by Mary Nichols
He had dismissed Mark’s accusations as something said in the heat of the moment, and she could not bring herself to voice her own suspicions, even when he questioned her about what had happened. She had suggested that Mr Saint-Pierre himself was the best person to ask. ‘I would do so if I knew where he was,’ he had said. ‘He is a most elusive gentleman. I tried to find him in London, but by the time I had tracked him down he had left town.’
There had been a note in his voice which reminded her of their earlier conversation about Adam. Something had happened in the past which made him sad, someone he had known, something he had done or not done, and Adam figured in it somewhere. It made her feel guilty that she had not told him the truth about her rescue and her visit to Robert Rudge’s home. ‘I spoke to him when he arrived here only minutes before the race began,’ James had continued. ‘We arranged to talk later, but, with all the commotion, he left before we could do so.’
She risked a glance behind her, but Adam had not come out with the rest of the congregation. She waited until the interment was over and the mourners were making their way back to the house, then touched Mark’s arm. ‘I left my gloves in the pew; you go on.’ Before he could offer to fetch them for her, she hurried back into the church.
Adam was standing looking up at the memorial tablets to generations of Danburys set in the walls, but turned towards her when he heard her step. ‘Miss Paynter.’ He inclined his head.
‘What are you doing here?’ She found herself trembling as she stopped beside him. ‘Don’t you think the family is upset enough without you intruding on their grief?’
‘I have no wish to intrude.’ His voice was cold enough to send a chill through her heart. ‘I came to pay my respects and offer my condolences.’
‘You know Mark has accused you of deliberately...’ She paused. looking for a word other than murder, though it was the one Mark had used.
‘I know.’
‘Then why come back?’
He smiled slowly, but the smile did not reach his brown eyes. ‘I said he was a rogue, didn’t I? But even I did not think he would stoop so low.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The accident, if accident it was, has made him a marquis and heir to a dukedom. And I make a very good scapegoat.’ His voice was bitter.
She was shocked into silence. It could not be true. Neither Mark nor Adam had wanted the Duke dead; it had been a terrible accident caused by avarice and pride, but it was not murder. ‘Oh, Adam, is there to be no end to it?’ It was only after she had spoken that she realised she had used his given name and felt the colour rush into her cheeks.
‘There has to be an end,’ he said, controlling the anguish in his voice with an effort. Did she know how beautiful she was, how difficult this was for him? ‘One way or another we have to make an end of it. I am leaving to go back to France.’
‘Running away?’ It was out before she could stop it.
‘No.’ He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, to make her see what she was doing to him, but if he touched her he knew he could never bring himself to leave her. ‘I do not run away.’
She laughed. ‘Like a good general, doing what is expedient at the time, is that it? Will you, like Napoleon, return with the violets?’
‘I do not think so.’ He paused, watching her face. ‘The Danburys will be rid of me.’
‘Why do you hate us so?’
‘Us? You include yourself in that?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you know, I had never thought of you as one of them?’ He put out a hand and lifted a stray curl from her cheek with one finger and let it fall again. ‘I do not hate at all. If war has taught me one thing, it is that hate is a dangerous and destructive emotion and leads to muddled thinking and ill-considered actions.’
‘Then what have you got against the family that needs a cool head and careful planning?’
He smiled. ‘Nothing, my dear Miss Paynter. It is over now. I came to say goodbye.’
Goodbye. The word had such a finality about it that she wanted to cry. She had asked if there was to be no end and, although she had been referring to the accusations and enmity between him and Mark, he had answered her in his own way. She could not look into his face for fear of betraying the misery she felt. ‘When do you leave?’
‘Tomorrow I sail from Portsmouth.’
‘Then go now,’ she said sharply. ‘Go before Mark finds you here. If he sees us together...’
‘Mark! Mark! It’s always Mark with you, isn’t it? Well, so be it. I wish you happiness.’
She had meant that if Mark arrived there would be more accusations, perhaps another challenge, perhaps a constable sent for, and all she wanted was to prevent that; but he was so angry that she could not explain.
‘And you? What of you?’ Her voice was barely above a whisper. ‘Will you go back to the army if Napoleon rises again?’
‘I may have to.’
‘Then let us pray he doesn’t, for it will make us enemies.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Me? Go back to the others...’
‘And pretend nothing has happened?’
‘Nothing has happened.’
‘No,’ he said bitterly. ‘Nothing changes.’ He took a step towards her, then stopped. ‘Sacre Dieu! This is impossible.’
‘What is impossible?’
‘Saying goodbye.’ He took her shoulders in his big hands and held her at arm’s length, searching her face. ‘Come with me. Now...’
She was so taken aback she could do nothing but stare up at him with wide violet eyes. ‘You must be out of your senses,’ she said at last. ‘I could not leave without telling anyone, even if I wanted to, and if you think I am the sort of woman who would desert the man I am engaged to marry to run off with the first handsome rake who propositioned me, then you have made a big mistake.’
He threw back his head and laughed aloud, making the sound echo round the empty church. ‘So I am a handsome rake, am I? If that is how you think of me, then so be it, I will give you something to remember.’ He took her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. She squirmed in his arms, but he would not let her go and his lips were sweet on hers, making her tremble with longing. She gave up the struggle and let herself go and then very slowly put her arms round his neck and clung to him, returning his kisses. Her senses reeled and her knees buckled, but she leaned into him and felt the warmth and strength of his body against hers, supporting her. It was a moment she was to remember with bitter tears and great anguish for a very long time.
‘Goodbye, little duchess,’ he said softly, then put her from him and strode out of the church. She sank into a pew and was still sitting there, in a daze, when Mark came to find her.
‘Maryanne, what are you doing?’ His voice burst stridently into her bemused brain. ‘I have been waiting an age. Come along, do.’ He stopped speaking when he realised she had not been listening. ‘Is anything wrong? You are not ill, are you?’
‘No.’ She picked up her gloves and reticule and stood up slowly, testing the weakness in her limbs, and was surprised to find that she could stand without falling over. ‘I felt a little faint. It’s the heat and this gown is so heavy.’
He took her arm. ‘When everyone has left you can change. We must keep up appearances, but it’s no use pretending we are all broken-hearted, is it? Henry was a wastrel, even his own mother acknowledges that, and I for one do not intend to let it make any difference to me.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Except it is gratifying to be called "my lord" by all and sundry, though I am not so sure Father likes being "Your Grace"; it doesn’t seem to fit him somehow.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He is a man of the people.’
He looked sideways at her. ‘Perhaps. But when I am the Duke of Wiltshire. I...’
‘Mark! How can you speak so with your cousin hardly cold in his grave and your father still a comparatively young man?’
He smiled. ‘No, my dear, you are right to scold me. Now, as t
o the wedding...’
‘Whose wedding?’
He stopped walking and turned towards her. ‘Why, ours of course. It will have to be postponed while we are officially in mourning, but we can still make plans for it. The ceremony and reception will naturally be held here. And afterwards we will make our home at Beckford Hall.’ He began walking again and she fell into step beside him like an automaton. ‘Father will live here from now on and so will Caroline until she marries. Henry was never right for her and I told her so.’ He did not seem to be aware that she was only half listening. ‘I am going to Beckford tomorrow. You will come, won’t you?’
‘If you wish.’
‘Of course I wish it. You may want to make changes to the house; you can plan those while I go round the estate. Where would you like to go for a wedding trip? Shall we go to Italy? Now the war is over, there will be no difficulties. We could go to Venice and Rome, or even Vienna. All the heads of state will be there for the Congress...’
Too miserable to stop him, too full of her parting from Adam, too beset by doubts and a terrible sense of doom, Maryanne could not speak and allowed him to go on, making one grandiose plan after another, until she could bear it no longer.
‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried out. ‘Can’t you see how impossible it is?’
He looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Impossible? Maryanne, my dear, nothing is impossible, given the will and the money to do it. You are not worried about what it will all cost, are you? When all’s said and done, I won that race, and Father, as the heir, will have to pay old Henry’s debts, even if it does stretch him a bit. Father will fork out for the wedding too, being your guardian. Besides, you will have your inheritance in a couple of months.’
She stopped to stare at him, looking for any sign of the Mark who had been so kind to her when she first joined the family, the Mark who seemed to be so careful of her reputation, the Mark who had professed to have ‘feelings’; but his grey eyes looked back at her and failed to stir anything inside her at all. She turned and ran back to the house, intending to go to her room, but at the head of the stairs she changed her mind and went along the corridor to the Dowager Duchess’s room. She knocked and was admitted by a nurse.
‘Grandmother, may I come and talk to you?’
‘Of course, my child; got you down, have they? All that humbug, pretending to mourn, pretending respect, when there isn’t one of them wouldn’t have put a knife in Henry’s back when he was alive if they’d had the courage, concocting virtues for him and forgetting the vices which made them hate him, glossing over the fact that half the ladies swathed in black down there are mothers to his bastard children. Hypocrites, the lot of ‘em.’ She indicated a chair by the bed.
Maryanne was shocked. ‘You can’t mean that, Your Grace.’
‘Oh, I do. They’re all alike.’ She paused to get her breath after the longest speech Maryanne had ever heard her make. ‘Except James. Didn’t fall in the usual Danbury mould for some reason.’
‘How was he different?’
She laughed. ‘Stubborn. Independent. Couldn’t make him conform. Goodness knows what he’ll be like now he has the reins in his hand, but I hope he is astute enough to pull the irons out of the fire.’ She sighed. ‘Thank God I’m too old to worry about it any longer. There is an heir, he has done his duty by the family in that respect.’
‘Mark.’
‘Yes, and I suppose that is the reason for this unexpected visit. You don’t humbug me, child. What is troubling you?’
‘I don’t think I can marry him. I don’t love him.’
‘What on earth has love to do with it?’
‘Everything,’ Maryanne said miserably.
‘You are as foolish as your mother. You like Mark, don’t you? You have no particular aversion to him?’
‘Of course I like him,’ she said slowly. ‘He has been kind to me, but. . .’
‘Kind! Don’t you know, child, the Danburys are never kind? They are selfish and arrogant and insular, and Mark is no exception, but that doesn’t mean he won’t make a good husband, provided you keep him on a tight rein.’
‘But I don’t want to be like that. I want a man I can look up to, not one I must continually try to master.’ Why did she keep thinking of a pair of laughing brown eyes? No woman would ever master the owner of those.
‘Bit late to say so now, don’t you think? You accepted Mark and the announcement’s been made. If you back out now you’ll cause a scandal, and this family has had enough of those to last for generations.’
‘If you mean my mother...’
‘Not only Helena; James too, though he had the sense to see the error of his ways and come home.’
Maryanne gasped, suddenly remembering Caroline’s accusation that she was one of James’s by-blows. ‘You mean they ran away together?’
‘No, foolish child. James was back before Helena left, though it might have been better if he hadn’t been, then there’d have been no one to help her make a fool of herself.’ She paused, peering into Maryanne’s face in a short-sighted way. ‘I can’t make you marry Mark, but I advise you to think very carefully before you set the cat among the pigeons. Your inheritance, like your mother’s before you, is conditional on your making a marriage approved of by your guardian.’
‘In other words, the inheritance is not meant for me, but my husband?’ Maryanne asked.
‘Yes, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary in that. And it would be best kept in the family.’
‘It can’t be that much, surely?’
‘I have no idea how much it is, except that it has been wisely invested ever since your mother left home and it has grown into a sizeable sum. It is the only bit of the family fortunes Henry couldn’t get his hands on and squander.’
‘My mother gave it up for love. I could give it up for lack of love.’
‘And do you think she was happy?’ The old lady snorted her derision. ‘Living in that hovel in the slums of Portsmouth with that terrible old man. The husband she had sacrificed everything for was never at home and there was barely enough money to feed you both. Do you think she was content? I tell you now, she was miserable.’
Maryanne sat and stared at the old lady as if she were a witch who had put a spell on her; she felt numb. Her mother had loved her father, she had never doubted that, but, when she sat staring into the fire or out across the grey sea, had she been regretting leaving a comfortable home?
‘That’s made you think, ain’t it, girl?’ And when Maryanne declined to answer she added, ‘What’s the matter? In the dismals because I failed to say the comforting words you wanted to hear? You get only home truths in this room, as anyone who knows me will tell you. Now go and find Mark and tell him I want to see him.’
‘Will you tell him I can’t marry him?’ Maryanne pleaded.
‘Certainly not. And you won’t tell him either, do you hear?’ The old lady’s voice softened suddenly. ‘Believe me, child, I know what I am talking about. Give yourself time to think about it. There is no hurry with the family in mourning.’
Maryanne stood up, dropped a curtsy and left her to look for Mark. The mourners had left, the house guests had gone to their rooms to change for dinner and the servants were clearing away the glasses and crumb-laden plates in the empty drawing-room. She was about to return to her own room when she heard Mark’s voice coming from the library. ‘I want to enclose the Downend pasture.’
‘You will do nothing of the sort,’ she heard James answer him. ‘It is the villagers’ common land.’
‘Father, it is no longer considered sensible to have vast tracts of land which are almost unmanageable. The latest thinking is to enclose. You can ask higher rents that way.’
‘I refuse to discuss it, Mark. I have always been looked on as a fair landlord, not a greedy one.’
‘Are you saying I am greedy, Father? How can I take over the estate if I am not allowed to make decisions?’
‘You may decide anything to do with the runni
ng of the estate, not the disposing of it. You will rouse the fury of the villagers if you take away their grazing.’ He looked up as Maryanne came into the room.
‘Maryanne, my dear, were you looking for us?’ He sounded relieved by her interruption.
‘Grandmother would like to speak to Mark. I came to fetch him.’
Mark drove them to Beckford in his curricle next day. It was an unfortunate choice of vehicle because it reminded Maryanne so forcefully of that tragic race. She found herself musing on the fact that the compensations of being the Marquis of Beckford had overcome his sorrow remarkably well, and then scolded herself for her uncharitable thought.
Once at Beckford, he had a horse saddled and set off to tour the estate, leaving Maryanne to amuse herself. She wandered about the lower rooms and then went upstairs and gazed out of the long window at the end of the corridor across the neatly tended gardens to the park and beyond that to the fields. The villagers were cutting hay, taking advantage of the warm dry weather. There were children working with them and she smiled to herself; attendance at the rectory school would be poor until the work was done and then it would be good until the harvest, when the children would be needed again. She sighed and turned away. As Lady Beckford, she would have money and influence to help the inhabitants of Beckford. She could also do something for all those helpless children orphaned by the war. Mark had asked her to marry him, Adam had not; he had simply suggested going away with him and that was not the action of a gentleman, so why was it so difficult to make what seemed, on the surface, to be an easy decision? Trying to think calmly and objectively only produced a mental image of someone with laughing brown eyes and gentle hands, and made matters worse.
