The Marquis Takes a Bride

by M C Beaton

  And Jemmy lives beside it;

  ’Twas there we saw each other’s face

  Whatever may betide it:

  But be it ill, or be it not,

  I dinna care a feather;

  For soon at Kirk we’ll tie the knot,

  And we shall live together!

  O! we shall live together, laddie,

  We shall live together.

  “Yes, we shall live together,” murmured poor Jennie. “But oh! How far apart!”

  Chapter Four

  Runbury Manor basked in the lazy heat of yet another perfect summer day. The birds twittered briefly in the ivy as the sun rose, falling silent as the heat burned the dew from the shaggy lawns and lowered another few inches in the lake.

  Jennie awoke late, already feeling hot and gritty. She was alone in the great bed. She climbed out and washed and dressed hurriedly, lest her lord should suddenly appear.

  But the great house seemed imprisoned in hot silence. She made her way downstairs, looking at her home, it seemed to her, for the first time.

  There was no denying that it stank abominably. The great hall door stood open but no fresh air blew in to relieve the heavy, musty air. Dust motes danced lazily in shafts of sunlight, which struck through the leaded pains of the windows to mercilessly highlight the worn, spindly furniture and threadbare rugs.

  Jennie ate her breakfast in solitary grandeur and then, becoming impatient, went in search of another human being.

  Lady Priscilla was seated in the morning room, carefully studying a letter with a large magnifying glass.

  She looked up as her granddaughter appeared and gave Jennie a fond, vague smile.

  “So kind,” she said fluttering the letter. “You are indeed a lucky young lady to have such an understanding husband.”

  “Why is he writing a letter to you?” asked Jennie, puzzled.

  “Read it my dear. ’Tis all that is charming!”

  “You know I cannot read,” said Jennie, crossly. “I have been taught to sign my name. If you will remember, grandfather insisted that that was all I needed to know.”

  “He did?” Lady Priscilla picked up the parchment from her lap and proceeded to read, unaware of the conflict of emotions on her granddaughter’s face.

  “‘Dear Lady Priscilla,’” she read, “‘I am making an early departure for London and wish you to make my farewells to my bride. Although the Season is over, I have a depressing round of social commitments… balls, parties, breakfasts and masquerades. Jennie is very young and very attached to her home and I feel it would be unfair of me to subject her to such a boring round of social duties so soon. Perhaps when she is a little older, she will learn to endure them as I do. For the moment, I feel I should be a monster, indeed, to take such a young girl away from all she loves. Yr. humble and obedient servant, Cyril, Marquis of Charrington.’ Now isn’t that thoughtful!” cried Lady Priscilla, dropping the letter.

  “He knows you are little more than a child. Most husbands would not be so considerate. What a gentleman!”

  “Yes, Grandmama,” said Jennie in a stifled voice and then she fairly ran from the room and out into the garden.

  She thought of London, she thought of all the balls and parties she was missing, and groaned aloud. Why hadn’t she gone with him the night before?

  She must try somehow to write to him. She could print a few simple words and at least she knew her alphabet. She remembered having seen a copy of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary somewhere in the library. Perhaps with the help of that she could compose a letter.

  Jennie did not consider that she could have ridden to Sally Byles’ home and asked that young lady for assistance for Jennie believed her friend to be as unlettered as herself, Guy sharing her grandfather’s views that an uneducated lady was a true gentlewoman.

  She entered the silence of the house again and went into the library. Everything was unnaturally quiet and still, the last of the wedding guests having set out very early in the morning.

  But search as she might, Jennie could not find the dictionary. In desperation she pulled open the double doors of a cupboard in the corner and then reeled back as a mountain of newsprint came tumbling about her ears.

  Lord Charles was forever ripping and cutting pieces out of the morning paper. Jennie had often wondered what had happened to them since nothing at the Manor was ever thrown away. Well, now she knew!

  She sat down under the mountain of fluttering newspaper and cried and cried with rage at the stupid Marquis, who had left her in this stupid house and all through her own stupid fault.

  After a time, she dried her eyes. At least there was one bright spot on the horizon of her gloomy mind. Guy would surely come to see her. She was no longer a young miss but a married woman. She now belonged to that mysterious society who were able to have all these delicious liaisons without anyone censuring them.

  All she had to do was wait for Guy to arrive, which he surely would the minute he found out she was not in London.

  But the long hot days stretched endlessly. The sun rose and set in a cloudless sky. The lawns turned brown and gold and the dusty gold and brown leaves began to turn and whisper along the weedy drive and nobody came. No Guy, no husband.

  Like a sleeping beauty trapped in some particularly noisome castle, Jennie drifted through the days as she had always done and sometimes, during the long, hot, sleepless nights, she wondered if her marriage had been all a dream.

  As the incredible un-English summer blazed on into a red and gold autumn, Guy Chalmers stalked away from the Marquis’ town residence in Albemarle Street with the butler’s now familiar message ringing in his ears, “No, sir, I regret that my lord and my lady are not yet returned from the country.”

  Guy racked his brains. He had not thought the Marquis would have taken Jennie straight to his country estate. He had suggested to the Marquis’ frosty-faced butler that he, Guy, might pay the newly wedded couple a visit, but this had been received with the stern rejoinder of, “No, sir, that is not possible. His lordship definitely said that he did not wish visitors.”

  Alice Waring had grown increasingly distant and had taken to mocking Guy and calling him a failure. He had been unable to repeat his delicious experience in her boudoir. Alice claimed coldly that Guy was ineffectual and would be unable to do anything to come between the married couple.

  The Marquis’ estates lay in Kent, a good two days’ ride from London, reflected Guy. He must do something. There was, after all, a faint possibility that Lord Charles might leave Jennie some of his money. But a ruined Jennie would not inherit a penny and Guy would undoubtedly get it all. With money and Jennie ruined, he could enjoy the grateful Alice’s favors any time he wished, having enjoyed Jennie’s in the ruining process.

  It was then that he hit on an idea. He would ride to Kent and call at the Marquis’ home claiming that his horse had shed a shoe. He would say that he was on his road to Dover to visit friends. That way he could see Jennie and ascertain whether the marriage of convenience still existed.

  Alice had refused to discuss her liaison with the Marquis and so Guy had come to believe that the Marquis had merely set Alice up as mistress in order to follow the fashion, without indulging in the pleasures of the bed. A man so wed to his tailor could have little time for women!

  Two days hard riding through the hot sun-baked countryside brought him to the gates of Charrington Court.

  He drew his horse into the shelter of a high hedge and pried off one of its shoes. Then, leading it by the reins, he walked to the lodge gates.

  A crusty and suspicious lodge keeper let him through, only after much exhaustive questioning.

  It was a long, long road to the Court from the gates. It seemed to wind through acres and acres of fields, then through a deer park, then through spacious formal gardens and then to the house itself, which was a great imposing early Georgian pile with two huge wings springing out from a central portico.

  Guy was left kicking his heels for some tim
e before he was finally conducted up the stairs to his lordship’s private sitting room.

  The Marquis was sitting at his dressing table, wrapped in a magnificent brocade dressing gown and cleaning his nails with the single-minded absorption of a well-trained house cat. He was scented and barbered and appeared his usual elegant self, even in his present state of undress.

  Guy did not know that the Marquis had only that morning taken off his dusty gaiters and sweaty clothes after helping with the last of the work of a bumper harvest. He only thought that he looked the perfect picture of the effete and bloodless aristocrat and put the breadth of his shoulder down to buckram wadding.

  He told his carefully rehearsed story of his horse casting a shoe and the Marquis merely smiled at him sleepily, rang the bell, ordered a servant to tell the estate blacksmith to see to Mr. Chalmers’ horse immediately and then turned his attention once more to his nails.

  “I am looking forward to seeing Jennie, again,” said Guy, breaking the silence at last.

  So am I, thought the Marquis to himself, but he said instead, in a vague kind of way. “Ah, my wife? Yes, she seems to prefer the country to the social round of London.”

  “Where is she?” demanded Guy abruptly.

  “Oh, somewhere about the countryside,” said the Marquis, still in that maddeningly vague way.

  “I shall be disappointed an’ I do not see her,” said Guy.

  “Will you? How touching are these family ties,” said the Marquis, examining an orange stick. “Well, you shall no doubt see her in London. We shall be returning there for the Little Season. She will be desolated to have missed you.”

  “I could put off my visit to these people in Dover,” said Guy desperately.

  The Marquis got lazily to his feet and flung an arm around Guy’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate hug.

  “I wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, “but what a splendid chap you are to suggest it. But… alas! We of the social world must honor our commitments and I am sure you would rather be with your friends than play gooseberry here.”

  “I assure you, sir,” said Guy stiffly, “that my friendship for Jennie is very close and very deep. She is my sole concern. She…”

  “Then how relieved you must feel to know that she is safely married and has a husband to take all these nasty little worries from your shoulders,” said the Marquis. “Ah, Dobbins, Mr. Chalmers horse is ready? Splendid! Good day to you, Mr. Chalmers. We look forward to seeing you in town.”

  There was nothing for Guy to do but take his leave.

  For the rest of the day, he travelled around the marches of the Marquis’ vast estate, hoping for a glimpse of Jennie. But the countryside lay calm and smiling and empty under the hot sun.

  Made desperate by fatigue, he returned to the lodge and rang the bell. This time there was no reply and the gates remained firmly closed. He could see the lodge keeper sitting by the open window in his shirt sleeves, smoking a clay pipe, but although he rang and shouted, the old man appeared to have gone unaccountably deaf.

  After dark, he tried leading his horse through a break in the hedge and found himself looking down the long barrel of a gamekeeper’s gun and it took a score of lies and apologies to extricate himself.

  He then rode wearily to the local inn to be told by a surly landlord that there was no room. He asked for ale, and was told there was nothing to drink, and tired and intimidated by the sullen stares of the local yokels in the tap, he took himself off.

  “What is the name of this cursed hostelry?” he asked himself, as he mounted his weary horse. He glanced up. The sign said, “The Marquis of Charrington” and Chemmy’s painted, bland and amiable features stared down at him.

  “Damn him!” thought Guy. “He saw through my story and is making sure I do not get near Jennie. Mayhap Alice will have some suggestion.”

  By the time he returned to London, two days later, he was in time to be informed that Mrs. Waring had left for the opera.

  He hurried to his lodgings to change into his evening coat and knee breeches and managed to reach the Haymarket Theater by the first interval.

  He went straight to Mrs. Waring’s box, ignoring in his hurry the gentleman seated next to her, and demanded a few words with her in private.

  Alice’s eyes glowed with triumph and malice. “Certainly not!” she said. “Darling, tell this… person… to go away.”

  Guy looked at her companion and found himself staring into the thin, painted, malicious features of the Earl of Freize.

  “Take yourself off,” said the Earl, turning his gaze away from Guy. “You bore the lady.”

  “Mrs. Waring and I are intimate friends,” grated Guy.

  The Earl raised one finger. “Get rid of it,” he said.

  Two burly footmen appeared from the shadows at the back of the box.

  Taken by surprise, Guy had no time to fight back. He was carried down the stairs like a sack of potatoes and out into the street, where he was dropped face down in the filth of the kennel in the middle of the road.

  He staggered to his feet consumed with hate. Hate for the Marquis, hate for Alice who had so quickly found herself a new protector. And what did they have that he did not? Money. Money, and therefore, power.

  There was nothing he could do now but wait for Jennie’s return. By ruining Jennie he would cut her off from her grandparents and bring that smiling idiot of a Marquis to his knees.

  After he had bathed and changed, he joined his cronies at Tothill and spent a splendid night roaming the streets with them, frightening and humiliating the weak and helpless. When a sultry dawn came up over London, he had boxed several Charlies, rolled several old people in the mud and had raped a serving girl on her way home. His amour propre was restored. He felt powerful again.

  All he had to do was wait….

  Chapter Five

  The Marquis rustled impatiently through his correspondence while a footman moved quietly about the room lighting candles, although it was only midday.

  His lordship and a deluge of typically English weather had arrived back in London together. Rain thudded down on the roof and chuckled in the gutters. Rain streamed in waterfalls down the plate glass of the windows beyond which Albemarle Street wavered and danced as if all its gray buildings had found themselves at the bottom of the Thames.

  “I would have thought she would have given up by now,” said the Marquis to himself. “Perhaps she really does love that horrible home of hers after all,” and then out loud, “What is it, Dobbins?”

  “A Mr. Guy Chalmers has called.”

  “Tell Mr. Chalmers that my lord and my lady are not yet returned from the country,” said the Marquis and then muttered, “Persistent beast!” after the footman had gone.

  He started to sharpen a quill and prepared to deal with his correspondence, vowing for the umpteenth time to hire himself a secretary.

  Once more he was interrupted by the entrance of the footman.

  “Excuse me, my lord,” said Dobbins, looking very worried, “but there is a young lady in the hall who says she is the Marchioness of Charrington.”

  A slow smile curved the Marquis’ lips. “I’m very sure it is, Dobbins. Show her in!”

  He got to his feet and turned around. A small bedraggled figure, clutching a bandbox, stood in the doorway.

  It was indeed Jennie. She was wearing a white dimity dress which was miles too short, a bedraggled straw hat with two dripping feathers and a much-worn pelisse. She was clutching a bandbox in one hand and the remains of a parasol in the other.

  She looked around in awe at the stately drawing room with its silk-paneled walls, elegant furniture and Chinese rugs, and at the apple wood fire crackling on the hearth. Finally she turned her eyes to her husband, taking in the exquisite cut of his coat of Bath Superfine, dove gray pantaloons and gleaming boots.

  “I came,” she said defiantly.

  “So I see,” remarked her husband pleasantly, “and I am very flattered that you have ma
naged to tear yourself away from the pastoral joys of your home.”

  “I felt my duty was to be with my husband,” said Jennie stiffly.

  “Very proper,” said the Marquis. “Before we continue our conversation, I will get the housekeeper to show you to your rooms. We will talk further after you have changed.”

  “I want to talk now!” said Jennie, stamping her foot.

  “Later,” he said gently, as the housekeeper rustled into the room. “Mrs. Benton. Take her ladyship to her rooms and make sure that all that is necessary is done for her.”

  Mrs. Benton, an awe-inspiring figure in black bombazine, majestically led the way and Jennie meekly followed, little rivulets of water running from her sodden clothes.

  It had been another hot, humid, sunny day when she had escaped from her home. Her previous pleas that she be allowed to join her husband had been met by shocked opposition from both her grandparents. It was her duty to wait quietly at home until her husband sent for her, they had said.

  Jennie had begun to burn with a steady fury against the absent Marquis, whom she imagined dancing and partying from dawn to dusk.

  She had bought herself an outside seat on the coach after walking several weary miles to the crossroads.

  As the coach had clattered down the long hill towards London, the purple clouds which had been massing all afternoon suddenly burst. She had been soaked to the skin by the time the coach had set her down at her destination and then the hack, which she had hired to take her to Albemarle Street, had dropped her at the wrong address. By the time she had found the Marquis’ home, she had felt she would never be dry again.

  She became aware that Mrs. Benton was pushing open a mahogany door and Jennie blinked at the splendor of the rooms in front of her. An exquisite little sitting room decorated in rose and gold led into a spacious bedroom, with a great Chinese lacquered bed.

  Mrs. Benton looked at her doubtfully. “Have you your lady’s maid with you, my lady?” she asked.

  “No,” said Jennie, biting her lip. “She… er… preferred to stay in the country. She is very old.” This was somewhat the truth since the lady’s maid that Jennie had shared with her grandmother had died two years ago and would have been in the region of ninety had she lived. “I shall manage for the present,” said Jennie, trying to adopt a haughty manner and failing miserably.