Obsession

by Claire Lorrimer

  Tonight she had instructed Cook to produce a cheese soufflé and eels en-matelote, followed by duckling roasted with chestnuts, Brook’s favourite dishes. She had instructed Fletcher to bring up one of the mature clarets from the cellar, confident that he would not forget to remove the cork a half hour before the meal to let it breathe. It was a repast just right for Brook’s discerning taste – one he would most definitely enjoy, and if her hopes and plans materialized, he would set aside his anger and take her to his heart again.

  SEVENTEEN

  1869

  Brook opened his eyes and promptly raised his hand to shield them against the sunlight streaming through the curtains. He was instantly aware of a throbbing headache, and its cause. Last night he had done something he had sworn to himself he would not do: he had followed Harriet into the bedroom and …

  At this point, Brook tried not to think further, but as his brain began partially to clear from the alcohol he imbibed the previous evening, he had all too clear a memory of what he had done. He had assaulted his wife.

  Momentarily Brook’s eyes closed, as if to blot out the vision of himself staggering upstairs behind Harriet aware of only one thing – he wanted her: he wanted to possess her. Starved of her beauty these past three months, and with her alluring appearance throughout the evening, her voice soft and enticing, his body craved release and the zenith of satisfaction he had only ever reached in her arms. Throughout the evening she had made it equally clear that she wanted him to desire her; that she was hoping he would return to her bed.

  Brook was now painfully aware of Harriet’s warm body as she slept beside him. He tried desperately to banish his recollections but they would not go away. He had drunk two bottles of claret, and afterwards made heavy inroads into the decanter of port left for him by Fletcher on the sofa table in the drawing room. Harriet, he recalled, had come to sit beside him and chattered about a party she and Felicity were planning. But then, after he had ordered Fletcher to bring him a brandy and leave the bottle on the table, he became aware that Harriet was no longer smiling. When she saw him refilling his glass a second time she’d stood up abruptly, saying she had a headache and was going to retire.

  Brook now called to mind the hazy memory of enjoying the evening and Harriet’s company hugely, so it angered him when she had, despite his protest, suddenly ceased to smile. She’d moved quickly away when he’d tried to touch her, and left him even more angry when she announced she was going to retire.

  Brook’s head was thrumming painfully and he wished he felt less giddy and could get up out of bed. Most of all, he wished his memories of the previous night would not keep surfacing. He must at some point have forgotten about Charlie; about Harriet’s shocking deception and his resolve never to forgive her for it. He must, too, have forgotten that on several occasions he had contemplated – albeit without much conviction – taking Felicity’s advice to put an end to what had become a sterile marriage: to divorce his wife. He’d forgotten everything but his need to hold her in his arms, feel her kisses, her touch: his hungry need to possess her.

  Beside him, Harriet stirred. Almost immediately, and without speaking, she got out of bed, pulled on her négligée and disappeared into her dressing room.

  Brook was momentarily overcome by a deep feeling of shame. He had forced himself on her. Drunk as he’d been, he’d ignored her protestations and taken her fiercely, hungrily, thrusting himself into her again and again until at last he had found release. Within minutes he had fallen asleep, only faintly aware that his face as well as hers was wet with the tears she had shed.

  Hastily, Brook now rang for Hastings. He needed coffee to clear his head. He would have liked a drink but knew he must not have one.

  There was a knock at the door and Hastings came into the room. He settled a large breakfast tray on Brook’s lap and would have removed the silver covering the top of the breakfast dishes but before he could do so Brook pushed the heavy tray away.

  Having seen his master drunk on many occasions since his rift with his wife, Hastings duly removed the tray and poured Brook a steaming cup of black coffee. When his master, considerably the worse for wear, had not come to his room last night, he had known that Brook had gone to his wife’s bedroom for the first time in months. Now, seeing his condition, he wished he could have persuaded him to go to his own dressing room where he now usually slept.

  Brook, too, was silently wishing the same thing. The coffee was helping to clear his thoughts, and he remembered with shocking clarity how Harriet had protested violently when he had ripped the clothes from her body, forced his kisses on her and used his own weight to push her backwards on the bed. All the time he had ignored her protests, her tears, her pleas to him not to take her in anger, only in love.

  Brook now felt bitterly ashamed of himself, but it was only a matter of minutes before he began to find excuses for what he had done. Not only had Harriet been overtly seductive, it had been she who had destroyed their marriage: destroyed the trust they’d had in each other with her lies and deceit. Her perfidy left him with no alternative than to deny the loving, satisfying, intimate side of their marriage. It was Harriet who had virtually left him without a wife.

  Telling Hastings to leave him alone, he lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes. How could he stoop so low as to rape his wife – because that was what he had done. Being drunk did not excuse him, nor did the fact that he’d had to lead a monastic existence ever since the day that wretched maid of Harriet’s had shown him the letter.

  Retrospectively, he asked himself now, would he rather not have known the truth about the boy? He had been so proud of him, so … yes, so devoted to him. Even now he found it hard when Charlie came running to him calling him ‘Papa’, a big smile on his little face. He’d been the child he believed to be a replica of himself, and his and Harriet’s love for one another.

  Men did not cry, he’d told himself on such occasions when he’d felt like weeping because he had lost not only the son he’d thought he had, but the unbelievably happy married life he’d once taken for granted. Not only was he now bereft of all he cared about, but he had totally debased himself. Why had he done it? It wasn’t simply that he’d wanted a woman, any woman: he’d wanted Harriet. However much he might wish it otherwise, he still loved her. It was because he loved her so much that her deception had wounded him so irrevocably.

  Once again, Brook now found himself questioning whether it might not be better for him to divorce Harriet. She was a constant reminder of what had once been and could never be again. As Felicity had said, he could provide Harriet and the child with a house, with money for her needs; he could provide for the child whose presence was invariably a painful reminder of what he had lost. As Felicity had pointed out, he was still a young man – handsome, according to her, financially well off and more than well able to find another wife who, this time, would be able to give him the family he wanted.

  Felicity, Brook thought as he walked unsteadily back to his own dressing room, had been a tower of strength to him. What else were good friends for? she had replied when he had expressed his thanks for her welcome. She would continue to be a good friend to Harriet, she’d told him, despite her disapproval of the way Harriet had deceived him, because she was a very unhappy woman. Would he and Harriet not be happier living apart? Harriet most certainly would be so long as she had the child she doted on with her. He, too, would surely find life less stressful if they were not there as a constant reminder of the damage Harriet had done to him and their happy marriage.

  It was clear to Brook that Felicity had a good knowledge of how men felt: that she appreciated the physical frustrations he must be suffering. As she pointed out to him, Harriet might not have betrayed him physically with another man, but she had cheated in a different way when she’d foisted another man’s child on him. Brook should have no conscience, Felicity maintained, if he were to break his marriage vows to be faithful to Harriet for their lifetime. If he did not wish to di
vorce her, he might find contentment again if he took a mistress. If Harriet was not her friend, she herself would have done anything to see him happy again.

  He’d been shocked but also intrigued by Felicity’s outspoken implications. Yet, tempting as her voluptuous, inviting body was during the evenings they now often spent together in her private, comfortable sitting room, he had not pursued what he’d suspected was an unspoken invitation for further intimacies.

  ‘Dammit!’ Brook swore softly as he stepped into the bath Hastings had prepared for him. He’d altogether had enough of women, of worry, of shame for last night’s disgraceful behaviour. He would go away for a bit – spend a day or two with his father, to whom he’d not told the painful fact that Charlie was not, after all, his grandson.

  His father, he thought unhappily, was besotted with the child: he rode over to see him every week without fail unless his recurring attacks of gout prevented it. He spent hours playing ‘soldiers’ with him, monopolizing the dining-room table. Old and young sat at either end of it setting out their troops ready for battle. Brook, who in the past had watched one or two of these games, noted that more often than not his father’s army were manipulated so as to lose the battle, the lead soldiers lying undignified in death with their feet and rifles pointing to the heavens. A group of Sir Walter’s men, Charlie’s ‘prisoners’, lay in neat rows in his camp.

  Recently, Brook had pretended not to hear when the child turned to him for his advice on battle tactics. He had invented an excuse to leave the room.

  There was no denying the fact that the little boy’s presence was a constant and bitter reminder of his own deeply unhappy existence: of all the joy that, without warning, had been taken away.

  On the other hand, he decided, finding a mistress would not help to divert him. He would go to London instead and enjoy its many entertainments.

  He rang the bell for Hastings and ordered him to pack a valise for a possible week’s stay in the capital. The coach was to be prepared for his departure in an hour’s time, he instructed, and Cook made aware that he would not be requiring meals until further notice; nor would he need food for the journey. They would stop and eat at a coach house on the way down to London.

  With an effort, he disregarded his throbbing head and allowed Hastings to shave and dress him. Hastings was the first to speak when Brook’s dressing was completed.

  ‘Do you wish anyone else to be notified that you will be in London, sir?’ he asked.

  Brook shot him a quick glance. ‘And do you have anyone in mind, man?’ he asked pointedly.

  Unperturbed, Hastings said as matter-of-factly as he could, ‘I wondered if Mrs Goodall should be told, sir, lest she were to ride here to see you and be wasting her time.’

  Brook flushed and said angrily, ‘I can do without impertinent remarks like that, Hastings. They are also ridiculous. Mrs Goodall’s visits here are primarily to see the mistress, not me.’

  ‘As you say, sir!’ Hastings replied, his disbelief quite recognizable on his face.

  Pretending not to notice, Brook said sharply, ‘Find Bessie and tell her to inform her mistress that I will not be attending the Albermarles’ dinner party with her this evening as I have been called away on urgent business. And for God’s sake, Hastings, take that look off your face before I tell you to pack your bags and find a position elsewhere!’

  Hiding a smile, Hastings only said, ‘Yes, sir!’ before turning to complete the finishing touches to Brook’s attire.

  Felicity received the news of Brook’s absence from the groom when she dismounted from her horse in the cobbled yard in the Hunters Hall stables. Brook had arranged to ride into Melton Mowbray with her to purchase a new saddle. She had been looking forward to spending the morning alone with him – a pleasantly warm and sunny one as it happened, and anger merged in equal parts with her disappointment. Harriet had told her she would be going down to the village, to distribute some of Charlie’s outgrown clothes to the worthy vicar’s wife who ran the jumble sale at the church hall, so Felicity had jumped at the chance to be alone with Brook. Now that he was to be in London for a week, she thought angrily, it would be at least seven days before she would see him again.

  However, she had no intention of wasting her entire morning. She needed to see Ellen, who she expected to bring her up to date with the ongoing relationship between Brook and Harriet. With Harriet absent in the village, she was able to do so without any delay. Ellen, however, had only bad news for her, namely that Brook had spent the previous night in Harriet’s bed. Knowing that marital relations had been resumed between the couple left her white-faced and shaking as she returned home.

  Harriet’s few commitments in the village, meanwhile, did little to lessen her shock and unhappiness at Brook’s cruel behaviour the previous night. When she went up to the nursery to see Charlie on her return, Bessie, seeing Harriet’s white face, the dark rings under her eyes and her shaking hands, looked at her in dismay. Harriet said that she had not slept well, an inadequate excuse for her condition.

  Bessie was not convinced and suggested that Harriet might be sickening with the onset of the dreaded influenza, which the baker’s boy had reported that morning was afflicting several people in the village.

  When Harriet had gone downstairs for breakfast that morning, she had dreaded the thought of seeing Brook. It was a huge relief to her, therefore, when Fletcher reported that he’d been told to tell her that Brook had gone to London with Hastings ‘on urgent business’.

  Harriet went into the morning room where she sank gratefully into one of the armchairs by the window. Try as she might, she was unable to put memories of the previous night from her mind.

  Was it possible, she wondered, that Brook had left because he was ashamed of himself? Bessie had described to her how degraded she’d felt when she had been violated. She, too, now felt the same. Her whole body ached and there were bruises on her arms where he’d gripped them to subdue her struggle to free herself. Could he have intended to hurt her in retaliation for the way she had hurt him?

  Harriet now relived the events which had led up to her decision to produce Charlie as Brook’s son. At the time, it had seemed as if Fate was determining she should do so to compensate Brook for the bitter disappointment of her past miscarriages. Even more compelling had been her need to have a living baby in her arms.

  Not for the first time, Harriet wondered if Fate had predisposed the meeting with Mrs Bates, with a mother who did not want her baby. And at a time when it had been possible for her to establish that the baby was hers?

  Harriet lent back against the cushions, her eyes closed as she recalled Una’s unquestioning assumption that she had given birth to Charlie. Nor had it been doubted by her old nanny, or Una’s children, who had been so thrilled with their new ‘cousin’. As she stared out at the cold, wintry garden, her thoughts were not on Hunters Hall but in Ireland. Without difficulty, she could recall the children’s questions:

  ‘What are you going to call your baby, Aunt Harriet?’

  ‘May I hold your baby, Aunt Harriet?’

  ‘Your baby looks just like you, Aunt Harriet!’

  ‘What have you called your baby?’

  No one had ever suspected that Charlie was not her child.

  Even before the time of her return home eight weeks later, she had almost come to believe the baby was hers. Her only doubt had been that Brook’s reactions might not be the same as hers. She had convinced herself that he would be thrilled with a son of his own, that he need never know that the baby was not of his conceiving. As she had hoped, he’d taken Charlie to his heart.

  She was forced now to face the fact that she’d had no justification for deceiving him in so vital a matter: to lie to him, to let him love another man’s child believing it to be his own. Her actions, she now saw, had been in answer to her need, not his. She’d known from the start that if she’d asked him to let her keep the baby, he would never have permitted her to do so.

  Ha
rriet now rose from her chair and paced the room restlessly as she tried to marshal her thoughts. Brook loved children and would almost certainly have told her that she must place the unwanted baby with some kind, motherly person – someone in the village, perhaps; someone with whom the child would have been well cared for, that he would pay for his upkeep had that been necessary. But … he would not have let her keep Charlie and pass him off as theirs.

  Close to tears, Harriet was now thankful that Felicity had not called to see her. Good friend though Felicity was, she could not bear to tell her how humiliated she had been by Brook’s assault upon her. She knew Felicity was a very great admirer of Brook.

  It had always made Harriet proud to think that other women found her husband as attractive and loveable as she did, and she had no wish to disillusion Felicity as to Brook’s unfailingly kind, courteous behaviour. Were Felicity to have visited today, it would not have taken her long to extract at least some of the details of the previous night’s horrors. Moreover, knowing of the reason for the current rift between her and Brook, Felicity had started to suggest that it might be best for them both to live apart. Harriet had been finding it harder and harder to explain to Felicity that despite Brook’s indifference, his coldness towards her, the withdrawal of his love and now, awful as it had been, last night’s drunken assault, she knew she would rather bear it all than have to live apart from him.

  ‘I know Brook can’t forgive me,’ she had said often enough to Felicity, ‘that he may never be able to love me as he once did, but whilst he allows me to go on living here, I can still hope, can I not? There are times when I raise my head and see him looking at me as if … as if he didn’t hate me … as if … it’s silly I know, but I think he does need me, needs things between us to be as they once were. He would have told me to leave long ago, would he not, if that was what he wanted? I cannot leave him, no matter how unhappy I am.’