Springtime Pleasures

by Sandra Schwab

  “Yes, you did.” She smiled a little sadly. “Because it is the truth. You are not to blame for the accident, nor for your sister’s injuries. And particularly not for your brother’s death.”

  Boo had said the same. Charlie had said the same. Even more so: she had tried to show him. Had spared no effort.

  Vividly, he remembered the feeling of her thigh and arm pressed to his side as she handled the horses with ease and competence. Remembered sea-green eyes sparkling at him from behind those ridiculous brass-rimmed spectacles, her wide mouth smiling and talking.

  And now, she was back in Scotland.

  For a moment, he had to close his eyes against the pain that threatened to engulf him.

  His aunt had been watching him all the while. When he opened his eyes again, she repeated emphatically, “You are not to blame for the accident, Chanderley. If your parents, if my brother tries to tell you otherwise—” She stopped, her brows coming together in a frown. “Tell me again about your respectable marriage, George. Has your father—”

  Alarmed, he saw how the colour came and went in her face, leaving it deathly pale. “Aunt Burnell!” He stood, ready to dash towards her.

  With a wave of her hand she bade him stay. “Who said that Miss Stanton would not make you a suitable wife, George?”

  He frowned, at a loss to understand why this was so important to her. “In April the earl summoned me to the town house to tell me I was expected to find a suitable wife. A respectable girl from a good family.”

  “Lymfort.” And more heavily, “Lymfort.” As if she had suddenly aged ten years over the last ten minutes, Aunt Burnell walked slowly back to the chair she had abandoned and sat down abruptly.

  “It has been made clear to me that Miss Stanton does not fall into the category of respectable young females,” Griff added cautiously.

  “By Lymfort.”

  “Yes,” he said, even more cautiously.

  In answer, his aunt uttered a curse so vile it shocked him.

  “That goddamned bastard!” she added for good measure and then sat quietly, so quietly that Griff started to worry. Should he offer her a brandy to restore her wits?

  Finally she lifted her head. Her face was ashen, her eyes like dead marbles. “Shall I tell you about my respectable marriage, Chanderley?”

  Uncomfortable, Griff squirmed in his seat. “Aunt—” Yet her voice overrode his and she continued as if he had not spoken at all.

  “Just like you, I was told to form a suitable match. My father and brother both impressed upon me the importance of respectability—oh, they had much to say on the topic. And then they sold me to the highest bidder, a friend of your father’s. Nouveau riche, he was, stilled smelled of trade, but he had impeccable manners and, more importantly, was fantastically rich.”

  A grimace made her mouth twitch. “You must know, your grandfather was in some dire straits back then. For all the usual reasons, of course: gambling debts of some kind or other, unnecessary extravagances, and mismanagement of the estates. If it hadn’t been for Burnell’s money, the Earl of Lymfort would have lost his precious town house. A marriage of convenience for a daughter obviously seemed a small price to pay, especially when the gentleman in question was so very respectable. In public, at least.” She looked down at her hands, which she kept always, always covered with gloves, even when she ate or drank tea.

  Indeed, Griff could not remember ever having seen his aunt without her gloves. It was one of her eccentricities, like her fondness for travel and foreign countries.

  Very slowly she began to undo the buttons on her right glove and then those of her left glove. “When I was a young girl, I used to love playing the harp—very much like your sister loves the fortepiano. I was a good player, I was told. A very good player.” She looked at her hands, now lying in her lap, the gloves now unbuttoned.

  Griff cleared his throat. “I have never heard you play,” he said awkwardly.

  She lifted her gaze, and a sad smile flickered across her face. “Of course you haven’t.” She slipped her gloves off, one after the other, and laid her hands on the dark wood of his desk. They fluttered briefly like pale little birds, before she stilled them.

  Griff felt all blood leave his face. “Good God!”

  The white skin was covered with a myriad of scars, thin, vicious lines, bisecting one another, and what looked like—

  “Are these burns?”

  Round marks, old enough for the scar tissue to whiten and become almost translucent.

  Aunt Burnell contemplated her disfigured hands. “Yes. From cheroots. The lines are from whippings. In case you wondered.”

  “Whippings!” he exclaimed. If anything, he felt his face go even paler. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “My very respectable husband, of course. Who else has the right to beat an errant wife?” She lifted her shoulder in half a shrug before her gaze fell on her hands once more. “Did you not know? The whipping and burning of palms is most effective when the wife loves music. The scar tissue will tighten the skin until she will never ever play an instrument again.”

  A choking sound emerged from Griff’s throat. With abject horror, he stared at his aunt.

  “These were not the worst injuries he dealt me,” she continued, her voice almost complacent. “Naturally, he made sure not to mark my face—that would have been difficult to cover up. As for the rest of my body…” She shrugged. “I never knew when the beatings would start, what would trigger him. Sometimes it was the dinner he did not like and which I had told the cook to prepare. Sometimes it was the dress I wore. And with time, he did not need any provocation at all. Blackening my body became his sport, especially when it became clear that I could not give him the heir he wanted.”

  Griff sat in his chair as if frozen to the spot. Bile rose in his throat. “The servants must have known,” he managed.

  “Naturally.” She regarded him steadily. “I screamed, I believe. And there was the blood, of course. But none would lift a finger in my aid. How could they? I tried to tell my family, my parents, even my brother. And they told me I was being missish and warned me against embarrassing them. I should be grateful to them for having found me such a respectable man to wed. And did I not live in all comfort in a grand house?”

  Griff tried to imagine it. The horror she must have lived through. The pain and humiliation of the beatings. And if her husband had tried to get her with child, he probably would not have been gentle either.

  Griff flinched.

  If a man found pleasure in beating his wife, he would also find pleasure in raping her. Repeatedly.

  “They did not believe me,” she said. “My brother, my father, not even my mother. My own mother did not believe me. Because he was such a respectable man. When he found out I had tried to tell them—your father, I believe, gave him a hint—he became even more angry.”

  More violence.

  Aunt Burnell was a sturdy woman, but not tall. A man could very easily overpower her, press her to the ground and do to her whatever he wanted.

  His stomach heaved.

  “Dear heaven,” he muttered. “Dear heaven.” He looked up and found her watching him. “If he hadn’t—” He shook his head, then he reached out and tentatively touched the back of her poor hand. “If he had not died, he surely would have killed you.”

  “Yes,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “And so I killed him first.”

  His eyes widened. “Wha—”

  “The gun that exploded into his face, that was no accident. He thought it was not loaded, you see. But it was. It was. I had made sure of that.” Calmly, she put her gloves back on and buttoned them up. “It was the only chance I had to survive. My family would not help me. There was nobody else I could turn to. I could have killed myself, I suppose. I was desperate enough. But I did not want to give the bastard the satisfaction. So I chose a different route. And now you know about my very respectable marriage.” Gloved once more, her hands lay on the table. “Be
fore I married Burnell I did not understand how one human being could kill another. He taught me to understand—quite.” She gave him a humourless half-smile. “Have I shocked you very much, Chanderley?”

  Griff swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, but not in the way you think. I am saddened and angry that you had to go through all this. If Burnell were still alive, I would gladly kill him for you.”

  Leaning forward, she patted his arm. “You are a good boy, Chanderley. So now you see why I cannot let your father ruin your life the way my father ruined mine.”

  His throat worked. “It would not be quite the same.”

  “No, it would not. But there would be unhappiness, wouldn’t it? I have seen the way you look at Miss Stanton.”

  “Yes,” he said in answer to her silent question. Yes, she is more dear to me than words can describe. Yes, she holds my heart in the palm of her hand. Yes, I would give anything—anything to call her mine. Yet guilt and duty had held him back and had compelled him to let her slip away, even after she had shared her body with him, so sweetly, so ardently, so everything he had ever hoped to find in a woman.

  A sudden knot seemed to have formed in his throat.

  Fumbling, he got up and went to the window. Blinking rapidly, he tried to regain control of himself.

  From behind him came her voice, inexorable and hard as glass. “When I needed him most, my brother would not help me. Lymfort chose to put respectability, a mere show of respectability at that, above the life of his sister. And he chose to put a burden of guilt on the shoulders of his remaining son, to cripple him with recriminations, to bind him with talk of respectability and duty and culpability. He does not deserve your loyalty, George.”

  Griff thought of what she had told him, of the pain and humiliation she must have endured in the course of her hellish marriage. Impotent fury made his hands curl into tight fists.

  If it had been his sister, he would have taken the bastard apart limb by limb. He would have gladly killed him even if he had to flee to the Continent afterwards to escape from a trial for murder. Her brother, however, had decided to ignore her plea for help. Indeed, if her conjecture was correct, he had blown the gaff about her and had thus added to the escalation of violence against her.

  For the first time in his life, Griff felt contempt for his father, who used the words honour and respectability in the most hypocritical fashion imaginable. How could he have done such a thing? How could he have left his own sister in the hands of such a monster?

  Griff shuddered to think of the anguish and despair she must have felt when she realised that she was all alone and nobody would help her. But instead of giving up, she had taken her fate into her own hands—unlike himself, who had given in and thereby sacrificed the woman he loved before all others.

  “You must think me such a dreadful coward,” he said eventually, his voice not quite steady.

  The reply he received was brisk and sharp. “Nonsense,” his aunt said. “You are not a coward, my dear, but a man plagued by false guilt. A sense of duty is all well and fine, if you don’t let it lead you astray.”

  He threw her a glance over his shoulder. “As you think mine has done.”

  She was watching him with her shrewd crocodile’s eyes. “Let us say it has led you on a detour. Fortunately for you, Scotland is not quite out of the world.” A smile curved her thin lips. “I have a nice little property down at the Dorset coast,” she said conversationally. “When our poor king started to visit Weymouth for his health back in the ’80s or ’90s, the court followed suit, and hangers-on like Burnell did, too. I never could understand why he chose Endsleigh Hall of all places, as the house did not suit his disposition at all. It was clearly built for a large family and was meant for relaxation rather than for entertaining. It is a charming house, even if I could never see it as such, and it deserves to be happy once more. The estate is a good one; it brings in at least six or seven thousand a year, I should think.” Her smile deepened. “I am of a mind to give it to you as a wedding present.”

  Griff’s mouth fell open. This would be a beyond generous gift; one that would give him a comfortable independence. No wonder, then, that he could not help gaping at his aunt like a fish on dry land.

  Laughing, she stood, suddenly as lithe as a young girl once more. “I shall speak to my man of business post-haste so everything is ready for you when you return from Scotland.” Her eyes twinkled. “I believe they have most convenient wedding customs up in the north.”

  “They… they have.” By Jupiter, they had. Rapidly he began to calculate how many days, how many hours… If she would have him…

  Aunt Burnell laughed again. “Don’t look like that, my boy. When you meet Miss Stanton again, you can grovel at her feet. I am sure she will be much impressed by such an excess of adoration. I expect to be invited to Endsleigh upon my return from the Continent.”

  “So you are leaving?”

  With quick strokes, she smoothed out her skirts. “I am, and as her godmother I will invite your sister to join me.” She threw him a sidelong glance. “We cannot have her grow mouldy under your parents’ roof, you know!”

  Griff took a deep breath. For the first time in months—nay, in years—the world looked like a fine place full of sunshine once more, where happiness was more than just a distant dream. Suddenly, the world was full of possibilities, not just for himself, but also for Izzie.

  He felt a smile spread across his face. “I think it is a most splendid idea,” he said.

  Chapter 19

  in which our hero is nearly finished off

  by Robinson Crusoe

  For the determined and desperate lover, the turnpike road system and the mail coaches, exempt from tolls, presented themselves as the most marvellous of inventions as they made travel to the north of the country fast and efficient, if a little uncomfortable. But nothing could beat those coaches for speed, and thus, on the stroke of eight that same day, Griffin found himself in the belly of that powerful beast of the Great North Road, the mail coach, as it flew off into the night to get letters, parcels, and passengers delivered to Edinburgh.

  Fifty-odd hours later he emerged from the same mail coach, his bones thoroughly rattled and shaken. Still, the prospect that greeted him—Edinburgh Castle perching on its craggy rock like a brown hen on her nest—cheered him to no end. His body might be tired, but as it was only midday, he pressed on. The time for rest would come later—when he had found her, when he had had her answer. And dear God, please, when she was back in his arms, where she belonged and where she fitted as if God had fashioned her with Griff in mind as her mate.

  So he borrowed a horse and a pair of saddlebags and bought a map and in a trice was on the road again. It took him half a day to reach Ardochlan—who would have thought that Scotland possessed so many small roads and so few road signs? Or perhaps it was because by then he was so tired, his mind whirled like a merry-go-round

  Griff gritted his teeth and pressed on. His body might betray him, but he could not stop now. He had to see her, to speak to her, hold her in his arms once more.

  If she let him. Please, God, if she let him.

  More by chance than anything else, he finally found Ardochlan. By then he was covered with the dust and grime of the road, his clothes rumpled, and his hat—his hat he had forgotten on the mail coach.

  Damn.

  He hadn’t changed his clothes in three days.

  He hadn’t shaved in three days, and itching stubble covered his face.

  He supposed he looked as bedraggled as he ever had.

  And he probably smelled, too.

  Indeed, if any of his London acquaintances could see him right now, they would probably perish from the shock of it.

  As it was, he looked enough of a fright to make the villagers stop and stare at him. The first man he asked for directions, an elderly, wizened individual, looked him up and down, shook his head, then proceeded to spit in the dirt in front of Griff’s grubby boots and walk away.

>   Splendid.

  Griff asked two women next, hoping the sight of him might evoke pity in their feminine hearts (what he could see of himself certainly evoked pity in his heart, and would evoke pure horror in poor Bing’s heart).

  But whatever it was that Griff’s appearance evoked in the hearts of the two village matrons, it was not pity.

  They eyed him suspiciously, then one of them said something to the other in a language he didn’t understand—surely that wasn’t English?

  The two women looked at each other, looked back at him—and burst out laughing. Finally, one of them addressed him in that language he didn’t understand, and pointed over his left shoulder. So he supposed he was given directions, after all. He certainly hoped he was been given directions.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Most obliged,” he said, and sketched them a bow—which made them burst into another round of chuckles.

  Still chuckling and chortling, they walked away from him, from time to time throwing him a look over their shoulders.

  Griff looked at his horse. “Did you understand what they just said?”

  The horse snorted and nibbled on his shoulder.

  “Ah well,” Griff said. With some effort, he swung himself up into the saddle. “Let’s see whether they have given us the right directions.”

  He rode in the direction the woman had indicated. And indeed, a short distance from the village, he spotted a large brick house.

  He rode up to what turned out a rather rusty gate and then through to the house itself. He stopped opposite a dented brass plate. St. Cuthbert’s Academy for Young Ladies, it read.

  Thank God, thought Griff. Thank God. He could hardly believe he had finally made it to Charlie’s St. Cuthbert’s. He slid out of the saddle, and nearly stumbled when his feet hit the ground.

  Steady, old boy. Steady.

  Clutching the reins of his horse, he read the plate again in case his tired mind had played a trick on him.

  But it hadn’t.

  It hadn’t.

  A wave of sudden emotion clogged up Griff’s throat, and he had to close his eyes for a moment. He had made it.