Reckless Griselda

by Harriet Smart

  Sitting on the hard chair in the middle of the room, dressed in her underclothing, Griselda was making a half-hearted effort to comb her hair.

  “You look white as a sheet, my dear. There’s nothing to be afraid of, I tell you.” Lady Farquarson gently took the comb from her hand and delicately started to disengage the tangles. “Oh, your father was wrong. You’ve no need to be dashing to the altar, I can see that in a glance. Sir Tam’ll be getting the best of you tonight, will he not?”

  “You are very kind to think so well of me,” Griselda said, desperately trying to suppress the sob that was rising in her throat. “I do not want to marry him. And he does not want to marry me.”

  “And what makes you think that?” she said.

  “Because he does not love me,” said Griselda. “He is only marrying me to save me from ruining myself.”

  “That sounds like love to me,” said Lady Farquarson. “But who am I to say? I don’t have your book learning, Miss Grizzy.”

  “It is not love,” said Griselda, looking at her reflection in the blackened looking-glass that stood on the table in front of her.

  “And you know what love is?” said Lady Farquarson.

  “No, that is the trouble.”

  “Well, if you’ll take the advice of a daft old woman, I would say that you could do worse for yourself than marry him. He’s a braw fellow with a good heart and he’s willing to wed. If he does not love you now, he will love you when you are brought to bed with a boy to take his name. That is the way of the world. It’s not what you call romantic, but it works.”

  Griselda shivered. She had sometimes wondered what the morning of her wedding might be like, for, despite all her bravado, she had thought of marriage as all girls do. She had never allowed herself to think that she would not marry for love, but it seemed she was about to do exactly that. She was about to catch herself a baronet and all the wealth and consequence that went with it. She would be Lady Thorpe and a girl who had made a heartless, mercenary marriage to save her skin. Lady Mary and dear Caroline, who had much better claims on him, would be brusquely pushed aside. She had, by her conduct, inadvertently won a race which she had never meant to enter – the matrimonial sweepstakes. And she had done it by cheating, by behaving as a decent person should never behave. A heartless, scheming drawing-room miss could not have done better.

  “No, I cannot do it, I cannot,” she said.

  “You must. He’ll be disappointed,” said Lady Farquarson. “And your father will be, too. He’s quite come around to the idea of his daughter being married to a man with forty thousand a year.”

  “Forty thousand?” said Griselda. Her throat went dry. “I thought he had some property, but…”

  “Did you not know it was that much?” said Lady Farquarson, shaking her head and smiling. “You’re a very lucky lass. Ah, Susan, here you are. Now, do you think we can turn out Miss Grizzy in a bit of style with these? She’s having an attack of the nerves and she needs to feel as handsome as she can for her man.”

  “You’re plenty handsome already, Miss Grizzy,” said Susan. “And what is there to be nervous of? That Sir Tam, I’d take him myself in a flash, he’s that bonny.”

  “He’s no for the likes of you, Susan, you cheeky quean,” said Lady Farquarson, holding the russet velvet pelisse against Griselda. “There, I thought that colour would suit. Brings out the green of your eyes.”

  ***

  “Griselda Anna, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour and keep him, in sickness in health; and forsaking all other, keep only unto him, as long as you both shall live?”

  The church was enormous given the size of the village, and the tiny wedding party was lost in it. But the Reverend Dr Samuel Hopkins was used to its grandiose scale and he read the service loudly to a large but invisible congregation. To be standing near him at the chancel steps was to be deafened. Because of her ankle Griselda had been permitted to sit on a stool, and felt that the question, which should have been directed at her, was in fact directed at the funerary monuments that littered the east end of the church. She half expected some other Griselda to shout back “I do”, or rather she hoped for it, for her own voice seemed locked in her throat. She did not believe she could get the words out.

  Thorpe’s “I will” had been quiet but firm. He had sounded grave and suitably repentant, his head bowed so that he should not be taller than the clergyman. Now it was her turn.

  She was looking down at her gloved hands, holding the one in the other so that she should not be seen to be shaking. The bonnet that Lady Farquarson had lent her had a large brim and she could not properly see Thorpe’s expression because of it. But she could sense him, sense his masculine strength, sense the perfection of that long, lean body, sense all that had first drawn her to him and which had made her throw caution to the wind.

  Obey him, serve him, love, honour and keep him? The words echoed in her head. Could she honestly undertake all that? So much to promise when she knew so little of him, and worse still when she knew so little of herself.

  “Miss Farquarson?” the clergyman prompted her.

  She could hear her father fidgeting with impatience beside her. She really did not have any choice. She might be with child, just as Thorpe feared. She had no right to do that to a child, no matter what her scruples. She would just have to try her utmost to keep that promise.

  “I will,” she said.

  Her father sighed audibly with relief.

  “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” asked Dr Hopkins.

  “I do,” said Sir George, with enthusiasm. He grabbed her hand and extended it to Dr Hopkins. He then offered it to Thorpe. Thorpe stood for a moment holding her hand as if it were a pump handle, still facing the clergyman. Then, unexpectedly, he turned and half knelt beside her, so his face was level with hers. And he looked into her eyes, with such solemn intensity that Griselda felt herself shake.

  “I, Thomas Francis, take thee Griselda Anna to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

  How would he have looked into Caroline’s eyes? She could not help scourging herself with that thought. Would there have been joy in those clear blue eyes, and the sense of a man happy to make such promises? For all she could see was the chilly firmness of purpose of a man unshakeably determined to do his duty as well as he could.

  Now it was her turn to take his hand and say her part.

  “I Griselda Anna, take thee Thomas Francis, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give you my troth.”

  “The ring, Sir Thomas?” said Dr Hopkins. Thorpe, still kneeling beside her, removed his signet ring from his little finger and laid it on the open prayer book. “Your glove, my dear,” said Dr Hopkins.

  She had a little trouble taking it off – it was a trifle too tight for her. She had borrowed it from Lady Farquarson, and it was inside out by the time she accomplished the task. She remembered the glove he had tried to steal from her, how that had been the last time he had kissed her, and how she had been so angry with him and yet wanted him so desperately to kiss him in return. Now he was taking her hand and slipping his signet ring onto her wedding ring finger. She felt sure it would not fit, that it would be too loose or too tight, but oddly it slipped perfectly into place as if it had been made for her finger. The flat seal, engraved with the Thorpe crest, settled as it should, on display to the world. Their eyes met in mutual surprise for a moment.

  But only for a moment. He looked down at her hand and practically in a whisper, as if he meant he
r only to hear him, said, “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

  He pressed her fingers with his own. Griselda felt her heart thudding and quickly told herself it was from agitation at the enormity of what she had done.

  “Let us pray,” said Dr Hopkins, and Sir Thomas Thorpe, her husband, now helped her from her stool to the hassocks that had been put at the chancel steps.

  ***

  The landlord of the Blue Bell had been sufficiently bullied by Sir George Farquarson to provide a modest but not inelegant wedding breakfast that matched the position of the bride and groom, if not their appetites.

  “I could not find a piper or a fiddler,” said Sir George as they sat down the cold meat, wine and a plum cake. “But when you first come to Glenmorval, Grizzy, we will have both, and you shall dance all night, and then some more. Yes, and I’ll have them light bonfires, and you can walk from house to house in the old manner. Our people will want a proper wedding feast for the laird’s daughter.”

  “I dare say that by the time she and Sir Tam get to Glenmorval, she’ll be in no condition for dancing,” said Lady Farquarson. “Let alone walking all over the neighbourhood.”

  “By God, yes, there’s a thought. My first grandchild – it had better be a boy, mind Grizzy, or I shall be very cross with you and not send so much as a silver mug. Tam, my boy, see the ladies have what they desire.”

  Now that the register was signed and the marriage lines handed to the groom, Sir George had pushed any lingering notions of parental outrage aside. Griselda winced at that “Tam, my boy,” unable to know when, if ever, she would be able to address her husband by anything other than “Sir Thomas.” He was no stranger to family formality – she had seen it with his own mother and why should things be different with his wife, the wife whom he had married out of duty rather than love? She could not expect an affectionate “Grizzy” from Thomas Thorpe.

  She took the cup of chocolate that he had politely offered and sat down next to him at the table. She remembered how he had handed her that cup of chocolate at that other inn, how her hand had rattled the cup in the saucer at the touch of his fingers. Now she felt beyond trembling. There was a crisp breath of the autumn in the air and the room was cool. She felt the draught at her shoulders, for they sat beneath the window, but it did not make her shiver. She felt nothing but the unaccustomed weight of his signet ring on her finger, as heavy as an iron manacle on the ankle of a slave. Putting down the cup, she sat with her hands on her lap, twisting it, hoping to pull it off and then not quite daring to.

  “Eat something now, my dear,” said Sir George, who was carving a side of pressed beef with his usual flamboyance. “You’ll need all your strength tonight.”

  It was a vulgar remark and even Lady Farquarson blushed and tutted at it.

  “A little cold chicken might be more to your taste,” said Thorpe. “You should eat something.”

  He was jointing one of the cold fowls, and had carved a few neat slices of the breast for her.

  “Yes, listen to your husband,” said Sir George. “You know you must do as he says now.”

  Thorpe put the plate down in front of her.

  “I wish you would eat,” he said, very quietly. “You are not yourself.”

  “How can I be?” Griselda said, equally softly.

  He bit his lip and turned to Lady Farquarson. “You’ll have some of this chicken, ma’am?”

  “I will, thank you sir. My, it’s a pleasure to see you carve a bird. You do it very daintily. Not like my husband, who will slit up a chicken like it’s a roebuck he’s just felled.”

  “Ah, yes, I was meaning to ask you, Tam,” said Sir George, his mouth full of beef. “Have you ever been deer shooting?”

  “Not in Scotland, sir,” said Thorpe. “A friend from Cambridge has a place near Exmoor. We have had some rare sport there but I dare say to shoot deer in Scotland would be rarer indeed.”

  Griselda pictured Thorpe in his shooting coat, his gun crooked over his arm while some poor doe lay newly dead, or worse still dying, on the brown heather and bracken of the moor above Glenmorval. She felt like a wounded doe herself, unable to struggle to her feet and run away. She felt she was bleeding silently to death as they sat there at that charade of a wedding breakfast. Where was her strength, her will to oppose this? What was happening to her?

  “Then you have pleasure in store for you at Glenmorval,” said Sir George. “For that is the best sport you will get in the world, I can assure you.”

  “Then you have not chased the fox in my country yet, sir,” said Thorpe, raising his wine glass to Sir George.

  Outside there was a rumble of carriage wheels drawing up at the inn. Thorpe got to his feet and glanced out of the window. “Ah, that will be Gough.”

  “Gough?” said Sir George.

  “My man,” said Thorpe, sitting down again.

  However, a few moments later, the landlord could be heard saying in the passage way outside, “Sir Thomas Thorpe, ma’am? Straight ahead – first door you come to.”

  “Who can that be?” said Thorpe getting up from his place at the table. He went over to the door and pulled it open.

  And stood there saying nothing.

  “Oh, but you are all right!” said a woman’s voice, Caroline’s voice. “Thank God! I have been so worried, Sir Thomas. When Gough came to me and told me you had been injured,” Caroline went on. “I had to come with him. I could not have stayed comfortably at Cromer knowing you were injured. And he has been so concerned for you. It is all right, Mr Gough, your master is quite safe. Tell us what has happened.”

  “I told you the man was exaggerating,” Griselda heard Lady Amberleigh say. “Good morning to you, Sir Thomas, I am glad to see you well. Now is there any sign of my niece yet, I wonder?”

  “My Lady, Miss Rufford, you had better come in,” said Sir Thomas and showed them into the room.

  “Griselda, my dear, you are here too – you are found!” exclaimed Caroline with real pleasure while Lady Amberleigh looked around her for a moment, obviously trying to master her surprise.

  “Well, brother, I knew you were en voyage for Cromer, but this is hardly the place I expected to find you. A pleasure, though,” she said and put our her hand to Sir George to kiss.

  “You’re looking very well, Jacobina,” said Sir George kissed his sister vigorously on each cheek in turn. “And this must be little Caroline! By heavens, what a beauty you’ve grown into.” And then he kissed Caroline on each cheek. “Not that you weren’t a very pretty child but… Well, this is most fortuitous. You are just in time to drink the health of the bride and groom.”

  “Oh yes,” said Caroline smiling. “Colonel Farquarson told me of your marriage, sir. My very best wishes.”

  “Oh, not my marriage,” said Sir George, “Though you may drink to that as well, if you choose. No, my daughter. Griselda and Sir Thomas here have just made a match of it. This very morning.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” said Caroline, glancing from Tom to Griselda. “I take it this is a joke – or am I misunderstanding something? Sir Thomas, Griselda?”

  Griselda could bear it no longer. The long suppressed emotion rose up inside her with something like volcanic force. She jumped to her feet and shouted at Thorpe: “Well, will you tell her or must I? Will you tell her what we have done?”

  “It is true, Miss Rufford. We were married this morning,” he spoke rather quietly and, if Griselda was not mistaken, with a great deal of regret. “When I told you in my letter that the circumstances had changed, I ought to have been more frank with you.”

  “Your letter?” Caroline’s brow clouded.

  “Did Gough did not give it to you?”

  “I have had no letter from you,” said Caroline.

  “Oh dear Lord,” muttered Thorpe.

  “What letter is this?” said Griselda furiously, turning to Thorpe. He ignored her and spoke to Caroline.

 
“Miss Rufford, I apologise, but there is no pleasant way of putting this. I wrote to ask you to release me from our engagement. I gave the letter to Gough yesterday morning. You ought to have…”

  “You wrote to ask me to break the engagement?” said Caroline, with a rising note of horror in her voice. “You wrote to me on such a matter rather than face me? Why? What on earth…?”

  “You coward!” exclaimed Griselda.

  “Now, Grizzy, that’s no way to talk to your husband,” said Sir George. “A little respect if you please.”

  “Why? He deserves none. You do not know the half of it,” said Griselda.

  There was a shocked silence.

  “Which is?” Sir George asked, looking at her sternly. “That he’s seduced you after all?”