Reckless Griselda

by Harriet Smart

  “You are harsh to me,” she said. “I know what I have done, and I take my share of blame. But you are so harsh.”

  “She is miserable, Griselda. If you had seen her – oh, I almost cannot bear it.“

  “You are in love with her!” she said after a pause. “Aren’t you?”

  “That’s not the issue here.”

  “I think it is,” Griselda said. “I have told you I am sorry, but you take this very personally. You always did admire her.”

  “Whether or not I love her does not matter,” he said. “What matters is what she feels – and that she has been hurt by this. That makes me very angry.”

  “And I’m not angry?” Griselda retorted. “Can’t you for a minute think how it is for me? I am married to him. I am married to this man whom I can never trust.”

  “Then you ought not to have married him,” said Hugh.

  “I had no choice.”

  “I don’t believe that. One always has a choice. Even in the most difficult situations there is always a chance, if one has enough courage, to do what is right. I had never thought that you lacked courage, Griselda.”

  “It took courage to marry him, believe me.”

  “It was wrong – and you know it. Why else would you be complaining to me like this?”

  “Perhaps it is better he married me and not Caroline,” said Griselda. “At least I know what I am dealing with. And you have Caroline – yes, you have her to yourself now,” she went on sitting down beside him and trying to take his hand, but he would not let her. “And you must marry Caroline. You are the only person who can put her right. I am sure of it.”

  “She would not look at me in that way.”

  “Now who lacks courage?” said Griselda.

  After a moment, he reached for her hand and said,

  “I do love her. That I cannot deny. But it is a hopeless condition. She will have Thorpe or no-one, and since he has been taken, she will suffer alone. That is her decision and I must learn to live with that.”

  “Have you asked her?” Griselda said.

  “You have no delicacy,” said Hugh. “How can I ask her in these circumstances? For heaven’s sake,” and he pushed away her hand. “We are not all impetuous fools, Griselda.”

  “I will speak to her then,” said Griselda, getting up. He grabbed her arm and made her sit again.

  “You will do no such thing,” he said. “You have caused enough trouble as it is. Can you imagine anything worse, anything more insulting to her than to have you tell her such things? She is in love with your husband. Don’t ever let yourself forget that!”

  ***

  The rooms had suddenly thinned out as everyone went for supper, and Tom, looking for Griselda, saw Caroline instead, standing alone in the corner of the room. He knew he had to speak to her – that he would be a coward if he did not.

  He saw his chance and made his way across the room. She saw him coming and was about to move away. He stretched his arm out and gently touched her on the forearm to stop her.

  “Miss Rufford, a word, a moment, if I may.”

  She flushed with agitation, a startled bird in a trap, glancing around her, looking for a means to escape.

  “My brother will not be pleased if he finds you talking to me.”

  “I know, I know, I quite understand. Please?” He took away his hand.

  “I really should not.”

  “I know I have hurt you.”

  “And I will be hurt again if I speak to you.”

  “That is not my intention. Please, Miss Rufford.”

  “I think of you and it pains me, Sir Thomas. Seeing you only pains me more. I would rather not prolong this conversation.”

  “Please let me speak, if only for a moment.”

  “I hope you have not come to ask for forgiveness. If you have I am not ready to give it.”

  “No, no, I could not expect that of you. I only wanted to know how you were. I heard you were ill.”

  “I am quite well thank you,” she said. He did not believe her. She looked pale.

  “I cannot tell you how deeply I regret that this has happened.”

  “But you married my cousin. When you spoke first to me of your affections, I sensed real sincerity, and yet…”

  “I was sincere. Believe me – ”

  “Believe you? How can I? When you allowed it to happen? How sincere could your feeling for me have been?”

  “A man may love in many ways,” Tom managed to say after a moment.

  “And yet a woman only loves once and that must be enough for her?” Caroline retorted. “If a woman behaved with such licence, you would despise her.”

  “Do you despise me?”

  “No, but I no longer respect you, Sir Thomas. And as for love, whatever that may be, I do not know. Perhaps you can tell me?”

  Tom could not answer.

  “You have a wife now,” Caroline went on. “She should be your first object in all things. She is a fine person. You ought not to have used her as you did.”

  “You are good to think of her, when you have suffered.”

  “I still have my reputation,” Caroline said. “You have taken that from her. She trusted you, as I did, and as Lady Mary may well have done. Who knows how many women you have trifled with, Thomas Thorpe?” She turned sharply away, her defiant manner dissolving into a more transparent look of pain than he could bear.

  “Caroline, please…” he said taking her hands to draw her back. “Oh Caro, please forgive me.” He bent his head over her hands and kissed them.

  “Sir Thomas, if you please,” she said, pulling away her hands. “You are a married man. What’s done is done. Please leave me in peace or I shall be obliged to call for my brother. Spare me a scene.”

  He let go of her hands and watched her cross the room. At the doorway to the next room he noticed Colonel Farquarson was standing watch, as if on guard duty, so stiff was he with evident displeasure. She took his arm as soon as it was offered and then for one moment turned back towards Tom, her slender form wrapped in folds of pale green silk as gracefully as a dancing figure on a Greek frieze. But there was no nymph-like serenity on her face.

  Chapter 21

  “I would like to go, if that does not inconvenience you?” Griselda said.

  “No, not in the least. I’ll have them bring the carriage for us.”

  Tom had found her in the tail-end of the supper crowd. She looked quite wretched – as wretched as he felt, so hard on the heels of that awful conversation with Caroline. “I have no wish at all to stay. Here, take my arm.”

  “I can manage, thank you.”

  They went down the great staircase together. Only footmen waited in the hall, as the guests upstairs all settled down to hear a famous Italian soprano singing the latest arias.

  “Wait here, it will not be a moment.”

  “I will walk out to it,” she said, going straight to the door. “It will be much easier for Andrew.”

  The courtyard was full of carriages and stamping horses, with drivers huddled under their many-layered capes, smoking their pipes and gossiping in corners, their faces turned into grotesques by the torch lights. Griselda, who would not be stopped, crossed the cobbled yard that fronted Renfrew House, almost as if she meant to walk straight out onto the street. Tom had to run behind to catch her, stripping of his coat as he did so.

  “You should not go from such heat into the night air without a wrap,” he said, putting his coat round her shoulders.

  “Andrew?” she called out, when she saw the carriage.

  “My lady?”

  “I will walk home,” she said. “I’ll have my wrap from the carriage, though,” she added to George, the footboy, who jumped down from the box to open the door. Then she handed Tom back his coat.

  “We will both walk,” said Tom. “Follow us, Andrew.”

  “Sir.”

  George scrabbled into the carriage and retrieved her wrap. It was the cashmere shawl but she threw it a
round herself like a peasant girl with her plaid, covering all her finery. And then she began to walk again, briskly.

  “You don’t know the way,” Tom said going after her.

  “I don’t care.”

  “What has happened? You must tell me.”

  “I would really rather not talk just now. I want to walk and be silent, if you can understand that.”

  “Yes, better than you know,” he said, and put his hands into his pockets. The night felt as raw as his nerves.

  Behind them the carriage rumbled over the cobbles at a funereal pace.

  Griselda said not a word, but he could see her breath in the dank air, when they passed a well-lit door way, which made him remember the kisses she had given him only that afternoon. He was tempted to stop her and pull her into his arms, but did not quite dare to.

  Instead they walked in silence until they reached the house.

  “Griselda, please,” he said, as they went into the inner hall. “There’s something I must say to you.”

  “I have a headache,” she said, going upstairs. The hem of her skirts was thick with mud. “I must go to bed.”

  “Have you some cologne?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Send Hannah to me for some,” he said, following her, taking two steps at a time.

  “Thank you.”

  He brought the cologne himself, although Hannah tapped at his dressing room door to fetch it. Gough had just pulled his boots off and was complaining at the mud on them.

  “My lady sent me for the eau de Cologne, sir, like you said. Poor lady, she has a terrible headache. Perhaps, Mr Gough, you might make her one of your powders?”

  “No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Tom. “And I’ll take the cologne to her myself.” He looked around. “Where is the damned stuff?”

  “Here, Sir Thomas,” said Gough, supplying a cloth with the flask. “Are you sure about the powder? A little arrowroot mixed with – ”

  “Leave one out for me here,” said Tom, “where I can find it if I need it. But I don’t want her ladyship disturbed any more. Hannah, you may go to bed.”

  And he set off down the passageway to her room.

  She was sitting in her stays and her shift, on a low chair by the fire. Her stockings lay on the floor with her silver grey dancing slippers, quite ruined by the dirty street.

  “Where’s Hannah?” she said, seeing him.

  “I’ve sent her to bed.”

  “I wish you had not...” she said in alarm.

  “Please, let me help you. Shall I undo your stay?”

  “I suppose I have no choice.”

  He put down the eau de Cologne and started to unpick the knot.

  “Is it so dreadful to allow your husband to help you?” he said, as he pulled the knot open and started to loosen the stay back. She had bent her head down as if to hide her face to him and he could not resist the sight of the fine hairs on the back of her neck. He kissed her lightly on the neck.

  “Sir Thomas, please!” she exclaimed, and jumped up from the chair. “I cannot...”

  She broke off and finished pulling her stays off instead. She threw them onto the floor and stood there in her shift, her arms folded tight across her. She clutched at her elbows so tightly that he could see the whites of her knuckles.

  “I cannot bear this!” she exclaimed.

  “You cannot?” he said. “When you are making us both miserable, for no good reason? What is amiss, for heaven’s sake? Why are you always pushing me away as if I were the devil himself?”

  She stared at him now.

  “You don’t see, do you?” she said after a moment. “You have no idea at all of the mischief you cause. It would almost be pardonable if it was not so…”

  And she reached down and threw her stays at him.

  Tom caught them, and his temper slipping away, hurled them back down on the floor, though he would not have minded at all throwing them in her face.

  “I saw you talking to Caroline,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, heavily.

  “Yes Caroline! Caroline who loves you. Caroline who will have no other but you. Caroline whose life has been ruined because of you! How can I let you be kind to me, and play at marriage when I know what she is feeling, how she is hurting…”

  “I was asking her forgiveness.”

  “With your usual polished charm? Oh I doubt she is one iota less in love with you after that performance. I saw your kissing her hands. Just how you kissed my hands this afternoon. Those big blue eyes gazing up at her. How is a woman supposed to resist? Do any of them? No, they all fall, just like timber in your woods, strictly to your order! But I will not let you do it to me, Tom Thorpe, even if I am your wife!”

  “So what was that this afternoon?” he said. “You were happy enough with my conduct then, I think.”

  “You were using me, just as you use all women! And I was stupid enough to permit it. Just as I was stupid before in that inn. But it will not happen again. I will not be used by you, let alone pitied by you!”

  She went to the door and held it open for him.

  “Please, in future, I would like my maid to attend to me.”

  “Then I will leave you,” he said, after a long silence in which, with all the strength he had, he swallowed all the bitter words he wanted to throw at her. “I hope you sleep well. You can be sure that I will not.”

  ***

  He did not even slam the door.

  She sat crying by the fire for some time, wrapped in her comforting old plaid.

  He was everything she had said he was, and yet he was not. Everything he had done was inexcusable and yet she could excuse it all because of the intoxicating effect he had on her. She felt enslaved by him and her heart revolted at the thought of that, especially when she felt she was being bribed into silent submission to his selfish wants by pretty white horses, Kashmir shawls and kisses.

  Enslaved enough, to find herself standing on the door to his room, candle in her hand and apologies on her lips.

  She stopped herself before the first knock. She knew she could not, in all honesty, retract what she had said no matter how strong the impulse was to break down her reserve. Wanting him like a child wants a glittering toy was not enough.

  So she turned away and stood on the landing, holding her candle, looking down the sweep of the staircase.

  Her future with him stretched out before her just like that staircase: luxurious but lonely, elegant but loveless. And she could not think how to begin to change it. Because she would not love him on his terms, only on her own.

  Chapter 22

  “Lady Mary, can you tell the court, in your own words, the nature of you relationship with Sir Thomas Thorpe?” asked Mr James Reinfield KC, counsel for the plaintiff.

  “We are engaged to be married,” she said in a barely audible whisper.

  “Perhaps, Lady Mary, you could speak up a little, if you would be so kind,” said Mr Reinfield.

  “We are engaged to be married,” she said, more firmly this time.

  There was a snigger from the public gallery and a few heads swivelled to have a good look at Griselda. She was sitting as inconspicuously as possible.

  “Except I think he is married to someone else now,” Lady Mary went on artlessly and the sniggers turned to outright hilarity.

  Will Randall had insisted Griselda come to court. “You must show yourself to be a loyal and loving wife,” he had said. She could understand the theory, but in practice it was not pleasant to sit there under the gaze of all, even though Lady Farquarson sat with her.

  “Your observation is correct, my lady,” said Mr Reinfield. “Now, perhaps you would like to tell me when it was decided that you and Sir Thomas would make a match.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, you see, it has always been understood. I remember my father telling me when I was quite a little girl that we we
re engaged.”

  “And you did not object?”

  “No, sir. He is my father.”

  Griselda glanced across at Lord Wansford who was smirking at that. She felt a little sick.

  “Of course, of course,” Mr Reinfield went on. “And you knew Sir Thomas at this time, when you were a child?”