by M C Beaton
Lord Hubert Challenge strode into the hall of his town house and blinked in surprise. The tiled floor gleamed like a looking glass, the walls were painted Nile green, flowers glowed from vases on occasional tables, and a new turkey-red carpet climbed the staircase to the upper floors.
He then focused his gaze on the splendor of his butler, Biggs, who stood preening himself in his new livery.
“Am I in the right house?” asked Lord Hubert wonderingly.
“Indeed that you are,” beamed Biggs. “Missus—I mean, my lady—has put everything in order, including me.”
Biggs turned slowly so that his master could admire the effect.
“Very fine,” commented Lord Hubert dryly. “Where is my lady?”
“Gone to the opera,” said Biggs, running his stubby fingers through his powdered hair and sending a cloud of flour-dandruff onto the claret-colored shoulders of his livery.
“Not alone, I trust.”
Biggs shuffled in his heavy shoes. “Well, no, my lord. There was a kind of tailor’s dummy called Mr. Trimmer…”
“Good God!”
“Zackly. And a couple of mushrooms by the name of Witherspoon.”
“I think I had better change and join my wife, if I can tear her away from that man-milliner,” said Lord Hubert grimly.
He mounted the stairs two at a time and was bathed and barbered by his valet while he stared around at the splendor of his new apartment. His favorite hunting pictures had been cleaned and rehung on tasteful pastel walls. His ancient four-poster bed had been hung with new curtains, and when he sat gingerly down on the edge of it, he discovered it boasted a new feather mattress.
He was pleased with the transformation, but at the same time he felt Mary might at least have waited for his return. He had not thought of her much when he was in Paris. She was a woman, after all, and women were subject to all sorts of fits and tantrums. He had only behaved like a husband, and she had reacted like a typical wife. He had nothing to reproach himself with.
At last, resplendent in dark blue evening coat, exquisite cravat and knee breeches, he set out for the opera to find his wife.
As he was entering the theater, he met a doleful-looking Major Godwin who told him that he too, was in search of his wife.
“We’re a bit late,” said Hubert cheerfully. “We’ll take my box and then catch them when the performance is over.”
When they were ensconced in his box, he pulled aside the red curtains and, raising his quizzing glass, stared across the brightly lit theater. He could not see his wife at all.
“There’s Lucy!” suddenly whispered the Major. Lord Hubert followed his pointing finger and gave a start of surprise. For seated next to Lucy was a vastly attractive young lady who could not possibly be the pale, colorless girl he had married. But it must be! There were the Witherspoons and there, by all heaven, was that court card, Trimmer.
At the same time, Mary looked across the theater and saw him. Her eyes immediately darted away and he realized in some bewilderment that Mary did not want him to know she had recognized him. Then she turned and laughed over her shoulder to Mr. Trimmer—and there was no doubt about it. Mary was flirting! And she wanted him to know it!
He leaned lazily back in his chair, beginning to feel amused. What a naive girl she was, despite her new appearance! Did she honestly think he could be made jealous by a fool like Trimmer? Obviously she did.
Then he noticed Lady Clarissa, with a party in a box near his own. He decided to go and flirt with Clarissa and see how his little wife liked that. He still felt terribly amused by the whole situation. The fact that his flirting with Clarissa would hurt his wife never entered his head. Mary was a woman, after all, and women naturally did not suffer from the same deep and intense feelings as men.
Major Godwin was already rising to join his wife. “Don’t know what Lucy thinks she’s doing with that feller but I’m going to throw him out that box right now.”
“You would fare better if you threw your wife out,” retorted Lord Hubert lazily, but Major Godwin had already gone.
Lord Hubert made his way to Clarissa’s box where he received a very warm welcome indeed. Viscount Perry was not in evidence, and Clarissa quickly vouchsafed the information that her fiancé was abroad “on business.”
Across the theater, Mary tried not to stare. She felt shocked and miserable. She had built up a picture in her mind of her husband as a beetle-browed, sweaty, boorish soldier. She had forgotten he was so handsome, with those black wings of hair falling over his high-nosed, tanned face. She had forgotten he could look so elegant. Suddenly, Mr. Trimmer appeared silly, fussy, stupid and overdressed. When she had flirted with him, she had caught the amused and cynical look her husband had thrown in her direction and had blushed to the soles of her feet. She had hoped to make him jealous by becoming a fashionable young lady. How on earth could he find her fashionable, accompanied as she was by this fop, by two of London’s most vulgar Cits and that silly, fickle beauty Lucy Godwin, who seemed determined to torture her patient husband.
Mary sat miserably deaf to the music, learning one of her first hard lessons—that you cannot choose your friends for any reason other than friendship. Choose them for reflected glory, choose them to help you cut a dash, and in the long run you are left looking very silly—and friendless.
She saw Hubert’s handsome head bent over Clarissa’s beautiful one, and all her misery fled in a burst of rage and her courage came back. How dare he! How dare he, on his first night home, flirt with that… that doxy. How could she be so naive as to have ever believed there was one ounce of good in the beautiful Clarissa? Mary clenched her fan so violently that the sticks snapped.
There was further humiliation in store for her. Her handsome husband was, admittedly, waiting for her in the press in the theater foyer after the show.
Admittedly, he was alone.
But he treated her as if she were some tiresome little cousin up from the country. He bent his head and kissed her hand lightly, wished her the pleasure of her company of friends in a light mocking voice which bordered on insult, and said he was going to Watier’s for a rubber of piquet and would, no doubt, see her later.
There was worse to come. After her husband had melted off into the crowd, Mary heard a loud, carrying female voice declaring with awful clarity, “Did you see the new Lady Challenge? Pretty little thing, ain’t she, but no ton. And such company! Even Brummell couldn’t bring her into fashion now.”
That voice resounded in her ears even as she sat at her dressing table later that evening, after dismissing her maid. She had taken off her cambric wrapper and was sitting gloomily in a near transparent Indian muslin nightgown. She might have felt less miserable had she known that the famous Beau Brummell, that arbiter of fashion and leader of the beau monde, had also heard the spiteful remark and had not liked it one bit.
There was a faint scratching at the door and she swung round. Her husband strolled into the room.
“God, I’m tired, Mary,” he yawned, beginning to tear off his cravat.
Mary turned back to the looking glass.
“Get out,” she said in an even tone.
The hand tugging at the cravat stopped. Hubert turned and looked at his wife. She certainly had become an amazingly pretty girl, he noticed, with her saucy brown curls peeping out from under a lacy nightcap, and tantalizing glimpses of her white body showing through the thin stuff of her nightgown.
“I know what it is,” he said with an indulgent laugh. “You haven’t forgiven me for that scene in Brussels. Well, I apologize. I kneel before you. I kiss your feet.” He suited the action to the words.
Mary jerked her feet under her chair and glared at him like an infuriated kitten. “I don’t like you, Hubert,” she explained in a maddening voice of weary patience. “Do get up and stop making a cake of yourself.”
Hubert rose, hanging onto his fast mounting temper. He tried to kiss her cheek, but she ducked her head and his kiss landed on
the top of her cap.
“Look, Mary,” said Hubert, standing back apace. “I know you were trying to make me jealous this evening. But you must do far better than that idiot Trimmer.”
“I was NOT trying to make you jealous. ’Tis only your overweening conceit that makes you think so, sir.”
“By God,” he said. “I’ve a good mind to teach you a lesson.”
“Don’t you dare touch me,” cried Mary, leaping to her feet and backing to the other side of the room. She suddenly became aware that she was dressed only in the transparent nightgown, and a furious blush seemed to cover her whole body. “You have my money,” she shouted, goaded beyond reason by rage and embarrassment. “Must you rape me as well?”
“I wouldn’t need to,” he said, becoming as cold as he had been hot a minute before. “But I do not waste my talents on gauche, little schoolgirls who think they are cutting a dash by being escorted by the silliest fribble in London.”
“Just you wait!” howled Mary, jumping up and down with rage.
“I am too bored to school you tonight,” he said, walking over and casually flicking her under the chin. “You need a lesson in how to behave like a wife.”
“You would beat me?”
“I would kiss you.”
Before she had time to retreat, he clipped her in his arms and forced his mouth down on hers. She struggled furiously to no avail, and then decided to stand cold and unresponsive in his arms. He relaxed the pressure of his lips and began instead to move them gently back and forth against her own until he felt her lips begin to tremble against his. She felt her bones melting and her senses reeling.
“Oh, Hubert,” she sighed against his mouth.
He abruptly released her and gave her a hearty slap across the buttocks. “Good night, my sweet,” he remarked cheerfully, and striding out of the room, slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Four
The usual unpredictability of the English weather struck fashionable London. A greasy drizzle fell steadily, trickling down the windows of Mary’s bedroom in sad little tears. The weather had turned chilly as well, and Mary’s sheets already felt damp to her touch.
She felt tired and low and despondent. She had lain awake into the small hours, waiting in dread in case her husband should visit her bedroom; or rather part of her mind dreaded the visit and another small mischievous part hoped that he would.
When her maid, Marie Juneaux, arrived with the morning’s post and the morning’s chocolate, Mary settled back against her pillows to survey the sheaf of letters which were, as usual, mostly bills. Then a gilt-edged card caught her eye. Someone—Biggs probably—had written laboriously in pencil, “delivered by hand.”
She picked it up and squinted at the convoluted script, and then lit her bed candle and leaning over, scanned the lines and then read them again, as if she could not believe her eyes. The Duchess of Pellicombe requested the pleasure of Lady Mary Challenge at a ball that very evening!
Mary had not been very long in town—but long enough to know that the Duchess was one of London’s highest sticklers. An invitation to her home was tantamount to a royal command. It was almost insulting that the card should have arrived at the last minute. But then, perhaps the formidable Duchess had only just learned of her existence.
She was not to know, until long afterwards, that she owed the invitation to the wiles of Beau Brummell. That fashionable leader had been determined to prove that he could make Lady Challenge the fashion, and had accordingly used his considerable influence on the Duchess.
A footman entered with a coal scuttle and proceeded to light a fire in the grate. The cheerful light from the flames soon danced around the walls and Mary began to feel very excited indeed. She had a new ball gown which had, so far, never been out of its wrappings. She lay back against the pillows and dreamed of entering the ballroom on her husband’s arm, basking in the glory of his admiring stare.
Her husband!
She sat bolt upright in bed. He must go with her. She could not go without an escort.
She rang the bell and when her maid arrived, began to dress feverishly. She ran lightly down the stairs to the dining room to find her husband had already finished his breakfast and was preparing to leave. She rushed into speech.
“My lord,”—she waved the gilt-edged card excitedly—“I have here an invitation to the Duchess of Pellicombe’s. Do say you will go with me.”
Hubert stared down at the card and then flicked it with his finger. “I see my name is not on the invitation,” he remarked lazily. “In any case, I have other plans for this evening. You did say, did you not, that you would not interfere with my… er… pleasures?”
“But I must have an escort,” wailed Mary staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. “I do not know of any woman who could act as chaperone. I do not know any man who…” She broke off and bit her lip.
“Exactly,” said Lord Hubert. “Your friend Trimmer. I am sure he will do very nicely.”
“But I don’t want to go with him. I want to go with you. How can you be so stupid!” cried Mary, stamping her foot in exasperation.
“You must learn that you cannot insult me one minute and ask favors of me the next,” said Hubert in an indifferent voice. “The fact remains that I am not going with you.”
He gave her a slight bow and strode from the room, leaving Mary to burst into stormy tears.
Mary bitterly wondered what was happening to her.
She was behaving like a spoilt child. She had been disappointed before, many times, and each of those times she had borne her disappointment with stoic calm.
“What is happening to me?” she wailed out loud, clutching a sodden piece of cambric handkerchief.
“I’m sure I don’t know, my lady,” came the voice of Biggs from the sideboard. Mary turned round. Through a mist of tears, she saw the broad back of her butler, his head bent over a dish of grilled kidneys which he was examining with intense concentration.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were in the room, Biggs,” said Mary, trying to recover.
Had Biggs been a properly trained butler of many years standing, he would have bowed and left the room. But he was not. He was an old soldier with an ugly, pudgy face and a graceless, stocky body—and a heart as big as St. James’s Square. So instead, he edged nearer to the table and said in a hushed voice, “If there is anything I can do to help, my lady… anything at all.”
Mary ran distracted fingers through her mop of curls. “I can’t tell you, Biggs. It’s something you can’t help me with. I can’t possibly tell you.” Mary’s voice choked.
“There, there, my lady,” said Biggs. “You tell old Biggsy and you’ll feel better.”
And Mary did. Mary who had never discussed anything with a servant in her life since her mama had taught her that to do so would be vulgar in the extreme and, furthermore, would cause a revolution among the “lower orders.”
Biggs listened carefully, his great head on one side and then an unholy twinkle lit up his small eyes.
“Well, now, my lady,” he said slowly. “I might just have the answer to your problem but you’ll probably not like it.”
“Oh, I will! I will!” cried Mary, grasping hold of the butler’s hand.
“See now,” said Biggs awkwardly, “it’s like this. When I was in the army, we had a lot of them there theatricals and me and some of the lads used to dress up and act in the plays, seeing as how the Duke, God bless ’im, liked a bit of theatre around the camp.
“Now in one of them plays, I took the part of a Spanish lady of quality. I was the Marquise Elvira Dobones deLorca y Viedda y Crummers. One of the officers wrote the play. Very naughty it was an’ all. I still have the costume belowstairs. Very grand costume it is, too, for it belonged originally to one of them great Spanish ladies. So, if I were to put it on and keep me trap shut, and sit with the chaperones, you could go to your ball. ’Course, we mustn’t tell his lordship for though he’s the finest man in the English army, he can b
e a bit of a tartar.”
“It would never do,” said Mary dismally, while her eyes began to fill with tears again. “It…”
“What the hell is going on here?”
Lord Hubert stood glaring from the doorway. Mary became aware she was still clutching the butler’s hand and blushed fiery red.
“My lady had something in her eye and I was endeavoring for to take it out,” said Biggs woodenly.
“Really?” commented his lordship cynically. Then his shrewd eyes noticed his wife’s tear-stained face. He walked towards the table and stood over her.
“I gather you have been crying like Cinderella, because you cannot go to the ball. Very well then, my child. If it means so much to you, I shall take you.”
