by M C Beaton
“Release me. Me!” The marquess looked at her in amazement. How could she even suggest such a thing, after all his magnaminity and generosity?
Then he noticed her pallor and the shadows under her eyes. “Forgive me,” he said gently, “I had forgotten the strain you have been under since you came to London. You are bewildered and distressed and do not quite know what you are saying. Please cancel your social engagements for today and get some rest. We will talk more of this tomorrow.”
He bestowed a chaste kiss on her cheek and left.
His pride is so great, thought Harriet miserably, that he will not even listen to me.
But the marquess had received a severe shock. He walked for a long time, thinking about Harriet’s behavior and his own.
Then he struck his brow with a dramatic gesture worthy of Bertram and exclaimed out loud, much to the alarm of an elderly couple who were passing at the time, “I have been dishonest!”
He did not want to marry Harriet because it was a fine and generous thing to do. He wanted to marry her because, quite simply, he wanted her. Life without her would be dreary and empty. He had never once said that he loved her. And now he had barked at her and lectured her. Was it not natural she should prefer the company of a youth like Bertram? Did she know how sulky and difficult and cruel Bertram could be when he wasn’t getting his own way? Damn Bertram! To be jealous of such a whelp.
She did not have any jewelry. His face brightened. He would buy her a fine necklace, call on her tomorrow, and tell her of his love. She must love him. Such a love as his could not go unreciprocated.
Two young belles sighed as they watched his long, lean, athletic figure stride by. They were very young and very pretty, but the marquess did not even notice their existence.
He felt his behavior toward Harriet Clifton had been that of the veriest coxcomb.
While the Marquess of Arden was walking about the streets of London discovering his love for Harriet, Agnes was entertaining Mr. Prenderbury.
When he was with her, she managed to forget the terrible lies she had told Harriet. They talked of so many things, books and plays and operas.
Cordelia flounced about the drawing room, listening to them in a bored sort of way and, at last, seeing that Mr. Prenderbury was oblivious to her charms, she decided to leave them alone. After all, it was not as if an old maid like Agnes needed a chaperone.
No sooner had she left than Mr. Prenderbury took a clean handkerchief out of the pocket in his tails and spread it on the carpet, rather in the fussy manner of that well-known dramatic actor Romeo Coates, preparing for a Shakespearean death scene, and then got down on one knee.
“Miss Hurlingham,” he said, having been assured that her title of Mrs. was merely adopted, “I would be very honored, would vow myself the happiest of men, if you could bring yourself to accept my hand in marriage. Only say the word and my lawyers will free you from your infamous contract to Lady Bentley.”
Agnes looked down at him, her heart heavy with guilt. She thought he was too fine, too noble, a man to be allied to such as she. Oh, if only she had stood out against Cordelia!
“I am honored,” she said sadly. “Please rise, Mr. Prenderbury. “I cannot accept your offer. There is that which stands between us.”
“Tell me,” said Mr. Prenderbury eagerly. “There is nothing I would not do for you.”
“I cannot,” said Agnes. “You must go.”
“But you must—”
“Please,” begged Agnes in an anguished voice. “Please go.”
He tried to protest. He reiterated his undying love, but all Agnes would do was to beg him to leave, tears standing out in her eyes.
At last he left. Agnes ran to the window to watch him go.
He stood for a moment in the street below, the picture of dejection and misery.
Upstairs, Cordelia was berating her maid, and her voice polluted the very air.
No, thought Agnes suddenly. I will tell him the truth. This is my only chance of happiness.
She ran downstairs and out into the street, calling wildly after him.
He stopped and turned about, staring in amazement as Agnes, hatless, holding up her skirts, came running along the street.
“I must tell you about it,” she said, gasping. “You might never speak to me again, but at least you will know why I rejected your suit.”
“Quietly.” he said. “Let us go into the gardens of Berkeley Square. We can talk there.”
He courteously helped her across the street and into the gardens in the square. The little summerhouse in the center was empty of people.
Agnes and Mr. Prenderbury sat down on a rustic seat.
“Now, my dear Miss Hurlingham,” he said. “What is the matter?” Agnes took a deep breath and blurted out everything about her lies to Harriet and now Cordelia had threatened, to treat her like a slave if she did not obey her wishes.
“Monstrous!” he cried when Agnes had finished, and her heart sank. “To deceive, to ruin the life of her sister, and all out of spite and jealousy!”
“Lady Bentley said furthermore that if I did not obey her”—Agnes gulped—”then I would never see you again.”
“This is what I will do,” said Mr. Prenderbury. “I am to give Miss Harriet away at the wedding and so I am on calling terms with Arden. So I will call on him and tell him all.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. It is the only thing to do. As for you, Miss Hurlingham …”
Agnes cringed a little away, waiting for his wrath to descend on her head.
“As for you,” he went on in a softened tone, “you have been treated shamefully. You will not suffer again. That is what you must do. You must return to Hill Street while I fetch my carriage. Pack all of your things and simply leave. You will come with me to my sister who lives in Bloomsbury, and there you will reside until I arrange for a special license. My sister is much older than I, and a widow. She will be delighted to have your company and to learn that her old stick of a brother is to be wed at last.”
Agnes looked at him wonderingly. “You still wish to wed me?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Prenderbury. “I love you so.”
He leaned forward and, with great daring, deposited a chaste kiss on her mouth. But her mouth was warm and sweet, faintly salted from her tears. The touch of her mouth had an odd effect on him. He felt quite dizzy and breathless. So he kissed her again, quite fiercely. And then again.
He pulled her closer into his arms, reflecting that life was full of surprises. He thought he loved her because he admired her brain and her humor. But the throbbing, passionate woman in his arms was a delightful surprise.
“Can you really love me?” whispered Agnes when he at last freed her mouth.
“Of course, you ninny,” he said, and Agnes thought she had never heard anything move loverlike in her life.
He resumed kissing her with all the single-mindedness of a scholar who likes to do things thoroughly, only at last becoming aware of his surroundings when he noticed two round-eyed children with a hoop, standing solemnly to watch their performance.
“Come, my love,” he said, pulling Agnes to her feet. “We have a great deal to accomplish. “And Arden must be told.”
But Mr. Prenderbury had to order his little-used traveling carriage to be brought around to Hill Street, after spending valuable time trying to find his underworked coachman. Unknown to him, his coachman had rented his carriage and horses to a merchant and his wife, and it took him some hours to find them.
By the time he arrived at Hill Street, Agnes was near to fainting with nerves, thinking he had changed his mind. Cordelia was gone from the house, and the servants helped her with her luggage, assuming she had been dismissed.
Then there were long explanations to be given to Mr. Prenderbury’s sister in Bloomsbury, and when he finally tore himself away from his beloved and presented himself at the marquess’s house, it was to be told that my lord was gone from home and not expected
back until late.
Mr. Prenderbury decided to leave his interview with the marquess until the morning. Nothing so very dreadful could happen to Harriet before then.
Harriet drove out with Bertram Hudson the next day, relieved that she would be absent when the marquess called.
So relieved was she that she failed to comment on the heavy traveling carriage and the four powerful horses and the luggage strapped onto the back. She had noticed the luggage but had vaguely assumed that Bertram was taking home something to his mother. Nor did she notice that her companion’s lips were moving soundlessly. Bertram was rehearsing his great scene, the moment when he would take Harriet into his arms and tell her that her worries were over.
Harriet studied the moving scene outside of the carriage windows. London was so full of people that the main thoroughfares appeared to be a moving multitude or a daily fair.
Off to one side ran the meaner streets, not paved like the main road but with ankle-twisting cobbles and a kennel in the middle. Outside of the West End, London was not beautiful. Apart from the public buildings and the fine houses in Mayfair, the rest of its one hundred sixty thousand houses were not lovely to look upon. They were utilitarian to a degree—long rows of brick-built tenements, with oblong holes for windows. All of the houses were of the same pattern, varied only by the height of the rooms and the number of stories, which were mostly three and rarely exceeded four. There were the front parlor and the back parlor, a wretched narrow passage or hall with a flight of stairs leading to the drawing room. In the basement were the kitchen and scullery.
Harriet let down the glass and the raucous cries of the street vendors filled the carriage.
Chairs were mended in front of the houses, nursery and common chairs with seats of rushes. Repairs cost from one shilling and sixpence to two shillings. Door mats were hawked about, priced from sixpence to four shillings depending on the size.
Turnery was a good street trade, and hawkers were busy selling brooms, brushes, sieves, bowls, and clothes horses.
With a hideous noise, the knife grinder plied his trade, setting and grinding scissors for twopence; penknives, a penny a blade; table knives, two shillings a dozen. Then there was lavender, fish, baskets and bandboxes, hot apples, and cat’s and dog’s meat at twopence a pound.
The carriage slowed as a watering cart held up traffic, the water dripping from a perforated wooden box at the back.
Harriet grew weary of the moving, shifting scene and picked up a copy of the Morning Post. One advertisement caught her eyes.
MATRIMONY—To Noble Ladies or Gentlemen. Any Nobleman, Lady or Gentleman, having a female friend who has been unfortunate, whom they would like to see comfortably settled, and treated with delicacy and kindness, and that might, notwithstanding errors, have an opportunity of moving in superior life by an Union with a Gentleman holding rank in His Majesty’s service, who has been long in possession of a regular and handsome establishment, and whose age. manners, and person, are such as will not be objected to, may, by a few lines, post paid, to B. Price, Esq., to be left at the Bar of the Cambridge Coffee House, Newman Street, form a most Desirable Matrimonial union for their friend. If the lady is not naturally vicious, and candor is resorted to, the Gentleman will study by every means in his power to promote domestic felicity.
Harriet laughed. “Would you say I was naturally vicious, Bertram?”
“Not you,” said Bertram absentmindedly. He did not want her to speak, for the heroine Harriet in his head did not bear much relation to the real-life Harriet.
The morning wore on, and still they traveled.
Bertram knew that soon he should offer to stop for some refreshment. But he wanted to enjoy his food, so he had to have matters settled between Harriet and himself before then.
In case she enacted a scene, he thought, it would be best to find some private place where they would not be disturbed.
To this end, he finally called to the coachman to stop in the middle of a picturesque village. He told Harriet he was going to scout about on foot because he had heard there was a hostelry, famous for its food, in the vicinity.
“Please let me get down and walk for a little,” begged Harriet. They had already stopped twice to change the horses, but each time Bertram had asked her to remain in the carriage.
He agreed reluctantly that there would be no harm in her walking about near the carriage until his return.
Bertram planned to hire someone’s house for an hour.
Harriet wandered across the village green. The day was warm and overcast and very still. She felt a long way away from London and experienced a pang of anxiety. She must ask Bertram how long they were going to be on the road. She had thought they would be comfortably back in London by mid-afternoon when her absence would not have created any comment. She had left a note for Aunt Rebecca, saying she had gone out walking and planned to visit the dressmaker before returning to Hill Street.
The coachman, over by the carriage, said something to one of the two grooms, and then they looked across to where Harriet was standing and exchanged sly smiles.
She had not turned over in her mind what she should do about her engagement. She found that thinking about the marquess was too painful. Life with him seemed terrifying, so why did life without him stretch in front of her like a dreary desert?
Meanwhile, Bertram had secured the use of one of the villagers’ parlors, exclaiming that his “sister” wished to rest for a little and did not want to go to the common public house.
Having completed the arrangements, he hesitated before returning to Harriet. He was hit by the full force of what he was actually doing. He had lied to his cousin’s fiancée and had run off with her.
In his dreams about Harriet, Bertram’s future life had always ended at the altar, with only a vague thought of life in a rose-covered cottage afterward. Now he felt weighed down with responsibility. Spoiled by his doting mother ever since he was a baby, and now firmly protected from the evils of the town by the marquess, young Bertram had never known the weight of any responsibility in his life.
The Harriet who was waiting for him so patiently suddenly was no longer the happy-playmate Harriet or romantic-persecuted Harriet but the female he was going to have to marry and support. He thought illogically that it was very selfish of her not to realize all he was sacrificing, forgetting that as far as Harriet was concerned she was merely out on a call.
Like a schoolboy creeping unwillingly to school, he went reluctantly back to where she was waiting and said that the inn was too low and noisy but that a friend would supply them with some refreshment.
“This outing is taking a very long time,” said Harriet anxiously. “If I am not back in town by this afternoon, they will think I have run away.”
“Not much longer,” said Bertram morosely.
The parlor into which Bertram led Harriet surprised her. No one could describe it as being in the first stare of elegance. The furniture was dull and heavy: stiff, high-backed chairs and the type of table the ton only used in their nurseries. The room was dimly lit by one candle, and that was a poor tallow one with a cotton wick. A tall, narrow, and tasteless mantelpiece framed a dull, squat stove of semicircular shape, with a flat front. The tall fire irons leaned against the mantelpiece, and a bowed fender of perforated sheet brass enclosed the hearth. A small hearth rug with a fringe and a bell cord with a plain brass ring completed the furnishing of the room.
A sly slattern of a woman came in and put two pewter mugs of porter on the table.
“May I not present my compliments to your host?” asked Harriet, taking the woman for the servant.
“Not now,” said Bertram, looking at the once-imagined love of his life with something approaching dislike.
“Look, Harriet,” he said. “Your worries are over. We are eloping.” Harriet looked at him in horror.
“Aye, well you may stare,” said Bertram, beginning to stride up and down. “But there you are. I decided to rescue you, tho
ugh ‘tis sad to be out of London when the Season is at its height.”
“Bertram,” said Harriet weakly. “My very dear Bertram. I am very flattered, very moved, by your determination to rescue me. But I cannot run. away without seeing Lord Arden first and telling him that our engagement is at an end. I wish you had asked me first. We are very dear friends, but I do not think you really want to marry me.”
Women, thought Bertram bitterly. Well, all they needed was a strong hand.
“You’ll do as you’re told,” he said masterfully. “You are to be my wife, and you will obey me.”
“Take me back to London immediately,” said Harriet firmly. “Don’t be so silly, Bertram.” She wearily removed her bonnet and shook out her curls.
“You call me silly.” Bertram’s face had become suffused with color.
A pin fell from Harriet’s hair, and she bent and picked it up. “You must see reason,” she said. “Even if Lord Arden is given to horsewhipping mistresses, it does not follow that—”
“Oh, I made that up,” jeered Bertram. “God knows all the plotting and planning Cordelia and I have had to do to save you, and yet you do not appreciate it one bit.”
“You made it up!” Harriet put her hands to her cheeks. “You made it up. You and Cordelia. My dear Bertram, Cordelia is only interested in getting Arden for herself. And Agnes! Agnes who cries so much and looks so guilty! Agnes who suddenly has new clothes and is allowed to entertain Mr. Prenderbury. Cordelia must have told her to tell me all those lies. Oh, God, let me return to London before it is too late.
“Do you not see what has happened, my poor innocent? Cordelia tricked you into this escapade. I am not in need of rescue from Arden, Bertram. I am in need of rescue from Cordelia.”
“I will not have you make a fool of me,” said Bertram. “Cordelia will already have told Arden you eloped with me, so elope with me you will. Gracious, if he ever found out how I tricked him, goodness knows what he would do to me. You are an ungrateful and unreasonable girl.”
