Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  At last Lady Dudley finished, and whipped the cloths away. Now there was only her hair to powder, and the wedding-dress to put on. Lady Dudley had chosen it. It was pale pink, a colour Lady Dudley loved, but which Mary knew did not suit her, with her sallow, yellowish skin and dull brown hair, and the things that Lady Dudley had done to her face seemed to make her look only more clownish and not at all less plain.

  ‘There, now you may look at yourself.’ The mirror was held up before her, and Mary struggled not to allow herself to cry.

  ‘I wish I were pretty,’ she said, the words bursting forth from her against her will. Lady Dudley raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Physical beauty is a matter of no importance. It is not for that your husband will value you.’

  ‘He doesn’t like me,’ Mary said in a small voice. The eyebrow climbed higher.

  ‘Like you? Why should he like you? I hope, Mary, you have not been reading books. When I was a girl, such sentiments would not have passed my lips. It was not considered at all proper for a husband and wife to be affectionate towards each other. Marriage is a contract, remember that. Remember also that your husband has much the best of the bargain in this case, and should be grateful and respectful towards you. You should not encourage intimacy from him. Why, the whole family bases their pride on their kinship with the Countess of Chelmsford. Dreadful woman! Her tide came from Ring Charles, and for what services we can only surmise. No, Mary, I hope I shall never see you demeaning yourself to be friendly towards your husband. Let him do his duty, and be grateful for the connection you bring him.’ She snapped her fingers at Rachel for the shoes.

  ‘Yes, Lady Dudley,’ said Mary. Rachel scurried over with the pink satin high-heeled slippers, and knelt to put them on her. Her little, workworn hands were warm on Mary’s instep, and when Mary looked down, Rachel glanced up for a moment, and Mary saw in her blue eyes the tears that she was not allowed to cry for herself.

  The chapel was so beautiful, filled with banks of fragrant white flowers, ablaze with candles and with every piece of plate, silver and gold, it possessed. Marie-Louise walked before the bride scattering white rose-petals and lilac florets in her path. Marie-Louise was dressed in a pale pink replica of the bride’s dress, and looked exquisitely beautiful in it with her red-gold curls and her brilliant eyes. It seemed to Mary one more strand in the plot to make her look ugly on her wedding day. And when she saw Jemmy, her rout was completed. His coat and breeches were of sapphire blue satin, his stockings and waistcoat were of white silk, the latter embroidered with blue and gold and scarlet threads. He was tall and elegant and so handsome that she was frozen with a shyness that rooted in her soul. He smiled at her tentatively, but she was too overcome to smile back, and she saw his expression change to one of remoteness, and her heart sank.

  The rings were exchanged, the vows made, the Communion taken: they were man and wife. Now Jemmy must take her hand on his arm and walk with her down the aisle, receiving the bows and curtseys and smiles and nods of congratulation from the family and close friends who crowded the chapel. Out into the hall, where the servants were assembled to give their congratulations. Bow, smile, shake hands. To the door, to stand at the top of the steps and look down into the courtyard where a deputation of the tenants and villagers in their best clothes waited to give three cheers for the young master and mistress, and to present their gifts and their blessings.

  Jemmy did his duty, and his smiles for the servants and tenants were genuinely warm, for he had known most of them since his childhood, and there existed a firm affection between him and those who would one day be his people. But he was horribly aware of the woman on his arm, and when he, for form, turned to smile at her, the smile was a frozen falsity. She had done something horrible to her face, presumably to make herself look prettier; the powder in her hair only made her face look yellower; and why in the world had she chosen pink again? But worst of all was her expression of haughty disapproval. If she would only smile, if she would only be agreeable! It didn’t matter so much from his point of view – he was well aware that she regarded the match as beneath her – but he was angry on the tenants’ behalf, that they should be so snubbed by a stranger. Their goodness of heart and generosity was amply proved to him in the words he overheard from two of them as they turned to go in.

  ‘A very proper, pretty young lady indeed,’ one said.

  ‘A pity she’s so shy – but there, it’s only proper feeling in a young lady,’ said the other. Shy! Jemmy thought. Well, it was kind of them to attribute it to shyness.

  Things got worse at the banquet that followed. For one thing, Jemmy’s own hair was too luxuriant to wear a wig with any comfort, but on the other hand, if he powdered it, it took days to get the powder out again. In the end he decided, since they had to powder, he would wear a wig over his own hair. He was regretting it now. He grew so hot under his double thatch, and the hotter he got, the more he drank, and the more he drank, the hotter and crosser he got. And then his bride sat beside him in the place of honour and barely ate or drank a thing, turning everything down with that sneering expression of superiority that he was coming to hate, and when he spoke to her, answering in monosyllables as if it wearied her to have to acknowledge his existence. A fine time he was going to have of it, with such a wife, he thought.

  Mary felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare that would never end. The wedding dinner went on and on, until she wondered how people could go on eating and drinking for so long without falling unconscious. Her agonies of shyness, heightened by being the centre of attention, and by the awareness of her own grotesque appearance (she had said, not pink, to Lady Dudley, not pink, but Lady Dudley had gone ahead and ordered pink just the same) made her feel nauseous, and she was unable to do more than taste a morsel of the delicious delicacies that were being pressed upon her. Her tight busk was filling her stomach with acid bile, and she knew what agonies of diarrhoea that would mean tomorrow. Her face seemed to have gone rigid in her embarrassment, and whenever she tried to smile she could feel it contorting into such a grimace that she found it safer not to make the attempt. It was terribly hot, and the sweat running along her scalp was mingling with the hair powder and depositing a sticky kind of mud on her forehead.

  Worst of all was her handsome, glorious husband (her husband!) sitting beside her, evidently enjoying himself, eating and drinking with a will, and occasionally flinging questions at her which she would still be groping to answer when his attention was distracted again. He would think her such a fool, she thought miserably, as well as ugly. He was getting rather drunk, she noticed. Later on would come that ordeal that Lady Dudley had warned her so fully about. Anxiety made her feel more nauseous. And there was another worry that she could not tell anyone about. Her monthly flux was due in only two days and she knew that anxiety could sometimes make it come early. Supposing the tension of this day brought it on – what would happen then?

  She longed desperately to urinate, but had no idea how one would excuse oneself from such a public situation.

  The ceremonies were all over. They had been put to bed, and given the loving cup, and the priest had blessed them. The bridegroom’s brother had undressed Jemmy and ushered him in, and he exchanged a whisper as he took the cup back that made the bridegroom smile – not a smile of levity, but a charming smile of affection. The bride thought that it must be wonderful to have him smile at one like that.

  The bride’s chaperone had undressed her, with a further repetition of her warnings and advice, and her last whisper as she left was, ‘Remember all I have told you.’ Would that I could forget it all, Mary thought. Then they were alone.

  It was a long, long silence. Mary listened to Jemmy’s breathing – the slightly thick breathing of a man well-primed with wine, as she was to come to recognize – and the tension in her was such that when he hiccoughed, she almost leapt out of her skin. It is the worst pain you have ever felt, Lady Dudley had told her, like being torn with red-hot pincers. It is a woman�
��s lot to endure such things. Why? she wondered. It seemed strange, if it were so horribly painful, that people went on doing it – not married women, who had to, but sluts and prostitutes, who could presumably choose.

  Jemmy stirred and touched her, and she flinched – she simply could not help it. At once he withdrew his hand. Her relief was only momentary.

  ‘You do realize, madam, that it is a legal requirement?’ he said. She did not know how to answer such a question. After a moment he went on, ‘However, I will certainly keep the secret, if you will. I have no wish to do what is so obviously distasteful to you. If you wish to be left alone, I will not trouble you.’

  The silence lengthened itself again. Her fear was beginning to recede a little, partly the result of being alone with him, and in the dark, away from the glare of all those eyes. Perhaps Lady Dudley was wrong. Perhaps it was not so bad. After all, some people apparently enjoyed it; and besides, if it had to be done, as indeed it did, better sooner than later. Perhaps it would make him like her a little better. It would be wonderful, she thought, if ever he would smile at her in that way.

  Timidly she cleared her throat. ‘Sir, I think that—’ She stopped. He had made a sound. It was not a sound of response. It was – it definitely was – a snore. Fuddled with a great deal of wine, he had fallen asleep.

  Lady Mary lay very still, struggling not to cry, and after a while she succeeded. Then she realized that there was wetness on the inside of her thigh. Her flux had started.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At first it was not so bad. The wedding of the heir to Morland Place was evidently an event of great importance in the locality, and there was a long round of festivities attached, visits to be made, visits to be received, dinners and balls and supper parties and picnic parties, which kept everyone occupied, and which meant that Lady Mary never had to get to grips with her situation. One of the worst things was the continuous presence of horses in her life. She had not properly grasped beforehand how devoted to horses Yorkshire people were. To her, horses were things which pulled your carriage and made the streets dirty. But to her new family and their neighbours, horses were almost like people, just as important and, apparently, a great deal more beloved.

  They talked about them all the time, about their rival merits, their abilities, their diseases and, endlessly, about breeding them. Lady Mary was taken on a visit to the stables at Twelvetrees, much as, when she went to stay with Lady Cooper in her house in Kent, she was taken on a tour of the house to admire the paintings and statuary. There was a great deal of talk about the provision of a riding horse for her, and it was evidently a matter of such first-rate importance to her father-in-law and husband, a matter for earnest debate and endless comparison of equine candidates, that she did not like to suggest that it was hardly necessary. Lady Mary was rather afraid of horses, and would far rather never have to mount one. But such an idea was evidently akin to heresy, and she looked forward with anxiety to a future of riding and hunting. Her only hope was that they would never manage to decide between themselves on which animal was to be hers.

  Even in the house one could not get away from the beasts, for there were almost as many portraits of great stallions and prolific mares as there were of ancestors on the walls. The marble-topped table in the great hall was generally littered with crops and spurs and odd riding gloves, and if ever a male member of the household sat down for a moment, he was almost sure to be occupied with mending a piece of harness or working out a horse’s genealogy.

  She was never alone with her husband during the day, although he sometimes went out without her, on business or for some pleasure he did not ask her to share. At those times she would be left in the company of her mother-in-law and the cousin from Northumberland, Frances. These two women were always very kind to her, and she felt that, had Lady Dudley not been there, she might have been able to make friends of them. But the presence of her chaperone – although she could no longer be called chaperone, but was a sort of lady-companion – made conversation stilted, and often when one of the ladies addressed a remark to Mary, Lady Dudley would answer for her before she could speak.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to walk in the garden a little?’ Sabina might say, thinking that the poor child looked pale.

  Lady Dudley would immediately interject sternly, ‘Thank you, madam, but it is a great deal too hot at this time of the day for Lady Mary to be walking out of doors.’

  Or Frances might say kindly, ‘Would you like a piece of work to do, my dear, to keep you occupied?’ Whereupon Lady Dudley would retort:

  ‘Lady Mary does no close work. Her eyesight is too delicate.’

  So the two ladies tended to chat pleasantly to each other, leaving Mary out of it, sitting with her hands in her lap, waiting for the next thing to be demanded of her. It was better when Alessandra joined them, for she would play on the spinnet and sing, and that was very pleasant. But sometimes she would bring her charge, the red-headed child from Shawes, and that was not so pleasant. Lady Mary thought the child passionate, spoiled and rude, and she had obviously conceived a dislike for Lady Mary which she evinced by being extremely polite and affectionate to everyone else in the room.

  Mealtimes were better, for while Maurice was there there was always music while they ate, which excused her from the necessity of making conversation, and which she found calmed her and made eating easier. Her husband continued to drink more than everyone else every evening and was therefore generally well foxed when they went to bed. She had at first dreaded the approach of bed-time, but it had been no ordeal since the first night. Her husband let her retire first, and came up the chapel stairs to the dressing room later on, where he spent so long preparing himself for bed that she was able to pretend to be asleep by the time he came to bed. He made no further sexual approaches to her, and she was thus saved the anguish of having to tell him about her flux, although in the way of shy people, it was long before she stopped torturing herself with trying to decide how she would have done it.

  Although it was south-facing, the drawing room was pleasantly cool that hot August day, for it had thick stone walls, and its small, diamond-paned casement windows were thus set so deep in the thickness that they let in the light but were shadowed from the direct beams of the high sun. Lady Mary sat on the long window-seat, officially to get the best light on her work, but really for the pleasure of being near the open window. The air that came in through the casement when the wind stirred was fragrant with roses, blowing as it did from the rose-garden across the moat, and it brought a multitude of sounds which she enjoyed identifying. Sometimes a bird would land nearby and call for a while before taking off again; sometimes a bee would settle on the windowsill in front of her to comb its fur and take its bearings. Butterflies, too, liked the sunny sill on which to rest for a moment, opening and shutting their wings. She stitched her hem by feel, watching the jewel-bright colours of the admiral and peacock and painted lady, the tawny skippers, the bright brimstone, the delicate silver-washed fritillary, and the piece of fallen sky that was the chalkhill blue. And when there was no butterfly to watch, there were the swans, passing slowly in their circuits of the moat, their feathers dazzlingly white against the reflected blue of the sky. Seeing her at the window they always paused a moment and drifted to her side of the water, in case she should have something for them. On the other side of the moat there was a small, low window in the kitchen wall on which they would tap with their beaks in the morning to be fed.

  A small sound within the room made her turn her head, and she glanced round to see that Lady Dudley, sitting in the shadowed corner of the room, had fallen asleep over her embroidery. Mary smiled to herself; it made her feel somehow more private when her companion dozed off. She let her hands idle in her lap and gazed dreamily out of the window. It was such a perfect day that she felt almost happy. The household had been in a ferment of excitement for days at the approach of race-week, and amid all the frenzied preparations, Mary discerned that however muc
h Lady Dudley forced her to keep aloof, there could not but be some enjoyment to be had for her from the festivities. There was to be a grand ball at Beningbrough House, and the invitation which had come for her had been couched in the most flattering terms. Sabina had recommended a dressmaker from York, who had come to Morland Place with samples for the women to choose from for the new gowns essential to such an important ball. Mary had already resigned herself to whatever Lady Dudley would choose, but Sabina – whether by chance or deliberate design Mary could not tell – had sent Lady Dudley out of the way while the dressmaker was in the house by asking her to do a task for her that, she said, she could only trust to someone of Lady Dudley’s experience and delicacy. The result was that Sabina, who would look wonderful in it, was to have the pink silk. With Sabina’s help, Mary had chosen a delicate harebell-blue silk for her gown; the underskirt was to be quilted with silver rosettes, and the stomacher was to be embroidered with a pattern of purple pansies with silver leaves.

  In such a gown, and if she could resist Lady Dudley’s ideas about cosmetics, she might look almost pretty. She daydreamed for a moment, about coming down the stairs in her ball-gown to where Jemmy waited for her in the hall; he turned to look at her, and was frozen in amazement at her unexpected beauty. In her dream, he came slowly towards her, his hand outstretched, with a tender look in his beautiful eyes and that smile on his lips …

  A sound in the hall broke her reverie, and a moment later the dog Fand padded in through the open door, trotted up to thump his chin down onto Lady Dudley’s knee for a second, and then came over to Mary, tail swinging, pink-frilled tongue dripping. She caught his head in her hands and roughed his ears ruefully, for he had woken the dowager who was now stitching busily away to pretend that she had not been asleep.

  ‘Mary, dear, make sure that the dog does not sully your gown,’ she said.