‘I beg your pardon, my lady, I wondered if you—’ She stopped abruptly at the sight of Jemima’s red eyes and flushed face, and forgetting etiquette, rushed over to her and knelt beside her. ‘My lady, what is it, what’s wrong?’ Jemima did not answer, and meeting her steady look, Jane frowned, and her lips tightened. ‘His lordship was up here just now, wasn’t he?’ she said. ‘Oh, my lady—’
‘Jane, tell me what you know. I’ve seen you and Pask whispering. Tell me what you know about him,’ Jemima said with a calm that wavered even as she spoke.
Jane shook her head, and then said. ‘Only that he drinks a lot, my lady, and gambles a lot. The other servants said he lost a thousand pounds last week at some palace or other, where a friend of his lives. Has he been unkind to you?’
Jemima shook her head. Jane was not telling her everything, she was sure, but she could not imagine what the rest could be. Something worse? Something so bad she did not want to tell her? At all events, she could not confide in the maid what had passed between her and Rupert. That would be disloyal, and he was, after all, her husband. ‘I’m homesick, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Jane, go down and apologize to the Lady Karelia for me, and tell her I will be down very shortly, when I have bathed my face. Go on, now, do as I say. I am quite all right.’
Jane went reluctantly. Outside Pask was waiting for her with an anxious look of enquiry.
She wouldn’t talk about it. She’s brave as a lion, that one – too brave.’
Pask’s fists clenched themselves. ‘I should like to kill him,’ he said fiercely. ‘When I think – Oh, if only the Master were alive!’
‘If only!’ Jane said, and went off on her errand.
Jemima had been longing for home, but when they were actually on their way, she grew nervous, and wished they had stayed in Venice. After all, at least in Venice he was someone else’s guest, and therefore bound to keep within the bounds of decency. Suppose she was wrong, suppose he behaved as badly in London? Then he would be entirely her problem, and what would she do then? And in London she would have no Karelia for company. And in London, if there was a scandal, everyone would know it. He was very silent on the journey, sleeping a great deal, and she was glad not to be the object of his attention. She looked at him while he slept and saw how the debauchery of the past weeks had marked him. His eyes were pouchy, and there were hard lines about his mouth, and he had a rash of little red spots along his cheek. But he was still handsome, although now – or was it her imagination? – she detected something strangely unpleasant about the handsomeness, a weakness, a softness, that ought not to be there.
He was very ill on the boat, especially in the Channel, which was choppy, and she sent Pask to help Boy take care of him, for Boy, though not actually sick, was also a little green and inconvenienced. Jemima found she was not troubled by the movement, and in fact stayed on deck as long as the sailors would allow her, enjoying the fresh-smelling sea breeze and the sight of the clean grey and white water and the strong, watchful gulls. Jane tutted at her for exposing her white skin to the weather, but she told her firmly she would not go below and Jane was forced to accept the inevitable.
When they got to London they went straight to Chelmsford House, where Rupert, still white and shaken, went straight to bed, leaving Jemima to unpack alone and to examine her new abode. She was shocked at its state. It was almost denuded of furnishings; all the pictures and mirrors had gone, as well as the plate, and anything that could have been of value. It was also extremely dirty, and in need of repainting, and the gardens were a tangled wasteland. There were only a handful of servants, too, and they looked an idle, villainous crew, evidently people who could not get work elsewhere and had taken the position for a low wage rather than starve. Jemima began to be seriously worried. Surely he would not live like this, if he had the choice, for she had seen how he liked luxury. In Yorkshire he had lived in great style – she remembered the numbers of candles, the great feasts, the excellent wines – so why would he be any different in London? Surely those evil-looking servants could not have laid the place waste in his absence? Four months was hardly long enough to have wrought such havoc. She tried to question them, but it was like trying to pin water to a tree, and when one of them discovered what she suspected him of, he grew abusive, and she was afraid. Explanations, she decided, would have to wait until Rupert was well again – but explanations there should be. She wanted to know exactly what had been going on, however bad it was.
Meanwhile, during his illness, she was embarrassed as to how to receive guests. With the help of Jane and Pask, for she was afraid to ask the other servants anything out of the way, they cleaned and polished the entrance hall as best they could, and took all the most decent furniture that was left into the smallest parlour. Pask washed the windows and the chandelier, and Jane went out to buy candles with Jemima’s own money, of which she had a little left since her honeymoon, and picked some attractive leaves from the garden to arrange in lieu of flowers. And in this room Jemima, the new Countess of Chelmsford, received those guests who came to pay the usual wedding-visits. There were strangely few of them: one or two curious members of the younger set, who came to stare so that they could report back on her clothes and her looks – and now, she thought despairing, on the poverty of her furniture – and one or two kindly older people who had known her father or other members of her family. They sat a little while and chatted, and went away with sad glances, and Jemima was feverishly bright, and spoke of the wonders of Italy, and offered them wine, though she was not at all sure there was any.
There were also a number of visitors for Rupert, all of them young men, all fashionable almost to screaming-point, some of them very oddly attired, many of them heavily daubed with cosmetics and reeking of orange-flower-water. Some were gentlemen’s sons, or scions of the nobility, some were actors or musicians or entertainers of other sorts, and some she could not place at all. They stared at her, and giggled, and asked after Rupert, and some asked to see him, and went upstairs, where they stayed for a very long time, though he had refused any visits from her, saying he was too ill.
Jane often urged her to go out, but she would not.
‘You ought to take the air, my lady. You are looking quite pale and drawn,’ Jane would say.
Jemima would reply, ‘Where could I go? And how? There is no coach here, no horses. I do not know anyone in London, and I cannot bear to be stared at any more. No, I will not go.’
So Pask cleared a little of the garden, looking ruefully at the marks and blisters it made on his gentleman-soft hands, so that she could take the air there. There was a stone bench underneath a cherry tree where she liked to sit and watch the birds. She would sit there for hours, even in the winter cold, and try to imagine she was at home, riding darling Jewel across her own land, cantering up to the Whin with Allen beside her. At least, she thought, birds and trees and grass were the same everywhere, and did not change mysteriously in their properties.
She received a letter from cousin William, excusing himself for not calling.
‘My duties prevent me, and I am sure at such a time you had much rather not be troubled,’ he said. Then he began again, in a slightly different hand and ink, as though he had intended to end the letter, and had added something else on impulse, or on further thought. ‘Well, you have cut us all out nicely, my cousins and I,’ he said. ‘I wish you may not regret it! You had much better have married me, but I dare say you enjoy your title.’
When they had been back two weeks, the servants told her there was no more money to buy food, and if she did not ask the Master for some, they would all starve to death. Jemima was angry. Rupert must surely have recovered by now from the journey, she thought – and he had had a visitor up there all morning, a young man who, by the equipment he was carrying, was a painter. If he was well enough to talk to a painter, he was well enough to talk to her, she thought angrily, and mounted the stairs with determination.
When she entered the ante-room to
his bedchamber, she saw Boy just coming out from the inner room with a tray on which were empty food dishes, and the sight angered her still further. He had food from somewhere, but didn’t care if the rest of them, including his wife, starved. Boy almost dropped the tray at the sight of her, and said. ‘What do you want?’ in a way that was made almost surly with nervousness.
‘I want to speak to my husband,’ she said firmly, walking towards the door. He stood against it, stretching out his arm as if to stop her, and she stared at him in amazement.
‘Get out of the way, Boy,’ she said.
‘You had much better not go in, mistress,’ he said. ‘Let me ask him if he’ll see you first.’ For answer, Jemima grabbed his arm and pushed him out of the way. It was the first time in her life she had ever manhandled a servant, proof indeed of her outrage, and Boy shrugged, stepped aside, and said. ‘Well, I tried to warn you.’
She opened the door. Her first impression was that here, alone in the house, was a comfortable room. It was very untidy and rather shabby, but it was fully furnished, and there was a large fire, which made the room quite warm. There was a huge bed with scarlet draperies falling from the central ball-and-crown, and at the foot of it stood an easel with a canvas upon it, while painting materials lay scattered about on the floor. The curtains were drawn across the window, though it was daylight outside, and the room was lit with candles, which reflected their light from several mirrors – the only ones in the house, to her certain knowledge. All this she absorbed in the brief second before her eyes went irresistibly to the bed.
Sitting up in bed, with a glass of wine in his hand, was Rupert, and as far as she could see, he was naked, not even wearing a bedgown. His head was bare, and his hair tumbled loosely about his shoulders. She was surprised at that, for she had always seen him either in a wig or a cap, and had assumed that like other men he had his own hair cut short underneath for comfort.
His other arm was around the shoulders of a blond-headed, heavily-made up creature, who was also naked, and who was undoubtedly a man. Jemima’s feet wanted to run away with her, but her eyes could not stop staring. Rupert, after a first start of surprise, defiantly drew the blond man closer, and lifted his glass to Jemima.
‘Ah, my dear wife! are you enjoying life in London?’
‘What are you doing?’ she asked stupidly. The blond creature had been glaring at her with narrowed eyes, but at her words he laughed, and snuggled closer to Rupert.
‘Why my dear, what do you think?’ Rupert said. ‘I’m having my portrait painted. Have a look at it, if you like.’
Their laughter followed her as she ran from the room, slamming the door behind her as if she was pursued by devils.
The following day, Rupert dressed and came downstairs. He was clean, shaven, sober, and serious, but Jemima looked at him, trembling, with anxious eyes, and was afraid she would begin to cry if she spoke. He stared at her for a while, and then said. ‘My little holiday is over. It is time to attend to business.’
‘Business?’ she managed to say. He sat down, still staring at her reflectively, like a man considering the value of a portrait he is about to steal.
‘Business, Lady Chelmsford. You see, I cannot doubt, that Chelmsford House is in severe need of refurbishing. This is because, while my father left me his title and his houses, as he was bound to do, he left me very little money. There is no estate attached to the title. The old Countess left everything of value to her daughter, my aunt, who in turn left it to her daughter. Lady Strathord. And while the exigencies of fate have now reunited the fortune and the title in one person, I find that Lady Strathord, the Jacobite whore, sold practically everything of worth to give the money to the Young Pretender.’
‘But—’
‘There is an income from the Shawes estate,’ he went on, cutting across Jemima’s protest, ‘but it is not enough to maintain Shawes and Chelmsford House and me, for you may as well know at once that I take a great deal of maintaining. I must have my little pleasures, madam, and pleasures do not come cheaply. I needed money. What was I to do? I would have to find an heiress, a rich heiress, and in spite of my repugnance to the idea, marry her. But where would I find an heiress who would marry mei That was a problem.’ And he laughed. Jemima flushed.
‘But when you came to Yorkshire – you lived at Shawes, in great style. You seemed to be rich.’
‘I sold my last few valuables, and borrowed a great deal from some sporting friends, who were willing to bet that I would never get you to accept me, or your mother to agree. That was a hard task, I must admit, for she began with a prejudice I thought I should never be able to overcome. That was why my friends thought it a good bet. But it turned out to be easy,’ he said with faint petulance, ‘much too easy. It was hardly any challenge at all.’
‘Then – you were not – you did not mean any of the things you said? You seemed – in Yorkshire – you seemed so different, so—’
‘It was a good act, was it not?’ he said, laughing gaily. ‘The noble, the virtuous, gentle and good, paying court to the fair and innocent. Lord, what I would have given for my friend Garrick to have seen it! My deepest regret is that no one – no one who matters,’ he amended contemptuously, ‘saw my finest role.’
‘But you couldn’t have been acting the whole time,’ Jemima said, clinging with fading hope to her own single comfort. ‘No one could pretend all the time.’
‘My dear girl, you underestimate me. Consider what a grounding I have had! The great Garrick! He has revolutionized the art of acting, and I have drunk from the fount. I know as much about the art as any of those who practise the profession – a great deal more than some of them, I may say. And you also underestimate the incentive I had to give that one, great performance. You were going to be very rich, and you were going to be mine. And now you are, dear girl, and so today I must attend to business. Apart from refurbishing Chelmsford House, I have a large number of most pressing debts to settle, and I must look over my new assets and decide what to sell.’
‘You mean to sell my property to pay your debts?’ Jemima said in a low voice.
‘No, Jemima, I intend to sell my property. You are forgetting the marriage contract. I can let you have a look at a copy of it, if you like.’
‘You can’t! I won’t let you!’ she cried in frustration. He looked at her almost with sympathy.
‘I’m sorry, but there is nothing you can do to stop me. You are trapped, fair and square. You are my wife, and your property is mine to do as I like with, and there is nothing in the world to be done about it. You must simply get used to it.’
Jemima’s mind revolved sickeningly as she tried to find a way out. Frustration and anger boiled inside her, and she clenched her fists, and turned her head from side to side as if physically seeking a way of escape. ‘I won’t let you destroy my estate,’ she cried. ‘There must be some way. I’ll divorce you.’
‘You can’t. You would need an Act of Parliament, and you have no grounds, even if you could find the interest to put it through Parliament; and even if you did divorce me, you would not get your property back. You would get only your settlement, which Is a cash income, which I would have to pay you out of the profits of the Morland estate, which is now mine. So you see?’
She was thinking now, fast and frantically. ‘What if I got the marriage annulled? Wouldn’t I get my property back then?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You have no grounds.’
‘I think I have,’ she said, but her uncertainty shewed in her voice. ‘What about non-consummation?’
‘The marriage was consummated, on that first night,’ he said.
‘I don’t think it was,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I don’t think what you did counts.’
He shrugged. ‘I can always do it again, and will,’ he said, adding as she took an involuntary step backwards, ‘by force if necessary. I need your property Jemima, and I will not let a small thing like that stand in the way. I can get to you much more quickly than you
can get to a lawyer, so don’t threaten me, unless you want another taste of married bliss.’
She turned away, and said with weary disgust, ‘I hate you. I want nothing to do with you.’
‘I dare say you do. But you are my wife, and for the time being, you will stay here with me, and behave nicely in public, and make me respectable at Court. I need that, you see, to counterbalance my little – pleasures. And if you are good, and behave nicely, I will let you go back to Morland Place.’ Her head came up eagerly, and he added. ‘Eventually.’ Her head went down again. ‘Cheer up, dear girl, you will enjoy some of your new life. Being at Court – parties, balls, playing cards with the Princesses. Living in London – the theatre – well, no, perhaps not the theatre in your case – but the concerts, the opera, the entertainments, riding round the park, the beau monde! Think of it, Jemima, it’s an opportunity most Yorkshire girls would give their eyes for. You might as well enjoy it.’
It was two years before he let her go home. They were strange years, not entirely without pleasure, but years in which she felt lost, cut off from the world, as though she were living inside a glass case, seeing and hearing but never a part of what was going on around her.
Rupert sold various things and paid off his debts and gradually refurbished the house. He did not ask her permission or opinion, but he always told her what he was doing with what she still insisted on thinking of as her estate, though whether this was out of courtesy or in a sadistic desire to cause her pain, she never knew. Reluctant though she was to part with Ask, she sent him home to Morland Place, so that she would have someone she trusted absolutely with whom to communicate. He was to help Clement run the estate, and to be the liaison between London and Yorkshire. Rupert let Shawes on a short lease, and the income was enough to maintain the house and to produce a surplus. To her surprise, he did not close down Morland Place, nor evict all her dependant relatives, though he would have had a perfect right to do so. She did not know whether he realized how many people were living at his expense; or whether he did not care; or whether it was his sop of convention and public opinion; or whether it was a curious, renegade streak of kindness in him.
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 38
