*
Lord Ledbury descended from the carriage without his customary, if casual, word of thanks to the postillions. He had not driven himself, upon the pleading of Whicham, who declared, rather histrionically, that he would lie before the coach wheels rather than see his employer break his neck through distraction. Privately, he thought it might even be his intent. He had seen his lordship in a fearful temper, had seen him reckless with drink, but never had he seen him with a look of blind confusion as he had in the small hours. He had remonstrated with him, pointing out that, without a moon, no post-chaise would leave Town until dawn, but could not persuade him to lie upon his bed. The valet had withdrawn to the dressing room when ordered to ‘leave me be’, but, as he later blearily informed Mr Syde, he had not dared seek his own bed.
‘I have been that fearful for his lordship. I was only thankful his razors are kept in the dressing room out of reach.’
‘In a rare taking he is,’ bemoaned the butler, shaking his head.
‘Indeed, Mr Syde. I know you will take what care you can of her poor ladyship.’ Whicham sighed. ‘Tragic it is, truly tragic.’ He sighed.
The servants had barely begun the day and the house was set by the ears, with Lord Ledbury ordering a post-chaise at half past six, refusing sustenance, and tersely informing the devoted Whicham that if he chose to follow he could do so with Coates driving his phaeton back to Melling Hall. Whicham was not a lover of horseflesh or the stables, but was to be found in the stable yard minutes after his lordship had departed.
The postillions found themselves exhorted to ‘spring ’em’ from the moment a clear way lay ahead of them, as if, one remarked, catching his breath at a change of horses, Old Nick himself was on their tail.
Norton, taken totally unawares by his master’s arrival, scurried into the hall as Lord Ledbury strode past the minion who had gone to the door and took the stairs, two at a time, without a word. Norton began to follow and then stopped upon the half landing, seeing his lordship disappear into the yellow bedchamber. The butler frowned. For all that in the immediacy of the new Lady Ledbury’s arrival he had showed her to that room, he knew that son, like father, had never stepped over the threshold in the years after the countess’s death. The room was kept as if in aspic, dusted, but never changed. That her son should enter it now was a shock, but then so had been the look on his face. Had Mrs Gowthorpe seen it she would have described it in an instant. He might be a man grown, not a child of six, but it was the lost look of the bereaved child, augmented by self-loathing.
*
George Ledbury stood very still, and was conscious of a pang of disappointment. There was no logic in expecting the room to be redolent of a perfume last used over a quarter of a century ago, and yet its ghost pestered him, seemed to blame him for not smelling it. He had come out of instinct, because this was where he had last felt as confused and miserable and utterly lost. He stepped further into the room, touched a faded bed drapery, an image in his mind of his mother, the mother who always had smiles for him, white and cold and unsmiling beneath the coverlet.
He swallowed hard, and then sank to sit, not upon the bed, but upon the floor beside it, leaning back against it, disturbing a faint odour of camphor, used to deter the moth. He closed his eyes. He tried telling himself it was not the same; his Kitty was not dead, but her rejection had been so absolute that his heart told him she might as well be so to him. He had faced the dark abyss, all those years ago, and had made every effort to avoid it thereafter. Understanding had been what made him act to help Henry Inglesham in his dark days, but he had told himself he would never again stand at the edge of the precipice for a woman. They were for sport, entertainment, the fulfilling of a need, but love, no, he would not love. And then his marriage of convenience had brought him Kitty, a woman at whom he would never normally have looked twice, and in a few short weeks he had been seduced, he, the seducer. He had not seen it. He had thought he was merely making life easier by getting on with his spouse, then it had seemed rather interesting wooing her, as an exercise. He had fallen in love for real whilst thinking it was only a game, underpinned by his longing, his physical need for her. What he had said was quite true. He had not touched another woman, because for all he craved the act, it could only be with her. Louisa’s unwanted embrace had got a physical reaction but it had repelled him. He wanted his wife, his Kitty, not as she had been on that disastrous wedding night, horrified, shocked, distressed, but as he had felt she could be, would be, soft, warm, exciting. There had been times when she had shown signs, a light in her eyes, a tremble when he kissed her… He covered his face with his hands. It was all gone, and he had not even been guilty of the sins of which she had accused him, but guilty of jealousy, desperate, blinding jealousy, because she had sought a little support from another man. So there would be no nights of passion, neither fire nor tenderness.
The child of six had been confused, miserable, lonely, and had no answer to his woes. George Ledbury the man had a decanter of brandy, and a pistol. It would suffice.
He frowned, forcing back the unmanly dampness in his eyes, and stood, rather unsteadily. He smoothed the bedcover where he had disturbed its side, and looked to the dressing mirror before which his mama used to sit, but there was no smiling ghost to aid him. His mouth set in a grim line. He left the room, closing the door carefully, went to where he kept his brace of pistols and loaded one. As he crossed the hall he saw a maid, and tersely ordered brandy in the library.
Norton entered the room a few minutes later, already looking concerned, for if his lordship was broaching the brandy at barely three of the clock, it was a very bad sign. What he saw made it hard for him to keep his composure. Lord Ledbury was sat in a large chair near the fireplace. He already looked haggard, and on the small table at his elbow the silver mountings of a pistol caught the afternoon sunlight. The butler coughed, and enquired, in a nearly normal voice, if his lordship would like a fire lit. Though the May afternoon was warm and sunny, an empty grate was somehow dispiriting to sit beside.
‘A hint of the fires to come, Norton?’ murmured Lord Ledbury, with a grimace. Norton blinked, but made no answer, and placed the tray upon the table. ‘No fire, thank you.’ There was a pause. ‘That will be all, Norton.’
There was an added inflexion of finality in the familiar phrase that made the butler’s blood run cold.
‘My lord, if I…’
‘That will be all, Norton. Thank you.’
The butler was powerless, and bowed himself out, with a sense of impending doom weighing heavily upon him.
The library was a room in which Lord Ledbury felt at home, his preferred bolt-hole. Now it was just four walls. Everything was black, meaningless. If he could have seen but a chance in a hundred that he could win back his wife’s respect and affection he would have been pacing the room, planning, but there was no hope he could see, no hope at all. It was not even as though he had committed those sins of which he was accused. He had been faithful, though if anyone had asked him, on the day of his marriage, if he really meant ‘forsaking all others’ he would have laughed. He was, in so many ways, innocent, and yet he had done something worse than being unfaithful, he had withdrawn from Kitty after the incident with Louisa Yarningale, stepped back when he ought to have made even greater efforts to show himself worthy and that she meant so much to him, and he had not, from pride and anger and ill usage. So she had turned to Knowle. The earl did not really for one moment think that she had any form of physical relationship with the man, but she had shared her feelings with him, and that hurt. And now he came to think about it, Knowle had not looked frightened when he had threatened him, but… triumphant. That was most peculiar, though irrelevant now. What was relevant was Kitty’s look of utter loathing. It haunted him.
He got up and went to the door, where he turned the key. Then he went back to his chair, dropped into it and reached for the decanter.
22
Lord Inglesham arrived at Melling Hall h
aving been travelling for the better part of eight hours, not even stopping long enough at the changes of horses to drain a tankard of ale. His only relief as he arrived was that Norton opened the door to him, worried but not floundering.
‘My lord,’ the relief in the butler’s voice was such he almost expected Norton to throw himself upon his neck.
‘Where is his lordship?’
‘In the library, my lord, but he has locked himself in and he has a pistol with him.’
Lord Inglesham strode across the hallway, any feeling of tiredness dispelled. Whicham was standing by the door, his ear unashamedly pressed to it, his hands gripped together.
‘How long has he been in there, Whicham?’
‘Since a bit before three o’clock, my lord.’
Lord Inglesham consulted his pocket watch, which gave the hour as six.
‘And I have heard glass smash. I believe he has been at the brandy, my lord.’ Whicham was at his wits’ end.
‘The decanter was full, my lord,’ added Norton, miserably.
‘That might be to our advantage then. With luck he will be too far gone to shoot either himself or me. Out of the way now.’
Whicham regarded him with a mixture of admiration and horror.
‘But what if he is not?’
‘Then I hope the local surgeon is good.’ Lord Inglesham gave a wry smile and put his shoulder to the door. It shuddered but held firm. ‘Damnation,’ muttered his lordship, rubbing his shoulder, and tried again. On the fourth attempt the frame splintered and Lord Inglesham fell into the library and barely prevented himself from sprawling on the floor. His host did not move.
Lord Ledbury was slumped in his chair, his cravat loosened, his hair dishevelled, his eyes bleary. In one hand he held, so loosely that its contents seemed about to tip onto the floor, a brandy glass. The other hand rested upon a pistol, which lay upon a small table at his right hand. A window pane was smashed and let a summer-scented breeze into the room, at odds with the scene. Taken from the wall and propped in the chair facing him from the other side of the hearth was the portrait of a woman, one whose close familial relationship to him could not be in doubt. Romney’s likeness of the last Lady Ledbury had been considered very true to life.
‘You are an idiot,’ announced his friend, with some acerbity.
‘Idiot,’ repeated Lord Ledbury, with a noticeable slurring.
Lord Inglesham, wincing at the pain in his shoulder, straightened up and looked at his best friend with a mixture of pity and exasperation.
‘For God’s sake stop toying with that thing, lest you become an even greater idiot.’ He looked at the pistol with loathing.
‘Best thing… could do for her.’
‘Rubbish. You would break the poor soul’s heart, and besides, she wouldn’t suit blacks.’
‘Sh’hates me, and with good raisins.’ He growled. ‘Roosons.’
‘She may dislike you intensely if you have been the blithering fool I think you have, but she loves you, George, little as you deserve it. It will be hurt that has made her lash out. Now, let me take that damned pistol and get Whicham to sober you up. We need to talk, and I have no intention of repeating myself just because you are too castaway to comprehend me.’ His tone was brisk. Giving the man sympathy would do no good at this juncture.
Lord Ledbury’s grip tightened for a moment.
‘Can’t live without her.’
‘If you pull yourself together man, you won’t need to live without her. Come on, my dear fellow, just let me have the gun.’
Lord Ledbury sighed, and held out the pistol, reversed, to Lord Inglesham. When it was no longer in his grasp, he buried his head in his hands and wept in the manner of the man so drunk that he is inconsolable. Lord Inglesham unloaded the weapon.
‘Give me a hand here,’ he called over his shoulder to Whicham, who was standing nervously in the doorway, and went to grip Lord Ledbury by the shoulder.
Between them they half led, half carried, the earl up to his bedchamber.
‘By the by, my friend, why the window?’
‘Window? Ah… bird… singing… happy. Threw paperweight at it.’
That seemed sufficient explanation for his vandalism. Friend and valet laid him upon his bed. Lord Inglesham looked at the valet.
‘Well, what are you waiting for? We want cold water, as cold as the kitchen can provide, and whatever he uses as a pick-me-up after a heavy night. Go on, man.’
Thus chastised, Whicham set about his tasks, leaving Lord Inglesham sitting, thoughtful, on the edge of his lordship’s bed, and looking at his inebriated friend. He had averred that Lady Ledbury loved him, and in his heart he believed it true, but what exactly had passed between them the previous night he did not know, and perhaps George Ledbury had gone so far she would find it hard to forgive. Some things a woman could not forgive, and if he had been angry beyond thinking straight… Lord Inglesham shuddered. He had said he wanted Ledbury sober so that the man would listen to what he had to say, but in truth he needed to hear from him exactly what had taken place before the earl’s flight.
It was with no small degree of relief that he heard the facts from an exhausted, damp-headed, but sobered earl an hour later. Ledbury looked the devil, but his head was clear, and his narration lucid.
‘So she was not afraid of you.’ Inglesham tried not to let it sound like a question.
‘No… yes… no… perhaps a little, briefly, but she was so angry, cold angry. It was I who was afraid of myself, Henry. Had I given in and overpowered her… I would have held her so tight I would have snapped her, crushed every ounce of breath from her sweet body in my desperation not to let her go… and yes, then I would have “frightened her”, beyond all measure. It may not count for much, but I saved her that.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘If you had seen the look in her eyes… She is lost to me, and I do not want to live without her.’ He groaned.
‘You need not. I swear it, George, but you will have to swallow all your pride and beg her, beg her forgiveness. Can you do that?’
‘Anything. Besides, I have no pride. I feel empty, lost. I cannot explain…’
‘Nor need you. Loss hits you like that. I know, too well.’
‘But even if I beg, her disgust of me will be too strong. I accused her of betraying me, my own wife who has never done anything wrong, except when she was foolish enough to accept me as her husband. She told me, it seems a lifetime ago, that she wanted me to love her, only her. And I do, I do.’
‘Well, I am glad of it, though not that you have had to get to this point to admit it. Have you told her the truth of your feelings?’
‘I tried, last night.’
‘Hmm, not the best time though, was it.’
‘She threw it back in my face, Henry.’
‘With some justification.’
‘She said I was a dog who growled to keep its bone, even though it wanted no more than to bury it in the garden, and that I had become so used to disloyalty in wives that I could not accept virtue.’
‘As I said then, with some justifi…’
‘You don’t need to labour the point. She will not believe anything I say is sincere, has not since that evening when Louisa Yarningale did her best to ruin everything, and it seems her “best” has ruined my life.’
‘Only if you let it. You have hurt your wife, hurt her deeply, because she is not the sort of woman who would ever betray you, but if you prove to her that what you said was an outburst because you cannot bear to be without her… She will not like it, alone in the London house. In a few days, when her anger has waned, she will want to come to Melling Hall and tell you just what you have done, and that is your ch…’
‘No, she won’t come. I left her a letter, a very formal sort of letter. I said since I disgusted her so greatly she could remain in Manchester Square and thereafter I would put my place in Suffolk at her disposal. but that Melling Hall’s doors would be closed to her.’
‘You bacon-brained clunch! Whe
n she has thrown herself into making this place her home! Honestly, George, you are a tomfool.’
‘You ought to have left me the pistol then.’
‘No. Your situation is not as desperate as that. Come down and have a decent dinner, get a night’s rest, and in the morning write another letter. Tell her you wrote the first in blind misery, and it was all wrong, that you want her here, want to try and make amends, earn her forgiveness, that sort of thing.’
‘It will not work.’
‘It has a chance, and addling your brain with brandy and self-pity has none. I have tried both, remember.’
*
Lucy Sudbury’s reading matter had undergone a subtle change, one which her sister regarded as both a surprise but also most encouraging. Homilies and improving tracts had been discarded for the poetry of Marvell, and even a thin volume of Lord Byron’s verse, although Lucy did frown and criticise it as ‘lacking composure’.
Charlotte Rowington had to admit Lord Inglesham’s courtship, if one could so term it, had been so subtle as to have crept beneath her notice. She had been watching her sister in the company of slightly younger men and been disappointed to find her blatantly uninterested in any of them, and to be frank, that seemed to be mutual. When Lucy first began to show signs of emerging from her sepulchral gloom, she had been puzzled, and only recognised the cause as ‘the tender passion’ when Lucy had shyly enquired if she had known that Lord Rowington was ‘the one’ from early in their acquaintanceship. When pressed, Lucy had, most uncharacteristically, prevaricated. Her sister had been perplexed, and only slowly did the truth dawn upon her. When Lucy came to her in the middle of the Jerseys’ ball and whispered in her ear that ‘just everything is going to be all right’, her first emotion was relief, relief that Lucy would look to the future and not dwell in the past. She had told Rowington with no small degree of delight, and he was even more openly thankful.
The Devil You Know Page 26
