Margarita and the Earl

by Joan Wolf

  Nicholas mentally determined that he would scour the earth until he found an ivory-inlaid vargueño for her. But all he said was: “I am afraid I’m not going to be much help to you. I can tell you the different periods of most of the furniture, but the fine points of decoration and design are not my forte. Perhaps we should get a professional in.”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “I want to be more knowledgeable before I do that. Lady Hopkins has promised to help me, and perhaps you and I can start by just looking carefully at what we have.”

  Cataloguing the house’s furniture was not very difficult. There were a few pieces of the original Jacobean furnishings, but the majority of things were Queen Anne and early Georgian, with a great preponderance of Chippendale. “I don’t think my uncle ever touched the house,” Nicholas told Margarita. “His father, my grandfather, had Mr. Chippendale re-do all the state rooms and I suppose he thought that that sufficed. However, that was fifty years ago. I don’t even think all the rooms have been painted since then.”

  “Good heavens,” Margarita said faintly. “What was the reason for such monumental neglect?”

  Nicholas looked sardonic. “Your grandfather couldn’t see the point of putting money into something that would one day only go to a nephew. I think the neglect started when he didn’t have a son of his own.”

  Margarita’s lips were unusually severe. “How can that be? He spoke of Winslow to me with great affection. He was proud of its ancient history, of its being named in the Doomsday Book.”

  The sardonic look vanished as Nicholas shouted with laughter. “The Domesday Book, sweetheart, not ‘Doomsday.’”

  “Domesday, then,” she repeated. “But he truly sounded as if he loved Winslow, Nicholas. I don’t understand.”

  “He loved it so much he hadn’t set foot in it for thirteen years.”

  “Thirteen years!” There was profound surprise on her face.

  “He stayed at Winslow for as long as my aunt lived; she did not like the city. But as soon as she died, he moved to London and never returned.”

  “I don’t understand,” she repeated in bewilderment.

  He gave her an odd, slanting look from under his lashes. “Why do you think he forced you to marry me the way he did?”

  Her eyes were steady and grave on his face. “He wanted to provide for me, of course.”

  “He could simply have left you the collection. Why did he tie your future to me?”

  His voice was expressionless. It was impossible to tell what he thought. “He wanted to be sure there would be someone to take care of me,” said Margarita.

  He looked at her for a moment in silence. She was speaking what she thought was the truth. And he thought that, given her background, it was the natural conclusion for her to draw. One of the first priorities for all her men had always been to make sure there was someone to take care of Margarita. He was sorry now he had brought the subject up. “Why do you think he made his will the way he did?” she was asking him.

  “You probably have the answer,” he replied easily. “He wanted to be sure you were looked after.”

  “But that doesn’t explain his neglect of Winslow,” she went on. “Or why, after so many years, he decided to return.”

  He shrugged. “It hardly matters, now,” he said. His face wore a look of complete indifference.

  Her thoughtful brown eyes never left his face, registering every flicker of expression on it. She came to the answer more by intuition than by reason. “You think he wanted me at Winslow, don’t you? I was his grandchild, and you were not. That was why he was coming back here after so many years. And that was why he made you marry me. Was that it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She felt a deep anger within herself, anger at the man who had been so brutal, who had hurt Nicholas so badly. There was a tight feeling in her chest. No wonder, she thought, he was so guarded against love. She wanted to throw her arms around him and comfort him but his face warned her not to offer sympathy. She drew an uneven breath and turned and walked to the window so he would not see the tears in her eyes. “He must have been a very stupid man,” she said lightly. “However, his stupidity has made me very happy so I cannot complain too loudly.”

  He came across to where she stood and put his hand on her neck, beneath her hair. “Has it made you happy, sweetheart?” he murmured.

  She leaned back against him. “Yes,” she said, and his hand moved forward over her throat and in between the buttons of her dress.

  “Good,” he said, and bent over her.

  *

  They planned to go to London at the beginning of April. Margarita pored faithfully over the copies of Sheraton’s Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book and Cabinet Dictionary that Lady Hopkins lent her. She looked carefully through Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture as well and she made some basic decisions about what she wanted to do. She planned to redecorate the family rooms first and see how they came out before she tackled the more formidable state rooms. Lady Hopkins recommended that she commission George Smith to make the furniture for her, and she decided it would be easier for her to go to London since she would then be able to look at fabrics for drapes and walls as well.

  Nicholas was going to take his seat in Parliament. Lord Linton had written to tell him that there was an important bill coming up, and Nicholas promised to be there for the debate and the vote. He also wanted Margarita to look over the large number of remaining paintings. They needed to decide what to keep and what to sell.

  All was in train for their departure when Nicky got sick. He had a cough and a fever. Dr. Macrae came and said it was the same influenza that had struck half of the houses in the neighborhood. He didn’t seem to think it was serious, but of course it was impossible to take a sick baby on a journey to London, and Margarita, who was still nursing him, couldn’t leave him even if she wanted to.

  “You go ahead, Nicholas,” she urged him. “You promised Lord Linton you would be there for the vote. Nicky isn’t seriously ill. I can manage here very well without you. And as soon as he is better, I’ll join you in London.”

  She was very firm, and in the end he gave in and left without her. That was at the beginning of April. After a week she wrote to tell him Nicky was completely recovered but that Mrs. Wade had taken ill. “I really need her to help me with Nicky on the journey,” she wrote, “so I am going to wait until she is better. I hope your introduction to Parliament went well.”

  The next communication Nicholas received from Winslow came from Mrs. Wade. Margarita had come down with the same influenza that had felled both Nicky and herself. “Lady Winslow begged me to tell you not to return to Winslow,” the nurse wrote. “She says you will only come down with influenza yourself and she would prefer to have you healthy. As soon as she is recovered she will join you in London.”

  In the end, it was May before the Winslow family was reunited in Berkeley Square.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So darke a mind within me dwells

  And I make myself such evil cheer

  That if I be dear to someone else,

  Then someone else may have much to fear.”

  —Tennyson

  For the first week of his sojourn in London, Nicholas was involved with the Parliamentary session. Escorted by Lord Linton, he took his seat and was introduced to nearly all the leading Whig politicians. He was most cordially received. The Beauchamps, as befitted one of the most ancient families in the country, had always been relentlessly Tory and tended to regard with disdain Whigs like the Romneys of Linton, whose titles dated only from the time of Queen Elizabeth.

  Nicholas was not ready to declare himself a Whig, but neither had he any use for the Tory government of Lord Liverpool. In Philip Romney, Earl of Linton, he found a kindred spirit. Linton was only a few years older than Nicholas, but they had gone to different schools, and as Nicholas was rarely in London, their paths never crossed until last year. The two men had taken an instant liking to o
ne another, each man recognizing in the other a sympathy of thought, and Nicholas was sorry when Linton left London to return to his home in Kent.

  “My wife is expecting a child next month and naturally I don’t like to be away from her for long,” Linton said to Nicholas. “Perhaps this summer you and Lady Winslow might pay us a visit at Staplehurst.”

  Nicholas accepted with genuine pleasure.

  *

  The departure of Linton left Nicholas with time on his hands. He was besieged by invitations, as the Season was getting under way, and as he found the empty house getting on his nerves, he attended more parties than he had any real desire to attend. He missed his wife. And, inevitably, he ran into Lady Eleanor Rushton and Catherine Alnwick.

  Lady Eleanor and he had been lovers in an off-again on-again fashion for about two years. In fact, Nicholas had not seen her for almost a year when he met her at Lady Palmer’s reception. In ten minutes Lady Eleanor made it perfectly clear that as far as she was concerned, his long absence made no difference. “My husband is still in the country,” she murmured, large green eyes glinting up at him. “Why don’t you escort me home tonight?”

  His first impulse was to say No. He had no real desire to resume his affair with Eleanor Rushton. He hesitated, searching for the words to tell her so. “Or have you turned into a good and faithful husband?” she said, amusement in her rich voice.

  His response was uncalculated and automatic, his hand coming up to rest, caressingly, on her bare shoulder. They were standing in an alcove of Lady Palmer’s ballroom and were unobserved, as they thought. Lady Eleanor put her hand over his for a minute, and laughed.

  “When I think of the money most of us have spent on women over the years and I look at Winslow, I could cry,” said Lord Melville to Lord James Tyrrell. They had both been watching the byplay between Nicholas and Lady Eleanor.

  “What do you mean?” Lord James asked, constraint in his voice.

  “I mean that he hides himself in the country for most of the year, yet the minute he appears in London, half of the most desirable women in town are ready to lie down for him. And it was that way when he was only Nicholas Beauchamp, with hardly a guinea in his pocket. He’s probably never spent more than twenty-five guineas on a woman in his life,” said Lord Melville disgustedly.

  “No, I suppose not.” There was an unaccustomed line between Lord James’s brows.

  “He didn’t bring his wife with him, I notice,” said Lord Melville.

  Lord James drew himself up. “Lady Winslow stayed at Winslow with her son, who was ill with influenza. I understand she will be coming to town shortly.” He gave Lord Melville a very frosty nod and moved away.

  Lord James was not happy, and it was not his own lack of success with Lady Eleanor that was disturbing him. He wanted to tell Nicholas that he was a fool for wasting his time on Eleanor Rushton, but he did not have the nerve. He was not enough of a fool to provoke Nicholas’s temper. He thought of his friend’s temper, of his mistresses, of his occasional hair-raising adventuring, and then he thought of Nicholas’s wife. The more Lord James thought, the more profoundly unhappy he became.

  *

  Nicholas was not overly happy with himself. He had not intended to let himself become involved with Eleanor Rushton again. It was her provoking taunt about his being a good and faithful husband that had done it. Something in him needed to prove, not to Eleanor Rushton but to himself, that he was not tied like that to Margarita. The problem was that he missed her damnably, and the more he missed her the more he sought to demonstrate to himself that he was perfectly capable of living comfortably without her. So he got himself embroiled with Eleanor Rushton and, when he visited Catherine Alnwick to end their affair, with her as well.

  *

  Meanwhile, at Winslow, Margarita was struggling with fatigue, illness, and depression. She missed Nicholas dreadfully. Without him everything was such an effort. And every time she thought she was ready to leave for London, something else happened to delay them. First Mrs. Wade got sick, along with half the staff. Then the whole burden of looking after Nicky fell on Margarita, and she was exhausted from toiling up and down stairs, carrying him around, feeding him, cleaning him, amusing him, and all the time trying to soothe the sensibilities of servants who were not feeling well and were working, like she, at jobs they were unaccustomed to.

  There was no one to share it with. She missed, almost more than anything else, Nicholas’s shoulder. It was the small things, she discovered, that brought home to her most acutely his absence. The unimportant, everyday things: the light touch on the cheek, the hand that rested so casually on the nape of her neck, his shoulder to lean against when she was tired and depressed. She had woven the new fabric of her life about those things. They represented to her peace and security and deliverance from loneliness. Without them she was adrift and lost.

  She was worn out, which was why she fell so sick with the influenza. It was two weeks before Dr. Macrae would allow her to get up and another four days before she was able to get into the coach to begin her trip to London.

  It rained the whole way. Nicky was cranky and fussed almost constantly. He was learning to get his legs under him so he could push himself up on all fours, and he did not like the confinement of the coach. He did not want to be held. He did not want to nurse. He just wanted to get out of the carriage. By the time they stopped for the night it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, and Margarita was almost in tears.

  They reached London in the late afternoon of the next day. Margarita, carrying Nicky, ran up the stairs under the shelter of an umbrella held by a footman. Reid was in the hall. “Welcome, my lady. I hope you did not get wet.”

  “No, thank you, Reid,” she said, shifting the burden of Nicky from one shoulder to another.

  “Here, give that great lug to me,” a voice said, and Nicky was efficiently plucked from her arms.

  “Oh, Nicholas,” she cried thankfully, the intensity of her relief causing her to abandon for once the careful formality she always maintained in front of others.

  He had an arm around her, and she leaned her forehead for a moment against his shoulder. When she straightened up, her eyes were brighter than they had been in weeks. “I was beginning to think you had deserted me,” he said, and she shook her head vigorously.

  “Never.”

  *

  The efficient, healthy Berkeley Square household took charge, and soon Nicky was happily trying to stand on his head in his crib, and Margarita was sitting down to dinner with Nicholas. She had lost weight, and there was a sallow tinge to her skin and shadows under her eyes—and Nicholas thought that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He made her drink two glasses of burgundy with him, which brought some color to her cheeks. He listened sympathetically to her tale of woe, then told her about his own experiences when he took his seat in Parliament. They sat over dinner for almost three hours and Margarita was looking much less tired at eleven than she had at eight.

  They left the dining room and went right upstairs to bed. “Nicholas mío,” she breathed as he got in beside her. “How I have missed you.”

  “And I you,” he returned, his hands moving over the remembered perfection of her body. She opened for him, like a flower to the sun, and he came into her without delay, his eyes closing as he held her close. The peace of being with her again. It was only Margarita who could do this for him. They moved together in perfect unison.

  For Margarita it was sheer heaven, being with Nicholas again like this. When he said, afterwards, his cheek against hers, “There is nothing in the world as good as this,” she sighed with contentment.

  “I love you,” she said softly.

  That night, curled against the security of Nicholas, she slept more soundly than she had for a month.

  Chapter Nineteen

  O never talk again to me

  Of northern climes and British ladies.

  —Byron

  The first thing Nicholas
did was to take Margarita out and buy her a whole new wardrobe. They went to a very exclusive shop in Bond Street that Nicholas had heard recommended by Catherine Alnwick. Margarita protested when she realized the amount of money Nicholas was prepared to spend. “I am sick of seeing you in that everlasting black,” he said firmly. “And the dresses you had Mrs. Burgess make at Winslow will not do for London. If I run out of blunt, I’ll simply sell another painting.”

  Madame Fentôn had been thrilled to have the young Countess of Winslow for a customer and had known exactly the styles and colors that would most suit her dark-eyed, delicate-boned beauty. Margarita and Nicholas left the shop laden down with boxes and Madame Fentôn promised to send those that needed alteration to Berkeley Square later in the week.

  The Duchess of Melford was giving a ball three days after Margarita’s arrival, and Nicholas thought that this would be an auspicious occasion for introducing his wife to the ton. The ball would be one of the greatest crushes of the Season, and Margarita would have an opportunity to see most of the people who mattered in London society without, herself, being the center of interest. Many women would have relished a more spectacular entrance into society, but his wife, Nicholas knew, was not one of them.

  Margarita was nervous but she made a gallant effort to disguise her apprehension from Nicholas. She had very little experience with large parties and was not sure how the evening would proceed, but, as she told herself prosaically, the only way to find out would be to go.

  Nicholas’s eyes lit up when he saw her, and she knew that she looked well. She wore a gossamer gown of shell-pink gauze with a scooped neckline that showed off the astonishingly delicate loveliness of her throat, shoulders, and arms. Her hair was drawn smoothly off her face and dressed in a heavy knot on the top of her head. A few tendrils had been allowed to escape and fall artistically about her neck. Nicholas put her cloak carefully around her shoulders. “You look beautiful, sweetheart,” he said encouragingly. “Pink suits you.”