It was all very cut-and-dried and logical, as British justice so often is.
And so Dev found himself facing a rope rather sooner than he expected.
At Axeleigh on their return from the inn in Bridgwater the two girls were met by an excited Tabitha, who ran out, skirts flying.
“We thought it best to send a message to you at the Ellertons’,” she cried.
“A message?” Pamela frowned. “But we never reached the Ellertons’, Tabby. We—”
“ ’Tis about your father. He’s had an accident. In his cups, he was. Fell down the stairs and twisted his back. Wait!” she wailed, for Pamela was already off her horse and running for the front door. “He’s at Huntlands.”
“At Huntlands?” Pamela swung about and gave Tabitha a blank look.
“That was where it happened,” Tabitha told her importantly.
“And Master Tom, he rode over and said as how ’twas best the Squire should stay there for a bit.”
“Constance, you stay here—someone must be in charge.” Pamela was up in the saddle again. “Find a horse. Tabby, and follow me over. I’ll be sending you back for whatever we need.”
She was gone before Constance could collect her wits. She watched an excited Tabitha flying down to the stables to get a horse and then went dejectedly inside. She hoped the Squire wasn’t badly hurt. Meantime there was her own problem. She tossed her reins to a groom and, once inside, ascended the stairs heavily, went into her bedchamber to think.
Of a sudden her face whitened. All the way home she had been thinking of Dev, lost to her forever. But now it came to her with the force of a blow that her marriage to Chesney was no longer fraudulent. Now that she had learned that her “marriage” to Dev had no legal force, that meant she was well and truly wed to Chesney!
Her knees gave way and she sank down on the bed.
Dear God, what had she done? In her foolish perversity, she had done a disreputable thing: She had married a man for whom she cared nothing, thinking all the while in the back of her mind that she would, when she chose, undo what she had done. Indeed she had planned to do so with a few well-chosen words: Go look at the marriage records of Essex—you will find my name there. At least you will find the name of Mistress Penelope Goode who married one John Watts. And I was that Penelope Goode.
Only now she knew that her name would not be there—not Penelope Goode’s name, not John Watts’s. She had trapped herself. Silently she pulled out the black riband that was tucked into her chemise and stared in horror at the golden wedding band.
She was bound to Chesney now. Bound forever by a narrow band of gold.
It never even occurred to open-hearted Pamela that the story the two men solemnly told her at Huntlands about her father’s unfortunate fall down the main staircase was other than the truth. She winged about the big airy bedchamber like a beautiful moth, making the Squire more comfortable. She sent Tabitha back with orders to assemble an enormous number of things—all of which the Squire protested he didn’t need—to be brought over later. She fussed over him and gave cook endless orders—and then rode home beside Tom.
The master of Huntlands concealed his yearning well. Although it was torture for him to ride back through summer meadows beside beautiful Pamela, knowing that she was soon to wed Dick Peacham, it was a torture he could not bring himself to avoid. He was ready and waiting to take her home and watched her covertly all the way back to Axeleigh, wondering how he could ever have missed the beauty she had become, marveling at the radiant femininity of her.
“Your father will be fine,” he assured her for the tenth time. “The doctor says he needs only rest.”
“I’m sure of it,” Pamela agreed, for riding beside the golden Viking of Huntlands had lightened her spirits—even if there was still Dick Peacham to be dealt with tomorrow and the next day and the next!
It did not escape Pamela that the ring Dorothea had waved under her nose was back again on Tom’s little finger and the thought that Tom and Dorothea might have had a lovers’ quarrel pleased her no end and added to her cheeriness. For although they were still wary of each other and avoided any mention of her impending marriage, the ice between her and Tom was melting.
It was with a happier heart than she had known since her betrothal to Dick Peacham that Pamela bade Tom good-by and skipped upstairs, two treads at a time, to tell Constance that the Squire was resting nicely. Surely such good news would lighten even Constance’s gloom!
At the landing she encountered a white-faced Tabitha, who was wringing her hands.
“What has happened?” demanded Pamela. And when Tabitha only gulped and choked, she began to shake her. “Has something happened to Puss?” she cried, for that was the only thing she could think of that would make Tabby act so.
And then she saw Puss, handsome and confident as always, strolling down the hall toward them.
“What has happened. Tabby?” she asked in an altered voice, and cold fear poured over her.
“ ’Tis Mistress Constance,” gasped Tabby. “She’s gone all strange-like. She broke her looking glass and I think she was going to use the broken pieces of glass to cut her wrists—”
To slash her wrists! Pamela pushed Tabitha aside and sprinted for Constance’s bedchamber. She threw open the door and skidded into the room just in time to see a disheveled Constance rising from a prone position on the bed.
“Tabby told me,” gasped Pamela.
“Yes. Well, don’t worry, I won’t break any more mirrors,” said Constance crisply. “How is your father?”
“He’ll be fine. But you, whatever made you—”
“It just all came over me for a second and it was too much to bear.”
"What? What was too much to bear?” Pamela ran to her friend, sat down on the bed and put a protective arm about her shoulders. “Oh, Constance, if you’d only tell me about it!”
Constance gave her a jaded look from those lovely violet eyes. Confession, they said, was good for the soul. Yet if she confessed all to Pamela, others would be hurt: Margaret. Captain Warburton. Clifford Archer.
And yet—she had to talk to someone or go mad.
“It’s Chesney, isn’t it?” demanded Pamela. “He’s written? He’s coming?” She studied Constance’s face. “He isn’t coming?”
Constance sighed. She patted Pamela’s hand as if she were a child and looked into Pamela’s earnest face, so full of anxiety now. Anxiety for her. Poor Pam! She deserved to know at least a little of what had happened.
“There’s so much I haven’t told you,” she whispered. “So much I can never tell you
Pamela gave her a troubled look. “Perhaps you should try anyway,” she said sensibly.
Constance swallowed and twisted her fingers together. Now that she was about to begin, it was hard to find the right words to make Pamela understand.
“I was married before.” She chose her words carefully.
Pamela was amazed. She had always felt that Constance and her father shared some secret, something they were keeping back from her, and now she knew what it was—Constance was a widow! And keeping it a secret because she didn’t want to wear the weeds!
“When I thought he had left me for another woman, I—I ran away. And came here.” No need to tell Pamela about Margaret, about Devon. “I married Chesney believing he would take me to Lyme—far away from the Warburtons and all my problems here.” She looked squarely at Pamela. “I did not know if my first husband was alive or dead.”
Pamela’s crystal blue eyes blinked. “You mean you married Chesney, not knowing?”
Constance nodded. She did not explain her intricate reasoning.
“But, Constance,” cried Pamela distractedly. “You cannot go about marrying people at random! At least, not without first ridding yourself of the first one! You will be declared a bigamist!”
That bent head nodded hopelessly. “I was ready to face all that. Once we arrived in Lyme, I meant to tell Chesney that ours was no legal marriage,
that I was already wed. His mother certainly would have been glad to see the last of me.”
She lifted her head and abject misery stared out of her velvet eyes. “But now I cannot go to Lyme at all for I have learnt that my first marriage was a sham.”
“Someone wrote you about it?” gasped Pamela.
“Yes,” said Constance. For surely that was the best thing, to let Pamela believe she had heard the news by letter. And wasn’t it true, after all? Dev had left her a note!
“How shabby!” Indignation lit up Pamela’s face.
“And that is not the worst. For if I was not legally married to Deverell, then I am legally married to Chesney!”
Pamela was looking at her in horror. Constance had kept all of these revelations bottled up! Now she understood all of Constance’s behavior—the sighs, the inattention, the restlessness. Constance had wanted to marry Captain Warburton—but had pushed him away because of her secret marriage. And to escape him she had flown into marriage with Chesney—a marriage she meant to shake free of. And now to learn the shattering truth—that her marriage to Chesney was binding and would forever bar her from marrying Captain Warburton! No wonder she had broken a mirror! No wonder she had been about to slash her wrists!
“You could divorce him,” whispered Pamela.
“Divorce, you know as well as I do, can only be had by Act of Parliament!”
And divorce by Act of Parliament would not be an easy thing to come by! The two girls stared at each other hopelessly. Constance was well and truly trapped—by a narrow band of gold.
In the days that followed, the Squire remained at Huntlands, and Pamela—with Tabitha in tow—rode over every day. For Constance, she insisted, was “needed to give Axeleigh proper supervision in her absence” and a young lady of quality never rode about the countryside alone. Numbed by the sequence of events, Constance was glad enough to be left alone to brood. Tabitha gave her daily reports of how things were going at Huntlands, even when Pamela was too busy to do so.
“Master Tom, he don’t leave the house when Mistress Pam’s there,” she reported importantly. “Finds ways to be where she is. She acts like she don’t notice, but”—conspiratorially—“she does.”
“But she’s to marry Dick Peacham in a fortnight,” objected Constance, for disgruntled Peacham was all but camping on Axeleigh’s doorstep, although Constance (to Pamela’s vast relief) had steadfastly refused to allow him to spend the night at Axeleigh since the Squire’s accident. She had told him calmly that it would be most improper since, during the Squire’s absence from home, they were but “two young women, alone and unprotected.” Dick Peacham, always a stickler for the proprieties, had been forced to accept that.
“Mistress Pam don’t seem to remember she’s to marry him,” said Tabitha cheerfully. “Sometimes she acts mad at Master Tom and sometimes it’s like old times with them laughing and joking together.”
“What does the Squire think of all this?” demanded Constance.
“Oh, his back hurts him something awful,” sighed Tabitha. “He groans a lot when he thinks nobody hears. The doctor says it will take time to mend and he shouldn’t be moved.”
So Pamela was likely to linger at Huntlands till the very eve of her wedding! thought Constance grimly.
In the restless countryside, political events were moving ever swifter and not until Sunday afternoon did Dick Peacham arrive at Huntlands and innocently drop a thunderbolt on Tom.
As it turned out, it was Tom’s second thunderbolt of the day. The first came with a discussion he was having with Pamela as they sat in a window seat on the second floor looking out over the lawns of Huntlands.
Pamela had not been able to contain herself. Swearing him not to tell the Squire, she had told Tom of Constance’s predicament. Now, after rehashing it once again, she gave Tom a slanted look.
“I’m going to save Constance.” She stated it coolly. “From Chesney and from that terrible old harridan, his mother.”
“How?” he asked bluntly. He was thinking how pretty she looked in her daffodil yellow dress with the light shining on her hair. A bit stiff the dress might be, but he knew what a beauty was inside!
“I’m going down to Lyme and propose marriage to him!”
This time she had struck a nerve. A solid jar went through Tom’s hard muscles and his blue eyes were filled with alarm. “You’re mad, Pam. He’s already married and you’re betrothed to Peacham.” It was the first time Peacham’s name had crossed Tom’s lips since the Squire’s accident and it had a bitter taste.
“Actually,” Pamela cocked her head and her voice grew dreamy. “I suppose I’m really going to propose to his mother.”
“You’re going to propose—to his mother?” Tom felt his world, which had been so solid and firm a moment ago, as steady as the limestone hills that rose as a backdrop to the Valley of the Axe, shake and quiver beneath him.
Pamela dimpled. “Yes, I’m going to ask her for Chesney’s hand in marriage.”
“Why?” asked Tom weakly.
“Because she decides everything for him, she’ll decide that too. She was furious when her little boy, the lad she supposed to be at Oxford getting his head stuffed full of knowledge, was actually in Somerset getting himself married to a penniless waif—for that’s the way she thinks of Constance, I know that from Chesney’s letters to her—she lets me read them. They’d be funny—if the whole thing weren’t so sad! He keeps squeaking up about a dowry and how a large one ‘might make all the difference in the world!’ ”
Tom snorted.
“His mother resents the fact that her darling son didn’t find himself a fortune and a girl she could manage!”
“You certainly don’t fill the bill,” protested Tom. “You tried to block her from dragging Chesney out of the bridal chamber last February. She certainly won’t imagine that you're someone she can manage!”
“I’ll try to seem more biddable when I ask her for his hand,” sighed Pamela. “I’ll tell her I was in love with Chesney all along and that it broke my heart to see him marrying a conniving schemer like Constance, and I’ll ask her if there isn’t something we can .”
Tom’s honest face mirrored his amazement. He hadn’t believed Pamela capable of such guile.
“And I’ll mention the size of my dowry and how I’m an only child with no mother to guide me.” She was laughing now for all that she was dead serious. “And she’ll believe me, for she thinks Chesney’s perfect and all the girls are after him. He told Constance that in his letters! And then she’ll prod Chesney into an annulment because she’ll want him to marry a fortune—me!” Yes, the more she thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. His termagant mother was the only person living who could make Chesney declare before a magistrate that he had not bedded his bride. And after all, it was true! But Chesney had written hysterically in his letters that he had told his mother he had had “relations” with Constance during their short betrothal—to keep his mother from trying to annul the marriage.
“Suppose she insists on a marriage contract between Chesney and you before she pushes him into an annulment?” Tom, ever practical, shot at her.
Pamela hadn’t thought of that. “She won’t,” she said hastily.
“But suppose she does? What then?”
“Then”—she lifted her golden head—“I’ll sign it!”
Tom opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked very fierce. They had both forgotten that Pamela, no matter what she signed, could not arrange for her own dowry, something the virago in Lyme would hardly fail to overlook.
Pamela noted that expression. “And then, if she tries to enforce it, you can challenge Chesney to a duel, and his mother—to save her darling son’s life—will give me back the document and we’ll all be as we were!”
They had both forgotten Peacham and the upcoming marriage. The very thought of Pamela being shackled by her own consent by contract to marry somebody else, even in jest, had so shaken Tom that it had rattle
d his brain. “And why would we do all this?” he demanded.
“So Constance can marry Captain Warburton, of course!”
Tom blinked. This was something he hadn’t heard about. “Don’t you mean Ned?”
“No, I do not mean Ned. I think she’s in love with Captain Warburton. She loved him so much she wasn’t willing to marry him bigamously and break his heart.”
“But she was willing to marry Chesney bigamously?” Tom quirked a golden eyebrow at her.
“Oh, you don’t understand at all,” said Pamela impatiently. “She meant to let Chesney out of it, don’t you see? She married him just to keep from being pushed into marriage with Ned because that would be something she couldn’t back out of, and if Ned found out she’d been married before and never divorced, it would break his heart, and besides I’m sure she couldn’t stand to be married to Ned and live that close to Captain Warburton whom she really loves!”
Tom looked dazed. Feminine logic escaped him completely. He thought how simple life had been before Pamela had tangled him into her affairs. And now he was secretly planning to call Dick Peacham out—if Pamela gave him the slightest encouragement—and end her betrothal abruptly. With a sword. And she was trumping up a duel for him with Chesney Pell! He wondered briefly if he would ever know serenity again.
Lovely Lying Lips Page 44
