The Marquis Takes a Bride (6 page)

At last she felt a hand on her arm and found her large husband smiling down at her. “Come, Jennie,” he said. “It is time to retire.”

The noisy guests cheered them up the stairs, blowing hunting horns and hallooing and whooping.

Feeling as if she were walking in a dream, Jennie allowed Chemmy to lead her up the stairs and along the twisting corridors to the bridal chamber. She did wonder, however, how her lord knew where it was.

The old four-poster bed had been turned back to reveal damp and yellowing sheets, which smelled strongly of camphor. The Marquis crossed and opened the window and was immediately greeted with cheers,
whoops and advice from the garden below. He waved his hand good-naturedly to the guests and turned to his bride.

“I shall use the dressing room,” he said. “You may prepare for bed here.”

“Are you going to sleep with me?” squeaked Jennie in alarm.

“Yes,” he said good-humoredly. “I am going to sleep with you. Beside you, that is. Come now. You do not expect me to sleep on the floor.”

“I could go to my old room,” whispered Jennie.

“So you could,” he agreed, “but our guests would certainly find out, since I believe your room has been given up to one of them. Be a good child and get into bed and go to sleep. I am not going to touch you.”

He strode off into the dressing room, leaving Jennie standing beside the bed.

Jennie scrambled hastily out of her clothes and then into an old flannel nightdress, which she buttoned tight up to the neck despite the close heat of the room.

“I could have spared myself this if we had gone to London,” she thought bitterly. “Oh, Guy, where are you?”

She lay rigidly on the bed, staring sightlessly up at the canopy. She did not believe for one minute that the Marquis would simply go to sleep. He would make love to her, of that she was sure, and then she would really be his wife. Perhaps he would make her fall in love with him and then she need no longer feel so guilty about being married to one man and being in love with another. Perhaps it would not be so bad after all.

The dressing room door opened.

“What are you wearing?” screeched Jennie, suddenly sitting bolt upright.

“Nothing,” said her husband’s amused voice. “I am in my buffs, my dear. It is the way I usually sleep.”

Jennie sank down into the bed, pulled the covers up to her throat and screwed her eyes shut. The bed gave a protesting creak as her husband’s great bulk climbed in beside her.

“Good night, my wife,” he said softly.

But Jennie did not answer. She kept her body rigid and her eyes shut tight and then started counting under her breath. When she had reached two hundred, she slowly opened her eyes. The merrymaking of the guests sounded noisily from the garden and, beside her, came the faint gentle sounds of rythmical breathing.

She cautiously propped herself up on one elbow. In the faint light of the moon shining in at the window, it was all too clear to Jennie that her lord had fallen fast asleep.

It was then she began to shake with muddled distress and anger. Her looking glass told her that she was pretty. But obviously her husband did not think so.

One of the wedding guests had decided to serenade the bridal couple, and his pleasant tenor voice floated in through the window on the still summer air. It was a familiar Scotch ballad made famous by Mrs. Mountain, who had sung it at Vauxhall. The sweet, lilting notes echoed in Jennie’s ears like a dirge.

“Yes, we shall live together,” murmured poor Jennie. “But oh! How far apart!”

Runbury Manor basked in the lazy heat of yet another perfect summer day. The birds twittered briefly in the ivy as the sun rose, falling silent as the heat burned the dew from the shaggy lawns and lowered another few inches in the lake.

Jennie awoke late, already feeling hot and gritty. She was alone in the great bed. She climbed out and washed and dressed hurriedly, lest her lord should suddenly appear.

But the great house seemed imprisoned in hot silence. She made her way downstairs, looking at her home, it seemed to her, for the first time.

There was no denying that it stank abominably. The great hall door stood open but no fresh air blew in to relieve the heavy, musty air. Dust motes danced lazily in shafts of sunlight, which struck through the leaded pains of the windows to mercilessly highlight the worn, spindly furniture and threadbare rugs.

Jennie ate her breakfast in solitary grandeur and then, becoming impatient, went in search of another human being.

Lady Priscilla was seated in the morning room, carefully studying a letter with a large magnifying glass.

She looked up as her granddaughter appeared and gave Jennie a fond, vague smile.

“So kind,” she said fluttering the letter. “You are indeed a lucky young lady to have such an understanding husband.”

“Why is he writing a letter to you?” asked Jennie, puzzled.

“Read it my dear. ’Tis all that is charming!”

“You know I cannot read,” said Jennie, crossly. “I have been taught to sign my name. If you will remember, grandfather insisted that that was all I needed to know.”

“He did?” Lady Priscilla picked up the parchment from her lap and proceeded to read, unaware of the conflict of emotions on her granddaughter’s face.

“‘Dear Lady Priscilla,’” she read, “‘I am making an early departure for London and wish you to make my farewells to my bride. Although the Season is over, I have a depressing round of social commitments… balls, parties, breakfasts and masquerades. Jennie is very young and
very
attached to her home and I feel it would be unfair of me to subject her to such a boring round of social duties so soon. Perhaps when she is a little older, she will learn to endure them as I do. For the moment, I feel I should be a monster, indeed, to take such a young girl away from all she loves. Yr. humble and obedient servant, Cyril, Marquis of Charrington.’ Now isn’t that thoughtful!” cried Lady Priscilla, dropping the letter.

“He knows you are little more than a child. Most husbands would not be so considerate. What a gentleman!”

“Yes, Grandmama,” said Jennie in a stifled voice and then she fairly ran from the room and out into the garden.

She thought of London, she thought of all the balls and parties she was missing, and groaned aloud. Why hadn’t she gone with him the night before?

She must try somehow to write to him. She could print a few simple words and at least she knew her alphabet. She remembered having seen a copy of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary somewhere in the library. Perhaps with the help of that she could compose a letter.

Jennie did not consider that she could have ridden to Sally Byles’ home and asked that young lady for assistance for Jennie believed her friend to be as unlettered as herself, Guy sharing her grandfather’s views that an uneducated lady was a true gentlewoman.

She entered the silence of the house again and went into the library. Everything was unnaturally quiet and still, the last of the wedding guests having set out very early in the morning.

But search as she might, Jennie could not find the dictionary. In desperation she pulled open the double doors of a cupboard in the corner and then reeled back as a mountain of newsprint came tumbling about her ears.

Lord Charles was forever ripping and cutting pieces out of the morning paper. Jennie had often wondered what had happened to them since nothing at the Manor was ever thrown away. Well, now she knew!

She sat down under the mountain of fluttering newspaper and cried and cried with rage at the stupid Marquis, who had left her in this stupid house and all through her own stupid fault.

After a time, she dried her eyes. At least there was one bright spot on the horizon of her gloomy mind. Guy would surely come to see her. She was no longer a young miss but a married woman. She now belonged to that mysterious society who were able to have all these delicious liaisons without anyone censuring them.

All she had to do was wait for Guy to arrive, which he surely would the minute he found out she was not in London.

But the long hot days stretched endlessly. The sun rose and set in a cloudless sky. The lawns turned brown and gold and the dusty gold and brown leaves began to turn and whisper along the weedy drive and nobody came. No Guy, no husband.

Like a sleeping beauty trapped in some particularly noisome castle, Jennie drifted through the days as she had always done and sometimes, during the long, hot, sleepless nights, she wondered if her marriage had been all a dream.

As the incredible un-English summer blazed on into a red and gold autumn, Guy Chalmers stalked away from the Marquis’ town residence in Albemarle Street with the butler’s now familiar message ringing in his ears, “No, sir, I regret that my lord and my lady are not yet returned from the country.”

Guy racked his brains. He had not thought the Marquis would have taken Jennie straight to his country estate. He had suggested to the Marquis’ frosty-faced butler that he, Guy, might pay the newly wedded couple a visit, but this had been received with the stern rejoinder of, “No, sir, that is not possible. His lordship definitely said that he did not wish visitors.”

Alice Waring had grown increasingly distant and had taken to mocking Guy and calling him a failure. He had been unable to repeat his delicious experience in her boudoir. Alice claimed coldly that Guy was ineffectual and would be unable to do anything to come between the married couple.

The Marquis’ estates lay in Kent, a good two days’ ride from London, reflected Guy. He
must
do something. There was, after all, a faint possibility that Lord Charles might leave Jennie some of his money. But a ruined Jennie would not inherit a penny and Guy would undoubtedly get it all. With money and Jennie ruined, he could enjoy the grateful Alice’s favors any time he wished, having enjoyed Jennie’s in the ruining process.

It was then that he hit on an idea. He would ride to Kent and call at the Marquis’ home claiming that his horse had shed a shoe. He would say that he was on his road to Dover to visit friends. That way he could see Jennie and ascertain whether the marriage of convenience still existed.

Alice had refused to discuss her liaison with the Marquis and so Guy had come to believe that the Marquis had merely set Alice up as mistress in order to follow the fashion, without indulging in the pleasures of the bed. A man so wed to his tailor could have little time for women!

Two days hard riding through the hot sun-baked countryside brought him to the gates of Charrington Court.

He drew his horse into the shelter of a high hedge and pried off one of its shoes. Then, leading it by the reins, he walked to the lodge gates.

A crusty and suspicious lodge keeper let him through, only after much exhaustive questioning.

It was a long, long road to the Court from the gates. It seemed to wind through acres and acres of fields, then through a deer park, then through spacious formal gardens and then to the house itself, which was a great imposing early Georgian pile with two huge wings springing out from a central portico.

Guy was left kicking his heels for some time before he was finally conducted up the stairs to his lordship’s private sitting room.

The Marquis was sitting at his dressing table, wrapped in a magnificent brocade dressing gown and cleaning his nails with the single-minded absorption of a well-trained house cat. He was scented and barbered and appeared his usual elegant self, even in his present state of undress.

Guy did not know that the Marquis had only that morning taken off his dusty gaiters and sweaty clothes after helping with the last of the work of a bumper harvest. He only thought that he looked the perfect picture of the effete and bloodless aristocrat and put the breadth of his shoulder down to buckram wadding.

He told his carefully rehearsed story of his horse casting a shoe and the Marquis merely smiled at him sleepily, rang the bell, ordered a servant to tell the estate blacksmith to see to Mr. Chalmers’ horse immediately and then turned his attention once more to his nails.

“I am looking forward to seeing Jennie, again,” said Guy, breaking the silence at last.

So am I
, thought the Marquis to himself, but he said instead, in a vague kind of way. “Ah, my wife? Yes, she seems to prefer the country to the social round of London.”

“Where is she?” demanded Guy abruptly.

“Oh, somewhere about the countryside,” said the Marquis, still in that maddeningly vague way.

“I shall be disappointed an’ I do not see her,” said Guy.

“Will you? How touching are these family ties,” said the Marquis, examining an orange stick. “Well, you shall no doubt see her in London. We shall be returning there for the Little Season. She will be desolated to have missed you.”

“I could put off my visit to these people in Dover,” said Guy desperately.

The Marquis got lazily to his feet and flung an arm around Guy’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate hug.

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, “but what a splendid chap you are to suggest it. But… alas! We of the social world must honor our commitments and I am sure you would rather be with your friends than play gooseberry here.”

“I assure you, sir,” said Guy stiffly, “that my friendship for Jennie is very close and very deep. She is my sole concern. She…”

“Then how relieved you must feel to know that she is safely married and has a husband to take all these nasty little worries from your shoulders,” said the Marquis. “Ah, Dobbins, Mr. Chalmers horse is ready? Splendid! Good day to you, Mr. Chalmers. We look forward to seeing you in town.”

There was nothing for Guy to do but take his leave.

For the rest of the day, he travelled around the marches of the Marquis’ vast estate, hoping for a glimpse of Jennie. But the countryside lay calm and smiling and empty under the hot sun.