A Marriage of Convenience (22 page)

‘Since you have nothing to say to me, let me tell you something which may please you.’ He moved closer, tossing his hat onto the sofa. ‘My brother means to ask for your hand.’ The slight intake of breath and stiffening of her body goaded him. ‘I see I have your interest now.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispered, with an agitated movement of the hands.

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he replied quietly. ‘Do I find you speechless for joy?’

She raised her veil and looked at him in incredulity.

‘Why should he have told you …
you
of all people?’

‘In a word—honour … misguided of course, but the real thing just the same.’ He met her gaze easily, as if unaware of the nervewracked entreaty of her expression. ‘He knew just how vilely he’d behaved: I daresay he felt he had to prove that he hadn’t betrayed me just to indulge a casual whim. And of course he realised he’d lost you a husband … dishonoured you in fact; so naturally he wanted to do the chivalrous thing by you.’ He smiled through scarcely parted lips. ‘That’s what’s so odd about men of honour, they’re as hard as nails in almost every respect, but they can’t abide a bad conscience.’ He let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘You know I was going to lend him a good deal of money? His pride wouldn’t suffer that after the way he’d treated me. Extraordinary how men can get so much moral satisfaction out of throwing away what they desperately need.’

The blood had risen to Theresa’s cheeks.

‘What will happen to him without that money?’ she asked in a choking voice. Esmond shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as if considering a subject that bored him.

‘He’ll have to leave the army. After that … maybe what he gets from Markenfield will last him a year; perhaps a bit longer. I shouldn’t think he’ll survive till he gets his trust money.’

She had listened with apparent meekness, but, as he finished, she faced him furiously.

‘Is your punishment to ruin him?’

‘My dear Theresa, are you suggesting I ought to lend him money after what he’s done?’

‘Tell me your terms,’ she said sharply.

‘You misunderstand me. I won’t blackmail you to abandon him.
Even if you never see him again, I wouldn’t raise a finger to help him.’

‘Then why have you come?’ she cried, twisting the fingers of her gloves.

‘I wanted you to know the consequences of accepting him. His future’s in your hands, not mine.’ The slightest tremor of anger ruffled the polished surface of his words. ‘He stands to inherit his uncle’s fortune. More money than his father ever squandered, or I’ll ever have. His entire future hangs on whether he gets it.’ He met her eyes blandly. ‘I’m not talking about trifles like keeping his career. Without that money he’ll be bankrupt by the time he’s thirty-five. Nothing more from Markenfield, the trust capital gone … No hope of survival except that inheritance.’ He paused and sat down nonchalantly on an arm of the sofa. ‘There’s just one problem. Clinton won’t get as much as a bent pin from his uncle if he marries you.’

‘Are you telling me Clinton’s unaware of this?’

He met her defiance with a smile.

‘He’s an incurable optimist. He thinks he’ll get round the man. Of course he hasn’t a chance.’

‘Shouldn’t he be the judge of that?’ she asked fiercely, her hands trembling.

‘You don’t know Richard Danvers,’ he said gently. ‘He married money, so he deplores everyone who doesn’t do the same. But you’re not just poor. You’re an actress too—a kind of courtesan in his eyes. Then you’re a Catholic … I’m afraid that’s a particular bête noire of his.’ He brought his fingers together and rested his chin on them. ‘How would you rate his lordship’s chances of persuasion?’

‘Tell me this, Esmond,’ she asked with flashing eyes, ‘how do ordinary people marry? Do they need fortunes? Do they grovel to their relatives and beg permission?’

The suddenness of her attack surprised Esmond and cut through the façade of civility he had imposed on his raw emotions.

‘You think a man used to spending two thousand a year on his career ordinary? A man who’s half dead unless he’s occupied? You think love in a cottage would suit his temperament?’ His voice had risen and he could no longer suppress the harsh and biting edge he now recognised. ‘You think he’d insult himself by letting you stay on the stage … by giving you anything but an establishment fitting your rank? And when he’s beggared himself for love, and love’s gone, don’t expect him to thank you for what you’ve cost him.’ He picked up his hat and moved towards the door, her beauty stirring him in spite of his anger. He had hoped to convince her
rationally of the disservice she would do Clinton by marrying him. Now with each new proof of her determination to deny his arguments, Esmond wanted to crush and humiliate her. ‘Have you asked yourself what he sees in you?’ She stepped swiftly to his right but he blocked her path to the door. ‘I waited three months at your convenience, Theresa. You’ll pay me the courtesy of a few minutes now.’ He leaned his back against the door, and met her outraged eyes. ‘Won’t you answer my question?’

‘Why he loves me? I’m sure he could answer better.’ Though her voice was level her eyes were filling.

‘You ran away. Just what he likes … the ones who are hard to break. He loves risks and dangers … the fact you were my mistress … now
that
was spice to him—far better than seducing any other man’s wife. He’s used to easy success but you denied him that, making him press harder. But wait till he’s sure of you. When you’re married and the diet’s unchanging from day to day, see how long you hold him then.’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted for yourself,’ she blurted out, ‘the person you loved with you all the time?’

‘I’m touched that you remember. But there are small differences between us. Ask for a list of his women. Ask what he said to them … what he promised …’

She covered her face with her hands and stifled a moan. A moment later when she moved hesitantly towards the door, he no longer had the heart to detain her. Instead he stepped aside. After she had gone, he longed to have the chance again; to talk to her gently, reasonably, with dignity. But that opportunity would not come a second time. He had been so confident to start with; so sure he could dissuade her, that when she had resisted he had lost his head. Now he had not the least idea whether he had succeeded.

In the station, amid clash of couplings and hiss of steam, he scarcely noticed people pushing past him to the waiting train. But later, among the fringed antimacassars and shaded lamps of a first class carriage, he began to feel less despondent. Perhaps he had not after all entirely lost to Clinton; even if he married her, there could still be other ways to bring him down. As the train sped on under its long banner of smoke, this thought alone was comfort to him in his bitterness.

Clinton’s regiment was sent to quell outbreaks of rioting in Cork and Killarney during December, so he did not see Theresa in Dublin at the date they had previously arranged. By the first days of January he was at last stationed in the Irish capital, and less than a week remained before Theresa’s long-awaited arrival.

Yet Clinton was neither jubilant nor carefree as he crossed the deserted parade ground three evenings before he was due to meet her at Kingstown harbour. Returning a sentry’s salute, he glimpsed through the dark entrance arch the forlorn ill-lit streets sloping down towards the Liffey. After the babble of voices at the mess table and the bright gleam of gold lace and silver, the surrounding city seemed silent and ghostly under its overhanging pall of smoke. In his quarters Clinton lit an oil-lamp and opened his brass-bound writing desk. Taking out an envelope he sat down by the fire and pulled out the letter he had received from Theresa two days earlier—a day which had ended all his certainties. Now once again he glanced through the humorous opening that gave so little indication of what was to come.

He skipped a page and came once more to the first piece of information that had badly shaken him.

Not for the first time since re-reading this, Clinton cursed himself for not proposing to her in York. But at the time it had seemed beyond argument to him that any proposal would gain force if it were delayed, since then it would seem properly considered. To have rushed in then would have been to risk appearing too hopelessly smitten to be able to think about consequences. And Clinton had heard too many tales, of women panicked into refusal by premature offers, to care to take that chance.

Now his regret, not to have hazarded everything in York, was sharpened by the calm way she wrote about not seeing each other till the spring after her one brief Irish visit. Nor did he suppose, that if he waited patiently, while every evening brought in new suitors, his chances would improve as the months passed. And yet the letter also contained tender passages.

But this passage came just before another, which to Clinton seemed worse even than the earlier intimation of the overriding priority she gave her career.

The bluntly expressed opinion that marriage between them was impossible, following hard on the heels of so many statements that could apply to him just as appropriately as to the wretched theatre manager, was clear enough warning what he could expect if he proposed. In fact Clinton strongly suspected she had invented the incident with the one intention of discouraging any mention of marriage. But it would make no difference to what he did. He knew that long ago he had passed the point where he could pull back; already his whole life seemed suspended in anticipation of
something
that would have to be gone through before he could continue with it. He would propose, regardless of his chances, because he had to; because until that obstacle was cleared, he would know no peace or happiness. Whatever the likely outcome, he would not throw in his hand until he had played it to the last card.

*

They came through the early evening darkness along the coast road from Kingstown to Dublin in a closed landau, seeing through the rain-flecked carriage windows the wide bay, and far out, under the
dark outline of the hill of Howth, a few sails, caught for a moment in the wandering beam of a distant lighthouse. Passing a row of seaside villas, Clinton placed a steadying hand under her chin and kissed her lips, laughing when the swaying carriage made them bump noses. After a mile or so, he asked her what she was thinking. Theresa squeezed his hand and smiled.

‘Only how pleasant it is to be freed from the trouble of thinking.’

‘I’ve never heard a better way to stop a man’s mouth before he has time to open it.’

‘And this?’ she murmured, kissing him firmly, so that no movement of the creaking springs could part them until she drew away. ‘When you close your eyes, your eyelids make you look as if you’re smiling. Did anyone tell you that before?’

‘Do you usually kiss with your eyes open?’

‘I take little looks from time to time. I love looking at you.’ She sat back and leant her head against his shoulder. ‘I was thinking how wonderful when everything’s still quite new … when even my silences seem mysterious and you find it better than a play just to sit beside me. That was before you asked what I was thinking, and then I wondered if I ought to say this or that, but instead I said what I did. And now I’m thinking that I’m lucky to be coming to a strange town where I won’t have to find the theatre and lodgings, and argue about lumpy beds or whether I paid for a large jug of hot water in the morning or a small one, and why, when every room in the place except mine was empty, I had to be put next to a screaming baby and a woman who snored. Don’t you think silence is less
commonplace
?’

‘Not when you’re breaking it. I’d never given a thought to snoring babies and women in lumpy beds …’

‘Until I made such poetry with them … Oh la, for shame, sir, to take advantage of a poor country girl with your flattering phrases.’ She heard him sigh and wished that she could be calmer with him; but again and again she found herself overtaken by a bubbling gaiety, a kind of intoxication that she could not help. ‘You make me so happy,’ she murmured, ‘like some sudden legacy or a chimney pot on the head … Everything unexpected.’

This time he laughed, but she still sensed that she had hurt him and should have been more serious so soon after their reunion. Yet in another way she was glad to have begun like this. If her letter had not already persuaded him that his pursuit had placed him under no obligation, she would have to show him by her manner that though she loved him, she did not want the proposal which Esmond’s arguments had made her dread.

The carriage came to a lurching halt among a press of vehicles drawn-up outside the Shelbourne Hotel in St Stephen’s Green. At once two porters were volubly competing for the privilege of carrying Theresa’s battered valise and hat boxes. Clinton
peremptorily
awarded the task to one of them, and taking Theresa’s arm led her into the crowded hall. The scene to her was an extraordinary one: women and young girls in ball dresses with long trains and aigrettes of diamonds in their hair, and men outlandishly decked out in tight silk stockings and blue velvet coats with silver buttons; most seemed much taken up with the effort of not tripping over their swords.

‘Isn’t this court dress?’ murmured Theresa.

‘It’s the Lord-Lieutenant’s Drawing-room at the Castle
tonight
.’

‘Oughtn’t you to be going?’

Clinton laughed as they pushed their way to the desk. Shouts went up around them that Lady Somebody’s carriage had arrived.

‘I’m not a débutante,’ he replied above the hubbub, causing titters of laughter from some young women standing nearby. When he returned with a maid to direct them to the rooms he had engaged, Theresa saw him accosted by a distinguished elderly man in court dress with the ribbon and cross of some order round his neck, Clinton at once introduced her as Mrs Barr. She caught the name Lord Roxborough and felt her cheeks flush as she was asked whether this was her first Castle season.

‘The Court of St James is more Mrs Barr’s territory,’ answered Clinton lightly. The old peer looked at him quizzically.

‘Not going tonight, Ardmore? It’s the young men they need for the dancing.’

‘Yesterday’s levée was quite enough.’

At the foot of the stairs Clinton was stopped by another acquaintance; this time an officer in full dress uniform. After an introduction the officer asked Theresa if she was any relation of the Warwickshire Barrs.

‘No, only the prison Barrs,’ she replied curtly, mortified with Clinton for not having warned her that he had taken rooms in the town’s most exclusive hotel on what was evidently one of the busiest nights of the season. The soldier seemed uncertain whether to be amused or offended and was still pondering this when Clinton nodded to him and moved on up the stairs. On the first landing was a little winter garden with a fountain splashing in the midst of the ferns and stone frogs. A crowd of housemaids and waiters were looking down over the banisters at the animated scene below, and a group of cigar-smoking billiard players, with cues in their
hands, were commenting on the looks of various of the debutantes.

‘If that one …’

‘Which one?’

‘Girl with a green sash. If she isn’t a vixen she ought to take an action against her face.’

Their laughter merged with the shouts of the head-porter announcing the arrival of more carriages. When the maid had left Clinton and Theresa in their rooms, and the porter, who had brought up the luggage, had departed with his tip, Clinton looked at her admiringly.

‘Poor old Archie Daventry’s going to be wondering what he did wrong for days. He’ll think there’s been some awful scandal with the family he mentioned. One of them in prison.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘I’m not.’ He shook his head with sudden vexation. ‘Damn. I should have told old Roxborough you were going to spend six weeks at the Prince of Wales’s. He’d have been frothing away to everybody about meeting a delightful creature … friend of the heir apparent, constant dinner guest at Marlborough House.’

Theresa said quietly:

‘Isn’t it just possible he’s heard of the Prince of Wales Theatre?’

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Why are we here, Clinton?’

‘It’s the best hotel in Dublin. No lumpy beds or snoring brats.’

She came up to him and took his hands, fixing his eyes with a look of tender exasperation.

‘You know very well what I meant. Remember your concern for my reputation in York? What about yours here? Why didn’t you ask me before making noble gestures on my behalf?’

‘We had to consider your audiences in York.’

‘Don’t you have to consider your brother officers? And the court occasions at the Castle?

‘I wouldn’t care a rap if I was scratched off the Chamberlain’s list tomorrow.’

‘But I’d care,’ she cried, ‘I’d care a lot if it was because of me.’

‘My love, it isn’t worth a thought. Of all Ireland’s shams, the Castle season takes the prize. Most of the Irish nobility live in England. Imagine a court without a resident aristocracy.’

‘Who were all those people then?’

He took off his chesterfield overcoat and threw it over the back of a chair.

‘Can’t we talk about you?’ he implored. ‘I’m really not interested in them.’ Seeing that she was still insistent, he went on rapidly:
‘They’re the richer sort of tradespeople, doctors, lawyers, the odd squireen … all scrambling over each other to marry their daughters to the sprinkling of peers who turn up.’