A Most Lamentable Comedy (17 page)

I take her hand and press it to my lips, falling to my knees before her and burying my head in her draperies. I inhale her scent and warmth. Her hand comes to rest on my hair.

‘You caught me,’ she whispers. There is something about this still, green centre – a tiny patch of grass, vivid against the darker green of the yews and dotted with daisies, surrounds the plinth – that invites hushed voices.

‘No. You have caught me.’ I turn my lips to her hand and bite her finger. Gently, quite gently. I do not know how long I can be so with her, for I wish to consume her, devour her like the monster I am.

‘Ah. And what shall I do with you?’

‘Whatever you wish, my love.’ Does that endearment slip too easily from my lips? I don’t know. I don’t know anything, now – the world could be flat, the earth move around the sun, dragons could lurk around us – all that is certain is that she and I are together.

She sinks to her knees so we are joined face to face.

And at this point, everything goes wrong. First, after a fumble of what seems like several frantic hours with the drawstring of my drawers, both of us swearing horribly, I forget there are two sets of skirts to contend with. I am only thankful I am not wearing hideous pink tights, not that I think too clearly at this point.

Yards and yards of damned skirts – how can this be when Caroline’s gown seemed so flimsy? I comment aloud, in my frustration, that it’s like tupping a laundry.

‘Most flattering. Ouch! Wait,you fool.’

Much writhing, sweating, swearing. She wriggles around and I wonder whether she simulates ecstasy or – oh God, it’s like the first time ever, wonderful and surprising, musky and sweet—

Very much like the first time, in fact.

Christ, how embarrassing, over before we’ve scarce begun.

She slaps my shoulder. ‘Get
off
me.’

She does not sound friendly, or satisfied (how could she?), or loving, or anything other than annoyed.

I remove myself from our mingled skirts. ‘I beg your pardon. I—’

‘Damned stone under me,’ she mutters, raising her hips in a way that makes me suddenly ablaze again with lust. She produces a piece of gravel that evidently had been trapped under her arse. ‘I tried to tell you, but of course you weren’t listening. That was awful,’ she adds. ‘Quite the worst I’ve ever had. And don’t you dare think we’re going to do it again, because we’re not.’

‘I love you,’ I offer, and regret it as she glares at me. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t usually—’

‘Oh, of course not.’ She puts herself to rights – damnation, I hardly had a glance at that magnificent bosom – and glares at my nakedness, shaming me to cover myself up.

‘Caro, I leave here tomorrow, very early in the morning.’ Why, damn it, why did I choose this moment to tell her?

She becomes quite still. ‘Wh – where do you go?’

Her face is pale and thunder rumbles close, very close. The first spots of rain, dark and heavy as pennies, appear on the flagstones.

Her eyes fill and overflow. Caroline, weeping? Oh God, I cannot, will not make her sad. But I can make her angry; I would far rather she think of me with hatred than with a broken heart. I want her to keep her pride, if I can.

I rise and tighten the belt of my tunic. ‘My destination is none of your business. Frankly, Lady Elmhurst, I’m bored. The play was amusing enough in its way, as were you. But now I’ve tasted your somewhat overblown charms – I must congratulate you on your chaste reserve, I really expected a faster surrender, from what the other gentlemen told me—’

She jumps to her feet and slaps my face. ‘You
bastard
!’

And she runs from me, briefly illuminated by a great crack of lightning, and thunder rolls as she disappears in the darkness of the maze.

Rain spatters heavily around me. She may hate me, but I have probably broken her heart anyway. I cannot put out of my mind the expression on her face as I insulted her. Rainwer trickles into my eyes and down my face – I can barely breathe, and I wonder if I am destined to wander this maze lost in pain and shame for eternity. No, that would be too light a punishment for what I have done.
Turn right
– a voice of reason suddenly cuts in.
Keep turning right and you’ll get out
.

And a tedious business it is, but I emerge into the gardens with the rain now almost over. The storm has moved on and the sky lightens, although lightning forks on the horizon.

My sandals squelch as I walk back to the house. I attempt to make plans. I should pack my belongings and leave. Bath, yes, that would make sense. I can be there in a couple of days, maybe sooner.

I head for the side door of the house, the one Caroline and I used when we left together.

It swings open. The man who tried to murder me ten years ago stands there, silhouetted against the light. I come to a stop and we stare at each other.

‘Nick?’ he says. His voice cracks. ‘Nick?’

And he flings himself at me.

Mr Nicholas Congrevance

M
y half-brother the Duke of Thirlwell weeps and hiccups on my shoulder. ‘I – I – thought you were dead. Damn you, Nick. Damn you to hell and back. Damn you.’

‘For God’s sake, Simon . . .’ I pat his back, attempting to calm him and wishing I felt more moved by his appearance. To tell the truth, it seems like another episode in a bad, fitful dream that for a very short time (say, ten seconds) was erotic and the rest of the time consisted of getting soaked to the skin and being lost in a maze wearing skirts.

‘You’re all wet.’ He steps back, still grasping my shoulders.

‘It was raining.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. We watched it from the ballroom, quite a storm. But what the devil are you doing here? Where have you been?’

‘Outside.’

‘Before that. It’s been ten years, Nick. Why are you here at Otterwell’s? I could scarce believe it when I saw you in the play. I almost swooned.’ He fishes a handkerchief from his coat pocket and blows his nose. I’d recognise Simon’s nose-blowing anywhere; it has a particularly annoying upward squeak to it, unchanged in the past decade. He has changed, though, as of course have I – he’s taller, broader than the gangling fifteen year old I knew ten years ago. We still look something alike, having shared the same papa.

‘I’ve been abroad. I’ll explain. Let me get out of these damned sirts.’

I push past him –
beg pardon, your grace
, I think, but don’t say it – and lead the way to the gentlemen’s tiring rooms. There I strip off the skirts. I’m soaked to the skin.

‘Who the devil whipped you?’

My usual answer is that it was when I was discovered in a harem in disguise (absolute nonsense, of course; any sultan worth his salt would have removed more than a few strips of skin from my back), but I am too weary and heartsick to engage in deception. ‘It was when I was a sailor.’

‘A sailor?’

I drop my shirt over my head. ‘I was press-ganged. Don’t worry, I deserted as soon as I could.’

He frowns. ‘You mean you’re in danger of being hanged?’

‘No, a sailor called Simon Allondale is.’

‘That’s
my
name,’ he says so indignantly I almost laugh.

I take a cloth, dip it into a bowl of salve and rub at my eyes to remove the black. Now I’m thinking furiously as to what I should do.

‘Why didn’t you write to me to tell me you were safe?’

‘After you pushed me off a cliff ?’

‘An outcrop.’ He glares at me.

‘A tall outcrop.’

‘Very well, a tall outcrop. Fairly tall. I – I’m so sorry, Nick. Forgive me. I ran for help but you’d gone when we came back. I made the men search for you for days . . .’

I remember the fall, waking with a dreadful headache and one eye sealed shut with blood so I feared I was blind; another bad dream where I got a lift with a carter to Newcastle, dazed with shock and pain. I remember the discovery that what little money I had with me had been stolen, and innocently thinking that the jovial man in the naval uniform would help me instead of throwing me and a dozen other unfortunates into the bowels of a ship.

What I can’t remember now is what our quarrel, and subsequent fight, was really about. I remember it started with Simon’s half-joking request that I address him as
your grace
, and my refusal to do so. So I ask him.

‘Why, it was over Molly.’

‘Molly?’

‘Molly Salthwaite. She married shortly after you – you left, and her first child was born only a few months later. I always thought I could see a likeness there and I hoped it was so. I asked her to name the child Nicholas, but it was a girl, so—’

‘Wait. Molly? Molly, the milkmaid with the huge bosom? You thought I—’

‘You said you were.’

‘But . . . I was sixteen, Simon. Of course I’d say so, particularly if it would annoy you.’

He sighs. ‘I was dreadfully in love with her. She’d handle the teats in a – a suggestive way while she was milking and wink at me.’

‘She used to do that to me too. It drove me half mad.’

‘And you didn’t . . .?’

‘No, never. I stumbled over my own feet and could scarce remember my own name whenever I saw her.’

‘Oh God.’ He blows his nose again. ‘I’m so sorry. But Nick, what have you been doing? Why did you not write? I always hoped you were alive, but I didn’t know.’

Ah. There’s the question. I squint into a mirror and comb my hair with my fingers.

He knows I’m playing for time. He waits, with that annoying, virtuous expression on his face, the young Duke caring for his own. And the trouble with Simon is that he is a decent fellow, and he can’t help it if he irritates the devil out of nearly everyone.

He says, ‘Old Ruby died last month. We buried her with the other dogs, in the shade under the horse chestnuts.’

‘Ruby?’

‘She was close to fifteen, Nick. She had a good long life. She—’

I slump into a chair, head in hands, and weep, tears running through my fingers, helpless with grief over a dog I’d hardly thought of in the last decade. I remember Ruby’s muzzle working its way into the palm of my hand as she walked with me, her joy when she ran to retrieve sticks, her unabashed adoration. Part of my mind realises that Simon, somehow during these years, has learned a little of the guile that I possess in abundance; blood will tell, I suppose. He knew exactly how to unman me and did not hesitate to unleash his weapon.

And I’m weeping for Ruby and myself, and my half-brother, and our father, and Caroline, while Simon pats me on the shoulder and croons, ‘There, there,’ in a particularly idiotic way until I shake him off.

‘You bastard. Your grace.’ Barton couldn’t have done better.

He grins. ‘No, you’re the bastard. Why didn’t you write to me?’

I take the handkerchief he offers me – a very fine lawn, with a T and a coronet embroidered on it – and blow my nose in a way that, with his efforts earlier, renders it unusable.

‘Well, Sion. At first I was too poor and too angry. Then, when I could afford to do so, I was still angry. And then embarrassed because it had been so long. I did, however, write to Pickering.’

‘You wrote to my land agent but not to me?’

I shrug. ‘I always liked Pickering, and I was his apprentice.’

Simon’s face reddens. ‘Damn him, he should have told me.’

‘Why?’

I know he’s longing to reply that it was Pickering’s duty, as a subordinate and servant, to tell him, but he clamps his mouth shut. He sits on a rickety chair next to mine and tips melted wax from a guttering candle so it may burn a little longer.

‘His rheumatism is getting quite bad,’ he says eventually, in an offhand manner. ‘He’s been thinking of retiring and going to live with his sister.’

‘He didn’t say.’

Simon, owner of many sheep, leans forward and fingers the sleeve of my coat. ‘Hmm. Wool with silk? Very nice. I’m glad you’ve done so well for yourself. What profession did you choose after your, er, naval career?’

‘It’s rather difficult to explain. By the by, I should offer my congratulations on your marriage to Miss Julia Longbenton.’ Pickering has kept me informed of his grace’s activities, and I’m anxious to change the subject.

Simon, saintly though he may be, is no fool. ‘Are you in trouble, Nick?’

We’ve stopped sparring at each other, more or less, and besides, he’ll drag the truth from me sooner or later. ‘Yes. I’ve seduced a gentlewoman and broken her heart. I love her to distraction but I’m afraid she’ll only think I’m after her money.’

‘Oh, dear me.’ He wrinkles his brow and actually wrings his hands. ‘Maybe I can help. Who is she? Is she here?’

I tell him.

He becomes so still I wonder if he’s turned to stone. ‘How long have you been back in England?’

‘About three weeks.’

‘Then you haven’t heard that Lady Caroline Elmhurst is on the run from creditors. She doesn’t have a penny to her name, and word has it that she’s on the lookout for a new protector. Her last lover, a military gentleman, left her deeply in debt. She is a notoriously . . .’ He pauses for the right word. ‘. . . indiscreet person.’

I can only gape at him in astonishment. ‘But her maid told my man that—’

‘Well, of course she wouldn’t want you to know. Obviously she was after your money.’

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This is far worse than I could have imagined.

My brother continues, ‘You have had a very lucky escape, Nick.’

‘On the contrary, she has had a lucky escape from me.’

‘You mean . . .’ You can almost see my brother thinking. I always won from him at cards, so transparent was his face.

I hang my head and mutter, ‘I thought she was rich, and although I was after her money initially, I love her. I led her to believe I was wealthy, but I have hardly any money. I’ve broken her heart and insulted her greatly. I don’t know what to do.’

‘You fool,’ my brother pronounces. ‘Who else knows of this unsavoury liaison between you and Lady Elmhurst?’

‘Mr and Mrs Linsley, Mrs Gibbons and Mr Darrowby, at least. I’m not sure about Otterwell, but he’s not a friend, and—’

My brother stands, strides to the door and shouts for a footman. The Duke of Thirlwell is about to take charge of one of his responsibilities – myself – and I don’t care for it one bit.