A Song Twice Over (52 page)

Therefore she did not behave like one.

How foolish, she reckoned – as her father might have reckoned – to squander the treasure of her time with Daniel in self-reproach. How futile to stir up thoughts of sin and try to convince herself that she ought to believe in them when what she was doing felt so completely right. Particularly since she risked hurting no one, she believed – at any significant level – but herself. And, setting her chin at the fighting angle which so delighted Daniel, she claimed the right to take that risk, to do herself that hurt, and – should she be wounded or broken – to pick up her own pieces afterwards, bind her own scars in her own fashion. As best she could. And be a trouble to no one.

There would be no cries for help. She knew her responsibilities and never, for one moment, thought of shirking them. Though the list was long. Her mother, who was entitled to her consideration. Tristan, to whom she had made promises and who was, after all, keeping his part of the bargain. Linnet, a fighter too in her way who, missing every victory by inches, was both to be pitied and to be reckoned with. Her father. Much loved. Deeply resented. Her own blood and bone.

She could save only a few precious drops from the ocean she owed to them for Daniel. Would they grudge it to her? Yes. She felt sure they would. But the knowledge only strengthened her resolve, firming the angle of her chin which was already quite firm enough as she lived the surface of her life among them, attending her mother's parties in the dark satin dresses cut so severely and skilfully for her by Miss Adeane, smiling serenely across the room at her father as he muttered darkly to Sir Felix Lark about the perfidy of the gentry in supporting cranks like Richard Oastler and his notions of factory reform; smiling, reassuringly this time, at her mother's fears that Sir Felix, who made her uncomfortable, and his mother, Lady Lark, of whom she was still in awe, might take offence and refuse to come to Almsmead again; smiling, only politely, as she chaperoned Linnet through long, tedious visits to the Colcloughs, listening with only a fraction of her mind to Uriah's sermons and Linnet's pious sighing; smiling again, in the carriage home, with some real amusement, as Linnet, instantly shedding her saintly mantle, began to scatter hints like sparkling, quite poisonous drops of rain about the outrageous behaviour of Mrs Marie Moon who, forsaking all other passions, had taken to spending her time with a certain very minor, entirely penniless Lark in a manner – as Linnet discreetly put it – likely to do ‘the poor boy'harm.

‘Lady Lark, of course, is mortified. The young man was entrusted to her care, it seems, when he got himself sent down from Oxford. She was to do great things with him, put some backbone into him, you know – his poor mamma being much too nervous and weak … In the head, perhaps? With the Larks one often wonders. But now our Madame Marie has bewitched him right away.
Quite
at her feet, one hears, fed on chocolates and champagne just like her poodle. How sweet. Except that Lady Lark, as I said, is horribly put out about it. His dear mamma is having the vapours and swearing that her fledgling's life forces are being drained away. Whereas Mr Adolphus Moon – poor soul. Naturally one's heart goes out to him. He has been obliged to return his children to their aunt, to spare them the example. And really – really – one can hardly blame him – can one?'

‘For what, Linnet?'

‘Why – for taking – well – the most
extreme
of measures.'

‘Divorce?'

‘Yes.' Linnet's voice sounded absent, her exquisite features sharpening and then – very rapidly – hiding beneath a mask of airy smiles. ‘Yes. Why not? Although divorce,' she wrinkled her nose, ‘is so socially awkward. And costs a fortune too. Annulment would be the answer.
Annulment
.' She breathed the word almost with rapture. ‘I wonder what could be done about that? One would need to know … And who would have that kind of information about her? Captain Goldsborough?'

Gemma, realizing that Linnet was talking to herself, went on smiling.

‘But would you marry a divorced man, Linnet?'

Instantly the airy mask shattered, a smile of brilliant, brittle gaiety breaking through. ‘
Marry
. Good Heavens, Gemma. Mr Adolphus Moon? Whatever are you thinking of? The poor little man barely reaches my elbow. And even if he stood six feet four and as beautiful as my brother, you know that my heart is given entirely – don't you? – to my saintly Uriah.'

And closing one delicately veined eyelid in a wink she leaned forward, all fragrance and amusement, to whisper a few swift comments regarding the origins of Uriah's saintliness in Gemma's unusually receptive ear.

Gemma's smile deepened and remained undimmed throughout dinner at Almsmead that same evening, despite her father's scowl and his audible mutterings when he saw her mother's – or Linnet's– choice of guests. An array of lounging, staring Larks who made Amabel so uneasy. Mr Adolphus Moon, who so embarrassed her. Captain Goldsborough who had never owned her beautiful Almsmead as he had once owned her previous home at the manor but nevertheless behaved as if he had.

‘Are these
your
friends, Amabel?' John-William Dallam wanted to know.

‘Oh darling – of course – please don't fuss …' She was pleading with him, trying hard to convince herself that she
did
, in fact, like these people, did want them here,
could
view them as welcome guests rather than hostile and scornful invaders.

‘Say the word,' her husband offered, ‘and I'll put them all at the other side of the door.'

Amabel gasped and turned pale.

‘Oh – John-William …'

Coming between them Gemma slipped an arm through theirs, drawing them together, smiling at each in turn and then at Tristan as he came hurrying downstairs, late for dinner as he always was after a full day's hunting, his uncomplicated soul moving easily, happily in its superbly healthy body as he came to kiss his wife.

She smiled now very serenely.

‘Hello Tristan. Was it a good day?'

‘Splendid.'

And it would be a good day tomorrow. He was leaving to hunt foxes for a week in Leicestershire. She was going home to Daniel; returning to her real life, her true identity, content to leave behind, in her mother's house, the sturdy, brown-haired, serious-minded little woman, far too busy with her own odd little occupations, her mill-school and her decaying little manor, even to realize that her husband neglected her.

‘Tristan – are you off
again
?' murmured Linnet wickedly, exchanging a knowing glance with Captain Goldsborough who could be relied on, it seemed, to share her opinion as to why the husband of such a blue-stocking should spend so much time away from home. Not much of a wife, Linnet's glance implied, for a splendid, sporting,
virile
young blood like her brother. Was it any wonder that he felt the need to get off on his own – or perhaps not quite on his own – every now and again? Captain Goldsborough's pitch black eyes conveyed to her that it was no wonder to him.

‘Poor Gemma,' sighed Linnet.

‘Gemma – if you'd rather I didn't go …?' Tristan offered later that night, having accompanied her to bed instead of lingering in the billiard-room as he had, in fact, intended.

‘Tristan – what nonsense. I want you to enjoy yourself.'

She was speaking the truth.

‘Well yes –' he frowned, torn as he often seemed to be between reluctance to sacrifice his own pleasures and a nagging urge to do the decent thing. Whatever it might be. ‘But we can't have people talking, can we? Don't want them saying that I … Lord, you know what I mean.'

Yes. She knew. And was he unfaithful to her, casually, occasionally? She thought so. She even hoped so until she understood that it did not really matter to either of them.

‘Tristan.
Enjoy
yourself.'

It was a command. She was the stronger. And now, on a moonlit February night, she lay with Daniel in her own bed, playing a far more honourable role, it seemed to her – albeit adulterous – than any she fulfilled at Almsmead. Sin, of course. But with love on her part. Integrity, she believed, on his.

Her measure of time.

‘Gemma – are you awake?'

‘Yes.'

‘Wouldn't you like to come with me in the morning, to meet Oastler?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Oh – you can be sure I have my reasons.' Smiling at him through the dappling moonlight, her special smile of joy in loving that could flow easily and sweetly into laughter, she looked wise and a little mysterious.

‘Why then? Because he opposes your father?'

‘No. Although he does oppose him, of course.'

‘He does. He'll stop him from keeping his engines running twenty-four hours a day and working children in relays to stay within the law.'

‘If he can.' She smiled again. ‘And they'll be my engines, Daniel, you know. One day.'

‘I know.' It made him uneasy to think of it. As it made him uneasy to think of other things. English, Protestant, mill-owning Gemma, his best and most trusted friend. As he, who despised everything she stood for, was trying to be hers.

‘Is that why you won't come?'

She shook her head, the lemon-scented brown hair brushing his shoulder.

‘Why then? The gossip if anyone saw you?'

‘Oh no. People think me so odd already that I believe I could get away with it. What
has
the Dallam girl done now? Gone tramping across the moor with her Chartist schoolmaster. Well – I never. Poor John-William. And poor, poor, Amabel.'

They laughed softly, together.

‘Then come. On the tramp. It's a good life.'

Suddenly he saw her, striding alongside him bareheaded and gipsy-fashion, her hair loose and taking flight on the wind, her sturdy, cob-pony limbs keeping pace with his. Suddenly – fiercely – he wanted her like that.

‘
Come
, Gemma. And politics be damned.' Fathers and husbands too, for that matter.

She sighed. ‘Oh no, Daniel. Mr Oastler's politics have nothing to do with it, don't you see. It's just – well – eight miles across the moor to Brighouse station and eight miles back. Rough ground and a very tidy distance, when you must know quite well – Mr Carey – that I have not been brought up to walk. Only to stroll. And only then with my carriage following discreetly behind me to pick me up if I swoon or stumble – which, with all my skirts and petticoats, is only too likely. I couldn't manage it, Daniel. You'd have to carry me. Or abandon me, which might be best, considering that I weigh rather more than a feather.'

It had not occurred to him. Lotus-feet again, planted not in solid earth but in the soft pile of drawing-room carpets and carriage rugs. A spirit fit for adventure in a body conditioned to helplessness. And he understood, with some surprise, that he hated her father. Or her mother. Or whoever it was who had cushioned and cosseted and over-protected her in those velvet swaddling bands so that only her will had been allowed to grow and harden.

‘Run away with me,' he said, wishing it might be possible, wishing he could mean it.

‘Well – not very far. And not very fast either. Only the five miles there and five miles back that one's carriage-horses can manage in a day.'

Throwing back the bedcovers he studied her body intently, brooding over it, grieving over it almost, a peasant sturdiness forced into the drooping languor of a hot-house lily, good, serviceable bones designed for a strength that had never been tested, tender, unblemished knees which had knelt only on a velvet prayer stool or a silk cushion, soft, smooth thighs which, as his mouth brushed them, turned his sorrow and his pity for her into desire. How timeless she was. How eternal. A lake of still, deep water into which he needed now, absolutely and as if his life depended upon it, to plunge, his senses instantly and hugely aflame.

‘I want you, Gemma.' And she slid down to him, swathes of her like brown silk all around him, gathering him to her, giving herself and taking him, no longer a penetration on his part but a joining together, a fusion of his body with hers so that, for a few dizzy moments, there seemed no inch of skin that was entirely hers or his, no clinging-place of bone to bone, no point of contact where he could be certain that his body ended and hers began.

‘Heavens,' she said, her laughter sounding weak. ‘Good Heavens.'

Breathing heavily, he sank his head into her breasts needing comfort for having loved her so mightily.

‘Yes,' he said.

He left her very early the next morning, slipping out like a thief before the servants were awake although he was in no doubt that the housekeeper, Martha-Ann, knew all about him. Yet a servant who gossiped lost not only her position but all hope of another and since Gemma seemed to trust the woman he supposed he must do the same. Possibly Gemma's mill-manager Mr Ephraim Cook and his wife knew about him too. Or suspected. But it could serve no interest of theirs to betray him, considering the precarious state of health of Gemma's father and the decidedly uncommercial character of her husband. While the husband himself and his exquisite sister who had drifted into the mill-school once or twice, patted a few heads and drifted quickly out again, seemed far too busy about their own affairs to take much notice of Gemma's.

Not that he feared discovery on his own account. What could the father do to him, after all, other than warn him off or try to buy him off or have him whipped out of town? While, if the husband felt obliged to take a shot at him, he acknowledged no similar obligation to make himself a willing target. Yet discovery for Gemma would be a disaster which stirred in him an unexpected vein of guilt and caution. What would he be able to do for her then? Indeed, could anything he had in him to give her possibly compensate for the loss of her good name and her security? For the luxury she did not value because she had never felt its lack? He doubted it. And therefore, for the first time in his life, he deliberately curbed his recklessness and – for her sake – was discreet.