Animating Maria (17 page)

Effy looked at Amy and Amy looked at Effy.

‘What can we do?’ cried Amy.

He smiled at her and Amy realized with a start that he was devastatingly attractive. Her eyes dropped to his well-muscled legs. Yes, definitely attractive.

‘I am sure you will think of something,’ he said. ‘I believe you always do.’

After he had left, Amy ordered champagne. Once again her nerves seemed to be stretched to the breaking point and she did not feel quite sane. She hoped the champagne would cool her.

She and Effy drank and discussed and dismissed various ways of getting the duke and Maria together.

‘Pity, that’s it!’ said Amy suddenly.

‘Whash a piddy?’ slurred Effy.

‘Maria. She’s got a lot of compassion and all that. She must be made to feel sorry for him. Let me see.’ Amy glanced at the clock. ‘He’s no doubt down in St Charles Street. I shall go there and tell him my idea.’

‘Come too,’ said Effy, blinking like an owl.

‘No, you’d better go to sleep. You’re foxed.’

Amy hurtled downstairs and ordered the carriage. She took two footmen with her for protection.

The sight that met her eyes in the middle of St Charles Street made her glad she had decided to bring a bodyguard along. A circle of men and women were surrounding the duke and a great brute of a man. Amy strode up and demanded, ‘What’s happening?’

‘A mill,’ said a dirty woman. ‘Our Bert’s going to draw ’is grace’s cork.’

The duke had not found a docile population when he had returned to St Charles Street. It was almost as if they had been waiting for him. Almost as if they had had this bruiser, Bert, drafted in from somewhere to confront him. It was, however, not unusual for one of the lower orders to challenge an aristocrat to a fight. The social laws did not interfere when it came to every Englishman’s right to bloody the nose of another. Often, like Bert, they made the mistake of thinking all aristocrats effete. But men like the duke, thrashed at home, thrashed at public school, trained from an early age to endure pain, sent to the wars, and then trained in delicate social arts like boxing, were tough and fit. If an aristocrat survived his upbringing, he was usually very strong indeed. Only those who had the luck to come into their inheritance when they were still in short coats could lead a life of carefree indolence.

So he had removed his coat and prepared to do battle. Amy’s brain worked quickly. If the duke was injured, then she could tell Maria, and Maria’s kind heart would be touched and she would come and sob at his bedside. But just to make sure the duke was not actually killed, Amy gently eased a pistol she had had the foresight to prime and bring along out of her reticule. She saw a gin bottle on the ground and picked that up as well. Then she noticed a pamphlet lying at her feet, and under the feet of the mob she could see many other pamphlets. Still holding the pistol, she tucked the gin bottle under her arm and picked up the pamphlet. ‘Citizens, rise against your oppressors,’ screamed the black type. ‘Come to the Methodist Hall tonight and hear Dr Frank preach on the equality of Man.’

‘Seditious bastard, whoever he is,’ muttered Amy. There was a cheer as the fight began.

To the crowd’s disappointment, it did not last very long. The duke danced lightly around his opponent and then struck like lightning. It was a massive blow, and Bert crashed onto the cobblestones while the duke stood over him nursing his bleeding knuckles.

A reluctant cheer went up and the crowd parted to let him through.

He walked blindly past Amy, his coat, which he had picked up off the ground, slung over his shoulder.

‘Oh, God, for what I am about to do, please forgive me,’ said Miss Amy Tribble, and she lifted the gin bottle and gave the duke a sharp and efficient crack on the back of the head. He reeled and staggered. ‘Catch him and put him in the carriage,’ shouted Amy.

As the duke was hoisted in, Amy saw his agent and servants clustered at the end of the street. ‘You cowards,’ she shouted.

‘Why did you hit ’im on the head, missus?’ demanded a woman, clutching at Amy. Amy shook her off. She had to get the duke away before any more onlookers began to spread the word that she had deliberately struck the duke, who was now unconscious.

The duke was laid out on the seat of her carriage by the two footmen. Amy climbed in and pulled down the window and called up to the coachman, ‘Drive on, fool. What are you waiting for?’

As the coach began to move, Amy heard a loud voice shouting. ‘Don’t let the rich scum escape. Hang them. Burn them.’

Amy stared in the direction of that voice. A ginger-haired man in showy clothes had climbed up a lamp-post to address the crowd.

Amy knew that face. It was Frank, the ex-second footman, who had caused rebellion in her servants’ hall and then had fled. He saw her and ducked down the lamp-post and disappeared into the crowd.

But Amy quickly forgot about Frank. The duke lay very still, his face white.

‘What have I done?’ whispered Amy. ‘Perhaps I have killed him.’

She raised the trap and ordered the coachman to drive to the duke’s town house in Cavendish Square.

The Dowager Duchess of Berham came slowly down the stairs as her unconscious son was carried into the hall. She leaned heavily on her stick and asked in a flat voice, ‘Is he dead?’

‘No,’ said Amy, ‘but get a physician. I think he is only stunned,’ while inside she prayed to God and all his angels to spare her from the gallows.

She turned to leave as the duke was slowly carried up the stairs.

‘No! Stay!’ cried the dowager. ‘I must know what happened.’

She commanded the housekeeper to put Amy in the Yellow Saloon. Amy waited in an agony of fear. They would probably hang not only her but Effy as well, assuming Effy to be a conspirator. Her mind see-sawed wildly.

After an hour of pure hell, the door opened and the dowager came in. ‘He is recovered,’ she said.

Amy put her head down and wept with relief.

The dowager sat beside her on the sofa and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘There, there. All is well. You have had a bad fright. He is very strong. He will need to rest, however. His wits seem to be wandering. He is talking about being in some fight and that as he was leaving, you struck him down from behind. Before he lost consciousness, he heard someone asking you why you had struck him.’

Amy flinched. She had been so sure that the duke had been totally unaware of her presence.

‘I did strike him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I meant it for the best.’

‘Meaning you thought the world would be better off without him?’

‘Oh, no. You see he is in love with Maria Kendall, but her father has forbidden the marriage and I thought if he were ill or injured, Maria might rush to his bedside and . . . and . . .’ Overwrought, Amy began to cry again.

‘You are a very bad woman,’ said the dowager in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘But I shall forgive you if your plan works.’ She rang the bell and then walked over to a writing-desk in the corner and began to write. When a footman entered, she ordered him to take the note to Miss Kendall, and to make sure it was delivered to her personally.

When the footman had gone, the dowager went back to sit beside Amy. ‘Now, Miss Tribble,’ she said sternly, ‘dry your eyes and let us get down to business. The Kendalls are common, but I believe them to be rich.’

‘Oh, yes, very rich,’ said Amy weakly. She took out a large handkerchief and blew her nose.

‘You are sure of this? Might they not be showy and vulgar people who put on a display of wealth but are constantly in debt?’

‘No, I happen to know that Mr Kendall pays cash for everything. No debts. I found out that much when we were in Bath.’

‘You advertise for difficult girls, do you not? What is the difficulty with Miss Kendall?’

‘Dreams, that is all,’ said Amy. ‘She used to live in a dream-world. Her parents bullied her too much, you see. But she is gentle and kind and most young girls have heads filled with nonsense.’

‘And some old ones,’ pointed out the dowager maliciously. ‘You take your duties seriously, Miss Tribble. Do you usually risk gentlemen’s lives in order to bring your charge to the altar?’

‘Please . . . I must apologize . . . not myself.’

‘We will see how it works. If it does not work, then you will be damned by me and society as a dangerous and silly old woman; if it does work, and I hope it does, for I have a feeling in my bones that Miss Kendall will do very well for my son, then you will have my lifelong support for your ventures. Please stop crying. Tears do not become you; nor do they make me feel sorry for you. It will be a great coup for you if this comes off. Believe me, the Kendalls should consider themselves fortunate that such as we should stoop so low. Why did the silly man break off the engagement?’

Amy told her of the duke’s drive with Maria.

‘Ah, well, I see his point. My late husband left all the squalid side of things to his agent, and quite right too. The only time we ever concerned ourselves overmuch with the welfare of underlings was when it seemed we might have an uprising like the Terror in France. Some of my friends even apprenticed their children to a trade. Trade! Can you imagine it?’

‘Easily,’ said Amy, recovering some of her spirit. ‘I am in trade myself, as are all women who push their sons and daughters into marriage.’

‘We take marriage very seriously,’ said the dowager, ‘and quite right too. You would not mate a fine racing horse with a coal horse, now would you, and expect the outcome to be worth anything? I hear someone arriving. Let us hope it is Miss Kendall.’

The butler entered carrying a card on a silver tray, which he presented to the dowager. ‘Miss Kendall,’ he said.

Amy let out a slow breath of relief. ‘Do not relax so soon, Miss Tribble,’ said the dowager sharply. ‘You are not out of the woods yet.’ She turned to the butler. ‘Take Miss Kendall directly to his grace’s bedchamber, usher her in, shut the door behind her and tell the other servants not to go near.’

‘What did you say in your letter?’ asked Amy curiously.

‘Why simply that my son was at death’s door and that she should come and say her last goodbyes.’

Amy’s face broke into a grin. ‘And they call
me
ruthless,’ she said.

Unarm, Eros, the long day’s task is done,
And we must sleep.

Shakespeare

Young girls do not mature and give up dreaming overnight. As Maria hurried to Cavendish Square, she was in the grip of a fantasy so morbid it was like a nightmare.

He would die before she got there. He would never know she loved him. His death-rattle sounded in her ears. Perhaps he really loved her after all, and her father’s breaking of the engagement had made him take his life.

On receiving the dowager duchess’s note, she had fled the house without telling her parents and had hired a hack.

When it stopped before the great house in Cavendish Square, she could hardly bear to look at it in case the hatchment was over the door and the mute already wailing on the steps. But one furtive glance told her she still had hope. That was until she stepped down and paid off the carriage and noticed that straw had been laid on the street outside the house to muffle the sound of the traffic.

The butler who opened the door to her looked so grave and so funereal that she felt quite faint. She waited in an agony of hope and despair until he returned and, with a bow, said in deep mournful tones, ‘Follow me, miss.’

How slowly he mounted the stairs! Was it because the duke was already dead and there was no longer any need for haste? She longed to ask the butler, and yet fear of hearing the worst kept her silent.

The butler went on up to the second floor and along a shadowy corridor lined with all the paintings the Berhams considered too inferior for public view. Rain had started to fall outside and the wind soughed around the building like a banshee.

The butler held open a door and bowed low. Maria slowly entered the room and he closed the door behind her.

The duke was lying on the bed, his eyes closed. His head was bound with bandages and his face was very white.

Maria ran and flung herself on the bed crying, ‘Don’t die. Please don’t die.’

The duke’s eyes flew open. He had been given a sleeping powder by the doctor and was feeling groggy. He thought vaguely it must be some sort of dream. Maria Kendall was lying on his bed. But with all the single-minded opportunism of the true aristocrat, he decided to make the most of the dream while it lasted.

He dreamily unfastened the ribbons of her bonnet and threw it on the floor and unpinned her hair so that it cascaded about her shoulders.

‘You are alive,’ whispered Maria.

‘Oh, it’s not a dream,’ he said. ‘You really are here.’

‘Your mother told me you were gravely ill.’

She was lying beside him, her head on the pillow next to his own.

He raised his head up, twisted round, leaned on one elbow and looked down at her.

‘Marry me,’ he said. It was a command, not a question. ‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘But wh—?’

Her question was silenced as his lips came down on hers. Sweet gentle kisses soon lost their innocence, to be replaced by hot, searching, probing kisses, inflamed by the exploration of his roving hands along her body.