Dorothy Eden (17 page)

In the meantime, a vaguely disturbing thing happened.

She came home a little earlier one evening to find the children alone in the nursery, and quarrelling furiously. At least Edwin was making all the noise, while Florence stood white-faced and stubborn, a drooping willow wand in her hand, refusing to obey his commands. It seemed that they were playing Zulu wars, and Edwin refused to take turns at being a Zulu. He much preferred to be the dashing British cavalry officer shooting Florence, armed only with her poor willow wand spear, down.

“Mamma, it isn’t fair that Edwin should always win?” she cried passionately. “Why can’t I be the British sometimes?”

“You can’t ride a horse,” Edwin said contemptuously.

“That’s only a pretend horse, you silly little boy,” she retorted, pointing to his wooden hobby horse.

“Children, children, be quiet,” Beatrice ordered. “Where’s Miss Medway?”

“She has a headache, she’s lying down,” Florence said. “She walked too far today, that’s the trouble.”

“Why, where did you go?”

“Papa took us on the Heath to catch butterflies. He said it was warm enough, the first ones might be out. But then he made Edwin and me stay by the pond because we were too noisy.”

“By yourselves?” asked Beatrice.

“Not for long, Mamma. Only Edwin was very naughty, he got his feet wet. He put them in the water with his
boots
on! And Papa was cross, and they hadn’t caught any butterflies. So we came home.”

Florence was getting priggish, Beatrice thought with one part of her mind. The other part was swooping into those happy past days, so far past and so few, when she and William had pursued their fluttering prey on the Heath. How dare he do those special things of theirs with Miss Medway. How dare he!

Anger was soaring through her veins. She rang the bell, and when Lizzie answered it she said sharply, “Lizzie, I came home and found the children quite alone.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I was in the kitchen attending to their tea. I thought Miss Medway was with them.”

“Then go and bring up their tea. I believe Miss Medway is lying down. Tell her, headache or not, I want to see her in the morning room.”

“Mamma,” said Florence timidly, as a flustered Lizzie bobbed and departed, “please don’t be cross with Miss Medway. It was Edwin’s own fault he got wet feet and ruined his boots. He’s old enough to know better.”

“Perhaps,” said Beatrice. She ruffled Edwin’s curls absently. He was her darling pretty boy. “But it was Miss Medway’s fault for leaving you. Now, Florence, don’t pout. A most unbecoming habit. Help Edwin to pack up his soldiers so Lizzie can put the tea on the table.”

“But he won’t allow me to touch them,” came Florence’s wail as Beatrice left the nursery, walking briskly down the passage to the morning room.

It had been in the papers this morning about the adultery and the subsequent disgrace of the leader of the Irish party, Charles Stewart Parnell, with a woman called Kitty O’Shea. A formidable scheming woman, one had no doubt.

Now why was she remembering that at this particular moment?

Ten minutes later Miss Medway stood before her. She was wearing the demure high-necked brown dress in which she had arrived at Overton House nearly a year ago. She looked young and vulnerable and she had been crying. It was certainly no headache that had made her eyelids so red.

Beatrice, after seven years of dealing with men and women of all ages, knew guilt when it was presented to her so plainly.

She also had a moment of cowardice. If only she could have ignored this, if only the three of them could have gone on as peacefully as they had done for the last few months, pretending nothing had happened, pretending that William had genuinely got over his wanderlust and preferred staying in England for no other reason than that he was devoted to his home and family…

But she had been deliberately shutting her eyes for too long. She realised that all too clearly. She had ignored the hints and signs, and now she must pay for her self-induced blindness. It was a great pity, but Miss Medway would have to leave.

“Florence tells me that Edwin has ruined a pair of boots in the pond on the Heath, Miss Medway. Do you realise he might have caught a severe chill, quite apart from the danger of his drowning. I must hold you to blame.”

Her voice was quiet and controlled, but tinged with the icy adamant note which the staff at Bonnington’s had come to respect. She was ashamed of her sensation of grim satisfaction when the slight figure standing before her trembled. It was foolish to think that the grief which would overwhelm her shortly could be assuaged by punishing this wicked young woman.

Wicked?

Even her anger wouldn’t truly allow her to think that. Of course the little fool was likely to fall in love with William. One had to suppose that she couldn’t help herself.

But had William encouraged her?

That was where the source of the pain lay.

Miss Medway lifted large swimming eyes and bravely looked Beatrice in the face.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Overton. I admit I am entirely to blame. But I—we—didn’t think the children would come to any harm for a little while. There was something—” Then her composure vanished and she couldn’t continue. She pressed her hands to her face and began sobbing so desperately that Beatrice had to overcome her own involuntary sympathy.

“Come now, Miss Medway. Whatever has happened can’t be that terrible. You’ve fallen in love with my husband, I imagine.”

The bent dark head moved in assent.

“Well, I suppose I can’t altogether blame you for that.” Beatrice was holding on to her pain and anger. “I love him very much myself, and have always thought that no one could not love him. You are only human, as I am sure you will tell me presently. But of course this means you’ll have to go. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do know that, Mrs Overton. I do, indeed.”

“The trouble is, you’re expecting a baby.” Beatrice heard herself speaking from some unfailing feminine intuition, every word rasping as if her throat were on fire.

“No! At least—I never meant you to know. I was going to leave as soon as I had found somewhere to go. Only today, on the Heath when I told Will—I mean, Mr Overton—”

The faltering voice stopped altogether and again Beatrice’s alarming intuition supplied the words. William had refused to let her go. He had said he would talk to his wife.

He would, indeed!

“Mrs Overton, can you ever forgive me?”

Beatrice didn’t allow herself to see the desperate appealing eyes. She was done with sentiment. At this moment she never intended to be sentimental again about anything, not even her deceiving husband.

“No. I’m surprised you’d even ask me such a thing.” Her strange harsh voice went on talking as if she were a judge in a court looking down from a superior height at this wretched guilty witness.

“But you’re not the first this sort of thing has happened to. I’ve had various girls at the shop whom I’ve had to help discreetly, and I may even help you when I get over being angry with you. Just now, I want you out of this house tonight. So go and pack your bags at once. I’d prefer you not to say goodbye to the children, or my husband. I will make the necessary explanations.”

Then, of course, as one might have expected, the girl fainted. She was stretched flat on the turkey carpet, her face colourless except for the long black lashes lying on her cheeks. In that moment of unconsciousness Beatrice was painfully aware of the fragile prettiness that had apparently been so irresistible to William. Though who was to know which had been the seducer, her volatile husband, or this demure quiet creature with her deceptive air of innocence.

The old classic melodrama, she thought disgustedly, the master and the maidservant. Above all, the servants must not be called. She was quite able to cope with a faint. She was never without a bottle of smelling salts in her bag, as shopgirls had been known to do the same thing in her presence.

The acrid smell in her nostrils brought Miss Medway back to consciousness. She struggled up, apologising at once for her foolish behaviour.

“I’m not usually as weak as this. Only today has been so difficult. Tonight we were going to tell you—”

We?

Beatrice had no intention of having a three-cornered conference. She would talk to William alone.

“Good Gad!” she exclaimed in Papa’s tone of voice.

Miss Medway’s sharp wince brought her back to self-control.

“I’ll have some tea sent up to your room, and then I hope you will feel well enough to pack. I’ll come up later, and tell you where I have arranged for you to spend the night, or the next few days. Don’t look surprised. I’m not an ogre. I don’t throw people out in the street, no matter what the provocation.”

And the provocation was severe. William and this scrap of a girl with their clothes thrown off, performing that intensely private act of marriage, of which she herself was too often deprived. The image in her mind was so vivid that a moment of dreadful weakness came over her. She thought she was going to mingle her tears with Miss Medway’s.

I married my husband determined to make him love me, but he never has, so who is to blame? she wanted to burst out.

Fortunately she controlled such devastating honesty. She had always prided herself on her honesty, but from now on she was going to be more clever, more subtle, more devious. She would somehow manage this deplorable situation without losing William’s friendship. She hadn’t yet his love to lose, but at least she would see that it hadn’t all been expended on a flighty governess. That would be too incredible to believe. William’s infatuations were passing affairs. This would blow over. Even the difficulty of the baby would be resolved. If necessary, she would personally find good adoptive parents for it.

But Miss Medway must leave tonight. One had better send a message to Dixon to have the carriage ready.

She saw the girl hadn’t attempted to move and said in a voice that rasped, “Come now, Miss Medway. You’re quite strong enough to do as I tell you. Go and begin your packing—”

“Oh, no, Bea. Just a minute,” came William’s voice from the door. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

“Mary isn’t leaving this house,” he said.

Mary! That must have been the moment when the terrible reality of the situation came home to her, for she was conscious only of appalling misery as William stood beside Miss Medway and put a protecting possessive arm across her shoulders. His face was full of a loving radiant tenderness, never, thought Beatrice bitterly, bent on her.

“Why don’t you look like that for me?” she cried compulsively, and knew that in that moment of weakness she had lost command of the situation.

William looked at her with genuine remorse, after all he was the kindest of men. Miss Medway, too, had the gall to look at her pityingly. She was strong enough now that she had William’s arm about her shoulders.

One advantage remained to Beatrice, however. She could twist the wedding ring on her finger and, recovering something of her self-possession, say, “Miss Medway will have to go, William. You surely can’t deny that.”

“But she can’t, Bea. She’s going to have my child.”

“And so?” said Beatrice stiffly. “This unfortunate situation is hardly a new one. It can be coped with, I imagine.”

She was realising suddenly that William himself had only today heard the disastrous news. That accounted for his emotional tenderness. His first reaction would be to want to protect the girl he had wronged. And he should do so, too. He was a gentleman, after all.

Too much of a gentleman, indeed, for it seemed that he was proposing to marry Miss Medway.

Beatrice could scarcely believe her ears.

“So you intend to commit bigamy?”

“Now, Bea, don’t pretend to be a fool. You know that I would have to ask you to divorce me. I intended to do that this evening, since Mary only told me today—”

“And what do you propose living on?” Beatrice interrupted, with an air of deep interest.

“Oh, I’ll continue writing. Aberconway has already offered me a fairly substantial advance for my next book.”

“Remembering that your first took seven years,” Beatrice murmured. “Is he offering you enough to live on for seven years?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Bea. I have some royalties. And I’ll do other things. You and the children must remain in Overton House, of course. I’m willing to transfer my title to you in trust for Edwin.”

Once he had been willing to make the sacrifice of marrying a plain young woman whom he didn’t love in order to keep his treasured home. What alchemy had this wretched governess worked on him?

But stick to reason, stick to the practicalities.

“With your style of living, my dear William, you won’t be able to exist for months, let alone years. You’ll be poverty-stricken. I really couldn’t allow that to happen. After all, we married for that very reason. Had you forgotten? We both made a pact. I believe in keeping pacts, especially legal ones. So,” she said with finality, “there will be no divorce.”

“You’re speaking from shock, Bea. When you’ve thought it over—”

“You have my answer now,” said Beatrice.

“But Mary and I love each other!”

His devastating simplicity was almost unanswerable. It was the first time she had ever heard him speak of love.

“I’m afraid that particular emotion wouldn’t survive under these circumstances, William, you really must be more practical. I mean what I say about no divorce. So to avoid a scandal I hope you won’t be doing anything so foolish as leaving the house tonight. We must make some constructive plans about this infant. When is it expected?”

“Some time in September,” Miss Medway said faintly.

So the love-making had happened at Christmas when she was ill, when her feverish fancy that the passages had rustled with nocturnal meetings had indeed been no fancy.

And how often had it happened since?

“Then we have five months,” she said briskly. “Being a small person, Miss Medway, it’s likely you won’t show your condition too much for another two months.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Bea,” William said. “But this is my child and I simply don’t intend to give it up. Neither will I desert Mary.”