Fair Fight (15 page)

Back into the lamp-lit hall I went, my heart fluttering. I slipped to the yard door, usually the province of servants, the way lined with boots. Boots waiting to be polished, with mud still upon them, boots made ready and shining. Boots I thought were Papa’s, waiting for feet that would never more fill them.

I opened the door and went out, into the wet of the night.

I could not think of the last time I had been outdoors in darkness, perhaps not for years, returning from church at Christmas. The yard was vast and strange, and I was afraid to step quickly, the cobbles slipped so beneath my shoes.

A light came from the stables, the swinging here-and-gone of a lantern. The drizzle speckled my face, damped my sleeve where it emerged from my cloak.

Before I could reach the stable the door swung wide and the yard was suddenly filled with figures; the one holding a lantern was a servant, and the face he illuminated as he held the light aloft was my brother’s. Then came the groom, holding a horse’s bridle. I knew it was Locket, even before the light showed her eyes rolled to the white and the foam at her lip.

‘Oh,’ I cried out. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘Go you inside, Charlotte,’ my brother replied.

I moved toward him, perhaps to rush at him, but my feet slipped like an ice-skater’s, and I stilled myself.

‘What have you done?’ I cried again.

‘Don’t be a fool; it was I who found her. It is colic, she must be walked. Go inside. I won’t tell you again.’

‘Don’t you be afeared, Miss Sinclair,’ the groom said. His voice was tense with the effort of holding Locket’s tossing head. He pulled her onward, and slowly she began to walk. Behind them I saw another dark form at the stable door. I was sure that it was Mr Bowden.

‘Please,’ I said to him, ‘save her.’

It was Perry who answered, ‘Go you inside, or you will need saving on your own account.’

My maid had appeared at the kitchen door and was calling to me. I let her lead me back inside, for I could not think what else to do. I stood in my bedroom while she pulled me about, my arms from their sleeves, my hair from its pins, all the time feeling I might grow wild, slap at her and run from the room. At last, as soon as I was out of my gown, I sent her to fetch brandy, for the shock. I could not bear to think of Locket, if I might not be allowed to help her. I dosed myself so well, indeed, that I did not wake when they shot her.

I could do nothing to ease that pain but continue to take brandy. It was days before I came out of my chamber. I had never even sat upon her back. Though I had known her only four days, I felt the grief as though I had been her mistress my life long.

Mr Bowden took my hand and whispered, ‘I will find you another horse as sweet,’ but he did not.

After this he did not come down to take breakfast with me any longer. I returned to sitting alone. The weight of the liquor and my pox-marked skin kept me sitting in place, and let fate take me where it would.

I had often felt great annoyance toward Perry but never as pure a hatred as I felt then. It was so powerful that I could not hold it still.

Who knows that I might not have kept there, frozen by the balance of hatred and sorrow, if Perry had not tipped me out of the scale one afternoon?

I was walking down to dine and met my brother in the hall. I had not expected that the gentlemen would dine with me. Perry had about him an air that suggested that he had been waiting for me. He stood at the bottom step, so that I had no choice but to pass close to him, and waited until I had completely descended the stairs before he spoke.

‘I am master of this house,’ was what he said, ‘and you will obey me.’

I did not stop, nor reply. What reply was there to such a statement? Perry put a strong hand on my arm to stop me.

‘You think me more monstrous than I am, Charlotte, but know you this: I will have the mastery of you. If your horse had not died, I would have sold her. You are willing to see me left heartbroken; I will see you left with nothing, I swear it before God. Leave George be, or we shall all be miserable. I will never allow you to be otherwise.’

I had never thought of escape in any real sense. I had never executed any kind of plot beyond the shaking of pollen onto Perry’s pillow. I must, however, do something. I could not live with him any longer; I could not bear to go to my aunt.

I did not know how to plan such a thing. All I could think was,
I shall have to try to seduce Mr Bowden
. Mr Bowden, I thought, seemed still the only chance I had. Perry left me no other course – he had driven me into a corner.

We dined in an atmosphere of the greatest tension. Mr Bowden seemed always to be avoiding my eye; I was trying, for the first time, to catch his gaze.

When I spoke to him, to say something silly, such as, ‘How do you like the soup, Mr Bowden?’

He replied, ‘Very fine, I’m sure,’ without ever lifting his eyes from his spoon. The only gaze I attracted was Perry’s malignant one.

Perry watched us both – I would turn my head from trying to engage Mr Bowden’s attention just in time to see my brother’s eyes slide away from me. Mr Bowden’s bent head looked just as my own must often have appeared, studiously avoiding the company, while still sitting in it.

After dinner the gentlemen did not come to join me in the drawing room. I stood at the window and watched them ride away into the evening. The hoof beats faded. Oh, how I wished I could just call for a horse and go. There was nowhere at all that a lady in my position might ride off to. She would need someone to take her in; she would need money of her own.

I did not call for my maidservant to put me to bed. I could not sleep, I knew without trying. Instead I went to Mama’s room, where I had not been in weeks. I felt a dull shock upon seeing that Perry had ordered the furniture to be covered in dust-sheets. I felt as though she had been buried for a second time. It made me only the more determined.

I stole into Perry’s library and poured half a bottle of brandy into my water-glass. I needed to be bold, that night. I was still determined that Mr Bowden must be persuaded to love me again. I went swiftly back to my chamber, carrying the water-glass concealed inside my wrap, in case I should come upon a servant.

At long last, when full dark was come and the water-glass almost empty, I heard the gentlemen return. I could tell from the clumsy thud of their boots and the boisterous sound of their voices that they were pretty well soused.

‘Off you go, dear fellow!’ I heard Perry call.

Surely he meant Mr Bowden. He would never address a servant in such terms, even while drunk. It was an odd goodnight to make, but my brother was not a conventional man and sure enough, the footsteps thudded off in two directions – Perry’s heavy tread toward the library and Mr Bowden’s softer footstep upon the stairs.

I hesitated only a moment, and then pulled the pins from my hair, letting it tumble down about my shoulders. It could still be called handsome; let me use it, this once. I threw a shawl about my shoulders, then took it off, then picked it up and put it about me again. My dressing glass showed me, not the pale wraith I had imagined myself to be, but a wild-eyed young lady with burning cheeks and a mass of dishevelled fair hair that needed a brush taken to it. No matter, no matter, I could not wait. I hurried out onto the landing. I paused and listened for Mr Bowden’s steps, like a fawn with ears pricked. There! I wheeled about. He was indeed going toward his own room.

I hurried down the landing. The halls had never seemed so long. Down the little stair I went to the half-landing, up the other, to the gentlemen’s corridor. No sooner had I ascended the top step than Mr Bowden was in front of me, coming from the other direction with one half of his collar sticking up and a tattered book clutched to his chest. He looked as shocked to see me as if I had indeed been a wraith. We looked at each other for a long moment. I had not planned what I would say to him, when once I found him.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

I walked toward him, but he did not reach for me. I came very close. He did not reach out, but neither did he step back. He stood very still, as though I were a wild animal he did not want to frighten away.

‘I came to find you,’ I said. I did not feel bashful in the slightest; I felt bold.

‘I am flattered that you thought of me,’ he said quietly.

He put a hand to his hair to smooth it, but it seemed to stick to his palm and he only succeeded in leaving it ruffled.

‘I always think of you,’ I said. ‘I am not sure that you think of me any longer. Won’t you show me that you do?’

He shook his head, not in the negative, but rather as if in wonder that I should say such a thing.

I stood on tiptoe and leant toward him – he had no choice then but to put out his hand to steady me, and having put his hand upon my waist it was a very little matter to lean further forward still, until our lips met. He returned my kiss, the edge of the book jabbing my ribs.
I am shameless
, I thought,
I am loose
. The thought was an exciting one and I kissed him more ardently for it.

Mr Bowden pushed me from him gently and held me by the shoulder, at arm’s length, to look at me.

‘I wish you would take me away from here.’ I tried to make my eyes soft, but one lid kept twitching. My heart was beating in my throat. I wished to get away so very badly. ‘Please George,’ I could not help it. ‘We must get away.’

I was not alluring, I was panicking. He dropped his hand so quickly I might have been a hot coal.

‘I’m far too busy,’ he said, ‘far too busy just now.’

‘Too busy for what?’ boomed Perry’s voice, behind me.

I jerked with the shock of it, like a wooden tumbling man strung on sticks.

I was humiliated, and yet I thought I might still catch him. His kiss had been passionate enough that I thought he must desire me. I sat at the looking-glass. Was mine truly a face Mr Bowden could love? I examined every inch of it, the pits and bumps of my skin. When I grew weary of that, I practised agreeing to marry Mr Bowden. I thought,
If ever I am given the chance, it will be best done simply
.
Clasped hands, modest posture, a whispered assent.

As unexpected as it was, I very soon had that chance. Of course, it was not Mr Bowden but Granville who was to be the recipient of all that rehearsal. And it is not to be expected that he appreciated it overmuch.

9

G
ranville, or Mr Dryer, as I then called him, was a schoolfriend of Mr Bowden’s. He came to dinner perhaps once a week and said little. He was tall, and though young, was very proper. His hair he kept powdered and curled above the ears, and he wore a very plain coat. He sometimes drove an old gig pulled by one horse.

When we found ourselves seated near one another he would talk to me, with grave courtesy, of the beauty of the garden, or the cooling weather. I answered him as best I could, being always awkward in the company of gentlemen, even such staid, stiff-mannered young gentlemen as Mr Dryer. He might have been a little flat but he was never rude. When Mr Bowden had teased me to sing (only, I knew, to hear me protest and make me blush), Mr Dryer said gravely that he should prefer that I sit and be easy amongst them. When he said this I did not know whether to be relieved or insulted.

Mr Bowden said immediately, ‘Oh yes, do sit and be easy by me,’ patting the seat next to his on the sofa.

I could only shake my head and laugh, and note how black was Perry’s look. All thoughts of Mr Dryer were driven from my mind.

Mr Dryer never occasioned ill feeling in me – but he kindled no curiosity, either. If he was anything to me then, it was an inconvenience; his presence meant that Mr Bowden would be less inclined to tease me into intimate conversation and I could not indulge myself in my little pleasure of antagonising my brother. A visit from Mr Dryer signified an evening devoted to talk of business and boxing, and very little else. I paid him only as much attention as I need, for politeness’ sake. I did not consider him handsome, because I did not consider him.

One evening we were all four of us at dinner: Perry, Mr Bowden, Mr Dryer and I. The gentlemen talked of a mill they had bought, or perhaps were selling. It was very dull.

Once Mr Bowden poked at the quail upon his plate as though he were examining it. He had once told me that he did not think much of shooting quail for sport. They were too slow to be much fun, he said, and called them ‘an inferior chicken’.

Now I said, ‘How does your quail compare to chicken, Mr Bowden?’

‘Oh, very poorly,’ he replied, with a serious face.

‘What are you saying? The flavour is far superior,’ Perry said. ‘Now, can we cease this incessant talk of buying mills? I wish to hear of the other kind of mill. Granville, how does your boxing miss fare?’

Mr Dryer spoke to me kindly enough, about exotic birds. I replied as best I could, though conversation has never been a talent of mine. Perry was singularly unpleasant but I would not rise to it in company. Instead I bowed my head as though his tired old insults had stung me, and he only made himself look brutish.

I withdrew alone, as I must being the only lady, and waited for the gentlemen to join me in the drawing room. I ordered a decanter of ratafia and took up my embroidery but the time passed very dull. I sat as near to the fire as I could get in that large and lonely room and hoped that the business of the mill would be finished with, along with the brandy.

At length, when I had begun to grow sleepy and think of my bed, the door opened and Mr Bowden came in, quite alone. This was entirely unexpected. All ideas of sleep flew away and I could not help but think,
Heavens, I believe he may declare himself. He has begged leave of the gentlemen to come in here –
but he stood just inside the door. He would not meet my eye.

‘Your brother asks that you go to him in his library,’ he said. He nudged at the carpet’s fringe with one high-polished riding boot.

My heart slowed mid-leap.

He would not look up, even as I walked past him to the door. He only moved back so that I should not pass too near and turned his face to the window, though it was dark outside. Even his reflection in the window glass seemed to be avoiding my eye. My face reflected beside his was a pale and patchy moon.

I hesitated in the doorway. From where I stood I could smell the perfume on his coat. If he would only have turned to look at me, I believe perhaps I would have spoken – but he did not. I walked up the stairs to Perry’s library with fear pulling upon me as though I had swallowed lead-shot.

Mr Dryer came out of the library just as I reached the door. He bowed to me without a word. I peeped up at him and saw that he, too, seemed to avoid my eye.

I knocked and was bid enter. I felt very strange. My fear receded, all my sensations as changed and muffled as Mama’s room, where familiar things were buried under dust-sheets.

My brother was standing at the mantel, winding the clock, as our papa used to do. I had never before seen him so exactly in Papa’s place and I did not like it. He turned and walked to the desk, waving his hand at the chair opposite his. I sat gingerly, as though I might fall.

Perry sat opposite me, in Papa’s polished mahogany chair.

‘Charlotte,’ he said, ‘you cannot stay here any longer. I have warned you that I will not keep you. You must be married, and as quickly as can be arranged.’

This was so unexpected that I did not have a response. I stared at him, my mind quite empty.

‘Mr Dryer is an excellent man,’ he said. ‘He will make a good husband for you. I only hope you will learn to be a good wife to him. Go now and let him make his offer.’

I could neither move nor speak. I only looked at Perry. His face was as serious as I had ever seen it.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Why do you stare so? What is wrong with you?’

‘Mr Dryer? I have scarce ever spoken to him. I have never thought of it.’

‘Mr Dryer has thought of you, and that is all that matters. He is just the man you need, Charlotte. He will keep you sensible.’

‘And if I have other thoughts? What then?’

One of my hands found the lump upon the other that I never had been able to claw free and began to squeeze at it through the cloth of my glove.

‘If they are thoughts of Mr Bowden then you must know that they are impossible,’ Perry said.

I felt my eyes narrow.

‘Give up the notion, Charlotte. He was never in any seriousness. You cannot really have imagined that he might love you. He has agreed, nay, offered, to step back for Mr Dryer. You must forget it entirely. You are to go to Granville.’

‘And if I will not?’

‘Then you will go somewhere less pleasant. Why would I keep you here? If you had never begun this game I would have provided for you for the rest of your life.’

‘It is not a life anyone would wish for, to be always alone.’
If it was a game, then Bowden played as eagerly as I did
,
I thought, but did not say.

‘Then let you take comfort in Mr Dryer’s company. I told you that you would hurt me if you persisted, and that knowledge did not give you a moment’s pause. Do you expect me to care for your feelings, when you have not cared for mine?’ Perry looked at me as though he pitied me. It was unbearable.

‘Your feelings are unnatural,’ I said.

‘What does it matter, when George shares them? You will never know love such as I have. You could not possibly understand.’

My instinct was to leap at him like a cat, but instead I found myself weeping. I did not consider whether or not I might accept Mr Dryer, if the choice were really mine. I did not weep for the loss of Mr Bowden, but for the absolute impotence of my position. I was defeated and I did not know how to fight him.

My tears were entirely out of character and made Perry furious. He commanded me to go down and accept Mr Dryer. He told me that I should be grateful to find a man who would have me, ugly as I was. He reminded me that Mr Bowden had given me up without complaint and that I would not find him weeping over the loss of my poxed countenance. This made me cry the harder. Eventually he called a maid to help me to my room, and wresting myself from her touch, I ran upstairs. I crawled into bed in my evening gown and indulged myself in a fit of despair almost as violent as I had when Mama passed on.

I closed the curtains around my bed, forming a box of cloth in which to cry myself into sickness. I only consented to be undressed because it was painful to lie for so long in stays. Not a soul on earth cared for me at all. I told my maid of this whenever her timid face peeped around the curtain.
Better I had died than to live so
, I whispered,
better I had followed Mama.
When she begged me not to hurt myself and pulled my hand from my skin, I slapped her with the one she left free. It was not a hard slap; I was lying down and weak besides, but was enough to stop her trying that trick again. I lay there, breathing my own stale air and refusing to eat anything but milk-porridge, for three long and wearisome days.

I rose on the fourth day, through boredom as much as anything else. I was as unhappy as I had ever been but it was wasted pain. No one but my maid had been near to my chamber in all that time. I had asked her each morning whether Mr Bowden had visited, or sent word; he had not. Though I would not see him, Mr Dryer had called twice, with a strengthening draught, a basket of chestnuts and his hopes that I would recover swiftly. My brother sent several messages to say that if I would stop my ‘fit of nerves’ I could join him for wine, or to play at cards. I would not, of course. I could not have borne to be near him.

I came to an acceptance then. I would give Perry his victory in exchange for my escape. Mr Dryer’s rule of me could not be worse than my brother’s. My standing in society, even as the wife of a merchant tradesman, would be higher than that of a spinster sister.

My maid I had bring paint and powder, though Mama would have disapproved. I spent many hours learning its application and its shortcomings; nothing could hide my scars entirely, short of a veil. I had been a fool to think that Mr Bowden would look at a poxed maid and see a wife. He had been playing at flirtation, just as I had. I was indeed lucky that Mr Dryer would condescend to take me.

I did not see George Bowden again until after my wedding and then, of course, everything was different.

Thus it was that I became Mrs Dryer. Granville had not a title, nor an estate like Aubyn, but he was a man on the rise, or so everyone said, and I might expect to grow richer every year. Besides this I was mistress of my own home at eighteen, and my brother had no dominion over me any longer. Many ladies were not so fortunate.

I insisted that the wedding be small.

‘I should not like a fuss,’ I said.

‘Certainly we shall not have a fuss,’ Mr Dryer agreed, and his hand reached out, hesitated, and then patted my own, gloved hand.

I had been afraid that Perry would insist that I invite my aunt and cousins but he did not so much as mention it. Although he consented to play the part of witness, he did it with such ill humour one would never have imagined that he had ordered me to accept Mr Dryer’s hand.

We were married at the church in Corston, Mr Dryer’s village – our village, I must now call it. Only Mr Dryer, Perry, Mr Dryer’s housekeeper and I were present. Mr Dryer’s parents had both passed on and I did not wish anyone else there. I would not have had Perry present if I could have arranged it.

I wore Mama’s pale grey silk and carried a nosegay of white peonies, tied around with a strip of blue muslin. I watched the flowers bob with the movement of the carriage and tried not to notice that the villagers came to their gates to see us pass by and whisper what a shame it was that we were wedding so quietly.

I felt so nervous as to be sick and Mr Dryer did not look much better. He kept glancing at me with an anxious look upon his face; I believe he was afraid I would change my mind, or perhaps he was changing his own. In any case, neither of us spoke up to call it off and the ceremony was as quick and as quiet as our journey to the church. The housekeeper, whose name was Mrs Bell, wept silently for the majority of the service. She was a big woman, but built on a grand scale rather than plump. She looked hard to the touch; raw-pink skin stretched tight over thick arms and a stubborn jaw. She had dressed herself in a plain black dress, more suited to a funeral than a wedding. No doubt she had no other respectable gown. She had been Mr Dryer’s nurse as a boy and he claimed to be fond of her, though he barely spoke to her at the ceremony. She held a lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes and her solid shoulders shook; I could not tell if she cried from joy or grief. We were the least merry wedding party that ever there was.

‘Now we can find ourselves a drink,’ Perry said, the moment the ceremony was behind us.

‘Yes! Let us do that. Perry, will you come back with us to The Ridings, or must we sit in some low tavern?’ Mr Dryer – Granville, as I must now call him – clapped his hands. He looked, if not happy, then at least relieved.

‘I can wait out the journey,’ my brother said.

We were then getting into the carriage. Perry climbed in first, though I was the bride. Granville handed me inside and then climbed in himself. Mrs Bell made to come inside with us but before she laid a hand on the door, Perry had leant forward and swung it closed. I did not know if he noticed her there or not. Her face was so startled as to be comic but then she turned her head and our eyes met. She did not look like the kind of woman it would be wise to laugh at.

‘Mrs Bell is still outside,’ I said. I hoped she could hear me but the glass was up.

‘This is a wedding carriage,’ Perry said, ‘surely the servants ride in front.’

Granville said nothing, only jiggled his foot where his legs crossed. Mrs Bell had the same idea as my brother and disappeared around the front of the carriage.

Granville had returned to glancing at me. I did not know where to look.
He is my husband
, I kept thinking.
My husband
. The thought did not feel like a real one. I watched his gloved hands where they rested on his cane. The fingers were very short for such a tall man. When he had taken his glove off to join hands with me during the wedding I had noticed that his hands had hair upon the backs of them.
I wonder how much hair is on the rest of him
, I thought, and my stomach lurched with the queerness of it.