Fragile Mask (16 page)

It was no good wishing now that he had stayed to do it. The
simple truth was that at the time all he had been able to think
about was escape. What sense did that make? None at all. From what
he was escaping he was at a loss to imagine. He knew that nothing
Unice or Osmond could say had moved him from his
determination.

The very next morning he had left, having chafed even at
the delay occasioned by the necessary partaking of breakfast. A
quick farewell, and he had driven away from Tunbridge Wells as if
the devil himself were after him. The only conclusion he had been
able to come to since was that he had taken leave of his
senses.

He became aware that his friends were eyeing him, in a
mixture of wonder and suspicion. The memories faded and he
frowned.

‘
What the devil are you all staring at?’

‘
You said she is not ice,’ accused Bedale, ‘and then you
went off into a dream.’

‘
I did nothing of the kind.’

‘
He said “fairy princess”,’ added Congleton. ‘And then he
said “snow maiden”.’

Lord Rowner jerked up in his seat. ‘Snow? You’re talking of
Christmas. You don’t mean that female you was chasing down at
Tunbridge Wells?’

‘
So ye do know about it,’ commented Congleton.

‘
Only what Teresa says.’

‘
Oh, the deuce!’ Were all those closest to him determined to
undo him? ‘What the devil has my sister been saying?’

‘
Says you’re obsessed,’ reported Freddy with devastating
candour, provoking instant glee in the other two.

‘
Aha, I knew it!’

‘
Caught at last, Hawk!’

‘
Says you talked of nothing else all through Christmas,’
pursued Freddy. ‘Says she thinks you’re in love with the
girl.’

‘
Chaste stars,’ Denzell exclaimed, outraged, ‘has
Teresa run mad?’ In
love?
What an utterly
stupid idea. And his sister was setting it about. ‘When I next see
Teresa—’

Dropping his foot to the floor, he leaned forward to snatch
up the bottle from the table and refill his glass yet again, his
thoughts tumbling in confusion and fury.

That was a female all over. Merely because he had mentioned
the matter once or twice, Teresa must needs take it into her head
that he was in love with the wench. Oh, he knew he had said so to
Ossie and Unice, but that was in jest. Just because Verena Chaceley
chose to thrust her image into his head time and again did not mean
that his heart was touched.

Deuce take it, even he could understand why that
happened. It was that last look of her—that spangled gown, the
honey locks: a fairy princess,
broken.
His heart
contracted, but he flung the thought away. That could not be
helped. It was done and he could not change it
now.

It was hardly worth oversetting himself. Verena
Chaceley was—
had
been, he reminded himself
wistfully—lovely to look at, and quite uninterested in Denzell
Hawkeridge. So what had he to do with Verena Chaceley? Because no
female happened to have caught his interest this Season was no
reason to imagine that his interest was already too caught up to be
available to another. The whole idea was ludicrous in the extreme,
and he would have something to say to Teresa.

Glancing around the circle of his friends, he discovered
them to be quite of Teresa’s mind.

‘
You need not look at me so,’ he snapped. ‘It’s nothing of
the sort. In love, indeed!’

‘
Well, ye can’t deny it explains a great deal,’ said Aldous
Congleton.

‘
That’s right.’ Cyril Bedale was moved to unravel his hands
from his stomach and lean across to pat his friend’s arm. ‘No need
to be ashamed of it, old fellow. Bound to happen sooner or
later.’

‘
Yes, but it has not happened,’ said Denzell in a harassed
sort of way. ‘Merely because my sister chooses to take some
romantical notion into her head—’

‘
Then how do ye explain your conduct these many weeks?’
demanded Congleton. ‘Ye’ve not set up a single flirt since the
Season began.’

‘
I’m trying to avoid the matchmakers. With the new crop of
debutantes just out, every bachelor who wants to remain so has to
be careful. Besides, it isn’t true. I’ve been courting several
chits.’

‘
Ah, but with what sort of enthusiasm, old fellow?’ put in
Cyril. ‘Abstracted, that’s what you’ve been. All noticed it.
Haven’t we?’

Congleton nodded. ‘Noticed it from the first. Except
Freddy, but he never notices anything.’

Desperation lent Denzell wit. Here was an opening. Let him,
for pity’s sake, deflect attention from this appalling nonsense. At
the same time, he decided, he would have a little of revenge on
Freddy for putting the cat among the pigeons in that boneheaded
fashion.

‘
You’re in the right of it there, Cong,’ he agreed. ‘Freddy
hasn’t even noticed that he’s about to enter parson’s mousetrap
himself.’

‘
Eh?’ said Lord Rowner, startled.

‘
Well, you are going to marry Teresa, aren’t
you?’

The other two gentlemen roared with laughter at Freddy’s
astounded face. He blushed, blurting out, ‘How the deuce did you
know that I am going to marry your sister?’

‘
Come, come, dear boy,’ Denzell said. ‘This is Teresa we are
talking about. If you must have it in words of one syllable, it is
my sister who says you are going to marry my sister.’

‘
But, dash it, I haven’t even popped the
question!’

‘
What has that to say to anything? If you don’t get a move
on, I have every expectation that Teresa will pop it to
you.’

This remark not unnaturally provoked a deal of hilarity in
their colleagues, further embarrassing the unfortunate Lord Rowner,
who would now be obliged to endure much chaffing.

‘
If I were you, dear boy,’ Denzell advised him in a voice of
mock kindness, ‘I should run away as fast as you can. I have never
met a stronger-minded female than my own sister.’

Except, he found himself reflecting privately as his
friends turned their teasing attentions upon poor Lord Rowner, for
Miss Verena Chaceley. Did it not take a strong character to
maintain that iron self-control?

A fleeting idea crossed his mind that it was this
strength that had made him depart in such haste—running away, as he
had advised Freddy to do. Only what had he to fear? Verena did not
even
like
him, let alone wish to catch him in matrimony.
Her iron will could give him no qualms.

But she was not iron beneath, came the unbidden protest
from somewhere deep within him. Oh, she was not. He would swear to
that. She was as soft as the snowflakes she had caught at that day
to build the children’s snowman.

***

Verena awoke to the sound of violent knocking. Starting up
in bed, she sat a moment, blinking in the dark, the shock
reverberating in her head as the relentless rat-tat
continued.

Abruptly the significance struck her. Nathaniel! Who else
would come battering on the door in the middle of the night? He had
come at last, just as she had known he must.

Even as the thought was forming in her mind, she had thrown
off the covers. Sweeping aside the curtains, she flung out of bed,
snatching up her flannel dressing-robe from the chair nearby with
shaking fingers. There was a candle on the bedside table, together
with a flint to light it, but she had no time to fiddle with that
now. Mama must be stopped from going down.

Groping her way to the door, she dragged it open and became
aware of voices in the hall below. Mrs Quirk had already opened the
front door.

Verena flew for the staircase to the upper floor, almost
bumping into Betsey’s bulk as the maid arrived at an uneven stumble
at the bottom of the flight, armed with the oil lamp that always
remained burning low against Mrs Peverill’s difficult nights.
Verena saw her own confused anxiety matched in the maid’s
illuminated features.

‘
It must be him,’ Verena uttered in a harsh whisper,
grasping at the woman’s arm. ‘Go down, Betsey. At all costs, you
must prevent him from coming up.’

‘
Who, Miss Verena?’ The maid’s tone was a trifle bleary
still with sleep, but matching her urgency. ‘Who is it?’

‘
Who? Who but Nathaniel!’

Betsey’s large hands gripped the oil lamp tighter. ‘Not the
master!’

‘
It must be. Go down, Betsey, for the love of
heaven!’

The maid needed no further urging. With a terse, ‘He’ll not
get by me!’ she was gone, lumbering off down the passage and
clumping noisily down the stairs towards the voices
below.

With automatic haste, Verena began ascending the second
flight towards Mrs Peverill’s room. Then she halted. What if Betsey
failed? And if Mama had managed to sleep through the knocking, why
should she wake her—to this?

If there was a tiny thought at the back of her
mind that Mama might insist on speaking to Nathaniel, despite her
daughter’s efforts to prevent it, she did not long allow it to
worry her. Her determination was fixed. Nathaniel would
not
take Mama back!

A piercing whisper penetrated her thoughts: ‘Miss Verena!
It’s all right, Miss Verena!’

All right? How could it be all right? Peering down, she saw
the glow of the lamp moving up towards her.

‘
Betsey?’ she called.

‘
Yes, it’s I, Miss Verena,’ came the answer. ‘Don’t fret
now.’

Bemused, Verena crept back down the stairs and met Betsey
in the passage outside her own room. There was an intensity of
relief in the maid’s voice and face, eerily lit by the shadowy
spill of light from her lamp.

‘
It ain’t him, Miss Verena, thank the Lord!’

Verena blinked dazedly. ‘Not Nathaniel?’

Betsey shook her head. ‘It’s that there Mr Ruishton, and
he’s asking for you.’

‘
Mr Ruishton? At this time of night!’ Then it struck her.
‘Dear heaven, it must be Unice! What has happened?’

Even as she spoke, urgent now with a growing dread—a
different dread, but none the less painful—she was moving towards
the head of the stairs, Betsey close behind her, holding high her
lamp to light the way.

All thought of Nathaniel, of the principal worry
of her life, left Verena in seconds. She had become so familiar
with Unice these last few months, so
fond
of her, that the
thought that something might have gone amiss concerned her deeply.
The baby was not due for another two weeks or more. What could have
happened?

‘
Mr Ruishton!’ she called, seeing in the flickering light
cast by Mrs Quirk’s own candle below the outline of Osmond’s figure
waiting in the hall. ‘What has occurred?’

He broke into speech before she could reach the bottom of
the stairs.

‘
Miss Chaceley, I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour,
but I did not know what else to do.’

As she moved forward, Betsey at her back, Verena saw at
once, in the brighter glow, the distress of mind mirrored in
Osmond’s features, pale with worry and fatigue.

‘
Oh, what is it?’ she cried, grasping at his lapels. ‘Is she
ill? Oh, heavens, tell me at once!’

‘
No, no, she is not ill,’ he said, ‘Only she is before her
time, and we are all at sixes and sevens, not having
expected—’

‘
Do you mean that the baby is coming?’

‘
At any moment! She thought it had been indigestion last
evening after dinner, but—oh, Lord, Miss Chaceley! My mother-in-law
always comes to us, but she had not planned to be here for another
week.’

Verena’s head was reeling as these words tumbled out. But
their message was clear enough. ‘You would wish me to come to
her?’

‘
I should not ask it of you, I know, but there is only her
maid and the midwife—’

‘
Of course I shall come, Mr Ruishton,’ Verena said at once.
‘I have no experience in these matters, but—’

‘
She will be comforted merely by your presence,
Miss Chaceley, I know.
Pray
come. She is
having a difficult time of it and I am...’ His voice failed, and he
was obliged to draw a painful breath. ‘Miss Chaceley, I
cannot
lose her!’

Verena gripped his hands, for she could not speak. There
was no thought at such a time for the company mask she still
maintained towards him, although for Unice there had been some
slight relaxation. It did not seem, however, as if he noted its
lack.

Another voice chimed in, dissipating the sudden tension in
the air.

‘
That will be enough of that, young sir,’ said Betsey with
all the authority of her years in service to a mistress who, like a
child, needed more of a nurse than a maid. ‘You won’t lose her, not
if I can help it.’