Fragile Mask (4 page)

‘
That he will not. I am of age, don’t forget. He
will find he has more than he bargained for if he tries his tricks
on you again, for he will have to reckon with
me
now.’

‘
Bravo, Miss Verena,’ Betsey said, placing a bulky woollen
shawl about Verena’s shoulders. She stooped to thrust the young
lady’s feet into a pair of olive-coloured slippers with low heels
and silver clasps, addressing her mistress the while. ‘Never you
fret, ma’am. Miss Verena will see him off if he does come. And I’m
here to lend a hand, if need be. He ain’t never going to take you
back.’

She rose, nodding with satisfaction. ‘There, that’s done.
Now I’m going down to see if that there Quirk has got your
breakfast ready.’

‘
Thank you, Betsey,’ Verena said. ‘I do not know what either
of us should do without you.’

The maid grunted as she left the room, but Verena knew she
was pleased. It was only the truth. They would have been lost, and
exposed, without Betsey’s care.

Mrs Peverill’s plaintive tone drew her
attention.

‘
Verena, dearest.’

She looked round to discover a worried frown in her
mother’s face. ‘What is it, Mama?’

‘
Verena…if—if he should come—’

‘
I hope he won’t. He does not know where we are.’

‘
But if he should,’ insisted Mrs Peverill.

Verena eyed her doubtfully. What now? She was not going to
make another futile attempt to extract a promise that her daughter
would not interfere, she hoped. She had spent years not
interfering, and had suffered in consequence agonies of guilt and
remorse. Now that she had done so to some purpose, nothing would
persuade her to alter her determination.

Mrs Peverill seized one of her hands and grasped it in a
surprisingly strong grip. ‘Dearest, my only fear is that you may
provoke him beyond bearing. You have such strength, Verena. Much
more than I ever had.’

‘
I may well provoke him,’ Verena answered. ‘It does not take
much, as you well know. But what of that? There is nothing he can
do, Mama. Not now.’

Her mother appeared unconvinced. ‘Still, I could wish that
you would leave me to deal with him.’

‘
That I shall not, Mama,’ uttered Verena, indignant. ‘How
could you ask it of me?’

‘
I ask it because—’ She broke off, sighing deeply.
‘Oh, Verena, I wish I knew how to explain. You think you know
Nathaniel, my darling, but you
don’t.’

There was a serious look in her face that gave Verena
pause. Yet what was there more to know? She thought she had been a
party to all Mama’s troubles, all that secret life that must be
hidden from other eyes—for pride’s sake, if nothing else. The
thought of it hardened her.

‘
I know him as well as I wish to, Mama, believe
me.’

Mrs Peverill’s lip trembled, but her grip on Verena’s
fingers did not relax. Rather it tightened. ‘Yes, you may speak in
that stony way, Verena, and I cannot blame you for that with what
you have witnessed. But—but you don’t understand.’

‘
What more is there to understand, beyond the evidence of my
own eyes and ears?’

‘
There is more,’ pursued her mother. ‘You have
compassion for me, Verena, but you should feel it for Nathaniel
also. You see, he cannot help himself. If you had ever cared for a
man, you must have understood it. You will do so, when it happens
to you. Nathaniel
loves
me.’

Verena stared at her in sheer disbelief.
Compassion? He could not help himself? Then heaven help him, for
she would see him dead before he dragged Mama back. And if
that
was ‘love’, then Verena would cut out her heart before she
gave it to any man.

Chapter Two

The Lower Rooms, whither Denzell Hawkeridge, on the very
next evening, dragged his hosts in search of the lovely Verena
Chaceley, were situated at the back of the Sussex Inn. They were
relatively thin of company at this time of year, opening for
assemblies twice a week only for the benefit of the increasing
number of residents settling in Tunbridge Wells.

The cold this Friday night had driven everyone to seek
refuge in the smaller of the two plain, unadorned rooms where a
good fire blazed, creating an illusion of a greater gathering than
was actually present. But the weather did not prevent the
inhabitants from appearing in the silks and muslins of full dress,
as Unice had warned Denzell.

He was himself attired in town gear of a suit of
claret-coloured cloth and a black Florentine waistcoat, with
stockings striped in black and white, his cravat knotted in an
intricate bow. Not, he told himself, that he had taken extra
special care with his appearance this evening.

Since the Ruishtons were among the very few of a younger
element that the town could boast, and had been missed during their
absence in London for some part of the autumn Season, they received
an enthusiastic welcome, which was extended equally to the charming
young man who accompanied them.

‘
Ah yes, Hawkeridge, is it not?’ mused Sir John Frinton, the
elegant old roué who led the Wellsian gentry. ‘I fancy I knew your
father.’

‘
Indeed?’ responded Denzell, smiling. ‘I will not say that I
have often heard him speak of you, Sir John, for I am sure you will
refuse to believe me.’

The old gentleman laughed. ‘I should. It is far more likely
that you will have heard your mother speak of me.’ He twinkled at
Denzell’s surprised look. ‘You need not look at me so, my young
friend. I have been, in my day, quite as much a devil of a fellow
as are you—with the ladies.’

Denzell grinned. ‘I don’t doubt it, sir. But unless my
friend Osmond has been giving me away, I cannot see
how—’

‘
My dear boy,’ interrupted the elder man, ‘you must not
think that we are all of us unacquainted with your exploits, merely
because we no longer have the energy to show our faces in Town. We
contrive to keep up with the world, you know, despite being quite
out of it.’

‘
Oh, indeed?’ Denzell muttered, faintly grim. The
scandalmongers had been at it again, had they? He should be used to
the tattling tongues of the old tabbies by now, but it could not
but gall him to find himself a subject for speculation even in this
out-of-the-way place. ‘And who is your particular informant, sir,
or shouldn’t I ask?’

In fact, there was no need to ask, for at that moment he
saw a rather sturdy dame, alarmingly garbed in lilac and yellow
with a heavily feathered turban, moving in on Unice, her interested
glance flicking in his direction. Sir John’s wry smile was all the
intimation needed that this was the local gossip whom Unice had
mentioned at breakfast.

The inflection of distaste in his voice had been noted. Sir
John’s smile grew.

‘
There is a price to be paid, my young friend, if you pursue
the path you are treading, as I know.’

Denzell eyed him. Yes, he had heard of this man, now he
came to think of it. There was that about him that stirred a vague
memory. The air of elegance exuded by the grey silk suit of ditto;
with its fine embroidered waistcoat; the white toupée, the powder
and paint, now so outmoded as to be ridiculous; and the wry,
twinkling humour.

But Sir John Frinton had ever been a rake, according to
Lady Hawkeridge, which Denzell himself was not.

His own flirtations were harmless enough. He frowned at the
man.

‘
Even when it is merely a pleasant game?’

Sir John nodded, the
teasing gleam in his eye pronounced.

‘
Even then. To those with an ear for tittle-tattle, motive
has no meaning. But you may easily stop it, you know.’

‘
May I, sir? How?’

‘
Take a wife, my dear boy, take a wife.’

Denzell burst out laughing. ‘Sage advice, sir, and of
course I must do so in time. But I shall indulge myself a little
more yet, despite such wagging tongues as your—what the devil is
the woman’s name?’

‘
Mrs Felpham. And I’ll wager there is not one item about you
that is in the public domain of which she has not already made
herself mistress.’

‘
I would not take you, Sir John,’ Denzell responded,
grinning. ‘There cannot be the least doubt of it. Oh, deuce take
it,’ he added in an under-voice, ‘now I am for it.’

He had just caught sight of Unice heading his way, with the
wretched gossip in tow. Her quiet, dead-leaf muslin gown, despite
the disadvantage of her shorter stature, looked remarkably well
against the overpowering Mrs Felpham.

Denzell turned instinctively for help to his companion.
‘Sir John—’

But the old man, with an adroitness that Denzell envied,
had melted away. With an inward sigh, he braced himself to counter
a series of impertinent questions that he could see forming behind
the eager eyes drinking him in from within a raddled countenance,
yellow with age and the ruthless application of
cosmetics.

As he fielded the probing of Mrs Felpham with practised
charm, he found himself wondering at Unice and Osmond’s having
decided to settle here.

To be sure, it was close to Unice’s parental home in a more
easterly part of Kent, and Osmond having no estates of his own—his
small fortune deriving from the will of a favoured uncle—it had
been prudent of him to purchase an affordable house and invest the
remainder of his capital to provide a reasonable income. But to
seek a home amongst this elderly and valetudinarian company was not
what he himself would have chosen.

‘
Regretting your visit already, are you?’ murmured Osmond’s
teasing tones in his ear, the instant Unice had borne Mrs Felpham
away.

Denzell turned to his friend, resplendent in a suit of
purple cloth, and spoke his mind in a disgusted
under-voice.

‘
Deuce take it, Ossie, how can you bear it? That female for
one. Not to mention an old bore of a playwright—Richard Cumberland,
is it?—and your ancient nabob Martin Yorke, to name but two trials
I have already undergone. It is small wonder that you come posting
up to town at every opportunity.’

Osmond grinned. ‘I suppose your opinion has nothing to do
with the fact that you find Verena Chaceley to be absent from the
company?’

A reluctant laugh was drawn from Denzell. ‘On the
contrary,’ he admitted, ‘it has everything to do with it. Were my
beautiful maiden of the snow here, I am sure I should be in
raptures over the entire population. But in truth, I cannot blame
her for absenting herself.’

‘
No doubt if she had known you were to appear, she would not
have done so,’ said Osmond ironically. ‘Don’t know what you’re
complaining about, however. Everyone is in such a flutter over you,
I should think even your appetite for attention must be
satisfied.’

Denzell grinned. ‘Indeed, dear boy, I am quite set up in my
own conceit. According to Sir John Frinton, my fame goes before me
in these parts.’

‘
Ha! Nothing special about you, Hawk. Anyone new is welcome
here, if they had a hunchback and a crippled leg.’

‘
I thank you. Now that you have thoroughly deflated my
pretensions, let us, for pity’s sake, extract Unice from that
busybody of a female and leave this place forthwith. The light of
my life is clearly not coming here tonight, and I have no mind to
spend the rest of the evening in this insipid fashion for
nothing.’

How he managed it even Unice was unable to tell, but in a
very short space of time Denzell had whisked them away from the
company with only a word here and a word there, and nobody in the
least put out. Apart, that was, from Osmond.

‘
It is too bad,’ he complained as, wrapped in greatcoats
against the winter night, they walked home beside the chair that
carried Unice. ‘First you tell me you have come here on a repairing
lease. Then, merely because you catch sight of a pretty
face—’

‘
Not merely pretty, dear boy, a face of stunning
beauty.’

‘—
you insist on hauling us out in the cold from our
comfortable home just so that you may parade about in the vain hope
of attracting her interest—’

‘
We shall see about vain!’

‘—
and as if this was not enough, when you don’t find her, you
dash out of the place as if all the devils of hell were after
you.’

‘
They are,’ retorted Denzell, as if his friend’s ridiculous
exaggeration had some truth in it, ‘and will be until I meet Verena
Chaceley. I will not give up. I have conceived the most cunning
plan.’

Osmond scoffed when he learned that Denzell meant to enlist
the aid of his godson Felix.

The very next morning found Denzell Hawkeridge up and about
at a most unseasonable hour for a Saturday, and, having consumed a
hearty breakfast, ascending the stairs to the nursery.

Young Felix was only too delighted to oblige his godfather,
and set off happily through the back garden with Nurse Dinah and
Miles in tow, to show him the famous snowman. Sadly, there having
been no further fall, it was somewhat the worse for wear. The
flakes that had lain most of Thursday and Friday had now turned to
ice underfoot, and the thaw showed patchy areas of rough ground
through the white film.