His One Woman (18 page)

‘In fairness, I suppose that he's in Washington on business,' said Aunt Percival. ‘The trouble is that you will be moving in the same circles and you are sure to meet; there's no help for it.'

‘Well, I shall not speak to him, that's for sure,' returned Marietta robustly. ‘I have nothing to say to him, and he chose, two years ago, to say nothing to me.'

Her words were braver than her thoughts, and she was not telling the truth. She had the most shameful wish to see him again, to throw herself at him, to tell him that he was the father of her child, the child whom she had borne in deserted loneliness, and to whom Avory had given his name when many men would have disowned him and refused to marry her.

If she could not forgive Jack, she could also not forget him.

‘The Van Deusens' afternoon gala is to be followed by a reception, to which your cousin Julie and her husband are escorting you. He's almost sure to be there—and Sophie, too. I suppose that she'll be setting her cap at him again.'

Why did it hurt so much to hear Aunt Percival say that? Jack Dilhorne was nothing to her. He could marry a thousand Sophies for all she cared. He deserved her—they would make a fine double-dealing pair.

‘Yes,' said Marietta faintly. ‘I suppose that's a real possibility. Avory told me, before he left for the war, that there was not a man in Washington who would have her for a wife. Aunt Hope muttered something about Carver Massingham, who will be her escort tonight.'

‘Carver Massingham!' exclaimed Aunt Percival scornfully. ‘She must be in a bad way to be going around with
him
. He's nothing but a middle-aged, low-life profiteer. God knows, he's rich enough, but what a come-down after some of her beaux.'

‘All of whom have now married other women,' sighed Marietta. ‘Who would have thought it?'

‘And her looks are not what they were,' said Aunt Percival cattily. There was no answer to that from Marietta because she had thought the same thing earlier that afternoon. Sophie's unpleasant soul was beginning to show on her face, and her passion for cream cakes and food was destroying her once dainty figure.

‘Well, I'm not crying off myself because Jack might be there,' Marietta said briskly. ‘And if I am to go, I shall have to start getting ready soon. You're sure you won't come? Mrs Van Deusen invited you.'

‘Quite sure. You go and enjoy yourself, and try to forget Sophie's megrims—and him.'

Which Marietta thought, later on at the Van Deusens', was more easily said than done: particularly when she first saw Jack. He was standing by the door, Ezra Butler by his side. Jack had, in some subtle way, changed. He looked harder than the man she had known. There had been a softness about him, an easy charm, but this man possessed a cold, shuttered face. It was the face of a man of power, a face which she had seen time and again in Washington, a face like that of his brother Alan.

If she were fanciful, she would also have thought that it was the face of a man who had suffered. But what of that? Had she not suffered, and at his hands? She watched his eyes quarter the ballroom before he turned to speak to Ezra, who shook his head at him.

Was he looking for her? And, if so, why? What could he possibly want from her, after two long years? She turned away to speak to her current partner. He was a member of the Beauregard family, a man who a few years ago would not have cared to know her, for all her wealth, let alone pursue her now that she was an even richer widow. The Beauregards had no need to marry money and therefore could afford to marry for love, or to acquire beauty.

Whatever else Jack had done to her, loving him and bearing his child had made her attractive to other men. Oh, she knew that she would never be beautiful as the world accounted beauty, but she possessed something better than that: a glow of pride, of accomplishment, enhanced by fact that the severe lines which betrayed the strength of her character and will
had been softened by a rare humour. Yes, she did owe Jack something—but he owed her more.

‘Is that Jack Dilhorne over there?' Danvers Beauregard was asking. ‘The man whose English brother made such a stir two years ago? I believe that you and the Senator were very friendly with him then, were you not?'

‘Oh, yes,' she tried to reply carelessly. ‘But that was then, this is now.'

If Danvers Beauregard thought that this was an odd answer he did not say so. He was still by her side, when Jack, having seen her from across the room, came over to speak to her.

He had examined her from afar, and unknowingly, like Marietta with him, had thought how much she had changed. She had become a strange, rare beauty whom even a jealous Sophie would have found it difficult to put down. Oh, he must speak to her, he must. The two lost years were as though they had never been: but he must find out, and soon, why they had become lost.

He reached her at last. She was wearing an amethyst and silver gown, her rich chestnut hair was up-swept and a small tiara of amethysts and pearls nestled in it. The amethyst-coloured gown was probably the result of the reduced mourning after the obligatory six months had passed since Avory's death. Indeed, in the war, such mourning had become, for the time being, less obligatory.

If Jack had ever thought that his passion for her was dead, slain by her abandonment of him, the mere
sight of her standing there before him, in all her glory, told him otherwise. If absence from her had done anything, it had made that passion stronger.

‘Marietta,' he managed hoarsely, all his ready wit, the things he had planned to say to her quite forgotten. ‘At last, we may speak…'

She raised her fan to her lips before dropping it and remarking in an indifferent voice dripping with icicles, ‘Mr Dilhorne, I have nothing to say to you, and you, sir, can have nothing to say to me. We meet, and part, as strangers,' and she began to turn away from him.

Like Jack, it was not what she had meant to say if she ever saw him again, but she was afraid that the mere sight of that once-loved face was enough to set her raging like a maenad if she were not careful. He had let her go lightly enough, so she must play the Roman matron to whom duty and honour were everything—and mistaken passion nothing.

To Jack this encounter was the stuff of nightmare. She was rejecting him again, and in public, too. He could see Danvers Beauregard's avid eyes on him. He was waiting, no doubt, for the further revelations which might follow on such an almighty snub, which was the result of—what?

Had they been alone, Jack might have said something, but Marietta's dislike of him was so plain that it drove every rational thought from his head. He wanted to fall on his knees, to clutch her hand, to ask her what he could have done to provoke such dislike, nay, hate. As it was, mindful that there were
other avid eyes on them, and—for her sake—however much she had publicly demeaned him, he could not create a disgraceful scene.

He bowed, his hand on his heart, and said to her retreating back, ‘I had hoped that we might discuss…'

She turned and said, ‘Enough. I will discuss nothing with you, sir. If you are a gentleman, you will refrain from badgering me.'

Her words were hurting her as much as they were obviously hurting him, but she dared not trust herself to his falsity again, as much for poor Cobie's sake as for her own. Jack said no more.

‘Then allow me to write to you, at least…' he began.

‘Write!'
This time when she faced him her scorn was so strong that she might have been the Medusa herself, the woman whose look could turn a man to stone. ‘Pray spare me that, sir,' and she turned away again, obviously determined to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.

He turned away himself and, his face white and grim, would have left the room and the house at once, except that Ezra caught him roughly by the shoulder and said, in a hoarse whisper, ‘For God's sake, man, stay. You cannot wish to expose either her, or yourself, to the mean gossip which would follow your retreat. I have no notion of what went wrong between the pair of you, but I know you to be a man of honour and of sense, and I must believe
that there is something here which needs an explanation.

‘From what you have said to me, you are mystified by her rejection of you. If so, there must be a reason, and a powerful one, for her to do such a thing, and to speak to you as she just did—she is no fly-by-night fool like her cousin Sophie. A man of sense—such as yourself—would try to find that reason. Think, man, think, what might you have done to deserve this?'

‘Nothing,' said Jack, equally hoarse. ‘I have done nothing that I can think of, and dammit, I love her still, and I fear I always will.'

‘All the more reason not to give up. There is an old saying I once came across, it goes something like this, “Truth will arise, though all the world may hide it from men's eyes.” Hold on to that, Jack—and remember, your father never gave up, ever, and it brought him an empire. Dammit, man, you're only after a woman!'

Jack began to laugh, his whole face changing as he did so. ‘You're right, Ezra, I'm behaving like a spineless ninnyhammer. I'll find out why she has changed towards me so greatly if I have to turn the thumbscrews on a few people.'

Ezra clapped him on the back. ‘That's the spirit, old fellow. Now, let us go and get politely drunk—the other sort wouldn't do for the Van Deusens!'

It was easy to make such a decision, Jack thought, but harder to follow it up. He couldn't kidnap Mar
ietta, or Aunt Percival, and compel them to talk to him, and if either of them saw him they went out of their way to avoid him. He came across Aunt Percival once in the street, and she immediately dashed off in the opposite direction. His own feelings of decency stopped him from pursuing her and grasping her by the arm to compel her to speak to him.

Desperate measures seemed to be necessary, particularly when he heard, through Ezra, that the word was that Marietta Grant was about to leave Washington and retire again to her farm near Bethesda—doubtless to avoid his hateful presence, Jack thought morosely.

It was while he was walking down the street where Marietta lived, after a hard morning spent in the offices of the Secretary of the Navy, that he suddenly remembered that when he had called there the little black servant had welcomed him and tried to console him. She, at least, still liked Mr Jack—although she had hinted that Marietta and Aunt Percival no longer did. If he called again to ask her whether she knew of any reason for their dislike, she might be able to enlighten him.

And if she didn't, could he persuade her to trick Aunt Percival into coming to the door in person where he might speak to her face to face instead of being abused at a distance as he had been the last time he had called?

He turned round, walked back to the Grant house and knocked smartly on the door. To his great good
fortune, it was again Asia who answered and no one else seemed to be about.

‘Oh, Mr Jack,' she said reproachfully. ‘You know you're not welcome here.'

‘But you were kind to me when I called the other day,' he said. ‘Perhaps you can tell me
why
I am not welcome—it would ease my mind.'

She leaned forward and said confidentially, ‘Now
that
I don't know, for neither of the Missises gossips, as you are well aware, Mr Jack. You'd have to ask them why.'

‘But they won't talk to me,' said Jack sadly. ‘Think, Asia, for old times' sake, would you consent to help me to speak to either Miss Percival or Mrs Grant?'

‘Now how could I do that?' asked Asia, her small face solemn.

‘By telling Miss Percival that there is an official at the door who is being a nuisance and won't go away. She is certain to want to dismiss him personally, and that will give me an opportunity to speak to her and try to find out what I have done.'

Asia thought for a moment. ‘You was always kind to me, Mr Jack, when many weren't, me being a nigra and all, so I will do as you ask.'

‘If you get into trouble through obliging me,' Jack said, ‘you know that I will not see you suffer by it. You will only have to call at Mr Butler's home and ask for me.'

Asia gave him a warm smile. ‘No need, Mr Jack,
I'll do what you ask. Miss Percival has a sharp tongue but she's always kind—and Miz Grant, too.'

It seemed an eternity, there on the step, until Aunt Percival appeared. The moment she saw him, she said grimly, ‘I might have guessed who the nuisance was. Go away, Mr Dilhorne, you have caused enough trouble in this house,' and she began to shut the door.

Jack could not grab Aunt Percival by the arm, but he could put his foot in the door and hold it steady with his hand so that she could not shut it.

‘No, Miss Percival, I am not to be dealt with as easily as that. I wish to speak to you or to Marietta, and I am determined to do so whatever it might cost me.'

‘Well, you'll not speak to Mrs Grant, she's gone to Bethesda with the children so that you might not pester her further.'

‘I haven't pestered her at all,' said Jack truthfully. ‘I haven't been given the opportunity to.'

‘Nor will you ever be,' said Aunt Percival, still grim. She had retreated behind the door, and was offering him only the sight of her head. ‘I'm sure that she wishes never to see you again after you abandoned her without a word or a line two years ago.'

This statement was delivered with such venom that it shook Jack to his foundations. For a moment he was speechless, staring at Aunt Percival as though she, too, were, in truth, the Medusa who might, at any moment, turn him to stone.

Unable to believe what he was hearing, he almost
stuttered, ‘Abandoned her without a word! How can you say that? It was she who never replied to my letters.'

‘Never a letter came from you, my man,' said Aunt Percival magisterially. ‘Isn't it enough that you broke my poor girl's heart with your wickedness and then, when she found a good man to love and to care for her, God had him killed in this terrible war? She has had enough to plague her without you lying about writing her letters in order to torment her further.'