Joan Wolf (4 page)

She stuck it out for eleven years and then, having fallen deeply in love with the gentle, scholarly John Hamilton, she eloped with him. Two years later, after Christopher’s death at the Battle of the Nile, they married.

Nicholas was devastated by his mother’s elopement. All through his childhood she had been the sun around which his life revolved. He had loved her with the fierce devotion only a child can give. The letter she left him he did not understand. He only knew that she had deserted him, and he had been left with emotions of bitterness, pain, and heart-scalding hurt.

He never allowed himself to trust a woman again. He accepted the
fact
that he must marry some day, but he was not yet prepared to have anyone in so intimate a relationship with him that she could by rights push herself into his own fenced and guarded world. He was furious with his uncle for forcing this girl on him, and he was, unfairly, furious at Margarita as well.

He glanced at the clock on the table, put down the poker he had been holding, and walked with his distinctive, catlike stride to the door.

For Margarita too, it was the wrong time for marriage. The brutality of the last year had battered and drained her until every physical feeling in her was dead. Even had she been going to a man she loved, she would not have been able to respond. The wellspring of feeling in her had dried up.

The only emotion she felt, as she watched the door open and Nicholas come in, was fear. Like all Venezuelan girls she had been very strictly reared, very carefully sheltered from any sexual knowledge at all. In her mind now were all the terrifying stories she had heard this last year, of the
llaneros
and the unspeakable things they did to Creole women. She didn’t know what those things were, but she knew her brother Fernando had said he would kill her before he let her fall into the hands of the
llaneros.

And now here was Nicholas, terrifyingly large, alone with her in her bedroom. He was her husband, she told herself sternly, staring at him with huge, black eyes. She must do what he wished.

For the first time Nicholas was really looking at Margarita as a woman, not as a potential rival. Her hair was loose and hung over her shoulders in a shining, silken fall. It was warm brown, Beauchamp hair, the same color as his own, he noticed with a little surprise. She was sitting up against the pillows, her dark eyes fixed steadily on him, her face carefully guarded and very still. She wore a long-sleeved nightgown that was buttoned up to her chin.

He came across the floor and sat down on the edge of the bed. Amusement gleamed in the gray-green of his eyes. “You won’t need that, sweetheart,” he said and reached out to unbutton her gown. She said breathlessly, “I’ll do it,” and continued the task with hands that were not quite steady. When she had finished, she looked up at him. He raised his brows a little, and without speaking, she pulled the gown over her head.

Nicholas’s eyes widened as he regarded the delicate beauty of his wife. He reached out almost tentatively to touch the small, fragile bones at the base of her throat, then moved his hand slowly down her shoulder to her breast. Her skin was like silk. He felt her shiver and looked into her eyes and said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Margarita, but if this is the first time for you, it is bound to be a little painful. Is it?” Mutely she nodded in reply, and he slipped off his dressing gown and got into bed beside her. “Relax, sweetheart,” he said. “It won’t be so bad, really.”

But Margarita could not relax. It took all her determination to force herself to remain passive in his arms, not to push him away. And, finally, when she realized what it was he wanted of her, to maintain a proud and desperate silence.

CHAPTER FIVE

Yes, it is lonely for her in her hall.

Matthew Arnold

Lady Moreton left the next day for her own home in Sussex. She had gleaned nothing from Margarita’s face about how the wedding night had been and since she knew Nicholas’s reputation with women, she assumed it had gone all right.

“God knows there’s enough here at Winslow to keep you occupied for a while,” Lady Moreton said briskly as she prepared to depart. “Nothing has been done to the house for at least forty years. It needs painting and new draperies and upholstery. Don’t let Nicholas spend all the money on the property, my dear. I’ve spoken to Mrs. Gage, and she will be happy to take you around the house whenever you desire.”

“Thank you, my lady. I hope you will have a safe journey home.”

“I hope so, too, my dear.” Lady Moreton hesitated, looked at the delicate, straight-browed faunlike face in front of her, then said, “Remember, my dear, you always have a friend in me.”

Margarita’s face broke for a moment into its rare smile. “You have been so good to me. Thank you.”

She watched in silence as Lady Moreton was assisted into the waiting carriage, then turned and went back into the house. Mrs. Gage, the housekeeper, was waiting for her. “I shall be happy to show you over the house any time, my lady,” the broad, ruddy-faced woman said cheerfully.

Margarita had no intention of taking Lady Moreton’s advice. She knew very well how to run a large country house; her father had owned two of them as well as a plantation at San Pedro. But she thought she also knew how her attempts to take up the reins at Winslow would be regarded by Nicholas. She was an outsider, an intruder, foisted upon him against his will. Nor had she any sense of the “coming home” her grandfather had predicted. “Home” was a lovely, warm, colorful country thousands of miles away from England. She would stay here because she had to stay somewhere, but she was an alien and she knew it. She had resolved last night, after Nicholas left her, that she would keep as much out of his way as possible. Perhaps, after a while, he would simply leave her alone.

She looked now at the housekeeper’s expectant face and realized she would at least have to let herself be shown over the house. They started immediately, and almost despite herself, Margarita found herself interested in Mrs. Gage’s narrative. Winslow was so
old.
The two main wings of the house dated from the Jacobean era, but the architect had built them to connect the Great Hall to the two formidable towers, all of which dated from the reign of Edward III in the fourteenth century.

“The Great Hall was the main living part of the castle,” Mrs. Gage explained to this stranger from South America. “During the Middle Ages the household would gather here to talk and to work and to eat.” Margarita looked with interest around the enormous oak-ceilinged room. “The staircase was originally stone, but when Lord Thomas Beauchamp had the house rebuilt in the seventeenth century, he replaced the staircase with the painted wooden one you see today. It is supposedly one of the finest Jacobean staircases in the country.”

“It is very lovely,” Margarita murmured obediently.

Upstairs was a room that was originally Edward Beauchamp’s great chamber, his personal bedroom. It had been converted into a state drawing room by the Jacobean builder, and Margarita privately thought that it looked as if no one had touched
it
since.

The North Wing of the house contained the state rooms and ended with the Donnington Tower, a fortification built by Edward Beauchamp, who had been, so Mrs. Gage informed Margarita, one of Edward Ill’s most distinguished generals. Margarita was most impressed by the long gallery on the first floor. It was a beautifully paneled room whose walls were hung with portraits of the Beauchamp family. The furniture was all arranged along the walls. “The purpose of the gallery was to allow space for walking up and down on a cold or wet day,” Mrs. Gage informed Margarita. Margarita thought that the gallery most probably got a great deal of use, as it seemed to her to always be cold or wet, or both, in England.

The North Wing also contained a black and white marble-floored room that was used as a dining room, a large, formal drawing room, and a “royal suite” that was intended to accommodate visiting royalty. All of the rooms had magnificent carved oak chimney pieces and molded wood ceilings, but the furnishings did look rather threadbare.

The South Wing was the area of the house Margarita was familiar with. It stretched from the Great Hall to the Lores Tower, which had been built by Edward Beauchamp’s son. Guy. The rooms in this wing were smaller and more intimate, planned as a series of small suites with each room carefully proportioned to the next. Here were the family bedrooms, several sitting rooms, a smaller dining room, and the library. Now that she was looking more closely, Margarita noticed for the first time that much of the draperies and the fabrics on chairs were faded and the furniture arrangement was not particularly comfortable.

When the tour was over she smiled, graciously thanked Mrs. Gage, and told that lady to carry on exactly as she had been doing. “I will be making no changes,” she said firmly, ignoring the housekeeper’s startled face. And she kept her promise.

As the weeks went by, she established a routine that comforted her with a sense of familiarity. She took over the small sitting room that adjoined her bedroom and made a shelter and refuge. She had her books there, books she had gotten in London in the weeks she stayed with her grandfather. She had her needlework. She had given instructions that the fire was always to be kept going, and she would sit close to it during the long winter afternoons, her thin southern blood warmed by its glow.

She rode once a day, at eleven o’clock. It was warmer then, and she ran little chance of encountering Nicholas, who was usually in the saddle much earlier. In fact, she arranged things so that she rarely saw him until dinner time when, formally attired, she would meet him in the small paneled saloon and go in with him to the family dining room. Nicholas was usually out on the estate all day, and he radiated the vitality, the joy, the satisfaction, of someone who is doing what he most enjoys. She would listen with every appearance of interest to his enthusiastic talk of seed drills and drainage and crop rotation, and when he asked her in return what she had been doing, she always answered serenely that she had been busy with her needlework. Occasionally she had a visitor, and she would sit politely in the drawing room exchanging small talk about the weather.

It surprised her that neighboring women should call upon her. At home, women never made such calls, and she hesitantly asked Nicholas if she was expected to return them. When he replied in the affirmative, she punctiliously made the rounds of her neighbors, sitting for half an hour over a cup of tea and leaving to go home with relief to her sitting room. It was less lonely when she was alone.

The weeks went by. Nicholas was endlessly occupied by the estate during the day and was barely conscious of Margarita. Her delicate beauty drew him at night, but she never gave him any response, lying passive and quiet in his arms. She puzzled him. He sensed a reserve in her as deep as his own, and he did not know how to pierce it His relationships with women had always been purely physical, and as such, they had been notoriously successful. He was not successful with his wife, and he did not understand why.

He was in the estate office one cold January afternoon when the door opened and Lord James Tyrrell came in. Lord James was a cousin of Sir Henry Hopkins and had been for years one of Nicholas’s closest friends. They had been at school together. When he saw who it was, Nicholas rose immediately to his feet, his hand held out.

“James! What are you doing in Worcester this time of year?”

“I had to rusticate for a while—got badly dipped at Watier’s last week. So I thought I’d pay a visit to old Henry and look in on you at the same time.”

Nicholas’s eyes surveyed his friend with
cool
amusement. “Cards again, eh?”

“Yes, damn it. I have no luck—unlike you, my friend. Congratulations on getting the old man’s collection. It must be worth a fortune.”

“I certainly hope so. Sheridan is winding up the legal details, and then I’ll be free to put some of those blasted pictures on the market. They should fetch a tidy sum.”

“All
of which you will put into this moldering great house of yours.”

“It isn’t the house I’m anxious to improve, James, but the land.” Nicholas spoke with a burning intensity. “Winslow could be one of the gardens of England if given the proper attention. There have been enormous advances in agriculture during the last twenty years or so. But my uncle would never put anything into the estate. The farms are run-down and unproductive, equipment is ancient and broken, and the stock is disgracefully depleted.” Nicholas had acted as agent for Winslow ever since he had been sent down from school five years ago. He was painfully aware of the truth of his own words. “Winslow needs money,” he concluded fiercely, “and, by God, it is finally going to get it.”

Lord James looked curiously at the man seated behind the huge old desk. In many ways Nicholas was an enigma to him. If he wanted, Nicholas could be one of the major figures of London society. He was indecently good-looking, had been heir to one of the most ancient of England’s titles, and had a streak of wildness in him that made him devastatingly attractive to women. But he spent only a small part of his time in London. The rest of the year he passed here at Winslow, passionately fighting a losing battle against decay. Lord James, who spent as little time as possible on his own family acres, did not understand him.

But no one could be better company when he was in the mood than Nicholas. Lord James bethought himself of some of the times they had had together and suddenly grinned. “Eleanor Rushton is not happy with your nuptials. Nick. She expressed herself quite forcibly to me on the subject.”

Nicholas did not look at all perturbed. “Did she?” he said coolly.

“And she is not the only fair lady to be disappointed, although the others have not so far confided their grief to my sympathetic ear.”

Nicholas grinned. “Were you very consoling, James?”

“Very.” Lord James shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind cutting you out with Lady Eleanor, Nick. She is a very luscious morsel. But, alas, she allowed me to hold her hand and no more.”