Lady Margery's Intrigues (8 page)

A whole hour passed and the guests began to fidget and yawn and only the marquess realized that Margery was playing the same piece of music over and over again.

Lady Sanderson began to grumble behind her whiskers and then suddenly sprang into action. She picked up the nearest cushion and hurled it at her son's head. “A romp! A romp!” screamed the two young girls, leaping joyously from their chairs and beginning to throw cushions at the young men. The young men retaliated with apples and oranges, and Ann and Cornelia threw down their cushions and let fly with candlesticks and
objets d'art
. Margery stopped playing and turned round.

Lady Sanderson was roaring with laughter, her face a weird purple behind its barrier of whiskers. Lady Amelia was hiding behind the curtains. The marquess had retreated to a corner of the room and was watching the scene, his face a mask of boredom.

“Let's smother the ladies,” roared Toby, advancing on Lady Margery with a cushion. There were whoops and cries all round. Ann Burleigh had climbed up on a sofa and was displaying an unmaidenly glimpse of leg. Margery took to her heels and fled with Toby yelling, “Yoicks! Yoicks!” and pounding behind her.

She ran swiftly through the seemingly endless saloons. The butler was standing on the front step with the great door of the hall lying open.

Margery fled past the startled butler and out into the grounds. The grass was soaking wet from a heavy fall of dew. Her slippered feet were soaked through in an instant, but, undeterred, she ran and ran, across the great uncut lawns to the safety of the Home Wood, where she collapsed sobbing for breath against a tree.

It was a brightly moonlit night and, peering round the trunk of the tree and through a gap in the wood, she could see the heavy figure of Toby, his great bull-like head twisting this way and that. Then the other guests crowded onto the lawn behind him.

“A hunt for Margery!” Toby was crying. “Bring torches!” The servants came out and handed each guest a flaring torch, and with great whoops and cries they spread out over the grounds.

Margery did not want to be caught. She had always managed to avoid these romps in the past and even left the room when anyone suggested blind man's buff. She was frightened of being found and facing a circle of jeering faces. These romps were usually an excuse for the gentlemen to get their arms around the ladies and could end in accidents.

Margery remembered attending a formal dinner at Woburn the previous year. During dinner, everyone whispered to his next neighbor and Margery had been frightened of the sound of her own voice. After dinner, the guests dispersed throughout the saloons, some to play the harp or take up an attitude on a sofa or play cards or talk of furniture. The Duchess of Bedford suddenly entered at the head of a troupe of young men and women. They had started throwing cushions. Then everything was thrown. The romp was at last ended by the duchess's daughter, Lady Jane, being nearly blinded by an apple which hit her in the eye, and the poet, Shelley, had been nearly smothered by the female romps getting him to the ground and pommeling him with cushions.

The whoops and halloos of the searchers drew closer, and Margery began to look wildly round. She seemed to be surrounded. There was only one way to go. Up.

Hitching up her skirts, she climbed nimbly up the tree as far as she could go and then settled herself comfortably on the fork of a branch and waited for the search to end.

The night was damp and humid and she began to shiver in her now-bedraggled dress. Suddenly it was quiet. She could no longer see the flare of the smoking torches between the trees. Margery eased her cramped limbs and prepared to descend. Then she froze as she heard the sound of voices directly underneath her. It was Toby and one of his friends, Jeremy Byles. Toby's exasperated voice rose clearly in the still air. He said: “Demme, Jeremy, but this is beyond a joke, upsetting m'household like that. M'mother says there's something strange about her.”

“Never thought to see you gettin’ leg-shackled,” said Jeremy.

“Never thought to see it meself,” said Toby sourly. “I wish now ... Well, never mind.”

“Can't expect a man to go through with it if the gel's insane,” Jeremy's voice suggested.

“Well, you know how it is,” said Toby. “I never know what to say to the ladies—and Margery, well, it's like talking to another chap, you know. Easy going. Never a suggestion of anything wrong with her till now."

“Not as if she's a real dasher, either,” said Jeremy.

“She looked different in London,” said Toby slowly. “All smiles and sparkle. She looks quiet and worried now and it takes a bit of the shine off.”

“It ain't as if you've got to get hitched,” persisted Jeremy. “No reason, eh?”

“You mean, have I thrown a leg over her?” said Toby with brutal frankness. “No. Not yet I ain't.”

“Tell you what I'll do,” said Jeremy. “Anything to help a friend. I'll hint her off, you know. Say you've got the pox.”

“I say, steady on,” howled Toby, his voice shrill with alarm.

“Oh, well, I could say you were secretly in love with someone else.”

Toby suddenly remembered how, a few years ago, he had been charmed by one of the local county girls and had confided as much to Jeremy. And how this Jeremy had gone on and on and
on
pointing out the many disadvantages of marriage. Dammit! He had made the whole idea of getting married seem like a foppish action.

“Don't do anything until I speak to Margery,” he said curtly. “No use standing here getting wet feet. She's probably in her rooms.”

Margery found she was trembling with rage. How
dare
Jeremy Byles interfere? Then she remembered that she no longer wanted to be affianced to Toby and that the infuriating Jeremy did not know that she had been sitting directly above their heads.

Stiff and cramped in every limb, she climbed down from her hiding place and walked wearily towards the house. All was quiet. The moon silvered the wet grass and sparkled on the dewdrops hanging from the thorns of the tangled rosebushes. Somewhere an owl hooted, opening up vistas of lonely empty countryside.

A shadow detached itself from a pillar of the porticoed entrance.

“The party is over, Lady Margery,” said the light, mocking voice of the marquess. “You do not show the courage I expected—to flee before a party of rowdy romps.”

“I do not like romps,” said Margery stiffly, feeling very young and pompous. “'Tis an unfashionable trait, I'll allow.”

He walked beside her into the hall. The candles had been snuffed and the great hall was lit by the red glow of a dying fire.

Margery hurried towards the staircase, but the marquess put a restraining hand on her arm.

“Stay for a little,” he said in a more gentle voice than she had ever heard him use before. He drew her gently towards the fireplace. Margery sat down on a high-backed settle and looked up at him apprehensively. He sat down opposite her, his face half hidden in the shadows. He threw a log on the glowing embers and the flames leapt up, sending eerie shadows wavering and dancing round the walls.

“I have already apologized to you, Lady Margery,” said the marquess in a husky, hesitant voice. “I now feel I owe you another apology. I had damned you as an opportunist and I thought that you had no affection in your heart for any of my friends. But when I saw you look up at Toby this evening, I realized that your emotions were genuine. Also, it must be a bitter blow to be faced with losing one's home.”

Margery felt tears start to her eyes at the unexpected sympathy in his voice. She longed to confide in him; to tell him that she didn't care a rush for any of his friends. But how he would despise her!

“Perhaps,” said Margery, staring into the flames, “I loved Chelmswood too much. It is only bricks and mortar, after all.

“There seemed to be no discomfort to cope with. I had Amelia's undemanding and uncritical friendship and I lived through the lives of my tenants.”

The marquess listened silently, one long hand laid against his thin cheek. He had a feeling that she was talking more to herself than to him.

Margery went on after a short silence. “Yes! That was it! I lived the lives of my tenants. Their marriages were my marriage, their babies my babies, their illnesses my illnesses, but ... oh ... all comfortably second-hand ... like reading a thrilling book. Father was mostly away from home. The only time I ever had to step into the real world was when I had to face another season. I enjoyed looking as unattractive as possible. That way I
knew
nobody would ask me to dance and I could therefore save myself from the pangs of rejection and failure. Each season was like a bad dream, to be endured with patience until I could return to Chelmswood and wrap myself in the minutiae of its domestic affairs and tenants’ problems. I wonder now whether it all kept me too young for my years.”

“And you so ancient,” teased the marquess. “But,” he added bracingly, “
this
will soon be your home.”

Margery started and looked wildly round as if awakening from a bad dream. “This!” she said in a horrified voice, which seemed to encompass everything from the neglected park to the damp rooms to the elderly lord immured between the walls.

“Of course,” replied the marquess, surprised. “You will naturally live in your husband's home. You did not think you could possibly get married and then simply return to Chelmswood?”

Lady Margery raised her hands to her face. That was, in fact, just what she
had
thought. She began to wonder if there were insanity in the family. But ... but ... perhaps one of the other two suitors would not be so bad ... but ... but then he would expect her to share his life and ... and ... his bed.

The marquess watched the changing emotions flickering across Margery's little face. She looked like an agitated pixie, her tiny figure perched on the huge settle and her slippered feet barely touching the floor.

“You
are
in love with Toby, aren't you?” asked the marquess with sudden curiosity.

Margery's eyes flew to his face and then dropped again in confusion. The marquess once again seemed a hard, cold stranger whose mocking eyes shone queerly in the dancing light of the flames.

“You must excuse me, my lord,” she said, getting to her feet. “The hour is late.” She dropped him a curtsy and hurried off into the darkness of the staircase before he had realized that she had not answered his question.

The marquess sat for a long time looking into the fire. He felt rather sad and ... and ...
desolate
... that was the word. It must have been too much burgundy at dinner. How strange the workings of one's liver! How strange that a couple of bottles of Toby's best should make the world seem such an empty, endless desert! He would go to the library, where he had last seen a bottle of Mr. J. Schweppes’ soda water, and drink the lot.

Margery awoke to blazing sunshine and a blinding headache. From the clamor of birdsong outside the window, she realized it must be too early for the eleven o'clock breakfast. She would take a walk downstairs and indulge in the unfeminine practise of reading the morning papers.

She passed various servants going about their duties on her way downstairs, but there was no sign of the other members of the household.

She stopped the butler, who was crossing the hall, and asked him if the morning papers had arrived. He inclined his powdered head in assent and said they had been given to Lord Sanderson, who often threw them out into the end saloon after he had finished with them.

Margery wandered through the empty rooms until she came to the end one. Lady Sanderson's “throne” was empty and an elderly dog—the only occupant of the room—lay snoring and whooping on the sofa as it chased rabbits across the endless fields of sleep.

Lord Sanderson's panel was closed and there was no sign of the newspapers. Margery was just about to leave when the panel in the wall slid open and Lord Sanderson's head popped out with the effect of a jack-in-the-box. He was wearing a nut-brown wig, which was slightly askew. Margery reflected how odd it was that white wigs or gray wigs, however badly made, gave their wearer a certain dignity, but brown wigs always bestowed a certain air of madness, even on such a personage as the Prince Regent, who had recently been seen wearing one. Then she noticed that, wig apart, his lordship was certainly behaving in a very strange manner. One chubby finger was laid alongside his bulbous nose and he was unmistakably leering.

“Come into my study,” invited Lord Sanderson, ogling her horribly.

Margery wondered for one wild minute whether she was meant to climb through the small opening, which at the moment was filled by Lord Sanderson's great red face.

“How do I get there? Your study, I mean,” she faltered.

There was a whirring of some antique clockwork mechanism and a section of the paneling opened to reveal a small entrance.

Feeling somehow that she would do better to turn and run, Margery nonetheless edged through and found herself in a small cubicle, almost pressed up against Lord Sanderson. To her relief, the mechanism whirred again and another small door opened in the wall opposite. Lord Sanderson led the way into a surprisingly cozy study. The curtains were tightly drawn, but a cheerful fire blazed on the hearth and two large rose-shaded oil lamps cast a comfortable glow.

He was not so eccentric after all! Admittedly the cubicle between the walls showed more signs of occupation than the study, which must have been the reason Toby had led her to believe his father spent his whole life walled up.