Spare Brides (13 page)

He was a seductive and challenging blast of ambiguities. He liked her. That much was transparent. There were moments when he was animated and amused, when he roared with laughter at something she had said, and moments when he let his gaze linger on her mouth for a moment longer than was comfortable. A moment longer than was acceptable. But this man stayed apart. This man was not for conquering. Even if she had been single and in a position to entice. There was something about him that suggested he would never fall under anyone’s spell. Charm was not a valid currency for him. He was separate, unreachable. Even when he placed his hand on her knee, an inappropriate, but welcome gesture, he was apart.

E
DGAR TRENT ACCEPTED
a cigar and, because he wasn’t familiar with anyone in particular, stood with a group of similarly aged men who were talking about the grouse-shooting last week and wondering whether it would be too cold for a drive in the morning; if not, they might take one. They were all – him included – at that pleasant stage of inebriation when the world is warm, fluid and accepting; the sharp bits have been blunted, if not smoothed away, and yet the hangover is too far over the horizon to be a concern.

Edgar felt exhilarated the way he always did at this point in the evening. He had, as usual, identified the most attractive women in the vicinity. It was a primitive, unquashable routine. Wherever he was, whether he was at a party, or in a public house, at work or walking in town, he spotted them, noted them; if there was time he hunted them. It was a compulsive pattern. Sometimes, if he needed to be expedient, he did not bother with chasing the most attractive women; they often required wooing and charming, and it could eat time. Sometimes he simply identified the most cheerfully willing. Tonight he felt he had time; he felt it would take time.

Ava Pondson-Callow had initially caught his eye. How could she not? Ava oozed confidence and experience. No one could ever pin an actual scandal on her, but somehow she wore her knowledge like her magnificent and numerous diamonds, boldly for all to see. He’d observed her this evening, before dinner, walking the drawing room, flashing her sharp and clever eyes at men and women alike; eyes that pulsed between chilly indifference and warm invitation. Intriguing. Edgar Trent thought she was the sort of woman who might be compared to Helen who launched a thousand ships, or Godiva who rode naked to lower taxes: an exceptional and complex woman. A single woman. She ought to have been his goal tonight. But he found she was not.

Lid was different from Ava. As beautiful, but not as sure. She was dark and petite, where Ava was blonde and elegantly lofty. Ava exuded intrinsic self-reliance. Lydia had an air of discontent about her that she largely concealed behind her fabulous dress, but he wondered what it was that provoked her restlessness and where it would take her; she didn’t seem to know. It was her uncertainty that absorbed him. Theoretically she was not available, not at all. But he had touched her knee twice; the first time she’d shivered but moved away, the second time she’d let his hand linger. He’d felt the firmness of her leg under the thin silk dress.

He knew the power he had over women. It used to matter a lot to him. Since the war, it mattered less. Everything was less since the war. He knew how to get women to fall in love with him. He knew how to get women to fuck him, even when they didn’t really want to, even when they really
shouldn’t
want to. It passed the time. Time that should be so precious was in fact an aching gap, and so he sometimes filled it with fucking.

Would he have Lady Lydia Chatfield? Should he pluck her or pass by? There were other woman here tonight he could have. There were always women aplenty. Lydia was delightful, posh, poised. These three things ought to add up to a safe bet, but there was a hint of something else that caused him to pause for thought. Vulnerability. Vulnerability was a menace. It made women messy and unreliable. He did not need or want that. He should pass her by.

And yet. As he pulled on his cigar, drawing the delicious smoke and tobacco into his lungs and then out into the over-grand smoking room, he recalled the sudden gleam of her pale arms at dinner and her delicate, almost pearlescent skin draped around her collarbones. He found that details came back to him in a way that was more interesting than irksome. She had neat, tiny ears, shell-like, and she tucked her hair behind them whenever she was nervous; her lobes were pink and fleshy. He wondered what it would feel like to take her lobe in his mouth. Her eyes shone like fathomless lagoons. And she was amusing. Her conversation challenged. He noted her laugh.

He would not pass. He would play.

Having made this decision, Edgar was bitterly disappointed, on returning to the drawing room, to be informed that Lady Chatfield had retired to bed, complaining of a headache. He looked around at the bevy of sparkling beauties that remained, but felt suddenly and overwhelmingly bored. It was as though someone had turned out the lights.

A
VA, AS HOSTESS,
felt she had the right to visit Lydia’s room even before Lydia was dressed. She arrived with her maid, who was carrying an enormous breakfast tray, the post and the papers, and who had instructions to build a hearty fire in the hearth, as it was dwindling.

‘Budge over, darling. I’m chilly.’

Lydia groaned but obediently threw back the satin bedclothes so that Ava could slip between the sheets. The mattress barely moved as Ava was so light, but she made her presence known when she put her icy feet on Lydia’s warm legs.

Lydia jumped. ‘Your feet are cold.’

‘I know. That’s why I put them on you, to warm them up.’

‘You should have invited Lord Harrington this weekend. He’d have kept you warm,’ said Lydia. She was teasing and scolding at once. She didn’t approve of Ava’s liaisons with married men, but she accepted them as an intrinsic part of her friend’s lifestyle.

‘Charlie is becoming horribly clingy. I deliberately withheld an invitation. I can’t have him slobbering over me in front of Mummy and Daddy. So you’ll have to put up with my cold feet.’

When they were debutantes, they’d often shared a bed early in the morning, as it was an expedient way to swap the previous evening’s gossip and secrets. Obviously, since Lydia had married, it wasn’t appropriate for Ava to rush into her bedroom, dive into her bed and chatter. Both women missed the intimacy intrinsic in time spent together before hair and teeth were brushed.

‘How are you so impossibly glamorous at this time of the day?’ asked Lydia as she turned and eyed Ava’s delicate cotton baby doll, which peeked out from behind her heavily embroidered peacock-coloured dressing gown.

‘Single girls don’t let themselves go the way married women do, you know.’

‘Charming.’

Ava laughed. ‘I’m teasing. You look very beautiful too, darling. You haven’t become a slattern since you married. Thank God. Not like Ella Deramore – did you see her last night? Such a shame, she was last year’s hit at the deb balls, but she’s piled on the pounds. No one would guess she’s several years our junior. I’d say ten pounds in six months’ marriage.’

‘She may be pregnant.’

‘I hope so, for her sake. If you
have
to be one or the other, fertile is always preferable to fat. Either way, if she carries on at this rate, by the time they reach their silver anniversary she’ll have to be hoisted into bed like Henry the Eighth. I thought her dress was going to rip at the seams.’ Aware and appreciative of her own superior metabolism, Ava sat up in bed and drew the breakfast tray towards her. ‘Hungry?’

Lydia sat up too and eyed the tray: fresh grapefruit, sardines on toast, soft-boiled eggs, and porridge made with cream and adorned with honey, nuts and slices of apple. It looked delicious, but she wasn’t hungry.

‘No, strangely, I’m not.’

‘You ought to be, you barely touched dinner last night. Cook is suicidal.’

‘It was delicious.’

‘I know, but I can hardly explain to Cook that you didn’t eat it because you were involved in an intensive flirtation, can I?’ Lydia glanced swiftly at Ava, wondering how she always knew everything. ‘But then you ran away. How very Cinderella of you. Did you leave a glass slipper? Are you hoping Sergeant Major Trent will search the kingdom for you?’ Ava was tucking into the sardines and giving the impression of teasing indifference, but Lydia knew her well enough to realise she wanted all the details.

‘He’s the chap I met in Lyons, actually.’

‘Really?’

‘You knew.’

‘No. Not at first. I had no idea who the duchess would bring as her cover, but now I understand it all perfectly.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You know very well what I mean. You said you had a thing for him, and you certainly do. That much was clear to everyone at dinner.’

‘Was it?’ Lydia asked, horrified. She wasn’t used to attracting scandal and didn’t want to become so.

‘Quite certainly, but take comfort from the fact that no one cares about your little intrigue; most of us have our own to concentrate on.’

‘There is no intrigue.’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘No.’

‘But you want there to be.’

‘I don’t. That’s why I went to bed early. It’s all becoming rather intense and …’

‘Exciting?’

‘I was going to say wrong. I’m glad I’m going home today, and so will he be. We’ll never see one another again.’

‘Ah, well, about that.’ Ava got out of bed and drew back the curtains. Snow was falling swiftly and had settled overnight. ‘Three or four inches. Stations closed. The roads are impossible. You won’t be going anywhere, darling. No one will.’

Lydia felt a sharp spike of exhilaration. She would have run. She had planned to do so but fate had intervened and she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret it. She got out of bed and stood with Ava. The women slipped their arms around one another’s waists and stood, backs to the room, watching the world transform. The window framed them like a work of art. Outside, the snowflakes were falling swiftly; there was a white blanket as far as the eye could see, clean and glittering, stretching across the courtyard, the formal gardens and the fields. A couple of gardeners were already sweeping the paths. Lydia sighed at this. She knew other servants would be up on the roof shovelling the snow away too. She wished they could have left it alone a little longer. She delighted in clean, untouched snow the way an artist might delight in a clean, untouched canvas; it held promise and possibility. She resented the black trail they were leaving behind their heavy wooden brooms. Swish, swish: the brooms moved back and forth, the gardeners shuffling after them. The pliable powdery snow flew readily to mounds at the side, revealing the grey gravel of the path. The women watched as the men worked on, the path seeming to stretch endlessly. Lydia had a strange sense that they might keep clearing past Ava’s father’s borders, past the neighbouring farms, until the land ended and they arrived at the sea. She almost wished they would. More, she wished
she
could. Her life suddenly seemed to be one of tedious order, irrational rules and restrictions. Some limits were imposed by society; often times she reached for the brakes herself. If only she dared to just keep going and going and going until she had gone as far as she could and there was nowhere left to voyage.

‘Tell me, Ava, what do you know of him? Tell me everything.’

E
DGAR FELT TRAPPED
by the snow and also exhilarated by it. He was often confused by the two contradicting emotions: that of feeling trapped and that of relishing the challenge of disentangling himself. He didn’t understand it but knew it was to do with what had happened in France. The mud had trapped him; he’d trudged through it, sunk into it. Then he’d crawled through it, slept in it; the mud and the blood. It had rotted his boots, seeped into his skin, into his mouth, up his nose, but somehow he had not drowned in it. When he’d had to, he’d burrowed deeper into the mud, urinated, puked and bled into it, but he had not been smothered by it. He had been promoted and decorated, he had been a success. A success because he hadn’t been buried in the land; he had clambered, fought and clawed his way out of it. Edgar thought it was a miracle or luck that he hadn’t died in the war; his point of view wavered depending on his mood.

When he opened the curtains and saw that the snow had seized the land overnight, he felt an overwhelming need to trample through it. Spoil its perfection, stamp his presence upon it. He realised that he would not be able to catch a train or cadge a lift out of the house that day, and he felt imprisoned. It was not that he objected to staying at the smart country house for longer than he’d anticipated; he objected to not having a choice. He had to show the elements that he was no one’s prisoner. He could not bear to remain indoors a moment longer than absolutely necessary. He had to forge ahead.

He pulled on the thickest pair of trousers and the only jumper he had packed and rushed downstairs. A manservant provided him with Wellington boots, but Edgar didn’t want to ask for a route. He needed to explore and conquer unaided; this urge in him had saved his life thus far. He was frustrated that he came upon fastened windows and locked doors; the servants clearly had not had a chance to open up the entire house yet – curtains were still drawn, blinds remained pulled shut. Edgar impatiently dashed from door to door and tugged on locks. He suspected that the only door that would be open before eight in the morning was the servants’ back door to the yard and stables, but he could not use the servants’ door. His disinclination was nothing to do with a sense of snobbery; he had no problem with passing through the colder corridors or the functional kitchen, but the guests were supposed to be as indolent as the master and mistress of the house, and his appearance in the kitchen would cause concern that he hadn’t slept comfortably or that he had been inconvenienced because the main doors were locked. There would be a fuss. Possibly someone would be scolded.

At last, in a smaller drawing room, he found a window he could budge without damaging the shutter or lock. He clambered out like a burglar, not giving any thought to how eccentric his ways might seem to his hosts. With no twinge of reluctance at ruining the thick carpet of snow – quite the opposite – he set off towards a pocket of trees about a mile away. He walked with haste, enthusiastically kicking the powdery snow. The chilly air and the vigorous pace made his cheeks tingle. He liked it. He liked to feel things – good or bad, physical or emotional; it proved he was still alive. He needed the proof, because sometimes he doubted it.