The Sleeping Sword (17 page)

‘Venetia, for heaven's sake!—it's not that.'

‘What then?'

‘I should have thought it obvious. I am worried about him.'

For a moment she quite simply did not understand.

‘Worried? Oh, lord! you think he's dead in a ditch, do you? Be easy. He's no such thing. If you ask me, he could have gone to see mother—'

‘Without letting me know?'

‘Oh dear! Yes, Grace, he
could
have forgotten about that.'

We sat an hour longer, Venetia's mind floating away somewhere with Charles, mine angry sometimes—because if he had gone off to Galton or anywhere else without the easy courtesy of a message then I believed I had a right to be angry—and then, at other times, for most of the time, frightened, remembering that he drove too fast, that there was rain again and no moon, wanting only—or so I thought—to know that he was safe.

I heard the door and froze as Chillingworth moved sedately across the hall to answer it, willing him to hurry, restraining myself from leaping to my feet as the double doors were smoothly opened—Chillingworth putting himself through his paces—and Liam Adair came into the room, with no air of tragedy about him, having come to deliver some documents to Mr. Barforth, which—since he must have known Mr. Barforth would not be here—meant that he had come to see Venetia.

She received him with open friendship, warmly jumping up from her chair and tripping to his side, her narrow, outstretched hands disappearing into his, looking very slight and fair beside him.

‘Liam, do come and cheer us up for we are both in our miseries.'

‘We can't have that now, can we,' he said, his voice still touched with that faint green memory of Ireland, his smile as roguish as I had ever seen it and his eyes as merry, although he must have known quite well that if she was suffering it was not for him. But Liam was the oldest of our generation, a man approaching thirty now, who before his father's marriage to my Grandmamma Elinor had lived precariously and afterwards had seen and survived so many changes of fortune that perhaps Charles Heron did not seem so great a threat to him.

‘So what is this misery then?'

‘Oh, I am being bullied, as usual, by papa and Grace is afraid Gervase may have run away—No, of course she is not and I didn't mean to say it. It is just that he did not come home for dinner and sent no word. Have you seen him today, Liam?'

‘I have indeed—or rather the dust he was making along the top road—It struck me at the time that he'd be on his way to Galton.'

‘Well,' said Venetia flatly, ‘I can think of nowhere else he'd get to on that road.'

‘So that's one misery settled,' murmured Liam, knowing it was no such thing. ‘But what I
did
want to tell you, Grace, is that I've had the oddest little letter from Cannes from Grandmamma Elinor, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear the next post that she's in love again.'

And so, easily, mercifully, we discussed the whims and undeniably the fancies of that enchanting little lady, now entering her sixty-third year, and her generosity to Liam when his father died, although the Aycliffe money—unfortunately for Liam, fortunately, perhaps, for me—had been tied up so well that Grandmamma Elinor could not dispose of too much of it. And he had been glad, he said, to go on the road and sell cloth for Mr. Nicholas Barforth. It was the steadiest job he had ever had and it suited him. Far better, he thought, selling the high quality finished product which could be easily carried in his sample-case than shearing the raw wool off the sheep's back, as he'd once been obliged to do for a spell some years ago in Australia.

‘Australia,' breathed Venetia, her eyes shining, and immediately his rich, lilting voice took her there, showing her the parched, brash, perilous, thrilling country she wished to see, making her gasp with excitement and shake with incredulous, wholehearted laughter.

‘Liam Adair, you never did that. Never.'

‘Now would I lie to you?'

‘Yes. And I don't care—just go on telling me—
do
go on.'

She was still laughing when he kissed her hand to say goodbye, having stayed far longer than her father would have allowed, and saying my own careful good-night, I went upstairs for the first time in a month alone, finding the bed huge and cold, while sleep, without the restless tossings and turnings of Gervase, was quite impossible.

I did not expect him to return that night and, even had I done so, I would not have waited up for him. I had made no provision for his return. I had not asked that a light should be left burning or a door unlocked, or that any servant be given the task of admitting him. Nor did I intend to spend the night straining my ears in the hope of his arrival, although lying in that chilly bed I soon realized that my determination not to listen only made me listen the harder, my mouth going dry when I at last heard a carriage, which proved to be my father-in-law.

Obviously he had gone to see his mother and there was nothing surprising in that. I had gone to see my father that afternoon and Mrs. Barforth was every bit as entitled to a visit from her son. Yet suddenly, in the cold and sinister night, the whole of the Galton estate, the wild moorland tangle of it, the thin, rapid waters rushing down its stony hillsides, the dark house built from those ancient stones, loomed large in my mind, recognizing me—since those weathered stones must surely know how to see and feel—as an enemy and an alien. And, having detected my animosity, how could I doubt their ability to defend themselves?

But there was nothing new in this, nothing I had not pondered a dozen times. And in marrying me, surely, the conflict of his double inheritance had been resolved? Certainly his father thought so. But his temperament, like Venetia's was mercurial, a summer's morning abruptly changing to a winter midnight, and supposing—supposing—he already regretted it? Supposing, having hated his day of confinement in the mill, he had taken his habitual, lifelong escape, not to me who believed men should be so confined, but to his mother who did not?

I had started to love him for the vain and selfish reason that he loved me, but now I had gone far beyond that. Now I needed him to love me. I had grown accustomed to it, to depend upon it, and would not easily let it go. And although I was possessive, certainly, I was more than ready to give him what I thought he had asked for, to keep the vows I had made him, since I would not have made them otherwise. I was brim-full of good faith and good intentions, and I wanted him here now, with me, to take advantage of them. I was hurt and unhappy, which had happened to me before. Most of all I was afraid, for I had not expected it to happen again.

I fell asleep at last, as one always sleeps in the end, and woke to find him in the room pulling a wet shirt over his head and letting it fall to the ground where his other garments already lay. It was around three o'clock in the morning, rain lashing against the window, a high wind blowing.

‘Lovely driving weather,' he said, stripped now and shivering.

‘Is it really? I was sleeping.'

‘Ah—so I wasted my time, did I, driving through the storm just to get to your side?'

‘I didn't expect you. I assumed you were at Galton and would stay there.'

‘So did I. I could have gone from there to the mill in the morning, but my mother said no, it wouldn't do, it was my duty to come home—and the Clevedons are very particular when it comes to duty. I told her she was probably sending me to my death but she reckoned a spot of rain wouldn't melt me, and if I went into the ditch—well, I've done that before.'

It was the Gervase I had known in other days, Venetia's difficult brother, a stranger in my bed, keeping his distance so that it was to his naked back that I delivered my crisp reproach.

‘You should have sent me a message.'

‘Saying what?'

‘That you would not be home.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I know I should.'

And rising to the provocation, wanting it settled once and for all, I snapped: ‘Then why didn't you?'

He sighed and, turning, lay on his back for a moment.

‘You do realize, don't you, Grace Barforth, that nothing obliges me to answer.'

‘You can suit yourself.'

‘Exactly. I didn't send a message because until I was on the road for Galton I wasn't sure I was going there.'

‘I see.'

‘I very much doubt it. I expect you had a splendid day, Grace, putting the house in order, making old Chillingworth mend his manners—my word, he was even polite to
me
just now when he let me in.'

There had been tears clenched very tight in my throat from the moment of waking and now, horrified to feel them stinging my eyelids, I sat up, knowing merely that since I was being attacked it was necessary to defend, to let him know once and for all that I would not be downtrodden. But what had I done to deserve this cool hostility? What had I done that he had not expected me to do, had not known I would do? I was exactly the same as I had been in Grasmere, exactly as he had said he wanted me to be. Nothing in me had altered except the depth of my love for him and surely he could not be displeased with that? I was bewildered and hurt but determined—in order that it could be put right—to know why. And because there were still a great many tears in me which I was firmly resolved not to shed, my voice, straining to hold them back, sounded cold when I asked: ‘How is your mother?'

‘Splendid—absolutely first-rate. Busy with her hound pups just now, of course—sends you her very best.'

‘Gervase, I think it is high time I asked you this, and I think you should answer. Your mother was not pleased, was she, about our marriage?'

‘No, Grace. My mother was not pleased about our marriage. Good-night, Grace.'

‘That is no answer. Will she be reconciled?'

‘I believe so. My father pointed out to her that, whatever happens now, even if he should throw me out of Tarn Edge by the scruff of my ungrateful neck, there will still be money enough—your money, that is—for Galton. How can she quarrel with that?'

I had not thought it possible that he could so wound me. He had said ‘my father pointed out to her', not ‘I married you for your dowry and your expectations', the very fate, in fact, which I had so dreaded. But it made no difference. He had intended to hurt me. He had done so. And for a long time, while he appeared to sleep, I lay winded from the blow. If he had beaten me with his fists I could not have felt more shocked, more bruised, more completely bewildered, and in fact would have coped better with physical violence, being strong enough and determined enough to strike back very hard. But against his spite—whether he meant it or not—I had no defence and was obliged, quite simply and in a strangled silence, to endure.

I knew I could not fall asleep again but I slept, waking as I had done in Grasmere to find his arms around me, his desire already far advanced, and in that first moment I pushed him roughly away, revolted at the thought of being so used, refusing, no matter what the cost, to be an object of pleasure without identity, a wife who was required by law and by custom to submit. But his face, in the light of early morning, was pale and tense as I had seen it in the garden at Listonby, his body trembling as it had done on our first night together, nuzzling and thrusting against me with the hurt and puzzled intensity of a child to which my own body responded, opened, enfolded him and held him long after his brief pleasure, until the trembling had ceased.

‘Darling, what is it?'

‘God knows—just hold me—and don't blame me too much. Just hold me.'

So fluent in other ways he had no words for tenderness, the sighing relaxation of his body as he settled his head on my shoulder was my sole indication that, whether he was sorry or not for having hurt me, he appeared to love me again. And I believed I could be content with that.

Blanche had her baby that July, giving birth as effortlessly and as correctly as she did everything else, the confinement being without drama and the child a boy, the new heir of Listonby.

‘So you have got it right first time,' said Venetia when we called to congratulate her, to which Blanche serenely replied: ‘So I have—which means, with a little contriving, that I shall not be obliged to do it again.'

‘How feeble of you,' Venetia told her. ‘I believe I should like a dozen.' But Blanche, draped in white lace, surrounded by lace pillows and pink roses, smiled her infinite superiority and shook her head. ‘You know nothing about it, my dear. I would advise you to have
one
and see how you get on with it before making plans for a dozen. And in any case it is considered—well—a little over-enthusiastic to have such large families.'

‘The Queen has had nine children.'

‘Yes, but then the Queen, of course, is so very enthusiastic.'

‘Of course,' said Venetia, winking at me behind Blanche's exquisite, indolent back, for Blanche—since her mother-in-law had become a duchess—had started to assume a familiarity with Court circles which both irritated and amused us. Not that Aunt Caroline had succeeded in penetrating the seclusion of so ostentatious a widow as our Queen who, having chosen to spend the rest of her life in mourning, expected others to do the same. But there was, in London, a gregarious Prince of Wales and his beautiful princess, the Danish Alexandra, a lady who, although her own temperament was placid and domestic, seemed prepared to understand that a prince—especially when his mother refuses to give him employment—must be amused. And to this prince Aunt Caroline had been drawn as a moth to a flame, being ready to declare to anyone who cared to listen that for all the scandals and half-scandals that surrounded him Victoria had no one but herself to blame.

It was taught, after all, in every charity school, board school and Sunday school in the land that ‘the devil finds work for idle hands to do', and in consequence it was most unwise of Victoria to exclude her son from all responsibility. And, having done so, it was more than unwise, it was downright foolish to set up such a caterwauling when, from sheer boredom, he got into mischief.