‘There!’ said Tremadoc. ‘Master in my own house. Told her I would be. Husband and wife. One flesh. Whom God hath joined…’ Suddenly, disconcertingly, he giggled. ‘Not much like God, that blacksmith, was he? No wonder if you fainted. But not flattering! Not flattering at all, my mamma says. Journey’s over now. Very patient man. Now we’re here. Now it’s time. Man and wife.’ He pushed her, not gently, down on to the big bed and she felt his hot hands looking for the fastenings of her dress. ‘Dammit!’ The buttons down the back were too small for his shaking fingers. ‘Dammit,’ he said again. ‘Man and wife.’ He set his hand to the low front of the dress.
‘Don’t!’ But it was too late. One surprisingly savage pull and the dress ripped clear down to the waist.
After that, it was all unspeakable muddle. Somehow, swearing and talking to himself all the time, he got her out of her clothes, and then, as she huddled, naked, in the big, cold bed, hauled off his own and fell on top of her.
‘Man and wife.’ He was talking to himself now, not her. ‘One flesh.’ He kissed her suddenly, hard, leaving the taste of blood in her mouth. His hands moved down from her shoulders to her breasts, hurting them, and, with a kind of horror, she felt her body suddenly move against his as if it knew something she did not.
‘Ah,’ he said, an animal sound. His hands were doing something lower down and again she was aware of fierce, unexpected, disgusting pleasure, then of sharp, intimate pain, and then of nothing.
Chapter Eleven
‘Miss, miss, are you all right, miss?’ The frightened whisper gradually penetrated Caroline’s consciousness, and she opened heavy eyes to see Tench bending over her.
‘Shh,’ Tench put finger to lips. ‘He’s still asleep. Very sound, he is. Oh, miss, is it too late? Did he? I did so hope…’ As she uttered the broken sentences, she was looking down at the tumbled bed, and her young mistress, bare-shouldered, heavy-eyed and with an unmistakable bruise on her lip.
Caroline, too, had realised that she was naked in bed, and was beginning to feel the places where she hurt. She lay there, speechless, colour slowly flooding her face.
‘I was afraid so, when he sent me away.’ Tench had summed up the situation, and spared Caroline further questions, merely moving away to find her a negligée and helping her lovingly into it. ‘Come through into his dressing room, miss,’ she whispered, ‘so we can talk. Jenkins says he’ll likely sleep for hours. Oh, miss, I am sorry I didn’t manage to tell you last night.’ She closed the dressing-room door behind them. ‘I should a’ stood up to him, but how could I?’
‘Told me what?’ Caroline was glad to subside on to the chair Tench pulled forward for her.
‘I knew something was up, the minute we got here.’ Tench automatically began to brush out Caroline’s hair. ‘You could tell, the way they was looking…The servants…whispering behind their hands. But nobody come up here to me, miss, and I was that busy unpacking your things, and the girl that brought your hot water just giggled and said madam said to hurry, and by the time Jenkins told me over my bit of supper, it was too late.’
‘Told you what?’ Caroline asked again.
‘They’re broke, miss. Stony. That brother of madam’s, the mill owner as killed himself. He had the handling of all their money, see. I don’t rightly understand how, but it’s gone, miss.’ She put a hand up to her mouth. ‘I should be calling you madam,’ she said. ‘If only I could a’ told you last night, you might a’ got it annulled. Is that the word?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Caroline said dully. ‘Don’t look so wretched, Tench dear. I don’t think it would have made any difference. What could we have done, you and I?’ She sat, staring at her own blanched face in the glass, seeing it all. No wonder Mrs Tremadoc had received her with such surprising enthusiasm. Instead of being an incubus she was now their sole hope of support. Mrs Tremadoc had doubtless already been in touch with the Duke — with her father, she reminded herself bitterly. Had they actually met? she wondered, and passionately hoped not. Last night, she had been too overwhelmed by the strangeness of her situation to formulate her impressions of Mrs Tremadoc, but this morning, imagining her face to face with the Duke, she knew her for a vulgar, stupid woman. If I had known what she was like, she thought, I would never have married her son.
Too late now. ‘I must dress, Tench. I need to talk to Mrs Tremadoc.’ The other thing she had recognised, half consciously, last night, was that Mrs Tremadoc entirely dominated her weak son.
‘Are you fit, miss — ma’am?’ asked Tench doubtfully.
‘I have to be. Mourning, Tench. The dress I had when the Duke’s aunt died. Mrs Tremadoc has just lost her brother, remember.’ And, saying this, suddenly found herself actually sorry for her.
It made their meeting just slightly easier. Mrs Tremadoc was drinking tea in the dining room whose over-bright colours seemed even more tawdry in the light of a fine morning.
‘You’re bright and early, my dear.’ Mrs Tremadoc rose to greet her. ‘I thought you and dear Geraint would sleep till all hours today. But I hope it means that you slept well in your new home.’ There was something about her tone that confirmed Caroline’s suspicion that she had ordered her son to…to…she could not find even mental words for what had happened to her last night. Now, Mrs Tremadoc longed to know if her son had made sure of her.
‘Yes, thank you, ma’am,’ she said. Tremadoc would tell his mother soon enough.
‘Tea or coffee?’ asked that lady now. ‘The tea is fresh made, but I could send for coffee…’
‘Tea will be just the thing, thank you.’ She had been glad to see that there was no servant in the dining room. ‘I am afraid I am not much of a breakfast eater.’ Food would have choked her this morning, but she noticed, with a kind of cold misery, that this was another lie she had found herself forced to tell in this house. Her new home. ‘I am so sorry, ma’am.’ She plunged into it. ‘I was most remiss last night in not condoling with you on your brother’s death.’
‘Thank you.’ Mrs Tremadoc’s hand shook as she poured Caroline’s tea. ‘It was good of you to put on mourning for him.’
‘I am a member of the family now. It is only right.’
Mrs Tremadoc gave a little sigh as if this had answered the question that had been exercising her. ‘My dear,’ she put a warm hand on Caroline’s cold one, ‘We must talk, you and I. This was a rash enough business, I am afraid, of yours and my dear Geraint’s, but we are to let bygones be bygones and think of the future.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Caroline sipped hot tea, found it reviving, and wondered if she had done Mrs Tremadoc an injustice.
‘My poor, dear brother.’ Mrs Tremadoc put a lacy handkerchief to her eyes. ‘Always so good to me. He managed everything for me…for Geraint and me. But — this cruel war. He never believed it would break out again after the Peace of Amiens. He thought…he said…Of course I trusted him! My own brother. He wrote me such a letter…Before…before he put a period to his existence. So kind, so loving, so sorry. It’s all gone,’ she concluded simply. ‘I don’t rightly understand, only that it’s all gone. If it were not for the dear Duke there would be an execution in the house this instant.’
‘The Duke?’ But it was what Caroline had expected.
‘Your kind father! Just fancy, when my Geraint was used to sing your praises — his Amoretta — and I’d keep telling him you were a little nobody and he should look higher! Little did I know whom you was.’ Launched into her story, discretion and grammar were slipping together. ‘You could have knocked me down with my fan when I got back to town and heard the talk. ’Cos, love, you’ve got to face it, talk there was, and no two ways about it. Lucky for you my Geraint’s a real gent, and married you all right and tight and brought back your marriage lines, which I asked him last night, the very first thing.’
‘Well,’ Caroline could not help it. ‘Lucky for you too.’
‘What?’ Mrs Tremadoc looked momentarily taken aback, then burst into a fit of giggles
. ‘Well, fancy that,’ she said at last, wiping her eyes with the lacy handkerchief. ‘So you’re not just a little mouse after all. I believe we shall deal admirably, us two, and no roundaboutation needed. You must know by now that my Geraint’s gentle as a lamb and innocent as a babe. If there’s contriving to be done, you and I will have to do it; and, no two ways about it, dearie, contriving there’s got to be. That father of yours is a hard man, and no mistake, but I’m sure you know the way to bring him round your thumb.’
‘I? Mrs Tremadoc, don’t set any hopes in that, I beg you.’ Every instinct told her that this must be made clear at once. ‘I’m afraid the Duke does not even like me very much. Anything he does for me will be from a sense of duty only.’
‘So? Well, that’s a facer, and no mistake. We’ll just have to think what’s best to do to bring him about, won’t we?’ Mrs Tremadoc drank a good swig of tea, put her elbows on the table and leaned forward to speak confidentially. ‘You must know, dearie, better than anyone, what really happened that day in Richmond Park.’
‘What happened?’ Caroline flushed, then paled, remembering it all, remembering Blakeney.
‘Ah.’ It was a sigh of greedy satisfaction. ‘You do know it all. I was positive you would. Lady Charlotte and that Gaston wa’nt it? Gave young Ffether the slip and off on their own God knows where. Well, now, who’s to know what happened between them two before they learned the truth about themselves. Lord!’ She giggled again. ‘Trust a man to make a mull of things. Fancy that ramrod of a Duke letting you all grow up together without knowing you was brothers and sisters, wrong side of the blanket. Serve him right if it was four bare legs in a bed with them and his daughter ruined. Oh, he’s been mighty clever, so he thinks, putting it about that there was only one elopement, yours and my Geraint’s, but you and I know better, don’t we love? And so we shall tell the Duke if he don’t see us right.’
‘Mrs Tremadoc, I do not understand you.’ But Caroline was very much afraid that she did. What the woman was proposing was blackmail, pure and simple.
‘Bless the child.’ Mrs Tremadoc rolled a roguish eye at her. ’I keep forgetting what a very newly married lady you are. But, look, dearie, all we have to do is convince that stiff-necked father of yours that you can spoil his fine story about Lady Charlotte if you want to, and he’ll pay anything to keep you quiet.’
‘I was afraid that was what you meant.’ Caroline’s cup clicked in its saucer. She was paler than ever, and breathing fast. ‘Let us have this clear between us, once and for all, ma’am. Whatever the Duke might have owed me, as my father, I forfeited when I ran off with your son. Anything he may do for me is more than I deserve. As to Lady Charlotte, I am able to tell you that her brother fetched her home that same evening, and Mr Mattingley had found them even before that.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Tremadoc, ‘but was he in time, that’s what I want to know? And what the world will, if the story gets out. Half-brother and sister. Not pretty, dearie, not pretty at all.’
‘The story is not going to get out,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m more glad than I can say if they have really been able to use my wretched elopement as cover for Lady Charlotte’s escapade, but escapade is all it was, and if I ever again hear you so much as suggest anything else, I shall leave this house at once, never to return. And take any allowance the Duke may choose to give me with me.’
‘Ho, will you!’ But Mrs Tremadoc looked shaken. ‘Now that’s something you ain’t going to be able to do, and the sooner you know it the better. I’ve got news for you, miss. All my Lord Duke chooses to offer his son-in-law is a family living down in the country, God knows where, paying some kind of miserable pittance.’
‘A living? Mr Tremadoc?’ Caroline put a hand to her mouth to quell a spurt of astonished laughter. ‘Never! But, surely, he’s…he’s not qualified.’
‘In orders? No, of course he’s not, but there’s no problem about that. He did very well at Cambridge, did my Geraint. With the Duke behind him, he’ll have no trouble.’
‘No,’ said Caroline thoughtfully. ‘I suppose he won’t.’ She thought of Mr Trentham, so truly good, a man of God. ‘Mr Tremadoc won’t like it,’ she said.
‘Of course he don’t. That’s why it’s up to you to do something about it, miss. After all, you lured him into marriage.’
‘I did not!’ And yet, she thought, there was horrible truth in the accusation. ‘We were a pair of fools,’ she said. ‘And must face the consequences of our folly. And you and I must not quarrel, Mrs Tremadoc.’
‘I’m not quarrelling.’ Mrs Tremadoc bridled, something Caroline had read of but never seen before. ‘I’m sitting here, listening to I don’t know what kind of impertinence from my new daughter-in-law, when all I am trying to do is advise her for the best.’
‘Good,’ said Caroline. ‘Then let us agree that there is nothing I can do to change the Duke’s mind. You must believe me when I tell you that is true. He’s a…an obstinate man.’
‘Deaf as a post and stubborn as a mule, I’ve heard. Well then, what about that mother of yours, Mrs Winterton. Can’t she bring him about.’
‘She’s ill,’ said Caroline. ‘She and the Duchess have gone to Bath. And even if she wasn’t, I doubt if she’d speak for me. What the Duke says is her law.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Tremadoc, ‘Lord knows, I can understand that. How about the Duchess, then? Everyone says she’s a right one.’
‘She’s always been good to me.’ Looking back, Caroline knew how true this was. And then, quickly, before Mrs Tremadoc should sprout a new crop of rash hopes. ‘But I’d rather die than ask her. Mrs Tremadoc, please accept that. And after all, might not a country living be the very thing for Mr Tremadoc? I’m sure he has told me often enough that he finds the London life distracts him from his poetry. In the country he will have time…’
‘Between marrying and buryings?’ said his mother gloomily. ‘Well, I tell you as I told him that it’s no use your imagining I’m going to sink myself in a country grave along with you. I’ve got my jointure still, brother Tom never got his grasping hands on that, and if you two decide to bury yourselves alive at Oldchurch, I’ll just have to look about me here in town. And you’ll have to learn how to hold housekeeping, miss, which I warrant will come as a shock to you both. My Geraint’s a difficult man to cater for, with a stomach like a princess. I’ll like to see how you contrive for him on your £1,000 a year.’
‘A thousand a year?’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘But, Mrs Tremadoc, that’s riches!’ Mr Trentham, she knew, had managed on £700. ‘I’m glad you saved your jointure.’ She longed to have Mrs Tremadoc confirm again that she did not intend to live with them.
‘The widow’s mite,’ sniffed Mrs Tremadoc. ‘The Duke’s man, that Grant, actually had the gall to suggest I might put it towards paying off poor Geraint’s debts, but I soon put him right about that.’
‘You mean, the Duke is paying Mr Tremadoc’s debts as well as giving him the living?’
‘Well, of course,’ said Mrs Tremadoc. ‘He could hardly have a son-in-law in the debtors’ prison, could he now? That Grant wants to see you, by the way. I said we’d send when you were safe home and rested.’
‘Then let us send straight away.’ Caroline rose. She longed to be alone, to consider everything she had learned from her mother-in-law, but where could she go?
‘I’ve had a fire lit in the morning room,’ said Mrs Tremadoc. ‘My Geraint’s not to be disturbed when he sleeps late. I’ll send directly for Mr Grant, and do you be thinking hard, miss, about your position. I tell you to your head, Geraint will never forgive you if you don’t find a way out of this mess.’
‘It’s not I who lost his money,’ Caroline was goaded into replying.
‘Tell that to Geraint,’ said his mother.
Arriving half an hour later, the Duke’s man of business was amazed at the change in Caroline. He had expected an awkward interview with a tearful child and was at once relieved and disconcerted to find himself con
fronting a very pale, very composed young woman in full mourning.
‘It was good of you to come so soon,’ she said, when the first, difficult greetings were over.
‘Not at all. The Duke left strict instructions that I was to lose no time in letting you know exactly where you stood.’
‘The Duke’s not in town?’
‘No. The whole family are in Bath. They mean to remain there until Mrs Winterton is better.’
My mother, she thought. ‘How is Mrs Winterton?’
‘Not at all well, I am afraid. The Duke instructed me to tell you that she must be spared any further nervous upsets.’
‘I see.’ A little glow of anger lit in Caroline’s heart. Was she to be blamed for Mrs Winterton’s illness along with everything else? Her mother’s illness. I shall never be able to think of her as my mother. A mother would have told her, warned her. She looked at the lawyer very straight. ‘I would not dream of doing anything to worry Mrs Winterton.’
‘Of course not.’ He was pleased that she had taken his point so quickly. ‘In fact, the Duke thinks, all things considered, that the less communication there is between you and the family, the better. It is precisely on that understanding that he makes the offer to you about which, I have no doubt, Mrs Tremadoc will have told you.’
‘I would prefer to hear it direct from you,’ she said.
‘Understandable. Most understandable. And wise, too, if I may say so. I have had some dealings with Mrs Tremadoc. It will be much better, if, after today, I deal directly with Mr Tremadoc. I am surprised not to see him here today, but it is convenient enough, for this once, since I have a personal message for you from the Duke.’
‘Yes?’
‘He asks for your solemn promise that you will say nothing, to anyone, about the events of the day before your elopement.’
The little glow was a flame of anger now, but she controlled her voice. ‘He does not need to ask.’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 17