by Mira Stables
Remembering his kindness, his tenderness, Fleur hugged herself under the bedclothes. Surely he could not really hate her so much as it had seemed when he had spoken to her so cruelly? Perhaps in time he would forget how badly she had behaved. As for that perfectly horrid threat about not needing to see very much of each other once she had learned her lessons — she sat up in bed, eyes very solemn at this shocking thought. Then her mouth curved to a demure little smile. How very slow she would be at learning them!
Presently she got out of bed and pottered about, exploring the room. She guessed that she was at Dakers, remembering the name because she had thought it a strange one, and longed to set out on a wider exploration but was a little diffident about her next move. She was not quite sure of her standing this morning — whether she was honoured wife or sullen captive. She stole across to the bedroom door and gently turned the handle. As she had half suspected, she was locked in. Well, really! After last night! How could he imagine that she would want to run away?
Indignation gave her sufficient courage to pull the bell. If she was to be treated as a prisoner they should at least feed her — and she was, she discovered, quite amazingly hungry! She pulled a negligée over her nightdress — with a passing thought that the garments that Marc had selected for his wife were far more improper than those worn by the Goddess Flora — and scampered back into bed, pulling the quilt up to her shoulders before she could feel herself decently covered.
Elly answered the summons of the bell, bringing hot water and enquiring her mistress’s wishes in the way of breakfast. The master had been out betimes as was his custom but had left orders that Mrs Blayden was not to be wakened and was to stay in bed until he came back as she was quite worn out by yesterday’s journey and their belated arrival. Fleur eyed that innocent-looking rosy face with deep suspicion. The girl must know that she had been locked in, since only by unlocking the door could she have gained admission. To be sure, Marc had said that the staff were devoted to him, but did they really accept his locking his wife in her room as right and proper? Better to make no protest at the moment. She did not want to make herself look foolish by issuing orders that the girl either could not or would not obey. But she would have something to say to Mr Blayden when he chose to put in an appearance.
Unfortunately, after eating an enormous and quite delectable breakfast, bathing — with an interested appraisal of the progress of her bruises, and putting on an even prettier nightgown, she fell fast asleep once more. Thus proving that she had already learned her first lesson — that husbands always know what is best for their wives — and only awakening when that gentleman appeared in person and swept her into a comprehensive embrace that left her neither breath nor opportunity for the lecture she had meant to read him.
This pleasant interlude over, however, he grew serious. “If you tried your bedroom door this morning, you found it locked,” he said directly.
She nodded, a hint of rebellion in the set of her lips.
“Very well. You have a choice. You may remain a prisoner, locked in whenever I am obliged to leave you, since I will not let you out of my keeping again. It will be dull for you, I fear, though I will do my best to make your captivity a comfortable one and will keep you well supplied with books and sewing materials or whatever you choose to occupy yourself with. On the other hand —” he paused and studied her closely for an appreciable time — “if you choose to pledge me your word not to run away, you may emerge from your seclusion and take your proper place as my wife and the mistress of my home.”
It was on the tip of Fleur’s impulsive tongue to tell him her true feelings on the subject of running away. But despite this morning’s hopeful reverie she was still just a little afraid. If he was too sure of her, might he not fulfil his threat of going about his own affairs and seeing as little of his wife as convention permitted? She hesitated, decided hastily on a middle course since the thought of being locked in was unbearable, and said meekly, “I will promise not to run away.”
He had not missed that brief hesitation. His brows drew together in swift suspcion. But in their earlier dealings together he had never found cause to doubt her word. And he would be watchful. If she was planning to deceive him she would not find it easy.
“Very well, then,” he said lightly. “Up you get, slug-a-bed. And after luncheon I will introduce you to your new domain. Shall I ring for Elly, or —” with a wicked twinkle — “do you prefer my services?”
“You may ring for Elly, thank you,” said his wife with dignity.
“A wise choice,” he conceded ruefully. She looked very sweet and lovable sitting up in the big bed, trying to look very much married and dignified in that absurd but extremely attractive garment that he had chosen for her. If he yielded to the impulse to kiss her again, it was little enough of her new domain that they were like to see beyond the confines of the Yellow Room. Obediently he rang the bell, briskly bade his wife make haste with her dressing, and went downstairs.
Fleur was not the only one with lessons to learn. With a naïvety surprising in one who reckoned himself very much a cynic and man of the world, Marc came gradually to the conclusion that marriage was very different from casual affairs with females of easy virtue. You could no longer keep your life in neatly separated compartments. A wife was there all the time. She had a right to share in your interests and your problems. She was not just a toy that you could, so to speak, put away in a cupboard when you had tired of playing with her. He was surprised to find himself accepting this community of interests with no small degree of pleasure.
He had always enjoyed the part of his life that was spent at Dakers, but it had been the enjoyment of congenial work, satisfying but solitary. When darkness fell there had been nothing much to do except pore over his accounts or read a book. There was no one to rejoice with him that five of the six calves born that spring were sturdy young heifers, or to sympathise when an unreasonable frost blighted the cherry blossom. Now all that was changed. Fleur was vividly interested in everything connected with the house and the farm. She was ignorant, of course, but it was a pleasure to explain the science of husbandry to so eager and apt a pupil.
Nor did it take her very long to bring the indoor servants round her thumb. And in this instance her success owed nothing to artifice. It must be admitted that, while her love for horses had easily been extended to a genuine interest in the other farm animals, her desire to know more about crop rotation and stall feeding was deliberately cultivated in order to please a husband who liked to talk of such matters. But her enjoyment of housekeeping was frank and honest, her growing affection for Marcus’s staff, sincere.
It was very much a family affair, she learned. The one-armed butler and the cook-housekeeper were husband and wife; Anna and Elly, the maids she had met that first night, were their daughters. She took her first step in their esteem quite unwittingly when she declined Marcus’s offer to hire a properly trained dresser for her, since Elly was but fourteen and quite untaught. Truth to tell, she disliked the notion of some superior town-bred damsel intruding on her private paradise with inquisitive eyes and gossiping tongue, and despising their homely way of living. Elly was both loyal and discreet, said Fleur, remembering that locked bedroom door. She was perfectly capable of keeping her mistress’s belongings in good order, hooking up her gowns and laundering that fragile muslin or silken underwear that still made its owner blush at her own reflection when she chanced to catch sight of it. If she could not dress hair in the latest fashion, what did that matter, here in the country? Especially, she might have added, when one had a husband who took a wicked delight in filching one’s hairpins, calmly announcing that he liked best to see her hair loose, and why should the patrons of the Rockstone Club be permitted a privilege that was denied to him?
Mrs Melby was the last to capitulate, perhaps because she spent most of her time in the kitchen and so saw least of the married pair. Also because, if the whole family was devoted to the master, Mrs Melby idolis
ed him. Who else, she demanded, would have employed a one-armed butler, even if the arm had been lost in his country’s service, just because years and years ago a young lass just starting work in his mother’s kitchens had set her heart on marrying Jim Melby, when he had two arms just as good as anyone else’s before the press gang took him? Mrs Melby didn’t see how an independent chit of a girl who had to be kidnapped and then locked up in case she ran away could possibly be worthy of her adored master. Fleur’s first reception in the kitchen was very stiff.
The atmosphere mellowed a little when the girl said how much she had enjoyed her breakfast and hoped, shyly, that her lateness had not entirely disrupted the kitchen routine. There could be no doubting the sincerity of the young lady’s compliments, especially when one had seen the well-polished plates that had come down on the breakfast tray. Mrs Melby unbent sufficiently to speak of the difficulty of tempting the master’s appetite since his illness. Not near enough did he eat for a man of his inches and now so thin as he was since that dreadful fever. She realised that she was holding her listener spellbound.
She reported the conversation that followed to her assembled family when the day’s work was done. “Looked at me with eyes like great black inkpots, she did, and her face as white as flour. ‘I didn’t know, Mrs Melby,’ she says. ‘He did not tell me. But I ought to have guessed for myself, seeing him so changed.’ And then she asks me what she ought to do, almost as if I’d been her own Ma. Downright concerned she was, and that I will say.”
“And what did you tell her, Ma?” enquired Anna with deep interest.
Mrs Melby bridled. “I told her to make him laugh,” she announced triumphantly. “Feeding him she can leave to me and well able I am to do it, though I do say so myself. But there’s nothing like a good hearty laugh for giving a man an appetite for his victuals and helping to put the flesh on his bones.”
Her family regarded her with startled respect, but after some animated discussion with several graphic examples drawn from personal acquaintance, it was generally conceded that there might well be something in what she said.
By the end of the first week Mrs Melby was prepared to admit that the master could have done worse. “A great heiress she is, by all accounts, but there’s no finicking nonsense about her and she’s not too proud to put her hand to any job that needs doing. Came and helped me stone the raisins this morning while we was talking about opening up the rooms that’s not been used since old Sir Caspar died. ‘I’m remembering what you said, Mrs Melby,’ she whispers, when he comes shouting for her to go and look at something or other. Maybe after all she’ll suit him better than I thought.”
Whether Fleur did indeed try to follow Mrs Melby’s advice or whether returning health was working its own miracle, Marcus was certainly less grim and gaunt looking and his laughter was heard almost often enough to satisfy his devotee. Deliberately or not, his wife amused him. Even when, as frequently happened, they disagreed. No arguments of his would persuade her that she had been wrong to accept Grandpère’s offer. She was sorry that she had angered him, but in her own view she had done nothing wrong — certainly nothing disgraceful. Her husband now knew all the circumstances — all about Mr Pennington’s will and the needy little family in Hans Town. The dancing had been something she could do to help them, and she had done it. She was honest enough to admit that she had thought it would be an adventure and also that the novelty had very soon palled, the repeated performances grown wearisome. But when a girl had only fifteen pounds a year, she must do as best she could.
This unexpected toughness of moral fibre first exasperated him and then earned his reluctant respect. It was all the more surprising because her physical capitulation was complete. In his arms she was all tenderness, all melting submission. But that did not mean, apparently, that she inevitably regarded his judgements as superior, his word as law. When he pointed out that, whatever the hardship inflicted by Mr Pennington’s will, she had been amply provided for as long as she remained at Blayden, she said only, “But what about Maman and my little brother? Besides, you had given me no reason to suppose that you were sincerely attached to me. When your letters stopped coming how was I to know that you had not deserted me?”
Instinct, and a growing understanding of the man she had married, warned her that pretty coaxing ways would not serve with Marcus. Perhaps her knowledge of his past suggested that he would have had a considerable experience of such feminine wiles, designed to wheedle a jewel or a handsome present from him. He was much more susceptible to reasoned argument. Whether her resistance teased or merely amused him, his respect for her integrity grew with every such encounter. In self defence he told her a little of his story. She listened in silence to a vague but roughly truthful account of meeting with a slight accident and then being caught up in the aftermath of battle; then said pertinently, “But what were you doing in Fleurus in the first place — right in the path of the French advance — when you were supposed to be in Brussels? And what sort of an accident?”
He did not want her enquiring too closely into the nature of his work in Belgium. To distract her he tried to fob her off with a mildly humorous version of his encounter with the mule. His friends had seemed to find it highly diverting. Not so his wife. But neither did she express wifely concern or sympathy.
“There, now!” said Mrs Blayden crossly. “I always did think that mules were one of God’s mistakes. What’s more, I’m persuaded that He thought so, too, and that’s why he made them infertile. But of course clever people must know better than God and went on breeding them. And now just see what has come of it!”
She sounded so indignant about it that Marcus shouted with laughter and ended by catching her in his arms and kissing her soundly. And for the first time Fleur ventured to put up a timid hand and touch the scar with gentle fingers and assure him that it was fading fast.
Chapter Sixteen
DAY succeeded day, and with each one Fleur’s hopes for a happy future grew more confident. To be sure, Marc rarely made her pretty speeches, and his endearments — if one might so describe them — were unusual. He was more apt to address her as ‘woman’ or ‘wench’ or even, ‘impudent brat’ than to employ the tender terms that she had always understood to be the common currency of lovers. But what need of those when his actions so plainly proclaimed his thought for her?
Whenever it was possible he took her with him, riding or walking about the estate and the neighbouring countryside. If the day’s task was too heavy or too dirty for a girl to share, or the weather too rough, he was careful to enquire if she had sufficient to occupy and interest her within doors. As he grew to trust her more fully, he would ask if she would not like Job to drive her into Rochester, where there were some excellent shops. Often, when he came home on days such as these, he would have some small treasure to show her — a cunningly woven wren’s nest — a spray of gaudy autumn-tinted leaves — a branch of scarlet-berried holly; and once, buttoned inside his jacket, a half-starved kitten that he had found, caught but uninjured in a rabbit snare. Only once had he left her for a whole day when he had gone up to Town on business. He had not invited her to go with him and she had not liked to suggest it, though she would dearly have loved to pay a visit to Hans Town and need not have interfered with his engagements. It had seemed a very long day. Nor had he said anything about his activities when he did at last return, but since Grandpapa Pennington had never discussed business affairs either, she did not find this surprising.
She did not doubt that she was much in his thoughts. She knew that he found her desirable. Almost she was convinced that he loved her. But one circumstance still puzzled and disturbed her. Each day, usually very early in the morning, he would disappear, for as much as two or three hours. She had not quite reached the point of asking him outright where he went on these occasions, but curiosity was growing to a painful intensity within her, and, alas! jealousy, too. She could never quite forget the tales that had been told of him. Even Melly, in dis
tant Cumberland, had heard of his shocking reputation. Maman and Papa-Paul had endorsed the stories. And Rose, kind, motherly, hard-working Rose, speaking in scathing comment on Lord Blayden and not knowing that her remarks were addressed to that gentleman’s daughter-in-law, had innocently remarked how different a one was his son. An acquaintance of hers had once enjoyed Mr Blayden’s protection for a few weeks and had held him in affection ever since. Fleur had known from the outset that her husband was no Galahad. How if the time that he spent away from her was passed in the arms of some light o’ love? She was very young, deep in love, and abysmally ignorant of such affairs. It never entered her head that six o’clock on a cold December morning was a very queer time to be leaving one’s warm bed and one’s distinctly attractive wife to go visiting a mistress.
There came a day when he went out even earlier than usual, leaving the house long before she woke. Anna told her that he had gone to see one of the horses, but when she visited the stables after breakfast there was no sign of him. When he did not return for luncheon she began to worry, fearing some accident, and to make matters worse she fancied she must be coming down with influenza. She felt very sick and thoroughly out of sorts and miserable. She had scarcely touched her breakfast — her uneaten lunch brought an irate Mrs Melby to see what ailed her. Fortunately the conversation which followed did much to hearten both ladies. Mrs Melby retired to her own quarters hugging to herself a secret too precious to be shared even with her husband — at least not just yet — and revolving plans for making various herbal brews and strengthening broths that would ease the little mistress’s discomfort. Fleur, forgetting present misery in eager planning, waited with growing impatience for her husband’s return, a good deal comforted by Mrs Melby’s sturdy insistence that if any accident had befallen him they would surely have heard of it by now. But the whole afternoon dragged away and still he did not come. It was barely half an hour before their early dinner when he at last put in an appearance, and by that time she was in such a state of mingled frustration and anxiety that she was hard put to it to avoid proclaiming her relief in a thoroughly shrewish scold. Only the fact that his appearance hardly suggested amorous dalliance saved him. He was filthy and exhausted — the pallor over the cheekbones that she had learned to recognise betrayed him — yet somehow he emanated a secret delight and triumph that she found quite infuriating.