by M C Beaton
The comte was immediately besieged by children demanding entertainment.
“Not now.” The comte smiled. “Later.”
“There will be no ‘later,’” said Delphine severely. “Now that you are married to me, I expect you to behave in a dignified manner.”
“On second thought,” called the comte to his audience of urchins, “I can spare you a few moments.”
To Delphine’s mortification, he began to juggle those wretched balls while the children cheered and clapped.
Her face flaming, she turned on her heel and marched away. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting the comte to cease his tomfoolery and run after her, but he did not pay her the slightest attention.
Delphine had just reached the corner of the street when she found her way barred by the small tiger she had seen with the comte at the fair.
“Ho! There you is, missus,” he cried.
“Let me pass,” said Delphine angrily. The tiger was not a boy at all. The bright sunlight revealed his face to be sharp and wrinkled. He was barely five feet high, which had led her to believe he was a child. His livery was exactly like the livery of a tiger, those minute individuals who acted as a sort of carriage-page to members of the ton. It was badly frayed and worn.
“You married Mister Jules, didn’t you?” he demanded. “Well, you got to help him. There’s a squad o’ duns heading this way for to take him to the round ouse.”
Delphine stared at him, open-mouthed, and then whirled about and ran back towards the comte. She seized his arm and the colored balls went bouncing and spinning over the sun-drenched cobbles.
“Jules,” she cried. “Your … your servant there says there are duns coming to see you.”
“Quickly!” He put an arm around her waist and hustled her into the dark entry of a building nearby and ran up the steps two at a time. He took a key from his pocket, unlocked a door on the top landing, dragged her into a shabby room and locked the door, and leaned against it with his ear to the scarred panels.
“What on earth …?” began Delphine when she could catch her breath. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh!” he said, not moving a muscle.
“I shall not shush! I …”
He turned quickly and clamped his hand over her mouth. The physical contact aroused such a confused welter of emotions in her body that she could only stare up at him dumbly.
“I will take my hand away if you promise to whisper,” he said in a voice which just reached her ears.
She nodded dumbly, and he took his hand away. “Have you any money?” he asked.
Delphine shook her head. “I have some money with my luggage in Manchester Square. But I shall refer your creditors to my lawyers …”
He looked her over and shook his head. “It would not serve,” he said in a low voice. “They would not believe you a lady of substance. No jewels. No carriage. No maid.”
“Then what shall we …?”
“Shhh! Don’t let them know we are here, and perhaps they’ll go away.”
Thudding feet came rapidly up the stairs and the next minute the door shook under heavy blows and kicks.
“Open up, Mr. Jules,” cried one. “We know you’re in there! Mrs. Jenkins told us so.”
“Merde!” said the comte.
“There is no need to swear,” hissed Delphine, scarlet to the roots of her hair. “Who is Mrs. Jenkins?”
“Landlady.”
“Break the door down,” said a voice outside. “Macdonald here’s got an axe.”
“That does it!” said the comte. He picked up a leather wash bag and stuffed some papers in it. The room was barely furnished, containing only a narrow bed, a table, a rickety chair, and a washstand.
“Come,” he said to Delphine. He went and gently eased up the window.
“Where are we going?” asked Delphine, stifling a scream as the first axe blow fell on the door.
“Over the roofs!”
“But I can’t …”
He picked her up and tossed her over one shoulder and, doubling up with an acrobat’s agility, gained the windowsill outside. Delphine stayed rigid across his shoulder. Far down below, the small mud-filled areas with their outside privies seemed miles away. She closed her eyes and gulped.
He seized the drainpipe and, still carrying her as if she weighed nothing at all, he shinnied up the drainpipe and then ran lightly over the sloping cracked tiles of the roof. One flying leap took him over to the roof of the building next door. There was no sound from Delphine. For the first time in her life, she had fainted dead away.
“Just as well,” he muttered to himself.
He continued his headlong acrobatic flight from roof to roof until he reached the last one. He gently lowered Delphine down onto the roof with her back against a chimney stack and, working the string of her fan over her limp wrist until he got it free, he proceeded to fan her.
Delphine blinked up at him. Beyond his blue eyes stretched the blue of the sky. Down below …
She let out a sharp scream and clutched at his legs.
He loosened her hold and eased himself down until he was sitting next to her.
“Don’t say anything,” he urged, “or you will be sick. Take deep breaths of air. That’s the thing.” Delphine did as she was bid, until the dizzy feeling of nausea passed. He put an arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her.
“We will wait here until they get tired and go away,” he said.
“This is monstrous!” protested Delphine. She thought longingly of her dead husband, who had always treated her as if she were made of fragile porcelain.
Although he had encouraged her in the masculine study of agriculture, until his death that interest had been confined to gentle rides around the estates with him in his carriage. Sir George would never have subjected her to such peril. She glanced down, then closed her eyes.
“I wouldn’t do that if you can’t stand heights,” said her husband sympathetically. “Some people can’t, you know.”
“You could have killed me,” raged Delphine, fear being replaced by burning resentment and anger. “No gentleman would behave so.”
“I think I have been very gentlemanly indeed,” he said severely. “‘T would not have been the act of a gentleman to allow you to suffer the indignities of the roundhouse. Now, instead, you are here with me, high above London on this sunny day. Over there you can see St. Paul’s and beyond that, the Tower. There are not many places in London where you can find such a view. It’s no use fretting about pride and dignity. All you will do is spoil our wedding day.”
“Have you no realization of the outrageousness of your behavior, sirrah? Have you no shame?”
“I think I have been very resourceful,” he said, picking up her fan and proceeding to fan her again. “You know, your eyes are beautiful when you are animated. Normally, they’re sort of dead brown, like pennies, but when you take an interest in something, they sparkle with little lights, like a trout stream.”
Delphine raised and dropped her hands in a gesture of resignation. “You’re mad,” she said. “Quite mad.”
His arm about her shoulders made her wretched body all too aware of the proximity of his. She would have liked to move away from him, but there was really no safe place to move to.
“I have not had a real home in such a long time,” he said reflectively. “Tell me about Marsham Manor. Tell me about the formidable Mrs. Bencastle.”
At first, in the forced calm voice of someone trying to humor the mentally insane, Delphine obliged. But he listened so intently that she found herself talking more to him than she had talked to anyone in her life.
Gradually, she began to relax against his shoulder, talking and talking, while the sun gradually sank lower in the sky and the cheeky London sparrows squabbled in the gutters. She finished with a description of the marquis’s visit and of how she had finally learnt of the manner of her parents’ death.
“We all have such stories,” he said. “Li
ving with all the French émigrés has its advantages. One hears so many horrors that one’s own seem to pale by comparison. Most of the poor things will not let the past go. For them, England is only an interlude.”
“And for you?” asked Delphine curiously.
“Ah, for me, I tried to become as English as possible out of sheer contrariness. My outer shell is very English, but my soul is French. Look! There is going to be a new moon tonight and the first star is out. Soon we may go.”
“Since you seem to have had so many occupations,” said Delphine, “why are you in such straits? Why cannot you pay your creditors?”
“It was my wretched vanity, my sweeting. I was determined to pay for the wedding breakfast and to have a new suit of clothes. But before I could pay my tailor or my rent or my coffee house bills or my bootmaker, I unfortunately felt obliged to give money to some needy friends, and so …”
“You are irresponsible,” said Delphine. “Such conduct must change.”
“I will be very good,” he said solemnly. “I am much too lazy to go against your wishes.”
Delphine bit her lip in vexation. Somehow, he managed to make her feel like a boring and nagging middle-aged matron.
But she had quite forgotten about the perils of the descent still awaiting her until he cocked an ear, listened to the noises of the street below, and said, “It is time to go now.”
“Oh, no!” wailed Delphine, beginning to tremble.
He stood up and raised her to her feet. He steadied himself with one hand on the chimney stack, seeing the glint of fear in her wide eyes.
The comte suddenly bent his head and kissed her ferociously, passionately, his lips moving against her own. Delphine tried to resist him, but she felt her body melting into his, and the stars and moon above began to whirl and spin.
He suddenly released her, only to swing her over his shoulder, leaving her too dazed and shaken by that kiss to protest or utter a sound.
The man is like a cat! she thought as he nimbly scaled down the drainpipe of the last house and, still holding her, ran across a small, odorous yard, leapt onto a barrel and was over a wall, jumping from the top and landing on the other side without a sound.
He set her on her feet and, tucking her hand in his arm, set off sedately through Soho Square with the stately tread of a bourgeois gentleman out for a Sunday walk with his wife.
Delphine stumbled from time to time, weary with emotion and fatigue, but his hand was always there to steady her. Several times, she opened her mouth to say something and closed it again.
At last, the corner of Manchester Square was reached. A small shadow detached itself from the blacker shadow of a building. “Guv,” it whispered hoarsely.
“Yes, Charlie, what’s amiss?” asked the comte.
“I wus wonderin’ whether you was going wiffout sayin’ good-bye.”
“No, I wouldn’t dream of it, and my dear wife will not object, I am sure, to my taking my only servant with me.”
The little man squinted up at Delphine, trying to see her face in the dark. “Have you got horses, missus?” he asked. “Real horses?”
“Yes, real horses,” said Delphine wearily. What on earth were her aged servants going to make of Charlie?
“It’s a long time since me and the guv had one,” he said plaintively.
“We are residing at Madame Beauchair’s, Charlie,” said the comte firmly. “Come and see me in the morning.”
The small man touched his hat and scuttled off into the darkness.
“He has been with me almost since I came to this country,” explained the comte. “I had a certain amount of my family’s jewels with me, then. I did not dare try to sell them in France, since I was masquerading as a peasant boy during my escape. But in London … Well, I was very young and thought I had a fortune. The money from the jewels did not last very long, and so, bit by bit, everything went, until finally I had only one horse and then that had to go, too. But Charlie stayed. He was my tiger and hopes to be so again.”
Madame Beauchair’s flat looked slightly more welcoming than it had earlier, with the soft candlelight masking the shabbiness of the furniture.
A cold supper had been left for them. Obviously Madame Beauchair’s maid had gone to join her mistress.
After a little hesitation, Delphine went into the bedroom to change, leaving her husband to open the wine.
She selected a plain morning gown, not wanting to wear evening dress, since her husband now had only the clothes he stood up in.
She washed and changed quickly. Her gown was of plain cambric, high at the neck and let in around the bottom with two rows of worked trimming. It was pale blue with darker blue embroidery.
Her husband surveyed her with a critical eye as he drew out a chair for her. “Not blue,” he said finally. “With your skin and hair, you should wear more dramatic colors, scarlet or burgundy, I think.”
Delphine unrolled her napkin and glanced up at him with irritation. “My dear sir, I am at least neat and clean. You have all the dirt of the London roofs about your person.”
“I know,” he rejoined. “I must spend my wedding night washing my clothes.”
There came a loud knocking at the door. The comte instinctively glanced towards the window.
“No,” said Delphine firmly. “I am not going to run over any more roofs. I have money here.” She marched to the door and opened it, prepared to face a battalion of duns.
But it was only the small figure of the tiger. “I got the guvner’s traps, missus,” he said, touching a battered and shiny excuse for a hat with one finger.
The comte came to join Delphine. “Wonderful, Charlie,” he said. “How did you manage it?”
“I waited till that old horse godmother, Mrs. Jenkins, took herself off for her quart o’ blue ruin and jemmied the lock an’ snaffled ‘em.”
He touched his hat again and prepared to withdraw.
“Wait,” said Delphine. She ran into the bedroom and returned a few moments later and handed Charlie several gold coins.
“Pray find yourself a suitable livery on the morrow,” said Delphine. “I understand you are to accompany your master and me to Marsham Manor.”
Charlie looked from Delphine to the gold. Then he slid it into one of the many pockets in his ragged coat, mumbled “yes missus” and darted off down the stairs, leaving his master’s trunks on the landing.
The comte lifted them inside the room and waved a hand towards the table. “Come, ma cherie, we must eat.”
Now, Delphine was not used to being criticized, except by Mrs. Bencastle. Sir George would not have dreamed of finding fault with her dress. She whipped open her napkin again with a noise like a flag flapping in the wind and studied her husband.
“You seem to set yourself up in matters of dress,” she said coldly while he carved a ham into delicate slivers. “No doubt you have much experience in such matters.”
He smiled at her vaguely but did not reply.
Delphine was tired. She found herself becoming increasingly irritated. “No doubt you learned about ladies’ fashions from the wives of your clients,” she pursued. “They seemed monstrous upset to find you were leaving for the country.”
“Yes,” he said equably. “I was a prime favorite.”
“I trust you confined your instructions to the drawing room?”
“Oh, no.” He smiled sleepily. “I gave great service in the bedroom as well.” “Shameless! How dare …”
“Mr. Baxter often said no one could instruct a man to tie a cravat like me.”
Delphine blushed. “It pleases you to make fun of me,” she said in a low voice.
“I? I was merely answering your questions. Do eat. You have no idea how spleenish one can become when one is hungry.”
“I am not spleenish!”
“But you are hungry.”
“Not at all.”
“Then I hope you will not mind if I eat. I confess to feeling very sharp-set.”
Delph
ine watched with lowered eyes as he heaped his plate and set to with a will. He ate slowly, neatly, and fastidiously. He appeared to have his mind solely on his food.
The candles on the small round table at which they were seated were now the only ones lit. He must have extinguished the others while she was dressing, thought Delphine.
The tall candles on the table isolated them in a golden pool of light. She scowled at her plate and waited for him to say something so that she could contradict him. But he continued to help himself from the cold collation that had been left for them.
Her stomach gave a treacherous rumble. Slowly, Delphine picked up her knife and fork. She would just eat a very little. But no sooner had she finished the first mouthful than she realized how ravenously hungry she was. The meat—ham, veal, and cold game pie—was delicious. It had been cooked to perfection, each piece having a delicate, subtle flavor quite unlike any of the dishes at Marsham Manor.
All at once, her hunger appeased, Delphine began to feel ashamed of herself, and wondered at her behavior. She could not remember having ever behaved in such a pettish fashion in her life.
But her feeling of well-being did not last long.
She realized her anger at him had stopped her for a short time from remembering that they were married and that there was only one bedroom and only one bed.
Delphine began to feel exhausted, nervous, and on the point of tears. He seemed so large, so very tall, and he had kissed her in that shocking way. What if he should kiss her again?
She was aware of his eyes on her downcast face. “Go to bed,” he said gently. “I am used to being my own servant and am quite capable of tidying things here.”
Delphine arose slowly, still not looking at him, and scurried from the room.
She undressed in frantic haste, terrified he would walk in and surprise her. She scrambled into her nightgown and tied a nightcap on top of her hair.
The bed was a large four-poster with worn brocade hangings. The sheets were thin and cold and smelled of lavender.
Delphine snuggled down and lay rigid, wondering what he was going to do.
Chapter Four