by M. C. Beaton
“Just you wait!” howled Mary, jumping up and down with rage.
“I am too bored to school you tonight,” he said, walking over and casually flicking her under the chin. “You need a lesson in how to behave like a wife.”
“You would beat me?”
“I would kiss you.”
Before she had time to retreat, he clipped her in his arms and forced his mouth down on hers. She struggled furiously to no avail, and then decided to stand cold and unresponsive in his arms. He relaxed the pressure of his lips and began instead to move them gently back and forth against her own until he felt her lips begin to tremble against his. She felt her bones melting and her senses reeling.
“Oh, Hubert,” she sighed against his mouth.
He abruptly released her and gave her a hearty slap across the buttocks. “Good night, my sweet,” he remarked cheerfully, and striding out of the room, slammed the door behind him.
Chapter 4
The usual unpredictability of the English weather struck fashionable London. A greasy drizzle fell steadily, trickling down the windows of Mary’s bedroom in sad little tears. The weather had turned chilly as well, and Mary’s sheets already felt damp to her touch.
She felt tired and low and despondent. She had lain awake into the small hours, waiting in dread in case her husband should visit her bedroom; or rather part of her mind dreaded the visit and another small mischievous part hoped that he would.
When her maid, Marie Juneaux, arrived with the morning’s post and the morning’s chocolate, Mary settled back against her pillows to survey the sheaf of letters which were, as usual, mostly bills. Then a gilt-edged card caught her eye. Someone—Biggs probably—had written laboriously in pencil, “delivered by hand.”
She picked it up and squinted at the convoluted script, and then lit her bed candle and leaning over, scanned the lines and then read them again, as if she could not believe her eyes. The Duchess of Pellicombe requested the pleasure of Lady Mary Challenge at a ball that very evening!
Mary had not been very long in town—but long enough to know that the Duchess was one of London’s highest sticklers. An invitation to her home was tantamount to a royal command. It was almost insulting that the card should have arrived at the last minute. But then, perhaps the formidable Duchess had only just learned of her existence.
She was not to know, until long afterwards, that she owed the invitation to the wiles of Beau Brummell. That fashionable leader had been determined to prove that he could make Lady Challenge the fashion, and had accordingly used his considerable influence on the Duchess.
A footman entered with a coal scuttle and proceeded to light a fire in the grate. The cheerful light from the flames soon danced around the walls and Mary began to feel very excited indeed. She had a new ball gown which had, so far, never been out of its wrappings. She lay back against the pillows and dreamed of entering the ballroom on her husband’s arm, basking in the glory of his admiring stare.
Her husband!
She sat bolt upright in bed. He must go with her. She could not go without an escort.
She rang the bell and when her maid arrived, began to dress feverishly. She ran lightly down the stairs to the dining room to find her husband had already finished his breakfast and was preparing to leave. She rushed into speech.
“My lord,”—she waved the gilt-edged card excitedly—“I have here an invitation to the Duchess of Pellicombe’s. Do say you will go with me.”
Hubert stared down at the card and then flicked it with his finger. “I see my name is not on the invitation,” he remarked lazily. “In any case, I have other plans for this evening. You did say, did you not, that you would not interfere with my… er… pleasures?”
“But I must have an escort,” wailed Mary staring at him with wide, shocked eyes. “I do not know of any woman who could act as chaperone. I do not know any man who…” She broke off and bit her lip.
“Exactly,” said Lord Hubert. “Your friend Trimmer. I am sure he will do very nicely.”
“But I don’t want to go with him. I want to go with you. How can you be so stupid!” cried Mary, stamping her foot in exasperation.
“You must learn that you cannot insult me one minute and ask favors of me the next,” said Hubert in an indifferent voice. “The fact remains that I am not going with you.”
He gave her a slight bow and strode from the room, leaving Mary to burst into stormy tears.
Mary bitterly wondered what was happening to her.
She was behaving like a spoilt child. She had been disappointed before, many times, and each of those times she had borne her disappointment with stoic calm.
“What is happening to me?” she wailed out loud, clutching a sodden piece of cambric handkerchief.
“I’m sure I don’t know, my lady,” came the voice of Biggs from the sideboard. Mary turned round. Through a mist of tears, she saw the broad back of her butler, his head bent over a dish of grilled kidneys which he was examining with intense concentration.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were in the room, Biggs,” said Mary, trying to recover.
Had Biggs been a properly trained butler of many years standing, he would have bowed and left the room. But he was not. He was an old soldier with an ugly, pudgy face and a graceless, stocky body—and a heart as big as St. James’s Square. So instead, he edged nearer to the table and said in a hushed voice, “If there is anything I can do to help, my lady… anything at all.”
Mary ran distracted fingers through her mop of curls. “I can’t tell you, Biggs. It’s something you can’t help me with. I can’t possibly tell you.” Mary’s voice choked.
“There, there, my lady,” said Biggs. “You tell old Biggsy and you’ll feel better.”
And Mary did. Mary who had never discussed anything with a servant in her life since her mama had taught her that to do so would be vulgar in the extreme and, furthermore, would cause a revolution among the “lower orders.”
Biggs listened carefully, his great head on one side and then an unholy twinkle lit up his small eyes.
“Well, now, my lady,” he said slowly. “I might just have the answer to your problem but you’ll probably not like it.”
“Oh, I will! I will!” cried Mary, grasping hold of the butler’s hand.
“See now,” said Biggs awkwardly, “it’s like this. When I was in the army, we had a lot of them there theatricals and me and some of the lads used to dress up and act in the plays, seeing as how the Duke, God bless ’im, liked a bit of theatre around the camp.
“Now in one of them plays, I took the part of a Spanish lady of quality. I was the Marquise Elvira Dobones deLorca y Viedda y Crummers. One of the officers wrote the play. Very naughty it was an’ all. I still have the costume belowstairs. Very grand costume it is, too, for it belonged originally to one of them great Spanish ladies. So, if I were to put it on and keep me trap shut, and sit with the chaperones, you could go to your ball. ’Course, we mustn’t tell his lordship for though he’s the finest man in the English army, he can be a bit of a tartar.”
“It would never do,” said Mary dismally, while her eyes began to fill with tears again. “It…”
“What the hell is going on here?”
Lord Hubert stood glaring from the doorway. Mary became aware she was still clutching the butler’s hand and blushed fiery red.
“My lady had something in her eye and I was endeavoring for to take it out,” said Biggs woodenly.
“Really?” commented his lordship cynically. Then his shrewd eyes noticed his wife’s tear-stained face. He walked towards the table and stood over her.
“I gather you have been crying like Cinderella, because you cannot go to the ball. Very well then, my child. If it means so much to you, I shall take you.”
But a few minutes ago Mary would have thrown herself into his arms had he volunteered to escort her. But now, Biggs’s sympathy had made her resent what she now considered to be a piece of autocratic condescension.
“I don’t want to go now,” she remarked, wondering in amazement if her voice sounded as childish and sulky to her lord as it did to herself. Evidently it did.
“Sulk, then,” said Lord Hubert carelessly. And the next second he was gone.
“Now you’ve been and gone and done it,” said Biggs with gloomy relish. “It would have been silly of me to go with you my lady. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Oh, please Biggs… do try,” cried Lady Mary, while somewhere in the back of her brain, the old self-controlled, madonna-like Mary looked on in amazement at the vacillating child she had become.
Lord Hubert Challenge had dreamt of this sort of evening for a long time. Now he was beginning to wonder why he wasn’t enjoying it one bit.
He was ensconced in his club with a few of his favorite military friends. The play was deep, the wine was good, and a huge log fire crackled in the club fireplace, dispersing the unseasonable chill of the evening. For the drizzle had changed to a downpour, slashing against the windows, driven by a wild gale. He was both comfortable and fashionably dressed in a double-breasted tail coat with a deep M-shaped collar, short-waisted waistcoat and close fitting knee-breeches. He had run into the Duke of Pellicombe earlier in the day and the Duke had been almost alarmingly effusive in his apologies. He would deem it a tremendous honor if Challenge would but grace his wife’s little ball. Hubert had said firmly that he had a previous commitment but had, nonetheless, accepted the card which the Duke had pressed upon him.
He shifted slightly in his chair and he could feel the stiff edges of the card in his pocket pressing against his hip. Well, he had offered to escort her, hadn’t he? And she had refused, hadn’t she? And furthermore, she was a silly chit and he didn’t care a rap for her… did he? But she was his wife and dammit, he had to admit he had not liked to see her cry.
He abruptly stood up and walked to the window and stared out into the street where a lamplighter battled with the gale, nipping up and down the posts like a monkey, filling the lamps from his oil can. The cowls on the chimney tops spun round and round, sending streams of black smoke down into the rain-drenched street below.
All at once he remembered the rain-soaked fields of Waterloo. He turned and looked at his group of friends round the card table. How few of them had survived! All at once the screams of the wind were the screams of the wounded and dying. Damn it all! He was blue-devilled. He would go to the ball after all.
When he arrived at his house to deliver the news to his wife, it was to discover with some anger that she had left. Asked who was escorting her, his footman became shifty-looking and muttered that it was by some Spanish lady.
“Probably some mushroom friend that the Witherspoons picked up in Brussels,” he thought haughtily.
He changed quickly into his ball dress, allowed his thick black hair to be teased into the artistic disorder of a style called coup de vent, tucked his chapeau bras under his arm and set out.
Some streets away, Lucy Godwin strode up and down the room waiting for her husband to get ready. “I declare I do not know what is taking you this age,” she stormed. “I had as well gone with young Haverstock. He dances so exquisitely. Do you remember…?”
“Young Haverstock died with a ball in his heart,” said Major Godwin as he struggled with the intricacies of his cravat.
Lucy bit her lip in vexation. “Now you have upset me by talking of death.”
“I am sorry, my dear,” replied the Major quietly. “It seems as if death is my trade. I shall never forget that battle, or the useless waste. So very many dead.”
“Ooooh!” cried Lucy, bursting into ready tears. “Are we to have no fun? You make me feel guilty. You prose so.”
The Major turned slowly. Large tears were rolling down Lucy’s heart-shaped face.
“There now,” he said in a softer voice. “You are spoiling your looks, my sweetheart. Come, I am an old bear to depress you so. I shall be the happiest man at the ball tonight if only you will smile on me.”
Lucy gave him a petulant, watery smile. And with that he had to be content, although his heart was very sore. He was still troubled by feverish nightmares of death and disaster. But he was a mean and selfish brute to expect this fairy-like creature to share his grim agonies. Wasn’t he…?
Mary Challenge found that she was able to forget her husband for at least two whole minutes at a time. She was the succès fou of the evening. She had entered the ballroom very nervously escorted by Biggs, expecting any minute that someone would cry, “Imposter!” But it had all gone as smoothly as a dream. Biggs, a splendid Marchese in purple velvet, lavishly trimmed with crystals from the dining room chandelier, and with his brushlike hair covered by an enormous turban, had sailed off sedately to sit with the chaperones. Mary was quickly taken in charge by none other than the famous Mr. Brummell himself. She was at first over-awed, but he seemed to find everything she said so excruciatingly funny that she began to relax after her first surprise, and when he at last asked her how she was enjoying her first season, she found the courage to reply calmly, “Absolutely terrifying, Mr. Brummell,” which sent the famous Beau off into whoops.
Her success was assured. Everyone was anxious to find what it was about Lady Mary which had kept London’s leader of fashion so amused.
Without his patronage, most might have found her a pretty enough girl with her large clear eyes and saucy fair curls tied up in a gold filet to match her gold-spangled gown. But because of the Beau’s obvious interest, she was at once declared to be “quite beautiful” and her dance card was quickly filled.
Mary was determined to enjoy her success, and the only thing she found lacking was that her infuriating husband was not present to see it. Even the arrival of Lady Clarissa, who was dressed in silver gauze, damped so that it molded her body, could not dim Mary’s enjoyment.
She was, however, slightly disturbed to notice that minx Lucy Godwin flirting with all and sundry, while her large husband propped up one of the pillars and watched. It really was too bad of the girl, thought Mary, smiling sympathetically across at him.
The next dance was a waltz and as Mary had not yet received permission to dance it, she decided to stroll over and join her friend, the “Marquise.” But before she could reach Biggs, she was accosted by Major Godwin.
“I say, Lady Challenge,” he began. “I must speak to you. Just a little of your time.”
Mary nodded and took his arm and they walked to the adjoining saloon where refreshments were being served. The Major found them a table in a corner, away from the other guests. He sat down heavily and looked at Mary like a large, sad dog who has just received a whipping from its master.
“I don’t know how to begin,” he blurted out at last.
“It’s Lucy, isn’t it?” asked Mary gently. “She is very young, you know.”
“But dash it all, we’re married,” groaned the Major. “I try to tell her not to flirt with the other fellows and she glares at me and calls me an old stick-in-the-mud. I tell you Lady Challenge, it’s no go. You’re a fine girl but you cannot understand what it means to love someone desperately and not be loved in return.”
Mary’s beautiful eyes filled with tears as she felt a sympathetic knot of pain in her stomach. “Oh, yes I know,” she said sadly.
The Major fingered his sideburns and looked at her awkwardly. “I say, I didn’t know. You mean…?”
Mary nodded. The burden of her unrequited love for her husband was suddenly too much for her to bear alone. For in that second she realized bitterly that she loved him with all her heart.
“Perhaps,” she volunteered slowly, “your situation is not as bad as mine. You see, Hubert married me for my money. He never pretended anything else. But Lucy must have loved you.”
“She did at first,” said the Major, covering Mary’s hand with his own large one. “Those were marvellous days. Then we came to London. After that she had no time for me. She… she said I had stolen her youth.”
Mary pressed his hand in return and forbore from remarking that Lucy Godwin had obviously read too many novels.
“La! How comfortable you look together. ’Tis said you are the latest fashion, Mary. So you are become like the rest of us. Setting up a flirt!”
Lady Clarissa stood looking down at their joined hands, her cat’s eyes alight with lazy malice. Mary snatched her hand from the Major’s, but not before her startled eyes had caught sight of the tall figure of her husband blocking the doorway.
“I doubt if I shall ever become so fashionable,” said Mary quietly. “Major Godwin is a friend. You must not mistake friendship and loyalty for anything else, Lady Clarissa. Love is a different matter.”
“In what way,” drawled her husband, strolling up to their table. He had only just caught Mary’s last remarks.
Clarissa swung round so that the drying gauze of her dress floated out from her body, showing tantalizing glimpses of the white flesh beneath. “Hubert darling,” she exclaimed, clinging to his arm. “Your little wife was just expounding upon the virtues of love. She and Major Godwin make quite a fuss about it.”
“Indeed!” said Hubert casually. “You must tell me all about it, Mary. We shall dance, I think.”
Mary rose to her feet, all poise gone. The sophisticated Clarissa and her tall, handsome husband seemed to belong together. Their eyes, as they surveyed her, held the same look of mocking mischief.
“I have no dances I-left,” stammered Mary. “Only the waltzes and I have not yet received permission to dance those.”
“Then I shall find permission,” he said smoothly. “Ah, I believe your next partner approaches.” He bowed and walked off with Clarissa on his arm, bowing and nodding to various acquaintances. He had not noticed her success! The evening fell in glittering ruins at her feet.