by M. C. Beaton
A bare half hour later, he joined his wife at the top of the first floor stairs leading to the chain of saloons and took his place beside her. The first of the guests were only just beginning to arrive, but he felt his fury mounting.
Mary, who had tried to make amends to him by respecting his headache, took one look at his icy face and her heart sank.
“What is the matter?” she whispered.
“Matter?” he hissed. “You did not intend me to come to this rout, madam. A shabby trick!”
“But I gave the servants orders to leave you asleep,” whispered Mary savagely. “I think you are drunk or mad or both.”
“By God! You shall suffer for this insolence,” he whispered viciously, just as the Duchess of Pellicombe ascended the stairs.
“Dear Lady Mary and Lord Hubert,” she cried. “Such a delightful idea. Isn’t it delightful?”
“No, it’s not,” snapped Hubert. “I wish the curst flat evening were over.”
“Oh dear,” wailed the Duchess, hastening off on her husband’s arm. “What on earth happened to the motto, ‘Manners maketh the man’?”
“Control yourself,” hissed Mary to Hubert as the Duchess moved away.
He opened his mouth to make a reply, and then he saw Lady Clarissa coming towards him up the stairs on the arm of Lord Peregrine. Clarissa had surpassed herself. Her burnished hair gleamed like fire, and her green eyes sparkled like the magnificent collar of emeralds round her neck. In fact, at first glance, it looked as if Lady Clarissa were wearing the emeralds and nothing else. Her dress of the finest silk was in a creamy skin color and dampened to mold her body. Lord Peregrine had painted his face to disguise his bruises.
To Mary’s surprise, he greeted both of them jovially, despite the fact that Hubert was smiling intimately into Clarissa’s eyes. Clarissa laughed lightly and murmured to Lord Peregrine. “You must not take our dear Hubert so seriously, Perry. Once a rake—always a rake. It is only naive little girls who believe in reformed rakes.”
Mary heard the murmur and her heart sank like a stone. She felt pallid and mousey compared to the glittering Clarissa. Her own dress of silver net, which had seemed daringly low in the privacy of the bedroom, now seemed the height of governess propriety.
Hubert had not yet learned one of the most difficult lessons of marriage—that you cannot give love and affection just when you feel like it. He had spent a long and energetic love-making with Mary and for the moment he did not desire her. He therefore felt trapped, and the hurt in her large gray eyes intensified the feeling. He longed to flirt with all the girls in the room and then see the dawn come up through the bow window at White’s in St. James’s.
Mary felt bewildered and lost. Her husband had suddenly turned into a hard, elegant and indifferent stranger. He looked heartbreakingly handsome in his uniform, and she noticed how other women looked at him and felt a lump of suffocating hurt in her throat.
This rout had really been to show the world that Lord Hubert and his wife were in love—a love such as fickle society had never known before. Still she hoped that when they danced together, he might warm to her. There was to be dancing and cards.
But no sooner had they joined the other guests than her husband abandoned her for the card room. She numbly conversed with various strange faces, and when the dancing began she found with some trepidation that Major Godwin was her first waltz partner. He plunged into his woes immediately and she could not help putting a sad little hand up to sympathetically caress his cheek.
She immediately realized what she had done and quickly took her hand away, but not before she had caught the malice in Clarissa’s green eyes and the speculative look on Lord Peregrine’s face.
The Witherspoons seemed to be everywhere, pushing and gossiping. At first, they were snubbed as usual but as Mary watched them, she noticed that they were finally gathering an audience and then many startled looks were being cast in Lucy’s direction. The Witherspoons were cheerfully burning Lucy’s reputation on the social pyre.
Lucy gradually became aware of the hard stares. She looked desperately around for Freddie but he had taken Mary into the refreshment room and seemed absorbed in conversation.
Lucy had arrived late, hoping to make an entrance. Now it seemed she was destined to prop up the wall, while her husband broadcast his infatuation for a married woman.
Her eyes filled with ready tears of self-pity.
“Like Niobe, all tears,” said a gentle voice at her elbow. Lucy looked up into the calm, austere face of Captain Peter Bennet. He made her a low bow. “We met in Brussels,” he said. “Peter Bennet at your service.”
“Oh, of course I remember you,” said Lucy. Her heart-shaped face was animated and her tears dried without leaving any unsightly blotches. “Like a summer flower after rain,” said Peter almost wonderingly.
“How pretty,” laughed Lucy, her vanity restored. “How is it we have not seen you in town?”
“I have been ill,” he said briefly. How could he tell this beautiful little creature of the horrid dreams and nervous exhaustion which had plagued his days and nights after the battle? He was normally a cynical and sophisticated man about town. But he had served in the Peninsular Wars from beginning to end, and then had survived the hell of Waterloo. Normally he would have found Lucy vapid and silly and his code of honor would not have allowed him to flirt with a married woman. But in his present state of mind, he would probably have fallen in love with the first pretty girl he saw at the rout. With the luck of the bewitched Titania, the first person he saw had to be Lucy Godwin and, like the fairy queen, he did not even notice the asses ears.
He gazed into her eyes and Lucy exclaimed, “You should not look so, Mr. Bennet! People will talk.”
“Let them,” he laughed, drawing her into his arms at the sound of the opening strains of the waltz. “Do you care?”
Lucy’s eyes flicked from the gossiping Witherspoons to her husband in the refreshment room with Mary. “No,” she said breathlessly, feeling the hard grasp of his arm at her waist. “No, not a bit.”
Mary emerged from the refreshment room on Major Godwin’s arm, just as her husband came out of the card room at the opposite side of the saloon where the dancing was being held.
Their eyes locked and held and one would have said their glances swore at each other. Clarissa floated past him and he caught her arm and said something in her ear. She threw back her head and laughed, her green eyes sliding towards Mary, holding a world of mockery. Hubert had not said anything about Mary at all, he had merely paid Clarissa a light compliment. But Clarissa meant Mary to be hurt and hurt she was. Hubert was being eaten alive with jealousy. He did not recognize the emotion that was tearing him apart. He only knew that everything was dreadfully wrong and that somehow it was all Mary’s fault.
From then on the evening did become a nightmare for Mary. Her eyes kept blurring with tears as she danced and laughed and sparkled as best she could, while the tall figure of her husband in his scarlet regimentals seemed to haunt her as he flirted outrageously with not only Clarissa, but half the ladies in the ballroom.
At the third waltz, she found herself in Major Godwin’s arms. “She won’t look at me,” he mumbled. “Peter Bennet of all people. Fine soldier and a good captain. I must speak to him!”
“So far he has done nothing wrong,” said Mary gently.
“I wish I were dead,” he said gloomily, treading on her toes. “Ah, you wince in pain. You know how I am feeling!”
“I am wincing because you are treading on my slippers,” Mary pointed out reasonably. The Major gave her a hurt look. What a child he is, thought Mary.
When the dance came to an end, she began to walk about with him until her next partner should claim her.
Suddenly there was a loud commotion at the top of the stairs. The ballroom fell silent and all eyes turned upwards. Guests crowded to the doors of the refreshment and card rooms to see what was amiss.
Biggs, who had been stationed a
t the top of the red carpeted stairs to announce the guests, came staggering forward. His face was deathly pale. His hand was pressed to his chest. He staggered painfully halfway down the steps and clutched onto the bannisters. Several of the guests rushed forward, but Biggs suddenly made a superhuman effort and hauled himself to his feet and stared down at the shocked faces of the guests.
His eyes dimly sought out Lord Hubert. “I’m a-going, Cap’n,” he said. “Remember Vittoria! Remember Salamanca! Those were the days, Cap’n. I don’t regret nothing.”
He staggered on the bottom three steps and turned his white face to the painted ceiling. “Come on boys!” he yelled suddenly. “Come along you lazy bleeders or Frenchie’ll get you.” His dim boot-button eyes stared down from some dream escarpment across the baking sierras of Spain.
“God save King George,” he cried in a great voice and fell in a crumpled heap on the ballroom floor.
“Dead!” screamed the Duchess of Pellicombe and fainted.
Lord Hubert pushed past the crowd of guests and knelt down on one knee by the side of his old comrade at arms. His hard, bright eyes lighted on his wife who was standing only a few inches from him. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Major Godwin was cradling her in his arms and murmuring soothing things into her curls.
Hubert’s distress manifested itself in an all-consuming burst of fury.
“You silly bitch!” he yelled at Mary. “This is your doing and may God forgive you. You’ve worked the man to death!”
There was an indrawn hiss of almost shocked enjoyment. The death of a butler, although beautifully staged, was as nothing compared to the delicious sight of the handsome Lord Hubert, “Beau” Challenge, publically humiliating his wife.
Peter Bennet gently untangled himself from Lucy Godwin’s arms and knelt on the other side of the butler. He thumbed open the butler’s eye and then put his head to Biggs’s massive chest.
“He’s dead all right,” said Peter cheerfully. “Dead drunk!”
Chapter 7
The Challenge rout was discussed for days afterwards—but not in the way that Mary had hoped. The party, which was to demonstrate her husband’s love for her to all the Polite World, had ended in showing them that he heartily detested her.
Lord Hubert did not know how to apologize. It was a wife’s place to forgive her husband, after all. But no sooner had he tried to take her in his arms after the last guest had left and tell her soothingly that Biggs should be pensioned off, than she had beat at his chest with her fists and called him a monster of ingratitude.
Biggs was the one who had apologized most heartily to both master and mistress, who both readily forgave him but would not forgive each other, Mary feeling she had nothing to forgive and Hubert not wishing to believe that he had.
He took himself off to his beloved Hammonds and Mary did not see him for three whole weeks. When he returned, he promptly set about escorting Clarissa, while Lord Peregrine smouldered in the background. Mary felt her heart would break, but Major Godwin at least was always there to take her about and comfort her.
The Witherspoons avidly watched the members of the quadrille. Their gossip about Lucy had been a great success and they were anxious to supply more. They were to be frequently seen either in Mary’s company or in Lucy’s, and gradually their malicious gossip that Mary was having an affair with Major Godwin and that Lucy was having an affair with Peter Bennet began to be believed.
Peter Bennet was the first to hear the gossip. He had escorted Lucy to a turtle breakfast and when he had left her to find refreshments for them, he had overheard two dowagers carefully picking Lucy’s character to pieces. His infatuation had fled leaving him feeling foolish and appalled at his behavior.
He was no longer available to help Lucy into her carriage or to stand holding her shawl and fan at the opera. He at last also heard the gossip about Lucy’s flight from Brussels, and he could hardly bear to look at her. Lucy, deprived of her last flirt, turned her hurt attention on her husband to find that he had apparently deserted her for Lady Mary Challenge.
Lord Hubert seemed much as he had been in his bachelor days. His clothes were the envy of the clubs, his graceful, muscular figure graced every ballroom in London. It was just as well, people said, that his little wife had found a flirt for herself.
When they met in their home, they treated each other with the polite formality of strangers, while Biggs looked on with anxious, worried eyes. He felt he had been the cause of the break-up in the marriage but, for the life of him, he could not think what to do about it.
He confided as much to the Highland cook who consoled him not at all by pointing out that it was none of his business, whereupon the much-incensed Biggs had called him a haggis-faced petticoat-wearing dumpling, and nearly got a pot of turtle soup over his head.
Then one late summer morning, the eight members of the Brussels quadrille found themselves face to face again—in a room in Horseguards. Each eagerly asked the other why they had been summoned, and finding that no one knew why, their various hatreds reasserted themselves and they glowered at each other in a laden silence.
The door opened at last and the well-known, portly figure of General Brian Deveney rolled in with a pale and silent Captain Harry Black.
The General sat down at the head of a long oaken table and motioned the members of the quadrille to take their places around it.
The General ruffled a sheet of paper and cleared his throat. “You will all recognize Captain Harry Black,” he began. “He called at the residence of Clarissa, Lady Thorbury in Brussels. Explain, Captain Black.”
Captain Black wetted his lips and looked nervously around at the party. “I called at Lady Thorbury’s,” he said in a low voice. “I was to inform Colonel Challenge that we had orders to march. I had a portfolio with me. In it were papers and maps showing the strength of our allied troops, and the placing of the various regiments, particularly near Quatre Bras.
“Lady Thorbury begged me to join them for an after-dinner drink. When I returned to staff headquarters, I left the portfolio in the care of the Adjutant. During the battle of Quatre Bras, it was discovered that the portfolio contained nothing but blank sheets of papers. For a while it was assumed that a traitor had stolen them from staff headquarters.”
“But,” interrupted the General, “after a rigorous investigation, headed by none other than His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, it was discovered the papers were removed from the portfolio at your house, Lady Thorbury.”
“Madness!” said Clarissa, her eyes flashing. “Just because I asked Captain Black to stay for a drink does not make me a traitor.”
“I agree,” said Lucy Godwin surprisingly. “I am sure it was not Lady Clarissa. But there are some people who would do anything for power and money. Blackmailers!” She stared straight at the Witherspoons.
“Ho, indeed,” snarled Mr. Witherspoon. “And what about young wives who run away and leave their husbands to die on the battlefield?”
“Freddie didn’t die, but that piece of malicious gossip just did,” raged Lucy.
“I think of a spy as one of the quiet ones,” said Clarissa lazily, looking pointedly at Mary.
The General held up his hands for silence.
“These pointless accusations are not getting us anywhere,” he said. “I want each of you during the next week to write down everything you remember about that evening from the moment Captain Black arrived. I shall not detain you any longer—with the exception of you, Colonel Challenge—a word with you in private, I beg.”
The party filed from the room and then hesitated on the steps outside. The Witherspoons went home to rehearse this latest gem of gossip. Lucy looked at Major Godwin in a furious way and insisted on going home alone. Major Godwin escorted Mary. Clarissa looked curiously at Peregrine. “Here’s a coil,” she murmured. “Who do you think did it, Perry?”
“The General himself,” said Peregrine with a great bark of laughter. Clarissa giggled. “Of course, you must be
right. But now we have to remember all sorts of dreary things. You shall help me write them, won’t you darling?”
“After,” he said.
“After what?”
“After this.”
“Perry! In the street. I declare you are becoming as wild as Hubert.”
“Don’t mention his name to me. What’s your game, Clarissa? You say you are playing him along to revenge me, but it seems to me as if you’re enjoying yourself a bit too much.”
“Pooh!” said Clarissa. “I am a good actress. Come, if you tease me you shall not have your Before.”
Lord Hubert Challenge left Horseguards an hour later in a thoughtful mood. He had no clue as to the identity of the traitor. He only knew it was not himself. It could not be Mary. Freddie would never betray his country. But Lucy Godwin was greedy and silly. The Witherspoons would do anything for social power whether in this country or in France. Clarissa might do it to discover a new thrill. But Lord Peregrine was too cowardly, too much the John Bull in an unappetizingly brutish way.
On his return home, he paced through the spacious, fragrant rooms of his house, looking for his wife but she had not yet returned. He sat down and tried to think clearly. He had to admit he was driving her into the arms of Freddie Godwin and he did not quite know why. He looked back on their quarrel and wondered if he had run mad. He had always been so sure of himself, so ruthless in attaining his aims. He had married to keep Hammonds in the family. He had married for money. He had not dreamed for a minute that the shy, countrified girl he had wed would turn into a woman with a tempestuous range of moods. He suddenly knew that he wanted her in his arms again, so badly it made him feel quite ill.
He wondered again what she thought of him. Her new vivacity had dimmed and her face had resumed some of its old madonna-mask, the eyes wary and guarded.
He had imagined a wife as being someone grateful, admiring and compliant who would be ready to accept his love and affection at precisely the time he felt like giving them, and at all other times would sit somewhere unobtrusively with her sewing, until he was ready to notice her again—not racket around the town with a married army officer.