by Jane Feather
“How dare you deny what you intended? How could you lie? I heard you . . . I heard what you said to your Cabinet friends. You were going to use our . . .” She waved an all-encompassing hand. “Whatever you want to call what I stupidly thought was between us, simply to advance your career. You can't deny that.”
“I can deny that I meant you any—” The rest of his sentence was drowned in a cascade of water as Constance, enraged beyond thought or reason, took advantage of his seated position, picked up a round bowl of sweet peas, and tipped it over his head. Water and fragrant, vividly colored flowers dripped from his head, clung to his shoulders, fell into his lap.
He jumped up with a violent execration, scattering sweet peas left, right, and center. Constance stared at him aghast, her fingers pressed to her lips. Laughter suddenly bubbled in her eyes, inappropriate but helpless laughter.
“What the hell!” He dashed at the water. “What the hell was that?”
“I'm so sorry,” she said through the bubbling laughter. “But you provoked me to such an extent that I couldn't help it. Here, let me.” She approached with her handkerchief and dabbed ineffectually at his shoulder. A flower was caught in his hair, another one behind his ear. Solicitously she reached up to dislodge them. He slapped her hand away.
“I'm so sorry,” she said again. “But you were already very wet anyway. In fact,” she added with her head on one side, “I think the floral touch is something of an improvement. I'll get a towel.” She moved to the door but he caught her arm, swinging her back towards him.
“Oh, no, you don't. Not until I've wrung your neck. You vixen, Constance.” Laughter still mingled with anger glittered now in his eyes and was matched with hers. His hands encircled her neck, the fingers pushing up her chin. “Shrew,” he said.
“I think at this point in the play you're supposed to say, ‘Come on and kiss me, Kate,' ” she murmured.
“Will you ever stop putting words into my mouth?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then, ‘Come, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.' ”
“Oh, nicely capped,” she whispered. “Very nice, Mr. Ensor.”
“Be quiet!” His mouth enforced the command. The passionate force of his kiss had little of the lover about it. He held her head in a vise; the pressure of his lips on hers was so fierce it was as if he would brand her with the imprint of his mouth. Constance couldn't resist even had she wanted to, and indeed matched force for force, as if the kiss was some kind of exorcism that finally blunted the blade of their mutual anger.
“I told you everything would work out,” Chastity said from the doorway, surveying the couple, who seemed to be locked in some elemental struggle.
Constance drew away from Max and looked over his shoulder at her sisters. She touched her swollen lips with her fingertips and caught her breath. “You're not supposed to creep up on people.”
“Well, we got worried when the shouting stopped,” Prudence said, coming fully into the room with Chastity. “So we thought we'd better make sure you weren't both bleeding on the floor. Whatever happened to Max? He's growing sweet peas.”
Max ran his hands through his hair, dislodging a bloom. Water dripped from his hair. “I trust Constance is the only virago in the family.” He shrugged out of his driving coat and went to the door. “Jenkins?”
“Right here, sir.” Jenkins stepped instantly out of the shadows beneath the staircase.
“Take this and see what you can do with it, please. And bring me a towel.”
Jenkins took the coat, holding it at arm's length. “May I suggest your morning coat also, Mr. Ensor. A warm iron will have it good as new. And perhaps I could offer one of Lord Duncan's shirts.”
“Just take care of these two.” Max handed him his black coat. “I don't imagine the ladies will object to my shirtsleeves.”
“Not in the least,” Chastity said, ignoring the ironical note to his statement.
“Are you sure you wouldn't like a dry shirt?” Constance asked.
“Quite sure, thank you. Your solicitude overwhelms me. Bring me a large whisky, will you, Jenkins?”
“Very good, sir.” Jenkins bore his sodden burden towards the kitchen.
“So you've patched things up,” Prudence said, surveying the flower-littered carpet.
“Far from it,” Max replied. “Matters couldn't be further from patched.”
“Oh,” Chastity said in surprise. “We rather thought, seeing you—”
“Never jump to conclusions,” Max said. “Your sister and I still have a great deal to discuss . . . a small matter of reparations, for instance.”
All eyes turned to Constance who was now standing with her back to the room, seemingly oblivious of her companions, gazing out at the dripping trees.
“Reparations, Con?” Prudence queried.
“Max and I do perhaps have things to discuss,” Constance said without turning back to the room.
“Then we'll leave you to it.” Chastity tapped Prudence's arm imperatively. “I think we're once again surplus to requirements, Prue.”
“Oh . . . yes . . . yes, I suppose we are.” Prudence followed her sister somewhat reluctantly to the door just as Jenkins entered with a tray and a large towel draped over one arm.
“I took the liberty of bringing you a glass of sherry, Miss Con, since you don't care for whisky.” He set the tray on a console table and handed Max the towel. He cast an impassive glance around the room, his gaze coming to rest on the flower-strewn wet carpet. “Should I clear this up, Miss Con?”
“Not just for the minute, Jenkins. The carpet's seen worse.”
Jenkins offered a half bow in acknowledgment and left the drawing room. In the hall he encountered Prudence and Chastity, who were hovering a few feet from the door. He coughed pointedly before making his stately progress to the kitchen regions.
“He's right, we shouldn't listen,” Prudence said. “Con will tell us everything later.”
“I read somewhere about a trick with a glass,” Chastity said rather wistfully. “If you put it upside down against an adjoining wall you can hear what's going on on the other side.”
“No,” Prudence declared. “We're going upstairs to the parlor.” She took her sister's arm and bore her off.
In the drawing room there was silence while Max rubbed his hair dry with the towel and blotted as much water as he could from his trousers. He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, combed his now unruly hair with his fingers, and then filled a glass from the whisky decanter.
“Would you like sherry, Constance?”
“Yes, please.” She turned finally from the window and drew in a quick breath.
“What is it?” The question was sharp.
She shook her head. “It's nothing . . . just that when you look like that . . . all disordered and casual and careless . . .” She stopped. She wanted to say, as you look when you've been making love, but now didn't seem quite the moment to invoke such an image.
He waited, eyebrows raised, but she shook her head again. She wasn't going to tell him she found him irresistible, that he turned her knees to butter, and her loins to molten lava. He handed her a glass of sherry and she took it with a murmur of thanks.
The doorbell rang and they both paused, listening, both assuming it would be Lord Duncan. Jenkins's step crossed the hall, there was a soft murmur of voices, feet moving to the stairs. Constance breathed again. Her father would not be a welcome intrusion at this point.
“So, how are you going to put this right, Constance?” He gave the broadsheet at his feet a disdainful nudge with the toe of his shoe.
“If it's untrue, why don't you write a denial? We'll publish it in the next edition.”
“No, I'm not going to dignify the accusation with a denial. I intend to ignore it. You will retract it.”
Constance set down her sherry glass. She folded her arms and surveyed him. “I am willing to apologize to you for the personal nature of the attack, but I will not ret
ract the statement that you intended to spy on us. I was not mistaken. I heard what I heard.”
“Those meetings are public. Anyone, supporter or opponent, can gain entrance.”
“But not anyone can listen to the private deliberations of the leaders of the Union. That was what you intended doing, and you intended to prepare the government for any action we decided to take.”
Max sighed. “Maybe I did. But I never pretended to you that I was a supporter of your cause. Quite the opposite. I said I was willing to listen to your point of view, that was all. You had absolutely no excuse to go off the deep end like that.” He held up a hand as her mouth opened in protest. “No, just hear me out. I did not lie to you about any of my feelings. I did not use you, or trick you, or pretend to feel something for you that I did . . . do . . . not. Is that clear?”
Constance still stood with her arms folded, frowning at him. “What did . . . do . . . you feel for me?” she asked slowly.
He tossed back the contents of his glass before speaking. Then he said, sounding more exasperated than anything, “Let me put it this way. I was perfectly serious about the statement when I capped your Shakespearean quote a few minutes ago.”
“You mean The Taming of the Shrew?”
“Precisely.”
“Come, kiss me, Kate,” she murmured, then her eyes opened wide as she recalled how the quote had finished.
“Married?” she demanded in utter bewilderment. “You want me to marry you?”
A look almost of pain crossed his face. “God knows why. I must have done something unspeakable in a past life to be condemned to such a fate in this one.”
Constance did not take the declaration amiss in the least. Her heart seemed to be turning somersaults. “I won't stop putting words into your mouth,” she said, wondering at the absurdity of such a response at such a moment.
“I don't doubt it. However, I have discovered a full-proof way of silencing you.” A smile lingered now in the depths of his eyes, tugged at the corners of his mouth. “So, Miss Duncan, will you marry me?”
“I wonder what I did in a past life,” she mused, tapping her mouth with her fingertips.
“Is that my answer?”
She nodded. There was no other response possible. They were made for each other, on the battlefield or in the bedroom. She loved him, even when she was cursing at him for an arrogant, opinionated louse. And how perverse was that? But she knew it was the same for Max. That edge they shared was what made them perfect partners. She could never consider marrying anyone else. No one else could come close to Max. The younger Constance would have lived in loving harmony with Douglas, she knew that. But she also knew that the person who had been forged by his death and her mother's would not have suited the gentle Douglas at all. What strange twists fate took. Constance had known without articulating it to herself for weeks now that she could never be happy with anyone but Max. She hadn't believed it could happen, because the one issue on which they could not agree was totally divisive. There was no room for compromise.
She said with some difficulty, feeling as if she was killing a fledgling that had not felt its wings, “What about your career? I can't compromise my work with the suffragists.”
“Can't or won't?” He watched her closely over his shoulder as he took his glass to the decanter on the console table.
“Both,” she said simply. “You can't marry me, Max. It'll ruin you.”
He had thought that himself once. Now it seemed merely something that had to be worked around. He filled his glass and turned back to her. “We'll just have to find a way to accommodate the driving force of your existence and the driving force of mine. In fact at this juncture marriage will repair what damage you've managed to do to my reputation in the pages of that paper of yours. It seems like a very elegant solution to me.”
Puzzled, she frowned at him. “I don't understand how . . . Oh, yes I do.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Of all the devious tricks, Max. Is that the only reason you want to marry me?”
“Absolutely,” he said blithely. “I make it a habit to use you, if you recall, to manipulate you for my own ends.”
The laughter died in her eyes. “I'm willing to bury that if you are.”
He set down his glass again and opened his arms. “Come here, you.”
She crossed the carpet and reached her own arms up to encircle his neck. Her head fell back, exposing the column of her throat as she looked into his eyes. She read there love, desire, hungry need, and she felt the surge of all three flowing swiftly in her blood.
“I love you,” he said, holding her waist between his hands. “And I will stand by you always. Even when I don't agree with you in private I will support you in public. You will never have cause to doubt my loyalty to you . . . my wife. That is a promise I make to you now, every bit as binding and solemn as the promises I will make at the altar.”
“I love you,” Constance said. “And I will support you in public. You will always know what I am doing or am about to do if it will have an impact on your career. That is the promise I make to you now, as binding and solemn as the promises I will make at the altar.”
He kissed her then, still holding her lightly, his lips tender this time, gently exploring the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the edge of her chin in a playful caress. He kissed the fast-beating pulse in her throat, and Constance pressed herself against him, feeling light as air, thistledown in the wind, as if some massive burden had been lifted.
“So,” he said softly, palming the curve of her cheek, “we have dealt with that little matter once and for all.”
“Once and for all. And once the engagement is made public—Max Ensor to wed an outspoken suffragist—no one would dare give credence to that article.”
“I'll get Henry to send the notice of the engagement to the Times for tomorrow's edition,” he said. “The sooner it's public, the sooner this will die down.” Then he frowned. “Of course, I must talk to your father first.”
“Oh, there's no need for that. I'll tell him myself when he comes in,” Constance said airily. “He already told me he'd find you a perfectly acceptable son-in-law, so he won't make any objections.”
“You've had this conversation?”
“No, it wasn't a conversation,” Constance corrected. “It was one of Father's little declarations that follow his laments. He makes them at frequent intervals in the hopes that one of us will make it to the altar.”
Max decided not to pursue that line of discourse. “Be that as it may, I should talk to Lord Duncan.”
“You're not marrying into a conventional family, Max.”
He scratched his head and yielded the issue. “I suppose I knew that.” He bent and picked up the discarded copy of The Mayfair Lady. “I imagine you'll be continuing with this.” He sounded resigned.
“I must. It's our only means of support.”
“What?” He stared at her. “I don't find that amusing.”
“No,” she agreed. “Neither do we. But it's the plain truth nevertheless. And now you're going to be one of us, I suppose we should let you into all our shady secrets.”
Dear God! Max thought. Now he was going to be one of them. Somehow her calmly matter-of-fact statement brought it home to him with vivid reality. He was marrying Constance, but she came in a trio. Take one, take all, when it came to the Duncan sisters. He would never have a minute's peace again.
Constance read his thoughts with remarkable accuracy, but then, they were fairly transparent. “It's not as bad as you think,” she said, laying a comforting hand on his arm. “We're really quite harmless.”
“You are not in the least harmless,” he stated with some vehemence.
Constance laughed. “Come upstairs with me now. We have to tell Chas and Prue and then we'll try to put you in the picture about our finances. You ought to know I come with no fortune, merely a load of debt. But it won't concern you in the least. The three of us are working it off nicely now and I'm quite self-
supporting.” She took his hand and led him to the door. “Come and be welcomed to the family.”
Max went willy-nilly, still trying to comprehend what she had said about being self-supporting. A man took a wife, he supported her. That was the way it was. The way it had to be. Didn't it? He decided not to pursue that line of discourse either for the moment.
As they entered the hall, voices came from beyond the curve of the staircase. Prudence, Chastity, and Amelia came into view, talking intently as they descended. Prudence saw Max and Constance first. Her step faltered as she wondered whether to bundle Amelia back upstairs before she encountered Max, but Amelia took the decision out of her hands. She came down to the hall.
“Constance, I was talking with your sisters,” she said with a fair assumption of ease. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ensor.”
Max was wondering what on earth his sister's governess was doing paying an afternoon call in Manchester Square when she was supposed to be in charge of his niece.
“Miss Westcott,” he said politely, managing just a hint of question in the greeting.
“Not Miss Westcott,” Constance said, wishing that this revelation could have come at a more suitable moment. There'd been all too many revelations thus far today. “This is Mrs. Henry Franklin, Max.”
Max looked at her. He looked at her blandly smiling sisters. He looked at the serious yet determined countenance of Amelia Westcott. “Henry?” he inquired on a note of incredulity. “My secretary, Henry Franklin?”
“Well, yes, as it happens,” Constance said, regarding him rather warily. “Secretaries are permitted to marry, I believe.”
“It's hardly my business,” he said, raising his hands in disclaimer. “My sister, however . . .”
“I have left Lady Graham's employ, Mr. Ensor,” Amelia informed him. She was rather pale, but utterly determined.
“I see. Is this recent?”
“As of one hour ago,” Prudence said. “Your sister, Max, saw fit to accuse Amelia of neglecting her duties by attending WSPU meetings during her hours of liberty.”