by M C Beaton
He seized Peter by the scruff of the neck, carried him to the door, hurled him out into the corridor, and returned to his wife.
“Now,” he said, “where was I?”
He leaned over her. A miserable yowl rose from the passageway.
“Oh, Devenham,” said Emily. “The poor animal.”
“You had begun to call me Peregrine.”
Yowl, yowl, yowl.
“He is only a cat, Peregrine. You mustn’t treat him so badly.”
“My lady, I am here to kiss you good night. Does that mean nothing to you?”
Emily smiled up at him and held out her arms. His lips had nearly reached hers when there came the sound of a heavy body throwing itself against the door.
Emily winced. Her lips were cold and chaste.
The earl drew back disappointed. Emily smiled at him tremulously, knowing she had failed him, but what else could she do? The yowls were increasing along with the desperate thuds on the door.
“He’ll knock his head senseless,” she moaned.
The earl stood up. “I leave you to consider your ridiculous behavior, madam,” he said stiffly. He stalked to the door and flung it open, and the cat hurtled into the room and straight onto the bed. The earl’s lip curled in disgust as he went out and slammed the door.
But that was not the worst of it.
The following day, the earl had been helped into his clothes by his Swiss and had then noticed a speck among the snowy folds of his cravat.
He decided to find a new one and opened the drawer where the clean linen was kept. He was searching about for a length of cloth that was already starched when he became aware of the horrible smell arising from the drawer.
He rang the bell and stood rigid with fury until his Swiss came running in.
“Was that cat in here?” demanded the earl.
“Yes, my lord,” said the servant. “Very amusing he is. He was watching me put away the clean linen, just like a human.”
“Indeed. Well, when you turned your back, this is the result. Smell this.”
The valet moved cautiously forward and then looked at his master in dismay.
“Exactly,” said the earl grimly. “Cat’s piss. Here and now I want it known that that animal is not to be allowed in my quarters or anywhere near my person.”
Emily found the resulting scene blistering and painful. The end result was that Peter was to be taken out to the stables and left there until her return.
And so, instead of setting out cheerfully with her husband to London, a bit of Emily’s heart was left behind in the stables. The fact was that Emily was sure of the cat’s love. She was not at all sure of her husband’s. She still sensed a woman somewhere in the background of his life in which she had no part. She was ashamed of her own fears and the timidity that kept her from her husband’s bed. She felt the earl was waiting for her to make the first move rather than be humiliated by her rejection. But every time she thought of making that move, her fears returned to plague her.
Sometimes, Emily fervently wished she had driven on and left Peter to his own fate in the ditch.
She had gone to the stables to say a tearful farewell to the animal and although the head groom had assured her the cat would be well looked after and fed, she sensed an underlying contempt in his manner which she felt boded no good for the hapless Peter.
She was waiting in the carriage for her husband to join her. Their relations were still strained.
But it was with a queer lightening of her heart that she saw the smile on his face as he climbed into the carriage to join her. He stooped and kissed her warmly and quickly on the mouth, and she gave him an enchanting smile. He sat down beside her and took her hand in his. Emily’s heart soared, and they were several miles on the road before she even thought about the cat or wondered what was happening to it.
The cat was much nearer than she realized. Behind her, at the back of the carriage, crouched down at the feet of the footmen in the rumble, among the folds of the bearskin rugs which were piled at their feet in case my lord or my lady should require them, crouched Peter. He was terrified at first by the motion of the carriage, but, after a time, the heat from the rugs made him feel drowsy. His eyes closed and he slept.
The posting inn lay some twenty miles from London in a market town called Shapphards. It was a spacious, pretty inn, built in the modern style with a porticoed entrance and a blue-and-gold coffee room, with a brass and walnut tap downstairs and well-appointed bedrooms with private parlors above.
Emily told herself she was glad her husband had taken a separate bedroom and fought down that niggling little wish that he would by forcing her to join him in his bed beat down her timidity. It would all be so simple, Emily felt, if he would kiss her and go on kissing her.
He looked splendidly formal with the diamond pin she had given him blazing among the snowy folds of his cravat. The parlor in which they sat down to dinner was light and charming, with a small bright fire, oak furniture, and pastel walls of nile green. The food was savory, and both fell to with a good appetite. When the servants were dismissed, the earl drew a small black box from his pocket and passed it to Emily. “For you, my sweeting.”
Emily colored slightly at the endearment and opened the box.
An emerald, as green as spring grass, as green as Peter’s eyes, flashed up at her from its gold setting.
“It’s a ring, Peregrine,” said Emily. “It is very lovely.”
“You never did get an engagement ring, Emily.” He came around the table and lifted the ring. Her hand trembled slightly as he put it on her finger. He raised her hand and kissed it.
Her eyes, lifted to his, were soft and brown, with little flecks of gold. Her lips were pink and beautifully shaped. Her …
“It reminds me of Peter’s eyes,” said Emily, turning the ring so that the green fire flashed in the candlelight.
The earl made a sound like gerrumph and stalked back to his seat. Emily looked at him nervously and cursed her unruly tongue. She longed to say something light and warm and affectionate. If only she had the courage to tell the truth, to face this husband of hers and say: I want to love you, I think I could love you, but you scare me to death. Please help me.
But instead, she said, “I cannot help worrying about the cat. Will they be kind to it, do you think?”
The earl poured himself a glass of wine and said in measured tones, “They have instructions to take care of the animal. They are not in the way of being disobedient or they would not be in my employ. They will treat the cat more like the animal it is and less like a lover.”
“You are jealous,” said Emily, “of a cat.” And inside her head, a voice was screaming at her to behave herself.
“I have no reason to be jealous,” he said with a shrug. “Only men in love are jealous.”
Emily winced.
Well, sneered her inner voice, what did you expect? He gives you a beautiful ring and kisses your hand, and all you can do, instead of saying thank you, is to worry about a horrible cat with a torn ear.
“The reason I am justifiably annoyed,” the earl went on, “is because you did not pause to thank me for the ring.”
“Thank you, Devenham.”
“Too late. Have you finished? Then perhaps you would like to retire and leave me to the more pleasant company of this decanter of port. It provides solace and comfort when nothing else is offered.”
For one split second, Emily was on the point of begging his forgiveness. But he looked so hard, so unyielding; and then there was always that feeling about him, that emanation from him of the presence of another woman.
“Do not worry,” she said, rising to her feet, “we will soon be in London and you can return to the arms of your mistress.”
The slight flicker of surprise in his eyes made her own suddenly fill with tears, and she walked quickly from the room and slammed the door behind her.
The deuce! thought the earl bitterly. Some scandalmonger has told her.
Miaow! Emily jumped in the air with fright and then stared at the bed, unable to believe her eyes.
Stretched out on the counterpane was the cat, Peter.
At the same moment, she heard the maid Felice’s light step in the passageway outside.
Emily ran forward and grabbed the cat, bundled him into the wardrobe, and slammed the door. She was leaning with her back against the door when the maid came into the room.
“I will not need you tonight,” said Emily. “I will undress myself.”
Yowl.
The maid stared at Emily, who put her hands over her face and yowled a fairly good imitation of the cat. “I-I am sore distressed, F-Felice,” she wailed. “Go quickly.”
“Yes, my lady,” came the maid’s anxious voice. “First, let me find my lady’s night rail and turn down the covers and …”
Yowl went the cat, and yowl, yowl, yowl went Emily. Felice knew of the ban on Peter. Emily was terrified that if the maid found out about the cat, she would immediately go to Devenham.
“Go away,” screamed Emily.
Felice fled. With a sigh of relief, Emily opened the wardrobe door.
“Poor Peter,” she said, picking up the cat and carrying it to the bed. “Poor, poor Peter.”
She stroked the cat’s fur and talked nonsense to it while it purred loudly and bumped its large head, with the ragged ear, against her chin.
“How on earth did you manage to travel this far? At least he will not try to see me tonight, Peter,” said Emily, setting the cat down on the floor. “He is much, much too angry with me.”
She began to take off her clothes and prepare for bed.
Felice was a very worried servant. That her mistress was in a demented state was all too painfully obvious. A good servant should not interfere in the affairs of her mistress and master. But what if my lady was yowling in that odd way because she was ill? And what if the earl found out that Felice had been negligent in her duty by leaving my lady alone?
Felice was very much afraid of the Earl of Devenham.
She was halfway down the stairs leading from Emily’s room, standing on the landing, when the earl’s Swiss came up with an armful of freshly starched cravats.
Felice liked the Swiss, who was called John Phillips. His real name was Jean-Philippe Danton, but he had anglicized his name long before entering the earl’s service. He was from the Canton Vaud, so Felice was able to lapse into her native tongue. In muscular strength he did not compare well with the second footman, being a wiry little man with a sallow face and a quizzical expression, but Felice had become as fond of him as she could be of anybody she was not exactly in love with. Talking in French, she told him of the scene just enacted by Emily.
“You must go and see my lord,” counseled John. “He is drinking wine in the parlor. My lady could have the vapors.”
With Gallic bluntness, Felice pointed out it was not the time of the month for my lady to have the vapors, but, with a little shrug, agreed she should say something to the master.
The fact that the earl looked singularly grim and forbidding did not deter Felice, who thought it was any proper aristocrat’s place to look stern and forbidding.
She promptly launched into a dramatic description of Emily’s distress.
“Thank you,” said the earl, when she had finished. “You may go. You did well to tell me. I will go to Lady Devenham immediately.”
With a pleasant feeling of duty well done, Felice went downstairs to the kitchens to make herself some tea and to gossip with the inn servants, and the earl went to his wife’s room. The door was locked.
He knocked on it until he heard Emily call out, “Who’s there?”
“It is I, Peregrine,” he called. “Felice tells me you are upset.”
Inside the room, Emily looked at the cat and the cat looked at Emily. At the sound of the earl’s voice, its fur had started to rise.
“I am very well now,” called Emily. “I had the headache.”
“Open the door.”
Emily had always wondered what wringing the hands meant. Now she knew.
If Devenham found the cat, he would divorce her, or beat her, or kill her. If she put the animal in the wardrobe, it would simply yowl and cry, and she did not think the earl would be as easily fooled as Felice.
Made bold by desperation, she called, “Go to your room, my love. I will join you there in a moment.”
There was silence while she waited with beating heart.
Then the earl’s voice, surprised and amused, said from outside the door, “Very well, my sweeting. Do not keep me waiting long.”
His footsteps retreated.
“There!” hissed Emily at the cat. “You useless lump of carriage rug. I am going to lose my virginity so that he does not wring both our necks.”
Feeling like a French aristocrat about to go to the scaffold, Emily picked up a candle in its flat stick and hurried along the corridor in the direction of her husband’s room. In her fright and anxiety, she forgot to pull her own door securely behind her.
She pushed open the door of the earl’s room. He was in his nightshirt.
Gracious, thought Emily, the man must have torn his clothes off to get undressed so quickly. Then she thought it strange that a man dressed in a white nightshirt with a great deal of lace about the throat and wrists should manage to look so compellingly masculine. The black hair that met in that widow’s peak and those thin black eyebrows over the flat silver eyes gave him a satanic look.
His mouth curved in a sweet smile, and all at once, Emily felt that everything was going to be all right and that perhaps she should be grateful to the wretched cat for making her take the necessary step.
He held out his arms, and Emily walked into them and buried her head against his chest, feeling the heat from his body and the steady thud of his heart against her cheek.
He lifted her gently in his arms, carried her to the bed, and laid her down. He stretched out beside her and took her in his arms again. It was very odd, thought Emily, that they were lying on top of the covers. Surely, one went underneath to perform all those dark and sinister midnight deeds. And he had left the candles burning!
He gathered her to him and pressed her body against his own. He kissed her eyelids, the curve of her jaw, and the tip of her nose. She could feel her breasts swelling and hardening and hoped idiotically that this was all natural and that they were supposed to do that. She noticed he smelled faintly of wine and lavender water and soap. His lips gently covered her own, and she forgot about everything else. Or nearly.
Just as her body felt as if it were melting and fusing into his own, just when her lips were parting under his, just when the sweet surging, bittersweet pain in the pit of her stomach was about to lead her to crave further intimacy, there came a soft thud at the door.
Low down on the door.
Peter.
Emily suddenly went rigid in the earl’s arms, waiting for that first telltale yowl.
Abruptly, the earl freed his mouth and propped himself up on one elbow. “What is the matter, my love?” he asked, his voice husky, seductive.
Thud.
Emily cringed, but the earl had heard nothing-yet—and was waiting for her answer.
Poor Emily thought of his rage and fury if he found the cat outside. She did not realize that if she had only surrendered to him, then he would have let her have a whole zoo.
“I can’t.”
She wrenched herself from his arms and his bed and hurtled out of the room, clad only in her flimsy nightgown. She tripped headlong over the cat, scrambled to her feet again, grabbed the animal, and ran to her own roo
m, slammed the door behind her, and locked it.
What am I to do? thought Emily. Oh, poor Peregrine. He will hate me forever.
“I hate you,” she said to the cat who was now purring ecstatically on the bed, prancing up and down and digging its claws into the quilt.
Then Emily’s eye fell on the little jug of milk on the tea tray. She poured some into a saucer and carefully added a few drops of laudanum.
The cat eagerly lapped up the milk, finished it, stretched, and began to wash itself in front of the fire, while Emily fretted and waited and tried to will it to go to sleep.
“I dare not give the beast any more,” she said aloud, “or it might die.”
Meanwhile, the Earl of Devenham had bitten the pillow, punched the wall, drunk half a bottle of brandy, and taken himself out to the back yard of the inn, where he doused himself under the pump.
Wet, cold, demoralized, and weary, he climbed the stairs to his room.
Emily was standing in the middle of his room, waiting for him. The cat had gone to sleep at last.
“Peregrine,” she said softly and held out her arms.
The earl gave her one horrified look. “I have had more than a man can stand this evening, madam,” he grated. He marched her to the door, pushed her out into the corridor, and locked the door behind her.
Emily returned to her own room and cried herself to sleep.
In the morning, she wearily dragged herself from bed, punched air-holes in a bandbox, and stuffed the drugged and heavy cat inside. The earl breakfasted in his room.
Silently, they climbed into the carriage together. Emily put the bandbox with the cat on the seat opposite and placed her jewel box and another bandbox next to it as a sort of camouflage.
The earl said not a word. He seemed once more master of himself and his emotions—”faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.”
He looked every inch the perfect English aristocrat. His calm dead face seemed to say: “These are my carriage, my servants, my wife,” in that order.
His heavy eyelids drooped and he fell asleep before the inn was out of sight.