Those Endearing Young Charms

by M C Beaton

  Weary and defeated, Emily sighed and raised her hand to her bosom.

  “Wait for me here,” she said in a dull voice. “I will leave with you directly.”

  Once in her room, Emily rang for Felice and harshly ordered the maid to pack. “You must not tell my lord I am leaving,” commanded Emily, looking so stern that Felice decided it would be the best policy to obey. She knew her mistress had never quite forgiven her for throwing the cat out of the inn window. The cat, Peter, yawned and stretched and then began to yowl in protest, as the bandbox with the air holes was produced.

  For once, Emily was deaf to his pleas of distress. He was thrust in roughly, and the lid was put securely down. For a while, the large cat kicked and scratched and even succeeded in rolling the box over on its side, but this new hardhearted Emily merely righted the bandbox and told him curtly to be quiet.

  Peter’s feelings were deeply hurt. He lay in the blackness of the bandbox and sulked.

  When at last the packing was finished, Felice realized she was expected to carry the trunks down the stairs without the aid of even a footman, for Emily did not wish to alert her husband. Emily felt she could not bear to look at him again. Felice and Emily finally suceeded in getting all the baggage into the hall, and the Anstey servants carried the bags out to the carriage.

  “Did you leave a note?” asked Mary, as the carriage rolled away.

  “Why? I have nothing to say to him,” said the Countess of Devenham, and turned her face to one side to hide the large tear that was beginning to slide down her cheek.

  Chapter Ten

  It was no consolation to Emily that the democratic rain which was slowly turning Malden Grand into a swamp was probably ruining the London Season.

  To Mary’s distress, Emily did not want to talk about her marriage. Apart from asking Mr. Anstey to contact his lawyers and set the annullment in motion, Emily refused to refer to the subject again. She had not wanted to linger in London, although her parents had assured her that the earl did not know the address in Russell Square. She was not afraid he would come looking for her, but she was very much afraid of seeing him again and suffering the resulting pain.

  Far better to sit among all the glittery newness of The Elms, listening to the unremitting pitterpatter of the rain, sewing, reading, and talking to one large sulky cat who had not forgiven her for stuffing him in the bandbox.

  Outwardly, her life had not changed so very much since the days before her marriage. Often Emily wondered how she had ever managed to bear the monotony of the long days. The worst thing she had had to face on her arrival home was that she loved her husband. The fact that she hated him and felt he had treated her shamefully did not alter that love. Instead of the radiant love Mary felt for her vicar, it was a sad, yearning longing that made the days lie heavy and the nights a torment.

  The Ansteys had once more fallen from social grace. No one in the county would believe that Emily had left her husband, for surely one did not leave a rich earl. No, it must be the other way around. The Earl of Devenham had discovered he could not bear to stoop so low. That was the story that Lord and Lady Harrison put about, and they told it so often that they forgot the original spite that had prompted the fiction and came to believe it themselves.

  Peter the cat felt his lot was a hard one. His mistress was silent and gloomy and only petted him in an absentminded way. He hated the rain. He hated the tyranny of the servants and the nasty-smelling newness of everything at The Elms.

  Then one day the rain stopped and the sun blazed down, warm and golden. Mist rose from the waterlogged meadows to be burned off during the day. Lakes dwindled to puddles and the puddles disappeared, leaving everything freshly washed and smiling under the warm rays of the sun.

  Peter bided his time. He was not allowed out of doors. Emily felt she had spent too much time cat-chasing.The cat had been trained to perform his necessary functions in a box of gravel.

  But the warm days were agony for Emily. Yearning and longing doubled as one golden day led to another. At last, Emily could bear her self-appointed prison no longer and took her book out to the garden and sat under the shade of a large oak. Large white clouds puffed across the blue sky like galleons under full sail, and busy birds pecked for worms on the grass. The French windows of the drawing room stood open.

  Peter cautiously stuck his large head around one of the doors. The air smelled sweet. He saw Emily, her fair hair bent over her book. Slinking on his belly, he crept like a shadow across the grass. He reached a gap in the hedge, hesitated, turned his head, and looked back at his mistress. As if aware of the cat’s gaze, Emily put down her book and looked up. Peter dived through the gap and ran off down the road.

  Emily frowned. Had that been the cat escaping? She picked up her book again, but found the words kept blurring and sliding away. With a little sigh, she arose and went to look for the cat.

  Peter played the whole day, chasing birds and hunting voles and field mice. Toward the end of the afternoon, he felt weary with all the unaccustomed exercise and tried to decide whether to find his way home and eat or to lie down and sleep. There was a bridge over the River Axe which skirted the village. It was in full spate, rushing and tumbling over the rocks into the deep pool below the bridge. Peter leaped up onto the parapet. The old stone was warm beneath his paws. He stretched out, full-length,above the rushing river and instantly fell asleep.

  His awakening was rude and terrifying. He felt himself seized in a cruel grasp and looked up into the faces of a ring of village boys. “Let’s ‘ave an ‘anging,” said one, producing a length of string. This was greeted with cheers, while eyes roamed this way and that, looking for a suitable tree on which to hang the cat.

  Mad with terror, Peter bit, clawed, and twisted until one vicious slash caught his captor on the cheek. The boy dropped him, and with a yowl of terror, Peter dived over the parapet and fell like a stone into the pool below.

  He surfaced, green eyes bulging with fear, and struck out for dry land. Above him, a jeering voice called, “Let’s stone the cat. Let’s stone the •••• to death!”

  Emily sank back into her chair in the garden, feeling depressed and weary. It seemed she could keep nothing she loved, neither husband nor cat. She had searched and searched, but of Peter there had been not the slightest sign.

  It was then that she began to cry. She had not cried since that one tear had been shed in the carriage. Now she sobbed and sobbed as if her heart would break. She could not think about her husband’s arrogance or his infidelity. She could only remember the charm of his smile and the strength of his body.

  Then she heard a carriage on the road. Mary and her parents had left to shop at a nearby town, and Emily felt she could not bear to receive callers. She would hide in her room and when Parsons, the butler, came to fetch her, she would tell him to say she was not at home.

  In the cool, dim quiet of her bedroom, where the shutters were closed to keep the sun from fading the carpet, she bathed her face and changed her gown. She was twisting her curls into a knot on top of her head, when Parsons scratched at the door.

  “I don’t care who it is, Parsons,” called Emily. “Tell them I am not at home.”

  There was a short silence, and then Parsons’ voice, muffled, came through the door, “It’s his lordship, my lady.”

  Emily stood very still.

  “Your husband, my lady,” said Parsons in a louder voice.

  Emily took a deep breath. He had come after all. Perhaps he had merely come to arrange a divorce. But she would give herself just one more chance. Surely such a great love could not remain unrequited.

  She called, “I will be with his lordship directly,” and with trembling hands began to apply a little rouge to her white cheeks.

  The Earl of Devenham stood in the hall, his eyes on the stairs. He had come to berate her, to tell her he had had enough of her and her family. It had been the final humiliation to find she had crept from his house like a thief in the night.


  Parsons appeared at his elbow to say that cakes and wine had been set out in the drawing room, but the earl snarled, “I will wait here. Leave me alone.”

  The hall was silent and dim and smelled of paint and varnish. He heard a light step on the stairs and looked up.

  Emily stood on the first landing, looking down at him. She looked thinner. Her dress was of plain white muslin and her golden curls were scraped up on top of her head. Two patches of rouge burned on her white cheeks.

  The earl of Devenham thought, all in that moment, that he had never seen such a beautiful sight. His pride fell about him and he held out his arms.

  Emily walked slowly down the stairs toward him, hope dawning in her eyes. His arms closed about her and held her close. “Emily,” was all he said, but he said it with that strange husky, seductive note in his voice, and she turned her lips up to his.

  “My lady!” screamed a small voice behind them.

  The earl released Emily and turned around, his eyes blazing with rage. The Ansteys’ knife boy stood there with blood running from a cut on his forehead, his jacket dusty and torn.

  “What the deuce do you mean by this impertinence?” raged the earl.

  “It’s the cat!” wailed the boy, staring at Emily and ignoring the earl. “It’s in the river and the boys are throwing stones at it. I tried to stop them, but they beat me and kicked me …”

  And with that, the thoroughly overwrought knife boy sank down onto the hall floor and cried and cried.

  The earl took one look at Emily’s stricken face, and jerked the boy roughly to his feet. “Look, my lad,” he said. “You’ve behaved like a Trojan so far,and I want you to be brave a little bit longer. Lead us to where you saw the cat.”

  The boy wiped his streaming eyes with the back of his sleeve, gave a clumsy nod, and set off at a jog trot, with Emily and the earl following close behind.

  Peter the cat struggled wearily in the pool. His eyes were beginning to glaze over and he felt the last of his nine lives beginning to slip away. There was a great deal of shouting and commotion on the bank, more than before. He felt himself being seized by the scruff of the neck, and he prepared to die.

  The Earl of Devenham, who had cracked two of the village gang leaders’ heads together, had dived into the water. He swam to the shore and climbed out and laid the cat on the bank. “Is he dead?” whispered Emily, as if a raised voice would frighten the last of the life out of the cat. The earl was about to say, “I hope so,” but he changed it to, “With any luck, I may be able to get the water out of the brute.” He jerked the animal’s paws and massaged its stomach until water spurted out of the cat’s mouth. Emily stood watching him. The sun filtered down through the trees onto his thick black hair. His fine cambric shirt was molded to his chest. She felt her heart lurch with love.

  The cat’s chest began to move up and down, and, under the probing of his fingers, the earl felt the beginning of a faint purr.

  “He’ll live,” he said. Emily went to rush into his arms, but stopped short for fear of crushing the cat. The earl scowled down at the animal in his arms and then began to climb up the rocks to the roadway. Emily climbed after him, while the knife boy, now fully recovered, scampered back to The Elms to be the first to break the news of my lord’s routing of the village bullies.

  The earl did not speak until he had reached the house. “Where does this creature bed down,” he said curtly. “In your room, I suppose?”

  Emily nodded miserably. He had looked, that one splendid moment when he had held out his arms, as if he loved her. Now the cat had come between them again. “Better a cat than a mistress,” thought Emily with sudden anger.

  Housemaids came running with warm towels. Peter was gently rubbed down and placed in his sleeping basket in Emily’s room. He felt warm and safe and completely exhausted. He gave a sleepy purr and closed his eyes.

  The servants departed, leaving Emily alone in her bedroom with her husband.

  Emily looked at him, her eyes guarded, wary. The silence between them lengthened. The light was fading outside and the room was full of shadows.

  “Why did you come?” she asked faintly.

  He shrugged. She waited for him to say that he had come to arrange a divorce, that he wanted to marry Cordelia Haddington.

  He said, “Because I love you with all my heart. I do not even care if you don’t want me. I just had to tell you the truth.”

  “But what about that … that woman?” asked Emily.

  “Cordelia? I told you that was finished.”

  “But the day before I left London, you were seen with her in your carriage.”

  “She practically fell in front of my wheels to stop me. I took her up and took her home. Nothing more.”

  “But what of that bill that Madame Dupont gave you? You looked embarrassed and thrust it in your pocket when you saw me.”

  “My life, I confess it was an old bill of Cordelia’s. I desperately wanted you to love me. I thought it the wrong time for an explanation.”

  “I thought you loved her.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  Emily nodded.

  He put one knee on his side of her bed. “Come to me,” he said huskily.

  Emily fell over the bed and tumbled into his arms. “You’re wet!” she laughed, feeling his shirt.

  “Then undress me.”

  “I cannot, Peregrine. I am frightened. That has always been the trouble. I am so frightened. I have no experience. I …”

  His mouth stopped her words and his hands on her body stopped her trembling. He parted her lips and groaned words of love against her mouth, feeling her little hands reach for the buttons of his shirt in the most natural way in the world.

  Emily could not remember afterward how they had got out of their clothes. It was almost as if passion had melted them away. A brief spasm of fear stabbed her when she finally lay naked in his arms, but a great red wave of passion came down on her and carried all her fears and inhibitions away.

  An hour later, the earl awoke. He felt marvelous. He felt he held the whole world in his arms. Someone—Mary?—was singing out in the garden. “Believe me if all those endearing young charms,” she sang in a lilting voice.

  The Earl of Devenham felt extremely hungry. He was about to waken his love when he felt movement against his naked back. He lit the rushlight on Emily’s side of the bed by stretching over her sleeping figure. Then he turned slowly round.

  The cat was stretched out on his other side, purring noisily. It butted its head against his arm.

  “No,” said the earl softly. “Get out of bed this minute.”

  And Peter went.