“In the drawing-room, my lady. Also—”
“Ridden that short-backed mare of yours to a standstill, Serena?”
She looked round quickly. “Ivo! You here?”
“Yes, Serena, as you see!” he said, advancing upon her. “Not only here, but extremely anxious to have a few words with you!”
“Dear me, in the sullens again?” she asked, her voice light but her eyes watchful. “Are you vexed because Emily did not abandon our expedition on the chance that you might arrive in Bath today? How absurd of you!”
“My girl,” said Rotherham dangerously, “it will be just as well for you if you stop thinking me a bleater, whom you can gull by pitching me your damned gammon! Come in here!” He pushed open the door into the dining-room, and to Lybster’s intense disappointment pulled Serena into the room, and shut the door in the butler’s face. “Now, Serena! Now!” he said. “What the devil have you been doing? Don’t lie to me! I know what expedition yours was!” He unclenched his left hand, and showed her the crushed letter. “Do you recognize that? Then tell me the truth!”
She said indignantly: “So, not content with browbeating Emily, you have bullied Fanny into giving you my letter, have you? Well, if I find you’ve upset her, you will very speedily wish you had remembered with whom you would have to deal, if you came raging into this house! I am not a wretched schoolgirl, wilting under your frown!”
“You are ameddlesome vixen!” he told her angrily.
Her eyes flashed, but she choked back a pungent retort, struggled for a moment with herself, and finally said, in a voice of determined calm: “No. This is no moment for a turn-up, Rotherham. If you have read my letter, it may be for the best. Of course you are angry—though why you should make me your scapegoat God knows! Never mind that! I can stand a knock or two. Ivo, what a fool you have been! You may blame yourself for what happened today! Don’t vent your wrath on Gerard! I’ve sent him back to London with such a flea in his ear as he will not soon forget, I assure you!”
“You have, have you? How much—how very much—I am obliged to you! Go on!”
“You are more obliged to me than you know! You may dismiss Gerard from your mind: Emily is no more in love with him than I am! Had you had enough sense to have come to Bath, without heralding your arrival in a letter anyone but an idiot would have known must scare the child out of what little wit—out of her wits!—she would never have spared Gerard a thought! She seized on him merely as a means of escape. Really, Ivo, you have handled this like the veriest whipster! You! You have the vilest temper in creation, but I’ve never known you lose it with a nervous young ’un! Couldn’t you guess that if you let Emily see it, she would behave exactly as would a filly you had spurred? She turned you into a positive ogre—and you could have made her adore you! Instead, you frightened her—and the devil’s own task I have had, all the way from Gloucester, to convince her she has been a goose! I can’t tell whether I’ve succeeded, but I can’t do any more! The rest is with you! Be gentle with her, and I think all may be well!”
“O God!” uttered Rotherham, in a strangled voice. “What have I ever done to be cursed with such a marplot as you, Serena? So you’ve convinced her that I’m not such a devil as I made her think! I thank you! And I thought that if there was one person I could depend upon to urge the wretched girl on no account to marry me, it was you! I might have guessed you would bullfinch me if you could!”
“Rotherham!” exclaimed Serena, grasping a chairback. “Are you telling me—are you daring to tell me—you meant to scare Emily into jilting you?”
“Of course I meant it!” he said furiously. “You think I’m clever in the saddle, do you? Much obliged to you! A pity you didn’t remember it earlier! Good God, Serena, you can’t have supposed that I wanted to marry that hen-witted girl?”
“Then why the devil did you offer for her?” she demanded.
“It only needed that!” he said. “Serena, I could break your damned neck!”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “Why? How was I to guess you had run mad? Anyone would think it was my fault you lost your head over a pretty face!”
“I never lost my head over any but one face, God help me! My temper, yes—once too often! I offered for Emily because you had become engaged to Kirkby! And if you were not a paperskull, you would have guessed it!”
“It’s a lie! I only wrote to tell you of my engagement after the notice of yours had appeared in the Gazette!” she said swiftly.
“And you thought that because you hadn’t told me of it I didn’t know? Well, I did know! You cannot live in a man’s pocket here, my girl, without setting tongues wagging! From three separate sources did I hear of your doings!”
“If you choose to listen to gossip—”
“No, I didn’t listen to it—until I knew who it was who had appeared in Bath! Then I did more than listen! I got the truth out of Claypole!”
“You didn’t so much as remember Hector!” she stammered.
“Of course I remembered him!” he said scornfully. “I remembered something else too!—that unknown person whose name you refused to divulge, when I first visited you here!”
“Unknown person?” she repeated blankly. “Oh, good God! Mrs Floore! I had not seen Hector then! Ivo, what a fool you were!”
“I was a fool,” he said grimly, “but not in believing that Claypole spoke the truth!”
“And you became engaged to Emily merely because I—Ivo, it is beyond words! To use a child very nearly young enough to be your daughter as a weapon of revenge on me—I wonder that you dare to stand there and tell me of such an iniquity!” Serena said hotly.
“It wasn’t as bad as that!” he said, flushing. “I meant then to marry her! If that curst Adonis of yours had won you, what did it signify whom I married? I must marry someone, and Emily was as good as another—better! I knew I could mould her into whatever shape I pleased; I knew she would be happy enough with what I could give her; I knew the Laleham harpy would jump at my offer. And I knew you would hate it, Serena! Oh, yes, infamous, wasn’t it? I did it because I was mad with anger—but I never meant to play the child false!”
“And what, most noble Marquis,” inquired Serena scathingly, “made you change your mind, and decide instead to be rid of her?”
He set his hands on her shoulders, and gripped them, holding her eyes with his, “Years ago, Serena, you fancied yourself head over ears in love with a devilish handsome lad! I didn’t think then that he was the man for you—and when I saw you both together here, I was even more certain of it! But when I heard of his reappearance, and of the reception he got from you, I was shaken as I never was before, and hope to God I never shall be again! But the instant I saw the pair of you I knew that I had rolled myself up to no purpose at all! I don’t know what madness seized you, but I do know that you don’t love Kirkby, and never did, or will!”
She wrenched herself away. “Did you? Did you, indeed? Perhaps you thought I loved you!”
“No—but I knew that I still loved you! I could see you would break with Kirkby—Lord, Serena, if I hadn’t been in such a damned tangle myself I should have laughed myself into stitches! My poor girl, did you really think you could be happy with a man that would let you walk rough-shod over him? For how long did you enjoy having your own undisputed way? When did you begin to feel bored?”
“Let me tell you this, Rotherham!” she flung at him. “Hector is worth a dozen of you!”
“Oh, probably two or three dozen! What has that to say to anything?”
“It has this to say! I am pledged to him, and I shall marry him, so let me recommend you to lose no time in reinstating yourself in Emily’s good graces! How dare you talk to me like this? And to think I didn’t believe the things Emily poured out to me today!” She paused, almost choking. “You deliberately tried to make that girl cry off!”
“Well, how the devil else was I to get out of a marriage that was going to wreck the pair of us—and Emily, too, for that m
atter?”
“You made your bed—”
“—and we could all of us lie on it, I suppose?” he interjected witheringly.
She drew a breath. “Good God, had you no compunction? You had offered her a great position, a—”
“Yes, I had! And if you fancy that her mother forced her to accept my offer, you’re out, my girl! I never tampered with her affections: don’t think it! Had I thought she cared one jot for me it would have been a different story, but she didn’t! She wanted nothing from me but rank and fortune, and she made that abundantly plain!”
“Ivo, did you, or did you not make violent love to her, and tell her that if she played the coquette with you after you were married it would be very much the worse for her?” Serena demanded.
“Oh, not then!” he replied coolly. “That was later! God knows what she thought I had in store for her, little fool!”
“Oh, how I wish she had slapped your face!” raged Serena.
“So did I wish it!” he retorted. “Lord, Serena, I even made her think I should be such a jealous husband that she would do better to marry a Bluebeard! I ran the gamut of impatience, jealousy, intemperate passion, veiled threats, and nothing I could do or say outweighed my coronet!”
“In her mother’s eyes!”
“Oh, yes! I don’t deny that woman had a good deal to do with it! But make no mistake about it, Serena!—until I convinced Emily that she would not enjoy all that stuff by half as much as she had thought she would, I could have been as brutal as I chose, and she would still have married me!”
She gave a gasp. “Delford! Ivo, you—you fiend! When she told me about that visit—the pomp and the ceremony you overwhelmed her with—the people you filled the house with—the formality you insisted on—I thought that either she was exaggerating to impress me, or that you had run mad!”
He grinned at her. “You never saw such a party! I had the state apartments opened, and shut my own rooms up, and dug out the gold plate, and—”
“How you can stand there and boast to me—! No wonder Emily stared at me when I told her you had no turn for ceremony!”
“Grandeur she wanted, and grandeur I gave her—full measure, and brimming over! Lady Laleham revelled in it, but Emily didn’t. That was when I saw the scales begin to tip. Then she was ill—by the bye, Serena, that was the best thing I’ve ever heard Gerard say! I told him Emily had been suffering from an attack of influenza, and damme if he didn’t rip back at me that it was more likely an attack of the Marquis of Rotherham! I never thought the boy had it in him to land me such a doubler!”
“Or to elope with Emily?” she demanded. “Was that your doing too? I can believe you capable even of that!”
“No, it never entered my head that he had enough spirit for such a stroke as that. All I did was to try whether I could sting him into coming here, and enacting his tragedy to Emily. He prated about the attachment that had existed between them, and for anything I knew it might have been true. If it was true, and he had enough courage to come here in defiance of me, I thought he might be the very thing that was wanted to weigh the scales completely down against that damned coronet. I gave him a couple of days’ grace, and then sent Emily a letter, calculated—as you so correctly pointed out to me, my clever one!—to scare her out of her wits. I can’t say I expected an elopement, though.”
“And if you had? Do you expect me to believe that you would not still have used the wretched boy in that unprincipled way?”
To her seething anger, he appeared to consider this quite dispassionately for a moment or two. “No, I couldn’t have helped him to a Gretna Green marriage,” he decided.
“This is something indeed! No doubt, if I had not frustrated that crazy scheme, you would now be posting north to do it yourself!”
“What I should be doing at this moment, if you had not wrecked everything with your damned meddling, would be thanking God for deliverance!” he returned trenchantly. “What I thought to find here was Emily playing Juliet to Gerard’s Romeo! His heroics may not appeal to me, but they are just the thing to put a little spirit into her! All she needed to make her cry off by the time her mother sent her here, was someone to support her! The fool that I was, I believed I could rely on you to scotch what you must have seen was the worst marriage ever! Very free you are with your condemnations of what I did, you shrew! Reserve some of your censure for your own behaviour! Instead of telling the chit she had better go hang herself than cling like a damned limpet to a man you knew would make her a hellish husband, you did all you could to persuade her I had all the amiable qualities which no one knows better than you I have not! By the time Gerard burst in on me, I knew you were failing me, but that you were ranged on the side of the Laleham harpy I never dreamed! What was in that red head of yours, my sweetest scold? Spite?”
Quick as a flash she struck at him, but he was quicker still, and caught her wrist in mid-air. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll hit me when I choose to let you, and at no other time, Serena! Why did you try to push me into that marriage? Answer me, damn you!”
“I never pushed you into anything!” she replied pantingly. “Wiser men than you have fallen in love with pretty featherheads! You to talk to me of spite! It never entered my head that you had offered for Emily because you wanted to be revenged on me, and hoped I should be hurt! You have gone your length, Rotherham! I may be every one of the things you are so obliging as to call me, but the only thought I had was to save you from the humiliation of being twice jilted! You may let me go: I would not touch you, any more than I would touch a toad!”
He laughed. “Wouldn’t you? We’ll see that! Now, you listen to me, my girl! There’s nothing I should like better than to continue quarrelling with you, but thanks to your well-meant but cork-brained efforts on my behalf the tangle is now past unravelling, and must be cut! When I’ve done that, I’ll come back, and you may revile me to your heart’s content!”
“Don’t you dare set foot inside this house again!” she said.
“Try if you can keep me out!” he advised her, and let her wrist go, and strode out of the room, a little too quickly for Lybster, hovering in a disinterested fashion in the narrow hall. “What a rare day’s entertainment for you!” he said sardonically.
“I beg your lordship’s pardon?” said Lybster, the picture of bewildered dignity.
“You may well! Inform Lady Spenborough that I shall be dining here tonight!”
“Yes, my lord.”
Serena was in the doorway, her eyes flashing green fire. “You will on no account admit Lord Rotherham into this house, Lybster!”
“No, my lady,” said Lybster, moving to the street door, and opening it for Rotherham.
Serena turned towards the stairs. Fanny, on the first landing, whisked herself back into the drawing-room, and softly closed the door. “There! You heard what she said!” she whispered to Major Kirkby.
“Yes, and I heard what he said,” he replied.
Serena’s hasty steps sounded outside. Fanny looked anxiously towards the door, but Serena passed on, and up the next flight. “Oh, dear, I fear she is in one of her rages!” said Fanny. “What shall I do? Oh, what a dreadful day this is!”
He smiled. “No, I think not, love. If I were you, I would do what I am going to do: retire to change for dinner!”
“Hector, you don’t mean to leave me to dine with those two, she cried,” aghast.
“Not I! Do you think I have no interest in the outcome of this battle? I too am dining with you, my love!” he said.
23
Admitted into Mrs Floore’s house, Rotherham had barely time to hand his hat to the butler before a door opened at the back of the hall, and Lady Laleham came out, dressed in all the elegance of figured silk and lace, and wreathed in smiles. “Ah, dear Lord Rotherham!” she pronounced. “I knew you might be depended upon to call again! Such a sad mischance that you should have found no one at home when you came this afternoon! But you must not blame us, you know, for yo
u forgot to tell Emily which day you meant to arrive in Bath! I hope I see you well?”
“My health, I thank you, ma’am, is excellent. I cannot, however, say as much for my temper, which has been exasperated beyond anything which I am prepared to endure!” he replied, in his harshest voice.
She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, in a fleeting gesture of sympathy. “I know,” she said, considerably to his surprise. “Will you come into the morning-room? You will, I know, forgive my mother for not receiving you: she is elderly, and, alas, not capable of exertion!”
“The person I wish to see, Lady Laleham, is not your mother, but your daughter!”
“Exactly so!” she smiled, preceding him into the morning-room. “And here she is!”
He strode into the room, and paused, looking grimly at his prospective bride. She was standing beside a large wing-chair, one trembling hand resting on its back, her eyes huge in her white face, and her breathing uneven. She looked very young, very pretty, and very apprehensive, and she showed no disposition to come forward to greet her betrothed until her mother said, in a voice of honeyed reproof: “Emily dear!” After that, she advanced, and said: “How do you do?” putting out her hand.
“Effusive!” said Rotherham. “You must not behave as though I were your whole dependence and delight, you know!”
“She is a little tired,” explained Lady Laleham, “and she has been a very silly, naughty child, which she knows she must confess to you.”
His eyes went to her face, an arrested expression in them.
“L-Lady Serena said I n-need not t-tell, Mama!”
“We are very much indebted to Lady Serena, my love,” Lady Laleham returned smoothly, “but you will allow Mama to know best what you should do.” She met Rotherham’s fierce stare with perfect coolness, a faint smile on her painted lips. “The poor child is afraid that you will be very angry with her, Lord Rotherham, but I have assured her that where there is full confession there must always be forgiveness, particularly when it is accompanied by deep repentance.”
Bath Tangle Page 32