He was sitting over a final glass of claret, and mulling over whether he should go to bed at once, when there was a tap on the door. Without waiting for a reply, it opened and Bella’s head peered round.
“Ah, so the rumour is true. And is it also true that you are packing all the ancestors off for a holiday?”
Gil laughed at this description. “Something like that.”
She ambled into the room uninvited, but Gil was not averse to a little company. She had brought her own wine glass, so they sat having a comfortable coze, in the way of old friends, and finishing the claret, after which they began on the port. Gil told her his travails at Garthorpe and Haddlewick, and how the portraits were to be a last attempt to settle the matter satisfactorily. She was a receptive listener, and when he had told all, she brought him up to date on all the latest on dits from town in the most amusing manner. He relaxed in her undemanding company, and felt he had not been so well entertained for weeks.
So when, by some means he could not quite account for, he found her sitting on his lap, it seemed the most natural thing in the world and he made no protest. And before long, somehow or other, they were kissing and he found himself enjoying it very much.
“Now this is more like your old self,” she murmured, between kisses. “I have been so worried about you, Gil dear. You have been so moped lately, not at all like you. Is this not the most pleasant way to pass the evening? And look, your bed is so conveniently to hand, is it not?”
He had no intention of going that far, but a cuddle was very pleasant. He had had a difficult time of it, and surely he deserved a little respite from it all? How delightful to be with a woman who was soft and yielding and did not stare at him with those mesmerising blue eyes… No, he was not going to think about that. Think about Bella instead, who perhaps was not as pretty or sweet or enticing as Gen, but at least she never shouted at him. And she was here, in his arms and that was what mattered, surely.
“I shall get rid of Ramsey, I think,” Bella mused. “I am tired of him. A married man is preferable for my needs. A bachelor is always thinking of his reputation, because he will want to marry some day. But a married man need not care. He has done his duty, and may leave his wife to bloom without further attention. Your little nonentity will be blooming soon, I daresay. Perhaps she already is.”
It was a casual remark, but it hit Gil with the force of a blow, knocking all the breath out of him. Blooming? His Gen? Was it possible? Was that why she was so pale in the mornings, and so uninterested in food? Maybe that was why she had been so upset — a woman in that delicate condition was far more sensitive, or so he understood. And Merton had tried to tell him! ‘Not her usual self… unusually heightened sensitivity… be sensitive to her circumstances… consider the future.’ Dear God, and he had railed at Gen and made her weep for days. His poor Gen… he must go to her at once. At once!
What on earth was he doing with Bella on his knee? “Get off me, Bella,” he said harshly. “Go away.”
“What! But we are having such an agreeable time, and it was about to get a great deal more agreeable, I had hoped.”
He pushed her off his knee. “Go and find your amusement elsewhere. I am a married man now.”
“It is a little late to think of that,” she said huffily. “Come on, do not play games with me, Gil. Come to bed, just like the old days.”
She began to tow him towards the bed, but he pulled himself free and marched, a trifle unsteadily, to the door, hauling it open.
“Out!”
“Really, Gil, you are no fun any more.”
But, to his infinite relief, she went, swaying provocatively past him, her eyes tilted flirtatiously. He slammed the door shut, and then leaned against it from sheer weakness, eyes closed. He had come so close, but he must not, he would not betray Gen like that.
His mind conjured up her face, smiling in that way she had, her eyes shining up at him, and he groaned in anguish. He should never have left her side, he knew that now. He should have listened to her, and not let the madness overtake him. Darling Gen, his own sweet love, who cared so much about him that she had screamed at him, trying to make him listen. And he had ignored her. Even after he had promised her that he would always abide by her wishes. He groaned again, balling his hands and beating futilely against the door in his frustration.
Carrbridge was right about him — he was nothing but pond slime. How could he ever make things right?
~~~~~
The next day it rained. It seemed as though even the heavens were pouring disapproval on Gil’s behaviour, so he accepted it as no more than his due, a small part of the punishment for his appalling behaviour.
The four horses, a motley collection drawn from the remnants of the stables, blew and snuffled in the early morning light. The groom, aged about fourteen, had borrowed a greatcoat from someone considerably larger, making him look shrunken and even younger. The coach was as shabby as anything Gil had ever been in before, and he could hardly believe he had to drive the disreputable old thing. The full-length portrait of his father, wrapped in multiple layers of sacking and oilcloths, was secured into the large hold beneath the body, and the four smaller portraits wedged into the body of the coach, between the wooden seats.
Mrs Compton was in the stable court to see him off. “Will this be the end of it, my lord?” she said. “This difficulty with Ben Gartmore is… very trying for the family.”
“Indeed it is,” Gil said quietly. “It is the greatest pity that Dr Hamilton has seen fit to propagate his ideas, and that Ben is so receptive to them, but with luck I shall be able to prove that Ben’s claim is unfounded.”
“You are a hero, Lord Gilbert,” Mrs Compton said fervently.
Gil felt so unlike a hero that he could not begin to formulate a response to this remark, so he merely smiled a little and climbed, with a grimace of pain, onto the driver’s seat. The groom hopped up beside him, Gil coaxed the horses into movement and the elderly coach lumbered under the arch and out of the stable court.
It was a long, dreary day. The rain fell steadily and seeped all the way through Gil’s greatcoat and then, with mindless disregard for his comfort, through every other layer, too. Even with laudanum, he could not mask the relentless throbbing in his leg, and he began to wonder how he could possibly endure the distance to Haddlewick. Every milestone passed was a small victory, another mile nearer the end of the journey. Whenever he flagged, which was almost constantly, he reminded himself that Gen was waiting for him at his destination, and tried not to wonder what on earth he was to say to her.
Then he had a piece of luck. To protect his leg from the worst jolts and ruts, he chose to stay on the better roads, which led him through York. Almost the first person he saw was Humphrey crossing the street in front of him.
“Lord, Gil, whatever are you doing driving this old wreck?” Humphrey said cheerfully.
But when Gil explained, he frowned.
“Haddlewick? You will not be there before dark, and you look done up. Are there no coachmen at Drummoor? No, I suppose not. Everyone is in London. But you cannot do this by yourself. Where are you changing horses?”
“The Lion and Lamb.”
“Wait for me there, and I shall drive you myself. You can ride in the back, and rest that leg of yours.”
Gil laughed. “Humphrey, you are the best of brothers! I should be very grateful.”
“You are in worse case than I suspected if you are not making even a token protest. Completely done up. I shall not be above half an hour.”
At the inn, Gil dosed himself with laudanum again, and equipped with a bottle of brandy and a couple of rugs, squeezed past the wrapped paintings onto the hard wooden bench inside the coach, and slept away the afternoon. Occasionally he woke to find the coach in comforting motion, so he drank some more brandy and slept again. Once, the coach was stopped with some kind of altercation going on between Humphrey and another man, but they soon rumbled off again. Gil turned over and closed hi
s eyes.
The next time he woke, the coach was stationary, and it was dark outside. He could hear voices in the distance. After a while, the coach door opened and a lamp dazzled him momentarily.
“My lord, I am very pleased to see you.” Merton, smiling broadly for once. “Are you quite rested?”
“Of course he is rested,” Humphrey said heartily. “He has been asleep for hours, the lazy good-for-nothing. Out you get, Gil. We have arrived.”
He scrambled out past the paintings, and almost toppled over when he tried to put weight on his bad leg, which seemed to have seized solid. Humphrey caught him in time to save him from an ignominious tumble.
“Up you come! No sitting down just yet, for we have to get all these monstrosities inside.”
They were outside the parsonage, Humphrey, the Mertons, Culpepper’s daughter and a couple of servants with lamps. But one face was missing. There was no sign of Gen.
“Do come inside, Lord Gilbert,” Mrs Harvey said. “You must be exhausted. Come and sit by the fire. I have some hot broth waiting for you.”
He was too weak to argue. Meekly, he allowed Humphrey to take his arm and help him inside. He was taken to the back of the house first, to wash and relieve himself, and then back to the little parlour they had been shown into when they had first arrived — was it only yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime ago. There was a good fire burning this time, and he was wrapped in warm blankets and given a bowl of broth to drink.
“Chicken broth,” he said, bemused, feeling that in some unfathomable way, he had slipped back in time and was still at Lavender Cottage. At any moment, Gen would come in and feel his forehead for fever. “Where is Lady Gilbert?”
“I believe she is at the church,” Mrs Merton said.
Gil set down his bowl and pushed back the blankets. “I must talk to her.”
“There will be plenty of time for that later,” Mrs Merton said.
“The portraits are the most important consideration now,” Merton said. “Mr Culpepper was most unwell yesterday. He is a little better today, but still… we should not delay in putting them before him.”
Gil nodded. “Humphrey can take charge of the paintings now. Get them unwrapped and show them to Mr Culpepper. I am going to find my wife.”
He rose unsteadily, but although willing hands reached out to help him, he walked out of the room unaided. Outside, he realised that he had left his greatcoat and hat inside. By the time he had walked the short distance to the church, the rain had soaked him all over again. The church door was ajar, with a space narrow enough for a slender lady to slip through. Gil was too large to fit through the gap and the door was stiff, so he had to heave it open, creaking and protesting.
Inside, a cluster of candles in a niche were the only lighting. The draught made the flames jump about, making shadows that danced like giant marionettes about the body of the church. She was sitting in a pew near the back, her head down, her face shaded by the side of her bonnet. He limped in, his footsteps echoing on the tiled floor, but she made no movement when he eased himself into the pew beside her.
He sat in silence, not knowing how to begin. What could he possibly say to her? What words could adequately convey all that was in his heart? He had always prided himself on his ability to sweet-talk a lady, to flirt, to make the sort of light-hearted conversation that suited the drawing room or ballroom. Or the bedroom, perhaps. But to sit in church beside the woman who meant more to him than anything else in the world—
And how had he come to that point? He had married her because he had been forced to, this little dab of a girl — a physician’s daughter, no one he would ever have looked at in the normal course of events. But somehow she had wormed her way into his heart, and taken it captive. He loved her, not in the light way of his flirts and mistresses, but in a deep, world-changing way that shook him to his core. He wanted, more than he could say, to be worthy of her, to earn her regard, or at least her respect. Yet he had failed, utterly.
He cleared his throat, and the sound ricocheted shockingly about the emptiness. Gen’s head jerked up, and she threw him a quick glance, then she looked down at her lap again. Her hands were so still, one gloved hand resting on the other. So neat, so demure. So good. Gen was goodness itself, and he was beneath contempt.
He had to say something, but what? How could he find the words? All his eloquence failed him. The only way was raw honesty.
“I am not sure what to say to you,” he said, leaning forward so that his head nearly touched the back of the pew in front, his breath ragged. “I want to tell you how sorry I am, to beg your forgiveness. I want to promise never to treat you so appallingly again.” He leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. “But how can I? I said all that before, and meant it too, and that did not keep me from this… this madness.” He wrapped himself in his arms, rocking slightly in his anguish. “Whatever I say to you now, whatever promises I make, no matter how great my sincerity, there is no certainty that it will not happen again. I have no idea how to make myself behave well. I have always been wild, and everyone remonstrated with me — my father, Mama, my schoolmasters, my tutors at Oxford, Carrbridge, my colonel — and it never made the slightest difference. I would be wild, because that was who I was. Oh, Gil Marford, he is such a rogue, did you hear what he has done now? I was wild and proud to be so. Nothing could induce me to change, and it never mattered because who was hurt by it except myself? Or so I thought.” He closed his eyes, one hand to his mouth, but the flood of words was unstoppable. “Until I met you. I never wanted to change until I met you, and now I do and I have not the least idea how to go about it. Help me, Gen, please. Please.” A half sob escaped him. “Tell me what I must do, because I cannot see any hope for me.”
All the time he was speaking, she had not looked at him, but when, finally, he had run out of words, she lifted her head and turned her great blue eyes on him. Those eyes! Ah, the pain in them, and it was all his fault. He almost broke down and wept at that point.
“I can’t help you,” she said, and her words had the finality of a death knell. “When you go crazy like that, I can’t reach you, so how can I possibly help you? If you won’t listen to me, or to anyone, then the only person who can make you change is you. No one else can do it.”
“Then what am I to do?” he whispered.
“You are in church,” she said softly. “You could try praying. Perhaps God will help you, if no one else can.”
25: A Bath Before Dinner
For a long time, he sat, head bowed in despair. He tried praying, but it seemed selfish to pray for his own better behaviour, something which ought, after all, to be under his control. Mama had always taught him to pray for others, so he prayed for Gen to have a better, kinder husband and to be happy, and then he prayed for Carrbridge to be spared the annoyance of his wastrel of a brother, and then, because he could not help longing for it, he prayed for Gen to feel some affection for him, even if he had lost all hope of ever winning her love. And perhaps at that point there was a tear or two which escaped.
“How is your leg?”
He jumped, so lost in his own thoughts that he had half-forgotten that he was not alone. “Fine,” he said instinctively.
“Truly?”
“Actually, not fine. I found an apothecary yesterday and acquired some laudanum. That has helped. And brandy. But… it still hurts. It hurts all the time, Gen.”
“You’re not feverish, which is a good sign.”
“How can you tell? You are supposed to put your hand on my forehead,” he said indignantly. “Although I have already had my chicken broth, so perhaps I am better already.”
She smiled, unbuttoning her glove. “I suggested the chicken broth to Mrs Harvey, for you would be sure to need it, after driving all this way in the rain.” She placed the back of her hand on his forehead. “There. No fever, you see?”
He clasped her hand, and held it to his cheek, eyes closed for a moment. “Thank you! Oh, thank you!”
/>
“Whatever for? The chicken broth?”
“For smiling,” he said. “For treating me like a normal human being, and not the worthless piece of scum I really am.”
“You’re not worthless!” she said fiercely. “Don’t say that! You brought the portrait, didn’t you? That was a heroic thing to do, so don’t ever call yourself worthless again. You’re just… a bit lost, that’s all. You’ll find your way again, I know you will.”
He could not answer her. Happiness welled up inside him like a spring. She believed in him! It was the second time that day he had been called a hero, and although he felt like the least heroic man ever, especially as he had spent the afternoon sleeping with the aid of laudanum and brandy while Humphrey drove through the rain, it could not but lift his spirits a little.
He gave her a somewhat wobbly smile, not letting go of her hand. In some unfathomable way, that little touch between them comforted him more than anything else. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and never, ever let go of her, but he dared not, not until he was surer of where he stood with her. Until then, holding her hand would have to be enough.
Miraculously, she responded to his smile with another of her own. “Have you shown Mr Culpepper the portrait? What did he say?”
“Several portraits, and I left Humphrey to unwrap them.”
“Lord Humphrey is here?”
“We met in York by chance, and he drove the rest of the way here, while your heroic husband slept in the coach.”
“That was a very good idea,” she said solemnly. “Shall we go and find out what is happening?”
He nodded, and, hand in hand, they went back to the house.
Mr Culpepper was excited. When Gil and Genista reached his room, he was pacing up and down in front of the five paintings which had been propped up in front of the bookcase.
“Ah, Lord Gilbert! And dear Lady Gilbert. I was just saying to Lord Humphrey and Mr and Mrs Merton that this portrait of the eighth Marquess of Carrbridge in his robes of state is a splendid piece of work. Portraits are something of an interest of mine, as you may observe from my walls, and there are more in my bedchamber, but I have nothing so fine as this. And a splendid figure of a man, so dignified in his ermine. One may sleep easy at night, knowing that the realm is in the hands of such men as this. His speeches were so finely wrought. I have several that I kept when they were printed in the newspaper, so that I might read them again and again. His demise was a great loss to our nation. But your brother is to make a speech soon, as I understand it, Lord Gilbert?”
Lord Gilbert (Sons of the Marquess Book 5) Page 24