“No; I am certain you have no desire to marry me at all; you merely wish to garner praise for having considered it.”
“Then I have spoken clumsily,” he said, abandoning his own brief flare of anger. “It is not an easy matter to lay your heart upon the line and wait for it to be trampled upon. You cannot, even with your stated inexperience of men, have failed to notice my admiration. For Heaven’s sake, pray do not be so prickly!”
“I am like a rose, am I not?” she asked in a voice that trembled. “Pretty as to flower but plentifully equipped with the sharpest thorns.”
“’Which can cause grave inflammation and poison the blood’. I have taken note of your warning but it came too late; I can no longer save myself and am already suffering from a raging fever from which it looks unlikely that I shall ever recover. You seem determined to misunderstand me; I will try again, this time endeavouring to be clear rather than clever: I have fallen deep in love with you; will you become my wife?”
“No; I cannot. I have already told you that I do not intend to marry,” she retorted, too surprised – although, goodness knows, he had wound up to his declaration by an admittedly circuitous but by no means incomprehensible route - to do anything other than bat away unthinkingly what she saw as a threat to a position with which she had, painfully, come to terms.
“You also admitted that such a decision caused you sadness.”
“Only in the abstract – I am not in the main discontented.”
“Do you dislike me so intensely that you can answer thus unequivocally without giving the matter any thought?” he asked, disheartened.
“I do not dislike you at all. How could I,” she added in a sudden rush, “when you keep rescuing me?”
“My repeated rescues do not force you to like me,” he pointed out. “But I own I thought that you did; was I mistaken?”
“I wish you would not keep asking me questions,” she exclaimed, childishly. “No, you were not mistaken; I do like you.”
“But not enough to become my wife? Does your heart already belong to another?”
“No,” she uttered in a stifled tone.
“Are you perhaps already married?” he persisted.
“No; I wish you would not badger me,” she cried, exasperated. “I could not leave Lady Leland,” she added after a moment, so clearly relieved to have found what she considered an unexceptionable excuse that her voice betrayed her, losing the note of panic. “I could not abandon her.”
“Of course not, but our houses are very close. We could surely accommodate ourselves to her needs without your having to abandon either her or me. Mary, I do not wish to be importunate but, unless I am completely in error, I think you do like me a little – indeed the very passion with which you argue your case and the way you lose your temper with me on the smallest provocation leads me to suspect that you like me more than a little.”
“You presume too much,” she answered loftily, wanting for some reason which she did not understand to hurt him and then, thinking better of it, adding, “Of course I like you. But liking is not sufficient, in my opinion – although I daresay you disagree – for marriage and,” she added, trying for another clincher since the first had not answered, “we have only known each other for a short time.”
With this he did not argue. “I should not have spoken so soon,” he agreed, clearly blaming his timing rather than his character – or her lack of sufficient liking - for her refusal. “It was unfeeling and tactless to raise such a matter when you have only recently escaped from another man’s importunity. Forgive me!”
“It was an odd moment to choose,” she agreed, relaxing into humorous understanding now that she felt the threat had passed.
“It seemed too good an opportunity to miss,” he explained. “The unexpected bonus of a sizeable portion of time alone prompted me to rush my fences in a rash manner.”
“Have you made numerous offers in the past?” she asked curiously, feeling safer still.
“What? Do you suppose me to fling out offers with the careless abandon of a man inviting guests to dinner, hoping that perhaps one at least may fall upon fertile ground so to speak?”
“No; it is my turn to apologise. I should not have asked you something of such an intimate nature.”
“You may ask me anything you like. I have asked you to marry me, which proves that I am not only prepared but positively eager to share everything in my heart with you. It was the way you put the question which made it absurd.”
“And it was the way you put yours which made it unconvincing.”
“Have I not convinced you now?”
“Yes; no; I do not know; I wish you will desist,” she begged, the panic beginning to build once more.
He lifted the reins and urged the horses forward. “Very well; but I must warn you that I shall not give up because you have not persuaded me that you hold me in such strong dislike that there is no possibility of your ever changing your mind.”
“That is because you have not listened to a word I have said; you are the most opinionated man I ever met.”
“But then you have not met many. You see, I have not only heard every word you have said but have formed my opinions in response. You have not told me that you dislike me and, while I am ready to admit that I cannot read your mind, yet I sense, nay believe, that you feel about me something of what I feel for you.”
“You accused me just now of having given my heart to another,” she reminded him.
“It was a diversionary tactic. I expected you to deny it passionately – which you did, although with something akin to disgust rather than outrage.”
“You denied being able to read my mind; now you are claiming to be able to read my heart.”
“Hearts,” he opined sententiously, “read each other, frequently without much recourse to the mind.”
“Indeed! Therein resides the explanation for many of the misunderstandings between lovers as well as the cause of so many miserable and mismatched marriages,” Mary agreed, her confidence returning now that the conversation had become less personal.
“I think,” he said softly, “that you have mistaken hearts for other, perhaps less worthy but equally powerful, organs. It is curiously difficult to tell the difference sometimes – and that is the source of the enduring misery to which you refer.”
“Oh!” Mary exclaimed, outraged. “Now I see further evidence of your contempt for my opinions; it seems that you consider me unqualified to make such a pronouncement. Must I bow to your superior experience?”
“You may, if you choose. But I do not think either of us is in any position to claim greater or more superior experience. I am several years older than you so I would guess that, in some ways, I am almost bound to be the winner of such an absurd competition.”
“Have there been a large number of females to whom you have given your heart in the past?”
“No, not my heart, dear heart. I am offering it, whole and untarnished, to you, Miss Best. It is a gift which it is no longer possible for me to withdraw; it is yours, for ever, to do with as you will.”
Mary’s eyes filled with tears at this declaration, uttered, as it was, in a grave tone. But, after a moment, she rallied to ask with an edge of sarcasm in her tone, “So am I to infer that there have been a large number of females with whom you have engaged in – in arrangements where your heart has not been involved?”
“Ah! I wondered if we would come to that! Yes, I suppose there has been a fair number – not a large number. Are you interviewing me for a job – the job I have applied for?”
“No, of course I am not. I have already declined and I was not in any event looking to fill a vacancy.”
“Nor you were. For a moment I thought that you were quite anxious about any previous attachments I might have had and whether they might prove to be rivals. Should I believe there is cause for hope when you express such interest in my past or are you merely engaging in idle conversation?”
“Oh!”
she exclaimed petulantly. “You tell me I have your heart and in the very next sentence you mock me.”
“Tease,” he corrected.
He drew the horses to a halt again and Mary’s heart quailed within her. Somehow, she seemed to have stepped off the firm ground on which she had believed herself to have arrived and to be once again standing in a quagmire.
“Do you tell me that you are not enjoying crossing swords with me in this manner? If so, I will desist at once. I should like to be kissing you but, since you are determined to deny me that, I have fallen back on words in an attempt to ensnare you; I thought you were enjoying it.”
She did not answer and would not raise her eyes. She knew that he was looking at her but she remained motionless, her fingers pressed tightly upon the reticule in her lap.
“Have I got it all wrong?” he asked as the pause lengthened.
“Yes!” she almost shouted. “Yes; you are importuning me and I – I hate it and I want it to stop!”
“I am sorry,” he said, chastened. “I misunderstood.”
He urged the horses forward, this time into a trot and Mary bit her lip until she tasted blood.
She could hardly bear it; he sat beside her without speaking, put, she was afraid, very firmly in a place in which he did not by any means belong by her hysterical response to what she recognised to be true. She was aware that she had wounded him deeply and entirely without justification. His manner now proclaimed him to be contrite and to be determined not to overstep a mark which she had falsely accused him of transgressing. He had done no such thing: his teasing had been a means of flirting with her and at the same time moving inexorably closer; she had welcomed it, she had enjoyed it and, like him, she had judged it to be the next best thing to kissing. Indeed, she had hoped that eventually it would lead to kissing. It would not now. Now she had nipped it so violently in the bud that that particular blossom would never, could never, bloom.
She, who had been used to pride herself on her courage, had denied her own feelings out of cowardice and, what was far more shameful, had led him on, taking a half-step back as he advanced but always beckoning him closer until he had asked the question which, if she had had the courage to answer it honestly, would have brought them both to the consummation they desired. She had lost her nerve on the very brink but, far from admitting it, had blamed him for putting too much pressure upon her.
Now she must take the consequences of her childish outburst. She found it intolerable to envisage a life in which he had no part; she had hit him so hard with those cruel, untrue, desperate words that he would never come back, never look on her again with caressing eyes, never tease her with that lurking smile – probably next time he found her in the river or being abducted he would leave her to her fate. Certainly, it was no more than she deserved.
Chapter 24
On the morning of the card party Lord Marklye rode over to the Dower House with the promised cards and counters. He declined to be announced, saying that he had no doubt the ladies were at sixes and sevens preparing for the evening and did not need him hanging around taking up their time.
In the afternoon, he suggested a ride with his guests, conscious that he had kept them waiting an inordinate length of time for their dinner the previous evening and that he had not so far done a great deal to entertain them.
As a consequence, Susan was unable to meet Signor Pontielli in the wood. It was true that she had refused to make a further assignation but this laudable decision had already been rescinded by the end of the morning’s lesson.
These were chaperoned by the maid, Mrs Porter having suffered such irritation during the last session that she felt unable to endure another just at present. Listening to her daughter playing what had seemed like almost endless scales, followed by the same Clementi phrase repeated over and over again until she felt ready to scream, was not very much to her taste.
The maid lounged in a chair and picked at her nails, glancing covertly at Signor Pontielli from time to time. Since he had not evinced any interest in her, she did not afford him a great deal of attention although she did think him handsome – if a little old. When Monsieur Lapideau was demonstrating a dance, she watched with amusement and a little envy for, although the dancing master lacked masculine beauty to an almost ludicrous degree, he moved well and she liked to dance.
When he had left, Signor Pontielli suggested that they work upon a song, although the one he chose was not the sort of simple ditty he had encouraged her to sing in the wood.
“It is coming along very well,” he said encouragingly but with little truth after she had laboured through the first stanza.
Under cover of instruction and speaking in German – in which language the song was written - he begged her to meet him once more in the wood that afternoon.
She did not at first understand him for, although she could read the foreign words, she had very little idea of what they meant, particularly when they were strung together into a confusing jumble.
“The wood – this afternoon,” he said in a low voice in English when he saw her puzzled look, inserting these words into a long and involved sentence in German.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled, having assumed she had made it clear that they could not meet there again.
“You cannot cut me off like that,” he said in answer to her frown. “You will break my heart. I beg you to meet me there once more so that we can decide how to proceed.”
“I cannot,” she exclaimed but her eyes shone so brightly that he had no difficulty in guessing that she did not by any means agree with the prohibition she had herself imposed and that it would take very little to persuade her to ignore it.
“You must,” he said. “I took you by surprise – frightened you – I will not do so again, I promise.”
“You will not …” She stopped, blushing furiously.
“Kiss you? I will try not to if you would rather I did not,” he declared beginning to play something almost at random to cover the sound of his words.
“Very well,” she said, “but it cannot become a habit.”
“No? Would you not like it to?”
“It is not a question of whether I would like it,” she answered with an assumption of sternness. “Mama would be so very displeased.”
“She will not if she does not know; certainly I have no wish to displease her.”
“No,” she whispered, able to agree to this shared endeavour with no difficulty.
But, as it turned out that Lord Marklye had planned an afternoon of riding round his estate and admiring the lake, she would, unless she could somehow communicate this difficulty to Signor Pontielli, once again leave him waiting in vain.
She wished that the Viscount had suggested undertaking this expedition with her mother alone – although that would have been an odd and insensitive action in view of Mrs Porter’s unconcealed dislike of riding; almost certainly he had lit upon it as a way to please her, Susan. She could not avoid the expedition unless she were to plead illness and, if she did that, she would be obliged to tell a great many more lies, invent symptoms and, quite possibly, endure the ministrations of a doctor who would no doubt be sent for without delay. Since she infinitely preferred riding to singing, she would usually have been only too happy to swap an afternoon of stumbling through a song for one of riding; but the riding did not involve Signor Pontielli and his beseeching eyes.
This time, remembering the music teacher’s distress and sense of betrayal when she had failed to inform him of the change of plan before, she determined to let him know that she would not after all be able to keep their appointment. She began a letter explaining the necessity of falling in with her host’s arrangements but found it extraordinarily difficult to hit the right note of regret for the spoiling of his afternoon without also hinting at regret for the missed singing lesson. This would be an outright lie and she was too straightforward and well-meaning to wish to deceive anyone. But if she were to say that it was her teacher – rat
her than his subject – whom she would miss, she was afraid that she would be guilty of making some sort of a declaration that he would very likely misinterpret.
Unable to decide what to write and terrified of committing the wrong sentiment to paper, she decided that she must speak to him directly. If the thought of seeing him in person, feeling his magnetic presence and drowning in his passionate gaze, formed part of her decision, she did not acknowledge it.
She was supposed to be engaged in changing into her riding habit but had not yet sent for Meg to help her; she must deal with the music teacher first and, aware that she had very little time before her mama would come looking for her, she hurried out of her room and down the corridor in the opposite direction to the main staircase. She was making for the servants’ stairs, which she knew to be at the other end of the long passage. She supposed that Signor Pontielli’s room could be reached from this staircase because she had more than once met him crossing the hall from that direction.
When she opened the door at the end of the corridor she found herself, as she had hoped and expected, on a small landing from which stairs went both up and down. His room, she guessed, would be up rather than down; down presumably led to the kitchen and the servants’ hall.
She ran quickly up the stairs and stopped at the next landing. Moving forward, she saw that there were several doors; there were a great many servants and she supposed they all slept up here. How in the world was she to find his room? What would any of them – in particular the scornful maid – think of her if she knocked upon the wrong door?
She began to walk down the passage, listening carefully, and was relieved to hear the strains of a violin emanating from one of the closed doors. This must be his room for surely no other servant played a violin. Aware, not only of the shortness of time at her disposal, but also of the danger of another servant appearing and seeing her, she applied her knuckles to the door. The music stopped immediately and a moment later it opened to reveal the music master in his shirtsleeves.
Mary Or The Perils 0f Imprudence Page 21