Louisa Elliott

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  The following afternoon Louisa was still in bed when he arrived, complaining of a raging headache. Robert laughed, even louder as she held her head and whispered to him to stop. Within minutes he was standing over her with coffee and biscuits.

  ‘This dreadful illness is merely the result of the wine you drank last night —on an empty stomach. I said you should have eaten.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘So, you’re paying for it now. With a hangover.’

  He sat on the bed and kissed her naked shoulder, so full of good spirits he made her feel worse. Wishing him far away, she said crossly: ‘You don’t even look tired…’

  ‘I am a little,’ he admitted, ‘but more than that, I’m delighted.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Well, you were quite a success last night. Quite a success. In fact I’ve been taken to task already for being so secretive. Who are you, and where have you been hiding for the last two years? No need to worry,’ he assured her, laughing, ‘I maintained my discretion, didn’t tell them a thing. You’re being referred to now as The Mysterious Lady in Blue, which is rather romantic, don’t you think?’

  Louisa closed her eyes, wishing she could share his delight, but for the moment it was too much. She hoped the Ball and its accompanying stir of gossip would be no more than a nine-days’ wonder, but even as she roused herself to dress, Robert was talking about future social occasions. And she had planned to drop out of sight again…

  Over the next few days, Robert’s euphoria waned and his plans reduced to a more acceptable level. Less than a fortnight after the Ball, much to Louisa’s relief, a far more exciting topic was on everyone’s lips. The whole city was rejoicing over the Duke of York’s betrothal to Princess May.

  The city had taken Prince George to its heart ever since the Dukedom had been conferred: even the humblest citizen felt personally connected. People said openly that they were pleased for the girl, that the young Prince was a far better bet as a husband; and more suited to future kingship than ever his elder brother had been. The fact that Princess May’s brother had been resident in the city for almost two years was a further cause for celebration.

  They were to be married within two months, a matter of days before the Royals were due to leave York for Dublin. Everyone cheered at the news: the regiment would now be able to take part in the city’s celebrations.

  Buoyant as a boy at Christmas, Robert arrived that afternoon to share the news with Louisa. He hugged and kissed her with the taste of wine on his lips, so obviously thrilled she looked at him in some amazement. At first she thought he was drunk, but his pleasure at the betrothal was genuine. It rather surprised her, since his attitude towards the regiment tended to be sardonic, as though the military games they played were his chief source of amusement. Often he reported conversations with waspish cynicism, giving Louisa the impression that if he could think of anything better to do with his time, he would willingly do it.

  ‘He’s a brother-officer,’ Robert explained as they walked the riverside path, and for the first time she found him talking seriously about his life with the Royals.

  She began to understand something of the deeply fraternal feelings underlying his usual flippancy. He could berate them, denounce with genuine anger their reactionary attitudes, and beneath it all still need them. They were his family: in effect he was wedded to them far more firmly than he had ever been to Charlotte. The men might change, but the idea of the regiment was almost tangible, having a reality and dependability that the ordinary world lacked. For a fleeting moment, Louisa recalled his angry words on the night of their argument, and she knew that this was the life he wanted her to know and understand. It was an intimate world, and she could see how difficult it must have been for him to maintain the secret of their relationship for so long.

  ‘There’ll be quite a party tonight,’ Robert went on. ‘In fact,’ he added with a laugh, ‘it was already getting nicely underway this morning. It’s fortunate I managed to escape.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll all be disgustingly drunk by midnight,’ Louisa commented, not quite in jest.

  Robert squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t be a wet blanket, my darling, it’s not often the Mess is in complete uproar.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll play those silly games that schoolboys find so amusing, like taking each other’s trousers off and having battles with breadbuns and champagne?’

  He laughed. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘Oh, Robert! I worked in a big house for five years: young gentlemen are all the same. I’ve heard the noise and seen the mess they cause. They wouldn’t think it so funny if they had to clear it up afterwards. Nor would you,’ she added. To cover her irritation she turned aside and began picking bluebells.

  He frowned as he watched her under the trees, feeling belittled by that sharp, governessy reproof, and annoyed by her failure to understand a piece of harmless fun.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ he asked. Annoyed that she was keeping him waiting.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dirtying your gloves and gown.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m picking bluebells.’

  With a theatrical sigh, Robert shook his head. ‘Now who’s playing childish games?’ he asked, striding through the long grass towards her. ‘Come on, darling, don’t be silly. Let’s get back to the apartment. I haven’t that much time, you know.’

  ‘Time for what?’ Louisa asked with obdurate calm, her attention still turned towards those long, slender stems.

  ‘Time,’ he repeated suggestively, cupping the soft roundness of her bottom, ‘for something we’re both in need of.’

  Ignoring his words and that familiar caress, she straightened and moved a pace or two away; then turned to regard him. In his immaculately-tailored suit, with curly-brimmed hat fashionably tilted, Robert stood beneath the trees in a pose of unconscious elegance. It was impossible to mistake him for other than what he was, equally impossible to imagine him indulging in ridiculous horseplay. Yet he had played the fool with her often enough, indulging in games which owed little to elegance and everything to sensuality.

  The trees, the dappled sunlight, reminded her of the first time, in Blankney, and she frowned, considering the differences that time and their relationship had wrought. She glanced down at her fine gown, remembering the old cotton dress she had worn that day, the burning fury which had so rapidly turned to urgent, ungovernable passion. Pique that their planned day should be marred by his anxiety to return to the Mess turned to injured feminine pride. She would not be hurried home, not allow herself to be sandwiched like a meal taken on the run.

  With a toss of her head, Louisa moved further into the wood.

  She heard the swishing and tearing of grass beneath his feet as he strode after her; none too gently, he grabbed her arm and swung her round to face him.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ he demanded, an uneasy blend of desire and ill-temper in his eyes. ‘If we don’t go back now, there won’t be time — and I want you. I’m on duty tomorrow, and the day after —’

  ‘Don’t you ever think of anything else?’

  ‘No,’ he huskily confessed, his mouth closing hard upon hers. ‘Not when I’m with you. I want you all the time.’ Taking the bluebells, Robert dropped them in the grass, forcing her unwilling hand down between their bodies. ‘Can’t you feel how much?’ Touching her breast, he murmured suggestively: ‘Are we going home — or do you want me to take you here and now?’

  ‘Stop it!’ she hissed, twisting away from him. ‘Do you think I’m your whore, to be ordered as and when you like? To be used in any spare half-hour you might have?’

  Stunned, he let his hands fall. ‘For heaven’s sake! Don’t be so ridiculous! When have I ever —’

  ‘Oh, but you have, Robert, you do it all the time! “I’ve only got a couple of hours — let’s go to bed.”‘

  ‘And you don’t want to, I suppose?’ he retorted angrily. ‘It’s just an acc
ommodating act, is it? The kind of act a whore puts on for her clients?’

  Louisa’s hand came up so fast he never saw it, only felt the weight behind that stinging slap and reeled with its force. Speechless for a moment, he simply stared at her; as he dropped his hand, she saw bright red wheals across his cheek.

  ‘That hurt!’ he softly exclaimed.

  ‘It was meant to!’ Trembling, Louisa smoothed her dress, fingers checking every little button of its bodice. Robert moved not at all.

  Eventually, as she bent to gather up that heedlessly scattered bouquet, he said: ‘I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. What was said just now — it wasn’t meant.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ she muttered angrily. ‘Well, I certainly meant what I said. And as you are so obviously keen to get back to your other playmates, Robert, might I suggest you take the quickest way back to the Barracks, and leave me to continue my walk. Alone. I don’t want to see you,’ she added for good measure. ‘I intend to be very busy indeed. So don’t bother to call.’

  ‘Louisa, don’t you think you’re —’

  ‘I mean it, Robert.’

  Looking into her blazing eyes, he saw that she did. With a shrug he retrieved his hat and dusted it off. ‘Believe me, I’m sorry. But I’ll not say it again. If you should need me, you know where I am.’

  With an elaborate and most unnecessary bow he turned, walking at an even pace through the trees and towards the river. Louisa was so angry she wanted to scream. Instead she picked up a short dead branch and threw it at his retreating back. It fell short but he heard it and, without turning his head, simply waved.

  She made her way back along the towpath towards Marygate Landing. It was hot in the sun and she walked slowly, carrying the nodding bouquet of bluebells. There was no sign whatever of Robert, but she passed several small groups, nannies with perambulators, elderly couples out taking the afternoon air. There were boats on the river, young men displaying their prowess before prettily-dressed ladies; several barges too. Gazing absently at one unwieldy and overloaded craft, she caught the eye of the helmsman. He was young and good-looking, with a bright spotted neckerchief and bare brown forearms, and he whistled his appreciation as she passed. Scarlet with embarrassment, Louisa tilted her parasol to cover her face, earning the derogatory glances of two middle-aged matrons on a bench nearby.

  They probably think I’m a prostitute, she thought furiously, cursing her fine clothes. Ladies rarely walked anywhere alone. And ladies don’t say what I’ve just said, she thought next, face flaming at the recollection, nor do the things I’ve done.

  Passing under the railway bridge, she hurried along the path beside the embankment, almost sobbing with relief as she ran up the two flights of stairs to her apartment. Dumping the flowers anyhow into a vase, Louisa locked the door and stripped off her clothes, scrubbing furiously at her erring body with water cold from the tap.

  I hate him, she thought, blaming Robert for those heated words, for every single act of love, every erotic gesture she had ever made. ‘The kind of act a whore puts on,’ he had said; and she winced again. Never before had she so much as questioned the rights and wrongs of what was done in the name of love. It had seemed so good; but one phrase, one gesture, had soured everything, driving doubt and humiliation before it. Without him she would not have known the ways; and without whores – how many? she wondered — he could not have taught her.

  Other than Charlotte, Robert had never mentioned previous experience, and in all innocence Louisa had imagined none. She cursed herself for a fool: there had to have been others, dozens, probably. How else could he know all that he taught so well? The act of procreation was simple and direct, a matter of instinct, she supposed, especially with a man; but there was nothing simple about Robert Duncannon, never had been, not after the first time.

  With angry determination not to cry, nor to brood, she donned a clean white cambric nightdress, made a cup of tea and settled herself to read a new book, feet curled up in the chair. After three pages, however, she put it down, not having registered a single word. A headache nagged behind her eyes and she closed them, aware of sudden overwhelming fatigue.

  After the exceptional warmth of the day, heat still lingered beneath the eaves; the window which looked out over the river stood open, but there was no breeze, and the bluebells, standing with heavy heads in the hearth, pervaded the air with their cloying, almost narcotic scent. Within a very few minutes, Louisa was sound asleep.

  A firm knock disturbed her dreams; in sleepy bewilderment she approached the door, wondering who it could be. Suddenly convinced that it must be Robert, come to apologize, she snatched the door open, ready to order him away. But it was Edward, strangely unfamiliar on this weekday evening in his best black suit.

  Louisa had not seen him for some time, and then only to exchange the briefest of comments before she left her mother’s house. While she wondered at his unexpected presence, his eyes took in her state of undress.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, already beginning to retreat. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll come back later.’

  ‘You’re not,’ she informed him, the words clipped. ‘I’m quite alone. Come in.’

  Having closed the door behind him, Louisa excused herself, returning from the bedroom with her robe. ‘I didn’t feel well,’ she explained, ‘so I decided to lie down.’

  Edward studied her face, taut and rather pale. ‘I can come back later, if you’d prefer?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she insisted. ‘If you can excuse my somewhat informal attire, I’d rather you stayed. I don’t often have the honour of visitors.’

  He found her brittle manner disconcerting and, in view of the reason for his visit, difficult. Unable to frame what he had come to say, Edward indulged in polite, inconsequential conversation, assuring her that everyone was in the best of health as far as he knew, that Emily and John had found a suitable house at last, and intended moving to Leeds as soon as possible. John Chapman had been travelling there daily for some weeks.

  Eventually, having run out of things to say, he simply sighed and looked at her helplessly. As her eyes softened, he looked away.

  Seeing the bluebells in their green pottery vase, he was reminded of another spring, so long ago it hurt him to count the years between. A day like this had been, with sun-dappled woodland and shadowy paths flanked by a carpet of blue; a small girl clutching her first bouquet of short and mangled stems in a chubby fist, white apron grubby, golden curls awry, blue eyes full of laughter and delight. He saw himself clasping that tiny hand, carrying her on his shoulders when the little legs were too tired to walk. It seemed a very short time ago, yet more than twenty years had somehow slipped away unseen.

  ‘What made you pick them?’ he asked, and suddenly she was no longer pale; colour flooded her cheeks and he wondered why.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, her smile rueful. ‘Because they were there, I suppose. I wish I hadn’t,’ she confessed, and then, as though that required an explanation, added: ‘They looked better where they were.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘They die so quickly, don’t they?’

  Concerned, Louisa leaned towards him. ‘Oh, Edward, what is it? I do wish you’d tell me.’

  ‘Victoria Tempest,’ he said flatly, not looking at her. ‘She’s very ill. I thought you’d want to know.’

  She was shocked, not comprehending. He knew that he had put it badly and wanted to comfort her. But even without Robert Duncannon’s presence, Edward was so conscious of him here that every loving gesture, every word he longed to say, froze in his mind the moment it was conceived. Stiffly, hating himself, he apologized for the baldness of his statement, adding with formal and unnecessary parenthesis: ‘You came to care for her very much, I believe.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a whisper, as though she knew there was little to hope for.

  He sighed, conscious of an inexplicable sorrow for the child he had never met. If she lived she would be pitiable, a mindless creat
ure for the rest of her days. But the chances of recovery were remote. ‘Meningitis,’ he murmured, and felt rather than heard the shock which brought Louisa’s hand to her mouth. ‘Her father came in late this morning, called me into the office to tell me.’

  Recalling that painful interview, Edward paused, reliving his own pity and embarrassment. ‘He broke down completely. Wept like a child. It was dreadful — I’ve never seen a man so broken. He really worships that child.’

  ‘Worships her?’ Louisa repeated in a high, unnatural voice. For a moment she stared at the ceiling as though considering the question. ‘I suppose you could put it like that,’ she said at last. ‘If you mean she’s like a wax doll in a glass case, taken out from time to time, but never really played with — I suppose you could say he worships her. But he doesn’t love her, I don’t think she’s real to him. But then, nobody is,’ she added bitterly. ‘People are just objects to Albert Tempest, either attractive or useful. Dispensable when they cease to please him. Like Rachel.’

  With an impatient gesture, Edward stopped her. ‘What’s the matter with you? The man wept, for Heaven’s sake. He was genuinely distraught!’

  ‘Oh, yes, he would be,’ she agreed with a mocking smile. ‘Albert Tempest is a creature of quite unbridled emotions, Edward, self-indulgent and blind to the sufferings of others. He sees nothing that isn’t pointed out, and even then he accepts only what suits him!

  ‘That child,’ she went on, ‘has had little warmth and even less companionship. Since Rachel left, the only person who seems to have given her as much as a second thought is Moira Hanrahan — and she had to come to me with her concern, because in her employer’s eyes, Moira is less worthy of notice than the mat he wipes his feet on! And would you employ a cold, hard, middle-aged woman as your child’s teacher and sole companion?’