The Disdainful Marquis

by Edith Layton

  Before she could speak again, he smiled, not at all kindly, and said in an explanatory fashion to Jenkins, “No, she’s not a bit afflicted with mal de mer. So put away your vinaigrette, Jenkins. Rather, I think, Miss Robins is afflicted with a surfeit of companionship. Her cabin is literally bulging at the seams. The fair Rose has joined Violet, and now the duchess has a veritable bower of pretty flowers in her employ. Rose, Violet, and Catherine. That does not have the right ring to it. You ought to change your name, little one, to Forget-me-not, to ensure your standing with the duchess. And the gentlemen. Miss Robins is here, I think, Jenkins, because it is difficult for a little young country flower to keep her head high in the presence of two such spectacular blooms as Rose and Violet. But never fear,” he said, laying one gray-gloved hand across her cheek to tuck back in an errant wind-whipped curl. “There are many gentlemen aboard who are weary of hothouse blossoms and who will welcome a fresh young English nosegay such as yourself.”

  All of Catherine’s fears and shame coalesced into one direct and burning emotion of hatred toward the marquis. He stood there smiling, he who had been her one possible lifeline, and dashed all her nebulous hopes of escape to bits with his words. She had thought to confide in him, but before she had been able to breathe one word, he had begun a frontal attack upon her. She dashed his hand away and looked at him with brimming eyes.

  “I find your humor ill bred,” she said. “And your inferences impertinent. Good day.” And she turned on her heel and walked off. After one moment’s silence, she heard a laughing “Bravo!” called in the distance behind her.

  “Didn’t she carry that off well?” the marquis laughed. “Like the dowager herself. She is a quick study, I’ll be bound.”

  “I think you’re being a bit hard on her, lad,” Jenkins said reproachfully.

  The marquis’ face hardened and he turned to look out to sea. “She’s only a little artificial flower, after all, Jenkins. Don’t tell me you’re touched and believe her role as ingenue?”

  “As to that,” Jenkins said, turning to face the sea as well, to get a last glimpse of home, “I couldn’t say. But no matter what she is, she’s only a girl. It’s not like you to get so spiteful, especially toward a woman. I saw you chatting up Violet as nice as can be. And she’s a right old tart.”

  “But she’s an honest old tart,” the marquis answered slowly, “with no dissembling. Our Miss Robins aspires to play the grand lady; it’s that, I think, that tickles me.”

  “Don’t seem to tickle you. Seems to gall you,” Jenkins said.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps it is just that I value honesty. And I might like her very well if she would drop that facade of purity.”

  “Well,” said Jenkins at length, “facade’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? With all of them? Pretending to be attracted and then pleasured, with a fellow pretending he don’t notice the pretense. That’s all part of the trade.”

  “And probably why I don’t patronize such businesswomen,” the marquis said loftily, till he caught Jenkins’ eye and then laughed lightly. “Or at least such obvious tradeswomen. You old wretch, you make me admit my every pretense.”

  “Seems you were interested enough in our bold little Violet,” Jenkins ruminated.

  “It always pays, Jenkins, to have the friendship of such females. For there’s a great many pillows that they have their ears to, and a great deal of information they can, all unwittingly, be privy to. So although I don’t have any designs on Violet, and well she knows it, it does pay to be in her good graces.”

  “Then, why are you going out of your way to alienate the little beauty?” Jenkins asked innocently.

  “Be damned to you,” the marquis said pleasantly, and as he cuffed Jenkins’ shoulder, they both began to laugh.

  “It’s just that ’tis pity she’s a whore,” the marquis finally said, when Jenkins thought he had forgotten the subject.

  “You can’t be sure of that, either,” Jenkins finally replied.

  “Oh yes, and Violet may be contemplating a life in the convent. Give over, old friend.”

  “Then meet her price and see.”

  “I’m not interested in the question,” the marquis said, yawning.

  And it’s not often that you lie to me, Jenkins thought, looking at the marquis’ profile, or to yourself.

  “It’s not such a bad crossing, for January,” Jenkins said eventually, to dispel the marquis’ frown.

  “What? Oh no, it isn’t,” his companion replied, and they talked of ships and crossings till the wind blew them below to seek refuge as well.

  Catherine went back to her cabin, because she had nowhere else to go. And because she wanted to make amends to Rose and Violet.

  She had no idea, as she crept back in, of what a fight had been raging before her return. For Rose and Violet now sat calmly, looking through their belongings, not speaking a word to each other.

  But the moment Catherine had risen, ashen-faced, and fled, they had both sat there in stunned silence.

  “Oh Vi,” Rose had wailed after a moment, “see how you’ve made a mull of it? You told me she was one of us, up to every trick, young as she was. And though when I first laid eyes on her I doubted it, really I doubted it, still you told me she was a deep one. And now, you see, you was wrong. She’s just a little innocent and I’ve gone and shocked her to the bone. Oh I could bite out my tongue.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Violet countered, sitting up and throwing away her pillow, with a look of furious dismay on her face. “It’s all part of her game, I tell you. She never drops her guard, not for a moment. All meek and mild, and she’d stab you in the back in a minute. I know her kind.”

  “That you don’t,” Rose shouted with unaccustomed heat. “For where would you ever meet such a sweet young innocent?”

  “Stupid cow,” Violet charged back. “If she was such a sweet young innocent, what would she be doing signing on with the old torment for?”

  “Well, that’s it exactly,” Rose sniffed, overtaken with remorse. “She’d hire on with Her Grace exactly because she didn’t know what she was about. For we did leave the dowager in the lurch, and that you do know. And when she asked me for the name of a replacement, I didn’t give her any, ’cause I wanted to leave the door open, in case things didn’t work out. And it’s a good job I did. But I’ll wager you didn’t give her a name neither. So she must have hired on this little pretty, just ’cause she’s so pretty and young and know-nothing.” And Rose dabbled at her eyes with the edge of the bed covers.

  “I never thought you were such a flat, Rose,” Violet sneered. “To be taken in so by an act of innocence.”

  “Well, it’s true that I’ve been taken in, many times, by the gentlemen,” Rose said slowly, “for I don’t understand them at all, I think. Or maybe it’s just that I keep expecting things of them that just ain’t there. But I do know women. And I’ll stake my life on that little thing’s honesty. For if she was up to snuff, why shouldn’t she come clean with us? You’ve done a terrible wrong, Vi, that you have.”

  Violet, assailed by self-doubt, struck back instantly. “Rose, I vow Carlton took half your brains with him when he took all your money. Do you think the old fiend would run the risk of hiring on a good girl of good birth and reputation?”

  “And I think you’ve gotten hard as nails, Violet; of course, she would, seeing as how she’s half turned in the head. And well you know it too. Didn’t you just say on our last trip as to how it wouldn’t be long before the old cow would be in Bedlam, and how we might never meet on another jaunt together again? Not that I ever approved of how you refer to Her Grace. Because dicked in the nob or not, she’s still a duchess, mind. Mad as hatter though she may be. So, of course, she’d hire on some sweet young thing. And a sweet young thing she is. I’ve never seen her on the town, and you haven’t neither. Oh I feel like a brute, Vi, really I do, and you would too, if you hadn’t grown so hard.”

  “Well, I haven’t grown so hard as your head,
Rose,” Violet shrieked in a voice that would have stood her in good stead in her first chosen profession, the stage. “And don’t you start blaming me—it was your babbling, your going on and on about your exploits that sent her flying, not mine. I was close mouthed as can be with her. So don’t put the blame on me.”

  “You’ve grown cruel, and hard, yes hard, Violet,” Rose stated with ponderous calm. “And I’m sorry for it.”

  The two fell silent, avoiding each other’s eye. And they went about pointedly searching through their portmanteaus, deep in their own thoughts, in exaggerated silence, till Catherine tapped lightly and entered their cabin again, after her time thinking on the deck.

  Catherine spoke very quietly.

  “I am very sorry,” she said, in the voice of a small child who has committed some grave misdemeanor and is determined to beg forgiveness as nicely as she is able, “about the way that I behaved. It was unconscionably rude on my part. Perhaps it was just that I was angry at myself for not seeing what was afoot. I quite deceived myself. And it was wrong in me to have given you the impression that I was disapproving or angry at you. For, you see, I was angry, but only at myself.”

  “Oh there, there, my dear,” Rose cried, seeing the girl standing head bowed and alone in the center of their little room, “we didn’t take anything amiss, did we, Vi? So you must not apologize, certainly not, right, Vi?”

  “Right,” Violet said, looking uncharacteristically conscious. “Not a thing to apologize for. “

  “That is very kind of you,” Catherine said, and then, turning her large anxious eyes to both of them in turn, she asked, hesitantly, “But there is something I must ask you. And it is very difficult for me, so please bear with me for a moment, and pray do not take offense.”

  “Oh we shall not,” Rose hastened to tell her, looking very anxious herself.

  “It is just this,” Catherine began. “Does Her Grace, that is to say, this is of primary importance to me, does the duchess know and condone your, ah, activities that go beyond companioning her?”

  “As to that, you see, my dear, we really could not say,” Rose said nervously. “Her Grace gives us free time once she is abed and no longer requires our presence. She is a very free, that is to say, a very—”

  “Liberal,” Violet put in quickly, seeing Rose stumble.

  “Yes, an exceedingly liberal employer. And she does not care what we get up to when she is not abroad. That is, so long as we are discreet and do not embroil her in any of our activities.”

  “Then,” Catherine ventured, raising her head, “you are not required to—to do,” she stammered, “what you do?”

  “Oh, Lord love you, no,” Rose laughed in relief. “That is not the case at all. Why, just ask Vi, she traveled with Her Grace for a season before I signed on.”

  “Rose speaks no less than truth,” Violet said hastily, “for the duchess hired me only as companion.”

  “Just so,” said Rose in satisfaction.

  “But I do not understand, surely she must have heard…she does not care, then, you say?”

  “The duchess,” Violet said quickly, “enjoys the attention we bring her. She enjoys the notice she receives when we are with her. As to what she may have heard, we cannot say.”

  “So, then,” Catherine went on, thinking aloud, “she does not expect me to, she does not require me to…”

  “Oh never, I’m sure,” Rose said in horrified tones. “She never discusses such things with us.”

  “Then I can stay on,” Catherine asked hopefully, “and only be a companion, and nothing else? No matter,” she said, with a little shake of her head, “what anyone else thinks? I cannot see how I can turn and leave now. And once I return home to Kendal, I shall, in any event, hardly be running into anyone that I have met here. Kendal is such a long, long way from London and Paris in so many ways,” Catherine thought aloud, “that it hardly matters what anyone in the duchess’s set thinks of me. So, after this journey, I will retire and go to live out my life back home where no one has ever heard of the duchess to begin with. Not,” she said, aghast at her ruminations, “that you would not be welcome in Kendal. Or that I think anything—”

  Violet cut her off with a wry smile.

  “Give over, Miss Catherine. If you are a nice little thing from the country, if you are well born, of course you’re shocked to flinders to find yourself with us. We’re hardly the sort of companions a well-bred miss hopes to find herself with. But that don’t bother us. So you’re staying on then?”

  “If you think, and I truly ask you please to tell me the truth, that I can go forward with the duchess and not be expected by her to—to pursue another trade.”

  Violet gave out a little yip of laughter.

  “Oh, that’s a nice way of putting it. I suppose your pockets are to let, then?”

  Catherine nodded sadly.

  “Well, we can’t help you out there neither. For we’re both in the same case. But once we get ashore, we can remedy that, and if you want, we’ll advance you the funds to skip out.” Violet looked almost as shocked as Rose and Catherine did at her sudden burst of generosity.

  “Oh no, no,” Catherine protested immediately. “That wouldn’t be right.” Catherine thought suddenly of the names she could put to someone who profited from a cyprian’s earnings and then blurted, afraid that her companions might know the nature of her thoughts from her horrified expression, “I would not ask you to be responsible for me. For if I can go on solely as a companion, as I was engaged to do, I can see the journey out and then take my earnings and go home.”

  “Of course you can go on with us. In fact, we can put the word about the gentlemen that you are not”—Rose paused—“of a sporting disposition.”

  Violet winced at Rose’s effort to tidy up her speech, and then, considering the young miss so sadly lost in their midst, thought rapidly. For no doubt the little beauty would draw the gentlemen like flies to a picnic basket. And then she and Rose could only profit the more from the fact that she was unwilling to go off with them. She smiled with perfect charity at Catherine.

  “Rose is right, we’ll tell them, never fear. And there is no reason to concern yourself as to the duchess’s caring one jot one way or the other. She’ll be glad enough if you only play the companion well. All she wants is for heads to turn when she appears. She don’t give a tinker’s damn as to what you do to occupy your free time. Whether you sew a fine seam alone in your room or dance naked in a fountain, it’s all the same to her. And that’s the truth.”

  “Very true,” seconded Rose.

  “And,” Violet said triumphantly, “you yourself said no one at home is likely to ever know what the duchess and her set is about. So cheer up. It will be a good journey. Rose and I will be amiable enough. And all the duchess wants of you is to keep by her side in good looks. You can just put all else out of your mind.”

  “You two must think me a fool,” Catherine said sadly.

  “Oh no,” Rose protested. “We were all young once. Only, perhaps, not quite so young.”

  Catherine laughed. And then she looked at her two fellow companions.

  “I think I shall grow up quite a bit on this journey.”

  “Travel is broadening,” Rose agreed complacently, ignoring the weary look Violet shot her.

  Chapter VII

  The crossing, all agreed, was not so bad as it might have been. There were those, of course, who had been taken ill by the vessel’s rocking over the January seas, and those who had been, as they expected, ill no matter what the conditions of the weather. But it might have been worse—there had been only the cutting wind and the winter’s cold. Travelers who were more experienced with the vagaries of the channel’s weather could only be grateful that there had been no pouring rains or wind-driven squalls of ice.

  As the shores of France loomed in the distance, the passengers began to assemble themselves for departure. Catherine had spent the remainder of her journey hugging her newfound knowledge to
herself and attempting to try on a new public face. For, knowing what she did, she reasoned there was no way she could delude herself into forgetting it for a moment. If she could not go homeward, she must go onward with a new attitude. But which one?

  She could not appear to be constantly disapproving, because she felt that would make her a sanctimonious fool, to go on with people of whom she patently disapproved. The only hope for it, she thought sadly, was to maintain an air of irreproachable dignity. To carry on as though she well knew what people thought, but was too sophisticated to care. No, she thought, not sophisticated, for that she could not simulate as she was decidedly not a woman of the world. Rather, that she knew what was happening about her, but chose not to notice or care. That was, after all, just what she was doing. Her attitude must be then, she thought, much as her employer’s was. Tolerant and uncaring. And if she felt any squeamish qualms about having to affect any sort of attitude at all, and not simply give the whole matter up and fly off to try to get home in any manner that she could, she consoled herself by recalling that a young woman alone and without funds in the English countryside might be thought of as a great deal worse than one employed in the entourage of a duchess of the realm.

  So Catherine stood, head high, surrounded by her trunks, on the deck of the packet and watched as the vessel began its docking procedures. And when the Marquis of Bessacarr strolled by with Jenkins at his shoulder, Catherine found her newly born affect of worldliness sufficient to allow her to acknowledge his presence with a smile and a nod in his direction.

  He paused in his steps, for they both realized that it was the first time she had ever admitted his presence without his first having approached or accosted her. He smiled in his faint cynical manner and came to her side.

  “So you have forgiven me my rash speculations? I am glad of it. I was, I fear, afflicted with the tediousness of the journey, and I let my tongue run away with me. How pleasant it is to see that you have compassion as well as beauty, little one,” he said, bowing over her hand.