Dame Durden's Daughter

by Joan Smith

  “Not for nothing, Your Grace. For Edith.” This had a blunt sound he rapidly spoke on to overcome. “For an old friend—sister, as you mentioned the other day.”

  “That is not the relationship I have in mind now,” Hel­ver said baldly, taking the thing beyond misunderstanding. He looked levelly at Dorion, as though to impress upon him his meaning. “You understand me?”

  “Well, of course she is not your sister. That was only a manner of speaking.”

  “No, she is not my sister, thank God. About these visits to the Deanery, Thorne, we wouldn’t want any scandal to attach to them, because of your position and Edith’s—and my own, for that matter.”

  “Why should scandal attach to them?” Dorion asked, feigning an obtuseness he was far from harbouring.

  “Ah, but I mean to visit frequently—at least once a week. I shall miss Eddie very much.” His eyes lingered on her, lovingly, covetously.

  Thorne cleared his throat. “Perhaps Edith should leave us for a moment.”

  “No, Eddie must stay. I want this perfectly clear be­tween the three of us,” Helver said.

  “Then by all means let us have it perfectly clear!” Edith said, jumping up from her seat. “I can’t believe Dorion understands the nature of your bargain, Saymore. He has not had the dubious advantage of your Continental trav­els.”

  “Call me Helver, Eddie. Well, Doctor, you understand what I am offering?”

  Thorne licked his lips and looked fearfully at Edith. “His Grace is offering to forward my career because of his—affection for you, my dear. As old friends, he is anxious to see you get ahead, and a wife, you know, normally ad­vances her position through her husband. There is nothing wrong in it.”

  “There is something very wrong when a husband ad­vances his position through his wife’s lover. There is a dif­ference there, I think you will agree,” she pointed out sneeringly.

  “Oh, lover!” Thorne laughed deprecatingly. “Friend is the word we are using, and in this case it is the wife who has the influential friends.”

  “Use whatever euphemism suits you, Thorne,” Helver said, “but pray confine yourself to the single. I already dis­like very much the notion of sharing her with you. You mustn’t be playing other cards behind my back. There are to be no other lovers.”

  “I am not being shared by anyone!” Edith shouted, her bosom heaving.

  “It is only a manner of speaking, my dear,” Thorne said, trying to calm her. Damme, why did Saymore have to put it into so many words right in front of her? He would have expected more finesse from him. “His Grace does not wish to lose your company. He means to call on us, that’s all.” Thorne darted a look of warning, of pleading, at Helver, who ignored it entirely.

  “That’s all, Eddie. Just discreet calls in the afternoon or evening when the Doctor is busy elsewhere, but no one need know that. I explained to you, you recall, how it is done in Italy. And really, you know, you said I might be your cavaliere servente after you were married.”

  “Dorion!” Edith said to her groom in a strangled voice.

  He cleared his throat and then laughed. “What foolish notions are you getting in your head, my love? You know His Grace better than 1. You must know his intentions are not harmful to you.” He cast one last appealing glance at Helver for help.

  “I wouldn’t hurt a hair of her head,” he said lovingly. “The last thing in the world I would ever do is hurt Eddie. I love her too much for that, and, if she dislikes it, the ar­rangement is not to be thought of.”

  “But what is the arrangement?” she asked, in some con­fusion. She found it hard to believe still that she had it right. Dorion would not take it so calmly if it were as she thought.

  In his worst nightmares, Thorne had not thought to see the matter come to a head in this awful way. That Edith and Helver were mutually attracted, he knew, and saw a clandestine romance developing between them while he obligingly remained unaware. That it should be put into black and white before the marriage, and in front of the bride, was a folly beyond imagining.

  “The explanation had best come from your groom-to-be,” Helver said, looking at Thorne expectantly.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I thought I had made myself clear,” Helver replied calmly. “I want Edith. I will do my best to advance you—though I can’t promise the Dean’s position so soon—in ex­change for her.” There—the cards were on the table, and it was all or nothing. He looked at Thorne, and he looked at Eddie, who stared at him as though he were a dragon. For an instant his resolve wavered. He read the indecision in Thorne’s eyes and feared he was about to turn holy on him, become a pillar of outraged virtue. “Well?” he asked.

  “It’s up to Edith,” Thorne answered, washing his hands of the affair, like Pontius Pilate.

  “Leave us,” Helver said to Thorne, but his eyes were fixed on Edith, trying to convey some message she was too distraught to read.

  “Edith hasn’t answered,” he objected.

  “Leave us,” Helver repeated without raising his voice. In fact, he lowered it somewhat, but still it held an air of authority.

  Thorne clenched his fists—looked at them both—then crept out on his shuffling feet, to pace the hall and fret and hope that Edith wouldn’t botch the scheme. It was unfor­givable of Saymore to have put it straight before her in such a fashion. One would have thought a man of the world would manage his amours more discreetly. He would never forgive him for that.

  Helver watched him leave, then turned to Edith with a mocking smile on his face. “What do you think of your holy man now?” he asked.

  In that flashing instant she hated Saymore. Any last trace of the boy was gone. Here was a man she didn’t know—cruel, mocking, degenerate. "You're beastly!” she said, her face white, with two dark, glowing eyes staring at him in revolted fascination.

  “Eddie!” he leapt up, surprised. “You can’t think I meant it! You know me better than that.”

  “You meant it. I think you had best leave, Your Grace.”

  “Don’t call me that! I’m not a stranger!”

  “You are. I don’t know you, or want to. I’ve never known you. You’re evil. Mama and all the rest of them were right, and I was wrong. I tried not to see what you were—tried to fool myself you weren’t as bad as you are—that you’d grow up one day, change. Well, you have. You’re a full-grown, hardened rake now. Or worse, if there is anything worse.”

  “There’s something worse all right! There’s that damned creeping hypocrite, spouting morality—a church­man willing to sell his wife for a promotion. I may be bad, but I’d never do that. I’ve never bought or sold a woman yet.”

  “No, you’ve just taken what you wanted and cast it aside when you were through with it. Lady De Courcy and Bessie Moog and all the others.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “And didn’t play the cavaliere servente in Italy, either, I imagine. Didn’t seduce Widow Malone when you were still a boy.”

  “She was the one did the seducing, an old woman and I was only sixteen.”

  “You bought her with a cheap set of garnets, and you bought Bessie Moog with a new house, so don’t bother telling me you never bought a woman.”

  “I never intended to buy you. I had no intention of making him a dean.”

  “A welcher into the bargain!”

  “Eddie, it wasn’t that!” he said desperately.

  “Liar! Liar—hypocrite . . . rake! Go away!” she shouted. He took a step towards her and could see she was deadly earnest, even trembling with it. It had all happened before. They were in the meadow with Larry, and she pre­ferred Larry. She wouldn’t believe him, and in frustration he raised his hand and struck her across the cheek. Her head was jerked to the side with the force of it. She looked at him in bewildered disbelief, her mouth open.

  Helver looked at her, and then at his open hand, horri­fied to see what he had done. A strangled, incoherent sound came from his throat, and he
reached out his arms towards her.

  Her face crumpled and tears spurted into her eyes. To his astonishment, she sobbed and said, “I’m sorry, Hel­ver,” and pitched herself into his arms.

  “Eddie—don’t! Don’t say that!” he whispered in an un­steady voice and crushed her head against his chest. “I’m sorry, darling. Oh, God! I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean to do it. Truly, I didn’t. I lost my head. I—oh, don’t you hate me, too. I couldn’t bear it. I don’t mind the others. Don’t you hate me, Eddie.”

  “I don’t hate you, Helver,” she sniffed in a small voice.

  “You should. It’s all true. I am rotten, but I didn’t mean what I said to Thorne. I had to show you what he is. He’d have sold you, Eddie. He doesn’t love you a bit.”

  “I know. I don’t care about him. I know you didn’t mean it.”

  “I didn’t, I swear. And I didn’t mean to hit you. If I ever strike you again I’ll cut off my arm. Forgive me, Eddie. I’ll never do it again.”

  “It’s all right.” She rubbed at her wet eyes with her knuckles and tried to draw away from him, but he pulled her back and held her tightly.

  “It’s not all right. It was a terrible thing to do,” he said fiercely. “Don’t heap coals on my head by saying it’s all right. Hit me—beat me—do anything, but don’t hate me. I need you, Eddie. I couldn’t bear it without you.”

  “Bear what?” she asked, ever blunt.

  “Everything—life, work, the Hall, the village, the whole world. When I thought you were going to marry him I was driven mad. I must have been crazy to . . . You didn’t love him, did you?”

  “No, I hated him.”

  “Why were you marrying him, then?”

  “Because—because he asked me, and Mama accepted, and there wasn’t anyone else. There wasn’t any pack of suitors, Helver. I lied, too, to try to make you jealous.”

  “You didn’t have to try. I’ve been so jealous for a week I nearly burst. I’ve been fighting with Forringer and Mama and even snapped at Travers a couple of times. What will the Dame say?”

  “I don’t care what she says. I’m not marrying Dorion.”

  “You’re marrying me, of course,” he said simply.

  “Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”

  “By the time I found out how much I loved you, you were engaged. Have you cared for me all along, ever since I’ve been back?”

  “For years. Ages before you left.”

  “You hid it very well. Never a word or a sign to me. Or was I just too blind to see it?” He looked long at her, and he could see it now, shining in her eyes. “I’ve never kissed you—in all the years we’ve been friends. We’re engaged now. It’s all right?” With this unwonted propriety he kissed her lightly on the cheek, still red from his hand.

  “It will be one of those grand passions, won’t it? Like Dante and Beatrice, only we’ll be married?” she asked, smiling at him.

  “Better than Dante and Beatrice. A Divine Passion,” he promised. And when at last he really kissed her, she saw that Helver was right, as usual. It was some elemental force beyond resisting or wanting to.

  Cradling her face between his hands he regarded her closely. “You do believe me, don’t you, that what I said to Thorne was only a trick? I could hardly go through with it when I saw you were taking me seriously. What must you have thought of me?”

  “Oh, I thought it wouldn’t be quite as dull as I feared, being Mrs. Thorne,” she said impishly.

  “Have I ruined your character at a touch?”

  “You ruined it years ago, feeding me wine and making me sniff brandy. I’m well prepared to be your wife now.”

  “I think I was preparing you for it all along without realizing it. But really, I’m not as bad as Thorne.”

  “I can’t quite believe he understood you.”

  “He understood, all right. He isn’t the saint you’ve be­lieved. But now that he’s not marrying you, I don’t hate him so much as I did. He might never have agreed to what I suggested if I hadn’t put the notion in his head and lured him along with the Dean’s chair. How the gudgeon thought I could get it for him is beyond me.”

  “If he thought it, you may be sure he’s right, he knows all the tricks and angles for getting ahead. But I never thought he’d be so low as to use me as one of his tools.”

  “He’d use his own mother—but never mind him. Eddie, we’re going to be happy together. Coming so close to losing you has taught me a lesson. I’m through with gallivanting and flirting. I have changed. I’ve been wanting to settle down to a more regular life, and it was never anyone but you I wanted to settle down with. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, only we’ll live at the Hall instead of one of the little cot­tages.”

  “And I will have an upholstered settee, and a maid to bring me a glass of wine. And I’ll have the Duchess and Aunt Sara and Uncle Egbert, too,” she added less enthu­siastically.

  “Devil a bit of it. Travers will convince them they’ll be more comfortable at the Dower House. I never did get the roof fixed, and they’ve been threatening to move out for a month. We’ll fill all the rooms up with children as fast as we can, to keep them out.”

  “You have over thirty bedrooms, Helver.”

  “Thirty-five, but we’ll give each of them a suite and a room for their nannies. Say an even dozen. I didn’t like being an only child.”

  “Neither did I, but I don’t know that I’d have liked eleven brothers and sisters.”

  “We’ll start with one and see how we take to being par­ents. I mean to get the boys’ noses to the grindstone as soon as they’re breached and keep them there. It was a mis­take on my father’s part, I think, to give me so much free time. And you will be in charge of the girls. I don’t want them roaming the meadows—God only knows what hea­thens they’ll fall in with.”

  Their foolish love-making was interrupted by a tap at the door, and Thorne looked in. His eyebrows rose an inch to see his bride encircled in the Duke of Saymore’s arms. “What is going on?” he asked sharply.

  “I’m taking over your wife a little prematurely,” Helver said with a mocking smile. “In fact, we’ve decided you are expendable, Doctor. Eddie don’t like triangles. She never cared for geometry in the least.”

  “Edith, I must ask . . .," he began, but was interrupted.

  “I would prefer if you call my wife Miss Durden till it is proper to call her Duchess,” Helver said. “But, really, I think it best if you not call her anything at all. Any ques­tions you have to ask in regard to this matter, you will please direct to me. And before you pester me with a dozen, I shall outline the position. You are not marrying Miss Durden; you are not to be Vicar at Tisbury. In fact, you are not to show your damned creeping form within the bounds of my village."

  “I have a contract!”

  “For a year. I will be happy to forfeit the three hundred pounds without availing myself of your services. I shall seek a moral mentor elsewhere, Doctor. I don’t care for the brand of morality you perpetrate, nor does Miss Dur­den. Three hundred should enable you to get beyond my grasp. If you are wise, you will do so.”

  “Dame Durden . . ."

  “Yes, she adores your Saxon blood but won’t care for that Italian streak of Machiavelli, if it becomes necessary for her to hear of it. You’re exposed, Thorne, and you’d better get farther away than Bath, for you’re through there, too. In fact, if you will take a piece of advice from your ex-student, you will do well to revert to your initial studies of the law. Scandal has a way of getting around, and the stench you’re picking up won’t serve you so well in the church as in the law—or politics. Really, you would make an admirable politician. I believe you have an innate ability for double-dealing that will see you Prime Minister before ten years are out.”

  “This was all your idea!”

  “It was, and I accept full responsibility for it. As my spiritual guide, however, you ought to have hinted me to a more proper course instead of encouraging me at every op­portunit
y to covet your bride. It is a poor guide who is led astray by his pupil.”

  “I had no intention of allowing you and Edith to . . ."

  “You had no intention of trying to stop me. Cut line, Thorne. The jig’s up. If you are at all wise you will leave before the necessary explanations are made to Dame Dur­den. I am only trying to save you from additional embar­rassment, but my heart isn’t quite in it.”

  “You haven’t heard the end of this!”

  “Better for you if I have,” Helver said with a laugh. “The other end, you know, involves the Court of Twelve Paces; and in my flaming career that is one court I have managed to stay out of. But I feel I can acquit myself well enough if it comes to that.”

  For a moment Thorne wanted to walk forward and strike the Duke of Saymore’s taunting face. He took one pace—even a firm one, with his heel striking the floor—then his inborn sense of self-preservation took over, and he turned and crept from the room. Helver and Edith were still together talking when the front door slammed, and they saw him leave.

  Looking at his back through the window, Edith said, “He’ll have to walk all the way to the village.”

  “Not he! He’ll be picked up by some gig before he’s gone half a mile. His sort always makes out in the world.”

  * * *

  Chapter 17

  Thorne had been gone for half an hour and, though the lovers didn’t know it, was comfortably en­sconced in the carriage—not gig—of Squire Rigby on his comfortable way to London. His mind seethed with plans. His three hundred he would get by applying to the Bank in Tisbury, he decided, to avoid direct contact with Saymore. It didn’t do to have dealings with such disreputable char­acters as that one. It would be known before long that his moral scruples had revolted at being Vicar to such a blackguard. A close questioning of Squire Rigby gave him Lady De Courcy’s address in the metropolis, and he passed the trip pleasantly by selecting an address for him­self within walking distance of her without cutting too seri­ously into his three hundred. A trip to Lazarus College to see the Don would also be necessary to see what livings were vacant.