Devil's Bargain

by Marlene Suson

  Even that malicious old gossip, Lord Rudolph Oldfield, who never said a nice word about anyone, spoke glowingly of the charming Duchess of Castleton.

  Only once did Marc mention his wife’s social whirl, grumbling that it was quite unnecessary for her to go to every ton party in London. She retorted that he had no cause for complaint since she neither asked for nor wanted his escort to them.

  To her surprise, her husband’s cool hauteur failed him, and she saw that her answer stung him.

  “Once you liked my company well enough,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, once!” she retorted coldly.

  Now, as Tia’s landau moved smartly down Pall Mall, Doris delivered a running commentary on the passing scene in a language that bore scant resemblance to the King’s English.

  As the maid had grown more comfortable with her new mistress, she had become positively loquacious. Her unintentionally humorous observations amused Tia as well as considerably enlarging her vocabulary of cant phrases.

  For all her garrulousness, however, Doris never again mentioned poor Madame Theroux. Once when Tia asked her, Doris said, “The dook, he says Oi’m not to be openin’ me gab about her.”

  The maid was also firmly silent about the rest of her past other than to say that she had been born in the holy land.

  This had bewildered Tia until Marc had explained that what Doris called the holy land was the slums of St. Cues, among the most squalid in the city.

  “However did it come to be called the holy land?” Tia asked.

  “From the holes in its residents’ garments,” Marc replied, “certainly not from the sacredness of its soil, for it is the lair of the lowest criminals in London. That is why underworld cant is called St. Giles’s Greek.”

  Once when Tia pressed Doris for more information about her past, she said bluntly, “Tis not a fit story for a duchess to be a-hearin’, and that’s the truth.”

  As Tia’s equipage stopped in front of Harding, Howell & Co., a yellow curricle passed them from the other direction. Noticing its fat, potbellied occupant, Doris exclaimed, “Did ye ever see such a gotch-gutted cove?”

  Tia, who had recognized the man, told her, “That gotch-gutted cove is the Prince Regent.”

  Doris stared at her in disbelief. “Ye be bammin’ me!”

  As Sebastian helped her down from the landau, several passersby paused to stare at him. It was not so much his height—although he stood two inches above six feet—as his massively muscled body and ugly face, scarred and flattened by heaven only knew how many fights and brawls, that looked singularly out of place in the duke’s elegant crimson and gold livery

  Sebastian was as silent as Doris was talkative. At first, Tia had thought him a mute, but Doris explained that his throat had been injured in a fight, and it was so painful for him to speak that he almost never did.

  Despite his silence, Sebastian’s nature was as pugnacious as his appearance, and he had very nearly precipitated several embarrassing scenes when he had thought some imaginary disrespect had been dealt his mistress. But toward her, he was as docile as a lamb.

  Doris scrambled down from the landau after Tia and followed her into Harding, Howell & Co. The store occupied what once had been thought the handsomest private residence on Pall Mall, the Duke of Schomberg’s mansion. Some of its previous glory was evident in the pillars that supported the towering ceilings and in the glazed mahogany partitions that divided the store’s main floor into five departments.

  Doris, tripping through the door after Tia, exclaimed loudly, “Gor blimey, it’s a palace we’re a-shoppin’ in.”

  Ladies’ fans were located immediately inside the entrance, and Tia chose one of painted chicken-skin on tortoiseshell sticks.

  Doris studied the soft leather doubtfully. “Don’t look like no chicken’s skin Oi’s ever seen. Tryin’ to bob ye, he is.”

  To Tia’s relief, the clerk clearly did not understand this cant term for cheating because he looked more puzzled than indignant.

  Tia hastily explained to Doris that, despite its name, the hide did not come from poultry but from calves.

  After paying for the fan, Tia went into the next department where gloves, lace, silks, and muslins were sold.

  Unfortunately, Doris had lost none of her singular skill for colliding with stationary objects, and she crashed into a table loaded with carefully arranged laces, sending them tumbling to the floor in a jumbled heap. The maid got awkwardly down to try to put the mess to right. But her mistress drew her firmly away, having learned from bitter experience that such attempts by Doris only resulted in greater disaster.

  Tia was thankful she had no need to visit the department beyond this one where French docks, jewellery, and ornamental ormolu were displayed. She shuddered to think what havoc Doris would cause there.

  The purchase of a pair of long white kid gloves completed Tia’s shopping, and they drove on to Stratford House.

  When Tia was ushered into the drawing room there to await her hostess, she discovered that she was not the only caller. A thin slip of a woman, her face set in unhappy lines, huddled in a corner of a sofa as though she feared that Tia might notice her.

  Something about her was very familiar, but it took Tia a moment to recognize her, so altered was her appearance.

  “Lady Amelia,” Tia cried, hurrying forward to the widow of Marc’s brother, Paul.

  Amelia did not rise to greet her, but instead seemed to shrink even farther into the corner of the sofa. Tia sat down beside her, unable to believe the change in her. When Tia had known Amelia at Ashmore, she had been plump and lovely. Now she was neither. Her blue eyes, once so bright, were dull with pain and red from weeping.

  She looked so miserable that Tia reached over and took her hands, cold as the ocean in January into her own, offering her silent comfort.

  Amelia’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Tia, everyone blames me for Paul’s death, but I would never have willingly done anything to harm him. I adored him, No one misses or mourns him more than I do.”

  Tia, who had seen the couple together at Ashmore, believed the widow. “But why, if you loved your husband so,” she asked gently, “did you take a lover?”

  “I did not!” Amelia cried vehemently. “I never wanted any man but my husband, but he... he had grown bored with me.”

  Yes, ha thought, that had been her own impression when last she had seen Lord Paul and his wife at Ashmore. She had been certain that he, not Amelia, had lost interest in their marriage.

  Tia, finding herself now in that same situation, understood only too well the pain this must have caused Paul’s wife.

  “When Major Hetton began paying me such particular attention, I... I am ashamed to confess that I did not discourage him because I hoped it would make Paul jealous and... and revive his interest in me. But then the major called Paul out and killed… him.” Tears streamed down Amelia’s face. “I wanted to die, too. I loved Paul so much. Everyone blames me for his death, but... Oh, God, I would give my own life to undo the harm I unwittingly did.”

  Tia frowned. “How very odd that Major Hetton was the one to call Paul out. It is usually the wronged husband who issues the challenge in such affairs. What reason did Hetton give for challenging your husband?”

  “That Paul had been cruel to me, which wasn’t true. Mama says it was because Hetton wished to make me a widow. And he succeeded.” Lady Amelia dabbed ineffectually at her cheeks with her soggy handkerchief. “Oh, God, how I rue the day I met Hetton... if that was indeed his name,” she added, more to herself than to Tia.

  “What?” Tia exclaimed, much startled. “Do you think it was not?”

  “I was told that no Hettons ever lived in the Northumberland village where he said he grew up. When I heard that, I remembered the day a stranger rushed up to us, saying he had never thought to run into Philip Erickson of Bingham on the streets of London. The major insisted that he knew no Philip Erickson, that he had never seen the stranger before, and that he
had never been to a place called Bingham. But now I think he was lying.”

  By now Amelia’s handkerchief was soaked with her tears, and Tia gave the widow her own.

  “Everyone except our hostess has given me the cut direct.” Amelia wiped her eyes with the borrowed handkerchief. “She is the only person who will still receive me.”

  “I will receive you,” Tia said firmly.

  “Your husband would never permit me to step inside his door. He loathes me. He never liked me. He tried to dissuade Paul from marrying me. Thought I was beneath his touch.”

  “Send me a message when you wish to come, and I will see that you are admitted,” Tia said, determined to make her husband see what an injustice he was doing his sister-in-law

  Their hostess came into the room. She apologized for her tardiness in greeting them, explaining that a minor household crisis had required her immediate attention.

  Seeing Lady Amelia’s tear-swollen eyes, the duchess immediately launched into an amusing ondit about Mrs. Drummond Burrell, one of the exalted patronesses of Almack’s. Diana had a special knack for imitating people, and she caught the haughty, disdainful, overbearing air of Mrs. Burrell so perfectly that even the unhappy Amelia was reduced to helpless laughter.

  Later, after Amelia, cheered by Diana’s imitations, departed, Tia said, “She tells me you are the only one who still receives her.”

  “Yes. Your husband would never forgive me were he to learn I do. My own husband is displeased with me, too, but my heart goes out to that poor child. I am persuaded that she was more a victim than a wrongdoer. It was very foolish of her to encourage Hetton in an effort to make her husband jealous, but she could not have foreseen the terrible consequences it would precipitate.”

  “No, she could not,” Tia agreed.

  “I know from bitter personal experience the terrible pain of doing something stupid that brings repercussions one could never have anticipated,” Diana said. “It very nearly cost me my husband.”

  Tia remembered what Marc had said about difficulties early in the Stratfords’ marriage.

  “What happened?”

  Diana shook her head sadly. “It is too painful a tale for me to tell you.”

  When Tia reached home that afternoon, she was told her husband was in the gallery, a long room that doubled as Castleton House’s ballroom. She went there immediately, determined to tell him Amelia’s odd story about Hetton and plead with him to try to forgive her.

  The gallery’s walls were lined with portraits of the eight dukes of Castleton who had preceded her husband and their duchesses, save one. Only Marc’s mother was missing.

  Tia was curious to know the reason for this omission, but Marc never mentioned his mother and she had been shy about pressing him.

  Her husband was alone in the gallery, standing in front of a portrait of his father, a handsome, brown- haired gentleman whom Paul had greatly resembled.

  For a brief moment, the mask behind which Marc hid his emotions slipped. What she saw in his face made her swallow hard. She forgot the widening chasm that separated them and instinctively reached out to offer him succour. She touched his arm comfortingly. “You loved him very much, didn’t you?”

  “Worshipped him,” Marc admitted, surprising her with this unusual candour. She noticed that he looked drawn and tired, as though he had been sleeping poorly. Well, that made two of them.

  He reached up, clasping her hand that was on his sleeve in his own and squeezing it. Her heart skipped a beat at this unexpected gesture. She was unnerved to discover that despite all the unhappiness he had caused her his touch thrilled her.

  Still holding her hand, he turned away from the picture of his father, and they passed the spot where his mother’s portrait ought to have hung. It was occupied by a painting of a small blond boy, dressed in breeches and a ruffled shirt, with an impish grin upon his face.

  He resembled Marc a little, and Tia asked, “Is that you?”

  “No, my brother Paul was five when it was done. Such a little devil he was then. The artist captured him perfectly.”

  Marc offered no explanation as to why his brother’s likeness hung in the place where his mother’s should have been, Tia had heard that she had been a great beauty, and she would have liked to see a picture of her.

  Marc was still holding her hand tightly in his own. Encouraged by this, she asked, “Was no painting done of your mama?”

  Marc’s face hardened into angry contempt. “Several were done.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They are in the attic. I do not care to be reminded of her.”

  “Why not?” Tia asked in surprise.

  “Do you think me an unnatural son? If I am, it is because she was an unnatural wife. She killed my father.”

  “How?” Tia blurted, much shocked.

  Never had she seen Marc’s eyes so arctic. His lips thinned into a narrow line. She thought for a moment that he would not answer her, but at last he said, “My mother could not have asked for a better or more loving husband than my father, but one man’s adoration was not enough for her. She revelled in conquests. When I was eleven, she began the new year by running off with one of her lovers. My father foolishly went after them. Although it was bitterly cold, he insisted on driving his fastest team hitched to his racing curricle. Fifteen miles from Rosedale, it skidded and overturned on an icy patch of road, injuring him badly.”

  Even all these years later, Marc’s voice still wobbled as he spoke of the accident, and Tia realized again the depth of emotions that he hid behind his cold, haughty facade.

  He stared with unseeing eyes toward the far end of the gallery “By the time my father was found, he had contracted a fatal inflammation of the lungs that carried him off eight days later. He and Paul were the only two people I ever loved, and they both died because of their faithless wives.”

  The suppressed fury in his voice told her that those two ladies, even though one was his mother, would never be forgiven by him for their part in their husbands’ deaths.

  It was not an auspicious moment to tell him Amelia’s story but Tia tried anyhow.

  At the mention of her, he dropped Tia’s hand as though it were a hot coal. “Don’t mention that evil female’s name in my presence.”

  “But—”

  “Perhaps your hearing has become faulty, madam,” he said caustically. “I repeat, do not mention her to me again.”

  It was Marc at his most stubborn, and Tia knew it would be a waste of her breath to attempt to continue.

  As she turned away, hard put to keep her own temper under control, he said icily, “I forbid you to see that woman.”

  His tone raised Tia’s hackles. She said nothing, but she had no intention of obeying his edict.

  Chapter 18

  Tia, her hands full of invitations which had arrived that morning, descended the marble staircase of Castleton House. She had divided the cards into two unequal piles. The smaller one held rejections and the larger, acceptances.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Tia turned toward the little office of Marc’s secretary and tapped lightly upon the door, which was slightly ajar. She received so many invitations that George kept the ones she accepted in chronological order and made up a schedule of her engagements each day.

  When the secretary did not answer, she pushed open the door and discovered his office was empty She went in and laid the cards on his desk. As she did so, she noticed a ledger whose cover had been inscribed with the words “Jennie Martin.”

  Curiosity, always one of Tia’s besetting sins, possessed her, overpowering her scruples, and she opened the ledger. She required no more than a minute to ascertain that it contained a record of the exorbitant sums, all noted in George’s neat handwriting, that her husband expended to keep Jennie.

  As Tia’s eyes travelled down page after page of notations and figures, she could not help but think for the thousandth time how modest the price Lady Todd’s chestnut had been in compar
ison to the payments Marc made on Jennie’s behalf. It still hurt her that he had refused to spend even a paltry sum on a horse for his wife while he happily squandered vast amounts on Jennie.

  The entries included the rent for a house in Bloomsbury that had to be where Marc kept Jennie. Clearly theirs was a liaison of long standing for the dates went back nearly six years.

  When Marc had warned Tia that he would have other interests after their marriage, she had assumed that he was talking about casual affairs of short duration. She found the longevity of his relationship with Jennie more hurtful because it meant that, despite his protestation that he would never love any woman, Jennie occupied a special niche in his heart.

  Curiosity again took possession of Tia, and she determined to see the incognita that Marc considered more beautiful than any other woman.

  Carefully, she laid her plans. She dared not let anyone know her destination, for word would get back to Marc. Somehow she would have to slip out of the house undetected, escaping the ever-watchful eyes of Doris and Sebastian. Nor could she order her landau. She would have to rely on a hackney coach.

  Tia went up to her dressing room, where she surreptitiously hid beneath a pile of her chemises one of the white kid evening gloves that she had purchased at Harding, Howell’s. Then she informed Beryl and Doris that she had the headache and wished to lie down.

  As the maid pulled the drapes to darken the room, Tia told her about the missing glove. “I am so vexed, because I planned to wear them tonight. I meant to go myself to Harding, Howell to purchase a new pair this afternoon, but I do not feel equal to going out. Would you have Sebastian take you there and buy me another pair?”

  The unsuspecting Doris instantly agreed to the errand. Tia gave her a five-pound note, praying that the maid would not wreak too much disaster upon the store.

  Tia felt badly about deceiving Doris. Although she was hopelessly inept as a maid, she was both good-hearted and entertaining, and Tia had come to like her as much as Marie.

  Poor Marie. Tia had run into her former maid, who was now working for the wife of a rich haberdashery merchant, while shopping in Bond Street