The Marquis of Westmarch

by Frances Vernon

  “I was not, as you know. Regret it, how should I? So much — so — but it has been folly and if I did not love you to distraction I would not consider even for a moment continuing with you under any guise at all! Friend or mistress or wife, sir.” I would have to kill you, she thought for the first time; and that realisation made her think more favourably than before of giving up everything for his sake.

  “It would have to be as wife unless we go as we are,” Auriol said quickly.

  “I know it.”

  Meriel was blushing. Auriol, thinking she was afraid, squeezed her shoulder.

  “Then you have indeed thought of it.”

  “Yes.”

  Both smiled faintly, looking anywhere but at each other, to think of having had very similar but entirely separate, unmentionable visions of their secret wedding, flight into Southmarch, and dignified communication of their news to the world.

  As Auriol’s wife, safe in Southmarch on a remote country estate, Meriel would be of little interest to the various Island powers after a year or so. Protected by her husband’s name, by being some man’s property, she would be merely the cause of the most colossal and fascinating scandal in Westmarch since her three-times great-grandfather had been murdered by a catamite of whom no one had heard before. It was the thought of being so unimportant as to be unworthy of the fate she most dreaded, incarceration in a Female College, which made the thought of attaching herself to Wychwood intolerable to Meriel.

  She also delighted in the idea. But in such moods, when she was possessed by a picture of herself as ruler of a tiny but rightful kingdom, she was able mentally to abolish the rest of the world. Whenever, later, she remembered that she could not kill the world, could not prevent it knowing she was female, she felt hatred rise up in her like a choking tide.

  The tide mounted up again now for the second time that evening. Her face became rigid.

  Seeing it, understanding, Auriol touched her, drew back and said, “So I have been powerless to change you.” That attracted her attention, and he went on, using inspired words but clumsy haste. “You are still my lord Marquis, are you not, Meriel, and only that? You are not human in your own eyes, no, I have not made you know that you exist, that you are Meriel Longmaster, man or woman does not signify. And all I desired was to give you yourself. Because that is what you have never had, you were a void, before, and I would to God you could cease to be one.”

  Her response was, “Either a void or a toad! Don’t shout at me! Good God, do you suppose I should not like to live with you, openly, for the rest of my life, without a pack of fools and coxcombs and place-seekers and toadies about me? Oh, you have indeed given me myself, sir.” She stared at him. “Wychwood, do you understand, if only it were not necessary to have them know I am not a man.”

  “And yet that must come at some time and far more disastrously than if we were to marry and go. Oh, we go round in hopeless circles.”

  Meriel turned away from him and sat down in the chair he had vacated. Knocking out her still-full pipe, she said resignedly, sounding far more feminine than usual, “We always will. I go round in circles as you say in my own head, sir.”

  “Do you?”

  “There are times I promise when I almost long to shout the truth about us, my condition, from the top of the Tower. Which I suppose is scarcely to be wondered at, though I’ve never had such a wish before. Oh, you must have guessed, how else could you have spoken as you have? I think, think sometimes it might be a most glorious rebellion, sir, to run away with you, and tell them all how I deceived them these past ten, eleven years. Vastly diverting it would be, too, only to see their faces, which to be sure I should not. Damn it!”

  “Little Marquis,” he said. “I think it would be.” He went to sit beside her, cross-legged on the ground, and took hold of her booted ankle. “It would indeed be infinitely diverting, and a most glorious rebellion! Of course it would. My love, it is the only thing to do. Let us only be brave. I’ll die before I let them harm you, if it comes to that,” he finished, feeling inadequate.

  “You’d best kill me,” she said, but he could see he had moved her, because her lips were softly working. Snail-trails of tears were shining on her cheeks. She was not looking her best tonight, for drink, distress, doubt and fear so easily spoilt her changeable face. He had noticed before that brown candlelight suited her less well than the hard light of day.

  “Is it yes?” he said.

  She imagined it. She thought of the ruin of Juxon who, it seemed to her at that moment, had done her a terrible disservice in making her live in disguise. At twelve, she might have become accustomed to being a girl, or would at least have wholesomely killed herself if he had tried to make her live as one: now, unless she ran away with Auriol, she would never be able to abandon her Marquisate. If she were deprived of it, suicide would be beyond her strength. She was too corrupt and had not enough rage left. She hated her present life, she decided, without reservation; only Auriol made it tolerable, of course.

  Her thoughts changed direction, and turning, she told him, “Wychwood, I have seen enough of the world to know how very fortunate we are, how very rare it is for two people to love each other with equal strength and to be suited besides.” She had realised a moment before that whatever happened, she would not be able to kill herself not only because she was too weak as she had thought, but because she liked the earth too much now, and thus, was also too strong. “It is almost an impossibility, as I don’t doubt you know.” She hesitated, and took in the reality of his kind dark blue eyes, fixed on her as they ought to be. “I remember, remember how you held me, that night at the Green Garter, after all I had told you, sir. No, we cannot throw it away. I cannot.

  “Yes. I think the answer is yes, I’ll marry you — but I shall never breed, sir.”

  Breed. For the first time, the word struck him as ugly: as meaning to do with maggots, rottenness, rats, and poisonous miasmas. Briefly, Auriol saw Meriel’s womb through Meriel’s eyes, but the vision faded instantly when he looked at her. No, she would never breed.

  She went on, “I shall continue to live and dress as a man in private, and so I tell you, that is if I don’t die of the scandal before I’ve had my chance!”

  Meriel’s legs were tightly crossed, but her right was swinging in circles over her left. Auriol laid his head on its foot.

  “Dear one,” he said. “Dear love. Of course you will, how could I think otherwise? We’ll go tomorrow, shall we then?”

  “No. Look at me.” Removing her legs, Meriel spoke with gentle earnestness, still quietly crying. One look at his surprised face made her say, “Ah, don’t say I’ve put you out of humour only because I ask you for a little time, which you must see I must have. Give me a fortnight, sir. I can’t go from here. I must have two more weeks as what I am, of the masquerade if you will, in order to think, at Castle West. I cannot decide absolutely as yet! If I go, sir, remember, I’ll never see it again. A fortnight.”

  He did not argue, but waited until she began to fidget with her pipe again. “A fortnight,” she repeated.

  He said, “I think it would rather be best to make a clean cut, but I cannot force you to it and I should never wish to.” He touched her foot again, lightly. “I collect you will be trying to enjoy being Marquis to the full, for a last two weeks. I don’t suppose you will enjoy it in the least, but it’s of little consequence, indeed I had liefer you detested it! Do I have your word that you will do it in the end? Marry me and come? Meriel?”

  “No,” said Meriel. “Not my word of honour, sir, I can’t give you that, not yet. I say ‘perhaps’ — which is a vast deal better than ‘never’, surely,” she added quite tartly.

  Of course, he thought, she is a woman of spirit. “Very true,” he said. “Very well, we’ll go back to Castle West. I can always abduct you, after all, and it will be easier to do so from Castle West, so much closer to Wychwood as it is.”

  “Oh, indeed?” said Meriel.

  Sudd
enly he laughed, and watched her face with a gleam in his eyes, stroking his chin all the while.

  “Well sir, what’s so diverting?”

  “Oh, I was but just thinking to myself that I ought to tell you — one reason for my pressing you in this way now. It is merely a thought which came to me only very lately, a most tedious complication, ma’am — well, unless we go off in this foolish fashion we shall have nowhere to make love to each other when winter comes. We’d never be able to make use of a bed, you know, and you know well enough it was cold enough in all conscience outdoors even in Flowers! Am I not in the right of it, Meriel?”

  The Marquis felt momentarily insulted; then she laughed too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Deep Gaming

  Meriel, who had taken upon herself the arranging of their lives till now, left Auriol to work out the practical details of their elopement. She accepted that she would spend her life in exile, sincerely looked forward to that free life now that the decision was all but taken, and meanwhile spent their last two days in the country attending to the estate business of Longmaster Wood. She and Auriol behaved affectionately towards each other, exchanged odd nervous or sly smiles, but did not indulge in difficult conversations, and did not try to make love.

  Meriel experienced quick, irresistible longings to go down on her knees and hug Auriol round the hips and cry out her gratitude to him for loving her and for being himself, but when these fits came on her, he never happened to be present.

  Auriol longed to be off. He felt absurdly jealous of the servants and tenants of Longmaster Wood, who seemed to be entirely at ease with Meriel and to think nothing of the fact that when she was away from them, she was something more than their squire: to them, Castle West seemed a long way away. He was jealous of her, too, because she behaved towards them with such grace, and never once seemed to think it necessary either to give in to some unreasonable demand or to play the great man and be proudly insolent. Her behaviour was quite otherwise at Castle West.

  She asked him once what on earth his people at Wychwood would think of her, and he blushed to think that this consideration had not crossed his mind. Her words made him realise that he had never quite thought of his social inferiors as full human beings, even though he would be less likely to treat them with rudeness or unkindness in a bad-tempered moment than Meriel herself. But the idea that his qualities and hers balanced very well, that each would supply the other’s deficiency, filled him with expectant pleasure. Back at Castle West, he was sure, they would feel able to make love in their gorse-screened place on the cliff-top. Then, Wychwood.

  On the final morning, Auriol breakfasted alone while Meriel spent a last hour in the paddocks, discussing a potential champion colt and making plans for her supposed return at the end of Month of Sun. When he had finished eating he wandered out into the stable-yard, where the black post-chaise was already waiting, piled high with baggage. Meriel was sitting on the mounting-block with a mug of beer in her hand.

  Seeing her, Auriol realised for the tenth-odd time since their fright in the woods that his love for her at last had nothing to do with his being either merely very lonely, or dazzled by a queen in disguise. Tears came into his eyes at the thought that within a very short time they would be leaving this place. He had gone through a day of horror after that near-disaster in the foxglove glade, thinking that Meriel had tired of him; but it was not so and never could be, he knew that. They had been irredeemably softened and made happy by contact with each other and by three months’ freedom to adore without restraint, and not even if they wanted to be grimly cold could they be so. They were a little depressed now only because their energy was spent, and there was still a fortnight of life at Castle West to endure.

  “Wychwood!” Meriel called out when she saw him. He smiled and raised a hand, which was not necessary, and when he came over the groom to whom she had been talking walked away.

  Meriel picked up a piece of straw from the step beside her and started to tear it with her fingers. “I shall be riding the first stage, it is too fine a day to be boxed up in a carriage. You’ll ride too?”

  He looked down at her. “No,” he said, smiling. “To my mind it’s no such fine day, it looks uncommonly like rain to me.” He wished he could say aloud that he knew she wanted to see the last of her home, and that without his watching her, but the stable yard was full of people.

  A team of fretting chestnuts was brought up and hitched to Meriel’s chaise. Auriol quickly entered the carriage, together with Meriel’s old pointer bitch, whom much to the surprise of her household she had decided to take down to Castle West. The dog was unused to town life, but Meriel thought she would soon grow accustomed to Wychwood. She was taking no other beloved object from Longmaster Wood.

  The Marquis mounted Black Belinda, turned round in the saddle, and took a last look at the stable yard. Here, she reminded herself, she had been set on her first pony, taught to shoe a horse, chased away by Juxon, introduced to beer and tobacco and the facts of reproduction, and assaulted with a hunting-crop, that once, by her father. She found herself unable to feel anything very much, and wondered whether if the yard had been old and picturesque, or perhaps reeking and tumbledown, her memories of it would be more poignant now. But the redbrick stables at Longmaster Wood had been rebuilt by Marquis Elphinstone in the year of her birth, and were as solidly practical as any building could be. Meriel supposed that in time to come she would be sharply sentimental about the place, as, in fact, she had been in the past. She wished of all things that she could imprint this last picture of it on her memory, but it was no use: it meant nothing to her, today of all days. She smiled, and her own smile made her realise that this was no sad occasion.

  Loudly she called out to the postilions bestriding the carriage-horses, and their little cavalcade set off to glad farewells from the stablemen. They rode out of the yard, away from the house and the lake and the woods, across a small expanse of sheep-bitten park, and through the iron gates which Meriel had climbed when she was eight. She had fallen down from the right-hand post and injured her hip on that occasion, and that had been the last time anyone, save Juxon and Auriol, had seen her lower half unclothed.

  Ten miles on, they passed through the village where Meriel’s old nurse now lived. She had been among those who had attended to Meriel’s dislocated hip, fifteen years before. She was eighty, but she came out of her house to wave to the Marquis. Cantering onwards, Meriel waved back behind with a vigour that surprised the half-blind old woman. She had been devoted to the child Meriel, and had suffered for years because her once affectionate charge had seemed to find it hard even to speak to her from the time of his father’s death.

  “Goodbye! Goodbye, Araminta!” yelled the Marquis through the dust kicked up by Black Belinda. She wanted to yell: I’m happy now, I’m never coming back!

  Hearing Meriel call out from inside the chaise, Auriol guessed what was happening, and felt fiercely loving pity mixed with foolish causeless guilt.

  *

  They made a fast journey, and arrived at Castle West at sundown less than two days later, having spent one night on the road. As soon as she climbed down from the chaise Meriel, blinking and exhausted, saw Juxon tripping towards her across the cobbles. She found it hard to believe it was really he, for he never even entered the stable-courts as a rule, because he was afraid of horses. “Look,” she said to Auriol.

  “My lord Marquis, I wished to be the first to apprise you of a most shocking piece of news!” Juxon said when he reached her, releasing his diaphanous coat skirts, which he had been holding up out of the dirt, in order to make her a bow. “Knight Auriol sir, you I am persuaded will be as much shocked as the Marquis.”

  The two of them stared at him, and so did the grooms, postilions and stable-hands whom he pretended to ignore. He knew what a figure he made in these coarse surroundings, with the sunset turning his pink hair to glowing orange, and his powdered face fascinating with the effects of agitation.
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  Meriel sighed in a worldly fashion. “I’m sorry to hear it, Juxon, but you’re talking in riddles. What is it?” She could have cried with frustration at being disturbed like this.

  “I daresay it is nothing of such great moment if the truth be told,” Auriol observed, his voice seeming louder than anyone else’s, though it was not. “Else you would not accost the Marquis in public, would you sir? But minor disaster, properly presented, is always so vastly entertaining.” He was furious.

  “Is that your opinion, sir? Is it? Well, you will discover whether or no it is, in fact, a case of minor disaster!” said the other, screwing up his eyes and swinging round immediately to Meriel. “Marquis, I wish you will come with me and I shall tell you the whole, alone. You, my Knight, will no doubt learn the greater part of what I have to report quickly enough!”

  “I think Wychwood’s in the right of it, but I’ll come if only to put your mind at rest,” said Meriel, looking at Auriol. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sir, I don’t doubt.”

  “Tomorrow,” he agreed, looking at Juxon because he would have liked to knock him down: not for insulting his intelligence, but for interfering, for depriving him and Meriel of even a quarter of an hour’s pause in which they might have accustomed themselves to being back in the dryness of Castle West, might even have persuaded themselves that it was a place of beauty, especially now in the evening with many-coloured shadows fading on its walls. Juxon made him long to run away from it immediately, and he hoped that the sight of him was filling Meriel with a similar and perhaps more ardent desire.

  Meriel watched her lover stalk away in the direction of his own rooms, and then allowed Juxon to follow her to Marquis’s Court. He talked all the way.

  She learned that news of a political intrigue had reached Castle West yesterday morning and that nothing else had been talked about since. It seemed that at least sixty officers of the various Island Guards, and members of the Quarter-Councils, had been bribed by Tancred Conybeare to help him foment rebellion in all three Quarters of divided Northmarch, and then restore him to the Marquisate; or, at least, to accept that when he occupied his ancestors’ palace they would be properly rewarded for not suppressing rebellion efficiently now.