Her Grace's Passion

by M C Beaton

  The maid brought out a small tiara of blood-red rubies set in gold filigree, gold so fine that once it was on Matilda’s golden hair, only the rubies shone like drops of blood, as if without support of any kind. There was a necklace to go with it, small sparkling rubies set in the same filigree but ending in one large ruby drop that burned like fire against the whiteness of Matilda’s bosom. Gold kid slippers and gold kid gloves completed the ensemble. “What do you think, Esther?” asked Matilda at last.

  “Beautiful, Your Grace,” said Esther reverently. “But there is just one thing, if I might be so bold?”

  “That being?”

  “Your eyebrows, Your Grace.”

  Matilda’s blue eyes flashed with sudden anger and the maid drew back a pace. “No, no, Esther,” said Matilda wearily, her anger going as quickly as it had come. “I was thinking of something else.”

  The duke had made her paint her eyebrows black, Matilda remembered. When he had briefly been besotted with her, he had said her eyebrows were like little gold and silver wings. But when disgust of her had settled in, he had expected her to be fashionable, and being fashionable meant having black eyebrows—and hairy ones, at that. Matilda shuddered, remembering the day he had bought her a pair of false black eyebrows and insisted she wear them. Fortunately false eyebrows, as every society woman knew, had a tendency to slip, and so the duke had gone back to commanding her to paint them.

  When Matilda was ready to climb into her carriage, only the admiration of Peter, the page, handsome in black-and-gold livery, gave her courage. She suddenly dreaded to think what people would say when they saw her arriving at the ball without a shred of mourning on her. But the duchess who dressed impeccably for all occasions had been the late duke’s creation. He would never have approved of the rainbow gauze gown. I am determined to be myself, thought Matilda, and then gloomily reflected that after having been under the duke’s domination for so long, she really did not know who she was.

  The fog was very thick, turning London into a black and mysterious place where carriages loomed up out of the gloom like primeval monsters, their lights like glaring eyes. Lights blazed out from the Courtneys’ mansion, turning the arriving guests still out in the fog and set against its glare into two-dimensional black cut-out figures that quickly became three-dimensional as they stepped forward onto the red carpet and entered the house.

  Matilda went into the dressing room set aside for the ladies and let Esther take her cloak. She nodded to various people she knew. There was no sign of Annabelle. She sat down and fiddled with her hair, hoping that if she waited long enough, her friend would arrive. The Countess of Torridon walked in. Her eyes met those of Matilda in the glass. The countess’s eyes were full of venom. Matilda rose and left the room.

  She mounted the staircase, wishing she had a companion with her, wishing her clothes were not quite so gaudy.

  The Courtneys greeted her with such affection that Matilda was surprised. She still did not realize in all her misery that her husband had been generally detested and she herself an object of pity. No one, least of all the Courtneys, found it odd that she was not wearing any mourning.

  She saw a Mrs. Rochester, a lady who had been kind to her in the past, sitting with the chaperones, and was making her way around the floor to join her, when she suddenly found herself surrounded by gentlemen, begging for a dance.

  She accepted the invitation of a handsome colonel and joined a set for the cotillion.

  Matilda was beginning to enjoy herself. The colonel was paying her lavish compliments and she was attempting to flirt with him, but feeling very gauche, for she had never dared flirt with anyone at all when her husband was alive.

  And then she became aware that someone was watching her intently. She half turned her head to meet the green gaze of the Earl of Torridon. Her steps faltered. He was still handsome, but in a more satanic way than she remembered, tall, broad shouldered, his black hair gleaming in the candlelight, his tanned face hard and set. She trembled but comforted herself with the thought that he would surely not dare approach her.

  But he tried. He came up to her as soon as the dance was over and bowed low. He begged the favor of a dance. Matilda was relieved to show him that her card was full. When her husband was alive, few of the young men dared ask her to dance, for all knew the duke could be spiteful, but now she was popular.

  “I must speak to you,” he said urgently.

  “There is your wife,” said Matilda. “She has just entered the ballroom.” Then she turned away gratefully to her next partner.

  But Matilda’s earlier feeling of enjoyment had fled. She wanted to run away and return to her former isolation. There was no sign of Annabelle.

  “How vastly fetching our dowager duchess looks,” said Lady Courtney to the Countess of Torridon. “So sensible of her not to go around dressed like a crow, for we all knew her husband to be a veritable ogre. And how beautifully she dances! Old Colonel Rogers was just saying she is a pocket Venus. She will be married again before this Season is over.”

  The countess bristled. She prided herself on her own dancing. What a curse this masquerade of a pregnancy was!

  She contented herself by taking a seat with the dowagers and remarking to one and all that the Dowager Duchess of Hadshire was looking very French. To London society French meant over-painted and bold. But she found no one prepared to lend a sympathetic ear. All had hated the duke and pitied his little wife, and all were happy to see her back in circulation.

  Matilda put a brave face on it, aware always of the Earl of Torridon. She finished one dance and turned to look for her next partner, a Mr. Judd, but there was no sign of him. Just before the music struck up for the waltz, she found the earl next to her. He silently took her card and then smiled. “You should not offer precious dances to hardened gamblers,” he said. “Young Judd is in the card room and playing deep. So my dance, I think.”

  She wanted to protest, wanted to run away, but he had taken her hand in his and put his other hand firmly at her waist. Her distress fled and, along with it, her embarrassment and her disgust of him. She had a feeling of coming home, of being safe, of a lightening of her spirits, of the ice inside her melting away.

  “I did not know I was already trapped when I made love to you,” he said harshly, and she looked up into his sad eyes, frightened and lost again.

  “Do not look so,” he said urgently. “I had been trying for so long to save my marriage and before we journeyed south to stay with the Frobishers, I made an effort, a last effort if you take my meaning. But it did not work, nothing seemed to work. I told her I wanted a separation and I would have told her that even had I not met you. She told me she was with child. I quizzed the doctor in Hadsborough, for it all seemed amazing convenient, but she was telling the truth for the first time in her life. So that is how matters stood. I should never have touched you, but when I saw you beside the pool, I lost my head, thinking of what life could have been like. I am very, very sorry. Pray accept my apologies. Surely you, above all others, know what it is to be trapped. I am breaking with convention in discussing my wife with you, but I must break the convention, do you not see, to assure you I did not, do not, regard you lightly.”

  “I forgive you,” said Matilda slowly. “And, yes, I can understand. Please do not speak of it again. I am so weary of being miserable.”

  He smiled at her in such a way that her heart ached, and then he said, “Then we shall both try to be happy.”

  The Countess of Torridon watched her husband and saw the way he smiled at Matilda. She felt her heart would burst with rage and jealousy. She did not love him, but he was her property. She felt herself to be far more beautiful than the little duchess. If only she could dance!

  Then she thought, Why not? The cushion was strapped on tightly. The next dance was the quadrille, and the countess had learned some new steps. She could not summon her husband and ask him to dance with her for she knew he would refuse. She saw Sir Charles Follett, a
well-known fop, and signaled to him to join her.

  “I have a mind to dance the quadrille,” said the countess.

  Sir Charles raised his little hands, the palms of which were stained with cochineal, in horror. “But, dear lady, your delicate condition.”

  “I am very well,” said the countess. “It is so wearisome to sit and watch the dancing and not to join in. Do say you will grant me this favor.”

  Sir Charles longed to refuse; he felt that to lead a lady so far gone in pregnancy as the countess to the floor would mean he was making a cake of himself. But there was something steely in the countess’s eye that reminded Sir Charles of his mother, and any woman who reminded Sir Charles of his mother could do what she liked with him.

  The Earl of Torridon noticed his wife had taken the floor only after the quadrille had begun. He wanted to stop her, but knew she would make a noisy scene.

  The quadrille had always been a difficult dance, or rather, the leaders of society made it difficult. For rich women often spent a great deal of time in perfecting their dancing and music. There were delicate little misses who could play the pianoforte as well as any concert pianist. There were society women who could dance like Madame Vestris because they spent long hours under the tuition of ballet masters. Being rich meant taking one’s pleasures very seriously indeed. And so the quadrille was often graced with men and women leaping about with all the finesse and elegance of the corps de ballet. The countess had been trained to perform entrechats with style, but it was her pride in this achievement that was to be her undoing.

  The entrechat, that ballet leap with many crossings of legs in the air, proved too much for the tapes that held the cushion. They snapped and the cushion fell down and rolled into the middle of the set.

  Sir Charles, seeing a suddenly slim countess in front of him, looked from her and then to the cushion and then back again, and began to laugh hysterically. “I’ Faith,” he cried, his voice shrill above the music. “My lady has given birth to a cushion. My dear Torridon, your wife has been playing you false with a sofa!”

  The dancers stood frozen as if some evil fairy had turned them to stone. Matilda’s partner, a Mr. Despard, stood with one leg raised and his mouth open. Lady Courtney was standing, her arm raised above her head. All eyes looked from the stricken countess to the furious earl.

  Then the countess turned and ran from the room. The band stopped playing.

  “Oh, do go on with your dance,” said the Earl of Torridon harshly. ‘I have not been so greatly amused this age!”

  The band struck up again and the earl walked into the supper room and called for wine. He felt he should be outraged, furious, but all he felt was the lightness of relief. She had tricked him but he was now free of her, and she had supplied him with excellent grounds for divorce. He eventually returned to the ballroom in time to see Matilda taking leave of her hosts. He followed her down the stairs and caught up with her in the hall.

  “I shall escort you home,” he said.

  Matilda looked at him in amazement. “Do not add scandal to more scandal, my lord.”

  “There is no one to see us,” he said, ignoring the presence of curious footmen and Matilda’s maid, Esther.

  “You must go home,” said Matilda. She went into the anteroom and waited while Esther put her cloak about her shoulders. Then Esther left to order the duchess’s carriage to be brought round. Matilda stayed where she was, waiting. She could not be seen leaving with him. His wife had played a terrible trick on him. Society would talk of nothing else for days. The earl would be made to look like a fool.

  When Esther returned to say the carriage was ready and waiting, Matilda asked anxiously, “Is my lord still there?”

  “No, Your Grace,” said Esther. “My lord walked off into the night.”

  Sighing, half with relief, half with disappointment, Matilda walked out to the carriage with Esther.

  Chapter Five

  Matilda journeyed homeward inch by inch as the carriage crawled through the suffocating fog.

  “This filthy weather,” moaned Esther. “That gown of yours will be ruined, Your Grace.”

  “Perhaps it will wash. I think my cloak will protect it from the worst the fog can do,” said Matilda in a distracted way. What would he do now? she was thinking. If he leaves her, people will say it is because he prefers me. Perhaps no one noticed him following me out. And where was Annabelle?

  How quiet and still London was in the fog. All sounds were muffled. All was blackness except for an occasional fire-fly flicker where some link boy led the way through the Stygian gloom.

  Despite the blackness, Matilda was able to make out, when the carriage stopped in Bolton Street, that all the candles and lamps in the drawing room were still lighted.

  Her butler, Smith, opened the door to her and said, “Your Grace, the Earl of Torridon awaits you in the drawing room. My lord says you left something of value at the ball and he is returning it to you.”

  “Very well. I will see his lordship,” said Matilda in a tired voice.

  She climbed the stairs to the first floor and entered the drawing room. He rose to meet her. “You may leave us,” said Matilda to Esther. “I shall not be long.”

  When the maid had retired, Matilda said crossly, “I left nothing of value at the ball.”

  “I had to see you,” he said.

  Matilda faced him resolutely. “My lord, your wife played a shabby trick on you. But have you considered the reason? You had asked her for a separation. The poor lady must have been prepared to do anything, to lie and cheat, to keep you. She must love you very much.”

  “You are mistaken. She wishes to own me. She has no desire to be a cast-off wife, that is all. I am weary of her scenes and tantrums. At times, I think she is not quite sane.”

  “I married the duke straight from the country,” said Matilda. “I am not used to the loose morals of society. You first met me at a time when I was deeply unhappy. Please leave me alone. What your wife is or is not is not my concern.”

  “If I succeed in gaining a divorce,” he said quietly, “will you marry me?”

  Matilda closed her eyes. She could think of no greater happiness than being his wife, but yet it could not be happiness if it caused another woman misery.

  “While she lives, I will always think of her as your wife,” replied Matilda. “I cannot wait for you.”

  He sat down suddenly and passed a hand over his forehead. “Then let me stay and talk to you for a little before we part. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No, my lord,” said Matilda. “We will have a short time together and then we must part forever.”

  The Countess of Torridon had drunk quite a quantity of brandy and was feeling better. She was confident she could lure her husband to her bed and so save her marriage. She had never tried to seduce him before. She had fascinated him once and could do so again.

  Her maid, Clarisse, came quickly into the room and began to lay out the countess’s nightdress and nightcap. The countess’s eyes lit with malice. Clarisse did not know yet what had happened, did not know yet that her hold over her mistress had gone.

  “Ah, Clarisse,” said the countess. “Do you recall all those gowns and scarves and trinkets I have given you?”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  “Then bring them all here. I want them back.”

  Clarisse looked at the nearly empty brandy decanter and smiled. “You have had too much to drink, my lady. You forget, it is in your interest to keep me happy.”

  The countess, who had been seated when the maid entered the room, rose to her feet. The maid looked in surprise at her slim figure. “The cushion, my lady!”

  “Yes, that cushion fell off at the ball, right at everyone’s feet. So your power has gone. You had better bring back all I have given you. I will tell my husband how you connived to make him believe in the pregnancy and you will be out in the street by tomorrow. I will tell him it was all your idea. Now fetch those things!”
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br />   Clarisse had a small room off the countess’s apartments. Too shocked to do other than obey, she went along to it and began to take all the glorious gowns and mantles from the wardrobe and the jewels from the box. Tears started to her eyes. She loved fine things with a passion. She could not give them back! And what of the morrow? The earl did not like his wife, but he would know that she, Clarisse, was party to the deception and that would be enough. No job. No reference. Nothing left to do but sink to the streets. Clarisse shuddered. Never!

  She dropped the garments and quietly opened the door to the corridor and crept down to the kitchens. She searched diligently until she found what she was looking for: arsenic. As in most households, arsenic was used for keeping down rats, for making cosmetics, for making wallpaper paste to keep the bugs at bay. She spooned a quantity onto a small piece of newspaper and then rolled it into a twist. Then she darted up the stairs again and into her room in time to hear the countess shout, “Where are you? What is keeping you?”

  “Coming, my lady,” called Clarisse.

  She scooped up armfuls of clothes and ran into the countess’s bedchamber. “Very good, my precious one,” sneered the countess. “And now fetch the jewels.”

  Clarisse meekly went back and collected the jewels, small brooches, single-strand necklaces, and pins, but all worth a small fortune.

  “Now,” said the countess, “you may undress me.”

  With trembling fingers, Clarisse undid the tapes and pins that held her mistress’s dress. There was a glass of brandy on the toilet table. Would the countess drink it before she went to bed?

  Once in her nightgown, the countess sat down at the toilet table and applied white cream to her face, cleansing off the color from her eyebrows, which she had dyed with elderberry juice, the rouge from her cheeks, which Clarisse had made by boiling Brazilwood shavings, rock alum, and red wine, and the carmine made from cochineal from her lips. She did not see Clarisse move quietly beside her and tip the white powder into the brandy glass.