The Devil and Drusilla

by Paula Marshall

  ‘How is the young fellow?’ he asked jovially, after accepting a glass of Madeira and some ratafia biscuits.

  ‘Restless,’ said Drusilla, smiling. ‘He is feeling so much better that he wishes to get up but the doctor says that he must wait a little longer. Head injuries are not to be trifled with, he says.’

  ‘No, indeed. The brain is a delicate instrument, easily damaged. His mind is not affected, I trust.’

  ‘Not at all. If anything he seems livelier than usual.’

  This polite chit-chat was interrupted by the maid who announced that Lord Devenish had arrived and wished to know if Mrs Faulkner would receive him.

  ‘By all means.’ Drusilla was always ready to receive m’lord Devenish. She and Mr Harrington rose when Devenish came in, and the maid was sent for Madeira and biscuits for m’lord also.

  Devenish was absolutely à point. He had ridden over wearing his most snowy breeches and a black jacket, both of which fitted him to the degree that they showed off his muscular figure to perfection. His boots were perfection too, as well as his hair. He had remarked to his valet before he set out that if he was fit for nothing else he was a splendid advertisement for his tailor, his hairdresser and his bootmaker.

  ‘You are pleased to jest, m’lord,’ returned his valet stiffly. His master was always a credit to him as he often boasted in the servants’ hall, but he did so wish that m’lord took the whole business of dress more seriously. He made far too many jokes about it for his liking.

  Devenish was surprised to find how much it annoyed him to discover Leander Harrington already ensconced in Lyford House’s drawing room. He had hoped to speak to Drusilla alone.

  Like Mr Harrington he asked all the right questions about Giles, and received similar answers, Mr Harrington nodding an unnecessary agreement with each word Drusilla spoke.

  That over, Mr Harrington leaned forward and addressed them both in confidential tones. ‘I suppose, Devenish, that the Jameses being your tenants, you are already aware that young Miss Betty has disappeared. Has the news reached you yet, Mrs Faulkner?’

  Drusilla said as calmly as she could, ‘Oh, no. It’s possible that since Giles’s accident no one has cared to touch upon it lest it distress me further.’

  Devenish said quietly, for he could see that Drusilla was disturbed, ‘I did not wish to trouble you with it. I heard the news after I had visited you and Giles the other day.’

  ‘Apparently,’ said Mr Harrington, watching Devenish rather than Drusilla when he spoke, ‘she disappeared on the afternoon of the day on which young Giles was attacked.’

  ‘And nothing has been seen of her since,’ asked Drusilla.

  ‘Oh, doubtless Devenish knows more about that than I, the Jameses being his tenants.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Devenish, wondering what game Mr Harrington was playing. ‘So we have no notion whether she has run off, or whether, like Giles, she was the victim of some unknown assailant. The latter is the most likely since she left all her possessions at home—unlike Kate Hooby.’

  ‘This is quite dreadful,’ remarked Drusilla, trying not to show how agitated she was. ‘Whatever is the world coming to that we may not walk abroad safely?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mr Harrington in self-satisfied tones. ‘It is not surprising at all when one considers all the poor fellows who have been turned away by soulless landlords since the war ended. No wonder that they seek vengeance on their oppressors who have treated them so heartlessly!’

  Devenish drawled in his most cutting fashion, ‘Since neither Giles Stone nor Mrs Faulkner are soulless landlords—indeed, I understand, they are quite the contrary—it seems a pity that they have to suffer for the sins of others.’

  ‘But is not that the way of the world?’ returned Mr Harrington eagerly. ‘As the French aristocracy found during the late French Revolution when the poor peasantry—’

  He got no further. Devenish cut in on him, saying, ‘I am sure that we ought not to trouble Mrs Faulkner with the misdeeds or otherwise of the French peasantry when she must be sufficiently distressed already by the misdeeds of those who attacked her brother. And in any case, whoever attacked Betty James—if she were attacked—was not doing so to avenge themselves on a heartless landlord.’

  ‘Well, no,’ conceded Mr Harrington uncomfortably, ‘and I did not mean to distress you, Mrs Faulkner, merely offer you an explanation.’

  Drusilla inclined her head. She had not been in the least overset by Mr Harrington beginning a demagogue’s sermon in her drawing room. On the contrary, the sight of Devenish elegantly putting down a man who constantly put down others was a pleasing one to her.

  Whatever the reason, whether it was Devenish’s putdowns, or something else, Mr Harrington had been rendered uneasy and shortly afterwards took his leave, begging Drusilla to remember that she had a true friend in him and he would do all in his power to track down the miscreants.

  ‘Very nimble of him,’ commented Devenish coolly when Mr Harrington was safely away, ‘to turn the poor oppressed peasantry into miscreants in the course of a couple of sentences. His powers of logic may be poor, but his ability to stand on his mental head should be applauded, as you must agree.’

  Drusilla began to laugh immoderately. She pulled out a small handkerchief, and said, her voice rendered weak by laughter, ‘Oh, m’lord, you really shouldn’t say such dreadful things, and I shouldn’t laugh at them.’

  ‘Why not?’ he responded. ‘We are a nation of hypocrites, to be sure, and the man who has just left is the biggest of them all. I wonder if he understands that, if he ever managed to secure his Revolution, his head would be among the first to roll when the guillotine was set up in Trafalgar Square. A man who is a traitor to his own interests would be adjudged to be a potential traitor to everyone else’s.’

  To Devenish’s intense pleasure this set Drusilla off again: he was pleased to see that she had lost the Friday face which Mr Harrington’s visit had given her.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said approvingly. ‘I like a female who laughs at my more learned jokes, and you looked as if you needed a good laugh.’

  ‘So I did, but I wonder if I ought to enjoy one at Mr Harrington’s expense.’

  ‘All good jokes are made at someone’s expense,’ he told her. ‘When I have finished this Madeira, will you allow me to visit Giles?’

  ‘Certainly. And you know that we ought not to be enjoying ourselves when the poor Jameses must be grieving for Betty.’

  ‘True, but our putting on a glum face will not bring her back. Tell me, Drusilla—you will allow me to call you Drusilla now that we have established that we share the same twisted sense of humour—do you see any similarity between what happened to Giles and to your late husband?’

  ‘Only that they were both hidden in the undergrowth and were found at some distance from home, although Giles was not so far away. Otherwise nothing.’

  ‘As I thought. Has Master Giles remembered anything more?’

  ‘Nothing, and the doctor thinks that he never will.’

  So Giles was still keeping his meeting with Betty a secret which, in view of the way in which Devenish’s suspicions were mounting, was wise of him.

  Drusilla might be putting a brave face on things but he thought that she was looking unwontedly pale. His care for her had him saying, ‘Let me raise two points: first of all, do I understand that Miss Faulkner is not with you at the moment and, secondly, how long is it since you left the house?’

  ‘As to Miss Faulkner,’ Drusilla said slowly, ‘she has gone to visit a friend. We have been thrown too much together over the last two years and I think that we both deserved a rest from the other. She would not leave until she was sure that Giles’s recovery was certain. As to your second question, I have been indoors since Giles was attacked. Foolish of me, I know, but while his condition was uncertain I did not like to leave the house.’

  ‘Your sense of duty reproaches me. Would you think it impertinent of me if I suggested that
we took a turn outside? I should like to see the roses back in your cheeks, and there is no Miss Faulkner about to look at me as though such a proposal meant your instant seduction.’

  ‘You are not to reproach her in her absence for worrying about me,’ returned Drusilla. ‘Like me, you may find it tedious, but it is surely better to be loved unwisely than not at all.’ She was remembering with some sadness her own firm line with Miss Faulkner, and hoped that she had not driven her away for good.

  Devenish was thinking of Rob, whose nannying of him he sometimes resented and to whom he had recently spoken sharply, and realised immediately the truth of what she had just said. How empty of affection would his world be if Rob was not in it. He must be more patient with him in future.

  ‘You are my good angel,’ he said, ‘and I hope that my angel will consent to walk with me outside like a common-or-garden mortal since I am unable to fly with her.’

  ‘I am not an angel, but I will walk with you. Nor are you the Devil, although you sometimes pretend to be. I, too, have been unkind to Miss Faulkner recently, and need to be forgiven.’

  He held out his hand to help her to rise. ‘Then let us take turns to forgive one another—and have done. Overmuch indulgence in repentance is nearly as soul-destroying as the original sin which caused it.’

  They were standing face to face by now and Devenish began to ask himself whether he was going to be able to behave himself with her once they were alone outside, hidden from prying eyes. Perhaps this invitation was not a good idea for a man who was trying to behave himself with a woman who, all unaware, had become temptation itself.

  For a diversion he tried to think of mundane things, saying, ‘Do you need to ring for your maid to bring you a shawl? You look a little pale.’

  ‘Indeed, no. The sun is shining and we shall walk briskly, I trust, and not dawdle. Do you know, I have never seen you dawdle.’

  ‘Nor I, you. You are always busy. I am waiting for the day when I find you, like Lady Cheyne, draped over a sofa, surrounded by admirers, murmuring sweet nothings back at them.’

  ‘Oh, I would not like that at all,’ replied Drusilla entering into the spirit of the game, as they walked outside to stroll on the terrace and then to make their way down a twisting path to the lowest lawn, hidden from the house by the trees and shrubs on the slope of the hill on which it stood.

  Devenish looked sideways at Drusilla in order to admire her perfect profile. He wondered how long it had been since he had known a truly good woman, one whose aim in life was to do her duty to those around her rather than avoid it. What surprised him most about her was that beneath her shy manner she possessed a keen intellect. She was well read and had a sly sense of humour which matched his own. There was nothing of the conventional Mrs Goody Twoshoes about her.

  To prevent his mind—and his body—from dwelling too much on her many virtues, which included a beautiful face and a graceful body, he remarked casually, ‘Have you had many visitors since Giles’s accident?’

  ‘Oh, half the neighbourhood. To begin with I was able to turn them away with a polite message saying that my first duty was to Giles in his sickroom. Later, when he began to recover, I invited them in—as I did Mr Harrington this morning. Lady Cheyne came two days ago and chattered non-stop about the black candles suddenly appearing in the church.

  ‘She and Miss Faulkner had a long conversation about them. Miss Faulkner reminded Lady Cheyne that in one of the Tales of Terror which she had read—she couldn’t remember which—black candles, not white ones, were used when the Black Mass was celebrated. I’m not quite sure what that had to do with our black candles.’

  She paused and said, surprised, ‘Why do you look at me like that?’

  Hearing this news, for once Devenish had lost his perfect self-control. His shock at the possible explanation of the black candles was visible on his face. He was not a great reader of Tales of Terror, and although he conceded that he might once have heard of the Black Mass, he knew nothing of how it was celebrated.

  He pulled himself together, thinking that perhaps it was not surprising that when he was with Drusilla he was not quite his usual self. ‘Oh, I was visualising Parson Williams officiating at a ceremony presided over by the Devil—horns and all. The mind boggles.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Drusilla, laughing at the scene which Devenish had just created. ‘Almost as much as the mind boggles at the notion of the Black Mass being celebrated in Surrey. But speaking of Parson Williams Lady Cheyne did say that the Black Mass had to be consecrated by someone who was—or had been—a real clergyman. Otherwise the Devil would not appear.’

  Devenish tried to lighten matters. ‘You know, I would never have thought that Lady Cheyne could have been conversant with such arcane matters.’

  ‘No, nor Miss Faulkner either. But they vied with each other in supplying me with all the dreadful details. Why do people read such things?’

  ‘Because their own lives are so dull and unexciting,’ returned Devenish, wondering if that was why the Black Mass itself was celebrated. And had Lady Cheyne and Miss Faulkner, via Drusilla, presented him with the solution to his puzzle?

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t call my life in any way remarkable for excitement,’ commented Drusilla, ‘but I have little desire to read them. I much prefer Miss Jane Austen.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Devenish, ‘Northanger Abbey, for instance, where Catherine finds that the medieval chest contains nothing more terrible than old laundry bills!’

  ‘Oh, never say that you like her novels, too. What good taste you have, m’lord!’

  ‘Not m’lord,’ muttered Devenish, taking her hand and kissing its palm in lieu of kissing anything else of hers, ‘call me Devenish—or, better still, Hal. And judging by Northanger Abbey Jane Austen liked Tales of Terror too.’

  His kiss startled Drusilla. Her palm burned where the kiss had lingered. He was so near to her now that she could see everything about him. His valet had nicked his chin a little when he had shaved him. Unlike Jeremy his beard was light in colour and he did not need to shave twice a day to keep himself in trim. For all his beauty, his jaw was stronger than Jeremy’s had been—and warned her of his determination and the power of his will.

  His blue eyes had flecks of silver in them. His eyelashes were longer than most women’s. His teeth were excellent—unlike those of many gentlemen. The long mouth was tender when he looked at her so closely, not tight and hard as it often was in company.

  His clothes—like the rest of him—were spotlessly clean, and the scent he gave off excited her. Jeremy had always smelled of horse and tobacco, but Devenish smelled of lemon soap and musk—the scent of the roused male which she had known with Jeremy only after he had taken a bath…which wasn’t very often.

  This ought to have frightened her, alone with him as she was, but didn’t. On the contrary it served to rouse her. She was so roused, indeed, that she forgot her common sense which had been telling her that she must resist Devenish’s advances because they were not, could not be, serious.

  Tired after so many anxious days and nights worrying over Giles, she allowed herself to fall into his arms when he put them around her. Mixed with desire was a sense that she was finding refuge in someone else’s strength, that she was not alone in a harsh world.

  Her warm body against his and her scent, particularly that of her hair, which had recently been washed by a soap containing the lingering fragrance of verbena, both had a powerful effect on him. Devenish found himself stroking her, first almost chastely as one might stroke a tired child seeking comfort and then more boldly. His hands moulded her small, but perfect, breasts, his mouth found the hollows of her neck, and descended slowly towards the neckline of her dress.

  And when, at last, he raised his head and his mouth found hers, passion, long suppressed, sprang forth like a tiger, ready to devour them both. They sank to the soft green of the lawn, beneath the spreading branches of a large oak which offered them both shade and secrecy from distant, p
rying eyes.

  What recalled him to sanity, to the feeling which he had long entertained that he must not betray her in any way, Devenish never knew. Long continent himself, he was also aware that Drusilla had known the delights of the marriage bed and must herself be missing them, given that her reputation was that of a faithful widow as well as a faithful wife.

  He must not, through his own selfishness, destroy that reputation. As gently as he could—even as his hands, of their own volition, had begun to pull down her dress so that he might see, as well as feel, what he was caressing—he lifted himself away from her to say, hoarsely, ‘Not now, not yet.’

  Passion had him in its grip so severely that he was in pain as his body screamed to him to continue and his intellect told him to behave himself lest he betray all that he believed in.

  Drusilla gave a little moan of deprivation and despair, of paradise lost. To be in the arms of a man again, and a man whom she had come to love with an intensity which she had never felt for Jeremy, and then to have those arms snatched away, was to descend from heaven into a hell of loneliness.

  Her loneliness since her husband’s death, the sensation of having been abandoned, had been bearable until she had met Devenish and discovered that he was the man whom she might have dreamed of but could never hope to meet.

  She sat up. Devenish was lying a little way away from her, prone, his right hand between his eyes and the ground. She leaned forward, touched his shoulder gently, and said, ‘What is it? Is anything wrong?’

  It was the only explanation which she could think of to explain his sudden change from passionate lover at the very moment when she thought that they were about to consummate their mutual attraction. Only attraction was too mild a word for what she was beginning to feel for him.

  She had earlier offered him a neat definition for the difference between lust and love. It had been too simple. Whatever she felt for Devenish was now beyond that: it was nothing more than the most powerful urge to be one with him. She had thought that he felt the same—but perhaps not.