“Dare I?”
“It should be safe enough. I’ll watch from the vestibule. When you have seen him the carriage will take him home.”
“I’m not sure I can say goodbye to him,” she told Charles brokenly.
He placed a comforting arm about her. “Rely upon your theatre training. You can carry it through and save him. If you persist in this romance you’ll both be destroyed!”
“All right,” Fanny said in a dull voice and went for her cloak.
It was snowing lightly and the waiting carriage had a mantle of snow on it. Fanny left Charles in the vestibule and went outside to the carriage.
Entering its dark interior she sat beside George. She was shocked by his appearance. If he had looked gaunt at the trial he surely looked ten years older now. He embraced her and kissed her gently. “Dear Fanny!” he said, holding her to him. “What are we to do?”
Steeling herself, she said, “Save what we can! I’ll go abroad for a while. You can live in peace. In a few years you can resume your seat in Parliament.”
“What about us?” George asked in agony.
She kissed him and caressed his face with her hands. “My dearest George,” she whispered, “we can never lose what we have had. A stormy love, yet a rewarding one. Perhaps one day we can be together again.”
“I want you now!”
“And you would soon hate me if I remained with you,” Fanny told him. “No. We must part. And there is always Dora. She loves you and nothing would make her happier than your asking her to marry you. All this while she has been a dedicated foster mother to your children.”
“Dora has been wonderful,” George admitted. “But it is you I love.”
“I know,” she said, resting her head on his chest. “But many people never do marry the ones they truly love. Our case is not so unusual, believe me!”
“How can I go on without you?”
She said, “We have our memories. You’ll be surprised how much comfort they will offer. In time, they may even be enough! Goodbye, my love!” They kissed again, embracing passionately one last time.
Then abruptly Fanny drew away from him and literally flung herself out of the carriage. He called after her, “Fanny!” She paid no attention but went inside and joined Charles in the vestibule. They both turned and watched the carriage move away.
“I gave a stellar performance,” she sobbed. “The trouble is, I wasn’t able to convince myself!”
He placed his arm around her. “Let us go upstairs. You need some brandy.”
A few moments later they stood facing each other before the blazing log fire, brandy glasses in their hands. The soldierly Charles raised his glass and said, “I offer a toast to a brave lady.”
Smiling wanly through her tears, Fanny replied, “If I may offer one to a loyal brother and a faithful friend.”
They drank and then Charles stared at her in silence for a long moment. He said, “I have a suggestion. Let me change that faithful friend to something more intimate.”
She said, “What do you suggest?”
“I want to be your husband,” Charles said quietly. “I’m not the one you really want. But I have always loved you devotedly. I think in time you might find it in your heart to care for me just a little.”
Fanny lay her hand on his wrist. “Charles, you are too kind!”
“Wait until I explain,” he said. “My regiment leaves for India within a week. We can be quietly married and you could accompany me as my wife.”
“Charles!”
“It will get you out of the country and you will have my protection as your husband,” he said eagerly.
Her eyes filled with tears again. She was past fighting the cruel tricks of fate which had so long kept her apart from George.
“Very well, Charles,” she said wearily. “I shall be honored to be your wife.”
Next morning when the elderly Hilda heard the news she sputtered angrily, “Isn’t it enough to ask you to give up the man you love without asking you to leave your country and the theatre?”
Fanny raised a protesting hand. “It is best this way.”
“I say it is nonsense and needless,” the character actress said. “You love London and the stage! David will find you a part in his new company. You know that!”
“If the yellow press attacked me it might destroy his London venture,” Fanny said. “I would never forgive myself for that.”
“He wouldn’t care!” Hilda said.
“I would,” Fanny told her. “The only safe thing is for me to leave London.”
Hilda gazed at her sorrowfully. “It will be like losing a daughter! You’re positive you don’t want me to talk to David about this?”
Fanny turned away from the old woman to hide her tears. “Positive!”
The next development in the mad rush of events came the following day. Fanny had shut herself up in her flat until she received word from Charles as to the time and place of their wedding. When he arrived the next afternoon he was once again wearing his uniform, but she could see by his worried expression he had things other than the wedding on his mind.
“Charles, what is it?” she greeted him.
“My brother—” he began and stopped.
“George? What has happened to him?” There was fear in her voice.
“Not George,” Charles said in a grim voice. “Kenneth, the Reverend Kenneth!”
The name of Kenneth brought forth a vision of the evil priest who in his fanatacism lacked any trace of charity in his heart. With dismay, she asked, “Is he going to try to harm George in some way? Use me to harm him?”
Charles shook his head. “No,” he said. “It seems the trial completely deranged Kenneth. Last night he hung himself in his room near the Cathedral. He left a note behind admitting he was the one who set the fire in the theatre in which you were playing, the one in which so many people died! He asked forgiveness!”
“I often wondered if it might have been he,” Fanny said. And turning away, she asked in a low, anguished tone, “Is the agony never to end?”
“The Palmer family have brought you nothing but grief,” Charles said. “George took you from the theatre you loved. Kenneth railed against you and in his hatred wound up murdering many innocents! And here I am, offering you a second-rate love and the doubtful pleasure of living as an army officer’s wife in distant India!”
Fanny quickly faced him again. “Yours is no second rate love, Charles. You were always the strongest and best of the three. I shall willingly marry you and go to India. And with God’s blessing we shall be happy together!”
“I pray that we shall,” Charles said solemnly, taking her in his arms. “I shall return tomorrow at seven. We shall take a carriage out of London and be married in a country chapel whose vicar I know. We shall need witnesses.”
“Hilda Asquith and Silas Hodder,” she said promptly. “They shall be here ready to accompany us.”
“Your last ties with the stage,” Charles said with a sad smile. “I’d say they’ll make excellent witnesses.”
“What about Kenneth’s funeral?” she asked.
“It will be private. Tomorrow morning. We hope to keep his suicide a secret, along with his confession that he set the fire. The Bishop takes the position that he was demented at the time of his death and not responsible for what he wrote. The family are in full agreement, as we’ve had enough disagreeable newspaper publicity for the moment.”
“It is surely for the best,” she agreed.
He took her in his arms. “Until tomorrow evening,” he said.
At first Hilda Asquith stubbornly refused to take part in Fanny’s wedding to Charles Palmer. But Silas Hodder won her over. The old stage door man was extremely persuasive and ready, as always, to do anything to help Fanny.
Seven o’clock chimed on the mantel clock the next evening. Fanny sat ready in coat and bonnet, solemnly awaiting the arrival of Charles. A nervous Hilda and Silas waited in the adjoining room. Suddenly th
ere was a knock on the door. Fanny slowly rose and went over to open it, trying to look happy so Charles would not be hurt.
The door opened and standing there looking handsome in greatcoat and top hat was David Cornish! The young actor removed his hat and came inside. “Surprised?” he asked.
“David!” she stammered. “I’m waiting for Charles. We’re to be married tonight.”
David shook his head. “No!”
“No?”
“Charles sent me as his substitute,” the actor said.
“I don’t understand!” Her head was reeling.
David took her in his arms. “Charles realized he wasn’t being fair to you. He came and talked with me. He told me it would be best for you to marry and leave London, but that he didn’t feel he was the right man. I told him he was correct. That I was the man!”
“But David!” Fanny protested. “You’re opening your first company here in London!”
He smiled and shook his head. “Not any longer. I’ve turned the whole project over to Sir Benjamin Fuller. He will head the company and star in my place. I have accepted an offer to play in America. We open in New York in a month. The vessel leaves within a few days. I also have an opening for a leading lady, whom I would prefer to be my wife!”
“David!” she cried out in wonder. Tears of joy filled her eyes, for in that moment she knew this was right. It was what she had truly wanted without ever admitting it! The stage was a fever in her blood of which she’d never be cured. Her father must be smiling at her now from wherever he was, she thought fleetingly. He had known better than she did that she could not desert her destiny!
David’s lips were on hers, his arms held her tightly to him and Fanny knew this was the beginning of something new and wonderful which would last for them as long as life itself.
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.crimsonromance.com
Copyright © 1978 by W. E. Dan Ross
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7293-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7293-7
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7294-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7294-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
A Scandalous Affair
Clarissa Ross
Avon, Massachusetts
To a dear friend, Peggy Lawton
and to the memory of Ken!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
Mary Scott stood forlornly in the center of the modest parlor of her family home. A small blue bonnet tied under her chin covered her shining, chestnut hair and the dark blue dress with its neat cape completed her travelling outfit. Her heart-shaped face was lovely in spite of its expression of sadness and her large gray eyes still radiant though brimming with tears.
Squire Martin Gordon, all rusty brown from hat to shoes, stood by the open door with a grimly impatient look on his lean, wrinkled face. He extracted a large pocket watch from his vest and studying it, rasped, “We must leave now, lass, or you’ll miss the London stage!”
She gave the tall old man an imploring look. “Just a moment longer,” she begged him. “It is the last time I shall ever be in this room. I wish to memorize it, so I may remember it always.”
Squire Gordon replaced his watch in his pocket and with open disgust snapped, “Sentimentality! I warn you that is something you should avoid whenever possible! You have to make your way in the world now. Giving way to sentiment will only make it more difficult for you.”
Scarcely hearing him she moved to a highly-polished table which she knew her late mother and father had prized and touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. The lace covering on it had been the work of her mother and the china bowl resting on the lace runner was a family heirloom, a wedding gift to her grandmother! She glanced about her at the other fine pieces of furniture, the ornaments, and the prints on the gray-papered walls. It seemed impossible this room which had been part of her life was to be snatched from her, that never again would she know the warmth and happiness its walls had offered her.
She gave Squire Gordon a spirited glance as she told him, “Had my brother Tom not been killed fighting against Napoleon you would not be turning me out of my home!”
The Squire’s mean, withered face showed no remorse. “You need not blame me for what is happening! I’m merely a man of business looking after his affairs in a proper manner. Blame your father!”
“Stop!” Mary burst out, taking a step towards the man in brown. “I will not hear you speak against my father! It was you who helped his ruin by loaning him money to continue his gambling!”
“Each time he came to me I reminded him that gambling was a sin,” the Squire said piously.
“But kept advancing him more and more money until both the mill and this house was heavily mortgaged to you!” she told him.
“It is far too late to argue about that,” Squire Gordon said. “What lost you your home was your father’s obsession for placing unlikely bets on race horses! I warned him it would be his ruin and so it turned out!”
Mary gave him an accusing look. “So now you have the mill, our home and the land which goes with it. Just before my father’s death he warned me it was the land you wanted!”
“Your father was quite mad in the last months of his life,” Squire Gordon informed her. “Otherwise he would not have put a bullet through his head and left you orphaned and penniless at one and twenty!”
“I do not want to hear about that!” she protested, and at the same time placed her hands against her ears.
Squire Gordon scowled. “You will do well to leave now and there’ll be no more discussion of such things. We have barely time to get to the stage as it is!”
She closed her eyes, gave a deep sigh, and then found a handkerchief to dab away her tears. After that she slowly crossed to the door and left her beloved home for what she knew was surely the last time. She proceeded to the waiting donkey cart in which the Squire had already placed her single, large satchel. He came and helped her into the cart and then sat at her side in the driver’s seat and flipped the reins.
The wheels of the cart began to spin and the donkey’s hooves threw up dust from the dry roadway as they headed in the direction of the village inn. It was there she would transfer to the stageoach and the long trip to London would begin.
Squire Gordon asked her, “Do you have the letter Parson Brown wrote for you? The introduction which will get you the post of kitchen helper in the home of Sir John Blake?”
“I have it,” she said quietly, not looking at him.
“See you don’t lose it!” the old Squire warned her. “London is no fit place for a young girl without proper contacts. The Parson says he has sent several of the village girls to Sir John Blake’s for employment and all have done well.”
Mary chose to make no reply. She sat thinking of the grim twist of fate which had sent her, a prosperous miller’s daughter, off to seek the menial post of kitchen slavey in London. She was sickened by what her long dead mother, and more recently dead brother and father, would think of this turn of events. She knew her father’s last dramatic act of repentance in taking his own life had been an effort on his part to touch the heart of grim Squire Gordon. It had been a useless g
esture as far as the tight-fisted Squire was concerned. He’d promptly proceeded to foreclose the mortgage on the property and order her eviction!
They came to the main section of the village and its rows of quaint cottages set back from the roadway under sheltering trees. Rudford was a quiet village but Mary had known great happiness within its tiny confines. It was on this very street that she had stood with other cheering onlookers as the young soldiers marched proudly by in their smart red and blue uniforms on their way to serve under Wellington!
Both her brother, Tom, and her fiance Ned Burnham had been among those brave young men on their way to the Continent to battle against Napoleon. And by a quirk of fate both Tom and Ned had been among the first casualties in the bitter campaign which ended in Napoleon’s final defeat! Not much glory for her or her father in that victory! They could only mourn their losses.
Now it was 1817 and Napoleon was safely banished to St. Helena. Wellington had returned to London the popular hero of the day, his coach drawn through the streets by cheering crowds to the doorway of his London home. Mad Old George III was still on the throne, with the portly and immoral Prince Regent actually having the monarch’s authority. All England was in a happy, celebrating mood and yet she was reduced to penury and sadness.
It was not until after her mother, that dear, gentle soul, had passed away from a heart affliction, that her father had begun to show an unhealthy interest in gambling. It began with cards and in no time it consumed him. After the news came of Tom’s death in battle, he had gambled more and more. Neglect of his milling business and his wild betting on many race horses soon brought him to ruin.
He had gone down on his knees to tearfully confess to Mary “I have squandered everything, daughter! We are penniless!”
She had kissed him on the forehead and said, “We have each other and will begin again.”
“If either Tom or Ned had come back from the war, I might agree with you,” he’d said. “As it is there can be no hope.”
“You must not give up!” she’d implored him.
Vintage Love Page 142