by M C Beaton
Large waves curled and thudded on the beach and a lonely seagull cried from the rocks, making her start with fear. The bathing machines, which had seemed so bright and cheerful during the day, looked dark and sinister as if each one hid a menacing figure. Stumbling along across the pebbles, she soon left the lights of the town behind and, as the darkness of the summer night closed about her, she began to wonder at the marquess’s folly in asking her to venture out so far alone. Had the note come from anyone else, she would immediately have been suspicious, but her great love for the marquess had clouded her wits and she could only think how happy she would be to see his tall figure waiting at the end of the beach. The moon slid behind the clouds and the darkness seemed almost tangible.
She heard the sound of footsteps on the shingle and darted behind some rocks. The moon shone out again and revealed a couple of ragged beachcombers, searching in the pebbles for trinkets or money that the wealthy bathers may have dropped during the day. They seemed to take a long time to pass and Jean waited behind her rock until she could hear their footsteps no more.
A small jetty, the place of assignation, had been marked on the map. After walking for what seemed miles with the sharp pebbles and rocks cutting through her thin half boots, she rounded a small promontory and, in the fitful moonlight, saw the jetty ahead at the end of a stretch of beach and could dimly make out a dark figure waiting on it. Breathing a sharp sigh of relief, she started to run and, as the figure left the jetty and came toward her, she flung herself thankfully into his arms, sobbing and laughing at the same time, “Oh, my dear, of all the stupidest things to do. I was half dead with fright.”
“Good,” said the voice above her cynically. “Then you have only halfways to go.”
She stared up into the sneering face of Lord Ian Percy. Desperately, she tried to break away but was held even tighter.
“Did you think I would skulk abroad and leave you to enjoy your wealth?” said the hateful voice. “By the time I’m finished with you, Jean Lindsay, you’ll be praying for death.”
She opened her mouth to scream but found it silenced by Lord Ian who thrust his mouth brutally down on hers and shoved his tongue between her teeth as an effective gag.
Fighting against faintness, Jean bit Lord Ian’s tongue as hard as she could and he reeled back with blood dripping from his mouth and smacked her savagely across the face. She fell to the ground and he threw himself on top of her, tearing at the bosom of her dress but it was a credit to the Parisians and its seams remained stubbornly intact. Jean opened her mouth again to scream and felt the point of a dagger pressing against her neck.
“Now, Jean Lindsay,” sneered Lord Ian, “you will do just as I tell you and you will enjoy every minute of it. Get to your feet.”
Her eyes wide with terror, Jean stumbled to her feet and stared at the naked blade of the dagger as if hypnotized.
The wind had risen and was whipping her long cloak about her body. The air was full of the sound of the wind, the crashing waves and their own heavy breathing. Great black clouds swept across the face of the moon and far-off thunder rumbled. It seemed to Jean as if all light and laughter belonged to some other place and century and she felt alone, out of time, on some alien, primitive shore, faced with death.
The noise of the oncoming storm had drowned out the sound of any approach and Jean’s hypnotized eyes suddenly saw long, white fingers clutching Lord Ian’s shoulder and a beloved voice say, “Turn about, Lord Ian. We will settle this once and for all.”
It was the marquess, a drawn sword in his hand, his gray eyes like two pieces of stone.
“What! My dagger to your sword?” said Lord Ian, looking around him desperately for escape. Lord Freddie and Hoskins came up at a run.
“Give Lord Ian your sword, Freddie,” ordered the marquess.
“For heaven’s sake,” howled Freddie. “Drag the fellow off to the magistrates and have done.”
“I have a score to settle,” said the marquess quietly. He had found his dragon and he was out for blood.
“Oh, very well,” said Freddie, handing Lord Ian his sword.
He and Hoskins drew back beside Jean as the two antagonists faced each other. Then the grim fight began. Sparks flew up from the swords into the stormy suffocating air and the marquess pressed Lord Ian back along the jetty. Jean watched in terror. She did not know the marquess was the finer swordsman and at any minute she expected to see him fall to his death. With a little whimper of terror, she picked up a rock and threw it full at Lord Ian.
It smashed him full in the face and he flew backward over the edge of the jetty and plunged into the water.
The marquess whipped around in a fury. “You stupid hell cat,” he shouted. “Cannot you leave me to settle this honorably.”
Freddie and Hoskins rushed to the jetty with Jean and looked over. The moon raced out of the storm clouds and Jean could see the body of Lord Ian Percy imprisoned in the glass curl of a wave like some grotesque insect sealed in a paperweight. Then the wave broke. The three men turned and looked at Jean in silence.
Freddie put his hand on the marquess’s shoulder. “Go easy, John,” he said. The marquess shrugged him off.
“This was an affair of honor which you have just made dishonorable… you stupid chit.” The marquess was tired and overwrought and his voice dripped acid. What on earth was the point of slaying dragons if the fair maiden was determined to make him look foolish by slaying them herself? What would Perseus have felt if Andromeda had remarked, “Oh, excuse me,” and killed the sea monster by shying a rock at it. The marquess’s most vulnerable points were his pride and his honor and Miss Jean Lindsay had just offended both.
“What will we do with the body?” asked Freddie.
“Leave it,” snapped the marquess. “No one else knows we have been here and I do not want this disgraceful affair dragged before the Brighton magistrates.”
He took Jean firmly by the arm and pushed the frightened girl up the beach toward the waiting curricles and delivered himself of a blistering lecture on her behavior.
“Did it not occur to you that if I wished to be private with you, I would merely have requested Lady Frank’s permission. It is a miracle you were not assaulted before you even met Lord Ian.
“Do you not know that it is unforgivable for anyone… anyone at all to interfere in a duel? I had thought you were at last growing up and learning to behave like a lady instead of a hoyden but I take leave to tell you, Miss Lindsay, that you have worse conduct and manners than a scullery maid.
“You have embroiled me in one shameful episode after another but this time you have gone too far. I wish I had never met you.”
The threatening storm burst about their heads and mercifully drowned out most of the marquess’s tirade. Jean merely caught a few splutterings of “shameless” and “dishonor” as the curricle, drawn by its tired horses, arrived in Brighton.
There was the usual tedious effort to rouse Muggles who eventually opened the door and retreated before the marquess’s glare to the shelter of the elephant.
“Now,” said the marquess. “We will settle this matter once and for all.”
But Jean felt on her home ground and that she had stood more than enough. With a choking sob, she pushed past him and fled to the safety of her bedchamber.
The marquess would have followed her but was forcibly restrained by Lord Freddie and Hoskins, who dragged him off to the drawing room.
The marquess was cooling down and beginning to feel that his temper had been excessive but Freddie’s mild remark, “She was only tryin’ to save your life, y’know,” fanned his wrath anew.
“I’ll take no criticism from you, Freddie,” he said spitefully. “Don’t tell me how to go on when you can’t even manage your own household.
“I take leave to tell you,” said the marquess, gathering the rags of his dignity about him, “that you’ve got a demned sloppy kitchen, demned sloppy servants and,” his voice carried back from the hall, “a
sloppy elephant.”
“Demme, that’s the last time that snobbish fellow sets foot in here,” said Freddie. “Nothin’ up with the elephant.”
Muggles tactfully handed him the decanter. “May I suggest, my lord, that things will look different in the morning.”
“No, you may not and no, they won’t,” said Freddie sulkily. “Listen to that demned storm. Hope Fleetwater drowns on the road home.”
Things looked definitely worse in the morning. The storm still raged outside and Miss Taylor reported in a hushed whisper that Jean had a dangerously high fever and that a physician should be sent for immediately. Freddie had already told his sister about the goings-on of the night before and Frank had to be forcibly restrained from rushing out into the storm to give the marquess a piece of her mind.
The physician arrived and disappeared upstairs followed by Miss Taylor, leaving brother and sister on tenterhooks. He came back after half an hour with a grave face.
“I don’t know what has been going on here,” said the physician dryly. “But Miss Lindsay has a high fever and seems to be in the grip of a perpetual nightmare. I recommend absolute peace and quiet. I have taken some blood and will call this evening to check on my patient.”
“Shouldn’t we tell Fleetwater?” asked Frank after the doctor had left.
“Not me,” said Freddie, shaking his curly head. “Called my elephant sloppy.”
“Called your… honestly Freddie, you’re all mad,” said Frank.
By the next day, Jean’s fever had abated, leaving her weak and listless. The doctor promised her that she would be up and about in no time, but his patient showed a marked disinterest in anything to do with the outside world. Even the news that the marquess had called to inquire after her health did little to rouse her.
After several days when Jean still kept to her room, Lady Frank began to despair of her ever getting well again. But Jean was young and resilient. The horrors of the drama on the beach gradually began to fade. The marquess, after all, must have been as upset and shocked as herself otherwise he would not have said any of those dreadful things. Finally, she moved to a daybed in the front parlor and the sparkling view of holiday Brighton repaired her spirits. The doctor advised sea bathing. Jean could swim like a seal and, unlike other fashionable young ladies, did not need the services of the burly bathing attendant to dip her in the water.
Accordingly, she soon set out accompanied by Miss Taylor to start her daily bathing schedule. The sun shone and the sea was as calm as glass with only a thin line of foam breaking gently on the pebbles. Jean breathed in the familiar air of the bathing machine, composed of saltwater, seaweed and stale perfume and felt as if she were coming alive again.
The bathing woman helped her down the steps into the water and she floated off, enjoying the unconstricted freedom of a healthy swim.
Moving strongly, she had soon swum far out of range of the bathing machines and the noisy young ladies, shrieking and screaming every time they were “dipped” by the bathing attendant She rolled over and floated lazily on her back, staring up into the vault of the heavens, dreaming of sailing to the Greek Islands on honeymoon with the marquess. In fact sailing anywhere, she thought, where the social conventions were not as tight and pinching and restricting as an over-small corset. A slight breeze crinkled the surface of the water and she shivered. The black thought that she had actually killed someone always seemed to be hovering on the edges of her mind. She decided to swim back.
Diving under the water, she blinked at the glittering shoals of tiny fish and wished she knew their names. A beautifully striped one zigzagged across her vision and she swam after it. Suddenly, she could see a dark mass moving under the blue water toward her. She surfaced, threw the water out of her eyes and dived again. Like the nightmare on the edge of her mind, the mass came slowly toward her, and all at once she saw a pair of white, bloated hands stretching out as if in mute appeal and before she broke for the surface, screaming and gasping, she saw, gazing at her through the summer window of the translucent sea, the hideous, swollen, dead face of Lord Ian Percy.
Swimming as if her life depended on it, she reached the safety of the bathing machine and fell gasping to the floor. The bathing attendant assumed she was still too weak after her illness and had a cramp and Jean had not the courage to enlighten her. Let Lord Ian Percy float around his watery grave for some other unfortunate to find and report to the magistrates.
Even afterward, she held back her grisly knowledge, shrinking from telling Freddie, Frank or Miss Taylor. If she could only stubbornly ignore the horror then it would surely go away.
Lady Frank eyed her pale face. “Freddie and I were going to take you to an assembly at the Ship Inn tonight. Are you sure you feel strong enough?”
“Of course,” answered Jean quickly. A ball was just what she needed to cheer her spirits and remove her mind from death and disaster. A new ball gown had arrived that day from London—and what nightmare could stand up to the miracle of a white silk dress, light as a feather, with an enchanting overdress of silver gauze woven in a spider’s web pattern?
Even Freddie gasped his appreciation as she came down the steps into the murky gloom of the hall that evening among the stuffed animals like some bright, ethereal goddess descending into the jungle.
The party decided to walk the short distance to the Ship Inn. The evening was clear and warm, sparkling with lights and voices and snatches of music. Underneath it all, Jean could hear the steady slurring sound of the gentle waves pulling at the pebbles on the beach and shivered uncontrollably.
“You’re not catchin’ a cold are you?” asked Freddie, all solicitation. “Never did think sea bathin’ was a good idea. Get put in a little box, dragged out into the water, bathin’ chap drops you in and fishes you out and you’re all cold and wet and sticky. Ugh!”
Jean shivered again and said faintly, “I quite agree, Freddie. I am resolved not to have any more bathes so please let us not talk ab…”
“Could kill you, all that wet,” continued Freddie cheerfully, “and then your corpse would be found floatin’ in…”
“Stop your nonsense,” snapped Lady Frank.
But the damage had been done. Fighting against the memory of Lord Ian’s dead face, Jean walked determinedly on. But nothing felt real and everything around her seemed to be very far away as if she were looking down the wrong end of a telescope.
“Hope you’re still not mad at John,” she heard Freddie’s voice say as if from a long way off. “Even the mildest of gentlemen gets very crotchety when it’s a question of honor.
“Take one of m’old friends, Geoffrey Lancing. Very quiet, unassuming sort of chap. Well, one day we was both passin’ this farm and Geoffrey sees these two ducks walking toward the pond. So he says, “I’ll lay you a monkey, the one with the black spot on its head makes it first.’ So I agree ’cause I thought the other one was faster. Well, Geoffrey’s bird is racin’ away like it was in the races at Newmarket and just when it got to the pond—out comes the farmer’s wife and wrings its neck! Well, Geoffrey, he was so mad, he ups and he’s goin’ to strangle the old girl and we has to pull him off.
“Wasn’t because he lost his money, y’see. It was because the silly old frump had interfered in a gentleman’s bet. Now do you understand? I say! You’re lookin’ under par.”
But with a peculiar, waxen, fixed smile, Jean assured him that she was perfectly all right and they entered the Ship Inn together.
Jean was soon surrounded by admirers, clamoring for the first dance, including many of the young cavalry officers who were stationed nearby at barracks on the Lewes road. Automatically, she selected the nearest, a large officer she had met briefly before who had enormous sideburns and a terrifying military moustache.
It was a country dance and a very energetic one at that so for half an hour she was not obliged to make much conversation and the cavalry officer took her subdued replies as becoming maidenly modesty and fell head over heels for
at least the third time that week.
Dance followed dance like some weird moving dream to Jean, the colorful figures bowing, curtsying, retreating and advancing, the dowagers and chaperones along the wall with their enormous turbans and jewels, nodding and gossiping and looking like some exotic Eastern guard of honor.
The Master of Ceremonies announced the waltz and suddenly the marquess’s face swam up in front of her eyes, looking to her fevered brain, brooding and malevolent.
Deftly, he swung her onto the floor and she followed him like a clockwork toy.
“My behavior the other night was possibly much too harsh,” he began. “But the provocation was great. Well, well. Let us put such distasteful thoughts from our minds. Lord Ian is probably wallowing around somewhere in his watery grave and I hope the fish have a very good dinner, although, if the truth be told he…”
He stopped in amazement as Jean wrenched herself out of his arms and stood a few feet away from him in the middle of the ballroom floor, her bosom heaving and two hectic spots of color on her cheeks. They faced each other in silence. Slowly the musicians faltered and stopped playing, the dowagers stopped gossiping, the dancers stopped dancing.
Jean finally addressed the marquess, her high, clear voice carrying to every corner of the room.
“Shut up… you… you silly, silly old fop!”
There was a long indrawn “Oh!” of shock as the elite of England’s fashionable society witnessed Miss Jean Lindsay’s downfall.
Another “Oh!” was expelled and died away among the pretty lanterns and banks of flowers. It was a matter of seconds but to horrified Lady Frank the room and its company seemed to stay rigid with shock for hours.
The marquess was the first to break the spell. With a slight bow, he turned on his heel and walked off to the card room. Several debutantes fainted, more burst into tears, all anxious to convince the gentlemen that their delicate sensibilities had been rudely assaulted. Only the dowagers, relics of the more free-spoken eighteenth century, remained unmoved.