Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  She was the most desirable thing Oliver had ever seen. After the last dance, without even speaking to Sir Cecil—Oliver reckoned that he already had the old man’s blessing—he drew Rose into a gallery off the hall and proposed marriage to her.

  Rose did not answer this question any more than she had answered any of the others he had put to her in the course of the long evening. Within herself, she was neither surprised nor pleased by Oliver’s proposition. Her husband, Robert, had also asked her to marry him as soon as he saw her. She knew the effect she had on men; she had known since she was twelve. They all wanted her, their faces turned red, they panted like dogs, all the while smiling as if these signs were invisible to her. That this huge stranger in his absurd sultan’s costume should fall in love with her the first time he saw her and ask for her hand in marriage even before she had had any supper seemed natural enough.

  “I’ve asked Rose to marry me,” Oliver told Sir Cecil as the two of them watched her mount the stairs.

  “I thought you might. What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She just stepped past me and went away.” “Take that as a good sign,” Sir Cecil said. “I’ll find out what she thinks.”

  He did not have to ask. Next day, after breakfast, Rose asked Sir Cecil what he knew about Oliver.

  “Respectable family,” Sir Cecil said. “Don’t you know the name?”

  “Yes, but he’s the first Barebones I’ve ever met,” Rose said. “Are they all like him?”

  Sir Cecil ignored her question. Because he had never had to answer to anyone, his style of conversation was to ask loud questions one after the other until the answers became obvious.

  “Do you fancy the man?” he asked.

  “Fancy him? He’s a dray horse.”

  “And you’re an Arabian mare. Do you think it makes any difference whom you marry as long as the man has money?”

  Rose cast down her eyes. She knew what her situation was. Her father, who had no money and three other daughters, all as pretty as Rose but unmarriageable because of their poverty, had told Rose at her husband’s grave that he had no place for her at home. Sir Cecil had been saddled with her as a consequence, but he wanted to get the saddle off.

  “Do you have money to live on?” he asked.

  “You know I am very poor,” Rose said, and touched her dry eyes with a handkerchief.

  “What a little beggar you are,” Sir Cecil said. “Answer me a thing or two. Do you want to stop being alone and poor in this benighted village and live in London wearing fine dresses before your juices dry up? Do you understand that all the eligible men in this county are too lowborn for you or too shy of your looks and Robert’s ghost to marry you? Do you know that Oliver Barebones owns a ship, or at least part of one, and a handsome house in the Strand? Do you see that he can’t get enough of looking at you and how he bulges and pants while he looks?”

  “Yes,” said Rose. It was no use refusing to answer Sir Cecil. He would only ask worse questions.

  “Then say yes to him. You’ll only have to give him what he wants on the wedding night and then once a month for a few years until he’s too old to want it any longer. He’s fifty or more now. You’ll still be a young woman in a town full of young men and you can have anything you want.”

  “But he’s horrible.”

  “Of course he’s horrible. So is being thrown out of this house into the Buckinghamshire weather. Do you know what I am saying to you?”

  When, an hour later, Sir Cecil brought Oliver into the room where Rose waited, she accepted the proposal of marriage that had been made to her. The fact that she looked out the window during the whole conversation and never let her eyes rest on Oliver did not trouble Oliver. He thought that it was one of the most charming things he had ever seen a woman do.

  5

  Henry was amazed when Oliver told him that he planned to marry a woman he had met just two days before.

  “How old is this country flower?” Henry asked. “Twenty.”

  “You’re fifty-one.”

  Oliver was not in the mood for warnings. “If she can’t keep up with a man of my experience,” he said jovially, “I’ll drop by the Widow’s for a bit of refreshment. The great thing is to get off on the right foot. That’s where you come in, Henry. You’re going to bet fifty guineas of my money that it won’t rain on my wedding day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s made me promise that we won’t be married in the rain. Lightning struck the church at her first wedding and she had two dead babies and a husband that broke his neck falling off a horse. It’s made her superstitious.”

  “What if I lose?” Henry asked.

  “She’ll leave me at the altar. But you never lose.” “That’s because I’ve never wagered that it wouldn’t rain in April in London.”

  “It doesn’t have to stop raining everywhere in London. Just in the vicinity of Saint Andrew’s—and only for an hour at that.”

  Despite all the blows that fate had rained on Henry, Oliver believed that he was supernaturally lucky. Hadn’t he lived when everyone else died in the plague house? He’d lost his wife and gained the finest girl in London as a daughter. He never lost at auctions by the candle. Money came to him when he needed it: at Lloyd’s, where he was admired for his hairbreadth escapes from bankruptcy, they called him Last-Minute Harding.

  “Besides,” Oliver said, “I’ve asked Fanny to come along and give us luck.”

  “Fanny? To this place?”

  The two friends were sitting in the Cocoa Tree, a chocolate house in Pall Mall that was famous for attracting customers who would bet on anything, however bizarre. Women, especially innocent girls, ordinarily did not come inside. If they did, they were almost certain to become the objects of insulting bets.

  “She shouldn’t come here,” Henry said.

  “Perhaps she won’t,” Oliver said. “It’s raining.”

  Oliver’s mind was elsewhere. He was looking for someone to take Henry’s bet; it would have to be a stranger because those who knew about Henry’s luck wouldn’t bet with him.

  “Those fellows will do,” Oliver said. He nodded toward a group of men who stood together gazing into the muddy street and drinking chocolate with boiled milk and sugar in it to make it less bitter, a new fashion in London. One of the men was splendidly dressed in silks, with lace cascading from the sleeves of his coat and half a dozen rings on his fingers.

  Oliver called a waiter and asked him for the man’s name.

  “Which one, sir?”

  “The one that’s dressed like a Gentleman of the Bedchamber on the royal birthday.”

  “That would be Mr. Alfred Montagu, sir.”

  “Does he bet?”

  “Famous for it, sir.”

  Oliver strolled over to the window, putting a hand on Montagu’s shoulder and smiling to move him aside. Montagu shrugged his hand off and stared pointedly at the place on his shoulder where it had lain, as if looking for a stain. Oliver, a hulking figure in an ill-fitting wig, ignored him.

  “Come over here, Henry, and choose your raindrop,” he said in a loud voice.

  Henry rose from his chair and joined his friend by the window. The glass was beaded with raindrops.

  “The other fellow would have to pick his raindrop at the same time,” Henry said.

  “Yes, of course he would,” Oliver said loudly. “Unless there was a handicap.”

  The chocolate drinkers overheard. “Pick what?” asked Montagu.

  Oliver looked him coldly up and down and decided to answer even though he did not know him and could not possibly ever know him. “The raindrop,” Oliver said. “For the raindrop race. Each man chooses a raindrop and then you see which one wins.”

  “Which raindrop wins?”

  Henry ignored the question with an air that suggested that the man who had asked it was the only one in London who did not know the answer. By now the curiosity of the whole group was piqued: perhaps it wasn’t to be a boring afte
rnoon after all.

  Montagu spoke. “You mean which one runs down the glass the fastest?”

  Oliver answered without looking at him; his eye was fixed on the pane, which was beaded with raindrops. “Yes.”

  “What sort of handicap were you talking about?” Montagu asked.

  “It’s obvious, I should have thought. If you choose a drop that has already started down, and my friend here chooses the next one to strike the glass, then he has been handicapped because your raindrop has a head start.”

  “Your friend would bet so?”

  “With suitable odds, yes,” Oliver said.

  “What if I choose that one?” Montagu pointed to a raindrop that was traveling a rapid zigzag course down the wavy pane. It was about an inch from the top.

  “All right,” Oliver said. “Two to one. Harding’s fifty guineas against your hundred. Neither side can tap the glass or blow on it or interfere with it or the raindrops in any way.”

  “Done.”

  “That one,” Henry said as a heavy drop struck the pane just below the upper sash.

  The race began. Henry’s large quivering raindrop stuck on the glass for a moment, then rolled downward. Montagu’s raindrop was way ahead. One of Montagu’s party placed a side bet of ten guineas on his friend’s raindrop. Henry’s raindrop began to run rapidly downward. Its weight, and the fact that it had fallen on a portion of the glass that was less distorted than any other, caused it to fall in a straight line, while Montagu’s followed a meandering course. More side bets were placed. A crowd gathered and cheered on the raindrops. Henry’s raindrop drew even with Montagu’s, and after three or four inches of neck-to-neck progress, overtook it and ran to the bottom sash to win by the breadth of a finger.

  Montagu gave Henry his hundred guineas, pouring them into his cupped hands out of a purse so that the last of the coins overflowed and fell to the floor. Oliver bent over and picked them up.

  “Most enjoyable,” Montagu said. But there was the look in his eyes of a man who hates to lose.

  Oliver stood up and gave Henry the coins he had gathered.

  “I’ll bet you half the hundred that it won’t rain on Saint Andrew by the Wardrobe between ten o’clock and noon on the first Tuesday after Easter, then,” Oliver said.

  “No,” Henry said. “You can’t choose the day. If it’s to be a real bet, I must choose it.”

  Montagu’s back was turned now, but he was silent and it was obvious that he was listening to the conversation between Oliver and Henry.

  “Sorry, Henry, you can’t,” Oliver said. “I met Rose on Shrove Tuesday and I must marry her on the first possible day after Easter. Even that is too long a wait. You don’t know what it is to wait for a girl like Rose all during Lent.”

  Montagu turned his head. He wore a beautifully made wig that was powdered a faint blue. “Have you thought of another bet?” he asked.

  “My friend wants to bet that it won’t rain on Saint Andrew’s between ten and noon on the first Tuesday after Easter.”

  “What day of the month is that?”

  “The seventh of April,” Oliver said.

  “You want to bet that it won’t rain in London on a day in April, do you? Will you say a hundred?”

  “All right,” Henry said.

  “Done,” said Montagu. “Let’s have them write it down in the betting book.”

  All during the raindrop race, Henry had been watching Pall Mall through the window for a sign of Fanny. Now she appeared in the door, wearing a sky-blue dress that flattered her eyes and a hat with a plume that trailed over her shoulder.

  Montagu saw her first.

  “By God,” he said. “Look at that, in the blue.”

  Henry turned around and Fanny smiled at him across the room. Her smile was not so luminous as Henry’s. Like Fanchon’s, it was mostly in the eyes, which softened and grew deeper and seemed to open, Henry thought, as if to invite the person she was smiling at to come inside her thoughts and find himself there.

  “Is that your piece?” Montagu asked, seeing Fanny’s smile. “Where did you find her?”

  His long pale face had taken on a peculiar look, the bloodless lips drawn back from the stubbly teeth, the intense gray eyes unblinking, the mouth parted with the tongue moving inside. Fanny was talking to Oliver now and saw none of this.

  “She’s my daughter,” Henry said.

  “You’re joking.”

  Henry looked him up and down, then turned away. Montagu took hold of the cloth of his coat to restrain him.

  “My mistake,” he said. “But daughters who look like that—my God, those eyes!—don’t usually live with their fathers.”

  Henry took hold of Montagu’s wrist but the other man resisted, twisting the fabric of Henry’s sleeve. His eyes remained fixed on Fanny.

  “She’s not married?”

  Henry didn’t answer.

  “I’m tempted to make an offer of marriage here and now,” Montagu said. “Would you say me no?”

  Henry gazed at Montagu without expression. The other man, like most people, was much taller than Henry. He looked down into Henry’s upturned face, then patted him on the shoulder.

  “I see that you don’t fancy me as a son-in-law,” he said. “But we still have our bet. Perhaps we can have another one someday soon.”

  Henry left him and led Fanny out. Oliver was telling her about the raindrop bet, and she was laughing as she listened. She squeezed Henry’s hand, proud like Oliver of her father’s luck.

  At the door, Henry looked back at Montagu and saw that his eyes were still on Fanny. Montagu saw that Henry was watching him; he did not care.

  “Shall we have dinner at Locket’s Tavern on your winnings?” Fanny asked. It was her favorite place. “Lobsters,” Oliver said.

  “Always lobsters,” Fanny replied, looking upward into Oliver’s grinning face. Henry realized that she had not even noticed Montagu or the look on his face.

  6

  Rose had been tutoring Fanny in the ways of men.

  “I had a beautiful sister who drowned,” she said, “and when they pulled her poor body from the pond, do you know what they said? ‘What a waste of cunny.’ Not ‘Poor Ella, dead before she’d lived,’ not ‘How sad.’ All they could think about, looking at that poor dead girl, was how she’d denied some man his beastly pleasure. Oh, Fanny, they’re horrible, you’ll see.”

  Sir Cecil had brought Rose down to London while she waited for Lent to end and her wedding to Oliver to take place. There was no point in her mooning around Lockwood Hall, he said, if she could be in the city learning to love her husband-to-be. The two of them had arrived unannounced on two pretty horses, a gray Barb for Rose and a big hunter for Sir Cecil, with a couple of countrymen walking along behind pulling Rose’s trunk on a cart. The trunk contained everything she owned—one ball dress, two ordinary dresses, a cloak, one pair of slippers, one pair of boots, her petticoats and stockings and ribbons. It was not quite half-full.

  “You must get her a horse,” Sir Cecil told Oliver. “She’s a damn fine horsewoman, has the best seat of any woman in Buckinghamshire. Her father was a horseman, still is, and made her ride all day as a child. Robert never got off a horse except to get on something that wore a skirt, and rain or shine, mud or snow, she rode with him every day.”

  “What about the horse she’s riding?” Oliver said. “The Barb? Oh, no!”

  But before he went back to the country Sir Cecil sold the animal to Oliver for twice what it was worth.

  “I must find a horse for myself now,” Oliver said, “so that we can go riding together, Rose. By God, you’ll turn heads up and down the park!”

  Rose paid no attention. She seemed not to hear anything Oliver, or any other man, said. When spoken to she looked away, out a window or into a looking glass or at a point in space, as if she had lost her hearing. In fact Rose had extraordinary hearing. All her senses were preternaturally sharp. On her first evening in London, after knowing Oliver’s friends
for no more than three or four hours, Rose had put on a blindfold and told them apart, one after the other, by the way they smelled. It was her only party trick, but it was a wonderful one and it made her instantaneously famous in London.

  “By heaven, Oliver,” his friends said, “you’d better have a bath before you come home from the Widow’s.”

  “The Widow will never see me again,” Oliver replied.

  He meant what he said. Rose fascinated him. Her other senses were just as extraordinary. She could sort out words spoken on the other side of the room in the midst of a party, and once at Southend when the Hardings and Oliver took her picnicking by the sea, she saw a ship coming down the estuary of the Thames and described the red lion that was the figurehead on all Dutch ships five minutes before anyone else could even make out the hull.

  Oliver heaped presents on her even if it was Lent—buying her trinkets, bringing dressmakers and milliners to the house, hiring the painter to make her portrait. She said, “Thank you for nothing.”

  For the sake of appearances, she lived in the Hardings’ house while waiting for her wedding day. She dreaded its arrival; it meant that she must move next door into Oliver’s house.

  “I like this house so much better than Oliver’s,” she said.

  “But the two houses are exactly alike,” Fanny said. “My father and Oliver had them built to be the same.” “They do everything alike. Isn’t it boring?”

  “I’ve never thought so.”

  Rose’s face, as she talked about Henry and Oliver, was full of secrecy and scorn. According to the rules she lived by, men were creatures to be outwitted and used. She seemed to think that Fanny was born knowing this because she had been born female and was part of a conspiracy all women belonged to.

  “Will you play something for me, Fanny darling? It helps me to sit still.”

  They were in the music room. The painter was at work on Rose’s portrait.

  Fanny sat down at her spinet and played some of the simple tinkling airs that Rose liked. She hated anything in French or anything that repeated itself too much. She hated posing, and when the painter left she opened the window to rid it of the hateful smell of turpentine and oils. Antoinette brought in a plate of cakes. Rose, who was very greedy about food, ate three of the four.