Taming of Annabelle

by Beaton, M. C.

  It was tall and thin, more spacious inside than it looked out. But the rooms were sombre and dark. There were a great deal of landscapes ornamenting the walls, their canvases so badly in need of cleaning that it was often hard to tell what part of England they were meant to portray. Annabelle felt crushed, almost extinguished by the dimness and silence of the rooms. The servants were very elderly, the Marquess not having the heart to get rid of any of them. Although Annabelle had already seen the house – in the company of her mother, Lady Godolphin and Minerva – the Marquess took her over it again, apologizing for its masculine dinginess and urging her to make any alterations she saw fit.

  But although he was warm and affectionate and loving, Annabelle trailed after him from room to room, like a sulky schoolchild, and, for the first time, he found to his horror he was becoming irritated with her.

  Then he chided himself, remembering that she was very young and that she had just been separated from her family.

  If he had taken her in his arms or had made any reference to the pleasures of the night to come, then Annabelle might have burst into tears and confessed her fears.

  But his easy manner, his atmosphere of expecting everything to be well with her, made her lose courage.

  They shared a glass of wine and some biscuits before retiring for the night. The housemaid, Betty, had been appointed lady’s maid to the new Marchioness and she was so busy putting on airs in the kitchen that she almost forgot to attend to her mistress and prepare her for bed.

  Annabelle sat like a statue while Betty brushed out her hair, looking so lost and miserable that the maid was at last moved to pity and exclaimed, ‘Oh, Miss Bella, if there’s anything you would want to know, anything your Ma didn’t tell you . . .’

  But Annabelle only said crossly, ‘You must call me my lady, Betty, and do try not to be so familiar,’ and so Betty tossed her head, and went silently off to lay out my lady’s night rail.

  Betty at last left and Annabelle climbed into bed and lay shivering despite the heat of the fire. She had a suite of rooms adjoining those of her husband – her husband, the stranger.

  Her mind seemed to fly along on different levels of thought. At the top, she was cross because Betty was untrained and should have warmed her nightgown at the fire and passed a warming pan over the sheets. On the next, she longed for Minerva, although she knew that was mad, but she wanted the Minerva who always had rescued her from scrapes in the past. Further down lurked the handsome face and figure of Lord Sylvester, forever lost. And right at the bottom, thrumming and throbbing away, the ancient fear of the virgin, lying on the edge of the unknown.

  She had extinguished all the candles so that the room was dimly lit by the rosy glow of the fire.

  At last the door opened, and the Marquess strode in. A spurt of flame from a log threw his great black shadow dancing over the walls.

  Annabelle lay very still, rigid. She had never felt so cold, so young, so frightened. With all her heart and soul, she longed to put the clock back and find herself alone in her narrow bed in the vicarage.

  He divested himself of his dressing gown. Annabelle peeped through her fingers and saw the red light of the fire shining on the muscles of his naked legs beneath his nightshirt and screwed her eyes tight shut.

  He climbed into bed and she quickly turned her back on him and scrunched up into a protective ball like a hedgehog.

  ‘Well, my sweeting,’ he said in a husky voice. ‘I think you should at least kiss your husband goodnight.’

  A wild hope seized her that that was all he wished – one goodnight kiss. She cautiously turned around and he gathered her into his arms and pressed her cold figure down the length of his warm, hard, muscular body.

  He kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, and she could sense, rather than see, that he was smiling.

  He kissed her cheeks and her eyelids and then, very, very gently, he kissed her mouth, his hands slowly stroking the length of her body.

  Annabelle began to feel warm and strangely comforted. The gentle soothing kisses and caressing stroking seemed to go on and on, until she could feel a tremor of excitement beginning to invade the pit of her stomach. His mouth pressed a little harder on hers and then began moving across her lips.

  The tremors of excitement built up in Annabelle, until he put one hand on her breast and buried his mouth deeply in hers. She was swept with a feeling of wild elation and moved langourously in his arms.

  The Marquess raised his mouth at last, and, cradling her in his arms, he looked down at her tenderly.

  Alive now with adolescent lust, shaking and eager for more discoveries, Annabelle hardly knew where she was or what she was saying. As he drew her tightly against him again, she gasped, ‘Oh, Sylvester, love me!’

  And all at once the room seemed to go cold and black.

  With one abrupt movement, the Marquess swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and strode from the room, banging the door behind him.

  Outside the Marquess’s house in Conduit Street a closed carriage was standing under the feeble light of one of the parish lamps. In it sat Squire Radford and the Reverend Charles Armitage. They felt they had been waiting forever. The vicar pulled a silver flask from his pocket and, after offering it to the Squire, who refused, he drank a great gulp of brandy. He fidgeted for some minutes and then took out a large silver snuff box like a small coffin, flicked open the lid and took a hearty pinch. He sneezed appreciatively and wiped his nose on his sleeve, cursing as the silver buttons on his cuff got in the way.

  Squire Radford shuddered fastidiously and handed the vicar a clean handkerchief.

  ‘Just think, Jimmy,’ said the vicar dreamily. ‘Two fortunes in the Armitage family. I could have the finest pack in England.’

  ‘I have always considered it eccentric for a man of your means to have a private pack. Have you not considered a subscription hunt?’ asked the Squire.

  ‘Aye, well, there you have me. Truth to tell, I could not bear all the argyfying and organization and whatnot.’

  ‘I hope,’ said the Squire, a trifle severely, ‘that your efforts to save Annabelle’s marriage are prompted by concern for her welfare and not by dreams of perfecting your pack at the Marquess of Brabington’s expense.’

  ‘Brabington’s as brilliant a rider over a country as ever cheered a hound,’ said the vicar, ignoring the Squire’s last remark. ‘He’ll see my way of things.’

  ‘Furthermore,’ pursued the Squire, ‘money is not always the answer. Take the Reverend John Russell of North Devon. You must have heard of his celebrated breed of fox terriers. Well, they were all bred from a little white bitch he bought from a milkman at Oxford.’

  ‘Never heard o’ him, and I’m sure it’s all a hum,’ said the vicar sulkily. Then his face brightened. ‘I tell ’ee, Jimmy, I’ll be glad to get shot of the metropolis. No place for a hunting gentleman. Them newspapers, too, are always sneering at the hunting clergy. And the lot of ’em are agin blood sports. Then why don’t they go for the pheasants? I hates pheasants. They’ve dispossessed the fox and demoralized the country. Foxes are crafty and that’s what makes the sport the greatest. Did I ever tell you about that Green Man Inn over the far side o’ Hopeminster? They kept a tame fox in the kitchen to run in the wheel as a turnspit. One day, Reynard gets out and plays havoc with the geese and then disappears.

  ‘We had hounds out next day and we picked up his scent not far from the inn. He led us a thirty-mile chase across country did that fox, and then he doubles back in a great ring, dives into the inn kitchen, leaps into the wheel, and starts turning the spit as if he had never left. The hounds would have had him, but that fat cook, Bessie, she loves that fox, so she covers him with her petticoats and starts screeching and laying into the hounds with the ladle. He died of old age, did that wretched fox. T’ain’t fair.’

  The Squire sighed and tucked the bearskin rug closer about his legs and felt with his feet for the hot brick.

  ‘Do you care at all
for your daughter?’ he demanded.

  ‘O’ course I do,’ said the vicar grumpily. ‘I’m out here in this demned damp night.’

  ‘Listen!’ said the Squire, raising a finger.

  There was the slamming of a street door.

  The vicar thrust his head out of the carriage window.

  ‘Gone away!’ he cried, espying the tall figure of the Marquess striding off down the street. He lifted the trap with his stick and shouted. ‘After him, damn you!’

  The coach rumbled forwards.

  For some time the Marquess of Brabington was deaf to all else but the thudding rage in his ears until he became aware that he was being hailed with loud cries and halloos.

  He stopped dead and turned to face the vicar, who was hanging out of Lady Godolphin’s carriage window.

  ‘You!’ said the Marquess in accents of loathing.

  ‘Get in,’ said the vicar.

  ‘At this moment,’ grated the Marquess, ‘I wish to have nothing to do with either of you or your family.’

  ‘Which is why we are here. We knew you would be leaving in a rage.’

  ‘You knew . . .’

  The Marquess, who had been turning away, turned back, his face white and drawn in the pale blurred light of the street lamp.

  The vicar’s head disappeared to be replaced by that of Squire Radford. ‘It must seem very odd to you, my lord,’ he said in his precise voice, ‘but I assure you, your feelings on the matter are not original. These things do happen on the best regulated wedding nights.’

  ‘I think you had both better explain yourselves,’ said the Marquess.

  ‘But not here,’ replied the Squire. ‘A bottle of burgundy in Humbold’s coffee house, I think, would ease our worry and tension. Come, my dear sir.’

  He swung open the carriage door. With a shrug of his shoulders the Marquess stooped, and climbed into the carriage.

  Annabelle struggled awake to the sounds of a muted altercation in the dressing room next door to her bedroom.

  Suddenly the quavery voice of Jensen, the Marquess’s butler, rose in exasperation. ‘See here, my girl,’ he said. ‘If my lady chooses to hire an untrained girl from the country as her lady’s maid, then it is my duty to train you. We have always kept the highest standards in the Brabington household, and we do not mean to see them lowered. Now. You do not brush out a silk gown. It should be rubbed gently with a piece of merino kept for the purpose. My lady’s bonnets should be dusted with a light feather plume. The mud from my lady’s boots should be removed with a soft sponge dipped in milk. Now, you light the fire in the dressing room and sweep the hearth, and place my lady’s linen before the fire to warm. Then the hair brushes should be washed in soda. Never wash combs. It splits the tortoiseshell. We will buy you a small brush especially for this duty . . .’

  Annabelle pulled the pillow over her head and willed sleep to descend again. But fear kept sleep away.

  She was quite sure she would be banished back to the vicarage. Would he be there when she went down to breakfast? Perhaps she could have a tray sent up. Minerva had said that very few ladies rose before noon and most had something light on a tray.

  She had the sickening feeling of being in deep disgrace with no one to turn to. Mrs Armitage would simply be puzzled. She would say, ‘But why did you call him Sylvester when his name is Peter?’ and there was no answer to that – or certainly not one that Annabelle meant to give anybody.

  Betty, with a swollen and tear-stained face, eventually came in with a cup of hot chocolate which she placed on a table beside the bed. She drew the curtains and opened the shutters. Pale sunlight flooded the room, and somewhere up by the chimneys a few birds were singing.

  ‘My lord says he will see you . . . I mean, my lady . . . at breakfast in a half an hour,’ muttered Betty.

  ‘Tell him I am indisposed,’ said Annabelle.

  Betty returned in a short time with the message that my lord too was feeling not quite the thing and therefore he suggested that my lady should join him so that they might be ill together.

  ‘Only,’ sniffed Betty, ‘it sounded more like a command to me . . . my lady.’

  Annabelle could only be glad that Betty’s lecture from the butler had damped her usual sly curiosity. She wearily arose and suffered herself to be dressed in a high-waisted, high-necked, ankle-length gown flared at the bottom. The sleeves were puffed at the shoulder and ended at the wrist with a lace frill. It was in a golden yellow colour of straw silk. Over her shoulders she wore a patterned silk shawl with tasselled borders.

  Betty was hopeless at dressing hair. Annabelle could usually manage to achieve a semblance of a fashionable style herself, but her hair had been so frizzed and teased and pomaded for the wedding that she could hardly get the brush through it, and eventually, in exasperation, she simply wound it up in a knot on top of her head.

  She dismissed Betty and opened her box of cosmetics. Perhaps if she looked ill enough, he would not shout at her. She applied a thick coating of blanc and then carefully painted purple shadows under her eyes.

  The effect looked more hideous than sickly and she was about to wipe it off when a footman scratched at the door and called that my lord was awaiting my lady.

  Annabelle gave a nervous start and hurried to the door.

  She followed the liveried footman downstairs, through the silent dimness of the house. For the first time, she wondered what the servants thought of the strange wedding night.

  The Marquess was seated in a small breakfast room on the first floor. It was panelled with dark wood and hung with pictures of the chase. Above the fireplace, the most savage-looking stuffed fox that Annabelle had ever seen – and she had seen many – glared venomously down into the gloom.

  The houses opposite were slightly smaller which allowed sunlight to penetrate the bedrooms upstairs but not any of the public rooms on the lower floors.

  The Marquess was dressed to go out. He was wearing a square-cut tail coat of blue wool with long narrow sleeves, slightly gathered shoulders and small rounded cuffs with biscuit colour pantaloons and hussar boots. His black hair had been arranged à la Brummell in a mass of artistic curls.

  His snowy cravat was tied in the Irish, and his buff waistcoat unbuttoned at the top to reveal the delicate frill of his cambric shirt.

  He smiled at her in a vague kind of way and then turned his attention to his newspaper again.

  Annabelle, eyeing him nervously out of one blue eye, walked over to the sideboard and lifted the cover of one dish after another. She realized she was ravenously hungry. But sick people did not have healthy appetites. She sadly settled for two pieces of toast and took her place at the table.

  He seemed completely at his ease, and completely absorbed in his paper. Annabelle cleared her throat several times, but he did not look up.

  At last, the Marquess put down the paper and yawned. ‘Oh, my poor head,’ he sighed. ‘Well, I suppose I must pay for my night of roistering on the Town.’

  Annabelle’s blue eyes flew to his in surprise, and then a wave of humiliation engulfed her. He had not even cared.

  ‘Are . . . are we going somewhere today, Peter?’ she ventured.

  ‘No, my lady. We are not. I have business matters to attend to. Illness does not become you. You are looking singularly horrible this morning.’

  ‘I-I am ill,’ said Annabelle defiantly.

  ‘Which is why I am not taking you anywhere.’ The tawny eyes seemed to mock her.

  ‘I feel a trifle better,’ ventured Annabelle, ‘and the sun is shining and . . .’

  ‘Then you may have the use of one of the carriages,’ he said equably.

  ‘I have no money,’ said Annabelle. ‘So I cannot really do anything.’

  He pulled a heavy purse from his pocket and passed it over to her. ‘Use that,’ he said, ‘and I will make arrangements for you to draw funds on my bank.’

  ‘Thank you, Peter,’ mumbled Annabelle.

  ‘And since we are to
go about in society, perhaps we should practise the conventions at home. I will address you as “my lady” and you will call me Brabington.’

  ‘It . . . it seems so cold.’

  He made no reply to this, but put down his napkin and rose and stretched.

  ‘Good morning, my lady,’ he said. He strode to the door.

  ‘About last night, Brabington,’ cried Annabelle, ‘I feel I must explain . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t please talk about last night,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I drank more than was good for me and I shudder to think what else I did.’

  He raised his hand in a mocking little salute, and then he was gone.

  Annabelle sat bewildered. He did not love her. A man in love would have fumed and raged. What if . . . oh, horrible thought . . . what if he had not heard her mention Sylvester’s name but had merely abruptly quitted the bedchamber because he was bored by her inexperience.

  She raised her hands to her suddenly hot cheeks. Or was he being very clever and getting his revenge by this seeming indifference? But she should be happy that he did not love her. For she did not love him. She loved Sylvester. She tried to conjure up a picture of Lord Sylvester’s face but found she could not.

  Annabelle decided she could not think any more on the problem until she had washed her hair and face.

  She rang for Jensen and told him to tell Betty to prepare a hair wash. ‘I had reason to send Miss Betty out to collect some items for my lady’s toilet table,’ said Jensen. ‘She is not trained and must learn.’

  ‘Then she will be taught by me,’ said Annabelle crossly. ‘Tell the kitchens I wish a wash prepared for my hair. It must consist of one pennyworth of borax, half a pint of olive oil, and a pint of boiling water. Oh, and add a little rosemary.’

  When Annabelle’s hair had been washed by a housemaid and a pomatum of olive oil, spermaceti, oil of almonds and essence of lemon gently rubbed into it with a warm flannel, her spirits began to recover.

  Peter was piqued, that was all. She would quietly amuse herself and show him she did not care, and soon she would win him round. It was of no use being married if one had to go everywhere oneself.