by M C Beaton
The vicar left her in the garden and rushed indoors to look for his best suit of clothes. He felt quite sick with excitement until he remembered Mrs. Bliss, and all the happiness drained out of him. But for Belinda, he could slay dragons.
The couple were silent on the road to Sarsey. Belinda, too, was picturing her mother’s rage and disappointment.
Mr. Bliss found to his bewilderment that the duke’s vicar was facing him and asking for Belinda’s hand in marriage. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “It is all very sudden. Do you have any money other than your stipend?”
“I have three hundred a year from a family trust, sir.”
“Well, it would not furnish Belinda with all the gowns and trinkets to which she has become accustomed. Also, she is very young…”
“We are very much in love, sir.”
“And love won’t wait? Well, my boy, if that is what Belinda wants, you have my blessing. But you now have her mother to cope with. You had best come with me.”
The ladies were in the drawing room. The duke had just joined them, wearing riding clothes, for he had been out early on his estates.
Looking as if he were facing up to a firing squad, Mr. Bliss said in a shaky voice, “My dear, Mr. Marsham here has asked my permission to pay his addresses to Belinda, and I have given my consent.”
“You what?” screamed Mrs. Bliss. “Belinda! The most beautiful girl in the county to be thrown away on a mere vicar!”
“I would remind you, madam,” said the duke icily, “that Mr. Marsham is a friend of mine. I should take it as a great and personal insult if you went against his wishes.”
Mrs. Bliss opened and shut her mouth like a landed pike. All at once she knew that the duke would not forgive her if she stood in his vicar’s way. Why could not the duke have more exalted friends close by? Mr. Graham, for example, would have been more suitable. But she wanted this wedding for Lucy, and nothing must stand in the way of that.
“Oh, very well,” she said ungraciously. “But I advise you to wait, vicar. Belinda is very young.”
Belinda rose to her feet. “That’s settled,” she said with satisfaction. “Mr. Marsham, let us go for a walk in the garden. Come, Barney.”
The butler came in at that moment to say that Farmer Jessop had called and wanted to see the duke. Lucy, not wanting to be left alone with her mother and her plans, slipped away.
She went downstairs and wandered into one of the great staterooms. She looked out of one of the windows. Belinda and her vicar were strolling arm in arm across the grass, with Barney at their heels. They were holding hands and laughing, innocence and happiness on a fine spring day.
Lucy drew back, feeling lost and bereft. With Belinda so much in love, she was left now with her own dark problem.
She walked over to the fireplace and stood with one small foot on the fender, looking down into the empty grate.
And then she heard a man’s voice, quite clearly, and realized at the same time that it must be coming from a room above, the flue acting as a sound conductor.
“I was all set to marry Meg,” came the man’s voice. It had a strong country burr. “But she slap my face. Now you, Your Grace, knows about the ladies. I kissed her and she slap my face and I could have swore she wanted me.”
Then came the duke’s voice, clear and amused. “And where were your hands, Jessop, when you were kissing her?”
“Well, I was a bit carried away, and that’s a fact. I put one hand down her gown, like, for a feel.”
“And Meg a virgin. Listen, Jessop, if you want to wed the girl, you will need to rein in your animal lusts until after the wedding. A virgin wants moonlight and chaste kisses and heavy sighs. Anything stronger is going to frighten her away. You must court her. Take her flowers. Lean forward and kiss her gently on the cheek. That sort of thing. The sure way to frighten any virginal female off is by mauling her and kissing her. Now, about the boundary down at the six acre…”
Lucy walked away from the fireplace, thinking hard. When the duke had kissed her, she had behaved surely as he had expected a virgin to behave, trembling and frightened. She was perfectly sure that if Mr. Jessop’s Meg had been just as bold as he, then he might have been delighted at the time and damned her as a slut later. Such a tremendous price was laid on virginity. It was considered a young lady’s most valuable asset—more valuable than her dowry or her jewels. A smile curled Lucy’s lips.
What if she were to go on the attack? What if she were to kiss him passionately? Such boldness must surely disgust any man. How beautifully quiet this stateroom was! She sat down in a chair to think the matter out. The duke was getting his revenge on the Bliss family by marrying an unwilling bride. But what if she were to show herself willing? Terribly willing. The spice would surely go out of the engagement for him. He would be forced to consider what marriage to her would mean. It would mean having Mrs. Bliss in residence for most of the year.
She waited impatiently the rest of that day, but the duke was engaged in seeing his tenants and estates manager. The stationer had called on Mrs. Bliss to present his samples, and she was choosing a suitable one for the wedding invitations. “These must be ready tomorrow,” she insisted, and the stationer said they would be, planning to charge her a huge sum to cover the costs of keeping his full staff at work all night long.
Lucy dressed with considerable care for dinner. Belinda came in when she had nearly finished, a radiant and happy Belinda. “You really do love your vicar,” said Lucy. “And yet you barely know him.”
“Yes, it is most odd,” agreed Belinda. “I simply wanted someone to take me away from Mama, and he seemed so agreeable and such a lot can be done with him to make him over. He will be bishop by the time I have finished with him. But in any case, I fell in love with him, just like that.”
“Oh, Belinda, leave the poor man alone. You will turn out like Mama and he will end up a bishop only because you have nagged him into it. Besides, bishops are very grand and do not play with dogs.”
“Really?” Belinda’s eyes widened.
“Yes, really, so do not ruin what you have got. Bishops are very stuffy, and the only time they ever see a dog is when they go riding to hounds.”
“Papa told me this afternoon that he will make over an allowance to me for gowns and things,” said Belinda, “but I thought I could transform Mr. Marsham with it instead.”
“And then he will not be the man you married. He will become like Papa, gray and scholarly and intimidated.”
“I should not like that, nor should Barney,” said Belinda seriously.
“And a bishop would not allow Barney to loll around on tops of beds the way he is doing on mine.” As if to underline the point, Barney picked up a pillow in his teeth and proceeded to worry it with great energy until Lucy took it from him.
“But what of you?” asked Belinda. “Are you still set on getting out of the engagement?”
“More than ever, and I must be quick about it. I plan to end it before this night is out, for the stationer will have the invitations here by tomorrow, and Mama is determined to write them all out and send them by the mail coach to London.”
“And what are you going to do?” asked Belinda curiously.
Lucy grinned. “I will not shock you by telling you.”
“Are you ready to go downstairs, Lucy? Marsham has been invited to dinner again. Did you choose the menu?”
“Not really,” said Lucy with a rueful laugh. “My plain fare did not annoy him, so I told Monsieur Pierre to have a free hand.”
To Lucy’s dismay, it transpired that the duke had invited several people from the county to dine, six in all, all obviously delighted at having obtained an invitation to Sarsey at last. So dinner lasted an interminable length and then the ladies retired to the drawing room, where Lucy was commanded to play for them. When the gentlemen joined them, card tables were set up, and there was a long evening of cards, followed by supper, then more cards, and it was two in the morning before
the guests took their leave.
The duke’s valet undressed his master for bed. The duke thought over the events of the evening. It had been pleasant to have company. Dinner had been splendid and Lucy had behaved charmingly to his guests. It was almost a pity that he was not going to marry her.
He dismissed his valet and climbed into his great four-poster bed and composed himself for sleep. He would take Lucy aside early the next day and tell her the wedding was off. He would reimburse Mrs. Bliss for the wedding invitations and that would be that.
He yawned and closed his eyes and the door opened then suddenly. There had been a soft scratching at the door. “Come in,” he called. The bed curtains were drawn tightly closed. He could hear soft footsteps entering the room and assumed it was some maidservant, although he could not think of any reason why a maidservant should be in his room in the middle of the night. But the duke had long been used to being surrounded by a whole retinue of servants. Servants anticipated his every need. When he went to sit down, a footman was always there to push a chair under the ducal bottom. When his glass was nearly empty, there was always another footman to fill it. Fires were never allowed to die down and go out, or dust to lie anywhere in the great mansion.
And then the bed curtains were slowly parted and he found that Lucy Bliss was looking down at him. “I c-came to s-say good night,” she said.
“So good night, Miss Bliss,” remarked the duke stonily. Lucy was in her nightdress and wrapper, with a frilly nightcap tied on her head. He suddenly wondered if she had divined that he did not want to marry her and was trying to compromise him.
“May I kiss you good night?” asked Lucy.
She really is trying to compromise me, he thought with sudden amusement. “And when I kiss you, does your mother come bursting into the room?”
Lucy gave a shudder. “No one knows I am here. You must never tell anyone! Promise!” she said fiercely.
“I promise.” So she was not trying to compromise him. What was she after? The best way was surely to kiss her and then find out when she did next. He held up his arms. She stooped down and put one small hand on each shoulder and bent her mouth to his. Her mouth worked feverishly against his, more with determination than passion. He put his arms around her and lifted her onto the bed to lie beside him. “That is better,” he said. He held the length of her slight body against his own and began to kiss her, but something happened to him that had not happened before. He had admitted to himself that Lucy was an attractive little thing and could rouse his senses, but now he felt hot and heavy passion surging through his veins. At first he could not get enough of kissing her, and then he wanted all of her. He freed himself from the bedclothes and rolled over on top of her.
Lucy’s mind was whirling about in all this passionate blackness lit from time to time with flares of alarm. She felt cold air against her legs and realized he was raising the hem of her nightgown, and with a shriek, she jumped from the bed. “I am sorry,” he said raggedly. “I do not know what came over me. I have never known such… Dammit, lady, do not come near my bedchamber again until we are wed.”
He lay shaking long after he heard his bedroom door close. What had come over the girl? What had come over him? Oh, God, the damage was done. He would marry Lucy Bliss, mother and all, he would put up with a hundred Mrs. Blisses just to have his fill of that body, that slight, seductive body with its small, thrusting breasts and long, long legs.
After a time, he rose and splashed himself with cold water and toweled down and put on his dressing gown. He would ask Lucy, he would wake her and ask her, what had driven her to come to his bedroom.
But he stopped outside her bedroom door. He heard Belinda’s voice. “I heard you crying, Lucy. What is the matter?”
He made out Lucy’s voice, muffled at first as if her face were hidden in the pillow, then stronger. “I hoped to give him a disgust of me, Belinda, so I went to his bedchamber.”
“Oh, no!”
“Yes, and he all but raped me.”
“Lucy! That cannot be true!”
“No, no,” said Lucy feverishly. “I mean he could have taken me. He is the devil, Belinda, and he knows how to take my soul away and make me want to do dreadful things like the beasts in the fields.”
“But why go to him?” wailed Belinda.
“I told you. I thought my wanton behavior would frighten him, for I have been told that gentlemen swear that no real lady is capable of passion. I hoped he might think I was not a virgin—anything to make him force me to break the engagement.”
“I cannot bear to see you so unhappy,” said Belinda. “Mr. Marsham likes Wardshire, so I will ask my darling to speak to the duke tomorrow, and he will listen, you’ll see. Wardshire is too proud to marry anyone who doesn’t want him. Perhaps instead of all these pranks and ploys, Lucy, you should just have told him. He cannot marry me now, for I am to wed Mr. Marsham. That’s it! Don’t you see? Tell him. Oh, I swear you don’t know your own mind!”
Then I will make her mind up for her, thought the duke as he walked quietly away, having heard enough.
Lucy watched Belinda set out in the gig the next morning, Belinda, who was so sure she could persuade Mr. Marsham to speak to the duke. They had agreed to try that method first, and if it failed, then Lucy would simply have to face up to the duke herself.
The morning stretched out, slow hour after slow hour. Lucy discovered a great deal of Sarsey as she spent that morning avoiding the servants who had been sent by Mrs. Bliss to look for her.
At last, looking out the windows, she saw Belinda coming back and ran to meet her.
“Well?” asked Lucy eagerly.
Belinda shook her head.
“He would not do it?”
“I did not get a chance to speak to him. He had gone out driving with the duke. So I said to that dragon of a servant that I would wait. She was dreadfully grumpy but made me some tea. She kept bobbing in and telling me that she was sure the master would be away for a long time and so I should take my leave. In the end I grew impatient with her and said as I was to be Mrs. Marsham, she may as well begin by getting used to my presence in the vicarage. She threw her apron over her head and began to wail and sob and call me a scheming woman and all sorts of nasty things. She went on like a woman crossed in love, and yet she is fifty if she’s a day and as ugly as sin,” added Belinda with all the callousness of youth. “It was all so upsetting that I came away. I shall try to see Mr. Marsham in the afternoon, if you wish.”
“No,” said Lucy, “you have tried hard enough. There is no reason why I cannot break off the engagement myself, and I only wish I had thought of such a plain and sensible way of doing it before.”
Belinda opened her mouth to point out that the reason Lucy had not done it before was for fear the duke might then insist on marrying her, Belinda, but was stopped from saying anything by the arrival of the duke himself, who said that he and Mr. Marsham had been to see the bishop.
That special license! Lucy said in a firm voice, “Would you be so good as to grant me an audience in private?”
“By all means,” he said as Mrs. Bliss’s voice could be heard from above, calling, “Lucy, is that you? Lucy, I need your help to write out these invitations.”
Lucy pretended not to hear and followed the duke into the library. He kicked the logs on the hearth with one spurred and booted foot and then swung round. “What now?” he asked.
She looked up into his eyes, but they were smiling down at her in a way that made her feel weak. She looked instead at a corner table and said, “I wish to terminate our engagement. I do not want Mama to send out those invitations.”
“As you will,” he replied with seeming indifference. “It will have to be Belinda instead.”
“It cannot be Belinda. Belinda is engaged to Mr. Marsham.”
He smiled again. “Fortunately, the announcement of the engagement has not yet been sent to the newspapers. Marsham will do as I command.”
“You cannot
mean it.”
“I do. Do you want to come with me to Mrs. Bliss and see her reaction? She always wanted Belinda to marry me, you know.”
“You are a monster,” raged Lucy.
“Exactly. So with your sister’s happiness in mind, I suggest you look forward to your wedding. Tell me, my dear, do you usually visit gentlemen in their bedchambers?”
“Frequently,” hissed Lucy. “And why should you care? You have probably kissed hundreds of females.”
“Scores, I think,” he corrected amiably. “Now, when I returned poor Mr. Marsham to his vicarage, he was met by his horrible servant, who was weeping and complaining about Miss Belinda, who, it transpired, had been waiting there all morning, saying she had to see the vicar, for she wanted the vicar to speak to the duke about something. What could that something have been, I wonder. Your sister is very happy and very much in love. As you are obviously very fond of her, do not do anything to distress her or dim her happiness.”
Lucy looked at him silently, her mind in a turmoil. Would he really insist on Belinda marrying him if she cried off? And yet it was a risk Lucy realized that she was not prepared to take.
She found her voice. “I will make your life a misery,” she vowed.
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “That is more like the Lucy Bliss I know and love. You must get to know my tenants. When does your mother rise in the mornings?”
“About nine. Why?”
“Then be prepared to leave with me and go on a tour of the estate at eight tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Eight
Lucy went into Belinda’s bedroom very early, but her sister was fast asleep. It seemed selfish to disturb her.
She dressed herself and made her way downstairs. Four housemaids were standing together in the hall, whispering and giggling. Lucy looked at them sharply and then decided as she had no intention of ever becoming mistress of this house and staff, it did not matter a whit how the servants behaved.