by Mary Nichols
Should he tell her so and risk losing the friendship they had? He was sure it would be lost, because once he had put his feelings into words, everything must inevitably change. Perhaps it already had after the faux pas he had committed after that last rehearsal. They could never recapture what they had once and, if it were not replaced by something stronger and deeper from which they could move on to marriage, he would be neither brother nor lover. It was a quandary which tormented him night and day.
She pulled up and dismounted, patting her horse’s neck and leaning her head against the animal’s neck. James reined in and jumped easily to the ground to stand beside her.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well, what?’
‘Admit I give you a fair run for your money.’
‘Oh, there is no doubt you always give me a run for my money,’ he said with a twisted smile. ‘The pity is I am no match for you.’
‘Don’t be a ninnyhammer, James. Of course you are. You are a man.’
‘So perspicacious of you to notice,’ he said wryly.
‘Now you are being silly.’
‘Am I? Never mind. Did you mean it when you said you had no doubts?’
‘Doubts about what?’
‘Lord Wincote.’
‘Of course I meant it. One should not marry unless one is very, very sure, do you not agree?’ She looked into his face, as she spoke. Now was his opportunity to speak, but his face was a mask of indifference.
‘Oh, you are right, my dear,’ he said blandly. ‘As long as you are certain, I will say no more. Let us forget the gentleman.’
Bitterly disappointed, she endeavoured to change tack. ‘Is that why you have done nothing about finding yourself a wife, because you are unsure yourself?’
‘Oh, I am sure.’ He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘The trouble is—the lady is not.’
‘Oh, James I cannot imagine that. You are one of the most eligible men in town.’ She paused. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Is that surprising? You would roast me alive.’
‘James, how can you think that of me? Oh, I know I like to tease, but no more than you do.’ She gulped and went on, her need to know so overwhelming that she was not aware of the effect her words might have on him. ‘If your heart were truly engaged, then you would find me wholly sympathetic.’
‘Vinny,’ he said, suddenly serious, ‘it is not your sympathy I want. Do you not understand that?’
‘Yes, yes, I do. It would be too much like condescension, like patting a child on the head and saying, “There, there, never mind.” So stupid and unfeeling. I should hate it myself.’ She smiled brightly to cover her misery. If he were suffering, now was not the time to add to his burden. ‘Let us make a pact: no sympathy and no recrimination and definitely no quizzing.’ And with that she caught the reins of her horse and put her foot in the stirrup, mounting without help. ‘Come, let us go home or you will be late at the House of Lords.’
‘Damn the House,’ he muttered, as he trotted behind her out of the park and back to St James’s Square. He was no further forward except in the realisation that she intended to accept Wincote’s offer. How could he prevent it? Ought he even to try? If he loved her, truly loved her, he ought to be prepared to let her go. He told himself, not altogether honestly, that if the object of her regard had been anyone else but Edmund Wincote, he would stand back and wish her happy, but to see her married to that charlatan was more than he could stomach.
He saw her safely through the gathering crowds to her door and then went home to change from his riding clothes into a dark blue frock coat and matching trouser pantaloons—more fitting garb for trying a Queen for ‘a most unbecoming and degrading intimacy with a foreigner of low station’, as the motion had worded it. Lancelot Greatorex could not have invented a greater farce.
Lavinia went indoors, feeling so low she was on the point of tears. She was certainly in no mood for callers, but the footman who opened the door for her told her Lord Wincote was in the withdrawing room. ‘Her Grace has gone out, my lady,’ he said. ‘Miss Hastings received him.’
Putting her riding hat and crop on a side table, she took a deep breath to steady herself and went up to the first-floor drawing room, where she found Emily Hastings and Lord Wincote sitting facing each other either side of the hearth, each with a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in their hands.
He jumped up when Lavinia entered and bowed towards her. ‘My lady, good morning. Miss Hastings has been so good as to entertain me while I waited for you. We have been hearing each other’s lines.’
‘His lordship is word perfect,’ Miss Hastings said. ‘If you will excuse me. I must see to my charges.’ And with a knowing smile towards Edmund, she left the room.
Lavinia did not doubt he had asked her to leave them alone together, but if he thought she would entertain any intimacy, he would find himself mistaken. ‘My lord, are you not due at Westminster?’
‘I was on my way there, my lady, but I decided to call on the chance I might see you. Miss Hastings told me you had gone riding, but vouchsafed you would not be long.’
‘Yes, I went early to avoid the crowds. Did you have a special reason for calling?’
He smiled. ‘Aside from seeing you and being blessed by your lovely smile, you mean? Why, yes, I did. As I missed meeting Lancelot Greatorex, it occurred to me we might go to the theatre. I would be able to take the opportunity to see the great man at work and perhaps make up for my absence. And we could get to know each other a little better too.’ He took a step towards her and it was all she could do to stop herself from backing away. ‘So what do you say, my dear?’
She did not like the endearment, it was almost proprietorial, as if he had anticipated her answer. She supposed his talk with her father had given him extra confidence. ‘I have already been to see his production of The Rivals, my lord.’
‘Then you will not wish to see it again. But I believe he is doing Romeo and Juliet next. May I look forward to taking you to see that?’
He was so confident, almost as if she had had already accepted him and that, she realised, was her fault. She should not have kept him dangling and now she knew exactly where her heart lay, she could not put off telling him any longer.
‘My lord,’ she began, ‘there is something I must tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You have been so good as to make me an offer of marriage—’
‘Yes, there is nothing I wish for more than to have you as my wife.’
‘Oh, dear.’ It was far more difficult than she had expected to dash a man’s hopes. ‘I cannot find an easy way of saying this, so I must be blunt. My lord, I cannot marry you.’
‘Cannot?’ he echoed. ‘You are bamming me.’
‘No, my lord. I am sensible of the honour you have done me, but I cannot become your wife.’
He stared at her unbelievingly. ‘I don’t believe you are saying this. It is some trite phrase you have been taught. Someone has told you that it is customary for a young lady not to accept on the first time of asking—’
‘No. No one has said that to me, and if they had, I would not play with your affections in that shabby way.’
‘Then why?’
‘I do not have that regard for you, that love, which I think is necessary.’
‘You will come to love me, I am sure. That is why I asked if we might continue to meet though there are no rehearsals, so that we may learn more about each other.’
‘It would make no difference.’
‘Lady Lavinia,’ he said, picking up her hand from her lap and looking into her eyes. ‘You said I was to wait until after the performance—’
‘Yes, but it is not fair of me to hold you to that, when I have already made up my mind.’ She felt uncomfortable under his gaze and wrenched her hand away from his.
He appeared not to notice. ‘No, I am persuaded your mind is far from made up. I will continue to
be patient until the day we have already settled upon.’
She raised her eyes to his in surprise. ‘You mean you will go on with the play?’
He smiled. ‘Of course.’
‘Even though, at the end, you know I will turn you down.’
‘You won’t turn me down.’ He stood up, seized her hand again and for one awful minute his face was so close to hers she thought he was going to attempt to kiss her, but he must have thought better of it, because all he did was smile and raise the back of her hand to his lips. ‘Until then we will forget we ever had this conversation, my dear.’
He made his way from the room and she breathed a huge sigh of relief, though the fact that he had refused to take no for an answer was an added worry. But she had made her own position plain enough and, if her father or stepmother asked about it, she could say truthfully that she had given his lordship her answer.
Going up to her bedroom, she was met on the landing by Emily Hastings. ‘Well?’ she prompted. ‘Is he not the most refined and romantic of gentlemen? And so kind. I am so pleased that you and he are to make a match of it.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Well, not in so many words, but he made it clear that there was no reason at all why you should not be left alone together for a few minutes. So romantic…’
‘Miss Hastings, I had not responded to his offer, you should not have—’
‘Oh, I know you have not formally answered him, but he says it is only some fancy you have to test his fervour and keep him up to the mark, but he has no intention of failing you. He loves you very much.’
‘Did he say that?’ she asked in surprise.
‘He said nothing could equal his regard for you, that without you he could not survive. Of course, I cautioned him against doing anything so foolish as to take his own life. It is a sin in the eyes of God, and he said he would try and remember that… Lavinia, why are you laughing?’
Lavinia straightened her face, but it was no good, the spluttering began again and she was forced to flee.
She went into her bedroom and sat down on the bed until the paroxysm of laughing faded and was replaced, just as suddenly, by a flood of tears. She cried until her eyes were red and her cheeks puffy, but tears did not help her. Edmund Wincote wanted to marry her, James did not. James had said he was no match for her and though they had been out riding at the time and he had been referring to her horsemanship, perhaps he had been trying to tell her, in that considerate way of his, that she was no match for him. But if he were in love with someone else, why would he even think of her in that context? Who was the lady? Was it someone she knew? Whoever it was, she must learn to live with it.
She must bear it, see him frequently and speak to him as if he were the brother she had always thought him to be, watch him married. How could she endure it? But she would never marry anyone else, she could not. Lord Wincote would learn that she meant what she said.
She rose from the bed, stripped off her habit, washed her face and dressed again in a pale blue spotted gingham dress. She brushed out her hair and tied it back with a ribbon before putting on a determined smile and going downstairs again to face the remainder of the day and all the days afterwards, for the rest of her life.
It was her own private trial that filled her head and heart, while the travesty of a public examination proceeded in Westminster. Opinion and speculation raged and the country was almost in a state of emergency. Once the preliminaries were over, the opening speech for the prosecution was begun by the Attorney General. According to Marcus, who relayed the proceedings over supper, he had begun by detailing Caroline’s wanderings on the continent, without mentioning the reason why she had become an exile in the first place.
‘I doubt any court of law has ever heard anything so detailed and explicit,’ he told them. ‘It is far worse than ever I expected and not fit for the ears of ladies, so we shall not talk of it.’
But the fact that he said no more did not mean that his wife and daughter were left in ignorance. There was no escape from it; reports of the trial filled every newspaper. They relayed the prosecution evidence in great detail, of intimacies in hotels, on Royal naval frigates and an Italian pollacca when Caroline and Bergami were supposed to have slept in a tent on deck. The names of the witnesses, cooks, gardeners, chamber maids, the captains of the ships the Queen had sailed in, the landlords of the inns in which she stayed, were household words. Lewd songs were sung about them, rhymes repeated. Never had the populace enjoyed such entertainment.
None of it could not keep Lavinia’s thoughts from her own misery for long. And the worst of it was, she could not tell anyone about it. It was not Edmund’s refusal to believe her that was the problem, it was her desperate love for James. It was like a pain deep inside her which would not go away.
It was exquisite torture when James came back with her father and brother after the day’s business at Westminster was concluded and stayed to dine. Like every other peer he was looking jaded. There were fine lines around his mouth and his eyes were dull, which might have been the strain of listening to the trial, or could have been down to unrequited love. But she would not speak of it to him; no quizzing and no sympathy they had agreed and she would stick to that.
On September the ninth, three weeks after it all began, the prosecution concluded its case and the House was adjourned until the third of October when Lord Brougham was to begin the defence, though how he could do that without discrediting the King no one but he knew.
Some of London’s summer residents set off for their country estates, but most stayed in the capital. There was still a great deal of gossip to be relayed while soirées were being hurriedly arranged. The haut monde began making calls again and Lavinia decided to resume rehearsals. She sent notes to all the cast, calling them together and was preparing the ballroom for their arrival, when James arrived.
He appeared a little less strained and smiled pleasantly as he looked about him. ‘Others not here yet?’
‘No, you are the first.’ She forced herself to sound calm, though inside she was shaking with nerves, half-afraid she would give herself away and then not only James but the whole cast would learn how she felt about him. The next two hours were going to take all her self-control.
The dress she was wearing was severely plain and her hair was pulled back into a simple Grecian knot, but whatever she wore, he decided, she was always beautiful and desirable. But she was looking pale and tired; her eyes seemed to have lost some of their lustre and the spring had gone from her step, as if she had the cares of the world upon her shoulders. ‘Vinny, are you sure this is not all too much for you?’
‘What do you mean?’ It was almost a snap. ‘I am perfectly capable of putting on a little play.’
‘I shall be glad when it is over,’ he said.
‘Yes, and so shall I.’
He looked at her sharply. It was not the answer he had expected unless, of course, she was looking forward to announcing her betrothal. He forced a smile. ‘And Lord Wincote?’
‘What about him?’
‘Is he still patiently waiting?’
‘I have seen little of him.’ Why she did not tell him the truth, she did not know, unless it was pride which prevented her. Or some perverse notion that he ought to be able to see what was underneath his nose without her having to tell him. ‘Like you, he has had to attend Westminster each day. No doubt he will be here soon with everyone else.’
He wished it were otherwise. He wished Edmund to kingdom come. He wished a way could be found to make Lavinia look at him as a man in love and not a brother. He was wondering whether to force the issue when Lord Wincote arrived.
If he was disappointed to find James had beaten him to it, he managed to hide it, as he greeted them both. ‘My lady, I hope I find you well?’
‘Perfectly well, my lord,’ she replied. ‘And you?’
‘I am quite well, my dear.’
She ignored James’s sharp intake of breath. ‘
Good, I am glad you were able to come today. You missed so much the last time…’
‘Yes, Wincote, where were you?’ James demanded.
‘I had urgent business to attend to,’ he said primly. ‘I have apologised to Lady Lavinia—’
‘I trust whatever it was has not taxed your strength,’ James put in. ‘You look a trifle fagged.’
‘I have been attending Westminster, just as you have, Corringham.’
‘I am surprised that should tire you. I had not thought you so interested in the debate, considering you have vouchsafed no opinion on the matter.’
‘Oh, but I have. If you are going to try the Queen, then you should also try the King. It is only justice, after all.’
‘And you, I comprehend, are a stickler for justice.’
‘Of course.’
‘Then I hope you never live to regret that conviction.’
Lavinia looked from one to the other. They seemed to be talking in riddles which instinct told her had nothing to do with what was going on at Westminster. Did James still think Lord Wincote knew something about Lady Willoughby’s missing diamonds? He had certainly been wrong about Lady Graham’s necklace because Constance had told her it had been recovered, though she did not know the details.
‘My lords,’ she said, determined to stop them quarrelling openly, ‘will you help me with the scenery? I want to have it in place for the rehearsal.’
They had no choice but to obey and by the time the scenery was in place, the others of the cast began arriving. First was Sir Percy, clad in yellow and pink, bringing with him Lady Rattenshaw’s apologies. ‘Not well,’ he said vaguely. ‘Said she would be right as ninepence in a day or two.’ Lavinia was disappointed that the lady was going to miss a second rehearsal, but there was nothing for it but to ask Constance to stand in for her again.