A faint shadow of something—relief?—flicked through the green of Toby’s eyes and was gone.
“Come and meet my distinguished guest,” said Toby heartily. “But then, you know Charles, don’t you?”
Margery nodded, faintly aware of the marquess’s mocking blue eyes.
“Hey, Charles,” said Toby. “Lady Margery is just about to retire. Good idea! Heard the dressing gong just now. But we’ll all meet at dinner.”
The marquess bowed low over Margery’s hand. “My felicitations on your engagement,” he murmured. “Toby is indeed a—er—lucky man.”
Confused and at a loss for words, she kept her eyes lowered and scurried off into the house.
The great hall yawned on either side of her. She climbed up a hideously carved wooden staircase, which branched off in two directions leading to the first floor. Which way to go?
She then saw the green-and-silver livery of a footman emerging from one of the rooms and, under his direction, she mounted a further flight of stairs and was ushered into a vast bedroom.
When the footman had lit the candles and left, she was at liberty to sort out her confused emotions.
She had thought that life without Chelmswood would be unbearable.
If a rich marriage was the only means of saving her home, then a rich marriage she would have. It had all seemed so simple.
Before the blow had fallen, she had not thought of marriage, simply enduring her seasons until she could get back to the “real” life of Chelmswood. Lady Amelia’s placid and uncritical friendship had been all that Margery desired.
Now, what had happened? She was frightened of marriage. If she should marry, then let it be to some congenial companion who would share her interests. Someone like… A picture of the marquess flashed before her eyes and she blinked to erase it. The marquess, indeed. The man was nothing more than a mocking dandy.
But Margery bitterly realized that there were fates worse than losing Chelmswood or even being a companion to Desdemona. If she suffered Desdemona’s patronage, even for a little, then perhaps she might meet some gentleman who would be much more suitable than the amiable but witless three she had just laid siege to. If she could charm them, why not someone else? Someone, perhaps, with little money, but who would not spend his time at cockfights or running amok on mad wagers. Lady Amelia could then return and live with her as before.
Margery tried in vain to imagine a “suitable gentleman,” but again the marquess loomed up before her.
What must the marquess think of her anyway—letting him kiss her as if she were the veriest lightskirt? She felt her cheeks grow red with shame and dreaded seeing him at the dinner table.
And how should she tell Toby that she had decided to terminate the engagement? Her head began to ache, but she resolutely rang the bell for Battersby and submitted to her maid’s expert ministrations.
Attired in a dark green velvet gown, fashionably low-bosomed and high-waisted and with her hair dressed à la Sappho, she timidly descended the stairs and once again walked through the long chain of saloons until she came across the rest of the party.
The party consisted of two of the local county girls who were barely out of the schoolroom—Ann Burleigh and Cornelia Smythe—and three men of Toby’s age who obviously shared his sporting habits. They were dressed with obvious discomfort in knee breeches and well-starched cravats and talked in very loud voices about how much they despised the life of London. Lady Amelia was sitting placidly listening to one of them—a Mr. Henderson—rhapsodizing over the joys of otter-hunting. Her motherly face wore its usual look of polite interest, and only Margery knew that she was bored to distraction.
The marquess was undoubtedly the most elegant gentleman there, the magnificence of his bottle-green evening coat and emerald jewelry highlighting the tawdry magnificence of their surroundings. He gave Margery a peculiarly sweet smile, but she resolutely looked away, her heart beating fast.
Ann Burleigh engaged her in conversation. What was London like? She, Ann, would have her season next year. Were the gentlemen very bold? A certain gentleman had helped Ann alight from her carriage only last Sunday, right outside the church, and he had pressed her hand violently. Now, didn’t Lady Margery think that that was a very rakish thing to do?
And Lady Margery wondered what this innocent would think of a passionate kiss from the Marquess of Edgecombe!
At dinner, Margery found to her horror that she was expected to make a speech on her engagement. She blushed and claimed to be overtired from her journey and earned a contemptuous “Pooh! Fiddlesticks!” from Lady Sanderson. No one asked or seemed to care about Lord Sanderson. It was almost as if he were dead, decided Margery.
There was no respite after dinner. Toby suggested that the gentlemen should join the ladies immediately instead of lingering over their wine.
He would entertain them with a song he had just learned by heart. Margery was pressed into service at the pianoforte while Toby stood beside her, leaning uncomfortably close.
She nearly jumped from her seat as Toby began to roar out his song with all the finesse of an anguished bull:
“I’m come a lusty wooer,
My dildin’ my doldin’,
I’m come a lusty wooer,
Lilly bright and shinee…”
The song seemed interminable, and, as is the way at these home musicales, the guests merely endured the first stanza before turning round and talking to each other. Margery alone was left to endure the brunt of the dildin-doldins, and Toby breathed passionate brandy fumes over her at the end of each line.
At last it was finally over and the voice had stopped. Margery looked up at Toby in a bewildered way, as if she could not quite believe that her ordeal was over. When she realized that it was indeed finished, she gave Toby a dazzling smile of relief and gratitude, which the closely watching marquess interpreted as love.
“Well, that’s that,” thought the Marquess of Edgecombe, giving a vicious kick to the logs in the fire. “She does love him after all, therefore I have no reason to stop her from wedding Toby.” And then he wondered why that cheering thought should make him feel so savagely gloomy.
Toby was now pressing Margery to entertain the company. She selected a very long composition by Scarlatti and resolutely began to play. If she played, she would not have to talk or think.
A whole hour passed and the guests began to fidget and yawn and only the marquess realized that Margery was playing the same piece of music over and over again.
Lady Sanderson began to grumble behind her whiskers and then suddenly sprang into action. She picked up the nearest cushion and hurled it at her son’s head. “A romp! A romp!” screamed the two young girls, leaping joyously from their chairs and beginning to throw cushions at the young men. The young men retaliated with apples and oranges, and Ann and Cornelia threw down their cushions and let fly with candlesticks and objets d’art. Margery stopped playing and turned round.
Lady Sanderson was roaring with laughter, her face a weird purple behind its barrier of whiskers. Lady Amelia was hiding behind the curtains. The marquess had retreated to a corner of the room and was watching the scene, his face a mask of boredom.
“Let’s smother the ladies,” roared Toby, advancing on Lady Margery with a cushion. There were whoops and cries all round. Ann Burleigh had climbed up on a sofa and was displaying an unmaidenly glimpse of leg. Margery took to her heels and fled with Toby yelling, “Yoicks! Yoicks!” and pounding behind her.
She ran swiftly through the seemingly endless saloons. The butler was standing on the front step with the great door of the hall lying open.
Margery fled past the startled butler and out into the grounds. The grass was soaking wet from a heavy fall of dew. Her slippered feet were soaked through in an instant, but, undeterred, she ran and ran, across the great uncut lawns to the safety of the Home Wood, where she collapsed sobbing for breath against a tree.
It was a brightly moonlit night and, peering round
the trunk of the tree and through a gap in the wood, she could see the heavy figure of Toby, his great bull-like head twisting this way and that. Then the other guests crowded onto the lawn behind him.
“A hunt for Margery!” Toby was crying. “Bring torches!” The servants came out and handed each guest a flaring torch, and with great whoops and cries they spread out over the grounds.
Margery did not want to be caught. She had always managed to avoid these romps in the past and even left the room when anyone suggested blind man’s bluff. She was frightened of being found and facing a circle of jeering faces. These romps were usually an excuse for the gentlemen to get their arms around the ladies and could end in accidents.
Margery remembered attending a formal dinner at Woburn the previous year. During dinner, everyone whispered to his next neighbor and Margery had been frightened of the sound of her own voice. After dinner, the guests dispersed throughout the saloons, some to play the harp or take up an attitude on a sofa or play cards or talk of furniture. The Duchess of Bedford suddenly entered at the head of a troupe of young men and women. They had started throwing cushions. Then everything was thrown. The romp was at last ended by the duchess’s daughter, Lady Jane, being nearly blinded by an apple which hit her in the eye, and the poet, Shelley, had been nearly smothered by the female romps getting him to the ground and pommeling him with cushions.
The whoops and halloos of the searchers drew closer, and Margery began to look wildly round. She seemed to be surrounded. There was only one way to go. Up.
Hitching up her skirts, she climbed nimbly up the tree as far as she could go and then settled herself comfortably on the fork of a branch and waited for the search to end.
The night was damp and humid and she began to shiver in her now-bedraggled dress. Suddenly it was quiet. She could no longer see the flare of the smoking torches between the trees. Margery eased her cramped limbs and prepared to descend. Then she froze as she heard the sound of voices directly underneath her. It was Toby and one of his friends, Jeremy Byles. Toby’s exasperated voice rose clearly in the still air. He said: “Demme, Jeremy, but this is beyond a joke, upsetting m’household like that. M’mother says there’s something strange about her.”
“Never thought to see you gettin’ leg-shackled,” said Jeremy.
“Never thought to see it meself,” said Toby sourly. “I wish now… Well, never mind.”
“Can’t expect a man to go through with it if the gel’s insane,” Jeremy’s voice suggested.
“Well, you know how it is,” said Toby. “I never know what to say to the ladies—and Margery, well, it’s like talking to another chap, you know. Easy going. Never a suggestion of anything wrong with her till now.”
“Not as if she’s a real dasher, either,” said Jeremy.
“She looked different in London,” said Toby slowly. “All smiles and sparkle. She looks quiet and worried now and it takes a bit of the shine off.”
“It ain’t as if you’ve got to get hitched,” persisted Jeremy. “No reason, eh?”
“You mean, have I thrown a leg over her?” said Toby with brutal frankness. “No. Not yet I ain’t.”
“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Jeremy. “Anything to help a friend. I’ll hint her off, you know. Say you’ve got the pox.”
“I say, steady on,” howled Toby, his voice shrill with alarm.
“Oh, well, I could say you were secretly in love with someone else.”
Toby suddenly remembered how, a few years ago, he had been charmed by one of the local county girls and had confided as much to Jeremy. And how this Jeremy had gone on and on and on pointing out the many disadvantages of marriage. Dammit! He had made the whole idea of getting married seem like a foppish action.
“Don’t do anything until I speak to Margery,” he said curtly. “No use standing here getting wet feet. She’s probably in her rooms.”
Margery found she was trembling with rage. How dare Jeremy Byles interfere? Then she remembered that she no longer wanted to be affianced to Toby and that the infuriating Jeremy did not know that she had been sitting directly above their heads.
Stiff and cramped in every limb, she climbed down from her hiding place and walked wearily towards the house. All was quiet. The moon silvered the wet grass and sparkled on the dewdrops hanging from the thorns of the tangled rosebushes. Somewhere an owl hooted, opening up vistas of lonely empty countryside.
A shadow detached itself from a pillar of the porticoed entrance.
“The party is over, Lady Margery,” said the light, mocking voice of the marquess. “You do not show the courage I expected—to flee before a party of rowdy romps.”
“I do not like romps,” said Margery stiffly, feeling very young and pompous. “’Tis an unfashionable trait, I’ll allow.”
He walked beside her into the hall. The candles had been snuffed and the great hall was lit by the red glow of a dying fire.
Margery hurried towards the staircase, but the marquess put a restraining hand on her arm.
“Stay for a little,” he said in a more gentle voice than she had ever heard him use before. He drew her gently towards the fireplace. Margery sat down on a high-backed settle and looked up at him apprehensively. He sat down opposite her, his face half hidden in the shadows. He threw a log on the glowing embers and the flames leapt up, sending eerie shadows wavering and dancing round the walls.
“I have already apologized to you, Lady Margery,” said the marquess in a husky, hesitant voice. “I now feel I owe you another apology. I had damned you as an opportunist and I thought that you had no affection in your heart for any of my friends. But when I saw you look up at Toby this evening, I realized that your emotions were genuine. Also, it must be a bitter blow to be faced with losing one’s home.”
Margery felt tears start to her eyes at the unexpected sympathy in his voice. She longed to confide in him; to tell him that she didn’t care a rush for any of his friends. But how he would despise her!
“Perhaps,” said Margery, staring into the flames, “I loved Chelmswood too much. It is only bricks and mortar, after all.
“There seemed to be no discomfort to cope with. I had Amelia’s undemanding and uncritical friendship and I lived through the lives of my tenants.”
The marquess listened silently, one long hand laid against his thin cheek. He had a feeling that she was talking more to herself than to him.
Margery went on after a short silence. “Yes! That was it! I lived the lives of my tenants. Their marriages were my marriage, their babies my babies, their illnesses my illnesses, but… oh… all comfortably second-hand… like reading a thrilling book. Father was mostly away from home. The only time I ever had to step into the real world was when I had to face another season. I enjoyed looking as unattractive as possible. That way I knew nobody would ask me to dance and I could therefore save myself from the pangs of rejection and failure. Each season was like a bad dream, to be endured with patience until I could return to Chelmswood and wrap myself in the minutiae of its domestic affairs and tenants’ problems. I wonder now whether it all kept me too young for my years.”
“And you so ancient,” teased the marquess. “But,” he added bracingly, “this will soon be your home.”
Margery started and looked wildly round as if awakening from a bad dream. “This!” she said in a horrified voice, which seemed to encompass everything from the neglected park to the damp rooms to the elderly lord immured between the walls.
“Of course,” replied the marquess, surprised. “You will naturally live in your husband’s home. You did not think you could possibly get married and then simply return to Chelmswood?”
Lady Margery raised her hands to her face. That was, in fact, just what she had thought. She began to wonder if there were insanity in the family. But… but… perhaps one of the other two suitors would not be so bad… but… but then he would expect her to share his life and… and… his bed.
The marquess watched the changing emotions f
lickering across Margery’s little face. She looked like an agitated pixie, her tiny figure perched on the huge settle and her slippered feet barely touching the floor.
“You are in love with Toby, aren’t you?” asked the marquess with sudden curiosity.
Margery’s eyes flew to his face and then dropped again in confusion. The marquess once again seemed a hard, cold stranger whose mocking eyes shone queerly in the dancing light of the flames.
“You must excuse me, my lord,” she said, getting to her feet. “The hour is late.” She dropped him a curtsy and hurried off into the darkness of the staircase before he had realized that she had not answered his question.
The marquess sat for a long time looking into the fire. He felt rather sad and… and… desolate… that was the word. It must have been too much burgundy at dinner. How strange the workings of one’s liver! How strange that a couple of bottles of Toby’s best should make the world seem such an empty, endless desert! He would go to the library, where he had last seen a bottle of Mr. J. Schweppes’ soda water, and drink the lot.
Margery awoke to blazing sunshine and a blinding headache. From the clamor of birdsong outside the window, she realized it must be too early for the eleven o’clock breakfast. She would take a walk downstairs and indulge in the unfeminine practise of reading the morning papers.
She passed various servants going about their duties on her way downstairs, but there was no sign of the other members of the household.
She stopped the butler, who was crossing the hall, and asked him if the morning papers had arrived. He inclined his powdered head in assent and said they had been given to Lord Sanderson, who often threw them out into the end saloon after he had finished with them.
Margery wandered through the empty rooms until she came to the end one. Lady Sanderson’s “throne” was empty and an elderly dog—the only occupant of the room—lay snoring and whooping on the sofa as it chased rabbits across the endless fields of sleep.
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