His marriage had originally begun as one of the games he played with life, one of his sardonic jokes. If he were honest, it had even been a backhanded way of getting his revenge on that unpleasant swine, her father, to bed his daughter and have that daughter his willing partner.
Only, at some point, the game had changed, and everything with it, for as he grew to know her, he had come to care for her. The change had been slow, and it was hard for him to know when his careless amusement had changed into love, when his cold heart had been melted. It was for her sake now, as much as his, although his own pleasure was great, that they made love. If he had changed her, transforming her from frigidity into a creature of passion and fire, he had changed himself, irrevocably, and he could even remember when that understanding had come to him…
Early one morning, against their usual custom of him rising before her, she had slipped out of bed quite naked, for she had no false shame before him, however modest and shy she was in public, and had begun to pin up her hair before the mirror.
Lying there, propped up on one arm, watching her, he saw, not for the first time, that although tiny, her body was beautiful, perfectly proportioned and shapely now that good food and happiness were bringing it to full perfection. When she raised her arms and turned her head, the lovely lines of it were fully revealed.
All those months ago he had been right. The promise he had seen in her, when he had caught her unawares in the schoolroom, had flowered into the graceful woman before him—and she was not, he was sure, all that she would yet be. The two Hesters, the one in the glass and the one outside it, moved before him, and the one in the glass saw his eyes on her. She smiled at him, her mouth lifting at the corner.
A wave of something which Tom Dilhorne had never before experienced broke over him. He knew, for the first time, that what he felt for Hester was not simply pride of ownership, or lust for the delights of the body, but was love for her, for something outside of himself, love for the essential Hester. She was not simply to be cherished because she was his, an extension of himself, but because she was herself, was Hester…
Jack Cameron had smashed the love and trust which was beginning to grow between them with a few wicked words. He was sure that it had been done deliberately, and Cameron, he swore grimly to himself, would pay for the doing. Dearly.
He also thought that he knew who it was who had spread the gossip about Sydney which had enabled Cameron to spit his poison. Something would have to be done about that, too. He blamed himself for having ignored it, for thinking that no one would dare bait Tom Dilhorne or his wife with their knowledge for fear of what he might do. He had not thought that vicious gossip would destroy what Hester and he were building between them—a marriage based on trust and joy.
He must, at all costs, try to get Hester back. He could not lose her now that he had found her—and had found himself through her. The last few months had shown him what true love was, and his suffering was all the greater because of it. The Tom Dilhorne whom Mary Mahoney had known would have ridden through this without a thought, a smile on his face. That Tom Dilhorne had gone for good. Improbably, Hester Waring, drunken old Fred’s plain daughter, had destroyed him.
He recognised that Hester was still insecure, still emotionally vulnerable because of her years of suffering and neglect, otherwise she would not so easily have fallen victim to Jack Cameron’s lies. She was standing with her back to him, her face averted. He made one last appeal to her.
‘Hester, please try to believe that Jack Cameron was lying by inference to hurt you, and to get back at me. I have never told anyone of what we have shared. Nor have I made any disgraceful bets involving us. I have never betted over a woman in such a fashion in my life. It’s a gentleman’s failing. I have no doubt from what I have overheard myself that somehow our life together has become common knowledge, and that Cameron has made a bet out of it—but not through me.’
Hester still refused to look at him. He could see her whole body trembling and shaking, but her voice when she spoke was steady and scornful. Oh, he had changed her, no doubt of it, and now she was strong enough to withstand him, who would once have been broken by him, would have given way.
‘Oh, you must be honest with me, Tom Dilhorne.’
She spat his name out as though it were nauseous medicine. ‘I know what I heard, and how else could they have heard it, except through you?’
She was impervious to reason. Worse, it might take time to show her who was behind the gossip. At this point pleading would not work. She was strong—how strong? Ironically he had made her strong, and for the first time she was using that strength—and against him!
Tom had always relished life’s ironies—even when directed against himself. But he could not relish this. For the first time he would use the whole of his moral and intellectual strength against her. Nothing less would serve, for was she not truly Mrs Dilhorne now, his fit partner?
His face grey, he counter-attacked. He had nothing to lose.
His usual laconic drawl was gone. The elegant, detached classicism which he had used in his office to win her to his bargain was gone. For once unconsidered words poured from him in a stream. Devious Tom Dilhorne was speaking from his breaking heart. The heart which no one, including himself, believed that he possessed.
‘Honest! Oh, let us be honest, by all means. It was true that I always meant to get you into my bed once we married. Oh, I’d no intention of keeping to our bargain. I’ve always wanted to bed you ever since I saw you in the schoolroom, on the day you sat among the chickens with Kate Smith, and the day when I met you carrying that abominable dress. You looked at me as though you could eat me—and you didn’t even know you were doing it!
‘You be honest, too, Hester. From the beginning, yes, the beginning, you wanted me as much as I wanted you. I could see the red-hot passion roiling round in you, beneath the starch and the ice, if only I could release it, smash the ice.
‘Oh, don’t deny it, Mrs Dilhorne,’ he went on as, shaking her head, she threw up both hands to her betraying scarlet face which she had finally turned fully to him.
‘It’s the truth and you know it. In the end you lusted after me as much as I lusted after you, only you wouldn’t acknowledge it. The worst thing Fred Waring and his high-and-mighty missis did was not to starve you, neglect you and beat you, bad though that was, but to turn you into a frightened prude, ready to hide every time you saw a man looking at you.
‘You’ve enjoyed yourself mightily with me these last few weeks and showed a rare talent for loving, too. I knew that if I’d proposed a real marriage to you in the beginning you would have shied away from me like a frightened mare I was trying to put a saddle on.’
He didn’t pause for breath, but continued headlong, throwing out a strong hand to grasp hers, to hold her, even though she tried to writhe away from him.
‘Yes, it’s true that I once thought that I loved Sarah Kerr, and would have married her, if she would have had me. But that’s long gone. It’s you I love now, God help me, and you’re a fool if you let this come between us. No, I didn’t tell the secrets of our marriage bed around Sydney, although I can guess who did. Nor did I bet on bedding you, although there are some who think I did. There are no secrets in this town; you misheard.’
Still she was turned away from him, aloof. Was she shutting her ears, refusing to listen? No matter. The man who had never before cared to justify himself could not stop doing so.
‘Yes, Hester, you misheard. Whatever there was of deceit in our marriage has long gone. Above all else I now love you truly, as I have never loved anyone before, nor ever thought that I should be able to love anyone. I don’t love you as a trophy, nor as merely someone to be the mother of my children, but I love you, only you, because you are Hester. I have never felt like this for anyone before—not even Sarah Kerr. Don’t let them destroy what we have, Hester, don’t.’
This uncharacteristic rush of words from the heart, not carefully considered in th
e manner of Tom’s usual speech, which should have told her how deeply he was hurt, how deeply he felt for her, had stopped. It had no effect on Hester. She had been unconsidered Hester Waring for too long, and their love had been too short for her to believe in herself, or in him, when the world had put its dirty fingers into their affairs.
‘I don’t believe you. My father was right. You are odious. I should never have married you. Do not speak of our time together. I shudder when I think of how I have been behaving—no better than a whore at Madame Phoebe’s—’
‘But not so inventive,’ he put in brutally, since it was apparent that she did not wish to heed him. His strength was rearing up to meet hers, for now they were equal in that, and yes, in misery, too, who had never been equal before.
‘Do not flatter yourself, Mrs Dilhorne, you have a deal to learn yet, before you can set yourself up in The Rocks.’
‘Oh, you are unspeakable,’ she cried passionately, ‘Every word you say confirms my father’s opinion of you.’
She began to wring her hands; an age-old gesture which touched him, even through his anger and pain at her rejection of him, and yes, anger at himself for indirectly bringing them to this pass through his own infernal cleverness.
He cursed himself for leaving her alone. Finally he cursed the men she had overheard. He had gone to the ball in such pride, his own true wife on his arm at last, armoured as he thought, in mutual happiness, and it had come to this…
‘You must hear me,’ he cried hoarsely, finding himself in a situation which he had never before envisaged. Tom Dilhorne had sworn a great oath long ago that he was his own man, and that none should enter the citadel of his heart. He had denied that he had a heart and the world believed him.
In bed with Hester he had, as it were, given her his heart to hold in her hand, something which he had never done before, and her rejection of him was thus the more bitter.
Hester refused to cry—she would not give him that pleasure—but the shock and shame which still gripped her had her sinking into her bedside chair, the chair where he had held her and made love to her. At the memory of it she began to wail tearlessly, to keen almost, like the Irish women at their wakes. Tom dropped on to his knees beside her.
‘Come, my love, come to Tom. Let’s forget this. We must trust one another. I’d not harm you by word nor deed. You should know that by now.’
Hester flung off the arm he had tried to place around her. The lost expression on her face, which he thought that he had banished forever, had returned again.
‘I don’t trust you, and I don’t want you. I should have known better. Who would want plain Hester Waring except as a trophy? Someone to boast about in your cups at the grog shop. That you had married an Exclusive’s daughter, a lady, never mind that she was plain and poor and that she was all that you could hope to win.’
Had the occasion not been so serious he could have laughed at this picture of himself, the most secretive of men, boasting about his life, either in or out of his cups, even if there was some truth in her belief that he had married her because she was a gentlewoman.
Tom stood up. It was useless to persist. To do so would merely antagonise her further, and he was sufficiently wise in the ways of men and women to know that only patience could mend matters here. He must try to show her that Jack Cameron had lied, and that Mrs Hackett, as he suspected, had spread the gossip about them around Sydney, and then perhaps matters could be mended, would be mended.
After all, he thought glumly, I am not truly innocent—she was right there. I did deceive her, but only for the best, mind. He thought of her laughing face when she had teased him the night before, until she had almost driven him out of his mind. Afterwards she had surrendered to him with such airy grace that he had sworn to himself that he would always cherish her. Alas, always had turned into a mere twenty-four hours.
‘I’ll go to my old room, then,’ he said slowly, and with perhaps a little hope that she might relent and allow him to stay.
Only to hear her return, ‘You may go to the devil for all I care, Tom Dilhorne.’
Well, he thought wryly, at least I’ve given her some spirit. She was such a mouse before I turned her into a tigress. All your own work, Tom Dilhorne, and look where it’s gotten you!
He turned at the door to say goodnight to her, only to have her swing her face away from him, to hide it in the chair back so that she might not see him.
But, as he crossed the landing to his lonely bed, he said with all the cold ferocity which had turned him from a penniless convict into the richest magnate in the colony, ‘By damn, Mrs Dilhorne, I’ll have you in my bed again, and liking it, choose how!’
Chapter Ten
Once the tempest of anger and despair which had raged through Hester had blown itself out, she was left becalmed on the high seas of misery.
Sitting opposite to Tom at breakfast the next day, she was afflicted by two contradictory desires. The first was never to see or speak again to the man who could so betray her. The second was related to the fact that both her mind and her body ached for him to take her to bed and make love to her with all the passion of which she knew he was capable. Or, on the other hand, for him to hold her, quiet, almost unmoving, cradled in his arms, as he so often did for long periods of time after their lovemaking was over. She could not imagine a world in which this would never happen again.
And Tom? Seated opposite to her, seeing her unhappy face, the face of the Hester Waring whom she had once been, that complex man was overwhelmed by one simple desire. To take her to bed and to make love to her, so that she would respond to him with all the passion of which he knew that she was capable, or, on the other hand, to hold her cradled in his arms, warm against him, sleeping or awake, as they so often lay after their lovemaking was over. He could not imagine a world in which this would never happen again.
Tom was sure that it was Mrs Hackett who had betrayed them, but he needed hard evidence that she had done so. Simply to confront her without it would be useless. She was perfectly capable of brazen denial. He gave a little thought to the matter before arriving at a possible solution—and one which amused him.
She had watched and spied on them from the day they had been married. On the evening when they came home from the ball she had seen Tom return to his old room with his possessions and had no doubt of what had happened. She was bursting to pass on this latest piece of scandal, and could hardly wait for noon to arrive when she was due to visit an old friend who would be sure to enjoy what she had to say.
While Hester sat alone, repairing a torn frill on one of Tom’s dress shirts, Mrs Hackett, in the intervals of drinking tea, was announcing gleefully to her cronies that ‘Madam don’t want him any more, and fine Master Tom’s been turned out of her bed again’, thus sending even more lurid news about the Dilhornes around Sydney.
What was even better, on the way home she was stopped by Jack Cameron, who asked her cheerfully whether she could help him again—she had previously supplied him with news of the state of the Dilhornes’ marriage. If so, he might be able to advantage her again.
Oh, yes, of course she could. She told him her latest piece of gossip, and arrived home, enriched, in a very satisfied state of mind indeed.
Tom’s opportunity to snare Mrs Hackett soon came. Walking down Bridge Street in the early evening, he saw young Ensign Osborne about to turn into one of the grog shops frequented by the younger officers and lesser gentry of Sydney.
Instinct had him following the lad, who owed him a favour. Deep play in which he had unwisely indulged in with his seniors, and in which he had lost heavily, had deprived the boy of the ready. Even more unwisely Osborne had paid his debts of honour at the expense of those he owed to tradesmen, and his IOUs to them had ended up in Tom’s hands.
Tom rarely showed sympathy to fools, but Osborne’s exploited greenness, combined with information from Hester—gained at the breakfast table—that young Osborne was from a poor family and most of his pay w
as sent home to his mother, had earned his pity for the young ass.
He had cancelled the debts for less than their value and told Osborne to keep his mouth shut: he couldn’t afford to finance the whole garrison. He had also advised him not to play cards with sharpers like Jack Cameron again.
Osborne’s gratitude had been pathetic, and he had heeded Tom’s advice; that gratitude might do Tom a good turn now.
He gave a start of surprise when he saw the boy, and walked over to where he sat alone, making his one drink last, saying, ‘Mind if I sit with you, lad? I’m alone, too.’
Osborne, not unnaturally, liked Tom, and frequently defended him to the other officers. He eagerly agreed to this suggestion.
‘Landlord, bring brandy for me and my friend here,’ called Tom.
It was a pleasant afternoon for young Osborne. He and Tom drank merrily together, the drinks on Dilhorne, of course.
He found himself muttering blearily to his Emancipist friend, ‘Say what they like about you, Dilhorne, you’re a good fellow, even if you were a felon. Never mind what Jack and the rest think.’
‘You’ve not been betting with Jack again, I hope,’ said Tom, filling Osborne’s glass again. His own drinking had not kept pace with Osborne’s, but the boy was too far gone to notice such a detail.
‘By no meansh. Not even on the book he’sh started over you and Hester.’ Drink had made Osborne unwary enough to come out with this, but not so unwary that he did not belatedly realise what he had said. He flushed red, and added, ‘Shouldn’t have told you that, Dilhorne, not the thing.’
‘Never mind that, lad,’ returned Tom cheerfully, ‘we’re all men of the world. Doing it a bit brown, don’t you think, to bet on a man’s marriage?’
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