by Joan Smith
“Well upon my word!” Kitty said, and sagged back against her chair. “Lorraine, I think it is time we leave. Until you see fit to legalize your status, Elizabeth, I shall not return to this house.”
“There’s nothing illegal about Rose Trelawney,” Annie defended me. “What does she mean? What is she getting at?” she demanded of us all. “You can’t mean the creature thinks you and Lud are carrying on an affair! Well, upon my word! Leave it to an old spinster to think the worst.”
Kitty very soon left, but not before another request to be informed of the date. It was put off by Ludwig and myself till it began to seem we would be rolling to the altar in a couple of bathchairs. When at last she was gone, Lud asked calmly, “When shall we actually be married?”
“I’d like a proper wedding, with banns read,” I told him. “In Italy it was such a scrambling little do that I’d like to have a larger ceremony this time.”
“I’ll have the banns started next Sunday, then,” he answered.
Abbie looked at us as though we were mad. “Hadn’t you better tell Miss Empey?” she asked.
“Oh no, she will take over the whole if she knows. I’ll send her a card, but not till the last minute,” I answered.
A card could not actually be held off till the very last minute, of course, and as soon as it was received, Kitty took the dreadful habit of dropping in every third or fourth day to check on the progress of the nuptials. “Of course you will go to Edinburgh for your honeymoon,” she told me.
This appalling idea sent Ludwig into a state of shock. It is only natural a husband not wish to return to the wife’s first home on his wedding trip, but really there was some merit in the suggestion. I had all my personal belongings to be gathered and brought south. I had, most of all, my share of the triptych I wished to get. A compromise was struck between us. We were to go to London for our wedding trip, which would put me back in touch with my wardrobe at Mayhews, and at an early date were to go to Scotland to wind up affairs there.
Before either the wedding or any trip, Mr. Uxbridge was apprehended by Mr. Williker on Wight, where he did go to oversee all his prisoners. He and the Dobbles were turned over to the authorities for punishment. They all escaped the noose, to Kitty’s consternation. But then it was a fitting climax to the ‘infamous affair’ that the culprits get off scot free, as she termed twenty years in prison. We learned the actual sentence from the McCurdles in Wickey. They always knew everything, sometimes before it happened. Kitty, as I might have foreseen had I given the matter any thought, struck up a wonderful friendship with this pair of harpies, who filled her head with all manner of evil doings on my part, while she filled them in on my earlier history. My torturing of the schoolboys at the rectory, refusal to take up a decent home with themselves, preferring to pitch my cap at the neighborhood’s richest bachelor, my lazy way of going on while with Miss Wickey, my constant running to the shops to order up new gowns, all was magnified out of all proportion to Kitty, till I had the very character Kitty always wanted me to have. She could learn no ill of Ludwig except that he was the most gullible of the works of God to have been taken in by me. Her last visit sunk to a weary hour of her shaking her head sadly at him, eyes full of pity for his bleak future with a trollop.
The wedding went forth on the announced date, followed by the trip to London. We had a perfectly marvelous time, with not more than half a dozen fights a day, always concluded in the time-honored manner of kissing and making up. I expect I was a perfectly wretched wife to John, who was too easy to bearlead. I shall deal much better with Ludwig. He is the sort who would turn into a domestic tyrant if he were allowed. He wants a wife who will give him a little opposition. He has acquired one who will give him a great deal.
Being rid of the hunter-green drapes and salmon carpet is by no means the end of my plans for Granhurst. There is the matter of the bedroom awaiting my talents. I refer to decor. And there is the grass rug, and the dull food placed on the table. Plenty to keep me busy.
Lud was difficult to get moving once we were back at Granhurst. It was necessary for me to point out his company was not really necessary in the least, for once I was there, either Ivor or Mr. Soames would be delighted to squire me about Scotland. It was actually the visit of Lord Baxford which got us shot off without being at all prepared for the trip. He was visiting Lorraine at the Graftons’, and Kitty brought him over to show him off to us. He took into his head to be rolling his eyes at me, silly old fool. I only encouraged him to make Kitty jealous, but when he mentioned coming back the next day, Ludwig suddenly decided we were leaving for Scotland early the next morning.
What should happen but that Kitty took the abominable idea of dragging Miss Grafton up north to see the Knightsbridge Museum as a part of her artistic education. Did it while we were there, but it could not be helped. Her real aim was to promote a match between Ivor and Lorraine while the girl was young and foolish, but the scheme did not take. It was Soames that caught the girl’s eye, and vice versa. In the end, Kitty left a good deal sooner than she had intended to separate them. We stayed not a moment longer than necessary, just long enough to gather up my belongings and sign some papers. I didn’t get the hundred pounds. They said I had been overdrawn on my allowance, having taken an advance to finance the trip south. In fact, I owed them fifty pounds, and I now owe Ludwig fifty more.
Ivor was alerted by Kitty to keep a sharp eye on my packing, lest I pack up any bibelots that did not belong to me. I didn’t, but Ludwig was so incensed at their scrutiny that he pocketed a pretty little Renaissance inkwell in spite, and threw it out of the window of the carriage into a ditch before we made our first stop, as I convinced him Ivor would have the constable after us. We were back at Granhurst before we heard anything else about it, in a letter from Ivor. I declined to reply at all, but Kitty, I am sure, relayed my ire at the suggestion.
So I am now settled in comfortably at Granhurst, known in the village as Lady Kessler, a female of shady background, but tolerated because of my husband. I am still in a rant occasionally when I meet opposition at home to my renovations. We are busy as bees pulling down curtains and up carpets. We have quit pretending to look for either a governess or school for Abbie. We will not part with her, and a strange female around the house bothers Ludwig.
Kitty managed by some unknown means to get the missing madonna out of Gwynne for her collection. He speaks highly of her, and has twice had her and Morley and Lorraine to dinner, along with ourselves. Thus far the invitation has not been returned, but one day I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kitty overseeing yet a different collection of paintings. I hope not, as Gwynne’s place is so close to our own.
She got the madonna from him while we were in London. The romance had not yet blossomed at that time, and I don’t know what price he extracted for it, but if she thinks she will now get the other piece from me, she is mad as a hatter. I wouldn’t let her have it for a million pounds. I didn’t put it in the chapel after all, as it was too damp and draughty. It sits in the blue Saloon, to annoy Kitty every time she drops in.
After her last visit, Ludwig turned to me with a consoling smile. “I know now why you were so eager to forget your past,” he told me. “It must have been hell, under that cat’s paw from dawn to dark.”
“Indeed it was. Had it not been for Soames to amuse me, I daresay I would have lost my mind much sooner.”
“That caper merchant! And a mere boy, to boot.” He had been jealous as sin of Soames from the moment he had met him, maybe sooner. He was very handsome and elegant.
“I am two years younger than Soames. Not quite an old hag yet myself.” I had passed my twenty-third birthday while without memory.
“I noticed that detail right from the beginning, Rose,” he said, arising from his chair and joining me on the sofa, where I was taking in his jacket. I had made him lose ten pounds. “Even in blue bombazine you were not quite an old woman.”
I wore, at the time, a blue taffeta gown, cut low off the
shoulders and with the Kessler sapphires around my neck, for we were dressed for dinner. I made the family dress properly for dinner every evening, and frequently displeased my husband by inviting company as well. We were dining alone on this particular evening, however. “Now you shall look less like an old man, with your jackets fitting your new trim figure.”
“I wonder what gave you the notion you could be happy with an old man,” he asked, hinting for some praise.
“It was living with Mr. Knightsbridge that led me to find you not quite ancient.”
“I want you to have another small bout of memory loss to obliterate that part of your past, Beth.”
“Just give me a tap on the head, a very slight one. Not too hard or I’ll forget you, too.”
“Annie likes a good big bump,” he said, hefting a heavy brass box that held bonbons for her. I hadn’t quite cured her of consuming a pound of sweets a day, but I made her eat meat at the table.
I readied my needle to defend myself, but he only opened the box and popped a candy into my mouth. “I don’t want that,” I complained.
“Hush, woman. Can’t you see I’m trying to shut you up so I can kiss you?”
“No, you’re trying to turn me into a big fat Rubens nude.”
“A plain scrawny English nude is good enough for me.”
“Lud! Abbie and Annie will be coming down any minute,” I pointed out, as he set aside my needle and his jacket, with a lecherous light in his eye.
“That’s why I’m in a hurry,” he answered reasonably. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry once he got started. It was a lengthy embrace that would better have waited till we were sure of privacy.
“I’m not really very hungry yet, are you? We could put off dinner . . .”
“Yes, I’m starved.”
“Dinner isn’t for half an hour.”
“I guess I can wait that long.”
“I can’t.” He arose and pulled me from the chair, out the door to the staircase. If you don’t humor a German he can turn quite violent, so I went along quietly.
Copyright © 1980 by Joan Smith
Originally published by Fawcett Coventry
Electronically published in 2003 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.