She thought about it all night, hardly sleeping at all. He was handsome, he was charming, he was an interesting and sympathetic companion, he was an Earl which would please her mother, and he was not one of her cousins. As a final featherweight in the scales, she remembered that his name was Morland, and that their children would therefore be Morland. The estate would not pass even nominally out of the family. She thought of beautiful Shawes, and of Chelmsford House in London, which she had passed several times when she had been staying in the Strand. And she thought of Allen.
If she married, she must never think of him again, for it would be a breach of loyalty to her husband, and so she indulged herself one last time, recollecting all his kindnesses to her through her childhood, recalling his face to mind; then she remembered that he had loved Marie-Louise, not her, and with a sigh she put him from her. Let Rupert replace him for her. She was not yet in love with Rupert, but there was nothing to suggest she would not be in quite a short time. The following day she gave him her answer, and he pressed her hand fervently, as if too overcome with his emotions for words, and then went straight away to speak to her mother.
The wedding was magnificent, and Lady Mary was inexpressibly glad that it was a public wedding in the Minster, which the whole world would take note of, not a dingy private matter in the half-Popish chapel, such as her own had been. Everyone who was anyone was there, and the ordinary people of York who had not been invited exercised their right of admission to the cathedral, so that it was packed to the doors, the crowd even spilling out onto the pavement outside. There were banks of flowers everywhere, candles, a red carpet and canopy at the door, and banners were hung up depicting the Chelmsford arms topped by the Earl’s coronet, and the Morland arms with the Neville and Moubray quarterings.
Jemima looked beautiful, all in bridal white and silver. She wore the diamond collar, together with diamond earrings, a present from the bridegroom, and on her bosom the gold and diamond cross which was part of the Percy jewels. On her head she wore a coronet of gold, diamonds, rubies and pearls, which Lady Mary had had fashioned out of others of the Percy jewels which were otherwise unwearable, and over her dress a mantle of crimson velvet, laced with gold. Her husband to be looked not unworthy of her, and as he put the gold and diamond ring onto her finger she thought how handsome he looked, with a mixture of the looks of his beautiful mother and handsome father.
The wedding feast was held at Shawes, and on the following morning the couple were to set off for London on the first stage of their honeymoon journey to Italy. ‘I have many relatives in Italy, and you will enjoy all the beauties of the place much better with someone to shew you them who is a native of the land,’ he had said to Jemima. She had nothing to object to in the plan. Lyme, Scarborough, and London bounded her horizon so far: a foreign country would be exciting and new however she saw it.
The feast seemed to go on and on, and Jemima’s sensation of being in a dream intensified. She had drunk rather a lot of wine, and it made her feel as though she were living inside her own body like a nut in its shell, and looking out of her eyes, an entirely different person to the one that everyone kept addressing as ‘Your Ladyship’ and ‘Lady Chelmsford’ and ‘my dear Countess’. She wondered if she would ever get used to that. Rupert seemed to be enjoying the feast as much as he had enjoyed all the summer’s activities: perhaps he was a little freer in his drinking than before, but after all, every man got a little drunk at his own wedding, didn’t he?
It was very late when they retired to bed. There was no ceremony of putting to bed: Lady Mary was not the person to suggest such a thing. They walked alone up the stairs, seen off by the guests with cheerful blessings and no unseemly remarks, and as they turned the corner of the stairs Rupert muttered something which sounded like ‘Thank God for that.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Jemima said, and he shook his head. His eyes seemed rather bleary, and he stumbled slightly on one of the stairs. When they got to the bedchamber, Jane Chort was waiting for them, along with Rupert’s man, whose name appeared to be Boy. He was a foreigner of some sort, with yellow hair and large blue eyes and a curious old-young face that made it difficult to say if he were, indeed, man or Boy.
‘I’ll use the dressing-room, madam,’ Rupert said with a bow. ‘Your servant. Come, Boy.’
Left alone with her mistress, Jane came forward with a shy smile and began to undress her to an accompaniment of chatter and compliments. It seemed to take a very long time to get her out of her elaborate clothes and take down her hair, and Jemima grew more and more sleepy from the long day and the unaccustomed wine, and she was glad when after a while Jane stopped talking and worked in silence. Of what was to come next, Jemima had a theoretical knowledge, from the breeding of horses, but she had grave doubts as to the practice of it in human beings. She had no idea how it was done, it being obvious that humans did not go about it in the same way as horses. She hoped it would not hurt too much, and that she would acquit herself creditably. Rupert, she was sure, would know what to do.
And then suddenly she remembered the time after the masquerade, when she had seen him in the coach with the nun. It was like a sudden splashing of cold water, rousing her from her sleepiness. But it could not have been true! she told herself. After all, it was late at night, and dark, and the coach had gone bowling by so fast. She had not seen what she thought she had seen. It could not have been Rupert in the coach; or if it was, he had not been doing what her fevered imagination had told her he was doing; and certainly not with another man. A man dressing as a nun? That would be shocking. Jane helped her into bed and arranged her nightcap becomingly, and then with a smile she left her.
The wine fumes rose once more in her head, and she struggled to keep awake. How long Rupert was taking! She began to drift off, jerking awake every few seconds as her head slipped over. By the time Rupert came to bed, she was really asleep. He got in beside her, and she half woke and stirred at the movement.
‘Rupert?’ she murmured. ‘Husband?’ She smelted the wine on his breath, and felt the heat of his body nearby, but she really could not keep awake. ‘I’m sorry—’ she began to say, but never got to the end of the sentence.
When she woke it was daylight, she was alone in the bed, and Jane Chort was coming into the room followed by a maid with a tray.
‘Here we are, my lady,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you hot chocolate and bread.’
My lady, Jemima reflected. So it had not all been a dream. But what had happened? She had fallen asleep when she should have been – did anything happen? And then she became aware that her nightdress was in disarray, and there was a certain strange smell in the bed, and the realization made her blush. Jane saw the blush, and smiled discreetly, and Jemima was all the more embarrassed, feeling the hot blood rush to her face uncontrollably.
‘His lordship’s up and dressed already, my lady. I’ll have your bath brought, for when you’ve had your breakfast. You must get ready. An early start, my lady, you remember his lordship said. Off early in the morning. Becky, put that down, child, and stop gawping, and go and lay out her ladyship’s dress.’
The chatter covered her confusion a little, and the blush subsided. When she had eaten and got up, and removed her bedgown to get into her bath, she began to blush again, finding a certain alien stickiness on her smooth belly which was certainly the source of the strange smell. She hastened to get into the bath and wash it away, hoping against hope that Jane Chort had noticed nothing.
An hour later she was walking out to the coach, where Rupert waited with evident impatience. It was still early, and none of the family was up, except Uncle George, who came out from the stables to bid her farewell.
‘It was a lovely wedding, Jem,’ he said shyly, and bent his head as she went on tiptoe, to receive her kiss. ‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ he said, and turned away abruptly with a sniff to drag out his handkerchief and trumpet briskly into it. The boxes were already on, Jane Chort and Pask and Boy were inside, a
nd Rupert dragged out his watch to consult it so Jemima hastily got in, and let down her window for a last look at her maiden home. The carriage rolled away through the barbican and turned out onto the track, and she looked back, thinking it would be three months before she saw it again. Clement and Uncle George stood alone on the drawbridge to see her off, Clement respectfully with his hands behind his back, Uncle George waving his white handkerchief for as long as the carriage was in sight.
There was silence in the carriage until it reached the main road and swung southwards, and then Rupert, whose eyes were very red, and who looked less handsome this morning, said quite distinctly, ‘Thank God.’
‘Sir?’ Jemima asked. He grinned at her – a different sort of smile from any she had yet seen.
‘Now it’s done. I’ve got you, and we are safe away,’ he said. Jemima smiled uncertainly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jane and Pask exchange a sentimental look at the young husband’s eagerness; but Boy turned his head to look out of the window, and she saw his reflection give a smirk of altogether a different kind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jemima loved Italy, and she loved her husband’s relatives, his uncles, aunts and cousins, with whom they stayed in Naples, Florence and Rome. She thought it strange that while in Rome they did not visit his brother Charles, who was still with King James at the Palazzo Muti, but accepted it when Rupert said that there were spies everywhere and he did not dare to compromise himself. Surely, she thought, Charles could have come to them, or they could have met somewhere other than in the exiled Court? He had married the daughter of an exiled Jacobite lord, Mary Cutler, and they were expecting their first child, and Jemima thought it would have been proper to pay them a visit, but Rupert did not even send his card.
They spent Christmas in Naples, and in January went to Venice for the Carnival, where they stayed at the Palazzo Francescini. Jemima met the renowned soprano Karelia there, and discovered that her late father-in-law’s music was held in great esteem. As a bride, she received a great deal of attention in Venice, and several parties and dinners were given for her, including a magnificent one at the Palazzo Francescini, at which Maurice Morland’s music was played, and Karelia sang a number of arias which he had written either for her or for her mother. It was all very exciting and flattering.
All the same, she was puzzled about her husband. Since they had come to Italy, his manners towards her had become more offhand. He was not exactly cold or rude, but he seemed not to care very much what she did, or whether she was contented. Whenever he could, he left her with his relatives and went off alone, claiming that he ‘had business’ or that ‘she would not enjoy what he wished to do – he had better go alone’. If she tried to press him, he grew annoyed, and so she quickly desisted. At Christmas he acted very strangely, drinking heavily and making odd remarks and laughing strangely, and Jemima saw that the Scarlatti relations exchanged glances as if they, too, found his behaviour strange.
And most puzzling of all was what she called in her mind, for want of any other term, their ‘married life’. He never went to bed when she did, always staying up later, sometimes not coming in until after she had retired, so that she was usually asleep by the time he joined her in bed. She often smelled drink on his breath and suspected that he might be drunk, though she had so little experience of drunkenness that she could not be absolutely sure. At all events, there was no physical contact between them. He never touched her in bed in any way, except accidentally, in his sleep, and there was certainly nothing in the way of ‘married life’, even though she was not entirely sure what that was.
In Venice things became abruptly worse. From the moment he arrived in Venice, he seemed strangely excited, and he had barely installed her at the Palazzo Francescini before he left her there and went out into the city accompanied by his strange manservant, Boy. Jemima did not mind at first, for she loved Venice, and had plenty to do and see, and her hostess was a kind and interesting companion. But after a week, she was hardly seeing her husband at all. Sometimes he did not come in at night, sometimes he arrived back, very dishevelled, as they were breakfasting, and when he did come home at night, he did not sleep even in the same room with her. He spoke roughly and rudely to her when she asked him whether they could not do things together, and she was no longer in any doubt that he was drunk a lot of the time. He also had some very strange friends, of whom she caught glimpses from time to time. Once, when she and Karelia were walking to St Thomas’s, he came reeling out of a narrow side street with his arm slung over the shoulder of a young man in a mask. They were both dishevelled, their clothes awry, and drunk. Rupert was holding a bottle of wine by the neck and paused in the act of bringing it to his mouth as he saw them. There was a frozen moment, and then he straightened up and gave them an ironic salute, and whispered something to his masked companion. The man laughed and kissed his cheek, and the pair about turned and went back into the shadows, and Boy, who had been behind them, followed, after giving Jemima a very insolent stare.
Jemima’s eyes filled with tears, and Karelia tactfully pretended not to have seen anything, and hurried her on, talking about the music they were going to hear.
A week became two, and things were no better. She began to notice the servants whispering and giving her odd looks, and Pask and Jane treated her with a kind of silent sympathy which she found both touching and irritating. Her own pleasure in Venice was marred by her husband’s strangeness, and she began to wonder, dully, if he would be like this when they got back to England. Had he changed again, back to what he had been, or worse? She could hardly believe it, still feeling that his behaviour over the summer was too consistent not to have been genuine. Perhaps it was an evil influence? People did behave very freely in Venice, and she had once or twice been on the verge of being shocked by things which perfectly respectable people did. Perhaps being abroad, and on his honeymoon, and in Venice at Carnival time had made him relapse temporarily into his former ways. Apart from anything else, why would he have married her, if he were really a drunken reprobate?
She came into her room one day to fetch her gloves to find him standing at her dressing-table, and when he heard her he turned abruptly to look at her.
‘Ah, the lovely Countess, my wife. How do you do madam?’ he said. He swayed slightly as he spoke, his words were a little blurred, and she realized that he was drunk, though it was only ten in the morning. But more importantly, he was holding in his hand the diamond collar.
‘What are you doing with that?’ she asked anxiously. He gave her an unpleasant smile.
‘Debts, especially gambling debts, must be paid,’ he said. She stared with horror.
‘You don’t mean – you aren’t going to sell them?’
‘Absolutely correct, madam. I felicitate you on your acuteness,’ he said carefully.
‘But you can’t! You mustn’t!’ she cried, coming forward a step. He snatched his hand back and held the diamonds high, out of her reach.
‘What? You would not have me jailed for not paying my debts? Or called out – that would be worse. I’d never be able to shoot straight, and you’d be a widow, and you wouldn’t like that, would you? Or would you?’
‘But you can’t sell those, you can’t,’ she cried in distress. ‘They’re mine!’
He laughed again, but this time quite a merry laugh.
‘Yours? What can you mean? Do you not remember, dear Jemima, that you are my wife? All that was once yours is now mine, as the law allows and the state provides. It’s all in the contract, my dear wife, all in the contract. I get all your property, and you –’ he choked a little on his mirth – ‘and you get all my titles.’ And now he laughed so much that he had to sit down on the bed to indulge it. Jemima watched him, with a murderous rage in her heart which for a moment drowned out the terrible hurt. Through his laughter he spluttered, ‘Oh my dear girl, if you could just see your face! What a bargain! All my tides for all of your fortune. A mess of pottage, dear girl, a mess of p
ottage. Lady Chelmsford! It is rich. You must see, it really is rich!’
The rage settled in her and became icy, as she watched him, and then, young as she was, a kind of wisdom came to her. She smiled. She felt her face might splinter and fall into shards as she did it, but she smiled.
‘A good joke indeed,’ she said, ‘but all the same, my lord, you must not sell those diamonds. Everything else in the box, if you wish, but not those.’
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Why not these?’ he said, pulling them to his chest in a childish gesture. She forced herself to continue to smile.
‘Because you would not get a good price for them here. In England, where they are famous, where everyone knows their history and therefore their worth, you will get twice as much for them.’
He nodded in a fuddled way. ‘True. You are not without sense, Lady Chelmsford. Very well, I’ll take this – and these – and these. That should do for now. And these – I return.’ He dropped the diamonds back into the box, put his booty into his pockets, and with a nod to her, strolled out. As soon as the door was shut she flung herself at the box, seized the diamond collar, and clutched it to her like a child snatched from fire. And then she fell onto the bed and wept with misery and frustration.
When the storm of weeping was past, she sat up, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and fastened the diamonds round her neck, feeling that was the safest place for them. She thought about his words – all her fortune for all his titles. She knew that it was true, that a married woman’s property became her husband’s, but surely her mother must have made some provision in the contract for her to control the Morland estate – after all, she was the heir, the young master, except that she was female? Surely her mother would not have signed everything away without some surety? And what about her settlement? And in any case, Lord Chelmsford must be rich, and would not need her fortune. She could not believe he had meant to be so cruel and unpleasant. It was the drink, she told herself. He would be all right once they were back in England. In England! How she longed for it. The door opened at that moment, and Jane came in.
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 37