The Devil You Know

by Sophia Holloway

  ‘Take me downstairs.’

  As she spoke, Lord Ledbury pulled back sharply, and, perhaps hearing the rustle of skirts, looked along the hallway. His eyes met hers.

  ‘Kitty!’ His exclamation was of horror. He came swiftly towards her, almost barging Sir Geoffrey out of the way. ‘It is not…’

  ‘I am going home.’ Kitty’s voice was a low throb. ‘I shall tell Lady Easebourne that I have the headache. Do not feel you need accompany me. In fact I would rather you did not. Stay here, enjoy yourself, enjoy whatever, whoever, you want. I do not care.’ She turned away, feeling sick and faint. He grabbed at her arm, but she shook him off and ran back to the stairs, followed by Knowle. He could not run down into the mass of partygoers and remonstrate with her. He turned back. Louisa Yarningale was standing with a smile upon her face.

  ‘Oh dear, George. Do you think she got the wrong idea about us? Or is it really the right one? I know you so very well, and like it or not, you want what I want.’

  ‘I want to snap your treacherous neck,’ he growled, coming towards her. For the first time since she had known him she felt frightened. He meant what he said.

  ‘You wouldn’t, you cannot.’ She backed away.

  ‘No, because I would not dance on the end of a rope for you and dishonour my wife further. You disgust me. Get out of my sight before I do succumb, and break you, and if one word of this passes your lips and becomes public then… you will wish I had killed you.’

  She ran, white-faced, past him and along beyond the stairs to seek shelter in a darkened chamber, where she cowered for a quarter of an hour before creeping out, and going home.

  *

  It was all too easy for Kitty to excuse herself to her hostess, for she looked stricken. She sat in the carriage, shivering not from cold but from the shock of her world falling apart in a moment. She had let herself forget he was a rake, in the intoxication of his seduction over these last weeks. She had floated on a cloud of happiness, even as she told herself it would be transient, for at least for a while she was his focus, and he wanted her, her alone. She had felt it, the burgeoning intensity of his desire for her, even regretted making him wait, torturing him with ‘not yet’, and all along it was a sham; he was running her ‘in tandem’ with his old mistress. Perhaps he discussed her with the Yarningale woman, laughed over her innocence, her folly in believing him. He had betrayed her, cynically, coldly, not just her body, but her heart, and she would not, could not, forgive such treachery.

  *

  Lord Ledbury also made his excuses to Lady Easebourne, saying, quite truthfully, that he believed his wife was unwell, adding that she must have, foolishly, not wished to worry him, but that he felt he ought to see that she was given all possible care. Lady Easebourne did not doubt his sincerity for a moment, and remarked later, to the Countess Lieven, that marriage would be the making of him.

  He walked home, the April night cold enough to make his stride brisk even had he not been keen to get home and remonstrate with his wife. He was appalled with himself for having fallen into so simple a trap, and angry that Kitty had seen, and unquestioningly believed, the evidence of a moment. His sense of the injustice of being adjudged guilty when he was a victim and innocent, and his frustration at not being able to take retribution upon Louisa Yarningale, meant that he arrived home in no mood to plead for forgiveness.

  His expression was severe as he trod up the stairs. He went to Kitty’s door and called her name. Rather to his surprise she came to the door and flung it open.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she flashed, illogically, since if it were true she need not have opened the door.

  ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘What is there to explain? I saw enough. Has it been going on all the time since you arrived in London?’

  ‘It has not gone on at all. I have told you before, and…’

  ‘Lied, over and over. And I believed you! Was it only the money after all that made you marry me?’

  ‘You know that is not it. You know…’

  ‘Nothing. I thought we… I… How could you?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘But I saw you. She was held closer than I have been. Are you going to tell me the trite lie that you “love” me but would rather “make love” with your mistresses?’

  ‘No. I have not touched another woman since we married, and…’

  ‘Except her, of course, your current amour.’

  ‘I did not touch her. She surprised me.’

  ‘And how grateful you must have been!’ Kitty sneered.

  ‘If I had not been having to wait and wait and wait for you, there would have been no response. It has been months.’

  ‘Ah, so actually it is my fault, your “straying”. I should have guessed. Had I been a submissive wife and done my “duty” enough all would be well, would it?’

  ‘Yes, No. I mean… I have not strayed and I do not want you to “do your duty”, I want you to… I want you…’ He floundered. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’ It was almost a wail. His answer was as instinctive as had been his body’s to Louisa Yarningale, the answer that was true in his head. If she had not held back from him, made him ‘wait and wait and wait’, Louisa Yarningale’s unsought kiss would have been spurned from the moment she presented her lips. He was being blamed for something over which he had had no control. It was also the worst answer he could have made.

  Kitty stared at him, speechless with wrath, bosom heaving, for half a minute, even as he realised the enormity of his faux pas.

  ‘How dare you blame your infidelity upon me?’

  ‘I am sorry, I did not mean…’

  ‘…Anything you have ever said to me. Go away.’ She pushed him hard, and so unexpected was it that he staggered. She shoved him out of the room, slammed the door in his face and then he heard her push something against it.

  *

  He stood there, caught between anger, the immense sense of injustice and total misery. Part of him wanted to knock the door down. He felt sure, whatever she had used to jam it, if he shouldered the door hard enough it would give way, but it would demean them both. Harsh words might not have been overheard, and could at least be ignored, but a splintered doorframe was incontrovertible proof of real rage, and would lead to gossip. He fumed, his fists clenched, but then he turned on his heel and shut himself in his own bedchamber, not even calling upon Whicham, which led his valet to wonder what had occurred.

  He lay in bed, far from sleep. She had accused him of deception, of consorting with a mistress even as he wooed her, and she was reading it all wrong. Yes, he had responded to Louisa’s embrace. He could no more resist that than not breathe. Had he not been patient, waiting for Kitty? Other than the eminently forgettable wedding night he had not been intimate with any woman, and now that he wanted his wife and was having to hold back, his desire was close to the surface. What Louisa had done, kissing him that way, pressing herself to him, offering herself, meant that his body had responded, but he had not wanted her, did not want her.

  But how swift his wife had been to think the worst, and if she could not believe the truth, how was he to regain her trust, that rapport which negated the need for words between them? It was an intimacy he had never felt with a woman, and he wanted that union of thought as much as he wanted a physical union with her. She had made him be patient; she had driven him to this lapse if lapse on his part it was, and now she despised him for perfidy. It was so very unfair, and it was a problem he knew not how to solve.

  19

  The night afforded neither party rest. Her ladyship took a meagre breakfast in her bed, and his lordship went out riding early and went thereafter to his club, wherein he immured himself, giving monosyllabic answers to his acquaintances and looking so morose that one was convinced he had heard bad tidings from his racing stable and decided not to place a bet on the earl’s filly racing two days hence.

  Lord Inglesham, dropping by mid-afternoon, was treated to similarly unsociabl
e behaviour, but was not to be put off, and persuaded his friend into a begrudged game of billiards.

  ‘So,’ he declared, as he achieved a cannon with a satisfying clink of ivory, ‘what has happened?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Lord Ledbury grumbled.

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘My wife observed me with Louisa Yarningale.’

  ‘Well, you cannot avoid the woman entirely, so…’

  ‘No, I mean “with” as in “in an embrace”.’

  ‘What! George, you surely did not…’

  ‘I did nothing, I tell you. The Yarningale woman created a scene out of nothing, presumably because she caught sight of Kitty in view. I had no assignation with her, I swear it.’

  ‘Tell me everything.’

  Lord Ledbury did so, and was not best pleased when, at the conclusion, his friend murmured, ‘Your poor Kitty.’

  ‘And you call yourself my friend. Poor me, more like. I am the innocent party in this.’

  ‘A novel experience for you,’ Lord Inglesham remarked, pondering the situation. ‘All I can suggest is that you reaffirm your lack of wicked intent and beg the opportunity to prove your fidelity and honesty.’

  ‘She will not listen. She has decided that I am some Bluebeard. If you had seen her expression last night…’

  ‘That was last night. I doubt very much she is feeling any better than you at present.’

  ‘Oh, she has the advantage of moral superiority from which she can look down upon me in my turpitude.’

  ‘And I am sure she would exchange that for amity.’

  ‘Not with me, not now.’ Lord Ledbury ran his hand through already disordered locks.

  ‘I agree it is a backward step, but give her time, and be patient.’

  ‘I have been nothing but patient these last few months and look where it has got me.’

  ‘It “got” you to a state of happiness in which I have not seen you before.’ Lord Inglesham decided sympathy was not the answer. ‘Damn it, man, what else was your poor wife meant to think, seeing what she saw, and just when you two were going about smelling of April and May? I am only surprised she did not actually hit you. She must feel terrible today.’

  ‘That’s it, blame me! I keep saying it, but you are like her and do not listen. I am not guilty. I have not been carrying on with Louisa Yarningale, do not want to. It was just as I told you. She tricked me, and then threw herself at me, was all over me. Only for a moment did I react positively, and it was not from intent. I do not want to make love to her, I want to wring her damned neck.’ He paused. ‘And what disappoints me is that my wife jumped to conclusions.’

  ‘The obvious one. If you had seen her, in the arms of another man, in a secluded alcove, what would you have done?’

  ‘Killed him.’

  ‘Er, yes, you probably would, but I mean after that. How would you feel about her?’

  ‘I… this is ridiculous. We are dealing with what has happened, not “what ifs”.’

  ‘Then I go back to my original suggestion. Tell her the truth and wait for her to believe it.’

  ‘Which will be when hell freezes over,’ Lord Ledbury grumbled. ‘Let’s get drunk.’

  As a long term solution, Lord Inglesham knew this was pointless, but just at this moment, and with his own low spirits, it had its attractions.

  *

  This unhelpful course was not one considered by Kitty, although an equally negative one, that of throwing herself into the river, had done so during the night. Her anger was swiftly subsumed by her misery. She felt hollow, numb, bereaved. Wootton, who had not been summoned to her mistress to put her to bed, made a very accurate assessment of her from the disorder of her chamber, with garments flung about, and from the pallor of her cheeks and stricken look in her eye, the nearest to which she had seen when Kitty had lost a favourite horse. Wootton inwardly raged at the male gender, and the earl specifically, but acted towards her mistress as if she were recovering from an illness, with much cosseting and a little bullying to get her to eat, and rise from her bed.

  It was a very pale and quiet Kitty who eventually did so, and wandered listlessly from room to room before toying with a luncheon which she could not bring herself to eat. Grief, and it was grief, was alien to her on this scale. The death of her father had put her into blacks but not overset her, and she had, naturally, no feelings about her mother beyond a vague regret that she had never had a mother. She had no idea how to even face the blankness that filled her now. Deep down a voice within admonished her, for this, it said, was how it was always going to be if she succumbed to loving her lecherous devil of a husband, but the rest of her refused to accept it. Had it been as she expected, there would have been a diminution of affection, a drawing apart, not this sudden wrenching, which felt as if it had eviscerated her.

  She wept, but the action did not wash away the nothingness. She was alone and miserable. Then she thought of her friend. If she went to see Charlotte then at least she could tell one person the awful truth, because she knew full well that she must otherwise wear a mask before Society, although no doubt the Yarningale woman would be crowing her victory soon enough. Kitty changed listlessly, and took the carriage to the Rowington’s residence, lest any see her pale face, and from the lethargy which enfolded her body as well as mind.

  It took but one glance for Charlotte Rowington to see that something was very much amiss, and she rose, coming forward to take Kitty’s hands and lead her to a sofa.

  ‘My dear friend, what is it?’

  Kitty stared blankly at her for a long moment and then, for an answer, burst into tears.

  For a while any words were so disjointed and muffled that no sense could be made of them, but eventually Kitty controlled her breathing, wiped her red eyes, and told her best friend what had occurred,

  Charlotte squeezed her hands.

  ‘My poor Kitty. How awful for you, and just when… I am not sure what to say, except that, eventually, you will become accustomed.’

  ‘To his infidelities? I suppose so, but he was pretending to me all along. I knew that one day he would not look at me as he has recently, that he would “move on” to another, but it is the depth of the deception that totally overwhelms me. Oh, Charlotte, I have been such a fool, letting myself fall in love with him, and I have, I have.’ The tears returned.

  ‘Dearest, do not castigate yourself for that, at the least. It is not a case of “letting” yourself fall in love. That is one of those things in life over which we do not have control. You cannot make yourself love someone, nor can you prevent yourself loving someone. It just happens.’

  ‘But I knew his reputation, and I blinkered myself, once he began to… Charlotte, you know that he even admitted, weeks and weeks ago, that he was “seducing” me, his wife.’

  ‘Goodness me, yes, he did. Well, I suppose if one were used to… I mean… but Kitty, I have seen you together these last few weeks and I would swear what I saw was two people in love, not one.’

  ‘Not one.’ Kitty picked up on the phrase, but in another context. ‘Ah yes, and that is the final straw. He said it was my fault because we have not been one.’

  It took a moment for Charlotte Rowington to make the connection, and then she did not know quite what to say. ‘Ah,’ was her best offering. She was a happily married woman of several years standing, and had, in that time, learned a little of what made a man “tick”. Enforced abstinence made for a tetchy husband, even if a loving one. In a man such as Lord Ledbury…

  ‘Kitty, perhaps that is what drove him, not lack of affection for you but…’

  ‘So you, my best friend, are also saying I have brought this on myself?’

  ‘No, and it is not an excuse for his behaviour, but it might explain…’

  ‘But he lied to me, all the way through, told me to ignore rumour, told me on several occasions he most specifically had no interest in Lady Yarningale, told me he had “walked away” when we married. If he had been open and ho
nest it would have been harsh and unfeeling, but the deception…’

  Her friend agreed, but also saw that it would have taken an extraordinarily cruel man to tell his bride to her face that he was still enjoying the charms of his mistress.

  ‘I am so sorry, Kitty. I think I can only say what I did at the beginning. You will become accustomed, and the hurt will fade.’

  With this unsatisfactory prognosis, Kitty had to be content, but found that sympathy was available from another source.

  *

  Returning to Manchester Square very little cheered, Kitty requested tea, and when Syde brought it to her, he also brought a letter which had been delivered in her absence. The neat round hand which had addressed it was unknown to her, and for one heart-sinking moment she wondered if it might be from Lady Yarningale, making the most of her defeat. She therefore stared at it for some minutes and fortified herself with a sip of tea, out of all proportion annoyed with herself because the cup trembled in her hand. Then, taking a deep breath, she opened it, and blinked.

  ‘My dear Lady Ledbury,

  After some consideration as to whether any communication with you upon last night’s events would be indelicate, I set pen to paper now in order to assure you both of my continued support, at what must be an awkward time, and that not one word of what transpired shall pass my lips into the public domain. My commiserations and sympathy must, I am sure, be unimportant, but this at least is of value to you. You find yourself in the most unfortunate of circumstances, entirely blameless, and perforce having to appear as normal before the world, when you have been grossly betrayed by one whom I have no compunction in calling despicable. He is unworthy of you in every possible respect, and makes me ashamed of my gender.

  Please do not feel obliged to respond to this. I am sure that when you feel able to face Society you will find keeping up the lie of domestic happiness a strain, and I offer myself as one to whom you may speak in utter confidence, and who will comprehend your distress.