A Companion in Joy

by Dorothy Mack

  As Nicholas saw it, he was driving to a house where he would be spending his wedding night with a girl who detested him. And if this were not sufficient to cast any man into the dismals, this same girl was becoming increasingly more desirable in his eyes with each passing day, and he had bound himself by his word as a gentleman to refrain from making love to her. He might dislike his reluctant bride’s intransigent nature, but her face and body had appealed to his senses right from the first moment, and this feeling had grown stronger despite the basic conflict that was always between them.

  Today, watching Kate drift down the aisle toward him in all the freshness of youth and so incredibly lovely, he had been seized with an aching desire to claim her for his own. It wasn’t love, he told himself impatiently; it was impossible to love someone who detested oneself, but he had never before experienced such a single-minded desire for a particular woman, and under the circumstances it was a damnable experience. The marathon farce of a marriage celebration might have been designed for the express purpose of reducing him to a state of impotent frustration. The less he saw of Kate the better. That was the most obvious and least destructive course to pursue.

  On this unpalatable decision, they arrived at the house they would henceforth share. Nicholas helped Kate down from the carriage with punctilious civility. As the door opened and Mudgrave, the newly hired butler, welcomed them, he hesitated briefly, then swept Kate off her feet and commenced carrying her up the shallow steps into the hall.

  Catching the butler’s approving eye, Kate stopped in mid-air the fist that was about to pummel his shoulder, but she hissed a low-voiced protest, “Put me down this instant! What do you think you are doing?”

  Her husband eyed her expressionlessly. “Surely you have heard of the custom of carrying a bride over the threshold of her new home for luck. Can you think of a bride in greater need of good fortune than your charming self?” This last was added with an ironic inflection as she opened her lips to protest.

  Evidently she thought better of what she had been going to say, because she allowed him to escort her up the stairs to her new suite with no further comment. At the door to the attractive sitting room that had been refurbished for Kate’s use, Nicholas bowed and wished her a formal goodnight. Had he been able to see the humour in anything at that moment, he would have laughed at Kate’s astounded expression.

  “Goodnight? But … but, I have ordered dinner to be served here later. My mother said, that is, I understand it is customary to dine together on one’s wedding day. When Roger and I were bringing some of my things here yesterday, I gave the cook a menu for tonight. What will the servants think if you do not dine with me?” She was clasping her hands together to still their trembling, but Nicholas seemed impervious to her agitation.

  “I don’t give a damn what the servants think,” he grated. “If you are so concerned with upholding the traditions of a wedding night, may I remind you that another time-honoured custom is that a bride spends her wedding night in her husband’s bed.” He watched her colour fade.

  “I … you promised!” she whispered accusingly.

  He laughed without humour. “Ah, yes, sooner or later we come to that promise. Well, I did not promise to dine with you. You cannot have it all ways, my dear. The decision is yours. Do we … dine … or do we bid each other goodnight here and now?”

  The little pause that followed this challenge was electric with undeclared feelings. Kate stared at the unreadable face of her husband with naked hostility before replying with stinging contempt, “Goodnight, my lord.”

  She turned without waiting for his reply and entered her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

  Nicholas acknowledged his defeat with no more than a shrug of his shoulders, but his closing of the sitting room door was clearly audible to the girl in the next room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At eight thirty that evening, Lord Langston banged the knocker on the freshly painted door to his sister’s new home. He explained to the butler that he had not come to call on the viscount and his bride but only to retrieve his quizzing glass, which he had left on the premises the previous day.

  “Lady Torvil requests that you step upstairs to her sitting room, sir,” replied Mudgrave smoothly.

  “Oh, no need of that. I wouldn’t dream of disturbing them, so I asked my sister to set aside the glass so that I might collect it tonight.”

  “I understand, sir, but my lady most particularly desired me to extend the invitation. She has your property in her possession.”

  Perforce, Roger allowed himself to be conducted upstairs. Kate was sitting turning the pages of a magazine when Mudgrave announced him, but she cast it aside the instant the butler departed and jumped to her feet.

  “Oh, Roger, I am so glad to see you!”

  Her brother frowned at this fervent welcome. “Can’t see why, you saw enough of me earlier in the day,” he pointed out. “I should think Torvil would be enough company for you tonight.” He glanced around the cosy room that was rather dimly lit by three branches of candles on various tables.

  “I don’t see Torvil,” he announced unnecessarily. “Don’t see my quizzing glass either.”

  “That’s just the point. He isn’t here. He has gone out,” Kate stated, giving the words great dramatic emphasis.

  “Gone out with my glass? Why would he do that, doesn’t he have one of his own? Or was he intending to return it to me? Very good of him, but he needn’t have bothered. Said I’d come around to collect it.”

  “Stupid!” Kate declared, impatient with his slow wittedness. “Of course he hasn’t taken your stupid glass; it’s in my bedchamber. Torvil has gone out,” she repeated, “on our wedding night. I had ordered dinner to be served here, and he refused to dine with me.”

  Roger looked acutely uncomfortable. “Maybe he had a previous engagement he had forgotten to cancel. Not good form to ignore appointments, you know.”

  Kate accorded this feeble offering the contempt it merited.

  “On his wedding day?” She stopped the nervous pacing she had begun when her brother entered and peered up at him with sudden suspicion. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Nothing to signify.” Lord Langston drew himself up to his full six feet and replied with dignity, “Your wedding reception didn’t end when you left, you know. That’s why I’m so late coming for my glass; had to change.”

  “Well, it’s my opinion that you are odiously cast away,” stated Kate roundly. “I’m telling you my husband has deserted me on my wedding night, and all you can think about is a stupid quizzing glass!”

  “No, no,” Roger denied, trying to soothe his agitated sister, “the eyeglass don’t matter, and I’m sorry about Torvil. It’s deuced awkward for you, though I understood you did not want him anywhere near your bedroom. Well, never mind that,” as she swelled with indignant denial. “The thing is, I don’t see what I can do about it. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Well, I do! He’s with that woman!”

  And to Lord Langston’s astonishment and consternation, his stoical sister burst into tears.

  “No, no, of course he’s not.” Roger put one strong arm about the sobbing girl’s shoulders and patted her back awkwardly with his other hand.

  “Yes, he is! He went straight from his wedding to the arms of his mistress!” came the theatrical insistence.

  “Well, he didn’t. Couldn’t have done so in point of fact, because she’s out of town. So cheer up.”

  Kate pulled out of his hold with the speed of a scalded cat and fixed him with a compelling eye while the tears dried unheeded on her cheeks.

  “You know who she is! Tell me!”

  “No, I don’t know,” he denied, looking more harassed by the moment.

  “Yes, you do. You said she was out of town so you must know. Who is she? Everyone in London knows the identity of my husband’s mistress except me. They say truly that the wife is always the last to learn. I would not have believed tha
t my own brother would conspire to deceive me!”

  “Now, stop it, Kate!” Roger declared, revolted by this excess of dramatics in his ordinarily phlegmatic sister. “I didn’t have any idea who the woman was when you told me about her, but then I made it my business to find out. She need not trouble you in any way, but it will do you no good at all to learn her name. It’s unlikely you’ll ever meet in any case.”

  Lord Langston had no compunction in telling his sister this deliberate untruth, because he had given some little thought to the matter on discovering the identity of Torvil’s mistress. Kate had been determined to go through with the marriage, and under the circumstances, he felt it could only add to her unhappiness to be forever looking for the woman at every social gathering she attended. Best to let the fact of her existence slip to the back of Kate’s mind while she and her husband came to some arrangement of their affairs. He had been prepared to dislike his prospective brother-in-law in the beginning but had found to his surprise that he wasn’t the hardened libertine he might have been. Over the weeks of the engagement, he had slowly inclined to the view that Torvil and Kate might be a well-matched couple in time. It was too bad about Lady Montaigne of course, but these affaires did not commonly last long. The least said on that head to Kate, the better. He must have drunk more than he’d thought today or he would never have blurted out the news that Lady Montaigne was out of town. He cursed himself for a fool and tried to make amends.

  “That is one worry you need not have. Torvil is not spending his wedding night with his mistress. Probably he’s just gone to the Argyll Rooms. That’s where I’m headed myself. You’ve had a long, exhausting day of it. Why not go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep? Everything will look better in the morning.”

  This interesting bit of advice to a new bride was wasted on Kate, whose doleful expression had become remarkably alert.

  “Argyll Rooms? Do you mean you think Torvil may be attending the Cyprians’ Ball?” Her eyes glittered strangely.

  Roger groaned at his careless tongue. “What do you know about the Cyprians’ Ball?” he demanded. “Young girls like you shouldn’t be aware of anything of that nature.”

  “Young girls like me are aware of a great deal more that goes on in the world than people think fit to tell us.” Kate’s irony was almost absentminded because she was doing some rapid calculation in her mind. Her brother did not much care for the speculative look she cast at him. Just so had she looked as a child, when about to propose some activity guaranteed to land them both in the basket. He braced himself for certain disaster.

  Kate did not disappoint him.

  “Roger, take me with you,” she begged eagerly.

  “Take my sister amongst the Fashionable Impures and the muslin company? Are you mad? I’d have to be more than a trifle cast away — I’d have to be completely disguised before I’d help you to ruin yourself!”

  She cut into his disgusted retort. “Naturally I’ll wear a mask and alter my appearance. No one will recognize me.”

  “You’d never get away with it. Why, half the men there will have been at your wedding breakfast today, and not just the unmarried ones either.” As Kate’s eyes grew round, he tacked hastily, “Well, never mind that, the thing’s impossible and even if it weren’t, you’d hate it. The manners and behaviour won’t be at all what you are accustomed to at Almack’s, let me tell you.” He watched her closely, but she displayed no sign of maidenly shrinking at this warning. “The men won’t keep the line tonight; they’ll expect you to be pretty free with your favours, and if you acted missish they’d spot you, mask or no mask. In fact, a mask would make you appear all the more intriguing. You’d have all the rakes in town sniffing after you. Besides, Torvil would have my head on a platter and it would give him a real disgust of you, mark my words.”

  Kate had grown increasingly thoughtful during this masterful speech, and Roger congratulated himself on having avoided disaster by a hair’s breadth.

  He now said softly, “I’m sorry, Katie girl. I know what a disappointing day this has been for you, but you’ll be the better for a good night’s sleep.”

  “No, Roger, wait!” Kate cried as he turned away. “I am confident of my ability to ward off the advances of any men save those completely lost to all sense of decency, and you will be there to shield me from such as these. If I can convince you that no one will recognize me, will you take me, please?” She laid a pleading hand on his sleeve and looked at him through hard-bright eyes that had recently known tears. “Torvil has humiliated me before all the servants. You may be assured my solitary dinner while my lord left the house has been the talk of the servants’ hall tonight. He deserves this retaliation. You may take me away from the ball immediately if he isn’t there. At least the servants will see that I have not languished in my room awaiting my lord and master.”

  Roger stared into his sister’s quiet, bitter face and knew an urge to murder his brother-in-law for bringing that look to her eyes. Kate was too young to know such disillusion. He hesitated and was lost.

  Kate’s expression changed to pure mischief. “Just give me twenty minutes to make myself over,” she said gaily, and whisked herself into the bedchamber before he could marshal his defences against her.

  Not that he had ever had much chance against Kate when she was determined on a course, he mused ruefully when he was alone in her pretty sitting room. Even as children, her will had generally been the stronger, and she invariably enlisted his aid in her escapades. Right from the moment that crafty butler had enticed him upstairs, he’d had a premonition of danger. He should have heeded his instincts and flown without the damned quizzing glass. It was nothing but an affectation anyway. He never had succeeded in achieving the correct supercilious air to carry the thing off. Now Torvil could wield the eyeglass like a rapier to depress pretension. He’d seen him stare at an encroaching mushroom at the Daffy Club with the air of a scientist studying a rare specimen until the fellow had turned beet red and effaced himself completely, after which Torvil had calmly continued his conversation without the least reference to the episode. In point of fact his brother-in-law, for all his reputed affability, would be a dangerous man to cross. He would not take kindly to meeting his wife in a place where no lady would dream of presenting herself. Roger had been wishing himself elsewhere for the past half hour and would have cravenly stolen down the staircase and made good his escape if the habit of standing by Kate had not been so ingrained. To prevent himself from sinking deeper into a melancholy conviction of disaster, he picked up Kate’s magazine and tried to concentrate on the contents. He was deep in an article arguing the benefits to the complexion of nightly applications of Denmark lotion versus the regular use of extract of pineapple when a seductive voice aroused him.

  “Bon soir, Monsieur, ’Ave I kept you waiting? Je vous demande pardon.”

  A vision in diaphanous red stood poised in the doorway, one hand extended to touch the door in an attitude that displayed a shapely white arm to great advantage. The other was slowly unfurling a black lace fan that matched her black half mask. From the fan resting coquettishly beneath a rounded white chin, Roger’s bemused eyes travelled up to a pair of smiling lips whose natural colour had been artfully deepened, and lingered on a tiny heart-shaped patch beside her mouth. Patches were no longer worn by well-born ladies of fashion, but there was no denying that this one enhanced the attractiveness of a slight dimple in her right cheek. Roger noted the highly coloured cheekbones before his fascinated gaze was irresistibly drawn to the barbaric earrings that hung nearly to her shoulders, shoulders which were almost totally exposed, along with a generous amount of curving white flesh, by the brevity of the red bodice.

  “Good Lord! Where did you get those earrings? Never tell me Mama approved that purchase, and I’ll go bail she never ordered that dress either. You look like a … like a…” Words failed him.

  “An opera dancer? A game pullet? One of the muslin company?” Kate supplied, her smile de
epening to reveal perfect teeth. “As a matter of fact Mama did order this dress, but it had some ruffling inserted at the bodice that I removed. Also, it looks quite different when teamed with the black lace. The earrings were bought for a masquerade. I was tempted to dampen the muslin to make it cling but decided against it.” She laughed at his expression of horror. “Will I pass for a Fashionable Impure?”

  Roger was studying her thoroughly now that the initial shock had worn off.

  “Yes and no,” he concluded finally. “I do not fear that you’ll be recognized. That hairstyle, drawn back like that, changes your appearance somewhat. The lacy thing you wore today concealed it, so I don’t think that will give you away, and that costume is certainly a far cry from your usual style, not to mention the patch and the war paint and feathers,” he added, eyeing the three black ostrich plumes arranged on her head. “Despite the revealing nature of your outfit though, there is still something about you that sets you apart. Perhaps it is only the mask,” he finished doubtfully.

  “I shall be a lady of mystery,” declared Kate regally, “a Frenchwoman with an imperfect command of the English tongue. That should serve to get me out of any difficult situation.”

  “You’d best remove your rings,” warned Roger dryly. “That topaz bauble could precipitate you into a more than difficult situation. There’s not another like it in the world.” He arranged a black silk cloak over Kate’s finery while she took off the topaz and diamond ring and her plain gold wedding band. “I’ll have the porter call a hack. You stay out of sight until it’s time to leave, and keep that dress covered. We don’t want the servants speculating about a mistress who is a painted hussy by night.”

  Kate laughed and allowed him to give the order to the porter while she locked her rings in her jewel box. She would remove the mask for the moment and rely on her fan to conceal her painted lips when they left.

  Their exit went without a hitch, as did their arrival at the brilliantly lighted Argyll Rooms. Roger had agreed with Kate that it would be advisable to pretend they were unacquainted, though he promised to keep his eye on her and be ready to lend assistance if required. Kate was in a reckless mood that was more defiance than gaiety but resembled the latter closely enough to pass muster.