“As a gentleman,” Mrs. Paine persisted, “I apprehend that you do not quite understand how delicate a lady’s reputation can be, and how easily damaged. A pretty young widow’s in particular.”
His face had begun to change. Folie had seen that look; hunted and yet hostile. She gripped her hands uneasily together.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “However, there are other circumstances in this case—”
“I know you would not wish to compromise Mrs. Hamilton or her stepdaughter in the slightest manner!”
“Mrs. Paine—”
She grabbed Christopher, clapping her hands over his ears. “Mr. Cambourne!” she hissed in agitation. “Do you not understand me? People will suppose she is—’’
“Thank you, Mrs. Paine!” he snapped, cutting her off. “You need not sully anyone’s ears with your insinuations, madam. In fact, you may tell the entire city that we are engaged. Now that she is recovered, Mrs. Hamilton and I are to be married in a private ceremony this afternoon.”
Folie felt as if the floor had sunk into the basement under her feet. The room fell silent. She just managed to keep herself from exclaiming, What?
She gathered her senses and shook her head vigorously. “But—Robert...”
“Everything is arranged, my sweetest,” he said, giving her a pointed glare. “I’m sorry that we could not keep our secret. Pray do not exercise yourself over it.”
Folie took the hint. She said nothing more. He had landed them in the soup now. Of course he was inventing anything that might throw Mrs. Paine off her dogged notion. Folie would have staked her whole jointure that he hoped his announcement would shame them all into going away with their tails between their legs. And then this “engagement” could be forgotten.
It was a grandly foolish attempt, hastily conceived and hopeless. But let him extricate himself. It served him quite well, she thought, for the mean, low things he had said of marriage and wives.
“Oh!” Mrs. Paine cried, recovering from her stunned silence. “But how splendid!” She hurried over and clasped Folie’s hands. “Oh, what a shock! Forgive me! Do forgive me.”
“No, no,” Folie murmured. “It’s quite all right. You could not know.”
“Do tell me what I can do! Have you a proper bouquet?” She looked over her shoulder at Robert. “Are the flowers ordered?”
“Yes, everything has been taken care of.”
“What nurseryman did you use? Not that paltry fellow in Shepherd’s Market, I hope! Have they been delivered yet?”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Witham-Stanley said, “I used him myself just last month—I was wholly disappointed. His lilies were perfectly atrocious. I cannot endorse him.”
“Cancel it!” Mrs. Paine straightened up militantly. “You may leave the flowers to me. Depend upon it, I shall see that you have the loveliest bouquet you can conceive!”
“And pray let me send over a plum cake!” Mrs. Witham-Stanley exclaimed. “But what sort of bride cake have you planned, Mr. Cambourne?”
“We have a plum cake,” he said swiftly.
“But is it to be iced? My cook creates the most splendid marchpane icing for a decoration. You have not seen the like. I should consider it an honor, my dear Mr. Cambourne. I’ve recalled so much of that dream of my sweet mother—you don’t know what pleasure it has given me! If you had not brought it into my mind, what would I have done?”
“And I have a recipe for a French kickshaw,” Miss Davenport offered shyly. “I should be happy to have one made up for the occasion.”
Folie bit both her lips together. Robert looked as if a calamity had overtaken him.
“You are all very kind—” he said. He glanced at Folie. She sat still, wickedly innocent.
“Come, Christopher! We have much to do! I vow I shall pick out the most perfect blooms myself.” Mrs. Price took her son’s hand. “Oh—I’ve just had the most charming notion! Would you like for Christopher to stand up with you, and hand Mr. Cambourne the wedding ring? I’ve just bought a new lace collar for his blue velvet coat—he is such a darling in it!”
“I shall allow Mr. Cambourne to answer that,” Folie said.
Mr. Cambourne gave her a baleful look. She smiled back virtuously.
“What a delightful idea,” he said dryly.
“Oh, you will not regret it!” the boy’s fond mother promised, growing a little teary. “It will be so sweet—you will want to weep.”
Mrs. Witham-Stanley sighed. “How I wish I could see it!”
“Why, you must come!” Robert’s voice was loaded with mockery, though no one else but Folie appeared to hear it.
“What fun!” Mrs. Paine cried. “We can help Mrs. Hamilton to dress!”
“May I bring Mr. Bellamy? He would be so crushed if he should hear that I attended without him. He can talk of nothing but Mr. Cambourne this and Mr. Cambourne that since you cured him of the headache!”
“Everyone come!” Robert said, with the expansive tone of a man who has partaken of too much strong drink. “Why not?”
TWENTY
“I can only suppose that you have taken leave of your senses,” Folie said, after the drawing room had been cleared of their callers, all ushered off by Lander to their various projects and plans.
“Yes, you have driven me perfectly mad,” Robert said savagely. “From your first letter, now that I think of it.”
“What ever are we to do now?” she demanded. “We cannot actually marry!”
“Don’t look at me as if it’s my doing! As of this morning, I was perfectly content to spend yet another night as a wretched bachelor.”
She gasped. “You are the one who claimed we were engaged!”
“What else was I to say, for Heaven’s sake? That I mean to keep you here as my dolly-mop?”
“I could have gone to Mrs. Paine’s,” she said. “I would be happy to!”
“Nonsense.” His voice rose. “How can you be so heedless as to suppose you could be safe there? Or put her family in danger? And come away from that window!”
Folie stood where she was, lifting her arms like a bird’s wings. “Oh, yes, what terrible peril I must be in, here in a Mayfair drawing room! Perhaps they will fly in at the windows and abduct me!”
He strode forward, grabbing her arm and hauling her bodily away. “You make me want to strangle you.” His voice had gone cold and quiet. He let her go instantly, but somehow the transformation from hot wrath to icy control was more alarming than any threat. He stood staring at her with the chilling stillness of a cobra that might strike at any moment. “Do not cross me in this, Folie.”
She could not hold his eyes. It was true that it was her fault. If she had not come to London in such a silly, happy rush...she turned her face aside, her eyes suddenly burning with shame and consciousness.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not intend for this to happen.”
“No, I cannot suppose that.”
“I’m sure that if we put our minds to it, we can concoct something. Perhaps—the way the gentleman pretended to be a doctor. Perhaps we could only have a mock wedding.”
“Hmm,” he said, in a tone she could not interpret.
“Perhaps that is what you have meant all along?” She looked at him tentatively under her lashes. “A mock wedding?”
“The notion occurred to me,” he said.
“Well, then,” she said, turning. She looked at their distorted reflections in a pier mirror hung on the wall. “That is what we will do.”
There was a long silence. Folie was trying to focus her mind on what excuse might extricate them after a counterfeit ceremony performed before the greatest gossip on Curzon Street, but all she could think was that Melinda would be ruined by this. Irreparably ruined. Folie knew of a Tetham girl who had lost her chance at becoming engaged because her mother, still youthful enough to be charming, had been seen conversing with the mayor while he was in his shirtsleeves. For all Folie’s defiant claim to Robert that she was too old to care for such
things, she was well aware that to be only thirty and a widow was to be judged on a razor’s edge of decorum, just as Mrs. Paine had said.
“I do not think it will suffice, Folie,” he said.
She wet her lips. “What shall we do?”
“Marry,” he said harshly. “There appears to be nothing else for it.”
No, she thought. You will wish me to Japan, and I cannot bear that.
“I know!” she said. “We can have a terrible argument just before the ceremony, and break the engagement!”
“And what does that accomplish, pray? Even more talk, and still nowhere for you to stay with any safety.”
“I cannot believe we are in such a spot over such a stupid thing,” she said miserably. “I cannot believe it. But—if I should ruin Melinda’s chances by my behavior—oh, I don’t know what I should do!”
“Come, you make it sound worse than the prison ship.” He reached out and pushed her chin up with a rough touch. “Show some spunk.”
Folie pulled her face away. “Do not mock me, if you please.” He had that derisive edge in his voice, and she was afraid that he would say something even more cutting if she did not prevent him. “I must have a moment to compose myself,” she said, moving toward the door. “I will be upstairs.”
Lander was waiting with “Dr. Joyce” in the breakfast room. When Robert returned, both of them hit him instantly with the same comment Folie had given.
“Are you mad, sir?” Lander demanded, standing beside the table. “This is not at all what we had planned.”
“No,” Robert said shortly. “Of course it isn’t. Of course I am mad.” He sat down in a chair, his hands in his pockets, his legs sprawled before him.
“We’ve been talking it over,” Lander said. “We don’t see how the thing can be counterfeited, not to any purpose. For one thing, I refuse to participate in a fraudulent marriage ceremony—it’s as illegal as murder—and for another—”
“It isn’t going to be fraudulent.” Robert flung himself out of the chair. “Isn’t there something—a special license—how do I get it? Where do I go?”
Lander stared. “Sir! You don’t mean you’re going to marry her?”
Robert paced to the small window that overlooked the back garden. “I said I was mad, did I not?”
“I do not think Mrs. Hamilton deserves that sort of disrespect,” Lander said angrily.
The fact that Robert agreed did not improve his temper. He shrugged as if he did not care. “She’ll have a whole lifetime to punish me for it, won’t she? A woman’s supreme object!”
“You surprise me, sir,” Lander said in a lower voice.
Robert did not answer. He rubbed his thumbnail over a speck of white paint on the window glass, peeling it off and flicking it away.
“I don’t suppose that Mrs. Hamilton’s object can ever have been to punish anyone,” Lander said.
“You don’t know much of women,” Robert said. “Now tell me where I must go for the documents.”
“Doctor’s Commons,” his rapscallion mentor offered obligingly. “Just to the south of St. Paul’s. It will cost you a pile of guineas to have a special license of the archbishop, but simple enough. You’ve no residency to prove, and you may be married right here at home—even at midnight if you please. I’ll see to a parson for you.”
“A real one,” Robert said firmly.
“Of course. I’ll fetch a local, so that Lander may vet him if you don’t trust me.”
“I would be a fool to trust you,” Robert said without rancor.
The man grinned. “I take it as a compliment. But I can be honorable when it suits me. You shall have an honest parson to preside, on that you may count.”
“All right,” Robert said, turning toward the door.
“I’d better be the one to go to the law court,” Lander said. “After all the commotion here this morning, their nerves will be hung on a hair-trigger.”
No one needed an explanation of who “they” might be. Robert checked an argument—Lander was right, he could leave the house with greater ease and safety. It was only Robert’s inner agitation that made the idea of standing here waiting for everything to happen seem intolerable.
“Fine,” Robert said. “Go.” He went to the sideboard, poured himself a cup of coffee from a silver pot, and sat down. He felt as if a heavy weight was slowly pressing down on him, crushing his lungs.
With an effort, he swallowed the black, sharp liquid. Lander went to the door. He paused there, with his hand on the knob.
“Sir,” he said, “I must ask you, before I do this—have you any warmth of affection at all for Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Bloody hell, Lander,” Robert said, laying his head back.
“You feel nothing for her?” Lander’s voice rose mistrustfully.
“Do I feel anything for her,” Robert repeated, his eyes fixed on the intricate plaster crown molding that adorned the ceiling. “Do I? Only I’ve had her in my heart every day of my life for ten years.”
“You do little enough to show it,” Lander said. “To be frank.”
“The devil with you.”
“I feel a great deal of attachment to Mrs. Hamilton. I would not wish to see her made unhappy. I believe she deserves to marry a gentlemen who truly loves her, and not just—”
“Just what?’’ Robert sat up, eyeing him.
Lander’s mouth set mulishly. “Someone who will not appreciate her properly.”
“I love her.”
Lander appeared unconvinced, lingering at the door.
“All right. I am vastly, desperately, deeply in love with her,” Robert said in elaborate assurance, mocking Lander’s serious tone. “How mawkishly must I say so to satisfy you?’’
“I don’t—it’s not—sir. It’s just that you seem so—bitter about it.”
Robert lifted his lip in disdain. “How young you are.”
“I must hope I never grow older in that sense.”
“Then make sure that you never lay your life in a woman’s hands,” Robert said. “So that she may cut you with a look, or run you through the heart with her judicious opinion of your character, or mention the men she might have had if fate had been kinder to her.” The venom in his own voice was startling to him. It was as if some other man spoke through him, and yet he knew every word was true. “Fall in love all you like, my friend,” he said harshly. “And the more you love her, the farther you had better run.”
Lander gazed at him. Slowly he shook his head. “I won’t believe that. I can’t believe that.”
“Take yourself off,” Robert said sullenly. “This is a waste of time.”
Lander left the room without another word. Robert closed his eyes, sipping the coffee, attempting to calm himself while plain, primitive fear was strangling him. He heard the other man’s chair scrape.
“I had better be off for the parson,” Dr. Joyce said.
Robert opened his eyes. He looked up.
“Still certain you want a real one?” the man asked, with a faint ironical smirk.
Robert held his coffee between his two hands. The liquid trembled in the cup. He took a deep, sharp breath. “Yes! Cease asking me that.”
His mentor nodded. He gave Robert a wordless cuff on the shoulder as he passed toward the door.
Folie had thought of several more ways to avoid a wedding, but each of them had been systematically ridiculed as hopelessly unavailing when she suggested them to Robert. After her third trip downstairs to offer her suggestions, she had to sit on her bed, stuff her knuckles into her mouth like a child, and bite down until she whimpered in order to prevent herself from weeping.
As much as he seemed to insist on this wedding, he became colder and angrier at any mention of it, even any idea to prevent it or afterwards annul it. Lander was gone to obtain a license, she knew. Folie was beginning to feel frantic, like a bird trapped into a cage with some unpredictable beast waking in a dark corner. No matter how amiable or careful she tried to be w
ith this creature, she had the sensation that she was somehow doomed to be mauled and broken.
Her brief fantasies, nurtured by Melinda during those moments near the sunlit bridge, seemed far away and foolish now. Even the idea that she and Robert could be real friends receded, when he was so baffling and ominous; when she could never seem to understand or foresee what would move him, only feel the shadow moving beyond sight or touch.
When Mrs. Paine returned, everything seemed to become completely dream-like. Like a good fairy bent on happiness at any odds, she bustled about the bedchamber—Folie had brought no wedding dress? Well, she must wear one of the gowns Melinda had not packed in her rush. A seam attacked to enlarge the bodice, a biscuit-colored ribbon substituted for the pink, some blonde lace added, and it would be as elegant as you please. Miss Davenport was given the task of adding lace, and when Mrs. Witham-Stanley arrived, bearing some pretty marchpane candies to regale the bride’s attendants, she declared that no bodice seam had ever defeated her yet, and began snipping expertly at the gown.
Miss Davenport, becoming uncharacteristically enthusiastic, began to fashion a little headdress from a matching length of lace and arrange it in Folie’s hair. When Folie was dressed and curled, the ladies sat back, giggling over a tray of tea and marchpane while she stood before the mirror, gazing at herself in bemusement. There was general agreement among her lighthearted attendants that the gown looked very well, but something was missing from the bodice.
“A flower,” Mrs. Witham-Stanley suggested.
“Do you have a necklace, my dear?” Mrs. Paine asked.
“Melinda took our jewelry,” Folie said. The ladies began to search their minds and persons for an alternative. Mrs. Witham-Stanley bemoaned the fact that she had not thought to bring her mother’s single diamond drop from home.
“Even a small pin,” Miss Davenport advised. “Not gold, that would be too extravagant. Something rich and pale.”
“Oh!” Folie said, remembering. She turned suddenly, and stooped to look beneath the bed. It was there. With a little effort, she reached under and retrieved a hat box. Inside was a small ivory casket. Folie lifted it out, set it on the dressing table, and opened the box.
The Regency Romances Page 70