Mistress of Mellyn

by Victoria Holt

  He went on: “Think of how much good this could bring to us all, my dear Miss Leigh. I have been so impressed by the manner in which you have helped Alvean. The child needs a mother. You would supply that need … admirably.”

  “Should two people marry for the sake of a child, do you think?”

  “I am a most selfish man. I never would.” He leaned forward across the table and his eyes were alight with something I did not understand. “I would marry for my own satisfaction.”

  “Then …” I began.

  “I confess I was not considering Alvean alone. We are three people, my dear Miss Leigh, who could profit from this marriage. Alvean needs you. And I … I need you. Do you need us? Perhaps you are more self-sufficient than we are, but what will you do if you do not marry? You will go from post to post, and that is not a very pleasant life. When one is young, handsome, and full of spirit it is tolerable … but sprightly governesses become aging governesses.”

  I said acidly: “Do you suggest that I should enter into this marriage as an insurance against old age?”

  “I suggest only that you do what your desires dictate, my dear Miss Leigh.”

  There was a short silence during which I felt an absurd desire to burst into tears. This was something I had longed for, but a proposal of marriage should have been an impassioned declaration, and I could not rid myself of the suspicion that there was something other than Connan’s love for me which had inspired it. It seemed to me as though he were offering me a list of reasons why we should marry, for fear I should discover the real one.

  “You put it on such a practical basis,” I stammered. “I had not thought of marriage in that way.”

  His eyebrows lifted and he laughed, looking suddenly very gay. “How glad I am. I thought of you always as such a practical person, so I was trying to put it to you in the manner in which I felt it would appeal to you most.”

  “Are you seriously asking me to marry you?”

  “I doubt if I have ever been so serious in my life as I am at this moment. What is your answer? Please do not keep me in suspense any longer.”

  I said I must have time to consider this.

  “That is fair enough. You will tell me tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I will tell you tomorrow.”

  I rose and went to the door. He was there before me. He laid his fingers on the door handle and I waited for him to open it, but he did no such thing. He stood with his back to the door and caught me up in his arms.

  He kissed me as I had never been kissed, never dreamed of being kissed; so that I knew there was a life of the emotions of which I was totally ignorant. He kissed my eyelids, my nose, my cheeks, my mouth, and my throat until he was breathless, and I was too.

  Then he laughed.

  “Wait until the morning!” he mocked. “Do I look the sort of man who would wait until the morning? Do you think I am the sort of man who would marry for the sake of his daughter? No, Miss Leigh …” he mocked again, “my dear, dear Miss Leigh … I want to marry you because I want to keep you a prisoner in my house. I don’t want you to run away from me because, since you came, I have thought of little else but you, and I know I am going on thinking of you all my life.”

  “Is this true?” I whispered. “Can this be true?”

  “Martha!” he said. “What a stern name for such an adorable creature! And yet, how it fits!”

  I said: “My sister calls me Marty. My father did too.”

  “Marty,” he said. “That sounds helpless, clinging … feminine. You can be a Marty sometimes. For me you will be all three. Marty, Martha, and Miss Leigh, my very dear Miss Leigh. You see you are all three, and my dearest Marty would always betray Miss Leigh. I knew from her that you were interested in me. Far more interested than Miss Leigh would think proper. How enchanting! I shall marry not one woman but three!”

  “Have I been so blatant?”

  “Tremendously so … adorably so.”

  I knew that it was foolish to pretend. I gave myself up to his embrace, and it was wonderful beyond my imaginings.

  At length I said: “I have a terrible feeling that I shall wake up in my bed at Mount Mellyn and find I have dreamed all this.”

  “Do you know,” he said seriously, “I feel exactly the same.”

  “But it is so different for you. You can do as you will … go where you will … dependent on no one.”

  “I am independent no longer. I depend on Marty, Martha, my dear Miss Leigh.”

  He spoke so seriously that I could have wept with tenderness. The changing emotions were almost too much for me to bear.

  This is love! I thought. The emotion which carries one to the very heights of human experience and, because it can carry one so high, one is in continual danger of falling; and one must never forget, the higher the delight, the more tragic the fall.

  But this was not the moment to think of tragedy. I loved, and miraculously I was loved. I had no doubt in that library of Penlandstow that I was loved.

  For love such as this, one would be prepared to risk everything.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and looked long into my face.

  He said: “We’ll be happy, my darling. We’ll be happier than either you or I ever dreamed possible.”

  I knew that we should be. All that had gone before would give us a finer appreciation of this joy we could bring each other.

  “We should be practical,” he said. “We should make our plans. When shall we marry? I do not like delay. I am the most impatient man alive, where my own pleasures are concerned. We will go home tomorrow, and there we will announce our engagement. No, not tomorrow … the day after. I have one or two little commitments here tomorrow. And as soon as we are home we will give a ball to announce our engagement. I think that in a month after that we should be setting out on our honeymoon. I suggest Italy, unless you have any other ideas?”

  I sat with my hands clasped. I must have looked like an ecstatic schoolgirl.

  “I wonder what they will think at Mount Mellyn.”

  “Who, the servants? You may be sure they have a pretty shrewd idea of the way things are; servants have, you know. Servants are like detectives in the house. They pick up every little clue. You shiver. Are you cold?”

  “No, only excited. I still believe I’m going to wake up in a moment.”

  “And you like the idea of Italy?”

  “I would like the idea of the North Pole in some company.”

  “By which, my darling, I hope you mean mine.”

  “That was my intention.”

  “My dear Miss Leigh,” he said, “how I love your astringent moods. They are going to make conversation throughout our lives so invigorating.” I had an idea then that he was making comparisons between Alice and me, and I shivered again as I had when he made that remark about the detectives.

  “You are a little worried about the reception of the news,” he went on. “The servants … the countryside. Who cares? Do you? Of course you do not. Miss Leigh has too much good sense for that. I am longing to tell Peter Nansellock that you are to be my wife. To tell the truth, I have been somewhat jealous of that young man.”

  “There was no need to be.”

  “Still, I was anxious. I had visions of his persuading you to go to Australia with him. That was something I should have gone to great lengths to prevent.”

  “Even so far as asking me to marry you?”

  “Farther than that if the need had arisen. I should have abducted you and locked you up in a dungeon until he was far away.”

  “There was no need for the slightest apprehension.”

  “Are you quite sure? He is very handsome, I believe.”

  “Perhaps he is. I did not notice.”

  “I could have killed him when he had the effrontery to offer you Jacinth.”

  “I think he merely enjoys being outrageous. He probably knew I should not accept it.”

  “And I need not fear him?”

  “You ne
ed never fear anyone,” I told him.

  Then once more I was in that embrace, and I was oblivious of all but the fact that I had discovered love, and believed, as doubtless hosts of lovers have before, that there was never love such as that between us two.

  At length he said: “We’ll go back the day after tomorrow. We’ll start making arrangements immediately. In a month from now we’ll be married. We’ll put up the banns as soon as we return. We will have a ball to announce our engagement and invite all our neighbors to the wedding.”

  “I suppose it must be done in this way?”

  “Tradition, my darling. It is one of the things we have to bow down to. You’ll be magnificent, I know. You’re not nervous?”

  “Of your country neighbors, no.”

  “You and I will open the ball this time together, dearest Miss Leigh.”

  “Yes,” I said; and I pictured myself in the green dress wearing the amber comb in my hair with the diamond horseshoe glittering on the green background.

  I had no qualms about taking my place in his circle.

  Then he began to talk of Alice. “I have never told you,” he said, “of my first marriage.”

  “No,” I answered.

  “It was not a happy one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “A marriage which was arranged. This time I shall marry my own choice. Only one who has suffered the first can realize the joy of the second. Dearest, I have not lived the life of a monk, I fear.”

  “I guessed it.”

  “I am a most sinful man, as you will discover.”

  “I am prepared for the worst.”

  “Alice … my wife … and I were most unsuited, I suppose.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “There is little to tell. She was a gentle creature, quiet, anxious to please. She seemed to have little spirit. I understood why. She was in love with someone else when she married me.”

  “The man she ran away with?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Poor Alice! She was unfortunate. She chose not only the wrong husband but the wrong lover. There was little to choose between us … myself and Geoffry Nansellock. We were of a kind. In the old days there was a tradition of the droit de seigneurs in these parts. Geoffry and I did our best to maintain that.”

  “You are telling me that you have enjoyed many love affairs.”

  “I am a dissolute, degenerate philanderer. I am going to say was. Because from this moment I am going to be faithful to one woman for the rest of my life. You do not look scornful or skeptical. Bless you for that. I mean it, dearest Marty, I swear I mean it. It is because of those experiences of the past that I know the difference between them and this. This is love.”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, “you and I will be faithful together because that is the only way we can prove to each other the depth and breadth of our love.”

  He took my hands and kissed them, and I had never known him so serious. “I love you,” he said. “Remember that … always remember it.”

  “I intend to.”

  “You may hear gossip.”

  “One does hear gossip,” I admitted.

  “You have heard of Alice and that Alvean is not my daughter? Oh, darling, someone told you and you do not want to betray the teller. Never mind. You know. It is true. I could never love the child. In fact, I avoided the sight of her. She was an unpleasant reminder of much that I wished to forget. But when you came I felt differently. You made me see her as a lonely child, suffering from the sins of grown-up people. You see, you changed me, Marty dear. Your coming changed the whole household. That is what confirms me in my belief that with us it is going to be different from anything that has ever happened to me before.”

  “Connan, I want to make that child happy. I want to make her forget that there is a doubt as to her parentage. Let her be able to accept you as her father. It is what she needs.”

  “You will be a mother to her. Then I must be her father.”

  “We are going to be so happy, Connan.”

  “Can you see into the future?”

  “I can see into ours, for our future is what we make it, and I intend that it shall be one of complete happiness.”

  “And what Miss Leigh decides shall be, will be. And you will promise me not to be hurt if you hear gossip about me?”

  “You are thinking of Lady Treslyn, I know. She has been your mistress.” The words seemed to come from my lips involuntarily. I was astonished that I could speak of such matters. Yet I had to know the truth, and so strong was my emotion that I seemed to have thrown all sense of propriety aside.

  He nodded.

  Then I said: “She will never be again. That is all over.”

  He kissed my hand. “Have I not sworn eternal fidelity?”

  “But Connan,” I said, “she is so beautiful and she will still be there.”

  “But I am in love,” he answered, “for the first time in my life.”

  “And you were not in love with her?”

  “Lust, passion,” he answered, “they sometimes wear the guise of love; but when one meets true love one recognizes it for what it is. Dearest, let us bury all that is past. Let us start afresh from this day forth—you and I—for better for worse … .”

  I was in his arms again. “Connan,” I said, “I am not dreaming, am I? Please say I am not dreaming.”

  It was late when I left him. I went to my room in a haze of happiness. I was afraid to sleep for fear I should wake up and find that it had all been a dream.

  In the morning I went to Alvean’s room and told her the news.

  For a few seconds a satisfied smile appeared at the corners of her mouth; then she assumed indifference, but it was too late. I knew that she was pleased.

  “You’ll stay with us all the time now, miss,” she said.

  “Yes,” I assured her.

  “I wonder if I shall ever ride as well as you.”

  “Probably better. You’ll be able to have more practice than I ever could.”

  Again that smile touched her lips. Then she was serious.

  “Miss,” she said, “what shall I call you? You’ll be my stepmother, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but you can call me what you like.”

  “Not miss!”

  “Well, hardly. I shan’t be miss any more.”

  “I expect I shall have to call you Mamma.” Her mouth hardened a little.

  “If you do not like that you could call me Martha in private. Or Marty. That’s what my father and sister always called me.”

  “Marty,” she repeated. “I like that. It sounds like a horse.”

  “What could be better praise,” I cried, and she regarded my amusement with continued seriousness.

  I went to Gilly’s room.

  “Gilly,” I said, “I’m going to be Mrs. TreMellyn.”

  The blankness left the blue eyes and her smile was dazzling.

  Then she ran to me and buried her head in my bodice. I could feel her body shaking with laughter.

  I could never be quite sure what was going on among all the shadowy vagueness of Gilly’s mind, but I knew she was contented. She had bracketed me with Alice in her mind and I felt that she was less surprised than I or Alvean, or anyone else, would be.

  To Gilly it was the most natural thing in the world that I should take Alice’s place.

  I believe that, from that moment, for Gilly I became Alice.

  It was a merry journey home. We sang Cornish songs all the way to the station. I had never seen Connan so happy. I thought: This is how it will be all the rest of our lives.

  Alvean joined in the singing, so did Gilly; and it was astonishing to hear that child, who scarcely ever spoke, singing quietly as though to herself.

  We sang the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” Connan had a rich baritone voice which was very pleasant to hear and I felt I had reached the very peak of happiness as he sang the first lines.

  “The first day of Christmas my true love sent to me

>   A partridge in a pear tree.”

  We went through the song and I had difficulty in remembering all the gifts after the five gold rings; and we laughed together hilariously while we argued as to how many maids there were a-milking, and how many geese a-laying were sent.

  “But they were not very sensible things,” said Alvean, “except of course the five gold rings. I think he was pretending he loved her more than he really did.”

  “But he was her true love,” I protested.

  “How could she be sure?” asked Alvean.

  “Because he told her so,” answered Connan.

  “Then he ought to have given her something better than a partridge in a pear tree. I expect the partridge flew away and the pears were those hard ones which are used for stewing.”

  “You must not be hard on lovers,” Connan cried. “All the world loves them, and you have to keep in step.”

  And so we laughed and bantered until we boarded the train.

  Billy Trehay met us with the carriage and I was astonished when we reached the house, for I then realized that Connan must have sent a message to arrive before we did. He wanted me to be received with honors. Even so I was unprepared for the reception which was waiting for us in the hall.

  The servants were all there—the Polgreys and Tapperty families and others from the gardens and stables, and even the village boys and girls who came to help and whom I scarcely knew.

  They were lined up ceremoniously, and Connan took my arm as we entered the hall.

  “As you know,” he said, “Miss Leigh has promised to marry me. In a few weeks’ time she will be your mistress.”

  The men bowed and the women curtsied, but I was conscious, as I smiled at them and walked along the line with Connan, that there was a certain wariness in their eyes.

  As I had guessed, they were not ready to accept me as mistress of the house … yet.

  There was a big fire in my room and everything looked cosy and welcoming. Daisy brought my hot water. She was a little remote, I thought. She did not stop and chat with me as she had hitherto.