Chesney had bethought him of his mother and how she had always shooed away any girl in whom he took the slightest interest. But this time would be different—this time he’d present her with a Fact Accomplished!
“If ye mean to escape”—he had wagged a mocking finger at her—“then perhaps I’d best tell the Squire to put a guard on you! For I mean to go through with this marriage!”
Constance had come away, telling herself it was all predestined. She was not meant for happiness. Or anything she wanted. She was meant to go through with this sham of a marriage.
And now Pamela was telling her that Chesney’s mother was ignorant of the whole affair.
Suddenly that too seemed foreordained.
“No, he did not tell me,” she said, amazing Pamela by her calm acceptance of the situation.
“But this is terrible!” cried Pamela in real concern. “She will cast you out!”
There was a look of desperation in Constance’s violet eyes. “I do not think so,” she mumbled. “But in any event I must take that chance.” For how could she tell Pamela that this marriage was but a device to take her to Dorset, and that she would break the news to Chesney and flee to Devon as soon as she got there?
“But Father won’t force you to—”
“It’s too late.” Constance laid a quieting hand on her arm. “The ceremony is about to begin.”
The sonorous words fell dizzily about her. Cherish... honor... obey... words which had taken on such a glorious meaning to her in Essex when she had looked deep into Dev’s smiling green eyes and plighted forever her troth. Now they fell upon her like hailstones upon a roof—meaningless, nothing but sound and fury. If God struck down liars with lightning bolts, I would be the first to go, she thought with a shiver as she said, “I do.”
She tried not to look ahead. Soon the guests would be boisterously snatching away her bride’s garters.
And then—!
Then she would be alone with Chesney. Alone in a big canopied bed.
Shakily she accepted the wine goblet Chesney offered. His hand was so unsteady he nearly spilled it on her dress. Everybody was now toasting the bride, they were clapping Chesney on the back, offering him congratulations, they were kissing her upon the cheek.
Someone said roguishly, “Are you ready for bed, Chesney lad?” and Constance’s cheeks burned. She must somehow keep Chesney downstairs drinking, get him so drunk that he would tumble into bed and pass out. And then tomorrow morning—oh, if only it would stop snowing, for tomorrow they must leave for Dorset!—tomorrow she would hoodwink Chesney by telling him what a magnificent lover he had been—even though he could not remember it! And she would find reasons why they could not sleep together in the inns where they stayed on the road to Dorset! Migraines, menstruation! Her mind leaped ahead, feverishly.
Captain Warburton watched her, a strange stunned expression on his face. He had never thought she would go through with it—he could not believe it even now.
The riband “favors” were being snipped from her gown amid much laughter. People were eating and now toasts were being drunk at random to the ladies’ eyelashes and eyebrows, although wicked glances were being cast at other parts of the female anatomy even as the glasses were lifted high. Constance felt suffocated. Chesney kept on drinking.
And then she could postpone the moment no longer. Chesney was still on his feet, for with a frown the Squire had firmly taken his last glass from him and muttered something about “consideration for the bride.” Chesney had bobbed his head drunkenly.
The very force of the crowd around her bore Constance upstairs. Leading the pack, she saw Pamela in her enormous blue and silver gown cast a worried look back, and gave her a brave answering smile. Whatever happened now, she told herself she would somehow go through with it—so that she might leave forever behind her the sight of Tony Warburton, scowling from below, and seek refuge in Devon.
Tony Warburton was not among that tipsy crowd of well-wishers who, amid shrieks of laughter and merry shouts, snatched off one of the bride’s beribboned garters. It was of violet satin a-sparkle with brilliants and Constance had insisted those garters be tied well below her knees lest impudent questing hands be tempted to reach above and wander along an elegant naked thigh.
But custom was custom and must be followed. One of her stockings was now sliding down but Constance tried to keep her full skirts from being tossed up as eager hands sought her other garter beneath her swirling petticoat and chemise.
In the midst of all this, the party about the bride became suddenly aware of a loud commotion downstairs. Late wedding guests, thought Pamela. And no wonder, people are crying out—with the snow as deep as it is, the miracle is that they ever got here at all! And then—just as Constance was being backed amid a wild flurry of skirts to the wall in the contest for the garter:
“Where is Chesney?” cried a piercing female voice from the hall below. “Where is he? Deliver him to me this minute!” The questing hands fell away from Constance’s skirts. One and all turned agape to meet this unexpected interruption as heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs.
In the doorway of the bridal chamber where all the merriment was taking place a large figure appeared—so large indeed it seemed to block the door. The woman who stood there panting from the rapidity of her ascent up the staircase was a stranger to all of them. She had accusing black eyes and she had not bothered to remove her snow-covered outer garments but had labored up the stairs with one gloved hand still in her fur muff and the other attempting to hold up layers of woolen petticoats and a dark velvet overdress that ran rivulets of rich crewel embroidery. Her enveloping fur-lined woolen cloak brushed against the doorjambs and her large fur hood had fallen back to reveal a bejeweled coif peeking out from beneath the encircling wrapping of a red knitted scarf. “Where is Chesney?” she repeated, on a note of rising fury. “Where is my son? I am here to stop this farce of a wedding!”
Someone in the crowd gave Chesney a shove forward and he emerged into his mother’s sight looking dejected and befuddled.
She plunged forward and seized him, shook him like a small boy. “Are you such a fool that you would attempt to marry without my consent?” Melting droplets from her clothing flew into Chesney’s frightened befuddled face.
“Madam, they are already married!” The Squire, incensed, had followed her up and now he stepped forward on Constance’s behalf.
“Bah!” cried his imposing new guest, focusing her fierce gaze on the Squire. “Chesney is leaving—with me!” Pamela’s blue and silver form would have blocked her way but Chesney’s powerful mother grasped her lurching son, who was so unsteady on his feet that he almost fell, and brushed the girl aside like a feather. Pamela ended up rather hard against the wall.
All the young people who a moment ago had surrounded the bride now streamed downstairs after Chesney and his charging mother. With a shudder, Constance followed, and leaned down over the upstairs railing, looking down into the hall below.
The big woman’s charge carried her all the way to the front door. There she paused and turned majestically to fix her glittering gaze on Constance, standing above her in bridal disarray.
Chesney turned too. “Con—Constance?” he stammered.
“There will be no room for this brazen hussy in my coach!” cried his mother. “Married or not!” She seized her son by the ear and dragged him forward by sheer bulk.
“Constance!” wailed Chesney as if he expected the slender girl above to fend off this leviathan who had hold of him.
Cart Rawlings found his tongue. “We will lend the bridal couple our own coach,” he began eagerly. “And Chesney can return it to—”
“Never!” roared Chesney’s mother. “My poor deluded boy shall ride with me!”
Pamela gasped.
Cart had never felt so foolish, but he remained a friend of Chesney’s to the end. “Well, then, Constance can ride after you in our coach,” he offered hurriedly. “And Chesney can return it
later. Or if you, sir”—he turned a pleading countenance to the Squire—“would prefer to furnish Mistress Constance with a horse?”
“A horse? Are ye mad. Cart?” The Squire surged forward in a towering passion. “My ward will not trail after her bridegroom alone through a howling blizzard. Not in a coach and not on horseback! Good riddance to you, Madam! You can take your son to Dorset or to hell for all of me!”
With a sniff, Chesney’s overpowering mother dragged her protesting son through the front door and the Squire kicked it shut behind her with a force that nearly knocked him backward off his feet.
The sound resounded through the house like an explosion. Outside in the snow there was the muffled roar of Chesney’s mother’s domineering voice and the sound of a whip cracking as the tired snow-covered horses were wheeled about to depart presumably for the nearest inn that would give them shelter on such a night.
Mouths gaped at this strange departure of the groom—with his mother and without the bride. But of them all no face was more amazed than Tony Warburton’s as he turned to look up at what had been—so casually, it seemed to him—tossed away. She was standing very still, perhaps with shock, in her bridal gown with the riband favors all snipped loose and one of them, perhaps the one she had been about to bestow on Pamela, still in her hand. Her face too was still and almost calm—and so beautiful it hurt to look at her.
With an effort of will, Tony Warburton forced his gaze away and held in check the sinews that yearned to send him up those stairs at a bound and sweep her up and away.
Chesney Pell—under duress, of course—had allowed himself to be led away from what Tony Warburton would have chanced hell for.
Constance, gazing down at the door through which her bumbling bridegroom and his furious mother had just departed, told herself dreamily that this was her punishment for a shabby deed: limbo again. Neither heaven nor hell but a suspension in between. Once again neither wife nor widow....
And now she must face all over again the soul-shattering pressures of her life along the Axe.
An embarrassing silence now fell over the hall and all eyes turned irresistibly to Constance staring down at them from above.
Pamela pitied her.
But Constance had all the aplomb of a sleepwalker who has slept through it all. She looked down upon them as if she did not see them at all, as if none of the evening’s events had touched her, while humiliation seeped through into her very soul.
And then, catching up whatever shreds of dignity she still possessed, she turned and disappeared in the direction of the bridal chamber and the empty bridal bed that awaited her.
They heard a door quietly closing.
The Squire, still purple with fury, downed a goblet of wine so fast he choked and had to be thumped on the back. He had expected to cap the evening’s merriment by bestowing a dowry on Constance, but the unexpected arrival of Chesney’s termagant mother had set him back on his heels. He would not dower the wench now, by heaven! Not a penny of his wealth should be bestowed on a worthless pup who let his mother haul him away from his bridal bed by the scruff of the neck, without even a struggle!
Pamela disappeared upstairs in a blue and silver swish, in an attempt to comfort Constance. And found the door firmly locked against her.
“Go away,” Constance called in a trembling voice. “I don’t want to see anyone just now.”
Pamela stole away.
Downstairs the guests, most of whom were staying the night, milled about in little groups, chattering in amazement over what had happened.
Tony Warburton, who had been grimly silent all during this macabre performance, detached himself from them. Flinging on his cloak, he strode outside and took a long silent walk in the snow. He was trying to come to terms with himself and he found it no easy task. At last he gave a short contemptuous laugh, a laugh that consigned himself to the devil—fool that he was, so set on a woman who would not have him!
Ned, he thought grimly, would probably laugh on hearing what had happened. And then most likely weep.
Numbed with cold and with boots slushing with snow. Captain Warburton took himself back into the candlelit house and astonished the company by the amount of drink a man could consume and still remain grimly sober.
Chapter 28
Before the week was out, an event of such import occurred that it overshadowed even the delicious scandal of Axeleigh’s deserted bride. On February 6, that merry monarch—dissolute Charles II—ill since February 2, succumbed to apoplexy.
News of the King’s sudden death spread like wildfire across England. Charles’s brother James had succeeded to the throne the same day and subtle changes in government immediately appeared, for James was a fanatic and—like the French King Louis across the Channel—believed himself possessed of a divine mission to rid his land of the Protestant faith.
News of the King’s sudden death reached Margaret in Devon and sent her out upon the road, despite the winter ice and mires, to London to receive her orders. For now the Duke of Monmouth, hearing of his father’s death, would be on the move. He would come from Holland with an army, he would send James packing—everywhere the mutters were the same.
And Margaret, who had just penned another letter to her brother at Axeleigh, once again urging him to betroth Constance to Tony Warburton, missed by one day her brother’s letter which would have told her of the wedding that went wrong.
The news of the King’s death reached a Valley of the Axe still floundering in snow, and as the snows of February melted into a muddy March there were meetings and ridings about and much serious conjecture about the anticipated “invasion” of the Duke of Monmouth, to claim, as Charles II’s firstborn son, the throne of England.
In the last years of his reign (while the Squire’s pretty daughter was rejecting suitors with almost childish glee), Charles II had ruled alone, having hastily disbanded in Oxford a Parliament that was pressing to forbid his brother James to succeed him to the throne. Shaftesbury and the other Whigs could not forget that James’s wife, Anne Hyde (who had married James in a midnight marriage), was daughter to the man who had pushed through Parliament the infamous “Clarendon Code” which imposed savage punishments for attending any but Church of England services, and effectively deprived Dissenters of both religious worship and education by the Five-Mile Act which forbade nonconformist ministers or teachers within five miles of any town—for Charles’s successor to have such a father-in-law was unthinkable!
But at Axeleigh, there were other concerns.
Chesney had not come north for Constance. She remained at Axeleigh. He was still at his mother’s house in Lyme, for that lady had refused even to let him go back to Oxford, trumpeting that he was “no better than a babe in arms” and “wattle” in any strumpet’s hands!
“What does Chesney say?” Pamela asked, noting the barrage of letters that came up from Lyme.
“Nothing,” said Constance, dismissing Chesney’s hysterical entreaties with the one word. She felt very ashamed of herself. For now at last the appalling truth was borne in on her:
Escape had not been her only reason for marrying Chesney. She was punishing herself by this marriage—punishing herself for giving her heart to Dev—and losing him; punishing herself for betraying Margaret by treacherously falling in love with Tony Warburton. Now her hot face went down into her hands. She was not only a scandal, she was a cheat! She was cheating this fool she had married!
“I have sent him back his pearls,” she muttered.
Constance must be got out of this despondency, thought Pamela. “Do you think the Duke of Monmouth will invade?” she asked, in an attempt to get Constance’s mind on other things. “Father says wiser heads will hold him back.”
Constance lifted her own head and gave Pamela a long level look. “He is Charles’s firstborn son! Of course he will invade,” she said scornfully.
“Then there will be a battle, for James will not give up the crown easily.”
“Yes, t
here will be a battle,” said Constance tersely and went back to glooming.
March slid into a rainy April and still Constance skulked about the house, remaining in her room except for meals, refusing to see visitors. Not that there were many callers for her these days, for Constance was no longer the eligible dowried young lady she had been before her disastrous marriage to Chesney. Women had always been envious of her—it was young men come a-courting who had flocked around.
The Squire too was depressed. The blackmailer had increased his demands. The last time he had put thirty guineas into the hollow tree.
Pamela, surrounded by so much gloom, did her best to keep everybody’s spirits up. Dick Peacham, to her enormous relief, had been called away just after the Twelfth Night Ball to his uncle’s bedside.
“Dying,” he had told Pamela dramatically. “And he has promised to leave me half of what he owns!”
Pamela couldn’t have cared less if Dick’s uncle left him half the kingdom, but she had tried to seem interested. “Of course you must go,” she had assured him. “And stay till the end!”
But the end was slow in coming. Dick Peacham found himself twiddling his thumbs at the bedside of an uncle who was gradually recovering and yet loath to let his favorite nephew out of his sight.
Peacham’s absence had lightened Tom’s heart. Pamela would forget the fellow now, he was sure. But he reminded himself that Peacham’s departure had left Pamela without a ready escort and in April he squired her to a party at the Hamiltons’. As was usual now, Constance had refused to go. But Pamela was determined to enjoy the evening. It had been thrilling to come in on Tom’s arm. Ignoring Margie Hamilton’s sly little digs about Tom being interested in Dorothea Hawley (for although flirtatious Melissa had been real competition, earnest young Dorothea, Pamela felt, was not), Pamela had clung to that arm even when Tom would have shaken her off. Then she had sighted Dorothea making her entrance along with the rest of the Hawley family.
Dorothea’s flaxen hair was self-consciously arranged, stiffly curled by her mother to be flat on top and to fall into corkscrew ringlets at the sides that imitated—by accident, not design—spaniel’s ears. To hold them well away from Dorothea’s “blooming cheeks,” as her mother insisted on calling them (loudly, to call attention to her daughter), these curls were wired to stay in place.
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