Kitabı oku: «Regency Innocents», sayfa 6
Somewhat overcome, she reached into her reticule for a handkerchief. While she was busy blowing her nose, she heard Charles cross to the fireplace.
‘You haven’t embarrassed me as much as I fear you have embarrassed yourself,’ Captain Fawley snarled. ‘Linney, perhaps you would be so good as to draw back the curtains?’
In silence, the manservant did as he was bade. Sunlight streamed in, illuminating the livid burns down one side of the Captain’s face, head and neck, which the length of his unkempt hair did little to conceal. The left sleeve of his threadbare jacket was empty; the lower part of his left leg was also missing.
Perplexed, Heloise said, ‘Why will drawing the curtains make me embarrassed?’
Captain Fawley laughed—a harsh noise that sounded as though it was torn from his throat. ‘You have just kissed a cripple! Don’t you feel sick? Most pretty women would recoil if they saw me, not want to kiss this!’ He indicated his scarred face with an angry sweep of his right hand.
But, ‘Oh!’ said Heloise, her face lighting up. ‘Do you really think I am pretty? How much more I like you already.’
The stunned look on Captain Fawley’s face was as nothing compared to what Charles felt. Her face alight with pleasure, Heloise really did look remarkably pretty. He could not think why he had never noticed it before. Her eyes sparkled with intelligence, she had remarkably thick, lustrous hair, and a dainty little figure. She did not have the obvious attractions of her sister, but she was far from the plain, dull little creature he had written off while his eyes had been full of Felice. ‘Captivating’, Conningsby had said of her. Aye, she was. And she would be a credit to him once he had her properly dressed.
There was a certain dressmaker in Bond Street whose designs would suit her to a tee …
‘You cannot mean that!’ Robert began to curse.
A few minutes of such Turkish treatment was all he would permit Heloise to endure, then he would escort her to the safety of her rooms.
‘Why not?’ Unfazed, Heloise untied the ribbons of her bonnet and placed the shapeless article on her lap. Charles had a vision of wresting it from her hands, throwing it off a bridge into the Thames, and replacing it with a neat little crimson velvet creation, trimmed with swansdown.
‘Well, because I am disfigured,’ Captain Fawley said. ‘I am only half a man.’
She cocked her head to examine him, in the way that always put the Earl in mind of a cheeky little sparrow. She missed nothing—from the toe of Robert’s right boot to the puckered eyelid that drooped into the horrible scarring that truly did disfigure the left side of his face.
‘You have only lost a bit of one leg and a bit of one arm,’ she said. ‘Not even a tenth of you has gone. You may think of yourself as nine-tenths of a man, I suppose, if you must, but not less than that. Besides—’ she shrugged ‘—many others did not survive the war at all. Gaspard did not. I tell you now, I would still have been glad to have him back, and nothing would have prevented me from embracing him, no matter how many limbs he might have lost!’
‘But you must want me to leave this house,’ he blustered. ‘And once an heir is on the way—’ he rounded on Charles ‘—you can have no more excuses to keep me imprisoned here!’
Before he could draw breath to reply, Heloise said, rather stiffly, ‘Is it because I am French?’
‘Wh … what?’
‘You reject my friendship because I am French. In effect, all this nonsense about being disfigured is the flimflam. You don’t want me for your sister.’
Faced with an indignant woman, Captain Fawley could do nothing but retreat from his stance, muttering apologies. ‘It is not your fault you are French. You can’t help that. Or being married to my half-brother, I dare say. I know how ruthless he can be when he wants his own way.’ He glared up at Charles.
‘Then you will help me?’ Again, her face lit up with hope. ‘Because Charles, he says it is not at all fashionable for a husband to hang on his wife’s arm all the time. I have heard in Paris all about the season in London, with the masquerades, and the picnics, and the fireworks, which he will not at all want to take me to, even if I was not his wife, because such things are all very frivolous and not good ton. But I would like to see them all. And he said I may, if I could find a suitable escort. And who would be more proper to go about with me than my own brother? And then, you know, he says I must learn to ride …’
‘Well, I can’t teach you to ride! Haven’t you noticed? I’ve only got one leg!’
Heloise regarded his left leg with a thoughtful air. ‘You have only lost a little bit of the lower part of one leg. You still have your thigh, and that, I believe, is what is important for staying in the saddle. Do I have that correct? You men grip with your knees, is that not so? Whereas I—’ she pulled a face ‘—must learn to ride side-saddle. I will have to hang on with my hands to the reins, and keep my balance while the creature is bouncing along …’
‘Well, there you have it!’ Captain Fawley pointed out. ‘You have both hands. I have only one, and—’
‘Oh, don’t tell me you are afraid of falling off!’ she mocked.
Charles suddenly felt conscious of holding his breath. For weeks before he had gone to Paris he had known Robert had regained most of his health and strength. There had been nothing preventing him from getting out and resuming a normal life but his own black mood. Had they all failed him by tiptoeing round his sensibilities?
‘A brave soldier like you?’ Heloise continued relentlessly. ‘You are full of … of … Well, it is not polite to mention what you are full of!’
Captain Fawley turned for support to his brother. ‘Tell her, Charles. Tell her that I just can’t—’
Charles cut him off with a peremptory wave of his hand. ‘You had as well give in graciously. Once she has the bit between her teeth, there is no stopping her. You cannot argue with her logic because it is of that singularly female variety which always completely confounds we mere males.’ So saying, he swept her a mocking bow.
Robert sank back into the cushions, looking as though he had been hit by a whirlwind. Heloise was still watching him, her head tilted to one side, a hopeful expression on her face. And all of a sudden the dour cripple let out a bark of genuine laughter.
‘I quite see why you married her, Walton.’
‘Indeed, she left me no choice.’
‘Very well, madam. I will come with you when you start your riding lessons,’ he conceded. Then he frowned. ‘Since I expect we will both fall off with monotonous regularity, I recommend we take our lessons early in the mornings, when nobody will be about to see us.’
She clapped her hands, her face lighting up with joy. Something twisted painfully inside Charles. Nothing he had ever done or said to her had managed to please her half so well.
‘I dare say,’ he said brusquely, ‘you would like to see your rooms now, madam wife, and freshen up a little?’
Heloise pulled a face at Robert. ‘What he means, no doubt, is that I look a mess, and that also he wishes to take me aside to give me a lecture about my appalling manners.’
‘No, I am sure not,’ Robert replied, regarding the stiff set of Walton’s shoulders with a perplexed frown. ‘Your manners are delightfully refreshing.’
Heloise laughed at that, but once they had quit Captain Fawley’s suite she turned anxious eyes on her husband.
He made no comment until he had taken her to the suite of rooms he’d had his staff prepare for his bride. On sight of them, Heloise gasped aloud. She had her own sitting room, with a pale blue Aubusson carpet upon which various comfortable sofas and chairs were arranged. Her bedroom, too, was carpeted almost to the wainscot. With a smile, Heloise imagined getting up in the morning and setting her bare feet on that, rather than the rough boards of the little room she had shared with her sister. No shutters on any of the windows, she noted, only heavy dark blue velvet curtains, held back with self-coloured cords.
‘I hope you like it—though of course if there are any alterations you wish to make, you have only to say.’
Heloise spread her hands, shrugging her utter bewilderment at such opulence. ‘How could I not like this?’ she managed to say, when it became apparent that her husband was waiting for her to say something.
It seemed to have been the right thing to say, for some of the tension left his stance. ‘I will ring and ask for refreshments to be served up here in your sitting room,’ he said, crossing to the bell-pull beside the chimney breast. ‘You may rest assured I shall not intrude upon your privacy. This is your domain. Just as the rooms downstairs are Robert’s. The only time I shall enter, save at your express invitation, will be to bid you goodnight. Every night,’ he finished sternly.
So that the servants would believe they were a normal husband and wife, she assumed. She sighed as a group of them came in and laid out the tea things. She supposed she should be grateful he wanted things to look right. At least she would get to see him once each day. Otherwise, the place being so vast, they might not bump into each other from one end of the week to the other.
Once the servants had retreated, Charles said, ‘Come, Heloise, I can see you are bursting with questions. I have a little time to spare to indulge your curiosity before I must be about other business.’
There was no point in questioning their living arrangements. She had promised not to be a nuisance. But she would like to know what on earth had happened between the two Fawley brothers for them to come to this.
‘Why does your brother accuse you of imprisoning him here? Is this something to do with the rift in your family you spoke of to me?’
‘You do not need to have tea served if you do not like it,’ he remarked, noticing the grimace of distaste with which she had set down her teacup after taking only one sip. ‘The kitchen can provide anything you wish for.’
‘Don’t you wish to tell me? Is that why you talk about tea? If you do not want me to know about your family secrets then you only need to say, and I will not pry any further!’
‘That is not the issue!’ This was not a topic he found it easy to discuss. She would have to make do with a succinct account of the facts. ‘Robert’s mother was my father’s second wife,’ he bit out. ‘In their zeal to protect me from her influence, when my father died the people he had nominated my guardians sent her back to her own family—with a modest annuity and penalties attached should she try to inveigle herself back into my life.’
‘What was she, then, Robert’s mother?’ Heloise asked, fascinated. ‘Something scandalous? An actress, perhaps, or a woman of easy morals?’
Charles smiled grimly. ‘Worse than that, in the opinion of my stiff-rumped maternal relatives. She was a doctor’s daughter.’
At Heloise’s complete bafflement, he continued, ‘She was, with her middle-class values, the kind of person who might have influenced me into thinking less of my consequence than they thought I should. They reminded me that my real mother was the Duke of Bray’s granddaughter, and set about instilling me with pride in my true lineage. Rigorously.’
Heloise shook her head. What a miserable little boy he must have been. But worse was to come.
‘I did not even know that I had a brother until, when I came of age, I began to go through all the family papers with my lawyers, instead of just ratifying them as my guardians assumed I would. I discovered that Robert had been born some five months after my father’s death. Instead of having him raised with me, and acknowledged as second in line to my inheritance, they consigned him to the care of his mother’s family. By the time he was sixteen, so vehemently did he hate my mother’s relations that he began to refuse even the meagre allowance they had arranged for him. Instead he requested they purchase him a commission, so that he could make his own way in the world without having any need for further contact with relatives who had made no secret of the fact they wished he had not been born. Which they did—hoping, no doubt, that his career would be short and bloody. It was not long after that when I discovered his existence. And by then he was beyond my reach. He neither wanted nor needed anything from the brother he had grown up hating.’
‘Oh, Charles,’ she said, her eyes wide with horror. ‘How awful. What did you do?’
He looked at her with eyes that had grown cold. ‘I did as I was trained to do. I acted without emotion. I severed all connection with those who had systematically robbed me, my stepmother and my brother of each other.’
‘And what,’ she asked, ‘happened to Robert’s mother?’
‘She scarcely survived his birth. The story he had from his family was that she died from a broken heart, at the treatment meted out to her whilst she was still in shock at being widowed.’
No wonder Charles appeared so hard and cold. The one person who might have taught him to embrace the softer emotions had been ruthlessly excised from his orbit. Then his relatives had taught him, the hard way, that there was nobody upon whom he could rely.
No wonder he had been able to shrug off the loss of a fiancée with such panache. Her betrayal was nothing compared to what he had already experienced.
And yet, in spite of all that, he had never stopped reaching out to the brother who repaid all his overtures with bristling hostility.
‘Oh, Charles,’ she cried, longing to take him in her arms and hold him. Tell him he was not alone any more. She was there.
She had begun to stretch out her hands towards him before recalling what a futile gesture it was. She could not be of any comfort to him, for he was only tolerating her presence in his life. Besides, he had already expressed his dislike of her propensity for being demonstrative.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said, swallowing back the tears she knew he would disparage, and folding her hands in her lap with a feeling of resignation. He had only confided in her so that she might understand the situation, and not create further difficulties with his brother.
He made that very clear by turning on his heel and stalking from the room.
What further proof, thought Charles, seeking the solitude of his own bedchamber, did he need that she now considered him more repulsive than Du Mauriac? Even though her heart had been moved by his tale, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to so much as touch his arm through his coat sleeve. But she had run to Robert and managed to kiss him. On both cheeks.
Chapter Six
‘I have brought my bride to you for dressing,’ the Earl informed Madame Pichot, upon entering her establishment the following morning. ‘She needs everything.’
Madame Pichot’s eyes lit up. ‘Walking dresses, day dresses, ballgowns, nightrail?’ She swallowed. ‘A court dress?’
‘Naturally.’ By the time such a grand toilette was complete, and Heloise had practised walking in the hoops, he would have found someone to present her in Queen Caroline’s drawing room. It was not so great a hurdle as obtaining vouchers for Almacks. If she offended one of the six patronesses of that exclusive club, or if they decided her background failed to meet their exacting standards for membership, she would never be truly a part of the haut ton.
Noting Heloise’s rather worn coat and battered bonnet, Madame Pichot ventured, ‘I could have one or two items delivered later today, or possibly first thing tomorrow. Just to tide milady over, of course …’
The Earl nodded acquiescence. Heloise would find it easier to think of herself as an English countess once she shucked off the serviceable clothing of a French bureaucrat’s daughter.
‘In future, should we require your services, you will present yourself at Walton House at my wife’s convenience.’
‘Of course, my lord,’ replied the dressmaker, somewhat startled by the statement Heloise knew had been made primarily for her benefit. Whatever had been her habit formerly, a countess did not deign to visit a dressmaker’s. She sent for such people to wait on her in the privacy of her own home.
‘My wife will wear pastel colours. Rose and powder-blue—and, yes, this primrose satin would suit my wife’s colouring.’ He fingered one of the swatches an assistant had brought for his inspection.
‘Oh, but with madame’s dark hair and eyes, she could wear striking colours. This crimson would look ravishing.’
‘I don’t want her going about looking like a demirep,’ he curtly informed the somewhat abashed modiste.
Heloise had just taken a breath to object and say that she was quite capable of selecting her own gowns, thank you very much, when her mother’s warning rang loud in her memory. He would want her to look the part she had persuaded him she could play. That he had no confidence in her dress sense might be somewhat insulting, but then, he was the one picking up the bills. Feeling like a child’s dress-up doll, she meekly tried on the few gowns that were already made up, and had never been collected by other clients, while Charles and the modiste between them decided which could be altered to fit, and which did nothing for her.
A trip to a milliner followed, and then to the bootmakers, where she had her feet measured for a last.
‘You must be growing tired,’ Charles eventually declared, when all his efforts to spoil his wife had met with supreme indifference.
Felice would have been in ecstasy to have had so much money spent on a wardrobe of such magnificence, not to mention his undivided attention in selecting it. But Heloise, he was coming to realise, cared as little for such fripperies as she did for him. He was not going to reach her by showering her with the kind of gifts that would win most women over.
‘I have other business to attend to for the rest of the day,’ he told her. ‘But I shall be in for dinner this evening. Will you dine with me?’
Heloise blinked in surprise. He had spent hours with her today already. She had assumed he would have something better to do with his evening. But he had actually asked her to dine with him!
Struggling to conceal her elation, she had just taken a breath to form a suitably controlled reply when he added, ‘Or would you rather remain in your room?’
Was that a veiled way of telling her that was what he wished her to do? Did he hope she would take the hint?
Well, she was blowed if she was going to take all her meals in her rooms as if … as if she were a naughty child!
‘I will dine with you,’ she said, with a militant lift to her chin.
As though she were about to face a firing squad, he thought, hurt by her response to a simple invitation.
‘Until tonight, then.’ He bowed, then stalked away.
The evening was not a success. Charles made polite enquiries about how she had spent the rest of her day, while they sat sipping sherry in an oppressively immaculate anteroom. He looked relieved when the footman came to inform them dinner was ready. She soon realised this was because they would no longer be alone. A troupe of footmen served a staggering variety of dishes, whisked away empty plates, poured wine, and effectively robbed the event of any hint of intimacy.
Her heart did begin to pound when Charles leaned forward, beckoning to her, indicating that he wished to whisper something to her. Only to plunge at his words.
‘At this point it is the custom for ladies to withdraw. I shall join you in the drawing room when I have taken some port.’
Feeling humiliated that he’d had to remind her of this English custom, Heloise followed one of the younger footmen to a vast room that was so chilly her arms broke out in goose pimples the moment she stepped over the threshold. She sat huddled over the lacklustre fire for what seemed like an eternity before Charles joined her.
‘Should you like to play cards?’ he suggested. ‘Some people find it helps to pass the time until the tea tray is brought in.’
He could not have made it clearer that this was the last way he wished to spend his evening.
‘I enjoy cards as little as I care to pour that vile drink, which is fit only for an invalid, down my throat,’ she replied rather petulantly.
‘Most husbands,’ he replied frostily, ‘take themselves off to their clubs, where they find companionship and amusements they cannot find at home, leaving their wives free of their burdensome presence.’
As Heloise stormed up the stairs, she decided never to set foot in that horrible drawing room again. If Charles would rather go off to his club, then let him go! She did not care, she vowed, slamming her sitting room door behind her, almost knocking over one of the silly little tables dotted about the floor as she stormed across the room to fling herself onto the sofa.
She glared at it, and the collection of ornaments it held with resentment. She hated clutter. She would have to get a footman to move it against the wall, out of the way. After all, Charles had said she could do as she pleased up here.
A militant gleam came to her eye and she sat up straight. He had meant she could decorate as she pleased. But she could do much more than that. She dared not ask him for a proper drawing table, knowing how much he disapproved of her sketches, but if, under the pretext of reorganising her rooms, she had that one large desk moved to a spot between the two windows, to catch the maximum daylight …
Her spirits began to lift. Drawing was more than just a hobby to her. She could lose herself for hours in the fantasy world she created on paper. It had been a solace to her in Paris, where she had been such a disappointment to her parents. How much more would it comfort her here in London, as an unwanted bride?
Her fingers were already itching to draw Madame Pichot, with her peculiar accent that would only pass for French in England. She reminded her of a drawing she had seen in the Louvre, of a creature whose eyes stood out on stalks and which was said to change colour to match whatever type of background it walked across.
Though how she was to locate a really good shop where she could buy pencils, paper and brushes without Charles finding out, leave alone how she would pay for her materials, would pose quite a problem.
It was very late when Charles came up to bid her goodnight, as he had warned her he would do.
‘Do you have everything you need?’ he enquired politely.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied in an equally polite tone, her fingers plucking listlessly at the quilt.
‘Then I will bid you goodnight,’ he said, barely brushing his lips across her forehead.
Heloise glared at his back as he left, barely suppressing the urge to fling some pillows at it. She was not a child for him to come and kiss goodnight in that insufferably condescending manner! She was surprised he did not tuck her in and pat her on the head while he was about it!
But the sad truth was she was as inexperienced as a child. She had no idea how to encourage her husband to regard her as a woman rather than a girl. And there was no female to advise her. Her worst fear was that if she did try to breach his reserve she might only succeed in alienating him completely. She heaved a sigh as she sank down under the covers. At least he appeared content with the present situation.
Several evenings passed in an equally unsatisfactory manner before Heloise discovered a chink in Charles’ armour.
When they met before dinner, and he enquired, as he always did, how she had spent her day, she told him that several outfits had arrived, and she had spent the afternoon trying them on.
‘Was the riding habit among them?’
‘Yes, and it is …’ She bit her tongue. The pale blue gown with its silver frogging had instantly put her in mind of his servants’ livery, and had made her crushingly aware that he only regarded her as just one more of his chattels. ‘It is very pretty,’ she finished in a subdued tone.
‘If you are still determined to learn to ride, I could arrange for you to begin lessons with Robert tomorrow morning.’ He frowned into his sherry glass for a few seconds, before saying softly, ‘I bought him a lovely bay mare, very soft about the mouth, for Christmas. He has never even been to look her over. I shall be for ever in your debt—’ he flicked her a glance ‘—if you could goad him into taking some form of exercise.’
‘Of course!’ she cried, immensely flattered that he had entrusted her with such an important mission. ‘He must not stay in those dark rooms and moulder away.’
The rigid formality of the dining room was completely unable to dampen her spirits that night. For now she had a plan.
If she could be the means to help poor Robert get out of his rooms, Charles would be pleased with her. Riding lessons would only be the start. He could take her shopping for art supplies. And, though he might be sensitive about his scars, surely she could get him to take her to Vauxhall Gardens to watch the fireworks one evening? Buoyed up by the prospect, she received her husband’s goodnight kiss with complaisance. Even though he was dressed in his evening clothes, and clearly on his way out.
One day, she vowed, snuggling down beneath the covers, he would take her with him on one of these forays into London’s night life from which he had so far excluded her. If all went well with Robert in the morning, it might be quite soon!
The sound of the outer door slamming, not once, but twice, roused Charles from the pile of invitations he had been poring over in his study early the next morning. As the season got under way, more and more people were expressing an interest in meeting his bride. But he had no intention of exposing her to this collection of rakes, cynics, and bitches, he vowed, tossing a handful of gilt-edged invitations into the fire. It said something about his social circle that he thought it unlikely he would ever find a house into which he could take his vulnerable young bride without risk of having her confidence ripped to shreds.
‘Stop right there!’ he heard Robert bellow, just as he emerged from the study. Heloise, the back of her powder-blue riding habit liberally stained with mud, was fleeing up the stairs.
She did not even pause, but ran along the corridor to her rooms, from whence echoed the sound of yet another slamming door.
Robert, red-faced, had stopped at the foot of the staircase, clutching the newel post.
‘Problems?’ Charles drawled softly.
Robert spun round so swiftly the heel of his false leg slipped on the marble floor and he nearly lost his balance.
‘Go on, then—order me to leave your house!’ he panted.
Charles leaned against the doorjamb, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why do you suppose I should wish to do that?’
‘Because I have insulted your bride,’ Robert flung at him. ‘I swore at her. Comprehensively and at length! You must have seen that she was crying when she fled up the stairs!’
Frowning, Charles pushed himself from the doorframe and advanced on his brother. ‘If you have insulted her, it is for you to put right. This is your home. I shall not evict you from it.’
Glowering, Robert spat, ‘And just how do you propose I make the apology? Crawl up all those stairs?’
Charles regarded the false leg his brother had, for the first time to his knowledge, strapped onto his mangled knee joint. Heloise was amazing. She had only been here a matter of days, and already she’d cajoled Robert out of his rooms, into his false leg, and onto the back of a horse.
‘No,’ he mused. ‘Until she calms down, I dare say all that will happen is that she will inform you she hates you. Far better to wait until she has had time to reflect on her own part in your quarrel. I suggest you join us for dinner tonight, and make your apologies then.’
‘Dinner?’ Robert blustered. ‘I had as well crawl to her suite now as to attempt ascending to any other rooms on the upper floors!’
‘Then I will order dinner for the three of us in the little salon,’ he replied, indicating a room across the hall. His heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity, he waited for Robert to protest that nothing would make him sit down and eat with the man who had been instrumental in causing his mother’s death. Instead, he only glared mutinously before hobbling back to his own rooms and slamming the door behind him.
Upstairs, Heloise was blowing her nose vigorously. It was no good feeling sorry for herself. That her first riding lesson had been such a fiasco was not what upset her the most, though that had been bad enough. What really hurt was her failure to gain any ground with Robert at all. Charles would be so disappointed with her.
Startled by a tap on the door, she blew her nose again, annoyed to find her eyes were watering afresh.
‘May I come in?’
Charles stood in the doorway, ruefully regarding his wife’s crestfallen appearance. ‘Was it the horse, or my brother?’
Waving admittance to the footman who hovered behind him, bearing a tray of what looked like His Lordship’s finest brandy, Charles advanced into the room.
‘I thought you might feel in need of a little restorative,’ he explained, as the young man placed the silver salver on an elegant little table beside the sofa she had flung herself on when first she had come to her room. ‘And, since I know of your aversion to tea, I thought I would supply something more to your liking.’
‘You are m … most k … kind,’ Heloise half sobbed, as Charles stooped to pick her riding hat up from the floor, where she had flung it not five minutes before. The feather that adorned the crown had snapped. He ran his fingers over it with a frown.
