Flint and Roses (54 page)

‘You'd do far better to come to bed with me. Now that would be a strong reason—you'd never bring yourself to face Nicholas again after that, you know.'

And because it was preposterous and shocking and because it was true—I leaned my head on the back of the sofa and laughed weakly, a shade tearfully, considerably astonished, beginning to wonder about the part of myself that could understand his sophisticated logic, that could mould itself so easily into his atmosphere. And I wondered, too, what had happened to the part of me that should have been scandalized, should have had a fit of the vapours and demanded to be taken home.

‘You wouldn't care for it, Blaize—I'd be far too horrified at myself to be a satisfactory companion.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I know. What a pity.' And leaning towards me he touched the side of my head and my ear, the gesture of smoothing out a stray ringlet I had seen him make to Georgiana, although I knew that not so much as a single hair of
my
chignon could be out of place.

‘Yes—truly—what a pity, Faith. You'd feel obliged to hate yourself, and me, afterwards. I know that very well, darling, and I won't tease you any longer. It's just that—well, you may call me a frivolous man if you like, but surely these grand passions don't remain at fever-heat forever? Not unless one nurtures them. And I wonder, my dear, if you might feel obliged to do that too? The same thing applies to what I told you about taking another lover. If one recovers from a grand passion, then was it really so very grand in the first place? Perhaps one could have resisted it—should have resisted it. Might it be more convenient not to recover at all? Believe me, I can perfectly understand how a middle-class lady may feel compelled to cling to her illusions. And now—since you are beginning to dislike me, and those lovely shoulders of yours are starting to prey on my mind—perhaps we should say good-night.'

I got up very calmly and moved towards the door, feeling that I was walking through water, forcing my way through slow but irresistible currents, a sea-weed tangle of impressions and emotions I would need time to unravel. But he reached the door before me, opened it, handed me the branch of bedtime candles on the hall table, bowed very slightly, his smile in no way unkind.

‘Dear Faith,' he said, ‘you have not had quite so desperate a day as you expected. You could even have enjoyed my company if you had put your mind to it. And that should be an encouragement to you, since we are agreed that I am not unique and irreplaceable, like Nicholas. Perhaps I would admit it to no one else, but there are hundreds of men like me.'

I set off for Cullingford the next morning at some risk to myself, since I had no real explanations for so early a return, but no accusations awaited me, merely a hastily scrawled note from Nicholas saying he had been despatched to London by his father on urgent business and would be perhaps a week away. And I sat with the letter in my hands for a long time, cradling it, since it was the first I had ever received, and then, again with that strange sensation of walking through slow-rippling water, I went to the fire and burned it, not for reasons of safety but as a test of my own courage.

I had a week then, in which to permit myself the luxury of remaining, if only in spirit, his mistress; a week before I would stand here and dismiss him. And this time I could not say, ‘I love you, but it is for your good', since I had said that before and neither of us had believed it. This time I would have to say, ‘It is for my good. I'm weary of it. I don't wish to continue'; and, although I didn't believe that either. I must contrive somehow or other to convince
him.

I no longer chose to dwell on it. I wished simply to
do
it, freeing my mind for the torment that would come after. There could be no more swan-drifting, and if, after all, I found myself marooned in some desolate marshland of the spirit, I would take myself and my grieving elsewhere, so that he, at least, could get on with his life. I would go abroad, perhaps, and take Prudence with me, whatever anyone had to say. For, if I was strong enough to separate myself willingly from the man I loved, whose possessive, autocratic nature would neither accept my reasons nor forgive me, then I could make short work of a dozen Daniel Adairs.

Yet, as often before, I had waited too long, and when Aunt Hannah walked through my door, the third day after my return, perhaps, before she had even taken off her bonnet, I knew it.

‘No,' she said. ‘Do not trouble yourself to offer me tea. You have troubles enough without that, my girl, and what I have to say to you will not accord with tea-cups and bread and butter. In fact it may well take your appetite clean away—and I confess to you that I have none.'

‘Aunt Hannah—what on earth is the matter?'

‘You may well ask,' she said, her back so straight that she could have had a poker inside her bodice, her expression confusing me, since, beneath the self-righteous anger which I was accustomed to see in her, lay something else which could just possibly be satisfaction, a certain smugness that some opinion, some guess of hers, had proved correct, presenting her with yet another opportunity of getting her way.

‘Is it—my mother?'

‘No dear,' she said, arranging her skirts very deliberately, smiling the blank bright smile of social occasions, the one she used before demolishing the clamour of some rebellious committee, the smile, indeed, which she had offered me long ago, before forcing me from my damp fog of mourning for Giles. ‘Your mother is as well as one could expect her to be. She is in love, you see, which seems endemic at certain seasons. As her daughter you should understand it. In fact you have been so bright-eyed and blooming at times, and so jumpy and droopy at others lately, that I could be forgiven for imagining you to be in love yourself. Can you tell me that I am mistaken?'

And, as often seems to happen when one faces the impossible, when one knows oneself overtaken by the ultimate disaster, I experienced no shock, no desperation, only a strange acceptance that may properly belong to the dying, and said quite calmly. ‘What do you want from me. Aunt Hannah?'

‘Nothing, dear. I am not even sure I shall wish to know you for very much longer. Well, Faith, you were always a feather-brain. Your character has always contained too much of your mother and too little of your father, and I wonder why it should surprise me to find you in this atrocious situation. You may know that your mother once attempted to ruin herself by just such a criminal attachment. I prevented that. I shall endeavour to prevent your disgrace in the same manner. What have you to say to me about that?'

But I could say nothing; and, smiling again, as if my silence seemed quite natural to her—my reaction exactly as she had intended—she continued, not with the accusations and reproaches I had expected, but in another manner entirely.

‘At least, Faith, you must be ready to admit the soundness of my judgment? I told you some time ago that you were not fit to live alone, and so it has proved. However, since your mother lacked the authority to compel you to return home, and was too busy about her own affairs to keep anything like a proper watch over yours, I felt it—right, shall we say?—to do what I could in her place. I am an exceedingly busy woman, Faith, and may not have been so vigilant as I would have liked. But my niece, Lady Chard, confirmed my suspicions on your account as long ago as last Christmas, when she remarked you had been playing the recluse and wondered if there was an admirer you had not told us about. You denied it. Lady Chard believed you. I did not. And my observations—dear me, Faith!—the state of your nerves sometimes when I have called here unexpectedly, supposedly to complain of your mother, your little heart pounding and your ears straining for that caller at the back door who must be warned in time and sent away. And these visits of yours to York, to this acquaintance who never visits you in return. Heavens, my dear! not even your mother would have believed you, had she troubled to think about it, and I feel sure her husband does not. Tell me, was the weather fine in Scarborough last Friday to Monday?'

‘Cold,' I said incredibly. ‘And rather blustery.'

‘Good. I am glad you do not feel the need to whine to me or insult me with pleas for my forgiveness. I shall not forgive you. Nor shall I trouble you with a description of how deeply your behaviour has disgusted me, since I imagine all that disgusts you is that you have been found out. I shall occupy myself instead by attempting to remedy the situation, as I once did with your mother, not out of any consideration for you, but because your disgrace must touch us all. You are not just “anybody”, Faith. You are a member of a well-respected family, the niece of Sir Joel Barforth and of Mayor Agbrigg, who are both revered, and rightly so, in this town. You are the daughter of Morgan Aycliffe, to whom the most splendid building this town possesses has been dedicated. You are the widow of Dr. Giles Ashburn, whose memory is held in high regard by all of us. You are the sister-in-law of Jonas Agbrigg, who is about to take his place on our town council and whose standing in the legal profession demands unblemished respectability. Jonas will be deeply shocked when I inform him of this, since he has appreciated your assistance to Celia as a hostess and had hoped to call on it again—something which now must be out of the question. I have no intention, my girl, of allowing you to damage these worthy men, you can be very sure of that. And I shall not rest until you are decently married.'

I opened my mouth to speak, my whole body leaning towards her in protest, thinking of Irish cousins, Mr. Oldroyd of Fieldhead, some husband, any husband willing to take a blemished bride.

‘Aunt Hannah.' I said, refusing it, but she held out her hand, palm upwards, in a gesture commanding enough to have silenced a meeting in the Assembly Rooms itself, and said, ‘Yes, Faith. There is no other solution. I believe my sources of information to be discreet—certainly they are reliable—but I am not the only interested party capable of making inquiries. There is no time to lose. I have delayed so long only because I was unable to ascertain the gentleman's identity. In the final instance, of course, I would have come to you and forced his name out of you, but that will not be necessary. I believe, my dear, that when you have recovered from your emotions you will have cause to thank me, for I have already been very busy on your behalf. I have just spent a most uncomfortable hour with that rascal of a nephew of mine—uncomfortable for him, I hasten to add—and whether he likes it or not, I shall force him to put everything right.'

Seeing my total astonishment—for Nicholas was in London and could put nothing right in any case—her lips parted once again in a smile of the most complete satisfaction I had ever seen, revealing her cleverness and her superiority to me as a cat must reveal itself to a mouse.

‘Yes, you may well stare, Faith, for he is the most complete rogue of my aquaintance and I did not expect him to be reasonable. But he could not deny that he went to Scarborough last Friday and did not return until Saturday. Nor can he deny that you were with him, since you were seen by a certain Mrs. Guthrie, who was once in your service and who is now, in a manner of speaking, in mine. He cannot deny that you were alone in that house together, especially since he knows that the housekeeper would be obliged to answer truthfully should her real employer, my brother Sir Joel, put her to the question. She has her place to consider, my dear, and would not risk losing it on your account. Yes, Faith; I believe I have done very well for you. A great many females have attempted to trap my nephew into matrimony, but in this case he overlooked the fact that he would have
me
to deal with. Good heavens, girl, what ails you? Most assuredly I cannot condone your wanton behaviour, but so long as it remains between the three of us it may be brought to a rapid—and highly profitable—conclusion. He has faults in plenty, no one doubts it, but he is a Barforth. I have always believed that family money should remain, whenever possible, in the family, and it has long concerned me that he would encounter some impossible, grasping woman on his travels—someone who would be no good to us at all. Well—it is a great thing for you, my girl, for do not forget that he will be Sir Blaize one day, since he is the eldest son. Joel and Verity may not quite like it, for, although you are not a poor match, you are not the best he could have made. But faced with the alternative scandal there is nothing else to be done. You have made your bed, my dear—both of you—and now you must lie on it.'

I had never lost consciousness before, and did not precisely do so now. I was quite simply and horrifyingly unable to speak, but Aunt Hannah, being well used to reducing her fellow creatures to speechlessness, did not appear surprised at that. She may, in fact, have considered it most appropriate, lingering no more than a quarter of an hour longer, advising me, when inbred politeness tried to force me to my feet at her leave-taking, to remain seated, or rather to go to bed and stay there, since I looked ill, most gratifyingly chastised.

‘I have warned Blaize,' she said, ‘that I shall require his answer by tomorrow morning. Verity should be here by then, since my brother finds he must remain in Cullingford for some days yet and appears unable to live without her. If my nephew chooses to be stubborn, then she and his father will be informed of it, and Joel will find a way to make him honour his obligation. However—I do not anticipate that things will come to that. I shall call tomorrow then—and if Blaize should come today I must ask you not to receive him. Contact between you at this point would be unwise. If he is looking for a way out, then he may persuade you into fresh folly, and it seems to me that you are all too persuadable. Remember—you are not at home to him.'

But I could not get to Blaize quickly enough, would have sent messages to Tarn Edge and then gone myself had he not appeared, a half-hour later, judging his time shrewdly, I thought, since Aunt Hannah would not be likely to return so soon.