Jack Chiltern's Wife (1999) (20 page)

‘I wrote to him from Paris,’ Jack said. ‘I had intelligence to send, and enclosed news of you and told him where we were going, so that he would not worry about you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she demanded. ‘I could have written myself.’

He smiled enigmatically. ‘I could not tell you I was in touch with London, could I? It would have contravened all the rules of espionage and put you in very grave danger if the despatches had been intercepted. It was all done in code. By the time we reached Haute Saint-Gilbert, it became too difficult to send word overland, so I am afraid your uncle does not know we are married. That is something we shall have to tell him when we arrive, my dear.’

It was the longest speech he had made to her since their wedding night and the most exasperating. Long after Edward had left them to return to his duties, she went over and over it. Why had he taken all that trouble? The risk must have been enormous. Nanette said she thought he had been helping aristocrats to escape, but it was much more than that.

Wherever he went, he was known. There was the couple at Calais, the Claviers, Thomas Trent, the blacksmith and others along the route. And there had been times when he left her at their lodging in the evening, telling her to go to bed and not wait up for him. She imagined him relieving the boredom of escorting her by drinking and gambling. Sometimes he had
called for pen and ink and wrote far into the night. Despatches. Letters to her uncle.

And there was Gabrielle. He had learned of her death in Paris and yet he had kept it to himself, bottled it up. Why could he not have confided in her? Why, oh, why had he married her?

E
dward was right; the
Lady Lucia
was fast. Five days later they docked in Portsmouth with nothing to complain of but a little rough weather in the Bay of Biscay. The formalities were soon concluded, they said goodbye to Edward and stepped ashore, back in peaceful England at last.

Jack hired a coach to convey them all to his home where James and Nanette were to stay overnight before proceeding on to London. It was taken for granted that Kitty would remain at Chiltern Hall when James and Nanette left. Why wouldn’t she? She was Jack’s wife and, however brutal the circumstances of it, the marriage had been consummated.

She was filled with apprehension and misery, wondering what the Earl of Beauworth and his wife would think of their son’s new wife. She looked like a peasant, had lived like one for so long she was even beginning to think and behave like one: ill clad, rough and unmannerly.

Both the gowns she had taken with her were torn and dirty, her stockings were full of holes, though she had tried mending them. She had no hat and her hair, a little longer than when Judith had cut it for her, stuck out like a bush. How could she face her new in-laws like that?’

Jack smiled when she ventured to express her concern. ‘My dear, clothes mean nothing. You are who you are whatever you
wear and my parents will understand. Nanette is also dishevelled and as for James and me …’ He spread his hands, laughing at his disreputable appearance in black trousers, second-hand naval jacket and a plain tricorne hat. ‘Hardly the stuff of gentlemen, are we? We are not returning from just a grand social occasion, but an adventure of epic proportions.’

An adventure, she thought, an adventure of my own making. Did I once envy James his independence? Did I really long to test my mettle in new experiences? Did I once wish I were a man? How foolish of me! Now I shall be labelled a hoyden and, if it had not been for Jack Chiltern, it would be much worse. She sighed. There was nothing to be done but brave it out.

‘What you need, what we all need, is a bath and a good meal and a day or two to recuperate,’ he went on. ‘After that, you can go shopping for your immediate necessities in Winchester and, later, you can go to London and buy whatever fripperies take your fancy.’

Not one word about how he was going to explain their marriage so soon after he learned about the loss of his first wife, not one word about an annulment, or how they were going to go on, when they were so obviously not going to suit.

Chiltern Hall was a huge mansion set in acres and acres of parkland and reached by a private road lined with ancient elms. It had hundreds of windows and almost as many chimneys.

‘Home,’ Jack said, as the coach came to a stop outside the porticoed main entrance. He opened the carriage door and jumped down almost before the wheels had come to a stop and ran up the steps just as the door opened and a footman appeared.

‘My lord! Oh, her ladyship will be so pleased to see you safe. She is in the blue parlour.’

‘Oh, no, she is not,’ said a female voice in a slight French accent. Kitty, who was being helped from the coach by James, looked up to see a woman, of perhaps a little over fifty, run and
throw her arms about Jack. She was slim and elegant in a round gown of dark blue silk trimmed with bands of coloured ribbon. Her dark hair, with hardly a trace of grey, was piled high, on top of which was perched a tiny lace cap from which floated more ribbons. ‘When did you get back? Oh, I am so glad to see you safe.’

She caught sight of the trio on the gravel beside coach. ‘Who are these people?’

He smiled. ‘Mother, here is Nanette. You remember her, don’t you?’

‘Nanette!
Quelle surprise!
Of course I remember you. Come ‘ere, child, let me kiss you. Why, it must be seven or eight years since I saw you at Haute Saint-Gilbert. You are quite grown up. I am so pleased to see you safe. Is my sister with you? And the Marquis?’

Nanette curtsied and kissed her aunt. ‘No, Aunt, Papa would not come, he feels his place is at home.
Maman
would not leave him.’

‘No, she would not. But you are ‘ere and for that I give thanks.’

Nanette turned towards James. ‘Aunt Justine, this is my husband, James Harston.’

James swept an elegant bow. ‘Your obedient, my lady.’

‘‘Arston? Are you not the young man who saved my son in France?’

‘It was fortuitous that I was in the right place at the right time, my lady.’

‘Then you are doubly welcome.’

Jack reached out to take Kitty’s hand and draw her forward. The gentle pressure of his hand, the warmth of his smile, made her insides melt, as they always did whenever he touched her. It was pleasure and torment together, heightening her sense of isolation and loss, feeding her desire. If he took her violently again, she would welcome it, welcome any sign that he wanted
her for his true wife. If that was what the marriage bed was all about, so be it. But she could never tell him that.

‘Mother, this is James’s sister, Kitty. She is my wife.’

‘Wife?’ She looked from one to the other in confusion. ‘‘Ow can she be? Gabrielle …’

‘Gabrielle is dead, Mother. She died over a year ago.’

‘Oh. Then I am sorry for it, but to marry again so soon …’ She sighed. ‘But I suppose you know what you are about.’

Did he? Kitty wondered as she curtsied. ‘My lady, my presence must be a shock to you and I am sorry for that …’

‘Oh, Jack is always giving me shocks. I am used to them,’ Lady Beauworth said. Her smile was so like Jack’s and her eyes were so like reflections of her son’s that Kitty found herself warming to her. ‘You are welcome. Come in and tell me all about it. But first some refreshment.’ She led the way as she spoke.

‘No, Mother,’ Jack said. ‘First a bath and clean clothes and then we can think of refreshment.’

‘Of course,’ she said. She turned to the footman. ‘Fletcher, fetch Mrs Gordon.’

When the housekeeper arrived, crying with pleasure to see Jack safely home, her ladyship issued instructions one after another; fires were to be lit, water heated, beds made, food prepared. Servants ran hither and thither, obeying her commands, and, in no time at all, Kitty was in a vast bedroom being helped out of her filthy clothes and into a scented bath by her ladyship’s own maid, Susan, whom she had brought with her from France when she married and who had never managed to get her tongue round the English language.

An hour later, with her blue gown cleaned, mended and pressed and her hair looking surprisingly neat after being washed, brushed and dressed, she ventured downstairs. Now she
could converse with her hostess in a civilised fashion, to try and reverse what must have been a very poor first impression.

Her mother-in-law had taken the news of Gabrielle’s death very calmly. It was almost as if she had half-expected it. And not a word of censure, only a warm welcome for her new daughter-in-law. If she and Jack had married in normal circumstances, if they had loved one another, she could be very happy here.

She was even more sure of it when she met the Earl of Beauworth, who was an older version of Jack, still very handsome though his hair was white. At dinner he questioned Jack carefully about the situation in France and what he had learned, especially about the situation around Lyons, his wife’s former home.

‘I hear Toulon has surrendered to Admiral Hood,’ he said. ‘And the revolutionary government has ordered every able-bodied man into the army. Do you suppose that is the beginning of the end of this dreadful business?’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I am convinced it will be worse before it is better. The revolt in the Vendée and Lyons has the government worried. They have tried to stir up more anti-Royalist hatred and ordered all the tombs and mausoleums of the kings to be destroyed. The bodies of Louis’s ancestors have been dragged out and tipped into a lime-filled common grave. And the Queen has been taken to the Conciergerie and reduced to the status of a common criminal.’

‘Oh, the poor, dear lady!’ the Countess cried. ‘And what of the Dauphin? Oh, but ‘e is not the heir anymore, is ‘e? ‘E is the King. ‘As ‘e gone with her?’

‘No one thinks of him as King; he is simply another Capet. By all accounts he was separated from his mother some time ago. He is still in the Temple, being brought up as a good
sans-culottes
.’

‘Poor child. ‘Ow can the world allow it? ‘Ow can Britain stand by and do nothing?’

‘We are doing what we can,’ the Earl said. ‘Now, tell us how you came to meet Kitty.’

This was a far happier subject and they listened with rapt attention as Jack gave them the facts in his dry, impassive voice. ‘I know it was perhaps not ideal that we had to travel so far unchaperoned,’ he said. ‘But, until I learned of Gabrielle’s death …’

‘Yes, how did she meet her death?’ his father asked.

‘She went to the guillotine,’ Jack said, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘Denouncing me did not save her.’

‘And have her parents been informed?’ the Earl asked, while Kitty digested this piece of information. Why had Jack never told her the manner of his wife’s demise? It must have made it doubly difficult to bear. No wonder he had been so crusty.

‘No, it is not something I could convey in a letter,’ Jack said. ‘I have decided to go with James and Nanette tomorrow and see them.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Kitty queried. ‘But I thought …’

‘It is not something that can be postponed, my love,’ he said, speaking gently. ‘They deserve to know the truth face to face. I will not be gone long and Mother will look after you until I return.’

‘Of course,’ her ladyship said. ‘We will send for my dressmaker and have ‘er make up some gowns, and then go into Winchester and shop for everything else. Then I shall show you all over the estate. We’ll go riding and visiting in the phaeton. Will you like that?’

‘Yes, very much. Thank you.’

‘No need to thank me. You are my daughter now and it will give me great pleasure. You must ‘ave a maid. Rose is a good girl and she ‘elped me when Susan was indisposed last year. She will suit you very well, I think. I will send ‘er up to you when you retire.’

Jack took his leave the very next day, kissing her goodbye at the front door with every appearance of tenderness. ‘I will be back,’ he said, looking into her violet eyes and wondering when the sparkle would return to them, when he would once again see the humour and spirit of her shining from them. It was his fault they had disappeared; perhaps absenting himself from her for a time might bring the roses back into her cheeks.

‘Mother, you will look after her, won’t you? She has been through so much and is very tired.’

‘Of course, she shall have everything she needs and wants. Now, off you go. And God bring you swiftly back.’

He climbed into the family coach with James and Nanette who had already said their goodbyes. They were taking a letter from Kitty to her uncle and stepmother, telling them of her marriage and asking their forgiveness.

She waved them out of sight and then turned back to her mother-in-law, who put an arm about her shoulders and smiled. ‘Now, Kitty, you are not to grieve. ‘E is only going to fulfil an unpleasant task and will be back before you know it.’

‘What will your friends and neighbours think of me?’ Kitty asked the Countess, two days later, when they were enjoying a ride in the phaeton. The estate was very extensive and covered parkland, pasture, woods, several farms, the river bank where the fishing was exceptional and the whole village of Beauworth. The weather was dry and warm and the workers were in the fields cutting the corn.

‘They will love you, why should they not?’

‘But they knew Gabrielle and that Jack loved her …’

‘Jack was a fool.’ It was said with such vehemence Kitty turned to look at her in surprise.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘‘As Jack not told you?’

Kitty smiled. ‘He is hardly going to admit being a fool, is he?’

The Countess smiled. ‘No, I suppose not. But ‘e should ‘ave said something instead of leaving you to think it was a happy marriage.’

‘Nanette seemed to think it was. She said Jack was devoted to Gabrielle.’

‘What does Nanette know of it? She only saw them together very briefly at the start of the marriage when she was only a child. And Jack would never complain. ‘E is very good at ‘iding his feelings, but that does not mean ‘e does not feel deeply. Only we who are close to ‘im know how much she made ‘im suffer.’

Suffering. She had detected that in his eyes on several occasions. ‘What did she do?’

‘She was a virago, a taker. She gave nothing. Poor Jack tried to satisfy her, but the more ‘e gave, the more she demanded. She would not live ‘ere, said it was too dull, quarrelled with me, made Jack quarrel with me too …’

‘But it is Jack’s home,’ Kitty exclaimed. ‘And it is so beautiful and so peaceful, I cannot think how anyone could dislike it.’

‘She did not want peace, Kitty, she wanted excitement. She could not live without it and turned to anyone who could give it to her. She loved risk …’

‘She gambled?’

‘Yes, and not just with money, Jack could have borne that in moderation. She gambled with ‘is love, made ‘im live in France and, when the war came and the family was forced to flee, she spent more time with ‘er parents in London than ‘ere.’

‘It was from there she was abducted, wasn’t it? Nanette told me she was kidnapped by someone from the French Embassy.’

‘Abducted!’ Her ladyship gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘Jack told his cousin that, I expect. ‘Is pride. No, Kitty, you should
know the truth. The man was her lover. She ran off with ‘im back to France. Her parents were distraught, as you can imagine, and they persuaded Jack to go after ‘er, to try and bring ‘er back. She betrayed ‘is whereabouts to the Revolutionary government and ‘e was arrested for ‘elping the
comte
de Malincourt to escape the year previously.’

‘That was when my brother saved him.’

‘Yes. Jack came back without Gabrielle, but ‘e was a changed man. His former sunny disposition turned to bitterness and anger. ‘E could not settle to anything. ‘E offered his services to the government as an agent and made several trips to France. Whether ‘e was still looking for ‘er, I do not know.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I was desolate every time ‘e went, afraid ‘e would never return.’