Lady Anne's Deception (The Changing Fortunes Series Book 4) (8 page)

“No.” Miss Hammond gave an awkward laugh. “I’ll get straight to the point. I don’t believe in shilly-shallying. I have formed a little band of women supporters. Your town house is so central. I wondered if you would consider helping our cause by holding a meeting here?”

“Here!” Annie looked about her. She wanted to say that she would feel easier in her mind if she asked her husband’s permission, but that would probably be taken by Miss Hammond to betray a weak-kneed slavish dependency.

“Are you still sort of… well, ‘Down with Men’ and all that?” she asked.

“Well, no,” said Miss Hammond, baring her large teeth in a smile. “Men are in power at the moment and we need their support. But Our Day Will Come.”

“So what is the purpose…?”

“The Vote.”

“Oh,” said Annie doubtfully. “You do not plan anything
militant…
?”

“Oh, no, no. We have Other Means.”

For a moment, Miss Hammond’s pale eyes flashed, and Annie felt increasingly nervous.

“Do I know any of the ladies perhaps?” she asked, to stall for time.

“I think at least one name will be familiar to you. Mrs. Amy Cartwright.”

Annie’s face cleared. “I know Mrs. Cartwright well,” she said. Amy Cartwright was a young widow and one of Annie’s newfound social friends.

“And Mrs. Tommy Winton.”

Better still. Mrs. Winton was a frivolous matron.

“Very well,” said Annie, slowly. “And when is this meeting to take place?”

“I thought perhaps Saturday.”

“
This
Saturday?”

“I know it’s short notice.” Miss Hammond played her ace. “Mr. Shaw-Bufford was sure you would not mind and he has promised to look in.”

“Well, I have no arrangements for Saturday afternoon, but perhaps Saturday evening was what you had in mind?”

“Oh, no. Saturday afternoon at two o’clock. We are having a meeting to arrange a social function to raise funds.”

Annie smiled with relief. She had been afraid that the purpose of the meeting was to arrange some sort of
painful
demonstration like chaining themselves to the railings of the Houses of Parliament.

“What a pleasant way of raising money.” She smiled. Secretly, Annie found herself hoping that her husband would return in time for the meeting. Then he would see that she had ideals, that she was not a useless member of society, unfit to set foot on his precious estates. For, among her other fears, Annie was beginning to wonder whether her husband was ashamed of her.

She imagined him entering the drawing room and finding her presiding over a meeting of intelligent, dedicated women. This happy dream carried her through until Saturday.

Saturday was a gloomy day. Rain fell steadily and remorselessly from a leaden sky. Raindrops trickled down the windows, blurring the view of the buildings across the square.

Annie’s throat was sore and her forehead felt hot.

She had not been ill since childhood, and she refused to accept the fact that she was ill now. She moved hazily through the house supervising the arrangements for the meeting: arranging flowers in bowls, telling the servants to carry in ranks of chairs for the drawing room, cajoling the cook into preparing her special scones for the occasion.

At times she couldn’t stop shivering and asked for fires to be lit throughout the house; then she was boiling hot and fretfully told the servants to open all the windows.

By the time the ladies started to arrive, shaking dripping umbrellas in the hall, Annie found that her vision was becoming slightly blurred and the day had begun to take on a dreamlike quality. She was too busy supervising the serving of tea to take in much of what was going on. Although she was the hostess, the women seemed to have forgotten about her.

Mrs. Tommy Winton was enthusiastically discussing arrangements for a ball to be held in her house. With the exception of Miss Hammond and a few of her militant supporters, the other ladies were mostly society butterflies who were supporting the Vote for Women movement as the latest fad and who were more interested in an excuse to hold a ball than in any political reform.

After a date had been fixed and caterers agreed on, Miss Hammond rose to make her speech. With amazing fervor, she thanked the ladies who had gathered to support her. By the evening of the ball, she said, she hoped to be able to tell them Marvelous News at which they would Throw Off Their Chains. Her audience, in the main, listened with polite disinterest. Miss Hammond and her society were merely part of the excuse for the ball and something to be endured on a rainy afternoon.

The butler murmured in Annie’s ear as she was just sitting down that Mr. Shaw-Bufford had arrived and begged a few words with her in private.

Annie arose wearily. Her head was on fire and her legs felt as heavy as lead. She followed Perkins to the study where Mr. Shaw-Bufford had taken up a position before the fire.

After a few preliminary conversational gambits, he got down to brass tacks.

“Lady Torrance,” he said, taking her hand in his, his deep-set eyes boring down into Annie’s fevered ones. “I am deeply moved to find that you have given up your house to such a noble cause. I have never discussed politics with you. But I will tell you this in the deepest confidence because I feel there is a bond of friendship between us…”

He hesitated, waiting for some response. He noticed Annie’s scarlet face and, not realizing it was the result of fever, put it down as a gratified blush.

“If I were prime minister,” he said in a low voice, “then women would have the vote, I assure you.”

Annie tried to gather her scrambled wits. “But Mr. Macleod is prime minister,” she said, passing the hand he was not holding over her hot brow.

“Exactly. And while he is in power there is not much I can do. That position should have been mine. But the day will come… Forgive me, I go too fast. The fact is, this society of Miss Hammond’s needs money. With money we can start to gain power.”

“But… the ball,” said Annie, weakly. “That is to raise money.”

“All it will raise is interest in the movement,” he said dryly. “By the time all the arrangements are paid for out of the subscriptions, there will be little left.

“And that is what has given me the courage to approach you. Lady Torrance, I beg you to contribute ten thousand pounds to the society.”

“What?” said Annie, dizzily. She tugged her hand away. “My dear Mr. Shaw-Bufford, you must ask my husband.”

“But you are a wealthy heiress. Surely you have money of your own?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie, wretchedly. “All my husband told me was that he had made arrangements for me to draw money on his bank any time I wanted.”

“Then it is probably your money. Your husband’s life-style, dear Lady Torrance, is… But I must not say more. It is
your
money, believe me. You are not his slave. You are an independent lady.”

By this time Annie would have paid him double the amount to get rid of him, she felt so ill. “I—I must think,” she said. “When shall I give you the money?”

“Well, I do not wish to rush you. Shall we say next Wednesday? I shall call for tea.”

“Yes, yes,” said Annie. “Now I really must get back to my guests…”

“Of course,” he said smoothly. He walked forward and held the door of the study open for her. “Perhaps you would be so good as to send Miss Hammond to me, Lady Torrance? That is, if she has finished speaking.”

Annie nodded and went out. She entered the drawing room and gave Miss Hammond the chancellor’s message.

It was only when Miss Hammond had left and Annie looked around the room through glazed and feverish eyes that she began to feel resentful. Mrs. Tommy Winton had taken over the role of hostess and was ordering the servants about as if she were in her own house. Nobody bothered to pay Annie the least attention.

To add to that, thought Annie furiously, the chancellor was holding private meetings in her husband’s study and sending the lady of the house scurrying about on his errands like a servant girl.

Well, he would stop it this instant!

Annie marched in the direction of the study. But as she put her hand on the doorknob, the intensity of the two voices inside the room stopped her. She was also assailed by a feeling of giddiness and a pounding in her ears, so the voices from inside the room seemed as if they were rising and falling on the waves of the sea.

“If I am caught, I shall at least be a martyr…” boomed Miss Hammond.

Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s answer came out in a sort of hiss that nonetheless carried through the panels of the study door.

“You will not be caught, Miss Hammond. Remember, my name must never be mentioned. Never!”

And then the voices sank to a murmur.

Annie turned wearily away. All at once she was too ill to cope. Let them stay till the coming of the Cocqeigrues for all she cared!

CHAPTER SIX

 

“And where is my wife, may I ask?” said a pleasant, masculine voice from the doorway of the drawing room.

Mrs. Winton had a mouthful of scone and strawberry jam and could only stare wildly at the Marquess of Torrance in dumb silence. Miss Hammond sailed forward like a tweedy galleon.

“Annie must be somewhere around,” she said brightly.

“Annie? You mean my wife, Lady Torrance?”

“Yes. You must not think me presumptuous, my lord, but dear Annie simply begged me to call her by her Christian name.”

The marquess leaned one broad shoulder against the doorway and smiled benignly at the room full of women.

For some reason they all found themselves becoming ruffled and uncomfortable.

Mrs. Winton succeeded in gulping down her scone. “Lady Torrance was here a moment ago,” she said, peering around hopefully. Everyone began to look around in a ludicrous way as if the Marchioness of Torrance were a missing handbag.

“Then,” pursued the marquess, “since you cannot produce my wife, perhaps you can enlighten me as to why so many of you delightful ladies have called for tea.”

“It’s a meeting. We’re organizing a ball to raise funds to support the Vote for Women movement,” volunteered Mrs. Winton, after a short silence in which no one spoke.

“And it was my wife’s idea?”

“Well, no,” blustered Miss Hammond. “I asked dear Ann—Lady Torrance if we could use her house and she said we could. Of course, she is a devoted supporter.”

“Obviously a strong feminist,” said the marquess sweetly, “since my house has become not ‘our’ house but
her
house.”

“Oh, your lordship will have your little joke.”

“Yes, I will, won’t I. Ah, Shaw-Bufford! Have you just arrived?”

The chancellor had been trying to glide silently through the hall behind the marquess’s back, but somehow the marquess, in some peculiar way, had seemed to sense he was there without turning his head.

He came to stand beside the marquess in the open door-way.

“Perhaps you can tell me the whereabouts of my wife?” asked the marquess.

“I was talking to her a little moment ago. I sent her to fetch Miss Hammond and bring her to see me in the study. I…” His voice trailed off under the marquess’s look of bland surprise.

“Then perhaps you sent her scurrying off on another little errand? Dear me. Is it the servants’ day off by any chance? No, it can’t be. I quite distinctly see several of them at least, ministering to all your needs.”

“My lord, I—”

“So I suppose I had better look for her myself.” The marquess ambled off after bestowing another sweet smile on all and sundry.

There was an awkward silence. Mr. Shaw-Bufford collected his hat, cane, and long gray coat with the astrakhan collar. Two little spots of color burned on his cheeks. He could never understand why such a useless dilettante as the Marquess of Torrance always contrived to make him feel ridiculous.

Annie, tossing and turning on her bed in the throes of a fever, felt a cool hand laid on her brow. It was taken away to be replaced by a cloth soaked in iced water and cologne.

“Oh, that’s very good, Barton,” she mumbled, only to be answered by a masculine voice saying gently, “The doctor will be here soon. Try to lie still.”

“Jasper!” she said, reaching out and clutching his sleeve. “Where are you?”

“I’m here.”

“Don’t go away!”

“I won’t. Be still.”

Annie fell into, a feverish dream in which Mr. Shaw-Bufford was chasing Miss Hammond through the maze at Hampton Court. “I shan’t be caught,” Miss Hammond was crying. “I shall be a martyr instead.”

Then she awoke to the murmur of masculine voices, a Scottish one—the doctor?—saying, “Her ladyship has the influenza, my lord. I will go myself to the chemist’s and have her medicine made up and return with it directly.”

And then Annie plunged back into tortured dreams.

For the next forty-eight hours, it was hard for Annie to separate her dreams from reality. At one time it seemed as if Marigold was in the room, looking down at her with bright, malicious eyes. Marigold was saying shrilly, “Are you sure she is
really
ill? She would always do anything to get attention.”

And her husband’s voice replying, “Please leave my house and don’t dare come back until you are invited.”

And sometime later a pleasant sensation of strong hands lifting her into a warm, scented bath, rubbing her down with a fleecy towel, carrying her back to bed again.

And then it seemed, at last, as if she awoke properly. Her head was clear and everything in the room looked sharp and new.

Her husband was sleeping in a chair beside the embers of the fire. He was unshaven and wrapped in his dressing gown.

She lay quietly studying his face. It was much stronger than it usually seemed, devoid as it was in sleep of its indolent charm. The mouth was set in a firm line. Two grooves of weariness were etched from his nostrils down each side of his mouth. His hair was tousled, one thick lock falling over his forehead.

Annie tried to think that his vigil by her bedside was a sign of love but could not bring herself to believe it. She was sure he would also sit up all night in the stables if his favorite horse were sick. And on that cynical thought she fell asleep again, awaking again when the sun was high in the sky.

There was no sign of her husband. The fire was blazing cheerfully, the hearth had been swept, and the curtains pulled back. Great white castles of clouds were being tugged across a chill, blue sky. Of her husband, there was no sign. Annie began to wonder if she had imagined the whole thing.

Barton came in quickly and exclaimed on seeing her mistress awake. “We were very worried about you, my lady,” said the maid, coming forward to straighten the pillows behind Annie’s head. “Thank the Lord the fever has gone. There’s a epidemic of that nasty influenza all over London. People are dropping like flies. I told the master he should hire a nurse, but he insisted on doing all the work himself.”

“He did? I didn’t dream it?”

“No, my lady. He only went off to get some sleep when he found your fever had gone down. Everyone in London seems to have called, but he wouldn’t let anyone see you. Lady Marigold came straight up one day when he was out of the room for a moment, and he was so angry when he found her here.”

“I seem to remember something about it,” said Annie.

“Mr. Shaw-Bufford called as well,” said Barton. “He said to remind your ladyship that you had an engagement on Wednesday. I didn’t tell his lordship, for I was sure he would be annoyed. It was thoughtless of Mr. Shaw-Bufford when you are so ill.”

Annie flushed guiltily, suddenly remembering with awful clarity her promise to give the chancellor money.

The door opened and her husband strolled in. She searched his face for some sign of love, but his eyes held a strangely guarded look. He sat down on the edge of the bed and studied her face.

“I’m glad to see you well, my dear,” he said. “The doctor says you are to continue taking your medicine for the rest of the week and you are to rest in bed. He will be along to see you this afternoon. You gave us quite a fright. When I arrived home I found the house full of chattering women and the chancellor of the exchequer making free with my study.

“It puzzles me that Shaw-Bufford should champion women’s rights. I would have said that the only thing that man believed in intensely was the advancement of Shaw-Bufford.”

Annie avoided his gaze and plucked nervously at the satin quilt. Barton left the room.

“Now what is worrying you?” teased the marquess. “You have two little lines right in the middle of your forehead.”

“I was wondering if I had any money of my own,” said Annie, still not meeting his eyes.

There was a little silence. Then the marquess said lightly, “Did I not tell you? Your father deposited a great deal in a private account for you. He wrote to me only the other day about it, but you were too ill to receive the news. Certainly, it’s yours… as my money is yours.”

It was on the tip of Annie’s tongue to say that she believed he hadn’t any. Instead she said, “Do you have access to my money?”

“No,” he said, looking at her steadily, “which is a pity since I have already dissipated your dowry in riotous living. I assume that is what you expect to hear?”

“Yes… I mean, no… I mean… Oh, what would you do if someone asked you for a large sum of money for a certain organization?”

“If I believed in what the organization was doing and I thought they genuinely needed the money, and if I could afford it, then I would certainly give them a check. Them. Not he or she, if you take my meaning. I would take the precaution of making the check out in the name of the organization and not to the individual who asked for it.”

“But if it was someone in a high position, someone in a national position of trust…? What if, say. King Edward asked you for money for a certain charity?”

“Then I would most definitely insist that the check be made out to the charity,” replied the marquess, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.

“Oh.” Annie digested this in silence. Then she remembered that Barton had said that Marigold had called. And she also remembered Marigold looking down at her, but it still all seemed part of a fevered dream. And had he meant all that about having spent her dowry on riotous living?

“Barton says Marigold called,” she said. “When is she getting married?”

“I neither know nor care.”

Annie smiled. “So you were only teasing me…?”

“About what, my love?”

Annie blushed. “About wanting me to have a baby before Marigold.”

“Well, according to your father, if Marigold has a son, the child will be the heir to the title and fortune since Marigold is the eldest. I felt quite depressed when I heard the news. But, ah well, one can’t compete with Marigold forever.”

So he didn’t love her. How that thought pierced Annie’s heart. Her pain made her lash out. “It’s just not fair,” she said. “No matter what I do, she always seems to win.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. Was it her imagination or was there a certain hint of ice in his blue eyes? But the next second he was smiling amiably down at her. He yawned and stretched. “Well, my dear,” he said, rising from the bed, “I am glad you are better. I can now toddle off and frivol about London in my usual manner.”

“With Miss S.?” said Annie, bitterly.

“Unfortunately, she is still in Paris. Perhaps I shall send her a wire…” And with that, he strolled out of the room.

Annie lay, staring out at the cold sky and aching with misery. For the rest of the day, she tortured herself with pictures of her husband walking about London with some pretty charmer or another on his arm. She pictured Marigold’s false pity.

In her mind, her husband slowly turned into an evil and depraved monster, and by evening she had conjured up such a Frankenstein that it was something of a shock when the marquess ambled into the room looking very much his usual handsome self.

“What do you want?” said Annie harshly.

“I’ve come to read to you,” he answered mildly, settling himself down in the armchair in front of the fire.

“I don’t
want
be read to,” said Annie pettishly. “My head aches.”

“Then you will find my voice very soothing,” he said imperturbably.

He began to read while Annie lay and seethed with fury. At first she was so angry that she could not hear the words, but after some time, despite herself, she began to listen. He had chosen Surtees’s
Handley Cross
, and Annie’s attention was caught by the mad antics of that famous huntsman, Mr. Jorrocks. The marquess read in a rather flat, soothing voice. From time to time Annie would remember her hurt and open her mouth to say something wounding, but somehow she found she could not and began to listen to the story again.

She had just decided that as soon as he finished the next chapter she would tell him what she really thought of him, when all at once it was morning again and she had slept the whole night through.

After that he ambled in and out of her room for the next two days, sometimes chatting to her, sometimes reading to her, always ignoring the blazing hurt and fury in her wide eyes.

Mr. Shaw-Bufford had sent flowers daily; Miss Hammond had sent a large box of chocolates. Marigold contented herself by sending Annie a letter, sympathizing with her sister for having such a tyrannical beast of a husband. Annie sent a letter to Mr. Shaw-Bufford thanking him for the flowers and regretting that she would be unable to see him until she was feeling better.

And then, just as she was feeling fully recovered, just as she was beginning to thaw toward her infuriating husband, just as her slowly maturing brain was beginning to tell her that a man did not spend his days waiting on his wife unless he felt
something
for her, she received a note from him saying that he had gone back to the country.

He begged her to forgive him. He pointed out that the matter was urgent. One of his tenants had been arrested for murder. He had killed another man in a drunken brawl. Although he was undoubtedly guilty, arrangements had to be made for the welfare of his wife and children.

Annie did not believe a word of it.

All at once, it was not Marigold she wished revenge on; it was her husband. She had an intensely feminine longing to play his game and see how
he
liked it.

Her mind shrank from the idea of actually having an affair with anyone. But somehow she was sure she could arrange things so that her husband would
think
that she had fallen in love.

Annie was resting on the sofa in the morning room the day after her husband had left when Mr. Shaw-Bufford was announced.

She toyed with the idea of starting to flirt with the chancellor in order to make her husband jealous and then dismissed it, knowing instinctively that Mr. Shaw-Bufford was the last man to make her husband jealous.

The chancellor came in, wreathed in smiles and flowers. Annie gave his present of a handsome bunch of chrysanthemums to a housemaid to put in a vase and thanked him prettily for all his bouquets and messages.