The Abandoned Bride (13 page)

“Yesterday, I thought,” he said, coming forward and standing before her. “Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing with a small cheroot that he held, its red tip a small glowing light in the darkness. “It’s a filthy habit I picked up in my travels. But snuff, for all it’s in fashion, makes me sneeze and I cannot see how the symptoms of illness can be a pleasure. Now this,” he said, laughing as he traced a small incandescent circle with its red embers, “only makes me cough and gasp, and so is, of course, much more pleasant.”

She could not see his face clearly, but he spoke so easily that she wondered if he were quite sober. As though he had overheard her thoughts in the stillness of the night, he said lightly, “I’ve had a little claret, a dab of port, a taste of champagne, and a sip of cognac, but I assure you, I’m the clearest-headed fellow in the company. And that perhaps is why I’ve come out here. There is nothing so depressing as being the only sober member of a jolly troupe. I’d like to be gone fully as much as I expect you would, Miss Hastings,” he said more seriously, “but my charming, convivial host has managed to elude me very nicely and I cannot go until I have had his ear in private. May I sit down?” he asked suddenly.

Julia nodded and must have murmured her assent, for he sat even as she moved away to make room for him, although there was already room and to spare for three persons on the bench beside her.

They sat quietly for a few moments and she could hear the orchestra beginning a sprightly country dance. “But Lord knows,” he said, as though he had been speaking all the while, “I should like to leave this place.”

“When can we go then?” Julia asked again.

“So soon as I can
corner
our clever host. He knows I have less than pleasant news for him, and like the king who slew the courier for bearing bad tidings, he confuses the messenger with the message.” Though Julia said nothing, he went on just as though she had asked that which was in her mind, “Our delightful Sir Sidney, you see, has been living here for years. He has entertained hundreds of our countrymen and has a reputation as a generous, immoral, but obliging host. The only problem is that we have discovered that he has been obliging to the enemy as well. Now as he has birth, and some powerful family connections, it’s been decided that the matter shall be resolved in an honorable, gentlemanly fashion. Oh no,” he said in mock horror, “no summary execution, no internment in Newgate for this Jolly Ollie. No, he is simply to be told, on the
qui vivre,
that his presence is not welcome in England again. Never again, as a matter of fact. And I am the lucky chap who is to tell him.”

There was nothing Julia could say. But she sensed that he needed someone to say something to him.

“How very difficult for you
...”
she began to say.

“How very nicely put,” he said sweetly.

“I only meant,” she said rapidly, “that it must be difficult for you to play at being a guest when you are, in effect, an enemy.”

“
I know,” he said wearily, “I’m sorry. I should not have bitten your head off. It is just that it is a tiresome, unpleasant business. I am offered everything by my host, and more than that by my hostess, and all I want is to deliver my message and to be gone from here.”

There was silence between them until Julia finally ventured to say cautiously, “She is very lovely.”

“Then that
was
your bedroom window,” he laughed. “You should take care not to stir the curtains when you spy on us. I take it you mean that you have observed the good lady of the manor and myself at our play. Ah yes, the fair Gilly,” he sighed. “She has been in my constant company. I cannot ride, eat, dance, or walk without her beside me. I must peek under my bed each night like a frightened maiden to make sure she isn’t there as well.”

She wondered at his relationship with their beautiful redheaded hostess, but she did not dare to comment and chance his scorn. His mood was edgy, his temper uncertain, and she wondered again at just how much he had imbibed, however much he claimed he was the clearest-headed of the guests. They remained in the darkness without speaking, but Julia felt his gaze upon her, as though he willed her to conversation with him.

“Tell me,” the baron said pleasantly enough, casting away his cheroot so that it made a fiery arc into the darkness, “did you take all of the medicines that our good host provided you?
”

“No,” Julia said in confusion. “You know I am not ill.”

“Ah, but you were a good guest,” he said, “for you didn’t send them back and insult him, did you? No,” he sighed, “the trick of being a good guest is to appear to enjoy everything that is offered, while discreetly refusing to use everything offered. But it is, as you say, difficult.”

His face glowed dimly white as he turned toward her, and Julia was both gratified and a little alarmed by the odd mood of fellowship that had come upon him and by the strange way that he could anticipate her thoughts as though she spoke them aloud. As he gazed at her, she could not tell if he meant to offer her friendship, violence, or even ardor. She still did not know him. So she edged away just the merest bit and asked, “Is there anything I can do? To make it easier for you, that is to say.” In her gray gown, her white face surmounted by golden white hair, she was as plainly visible to him in the depth of the dark as was the radiant moon in the black sky above them. And it seemed to him that she shimmered and wavered in a nimbus of silvery light even as that inconstant planet did. He did not think he had drunk so much until he had come out into the night air. Then he found her in the empty garden, young, innocent seeming, looking like some lost fairy creature, her sad and beautiful face uplifted, yearning to
the
moon. Even knowing what she was, in that instant she seemed the only familiar person in that household of cheats. Then they had spoken and he had discovered the odd communion between them, the eerie way in which she seemed to understand so completely each thing he said this night. He took in a deep, shuddering breath of cool night air and forced himself to remember precisely who and what she really was, despite the effects of wine and moonlight. He had to stoke up his anger, she had disarmed him so, and all he could achieve was sarcasm. He laughed and said, “Anything that you can do to make it easier for me? You wish to ease me then? How delightful. Do you offer yourself to me to save me from my hostess? What a lucky fellow I am. What a choice of beds the night brings to me. One exquisite female wants me for her husband’s sake, or for his fortune’s sake, it is the same thing to her, I think. And the other offers herself, for what, I wonder?”

“Why?” Julia cried as she sprang to her feet, goaded beyond her limit of endurance, “why do you offer me friendship with one hand and snatch it away with the other?”

“But,” he said, lowering his head and closing his eyes for a moment so that he could see things more clearly, “I never offered you anything. Or at least, I did not mean to do so.”

He raised his head to find that he had been addressing the ether. For she was gone.

8

Sir Sidney bustled into the study, smiling even as he hurried to meet his guest.
“Don’t get up, don’t get up,” he insisted as the other gentleman rose to his feet, “for I’ll be joining you in a moment.”

Then the stout Sir Sidney, his movements such a parody of stealth as to be amusing, made straight for the library shelves behind his desk. He extracted a set of heavy volumes, dark red leather tomes with ornate, incomprehensible titles in what might have been Greek picked out in gold leaf upon their spines. With a wink to his guest, Sir Sidney, as though with difficulty, carried the four volumes to his desk, puffing all the while at the exertion. With a negligent gesture of his podgy hand, he waved away the assistance offered.

“Heavy fellows, cost a fortune, but worth every guinea spent. My favorite works, the author’s a fellow named Bacchus, perhaps you know him?” Sir Sidney asked, as he laid the books down upon the desk. With a practiced flourish, he began to open the uppermost one. As he did so, the entire stack of books fell open neatly in the middle to reveal that the book covers were false and that what lay within them was not pages, but
a cleverly designed box containing two decanters and a set of blown crystal glasses.

“Ha!” Sir Sidney said with satisfaction. “Now this, I think, is what a library is really for.” He poured a brimming glass of amber liquid for his guest and handed it to him.

“I never was a bookish fellow,” he commented as he took another glass for himself and settled back in his wide and comfortable chair behind the desk. “And here was this great library overflowing with books. And most of ’em in frog-talk at that, if they wasn’t in Latin, which I never got a handle on, no matter how my schoolmasters thrashed me. So when I chanced upon these fine volumes, why I snapped ’em up. Now I sit in here half the day and have the reputation of a studious fellow, don’t you know, and enjoy myself as well. And my dear sweet Gilly don’t know the half of it, neither.”

His guest ve
r
y much doubted if his host’s dear sweet Gilly ever cared to know even a quarter of it, but since for some reason, Sir Sidney seemed bent upon presenting himself as a devoted husband with an adoring, if overbearing wife, he said nothing. He was not here to shatter his host’s illusions, if indeed he had any left. He was only here to deliver a message, and if Sir Sidney wished to play at some charade for his own pleasure, it made no matter to the eventual outcome of their discussion.

As though he had known what was to come, Sir Sidney had avoided him for three days, but now, at last, he was run to earth. The baron was then not surprised at his host’s overly glib manner, or at the fact that he drank deep before he addressed his guest again.

“Out with it,” Sir Sidney said then, placing his elbows upon his desktop, resting his many chins in his hands, and looking at his guest owlishly. “I swear, Nicholas, old chap, you’ve put me into a quake. You’ve been so single-minded these last days, all you keep parroting is that you wish private discourse with me. Whatever can it be?” he said, and then went on quickly before the baron could even draw in breath to speak, “I’ve thought of the most incredible things, y’know, m’ boy,” he said, slurring his words just a
little
, although his guest doubted that the jot of brandy he had drunk had been enough to cause it; Sir Sidney was known as a fellow with a hard head. “I think that I’ve been deliberately avoiding you these past days, that serious phiz of yours sent me into such disarray. I can’t help but think that it’s to do with m’lady fair. You’ve been with her every moment since you’ve arrived here, and don’t think I haven’t noticed it, too.”

Sir Sidney paused, and glowered at his guest. But Nicholas’s face did not change. He sat at his ease, one leg casually thrown across the other, and returned his host’s accusing stare with a bored look. This was a game he understood. But was the fool actually trying to frighten him off, make him so abashed at the discovery of his presumed adult
e
ry that he would slink away and let the matter be? If so, the baron thought ruefully, then Sir Sidney was not so clever as he had given him credit for being.

But now Sir Sidney’s face softened, it became, in fact, almost clownish in its innocence as he went on to say, “I know she’s a beauty and I know I don’t deserve her. But if you’ve set your heart at her feet, I want you to know, m’boy, that I’ll look t’other way. She may do as she wishes, so long as she stays here with me.” He waggled his finger at the baron before he added, “Now, there’s plain speaking, lad.”

“It can hardly be plainer,” drawled the baron, “but it also can hardly be more unnecessary. I don’t pine for her, Ollie, and we haven’t the sort of relationship that should give you either a moment’s pause as to her constancy or the slightest upper hand over me.”

Sir Sidney dropped his childish expression and looked genuinely shocked at that bit of information.

“You mustn’t blame her for it. She is dazzling and no doubt obedient to your wishes,” the baron sighed, “but I never mix business with pleasure.”

“You wasn’t so damned particular last time you visited!” Sir Sidney said
venomously
, all traces of good humor gone.

“I was not upon business then,” the baron said coolly.

Sir Sidney rose and stepped out from behind his desk. He placed his hands behind his back and faced his visitor. He was no longer the charming host, or the offended husband, or the jolly fat man, the baron noted. He was now deadly serious, and very frightened.

“It’s bad news then?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” the baron said, not unkindly, as he too rose to his feet and set down his glass upon the desk. “All has been discovered, as they say in the old
cliché
, but rather than advising you to ‘Fly, at once,’ I am here to tell you that you may as well stay put. For you’re not welcome back at home, sir, and never shall be again. That’s the sum of it. I’m so
rr
y that you had me on your hands for all this time for just this unhappy news. If you had seen me at once, I should have been able to settle the matter immediately. But that is all there is to it. For what it’s worth, I’m so
rr
y, Ollie,” the baron said as he turned to go.

“Wait!” Sir Sidney cried. “Wait, Stafford. I must speak with you.”

The baron paused. It was this that he had disliked about the assignment initially, this possibility that Sir Sidney would plead with him for mercy. For he
had no authority to change anything. He only had the task of bringing the news. He attempted to explain this to his host, but Sir Sidney motioned to him to sit again. He was so very visibly upset, that in all conscience the baron could do little else but agree.

“For God’s sake, Stafford,” Sir Sidney said, his face grown very white and beads of moisture apparent upon it, “what am I to do?”

“There’s
nothing to do,” Nicholas said on a sigh. “It’s been decided. If I were you, I should consider myself lucky that there is nothing else to it. Exile may not be comfortable, but it is, I understand, a great deal less uncomfortable than hanging.”

“If you were me,” Sir Sidney said, swinging about to address the baron with a glittering eye. “You cannot know what it is to be me! Look at you. Look at me. My God, man, how can you know what it is to be me?”

The baron made as if to speak, but Sir Sidney waved him to silence with a trembling, flapping hand. “If I were you, then no, I should not have done as I did. What would have been the point of it? For it wasn’t done for conviction’s sake, Nicholas, nor in malice. But I must have the blunt to keep this place running, to pay for servants, entertainments, luxuries. My estates could not support my life-style. It wasn’t even done for me. But for her. Don’t you see? It was all for her.”

His guest felt supremely uncomfortable. Tears were coming to Sir Sidney’s eyes,
the
man clearly suffered. But still, knowing his past history and knowing that such a man was many things, but never only a sentimental fool, the baron said nothing and only waited patiently for him to be done with his speech. It was to be a plea for understanding, he knew. He did not have the power to grant the fellow a reprieve, but at least he could hear him out. “You’re a man of the world, Stafford,” Sir Sidney went on, locking his gaze with his guest’s, “but do you know what it is to love completely, even though you know it is folly? I adore her, even though I know she is unfaithful. But I allow her to be so, I even encourage it, all so that she will stay with me. I indulge her in everything. Yet, with all that I give her, I know ve
r
y well that when my purse empties, she will leave me. And I cannot bear the thought of that. I don’t like myself for it, but there it is. Do you know what it is to be unmanned by love?”

There must have been something, something quickly expressed and as quickly suppressed, in the baron’s face that encouraged his host to go on.

“No, how could you know?” Sir Sidney said brokenly. “Only look at you. Females think themselves privileged to touch you. They dote on you: your form, your face, your voice, do you think I don’t know? She was used to go on ab
out
your shoulders, for God’s sake, Stafford. Do you know what it was like to give her a new emerald bracelet and hear her murmuring about your damned bloody shoulders?

“I am not so much older than you, Stafford,” Sir Sidney said, drawing himself up with a curious sort of defenseless dignity, “though you wouldn’t think it. Only five years your senior, in fact. Where is the fairness in that? I was
born
with this foolish, bandy-legged body. I was
born
with this insipid face. When I reached my third decade, I lost my hair and what was left of my form and then my honor, because of it. But it was not fair. Why should nature have made me plump and old before my time, and made you so wondrous desirable? Do not condemn me, Stafford. Oh no, not until you think .on the inequality of mankind and the cruelty of chance. I must pay, and pay dearly, for love because of it. You are free to love where you wish because of it.”

“This is nonsense and you know it,” the baron said coldly. “Do you think that patriots are all models of manly beauty? And that traitors are all uncomely? What a simple world that would be. And do you think that having a pleasing aspect guarantees love and happiness? No, if these are actually your reasonings, they are false and inadequate. You had this home, located so neatly near the main routes to Paris, Brussels, and Vienna. You entertained your countrymen, you took their confidences as payment and then sold them for personal gain, whatever the spur. Shall we tell those poor lads maimed and murdered through information given that it was their lot to suffer because you lacked beauty in the eyes of your love? It’s nonsense, Ollie. If you wish to believe it, then do. But be done with explaining it to me.”

Nicholas shook his head in disbelief and then went on. “But I doubt you believe it yourself. Listen well, Ollie. I only delivered the message. I had no part in making the decision, nor can I alter it in any way.”

“But you can,” Sir Sidney said eagerly. “That’s the point, you can. You’re trusted, you’re in at the top. Your word is as good as any man’s. Better, actually. You could vouch for me, work for me, exonerate me completely. But,” he said hastily, seeing the baron’s expression, “I do not even ask that. Tell them you could not reach me. Tell them you had no chance for speech with me. Give me time, time to see how I can clear myself, for given time, I can.

“Give me time to gather the facts to convince them,” Sir Sidney cried, grasping onto his guest’s coat sleeve with his warm, moist hand. “You have some further business on the Continent, I know that. Forget me for a space, at least until you return home. Or tell them that you sought me out on the way home, rather than on the way going, and missed me, is that so very much to ask?”

“No,” said the baron with finality, “it is not so very much, but it is far too much. I have given my word. I cannot break it. It is not and never was a matter of my personal choice, or my opinion or sympathy, in any wise. Believe me. I had a message to deliver. Merely that. It is out of my hands now. There can be nothing more upon my part.”

“I warn you
...
” Sir Sidney cried out, his eyes wild with emotion, “I swear you will regret this.”

The baron disengaged his arm from his host’s grim clasp. He said only, “Do not beg me, and do not warn me. Can’t you see?” He gestured impatiently. “It is over, it is done.” Then he bowed politely and said coldly, “I thank you for your hospitality, Sir Sidney. I shall leave now. I do not think we shall meet again. Good day.
”

Sir Sidney stood alone in his study and trembled with rage. What he most feared, and had feared for years now, had come to pass. It could have been worse, he knew. Not only had he eluded the hangman’s noose that might have awaited him, but there could have just as easily been a different sort of courier with an entirely different sort of message to deliver: a bland powder to place in his wine, or a keen knife to slip through his ribs. Yet, that might have been kinder for him.

For now that the war was over, he had no more information to sell. With no money coming in, he could never keep up life in his accustomed style for long. When that gaiety ended, he had always thought that he could at least return home. But now, he had not even that. He did not delude himself into thinking that she would remain with him for much longer than it took for his funds to run out. He would have no home, no wife, no future. But he was not the sort of man to give up easily.

He would work with the materials at hand, he thought, as he steadied himself and went to sit behind his desk again. He poured himself another libation and downed it rapidly. The Baron Stafford was not the man he would have chosen to work through, but a man must seize any opportunity when he fought for his life. And then again, he realized, he had always resented Stafford, just as he had said. The baron’s being the chosen messenger had been a greater insult, perhaps they had known that. No matter, it would only mean that what he must do would not be so onerous a task. Oh no, Sir Sidney thought darkly, as he remembered his guest’s departing words, you shall see me again, Stafford, and next time there will be a great deal more that you will offer to do upon your part. I shall see to it. And then, you will not thank me for my hospitality, or for anything, because you will discover that I am a man of my word as well.