The Marquis Takes a Bride (16 page)

“Yes, my lord.”

“Very good. You may take a break from your work if you wish.”

“Certainly, my lord,” said Mr. Porteous, his face brightening.

Sally Byles stood in the hallway of her parents’ town house and read the little note which had been slipped into her hand by the tutor who had been waiting for her outside her home. It read:

“I am to travel to Runbury Manor with her ladyship. I am distressed to leave this city
which holds all that my heart desires
. Farewell. Andrew.”

“Andrew,” breathed Sally. “What a beautiful name!”

She rushed in search of her mother and bewildered that poor woman with an impassioned tale of how Jennie desperately needed her companionship at Runbury Manor.

Mrs. Byles at last gave her consent for Sally to go. Mrs. Byles had taken Mr. Deighton in dislike and thought it would be a good excuse to remove her daughter from town.

The Marquis of Charrington called at Mr. Guy Chalmers’ lodgings to be told he had gone from town.

Mr. Peregrine Deighton called at the Byles’ residence the following day to be told that Miss Byles had already left for the country.

The two friends, Perry and Chemmy, were left to enjoy the sports and amusements of their former days, but somehow the savor had gone.

Damnable women, thought Perry. They ruin everything!

The first few weeks at Runbury Manor were surprisingly pleasant. There was so much to do, so much new furniture to arrange, so many curtains to hem and wallpapers and paints to choose for the walls.

The only thing that Jennie found amiss was the peculiar amount of gamekeepers patrolling the grounds. Every time she went for a sedate walk with Sally to supervise new improvements to the gardens, a man with a gun seemed to pop up from behind every rose bush. She had asked the steward the reason for it but he had only smiled and said he was following the Marquis’ instructions.

The old servants had arrived to a joyful welcome from Jennie. Their duties were to be extremely light as there was, by the time of their arrival, already an army of servants in residence.

Jennie enjoyed all the bustle and noise and the banging, hammering and painting of the workmen. It also meant that Sally had little time to be alone with Mr. Porteous. Jennie was fond of her tutor but could not help feeling that his attitude to her young friend was somehow rather predatory.

But as the weeks went by and a long period of rainy weather set in, Jennie’s excitement began to wane. Try as she would to concentrate on the fact that her husband was a philanderer and more than possibly a would-be murderer, she found her treacherous body aching for his touch. She was not pregnant and that also distressed her. That splendid night of lovemaking had meant nothing to her husband and she had not even the prospect of a child to console her.

She had not heard from Guy and was strangely relieved. She thought more and more of what Chemmy had said about Guy being the guilty party and she wondered if it could possibly be true.

She also became increasingly worried about the growing relationship between Mr. Porteous and Sally, and wished fervently there was some older person to advise her. Sally was already chattering about how she would inherit money from her grandmother when she was twenty-one and was perpetually telling Jennie that elopements were “quite dreadfully romantic.”

Jennie walked into the drawing room quietly one morning and stood aghast at the sight of the tutor clutching Sally in his long bony arms, and kissing her with passionate savagery. She whisked herself out of the room and stood in the hall. “What shall I do?” she prayed. “Dear God, let something happen to stop this.” Feeling very young and bewildered and alone, she ran to her room and indulged in a hearty bout of tears and then lay prone on the bed and
ached
for her husband. “I don’t care if he wants to kill me,” she muttered into the uncaring pillow. “I shall write and
beg
him to come to me.”

After some time, she rose and dried her eyes. The problem that was Sally and the tutor must be faced. She was, after all, as a married woman, Sally’s chaperone and she must not be put off from her duty by her own lack of years. She would speak sternly to Sally and, if Sally would not listen to her, then she would write to Mr. and Mrs. Byles.

She marched firmly down the stairs. Galt, Runbury Manor’s new butler, a thick-set individual of awe-inspiring stateliness, waylaid her in the hall.

“There is a young lady to see you, my lady,” said Galt with a strange tinge of amusement in his voice. “I have put her in the Blue Saloon.”

“Did she give a name?”

“Oh, yes, my lady. A Mrs. Porteous.”

“Mrs.
Porteous?
A
young
lady!” exclaimed Jennie, and then carefully schooling her features, she said, “very good, Galt. I will see her immediately.”

Galt bowed and threw open the double doors leading to the now refurbished Blue Saloon.

The lady standing by the empty fireplace seemed very young but, as she walked forward, Jennie noticed that she was, in fact, somewhere in her thirties.

She had a thin, pale face and pale, myopic eyes. She was dressed in a plain round gown of gray alpaca and from under the brim of her severe bonnet, wisps of red hair escaped.

She spoke in a clear, well-bred English voice, “My lady, the Marquis of Charrington, your husband, told me I should find Mr. Porteous here. He wished to write to you to apprise you of my coming but I said to him, I said, ‘Nay, my lord, I wish to surprise my Andrew.’ The Duke of Westerland is anxious to secure Andrew’s services again and, after receiving a letter from your husband, His Grace kindly suggested I should travel to England to fetch my husband.”

“Mr. Porteous is your husband,” said Jennie flatly. It was not a question.

“Oh, yes, my lady,” said Mrs. Porteous. “We have been married these past ten years and have two fine boys. I was lady’s maid to Her Grace, the Duchess of Westerland, when I met Andrew. I hope it is not an imposition, my arriving like this?”

“No. Oh, no,” said Jennie faintly. She tugged at the bell rope.

When Galt appeared, Jennie said: “Pray inform Mr. Porteous that there is a
lady
to see him. Do not tell him that his visitor is Mrs. Porteous. Mrs. Porteous wishes to surprise him.” Jennie did not want Sally to overhear and so receive the shocking news from a servant.

“Quite, my lady,” said Galt. “I do understand.”

Jennie sat very tense, listening to a murmur of voices in the hall. Then, to her dismay, she heard Sally cry, “Dear Andrew, is this perhaps one of your fair charmers? A rival for your affections?” and Mr. Porteous’ deep answering laugh.

Galt said something in a low voice and Mr. Porteous’ answer rang out clearly, “Nonsense, man. Whoever the leddy is I am sure Miss Byles is as anxious to discover who it is as I am.”

The doors swung open and Mr. Andrew Porteous stood on the threshold with Sally’s hand on his arm.

He looked straight across the room at his wife and his face turned a dull red. Sally, who had begun by smiling brightly, slowly looked from one to the other and her smile slowly faded.

“You are looking very well, Andrew,” said Mrs. Porteous, walking forward and kissing him on the cheek. She seemed completely unaware of the consternation on her husband’s red face and the white-faced dismay on Sally’s. “Isn’t this a lovely surprise? I have his lordship, the Marquis of Charrington’s traveling carriage outside, ready to convey us to London and from thence to the north. The Duke is anxious to have you back, Andrew. Now, we shall just go to your room and start your packing.”

Mr. Porteous pulled himself together with a great effort. “I am glad to see you, Abigail. You have met her ladyship already. May I present Miss Byles, a guest of her ladyship?”

Mrs. Porteous sank into a deep curtsey but her rather vague eyes never left her husband’s face. “The boys will be glad to see their Papa,” she went on. “Come, Andrew.”

She curtsied to Jennie and again to Sally and then drifted from the room. “Come, Andrew,” she said again, her light colorless voice floating in from the hall.

Mr. Porteous took a step towards Sally, who immediately backed away, staring at him, her blue eyes wide with shock.

“Ah, weel,” quoted Mr. Porteous with a heavy sigh. “’How happy could I be with either, were t’other dear charmer away.’ Aye, just so.”

With that, he walked heavily from the room. Both girls stood staring at each other, listening to the slow, heavy tread of his footsteps as he followed his wife upstairs.

“Jennie!” whispered Sally desperately.

“No!” said Jennie fiercely. “Not here. Do not let the servants see your distress. We shall go outside to the garden.”

Both girls left the room in silence and met again in the hall, after they had changed into long cloaks and put calashes over their bonnets to protect them from the rain and heavy wooden pattens over their slippers.

In silence they walked around the side of the house, down a few mossy steps into the rose garden and along a cinder path where an antique sundial dripped rainwater like tears, as if mourning the loss of sunny days.

The sky seemed to press down upon the house, flat and sodden and gray. The rose garden was very still and silent except for the steady patter of rainwater falling on the leaves.

“Now, Sally…” said Jennie.

“He promised to marry me,” said Sally, her voice a dismal echo of the gray weather.

“Did he exactly
promise?
”

“Not in so many words. Just things like we should spend our days in each other’s arms. I feel
dirty
.”

“You didn’t… I mean, you couldn’t…” began Jennie.

“Lose my maidenhead, you mean,” said Sally with a harsh laugh. “No, thank God. Oh, Perry, how I have misjudged you.”

“Does Perry come into this?” queried Jennie.

“He has written to me every day,” said Sally in a low, intense voice. “Long, long letters of love and devotion and Andrew and I used to read them together and
laugh
at them and sometimes I would feel ashamed and start to defend Perry and then he, Andrew, would take me in his arms and make love to me and I would forget everything else. What am I to do, Jennie? I’m so ashamed.”

The tears dripped down Sally’s face and the rainwater dripped down the sundial and water ran down Jennie’s cloak and dripped inside her pattens and she felt she had never been so young or helpless before.

“You must stay out of the road until Mr. Porteous leaves,” said Jennie at last. “He is not worth crying over. You know, Sally, when you were so upset about Perry choosing your trousseau, you should have told him so and then tried to work something out. And I… I should have told Chemmy all about the Charrington diamonds. I should have told him I was never really in love with Guy. But I’m frightened… frightened in case I tell him and… and it turns out to mean nothing to him after all.

“I’m in love with him, I’m frightened he will never love me… I’m frightened he is trying to kill me. He said Guy was the one who put that spike in my saddle but then… that awful man in Vole Lane said Chemmy had paid him. But how can one love someone and still believe that person to be a villain? Chemmy is so easy-going and amiable and yet he sometimes betrays an intensity which frightens me. And I don’t understand Guy any more. He somehow seems shallow and I know now that it was a shocking thing to do to suggest I should set up a flirt. I don’t know what to do. You’re not listening to a word of this, poor Sally. Shall we try to bring our gentlemen here? Shall we have a ball? Shall we, Sally? We’ll invite all the county and send to London for Perry and Chemmy and we’ll wear our prettiest ball gowns and you shall forget that dreadful Mr. Porteous.”

“I-I don’t care about
anything
,” wailed Sally. “I’m going to die.”

“No, you’re not, you silly goose. Come with me now and we shall go to the greenhouses and steam ourselves dry and admire the fruit and so pass the weary time. I shall not take my leave of Mr. Porteous. He was a very good tutor and I am grateful to him for saving my life but he has abused my hospitality by trying to seduce my friend and I feel too young and embarrassed to cope. Oh, why isn’t Chemmy here! He should have guessed the appearance of Mrs. Porteous would be a dreadful shock!”

“Shock tactics, that’s why,” said the Marquis of Charrington, smiling at his friend Perry’s agitated face. “And it worked, did it not? Sally has written begging you to attend the ball.”

“But to trust your wife and Sally alone with a man
known
to be a philanderer…” began Perry.

The two men were seated in the Marquis’ drawing room.

Chemmy smiled. “It seems that our Mr. Porteous was nothing but a harmless ladykiller who received every encouragement from Sally. I already knew enough of his character to know that, despite this one shortcoming, he would make an ideal watchdog for my wife.”

“And an ideal seducer for my fiancée,” grated Perry.

“Cheer up, man,” said the Marquis. “It has all worked out for the best. If I do not seem overmuch concerned about your worries, it is because I have many of my own. I received a letter this morning from Alice Waring. It seems that Guy Chalmers plotted to ruin Jennie so that he might inherit the grandfather’s estate and, having failed to do that, has been trying to keep myself and my wife at loggerheads so that we do not produce heirs. I also believe he has been trying to murder her. Although Jennie’s attacker in Vole Lane failed in his mission, it was a stroke of genius to accuse me of being behind the attempt.

“At first I thought Chalmers was simply trying to seduce Jennie and I even gave him the credit for being in love with her! Later I began to suspect he might be playing a deeper game. I have been very unfair to Jennie and now I fear for her safety. Had I thought for a minute that Chalmers was such a villain I would not have waited in the wings so calmly, letting things take their course.”

“I shall call him out!” said Perry, leaping to his feet.

“No, no,” said the Marquis. “Sit down, my fire-eating friend. We shall draw him. Jennie has added a postscript to her letter telling me that Guy has not been invited to the ball. You and I, my friend, shall go in search of Mr. Chalmers and I shall let him know that I am about to terminate this marriage of convenience and turn it into a love match. We shall tell him of the ball. I shall tell my steward to call off the guards at Runbury Manor and mark my words, Guy will turn up on the night of the ball, hell-bent on murder. Jennie will never believe my accusations unless he is unmasked before her eyes for the villain that he is.”