Читать книгу The Scandal Of The Season - Энни Берроуз, Annie Burrows - Страница 12

Cassandra watched the Colonel stalk from the ballroom, her heart pounding and her limbs shaking. She couldn’t believe she’d spoken so sharply to him. She never stood up to anyone, or lost her temper, ever. But then he’d dragged her through so many strong emotions in such a short space of time. Perhaps that was what had made her lose self-control.

To start with she couldn’t believe he would turn out to be so…unkind. She’d had such fond memories of him. He’d been the first man she’d ever looked at with any sort of romantic interest. And although he’d been far too mature and important to return that interest, she hadn’t held that against him. On the contrary, when he’d come to her rescue, several weeks after their initial meeting, he’d gone up in her estimation even higher. So much so that ever since, she’d thought of him as her hero. Her saviour. She’d never had the chance to thank him properly for what he’d done. And so she’d been really pleased to see him when he’d marched into the ballroom.

Only to learn that he hadn’t done what she thought he’d done at all. Far from stepping in, and rescuing her from her folly, he thought he’d been rescuing Guy from her clutches. Those few curt words had shattered the bubble of pleasure in which she’d been floating, during these last few weeks since she’d come to London. No, come to think of it, he’d punctured her pleasure the moment he’d reached her side when he’d accused her of being up to her neck in mischief just as she’d been thinking how wonderful it was to be able to renew their acquaintance. Now that she was old enough to hope he might see her as a woman and not a silly schoolgirl.

‘What,’ said Rosalind, breaking through the turmoil of her reactions, ‘was all that about? Who was he? And aren’t you supposed to be smiling? Her Grace says we are always supposed to have a serene smile stuck to our lips no matter what, when we’re out in society.’

Cassandra blinked. ‘Yes, of course, you are correct. Thank you for reminding me,’ she said, fixing the required smile in place.

‘Who is he? An old flame, or something?’

‘Not an old flame, no. But I did believe he’d been my friend. He was the only person, during the whole sorry episode, who did anything practical.’ He’d been like a rock. Standing firm in the midst of all the confusion on the quayside, the only one who seemed to know what was going on and having some control over it.

‘What sorry episode? And what did he mean about you scheming? Are we done for?’

‘I am so sorry, Rosalind,’ she said, turning to the girl, rather than continuing to gaze blankly at the door through which he’d just gone. ‘I did warn Godmama that things from my past might come back to haunt us, but she assured me that she could scotch all the rumours about the indiscretion, particularly since I committed it when I was scarcely more than a schoolgirl…’

‘Indiscretion?’ Rosalind’s eyes grew round with wonder. ‘You? And you always being held up as a pattern card for me to follow.’

Yes, well, Cassandra had spoken to Godmama about that, too. But she’d brushed Cassandra’s concerns aside, reminding her that Rosalind needed to learn so much in the way of deportment and etiquette that advising her to mould herself on Cassandra would be the quickest way to effect the necessary transformation in the short time they had available.

‘After all, it is one of the reasons I brought you to Town, darling,’ she’d said. ‘So that you could help me school Miss Mollington into behaviour fitting someone who could marry a titled man.’

Of course, Cassandra had felt that it was the least she could do to repay Godmama’s generosity and hard work in attempting to restore her reputation.

‘I am so sorry,’ said Cassandra. ‘You must be so disappointed…’

‘The only thing that will disappoint me is if you don’t, immediately, tell me all about it. What kind of indiscretion did you commit when you was a schoolgirl that could get a man like that in such a pother that he’d threaten to expose you?’

‘Not here,’ said Cassandra, who’d noticed that several people were looking their way, then looking at the door through which Colonel Fairfax had just marched, and then back at them again and then whispering behind their fans. ‘Come.’ She linked her arm through Rosalind’s and sauntered along until they reached the door to the terrace. There were a few people outside taking the air, but there was still plenty of places where they could talk without risk of being overheard.

‘Well?’ The moment they were out of earshot of the ballroom, Rosalind leaned back against the parapet, demanding an explanation. Cassandra rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She hated to have to let Rosalind down. Over the last few weeks, they’d become friends. Or the closest thing to friends that Cassandra had experienced for many years. Even though Rosalind was a bit rough around the edges, she had a generous nature and a warm heart. But now their friendship would all come to an end. The way friendships did at the first hint of trouble.

But where to start? With the first ball she’d ever attended, where she’d first met Colonel Fairfax?

No, for if she talked about that, she’d also have to go back further, to explain the complicated reasons why she’d gone there without her mother, and she didn’t want to go into all that right now. It would take too long to relate the story of how Lady Agatha, her closest thing to a friend back then, had decided it was high time she had a little fun and persuaded her own mother to let her join a party of local young people attending a benefit ball at the White Hart. Her stepfather had been not only too mean to wish to purchase three tickets to raise funds for the parish alms houses, but when Agatha’s father, the Earl of Spendlow, had offered to collect her in his own carriage and convey her home in it, too, Mama had timidly suggested that it would be a splendid way of helping her prepare for her eventual come-out, by experiencing a ball in unsophisticated surroundings, without incurring any expense whatever.

She sighed as she thought of her younger self, walking into that ballroom arm in arm with Lady Agatha and being immediately besieged by a corps of scarlet-jacketed officers from her brother’s regiment. Guy, Agatha’s brother, had seen how wary she’d been of all those boisterous young men and had taken her under his wing. And she’d felt safe with him, for he’d treated her exactly the way he treated his own sister.

There had been only one officer who hadn’t joined the mob, who hadn’t teased and flattered either her or Agatha. And that had been Colonel Fairfax. There was nothing frivolous or false about him, she’d decided, as the evening had progressed. He was fully in command of himself, unlike other men who became increasingly intoxicated the closer it drew to midnight.

She’d begun to wish he’d ask her to dance, but he never did. She’d danced with the squire and the grocer’s son. And then, after a particularly energetic reel with the young blacksmith, she’d gone outside to get a breath of fresh air and cool down. He’d followed her outside. And told her that she was being foolish to do so, alone. And had escorted her inside, having made her feel wretchedly guilty.

Especially because, for a moment, in the moonlit inn yard, he’d looked at her, or she’d thought he’d looked at her, or she’d imagined he’d looked at her, with a sort of admiration tinged with longing. As though he had been considering kissing her.

Wishful thinking, obviously. Ah, well. She knew better now. About a lot of things.

Including how much information to impart to someone she didn’t, really, know all that well.

‘When I was sixteen years old,’ she therefore told Rosalind, cutting right to the heart of the matter, ‘I eloped with a soldier.’

‘No!’

Far from being outraged, Rosalind looked positively enthralled.

‘’Andsome, was he? ’Andsome as that Colonel?’

‘No,’ said Cassandra at once. She’d never met anyone who could hold a candle to Colonel Fairfax. Not even considering the changes the years had wrought in him. He’d been taller than most of the men at the dance, so that he literally stood head and shoulders above them all. And he’d also had an air of self-containment about him, so that he’d seemed far more dignified than the rest of the laughing, sweating, roistering crowd.

Tonight, he’d looked like a pared-down version of himself. As though he’d been ill and was still recovering. Although the biggest change had been in his eyes. Or, at least, in the way they’d looked at her. No longer with kindness and understanding, but with a cold, implacable hostility. Like two chips of ice. She gave an involuntary shiver.

‘A good kisser?’

What? She’d never kissed the Colonel, or come anywhere near it. Oh, but Rosalind was still harping on Guy. ‘He only ever kissed me once or twice, to be honest,’ Cassandra explained. ‘And only on the cheek, or the hand…’

‘Then why on earth did you elope with him? Was it money?’ She frowned. ‘Nah, because you don’t have any. Or you wouldn’t be taking Pa’s wages to introduce me about to titled people.’

Cassandra flinched. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the blunt way Rosalind spoke about money, nor did she appreciate the reminder that she was being paid to be her friend.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t about money.’

‘Forbidden love, then? Ooh, how exciting! I never knew you had it in you. You always looks so prim and proper.’

‘Well, if I am a bit prim nowadays,’ said Cassandra defensively, ‘it is because I learned my lesson back then. Guy was trying to rescue me from an unhappy home, as a matter of fact. My mother, who was a widow, was deceived into marrying a horrible, horrible man who made my life an utter…hell.’ She shivered as she recalled those dark days. Darker than anything that had happened since. ‘And Guy, well, he was my friend’s brother, or, to be completely accurate he was only one of them, she had several. They lived in the neighbourhood where we went to live when my mother remarried. At least, some of the time. You see, Lady Agatha’s father was an earl, who had several properties dotted all over the country. When they came to stay, they were the principal family in the area, which made it hard for my stepfather to refuse to let them in when they came calling. Even though he wouldn’t allow Mama or me to pay any social calls in return.’

‘What? That’s…that’s…’

‘Mean, yes. And when, one day, things had become particularly unbearable and Guy saw how things were, he, well, was overcome by a fit of chivalry, I think. Said he couldn’t bear to leave me and begged me to run away with him. He promised that we’d get married. That his regiment was going abroad soon, but that as an officer’s wife, I could go with him. He made,’ she said sourly, ‘living in a billet in a war-torn country sound terrifically exciting—’

‘I’ll say!’

‘But the reality was anything but. When we got to Portsmouth, Colonel Fairfax—’

‘The one who just called you a siren?’

‘Yes. He…he really shouted at Guy. Said he’d ruined me because we were both under age and that I couldn’t get married without my guardian’s permission, and the permission of his commanding officer, as well.’

‘He was your Guy’s commanding officer?’

‘Yes. And he ordered Guy to send me back to my family. But Guy couldn’t, because he’d spent every penny he had getting us that far.’ Guy had been all chivalry and no sense, she reflected sadly. Insisting on separate rooms when they’d had to stop overnight on their journey, to preserve her virtue. Hiring a chaise he could ill afford rather than mounting her on horseback where she’d be exposed to the elements…

‘In the end, it was the Colonel himself who provided the fare home. And arranged for one of the other soldier’s wives, one who didn’t get picked to go with the regiment, to act as my chaperon, because,’ she explained, seeing Rosalind’s puzzled frown, ‘only a certain number of the common soldier’s wives are allowed to travel abroad and they draw lots to see who can go. And I was that grateful to him,’ she said, running her hands up and down her arms again, in agitation. ‘I thought he was sorting out the awful mess Guy had made of rescuing me, was being kind, when all the time…’

‘He was rescuing Guy from your clutches,’ said Rosalind, with a giggle.

‘It isn’t funny,’ retorted Cassandra, recalling the way she’d felt when he, her hero, had said he thought her neck was pretty. It had taken a moment or two to realise he wasn’t paying her a compliment. A few more insults before she’d seen that all these years, he’d been blaming her for the mess Guy had led her into and thinking she was some sort of siren who lured unsuspecting men to their doom.

‘Why are you giggling?’

‘That Colonel. Thinking that anyone would need rescuing from your clutches. At that age! And you not even knowing as much as that you were too young to obtain a special licence…’

‘We were so silly. The pair of us. If I hadn’t been so desperate to escape my stepfather, and of course in those days I thought marriage was the only way a girl could escape…’ She shook her head. ‘Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. I was desperate and I did trust in a foolish boy, and ended up ruined.’

‘Ooh.’ Rosalind sidled a bit closer and leaned in. ‘What was it like? Being ruined?’

‘Cold and uncomfortable.’

Rosalind frowned. ‘Cold? Didn’t he…you know…snuggle up when he was doing it?’

‘Doing it? Oh!’ Cassandra suddenly saw that they’d been talking at cross-purposes. ‘No, I thought I told you, we never did…that.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It wasn’t him, or anything he did that made me cold and uncomfortable. He was always a perfect gentleman. It was after. When I got home again. That was the worst bit. My stepfather refused to take me back. Said I was a…well, I don’t want to repeat any of the names he called me.’ She shuddered, recalling the look of glee on his face when he’d said that her behaviour obliged him to wash his hands of her. That from now on she was dead to him and to her mother, and to her brother. That she must never return and not a penny would she ever have from either of them.

‘Betty and I had no money left and nowhere to go.’

‘Betty?’

‘The soldier’s wife I told you about. The one who came with me, to lend me respectability on the journey. Fortunately, my stepfather hadn’t seen her, since he’d been too busy shouting at me and forbidding me to enter the house. She had the sense to sneak round the back and ask the servants if any of them knew of anywhere else we could go. And the cook, who’d been with the family from before my mother’s second marriage, let her know about an aunt of mine who was supposed to be living in a scandalous manner. I’d never heard of her before, because, well, nobody talks about scandalous aunts to young girls, do they?’

‘I don’t suppose they do, no,’ said Rosalind, enthralled. ‘And they took you in, did they?’

‘Ah, eventually, yes.’ It had taken weeks to reach the house in Devon. She and Betty had to walk all the way, foraging for food from the hedgerows as they went. They must have looked like scarecrows by the time they knocked on the front door of the cottage in Market Gooding, so she supposed it wasn’t so surprising the two older ladies had been reluctant to let them in. It was only when Betty had broken down in tears, saying they had nowhere else to go and threatening to lie down and die in their front garden, that they’d said they supposed the pair could stay for a while until they thought of something else.

They hadn’t been there long before discovering why the two ladies had been so reluctant to have them stay and also why they didn’t have any live-in servants already. Although the house was relatively spacious, they shared a bedroom. Betty had explained to the puzzled young Cassandra that the pair of them were in love with each other, in a romantic way, and were probably worried about what people would say if they found out.

‘For my part, Miss Cassy,’ the pragmatic Betty had declared, ‘I don’t care what they get up to as long as they give me houseroom. And nor should you.’

And she didn’t.

‘Betty gradually took on more and more of the household chores,’ she said, ‘and I became an apprentice in their dressmaking enterprise.’

Rosalind frowned. ‘You had to work with the needle to earn your living?’

Cassandra nodded, maintaining the fiction that her aunts used to disguise the real reason why they chose to live together, without a husband between them. People accepted the story of them being indigent females, throwing in their lot together and plying their needles to eke out a living, assuming that neither of them had managed to find a husband to support them. And the aunts, and now Cassandra and Betty, too, took great care to conceal the fact that they loved each other in a way that society would find shocking. As Rosalind might. Which was why she wasn’t going to tell her about it. Or, at least, not right now.

‘So what was all that about running through Guy’s fortune?’

‘I don’t really know. I mean, he did leave me some money in his will—’

‘Oh, did he die, then?’

‘Yes, in the retreat to Corunna. Along with Betty’s husband, which actually settled her position in my aunt’s household. She is their cook-housekeeper now, with a proper wage to reflect her status.’

‘And Guy left you a fortune…’

‘No. I mean, he didn’t have a fortune to leave. I receive a small annuity, that is all. Though even that took me by surprise.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Even though he kept in touch, after the way things had ended, I didn’t really believe a word he wrote.’ She wouldn’t even have written to let him know where she was and what had become of her, if her aunts had not insisted, saying that he was responsible for it and should shoulder the blame. ‘I mean, he said that he considered himself betrothed to me and that he would carry through on his promise to marry me as soon as we were old enough. And that he would always take care of me, no matter what. But…’

But Rosalind had clearly lost interest in Guy.

‘So that Colonel was blowing a lot of smoke, then? He really has no reason to threaten you, or force me to go home?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. But,’ she said, lowering her voice and leaning in a bit closer, ‘if he decides to make trouble for us, people might feel obliged to look a bit deeper into the reasons Godmama is giving everyone for our, um, relationship. And rumour can be terribly damaging.’

‘So what are we to do?’

Cassandra had no idea. ‘We will ask Godmama,’ she said. ‘I am sure she will come up with one of her clever notions.’ And if not, well, at least she’d had a few weeks in London, which she’d thoroughly enjoyed, before having to pay the piper.

It was just such a shame that Rosalind’s plans, too, would come to nothing.