Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 28

‘Divorce?’ Bree’s eyes flew to his face. ‘No, Max, you cannot! Not, not when she has been so … ill.’

‘My wife left me after only days of marriage to live as another man’s concubine. She took my money, made every attempt to cover up her whereabouts until now when she can be assured of my very close attention to her demands.’ He spun round to face Bree, his face dark with anger. ‘She puts that look on your face, that hurt in your eyes, and you tell me to be kind to her?’

‘Max, I cannot marry you. And I do not believe you really could bring yourself to obtain a divorce. I love you,’ she burst out. ‘And I know the man I love is not someone who could do that to a woman he once loved. Imagine the scandal, the talk. She cannot defend herself, not now.’ She found she was on her feet, uncaring that Drusilla was sitting feet away. ‘I love you, and I am right, am I not?’

‘I love you too.’ Max reached out for her and drew her into his arms. ‘I love you, I would die for you, and, yes, you are right. I cannot divorce her.’

Bree let herself stand within the circle of his embrace for a long moment, then slowly drew away. That was the last time, the last embrace. At least she had the satisfaction that they were doing the right thing. That seemed a hollow consolation.

‘What now?’ she asked Drusilla when she had control of her voice again. ‘Where will you go while things are being arranged? To the town house with Lord Penrith?’

‘No! I have told you, I will not stay with him, not in the same house.’

Max looked so furious that Bree spoke before he could let rip with what he was so obviously feeling. ‘Stay here.’

‘What!’

‘But, Max, what else can we do? She will not go to you, she can hardly stay in a hotel with one tiny bag and no maid and you cannot send her on to Longwater until you have warned the Dowager and arranged for the cottage. This is the most discreet way.’

‘So you house my wife while we set about cancelling our wedding?’

‘I suppose so.’ Bree shrugged resignedly. ‘Max, unless you and Drusilla want to talk further today, I suggest I show her to her room and she can rest until dinner. I would be grateful if you could call tomorrow morning and we can discuss what to do about cancelling the preparations for the wedding when we are both a little calmer.’

‘Very well.’ His eyes were troubled, but he managed a smile for her, the tenderness in the curve of his lips, a caress. ‘I will call at ten. Goodbye, Drusilla.’

His wife turned a shoulder on him, he shrugged and went out leaving Bree staring at her unwelcome houseguest. Drusilla looked up at her suddenly. ‘Do you hate me? You must wish I was dead. Do you really love him? You can’t, can you, not a pompous aristocrat like him?’

‘Pompous? Max?’ Bree stared at her. ‘He is anything but that, and, yes, I do love him. I do not hate you and I do not wish you were dead—I just wish you had never met him, that is all. But you did. And I do not understand how you can misjudge him so.’

‘You wanted to marry him—have you met that old dragon of a grandmother?’

‘No, not yet.’ Bree went to the door, anxious to get Drusilla upstairs before she vented the whole of her pent-up feelings.

‘She’s worse than he is. Must do this, must do that. Talk like this, pay attention to that. It was like being at school. Dr … dreadful.’

That wasn’t what you were about to say. ‘Come upstairs and rest,’ Bree said firmly, to disguise her own puzzlement. The longer she was in this woman’s company, the odder she seemed. Of course she does, part of her contradicted. You’ve had a shock, she’s taking the man you love from you. You cannot expect to like her!

Silent now, Drusilla followed Bree upstairs to the spare bedroom next to Rosa’s room. ‘Here you are. I will send my maid up. Let her know if there is anything you need.’

She closed the door and wandered downstairs, wondering vaguely why she was not in the throes of violent hysterics. ‘Years of having to cope with whatever comes along, I suppose,’ she murmured out loud as she reached the hall, only to find Rosa waiting anxiously.

‘What did you just say?’

‘I was explaining to myself why I was not in the throes of strong hysterics,’ Bree said wryly. ‘I have settled my betrothed’s wife in the spare bedroom, by the way. She is staying with us, as she cannot bring herself to be with Max.’

Rosa’s face was so expressive of her feelings that Bree found she could laugh—a little. ‘I’ll explain quickly on the way down to the basement. I need to send Lucy up to her.’

Her rapid explanation was enough to strike Rosa dumb by the time they pushed open the door and went into the kitchen. Cook was making pastry, while at the other end of the table Lucy was talking to a girl a little younger than herself.

‘Oh! I beg your pardon, Miss Bree. This is my sister Penelope. Penny, make your curtsy to Miss Mallory and Miss Thorpe. I hope you don’t mind her visiting, Miss Bree, only she’s up from the country looking for a position and Mrs Greenstaff at the end of the road is advertising, so I was telling her about the household.’

‘That’s all right, Lucy.’ Bree smiled at the younger girl. She was neatly turned out and her hands were clean and well kept, plump still, with a touch of puppy fat. ‘How old are you, Penelope?’

‘Seventeen, Miss Mallory.’ Something was nagging at Bree’s mind, but she could not catch hold of it. It is hardly a wonder, she thought, given what has passed in the last few hours. She exerted herself to be pleasant.

‘I hope you have good luck in securing a suitable position. Lucy, we have an unexpected visitor. La … I mean, Miss Drusilla. She has had a difficult journey and is resting in the spare bedchamber. She has very little luggage and may need to borrow some things—just take whatever seems suitable to you from my room. And, Lucy, she has very bad smallpox scars—do try not to let her see any reaction to her appearance.’

The maid’s eyes opened wide. ‘Poor lady. I’ll be ever so tactful, Miss Bree.’

‘I’m afraid that is one more for dinner, Mrs Harris,’ Bree apologised.

‘No need to fret, Miss Bree. Mr Piers put his head round the door not half an hour since and said he would be eating at the Mermaid, so it all evens out,’ the cook said placidly, reaching for the flour.

‘I packed him off to the inn,’ Rosa explained as they climbed back up to the ground floor. ‘I told him you would be more in need of female company and if I wasn’t at the inn, he would be most use at the office.’

‘Thank you.’ Bree sank down in her favourite armchair and let her head fall back onto the cushions. ‘Oh, Rosa. I think Max has broken my heart.’ And then, at last, the tears came, and with them the merciful release of simply not having to cope, to control herself, to think of anyone else.

Max stalked into the hall and thrust his hat and cane into the butler’s hands. ‘I am not at home to anyone.’

‘Until when, my lord?’

Max paused in the doorway into his study. ‘For the foreseeable future, Bignell.’

He shut the door, taking care to do so softly, recognising in that the same instinct for keeping control that he had seen in Bree’s eyes as she had politely enquired if anyone had wanted tea.

It would have been easier if she had broken down, had railed at him, wept, accused him of deceiving her. He felt he deserved all of that, but her courage and self-control had imposed the same duty on him to hold back the emotion he was feeling.

About Drusilla he could hardly think at all, beyond anger at her shrinking, her accusations and thinly veiled hints that he meant her harm. He pitied her profoundly, for her disfigurement and also for the fact that she seemed no deeper, no wiser, than she had ten years ago. That kind of tragedy, if one survived, would surely make one stronger, give one the wisdom to cope.

His own feelings could wait. Whatever pain he was feeling, and would feel for the rest of his life, he could lay at the door of his own infatuation and his own reluctance to do anything in the years since Drusilla had left him.

Max splashed brandy into a glass and began to pace to and fro before the cold hearth. What had he done to Bree? To her heart and to her reputation? It was widely known in society that they were intending to wed; now it would appear that she had been jilted, or that she was a jilt. And somehow he did not believe that any story they might put around about her sudden reluctance to marry one of society’s most eligible bachelors was going to convince anyone.

The only way he could protect Bree was to reveal the truth about Drusilla. Could he expose her and her pitiful story to the gossip and sniggers and prurient curiosity? He came to a stop in front of a pair of small portraits. On the left was his father, painted on his twentieth birthday, on the right was Max at the same age.

Less than a year after his portrait had been completed he was married. For the first time Max studied his own likeness, glancing between it and his reflection in the mirror over the mantel. Had he ever looked that young? He began to catalogue the changes: laughter lines at the corners of his eyes; a harder, stronger set to his jaw; a sprinkling of grey just touching his temples; the replacement of that look of eager anticipation with one of guarded experience.

Ten years and he was another man, looked another man. And loved, hopelessly, another woman.

Dinner was a bizarre experience. Drusilla said virtually nothing and ate everything that was offered, while the other two women made valiant attempts at conversation.

When the meal finally dragged to a conclusion she took herself off to bed with the announcement that she was very tired after the dreadful day she had had.

‘Well!’ Rosa exclaimed. ‘After the day she has had!’

‘It must be very difficult for her.’ Bree tried valiantly to be fair. The alternative was bitter ranting or to relapse into floods of tears, and that had left her red-eyed and exhausted.

‘Nonsense.’ Rosa sounded every inch the headmistress. ‘She is reacting just like a spoiled chit of a girl—I have seen enough of them to know. She has no thought for anyone else’s feelings and she is totally self-absorbed.’

They sat for half an hour in virtual silence, then Bree said, ‘It feels like a bereavement—that awful time when your mind is full of nothing but the fact that someone you love is no longer with you and there is nothing to talk about, nothing you have the energy to do.’

‘It is a bereavement,’ Rosa said gently. ‘Unless …’ She hesitated. ‘Drusilla will not be living with him. Have you thought of an irregular relationship?’ She looked decidedly uncomfortable saying it.

‘No.’ Bree stared at her. ‘No. That never entered my head.’ She tried to imagine it, almost seduced by the thought. Drusilla did not love Max, did not want to live with him. She could not be hurt by it. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I love him, I want to be with him openly, to have his children. I cannot bear the thought of something clandestine. It would get out, there would be rumours and whispers. There are Piers and James to think about. And what if I became pregnant?’

Rosa nodded. ‘That is what I thought you would say. But he might ask you—it is best to be prepared.’

‘No.’ Bree smiled, thinking about Max. ‘He might be prepared to anticipate marriage, but he would not ask me to be his mistress.’ Warmed a little by her certainty in him, she got up and stretched. Every muscle ached; it must be from the tension of the day. ‘I think I will go to bed too. I don’t know if I will sleep, but I must try to.’

She kissed Rosa’s cheek and went up, surprising Lucy, who was just turning down the bed. ‘Is Miss Drusilla comfortable?’

‘Yes, Miss Bree. Dreadful thing that smallpox, she must have been so beautiful. I have lent her one of your nightgowns.’

Bree climbed into bed, blew out the candle and curled up, pulling the feather comforter round her ears, expecting to lie awake for hours. But when she woke abruptly, to complete darkness, she realised she must have fallen asleep almost immediately. It had not been an untroubled slumber. Fragments of dreams, of jumbled memories, of emotions swirled in her brain.

What woke me?

She struggled up against the pillows, disentangling twisted sheets to do so, and forced herself to remember. Yes! That was it, the sense of something not being right, of something in the picture being at odds with what it should be.

Then the pieces all slid together and she knew. She is not Drusilla. She is too young. This is not a woman of almost thirty, this is one who is twenty at most.

‘Then who is she?’ Bree threw back the covers and reached for the tinder box. In the light of the candle she sat on the edge of the bed, bare feet dangling, and put all the inconsistencies together. Those plump, flawless hands. The smooth nape and perfectly black hair, her gauche manner that had so reminded Rosa of the girls she used to teach, that slip of the tongue when she was describing life at Longwater: It was like being at school, Drusilla said. That was what she had almost blurted out before she had hastily turned Drusilla into dreadful.

Fanny, that is who she is. The little sister. No one else could be so like Drusilla. And Max sees what he had last seen, what his memories had preserved, a beautiful woman of twenty, only with the mask of those scars to veil the differences.

Relief swelled through her, so violently that it almost hurt. Max was not married. He was free. He was hers. The clocks in the house chimed three, the sound silvery in the stillness. Was he awake, like her? Yes, her instinct told her. He was awake, suffering, believing that his own actions and inactions had led to the end of both their hopes.

Bree slid off the bed and began to drag on clothes, snatching up a gown she could manage without waking Lucy and pushing her feet into the nearest pair of shoes. She found her reticule, checked that there was enough money in it for a hackney carriage fare, then stopped in the act of fastening her pelisse. How on earth was she going to get a hackney at this time of night? And she could hardly walk there, not alone.

Shielding the guttering candle flame with one hand, she crept along the corridor and eased open Piers’s door. Goodness knows what time he had come back last night, she thought, guiltily aware that Rosa had probably sat up for him.

‘Piers, Piers, wake up.’

‘Wha—?’ He rolled over, rubbed one had across bleary eyes and stared up at her. ‘Bree? What on earth? What time is it?’

‘Three in the morning. Piers, get up, please, and get dressed. I need to go to Max.’

‘Are you eloping?’ He sat up, unfocused, the night’s growth of stubble making him look older than he was.

‘No, of course not. Piers, listen, he isn’t married after all.’ Bree sat on the edge of his bed and gave him a shake. ‘She isn’t Drusilla.’

‘But Max recognised her. Bree, I know you’re upset, but we’ve got to face facts.’

‘She is what Max remembered of Drusilla.’

‘You mean, she’s a ghost? I know you need to hope, but, Bree, that isn’t possible.’

‘No—I mean she’s her younger sister. I mean, she is Drusilla’s younger sister, Fanny, pretending to be Drusilla. And she is just the age Drusilla was when Max met her.’

‘Oh, I see!’ Piers looked wide awake now. ‘But you cannot go off to see Max at this time of night.’

‘Why not? If he is half as miserable as I was until I realised, I cannot bear to leave it until the morning. But I can hardly walk across London by myself.’

‘Well, let me get dressed then. But I’ll wager you he has sunk his troubles in a brandy bottle.’

Bree had already drawn back the bolts when Piers came downstairs, his hair still tousled and his chin unshaven. ‘I’ve left a note for Peters in case he thinks we’ve been burgled. Do you think there is any chance of a cab or shall we take the most direct line and walk?’

‘We’ll try Tottenham Court Road,’ Piers decided. ‘You never know.’

They were in luck. One weary cabby, obviously returning home, agreed to turn around and head back into the West End for double his fare. Bree could hardly sit still on the battered upholstery as the horse plodded its way down to Oxford Street.

‘What are you going to do with her? Fanny, I mean?’ Piers asked.

‘It’s not for me to say. She is pretending to be Max’s wife, after all.’

‘She nearly ruined your life,’ Piers pointed out.

‘I know. It has hardly had time to sink in, it was such a shock. I can’t imagine doing something that dreadful to another person, but I don’t think she understands.’

Piers’s snort of derision was comment enough. He peered out of the smeared window. ‘Almost there, this is Bruton Street.’

‘Here’s the money.’ Bree thrust it into his hands and tumbled out of the carriage door before it had stopped moving. She was halfway up the steps to the shiny black front door when it opened and a tall, cloaked figure stepped out.