Читать книгу Regency Collection 2013 Part 1 - Хелен Диксон, Louise Allen, Хелен Диксон - Страница 27

Max regarded Bree’s carefully neutral expression. ‘I would not wish to trouble the Dowager,’ she said politely. ‘Although of course she will want to make sure everything is done correctly.’

‘If we wish to get married on a Thames wherry and then set off on our honeymoon in a gypsy caravan, that is just what we shall do,’ Max said robustly. ‘Grandmama has nothing to say to it. I just thought that she might be able to take Miss Thorpe’s place on occasion when you are shopping, or visiting, so Miss Thorpe can get on with helping you with some of the organising.’

‘Yes, of course, that would be very kind, but I do not wish to impose.’ Still she did not seem reassured.

‘Are you dreading her ruling the roost when we live at Longwater? She has announced her intention to move to the Dower House before the wedding—did she not write to you to tell you?’

‘Yes, of course, it was a very kind letter.’

‘Mmm.’ Max regarded her quizzically. ‘And you are wondering just how far away the Dower House is, and how many times a day she will be over saying things like, “I see you have moved the épergne in the Chinese drawing room. It has been there since 1066”?’

‘They didn’t have épergnes in 1066,’ Bree said, a reluctant smile lifting the corners of her mouth. ‘And, yes, I suppose I am rather dreading it.’

‘There is no need—I give you my word she will not interfere. She has told me she intends not to set foot over the threshold except at your invitation.’

‘Oh, no! But it is her home. I could not possibly expect that,’ Bree protested. ‘It is just that I am not used to being a countess and I expect I will make all kinds of hideous mistakes and I was lying awake all last night wondering if I did the right thing. I should have refused you and then you would have married a suitable young lady who is used to such things.’

‘So that is why you have bags under your eyes.’ Max smoothed the faint dark shadows with his thumbs.

‘I don’t have bags,’ Bree protested, the smile back again.

Max sat back on his heels, studying her. ‘What do you think the duties of a countess are?’ he asked eventually.

‘Um … to direct the households, take care of the dependents of the estate, to entertain the earl’s friends and associates, to do good in the local communities, to keep the earl happy. Oh, yes, and to produce an heir,’ she added with a blush.

‘I believe that covers it,’ Max said. ‘I think you can do all that, don’t you? Keeping the earl happy is, of course, of paramount importance, and the production of the heir is also a consideration. How many children would you like?’

‘I hadn’t thought.’ Discussing it was making her deliciously flustered. Max wondered how much longer he was going to manage to refrain from kissing her.

‘I have given it some thought, I must confess. I realised I was falling in love with you when I caught myself speculating on whether they would have a mixture of our colouring, or whether the boys would be blue-eyed and blond and the girls brunettes or the other way around.’

As she had when he had told her about the poetry, Bree’s face lit up. Max wondered why she was finding it so hard to believe he was truly in love with her. But how to convince her?

‘I don’t mind what colouring they have,’ she confessed. ‘But I would like perhaps four.’

‘Then four it is. What is it, Bree? You are still worried, aren’t you?’

‘Will you expect me to cut all links with the company? I know I should, but it has been so important to me, and Piers is still at school, and it is vital for his future …’

‘Hush.’ He pulled her into his arms and kissed her until he could feel all the resistance and tension drain out of her, then set her back in her seat before temptation got the better of him. ‘You can carry on just as you are now, my love, only promise me you will not try to drive a stagecoach again.’

‘I promise. Oh, Max, I am sorry to be so anxious, only I know how difficult it must have been before, to marry a wife so much out of your circle. I don’t want to be a problem to you.’

‘And at three o’clock in the morning you wonder if I put so much pressure on Drusilla that it drove her away?’ He had been half-expecting this, but it still hurt to see the doubt in her eyes.

‘At ten o’clock this morning actually, in broad daylight,’ she confessed ruefully. ‘Max, I love you and I trust you and I am having silly pre-wedding vapours. I wish it was all over and we could just run away somewhere. I am not going to let your first marriage come between us, I swear it.’

He leaned forward to cup her cheek with his hand. He had felt on such firm ground with Bree that to have felt it shake, even a little, reminded him how precious she was to him. ‘If ever you want to know anything about it, ask me. I will not speak of it unless you do, but you can ask anything, tell me any worry.’

Bree turned her cheek against the warmth of his palm, feeling the calluses from riding and driving, the sensitive fingertips that seemed to know exactly which part of her body to caress. Calm seeped through her and she smiled at herself for her worries.

‘Thank you, I promise I will do that. Max, do you realise that in ten days we will be married?’ She bent forward, kissed him lightly and got to her feet.

‘It had not escaped my notice.’ Max moved to her desk and began to mend her pens with the little pearl-handled knife that lay by the standish. ‘I have not yet got to the pathetic stage of working out how many hours it will be before I can carry you over the threshold at Longwater though.’

She had a sudden vision of the future. Of Max, perhaps with a touch more grey at his temples, standing just as he was now, mending a pen, and herself, her belly swollen with their child, sitting looking up at him, and somewhere the sound of other children laughing.

It was so vivid that it took her a moment to come to herself when Peters coughed.

‘Yes, Peters?’ The footman was standing in the doorway, looking perplexed.

‘A lady—’ He corrected himself. ‘A female person has called, Miss Mallory, asking for you.’

‘Who is it?’

‘She would not give her name, Miss Mallory. She has no card and she is heavily veiled.’

‘Not a lady? Is it someone come to speak to Cook about a position?’

‘No, Miss Mallory. She’s not quite a lady, if you know what I mean. But she’s not a servant, I don’t think. Her gown’s quite respectable.’

‘Well, show her in, Peters.’ Bree turned to Max with a shrug. ‘I had better see what she wants. Perhaps it is someone collecting for a charitable organisation.’

‘Your visitor, Miss Mallory.’

The woman stepped into the drawing room and stood quietly facing Bree while the footman closed the door behind her. Max remained where he was, behind her line of sight, and she gave no sign of noticing there was anyone else in the room. Her gown was a drab merino with a modest line of braid around the hem, worn under a dark green pelisse. She was wearing a bonnet with a small poke, entirely covered by a thick black veil of the kind worn for deepest mourning. It covered her face and hung down below the level of her chin.

‘Good afternoon,’ Bree said, trying not to show how disconcerting the blank screen of the veil was. ‘I am Miss Mallory. How may I assist you?’

‘I hope I may assist you,’ the woman said, raising her gloved hands to the hem of the veil. ‘I hope I may be in time to prevent you marrying Lord Penrith.’

She lifted the veil and for a moment Bree could not quite realise what she was looking at. Then she saw a pair of wide green eyes under arched black brows, a sweetly curved mouth and a face that was completely destroyed by the most hideous scarring she had ever seen. There was not a part of the skin untouched by the ghastly pits and craters. Bree knew what it was, she had seen smallpox scars before, but never anything so dreadful as this.

‘You …’

‘I am Lady Penrith.’ The soft voice with its hint of West Country burr seemed to echo in Bree’s head. ‘I am Max’s wife.’ She was aware of Max moving, as though released from a trance; she saw the woman turn and see him and heard her say, ‘Oh, Max! Darling, why did you not come for me when I wrote? Why did you abandon me?’ And then the echo in her head turned into the sound of a rushing wind, the room went dark and she slipped to the floor in a dead faint.

Bree came to herself in her bedchamber, Rosa by her side. ‘Rosa, what on earth happened? I have had the most dreadful nightmare.’

‘No, you have not,’ her companion said bluntly. ‘Bree, there is no easy way to say this. That woman downstairs maintains that she is Lady Penrith. Max appears to accept it.’

‘But Drusilla is dead. Max went to her grave, he is having a headstone made.’

‘Apparently there has been some mistake.’

‘And they are both still here?’ It was a nightmare, a waking one. It was so frightful that Bree simply could not comprehend it.

‘She will not go until she has spoken to you. She will not go with Max, she says she does not trust him. Piers and I discussed it and decided we can hardly have her bundled out of the house onto the street.’

She doesn’t trust him. The woman’s words echoed in Bree’s head. Why did you abandon me? Bree sat up. ‘I will go down and speak to her.’

‘Max wants to come to you. He asked to be told the moment you regained consciousness.’

‘I will see her first.’ Bree went to the washstand to splash cold water on her face.

‘But, Bree—’

‘I will go downstairs. It would not be proper for him to come up here. He is a married man.’ The room seemed to tip a little as she said it, but she gripped the edge of the washstand with wet fingers until she had herself under command again. ‘How is Piers taking it?’

‘He is stunned, we both are. Bree—Max cannot have known she was alive. He seems as shaken as the rest of us.’

‘Whether he knew or not, the fact remains that she is. At least we found out now and not after the wedding.’

‘How can you be so calm?’ Rosa was staring at her.

‘What is the alternative?’ Bree enquired baldly. ‘Hysterics?’

In the hallway Piers was pacing back and forth, his fists clenched. ‘Bree.’ He ran to the foot of the stairs and put his arms around her. ‘Bree, if he knowingly deceived you, I shall call him out.’

‘Oh, bless you.’ She allowed herself the weakness of resting her head against his shoulder for a moment. ‘That won’t mend matters, my love. Stay here with Rosa.’

She tapped on the drawing-room door and went in.

Bree had not known quite what to expect on the other side of the door. What she found was Drusilla seated on the chaise, her bonnet, veil and gloves discarded, and Max standing on the other side of the room. If they had been speaking, they had stopped at her knock, but Bree felt instinctively that they were two people who had rapidly found themselves unable to communicate.

Max looked at her, the pain in his eyes so acute that for the first time the realisation of what she had lost hit her. It was as though she had been in shock and someone had slapped her face to bring her out of it.

Hastily she averted her gaze, covering up her reaction by making rather a business of finding a chair and sitting down. ‘Have you rung for refreshments? A cup of tea, perhaps?’ The English answer to any disaster, she mocked herself.

‘Thank you, tea would be very nice.’ Drusilla smiled faintly, her wonderful green eyes wide and guileless.

How does she manage it? She is confronting her husband after ten years and a terrible tragedy and yet she seems as composed as though they had parted an hour ago. Bree began to wonder if Drusilla was perhaps not very intelligent, or that she had so little imagination or empathy that she simply did not comprehend the havoc her reappearance was causing.

‘Would you be so good as to ring the bell for Peters, Ma … Lord Penrith.’ Rather desperately she turned to Drusilla. ‘Have you had a long journey to get here?’

‘It took me all day yesterday. I have been living in Portsmouth. I stayed at the Bull and Mouth last night, then I went to find Lord Penrith. I stood in the square, watching, not daring to go in. But I knew I had to see you—I had read the gossip columns all about the marriage. Then he came out and I followed in a hackney. I enquired of the girl delivering milk and she told me who lived here, so I knocked.’

She told the tale as though reciting from a book. Bree was left with the impression of a young girl, forced to perform her poetry lesson in front of adults, not a woman of almost thirty. Nerves, poor thing, she reproved herself. How would I manage?

‘Your arrival is timely,’ she said, seeing the involuntary grimace on Max’s face as she said it. ‘We would have sent out the invitations tomorrow.’

‘Indeed.’ He moved forward and sat, taking a chair so the three of them formed the points of a triangle. Bree was visited by the fancy that he had been waiting for someone to come in before he was willing to move any closer to his wife.

‘So, what have you decided?’ she asked briskly. If she let herself weaken, think of anything other than the practicalities of this hideous situation, she was going to fall apart.

‘Nothing,’ Max said. ‘We have been rehearsing the circumstances of our … parting, and what has occurred since.’

‘Might I know these circumstances?’ Bree enquired. ‘I feel I have some legitimate interest.’ I am sounding hard and brittle. She could hear her own tone and hated it, but it was the best she could manage. It was better than hysterics and reproaches.

‘You know the start of it. Bree, I would spare you this, but it is better that you hear it all, ask whatever questions you have. As I told you, Drusilla met a man, shortly after our marriage, and ran away with him. I organised funds for her and after some years they stopped being drawn upon. I heard nothing more.’

‘I wrote to you!’ Drusilla burst out. ‘I wrote to the town house and to Longwater. I wrote and told you I had left Simeon, that he was cruel to me and I couldn’t bear it. I told you I was ashamed to take your money any longer and that I wanted to come home, to beg your forgiveness. And you ignored me.’

Her hands twisted together in her lap as she spoke, then, in a gesture of despair, she held them up and let them drop back, palms down. They were white, smooth, perfectly untouched by the frightful scarring which had wrecked her face. Bree glanced down at her own hands. She kept them carefully, yet the lines of the tendons showed under the skin, there was the odd freckle, a tiny scar on one knuckle. This woman was older than she, and yet her hands were whiter, plumper, without freckle or blemish. Whatever she had been doing for ten years, it had not involved any form of manual work.

‘I never received your letters, as I have just been telling you,’ Max said evenly.

‘You must have done,’ Drusilla retorted. ‘I do not believe you. But that is in the past now. I knew I could not trust you to help me, I was resolved not to live on your money, so I went back to my parents.’ She turned to face Bree, the light from the window highlighting the dreadful mask of her face. ‘The Countess of Penrith earned her living serving behind the counter in an apothecary’s shop, a pretty tale, is it not?’

Bree could not answer the bitterness directly. She could not believe Max would lie, and yet, why would he not receive letters? Mail to peers of the realm did not go astray, and more than one letter had seemed impossible. Unless Drusilla was lying. Unless Drusilla was not who she claimed.

‘I suppose,’ she said, directly to Max, ‘that you are entirely satisfied that this is your wife?’

‘Oh!’ The other woman gave a strangled sob, and buried her face in her handkerchief.

‘That hair, those eyes, her voice—all as I recall from that very first meeting,’ Max said, his gaze on the bowed black head. ‘And she knows things that only my wife would know.’

Drusilla raised her face from the handkerchief revealing a tear-streaked visage. Bree felt a pang of guilt at doing this, but it was her life, her happiness, her lover, all were being snatched from her.

‘I know about a certain ornament on his body,’ Drusilla said viciously, then, as Bree felt her face colour, added, ‘and so do you, I see, so that does not convince you it requires marriage to become that intimate with Max. Do you want me to tell him, in front of you, where we first made love, what he said to me? I can describe the nightgown I wore on our wedding night, I can tell you about the boathouse on the lake at Longwater and one endless night—’

‘Enough,’ Max snapped, his tone the first clue that he was as close to losing control as Bree felt herself to be. ‘I believe you. Bree, we must accept it, I am married.’

‘You sound as though you wish I were dead,’ Drusilla said.

‘I stood at your graveside,’ Max retorted. ‘How do you think I feel? Whose grave was it in truth?’

‘My sister’s. We all caught the smallpox, they died, all three of them. I do not know how I survived. I wish I had not! The register was not made up properly. I went to look. There were so many people dying in that outbreak, it was no surprise. I was about to tell the verger, then I saw my own face reflected in a glass and I could not bear it. I was alive—now I had the chance to vanish altogether.’

‘I am sorry,’ Bree said shakily. ‘I do not wish to add to your troubles with my own … feelings.’

The other woman turned her head away, apparently overcome again, this time by the sympathy in Bree’s voice. In cruel contrast to her face, her nape was as white, tender and unscathed as her hands. The black glossy tendrils of her hair curled in stark contrast to the flawless skin.

‘How have you lived since then?’ Max asked, his voice softer.

‘I sold the shop and I went to Portsmouth. I make my living as a milliner.’

‘And what now?’ Bree asked. ‘What do you want now? To return to your husband?’ Husband, husband, if I say it enough I will come to accept it.

‘No!’ Drusilla’s response was instant. ‘Never. I do not trust him now he knows I am alive.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Max sprang to his feet. ‘Do you fear that I will murder you? Of all the outrageous, unfounded—’

‘You abandoned me before. I almost died.’

‘How was I to know? I never had your letters.’ He turned on his heel and strode to the window, his back to them. Bree could almost feel the tension in him as he strove for control. ‘What do you want?’

‘A little house somewhere I can live retired. Enough money for comfort. Is that so much to ask? There is a cottage ornée in the park at Longwater that would do very well.’

‘Is that before or after the divorce?’ Max asked quietly.