Rebel Heiress (18 page)

‘You must excuse me,' she said to Beaufrage, ‘I am not well. Thank you for what you have told me. I admit I needed to know it. Now, I beg you will leave me.'

But he had seized her hand. ‘Henrietta, I have hurt you, and I could kick myself for doing so. But as you say, you had to know. How could I let you be sold into such a mockery? Now, but recollect yourself; remember how I have always loved you and take your revenge on Rivers by announcing your engagement to me. Only think what a laugh the world will have at his expense then.'

Henrietta snatched away her hand. ‘Lord Beaufrage, if you ever wish me to speak to you again, say no more of this. I have had enough, too much …' She turned from him and made her way, almost running, through a shrubbery path to the house. Her thoughts were in a whirl of shame and pain; her only idea to get unobserved to her room. She went in, therefore, through a side door into a conservatory from which a convenient stair
led to her bedroom. But as the door shut with a soft sigh behind her, she heard Lady Marchmont's voice, a tearful whisper: ‘I can bear no more,' she said.

And now, through the warm green half-light of the conservatory, Henrietta was aware of two figures, intertwined, their backs towards her. Lady Marchmont's head was on Rivers' shoulder, his arm around her waist. And even as she looked at them, Rivers, alerted perhaps by the sound of the door, turned and saw her. He started and dropped his arm from Lady Marchmont's waist. She in her turn raised her head from his shoulder to stare steadily at Henrietta.

They all remained speechless for a moment; then Henrietta spoke: ‘Do not trouble yourselves to say anything. I know it all. I have heard it this instant from Lord Beaufrage.' She advanced towards them, pulling the ring off her finger as she went. ‘Here' — she held it out to Rivers — ‘here is your ring.'

He did not take it. ‘Miss Marchmont — Henrietta, you must hear me.'

She looked at him steadily, still holding out the ring. ‘I do not see that there can be anything for you to say to me, Mr. Rivers.'

‘But there is. You do not understand.' And then, passionately, to Lady Marchmont: ‘Lavinia, leave us. Have you not done enough harm already?'

She looked up at him for a moment in silence, her large eyes aswim with tears, then turned, still silently, to glide away. Henrietta, too, was silent with the new shock of hearing Rivers call her stepmother by her first name. She made as if to leave him too, but he caught the hand that still held his ring.

‘Henrietta, you must listen to me.'

‘I do not see why. I think I have heard too much already.'

‘But you do not understand.'

‘On the contrary, I do understand, at last. What an innocent fool you must have thought me, Mr. Rivers! How you and Lady Marchmont must have laughed at me, so gullible, such an easy mark. Oh' — she put her hands to her face — ‘I cannot bear myself.'

‘Henrietta — ‘There was no mistaking the appeal in his voice. ‘You must try to understand. Here —' He took her hand and led her, only half resisting, to a seat under a giant fern. ‘You cannot think me such a scoundrel as to have wooed you merely as a cover for my affair — to which I must plead
guilty — with Lady Marchmont. Henrietta, say you do not believe that.'

‘What else can I believe? And, besides,' with a flash of her usual spirit, ‘you did not woo me. Lady Marchmont most kindly did it for you.'

‘And I tamely submitted? Is that how it looks to you? Do you really think I would stand by and let my mistress choose me my wife? How little you know me.'

‘You have not given me,' she said, ‘much chance to know you better.'

‘Oh …' It was almost a groan. ‘You are in the right of it, of course. But how could I, circumstanced as I was, take the privileges of an accepted lover? Henrietta, I know what you must be suffering, but think a little what I have suffered too.'

‘You? I should have thought all had gone swimmingly for you. What more could any man want?'

‘Only what I begin to fear I have lost: your respect, Henrietta. But you must let me try to explain. And first, here, take my handkerchief. I cannot bear to see you sit there and cry.'

She accepted it and dried her eyes. ‘I do not much like to cry either. I promise you I shall not do so again.'

‘I know, you mean to forget me, and I cannot blame you. What a shameful figure I must cut in your eyes. To allow myself to be plumped into an engagement merely to avoid the embarrassment of discovery. But, I tell you, it was not like that at all. You
must
have known how truly I was falling in love with you. God knows, it was apparent enough to —' He paused.

‘To Lady Marchmont, you would say?' ‘Yes. Oh, God, how am I to explain without hurting you more?'

‘Well' — she looked up at him — ‘you might try telling the truth.'

‘I will, I promise you. Only, I do not know how they look on these things in Boston.'

She jumped up in sudden heartwarming fury. ‘That is enough, Mr. Rivers! If you are to take a leaf out of Lady Marchmont's book and start twitting me with Boston, I will take leave to leave you.'

But again he had her hand. ‘Henrietta, please … I did not intend it like that; you must know I did not. But you are too fine, too innocent, for our sordid way of living. Oh, God, how
often I have cursed myself since I first met you, and more especially since I have come to know you better.'

‘You have not, I collect, carried your contrition to the point of breaking off your affair with Lady Marchmont.'

‘Breaking off? If you but knew how I have tried. But I can see there is nothing for it; you must bear with me while I tell you the whole. It casts, I fear, no very happy light upon me, nor — which is what I mind the more — upon your stepmother, but it is too late to be thinking of that now. I do not know how much Lord Beaufrage thought fit to tell you in these revelations of his, but I, if you will but hear me, will start from the beginning.' With gentle firmness he drew her down to sit once more beside him. She had never been so close to him before and there was dangerous excitement, despite everything, in his touch. But a moment before, he had been still closer to Lady Marchmont. With an effort, she withdrew her hand from his.

‘But where shall I begin?' He reached up to grasp the huge trunk of the fern, his arm warm across her back. ‘If I tell you that I was an orphan, much alone in the world, you will think I am making excuses for myself, and I shall not blame you. And yet, it is to the point. For when I first came to London, a very young man of eighteen, I was, I cannot tell you how shy, how ill at ease in society. Simon was still at Harrow. I was quite on my own. Lady Marchmont was Lady Beaufrage then; her husband, who was twice her age, had been a friend of my father's. It was natural that I should spend much of my time at their house. It was inevitable that I should see that Lavinia — Lady Beaufrage — was not happy. Her husband was a good enough sort of man, but he cared nothing for the things that amused her. They had been married for ten years or so at that time. Cedric was a boy at school, Lavinia had nothing to occupy her. She took me up; she made a man of me. Your father, my guardian, was in India still; if it had not been for her, I do not know what would have become of me.'

She was struggling against sympathy, against the hinted caress of his arm. ‘And your grandparents? Where were they?'

‘Oh, Henrietta …' He gave a half-despairing sigh. ‘But I do not blame you: I have given you cause enough for suspicion. My grandfather was in Scotland, seriously ill, my grandmother absorbed in nursing him. My father, you must know, had defied their wishes to marry my mother and they had washed their hands of us all. It is only in the last few years, since they have
been living in Wimbledon, that I have come to know and love them. Besides (ruefully), they always liked Simon best. He and my grandfather used to spend hours together in the study. And I… I was alone indeed, with the world before me, and no one, if it had not been for Lady Beaufrage, as a guide. She taught me everything: how to dress, how to behave, when to talk, when to be silent. She persuaded me to join the army and got me my first commission.'

‘How?' asked Henrietta.

‘Why, by introducing me to the Prince Regent at Brighton. Lord Beaufrage was a Whig, you know, and those were the golden days of Whig society. Oh, if you could but have known it, you would be able to understand! In London, there was Devonshire House: the parties, the talk, the friendship. And at Brighton, of course, the Pavilion. It was so gay, so easy, so friendly…'

‘So wicked?' suggested Henrietta.

‘Well, in a way, I suppose so; but it did not seem wicked when we became lovers. At least, not at first.'

‘And what of Lord Beaufrage?' Henrietta asked.

He coloured. ‘That was when the shoe began to pinch. You see — you must understand — I had accepted the whole affair as a natural part of the world we lived in. Lavinia — Lady Beaufrage — had given her husband an heir; it seemed the understood thing that she might do as she pleased. After all, there was Lady Melbourne, and the Duchess of Devonshire… it was all around us, Henrietta; it was in the air.'

‘But just the same, I collect, Lord Beaufrage was so unreasonable as to dislike it.'

‘Well, yes. When he found out, there was the devil to pay. He sent Lavinia away. War had broken out again by then, so she could not go to Europe, but had to make the rounds of the watering places, from Bath to Cheltenham and from Cheltenham to Harrowgate, and deuced bored she was too, poor thing. You must see that I could not give her up then.'

‘I can see that you were in some sort committed.'

‘Of course I was.' He seized upon it gratefully. ‘And then my regiment was in camp near Bath, so of course Lavinia stayed there, and Lord Beaufrage was angry with her anyway…'

‘So it went on?'

‘Yes. It went on. And then, all of a sudden, Lord Beaufrage died.'

‘And you did not marry her?'

‘That was another shock to me. Of course I took it for granted I would marry her as soon as she was out of black gloves.'

‘And what did she say?'

‘She laughed at me. She told me that I was very well as a lover, but that she did not propose to live on love in a cottage. Lord Beaufrage, you see, had tied up every penny of his money for Cedric — what he had not spent, that is. I think towards the end of his life he spent his fortune simply so that she should not touch it after his death. At all events, she was left in sadly straitened circumstances, and would have none of me. She sent me away, and, to my relief, just then my regiment was ordered aboard. When I returned on leave, a year later, I found her married to your father.'

‘Whereupon it began all over again.'

‘You speak like my conscience. I cannot tell you how often I have reproached myself on that very point. But she was so unhappy.'

‘Unhappy? Why?' She tried to move a little away from him, but his hand fell gently on her shoulder to keep her where she was.

‘I was afraid I should never make you understand. But she
was
unhappy, Henrietta, truly she was. You may think the less of her on that account, but the fact remains, it was not a happy match for her.'

‘Not for either of them.' If only she could keep her pulse as steady as her voice.

‘My God, no. You are in the right of it there. I suppose your father was dazzled by her, fresh back from India as he was, and I am afraid she did not give him time to know her better. It was, from a worldly point of view, an admirable match for her.'

‘And I collect that she might have had some difficulty in finding so good a one again.'

‘It is true, of course. Her separation from Lord Beaufrage had been public knowledge. That was why I had urged her so strongly to marry me.'

‘But she still thought she could do better for herself?'

‘I am afraid you could put it that way. And as it proved, she was right — in worldly terms at least. But I do not believe they were ever happy together. Your father, as you know, plunged at once into politics, and was soon high up in the councils of
the Tory Party. Lavinia, for her part, had never cared much for politics, and, worse still, her friends were all Whigs. I am afraid your father soon learned that it was best not to talk to her about what most interested him. And what remained? He cared no more for her balls and masquerades than she did for his affairs of state. By the time I came home they had agreed to go their own ways.'

‘But she had not given him an heir.' Henrietta had learned enough of the conventions of London society to know how important this was.

‘Nor ever will,' said Rivers. ‘But that — no, damme, we'll not talk of that. Only, believe me, you cannot accuse me more bitterly than I have done myself. And when I think that it was through me that she met him —'

‘Through you?'

‘Yes, did you not know? When he came back to London, the talk of the day, Lady Beaufrage sought him out for my sake. I was his ward, remember.'

‘Oh.' It was all she could say.

‘Yes. It all started with that.'

Henrietta thought for a moment, then: ‘One has to admit that she is a very capable woman. And still you loved her?' She could not resist the question.

‘I was besotted with her. I promised to tell you the truth and I will do so. She is — do not ask me to describe what she is. Only believe that I have learnt my lesson now, most bitterly.'

‘And why should I believe that?'

‘Only because it is true. That first time I saw you, on the Plymouth road, I was shaken, I cannot tell you how much. You talked to me, so frankly, so freely, about yourself, your life, your hopes. And they were such
true
hopes. They were real: no schemings, no connivings, no plots. It was like a breath of fresh air, of the spring itself, to make me realise in what a false and sordid atmosphere I had been living. On the boat, afterwards, beating up and down the Channel, I dreamed only of you, of how we might meet again, of how I might make myself worthy of you. Oh, I was to do such things. I would join Wellington; cover myself with glory; return with I do not know how many eagles, and win your hand like a hero of old.'