The Buccaneers (49 page)

“That's done,” Guy said firmly. “And so is this—I am leaving England.”

Nan pulled back and looked into his face, astounded. “What?”

“I'm going abroad, to work. To Greece. I leave within a fortnight. The only question is, will you come with me?”

“I don't understand.” Nan stared.

“I couldn't go on seeing you and him together.... When I saw you in the park at Champions and knew I'd have swept you from your saddle if the groom hadn't interrupted, I decided I couldn't go on in London—or anywhere else in England.”

“Even then? Was
that
why? I thought you had quit the election because you'd heard those rumours—those lies! But
have
you heard them?”

“Only yesterday. Lady Richard told me. I was trying to find you. She told me that you'd left the Duke, but she didn't know where you were. Finally, Hector Robinson told me.”

“Well,” Nan said, “you must not go away.
I
am going back to America. Do you think I would let you sacrifice Honourslove? I know what it is to you!”

Guy took her by the shoulders and looked down into her flushed determined face. “I
would
give it up for you—I was going to—but now I hope I shan't need to. Do you remember when we talked about that Cavalier poem, on the terrace, years ago? ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more'? In the last few weeks—you can't think how insane I've been—it's turned itself round in my head: ‘I could not love Honourslove so much, Loved I not Annabel more.' It's monstrous poetically; but everything I care about in Honourslove is
in you
too. If you were with me, I'd have it with me. Whereas if I were there without you, knowing you were with him, and unhappy—”

“Oh ...” Nan sighed from the sheer joy, however short-lived it must be, of knowing that her deepest feelings were shared. “And all that I care about is in you. I've been so lonely—a stranger even to myself for so long.... It's like coming out of cold and darkness into the sunlight... like coming to life....”

“Like a flower unfolding.” Guy touched her soft cheek. “You
are
a flower, Annabel ... a rose coming to bloom.”

“Not a rose, with the colour of my petals.” Nan dimpled. “A tiger-lily, more like....” But a sense of the brevity of their time together came over her. “Dear Guy,” she said sadly, “it's sweet loving each other, the sweetest thing I've ever known, but we can't go on, we—”

Glancing about the small, poorly furnished room, Guy led her to a horsehair sofa and sat down beside her. “Does Ushant understand that you're definitely leaving him?”

Annabel hesitated. It was important to tell Guy exactly what had happened. “Yes. He said he would make me go back to Longlands with him by force if he had to. He said he would force me to ... act as his wife. He said I had no choice but to obey him.”

Accustomed to Ushant's phlegmatism, Annabel hadn't expected the fury Guy displayed; he jumped up, swearing under his breath; then came back and gripped her hands in his. “But, my God, Annabel—”

Annabel swallowed. “I haven't—been his wife since I lost my baby. I said no, and when he tried to stop me I ran away by a door to the mews.... It was a
very
definite departure, not to say vulgar. Now he will divorce me for deserting him.”

“When he hears about that Churt woman's lies he will try to divorce you for more than desertion. For ... infidelity.”

“I told him I was in love with someone else; I didn't say who. I told him there'd been no wrong-doing, that the man didn't even know; that nothing would come of it.... I'm sure he knew I was telling the truth.”

“His lawyers will advise him to act as if you hadn't been truthful.”

“I have thought of that—oh, I've thought! ... And you would be named; you'd be involved.”

“Darling Annabel,” Guy said, “we're both involved, and, except for the insult to you, I welcome anything that will set you free.”

There was a new tenseness in him. Nan looked at him, gravely questioning.

“If you had simply left Ushant,” he said slowly, “—not that ‘simply' is the word—I'd have begged you to marry me, and have kept on begging. If you had said yes, we'd have stayed apart, waiting till you were free. But things have changed, thanks to Lady Churt. Ushant will probably sue for divorce, citing me. And I'm afraid... How can I leave you alone, to face the horrors alone, either here or in America? If you will come with me, I ... I will hold you in respect.”

Nan shook her head vehemently. “You can extricate yourself and live as you ought to, but not with me as a drag. Does your father know about this? He will be very angry—”

“I've written to say that I'm going abroad to work on a railway project. Now that I've found you—at last!—I'll go down and face him, and if you'll allow me, I'll tell him about us as well—” Over Nan's attempted expostulation, Guy persisted: “We can't let him, any more than Ushant, decide the whole rest of our lives.... You will come with me, Annabel?”

Nan tried to muster her failing resolution. “I want so much to be with you that I can't see things clearly; I need to think, I've never thought of anyone but myself, now I'm thinking of you too, and I have to be sure.... I must wait till Miss Testvalley comes.”

“Miss Testvalley?” Guy was obviously taken aback. Perhaps, Nan thought anxiously, he was hurt, or displeased, that another person's opinion was so important; she hastened to explain. “You see, I told her that I had
not
left Ushant because of you, and I wrote to her saying that I'm going to America and asking advice about earning money.... She won't try to influence me; she's wise but she's ... well, detached, even when she's fond of people....”

Nan fell silent. Guy was unquestionably frowning, yet not angry—or not angry with
her.

“Annabel,” he said, taking her hands in his, “I would never deny you independent thoughts—other advisers.”

It hovered between them, the image of the Duke, whose attitudes Guy evoked by their opposite. It was so palpable that words weren't necessary to tell him that she understood. It was enough to exchange a long, deep look in a silence broken only when Guy said, drolly: “That is, of course, so long as the advisers advise you to marry me.... Annabel”—he was serious again—“you know, it hardly makes sense for you to go to America and me to go to Greece when what we want is to be together. Heroics won't do!”

Nan started to smile. “The truth is,” she confessed, “I've been bracing myself so hard to cope with an unhappy ending that I can hardly imagine anything else.... I'm still afraid to hope.”

“I'll go to Honourslove tomorrow. I'll tell my father that I love you and won't rest till you say you'll marry me.—No!” Guy jumped up, pulling Nan with him. “No, I'll go today!—I want to see my solicitor—I shall just manage the train.” He stroked Nan's face. “Darling, your cheeks are hollow ... and you're thin; you've gone through a frightful time. But that's going to change.” He held Nan as if he'd never let her go, then broke away, with an “If I leave now I'll see you again all the sooner.” He seized the hat he had dropped on a table and went out. From the window, Nan watched him turn at the gate and wave, then hurry up the street.

 
 
 
“Application of the law,” Grant-Johnston stated, “is inconsistent, absurd—and unequal, which may be to your advantage.”

As Guy looked a question, his friend's candid freckled face creased in a smile that was in large part cynical. “It's easier for a man to get a divorce than for a woman, for a nobleman to get a divorce than for a commoner ... and I daresay for a duke than for a marquess, an earl, a viscount, or a mere baron. A husband can hire detectives to spy on his wife and the co-respondent, and bribe servants to bear witness. On the other hand ... the Lords heard a case—you were abroad, or you'd have seen it in the papers—in which the husband had petitioned for divorce; the wife had sent him a letter saying she had left him for another man and then gone to Australia.”

“And?”

“The Lords deferred issuing the decree until they were sure that the lady had been served notice of the lawsuit.... So a letter of confession sometimes serves; and if a duke wants a divorce but doesn't care about revenge—”

“But, of course, the spouses can't say they both want the divorce?”

Tony, who had been leaning back, teetering on his chair, sat up so abruptly that the front legs hit the floor with a thud. “Don't
breathe
the idea! There's covert agreement all the time—everybody knows it—but the worst thing that can happen is for a judge to suspect ‘collusion, condonation, or connivance.' Though, there again, I wonder.... With a duke the court might turn a blind eye.”

“It's barbaric.”

“At best. But”—Tony wagged a cautionary ringer—“assume the worst. If you do persuade her to ... to ... to ... to accept your protection until you can marry, assume that you'll both be followed. That is, the Duchess will be if they find out where she is. She may think the Duke wouldn't ‘do' that, but his lawyers would. We're a cutthroat crew.—What are your plans, if she agrees?”

“I would have her cross the Channel; to Boulogne, I think. I'd follow as soon as these papers are taken care of, and we would go to Greece from France.”

“Have your man travel to Folkestone with your luggage and get it aboard the Channel steamer.”

“He doesn't want to stay with me, understandably; but he's a good sort. I can trust him to do that.”

“You will travel separately, as for a short business-trip, with one bag and a ticket to Paris. At Boulogne have your luggage put in the
consigne.
You won't take the train to Paris, but go to a hotel. Not hers. From there on, you make your own arrangements. —Yes.” Tony understood Guy's look. “There's a regular modus
operandi.
Just the same, old man, this case has its points.” Tony's eyes unmistakably glinted. “How often does an American girl want to leave an English duke? It's bound to interest not only us lawyers but the public.”

“Forgive me,” Guy said, “if I don't share your professional excitement.”

 
 
Sir Helmsley received his son without preliminaries. “What's this! You're not standing for Lowdon! Now you say you're ‘leaving'? Leaving England, leaving Honourslove? I trusted you!” Gasping, Sir Helmsley continued: “I—I have kept Honourslove for you, I trusted you to carry on—it's eight centuries—to tend to the estate... to merit your birth-right!”

He lowered his eyes as his son looked at him.

“The estate is in good running-order,” Guy said. “There shouldn't be any extraordinary expenses, but I'll continue to help if needed. But there's more, sir, and I know you will ... Please sit down, sir; I know that this will be a blow.” As his father subsided tensely into a chair, Guy said rapidly, rattling it out: “I expect to be named as co-respondent in a divorce suit by the Duke of Tintagel.”

Sir Helmsley gripped the arms of his chair. It was many seconds before he had taken in what his son had said; then, white hot with fury, he shouted, “What—? Are you mad?” With difficulty, he stood up on his crutches. “Nothing like this has ever happened—Do you realize that he can put you in gaol—you and little Miss Mouse too—and it would serve you right, both of you.... The scandal, the—”

“She has left Tintagel, but not because of me. Even he won't say that.” Guy, trying to remember that compassion was due, kept himself from meeting explosion with explosion, and waited for a lull. When it came, Sir Helmsley, breathing more slowly, demanded: “Don't you know he can sue you for damages? He can ruin you for life!”

“He has had no grounds. Father, I didn't decide to go abroad again so as to take her with me. She knew nothing about it. But I hope that she will marry me as soon as she is free—”

“And where are you hiding her now; where are you keeping her?” Imprudently letting one crutch go in order to shake a fist at his son, Sir Helmsley staggered, but recovered his balance. “I suppose she's in some squalid, vile hotel where they'll trap her—and you with her?”

“She is staying with Mi——” Involuntarily, Guy's eyes went from his father to the little Rossetti painting for an instant as he suppressed the “Miss” he had almost, in his extreme agitation, uttered. “She's in safe keeping, she is
not
with me, but I regard her as under my protection; she—”

“She, she, she—! And what about
me?
Look at what you're doing to
me!”
Sir Helmsley, shaking with bitterness, subsided, panting; then rose in a new crescendo. “You! You would desert; you would have Honourslove go to a child by an—an—an American? A woman with no scruples? one of those damned pirates?” A purple vein in his forehead throbbing, Sir Helmsley Thwarte cried: “Why should I care to preserve the place?” and in a shrill, insensate, infantile fury screamed: “Damn you, I ... I ... I'll sell the Holbein!”

XL.

At two in the morning, Miss Testvalley, tired to the bone after a cold, crawling journey from the Champions way station to Paddington and an endless wait for a hansom to take her across London, let herself into the sleeping house in Denmark Hill, hours late. She lit one of the candles on the table in the entry and crept noiselessly up to her old room, to find a nosegay of purple and red anemones in a copper jug which she recognized as pilfered from the kitchen. It acted as a cordial. “So affectionate, and so eager for love,” she thought, opening her valise and removing the few objects needful for the night. “I warned the Duke that she was young and impressionable. But I didn't warn
her
properly.” Miss Testvalley pulled a long nightgown over her head. “I shouldn't have left her to her own childish free choice. She was seduced by the Celtic gloaming of Tintagel. As I was by the greatness of the match.... I see that now.
And
I let her read too much pseudo-mediaeval poetry.”