The Constant Companion (13 page)

“Indeed, yes,” he said, smiling down at her. “I could stay here with you for the rest of my life, but I feel we shall starve to death if we don’t eat something.”

Constance sat up and yawned, stretching her arms high above her head. The covers fell from her body, revealing two perfect white breasts to her husband’s fascinated gaze.

“Oh, my God, Constance, my sweetheart,” groaned her husband, dragging her down against the length of his body. “I want you again.”

And that was the mistake which led to the first row.

Both emerged from the highly passionate tussle some time later, exhausted, hungry and nervous.

At last seated again in the dining room, with her husband looking strangely elegant and remote and facing her down the length of the table, Constance suddenly felt as if she were dining with a stranger.

When the servants had retired, she searched around to make some sort of conversation. “Have I any money?” she asked at last.

“As much as you like,” yawned her husband. “Why?”

“I am badly in need of some new clothes,” said Constance.

His eyes mocked her. “I much prefer you without clothes,” he teased and then looked with surprise and some irritation at the painful blush spreading up his wife’s neck and face. He did not realize that despite her experience of the bedroom, Constance was still very shy out of it. He was feeling overtired and his nerves were on edge.

“You had better let me choose clothes for you,” he added.

“I shall choose my own clothes,” said Constance with a half laugh, for surely he must be joking.

“Nonsense,” said Lord Philip. “You are no longer a companion but a lady of fashion, and must dress accordingly. You have not had the necessary experience in choosing dresses suitable for the
ton
. I shall advise you.”

“You’ll
what?
” said his wife, her eyes blazing. Constance was also feeling exhausted and nervy. “And where did you gain your experience of women’s clothes, my lord? In the brothels of Covent Garden?”

“It is as well there is a table between us, or I would give you the smacking you deserve for that piece of cheap impertinence,” said Lord Philip.

“You! Smack
me!
How dare you, sirrah!” gasped Constance.

At this interesting point, the door opened, and Masters the butler appeared with his retinue of footmen and started to serve the next course.

The newly marrieds smouldered at each other down the length of the table until the servants had retired.

“I think,” said Lord Philip haughtily, “we should forget the previous conversation and pretend it never took place. It was very ill-bred of you.… Oh, what is it now, Masters?”

“A letter for my lady,” said the butler, presenting it to Constance.

He then retired again from the room as Constance broke open the seal. “It is from your sister! Let me see… wishes to call on me tomorrow… feels it incumbent on her to advise me as to the proper behavior for a Cautry.” Her eyes grew quite round as she read on. “One springing from such a lowly position as myself should… Impertinence!” raged Constance.

Now Lord Philip thought it a prime piece of impertinence himself, but his sister had only been repeating, in a way, what he had just said himself. “Well, you can’t really blame her…” he began, unforgivably.

“To think that I ever let you
touch
me!” raged Constance. “Your mind is as starched as your cravat.” And before he had time to reply, she ran sobbing from the room.

Lord Philip took a hearty swallow of wine and then stared moodily at the decanter. Such emotional scenes were disgracefully ill-bred. No, he would not apologize. He fueled his bad temper with a few more glasses of wine, unfairly accused Masters of watering it, howled for his carriage and slammed out of the house.

He sat in his curricle and stared at the swishing tails of his horses. He was one of the few aristocrats in London who did not have the tails of his horses docked, considering the process which involved the amputation of several vertebrae in the tail and the searing of the bleeding stump with a hot iron, an inhuman practice. It was almost dark, and already the flambeaux were flaring and smoking outside the neighboring mansions.

A nagging feeling of guilt tormented him and made him even angrier. Thinking of Constance, he suddenly remembered scraps of the Comte Duval’s conversation she had overheard at his sister’s.

He remembered how the comte had been courting Fanny Braintree. His anger had found a refreshingly new direction. He set his horses in motion and headed towards Whitehall to consult a certain gentleman at the Foreign Office.

It was two in the morning before Lord Philip arrived home. It had been a stormy meeting. Fanny Braintree and her choleric father, the General, had been summoned to the Foreign Office. Fanny Braintree had wept and fainted, and recovered and wept and fainted again. She had not given any information to the Comte Duval, she had insisted, terrified that her father and these austere gentlemen should find out that she had parted with her virginity as well as her papa’s state secrets. The General, at last convinced of his daughter’s innocence, had led her away. Fanny was to be sent off to relatives in Scotland, however, to remove her from the dangerous comte’s notice.

Lord Philip was commissioned to keep a close watch on the comte. He was not to tell anyone of his suspicions, even his wife. Philip had demurred at this. Surely it would be all right if Constance knew. But the severe gentlemen of the Foreign Office firmly believed all women to be born tattletales. Lord Philip’s duty to his country must come first.

He wearily climbed the stairs to his wife’s bedroom. The door was locked. He was too tired to feel the slightest twinge of anger, and removed himself to his own rooms to sink into a long and dreamless sleep.

Constance waited, sitting up in bed and staring at the door, hoping one minute that he would go away and the next, that he would try to force the door. As the silence lengthened and she realized he was not coming back, she too fell asleep and dreamed of being hunted across endless muddy fields by Lady Amelia and Mrs. Besant.

Despite his exhaustion, Philip woke early—early for London Society, that is—at two in the afternoon. He remembered Amelia was giving a party that afternoon, and decided to attend so that he could begin to study the comte and perhaps discover the name of his English accomplice.

He was informed his wife had not yet come downstairs. He scribbled her a letter, ate a hasty breakfast, and made his way to Manchester Square. Still tired after his amorous labors of the day before, he did not yet miss Constance, and almost persuaded himself that he had behaved very well indeed.

Constance appeared in the morning room about ten minutes after his departure and read the letter that Masters handed her.

“
Dear Constance
,” she read, “
I regret I have a social engagement at Lady Godolphin’s this afternoon. You may buy a new wardrobe and tell the dressmakers to send their bills to me. P
.”

No word of love. The letter that Lord Philip had thought magnanimous in the extreme was ripped to shreds. That he should leave her so soon to go dance attendance on Lady Amelia was well nigh past bearing.

Constance was roused from her fury by a discreet cough from the doorway. “Excuse me, my lady,” said Masters. “Lady Eleanor has called.”

“Tell her I am not at home,” snapped Constance.

“Very good, my lady,” said Masters.

Constance crossed to the window and observed with satisfaction the angry flush on Lady Eleanor’s face as her groom returned from the doorstep to the carriage with the tidings that Lady Philip was not at home.

Lady Eleanor sourly turned down her calling card and handed it to the groom, who returned to the house to give it to the butler. Then he was called back by Lady Eleanor who substituted it with another card with the corner unbent. Lady Eleanor had obviously decided she did not want the upstart Lady Philip to know that she had called in person.

Her carriage rolled off and Constance turned from the window feeling rather flat.

Well, she would go shopping and entertain herself by buying a pretty wardrobe.
Then
her haughty, overbearing husband would find she had excellent taste.

Then Constance bit her lip. She would have to have
someone
in attendance and she did not wish to spoil her day by taking the sour-faced Bouchard with her. She decided to take the more congenial company of one of the footmen and rang for the carriage to be brought round. She was vaguely aware that her husband kept more than one carriage. She did not realize he kept seven.

Constance was soon dreamily lost in a magic world of silks and muslins and beads and feathers and bonnets. The sun was setting by the time the last of her parcels was handed into the carriage.

It was then that she spied the familiar figure of Mr. Evans and cheerfully hailed him. Mr. Evans seemed delighted to be recognized by the new Lady Philip. He accepted a place in Constance’s carriage. In reply to her offer to transport him to wherever he was bound, he said shyly that he had a message to deliver to one of Lady Amelia Godolphin’s guests.

Constance had forgotten her rage at Philip and cheerfully agreed to take the secretary to Manchester Square. After all, such a passionate husband would surely be immune to Lady Amelia’s charms.

She prattled on absentmindedly about her purchases and then said, “I am exceeding grand now, Mr. Evans. I even have a French lady’s maid, although I shall have to take French lessons, I fear. It is not good
ton
to be ignorant of the language, even though we are at war with the country.”

“I think it quite unnecessary,” said Mr. Evans. “No one wishes to speak French these days, Lady Philip.”

Like all shy people who are beginning to emerge from their shell for the first time, Constance became unaccountably stubborn.

“But I should like to learn French very much indeed,” she countered. “I shall ask my husband to hire a tutor for me.”

Mr. Evans grew quite heated, “I am surprised at you, my lady,” he exclaimed. “That monster, Napoleon Bonaparte, plans to defeat England. Our men are dying under the sabers of his soldiers. I would not speak one word of their accursed language!”

But Constance was not paying any attention. The carriage had come to a halt in front of Lady Amelia’s house in Manchester Square. Candles had already been lit in the downstairs saloon and the curtains had not yet been drawn. Close by the window stood Constance’s husband. Lady Amelia was smiling up at him and, even as Constance watched, she put a possessive little hand on his sleeve. Bergen, the butler, stood on the step, watching Constance with scarcely concealed hate. She shrank back against the squabs.

“Goodbye, Mr. Evans,” she said quietly.

Mr. Evans had been staring at the fascinating tableau presented by Lord Philip and Lady Amelia. He hurriedly made his good-byes after pressing Constance’s hand with a warm gesture of sympathy which brought tears to her eyes.

Lord Philip Cautry had not seen his wife’s carriage outside the slim mansion in Manchester Square, but Lady Amelia had. She did not want to waste any more time wooing a lost cause like Lord Philip, but she had to admit it gave her a delicious feeling of power to notice the stricken look on Constance’s face. Also, her flirting with Lord Philip annoyed Mary Besant.

Mary Besant was feeling obscurely disappointed in Lord Philip Cautry. She would never have believed that he would have left his wife’s arms so soon.

The Comte Duval watched the comedy of manners from his corner of the room. A disappointed wife could be a useful wife, he thought. And Lord Philip had important friends at the Foreign Office. A jealous and bitter wife might be ready to listen closely to her husband’s conversations with important men.

Wellesley’s repeated victories in the Peninsula were shaking the French Empire to the very core. He had begged to return to his beloved France but his directive was always the same. He must remain in England. The Emperor would need friends on this side of the Channel when he finally overthrew the British and marched his soldiers through St. James’s.

Duval mulled over Constance’s lack of French. The attempt to kill her at her wedding had been a foolish risk. The girl suspected nothing. Had she done so, she would surely have confided in her husband. Or would she? thought the comte studying Amelia and Lord Philip. Lord Philip had held the comte in conversation earlier in the evening, practically gloating over Wellesley’s victories and the fact that the Prince Regent had made that infuriating thorn in Napoleon’s flesh an Earl. The comte had smiled and agreed to everything, wondering at one point whether Lord Philip were deliberately trying to annoy him.

Lord Philip was suddenly missing Constance desperately. The hour was more advanced than he had realized. He hurriedly took his leave and rushed home, only to find that his wife had left for the opera accompanied by Peter Potter.

He glanced at the clock. They would soon be home. He rang for the brandy decanter and then stretched out his legs and prepared to await their return. But he was still very tired, and in no time at all he was asleep.

And so it was, later that evening, that Constance, emboldened by an enjoyable visit to the opera where she had received a great deal of compliments, and by a longing for the arms of her husband, walked up to his rooms only to find his bed empty.

She lay awake for most of the night, torturing herself with visions of Amelia in Philip’s arms. Once again, Amelia’s salacious conversation pounded in her ears until poor Constance decided that her own lovemaking had been too naive and innocent to hold an experienced man like her husband. As a brassy dawn rose over the streets of London, she turned her white face into the pillow and cried herself to sleep.

Lord Philip awoke the next morning, stiff and hot. The English weather, which had been unseasonably cold and blustery for the past few days, had suddenly decided to become tropical. The air in the drawing room was already stifling. He felt sweaty, dirty and ill-used. Surely to God his wife’s duty was to at least
ask
about him when she came home from entertaining herself at the opera with his best friend. And what of the servants? What the hell had been up with them that they should let their master snore in a hard chair all night?