The Gilded Web (13 page)

“I heard that she was going to elope with Fairhaven,” Albert said. “It was to stop her from doing so that Eden tried to have her confined and taken home. Unfortunately, he took Alexandra instead. But Eden is even more wild than his sister. He is always fighting and provoking quarrels, I have heard. And no lady is safe with him, apparently. He thinks himself irresistible to the fair sex.”

“It comes of the unfortunate fact that the old earl died ten years ago,” Mrs. Harding-Smythe said. “The present earl was very young to take over all the responsibilities of his new position and the upbringing of two such ebullient children. The countess, poor lady, is placid and overindulgent. She has not been able to control them at all. The earl, unfortunately, takes after her. His is not a firm character. Not at all like Beckworth's.”

“I will be marrying Lord Amberley, not his brother and sister or his mother,” Alexandra said quietly. “I am sure that Papa would not have approved his suit if he felt him to be an unsuitable match for me.”

“Oh, of course not, dear,” her aunt hastened to assure her. “It is just unfortunate that having had such a father, you will find it quite impossible to find a husband worthy of him. My brother is quite without equal.”

“My uncle probably does not know about Amberley's mistress,” Albert said. “He has had her for a year or more, though I have never been able to see the attraction. Mrs. Borden looks and behaves altogether too much like a man for my tastes. However, perhaps it is that very fact that attracts Amberley. My uncle, of course, is too unworldly to have heard of such sordid matters. And under the circumstances, I suppose it does not signify a great deal. The important thing is that you are respectably betrothed, Alexandra. I am happy for you.”

“Now, there is another word,” James Purnell said, pushing himself to a standing position before the fireplace. “‘Happy.' In the country it means joyous, contented, pleased. What does it mean in town, pray, Albert? No, don't answer now. I would like to hear a full explanation. Shall we leave the ladies to their tea while you show me your team? You are always assuring me that you have an eye for good cattle. I would like to learn from you.”

Albert found himself looking up into his cousin's direct dark gaze and not particularly liking what he saw. He rose to his feet so that he was not at quite such a disadvantage, although he was still more than four inches the shorter of the two. He bowed when Purnell gestured toward the door, bowed again to the ladies, and accepted the invitation with as good a grace as he could muster.

“I am so gratified to see that dear James is willing to learn from Albert,” Mrs. Harding-Smythe said. “He will be able to benefit such a great deal, you know, and Albert will be only too pleased to share his experience. Now, Alexandra, my love, do tell us all about your interview with Lord Amberley.”

Caroline giggled. “Did he go down on his knees, Alexandra?” she asked, clasping her hands to her bosom. “Oh, I shall positively die if my future husband does not do so. I shall feel absolutely cheated.”

Alexandra folded her hands in her lap and looked up at her aunt. “His lordship said all that was proper,” she said. “And I accepted him.”

H
OLD STILL, LOVEY. I HAVE ALMOST FINISHED.” Nanny Rey was coaxing strands of Alexandra's dark hair into ringlets at the sides of her face.

“But I cannot wear it like that, Nanny,” Alexandra said, “pretty as you have made it look. It just does not seem right.”

“Such pretty wavy hair you have,” Nanny Rey said with a cluck of the tongue. “Much prettier than that of any of the other misses I have seen since we have been here. And they all have curls and ringlets and the Lord knows what. None of them have their hair all confined as you do.”

“I don't know,” Alexandra said doubtfully, examining the results of Nanny's artistry in the mirror. “Papa has always said that a girl's hair should be down until she is sixteen and then up. He says that only vanity makes a lady want to show off her hair. I have never seen Mama's brushed out more than two or three times in my life.”

Nanny Rey compressed her lips and viewed her charge's mirrored image over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. “Your Papa also brought you to town so that you might learn how to live as the upper classes live,” she said. “Ladies here try to look pretty, lovey. They don't go out of their way to hide their beauty.”

“Oh, dear,” Alexandra said. “Is that what I am trying to do, Nanny? But I don't have any great beauty to hide, do I?”

Nanny Rey sniffed. “Not much,” she said. “You could only be the most-sought-after young lady of the Season if you wanted to be, that's all.”

“Oh, come now.” Alexandra laughed. “You must own that you are somewhat biased. Though I do love you for saying so. Have I done the right thing, Nanny? But what does it matter whether it is right or not when it is the only thing I can do? Oh, but it feels so strange to be betrothed to a stranger. My life feels as if it has been turned quite topsy-turvy.”

“I can't say either way,” Mrs. Rey said, rummaging in a box in a drawer of the dressing table and coming out with a string of pearls. “I don't know his lordship. Perhaps you have been saved from the frying pan only to be cast into the fire, but I can't see that it makes any difference if that is so. You know how I felt about the duke.”

“Yes,” Alexandra said, bending her head forward so that the pearls could be clasped at the back of her neck. “And it seems that you were right all along. I was enraged by his snubbing me last evening. I suppose everyone else thinks he acted with perfect propriety, but I just cannot accept it. I don't like town ways, Nanny.”

“There,” the older woman said, patting Alexandra on the shoulder. “Perhaps this earl will marry you and take you away from this house, lovey. And perhaps he will teach you something about real life. Perhaps my girl will be happy after all.”

Alexandra smiled and turned on the stool. “You are always telling me how unhappy I am, Nanny,” she said. “You are absurd. I have never felt particularly so. Only a little restless perhaps, and eager to begin my own adult life.”

She stood before the pier glass and surveyed herself from head to toe. She was wearing a new gown, a royal-blue silk, high-waisted, simple in design, perhaps a little lower at shoulders and bosom than she was accustomed to. The feathery ringlets at either side of her face touched her shoulders.

“Papa will not like it,” she said. “He will say I look like a coquette.”

“You look like a very pretty young lady about to meet her betrothed for dinner and the theater,” Nanny Rey said firmly from behind her.

“I think I do like this gown,” Alexandra said, “though I have been afraid to wear it until tonight. My hair feels strange. Well, Nanny, perhaps it is as well to begin a new life with a new look. I don't know.”

“Are you ready to go down yet, lovey?” Mrs. Rey asked. “If not, I must leave you. I have a hundred and one things to do. I cannot stand around here all night long gossiping and admiring pretty young ladies.”

Alexandra smiled and turned around. “I am going to stay here for a while,” she said. “I do not need to go downstairs just yet. You go on, Nanny. Far be it from me to keep anyone from work.”

She was afraid to go down. She acknowledged the fact quite freely to herself when she was alone. She was afraid to step out into the unknown as she would be doing when she left her room and went downstairs to join her parents and the Earl of Amberley in the drawing room. Her life would be forever changed, and she was bewildered by the speed with which it had all happened.

She had been contented with her life. Oh, not happy. Nanny Rey was quite right about that. For years she had fretted against the restrictions of her home life. She had longed for the freedom she should have had when she left the schoolroom—the freedom to think and speak and do what she wished and what she thought right. The lifetime necessity of thinking twice about every impulse lest it offend some notion of propriety had become more and more irksome. The corrections—Lord Amberley had been quite correct to call them punishments—to which she was constantly subjected and which she could in no way fight had become an increasing humiliation.

Yet she had been content. With a life so restricted in its freedom and with her only real friend—her brother—from home so frequently, it was almost inevitable that she had developed a rich and intense inner life. Very little of her living was done outside herself, she often thought. Almost all was done inside.

She played the pianoforte, often for hours at a time, if she was not engaged in some other, imposed task and if she was not confined to her room as she so frequently was. If Mama came to the music room, she played music from the sheets kept in the stool. And indeed she loved all music. But if she were alone, she often closed her eyes, forgot her surroundings, and played from her heart. She should write down some of her compositions, James had told her more than once. But how can one write down the fleeting impulses of the moment? A butterfly is ruined if killed and spread out to be admired. A butterfly must be free. The music in her must be free.

She sketched and painted, sometimes outdoors, though she was rarely allowed to go far from the house, but more often indoors. She liked painting portraits, though there was a limit of subjects at home. And most of the people who sat for her—some of the servants, James, once Mama—were not happy with the finished paintings. She was not content to paint only what she saw with her eyes. She wanted to paint what she felt. She wanted to reveal the person as she knew him or her. And so colors and lines and textures were sometimes changed from the strictly realistic.

The last painting she had done of James—a year before—had shown him with his head thrown back, his hair windblown, his face lit by a warm smile. It was ridiculous, Mama had said. James never looked like that, and he was older than the very young man of the portrait. James himself had made no comment. He had merely squeezed her shoulder until it hurt and taken the portrait away. She did not know if he had kept it or destroyed it.

And she wrote endlessly—stories, reflections, poems. All the thoughts and feelings that might have been confided to a sympathetic mother or to a sister or friend were poured out on paper. It was mainly poetry that she wrote. The discipline of having to express herself through meter and rhyme helped her to formulate and organize her thoughts and sometimes to calm her feelings. She had never shown her writings to anyone. Only Nanny Rey and James even knew they existed.

And so she was not an actively unhappy person, she reflected, despite what Nanny and her brother believed. It was true that the older she got, the more irksome became the restraints on her freedom. And yet the certain knowledge she had always had that one day she would marry the Duke of Peterleigh had buoyed up her spirits. She had never known more of him than a brief and formal meeting every year or two could reveal, and had occasionally been chilled by his advanced age and distant hauteur. But she had always reminded herself that she would be a duchess and that she would spend most of her days in London.

During her month in London she had met the duke a little more frequently than ever before. But she had ignored any unease she had felt. The duke was not a warm or a charming man. He was not well-liked. Her flesh had secretly crept when she had thought that she must become this man's property to be used as he would. But there were compensations to outweigh these misgivings. When she married, she would finally pass beyond her childhood. Surely the duke would not dictate her every action as Papa had done.

And now all was changed. Alexandra sat down at one end of her high bed and clasped the fluted bedpost. She was to marry the Earl of Amberley. She was to be the Countess of Amberley. She still could not quite grasp the reality of all that had happened to her in the past few days. She had been so totally out of control of her own destiny. She always had been, of course, but she had never realized it as she did now.

She had been rather proud of herself at first. Apart from the terror she had felt during that night at the earl's town house and the dreadful embarrassment she had felt at being found by him in quite the state she had been in, she felt she had handled herself well. She had not given in to either hysteria or the vapors. And she was very satisfied with the firm, though polite, refusals she had made to both Lord Amberley's and Lord Eden's offers. For once she had had important decisions to make, and she had made them herself, according to her own wishes. She had felt her age for the first time in her life.

Even last night, at Lady Sharp's, during that terrible ordeal of knowing herself outcast, she had held on to her pride. She might have crept away or rushed away with James as soon as she had realized what was happening. But she had not done so. She had held her ground and would have continued to do so for another five or ten minutes before making as dignified a withdrawal as she could. It was true, of course, that she had not expected the duke's snub. She was really not sure how she would eventually have reacted to that. She had not been given a chance to find out.

She had been touched and a little embarrassed by the approach of Lady Madeline Raine. She had recognized the girl's motive and had honored her courage and kind heart. She could not agree with James that her motives had been calculated and self-serving.

But what of Lord Amberley? He had come gallantly to her rescue—again she could not doubt his motive—and completely destroyed all her newfound pride. At the time she had been grateful. The moment of triumph had been irresistibly sweet as she had watched all the cold, condemning faces turn to warmth and deference. She had held to his arm as if it were the only solid anchor in a sea of troubles.

It was only when it was too late that she had realized the implications of what had happened. For one thing, she was bound to marry him. There was no further choice. Even if Papa had not been quite so insistent, there was her own common sense. For a whole hour she had allowed the cream of the
ton
to believe that she was about to engage herself to the Earl of Amberley. And this when she was already in the thick of scandal. There was no possible way she could have refused his offer earlier that afternoon.

And for another thing, she had just lost again an independence, a control over her own affairs that she had had for only one brief moment. Her father had always controlled her. The Earl of Amberley had taken over that control the evening before. He had seen her in a difficult spot, and with that dreadful male arrogance that all men seemed to share, he had assumed that she could not possibly extricate herself without his assistance. She was once again the helpless female, in the hands of a new and totally unknown owner.

She tried not to hate him. Indeed, she did not do so. He had made a great sacrifice in order to come to her rescue. He had sacrificed his own freedom, his own future. And all without any real obligation to do so. He was not the one who had compromised her. And there was kindness in him. If his behavior of the night before had not proved that, his words of that afternoon certainly had. He had tried his best to assure her that life with him would not be intolerable.

And those parting words of his had been kindly meant too. He would never strike her or punish her, he had said. Indeed, he would never even demand her obedience. She was not sure how far she trusted his words. How could a man never demand obedience from his wife? What if she defied him every day of his life? But the words had been soothing, and had opened to her mind a seductive glimpse of heaven.

A wife is to be a man's companion and lover, he had said. Strange, alien words! She knew very little about love apart from the deep bond of affection she shared with her brother. But the word “lover” seemed far more intimate than love. It brought to mind the strange feeling she had had the evening before with her hand on the earl's arm and his hand covering hers. And it brought back the distinct physical shock she had felt that afternoon when he had touched her palm with his lips.

She found the Earl of Amberley rather frightening. Despite all his kindness and his meddling male ways, there was a raw masculinity about him that she had never encountered before and had no idea how to cope with. The thought of being this man's property frankly terrified her. The thought that soon she must allow him marital intimacies threatened to rob her completely of breath. There was only panic to be gained from such a thought.