The Reckoning (63 page)

Then all was movement again, and sound. The travellers
climbed into the coach, the doors were closed, the coachman
cracked his whip, and everyone waved and shouted as the berlin drew away, waved and shouted until it disappeared
round the corner in to St James's Square and out of sight.

As they turned to go back indoors, Rosamund found her
hand was somehow being held by her husband's. She looked
at the linked hands in surprise, not having noticed it happen,
and then, doubtfully, up at him.

‘
So now our married life really begins,' he said with a
smile. 'Until this moment, I think you still felt more like Lady
Theakston's daughter than Lord Chelmsford's wife. But now
she's gone and there's only me. You'll have to begin to depend
on me from now on.’

It was a pretty speech, and well meant, but out of the
corner of her eye she could see Parslow purposely not over
hearing.
Mother's proxy
she thought.
She hasn't really gone.
And if it came to it, she would always sooner entrust a
problem to Parslow than to the unknown quantity of Marcus.

*

In another way, however, it was that evening that her
married life began, and she knew well beforehand that there
would be no escaping it this time. After all the excitement and
strain of the wedding, everyone was tired, and there was
perfectly good reason for Lady Barbara to suggest, with the
confidence of a tsar that her suggestion would carry the
weight of law, that they should all go early to bed.

Rosamund remembered too late that she had given no
orders about a change of bedroom, nor indeed had had the
opportunity to discuss it with Marcus. So it was back to the
Countess's Room and the catafalque. Moss prepared her and
put her to bed, and there, without the benefit of so much as a
glass of champagne, she sat up against the pillows to await
her fate.

Marcus came in at last, just as he had the night before,
with his dressing-gown over his shoulders, hanging a little
crookedly so that it made her think of a cavalryman's pelisse.
That was a good line of thought, reminding her that he had
been the brave soldier she had waved off to war from the
nursery window. He was still the same Marcus, and he should
not be made to suffer because she was not the same Rosamund.

‘
Are you tired, my love?' he asked her as he put down the
candle on the bedside, and shrugged off the dressing-gown.
He looked so strange in his nightgown. It was a pity, she
thought, that men couldn't wear some kind of trousers to bed,
so that they looked more familiar, more like their daytime
selves. It all added to her sense of dreamlike unreality.

‘
A little,' she said. Just as they say only the tip of any
iceberg emerges from the water, so only a small part of what
she was thinking was actually voiced. 'Reaction to all the
excitement, I expect.'

‘
Yesterday must have been a great strain on you,' he said,
lifting the covers to slide himself in beside her. 'You were the
centre of all eyes, much more than I was, and you must have
been aware of it.' As she was still sitting up, he too sat up
solemnly, his hands folded on top of the sheet. 'It's a pity we
couldn't have had a small, private wedding of our own, first.
It would have been nice to go to the Abbey for the public
ceremony having been married a few weeks first. Then I
could have given you a husband's support through it all.’

What an odd thing to say, she thought – but it was kindly
meant. And what a strange man he was, after all – for most
people, such splendour and glory and publicity were proofs of
status and very precious. But she understood what he meant,
hearing the words under his words. 'You still don't really
want to be Earl of Chelmsford, do you?’

He shook his head. 'I never did. I'm not cut out for it. I'm
just a simple soldier, and I'd rather have married you in a
tent somewhere, with the regimental chaplain presiding, and
the men giving us three-times-three and throwing their
shakoes in the air.’

Rosamund wrinkled her nose. 'Sounds damp and muddy to
me.’

He didn't seem to hear her. 'It was Bobbie's title, and he
was the man for it,' he went on quietly. 'I still think of him,
throwing his life away to rescue me. He'll always be the earl,
in my mind.'

‘
Well, since he made the sacrifice,' Rosamund said, 'you
had better make sure it wasn't in vain, and do his job for him
as best you can.'

‘
Yes,' Marcus said, and then his smile flashed out. 'And
being earl has won me
you –
that's the greatest blessing. So I
can't repine, can I? I'd never have had you otherwise.’

Rosamund couldn't think of anything to say to that, so instead she slithered down from sitting to lying, and was
about to say let's go to sleep, when she remembered that there
were other things to be done yet, and that her change of posi
tion must look like invitation to Marcus. Indeed, his smile
disappeared, and he looked suddenly serious and intent, like a
man in church about to take the sacrament. She didn't want
to look at him looking like that, so she closed her eyes, and a
moment later she felt him lean across her to put out her
candle too.

That was better. Safe in the darkness, she opened her eyes
again, and waited, lying on her back, for the worst. She knew
about it in theory, but hadn't worked out the detail in her
own mind – hadn't particularly wanted to. She had seen
horses and other animals doing it, but knew, of course, that
human beings did it lying down and in bed, so it couldn't be quite the same, could it? She wished she knew what she was
supposed to do, or even, at least, if she was supposed to do
anything. It made her feel so helpless to have to rely entirely
on someone else's knowledge and experience, and helplessness
always made her angry. It seemed so unfair: there was
nothing else one ever did in life where one hadn't the slightest
idea of the correct procedure, where one wasn't instructed beforehand on the proper mode of conduct. When she had
been presented at Court, she had been schooled carefully in
every word and gesture, and wasn't this, in its way, just as
important?
Marcus moved, and she felt a quick spasm of fear. Now it
was happening. He was making furtive, jerky movements just
beside her; then she felt his hand on her midriff over her
nightgown, and stiffened automatically.

He felt her tension. 'Don't be afraid,' he whispered. 'I'll try
not to hurt you.’

Try? she wondered uneasily. That was not very reassuring.
He ran his hand over her belly as if stroking a horse's rump,
and then began to pull up her nightgown from the hem. It
came up at the front all right, but soon got caught under
neath her at the back. Now do I help him, or would that be
unseemly? she wondered helplessly. Do I pretend I don't know
what he's trying to do? He tugged at it, and she decided in the
end that not to help might seem like resistance to the whole
idea, and she had no desire to delay matters needlessly. So she
lifted her weight slightly and with the hand furthest away
from him, as discreetly as possible, freed the hitch.

When her nightgown was up as far as her waist, there was a pause, and then he loomed over her, jostled for space with his
knees between hers, and then was lying on top of her, the
warm, naked front of his body against the warm naked front of hers. A number of thoughts went through her over-active
mind:
ah, so that's what he was doing before — pulling up his
own nightgown;
and
goodness, how hot his skin is, and how
smooth;
and
what an extraordinary business this is — animals manage it much better.

Then his hand fumbled between them, and a shock of real
isation went through her like a bolt of electricity, and she
thought,
Not really? Not like that?

‘
Oh my darling, my darling,' Marcus murmured in what
sounded like ecstasy.

And then it really was happening. It did hurt quite a bit,
but not unbearably, and it was all over quite quickly, and in
silence except for Marcus's gasping breaths. When his movements stopped, she lay still for quite a while with his weight on top of her, wondering if that were all there would ever be
to it, and if she would ever get to like it, and if it would have
been different with someone else.

She remembered, guiltily, the excitement she had felt once
in Philip Tantony's arms, how she had longed to be closer and
closer to him, without knowing how such a thing could be
possible.
Would she have felt differently if it had been Tantony
in bed with her just now?
Well, she would never know now.
Her life was with Marcus, and if there were any pleasure to be
had from this strange business, it must be with him she found
it.

The worst thing was being intelligent enough to wonder
about things you could never know the answers to. She
wished she could have gone to her marriage bed with a
stupidity to match her ignorance, and the comfortable lack of
curiosity of a cow or a horse.

*

The Aylesbury summer fair was the biggest event of the year,
and emptied the villages for miles around. It was a hiring fair,
an agricultural fair, and sheer lighthearted entertainment all
in one. It had all the usual stalls and shows, jugglers and fire-
eaters, boxing-booths and fortune-tellers and freaks, archery
competitions and bowling for a pig; any number of delicious
things to eat and drink, the taverns open until far into the
night, and dancing under the stars if the weather were fine.

It was customary for big households to allow their servants
the day off for it, and even to provide a cart or brake to trans
port them — which made attendance all the more universal,
for who would want to stay at home without servants?
It seemed that Lady Harvey Sale would.

‘
Oh don't say that, Minnie,' Polly cried. 'You must go! It's the greatest fun — don't you remember from last year? We'll
walk about and look at the shows and have dinner —'