Tilly (15 page)

“Piffle,” said the marquess rudely. “You got Toby when he was drunk, the pair of you. You don’t want it spread around London that Lady Aileen can’t get married unless she tricks some poor chap into it.”

“And who would spread about such a malicious and
untrue
piece of gossip?”

“Me,” said the marquess cheerfully and ungrammatically. He was not in the least afraid of the formidable duchess.

“I should never have brought my fairy to this sink of iniquity,” raged the duchess. “You can tell that Bassett fellah the engagement is
off!
”

As if on cue, Aileen sailed in to be told the news, which she received with surprising calm. “I am glad you have settled this for me. I know the news will break poor Toby’s heart,” she said, “but I cannot spend the rest of my life with a drunk.”

“I shall tell the servants you are leaving immediately,” said the marquess coldly. He had a sudden feeling of compassion for his wife. How on earth had she endured this terrible couple?

Tilly was gladdened some two hours later by the sight of the Glenstraith’s traveling carriage lumbering off down the drive with a
mountain of luggage balanced precariously on the roof.

Toby Bassett also watched the departure. He was glad he would not have to endure any more lectures from the duchess.

The sun was blazing down on the heavy summer green of the countryside. The lawns stretched out to the lake like fields of green glass and each heavy rose hanging in the still hot air seemed to have been formed from the finest porcelain. Tilly stretched up her arms in relief. Now if only Cyril Nettleford would leave.

Tilly sat under the cool trees of the vicarage garden and looked about her with pleasure. Variegated lupins blazed against the old red brick of the garden wall and a moss-covered sundial at the edge of the shaggy lawn marked off the passage of the sunny hours with one long, shadowy finger.

She was making the first of her social calls, accompanied by the ever-correct Francine. She had not seen her husband and had felt too nervous and shy after the scene of
that night
to go in search of him.

The vicar was a small, plump, scholarly man called Mr. Waring. His tight-fitting clericals were shiny with age, but his round, gentle face gave him a pleasing dignity. His wife was younger than he and pretty, in a faded-blond way, with silver threads in her fair hair and faded-blue eyes. Witness to what must
have once been her undoubted beauty was there in the presence of her daughter, Emily, a pretty, lively girl with rosy country cheeks and thick fair hair piled up over a wide forehead.

Mr. Waring was mourning the death of one of his parishioners,”… a wild fellow and as strong as an ox until the drink got to him.”

Tilly remembered Toby’s family failing. “Is there no cure?” she asked. “Surely it is a matter of willpower. Can’t one just stop? It is a moral weakness, after all.”

“I do not understand it, my dear,” said the vicar gently. “Sometimes a strong belief in God effects a cure. That is my department. Sometimes just a belief in something or someone
outside
themselves. I have seen rips of fellows cured after they’ve fallen in love with pretty girls.”

Tilly glanced speculatively at the pretty face of Emily Waring. But did Toby ever sober up enough to notice a pretty face?

The vicar and his wife began to talk of parish matters, while Emily played with a shaggy puppy in the grass. Tilly watched her.
She must be only a year younger than me
, she thought,
and yet she romps away there without looking like a tomboy. Perhaps one day
I can work backward from all these rigid social manners and social conventions.

Suddenly a picture of her husband’s lean, hard naked body danced before her eyes, and she felt quite dizzy and faint. This could not be love, thought Tilly angrily. It was more like a sickness.

Then a shadow fell across her and she looked up into the blue eyes of the cause of her sickness and her heart did several somersaults.

He did not look at all angry, she noticed when she could. He was smiling at her, actually smiling.

The marquess drew up a garden chair next to the vicar and began to chat in his light, pleasant voice.

“Who is that gorgeously romantic man?” whispered Emily.

“My husband,” said Tilly, with pride.

“No,” whispered Emily shyly, “not his lordship. That young man over there.”

Tilly turned her head. Toby Bassett was standing at the garden gate. His face was as pale as marble and his eyes smoldered as he looked across at the group.
Really
, thought Tilly,
if one didn’t know Toby was drunk, one would think he was in the throes of composing
an epic
. But she merely said, “It is my husband’s friend Mr. Bassett.”

Toby ambled lazily over and dropped down on the grass beside Emily. He was wearing a striped rowing blazer with white flannels. He looked like an illustration of something called
My Oxford Days
.

Tilly introduced Emily to him. Toby stared at Emily vaguely and Emily stared wonderingly back. Then the puppy romped in between them, jumping up to lick Toby’s face, and then rolled on its back and waved its fat little paws in ecstacy.

“He’s called Towzer,” said Emily shyly. “It’s not a very original name, but he seems to like it.” She chattered happily on and Toby seemed content to lie in the sun and listen, his straw boater tilted over his eyes.

Tilly watched her husband’s animated face as he talked to the vicar and his wife and wished the moment could be frozen in time—the marquess’s fair head gleaming in the sunlight against the cool green background of the trees. The garden smelled of flowers, sugar, cake, and tea. Up above, great white castles of clouds sailed majestically across a cornflower-blue sky. Beyond the wroughtiron gate set into the garden wall, a field of corn stretched lazily into the summer distance,
turning green and gold as the breeze rippled across it.

Then the marquess rose to his feet and the golden spell was broken. Toby dusted grass and leaves from his clothes and looked about him in a bewildered way, as if he were emerging from a particularly beautiful dream and wished to stay asleep.

The marquess and Toby, it transpired, had walked the five miles to the vicarage, while Tilly and Francine had traveled in the dogcart. With a slight hesitation in his voice, the marquess asked Tilly if she felt energetic enough to walk back with him and let Toby and Francine travel in the dogcart. She nodded her assent and unfurled her white lace parasol to protect her face from the sun.

They all left, promising to come again. To Tilly’s surprise, the marquess pressed an invitation to dinner at Chennington on the vicar and his family. Toby had that rare sober look on his face as he picked up the reins of the dogcart and bowled off down the dusty lane with Francine sitting beside him, her print cotton dress fluttering in the wind.

The married couple walked along in silence. To take her mind off her disturbing companion, Tilly was turning over in her mind the possibilities of matchmaking. What
if Toby should marry the vicar’s daughter? Perhaps all he needed was to fall in love with someone and, although Emily was only a country vicar’s daughter, Toby’s family must know of his excesses and would surely be delighted to see him settled with a respectable girl. If he ever got free of Aileen’s clutches!

“Penny for them,” said the marquess.

“I was thinking of Toby,” began Tilly and then saw a dark scowl on her husband’s face. Of all the unfortunate remarks! She hastened to explain. “I was only thinking that perhaps Toby would settle down and not drink so much if he were married to a nice girl like Emily.”

“Wouldn’t that break your heart?” he demanded acidly, beginning to walk more quickly, so that Tilly had to pick up her skirts and lengthen her step to keep up with him. “He’s free now, you know. The engagement’s off.”

“Oh, do slow down!” she cried. “Please, Philip. I want to talk to you.”

The marquess slowed his step, and Tilly caught her breath and gathered her courage. “I only said that about Toby that night to hurt you,” she said in a small voice. “I wanted to hurt you the way you had hurt me… only
making love to me because of the terms of your father’s will.”

“I should have told you about the will,” said the marquess after a long silence, during which poor Tilly thought he would never speak again. “But it seemed so cold, so crude. Especially after my abominable behavior on our wedding night.” There, he had said it, and he felt infinitely better. “I wanted to make you fall in love with me, Tilly. That was suddenly the most important thing.”

Tilly’s heart seemed to stand still. “Why?” she asked. “Why was it so important?”

He stopped, turned, and looked at her. She was wearing a cool white blouse with a lace bertha that had a little ribbon of black velvet threaded through the lace at the neck. A wide biscuit-colored straw hat covered in a whole garden of fruit was perched on her small head, casting her face into shadow. Her long sage-green poplin skirt was tailored tightly over her hips to accentuate her trim figure. The white lacy parasol sent golden flecks of sunshine flickering over her face and dress, and in her wide blue eyes two large, perfect tears formed and welled slowly over onto her cheeks.

He took out his handkerchief and gently dried her tears. “I have fallen in love with
you, Tilly,” he said slowly. “Perhaps I have always been in love with my noisy schoolgirl and then my beautiful wife. I didn’t know it until this minute. I wanted you to be in love with me to satisfy my vanity. But I am in love with you, dear heart.”

Poor Tilly broke down and cried, standing in the middle of the dusty country lane with the great tears raining down her face and falling to sparkle on the lace of her blouse. He looked around and saw a few yards in front of them a little stone bridge curving up to cross a glittering stream that ran underneath.

He took her gloved hands in his and led her gently to the parapet of the bridge and made her sit down. Then he dried her tears again, bending his head forward to catch her broken words. “I—I I-love you so awfully, Philip.”

He put an arm around her shaking shoulders and hugged her close, murmuring, “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Please don’t cry. You will ruin your pretty eyes,” and other such nonsense that was like a balm to Tilly’s soul.

When she had recovered, he turned her face up and kissed her softly on the lips. “I am a beast,” he said penitently. “And I scared you and rushed you, didn’t I? Listen,
Tilly, I shall make it up to you. You shall have your courtship and your kisses and love letters and flowers, just like any other girl. And then when we—you know—when we feel
comfortable
together, we can get down to some more serious lovemaking. We have all the time in the world now that we know we love each other.”

Tilly gave a sigh of pure happiness and leaned her head against his chest, crushing her smart straw hat in the process. They sat like that for a long time, as if turned to stone.

The silver water chuckled over the stones of the river underneath the bridge. The breeze had dropped and tiny blue butterflies danced erratically through the heavy summer air.

Somewhere in the warm distance, Cyril Nettleford espied the two figures and dismounted from his horse, tethered it to a tree, and made his way quickly and cautiously across the fields on foot until he was able to creep down under the shadow of the bridge.

He mopped his streaming face and listened hard.

“You have not answered me, Tilly,” the marquess was saying in such a caressing voice that Cyril felt his heart sink to his elastic-sided boots. “Shall we have our courtship
and leave the more dramatic side of lovemaking until later?”

“Oh, yes, Philip,” sighed Tilly shyly, failing to hear an echoing sigh of relief from under the bridge.

I still have time
, thought Cyril.
Sentimental fools
. The well-turned calf of a footman or the trim, muscular waist of a valet could set Cyril’s unlovely pulses racing. Women disgusted him.

He crept to the side of the bridge and watched the happy couple make their way off down the road. The marquess stopped, gathered Tilly in his arms, and kissed her hard. The two bodies seemed to fuse together in the dizzying, dancing sunlight.

Blast!
thought Cyril cynically. They
won’t wait long
. He chewed his lip and thought how convenient it would be if Tilly could meet with an accident. From there his mind moved on to the idea that an accident might be arranged.

Francine was waiting for Tilly when that young lady bounced into her room, looking flushed and exhilarated. She breathlessly told Francine of the marquess’s proposed wooing.

“Very much the gentleman,” was Francine’s
delighted comment. “I was wrong about that one. I think now that all men are perhaps not like my wicked compt.”

“And, oh, Francine,” cried Tilly, throwing her mangled hat on the bed, “I have a marvelous plan for Toby. Wouldn’t it be splendid if he were to marry Emily Waring? I am sure she is just what he needs.”

“Emily is too young,” said Francine repressively.

“Fiddle,” sang Tilly, pirouetting around the room. “
I
am much younger than Philip and only see how it has worked out. I want everyone to be happy. What about you, Francine? I feel in the matchmaking mood. What about James, the footman? He is so handsome and I have seen the way he looks at you!”

“James is not for me,” said Francine primly. “Just be satisfied with your own happiness, my lady. It is always wrong to meddle in other people’s lives. See what a mess I was making with you and your good husband!

“Now come, my lady, I will draw your bath. It is nearly evening and you want to look your best for dinner,
non? Alors
, there is just one little favor I wish to ask, my lady.”

“Anything,” said Tilly, who felt that if she
could wrap up the world and give it to Francine, she would do it there and then.

Francine cast down her eyes and pleated the material of her print dress in her long fingers. “It is an unusual request, Lady Tilly,” she said at last. “You know that I have been in the habit of escorting you to the drawing room before dinner?”