An Aria Writ In Blood (The Underwood Mysteries Book 4) (5 page)

She was exceedingly angry herself when she discovered just how tiresome.

“Trent!  How could you have been so stupid – and offensive.  Uncle Peter dandled you on his knee.  It is bordering upon the disgusting to see you angling after his wife.  Besides which, Luisa could not have made it any clearer that she had no wish to encourage your pretensions.”

Trentham looked sulkily mutinous, “That is merely for Peter’s benefit.  She is not happy with him – any fool can see that.”

“Whether she is happy or not is entirely immaterial,” interjected Gil harshly, “It is not your place to judge.  You have no right to come between a man and his wife.  ‘Whom God has joined, let no man put asunder’.  Do those words mean nothing to you, boy?  And if you can be callous enough to destroy your uncle’s happiness, have you no thought for your sister?  Cara desires nothing more than to have her family gathered about her for our wedding.  She will be distraught if Peter leaves before the ceremony – and that is just what he is threatening to do.  And I for one cannot say I blame him.  I have always known you to be odiously spoiled, Trentham, but I never thought to hear you speak in such ribald terms to your uncle – and of your aunt.  Dear God!  Do you not see that what you are contemplating is incest?”

Trentham had been growing steadily redder and more angry in the face of this double onslaught, but these last words drove the blood from his cheeks and he looked suddenly sickened, “Damn you!  She is
not
my aunt.”

“In the eyes of God and the law, that is precisely what she is!”

When his face crumpled in misery, Cara saw him once more as the loveable little mischief-maker who had so plagued her teenage years and her pity for him was almost overwhelming, “My dear, this has to stop.  I am begging you, for my sake if not your own, please try to banish these feelings for Luisa.  When my wedding day is over, she and Peter will go back to Italy and you need never see either of them again.  I know you think you are in love with Luisa, but I promise you the pain will end.  You will meet some charming girl your own age…”

In his grief and anger he swung his arm as though to fend her off, “Oh, shut up!  Shut up, shut up!  You know nothing of how I feel.  Nothing of the torture I suffer every time I see Peter touch her, speak to her, even look at her – to know he takes her to his bed every night!”

“That’s enough!” roared Gil, so loudly that Cara started and even Trentham was silenced, “I will not allow you to speak thus in the presence of my future wife.  There will be no further discussion.  Either you agree to behave with propriety, with a modicum of the dignity your position in society demands, or it will be
you
who is asked not to attend the ceremony – not your aunt and uncle.  Is that quite clear?”

From the stunned expression on Trentham’s face this was the very last thing he had been expecting.  He turned a pathetic face to his sister, “Cara, you would not side with Peter against me?  You won’t let Gil do this to me?”

Cara glanced at her betrothed.  She had never seen him display such anger.  She returned her gaze back to her brother, tears standing in her eyes, “I side with no one but Gil.  If he says you may not come to our wedding, then you may not come.  The choice is yours, Trent.”

He cast her a look of utter contempt and one of loathing towards Gil, then stormed from the room.

She heard Gil draw in a huge breath and she knew that he had found the whole scene horribly unpleasant.  She waited for him to make some movement towards her, but as the minutes ticked away and he did nothing, she imagined he must be as appalled with her as he was with her brother.  This was more than she could bear.  Earning Gil’s respect had been almost as important to her as earning his love.  The tears she had so gallantly withheld from her brother now began to pour down her cheeks, “I am so very sorry, Gil,” she sobbed, “I do not know what to say to you.  How can you ever forgive me?”  She blundered past him, trying to escape as much from the room and his silent, condemning presence, as from her own feelings of utter misery and humiliation.

He caught her in his arms as she passed him, “It is I who should apologise, my love.  I should not have taken it upon myself to exile your brother without first consulting you.”

Surprised she looked up at him, “I … I thought you were angry with me.”

He bestowed that slow smile she loved so well, “I don’t think I have ever been angry with you, Cara Mia, but you have every right to be angry with me.”

She shook her head in confusion and attempted to wipe the tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers.  He produced a handkerchief and gently performed the task for her before leading her to a sofa, “I’m glad we found ourselves alone, my dear.  I would have words with you.”

She took the seat and attempted to compose herself, “About Trentham?” she asked, self-consciously blowing her nose.  She would have preferred not to do something quite so basic and human in his presence, but unfortunately the bitter tears had made it a necessity.

“No, not about Trentham,” he answered shortly, “I am beginning to find that boy’s antics tedious, to say the very least.”

“Then what?”

“Us – our marriage, I mean.  If one thing has become painfully evident through all these passionate demonstrations, it is the issue of disparity between our ages.  I am over forty and you are not yet thirty.  I have been married before – albeit briefly – and bring a fourteen year old son with me.  You have been used to a life of leisure; I have had to work for my bread.  I cannot help but question the wisdom of our embarking on a life together…”

Cara looked at him in silence for a moment that seemed to last an eternity, then she asked starkly, “Gil, do you love me?”

He was thrown into confusion, red staining his cheeks; “I beg your pardon?”

“The question is simple enough.  Do you love me?  Do you want to wake in the morning and see my face on the pillow beside you?  Do you want your children to be my children?  You chastised Trent just now for speaking coarsely in my company, but I will risk your wrath by saying something similar, because I have to know how you feel about me.  Do you want to take me to your bed every night?  I ask because these are the things that matter to me – neither our ages, nor our differing backgrounds.  If you answer no to any of these questions, then, though it breaks my heart, I will not marry you.”

He took her hand and kissed it, “If only I could see this matter in such simple terms, my dear.”

“Then you do not love me?”  Her lower lip trembled and he lifted a gentle forefinger and brushed against it, “I love you.  I want you.  And I need you, more than you will ever know.  But I am years older than you are.”

With a cry of pure joy she threw her arms about him, “Oh, who cares for that?  You frightened me.  Dear God, I took such a risk then, telling you I would set you free.  What sort of a foolish woman shows a cornered man an open door?  I was desperately wondering how I could take back my words and make you marry me anyway.”

“I’m sorry.  I did not mean to be cruel – but I could not bear the thought of you regretting our marriage.  I had to reassure myself that it is what you really want.  I’m not always quite as self-possessed as you seem to imagine.”

She put a stop to further discussion by kissing him and was gratified to feel his arms close about her so tightly as to be almost painful.

*

Luisa was seated at her dressing table when Peter entered their bedroom.  One glance at the reflection of his grim visage in the mirror was enough to prompt her to send away the maid who was standing behind her, brushing her hair.  He made no comment, merely waited for the girl to bob her curtsey and leave the room, then he approached his wife, taking up the discarded brush and continuing the task abandoned by the maid.

Luisa met his eyes in the mirror and smiled tremulously, “Good evening, Pietro.”

“Good evening, my dear one.  Did you have a pleasant day with Cara?”

“Yes, but I missed you.”

“Did you really?”

“But of course!”

“Perhaps you have other company than the ladies.  Did you meet anyone whilst shopping?”

The colour in her face began to fade a little, giving her the slightly sickly, yellow look which belongs to the olive-skinned, “I was with Cara and Mrs. Underwood the whole time, Pietro.  I met no one else.”

“Cara is such an affectionate sister – perhaps Trentham joined you when you stopped to take tea?”

She closed her eyes in pain as the hairbrush was wielded with ever more deliberate and heavy hands, “Pietro, please!  I have not seen Trentham at all today.”

He threw the brush down, transferring his hands to her shoulders, pushing the silken wrap aside to expose the flawless flesh, his fingers brushing against her skin.  She trembled a little as he lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear and though his next words were whispered, she heard them with a stab of fear,

“What is the matter, my darling?  Was that a shudder of revulsion?  Are you wishing I were one of your young lovers?  Has the idea of being a lady palled now?  Do you long to be back in the Opera, whoring your way around Europe?”

Suddenly angry she tried to wriggle from his grasp, “Pietro, stop this!  You are unkind.  Why do you do this to me?  I should not have to listen to these insults from my husband.”  She stood up and tried to fend him off, but he swept her into his arms, carried her across the room and threw her with little apparent effort into the middle of the great four-poster bed.

For a moment he looked down at her and she scarcely recognised him, his face looked bloated and red, and his eyes burned as though with fever.  Stripping of his coat he flung it away and lowered himself onto the bed beside her, “Show me what you learned before I rescued you from the gutter, my dear.”

*

CHAPTER FIVE

(“Omne Tulit Punctum Qui Miscuit Utile Dulci” – He has gained every point who has combined the useful with the agreeable)

During the next few days, the actions of the ladies bordered upon the frenzied.  The nearer drew the wedding, the more they realized they had carelessly overlooked.

Underwood was left more and more to his own devices as Verity desperately tried to finish her portrait of the happy couple.  Luckily she had foreseen just such difficulties and had painted Gil beforehand in Hanbury, leaving a space for the then absent bride.

Verity’s indulgent husband (in the opinion of less enlightened beings) was always more than happy to make allowances for her pursuit of her own passions, but that all changed dramatically with the arrival of his mother, bringing in her wake a variety of uncles, aunts and cousins.  It was then he began to seriously resent her preoccupation with canvas and oils.  He had utterly failed to appreciate that with Verity, Cara and Gil all busy, he would be called upon to display a level of filial devotion never before dreamed of nor expected.  Jeremy James had one day of pure, sadistic pleasure in watching the normally stoic Underwood squirm beneath a barrage of relative interest, before his own mother arrived and began to expose rather more of his secrets than he cared to share.  After all, he had a reputation (prodigiously bad) to maintain.

It came of something of a shock to his many companions to find that far from being the penniless peasant risen through the ranks that he liked to portray, Jeremy was actually the son of a minor nobleman and his mother had been friends with the Countess since their joint assault on the ‘Ton’ when their presentations had occurred in the same season over thirty years before.

Sadly, given the opportunity to be magnanimous, Underwood did no such thing.  He was not in the least gracious in victory.  His shout of laughter echoed across the dinner table when Mrs. Thornycroft admitted that she had posed for a portrait herself when Jeremy was a mere babe in arms and that she still possessed the small, white satin embroidered bonnet he had been wearing on that memorably affecting occasion.

“Now that,” he stated emphatically, “is something I simply have to see for myself.”

“Don’t be unkind, Chuffy,” interjected his mother severely, “As it happens, I still have your first pair of shoes, darling little things made of white kid.”

“Ha!” snorted Jeremy James, “I can just see Underwood in white kid pumps.”

“Now, now, boys,” said Verity, “Let us at least try to act our age, shall we?”

The two men ceased their rivalry abruptly, but glowered menacingly at each other across the table – it seemed the peace treaty would be blown apart once the ladies retired to take tea in the saloon.

Once alone, the men swiftly reverted to type.  The air became thick with the smoke from cigarillos and pipes, and thicker still with ribald jokes and gutter language.  It was at moments like these that the slightly more civilized Gil, Underwood and Dr. Herbert withdrew to one end of the table whilst the Wablers, Jeremy James, General Milner (who was, for all his show of civility before the ladies, an old soldier) and Peter Lovell grew louder, coarser and drunker at the other.

“When I was a young innocent, I often wondered why the ladies took themselves off after dinner,” mused Underwood, squinting slightly against the smoke. 

Gil laughed, “Once you went to Cambridge, it did not take you very long to solve that particular mystery, did it?”

“About twelve hours, to be precise,” agreed Underwood with a grin, “I arrived in the morning, then took dinner in halls that night.  Gad, but we had been too gently raised, with father away and mother in sole charge.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  We had been exposed to Uncle George’s excesses.”

“Hardly!  Mother let us see him, but it can be noted now, with hindsight, that she never let us out alone with him, despite his pleading on several occasions for permission to show us a little of what he called ‘town-life’.”

Needless to say that same Uncle George had joined the Wablers’ end of the table and not, as he whispered loudly to Jeremy, the dry as dust Underwood brothers.

Disconcertingly George chose that exact moment to call, with a slur in his voice, “It seems the port is with you, my dear Chuffy.”  Underwood obligingly slid it down the polished surface of the table, fortunately in the correct direction, though he would not necessarily have known it.  Years of simply passing it on had made the movement instinctive, but it would not have been beyond his slightly twisted sense of humour to pass it the wrong way just to enjoy the ensuing furore.  There were certain aspects of being English which he adored and admired, such as cricket, a reputation for fair-play, tea on the lawn and the existence of Universities, but he had no particular relish for other useless and archaic traditions which were adhered to by people like his uncle.  Passing the port clockwise was pointless, in his opinion, and dressing up to chase terrified little foxes across muddy fields in the dead of winter was not only cruel but a waste of time and effort.

Fortunately he was saved from what could have turned out to be a tedious and circular argument simply by doing the right thing by chance.  Gil noticed it and was relieved; deciding hastily that a change of subject might be politic before Underwood recalled a lost opportunity for a ‘debate’ and took the port back the ‘wrong’ way.

“Well, my dear brother and equally dear friend, you might have found yourself dining with a bishop this evening,” he said quietly, taking a sip of his port.

“Oh Lord!  Which one?  Thank heavens you managed to put him off, whichever it was.  I detest all clerics but you, Gil,” said a seriously alarmed Underwood.  Bad enough that these few days were to be haunted by the presence of his family – add senior ministers to the brew and he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it.  He could forgive his brother much, but Gil’s need for him to be occasionally polite and pretend belief in a creed which basically horrified him, was not his favourite way to spend his time.

                Gil laughed again, “In the face of your extreme antipathy, I can only be grateful that sense prevailed and I rejected the offer made by my future father-in-law.  The bishop to whom I refer would have been myself.”

Underwood, with his usual lack of sensitivity, showed that he was delighted to hear this news, but Francis Herbert, aware of deeper implications, remained impassive,  “But, my dear Gil, it is what you have worked for, struggled to achieve.  Think of the good you could have done.”

“Francis, when - and if - I ever take the bishop’s mitre, it will have been earned by the sweat of my brow, not offered to me in order to make me a more fitting mate for a member of the aristocracy.”

“Isn’t that rather short-sighted?  Many men have achieved status through marriage.  Is it not more important what you do with the power rather than the reason why you wield it?  God works in a mysterious way.  Perhaps it was His plan all along that you meet and marry Cara in order to gain your See.”

“You need not think I have not presented myself with every theory, Francis, which is why, in the end, I did accept the promotion to Rural Dean.  The leap to bishop was altogether too hurried and huge for me to contemplate.  I now have to acknowledge that I will never again be judged by my own actions, but by the superior rank held by my wife, so it falls to me to appraise myself – and believe me, there will be no sterner judge.  I alone will decide when, or indeed if, I am fit to hold higher office in the Church.”

From anyone else this speech would have sounded impossibly pompous, but Gil was so pleasant a character, and so very sincere in his feelings, that neither Dr. Herbert nor the usually cynical Underwood, spoke a word to gainsay him, though his brother could not resist one small barb, “And how does the lovely Cara feel about your denial of her father’s generosity?”

Gil, smitten as he was, smiled at the mere mention of her name, “Cara leaves all such decisions to me.  She knows I will strive to ensure her comfort, no matter what else I chose to do.”

Francis, a man possessing an adoring and, for the most part, obedient wife, was satisfied with this answer; Underwood, married to a woman who loved him deeply, but who had a mind of her own and strong opinions, was inclined to be slightly worried by this calm assumption of complete support.

*

As was to be imagined, from the amount of money to be lavished upon it, the wedding of Cara and Gil could not have been more lovely; though all those who knew the couple well admitted that they seemed so much in love that all the pomp was rather out of place.  It was evident they would have been quite as happy to exchange their vows in a draughty, old, country church as in the rather grander setting which was their eventual choice.

Underwood, in his place by his brother’s side on the front pew, glanced back and was astonished to see just how many people had gathered to see his younger brother marry Cara.  It was probably in that moment that he realized just how big a step Gil was taking.  No wonder the man had been plagued by second thoughts!  One did not just marry an Earl’s daughter; one entered a whole new world.  The glitter of jewellery alone was enough to blind a man if looked long enough at it.

He would have been even more stunned if he had seen the seemingly never-ending procession of carriages which inched their way to the church porch, disgorging yet more guests of the Earl; the gentlemen dressed in peacock colours which vied with the ladies’ pastels.  Lady Hartley-Wells was dressed in her usual half-mourning purple, and a few other elderly women were similarly attired, but the fashion was generally for much lighter colours, such as peach, pinks, mauves and yellows.  The bride wore ivory satin, with a train of remarkable length, and her supporting friends were clad in palest yellow.  Horatia held her mama’s hand, on her best behaviour, and Toby looked stunning in his dark blue, his grin so wide that his teeth rivalled the pearls about Cara’s throat.

For the ladies it was over all too soon; for the gentlemen the stifled sighs of relief fooled not one of their spouses.  They were eager to devour the wedding breakfast and begin to toast their ‘lost’ brother – as Jeremy James elegantly phrased it,

“Another man leg-shackled to a harridan-in-waiting!”

The reception was everything Gil and Underwood feared.  Uncle George did indeed drink far too much – fortunately for them, he did it with the Earl as his companion.  It was painfully evident the Countess was not amused, but since her own husband was the instigator, there was little she could do about it.  Even Cara laughed at her mother’s stiff expression when Uncle George insisted upon treading a measure with her.  She had never allowed her husband to take the liberty of dancing a waltz with her, being of the old fashioned sort of lady who disapproved of such frivolity, but she found herself being swept across the floor by George and when he finally released her, she joined the Underwoods, valiantly fanning her pink cheeks, breathless and on the edge of giggling, admitting, “I must say that it is a remarkably enjoyable way to dance!”

By late afternoon Cara and Gil were waved off amid showers of rice and rose petals, their carriage bound for a secret location where they would spend their wedding night, to be followed by the journey to Southampton, where they would board the Earl’s yacht bound for an idyllic honeymoon travelling in Europe – made safe by the final defeat of old Boney, thanks to such heroes as Thornycroft and the Wablers.

It was to be several more days before the last friends and relatives were seen politely on their way home, then the Brighton contingent were able to do their own packing and prepare to decamp.

Only one thing occurred to alter this plan.  For some days Luisa had been pale and unwell; she was barely able to fulfil her duties as maid-of-honour to Cara, and when the time of departure came, it was obvious she was not physically able to stand the rigours of a sea voyage.  It had been intended that Peter and Luisa should accompany Gil and Cara to Rome, where Peter owned a villa, but it was not to be.  Peter had been particularly eager to whisk his wife away from the temptations offered by the wicked city of London, but even he could not argue with Dr. Herbert when Luisa had fainted and proved to be suffering from a fever and agonizing stomach cramps.  She was in no way fit to travel and her husband was forced, most reluctantly, to agree to letting Gil and Cara go ahead without them. 

He had hoped she would recover within a few days, but when the time came for the removal of the household to Brighton, Luisa was only slightly better.  It quickly became evident that Lord and Lady Lovell would have to join the throng heading for the seaside.  The Earl’s London residence was to be closed up for the rest of the summer and any staff who were not to accompany the family to Brighton had been granted leave of absence.

Peter was assured by his pale wife that a few days of sea air would benefit her immensely, but in the end it was the Countess’ all too obvious horror at the turn of events which made up his mind.  It would serve her snobbery well to have to admit her less than salubrious relatives to the Brighton hierarchy. 

Fortunately, due to his exemplary behaviour at the wedding and even after, Trentham had managed to allay any of Peter’s suspicions, so Brighton did not seem to be such an appalling prospect as it had at first.  How could he know that this illusion had been perpetrated merely for the sake of Cara, in the face of Gil’s threats?