Caught in the Light (24 page)

"No doubt." Barrington wrestled his hunting watch out of his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. "Well, well, there's time enough, certainly."

Susannah cleared her throat ostentatiously. "My dear, should we not ?"

"Damn it, let her go if she will. Where's the harm in it?" He smiled at me awkwardly, aware he had come dangerously close to acknowledging the delicacy of his position as my custodian. "Pay your charitable call, Marian, by all means. I would not wish to come between you and a kindred spirit. A twittering spinster is, I feel sure, just the counsellor you require at this passage in your life." His smile broadened disingenuously. But I knew better than to rise to his bait.

What was Barrington's lumbering satire compared with the torments his brother had devised for me? And what did it matter anyway, when I had achieved no less than I desired?

We were approaching the village of Corston and were within sight of the outskirts of Bath. The autumn sun flattered the pale stonework of the buildings and would have enchanted those disposed to be enchanted, as I had certainly been when I first visited the city as a girl of fifteen in the company of my parents. But I had not heard the name Esguard then, nor learned how much more bitterness there was than sweetness in the world. The vista left me unmoved.

As doubtless it did my brother-in-law, not least because he had his back to it as we approached and was listening, though scarcely attentively, to his wife's third discourse of the day on the recent tragic death in childbirth of Princess Charlotte. This had occurred the previous week, at Claremont House in Surrey. The child she had borne, a son, was also dead. The Queen, who had been in Bath partaking of the waters, was reported to have returned to London. It was a lamentable business, but it had given me some grim comfort. I would never bear Jose a son, nor die in the attempt. God had cursed him with a barren wife, so he complained. But, if he was right, then I could only regard it as a blessing. I wanted no child of his, nor any child of mine to have such a father.

"It is as melancholy an event as can be imagined," doled Susannah. "The Prince Regent is left not merely bereft, but without an heir."

"He'll find some way to assuage his grief," growled Barrington. "And there's always an heir, if one searches hard enough. The failure of one line is the success of another." He looked at me and I could not help blushing. It seemed clear he intended some reference to the advantage his odious son Nelson would ultimately derive from my childlessness. "Thank God I married a robust woman."

"Barrington, please!" objected Susannah.

"I'm complimenting you, madam," he retorted with a smirk.

"How is dear Nelson?" I enquired, well knowing that the infrequency of his letters was the despair of his mother. "I have heard so little of his exploits since my arrival."

"His schoolmasters seem pleased enough," was Barrington's grudging reply.

"How proud you must be of him." The sentiment was genuine. I

imagined Barrington would indeed be proud of a son who was maturing as rapidly as Nelson was into a prig and a bully.

"Nelson's a fiery little fellow," said Barrington, a paternal gleam lighting his eye. "He has the Esguard up-an'-at-'em."

"How gratifying." And now it was my turn to give a disingenuous smile.

I sustained the cut-and-thrust of our conversation all the way to Weston, calculating that it would encourage Barrington to be rid of me. So it proved. His expression as he helped me down from the barouche outside the church suggested that his subservience to Jose's whims was being sorely tested.

I watched them pass out of sight along the road into Bath before approaching Miss Gathercole's cottage, one of a terrace adjacent to the churchyard. Her insistence, conveyed at a whist party three nights previously, that I should take tea with her could indeed have been the desperation of the lonely. I had detected some greater significance to it, however, some depth of meaning which spoke of an altogether more subtle and perceptive character than Barrington and Susannah believed her to possess. It scarcely mattered if I was wrong. This interval of liberty would be a joy, however I spent it.

The door was answered not by Miss Gathercole herself, nor yet by some maid-of-all-work, but by a stockily built fellow in a pea-jacket. He had a broken nose, a scar over his right eyebrow and swollen knuckles. He also had a direct and challenging manner that marked him as neither servant nor gentleman. "Would you be Mrs. Esguard?" he asked before I could get out a word.

"I would, yes."

"Step inside, ma'am. You're expected."

A short, narrow passage, which he seemed more or less to fill, led to the rear of the cottage. A door to his right, towards which he extended his hand, gave on to a small sitting room, in which I could see Miss Gathercole in a chair by the crackling fire, smiling at me in welcome. As I stepped into the room, I realized that someone was sitting in the chair on the farther side of the fire. He rose as I entered and bowed towards me. For a second I hardly dared believe the evidence of my eyes. My astonishment must have been apparent, for

Mr. Byfield gave me a warm and reassuring smile before stepping forward to take my hand.

"I cannot tell you how good it is to see you again, Mrs. Esguard," he said. "I can only hope that you know without the need for me to say."

"It is an inestimable pleasure for me, too, Mr. Byfield," I responded.

"That is fortunate," put in Miss Gathercole, as she rose and joined us in the middle of the room, 'since I find that I have to leave you for a while. I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Esguard." She smiled at me like the kindest and most indulgent of dimple-cheeked aunts. "You have happened to arrive just as I am compelled to attend to urgent business elsewhere. I trust you will excuse me."

"Yes. Why, yes, of course, Miss Gathercole."

"Mr. Byfield will, I am sure, entertain you in my absence."

"Rest assured I'll do my best."

"May I take Poulter for the fetching and carrying?"

"Please do. And work him hard, Emily. He's like a horse too long in the stable at present. All huff and no puff."

Miss Gathercole laughed and went out, closing the door behind her. I saw her pass by the window a moment later, accompanied by the barrel-chested Mr. Poulter.

"I am no stranger to Bath, Marian," said Mr. Byfield, detecting the puzzlement in my gaze. "Emily and I are old friends. Your brother-in-law probably regards her as a person of no consequence."

"Yes, he does."

"So people of unsuspected depths often appear to the shallow and foolish."

I smiled. "I feel sure that is true. And Mr. Poulter?"

"A retired pugilist whose services I have had need of these past months."

"Why, pray?"

"Because your husband has set some dubious folk on me, against whom I have been obliged to protect myself."

"He has done whatT My grasp on his hand tightened. "Lawrence, I had no inkling of this. I thought your departure from Tollard Rising was sufficient for Jose's purposes. Had I realized he meant to I broke off and stared at him, aware, as he must have been, of the tension between us that communicated more certainly than any words the strength of our mutual attraction.

"Had you realized, you might have written to me? Is that what you were about to say?"

"I did not write because .. . there was nothing you could do for me."

"There is nothing I would not do for you."

"You cannot un marry me."

"Has Jose not done that already, Marian, in the only sense that truly matters?"

"I am pledged to him in the sight of God."

"As he is to you. But can you stand here and tell me he has honoured his vows?"

"No," I replied in scarcely more than a murmur. "I cannot."

"Just as I cannot stand here and tell you I do not love you."

"Lawrence, I '

"Do you love me, Marian?"

A silence fell. We looked at each other and I saw in his face the mirror image of a passion I had sought too long to deny. "Yes," I said, nodding in slow and certain acknowledgement of the truth of what I was about to declare. "I do love you."

He took me in his arms at that and kissed me, as I wanted him to, as I would not, for all the world, have had him do other than. "I will not let us be apart any longer," he whispered as he held me. "I will not let you renounce our love."

"I could not renounce it, Lawrence. Not now."

"I have been in hell these past months."

"I too."

"Then let us make a heaven for ourselves."

"How can we?"

"We will go abroad. I am a man of modest but independent means. We will not starve."

"I should not care if we did. So long as we starved together."

He laughed. "You are a brave woman, Marian."

"That is not what people will say of me."

"Do you care what they will say?"

"Once I would have done. But no longer."

"I hate the thought of Jose so much as touching you."

"If we go quickly, he never will again."

"Emily tells me you are to attend the ball at Midford Grange on

Thursday."

"Susannah has spoken of it, yes."

"That will give me time to arrange a passage to the Continent from Bristol. I shall send Poulter with a phaeton to wait for you at the house. He will go unnoticed among the other drivers. It should be a simple matter for you to meet me, and we can travel on together. We will be long gone before Jose hears of it, you may be sure."

"Can it be so easily accomplished?"

' If you are willing to depart with nothing but the gown you wear to the ball, I believe it can."

"So long as I depart with you, Lawrence, I am willing to relinquish all material possessions."

"You will have to relinquish your good name also, Marian. Remember that. They will call you an adulteress."

"I do not care." All the pretence and misery Jose had forced upon me stood renounced in that instant. In admitting my love for Lawrence Byfield, I was taking a step into the unknown. And I was rejoicing as I did so. "I am yours," I declared, returning his ever more frantic kisses. "Body and soul."

"Emily and Poulter will not be back ... for an hour at least."

"Nor need I be ... at Bentinck Place."

"One hour, then." He stared deeply into my eyes. "As a foretaste of all the hours to come."

"Yes." I smiled at him. "Let it be so."

And it was so. He took me up to a small room beneath the eaves of the cottage, where a fire was burning. There, as the November afternoon greyed towards dusk, I gave myself to him as I had never, from the very first, given myself to my lawful wedded husband. There was passion where before there had only ever been brutality. There was love and all the physical fruits of it compressed into an hour. I had often dreamed how such things would be between two people joined in tender consent. To learn the answer was to clasp a magical truth and to glimpse the emptiness of Jose's soul. All the forced serving girls and hired whores in the world would fail him in this. He could never know what Lawrence Byfield showed me that afternoon: the rapture of giving and receiving; the bliss of union, as like the angels in heaven as the beasts in the field.

I left the cottage while our enigmatic hostess was still absent and walked slowly up across Sion Hill towards Bentinck Place, composing myself as I went and praying there was nothing in my manner or appearance to betray the convulsion of my emotions. For three days more, I would have to act the part of Barrington and Susannah's reluctant and oppressed house guest. Then freedom and happiness would be mine. It was not long to wait, though it seemed an eternity. It was hardly any time at all, set against

And just like that, as abruptly as an interrupted sentence, I came to myself as Eris again. I was most of the way across High Common, with the foreshortened arc of the house fronts of Bentinck Place already in sight. I stopped in my tracks, frozen by panic and confusion. How had I got there? What was I doing? I stumbled to a nearby bench and sat down, breathing shallowly and sweating despite the chill of the morning. I looked at my watch and saw it was nearly noon. More than three hours had passed since I'd got out of the car: three hours and quite a few miles. I must have walked into Bath without realizing it. I certainly felt tired enough to have done so. Of course, I had realized it in a sense. The ride in the barouche and the stop at Weston were crystal clear in my mind. It wasn't like remembering a dream. It was actually the opposite. Sitting there on that bench, I felt like a dreamer aware they're dreaming, aware of the waking world they can return to if they simply open their eyes. It took no effort. The effort was all the other way.

But Bath was a dangerous place for Eris Moberly to be. That much I knew. The truth of it was something to grasp and hold on to. I had to get away. The longer I remained, the greater the chance, remote though it logically was, of encountering Niall Esguard. Perhaps it was approaching Bentinck Place that had shocked me out of the fugue. I decided to head for the railway station. I'd be able to get a taxi there. I got up and began walking fast downhill, across Weston Road and on through the park below the Royal Crescent to Queen Square. There was a slow-moving queue of traffic along the north side of the square, and I stood at the edge of the pavement, waiting to cross. For a second, I looked up at the elegant buildings around me. It really was no more than that a momentary lessening in my concentration. But it was enough. The noise of the traffic ceased, the cars vanished and the square was quiet and empty. Nothing moved. Nothing told me for a fact what I knew for a certainty. This was Bath as it had once been. And I, too, was as I had once been.

"Mrs. Moberly?" I heard somebody say. Fear gripped me with transforming force. I turned, the world reverting around me to the present as I knew it. And there, in front of me, was Montagu Quisden-Neve, muffled up in an overcoat and fedora, with a red-and-white polka-dot bow tie lurking garishly in the shadow of his upturned collar. He treated me to his faintly lecherous man-of-the-world smile. "Upon my soul, it is Mrs. Moberly. What are you doing in Bath, my dear?"