Dorothy Eden (18 page)

Beatrice recognised the stubborn note in his voice. But she also thought she detected deep uneasiness beneath his determination. She knew him all too well. He hated trouble. He so much preferred the easy path. His troubled frown showed that he was well aware of what was ahead of him if he stuck to his noble principles. A hole in corner life with a woman he was not free to marry, a child born out of wedlock, poverty, being ostracised by his friends and asked to resign from his clubs, the permanent loss of his luxurious travels abroad.

Not to mention that he would probably be dead in five years of chronic bronchitis.

She simply could not allow these terrible things to happen to her gentle, sensitive, adorable, faithless husband. She would fight every step of the way, and she had all the weapons.

Except love…

And the agony of his white face tearing at her.

She had to win, but she knew that she was willing to make almost any concession to ease his pain.

Actually, her logical mind had already realised that there was only one concession possible. The enormity of it appalled her. Would she be capable of making it? She must speak quickly, before cowardice kept her silent.

“Now listen, both of you. This is a deplorable situation, but it isn’t irretrievable. There’s one practical thing we can do to avoid a scandal and protect the child. You and I, William, must adopt it. No, more than that.” She was improvising as the fantastic scheme grew in her mind. “It must
be
our child.”

Miss Medway was as still as a ghost, listening. But William’s chin had a stubborn implacable tilt.

“Bea, you’re a famous organiser, we all know that, but you can’t give birth to another woman’s child.”

“Of course I can’t. However, I could seem to. And it wouldn’t be the first time this sort of thing has been done.” (
Though surely only by women who love their errant husbands beyond all reason
… ) “We would have to go abroad, to begin with.”

“We?”

“Miss Medway and I. Everyone knows I have difficult pregnancies. It wouldn’t be so strange if my doctor suggested that I spent the last three months abroad in a quiet pension in Switzerland, or Italy. It would be quite simple, really.”

“Bea, you can’t be serious?”

“Indeed I can.” She met his incredulous gaze sadly. “You speak of love. I speak of love, too. If this would make you happier, the child would be born an Overton. Because you simply must understand that I will never divorce you.”

William made no answer. He stood rigid in his dilemma, and only came to life when Miss Medway suddenly broke into noisy sobbing. Then he put his arm round her again, tenderly, and rested his lips on her hair.

He had no shame, Beatrice thought furiously, nor any thought for her feelings. It was only this wretched Mary Medway whose feelings must be protected. This girl who had seduced him with a red ribbon tied in her hair, with her Chopin ballades, her soft voice…

“If I am not to leave here tonight, neither is Mary,” William said at last, quite mildly.

Beatrice nodded.

“I agree. If we’re going to give this scheme serious consideration, Miss Medway will need to be in the house for another two months. She must get some fuller gowns, and so must I. What a pity the fashion for crinolines has gone out. They were such a wonderful camouflage.”

“You want everything, Mrs Overton! Everything!” Miss Medway burst out with sudden passionate spirit.

“I can assure you I don’t want this situation,” Beatrice retorted.

“Then don’t stand in our way,” William begged. “Have a little compassion.”

“Compassion!” Beatrice exclaimed. “Gad, I can’t stand any more of this. Would you prefer to find some old crone in the back streets of Paddington, with a knitting needle?”

“
Bea
!”

“Well, don’t you both deserve that remark? Isn’t it more practical than high-flown words like compassion? I assure you I have plenty of compassion for deserving people. But just at this minute, it’s too much to ask of me.”

So the long night had to be lived through. Did she lose her husband, or did she acquire another and very unwelcome child?

And what about poor Mary Medway? Poor, indeed! The sin was hers, she must suffer.

All the same, who could resist William at his most beguiling? He had never had to beguile her his wife because she had fallen too readily into his arms.

Perhaps that was the trouble.

But at some time, in the long vista of the years ahead, he would seek her anxiously and lovingly. Time would achieve this desirable state.

She had to cling to this long-held belief. Otherwise her life would be a desert, an emptiness, a null and void state, a bankruptcy, which simply did not bear contemplating.

At eleven o’clock Hawkins tapped at her bedroom door.

“I didn’t ring for you,” Beatrice said.

“No, ma’am, but Annie said you hardly touched your dinner. I was wondering if you were feeling poorly.”

The anxious devoted face was too faithful to be dismissed. One had to appreciate faithfulness, above all.

“I’ve had a worrying day, Hawkins, that’s all. I think I need a holiday.”

“Oh, ma’am, you do. We were only saying below stairs the other day—”

Beatrice cut that off sharply. “I hope you were not gossiping.”

“Oh, no, ma’am. We were only anxious about you, working so hard.”

“Well, then, you’ll be pleased to hear that I am contemplating a long holiday.”

“I’m so glad, ma’am.”

“But only contemplating. I may think better of it in the morning.”

“For your sake, ma’am, I hope you don’t.”

How would Bonnington’s survive without her for three months? It would have to, that was all. She would have three idle months abroad in which to write long letters to Adam Cope and Miss Brown, and that very young man, James Brush, who was so clever at window dressing. She would tell him to do an elaborate maternity window, ha ha! He would do so, anyway, she suspected. If the birth of royalty was to be commemorated, surely the birth of a child to the owner of Bonnington’s deserved the same attention.

All this fuss would be made for a little bastard who was to grow up an Overton and probably be the most successful soldier of them all! Would the old General approve of her action? She rather thought so. Strategy, he would say. But give the child a sensible upbringing. Stamp out any weaknesses it might inherit from that governess who was not even one of his pretty nosegays, but just a common brown sparrow.

Which made it all the more humiliating…

Towards morning Beatrice thought she heard the sound of a piano playing, but that must have been imagination for dawn was breaking. Apart from that dream-filled doze she had been awake all night.

She rang for Hawkins at her usual time and handed her a letter she had just written.

“Tell Dixon to deliver this to Mr Cope,” she said. “I won’t be going in to the shop today.”

“Ma’am, you are sick!”

“No, I am not, Hawkins! I have simply decided to take a day at home to attend to my wardrobe.”

“Your wardrobe, ma’am? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, except that I seem to be putting on weight. I want to decide what gowns can be let out.”

She saw the flicker in Hawkins’ eyes, and knew the hint had registered. In no time at all, there would be whispers below stairs.

Lord, I am like that old Tudor Queen Mary with her false pregnancies, and just about as unhappy…

Though whether she could conceal the real truth from Hawkins with her sharp devoted eyes was another matter.

An hour later William knocked at her bedroom door, and with a formality that was one more wound in her vulnerable breast, asked permission to come in.

He didn’t approach the bed where she was propped against pillows finishing her breakfast. He stood at the window with his back to her, and said wryly, “Have you begun the first act already, Bea?”

“The sooner the better. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.” His head was bent, his voice almost inaudible. “Mary has finally persuaded me. She spent all night doing it. It’s for the child, she says. She knows you’re a good mother.”

“And you a good father,” Beatrice said evenly.

“What the devil does that matter!”

“It matters a lot.” She was terribly afraid he was crying. “William, Mary’s right. This is the best way. Indeed, it’s the only way, because, believe me, I wouldn’t be happy to see a child of yours lost.”

“Oh, blast the child!” he muttered. “You might as well know, Bea, that even though it seems I have to lose her, I’ll never stop loving Mary.”

“You think so now—”

He lifted his head, showing the embarrassing tears on his cheeks.

“I’ll think so until the end of my life. I love her, Bea. Don’t you understand the meaning of that word?”

“Yes. I understand it.”

“Well, it’s something there won’t be much of in this house in the future,” he said, and abruptly left the room.

T
HEIR UNAVOIDABLE INTIMACY BEGAN
in their cabin on board the Channel steamer. With a sigh of relief Beatrice undid her skirts and flung off the padding she had been wearing round her waist. Instantly she felt light and slim, as if she had indeed given birth to a baby.

Miss Medway, on the other hand, could now lose her modesty and show the bulge in her stomach as much as she pleased. For the last month Beatrice had insisted that she did not leave the house, that she wear voluminous skirts and shawls to conceal her increasing size, and that apart from giving Florence and Edwin their morning lessons in the nursery and making an appearance at dinner at night (this last merely in order to avoid servants’ gossip) she kept to her room.

She could occupy herself usefully with sewing and knitting for the baby. She was a beautiful needlewoman, and Beatrice acknowledged that this infant would be more exquisitely dressed than either of her own had been. The story told to Hawkins and relayed to the rest of the staff was that Miss Medway was proving so useful that Beatrice had chosen her for a sympathetic companion during her exile abroad.

Exile was a funny word to use. She could see the faint bewilderment in Hawkins’ eyes.

“Any time spent away from my family is exile,” she said.

How much Hawkins guessed she didn’t know. The dear creature was so loyal it didn’t really matter if she did guess, except that Beatrice would never get over the pain of admitting her husband’s infidelity. She wished that no one in the world needed to know about that.

One person, however, had had to be taken into her confidence. Miss Brown.

No one but she could organise the clever padding to wear over Beatrice’s stomach, and discreetly acquire the disguising garments for Miss Medway. Also, plans had to be made for her absence from the shop, and only Miss Brown with her sharp eyes and forbidding manner could quell possible gossip. Finally, Beatrice would never have succeeded in deceiving so old a friend, and one so full of anger on her behalf.

“That little slut!” she had hissed on hearing the disastrous story. “Oh, poor Miss Beatrice!”

She never said a word against William, a fact for which Beatrice was grateful. Though what she thought privately was another matter. She had always made it clear that she considered no man worthy of Miss Beatrice. Indeed, she hadn’t too high an opinion of men in general, and this episode only served to prove how right she was.

The last eight weeks had been the longest and most difficult in Beatrice’s life. She had found long ago that the only way to cope with mental perturbation and anxiety was to keep endlessly busy, even with the most trivial things. So, although she had to curtail her time at the shop in order to give credence to the story that her health was indifferent, she filled in the long hours at home with setting out in detail new plans for Bonnington’s, with adding accounts, with sorting out clothes, with discussions with Cook and the gardeners, and with interviewing applicants for the post of nursery governess. A plain girl, this time. A good sensible unimaginative creature who would bore William on sight. For one had to be realistic about this hazard even though she was certain William would never allow himself to get into such an embarrassing situation again.

He was too susceptible, that was all.

She had already forgiven him for Miss Medway, and had told him so.

“When I come back from Italy, everything will be the same as it always was,” she had said in the forthright brisk manner she used to hide emotion.

“Hardly.” He scarcely spoke to her nowadays, but he had to make some acknowledgment of this apparently unwanted generosity.

“But it will be, because I haven’t stopped loving you,” she said earnestly. His haggard and haunted appearance had been giving her the greatest anxiety.

His lips quirked, though not in a smile.

“Haven’t you? One day I expect you’ll add up these things against me.”

“Will you care if I do?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was flat, indifferent. “I suppose I will. I like to be loved. That’s my trouble.”

It was a crumb of comfort to which she clung.

Florence’s and Edwin’s lamentations were another thing.

“Mamma, Miss Medway won’t take us for walks on the Heath any more. Why won’t she?”

“Because Lizzie is perfectly capable of taking you.”

“But we’d rather have Miss Medway, Mamma. Edwin hates Lizzie. So do I, rather.”

“You must simply make the best of her, my darlings, because Miss Medway is coming to Italy with me.”

“But
why
? Why are you so unkind to us?”

Florence was becoming a nagging child. Beatrice had to speak sharply to her, and then was remorseful when Florence winced, and her face closed. Now she was in danger of making an enemy of her daughter.

What that deceitful governess had to answer for!

Finally, William had said a polite goodbye as she had stood in the hall surrounded by luggage. His lips had barely brushed her cheek. What form his farewell of Miss Medway had taken, she didn’t know.

She doubted if he had smiled since the day he had agreed to what he now privately called her monstrous plan. His haggard look had increased and his eyes showed a deep sadness that sometimes made her shiver, fearful that it would be there forever.