Ginny (15 page)

He rather gruffly suggested an early night. Once again Ginny snuggled down among the rugs and quilts on the hearth, and once again Lord Gerald doubled his long legs up on the settle and tried to close his eyes.

He looked down at Ginny and found she was staring up at him, wide-eyed, and with an unreadable expression on her face.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

Ginny sighed. “If this were a book,” she said, putting her still bandaged hands behind her head, “it would all be so romantic.”

Lord Gerald firmly closed his eyes.

“I mean,” Ginny went on in the same placid voice, “it is just as well we feel no attraction for each other, or the situation would be quite agonizing.”

Lord Gerald pretended to snore.

“And furthermore,” added Ginny, “can you imagine if it were Peter Paster here or someone like that instead of you… ?”

Gerald never knew quite what happened except that he was suddenly seized with a fit of the most terrible temper. Hadn’t he behaved like a gentleman all day? Hadn’t he slaved like a scullery maid to clean the kitchen while she snored her stupid head off?

With a great effort he said, through his teeth, “I am not Peter and I am too tired to get involved in one of your stupid discussions about romance, so go to sleep.”

“All right,” said Ginny. And she did!

Gerald simply couldn’t believe it. He uncoiled himself from the settle and knelt down on the floor beside her. His collar dug into him and he started to remove it. Why should he worry about the conventions when she was not awake to notice how politely he slept in all the discomfort of a dirty shirt. He then removed his shirt with a sigh of relief and threw it onto the settle opposite.

Ginny opened her eyes. Lord Gerald was kneeling over her in his vest and trousers, the flickering shadows from the fire playing along the gold hairs on his muscular arms. They looked at each other for what seemed like a long time, Ginny, wide-eyed and wondering, and Lord Gerald, hard and tense, crouched in the firelight.

Then she raised one of her bandaged hands and lightly touched his neck.

All hell broke loose inside Lord Gerald de Fremney.

He pulled her up into his arms and fastened his lips on hers, deeper and harder, crushing her against him, his senses swirling and throbbing until only one thought, one mad desire burned in his brain, and that was to quench this terrible burning passion that Ginny was able to arouse by a mere touch of her hand.

Sometime later, when his heart had stopped thudding and a glimmering of sense came back, he smoothed her hair back from her brow and tenderly kissed her mouth. “I’m sorry, Ginny,” he said quickly. “It should not have been like that.”

And the infuriating Miss Bloggs smiled up at him in the firelight and murmured, “Really? You must show me what it should have been like.”

“Like this,” he whispered, bending to her mouth again and slowly and carefully beginning to remove all the articles of clothing that had not been removed before. The wind howled and moaned outside, and the logs in the fire sputtered and cracked, and there were only the black beetles to watch the ancient naked dance of the two bodies on the floor.

“You’re very bruised,” said Lord Gerald as the white-and-red light of dawn crept across the floor. “Was that me?”

“No, darling,” smiled Ginny. “The fall from the carriage.”

“You have a great bruise just here, rather like the map of India. I shall kiss it better….”

Mr. Figgs often said in later years that he had never been so well looked after in his life. “They didn’t even allow me to set a foot out of bed,” he had said proudly, “and Miss, she even read to me. And they paid handsome for their board when they left.”

A freakish warm wind came dancing over the English Channel on the third day, turning the white carpet of snow into slush and flooding the fields.

Lord Gerald struggled back into his shirt, which Ginny had washed, and helped her into her stays and then fastened up all the tiny buttons at the back of her dinner gown with thin, sensitive fingers that itched to unbutton them all again.

Gerald planned to walk for help, leaving Ginny at the inn after warning her not to unbolt the door until she heard the sound of his voice.

He went into the kitchen to make some tea first and, while he filled the kettle, he found a nasty questioning voice had entered his brain.
You’ll have to marry her now, won’t you?
said the voice.
Walked neatly into that little trap, didn’t you?
He resolutely fought the voice down, made the tea, put cups and saucers on the tray, and returned to where Ginny was sitting by the fire, looking pensively at the flames.

He poured out tea and as Ginny made no remark, he said in a voice with a sharp edge to it, “I’m getting quite domesticated.”

“Yes,” said Ginny. She looked up at him and her gaze seemed disconcertingly penetrating and shrewd. In a second it had vanished, leaving her eyes completely blank. She fiddled with her teaspoon and then there was silence. Not Ginny’s usual placid silence but a silence stretched taught, an atmosphere of waiting.

Lord Gerald finished his tea and stood up. He had better propose and get it over with.

“I say, Ginny,” he remarked casually. “I suppose I had better marry you. I mean, in the circumstances, that is…”

“I don’t see why,” said Ginny.

“
What?
” Lord Gerald was outraged. “If I did not have first-hand evidence that you were a virgin, dear girl, I would begin to suspect your morals. Of course we’ve got to get married
now.
It’s the done thing!”

“There is no need for anyone but us to know what has happened,” said Ginny calmly. “You may return to your bachelor pursuits. You will soon find someone to replace Alicia.”

“Has all this time we spent together meant nothing to you?” he raged.

Ginny turned her face away. “I have already pointed out that you are under no obligation to marry me,” she said in a flat, dead voice. “Now,
are
you going to find help or do I have to do it?”

He went out and slammed the door.

It was several miles hard walking before he stopped shaking with anger. It was several more before he could calmly review what he had said. He was on the outskirts of Gyrencester before he realized he had not said he loved her.

And with a sickening, lost feeling, he realized that he did!

The police failed to find any trace of Ginny’s abductor. The telegraph boy had said a large gent had met him in the driveway of Courtney and had taken the telegram and then given him that famous sovereign. He couldn’t describe him rightly, because he had been wearing a long coat to his heels, a cap down over his eyes, and a muffler across his face and his voice had sounded funny.

Ginny had removed herself and most of her household to town. Although some months had passed, Lord Gerald could still remember his last painful interview with her in the stuffy little estate office at Courtney. He had tried to point out that his honor as a gentleman was at stake. He was not in the habit of seducing virgins. It was her
duty
to marry him. And Ginny had just stood there as empty-eyed and lifeless as a china doll. He was about to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her when she had suddenly walked from the room, and by the time he had gathered his wits and had gone to look for her, she was nowhere to be found.

He was so humiliated and angry, he decided he did not care for her one bit and the very next day he would ride over and show her so. But the next day she had left for London and had promptly hedged herself about with a round of social calls and activities and he was never to see her alone, even for a minute.

As Ginny flirted and danced with one eligible man after the other, his hopes died. The charming, warm, and passionate Ginny, he decided, only existed in his mind. He had been tricked by the snow and the storm and the firelight. She was as silly and empty-headed as he had always believed her to be. He prided himself on a narrow escape and returned, brooding, to his country home. If he thought of her at all during that long winter it was to hope that someone
would
murder her.

One warm May day when the dog daisies danced on the green banks and the purple clover carpeted the meadows he looked across to Courtney and saw spirals of smoke rising up from the tall chimneys. She was back!

He worked harder than ever on his estates, burying himself in agriculture and manual labor so that he might fall into an exhausted and dreamless sleep each night.

He was just beginning to tire of this monkish existence when he received an invitation from Lady George. The gilt-edged card was accompanied by a letter informing his lordship that Lady George’s “duveen” niece was staying with her and was absolutely the prettiest thing imaginable. Lady George wanted the ball in honor of her niece, Mary, to be a great success and would Lord Gerald please attend, although little dickey birds had told her he never went anywhere these days.

He looked at it thoughtfully and then across the sunny fields to where the tall chimneys of Courtney rose above the trees.

He would go, he decided. He was sure Ginny would not be there. He had a longing to dance with a pretty girl and be feted and petted by their hopeful mamas.

He sent a warm letter of acceptance and felt the first pleasurable thrill of anticipation he had experienced since his nights at the inn with Ginny.

He endowed Lady George’s niece, Mary, with all the beauty and charms of perfect womanhood. He would marry her, he would invite Ginny to the wedding, and he would smile into her empty eyes and tell her how happy he was. He might make some laughing little reference to their time at the inn to show her that it had meant nothing to him.

The days before the ball passed quickly and the evening of the great event soon arrived. He dressed with unusual care, pulling his white gloves over his hands, which were callused like a laborers’ by the hard work during the winter and early spring.

His servants smiled their approval to see their master once more behaving as fitted his position in life instead of grubbing among the turnips.

His new Lanchester purred along the lanes in the twilight toward Lady George’s mansion. The air was warm and sweet and full of the scent of growing things. Tiny new leaves arched across the road, spreading their black lace against the darkening sky. It was as if the whole of nature had fallen asleep and was breathing deeply and evenly—the faint mist that was beginning to rise from the fields, her gentle breath.

He found himself relaxing and the nagging empty feeling he had been carrying around inside him for months began to recede.

As he drove up the winding drive of Lady George’s mansion he could hear the strains of music mingled with laughter.

Soon he had deposited his coat and was mounting the red-carpeted steps to the ballroom, breathing in the familiar smell of an English country house ball: hothouse flowers, beeswax, woodsmoke, and dog.

He shook hands and bowed to Lady George, who was receiving the guests, and then turned to be presented to her niece, Mary. A big ox-like girl grinned up at him from under a heavy fringe of dull-brown hair. A small light-brown mustache graced her upper lip, and her mouth was very full and red. He had a sudden urge to turn and flee, but instead he murmured politely that he hoped to have the pleasure of a dance with Miss Mary, adding hopefully that he was sure her dance card was already full. No, it wasn’t, said Mary with a great horse laugh. She was a regular farmyard this girl, thought Gerald bitterly as he wrote his name in her card with its little silver pencil.

He escaped into the ballroom, nodding and bowing to various familiar faces. He escaped to the champagne bar and joined the group of chattering young men who were fortifying themselves against the night ahead and discussing shooting, hunting, and military pursuits as if the female half of the race did not exist. Lord Gerald would like to have chatted about farming with someone but there was no one who seemed interested. He felt old and depressed and began to wonder whether he might be a bourgeois manqué.

He thought he heard the announcement, “Miss Bloggs,” but he immediately realized he must have been imagining things. Bloggs was such a ridiculous name anyway, a lump of a name, a common name. Still, it would do no harm to saunter to the ballroom and just look in.

Ginny was standing at the entrance to the ballroom, followed by Barbara and Tansy, who were looking as if they had just found out that the slipper did not fit. Barbara was bristling with silk and lace and feathers and looked like a dumpy self-important pouter pigeon. Tansy was thin and angular in tight purple georgette, and was wearing a pottery necklace that had obviously been hand-thrown in the studios of Bloomsbury, to judge from its knobby appearance and acid colors.

Cyril and Jeffrey brought up the rear, both magnificent in impeccably tailored evening dress.

Ginny stood bowing and smiling around and was quickly surrounded by a court of admirers, both male and female. He was surprised to notice that Ginny appeared to have become a great social success. But then was it so surprising? She had looks and a fortune and had already built up a reputation for herself as a hostess. Her eyes were vague and her smile empty and meaningless and Gerald sighed as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Despite the exquisite lines of her sapphire-blue dress and the magnificent diamonds that sparkled at her ears, her face was silly and empty and he could have laughed aloud from sheer relief.

He had thought of her and dreamed of her too much, he realized, until he had forgotten what the original looked like.

He turned his attentions to the other ladies present, noticing for the first time what a lot of pretty girls there were around, and endured his dance with Miss Mary with charming fortitude.

But as the evening went on and Ginny was constantly surrounded by admirers either on the floor or off, he began to experience the first nagging pangs of pique. She had not once looked in his direction or had given any sign that she was aware he existed. But why should she bother even though she had lain passionately in his arms? She had not been found out, and in this new and often shocking Edwardian society, which was kicking up its heels with a vengeance after the death of Queen Victoria, to be found out was the only crime.