Lady Hathaway's House Party (3 page)

Belle had a sharp feeling of resentment at this proprietary gesture. If he wasn’t willing to admit to being her beau, he shouldn’t take the freedoms of one. Anyone watching them—as they probably all were, through the curtains—would certainly take him for her lover. Yet he had been availing himself of her arm at his pleasure for a few months now, and she had not resented it before today. She had even felt a certain peace, a tranquility at his attentions.

It had been good to get home to Easthill and lick her wounds after that disastrous season in London. It had been easy to slip back into the old ways, with the old people, and pretend the nightmare had never taken place. But here at Ashbourne with the nightmare people she realized the past could not be forgotten as though it had never been. There were indelible reminders that must be dealt with. There was her damnable new name, and there was Oliver—safe at Belwood, thank God, but there, alive and her legal husband, and really Arnold had—
she
had—no right to behave as though she were single again, only because she wanted to be.

But she didn’t, she suddenly realized, want to be young, naive Belle Anderson again. She wanted to know what she knew now, and have a fair chance. Yes, she wanted to pit herself against that pack of wolves in London and outwit them. She had been so hopelessly unprepared when she went there, a romantic young girl with dreams of a handsome lord meeting her, and falling in love, and marrying her. But really that was more or less what
had
happened, she thought, and frowned. It was almost like the traditional fairy tale, except for the happy ever after.

There had certainly been none of that. Hardly a single happy day after the marriage. Oliver, so charming and gallant a suitor, had become a very difficult husband to understand. He had changed, not gradually over a period of time, but almost overnight. When they were courting he used to laugh rather fondly at her country habits, and quiz her she lacked polish, but after the wedding the fondness was gone, and only the jibes remained. “Surely you’re not wearing that hat?” he would inquire with a lifted brow as she dressed to go out. But it was the self-same hat she had worn before her marriage, with no disparagement of its style.

“My dear, go to see the Tower of London?” he had goggled in amazement when she suggested it. Her first visit to London, naturally she wanted to see the sights she had always heard of. But she didn’t see them with her husband. He was off to his clubs and his boxing parlor and to other pursuits of pleasure best not remembered, and she got about as best she could, with the friends he had chosen for her first, till she came to realize how much she hated them, and then she found a small circle of her own.

Her love, and she had loved him once, was transformed first to pain and doubt, a feeling that
she
was doing something wrong. She was not pleasing him, but she hadn’t changed. He had known when he married her she was no city bird, but a country girl who enjoyed the simple things. No, it was he who had changed. Not that he had ill-treated her; he was always civil and polite and generous to an unwanted degree. Nothing seemed to ruffle him much, except that her little lack of polish might be a subject for laughter by the ton.

That appeared to mean a great deal to him, what people would think. He deported himself always with the greatest decorum. He was polite to everyone, including herself. He must have the most polished manners in London, and the least real feelings. His gifts—costly, elaborate things—were given with the same polite detachment that he might hold a door open for a lady. Ridiculously rich gowns, even a sable-lined cape in late May—so unsuitable, so lacking in thought and appropriateness. Bracelets, rings and an endless stream of baubles, a “trifle” every time she turned around. What was she supposed to do with so much stuff in bad taste? For the fact was, Oliver’s taste did not coincide with her own. She was young, she liked simple things, but his gifts were invariably designed for a Junoesque dasher. She sometimes felt she had married a jewelry merchant, a man who was away all day every day, and usually half the night as well. All she had from him was the product he dealt in, but nothing of himself. Was she to live unhappily ever after?

Chapter Three

Avondale spent the night at Wimborne with his Hasborough relations, and proceeded on towards Ashbourne in the morning. The road took him northeast. At Eastleigh he stopped for lunch, and though he ate only half a partridge pie, the meal took over two hours. He needed no map to tell him he was twenty miles from Ashbourne. He regularly made Kay’s place an overnight stop on his way between London and Belwood, in Dorset. He needed no map either to tell him he was less than twenty-five miles from Belle’s home outside Amesbury.

Prior to his marriage, Belwood had been his lodestar. It was from Belwood that he calculated the distance to Scotland or London or Cornwall. If he was at Derby for the races or at Brighton for sailing or at York for politics he carried at the back of his mind how far he was from home, and how long it would take him to get there. There was no exigent business awaiting him that made a dash home a likely thing. He had an excellent bailiff, a steward and housekeeper, and no infirm relative likely to take a turn for the worse. He was free to go where
he pleased and stay as long as he pleased, but when your family has called Belwood home for over five hundred years, it cannot help but become the focus of your existence.

Since his marriage, however, and more particularly since his separation, he found himself computing not only the miles and hours to Belwood, but also the miles and hours to Easthill. And now he was halfway, more or less, between Ashbourne and Easthill, and so he sat over his ale, running in his mind first one way, then the other.

He knew (he thought) what awaited him at Ashbourne. Kay’s parties were always amusing. She had mentioned Raffles, and it would be interesting to hear him. Quite an authority on the East. It would get a few days in. Getting the long days in had become a burdensome task the last months, and with good company and a well-run home to beguile him, he was tempted toward Ashbourne. He was on his way to London, and had said he would attend her party— perhaps she had counted on him to round out her numbers. Kay ran a pretty tight ship.

A year ago he would not have considered
not
showing up at a house party to which he had promised himself. He was quite severe about manners and social duties in those days, but he had become somewhat lax, without being aware of it. In his mind the map of England was spread out before him, and Amesbury seemed to grow larger the longer he sat over his ale, till at last all roads led to Amesbury, and via Amesbury to Easthill.

He would have to go sooner or later. Foolish to keep putting it off, thinking she would come back of her own accord. She had been gone ten months, with never a word. Gone home for a week’s rest from the season, and never come back, nor honored her husband with so much as two lines scrawled on a piece of paper. She hadn’t even said goodbye, but gone home a day earlier than she had said, setting out in late afternoon instead of waiting for the morning. The last conversation he had had with her they had decided on her departure in the morning, and she hadn’t even given any explanation to the servants to be relayed to him. Nothing—she just left.

The next thing he heard from her was a letter from her solicitor desiring an interview to finalize details of the separation. He still couldn’t believe it. After ten months of living with it, the thing still seemed totally incredible. How did a brand-new wife who had been treated with the greatest respect and generosity, had been treated in fact like the duchess
he
had made her, dare to serve him such a trick?

Avondale was proud, and he was short-tempered, but no one had ever said he was unjust, and it was the injustice of it that he believed to be uppermost in his mind. Whether he was such a strict moralist that injustice should make his heart thud angrily might have been a moot point to his friends, but to himself he put no other construction but injustice on his anger. No one had the right to treat anyone with such contempt as that, and when the perpetrator was your own wife, a little country bumpkin that you had chosen to elevate to your own more lofty social position, it became an infamy. It was intolerable, yet for the past ten months he had been tolerating it with every outward sign of equanimity. It was doing some considerable damage to his nerves and temper, but no traces of his resentment were allowed to show.

What had he done to merit such conduct? He had treated Belle with singular cordiality from the day he had met her. He had wooed her in the manner she had demanded, and that was highly distasteful to himself, he decided in retrospect, though at the time he had enjoyed it. Running at her skirts to every inferior do in town. After marriage he had taken pains to see that she had her own circle of friends. He had given her a larger allowance than any lady he knew, given her her own carriage, a very dashing high-perch phaeton and a team of cream horses to pull it, gave her a present every time he came through the door. He had never insisted she accompany him anywhere that she expressed the least reluctance to going. Did not forbid her running around to balloon ascents and the Tower of London like a dashed tourist. Not every husband would have been so considerate. He had pointed out to her the pitfalls a country-bred girl was likely to fall into, the gambling that went on in some homes that still passed for acceptable, the more reprehensible bucks, and notorious wives to be avoided.

His reward had been that she became nearly mute with him, went as a martyr to a few dos he suggested rather strongly they should attend as a married couple, fallen into something dangerously like a decline, and refused his suggestion that they remove to Belwood for her to recuperate. She would go home, she had said, and even that he did not forbid. It had seemed reasonable, as he secretly nursed the hope she was increasing, and wished to see her own family doctor, for the fact was that in spite of the little city bronze he had managed to get on her, she was shy. For such an affair as that she would want an old friend, and he could understand that. He had offered to take her home himself, but had not insisted when she told him he would not want to miss the races at Newmarket.

In fact, he had not wanted to miss the meet, having a very good nag running himself, but he
had
missed it to be there when she came back. He had sent her off in his own traveling carriage with a groom and four men riding post, all of whom had landed back in London four days later saying her ladyship didn’t know just when she would be wanting them again, and so she had sent them back to London.

And still, simpleton that he was, he had suspected nothing amiss. He thought he would stop at Amesbury, not so far out of his way, en route to Belwood and pick her up. He sat awaiting the letter, for the season was winding up then, and really Belle hadn’t seemed to like London much. To save time he had even had one of the servants pack her trunks, and then was when the first apprehension of trouble had arisen. As he went over her wardrobe trying to decide what to have packed, he noticed that she had taken very few of her gowns with her.

This cheered him at first. She could not have planned to stay long. But as he looked more closely, he observed that every single outfit she had had since her marriage remained behind. Similarly, she had left locked on her dressing table her jewelry box with all her regularly worn jewels. He had a duplicate key himself, and upon opening it he discovered that like the gowns, everything given by himself remained behind. She had left his house with exactly those items she had brought to it. Odd a lady would not want to show off to her friends and family some of the loot she had come into.

But Belle was not a great one for getting herself decked out in finery. He often had to remind her to put on a necklace or ring when they were going out. Then too, she was increasing, and probably planned to spend a quiet time resting at home. It had all been made to seem plausible, till the letter from Mr. Edward Sangster of Amesbury had arrived, and then the truth was out. She had left him for good. Had sneaked out behind his back, taking nothing with her, and didn’t intend to return.

His first reaction had been instinctive. He had had his curricle harnessed up and gone after her, sixteen miles an hour. Had actually got as far as Farnborough before the ineligibility of such a scheme occurred to him. She was reverting to her courtship days. Trying to make a maygame of him again, to show London she had him on a leash. He had turned his curricle around and decided to show her a lesson. If she thought to scare him with this letter, he would use a little scare of his own, and most cordially invite Mr. Sangster to come ahead and do his worst. He had called her bluff, and regretted it a hundred times since.

Mr. Sangster had come with a sickening celerity, to lay before his lordship claims so modest as to infuriate him. There was no pretending now she was not serious; it couldn’t possibly be read into a scheme to get more from him. She would take nothing—no allowance was requested, no separate domicile would be accepted nor even considered. She would live with her father at Easthill as she had always done. She had left everything he gave her behind, with the single exception of her wedding ring. He wondered that hadn’t been the first thing given back to him. Not a mention of a reconciliation. A brusque essay along that line made by himself was summarily brushed aside. Her ladyship wished for no reconciliation. Period. Her ladyship wished nothing more than to be rid of her lawful husband at all costs, and in a state bordering on shock his grace acceded to it. He would not beg and grovel to Belle Anderson, nor to anyone, but he would let her hear what he thought of her.

He had written off a scorching blast of a letter ranting on about injustice and ingratitude and duplicity, and sat waiting for a reply that never came. From the day she had sneaked out behind his back, he had not had a word from her. She had not returned to London, nor gone to Brighton, nor visited any of their mutual friends. She had been swallowed up at Easthill.