Lady Susan Plays the Game (12 page)

‘Most generous,' she interrupted herself, ‘most generous, dear Sir James. The happiness of my daughter is paramount and there is no one I would rather see as my …' she paused to give him a coquettish look – it could do no harm and might do good – ‘son-in-law than you. But you must know that dear Frederica must be loved for herself. Alas, my husband … you understand me, there can be only the smallest dowry.'

‘No, no,' cried Sir James and now his words came tumbling out. ‘I have quite enough – that is my income, you know my uncle too, eight thousand a year.'

That much
, thought Lady Susan,
not bad at all. And the girl would be off my hands
.

‘I will speak to her directly.'

He was not prepossessing, but eight thousand pounds must come with some disadvantages. She herself had married a better man for less. The exmarriage would remove the
expense of Frederica's upkeep and advantage herself: Sir James would, she imagined, be generous towards his mother-in-law.

After he had left, Lady Susan sent a footman to fetch Frederica from the music room. Within ten minutes they were together in the library. Manwaring was out, she assumed, and the women of the house keeping their chambers.

‘My dear Frederica. I have had the most pleasant conversation,' she began. Frederica looked alarmed. ‘I imagine you know what I am going to say and that you have got over the nonsense you expressed when last we conversed on this important subject.'

‘No, Mama, I don't in the least know what you will say.' She was trembling.

‘What on earth ails you, Frederica? Really! You can't have been quite unaware of Sir James's attentions. They have been quite marked lately – they were perhaps not quite decorous. But you know,' and she smiled in a way that struck terror in her daughter, ‘you have quite enthralled him.'

‘Oh Mama, don't say so. No, he loved Mary and she loves him, I know she does. She once told me. It can't be,' and she patted the air away with both hands.

‘I am not speaking of Miss Manwaring,' said Lady Susan. ‘I'm sure she would indeed like to have had Sir James, what girl would not? I'm speaking of you. Sir James is quite captivated by your charms. A little encouragement from you and he is yours.'

‘Don't say it, Mama,' cried Frederica, her face white and her eyes beginning to brim. ‘Don't.'

‘There is no occasion to cry I assure you,' said Lady Susan, keeping her temper with an effort. ‘A proposal from a man with eight thousand pounds a year is not a crying matter.'

‘Mama, he is almost betrothed to Miss Manwaring, to Mary, and besides' – she was really sobbing now – ‘besides, besides I don't like him. He is … he is just like a Lincolnshire curlycoat pig.'

Lady Susan suppressed a laugh. Given his pink eyelids and trembling nose, the analogy was not unjust. She waited in silence for a moment, then continued. ‘You were not, I think, keen on the idea of Madam Dacre's Academy, despite its expense. Surely your own establishment, a nice house in the country, one in town if you ever wanted it, a carriage and' –
she forced herself to add, for the person before her really was just a child – ‘a pony, would be fine alternatives.'

‘No, Mama, I cannot like him, I really cannot.'

Lady Susan paused, then tried a woman-to-woman look before saying, ‘A girl can always learn to like a man if there is enough incentive.'

‘But I never can, Mama. A woman must look up to a husband, he must be her superior. I cannot look up to Sir James, I truly cannot.'

Lady Susan let that one pass. She herself had never looked up to any man – and didn't find such a posture at all necessary.

‘Frederica, marriage is not a matter of what you may or may not want. It's something for life and something that in your case had better be undertaken sooner rather than later.'

Her daughter was not listening. She was twisting her damp little handkerchief round and round in her fingers.

There was nothing to be done. If Lady Susan proceeded, she would only make her noisy in grief. ‘Well, well, let's leave the subject. Think about it, Frederica, when you are calmer. You cannot depend on your face and I cannot keep you indefinitely. Sir James may perhaps be a little boorish but a man can be tamed.'

‘Oh Mama, and … I want to please you. You know I do. But I cannot, I cannot,' and she dashed from the room, her face streaming with tears.

Lady Susan was slightly dissatisfied with herself. She could handle men better than children.

She wondered at her distaste for Frederica. Even in this conversation she had noticed her daughter's plump hands, in shape resembling her own. She contemplated her thinner ones where the veins would soon obtrude just a little, faint blue beneath the transparent surface; she found them strangely alluring.

A faint shudder passed over her. She knew her beauty was intact and that it was greater than her daughter's was or would ever be. And yet there was something about real youth, however manifested, that could not be counterfeited.

Eight thousand pounds a year. The figure struck her forcibly. She'd almost a mind to take him herself. But the image of Manwaring rose before her, and she felt the now accustomed longing. Besides, Sir James was really too ridiculous. He must be Frederica's. Some months at Madam Dacre's should do the business. She would speak to that lady and make clear what she expected. Sir James could be dangled for a while.

Next morning it became clear that he had engaged in some unsatisfactory talk either with Mrs Manwaring or with Mary, for the mother wore a long face at the breakfast table. Despite her own sprightly remarks, Lady Susan met with elaborate silence. Miss Dawlish, Mary and Manwaring all breakfasted in their chambers.

Sir James came breezily into the room and began talking about the weather and its effect on horseflesh. Soon even he fell silent. For a while he remained at a loss for words, then informed them that his bags were being packed and his phaeton prepared for departure. His famous horse would follow after him later in the day.

In the hallway, only Miss Dawlish, who felt herself the upholder of standards, represented the family in saying farewell. As Sir James went down the steps, Lady Susan tried to engage her in talk. But Miss Dawlish was not to be drawn. She did, however, manage a weak smile at Lady Susan's remark about young men and horses.

Sir James mounted his phaeton and took up the reins with complicated feelings. Two female voices mingled in his ears. ‘Oh please, please go away' had been Frederica's last words to him when he encountered her shrinking into the banister, while Lady Susan's farewell – ‘Time, give her time, Sir James, only a proper bashfulness' – had been so soothing and engaging they enveloped the daughter in their sweetness.

And yet was it sensible to give Miss Frederica ‘time'? Lady Susan had told him how courted she was, how admired through Norfolk. It stood to reason, then, that he ought to make another more forceful attempt. He did not mention this resolve to Lady Susan. She had gently scolded him for his behaviour in the stables – his mother would have been much fiercer.

Yet he remained perplexed. As a result he travelled faster than he should, ignoring the damage done to his delicate springs.

Despite her resolve, Lady Susan soon found she was having too delicious a time with Manwaring to interrupt it for long. She was aware that her lover was becoming careless. He didn't always allow the proper interval before he followed her to her dressing room, and his eyes swivelled in her direction when they should have remained on his wife and daughter.

Some days after Sir James had gone and six weeks after they had begun their pleasant mutual torture, Manwaring drank more than usual at dinner. He'd been out hunting with the affable vicar, a man who liked carousing, especially at the Langford table. They had already enjoyed some good port together before they came to dinner and Manwaring's guard was down.

Over dessert Lady Susan caught his eye and enjoyed the sensation of a secret life. Her body responded under the ivory silk shift that lay softly beneath her sober outer garment. On the table, the knives, forks, spoons and crystal glasses glittered in the candlelight.

Then, as she looked away and absent-mindedly fingered some almonds and dried apricots on her plate, she became aware that Manwaring had kept his eyes on her, and had even let a smile that could only denote intimacy play upon his lips. His wife's fixed gaze rested upon him, as did her cousin's. The room went very still. Time seemed to have halted.

The conversation had been general, something about the French campaigns in Italy under their new young general Buonaparte, but it ceased now and the room swam in a haze of emotions. No one reached for the porcelain dishes of tiny sweet biscuits; nobody touched the glass decanters. Some seconds of complete and frightening silence ensued.

Then time regrouped and went on. Charlotte Manwaring stifled a sob, jumped up from her chair, pushing it abruptly back on the footman who was about to serve a special syllabub on a frosted green glass plate. It fell to the ground in a snowy mess of sugar and froth. She ran from the room.

Her husband recollected himself at once and swallowed as if coming out of a trance. He started to talk in the belief that he might save the situation. Abruptly he realised it was hopeless and got up to follow his wife. ‘She must be ill,' he muttered. ‘One of her headaches.'

The rest of the diners sat on not bothering to eat but sipping at their water and wine. Frederica was very pale. Mary looked angry and scornful.

After a few moments, Miss Dawlish glared directly at Lady Susan. Then she too rose from her chair. ‘I shall go to my cousin,' she announced, ‘she was feeling unwell earlier, I think. The unaccustomed sun you know.'

Back in her dressing room Lady Susan mused on the event. It had crossed her mind that there would be a discovery one day. She had even visualised it – a crowd suddenly arriving in the bedchamber as she had the whip raised high in her hand, or at the climax – just after the climax perhaps – the door flung open and an audience in the corridor with torches, noise and flashes of light, Manwaring and she caught as if on a stage in the theatre.

She had dismissed Barton for the night and was looking idly through a book of fashion plates while reclining on her daybed. The door of her dressing room slowly opened. It was Manwaring.

‘You're mad,' she hissed.

‘Absolutely so,' he whispered back, ‘quite mad, madly in love'.

Lady Susan dropped her book and lay back with a smile. Manwaring entered the room fully and came over to her. There was really no resisting him.

As they continued their sport they forgot their surroundings. Lady Susan liked to keep her lover waiting for the blows, while he gave her the kind of sustained pleasure she now discovered she so needed. She relished the feel of her hand on his hard flat belly and tight buttocks.

It was in one of the piquant pauses they both enjoyed that Lady Susan and Manwaring distinctly heard a noise outside in the corridor. Since it was after two in the morning there was no comfortable explanation.

She silently dropped her arm and the whip. Manwaring turned over, ‘Damn, what is it?'

She laid the handle over his mouth and pushed him into stillness. ‘Shsh,' she whispered.

Words were being spoken outside the door but it was impossible in the room to make them out. Both recognised the tones of Mrs Manwaring and Miss Dawlish.

Then they heard distinctly: ‘Dear cousin, you cannot go in. It would be unseemly. Do come back to bed.'

‘But he is not in his chamber.' Mrs Manwaring shrieked her words, making no effort now to keep her voice low. ‘And where could he be at this time of night? Parker says—'

Miss Dawlish interrupted her and, from the rustling sound, seemed to be holding her back from pushing against the door. ‘Charlotte, it's not like you to listen to servants' gossip. You're overwrought.'

Inside the room Lady Susan and Manwaring were frozen in postures a little less dramatic than those of a few moments earlier, but still thoroughly incriminating if viewed by an angry wife. Lady Susan used all her energy to stifle Manwaring's noisy breathing.

Then Mrs Manwaring said something to her cousin they could not catch. A shuffling followed and Lady Susan discerned Miss Dawlish's soothing tone. She thought she made out the words ‘in the morning'. They heard footsteps receding. No more sounds followed.

After a while Lady Susan began to move her body gingerly, keeping the whip over Manwaring's mouth. She felt enlivened, even excited by the danger, but vexed with her lover for taking such risks. Was it his man Robert who had betrayed them? Or possibly Barton? The maid had to mend the clasps on her bodice, which were so often ripped. She must have suspected something. Also Lady Susan knew that Barton had been in the habit of boasting of her mistress's superior charms, especially in houses where they had arrived without their own coach and horses. But why would her maid be disloyal now, what would she gain?

There was really no need to suspect anyone's servant of more than the usual gossip, not even Mrs Manwaring's Parker. Manwaring had been quite indiscreet enough to give them both away.

She resolved to mend matters next day. She'd come not only to appreciate the free accommodation and blue boudoir but also to adore the nightly exercises. Surely she could talk them both out of this predicament so that they could continue their delicious ritual.

As the silence deepened, Manwaring relaxed. He even made a move to continue their business. But, much as she felt inclined, Lady Susan knew the danger too great. ‘No, no,' she insisted, ruffling his thick hair, ‘you must go now. Return to your chamber, put out
your greatcoat, so that in the morning you will say you couldn't sleep and went out into the grounds for a walk.'

‘In this weather?' Manwaring stifled a laugh and reached for her. She pulled away.