Songs of Love and War (43 page)

‘No offence taken, Boysie,’ Harry replied with a grin. ‘But to make up for your slight you must now list all the reasons why, brains apart, you love me so dearly.’

Celia was waiting for Harry and Boysie in one of the cold drawing rooms, huddling by the fire, drinking a mug of hot cocoa, when they arrived mid-morning the following day,
having spent the night in a small hotel in Edinburgh. The butler showed them through an austere hall where antlers of all sizes hung on the walls and a giant bearskin was spread on the flagstone
floor, the bear baring his teeth in a silent growl. He announced them at the drawing-room door while two young footmen went outside to attend to their luggage. ‘Darling boys, you’re
too
good to come to my rescue!’ Celia gushed, running to greet them with hugs and kisses.

‘Do you
need
rescuing, darling?’ Boysie asked.

‘But of course I do.’ She beamed a smile. ‘You’re my knights in shining armour.’

‘It’s a rather splendid house this, or could be if one heated it up a little and redecorated,’ said Boysie, rubbing his hands to warm them. ‘Where is he, the
wife-stealer?’

‘Hush, Boysie! There are spies everywhere!’ Celia hissed, loving the drama. ‘You must be tired. It’s a ghastly journey, don’t you think?’

‘I think Scotland is ghastly, if you ask me,’ said Boysie, running his eyes over the tired furniture and faded upholstery.

‘What were you thinking?’ Harry asked.

Celia looked sheepish. ‘Whatever it was, I’m not thinking it now,’ she said. ‘Do you believe Archie will have me back
even though I’m no longer
intact?’
she whispered.

‘You might have to grovel,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, I can grovel. Can’t we just pretend that Lachlan abducted me and had his wicked way?’ she suggested.

‘Is that really fair?’ said Harry.

‘Nothing’s fair in love or war,’ Boysie added, falling into the sofa.

‘Have some tea,’ suggested Celia. ‘Patterson, a pot of tea for my friends. Now sit down and warm up. It’s frightfully cold in here. Makes Castle Deverill seem as hot as a
greenhouse by comparison.’

She perched on the club fender so that the fire could warm her back. ‘What are we going to do? Lachlan thinks it’s all perfectly wonderful. He loves the fact that everyone in London
is talking about it. He wants to marry me.’

‘Then he should have run off with you
before
you made your marriage vows,’ said Harry.

‘I don’t think he’s very clever, do you?’ said Celia, crinkling her pretty nose. ‘I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

Boysie lit a cigarette. ‘You have two choices. One: you annul the marriage and marry Lachlan instead. But frankly, living up here will drive you mad.’

‘What’s two?’ Celia asked anxiously.

‘You come back to London with us. Explain to Archie that you had a terrible attack of wedding nerves and beg him to forgive you.’

‘Of course you’ll have to explain your decision to Lachlan,’ Harry reminded her.

Celia was shocked. ‘Lord no. I’ll run off into the night and leave him a note. I couldn’t possibly tell him to his face.’

Patterson soon brought them tea. He placed the tray on the coffee table then disappeared discreetly back into the hall, closing the door behind him. ‘Why did you run off at your wedding,
Celia? Why not later?’ Boysie asked. ‘Did you really have to humiliate poor Archie, not to mention your poor mother?’

‘It was the thought of the wedding night. I didn’t think I could go through with it. Archie leaves me cold, you see. Lachlan is another matter entirely. He’s so devilishly
attractive.’

‘I thought you girls just lay back and thought of England. Then after an heir and a spare, found a man who really satisfied you in the bedroom. Sounds very sensible to me. Marriage
isn’t about love, it’s about alliance.’ Boysie glanced at Harry. ‘I’ll marry “the pudding” because it’s my duty as the only son to further the family
line. But I won’t love her. If she loves me she’ll be desperately unhappy.’

‘Poor Deirdre,’ said Celia without really meaning it. ‘Dreary Deirdre. It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?’ She sighed heavily as if the travails of womankind
rested on her shoulders alone. ‘I suppose I must return to Archie.’

‘Where’s Lachlan?’ Boysie asked.

‘Fishing. He’ll be out all day.’ She looked suddenly forlorn. ‘He spends a lot of time doing that.’

‘And what are you meant to be doing while he entertains himself?’ Harry said.

Celia smiled pathetically. ‘I don’t know. What
do
women in Scotland do?’ she asked.

‘Brush their husbands’ sporrans,’ said Boysie with a chuckle.

‘Really, Boysie, you’re too much!’ Celia laughed. ‘How do you bear him, Harry?’

The three friends had lunch together in the dining room while Lachlan, blissfully unaware of Celia’s plans, sat beside the river with his gillie, watching his fishing line and eating the
picnic the cook had prepared for him. When he returned home that evening he would find a note on the table in the hall and Celia gone.

Beatrice was eternally grateful to Harry and Boysie for bringing Celia home. She threw her arms around her daughter and wept profusely as if Celia were the liberator of her
unhappiness, not the cause of it. Digby was much less forgiving. ‘You’ve made us a laughing stock!’ he declared furiously. ‘After all we have done for you! Do you have any
idea how much your wedding cost us, in both money and effort? I hope Archie takes you back, but I wouldn’t blame him if he got rid of you and chose someone else. You’d better beg, my
girl. Without Archie I don’t think you have much of a future.’

Celia was stunned. Her father had always been indulgent, quick to laugh, slow to chastise. She thought he might see the amusing side, smile at her courage, perhaps shake his head at her
foolishness in a ‘Really, so typical of you, Celia my dear’ sort of way, but certainly not be furious. She disintegrated into passionate sobs. ‘Is it really so hopeless,
Papa?’

Digby lifted his hands and shrugged, the light catching the gold on his large signet ring. ‘There might be a way,’ he said.

Digby met Archie in the library at Deverill House on Kensington Palace Gardens. He gave the young man a stiff drink then made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. ‘I can only apologize
for my daughter’s deplorable behaviour. Wedding nerves might explain her foolishness, but not justify it. However, she is married to you and in the eyes of God marriage is a bond that no man
can put asunder. Therefore I have decided to increase her dowry by £100,000 as a small recompense for the ordeal she has put you through. I hope you see it in your heart to forgive, or at
least to take her back to save us all from further scandal. She has seen the error of her ways and is keen to make it up to you.’ Digby knew that the offer was, in truth, a humiliating one
which no man would accept unless it happened that his family was on the verge of complete bankruptcy. Through his contacts in the city he had discovered that the Mayberrys were being overwhelmed by
colossal debts. That house of cards was on the point of collapse. He knitted his fingers and watched the colour rise to his son-in-law’s cheeks.

Archie inhaled through his nostrils as he considered Digby’s words. ‘You are asking a great deal of me, Sir Digby,’ he said finally, but Digby knew it was an offer too good to
refuse. ‘Had she fled with a girlfriend, I might have understood her wedding nerves. But to run off to Scotland with Lachlan Kirkpatrick and live with him is a clear case of adultery.
However, we are married, as you say, and in God’s eyes must remain so. I will take her back, but this is a blight on our happiness. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust her,
much less love her, but I will strive to forgive.’ The two men shook hands. Money had, as it so often did, eased the pain of the recent events and cast Digby’s daughter in a more
favourable light. Certainly it softened the atmosphere in the library so that, when the door was opened and Celia summoned, the two men were on excellent terms, discussing the roaring start to the
London Season.

Celia appeared, sufficiently contrite. Archie glanced at her, but he couldn’t meet her eye. He shook Digby’s hand again and walked out into the square where his chauffeur waited for
him on the kerb beside his shiny Ford Model T, a wedding present from his father, bought with borrowed money. Celia followed, uncertain what to do, wanting to cling on to her childhood and the
security of her home, but knowing she had willingly left her girlhood behind in Lachlan Kirkpatrick’s bed from where she could never get it back. Her father didn’t want her at home,
Archie probably didn’t want her either, and Lachlan had wanted her very badly but seemed to want her less when the excitement of their grand escape had worn off. The drama had been thrilling,
but the aftershock now left her cold. She climbed into the back seat beside Archie.

‘Are you going to forgive me?’ she asked, trying to find the old Archie beneath his hard and pitiless mask.

‘I thought I understood you, Celia.’ He shook his head and gazed out of the window as the car drove round the square and off towards Mayfair. ‘But I don’t know you any
more.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was thinking only of myself. I was a fool and I will live with that for the rest of my
life.’

‘Yes, you will.’ His profile remained unmoved. ‘And you will accept everything I demand of you.’

They settled into their new home in Mayfair and Celia tried very hard to be a good wife. She ran the house, arranged dinner parties and accepted the sudden deluge of
invitations that arrived from the grandest hostesses in London. As Boysie had predicted, the drama had only made them more interesting as a couple and when in public they put on a convincing
display of unity. However, Celia’s bed remained empty at night, their marriage unconsummated. Archie didn’t speak to her at all, unless in company, so Celia made sure the house was full
of guests whenever possible. Her front door was forever open and callers most welcome. They came in their droves, simply so they could report what they’d seen of the ‘runaway
bride’ and her poor cuckolded husband, and both Celia and Archie did their best to keep up appearances.

‘It’s a sham,’ Celia confessed to Kitty when they were alone together in the garden one afternoon, sitting side by side on an iron bench, a gift from one of the wedding guests.
‘We look like the happiest couple in the world, yet we’re the most miserable and it’s all my fault.’

‘It will settle down,’ Kitty reassured her, taking her hand.

‘He won’t forgive me, Kitty. I hurt him and he won’t ever forgive me for it.’

‘You’ll have children soon and they’ll bring you together.’

Celia laughed huskily, throwing her head back so her throat flashed white and vulnerable in the sunshine. ‘He doesn’t come to my bed,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t visited
me once. Not once. I’m a pariah.’

‘He will.’

Celia stared at Kitty, her eyes wide and desperate. ‘The irony is I so want him to.’

‘Oh Celia.’

‘I ache for him, Kitty. I long for him to hold me. I long for things to be the way they were before we got married. Back then I dreaded him touching me. But now I wish he would.’ Her
voice lowered as she struggled with her emotions. ‘But I’m a tainted woman. I’ve been with another man. I’m spoiled goods. No one wants me any more. I hear Lachlan is
courting that dreadful Annabel Whitely. He didn’t waste time pining for me, did he?’

‘Forget about Lachlan. Concentrate on your marriage. You have to be patient. You can’t expect wounds to heal overnight. Archie will soften, I’m sure.’

‘He’d better or I’ll wither away. The virgin bride, they’ll call me.’ She smiled at Kitty sadly. ‘And what about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, Jack will have to have a father, you know. You can’t bring him up without a man to look up to.’

Kitty frowned at Celia. She hadn’t thought about that. But Celia was right. It wouldn’t be fair to deny Jack a father’s love. ‘I always believed I’d marry the man I
loved,’ she said. ‘I was starry-eyed and dreamy. But it isn’t like that, is it?’ She was lost now in the half-distance, her mind dragging her back to Ireland and the
memories she had left there.

‘One has to be lucky.’ Celia sighed. ‘I didn’t realize how lucky I was.’

‘I loved a man,’ Kitty confessed suddenly, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I loved a man with all my heart, Celia. I loved him enough to die for him. But I couldn’t have
him.’

Celia stared at her cousin in astonishment. ‘Was he Irish?’ Kitty nodded. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He was imprisoned.’ Kitty turned her eyes away. She didn’t want anyone to see the pain behind them, not even Celia.

‘For what?’

‘For being a rebel.’

‘Oh,’ Celia gasped, not really understanding what that meant, but knowing it had something to do with the reason they had stopped spending summers at Castle Deverill.

‘I told him I’d wait for him,’ Kitty continued. ‘I would have waited forever. But he let me go. I wrote letters. So many letters. But he never replied.’ She dropped
her shoulders. ‘He knows, you see. There are too many obstacles in our way. There always were. But I believed we could jump them.’ She laughed unhappily. ‘I could jump anything on
a horse, couldn’t I?’

Celia wrapped her arms around her cousin. ‘Aren’t we a sorry pair?’ she said, squeezing her. ‘The Deverill cousins and their complicated love lives. Do you think
it’s in our blood?’

‘I don’t know. Our sisters have all married, haven’t they?’

‘To the most dreary men in England! I wouldn’t want their boring husbands. I’d still rather be married to Archie, even though he’s not talking to me.’

‘I’ll have to marry a man I don’t love because I’ll never love anyone as much as I love Jack.’

Celia pulled away. ‘Jack? You mean Jack O’Leary, the boy who loved frogs?’

Kitty nodded. ‘I named little Jack Deverill after him. He is brave, handsome, funny, intelligent and kind. I couldn’t think of a better man to name him after.’

‘Don’t expect to love like that again, Kitty, or you’ll never be happy,’ said Celia with rare wisdom. ‘You have to find someone you respect and who respects you. A
partner for life. He’s out there somewhere, Kitty. You can’t live off your grandmother forever. You need to give Jack Deverill security.’
It’s truly over then,
Kitty
thought to herself, and the last ember of hope died.