Susie (17 page)

“My lady’s in the drawing room, but—”

Giles had already opened the door of the drawing room. He stared in amazement at the sight presented by Susie, clad only in a white satin nightgown, with her hair streaming about her shoulders.

“You should not be dressed like that in front of the servants,” he said stuffily.

Susie looked quickly up. “Oh, G-Giles,” she said with a catch in her voice. “H-he can’t
stand
me. And h-he’s got
false teeth
!”

“He would,” said Giles gleefully. “But what are you doing down here at this time of night?”

“What are
you
doing here at this time of night?” countered Susie suspiciously.

“I was on my way home from a party,” lied Giles, “and I saw your drawing room lights on. Anyway, I gather the engagement is off.”

“Yes,” gulped Susie. “Oh, here’s the champagne. I want to get drunk.”

“Before you do that,” said Giles, waving away the interested footman, “I want to tell you what I’m going to do with you. Now, you have made a sad mess of things up to date, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Giles,” said Susie, drinking a glass of champagne quickly and pouring herself another.

“So I suggest I should look after you.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because—hey, wait a minute. Leave some of that champagne for me. Three bottles, by George. Did he expect you to drink them all yourself? Because I’m the only person who knows how to look after you, that’s why. If you don’t marry me, just think what’s going to happen to you. Either you’re going to have men pawing all over you, or you’ll be throwing yourself at them.

“I’ll take you off, tonight, to a sort of hunting box thing I’ve got in Sussex. I’ll get a special license and marry you as soon as possible, and after you’ve been in my arms a few nights, Susie, it should cure you of running after fusty curmudgeons with false teeth.”

“Do you love me?”

Giles looked at Susie with some exasperation. He did not want to answer that question yet, even to himself. Lady Matilda had gleefully relayed over the telephone the details of Susie’s attempted seduction of Sir Arthur. He had called around immediately. He had discovered that he, Giles, most certainly didn’t want any other man to have Susie. He wanted to be the one to introduce her to the delights of love. But whether he loved her or not, he wasn’t at all sure.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I’m prepared to take care of you.”

Susie looked at him sadly and a little drunkenly. She suddenly did not want to be left alone anymore.

It would be marvelous to be back at the castle and see Thomson and Mrs. Wight. She could ride Dobbin as much as she wanted, without the half of London staring at her and photographing her. And it had been pleasant to be kissed by Giles. He would not grab or maul.

“I’ll let you know in the morning,” she said at last, reaching for a fresh bottle of champagne.

“No, now!”

“I’ll get Lady Matilda.”

“No. You’re coming with me—alone.”

“Not even Carter?” said Susie in a slightly slurred voice.

“No!”

“Dobbin, then?”

“Your affection for that animal is ridiculous. But, yes, he can travel behind the carriage, and we’ll put him on the train.”

“I don’t think I want to go,” said Susie at last. “I’ve decided I want to go to sleep more than anything in the whole wide world.”

“Look!” said Giles grimly, “Sir Arthur is still on the premises. Do you want to wake up in the morning and find him? Do you think he’ll let the Blackhall fortune slip out of his grasp so easily? He’ll probably call at
your
bedroom.”

Slightly sobered, Susie gave a squeak of alarm.

“Where is this hunting box?” asked Susie.

“It’s a quiet little place down in Sussex, near Lewes. Mostly farming country. I don’t think it’s been used for a hunting party for about eighty years. I’ve only recently had it put in order. I plan to sell it, but we can use it first.”

“Is it small?” asked Susie hopefully, dreams of that cottage beginning to run through her mind.

“Oh, very small.”

“All right,” said Susie, the champagne making up her mind for her. Also, she had had a young lifetime of obeying orders. How much easier it would be to submit to a stronger will than to go on in this muddle.

“Good girl,” said Giles. “Now go and pack…unless you want to travel to Sussex in your nightgown!”

The sleepy footman was summoned again and told to fetch a cab to take them to Victoria Station, where they would catch the Brighton train, stopping at Lewes.

To Giles’s surprise, Susie was ready in a remarkably short time. Her bags were strapped up behind the carriage. A snorting and sleepy Dobbin was brought around and tethered to the back. The cabbie was told to drive to Giles’s lodgings first, so that he could collect a few belongings, and that being achieved, they clattered through the silent streets in the direction of Victoria Station.

Susie had fallen asleep in the carriage and only awakened when they pulled up in the forecourt of the station.

She climbed stiffly down while Giles fetched a porter. She suddenly did not want to go through with it. Giles appeared like a stern and formidable stranger.

The guard had to be heavily bribed in order to allow Dobbin to share the guard’s van, and Giles stood fretting and fuming while Susie whispered soft words in the wretched animal’s flattened ears, so that Dobbin would allow himself to be led into his strange quarters.

Susie turned a white face to Giles. She was suffering from an incipient hangover, and nothing seemed quite real—the half—deserted station, the staring porters, and Giles, still in evening dress and opera cloak, looking like some handsome Mephistopheles as he stood by the guard’s van with the smoke from a nearby engine billowing about him.

Susie did not want to go. But there was Dobbin, already on the train, and if she did not go, who would look after him?

Giles abruptly made up her mind for her by thrusting her rudely into a first-class compartment and slamming the door behind them both.

The guard waved his green flag, and the London to Brighton express gave one loud cough and shunted forward.

As a pale dawn rose over London they rattled out over the houses, and Susie was reminded vividly of her first journey to Blackhall Castle with the earl. She hoped Giles would not kiss her. But that man seemed to be wrapped up in his own thoughts, and after a bare fifteen minutes he fell sound asleep.

She sat bolt upright for many weary miles, wondering if she had gone mad, wondering how Dobbin was faring in the guard’s van, until she too fell asleep.

A steady cold drizzle was falling when the train rolled into Lewes station. Giles woke Susie.

She put her hands to her aching head. Her mouth felt dry and hot, and her brains seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool.

But there was Dobbin to see to, Dobbin to be fussed over, and the sweating and terrified guard to be placated. He said that Dobbin had tried to bite him during the whole journey.

Then there was the cabbie at Lewes station to deal with after Dobbin had kicked the back of his carriage and left scores in the paint. Giles wanted the animal left at the station until he could get a horse box sent for him, but Susie’s large eyes filled with miserable tears, and he impatiently gave the cabbie enough gold to buy that gratified man a new hansom.

Finally they jolted off under the shadow of the twelfth-century walls of Lewes Castle, past the cattle pens of the market near the station, and soon they were bowling along a narrow road bordered with high hedges on either side.

Susie tried to keep her spirits up with visions of the hunting box. “Box” sounded reassuringly small. Perhaps they would have a cozy, domestic life. She would cook him meals and smile at him as he smoked his pipe beside the fire in the evening. But Giles did not smoke a pipe. She wondered if she could persuade him to buy one.

“I forgot to leave a note for Lady Matilda!” exclaimed Susie, coming out of her dream.

“I did,” said Giles curtly. “She’ll know where to find you. We’re nearly there.”

The carriage had been picking its way for some time down a network of small lanes. It suddenly wheeled around in front of a small lodge.

Giles rapped on the roof. “I’ll open the gates, cabbie. There’s no one at the lodge.”

After opening the gates, he climbed back inside.

The carriage rolled up a long graveled drive bordered on either side by a line of stately elms. After half a mile or so, it came to a stop in front of an imposing mansion.

“Is this the
box?
” asked Susie in surprise.

The hunting box was a trim Georgian manor of red brick, two-storied, and ornamented with a pillared entrance.

“Yes, this is the place,” said Giles, sounding more cheerful. “There are hardly any servants, but I keep an elderly couple in residence—Mr. and Mrs. Harrison. Old Harrison acts as butler when I need him, and Mrs. Harrison sees to the cooking.”

Susie’s dreams of a country cottage fizzled and died.

The elderly Harrisons were delighted to see their master and his “wife.”

“Don’t tell them we aren’t married,” Giles had whispered. “The local vicar is an old school friend of mine, and he should be able to tie the knot pretty soon, so it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

Susie nodded weakly, feeling too ill to protest. She was led into a comfortable bedroom on the first floor and collapsed gratefully on a large old-fashioned four-poster bed while Mrs. Harrison, a robust lady in her sixties, unpacked her trunks and lit the fire.

She pulled off Susie’s boots, bobbed a curtsy, and left.

Susie was just drifting off to sleep when the door opened and Giles strolled in. He threw his cloak on a chair, took off his jacket, undid his collar and tie and threw them carelessly in a corner, kicked off his evening pumps, and collapsed on the bed next to Susie.

“God, I could sleep for a week,” he groaned.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” cried Susie, sitting up and then moaning as her headache returned in full force.

“It’s
our
bedroom,” said Giles. “Husband and wife, remember? Now go to sleep.”

He turned over on his side and closed his eyes. Susie looked at him doubtfully for a few minutes, but her eyes ached and her head hurt, so at last with a resigned little sigh she too went to sleep.

When she awoke some hours later, Giles had gone.

She climbed stiffly down from the high bed and went to look out of the window. Small chilly flakes of snow were beginning to drift across the bleak countryside. There was a stretch of lawn dotted with old trees in front of the house, ending in a thick wood.

A deer stood frozen at the edge of the wood, looking like a child’s toy. Then, with one enormous bound, it disappeared.

A faint smell of cooking drifted up from downstairs. Susie realized she was very hungry indeed.

She bathed and changed and made her way down a beautiful staircase to a bright square hall.

Mrs. Harrison appeared with an enormous white starched lace cap on her gray hair in honor of the occasion.

“My lord is just sitting down to an early dinner, my lady,” she said. “If you go straight through to the dining room, you’ll just be in time to join him.”

She held open a door, and Susie walked into a pleasant room that had not changed much since the days of the Regency. There were no carpets on the highly polished floor. An applewood fire crackled at one end, and the room was lit by two branches of candles on the dining room table.

A silver epergne depicting the Battle of Salamanca dominated the center of the table. Susie sat down and peered cautiously around the battle to where her “husband” was sitting at the other end.

He gave her a brief look and then said, “Move your chair round here, Susie. I can talk to you easier.”

Susie went around and sat beside him, looking down at her folded hands, while Mrs. Harrison bustled in with the dishes.

Susie was wearing the brown velvet dinner gown with the bands of sable that she had worn for her first dinner at Blackhall Castle. Giles was wearing a black velvet smoking jacket with plaid trousers and an opennecked soft white silk shirt and a paisley cravat with a small ruby stickpin.

Susie thought he looked very handsome but very Bohemian. He should have at least put on a dinner jacket.

Unconventional clothes could be taken off so quickly, she reflected, and then blushed at her unconventional thought.

“I rode over to see the vicar, Charlie Wade,” said Giles, shaking out his napkin. “Then I went into Lewes and arranged a special license. Charlie can marry us in a couple of days time. He thinks the whole thing is a great laugh.”

“He does?” asked Susie miserably. She had been hoping for a severe cleric who would have pointed out to Giles the error of his ways.

Susie was wishing desperately she had not come.

But she was young and she was hungry, and she attacked her meal with a good appetite, refusing, however, Giles’s offer of champagne.

She felt she never wanted to touch the stuff again.

Giles suddenly wondered what to talk about. He had never really
talked
much to Susie that he could remember.

“Dobbin’s all right,” he said at last. “Ate a good dinner.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Susie, her beautiful eyes lighting up with real gratitude. “Is his stable warm enough?”

“Yes.”

There was another silence.

“It’s a very pretty house,” ventured Susie at last. “I did not think a hunting box would be so big.”

“Well, it has to be,” Giles pointed out. “Where else would one put one’s guests?”

There was another silence while the wind howled miserably outside and the snow whispered against the windowpanes.

“Port?” asked Giles after the dishes had been cleared and an old fashioned sort of tray on wheels containing port, Madeira, and liqueurs to have with walnuts had been wheeled onto the table.

“No. Yes. I mean, thank you, I would like some,” said Susie miserably, her eyes falling before the gleam that was appearing in the blue eyes opposite.

She drank a glass of port very quickly. “What shall we do this evening?” she asked brightly.