The Constant Companion (12 page)

“A lady never refers to or
notices
her husband’s past affairs with the Fashionable Impure,” retorted his lordship, the glitter in his eyes betraying his annoyance.

“Oh, really,” said Constance sweetly. “But a
gentleman
can, of course, insult his wife by referring to mythical affairs with ploughmen.”

“I married you,” grated Lord Philip, “because I found your modesty becoming. I am afraid I was mistaken in you.”

“As I was in you,” retorted Constance, her face flushed with anger. “
I
thought
you
were human. This should have been the happiest day in my life. But instead, I am nearly killed and you go on as if somehow it were all
my
fault. The only affection you have shown all day is towards that little trollop, Marjorie Banks-Jyce.”

Lord Philip dabbed his mouth fastidiously with his napkin. “You’re jealous,” he said.

Constance’s hand flew to her glass. She picked it up and threw it full at her husband. He dodged, and it went sailing over his head and struck the door.

As if answering a knock, Masters, the butler, opened the door and entered the room, followed by two footmen, and proceeded to supervise the serving of the pudding as if nothing was amiss.

My lord’s and my lady’s faces which had a bare moment ago been contorted with anger were now masks of well-bred calm.

“A dreadful evening, is it not?” remarked Lord Philip, stabbing his whipped syllabub to the heart.

“Indeed, yes,” said Constance. “Very stormy. Quite appropriate, is it not?”

Lord Philip eyed the footman who was sweeping up the broken glass. “I agree,” he said in a hard mocking voice. “Love is always stormy, my dear.”

Masters smiled indulgently and heaved a romantic sigh.

“I hope Squire Benjamin will not try to travel home on a night like this,” Constance essayed.

“He will stay in town with my sister. Evans made the arrangements… you violent, spiteful, little cat!”

The last remark was made immediately after the door closed behind the servants.

“I was much goaded,” said Constance. She rose to her feet and walked down the length of the table towards the door. “I shall leave you to your port, my lord.”

He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her as she walked towards him, her face flushed and her bosom heaving. She had never looked more beautiful. He reached out as she passed him and grasped her wrist. He meant to tell her so, but instead found himself saying, “I shall forgo my port, tonight. I think it is time we retired.”

Constance looked down into the glittering green eyes and her courage began to ebb. It had been a false courage after all, wine-induced. She had never before answered back to anyone the way she had answered back to this husband of hers.

Her long eyelashes dropped to veil fear and embarrassment in her eyes.

“Then I shall see you in the morning,” she said in a trembling voice.

He released her wrist. “You shall see me long before then,” he said. “But you may go up now and I shall join you shortly.”

Constance trailed miserably from the room. A footman bearing a branch of candles appeared as if by magic, and she followed him upstairs to her room. She dismissed her lady’s maid, Bouchard, who gave a sour curtsy and escaped to join the servants’ celebrations below stairs.

Constance wandered from her sitting room into the bedroom and stared at the great canopied bed against the wall. She slowly undressed and put on a ridiculously flimsy nightgown. Who had chosen it? Philip?

She felt very young and alone and frightened. Lady Amelia’s salacious whispers muttered in her ears like so many demented ghosts.

And then she thought she heard a soft footstep in the corridor outside.

Lord Philip, clad only in an elaborate gold and blue dressing gown, strode into his wife’s bedroom. He did not look towards the bed, but marched to the fireplace and moodily stared down at the glowing coals. Apart from the red light from the fire, the room was in darkness. He was uneasily prey to a series of conflicting emotions. Up till this point, he had naturally considered that his wife would spend their wedding night in his arms. That was the natural way of things. He was in no doubt that she would not enjoy the experience, although he knew himself to be a practiced lover. No lady ever enjoyed sex, and it was natural and fitting that she should not. Such base pleasures were only felt by gentlemen, and women of the demi-monde and the lower classes.

But a nasty little nagging voice in his brain was telling him that at least he should have tried to woo her. Nonetheless, he must go through with it. It was unthinkable that a man should not bed his own wife. Any other course of action and the planets would reel in their courses, and furthermore, the population of England would decline.

He removed his dressing gown, squared his shoulders and marched up to the bed.

Empty!

He could not believe his eyes. Lord Philip lit a candle beside the bed and held it up. The covers of the bed were turned back but of Constance there was no sign.

He was about to put on his dressing gown and go in search of her when a small stifled sound coming from somewhere quite near made him pause. He held up the candle again, his eyes raking round the silent room. Again, that little noise.

He slowly put the candle back on the table and knelt down on the floor and looked under the bed.

In the red light from the fire, he saw Constance. She was lying under the bed, pressed against the far wall, with a handkerchief pressed against her mouth to stifle her sobs.

She stared at her naked husband, her eyes dilating with terror. Lord Philip Cautry’s muscular body had made many a feminine heart beat faster but never before with fear.

“Come out of there,” he said gently. “Come!”

He stretched out his hand imperiously and Constance allowed herself to be pulled out. Lord Philip retrieved his dressing gown and shrugged himself into it. He indicated a chair at the fireplace.

“Sit down!” he commanded, seating himself opposite as the trembling girl obeyed him. “Now, my girl, I expect a certain amount of nervousness from a virginal girl, but this is ridiculous. Explain yourself.”

Constance dried her eyes and looked at him bleakly.

“I cannot, my lord,” she said in a low voice, “bring myself to perform even
one
of the exhausting and humiliating acts expected of me.”

“Fustian,” said her lord, his thin brows snapping together. “You will soon get used to, what is, after all… What exhausting and humiliating acts are you talking about?”

And so Constance told him in a faltering voice all she had learned from Lady Amelia, the words sounding doubly obscene coming as they did from such innocent lips.

Lord Philip felt a faint twinge of regret. Perhaps he should have bedded Amelia, after all. It appeared as if she would have been a highly inventive mistress. But then that was pushed from his brain by a sudden wave of compassion and tenderness for the young wife opposite. He leaned forward and drew her onto his knees, holding her very gently.

“I am truly sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I had not realized—did not guess—what filth that monster of a woman would have told you. It is not like that at all. It is a matter of love between man and wife.”

“Love!” cried Constance harshly, trying to pull away from him.

“Yes, love—even in this marriage of arrangement,” he said gently, beginning to stroke the long shining tresses of black hair. Suddenly tired and exhausted with emotion, she leaned against him, only wanting her fear to cease.

He turned her face gently up to his and then bent his head and kissed her very softly and for a long time, until the trembling lips beneath his own began to cling and burn.

When at last he carried her to bed, Constance wound her arms round his neck and buried her head in his chest. She would now have gone with him anywhere, done anything, just so long as he did not stop.…

Sometime in the small hours of the morning, Lord Philip awoke in the tousled battlefield of his marriage bed. It was cold, and the blankets and sheets appeared to have tied themselves into a Gordian knot at the foot of the bed. He finally wrenched them apart and drew them tenderly over his wife’s naked body. She awoke and stared up at him with wide questioning eyes.

And that was when Lord Philip Cautry fell irrevocably in love with his wife. He felt awed and happy and strangely embarrassed as he buried his face in her breast and said in a low voice, “
Je t’aime.
”

“What does that mean?” asked Constance.

“Don’t you know French?” he teased. “It means ‘I love you.’”

Constance held him very close. She was so happy, she thought she might cry.

“I know a little French,” she said. “L’Empereur’… ‘trahison’… ‘espion,’” she murmured lazily.

The body against hers seemed to go very still. “And where did you learn such interesting words?” said Lord Philip, raising himself on one elbow to look down at her.

Constance racked her sleepy brain, but at first she could not remember. “I think I heard someone saying them—at your sister’s party in Kensington,” she said at last. “Probably the Comte Duval. He is the only Frenchman I know. Oh, yes—I remember now. He was talking to a friend—an English friend.”

She looked up at him anxiously. In the pale dawn light, his face looked very set and stern.

“You said you loved me, Philip,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I love you too. I’m afraid I fell in love with you that first night I saw you.”

The green eyes glinted down into her own. Lord Philip traced the line of her swollen lips gently with one long finger.

“Then prove it, Constance,” he said in a teasing voice. “That is, if you are not too tired.…”

Mrs. Mary Besant sourly turned down the corner of her card to show that she had called in person, handed it to her groom to deliver to Lord Cautry’s butler, and then ordered her coachman to drive her to Lady Amelia’s.

“Four o’clock, my dear,” she cried to Amelia as soon as Bergen, the butler, had retired, “and they were not even out of
bed!
”

“What do you expect?” snapped Amelia. “They only got married yesterday.”

“But I thought up such a good idea to embarrass her…” began Mrs. Besant, but was interrupted by her beautiful friend.

“I’m not interested,” retorted Amelia pettishly. “They’re married and that’s that. I never waste my charms on lost causes.”

“But you wanted her dead,” wailed Mary Besant.

“Not any more,” yawned Amelia. “I have other fish to fry.”

In another part of London, rage against Constance was also dying out. “I shall just have to make the best of things,” said Lady Eleanor to her husband. “If I had not given the reception or had stayed away from the wedding, Philip would never have spoken to me again, and family comes before all else. We Cautrys must stick together, and she is now a Cautry.”

“Quite, my dear,” said her husband, signalling wildly with his eyes to Mr. Evans to provide him with some excuse to escape.

“But she must be taught as to how to go on,” went on Lady Eleanor. “She has, after all, not been used to such a grand social position. Yes, yes, I think a little schooling from a woman of the world like myself would not come amiss. What is it, Mr. Evans?”

“I have some business papers which require Mr. Rider’s signature urgently,” said the secretary.

“Oh, very well,” said Lady Eleanor with an imperious wave of her hand. “You may go to attend to them, Mr. Rider, but you stay, Mr. Evans. I have some errands I wish you to perform.”

“Really, Eleanor,” bleated her spouse. “I should think one of the footmen…”

“I said I wanted Mr. Evans, so Mr. Evans shall do it,” said his wife testily. “I am surprised that you should dare to argue on such a trivial point, sir. I wish you to take a message to Lady Philip, Mr. Evans. I shall inform her I shall be calling on her on the morrow. I no longer bear the child any ill will. But then I was always famous for my charitable nature!”

Bouchard, the lady’s maid, nipped quickly up the area steps. My lady had not appeared from her bedchamber and Bouchard wished to buy herself a few ribbons. As she reached the corner of the street, she was surprised to hear herself being addressed in her native language, and swung round in surprise. A very elegant gentleman with a thin painted face and snapping black eyes made her a very low bow.

“Good afternoon,” he said again, in French. “I believe I have the honor to address Mademoiselle Bouchard?”

Bouchard gave a nod of assent.

“You see, I am a friend of the Cautrys,” pursued the gentleman. “My name is Duval, le Comte Duval.”

Bouchard, highly impressed, sank into a deep curtsy, unmindful of the muddy pavement.

“I heard that one of my countrywomen had taken the position of lady’s maid to Lady Philip and I felt obliged to find out if you were well-suited.”

“Indeed, yes, milord,” said Bouchard, highly gratified. Just wait till she told that frosty-faced butler about this!

“But then,” went on the comte smoothly, “I believe her ladyship has some knowledge of French so that should make you feel more at home.”

“No, milord,” said Bouchard with a superior smile. “Lady Philip doesn’t know a word.”

“Ah, yes, neither she does,” smiled the comte. “I was thinking of somebody else. Good day, mademoiselle.”

He swept the gratified Bouchard another splendid bow and strolled away.

He need not have worried so unduly about little Constance, he thought. Just as well. The murder of a little companion would not attract such a furor, but the mysterious death of my Lady Philip Cautry most certainly would. Constance was perfectly safe—unless of course she decided to take French lessons.…

Lord and Lady Philip Cautry lay in bed and watched the evening shadows lengthening across the room. Both were feeling debilitated and hungry. Lord Philip felt he could eat a whole saddle of mutton, but he was still suffering from some guilt over his previous churlish behavior and did not want to voice such an unromantic need. At last to his relief, Constance said timidly, “I am very, very hungry, Philip. Perhaps we could…”