Elizabeth Mansfield (23 page)

Lady Denham nodded with the same feeling of despair. Somehow her party had become a dismal failure. “Yes, of course, Millicent,” she said with a deep sigh.

***

Something forbidding in Letty’s eyes kept Aunt Millicent and Prue from prying further into the cause of her red eyes and strained expression, and she was permitted to retire without delay. She hurried upstairs to her bedroom, only to find Katie waiting for her. Turning away so that Katie would not get a good look at her face, she said, “Please, Katie, go to Prue. I don’t need you, but she’s had a difficult evening and will be very grateful for your assistance.” And she sank down on the edge of her bed.

Katie did as she was bid, but after she’d heard Prue’s story, helped her wash the dirt away, and tucked her into her bed, she returned to Letty’s room and peeped in to see if anything needed doing. To her surprise, Letty was still sitting on the edge of her bed. She apparently had not moved for almost an hour. Her hands lay slackly in her lap, and her eyes were fixed on the middle distance with an unseeing stare. Katie crept in, shut the door gently, and knelt down before her. “Miss Letty, nothin’ in the world can be bad enough to make you look so,” she whispered worriedly.

Letty focused her abstracted eyes on Katie’s face. The abigail was looking up at her with unmistakable affection and concern. It was the first sign of real sympathy Letty had had since Roger had come into her life. Because she had so determinedly kept her problems secret, the warmth and compassion that normally would have been offered by her mother, her sisters, and probably her aunt Millicent had not been given. For months she had had to keep her own council and to weep into a lonely pillow. There had been no ear into which she could pour her troubles, no shoulder on which she could find comfort. So the troubled look on Katie’s face undid her. “Oh, Katie,” she whispered tremulously, the tears spilling from her eyes. The tiny abigail did not need to hear more. She jumped up beside her mistress and put a supporting arm around her. Letty’s head dropped against the girl’s shoulder, and she wept in great, gulping sobs. Katie rocked her gently, cooing soft, comforting sounds into Letty’s ear. She continued her gentle rocking until Letty’s sobs had worn themselves out. Then she washed Letty’s face, undressed her, and put her to bed. She blew out the candles and sat at the side of the bed until Letty had fallen asleep. She had asked no questions and had learned nothing of the cause of her mistress’s anguish. But Katie had, as usual, learned
something
from the experience; she hadn’t realized until tonight that anyone but scullery maids could cry that way.

***

Lady Denham kept silent until she and Roger had returned home and dismissed the servants. “I suppose you’re going to tell me now,” she said to her son furiously, “that you did nothing tonight to upset Letty. Do you intend to tell me that you exchanged nothing but the merest commonplaces again tonight?”

“I am not going to tell you anything tonight, Mama,” Roger said wearily, “except to wish you a very good night.”

She glanced up at him, ready to make a sharp retort, when she caught sight of his face. He was quite pale, his lips compressed, the line of his jaw tight and tense. Motherlike, she immediately softened. She reached up, drew his head down, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “A very good night to you, too, my dear,” she said gently, and went off to bed.

Roger dropped onto his bed without bothering to undress. He needed to think, to reconstruct that evening at Vauxhall, and he wanted to do it without delay. It must have occurred more than a year ago. He doubted if he could remember.

Lying in the darkness, he stared unseeing at the ceiling and tried to reproduce the evening in his mind. There was to be a masquerade at the gardens, he recalled, and even weeks before, Kitty had teased to be taken. But he disliked Vauxhall and he disliked masquerades. He had given in to her wishes, of course, but with ill grace. And he’d refused to wear a costume. A domino would suffice, he had told her with finality. Strange how it was coming back to him. He remembered that she’d decided to dress as Little Bo Peep. She had beautiful ankles, and the costume would give her an opportunity to display them to the world. The costume had been copied from a picture in a book of nursery rhymes and had looked quite charming. But when it had arrived from her dressmaker’s and she had put it on to show it to him, she had looked at herself with disgust. The very high waist and the short, full skirt had not flattered her. “I look as if I were
breeding
!” she’d said in revulsion. In the end, she’d worn a domino—a bright green domino.

He tried without success to remember the color of his own domino. It was not important, but he wanted to remember every detail. He didn’t think it had been green. Whatever the color, he’d been wearing it when they’d arrived at the gardens. He had put on the mask, but he now remembered that he’d found it annoying—it was somewhat too narrow for his face and his vision had been partially blocked because of it. His groom had set up a table in a pleasant, Grecian-like alcove set within white pillars. Kitty had complained that the situation was not to her liking—too far from the bustle—but he’d ignored her complaints. Thinking back on it, he realized that he’d been a most ungracious host. She’d wanted him to take her to the rotunda to dance, but he’d refused. He was not overly fond of dancing, even in the best of circumstances, but to be milling about in the throng at the rotunda struck him as the very
worst
of circumstances. She had flounced off in annoyance, threatening to take up with the first familiar face she could find.

He remembered sitting alone for a long time, his feelings alternating between a desire to throttle her and guilt that he’d been so surly. But when more than half an hour had passed, he had begun to feel concerned. While it was true that Kitty was not a simpering little innocent and could easily take care of herself, this was a place that attracted all manner of ruffians, and the lady
was
there under his protection. He’d roused himself from his musings and had gone off to look for her.

Here Roger tried to envision every detail. He had come to the rotunda and looked over the crowd. At first, he’d been dismayed by the number of revelers who thronged the area. He’d feared that he never would find her in the mob. But almost at once, he’d seen the bright green domino and the auburn curls peeping out from under the hood, and he’d felt a wave of relief. Like a worried parent who finds a lost child, his relief had been followed by an explosion of fury. A parent would shout, slapping the child’s face, “How
dared
you to be so naughty!” His feelings were quite the same. He would have liked to beat her! Instead, he’d dragged her ruthlessly behind him all the way back to the table.

But—good God!—
that
had been
Letty!
The memory of it made him groan aloud. The poor child had stumbled along behind him, terror stricken, and he had callously ignored her cries. He had been completely convinced that it was Kitty whose hand he clutched. He’d thought that her cries were
playacting
—in fact, the choking sounds he’d heard behind him had seemed like suppressed laughter and
had only increased his fury.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine Letty’s feelings. The girl was being abducted by a complete stranger and dragged to God knew where. Perhaps even to be raped and murdered, for all she knew! Roger felt sick with self-revulsion. But he knew there was more to remember, and reluctantly he forced himself to recall the rest.

They had returned to his table, and he had unceremoniously dumped her into a chair. She had said something about a mistake—
I am not the lady you think me,
or some such expression. He had not paid attention. He’d believed that Kitty was being coy—teasing him out of his anger. He’d said something curt to prevent her from continuing the nonsense. What had he said? He couldn’t recall it at all. Try as he would, he could re-create none of the conversation that must have passed between them. He remembered only that she’d made a rather pretty, pleading speech, in a voice much lighter than Kitty’s, and he’d been struck by what he thought was Kitty’s talented acting.
Acting!
Lord, what a fool he’d been! The “acting” had seemed to give Kitty an unexpected charm, and he remembered feeling a surge of desire for her. He’d tossed off his mask to see her more clearly. She’d stood up before him, the curves of her body smooth, lithe, and enticing under the domino, and he’d pulled her into his arms.

He shut his eyes in pain. How roughly had he handled her? He could not—or would not—recall. But he remembered how she’d felt in his arms. She had been unexpectedly light and soft, and for a moment he’d enjoyed the sensation without thought. Then he’d kissed her. She’d been pliant and unresisting, but also unresponsive. It was the unresponsiveness that had set off the warning bell in his head. He suddenly became aware that the girl in his arms was trembling from top to toe. That could
not
be Kitty!

The rest was easy to recall. Kitty had arrived, the two women had looked at each other carefully, and it was clear that both had understood what had happened. Then the girl—Letty—had darted off into the underbrush and made her escape. He’d tried to find her—to apologize—but she’d disappeared. He had felt guilty and uneasy for a brief while, but (he admitted to himself with shame) he had soon forgotten her. He’d returned to Kitty. That lady, probably because of an instinctive jealousy, had suddenly become so enticingly complaisant that the entire incident had gone completely out of his mind.

Lying there in the darkness, Roger felt himself flush hotly in mortification. He pulled off his neckcloth and tossed it to the floor. He pulled himself to his feet and strode about the room. But he could not shake off his feelings of humiliation and self-disgust. Damnation, he thought, I should be horsewhipped! Letty had a brother, hadn’t she? Why hadn’t
he
come looking for Roger, demanding satisfaction? London was supposed to be civilized—men could not go about abducting and abusing innocent girls without castigation! If he’d been properly taken to task at that time, he wouldn’t now be in this impossible muddle.

It was clear that he’d taken off his mask and that Letty had recognized him. Why, then, had her family done nothing? And why, one year later, did they encourage him to pay his addresses to the girl he had so abused? The answer was obvious.
Letty had never told anyone.
The family did not know. The realization that she had confided in no one—not even Prue—made him sink down on the bed, his brow furrowed in deep speculation. She had kept the whole terrible story to herself. Why? His spirit leaped up at a ray of hope. Had Letty cared enough about him, even then, to protect his name?

No, the thought was ridiculous. They had barely been acquainted at the time. And after his gross mishandling of her at Vauxhall, it was scarcely likely that she could have any feeling for him but the deepest loathing. She had probably kept her peace and told no one because she wanted to forget the whole sordid affair. It was no wonder that she later refused to marry him. She had seen a side of him that no innocent girl should see. Letty had been gently reared—a sensitive, chaste, refined, obedient,
ingenuous girl. How could she agree to wed a man she knew to be a vulgar, lustful, brutish lout?

He lay back on the bed and threw his arm across his forehead in a gesture of despair. At last he understood the nature of the obstacle that he had sensed lay between them from the first. But it was a sizeable obstacle indeed. He had badly botched his hopes. He’d done it unwittingly but, he feared, irrevocably. Even if he were to assure her that he would never again treat her with anything but the most gentle understanding, would she be likely to believe him? Of course she wouldn’t, he realized with a jolt, sitting up abruptly and staring out into the darkness in chagrin—she’d seen Kitty again tonight! She must have thought—Good Lord!—that
he
had brought her here! If he had in any way softened her resistance to him during all these weeks in Bath, the meeting with Kitty would surely have hardened it again to a rocklike, impenetrable solidity.

No, she would never take him now. Feeling drained and empty, without hope, and moving with the abstracted air of a somnambulist, he bent down and removed a boot. How ironical, he thought, that the artificial relationship he’d had with Kitty should appear to Letty more real than the agonizing genuineness of the love he felt for
her.
In a burst of anger at the helplessness and futility of his position, he stood up and flung his boot to the far corner of the room. Furiously, he repeated the act with the other boot. This conduct failed to relieve his frustrations but only succeeded in making him feel quite foolish. Without undressing further, he threw himself upon the bed, folded his hands beneath his head, and stared up at the ceiling. Dawn would come eventually. In the meantime, he permitted himself an unaccustomed indulgence in self-pity, during which he glumly rejected even the small comfort his mother had once offered—when she’d said that a bit of suffering over a love affair would be good for his character. He very much doubted that this agony was good for anything—not his character, not his future, not even his immortal soul.

The morning should have dawned in gray and drizzly gloom, but Mother Nature, with her usual callousness and lack of sensitivity to human moods, brought forth a day of such sparkling brightness as to be considered singularly inappropriate by a good number of Bath’s inhabitants. Roger, for one, buried his head in his pillow when Trebbs came in and threw back the curtains. “Shut those things!” he muttered hoarsely. “And Trebbs, be a good fellow and take yourself off. Don’t come back until I call you. Sunshine! Faugh!”

Prue observed the sunlight spilling into her bedroom window and making lopsided rectangles on her carpet with a frown. “Doesn’t it ever rain in this benighted place?” she asked no one in particular.

Her sister stood before the window in
her
bedroom studying her face in a hand mirror. The puffy redness of her eyes was quite unmistakable in the revealing glare of the sunlight. A grayer day would have made the morning—and the sight of her face—a little more bearable. She, too, drew the curtains against the relentless brightness.