Joan Wolf (19 page)

Laura’s eyes were wide and dark in her pale face. “Have you done that?”

“No. I destroyed the diary.”

“But what did you see Mr. Murray about?”

“I am also going to promise Giles that I will keep quiet about his culpability in your accidents if he promises to leave the country. If he comes back, I will publish a copy of his confession to the world. It’s the confession that will be lodged with Mr. Murray.”

“Will he make a confession?”

“I hope so. At any rate, I’m going in to see him now. David will come with me and wait outside—just to make certain I come back out.”

She looked up at him steadily, his beloved face blurred by the tears she was holding back. He looked so tired. “I suppose you must go,” she said in a low voice.

He looked back at her, and his mouth curved in a faint yet very tender smile. “No fuss,” he said. “No admonitions to be careful. Only ‘I suppose you must go.’ There isn’t another woman like you in the world, Laura.”

She managed to smile back at him, and only after he had left to go face his hate-filled enemy did she break down and cry.

* * * *

At seven o’clock she went downstairs to join Jane for dinner. They ate in unaccustomed silence, inhibited by the presence of the servants from talking about what was on their minds. When the final course was served, Jane dismissed her attendants and she and Laura settled down for a talk. David had told his wife the identity of the saboteur.

“I didn’t like that fellow at all,” Jane said flatly. “Now I know why.”

“I always thought I liked him,” Laura returned, her clear brow furrowed a little in puzzlement.

“Well, you didn’t like him enough to want to marry him.”

“That’s true, but I always assumed that was because he reminded me ...” She broke off and flushed as she realized what she had almost said.

“Whom did he remind you of?” Jane asked curiously.

“My first husband,” said Laura woodenly.

Jane looked unimpressed. “Oh. Well, if your first husband was like Giles, I don’t imagine you liked him very much either.”

“No,” sighed Laura. “I’m afraid I didn’t.”

Jane leaned forward and lowered her voice. “If I were you, Laura, I should want Giles dead.”

Laura stared at her. “Dead?” she echoed blankly.

“Certainly. This business of making him leave the country is all very well, but you’ll be safer if he’s out of your way permanently.”

“I see.” Laura was gazing at her in fascination. “What do you suggest, Jane?”

“I don’t suppose you could get rid of him yourself,” Jane said with regret. “It would be too complicated. You’ll just have to hire someone to do it for you.”

“Hire someone to kill Giles for me,” Laura repeated.

“Yes,” agreed Jane. She was deadly serious. “And it’s no use telling Mark
he
ought to do it. Men are so squeamish about things like that.”

“I know.” There was a suspicious tremor in Laura’s voice, but Jane seemed not to notice. “It would be just like them to boggle at a little thing like murder.”

“David was actually sorry when Julian fell off that cliff,” Jane said in exasperated indignation.

“Jane, if you were in my place, would you really hire someone to kill Giles?”

“No. If I thought someone was trying to hurt David, I would kill him myself.” Jane’s eyes were blazing and Laura looked at her in awe. “You are more civilized than I, however,” Jane continued, “so I recommend you hire someone.”

As she concluded this piece of advice, the door opened and David came into the dining room alone. “Where’s Mark?” Laura asked, going very white.

“He’s in the library,” David reassured her hastily. “He’s fine, Laura, there’s nothing to worry about. He got Gregory’s confession, but I rather think he’d like to tell you about it himself.”

Laura rose instantly. "I'll go to him.” David went to sit by his wife as Laura walked swiftly out of the room.

Mark was standing leaning against the chimneypiece when Laura quietly entered the library. He didn’t see her at first; he was too busy staring with abstracted concentration at the pattern of the priceless Persian rug.

“Mark?” she said softly. He looked up, pushed himself off from the chimneypiece, and without a word walked straight into her arms.

* * * *

It took some time for the whole story to finally emerge. It had been a shattering interview. “Giles just sort of collapsed when I told him about the diary,” Mark said. “It was terrible to watch. He ... shriveled up before my eyes. I could have borne it better if he’d defied me. But he never tried to deny it. I think perhaps he was even glad to be found out, glad to be forced to stop.”

“He agreed to go abroad?” she asked.

“Yes. He agreed to everything I suggested. I have never seen a man so utterly defeated.”

“He signed a confession admitting to arranging my accidents?”

“Yes. He sabotaged the phaeton and the boat. He was going to find an excuse not to go out with you that day, you know. He just wanted to make sure
you
got in the boat.”

“And the mirror?”

“Yes. He was hiding in the trees. He knew you would come back over the ha-ha.” Mark rumpled his hair in the way he always did when he was tired. “It seems he got the idea of making it look as if I were trying to kill you after the incident at Dartmouth Castle. That, apparently,
was
an accident.”

They were sitting side by side on the sofa, and now Laura put her cheek against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “The nightmare is almost over, then.”

“It is over,” he replied firmly. “Giles is leaving for France tomorrow.”

“Leaving you still surrounded by all those horrid suspicions.”

“The talk will die down when no more accidents occur,” he said tranquilly. “It won’t be so bad.”

They sat together peacefully for a few minutes, and then Laura said mischievously, “Jane told me to hire someone to kill Giles.”

“What!” Mark pulled away from her and stared down into her amused face. “Did she really?”

“Yes. But she advised me not to tell you. Men, she said, are so squeamish about things like that.”

Mark began to laugh. “Only Jane,” he said. “I’ll wager she was perfectly serious, too.”

“She was. She made me feel as if I were a poor-spirited little dab of a thing.”

He hugged her to his side. “Not poor-spirited,” he said, “but certainly too tenderhearted to ever dream of hurting anyone, even your worst enemy.” He stopped laughing and looked down into her lovely, smoky eyes. “I’ll wager even further that you’re sorry for Giles.”

A faint, rueful smile touched her mouth. “I am,” she admitted.

“Yes,” he said with infinite sadness. “The damnable thing is, so am I.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Giles left for France the following day, as he had promised; both Mark and David saw him onto the boat. A few days after his departure, Laura and Mark removed from Hawkhurst to Cheney House in town. It was time, Mark said, that they began to lead a normal life.

It was a course of action more easily prescribed than carried out. It seemed to Laura, as she wondered why she could not relax and enjoy the whirl of social events they were caught up in, that she had never really lived a normal life. She had never had a chance just to be young. Always her life had been shadowed: by her unhappy first marriage, her fear of losing Robin, her fear that Mark did not love her, her fear that he was trying to kill her, her fear that something would happen to him.

 In retrospect, it seemed she had spent all the years of her young womanhood under some shadow or other. It was not so easy just to step out into the sunlight and forget.

Sometimes she felt as if she were a thousand years old.

* * * *

The culmination of their London sojourn came on July 19, 1821, when George IV was formally crowned King of England. Mark, magnificently attired in his state robes, and Laura, gorgeous in full court dress, joined the procession of peers and peeresses that gathered in Westminster Hall at ten A.M.  Laura, looking around curiously, spotted Jane and David and waved. In a moment the Wymondhams had joined them. Jane and Laura were commiserating with each other about the ostrich feathers they were both obliged to wear in their hair, when Mark nudged his wife. It was the King.

He was splendidly dressed in a twenty-seven-foot-long train of crimson velvet emblazoned with gold stars, and a black Spanish hat that had great plumes of ostrich feathers. He wore a wig whose curls fell gracefully over his forehead.

“Well, at least
one
man is wearing ostrich feathers,” Laura whispered to Mark before sinking down in a deep curtsy.

The procession formed up and at last slowly started moving from the Hall to Westminster Abbey. It was headed by the King’s Herb-Woman and six maids, who scattered herbs along the way. They were followed by the chief officers of state bearing the crown, the orb, the scepter and the sword of state.  With them were three bishops carrying the paten, chalice, and Bible. The peers, in the order of their rank, moved majestically after the bishops. The King walked under a canopy of cloth-of-gold borne by Barons of the Cinque Ports. As he entered Westminster Abbey, he was greeted by the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

It was a very long ceremony. Too long, Laura thought as she moved her head restlessly. All of her ostrich feathers felt as if they were sticking straight into her head. One of the high points was the sermon in which the King was reminded that the most essential service that a sovereign can render to state is to encourage morality and religion.

At these words, Jane, who had never forgiven the King for making David attend the trial of the Queen for adultery, snorted. Quite audibly. There were smothered smiles all around them, and Mark’s shoulders shook suspiciously. After that it all became unbearably long and dull.

Finally it was over, and they were allowed to leave the Abbey and go back to Westminster Hall for the banquet. The Hall had been completely transformed for the occasion. A wooden floor had been laid on top of the original stone; the walls had been draped; there were tiers of wooden galleries for spectators, and a dining table for peers and bishops ran the length of the Hall. The King and the Royal Dukes sat at the south end of the Hall at a platform draped in scarlet and gold. At the north end there was a triumphal Gothic arch, and above this arch was a gallery for the orchestra.

There was only one thing wrong with the arrangements, thought Laura to herself as she ruefully surveyed the splendor below her. The three hundred and twelve people sitting down to dinner with the King and his brothers were all male. She, along with the rest of the peeresses, was sitting up in the gallery as a spectator.

 She had a sudden strange feeling, as she gazed down at the scene below her, that this was exactly what she had been ever since they first came to London: a spectator, incapable of joining in with the fun and gaiety of all the others at the party.

Down below, there was a procession of attendants coming through the Gothic arch bearing the first course. The smell wafted up to Laura, and her nostrils twitched. “I’ll be damned if I ever let Prinny have another one of my paintings,” Jane muttered darkly at her shoulder. “This is really the outside of enough!”

At the peers’ table David murmured something to Mark, who was sitting next to him. Mark nodded and then looked up at Laura in the gallery. She knew instinctively that he was feeling exactly as she was. She smiled at him, and the lines of reserve eased from his face. He smiled back.

Suddenly there was a trumpet roll, and through the Gothic arch came three of his Majesty’s chief peers: the Lord High Constable, who was the Duke of Wellington; the Lord High Steward, who was the Marquis of Rayleigh; and the Deputy Earl Marshal, who was Lord Howard of Effingham. These gentlemen all were correctly attired in their state robes. They were also on horseback.

Laura stared in awe-stricken surprise. Down on the floor, Mark turned to David. “I don’t believe it,” he said in stifled tones.

David was frowning. “Only an idiot like Prinny would dream of bringing horses into a banquet,” he said, his eyes on the Marquis’ high-strung gray.

Up in the gallery Jane was leaning dangerously over the rail, watching her uncle. Laura grabbed her dress and hauled unceremoniously. Suddenly Jane giggled. “You should see Uncle Edward’s face! Alcibiades isn’t going to stand for this, and he knows it.”

“Here comes the meat,” said Laura. Her voice was shaking.

Hallway through the meat course, the Marquis’ horse decided he had had enough. The Marquis, who had done his part in the ceremony under loud protest, completely lost his temper and began to curse audibly.

Down at the peers’ table. Mark buried his face in his hands. “I feel like I’m dining in a circus,” he said to David when he got his breath back.

“Poor Uncle Edward,” said Jane.

Laura, her eyes brimming, answered after a minute, “Poor Alcibiades.”

The three horsemen withdrew, but peace did not reign for long. There was a new fanfare, and through the Gothic arch came a horseman on a white charger, in full armor, with a plumed helmet and carrying a gauntlet.

Mark finished his glass of wine and started on another. “Not a circus,” he said. “A tournament.”

The tournament did not materialize, however. The King’s Champion threw his gauntlet down three times but, prudently, no one accepted his challenge. The King then rose and drank to his Champion out of a gold cup; next he drank to his peers. His peers responded by drinking to their King and giving him several rounds of hearty cheers.

“M-Mark is getting drunk,” said Laura.

“I wish I were,” Jane replied gloomily.

Finally, after a great deal of further ceremony, the King withdrew to Carlton House. Freed of Majesty, horses, gauntlets, and challenges, the peers settled down to enjoy themselves.

“This is outrageous,” Jane complained to Laura. “Here we are, I a nursing mother, you a mother-to-be, and we’re starving, while those wretches of men ...” Words failed her.

Down on the floor, Mark and David appeared to be getting progressively merrier. Laura got up and went over to the gallery rail. The din in the Hall from all the voices was deafening. She waved her hand and finally caught Mark’s attention. “We’re starving,” she mouthed at him.