Lady Susan Plays the Game (42 page)

Lady Susan's nerves were still so stretched from the events of the last twelve hours that she didn't at once know what he was saying. But soon she realised that the attentions of an ardent lover were exactly the remedy she required. If she could not erase what had happened and was happening, she could at least shut it out.

With different emotions but similar eagerness they had stepped into the bedchamber and Lady Susan was soon pleased to find herself in the uncomplicated arms of Manwaring, feeling and inflicting an entirely predictable pain.

When later they sent for refreshments – their particular love-making gave them both an appetite – Barton placed Mrs Johnson's note on the tray. Lady Susan recognised the handwriting. She had managed during the last hour or so to banish the encounter in Edward Street from her mind; the note brought it back with a thud.

‘Well,' she said as she kissed Manwaring's ear while reading the note over his head, ‘this is unfortunate indeed. You must go at once.'

It was necessary to be selective with the letter's contents; so she hastily got up and stuffed the paper into a drawer in her writing desk.
Another one for burning at night
, she reflected. ‘Your wife has arrived at the Johnsons and has just had an audience with her guardian.'

Manwaring leapt up in fury. ‘Has she, by God!' He pushed away his coffee, put on his outdoor clothes and, after a quick embrace, left the apartment.

Lady Susan finished her drink in silence. There would of course be an outburst from Reginald when she next saw him. For she did not doubt that Mr Johnson had told him all that
he knew and all that Mrs Manwaring had just poured out to him. Reginald would have seen that lady leave with his own eyes and know the source to be believable. He might rush round to her lodgings and demand an explanation. But she knew him well. He would not come at once – or she would never have risked her restorative time with Manwaring. Indeed, now she thought further, she rather expected that Reginald might wrap himself up in his hurt, for his pride would have been dented – then he would write a most bitter note.

Whatever he did, it would be all words, and Lady Susan fancied that she could cope with them. At the back of her mind lay the debt to Sir Philip. In the past a debt had rarely worried her but this one had been translated into power and Lady Susan didn't care to be in anyone's power. Marriage with Reginald could cancel the debt. Although she felt angry in anticipation of the young man's fury, she would have to cozen him. Given her mood towards him, the prospect was fatiguing. She surprised herself: usually she enjoyed wheedling and manipulating because she was sure of success. It must be the tiredness from travel that ailed her – she never liked long coach rides, especially out of London.

She dashed off a reassuring note to Alicia Johnson, who she knew would be fretting at having allowed this debacle to happen. Had she been at home she could have got Reginald away and she must now be feeling guilty. But Lady Susan could not blame her. It was simply unlucky that she had timed her trip to the milliners to coincide with the arrival of two such inappropriate guests.

Lady Susan wanted to cheer her friend. So she wrote that she expected Reginald to rage and fuss and be pacified within twenty-four hours. If she was not quite as secure of anything as she had been before the journey to Norfolk and visit to Hans Place, she would keep up her character with Alicia.

The note did its work. Mrs Johnson believed at once. She had almost unlimited faith in Lady Susan and her power over men.

Alone in his friend Richard Marchmont's lodgings in the Temple Reginald gave way to all the mortification of humiliated love. The blow to his self-esteem was immense. It was the first time he had loved and he had been fooled. He had heard of the wiles of woman but nothing he'd read, or that his sister or anyone else had said, could have prepared him for this moment.

When Mr Johnson had first begun to speak he'd resented the interference in his affairs and almost left the room. He'd stayed to be polite to an infirm old man. Then he'd listened against his will, then concentrated intently, until he realised he must believe. In all the fury of jilted passion he now sat down to write the bitterest note he had ever composed.

He wrote quickly, scratching the paper with the quill he was too agitated to sharpen properly. He wrote, he read, he crumpled the sheet and threw it to the side of the room. He began again, smudged the ink before blotting it – she would think him in tears: he would not give her the satisfaction. He tore that paper as well, and started again, trying to control his unsteady hand: ‘I bid you farewell for ever,' he wrote.

But it was not enough. For a moment he felt the urge to abandon the attempt and dash round to her lodgings and scratch the word ‘whore' – a word that had never before passed his lips – with a sharp quill on the serene, beautiful, deceiving face.

He tried to write again but then got up. A letter would not do. It was too good for her. He
must
see her. She must listen to his loathing. The thought overcame him: he knew he had to go.

Lady Susan was resting on a chaise longue in her drawing room when Barton knocked on the door with the news that Mr de Courcy waited below. Before the maid had finished giving the message, it was overtaken by the author, for Reginald could not wait. He burst in on Lady Susan, who rose as he entered. The light was behind her and she was more silhouette than real. He could not easily discern the expression as she moved towards him, saying, ‘Dearest Reginald, how wonderful and unexpected—'

He cut her off. ‘You deceive me no longer, madam. I have seen you as you truly are. I need only say “Langford”.' He stopped and looked meaningfully at her. ‘Langford,' he repeated. ‘It is enough. You know what I allude to. I have heard it all. Poor Mrs Manwaring, your supposed friend, poor lady, how she has suffered at your hands. I know it all. She has told her guardian everything.'

‘Reginald, what can you mean? Dear Reginald, do sit down. Take refreshment. Calm yourself.'

He ignored her invitation. ‘You ask what I mean, Lady Susan. I know you would love me to describe it to you, all of it. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes, I also understand
what pleasure you would take in hearing of the misery you caused, the desolation you afflicted on an honourable house – and on me.' His voice broke a little here but he swallowed and hardened his tone.

He had to go on at once. He dared not look at her, for she had moved a little from the window's frame and he saw that lovely face, a little pallid indeed, but looking calmly at him. He was uneasy, but, no, he could not have been fooled this time. ‘You have taken the peace from two families and glory in it.'

She thought to move towards him and put her hand on his arm, but it was too soon.

‘Do at least sit down, Mr de Courcy. You came to confront me. Do me the justice of listening as well as speaking.'

She sat down herself as she spoke and habitual politeness made him sit too, but he stayed on the end of the chair, fiddling with his shirt cuff, twisting and twisting it out of shape.

‘I think you can have nothing to say to me. It would be better if I left now.' He was conscious that he'd slipped a little from the high ground, that he was expressing more misery than he'd intended.

‘Reginald, dear Reginald, believe me, I am quite bewildered by all this passion. I cannot imagine what Mr Johnson can possibly have told you that could have so conquered your mind and destroyed the love you were so kind as to impress on me a few weeks ago. Has it simply evaporated through the second hand words of a jealous woman? Surely you knew the rumours before we ever met. You knew how the jealousy of such a woman for her admittedly straying husband enveloped every lady of moderate beauty. I cannot imagine why you have been so imposed upon.'

She looked sadly at him and indeed, as the memory of her debts and Sir Philip's power rose unbidden to her mind, an expression of true anxiety did for a moment cross her face. She raised her handkerchief and dabbed one eye. ‘None of this matters to me – I am used to it – except in what it has done to us. I cannot bear to feel that I have been so sunk in your opinion, for that is the dearest thing to me in the world.'

She had lowered her voice, but Reginald caught her words. Just for a moment he wavered. But, no, the tale he'd heard was too authentic, too detailed; Mr Johnson had
vouched for it. He thought too of those letters, those many letters at Churchill which Lady Susan had said were from her friend Charlotte Manwaring. His brain reeled.

‘I don't know what magic you have enveloped me in, Lady Susan, but I know that my mind has been perverted by your wiles. I know now that, even while you were with us in Churchill, snaring us with your witchcraft – yes, witchcraft – all the while you were shamelessly corresponding with Mrs Manwaring's husband.' He mustered as contemptuous a look as he could and darted it at her. ‘I also know that he has just been here.'

Lady Susan was startled: he saw that she was.

‘Yes, even the most trusted servants can be bribed.'

‘I cannot be responsible for who visits me,' she began, but he continued to talk over her.

‘And all this when you were encouraging me as a lover, and I, deluded fool, actually wanted you to be my wife, to foist you on an ancient family who all well knew what you were. How close I came to destruction!'

He could sit no longer. He was too agitated. He walked a few paces, then went on, ‘But I have escaped you, just in time. I am fortunate, but poor Mrs Manwaring – her sufferings are not over. And her daughter. All ruined by you.'

This was an exaggeration. But it was no time for quibbling. ‘Reginald,' she interrupted, ‘this is absurd.'

‘It is, madam, my weakness for you, my love for so artificial and conniving a creature is absurd, and I shall long rue the day.' He had manoeuvred himself so that he was now dark against the bright window. ‘It is time to depart for ever.' He moved towards the door.

Lady Susan was still sitting. She had coped with too much in the last twenty-four hours and a profound weariness was coming over her. The time with Manwaring had been reinvigorating but she would perhaps have been better resting.

She supposed she could still cozen Reginald, still bring him round if she tried. It was not certain but it was not impossible. She was used to playing what she thought a trump card at the tables and finding herself lost, but she was not used to this in love matters. Where words and gestures were required she knew her skill. And yet she supposed there were defeats, even in love. Would this be one?

She doubted it need be so. But, if she did not require marriage and a great deal of money so urgently, she wondered if she would take the trouble she supposed she must take.

Yet the more she needed Reginald de Courcy, the more she found herself resenting the fact. This ranting at her was tedious. Urgency or no, she was beginning to think she really could not be bothered. If she were not so drained, so very tired, she might have continued her course, she later thought. But for now she was simply sick of the game.

‘Mr de Courcy,' she said as he paused at the door. ‘I am happy that you feel yourself so superlatively in the right and are so sure of your own position.' She saw him start. Then she went on, ‘You have restored yourself to all the complacency of an only son and petted brother; your family will rejoice that you have been so obedient to their wishes and that the prodigal has returned to the fold.'

He stared blankly back at her. He had never heard her speak this language before and could not immediately respond.

She went on, ‘You will take comfort in following the prudence that has been marked out for you and recover your composure. I release you from an engagement you pressed upon me. I believe that I too will recover from the disappointment.'

He flushed deeply, then turned white and dashed out to the street.

He was in the carriage at once. In his pocket he still had the lock of Lady Susan's hair that he had had set in a jewelled frame. He'd meant to tear it from his pocket and throw it on the floor in front of her.

But there had been something about her that forbade violent gestures, something that went on humiliating him. He thought of those dove's eyes in front of a serpent's mind, those perfect lips from which he had drunk such poison. Hers had been the violence – the envenomed arrows, the barbed dart shot through his body. He squashed the miniature with his two hands till he bent the filigreed frame, then dropped it on the floor and crushed it with the heel of his boot. The jewels were scattered on the floor like tears and the hair unravelled at his feet.

He lacked an outlet for his frenzied feelings. He must do something. He would go abroad and see what bright skies and a new climate would do for a shattered heart. But there
was a war on and it was no moment for a grand tour. He should buy a commission and throw himself on to the battlefields of France. He would not be mocked for wanting to serve his country. And if he died in arms, well, what of it?

But the thought of his poor father and mother whom he had already so grievously hurt stayed him. Their image put him in mind of his house and acres. Lady Susan had spoken slightingly of his position and his family. He would not let her triumph by hearing of his death. No, he would live to enjoy them in spite of that enchantress.

He wondered about returning to Churchill to his sister and, he remembered with a jolt, Frederica. He had not mentioned her when he had listed her victims to Lady Susan, but surely her daughter was one of them, along with himself. Perhaps she was the saddest. She had cried to him for protection – and he had failed her. The poor child: she at least had known what her mother was. He would need to show how sorry he was for his blindness. He must make it up to her if they saw each other again.

But he was not quite ready to face Catherine Vernon. He would instead return to Parklands, from which he had come so prematurely – and luckily – propelled by his then uncontrollable desire for Lady Susan. It would be humiliating of course to see his parents once more so soon but, in the general rejoicing at his escape, they would forget his rashness. His father lacked tact but Reginald could rely on his mother to rein him in as much as possible.