“Madam, unfortunately for me, you are a woman of great spirit,” said Clarke, dosing himself again with brandy. “And equally unfortunately for me I am a rogue and always have been.” He gave a rueful smile and sat down again. “Oh, but what will I tell Mrs Clarke? What will I tell her?”
“I’ll make you a better bargain,” Griselda said. “I will explain to your wife and you will go and speak to my husband’s counsel.”
“A pretty thought,” he said, “but you won’t have to live with her.”
“Oh, I have domestic complications of my own,” said Griselda as lightly as she could, but her heart was heavy.
“Tom?”
It was nearly five, and Tom found Will stirring up his fire in the principal living room of his simple but comfortable chambers.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Will.”
“No, how could you? Come and sit down and have a drink. My God, man, you’re drenched.”
“I rode over here.”
“Ever the countryman.”
“Sometimes the only place a man feels comfortable with himself is on horseback,” said Tom taking off his sodden greatcoat.
“You look as if you’ve been out all afternoon,” said Will pouring out two glasses of claret.
“Pretty much.”
“Here,” said Will, handing Tom the wine.
“You look busy,” said Tom looking at the table with its covering of paper and open books. The ink-stand was open. “I am disturbing you.”
“I was glad to be disturbed,” he said. “I have been writing a counsel’s opinion for a litigious old women of property in Berkshire and I have been praying for this last half-hour to be interrupted. You are very welcome.”
“At least I can still please someone,” said Tom, taking a chair by the fire.
“Did you find your wife at home?” Will said after a moment.
“No,” he said, with a sigh. “But neither did I wait for her. Curious that, isn’t it? The creature in the world I most want to see and I send for my horse and spend the rest of this miserable afternoon, hacking about the filthy streets of this appalling city. Cowardice I suppose.”
Will whistled softly.
“You are a serious case.”
“Oh God, yes. I’m ready to slit my throat over this.”
“Now that would be cowardice,” Will said.
“I think it would simplify matters a great deal. And it would make her happy.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“She does not care for me, Will. And why should she? After all I have done to her.”
“You made her your wife. I don’t believe many women would find that such an unbearable situation. It’s not as if you are a pauper.”
“I forced her hand. I scared her into it. She had no choice because I denied her right to make a choice in the matter. Because I wanted her and I wanted to assert my rights over her. I behaved like a child.”
“You behaved,” Will pointed out, “like a man in love. That has its own honour.”
“No. What good is my love when she feels nothing for me in return?”
“You do not know that.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Will, but I have nothing to delude myself with. She does not care for me and that is an end to it. Love is like a contract. Both parties must be willing to sign, and she will not. And marriage without love is as abhorrent to me as it is to her.”
“Then you agree on something. Something important, for that matter.”
“All the more reason that I find some solution to this.”
“Weather this storm. Take her down to the country. Make her love you. That is the usual thing.”
“She is not the usual woman. She has principles, and pride and spirit, Will, in such measure that to keep her by me would be like taking a wild animal and trying to tame it.”
“That can be done.”
“But it should not be done. Every time I break in a young horse I wonder at the rightness of it. This would be a far worse crime. I love her and I will not imprison her.”
“So,” said Will, after a moment of consideration. “I suppose you have come to ask me about legal remedies to this situation.”
“Yes, I have.”
Will got up from his chair and began to walk slowly up and down the room, thinking.
“The thing is, Tom, that it would be practically impossible. I take it the marriage has been consummated?”
“Yes.”
“Then an annulment is out of the question, I’m afraid.”
“Divorce, then.”
“Divorce? That would require a private act of parliament, and ample though I know your income to be, it is not a prince’s fortune, which by my reckoning is about what would be required. And then there is the not inconsiderable question of grounds. What grounds are there? Has she taken a lover? Has she deserted you? No, of course not! Ergo, Tom, you have no grounds.”
“Can she not find grounds against me?”
“You would have to be the greatest monster in Christendom for her to be able to divorce you, Tom. You would have to have kept her locked in a cell and practically starving, as well as installing your mistress in her place, and murdering your children, for a court to take a favourable view of a woman’s petition for divorce. And then only if the gods were kind to you.”
“I would be better slitting my throat, then,” said Tom.
“There is another remedy, one which is available to you, but in my mind it has a cruelty all its own.”
“Tell me.”
“A deed of separation. You form a separate establishment for her with a suitable income. You relinquish your conjugal rights over her. You are only obliged to each other as set down in the deeds drawn up – no more and no less than the letter of the document. Of course neither of you are free to marry and although a man of your position can find discreet comfort for himself, the woman is left in a situation which can at best be described as ambiguous.”
Will paused to refill the wine glasses and let his words sink in.
“She is neither wife nor widow. What is a woman of good breeding to do with such a life?” he went on. “That is the question you must ask yourself. In Lady Thorpe’s case she is denied the comfort of her position in society, the friendship of her equals, and the pleasure of having children. And of course a legitimate union with any person she may fall in love with. Frankly speaking, I cannot imagine a crueller thing to do to someone you profess to love so deeply.”
“Must you talk as if you are in court?” said Tom with irritation.
“You asked my advice.”
“All I want to do is give her her freedom!” Tom exclaimed. “Is that so difficult? I am not a turnkey at Newgate, obliged to do as my master the prison governor tells me.”
“Society is your master, Tom,” said Will. “And society does not look kindly on freedom. Especially for young women of good family. But you know all this – love is making you forgetful.”
“There must be some other way!” Tom said hotly. “There must.”
“Make her love you,” said Will. “Put a child in her arms and she will love you.”
“For God’s sake, Will, must you descend to commonplaces? She is not like that. If she were then I would not have – ”
He broke off.
“Have married her?” said Will. “So, you’ve acquired a priceless Chinese bowl and now you want to break it? And when it’s broken you’ll be miserable. I’ll wager my fortune on it – such that it is.”
Tom refilled his glass and sat down by the fire again, staring into the flames.
“I’m your friend, Tom, before I was your counsel, and I don’t wish to see you miserable. Or lose my fortune for that matter.”
There was a knock at the door and Will’s servant came in.
“Message for you, Mr Randall,” he said. “From Mr Woburn. Will you wait on him at once in his chambers.”
“At this time of night?” said Will incredulously. “What does he want?”
“His boy said it was to do with Thorpe and Wansford. New evidence.”
Tom swivelled in his arm chair and looked at the servant.
“What did you say?”
“New evidence, sir.”
Will drained his glass and then tossed the dregs into the fire.
“Thank you, great gods of chance!” he said. “Come on Tom, let’s go and sample Mr Woburn’s good sercial.”
***
“So then, Mr Clarke,” said George Woburn, “to confirm: The Marquess of Wansford offered you the living of St Lawrence, Compton End, in the county of Staffordshire and settled your debts which amounted to three thousand guineas, in return for the creation of these letters?”
“Yes, he did,” said Clarke.
“To what end?”
“I believe Lady Thorpe – the dowager Lady Thorpe, that is, and Lord Wansford wished to consolidate their properties by marrying their own children,” said Clarke.
“And a male heir born of Sir Thomas and Lady Mary Thorpe would stand to inherit all their property,” said Woburn nodding. “A most curious exercise in dynasty building.”
“A very expensive one. Three thousand guineas is no little sum,” said Will.
“That’s a trifle to Wansford,” said Tom. “And there is not much the man won’t do to oblige my mother. This is all her scheme, I am sure of it,” he added with a sigh.
“She dictated the letters,” said Clarke.
“Which accounts for those silly remarks about redecoration,” said Will. “For she hasn’t been over the threshold at Priorscote since you came of age.”
“No,” said Tom. “She always loathed the house. It was too small for her. And there was too much of my father in it.” He gave a grimace and sat down at the table opposite Clarke. “Well, Mr Clarke, I hope you are pleased with yourself for your part in this mischief.”
“No, Sir Thomas, I am not. I deeply regret it. I am a weak and foolish man. Your late father told me as much when he dismissed me from my post as your tutor. I ought to have seen the sense of what he said, especially when he was so kind as to give me a good reference. He believed I was capable of reforming myself and gave me the opportunity to do so but I did not take it. Instead I felt bitter, exiled from the comfortable pleasures of your father’s house. When you dine at a gentleman’s table every day and are treated as an equal, it is difficult to settle to shabby lodgings.”
“I imagine you will have to settle for some very shabby lodgings when all this comes out,” pointed out Will. “The sort you find in prison.”
“And it is as well you took a wife when you did, Sir Thomas,” Woburn said. “For there is no knowing what trouble they could have brought you otherwise. As it is, the breach of promise action is merely Lord Wansford venting his displeasure at having been foiled. And tomorrow in court, we will dismiss his hot air with the cool breath of truth.”
“Yes, you could not have chosen a better wife,” Clarke said.
“What do you know of my wife?” said Tom.
“Did I not say?” Mr Woburn said. “It is thanks to Lady Thorpe that Mr Clarke has been persuaded to come forward. She solved the riddle which we could not. You are to be congratulated on your choice. A man cannot go wrong with a quick-witted woman beside him in life.”
Tom’s felt Will’s eyes on him and got to his feet, suddenly uncomfortable. The triumph of knowing the case was won evaporated, leaving him with confusion. Why the devil had she gone to such trouble for him?
He was standing by the window. Will was at his side.
“I think you should go home,” Will said. “Go and make your peace.”
“It’s not so simple,” Tom said, with a sigh, “but I think there is a solution. I’ll need your help though, Will.”
***
“I believe her ladyship’s in bed, Sir Thomas,” said Manton.
It was hardly surprising. It was after one in the morning by the time Tom got back to his house in Upper Brook Street.
“And so should you be, Manton. I’m sorry for keeping you up so late. You and Mr Gough will be glad to know there won’t be any more of my unsociable hours.”
“Why, sir? Are we going back to the country so soon?”
“Well, that rather depends on your mistress.”
“I see, Sir Thomas,” said Manton sounding as if he did not.
It was not the time for illuminating explanations, though they would have to been made sooner rather than later. So instead Tom went upstairs. He went up with less than his usual vigour. He was exhausted, but knew he was still too vexed to be able to sleep well.
But at least the decision had been made. The decision he knew was the right one. Will had argued against him with all his professional powers and yet the plan he had decided upon remained in his mind as the only correct course. Will had been furious, as only an old and dear friend could be, but in the end he had agreed to help him, though he shook his head as he did so.