The Westerby Inheritance (20 page)

Jane put the back of her hand to her trembling lips in the age-old gesture of the woman at bay.

“You wouldn’t,” she said faintly.

“I would. In fact, I will. You must learn one of life’s hard lessons, my lady. If you use people for your ends, they are apt to use you.”

Jane sat down suddenly and began to cry. How could she ever have imagined that she was in love with this monster? She cried steadily in the silence. At last she raised her wet eyes, searching the hard face above her for some sign of pity and finding none.

“I am still waiting,” he said in a cold voice. “I would prefer you to offer what you owe me rather than force me to take it by other means.”

“Give me some time to think,” wailed Jane. “I will give you my answer tomorrow.”

“No. You have had time enough.”

“I shall have my servants throw you out,” said Jane in as firm a voice as she could manage.

“Don’t trouble,” he said, striding to the door. “I shall see you in court!”

“Wait!” screamed Jane. She ran forward and caught his sleeve. He paused only to disengage his sleeve from her grasp and then marched down the stairs.

In seconds Jane assimilated the full extent of the ruin that faced her, that faced Hetty—Hetty, who was so proud of her new-found social success. And her father! Oh, God. It would surely kill her father, thought Jane wildly, too distraught to realize that her father had always been one of the most self-centered men in England, with or without his wits.

“My lord!” she called. He was at the street door, swinging his heavy cloak about his shoulders. Sanders looked up curiously at his mistress’s white face.

Lord Charles stared upward and read the capitulation in her eyes. He came back up the stairs to where she stood and drew her into the drawing room.

“One more chance, Lady Jane,” he said grimly. “Your answer.”

“There is one condition,” she whispered.

“You are in no position to make conditions,” he said testily. “Oh, very well. Out with it.”

He watched as she stood with her head bent, the toe of her slipper tracing the pattern in the Oriental rug.

“I would not like anyone to know—I mean, I would wish this matter between us to be kept secret. Were it known I was your mistress, it would perhaps affect my stepsisters socially.”

“No one shall know,” he said with an amused laugh that made her shiver. “I took the liberty of renting a house for this purpose. Come, Lady Jane. I know Lady Hetty and the girls are from home. There is nothing to stop you from taking a drive with me.”

Her eyes brimming over with tears, Jane mumbled helplessly, “I will fetch my cloak,” and trailed miserably from the room.

Lord Charles awaited her impatiently, fighting down his nagging conscience.

Once in his carriage, “the miserable watering pot,” as he was beginning to think of her, began to cry again. “Zooks,” he said cruelly, “it will be like making love to the Atlantic Ocean, I think. I trust I do not catch cold.”

“I have forgot my nightgown,” sobbed Jane.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said his lordship, turning his head away in exasperation.

His carriage wound its way through the London streets for some distance and then headed past the Mother Red Cap public house and out the Hampstead Road. On and upward they went, past the drenched acreage of Hampstead Heath, past Mr. Caston’s New Georgia pleasure gardens in Turner’s Wood, and finally came to a small red brick mansion hidden in a grove of trees.

Lord Charles tossed a guinea to the solitary coachman and told him to take himself off to the Spaniards and return in two hours.

His lordship was now anxious to get this increasingly tasteless revenge over and done with. On the other hand, he had no intention of not exacting it. Of course she was weeping and crying. But she must learn that she could not coldbloodedly make use of people. And so, with the unromantic and virtuous thought that he was teaching her a much-needed lesson, he guided her firmly upstairs to a large bedroom.

It was bare except for two upright chairs, a table, and a large fourposter bed with the covers turned back. Of servants there was no sign, but ample evidence that they had been at work some time earlier. A fire crackled on the hearth, and two branches of candles had been lit and placed on the table by the bed.

A wind had sprung up, and the trees outside sighed and moaned, and the rain ran down the window like tears.

Jane had ceased crying. Her courage had returned. If she had to go through with it, then she would do it with as little fuss as possible. Whatever she was to undergo, it would not kill her. Hetty and Sally and Betty would be safe from scandal, and with any luck he would have such a disgust of her that he would not wish to see her again.

“I shall leave you to get undressed,” he said curtly, striding into an adjoining dressing room.

Left to herself, Jane quickly removed her gown and jewels and slowly pulled the frivolous lace cap from her hair. She unrolled her stockings and took off her panniered petticoat and stood shivering in her underpetticoat and cross-laced bodice. She could not bring herself to remove these last items of dress and went and sat on the very edge of the bed and waited with a beating heart.

In the dressing room, Lord Charles stood in his cambric shirt and breeches. He had known this would happen, he told himself savagely. His damned conscience couldn’t wait! It had seized him by the throat and shaken him. He had never bedded with a virgin in his life, preferring the more epicurean pleasures of experienced women. She would probably lie under him like a piece of wood, and he would be left with all the guilt and none of the pleasure.

“Why does she always make a fool of me?” he cursed silently. Well, the only thing left was to take her home and wash his hands of her. And she did not look at all pretty with her face all blotched with crying.

He walked into the bedroom.

Jane stared up at him with dull eyes, reflecting that he looked like the Satan he was supposed to be. He had removed his wig, and his close-cropped black hair grew in a widow’s peak on his forehead.

He sat down on the bed next to her and took her by the shoulders. He was going to tell her to get dressed, and say something exceedingly nasty like “You are repulsive, madam,” but as soon as he touched her he felt a heady excitement beginning to course through his veins. His eyes seemed hooded as he stared down at her for a second, and then he bent his mouth to hers.

At first she submitted lifelessly, assuming this to be a prologue to those unnamed horrors to come, those horrors which were the basis of all coarse jokes. But as his mouth moved against her own with a strange intensity, as if the whole of his mind and body were concentrated in the touch of his lips, she began to feel the knot of fear inside her thaw, to be replaced by a strange, growing, burning sweetness, accompanied by a heavy lethargy.

He kissed her for a long time, always her lips, barely raising his mouth, pressing and exploring, while the fire spurted on the hearth and the rain drummed on the windows. He held her always a little away from him until, with a small choked sound, she wound her arms round his neck. He abruptly raised his head and pulled hers firmly against his chest. She tried to look up, but one strong hand kept her head anchored against the steady thud of his heart.

Lord Charles did not want her to read the expression in his eyes.

“I am in love with her after all,” he thought bitterly. “That was why I was so jealous at Ranelagh. That was why I hated her so. Why did the gods smite me with this great love for this heartless baggage? An I bed her, I will not be able to call my soul my own.”

He released her and rose abruptly to his feet.

“Get dressed,” he said harshly, standing with his back to her. “I am not in the mood.”

Shocked and buffeted by a sea of stormy emotions, Jane stared after him as he strode from the room.

With weak and trembling legs, she walked over to the chair where she had left her clothes and began to put them on in a dazed kind of way.

She loved him! She must have fallen in love with him that very first evening. And she had thought she had
forced
herself to fall in love!

And the kisses which had meant so much to her had merely given him a disgust of her.

Her lips trembled, but her pride would not let her cry again.

When he returned, he marched her down the stairs without a word. Jane found herself hoping that his coachman was still tippling at the Spaniards Inn, but the man was up on his box and waiting, as if he had been there all along—which, in fact, he had, being a thrifty Wesleyian who considered he had better uses for gold than pouring it down his throat.

All that long journey back to London, Jane racked her brains for something to say. At last she essayed, “I think we are not suited.”

“Yes,” came the cold answer from the other corner of the carriage.

Oh, if only he would smile!

“So,” went on Jane in a small voice, “we shall cancel our contract, shall we not?”

“It has not been fulfilled yet,” he said, turning round and looking at her fully for the first time since they had entered the carriage.

“But—”

“I shall consider it,” he snapped.

“I lack experience,” said Jane timidly.

“Obviously.”

Jane winced and searched around for some means to hurt him as he had hurt her. “I shall look around this Season and find some kind gentleman to instruct me,” she said, eyeing him from under her heavy lashes.

“Do that,” said his lordship in measured tones, “and I will kill you. When I am finished with you, anyone who cares may have my leavings, but not before.”

“I would consider it a sickness, sirrah,” said Jane, all fears swept away in a burst of anger, “to make love with someone I did not like!”

“Really! I had thought you an experienced mistress in the pleasures of revenge,” he said, goaded by hurt. “After all, your glass should tell you that I am hardly smitten by your beauty. Your hair under that stupid cap is exactly like a bird’s nest.”

“What!” screamed Jane, sitting bolt upright and clutching her fan till the sticks snapped. “You dare to criticize
my
hair! Why, sir, without your wig, you look like a great predatory crow. Very much, in fact. I remarked your feet were yellow.”

“I am wearing yellow stockings,” he said between clenched teeth. “You forget to whom you are speaking, madam.”

“Tra la!” said Jane. “To a man old enough to be my father.”

That shaft struck home. He was just stretching out his hands toward her when the carriage clattered to a halt outside Number Ten.

He recovered his poise and smiled at her cruelly. “Your next appointment with me is in two days’ time. I shall call for you.”

“I can’t,” said Jane. “I am invited to the Courtneys’ drum.”

“I am sure they will be disappointed when you refuse,” he said.

He climbed down from the carriage and then helped her alight.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it fleetingly. “Till our next meeting,” he said softly.

She entered the hall of Number Ten and found Bella standing waiting.

“You never was out with his lordship without a chaperon!” cried the lady’s maid.

Jane sighed. Old servants and old dogs were always allowed unlimited license, but at times she felt Bella went too far.

“His aunt was with us,” she lied, untying the strings of her sodden cap, which had been drenched while she stood on the pavement with Lord Charles.

“That’s a mercy,” said Bella, not sounding very convinced. “He’s got the very devil of a reputation, has that one, and I wouldn’t like you to feel you’re over beholden to his lordship on account of him restoring your pa’s estates.”

“Guard your tongue,” admonished Jane, walking into the morning room to get away from her.

But Bella followed her in. “There’s a letter arrived for you when you was gone.” She picked up a silver tray from the table and handed Jane the sealed envelope that was lying on it.

Jane sat down wearily, cracked open the seal, and gave a groan of dismay after she had scanned the contents. It was from Philadelphia Syms, who accused Jane of forgetting their friendship. Why did Jane not invite her to London? Think of all Philadelphia had done for her. Had it not been for that gift of the shawl, then Jane would still be living in penury in the house at Westerby. And so on.

Jane frowned in vexation. Her affection for Philadelphia had somewhat cooled. And what if Philadelphia should come to stay and find out about Lord Charles!

“It’s from Miss Syms,” she said to Bella. “Philadelphia wants me to invite her for the Season.”

“Such a pity as you can’t have her here on account of you having the house done over,” said Bella cheerfully. “But the Westerby town house, that’s your pa’s, not Mrs. Bentley’s, and it’s got a mortal lot o’ rooms and a grand staff eating their heads off. Don’t see why Miss Syms couldn’t go there. I’m sure Mrs. Bentley would feel better doing something to pay for her keep—like acting as chaperon.”

Jane grinned at the maid. “And what if Philadelphia comes here and finds we are
not
having the place done over?”

“’S easy,” said Bella. “It’s just
been
done. She ain’t been here before, so she won’t know no better.”

“Very well, Bella. I shall write to her directly.”

“Will you be seeing that Lord Welbourne again?” asked Bella, pleating her apron in her chubby fingers.

“Of course,” said Jane coldly. “One meets everyone during the Season.”

Bella sniffed but did not reply, keeping her obviously dark thoughts to herself.

Lord Charles Welbourne strode into his home, to be informed that Sir Anthony had called and was awaiting him in the library. He pushed open the door of the library. Sir Anthony was sitting in front of a cheerful fire with a glass in his hand.

“You look as bad as the weather, demme,” he remarked to Lord Charles. “Overcast and thundery.

“I came here,” went on Sir Anthony, as Lord Charles slumped in the armchair opposite and did not reply, “because there ain’t anywhere else to go. Everything’s canceled. Everything seems to have been planned for the open air. Think they was a bunch of demned foreigners, eh? The English weather always takes ’em by surprise. Been hearing news of Westerby. Seems he’s become as bad as Bentley over that curst house. You know it’s an old Jacobean barn of a place with that modern sort of classical wing tacked on one side, making it all sort of lopsided-looking?