A Dangerous Undertaking Page 13

  ‘Now you know the truth, can you forgive me?’

  ‘Now, as to that…’ There was a tinkling laugh which could only have belonged to a woman being coquettish. ‘Kiss me and I shall tell you whether I forgive you or not.’

  ‘But I am married.’

  ‘So when has that stopped a man kissing the woman he loves?’

  ‘I——’ Roland became silent suddenly and Margaret was sure he was obeying the demand for a kiss.

  ‘Now I may forgive you, if you tell me that you still love me.’ Again the high-pitched laugh that assailed Margaret’s ears like the wind in the reeds of the fen, foretelling a storm. ‘Poor little mouse, she doesn’t stand a chance, does she?’

  ‘No, I am afraid not.’

  Margaret, clothed in a misery which wrapped itself around her like a thick cloak, turned and hurried towards the pavilion, where there were other people, lights and music and gaiety. If she could only find Charles and Kate, they might be persuaded to take her home. She stopped suddenly. Mouse, was she? Didn’t stand a chance—wasn’t that what they had said? But she was Roland’s wife and she carried his child; was she going to let them dismiss her so lightly? She turned and walked slowly back, meeting Roland and the girl as they came along the path together. It was the same fashionable young lady thay had seen earlier talking to Kate and Charles. She had her hand on his arm and was smiling. Roland looked grim.

  ‘Why, my dear,’ Margaret called, falsely bright, as she hurried towards them. ‘I had given you up for lost. Where is my cordial?’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. I’ll fetch it now.’

  ‘Do not trouble yourself, I am no longer thirsty.’ She turned deliberately from Roland to survey the girl from top to toe. ‘Are you not going to introduce your friend to me?’

  He pulled himself together. ‘Of course.’ He turned to Susan, who had a triumphant gleam in her eye which made him angry; she had nothing to be triumphant about. ‘My lady, may I present Mistress Susan Chalfont?’

  Margaret gave no more than an inclination of her head, but Susan swept a low curtsy. ‘I am pleased to meet you, my lady. Ro… His lordship has told me so much about you.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Margaret’s voice was as cold as ice.

  ‘Yes, it is so romantical. I wish you well.’ Again that empty laugh. ‘I am persuaded the Pargeters have the devil’s luck when it comes to their women.’

  Roland squirmed uncomfortably. When Susan had come upon him hurrying to fetch Margaret’s cordial, he had seized the opportunity to speak to her alone and try to explain why he had married and why those early reasons were no longer true. And then Margaret herself had appeared and the whole thing had blown up in his face and he hated himself. He swept Susan an elaborate leg. ‘Mistress Chalfont.’ Then he turned to offer Margaret his arm. ‘Come, my dear, we must find Charles and Kate.’

  His manner angered Susan. She did not see why she should be dismissed in that fashion, even if he was married to the mouse. ‘I shall come too,’ she said, taking Roland’s other arm. ‘Mama and Papa will be looking for me.’

  Thus all three made their way to the pavilion, but only Susan found anything to talk about.

  ‘You must come to my ball,’ she said. ‘Both of you. I shall ask Papa to send you an invitation tomorrow. It is to be masqué. All the best people will be there. The house has been in a ferment for weeks. Our ballroom is not very large and the crush will be tremendous, but so much the better. Papa has engaged the very best orchestra and a new French chef. Of course, we had hoped to announce my betrothal, but that will have to wait.’ She laughed suddenly and gripped Roland’s arm tighter. ‘But I do not mind; the best things are worth waiting for, and in the meantime I may flirt a little with whom I choose.’

  ‘Indeed you may,’ Roland said, because she had run out of breath and he felt that something was required of him.

  ‘Oh, la, Roly.’ She tapped his arm with her fan. ‘Are you not even the tiniest bit jealous?’ She leaned forward to speak to Margaret across his front. ‘We are very old friends, Roly and I.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I spent some time at the Chalfonts’ Derbyshire home, recovering from the wound I received at Culloden,’ Roland explained to Margaret. ‘It was due to the care I received there that I survived.’

  Margaret forced herself to smile at the girl. ‘Then I owe you a debt of gratitude.’

  Susan seemed to find this statement amusing and could not answer for laughing. She was still giggling into her lace handkerchief when they came upon her parents, anxiously looking for her.

  Sir Godfrey looked grim, but Susan ran to him and took his arm. ‘Papa, all is well, truly it is. Roland has explained and it is oh, so thrilling. Do not be angry with him any more. Let me introduce you to Lady Pargeter.’ To Margaret she said, ‘My parents, Sir Godfrey and Lady Chalfont.’

  Margaret curtsied but, before she could speak, Roland bowed stiffly. ‘My respects, Lady Chalfont, Sir Godfrey. I must find my sister.’

  ‘She has gone home,’ her ladyship put in. ‘She was feeling a little unwell—the heat, you know. Charles said you would understand.’

  ‘Of course. Charles is right to be careful. I think we shall also return home.’ He bowed again. ‘Your servant, my lady.’

  He took Margaret’s arm and led her away. Behind them, they could hear Sir Godfrey remonstrating with his daughter and her spirited response.

  ‘I believe Mistress Chalfont is a little spoilt,’ Margaret said, testing the water. She wanted to find out more about the girl, but was reluctant to plunge straight in.

  ‘A little, I think, but she is an only child and came to the Chalfonts late in life.’

  ‘You did not tell me about them.’

  ‘There was no reason to. Now, where is that good-for-nothing coachman? In the tavern, or I miss my guess.’ They had come upon their coach, but of the driver there was no sign.

  ‘You can hardly blame him if you decide to leave early,’ she said mildly.

  ‘No, of course not. Get in and I’ll go and find him.’ He opened the door and helped her up the step, then he was gone.

  She settled herself against the velvet upholstery, but she could hardly sit still for the tumult in her breast. Susan Chalfont was more to Roland than a friend, that was obvious. Were they in love? Had they been lovers? She did not want to think of it, but she could not help imagining them in each other’s arms, making love as she and Roland had made love. The thought of that sickened her. Had Roland quarrelled with the girl? Was that why he needed her forgiveness? Had he married Margaret simply out of pique? Married her for a year, married her intending the union should never be consummated? But it had been and she was with child and she did not know what to do. She fished in her reticule for her handkerchief just as he returned and seated himself beside her. Hastily she sniffed back her tears and waited while the driver climbed up and they moved off.

  ‘Roland, why was Sir Godfrey Chalfont so angry with you?’

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘Yes. He could not bring himself to speak to you, and yet you say it was because of him you are alive today.’

  ‘Perhaps I was not grateful enough.’

  ‘That sounds unlikely. I am sure you always pay your debts.’

  He laughed grimly. ‘Oh, yes, my debts are always paid. I do wrong and I am punished.’

  ‘What wrong have you done?’

  ‘I have wronged you.’

  Her heart began beating almost in her throat and her next words were breathless. ‘Because you married me, knowing you loved Mistress Chalfont? And now you must bear the punishment?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer was torn from him. ‘I have wronged Mistress Chalfont too.’

  She was determined to stay cool, not to let him know how hurt she was. ‘Thank you for being honest with me,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You deserve no less.’ His voice was cracked.

  ‘And did I not deserve your honesty when you first met me?’

  ‘For that I
apologise.’

  ‘Apologise! Is that all you have to say? You had a lovers’ quarrel and you married me to spite her. Did you not think of my feelings at all?’

  She thought it was as simple as that! Well, he would not disillusion her. ‘You and I made a bargain,’ he said. ‘Feelings had no part in that, neither yours nor mine.’ It was a foolish thing to say and he regretted his words immediately; they inflamed her even further.

  ‘I tell you this,’ she said as coolly as she could manage, though the effort was almost her undoing. ‘I am glad we agreed this marriage of ours would last no more than a year. Glad, do you hear? Glad! Now, be so good as to stop the coach and get out. I cannot bear your company.’

  He put his head out and called up to the driver to stop, then he opened the door and jumped lightly to the ground. ‘Goodnight, my lady.’ To the coachman he said, ‘Take Lady Pargeter home. I will walk.’

  The coach rolled away but he did not immediately follow it. Instead he went to White’s, where he drank a whole bottle of Rhenish which had little effect on him. How could he have been so heartless, so uncaring, so utterly mad? Yes, that was what it was—madness. Two lovely women, and he deserved the wrath of both. He should be put away in Bedlam, but instead he joined a game of dice. He was too disturbed to concentrate on cards, but dice required only luck and, amazingly his luck was good. He won two thousand pounds in the space of half an hour. It did nothing to cheer him up.

  ‘One would think you had lost a fortune, Pargeter,’ John Carstairs said, slapping him on the back. ‘Why the long face? You have a pile of guineas in front of you which I’d give an arm for.’

  ‘Take it,’ Roland said. The young man lived beyond his means and was always impecunious.

  ‘What? Are you gone mad?’

  ‘I believe I am.’

  ‘Then it must be love.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me; let me guess. You have found the perfect woman to be your wife, but she will not have you?’

  ‘I am but lately married.’

  ‘Is that so? Then you have found a jewel of a mistress and your wife does not understand about precious gems, being new to the state of matrimony.’

  Roland smiled, refusing to take the bait. ‘Shall you toss me for the pot?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll not stand against your luck tonight.’

  ‘Then I may as well go home to bed.’

  Carstairs laughed. ‘Whose bed? I know of a lady——’

  ‘No thanks, I am off ladies altogether. Give me the company of men, preferably fellow officers. You know where you are with them.’

  ‘Talking of the army,’ Carstairs said suddenly, ‘I heard that the Young Pretender’s followers are rallying.’

  Roland evinced a flicker of interest. ‘They would never risk another invasion, not after Culloden. There can hardly be a man left to join them.’

  ‘I’m told Cumberland thinks otherwise. I heard he was looking for you.’

  ‘For me?’ Roland queried. ‘Why should he want me? My soldiering days are done. His Grace knows I left to take up my inheritance when my father died.’

  He picked up the gold coins from the table, made a bow to the assembled company and left, with Carstairs’s cheerful rejoinder ringing out behind him. ‘Better a monarch that needs you than a wife who fetters you.’

  He was fettered, but by his own hand, not his wife’s, and he could see no solution. It was almost day again and nothing had been resolved and, added to that, his head was thumping. Culloden. That was where his troubles had started; why should he want to go through that again? It would be a good joke, if only it were not so serious.

  Suddenly he was laughing, loudly and uproariously, so that windows were thrown up and night-capped heads came out to shout at him to be quiet, that there were some who had to rise for work in less than three hours, and if he wanted a pail of water thrown over his lovely suit, then he was going the right way about it. His laughter ceased as suddenly as it had begun and he went silently homeward.

  What could he say to Margaret? Should he tell her the truth of why he had married her? But did he really know why himself? He only knew he loved her as he had never loved any woman, and that included Susan. Could he explain that what he had felt for Susan was gratitude, not love, and he had only recently recognised that? In Margaret’s present mood, she would not believe it, nor understand. Only time might convince her. Time. But time was something they did not have. Half the year was gone. How, in the name of God, was he ever going to live without her?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARGARET knew Roland would not follow the coach home; she had driven him away with her shrewishness. How could she have been so foolish? He had been right to remind her of their bargain, because that was all their marriage meant to him. He had never mentioned feelings, falling in love, or anything which could bind him to her emotionally, and she had agreed to his terms. He hadn’t asked her to fall in love with him, had not even expected it, and the fact that he had shared her bed meant nothing; she was his wife and he had a perfect right to do so. If only she had managed to keep her jealousy to herself, they might have remained on good terms. But was that enough? Wouldn’t she rather have nothing at all if she could not have his love?

  Penny helped her to prepare for bed but she knew she would not sleep, and as soon as the maid left she rose and went to sit at her bedchamber window, gazing out across the moonlit scene, wishing she had never gone to look for Roland in the gardens, never learned about Susan Chalfont; and she wished fervently that she had not taxed him with being in love with the girl. But he had admitted it! Her anger, which had cooled as she had sat looking out on the peaceful scene beyond her window, rose to the surface again when she realised how she had been used. To have married her simply because he had quarrelled with Mistress Chalfont was the outside of enough, especially as the quarrel, whatever it had been about, seemed to be over now.

  The horizon was streaked with pink and the sky was changing from dark voilet to pale grey when she heard the night footman open the door to her husband. She heard him speak to the servant, then his steady tread on the stair and his footsteps in the corridor outside her room. It seemed as if he paused outside her door. She ran to it and flung it open, unsure of what she would say, but wanting reassurance, a return to amicable relations, if nothing else. He stopped and turned towards her.

  She looked pale, with her hair tumbling about her shoulders and her eyes dark pools of seething emotion. And did she know that the diaphanous gown she wore was nearly transparent? God, what the sight of her did to him! He fought his own passion to drawl lazily, ‘Still awake, madam? I had thought you would be asleep hours ago.’

  ‘Sleep! How can you expect me to sleep after such an eventful evening?’

  ‘Eventful, my dear? I thought it rather dull.’

  She had intended to speak calmly, to be sweet and reasonable, but the way he stood there, surveying her with an attitude of indifference, if not actual boredom, inflamed her. Her good intentions vanished like a puff of smoke and she found her voice rising. ‘You introduce your paramour to me and make me the laughing-stock of all London and you think that dull, do you?’

  ‘Mistress Chalfont is not my paramour.’ He seized her arm and propelled her back into her bedchamber. ‘And if you insist on shrieking at me like a fishwife, then do it where we cannot be heard by the servants.’

  ‘I am not shrieking.’ She wrenched herself out of his grasp and stood facing him, her chest heaving. ‘And you admitted you loved her.’

  ‘So I did.’ The effort to remain cool was proving almost too much for him, but he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘That does not make her my mistress. She nursed me——’

  ‘I know that. And nursing usually means beds and night apparel and——’

  He threw back his head and laughed aloud. ‘Margaret, I was too sick to know what was happening to me.’

  ‘You laugh, sir. I am a joke, a wry jest, someone to amuse you when your love is not to hand. But
now she is close by and you go to her and make a fool of me——’

  ‘Go to her?’

  ‘Yes, that is where you have been, is it not? Do not trouble to deny it, for I shall not believe you.’

  His laughter died as suddenly as it had come. ‘Very well I shall not deny it. And it is not I who make a fool of you, but yourself. You are behaving like a jealous harridan. It was not part of our contract.’

  ‘Contract! We must not forget our contract, must we?’ She spoke bitterly, suddenly weary of the fight. She lowered her voice. ‘Why did you marry me, Roland? If Mistress Chalfont had quarrelled with you, could you not have taught her a lesson without going to such lengths?’

  ‘We did not quarrel.’

  ‘Then why did you not wed her? Why marry me? Explain that, if you will.’

  ‘I cannot.’ He took a step towards her, almost as if he wanted to plead with her, but she could not trust herself to remain aloof if he came too close and she backed away against her dressing-table. ‘Margaret, please listen…’ He lifted a hand towards her, but she dashed it down, stinging her fingers on his signet-ring.

  ‘It is a great pity you did not remember our contract when you took me to bed,’ she went on, though she knew every word she uttered was making matters worse. ‘There can be no annulment now.’

  ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I wronged you most grievously and I am sorry for it.’

  ‘Sorry!’ She stared at him with eyes dark-rimmed with fatigue.

  ‘Yes, I wish I could make amends.’ He stopped. How could he make amends? How could he undo the dreadful harm he had done to her?

  ‘Nothing you say will make the least bit of difference,’ she said, summoning the last vestige of her pride and tilting her chin upwards. ‘We cannot cancel out what has been done and I must take my share of the blame for agreeing to marry you on those terms. I thought——’