‘And Lord Edward Wittenham arrived just before the doors closed. He had been on duty. He was looking for you, really, Susan, but Countess Lieven introduced me as a suitable partner and … he was very droll.’ In the gloom, Harriet blushed. It did not make Susan feel any better.
When they alighted in Hill Street, Sophy kissed her sister’s cheek and sent her off to her bed, with a recommendation that she let her maid tuck her into bed lest she continue to dance in her sleep. This sent her off giggling. Susan began to climb the stairs also.
‘The Morning Room please, Susan.’ It was not a request. ‘Please light two branches of candles, William.’ She looked to the sleepy footman, who took a taper and candlestick, and preceded her up to the first floor. Without thinking, Susan stood, hands folded, before the fireplace.
‘Is your ladyship wishful that the fire be lit?’ asked William, uncertainly.
‘No, thank you, William, that is all for tonight. Please, get to your bed now.’
He bowed and retired. The room was chilly. Susan pulled her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, and waited for the outburst. Sophy took a chair by the fire and sat, ramrod straight, the candlelight illuminating one side of her face, which bore little trace of any expression.
‘There have never been limits put upon you, Susan, except that you have been immured at Tyneham Court and never seen how the world runs upon compromise, consideration, and socially acceptable modes of behaviour.’ It was a simple statement, calmly, made. ‘And understanding that you have been unused to conventions, you have been treated very leniently in this house, whatever you may feel. My mama always felt for your poor mother. However, tonight you stepped so far beyond common good manners that I am forced to tell you that you jeopardise any chances both you, and indeed Harriet, have of finding a husband, and that if but one word of this spreads, you will be a social pariah. Do you want to find a husband, Susan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then obey the Rules, and try to at least hide your repellent selfishness. You seem keen to attract men, any man in fact, but then treat them as … well, as dogs that you have but to snap your fingers at and command obedience.’
‘Am I repellent?’ There was just the trace of tremor in Susan’s voice, then she laughed, an ugly, jangling laugh. ‘Perhaps I am. You say I am selfish; I say I am protecting the only person who will look after me … and that is myself. My aunt pitied my mama. My mama was a fool, because she let a man imprison her, treat her as an object that cluttered his house and no more. I want to be married, because returning to my “prison” at Tyneham Court is unthinkable. Can you imagine living there with Tyneham? And no doubt with whatever submissive dab he takes to wife? Better I find a new gaol, and a new gaoler.’
Sophy’s hands gripped each other, as she listened, shocked, horrified, pitying.
‘I am a beauty, as my mama was, I think. It did not save her but it will save me. Men,’ and she almost spat the word, ‘are so very visual. They look, as a child does at a table laid with cakes and pastries, and then they want. Well, if they want me they have to do as I want, yes, like a dog. They are no better than slavering dogs. If I can get a husband who will do anything to keep me happy, then I will have freedom. I will run my own home, but I will run my own life too. I shall decide what I do, where I go, whom I take as friend,’ her eyes glittered, ‘or lover.’ Her cynicism was total. ‘You think me cruel to men. I say I am paying them back for the way my father treated my mother.’
There was silence in the room, where swathes of shadow encroached to distort the image of the two young women. Sophy thought very hard before she responded, and her voice held sympathy, though Susan heard it as pity.
‘I am sorry, Susan, very sorry, that you, at nineteen, have so dark a view of life, and love.’
‘I have not mentioned love. I do not believe in it. The only love I ever saw was my mother’s for me, and that was weakness.’
‘Then what you aspire to is not living but existing. You want to keep people out because they may hurt you. That is a risk, but only when we make ourselves vulnerable can we benefit from the strength of love, and love, of husband, children, relatives, friends, is what living is about.’
‘But even if that is so, love and marriage are not the same thing. How many of my peers will marry for love?’
‘A few. Many will marry with attraction, affection, admiration, and find love, perhaps not passion, but comfortable love, companionship of sorts, and not being alone. You want to marry yet remain alone. You have no experience of people beyond the tiny world in which you grew up, and it has slewed your perceptions. When a woman marries she becomes the possession of her husband in law. That is fact, but she gains his protection, she gains someone to stand alongside her against the world if it does come banging at the door, armed and angry. You talk of wanting a husband who will obey you. You would look down upon him. Well, I am past the age when it is likely I shall find a husband, but I would want a man to whom I could look up, respect, admire, not slavishly but be proud to be his companion, and given the chance I would want love, real love, with all its vulnerability. I do have more years in the world, Susan, grant me that.’ She smiled, a little sadly. ‘You say you want a husband, even if upon terms I find appalling. In that case, listen to me now. If you disobey the conventions of Society, you will not get a husband, of any sort, which leaves living with Tyneham. I happen to agree that anything would be preferable to that.’ She did not say Lady Chelmarsh thought she was the ‘submissive dab’ he might pick as a wife. He might pick her, but she most certainly would not accept. If she ever—She banished the fleeting image of ‘Rake Rothley’ from her mind. ‘If you want a husband like a lapdog, then remember you can only kick a dog so often and then it will turn and bite you or run away. You have pushed Bollington away, aided by the fact that his mama regards you with horror as uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and likely to bring ruin upon them. If you have a gentleman who singles you out and whom you would consider being your “gaoler”, have the good sense not to try and make him jealous before his ring is upon your finger.’ She stopped for a moment, and her voice softened. ‘I may, in my mother’s place, demand a standard of behaviour from you, Susan. I cannot demand you find a heart. I can implore you to think upon what I have said, however, and try to see that marriage is not about victory or defeat, not if you have warmer emotions involved. I once told Mama the best thing for you would be to fall in love with a man who did not reciprocate your feelings, a rake who would be more cynical than you yourself. That was wrong of me. I would wish that you found a man you could love, and would love you in return, not abjectly, but honourably, and could teach you to … really feel.’ Sophy sighed, and passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Enough has been said tonight, Susan. Go to your bed, and include in your prayers one for self-control. We can only hope that the young lady before whom you made your outburst tonight was too shocked to tell anyone else about it. If you repeat such behaviour, I will not permit you to attend social functions. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, cousin.’ Susan curtsied, as she would to her aunt in such serious circumstances, and left.
Sophy sat for a moment, and having concentrated upon her cousin, slowly found herself contemplating not only Susan’s folly but her own. She covered her face with her hands. Susan ought to be her only worry, and here was she, actually excited by the thought that Lord Rothley might want her to fall into his clutches at the same time as she was determined that he must fail. She wished her mother were here, but even more so her father. Depressed and worried, she then sought her own bed, where she did not sleep until near dawn.
Lord Rothley did not sleep, but then he did not seek his bed until dawn. He would not hear from Vienna for perhaps ten days, but he did not need a reply to feel responsible. Susan was a problem child, and child he thought her still, wilful, if not actively contrary, and Lady Sophy suffered because of it. When he had seen her tonight he had wanted so much to hold more than her hand, give more than advice. He had wanted to hold her, take her troubles, bear her burdens. He laughed out loud at himself. He sounded like some chivalric knight in such tales as little boys read. He would be wanting next to slay dragons for her. Susan might seem, if not a dragon, then at least a serpent, but he could not slay her. Somehow he had to try his best to protect her also, though how eluded him. When he lay in his bed, when he closed his eyes, there came not rest but a revolving in his mind of how he might deal with this complicated situation, and no good answers.
If the matchmaking mamas watched Lady Sophronia and saw her troubled, they sighed sympathetically, and shook their heads, blaming it upon her cousin. None of them would want to have charge of the wayward and wilful Susan, even without the knowledge of what had happened at Almack’s. Susan’s behaviour there became more restrained, even as she privately railed against the prohibition on her dancing the waltz, which remained, clearly as a punishment, for another two weeks. This bottled-up anger found expression elsewhere. She went out of her way to flirt with Lord Edward Wittenham, who appeared the day after the Lady Jersey incident with posies for all three ladies, though Sophy could see that two were but covers for the third to be acceptable. She thought his eye had actually been taken by Harriet; after all it had been she who had danced with him, and she coloured very prettily when she received the flowers, but Susan dazzled him, intentionally trying to cut out her quieter cousin. It was cruel. Sophy was not sure it was totally successful, however, since Lord Edward cast several slightly desperate glances at Harriet, glances which seemed to convey that he was being unwillingly sucked into the quagmire of admiration. Thereafter he was seen at more parties than previously, and though he gravitated to Harriet by inclination, the magnetic attraction of Susan almost always won. Harriet was sweet, laughed at his mild jokes, looked up at him as if adoring a demigod. She made his heart sing softly. Susan did not bother to appeal to his heart, but to a rather different part of his anatomy. He wondered sometimes, as he lay in his bed, if she was the true form of a witch. He did not like her, let alone love her, but the stirrings of his heart for Harriet could not compete with the stirrings in his loins when Susan purred at him, drooped her heavy eyelids and fluttered her eyelashes at him. It was enthralment in the truest sense. He was ashamed but exhilarated.
Harriet was unhappy. She felt inadequate, and did not blame the cavalry officer. After all, Susan seemed to only have to snap her fingers and men fell at her feet. She only hoped that she would be allowed to pick Lord Edward up from the floor at a later date, for she had noticed that gentlemen did not remain as enamoured of her cousin as she perhaps hoped. Harriet had found his open, engaging manner and slightly dashing looks striking from that first moment when she had seen him, already looking at Susan. She was always going to be the one looking at men already looking at Susan. When her cousin was not close, as when she had spent that delightful evening at Almack’s and he had danced with her and then obtained refreshment for her and talked to her and … it counted as one of her best evenings ever.
She knew why she had come to London, to find a suitable husband. It was what one did, what one was expected to do. She knew how deep her mother’s mortification had been that Sophy did not ‘take’ and had returned home unattached, unsought. At the same time, one dreamt, dreamt that romance and practicality would prove one and the same thing. Several gentlemen had shown a little interest in her, but they made her feel that they were doing just that, taking an interest in making a purchase, like a horse. Lord Edward Wittenham did not make her feel that way at all, possibly, and loweringly, because he was totally uninterested in her. She knew that she was terribly interested in him. The only good thing about him watching Susan was that she could watch him, unobserved, notice that the very tip of the ring finger on his right hand was missing, that his smile was always fractionally lopsided, that in candlelight there was a flash of copper in his brown hair, and that although Susan mesmerised him, he did not look happy with her.
So Harriet lost a little of her appetite for food, and jollity, and Sophy, strangely shy about asking after her youngest sister’s heart, still had the wit to see the problem, and know its cause. Susan did not want Wittenham, she wanted to show her cousins she could have him at her feet if she wished, wanted to make Sophy pay for the constraints that she felt were being put upon her by making the innocent Harriet miserable.
In this Sophy was only partially correct. Lord Bollington had cooled, and Susan wanted freedom as soon as possible. The youngest son, even of a duke, who had blood and lineage but little to inherit, would not normally interest her, but making her cousin pay for treating her as a foolish child was entertaining and, as she had said, she would marry anyone to escape a return to Tyneham. She was unsure of her next move, however, for there was an alternative to Lord Edward. Lord Pinkney would make her a countess, though one who lived hand to mouth if the tales were true. However, his lordship was not an easy fish to land, and this intrigued Susan. Wittenham was so very easy, but Pinkney sometimes looked lazily at her lures, and smiled, and at other times acted as if she had him upon the hook and all she had to do was reel him in.
Sophy knew her words fell upon deaf ears when she warned her cousin about him, and even thought it spurred the foolish Susan on, and she knew the uncharitable thought that when her cousin was busy ensnaring him, she at least had less time to work her wicked magic upon Lord Edward.
As Sophy watched her cousin, so Lord Rothley watched them both, and became increasingly frustrated that he could not be of assistance without revealing a secret that was still supposition on his part. When he next encountered the three ladies after the night at Almack’s, Susan had treated him to a display of icy coolness, which had been mirrored by Lady Sophy when the younger girls had been led onto the dance floor by suitable partners.
‘Surely I do not have to assure you ma’am, that the events of the other evening will remain cloaked, and private, between us only.’
‘Between us only’. Sophy flushed. Oh, how alluring were those words, the declaration of a bond, a shared secret. Yet how often had he captivated a lady by making her think just as she was thinking now? Had he looked as sincere to a score of ladies before?