Haggard (34 page)

And in the meantime, he suddenly realised, she could be enjoyed the more by humouring her perversities.

'You will be good to me first,' Haggard said. 'You will come back to this bed, now, and make love to me, and then you will sleep here with me. You will sleep with me every night for the next three months. At the end of that time, I will allow you to visit London. I will give you to your sister. For six weeks. Is that not an equitable arrangement? For every twelve weeks you spend with me, behaving as a wife should, I will allow you six in London.'

She stared at him for some seconds. 'I hate you,' she said at last, in an almost matter of fact tone. 'I hate everything about you.'

Haggard patted the bed beside him. 'And take off those stupid clothes.'

Slowly Alison released the bed jacket, shrugged it on to the floor behind her. Then she lifted the nightgown over her head, threw that also on the floor, inhaled to fill her lungs. 'You're an old man,' she said contemptuously, slowly approaching the bed. 'You'll not be stiff enough to enter.'

He held her wrists, pulled her on to his chest, kissed her mouth. 'I am not going to enter you, my darling. As it displeases you. You may use your hands after all. Pretend I'm Emily. Be loving, Alison, my sweet. Be loving.'

'I hate him.' Alison Haggard nesded deeper into the double bed, her chin on her hand. 'Everything about him. His age. It's horrible. Do you know he's nearly forty? Even Papa is only a year or two older. If I loved a man at all it would have to be someone young. Someone even younger than myself. Someone who could keep it up for hours and hours. I suppose
some
men can do that.'

Emily lay beside her, gently stroking the long golden hair. 'Did he really, well . . .'

'He did.' Alison rolled on her back, arms and legs flung wide. The strange thing is I rather enjoyed it. I'd never felt anything like that before.' She rose on her elbow, clutched her sister's hand. 'Em, do you suppose . . .
’

'No,' Emily said,
‘I
never heard of anything so ghastly. Anyway, we'd hurt each other. Didn't he hurt you?'

‘I
don't know,' Alison said seriously,
‘I
suppose he did. But it was different.' She leapt out of bed as the drums and fifes started again; it was the sound of martial music which had first awakened her. She stood at the window, pulling the drapes just wide enough to look through, at the red jackets and the gleaming bayonets, the horses and the officers with their gold braid . . . young men, she thought.

'War.' Emily stood beside her, put her arm round her sister's waist, was rewarded with an equally warm embrace. 'Isn't it terrible.'

'Oh, you think everything is terrible,' Alison complained,
‘I
think it's splendid. All of those young men, all going to be blown to bits, just pieces of mangled red flesh everywhere . . .'

'Ugh,' Emily said, and crawled back into bed.

'Or think of the King of France, kneeling there, waiting to have his head chopped off. Wouldn't it be marvellous to watch King George have his head chopped off? I suppose it would be boring. He's so
old.
But Prince George. Or that Freddie. Wouldn't that be splendid?'

'Come back to bed, do,' Emily begged.

Alison crossed the room, slowly. 'What do you suppose it must feel like, to kneel there, and know you are about to die, that all around you are people who hate you, jeering and laughing at you? What do you think it feels like as the knife hits your neck?'

'You are in a horrible mood,' Emily protested,
‘I
don't suppose you feel anything at all.'

'You must feel
something,'
Alison insisted. 'You can't die and not feel anything. Imagine it, Em, you and me executed, the man holding up our heads, with our hair trailing and the blood dripping from our necks.'

'Stop it, stop it, stop it,' Emily screamed, pulling the pillow over her ears.

Alison knelt beside her, kissed the nape of her neck,
‘I
was only supposing.'

'Well don't. I've never known you in such a mood.'

'Ha,' Alison said. 'You haven't had to spend nearly two years locked up with John Haggard. He never talks, he hardly ever smiles, he doesn't play any games, he won't entertain, God, I may as well have married my own father. But I don't have to see him for six weeks. Six whole weeks. God, I want to
...
to
...
I don't know what I want to do. I want to flirt and I want to make love and I want to dance. Get up, get up, get up,' she shouted pummelling her sister's back. 'Papa is taking us to Almack's tonight. Didn't you know?'

'I don't see how we can,' Emily said,
‘I
don't see how we
dare.'

'Oh, nonsense. It is Haggard they hate, not us. Besides, the Prince won't be there. But the officers are going to be there before they sail for Holland. Get up, get up, get up.'

The music rippled across the giant ballroom, set the crystal chandeliers to tinkling, and the myriad candles guttering and flaring. The colours were dazzling, the ladies in whites and pinks and pale blues and greens, the officers in their red jackets, with here and there a sprinkling of blackcoated riflemen or gold and blue artillerymen to add contrast; there were even one or two naval officers present, and of course a smattering of drably dressed politicians and young men about town. It was too early in the year, and yet everyone who was within reach of London was at Almack's this night. Tomorrow the Army embarked. Once again it was war, with France. Why, the intervening ten years might never have been. War with France was a natural state of affaire.

But this war would be different, was already different. This was a punitive war, a determination to punish the upstart lawyers and doctors and merchants who had dared to overturn the established order of things, who had dared to execute their own king, who had dared to challenge the rest of Europe to follow their example. Who had dared to overrun the Netherlands. Which was where, however dark the secret, everyone knew this army was destined. Alison, seated against the wall behind her fan watching Emily dance with a guard officer, wondered what John Haggard thought of it all.

'War,' Papa had said. 'You had best return to Derleth.'

'Whatever for?' she had asked.

'Well, 'tis a serious matter.'

'How can it possibly affect Mr. Haggard?' she had demanded. 'So there will be French privateers and some of his sugar may be lost. He survived the last war, he is always telling me, even more prosperous than he began it.'

'Your two sons are in the service,' Papa had pointed out.

'His
sons,' she had answered contemptuously. 'Mine is safe at Derleth.'

But she might as well have gone home, she thought angrily. She was the most beautiful woman in the room. In her pink satin gown, the ostrich plumes which dominated her headdress, in the pearl necklace she wore or the diamonds on her fingers—all paid for by the Haggard wealth—she was the best-dressed woman in the room. And she knew she was the best dancer in the room. But she had not once been asked. Because she was Mistress Haggard. Because everyone knew of her husband. Because he had quarrelled with the Prince of Wales.

While Emily, wearing last year's gown, had not missed a dance. I may as well be home, she thought, her anger growing. By marrying Haggard, by securing Papa's debts and my own future, as he would have it, I have taken on a millstone to hang around my neck and leave me bereft of friends or entertainments, for the rest of my life.

She was so angry she wante
d to stamp her foot, and could not resist the tears which suddenly sprang to her eyes. It was so
unfair.

'Ma'am,' said the young man.

Alison raised her head, blinked at her stepson in consternation. 'Roger?' She frowned. 'It cannot be.'

He sat beside her, while her eyes glowed at him. Haggard must have looked like this, once, she thought. Except that Haggard had never been so handsome, nor so superbly displayed by his uniform. Haggard had never been a soldier. But Roger wore the dark blue coat with the red facings and the masses of gold braid of an officer in the Royal Artillery; with the white stock and the high black boots, with a sword at his side, he was quite the best-looking man in the entire room.

'Roger,' she said. 'What a pleasant surprise.'

'And for me, ma'am,' he said,
‘I
had not supposed you in London.'

‘I
had to visit my father,' she said. 'He is not well.'

'Oh, but I have just seen the colonel . . .'

‘I
ndeed you have,' she agreed. 'He is at the tables, is he not?' She peered through the archway to her left. 'But there is the trouble. He will continue to live his normal life, however poor his health. But I am sure you did not attend Almack's to discuss my father's health?'

'Oh, no, ma'am . . .' He bit his lip. 'Would you care to dance?'

‘I
should be honoured.'

The room whirled about them, as she left her hand resting on his shoulder, feeling the epaulette beneath her fingers, inhaling the faint aroma of leather, gazing into his handsome face. Roger Haggard. She gave him a smile, but he allowed her only a brief grimace in reply. Nor did he speak. He was concentrating on dancing.

'You are a very naughty boy,' she said, as he escorted her back to her seat. 'You have not written. Why, I will wager you do not even know you have a new brother.'

'I did know, ma'am,' he said. 'And I wish to offer you my congratulations. May I say . . .' He ran out of words, and flushed.

That I have not changed? I have endeavoured not to, to be sure. Now do sit down, and tell me about life in the Army.'

'I . . . you must excuse me, ma'am. My fellow officers are waiting for me. Excuse me.'

She watched him walk across the room. He had performed his duty. Really, he was after all very like his father. Except that he was only . . . she frowned as she calculated. Seventeen years old. As she was nineteen. He could be her brother. Or her lover. A seventeen-year-old boy, with a dick as hard as any in the land, she'd be bound. Her stepson. My God. No relation at all, really, merely the son of the man to whom she was married, the man she hated with utter loathing.

Therefore she should hate the son as well. He would undoubtedly grow up into a copy of his father. Save that they had quarrelled. Now where did that leave Roger Haggard, she wondered?

There is a brown study.' Emily sat beside her. 'And after such a handsome partner, too. However did you let him get away?' 'Didn't you recognise him? That was Roger.
’
'Roger who?' 'My son, you silly goose.'

'Good Lord. Well, I only saw him twice, and that was two summers ago. He looked quite different. I suppose it is the uniform.'

'Not entirely. It is the Army, as well. He had twice the confidence I remember. Em . . .' She seized her sister's hand. 'I want him.'

Emily frowned at her. 'Whatever do you mean?'
‘I
want to bed him.' 'You must be insane.'

'For God's sake,' Alison said, keeping her voice low with an effort. 'Why does everyone accuse me of being insane all the time? I want to bed him. There is nothing insane about that.' 'He's your stepson. You couldn't.'

'Against his father. Oh. yes. That's why I want him. You have no idea what that great lout has inflicted upon me these past three months. He would be bad enough, but the thought of again becoming pregnant . . . I've had a syringe up me more times that I've had Haggard.'

, 'And you don't suppose this
boy could make you pregnant?' ‘I’l
l use the syringe again, you silly goose.' 'Anyway, he'd never agree.'

'Of course he won't agree, goose. That's why I'm telling you.' 'Me?' Emily shook her head. 'Oh, no, oh, no, no, no.' 'You said he was handsome.' 'He is. But . . .'

'And you'll have him too, all to yourself, when I'm finished. If you'll just do as I tell you. We'll both have him, and he'll never know the difference. Please, Em. Don't let me down.'

Emily Brand stared at her sister as if she'd never seen her before in her life. 'You must hate Mr. Haggard very much,' she said at last.

'I do,' Alison said.

Roger Haggard drank champagne punch and watched his stepmother through the archway. How utterly beautiful she was. He wanted to loathe her, as the woman who had displaced Emma, who had replaced his own mother. But
it was impossible to hate such
radiance. And now she was a mother herself. Father's possession. As everything in Derleth, everything on Haggard's Penn, were Father's possessions.