Hester Waring's Marriage (15 page)

 

‘Tom,' said Hester seriously, letting Tom know by her form of address that she was not bantering him, but needed an honest and straightforward response. They were lying quietly and comfortably in bed the next morning, watching the dawn break, for Tom disliked drawing curtains, although the room possessed a magnificent pair, made of Chinese brocade.

‘Yes, Hester.'

‘There's something which worries me a little.'

‘What is that?'

‘Well, from what Mama said—and it wasn't very much—I gathered that going to bed with a man was a cross women had to bear. It wasn't very pleasant, she said, but it had to be done if you wanted to marry and have a family. I know that she frightened me so much that, before I met you, I couldn't look a man in the eye. Not even Captain Parker, whom I used to find attractive, which you know, since you tease me so about him.

‘Yet…' Her voice trailed off. ‘Now,' she began again, ‘but now…'

‘Now…Hester?'

‘Well, is there something wrong with me that I enjoy what we do so much?'

His shout of laughter covered his hidden anger at what the late Mrs Waring had done to her daughter.

‘Of course it's not. It's the most natural thing in the world. There'd be no babies, Hester, if we didn't enjoy ourselves, and you wouldn't like that.'

‘Are you sure?' she asked him dubiously, hiding her face against his broad chest.

He took her by the chin and tipped her face towards him.

‘Look at me, Hester. You were made to enjoy yourself and so was I. Only foolish parsons and, forgive me, silly women, think otherwise. Why should we torment ourselves over what comes so naturally? It's only when we misuse ourselves and one another that it's wrong.'

‘Oh, Tom,' said Hester, ‘you comfort me so. I was beginning to think myself quite vicious like the women at Madame Phoebe's.'

‘The women at Madame Phoebe's don't enjoy themselves, my love,' he told her softly. ‘Which is why I never
slept with them. You run out of honest joy if you pay for it, or do it for pay. And that includes husbands and wives if they misuse one another. They're not vicious, Hester, they're earning a living, poor creatures, in the only way they can.'

Hester stirred in his arms. She thought that if he had not rescued her she might have been one of Madame Phoebe's girls if all else had failed her. He had saved her from that… She shivered and turned to him for reassurance. ‘You know so much, Tom, and I so little. Tell me, are all men like you?'

‘God forbid, no!' he said suddenly, with great violence and deadly serious. ‘The only good thing you can say about me, Hester, is that I don't like to see women suffer.'

‘Only,' she said softly to the grey light when he finally slept beside her. ‘But that's a big only, Tom.'

 

Crouching at their bedroom door, listening—her face avid and cruel—there was one who did not enjoy their passion, or their new-found happiness. She was only too willing to make a mock of it about Sydney.

‘Well, he finally gave it to that haughty madam the night of the storm,' cackled Mrs Hackett to her friends and anyone who would listen. ‘Carried her up to bed and stayed there with her for two whole days! Only got up, he did, to come to my kitchen as bold as brass, wearing his bed-gown. “My wife is ill,” he says, cool as cool, “and won't be up today. I'll take her meals up to her.”'

She fell into paroxysms of ugly mirth. ‘Ill! Looking after her! Two whole days of it! I wonder you couldn't hear them in Sydney!'

Jack Cameron's book threatened to lose him even more when the news entertained the town and the garrison. He disliked Tom enough to let his emotions control the odds
he had offered. When the gossip reached Lachlan Macquarie he grinned at it, and thought, The cunning fox. I wonder what his game is this time?

Alan Kerr heard Pat Ramsey and young Ensign Osborne laughing over Tom Dilhorne's latest exploit, and took the good news home to Sarah. When he had finished telling her, she kissed him.

‘I told you to trust Tom,' he said.

T
om and Hester had been truly man and wife for about a fortnight and were still in the first throes of delight when they received their invitation to attend Lachlan Macquarie's ball.

A ball! Hester had never been to one. She had read about them, but had never hoped that she might be a part of the grand company at Government House enjoying themselves in state. On the other hand, neither could she have visualised what had happened to her since she had married Tom.

Each day brought her new experiences—or was it more true to say that it was the nights which pleased her the most? She must be pleasing Tom, too, for on the night he told her of the invitation, he also said to her, ‘For being such a good wife in bed, Mrs Dilhorne, you shall have a new gown for the ball, and be the finest lady there.'

Tom, as usual, was as good as his word and came home with a splendidly simple robe of the finest amethyst silk. He also gave her—she never knew where his treasures came from—a collar of amethysts and a ring to wear with it.

That night he made her dress herself as for the ball in
all her new finery, her hair coiled high on her head and delicate kid slippers on her tiny feet. Then, very slowly, he removed everything with a loving and elaborate care which had her whimpering in frustration. Everything, that was, but the amethyst necklace which remained around her neck during the long night of loving which followed.

Hester had still not yet achieved the looks which Tom was sure she would possess when her flowering was complete, even though she was much improved from the girl he had married.

He was proud to take her on his arm, truly Mr and Mrs Dilhorne at last, to taunt Sydney with his success and her emerging beauty as well as to defy the gossips who had been devouring his marriage like vultures.

Before they left, Hester asked him shyly, ‘Do I look well, Tom?'

He looked at her, ran his hand delicately around the column of her neck, and whispered in her ear, ‘Very well, Hester, although I prefer you with only the amethysts on—but that would never do for the ball—later, perhaps.'

Flushed and smiling, for Tom had spent the journey in the carriage wickedly teasing her about the delights to come when they finally reached home again, Hester arrived at Government House more sure of herself, she considered, than she had ever been. Which only went to show, she thought wryly afterwards, how poor a prophet she was and that pride was sure to go before a fall.

To begin with she was too happy to do more than enjoy being present. Lachlan Macquarie was kind to her when he arrived. He and his wife had recently been guests at one of her first dinner parties—but after a time she could not fail to notice that she and Tom were the subject of more than common interest, and that, by the way it was expressed, some of it was unpleasant.

Tom noticed, too, and his face hardened, but he said nothing to Hester. He shrugged off his uneasiness and concentrated on trying to secure her pleasure. Hester tried to put the nods, winks and leers out of her mind. Living with Tom was giving her armour.

After a light collation had been set out on tables at one end of the vast ballroom she expressed a desire to sit away from the heat. Tom immediately took her to a corner of the room by the newly built glasshouse where it was pleasantly chill and there were no other guests.

They sat together for a little while, watching the passing show, until Tom suggested to Hester that she might like a cooling drink and, on her agreeing, strode off to collect it, leaving her alone to listen to the band and admire the dancers. Tom rarely danced.

‘Not part of my education,' he explained. Hester often wondered exactly what his education had consisted of and how he had obtained it, but he never spoke to her—or anyone—of his past life.

A pair of officers, one of them Jack Cameron by his voice, and another whom she did not know, walked into the glasshouse, to smoke a cigar, away from the ballroom where smoking was frowned upon. They stood near the open door and appeared unaware of Hester's presence nearby. She could hear them laughing and talking.

The talk and the drifting smoke disturbed her. She was about to move away to try to find Tom when she heard her name, and his, repeated.

‘So he got his plain piece into bed, after all,' the unknown officer said coarsely. ‘A fortnight ago, I hear, and a high old time they seem to be having: in bed for two days, they say. All bets due should be paid off, Jack. When do I get my money?'

‘Don't know, old fellow. He's got her there, true, but
will he keep her there? Tom Dilhorne knows how to rig the odds, you may be sure, but can you be certain that she'll want to go on having her jollies with a brute like him? No, we'll wait to see what happens before I pay him—or anyone else.'

‘You're nearly as devious a devil as he is, Cameron,' complained the other officer. ‘I'd like to see the colour of my money.'

‘Well, it took him over two months to get her there, it might not take so long for it to be off again. Even Dilhorne can't win all the time.'

The other man said nothing to this, then asked, ‘Have you seen her tonight, Cameron?'

‘Can't say I've had the pleasure,' guffawed Jack. ‘If you can call it a pleasure!'

‘Well, I own she's not quite as plain as she was. But that bastard Dilhorne's put his brand on her. She's wearing a fortune in amethysts around her scrawny neck.'

Cameron guffawed again. ‘I thought that it was Sarah Kerr Dilhorne was sweet on. This one's a bit of a come down, I must say. But if he wants to drape her in amethysts, that's his bad taste. I suppose he spent his winnings on them.'

They moved off and Hester heard no more. She had sat as though paralysed, unable to move as the dreadful truth unfolded itself. Tom had broken their bargain, not because he loved her, but to win a bet. Had their whole marriage merely been a callous joke played by a man who loved another woman, and that woman, Sarah Kerr?

Jack Cameron carelessly stubbed out his cigar in one of Elizabeth Macquarie's pot plants before he left the conservatory. Arriving late in the ballroom, he had seen Tom leave Hester alone and had manoeuvred Menzies into a
position where he was sure Hester could hear every cruel and deceiving word.

If she didn't think that her husband had made her the subject of vulgar bets and even more vulgar jokes, it wasn't Jack Cameron's fault. If that didn't take the shine off Master Tom's marriage, then nothing would.

Better still, if he had made sure that the marriage was off again, he might save himself from the financial ruin which was staring him in the face. That would teach Dilhorne not to humiliate an officer and a gentleman in Madame Phoebe's.

Hester sat rigid. The amethyst collar seemed to burn her neck. So the bargain with Tom was not a secret after all. Tom had told. Worse, he had bet on getting her into bed. Everyone knew everything, hence the looks and guffaws in the ballroom. How else would Jack Cameron know what she and Tom were doing if Tom had not told? His words could have no other meaning. Alternate hot and cold chills racked her. The glow on her face had disappeared.

How much had he told? Why had she ever trusted him? Her father and mother had been right about him. He had gained his revenge on her father by making her his wife and then publicly humiliating her. She thought of their lovemaking and the joy it had brought her, and she was near to fainting where she sat. The brute, the odious lying brute. He had treated her like a whore and she had thought him so kind, so considerate. The room reeled about her.

Tom returned with their drinks. He knew at once that something had happened. Hester's face had changed and shrivelled. She was once more hunted-looking Hester Waring; even her eyes seemed to have sunk back into her head and her pallor was ghastly.

‘Hester! What's wrong?' he exclaimed, putting the
glasses on a table by her chair. He made to take her hand in his, but a look of horror passed over her face.

‘Don't touch me, you are not to touch me. Take me home.' She made as if to push him away, her voice faltering on the word home. She had no home…

Tom straightened up, his face stern. ‘Why, Hester, why?'

‘I heard,' she whispered. ‘I heard them. They were laughing about Tom Dilhorne's plain piece whom he got into bed with him to win a bet.'

He stood quite still, face impassive. ‘Hester, you cannot believe that.'

‘Oh, but I do, I do. They knew everything. Exactly when it happened. That we had two days in bed together. How we enjoyed ourselves…' Her voice broke. ‘I thought it a secret between us, and it is the joke of Sydney.'

She stood up and put her trembling hands to her neck, unclasped the amethyst collar and handed it to him.

‘I'll not wear your brand, Tom Dilhorne. That's what they said it was. Your brand. Now take me…home…'

She had begun to shake. Tom put out a hand to take her arm, but she flung it off. ‘You are not to touch me.'

He held the collar in his hand, his face grey.

‘Hester, please.' It was the first time he had ever pleaded with her—or with any man or woman for that matter. ‘Please put the necklace back. If they don't know now that you are throwing me off, they will when they see that you are not wearing it. And believe me, Hester, I love you. For my sake, put it back on. For Tom, Hester, for Tom.'

There, he had said it at last, what he had never said directly to her during all their lovemaking. What he had thought that he would never say to anyone, ever: I love you.

‘For your sake! Why should I? They seem to know ev
erything else about us so I
want
them to know that I've thrown you off, and then you'll lose your damnable bet and Jack Cameron can collect his winnings.'

He was putting the collar carefully into his pocket until he heard Cameron's name.

‘Jack Cameron? Was it Jack Cameron you overheard? How can you believe a scoundrel like that when you don't believe me?'

‘Because you're a bigger scoundrel than he is, and all Sydney knows it. Yes, he knew. They both knew. I think by the way that people have been looking at me that they all know.'

Her voice trembled on a sob.

‘They knew what we were doing, and that you betted on me. Did you tell them the next day? Oh, please take me home. I cannot bear to be looked at any more.'

Tom, for once, was defeated. Hester began to walk away, head high, and he walked beside her, not touching her. They crossed the ballroom not touching, looking at nothing and nobody, her face as impassive as his: Mrs Dilhorne well taught by Mr Dilhorne.

More than one person noticed that Mrs Dilhorne was not now wearing her amethyst collar, among them a grinning Jack Cameron.

But it was Tom's face which held most people's eyes. It was as set and grim as though he were going to his execution.

 

All the way home Hester huddled herself away from Tom. He drove with uncommon care, and when they reached the villa and were at last inside she left him without a word, mounting the stairs to their room—which not long ago had been her room only.

At the door she turned, mouth trembling. ‘You can col
lect your possessions and go to your old room, Tom Dilhorne! The original bargain between us still stands, that's all.'

He ignored what she said and walked in after her. ‘Hester, you must listen to me.'

‘Why should I? You cheated me from the beginning. I can see that now. It was all a huge joke to you, to marry a lady, and you got a good housekeeper into the bargain.'

‘I could have found a housekeeper,' he said, ‘without needing to marry her. Mrs Hackett on her own would have done—I can't see myself marrying
her
.'

‘Why did you marry me? Because you wanted a lady for a wife? They said that you loved Sarah Kerr, and what a come down I was.'

He closed his eyes. The careless banter he had used to her since the day of her appointment could no longer serve here, and yes, to some extent, she was right. He had begun his pursuit of her quite cynically and cold-bloodedly. He had manipulated her into marrying him, and then he had manipulated her into bed with him. Even though she had wanted it as much as he did at the end, it remained manipulation.

His marriage had originally begun as one of the games he played with life, one of his sardonic jokes. If he were honest, it had even been a backhanded way of getting his revenge on that unpleasant swine, her father, to bed his daughter and have that daughter his willing partner.

Only, at some point, the game had changed, and everything with it, for as he grew to know her, he had come to care for her. The change had been slow, and it was hard for him to know when his careless amusement had changed into love, when his cold heart had been melted. It was for her sake now, as much as his, although his own pleasure was great, that they made love. If he had changed
her, transforming her from frigidity into a creature of passion and fire, he had changed himself, irrevocably, and he could even remember when that understanding had come to him…

Early one morning, against their usual custom of him rising before her, she had slipped out of bed quite naked, for she had no false shame before him, however modest and shy she was in public, and had begun to pin up her hair before the mirror.

Lying there, propped up on one arm, watching her, he saw, not for the first time, that although tiny, her body was beautiful, perfectly proportioned and shapely now that good food and happiness were bringing it to full perfection. When she raised her arms and turned her head, the lovely lines of it were fully revealed.

All those months ago he had been right. The promise he had seen in her, when he had caught her unawares in the schoolroom, had flowered into the graceful woman before him—and she was not, he was sure, all that she would yet be. The two Hesters, the one in the glass and the one outside it, moved before him, and the one in the glass saw his eyes on her. She smiled at him, her mouth lifting at the corner.