The Danbury Scandals (13 page)

Lady Markham
laughed. ‘You must be a little selfish now and again, my dear, or they will
walk all over you. Mark must be taught a lesson, because he doesn’t value you
as a prospective husband should.’

‘Oh, I had
forgotten I told you that. You won’t repeat it, will you?’

‘Why not? The
world already knows, the announcement is in the Thunderer today.’

The teacup in
Maryanne’s hand shook as she set it carefully down on its saucer. So Mark had
taken her prevarication for consent and published their engagement, and Adam
would think that was what she had wanted. Now what was she to do?

‘What is the
matter, child? You have gone white as a sheet.’

‘Nothing.’ She
made a sound that was meant to be a laugh but was almost a sob. Was there no
end to her foolishness? ‘I thought that after I went missing he might change
his mind.’

Lady Markham
searched her face and Maryanne knew she had not deceived that astute lady. ‘You
mean you hoped he would.’

‘No... Yes... I
don’t know. Mr Saint-Pierre said I could not be in love with Mark if I couldn’t
make up my mind. Was he right, do you think?’

Beth Markham
smiled. ‘You must follow your heart, not your head, in these matters.’

Follow her
heart. How could she do that when her heart was plainly misleading her?

‘It’s Adam,
isn’t it?’ Beth asked softly. ‘I grant he is a handsome beast, but he has no
time for women, you know.’

Maryanne’s
spirit returned. ‘You do surprise me.’

She stopped
when she realised she was about to blurt out that Adam had kissed her, and more
than once. Lady Markham, kind as she was, was not averse to gossip, and for the
family’s sake she must say nothing of that.

‘He has other
things on his mind just now.’

‘Curricle
races?’

Lady Markham
laughed. ‘Not only that.’ She paused. ‘He is very concerned for the plight of
the French aristocrats who want to return to their estates now Louis has been
restored to the throne. They want to pick up their lives again, but their homes
are in ruins, their lands confiscated and many of them are heavily in debt,
dependent on their English hosts. Adam is trying to help them. There are
others, of course, who would stop him; they do not want to see a return to the
old regime of rich and poor.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘After all the years of war,
they are all poor, peasants and aristocrats alike. France is in a mess.’

‘Is that why he
is in England?’

‘Partly, though
I believe he intends to return to France soon.’

‘When will he
go?’ Her heart felt like lead. It was no good deceiving herself; she wanted him
to stay, she wanted him to stay for her sake. But she was engaged to marry Mark
and there was no way out of that without a scandal. Perhaps it would have been
better if everyone knew where she had been those few hours when she was ‘lost’;
Mark would have called off the engagement, there would have been no announcement
and Adam would have felt duty bound to marry her. Duty bound! Was that what she
wanted? No! No! If he did not love her, then she must put him from her mind and
try to pretend she had never met him.

‘I don’t know.
Not until after the race. But I hear the Dowager Duchess is not well again and
the Duke has returned to Castle Cedars, so the race has been postponed yet
again.’

‘Perhaps it
will never happen.’

‘Oh, it will
take place, I’ll lay odds on it; there is too much money at stake to abandon
it.’

‘How foolish
men are!’

‘Indeed, yes.’
She smiled cheerfully at Maryanne. ‘But what would we do without them?’

Maryanne did
not consider that question required an answer and turned to gaze out of the
window. ‘I think I should return home.’

‘Tomorrow,’ her
ladyship said firmly. ‘I have said you need at least two days to recover, and I
want everyone to see you; there must not be the least doubt in anyone’s mind
where you have been staying. I mean to take you back in style.’

Lady Markham
was as good as her word. The carriage that took them both to Danbury House was
painted in a pale pink, with elegant lines of a deeper shade of the same
colour. The rims of its wheels were black, but the spokes were of a deep pink,
and even the horses had pink plumes. On the high box sat a Negro boy in pink
satin livery with a huge black turban. Lady Markham, followed by a bemused
Maryanne, sailed from the house to get into it, a vision in pink satin and net.
‘I had it done especially for the celebrations,’ she said, patting the seat
beside her and nodding her head so that the long feather in her hat bounced up
and down. ‘What do you think of it?’

‘It is very -
er - striking,’ Maryanne said, as they moved off up the street at a pace slow
enough to ensure that everyone saw them.

Her ladyship
laughed. ‘I’ll lay odds that this time next week there will be any number of
pink carriages in the park.’

‘Then yours
will no longer stand out.’

‘Oh, then I
shall change it for another. I like to set the fashion, not follow it.’

If her ladyship’s
plan had been to make sure that they were stared at, she certainly succeeded.
Everyone turned to look as the barouche went by, and some laughed while others
called out a ribald comment, to which Beth Markham had a ready reply. Maryanne
felt like a goldfish in a bowl. ‘If you have something worth seeing, then
flaunt it,’ her ladyship said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it is ugly or
beautiful; there is nothing worse than being ignored.’ She laughed. ‘I, too,
have a reputation to preserve.’

‘How did you meet
Mr Saint-Pierre?’ Maryanne asked. She could not imagine Adam being attracted to
such flamboyance.

‘Robert Rudge
introduced us. Adam came to England looking for his father’s lawyer, but old
Joseph was dead and Robert had taken on the practice. He realised Adam needed
an entrée into society and he thought of me.’ She laughed. ‘He has been an apt
pupil, but then, with his breeding, it is hardly surprising.’

‘His breeding?’

Her ladyship,
caught out in an indiscretion, laughed in an embarrassed way. ‘I believe his
father was a wine grower, a landowner of some importance.’

‘What else do
you know of him?’

‘I gather
everything was lost during the Reign of Terror except a little money that
Monsieur
Saint-Pierre had smuggled to London. More than that I cannot tell you.’

‘What has Mr
Saint-Pierre got against the Danbury family?’

‘Nothing that I
know of.’ Her ladyship reached up and tapped the young Negro with her fan. ‘You
may whip the cattle up a bit, Dandy, we have dawdled enough.’

Maryanne was
almost jolted from her seat as the horses seemed to take to the air, and they
fairly flew over the ground, weaving in and out of the traffic like a flashing
pink comet. They slowed to a walk again as they entered Piccadilly and drew up
outside Danbury House.

‘Now, don’t
forget your story,’ her ladyship admonished as the front door was opened by a
footman. ‘And please, for my sake, do not look too robustly healthy.’

Caroline and
Mrs Ryfield were alone in the house and Lady Markham stayed only long enough to
pay her respects. Maryanne dreaded her going, knowing she would be subjected to
a cross-examination as soon as the extraordinary carriage had rolled away. She
tried to forestall it by asking, ‘Where is Mark?’

‘He is out,’
Caroline told her. ‘Did you expect him to wait in, kicking his heels, until you
decide to come home?’

‘Lady Markham’s
physician recommended two days in bed for me and she would not hear of me
leaving.’

‘How cosy for
you!’ the younger woman said. ‘Comfortably in bed while Mark scoured the city,
imagining all sorts of fate for you, each worse than the last, though why he
bothers with you I do not know. If you got yourself trampled underfoot, you
have no one but yourself to blame.’

‘I fainted in
the crush,’ Maryanne said, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘Fortunately Lord
Markham saw me being carried from the crowd and had me taken to the home of a
friend while he sent for his wife.’ It was as near the truth as she could make
it without denying the story that Lady Markham had told. ‘His housekeeper lent
me some clothes, my own were badly torn. I shall have to return them.’ At least
taking the gown back would give her an opportunity to talk to Jeannie again and
she might learn more about Captain Shoecar from her.

‘Tell me this
friend’s name. We must thank him properly.’

‘I don’t know
it. I was not there very long and, besides, I had fainted...’

‘Then how will
you return the clothes?’

Maryanne was
nonplussed; she was not used to telling untruths and it was easy for Caroline
to see that she was hiding something. Oh, why did it all have to be so
complicated? Why couldn’t she tell everyone that Adam had rescued her? But no
one, especially Caroline, would believe they had been in the same place at the
same time quite by chance. She found herself wondering if the secrecy was more
for his benefit than to protect her reputation and, if that was so, was she
helping to cover up something evil or illegal?

‘Well?’
Caroline’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

‘I shall have
to ask Lady Markham his direction, shan’t I? she replied tartly. ‘Now I’m going
to my room. Please send for me when Mark returns.’

It was cool in
her room because the window was open and a light breeze played with the
curtains, throwing a pattern of shadow across the wall. A bird which had been perching
on the window-sill flew up and into one of the trees in the garden. She ran to
the window and saw it perching on a branch, regarding her with its head on one
side. In its beak it held something shining. ‘A jackdaw,’ she said aloud. ‘The
little thief!’ Jackdaw. Jack Daw. Shoecar.
Choucas
. She began to laugh.
Oh, what a joke, and all at her expense, she was sure.
Choucas
was the
French word for jackdaw. She stopped laughing suddenly. Jackdaws were known for
their thieving. Was that how he got his name? Was he no more than a common
thief?

She sank into a
chair by the window and watched the bird fly away. It was free as the air, free
as he was; she was the only one in captivity, captive of her own stupidity. Now
it was too late, she realised why she had been reluctant to accept Mark. She
loved Jack Daw, who had stolen her heart, stolen it with nothing more
substantial than a kiss. Was that grounds enough to imagine herself in love?
After all, what did she know of the man? Nothing except that he had brown eyes
that could be tender one minute, cold the next, that he could make her laugh,
but could also make her cry, that his mother had been English, that he was
involved in some way with the French
émigrés
and he didn’t like the
Danburys.

On the other
hand, Mark’s background was an open book, his intentions clear and unequivocal;
there was no mystery about him. If she married Mark, she knew exactly what her
life would be like. Why did she persist in trying to compare the incomparable?
She leaned forward as the jackdaw swooped on a group of sparrows pecking at
crumbs on the grass, scattering them, then soared away into the sky.
Le
choucas
, wild, free, a thief.

Mark returned
just in time for supper. He greeted her with a swift peck on the cheek and a,
‘Hello, Maryanne, glad to see you are none the worse for your adventure.’ Then
turned to the subject of the curricle race, which he had decided was to be held
in the grounds of Castle Cedars. He was so full of it, she could not speak to
him of their engagement, which he took so much for granted.

‘His Grace
declines to return to London,’ he said, as they went into the dining-room. ‘He
maintains it is because of his mother’s illness, but I think he’d as lief
cancel the whole thing, having no stomach for anything that requires a little
exertion...’

‘Then why don’t
you call it off?’ Maryanne put in. ‘Is it so important?’

‘Of course it
is.’ He seated himself opposite her and beckoned a servant. ‘A man must pay his
debts.’

‘And suppose
you lose?’

‘I will not
lose.’ His features were set in hard lines, his dark brows drawn together in
angry determination. ‘I have the best team in the land and I can’t lose.’

‘And have the
others agreed to race at Castle Cedars?’

‘Others?’ He
watched the footman heap his plate with food. ‘Oh, you mean that rascally
Frenchman. He agreed to any time or place I cared to mention and he cannot back
out of it now without losing what little honour he has left.’

‘Do you hate
him so much?’

He turned
sharply to search her face and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘You
look embarrassed, madam, but I hope it is not because you have a liking for the
damned fellow’s kisses.’

‘No, no, how
can you say that?’ She felt like a Judas; she should have told him the truth.
She cared for Adam’s kisses more than Adam cared for hers. He had made a fool
of her and denied he had any feeling for her and that must be the end of it.
Mark, at least, was a gentleman, worth two of Adam Saint-Pierre.