Miss Marianne's Disgrace

Marianne jerked her attention to Mrs Stevens’s kind round eyes, her son’s eyes, and shook her head. ‘No, not at all.’

‘Liar,’ Mrs Stevens teased. ‘When I was young I used to hate sitting with old ladies and listening to them talk. Lady Ellington tells me you play the pianoforte. We have a lovely Érard in the music room. The man who sold us the house said it was once in the Palace of Versailles, but I’m not sure I believe him.’

‘A French-made Érard!’ Excitement filled Marianne more than when the carriage had approached the house, before it had become obvious Sir Warren had no intention of joining them. ‘I used to play one at the Protestant School in France. Do you play?’

‘Oh, heavens, no.’ She laid a thin hand on her chest. ‘I hate to think of a fine instrument going to waste. If you’d like to try it, you may. It’s just down the hall in the music room. Third door on the left.’

‘May I?’ Marianne asked Lady Ellington, as eager to see the instrument as to escape the staring portrait.

Lady Ellington slid a sly glance at Mrs Stevens whose eyebrow arched a touch. ‘I don’t see why not.’

Marianne threw her companion a questioning look, wondering what she was up to. Lady Ellington ignored it in favour of adjusting the clasp on her diamond bracelet. The ladies must be eager to discuss something more salacious than Italian landscapes out of her hearing. Whatever it was, Lady Ellington would tell her about it later. Her companion didn’t see the need to shield her from reality, not after Marianne had learned so much at Madame de Badeau’s.

Marianne rose and shook out the skirt of her dress. ‘Then I’d be delighted to play.’

‘Wonderful.’ Mrs Stevens beamed as Marianne made for the hallway. ‘Leave the door open so we may hear your beautiful playing.’

Marianne stepped into the long main hall running the length of the front of the house. The faint dragging of a saw across wood and the thud of hammers carried down from somewhere upstairs. She headed left, past the large marble fireplace situated across from the main door, a medieval relic left over from the house’s days as a priory. Mrs Stevens had told them something of the house’s history over tea. Old swords and helmets dotted the panelled walls, creating a more menacing than welcoming effect in the low-ceilinged entrance hall with its thick exposed beams.

She followed the neat line of black-marble diamonds inlaid in the slightly uneven floor, counting the solidly spaced doors with their rounded tops and thick iron handles.

When she reached the third door on the left, she slid one of the wide panels aside, stopping as Sir Warren’s eyes snapped up from his desk to hers. The troubled eyes from the portrait. They widened with shock before crinkling with annoyance, then embarrassment. In front for him were books arranged in an elaborate set of triangles and balanced against one another like a house of cards.

‘You should have knocked.’ Sir Warren jumped to his feet and rounded the desk. The large red dog sitting beside him raised its hindquarters in a stretch before trotting past his owner and up to Marianne. ‘I was working.’

‘Yes, it’s quite a labour.’ She leaned to one side to peer around his solid chest at his creation, ignoring the flutter in her stomach at this unexpected meeting and the cutting realisation he had been avoiding her. ‘Is it a castle or a barn? I can’t tell.’

‘It’s a castle.’ Amusement replaced the flush of anger. ‘I’ll have you know, half of all writing is procrastination.’

‘Then it appears you’re making great progress.’ Marianne tapped the dog lightly on the head with her fingers, then waved him away. He obliged, wandering over to the hearth rug and settling down on the spiral weave.

‘If only I were.’ He dismantled his castle and stacked the books in two neat piles. Then he faced her, leaning back against the desk and admiring her with more amusement than censure. His coat was missing and the wide sleeves of his shirt were flecked with small dots of ink. Dull black boots that wouldn’t pass muster in London covered his calves and feet, and around his neck his cravat sat loose and crooked. ‘Rather bold for a young lady to be wandering alone in a gentleman’s house.’

‘It isn’t the first time I’ve been bold in the presence of a gentleman.’ She approached him, determined to appear confident and collected and reveal nothing of the thrill racing through her at his unguarded humour. It would end soon when he decided it was best to not be alone with her and bolt off to see to some other matter in another part of the house.

‘Nor do I suspect it will be the last.’ Not a speck of derision marred his smile as he stroked his strong jaw. The play of his fingers along his chiselled chin, his sure stance and the curious way he regarded her proved as captivating as the time she’d watched the workers in the Falconbridge Manor fields in the evening, their shirts discarded as they’d swung their scythes. She could picture him among them, the gold sun across his back, his thick arms swinging the blade, the honey skin glistening in the low light. Marianne adjusted her collar, stunned by her suddenly lurid imagination. This wasn’t the way she normally regarded men. It was dangerous.

‘I’ll have you know I wasn’t wandering, but searching for the Érard. Mrs Stevens told me it was in the music room, the third door on the left.’ She couldn’t have counted wrong. Three was not a difficult number.

‘The music room is the second door on the left.’ He cocked his thumb at the wall and the arched door set snug between two bookcases. ‘There’s another entrance through there, if you’d like.’

‘My apologies then. I’ll leave you to your work.’ And make sure it was she and not he who did the quick leave taking this time.

‘No, please, stay.’ He moved to place himself between her and the library door. The dry tang of dusting powder clung to him, punctuated by the faint richness of cedar. It struck her as strongly as his state of undress. It was too intimate for a woman of Marianne’s undeserved reputation.

‘No, I must go.’ She tried to step around him, but he moved first, agile for a man of his robust build. The dog watched them as though he were bored.

‘Please, I’d like it if you’d stay.’

‘Why?’ He wasn’t the first gentleman to try and corner her alone in a room. If he dared to touch her, he also wouldn’t be the first to feel her knee hitting his unmentionables. She’d learned fast how to defend herself against the lecherous gentlemen who used to haunt Madame de Badeau’s. She’d had no choice. The awful woman hadn’t lifted a finger to protect her.

‘I wish to apologise for leaving you so abruptly at Lady Cartwright’s. You were concerned about me and instead of thanking you, I was rude. Please, forgive me?’

She blinked, stunned. No one, not even Madame de Badeau when she’d been dying of fever in Italy, had ever asked for Marianne’s forgiveness. To Hades with his state of undress, she’d stay for this and savour the moment. It would probably be the last time she’d receive an apology from anyone outside Lady Ellington’s house.

‘It’s been quite some time since I’ve attended to a patient,’ he continued in the face of her silence, something of the shadow from the portrait darkening his expression. ‘It brought back a number of painful memories and made me forget my manners.’

‘What memories?’ She didn’t usually pry. People were all too eager to tell her their business and everyone else’s without any entreaty, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking. He hadn’t rushed to condemn or insult her like so many others did. It made her curious and less wary about him than she should have been.

The bang of a dropped board echoed on the floor above them. She thought he wouldn’t answer, but to her surprise, he did.

‘During my time as a surgeon in the Navy, I saw horrors so awful, if I wrote them into my novels, readers would think I’d exaggerated for titillating effect.’ He snapped his fingers and the dog strolled to his side. He dropped his hand on the dog’s head and ruffled the silky fur. ‘For a year or two after I left the Navy, the memories used to trouble me. Usually it would happen at night, but once in a while a familiar smell or something equally trivial would bring them back during the day. Eventually, it stopped and I thought myself past such episodes, but it happened again when I attended to your friend. It’s why I left so quickly. I didn’t wish to explain it to you, or anyone else. It’s not something people outside my family are aware of, or something I’m proud of.’

‘Then why tell me about it?’ It was insults people usually heaped on her, not confidences.

‘You remind me of my sister, someone who might understand and not mock me for it.’

The faint connection they’d shared outside the study at Lady Cartwright’s whispered between them once more. Sir Warren was offering her honesty and respect, treating her like a real person, not a tart to be pawed or derided. It was how she’d always longed to be viewed by strangers, especially gentlemen.

‘No, I couldn’t.’ She fingered a small embroidered flower on her dress. ‘It makes me a little ashamed of how much I pore over my own troubles. They’re nothing compared to yours.’

‘What troubles you, Miss Domville?’ His voice was low and strong, like a physician trying to sooth an anxious patient.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about me?’ She flicked her hand at the study. ‘I’m sure the neighbours rushed over to tell your mother the stories the moment the removers left.’

‘We weren’t here when the removers left and they didn’t remove much. I bought the property lock, stock and barrel.’

‘And no one informed you at Lady Cartwright’s?’ At times, it seemed as if the only topic anyone could discuss.

‘I was delayed and missed the dinner. I left the party as soon as I finished with Lady Ellington. Why don’t you tell me the real story, then I’ll know the truth when Lady Cartwright gives me the exaggerated version.’

Honesty. He was holding it out to her again except this time it would be her sharing instead of him. She shouldn’t, but she was tired of dragging the past and the secret of her lineage around like a heavy chain. Perhaps with this gentleman who treated her like an old friend instead of a pariah, his concern for her as genuine as Lady Ellington’s, she could take the first step to being free of it. ‘You’ve heard of Madame de Badeau?’

‘She was the French courtesan who tried to ruin the Marquess of Falconbridge.’

She nodded as she twisted the slender gold band encircling her little finger. She should leave him as ignorant as everyone else of the truth about her relationship to the woman. She didn’t know him, or have any reason to trust him, except for the strange calm his presence created in her. It reminded her of the first day she’d arrived at Lady Ellington’s after Lord Falconbridge had stumbled on her trying to run away from Madame de Badeau’s. The gracious woman had taken Marianne in her arms as if she were a long-lost daughter. Not even Mrs Nichols or Mrs Smith had ever hugged her so close. Marianne had earned Lady Ellington’s affection by helping her nephew and his wife avoid ruin. Sir Warren owed Marianne nothing, yet he still looked at her as Lady Ellington had that first morning, as if she was as deserving of care and respect as anyone else. She should stay silent, but under the influence of his sincerity, she couldn’t hold back the story any more than she could have held back the tears of relief in Lady Ellington’s embrace.

‘All my life, I and everyone else thought she was my sister. What few people really know is she was my mother. She had me long after her husband, the Chevalier de Badeau, died. She passed me off as her sister to hide her shame. I don’t even know which of her many lovers was my father.’ Her stomach clenched and she thought Mrs Steven’s lemon cakes might come up. She shouldn’t have told him. No one outside the Falconbridge family knew and there was no reason to expect his discretion. If he repeated the story, then the faint acceptance Lady Ellington provided would disappear as everyone recoiled further from the illegitimate daughter of a whore.

She waited for his reaction, expecting him to curl his lip at her in disgust or march into the sitting room and demand his mother have no further dealings with her. Instead, he nodded sagely as if she’d told him her throat hurt, not the secret which had gnawed at her since she’d riffled through Madame de Badeau’s desk four years ago and found the letter revealing the truth.

‘Your mother isn’t the first woman to pass her child off as her sibling,’ he replied at last.

‘You’re not stunned?’ She was.

‘No.’ He turned back to his desk and slid a book off of the top of the stack, an ancient tome with a cracked leather cover and yellowed pages.

His movement left the path to the music room clear. Marianne could bolt out the door, leave him and her foolishness behind, but she held her ground. She wouldn’t act like a coward in front of a man who’d been to war.