Slightly Wicked

Chapter XIII

Rannulf was seated between Lady Effingham and Mrs. Hardinge at dinner, his grandmother having been more discreet in her table arrangements than Lady Effingham was at Harewood. It was a relief to him, even though the one lady talked about nothing but the travails of having six daughters to bring out when one would like nothing better than to remain on one’s own country estate all year long, and the other tittered and commiserated with him over the fact that he had to keep two matrons company when he would doubtless far prefer to be seated by someone younger and prettier.

“Might I even say,” she suggested, arching him a sidelong glance, “a particular someone? ”

Miss Effingham, farther down the table, on the same side as Rannulf, talked animatedly with Roy-Hill and Law, her table companions. A few times Lady Effingham leaned forward and wanted to know the cause of a particular burst of laughter.

“Lord Rannulf and I and everyone else feel very isolated from the merriment, dearest,” she said on one of those occasions.

Judith Law sat on the other side of the table and conversed quietly with her uncle on one side and Richard Warren on the other. Looking at her now, one would never guess that she had endured such a terrifying experience just a few hours ago. She was far more the lady than her aunt, despite the latter’s elegance and surface sophistication. Like the other ladies from Harewood, she had changed in a room allotted to her upstairs. She was wearing the same cream and gold silk dress she had worn at the Rum and Puncheon on the second evening. He remembered it for its simple elegance, which at the time he had thought deliberately understated, like the rest of her garments. It now had panels of a well-coordinated darker cream fabric set into the sides, a band of the same material lining the neckline so that far less of her bosom was visible, and an almost nonexistent waistline. She wore a fine, lace-trimmed cap, which, quite predictably, covered her hair.

How many of those seated about the table, he wondered, though they had been acquainted with her for a week, realized that she was below thirty years of age? Or knew the color of her hair—or of her eyes for that matter?

One thing had become distressingly clear to him in the course of the day. He could not—he really could not—marry the Effingham chit. He would be insane within a week of their marriage. It was not just that she was silly and empty-headed. It was more that she was vain and totally self-absorbed. And her only reason for trying to attach his interest was that he was the son of a duke and a wealthy man. She had made no attempt whatsoever to get to know him as a person. She probably never would. He might spend fifty years married to a woman who would never know—or care—that he had spent the last ten years denying the guilt he felt over not doing his duty and entering upon a career in the church as his father had planned for him and instead had lived a life of aimlessness and occasional dissipation. Or that very recently he had decided to give his life direction and meaning by becoming a knowledgeable, involved, responsible, perhaps even progressive and compassionate landlord.

The dinner table conversation did not demand much of his brain. He was able to do a great deal of thinking at the same time.

He could not marry Miss Effingham.

Neither could he disappoint his grandmother. Was he the only one who could see the rigidity of her bearing and the deep lines on either side of her mouth, both indications of suppressed pain? Or the brightness of her eyes that masked bone-weariness? And yet this garden party extending into a dinner and entertainment for the Harewood guests had been her idea. Rannulf glanced several times at her with fond exasperation.

And there was Judith Law. He wondered if she realized that two men had panted equally for her this afternoon. To his infinite shame he had wanted her quite as desperately as Effingham had. Pale and disheveled and bareheaded, she had looked achingly appealing, and her trembling bewilderment had invited him to comfort her in other ways than the one he had chosen.

He had sat beside her in the summerhouse, imposing rigid control on his own urges, concentrating every effort of his will on giving her the quiet, passive comfort he had sensed she needed and castigating himself at every moment with the knowledge that he was not far different from Effingham.

He had always seen women as creatures designed for his personal pleasure and satisfaction, to be taken and used and paid and forgotten. Except for his sisters, of course, and other ladies, and all women of virtue, and even those few of questionable virtue who had said no to him.

The trouble for women as voluptuously gorgeous as Judith Law must be that men would almost always look on them with lust and perhaps never see the person behind the goddess.

His grandmother interrupted his rambling thoughts by rising from her place and inviting the other ladies to join her in the drawing room. It was tempting after they left to settle in to the port and congenial male conversation for an indefinite length of time, especially since he suspected that Sir George Effingham and a number of the other gentlemen would be quite happy to spend the rest of the evening at the table.

However, duty called and he had promised himself that he would play host and lift some of the social burden from his grandmother’s shoulders. He stood up after a mere twenty minutes, and the gentlemen followed him to the drawing room.

He had no intention of having the same few young ladies as usual entertain the gathering with their pianoforte playing, Miss Effingham inevitably keeping the instrument all to herself once she had occupied the bench, with him as her page-turner.

“We will take tea,” he announced, “after which we will all entertain one another. AM of us who are—let me see—all of us who are below the age of thirty.”

There was a chorus of protests, most of them male, but Rannulf held up one hand and laughed.

“Why should the ladies be the ones expected to display all the talents and accomplishments?” he asked.

“We all, surely, can do something that will entertain a gathering of this nature.”

“Oh, I say,” Lord Braithwaite cried, “no one would wish to hear me sing, Bedwyn. When I joined the choir at school, the singing master told me that the kindest comparison he could think of for my voice was a cracked foghorn. And there was an end to my singing days.”

There was general laughter.

“There will be no exceptions,” Rannulf said. “There are more ways to entertain than by singing.”

“What are you going to do, Bedwyn?” Peter Webster asked. “Or are you going to exempt yourself on the grounds that you are the master of ceremonies?”

“You may wait and see,” Rannulf told him. “Shall we say ten minutes for tea before we have the tray removed?”

He went first. It seemed only fair. He had learned a few conjuring tricks over the years and had been fond of entertaining Morgan and her governess with them. He performed several of them now, foolish tricks like making a coin disappear from his hand and then reappear out of Miss Cooke’s right ear or Branwell Law’s waistcoat pocket, and making a handkerchief suddenly transform itself into a pocket watch or a lady’s fan. He had, of course, the advantage of being able to plan well ahead of time. His audience exclaimed in wonder and delight and applauded with enthusiasm, just as if he were a master of the art.

A few of the guests had to be coaxed and one of them— Sir Dudley Roy-Hill—refused categorically to make an idiot of himself, as he phrased it, but it was amazing over the next hour to discover what varied and sometimes impressive talents had lain hidden through the first half of the house party. Predictably, the ladies entertained with music, most either vocal or on the pianoforte, one—Miss Hannah Warren—on the drawing room harp that Rannulf could never remember hearing played before. Law sang a woeful ballad in a pleasant tenor voice, and Warren sang a Baroque duet with one of his sisters. Tanguay recited Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” with such passionate sensibility that the ladies burst into appreciative applause almost before the last word was out of his mouth. Webster did a creditable imitation of a cossack dance he had once seen on his travels, bending his knees and crossing his arms and kicking his feet and leaping and singing his own accompaniment and succeeding in convulsing both himself and his audience in helpless laughter before collapsing in an inelegant heap on the carpet. Braithwaite, perhaps encouraged by the reception of his choirboy story, told three more tall tales about his school days, all at his own expense, embroidering the details with humorous exaggeration until the ladies and even a few gentlemen were mopping at their eyes while still laughing.

“Ah,” Lady Effingham said with a sigh when Braithwaite sat down, “that is everyone. I could continue watching and listening for another hour. But what a splendid idea, Lord Rannulf. We have all been royally entertained. Indeed I—”

But Rannulf held up a staying hand.

“Not so, ma’am,” he said. “Not everyone. There is still Miss Law.”

“Oh, I really do not believe Judith will wish to make a spectacle of herself,” her fond aunt said hastily.

Rannulf ignored her. “Miss Law?”

Her head had shot up, and she was gazing at him with wide, dismayed eyes. This whole scheme of his had been designed for just this moment. It really had infuriated him that she had been made into an invisible woman, little more than a servant, all because that puppy of a brother of hers had thought he could live beyond his means and be funded by the bottomless pit of his father’s fortune. She should become visible, even if just once, while all the guests were still staying at Harewood, and in all her greatest magnificence.

It had been a gamble from the start, of course. But it had been planned before the distressing events of this afternoon. All evening he had toyed with the idea of leaving her invisible.

“But I have no particular accomplishment, my lord,” she protested. “I do not play the pianoforte or sing more than tolerably well.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking directly into her eyes, “you have some verse or some passage from literature or the Bible memorized?”

“I—” She shook her head.

He would leave it at that, he decided. He had done the wrong thing. He had embarrassed and perhaps hurt her.

“Perhaps, Miss Law,” his grandmother said kindly, “you would be willing to read a poem or a Bible passage if we were to have a book fetched from the library. I noticed in conversation with you this afternoon what a very pleasant speaking voice you have. But only if you wish. Rannulf will not bully you if you are too shy.”

“Indeed I will not, Miss Law.” He bowed to her.

“I will read, then, ma’am,” she said, sounding unhappy.

“Will you fetch something from the library, Rannulf?” his grandmother asked. “Something by Milton or Pope, perhaps? Or the Bible?”

So, he had succeeded only in embarrassing her, Rannulf thought as he strode toward the door. But before he reached it a voice stopped him.

“No, please,” Judith Law said, getting to her feet. “Fetching a book and finding a suitable passage will only cause a long delay. I will... I will act out a little scene I have memorized.”

“Judith!” her aunt said, sounding truly horrified. “I hardly think a gathering of this nature would appreciate being subjected to schoolgirl theatricals.”

“Oh, yes, yes , Judith!” Mrs. Law exclaimed almost at the same moment, her heavily ringed hands clinking as she clasped them together, and her bracelets jangling. “That would be wonderful , my love.”

Judith walked slowly and with obvious reluctance into the open area before the hearth that had been cleared for the nonmusical items of entertainment. She stood there for a few moments, the bent knuckle of one hand against her lips, her gaze on the floor. Rannulf, his heart beating in his chest like a large hammer, was aware of a few shufflings of discomfort from the guests. Several of them, he guessed, were looking full at her for the first time. She looked like someone’s plain and overweight governess.

And then she looked up, timidity and embarrassment still in her face.

“I’ll do Lady Macbeth’s speech from the last part of the play,” she said, her glance darting to Rannulf and away again. “The sleepwalking scene that you are all probably familiar with, the scene in which she tries constantly to wash the blood of the murdered King Duncan from her hands.”

“Judith!” Lady Effingham said. “I really must ask you to sit down. You are embarrassing yourself and everyone else.”

“Shhh!” Mrs. Law said. “Do be quiet, Louisa, and let us watch.”

From the look of astonishment on Lady Effingham’s face, Rannulf guessed that it was the first time in a long while that her mother had spoken thus to her.

But he had little attention to spare for anyone except Judith Law, who was looking quite, quite inadequate to the role she had just taken on. What if he had made a dreadful mistake? What if she was hopelessly overawed by the occasion and the company?

She turned her back on them. And watching her, he began gradually to relax. He could see her, even before she turned around again, work her way into another woman’s body and mind and spirit. He had watched it before. And then she dipped her head forward, removed her cap and dropped it to the floor, drew out the pins from her hair, and dropped them too.

Her aunt gasped and Rannulf was half aware of a few of the other men in the room sitting up straighter.

And then she turned.

She was not Judith Law in any of her guises. Her loose dress had become a nightgown. Her hair had been messed up while she tossed and turned in bed trying to sleep and then sleeping restlessly. Her eyes were open, but they were the strange, vacant eyes of a sleepwalker. Yet her face was so filled with horror and revulsion that it bore no resemblance whatsoever to Judith Law’s face.

Her shaking hands lifted slowly before her face, the fingers spread, looking more like serpents than fingers. She tried washing her hands, desperately rubbing them over each other, and then held them up again and gazed intently at them.

In the play there were two other characters—a doctor and a gentlewoman—to witness and describe her appearance and actions. Their words were not necessary tonight. She was unmistakably a woman in torment, a woman with both feet in hell, even before she spoke. And then she did.

“ ‘Yet here’s a spot,’ ” she said in a low, dead voice that nevertheless carried clearly to the farthest corner of a room that seemed to hold its breath.

She touched the spot on her palm with the middle finger of her other hand, picked at it, scratched at it, gouged it, her actions becoming more and more frenzied.

“ ‘Out, damned spot! out, I say!’ ”

Rannulf was caught firmly in her spell. He stood close to the door, neither seeing nor hearing anything but her— Lady Macbeth, the sad, horrifying, guilty ruin of an ambitious woman who had thought herself strong enough to incite murder and even commit murder. A young, beautiful, misguided, and ultimately tragic woman whom one pitied to the depths of one’s soul because it was too late for her to go back and apply newly acquired wisdom to past decisions. As perhaps it is not too late for those of us who are fortunate enough to have committed sins less irreversible, he thought.

And then finally she heard a knocking at the castle door and became panicked over the possibility of being caught literally red-handed over a murder committed long ago.

“ ‘Come, come, come, come, give me your hand,’” she told an invisible Macbeth, her hand a claw grasping his invisible arm. “ ‘What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.’”

She turned then and even though she moved only a few steps in the confining space, it seemed that she hurried a great distance, panic and horror in every step. She ended, as she had begun, with her back to the audience.

There was a moment’s complete hush ... and then loud, genuine, prolonged applause. Rannulf felt himself sag with relief and realized in some astonishment that he was very close to tears.

Roy-Hill whistled.

Lord Braithwaite sprang to his feet. “Bravo!” he cried. “Oh, I say, bravo, Miss Law.”

“Wherever did you learn to act like that , Jude?” her brother asked. “I had no idea.”

But she was down on one knee on the floor, her back still toward the room, quickly pinning up her hair and stuffing it beneath her cap again. Rannulf crossed the room and offered her his hand.

“Thank you, Miss Law,” he said. “That was a magnificent performance and a very fitting conclusion to our entertainment. I would not wish to be the one to try following that.”

She was Judith Law again, her face aflame with embarrassment. She set her hand on his, but her head was dipped low as she hurried back to her chair beside Mrs. Law’s without looking at anyone.

Mrs. Law, Rannulf noticed, was drying reddened eyes with her handkerchief. She grasped one of her granddaughter’s hands and squeezed it tightly though she said nothing.

Rannulf moved away.

“But my dear Miss Law,” his grandmother asked, “why at your tender age do you keep all that glorious, beautiful hair covered?”

Judith’s eyes widened in surprise, Rannulf saw when he glanced back at her. He noticed in the same moment that the attention of all the gentlemen was riveted on her.

“Beautiful, ma’am?” she said. “Oh, I think not. The devil’s own color, my papa always called it. My mama always described it as carroty.”

The devil’s own color! Her own father had said that?

“Well,” his grandmother said, smiling, “I would compare it to a gold-tinged fiery sunset, Miss Law. But I am embarrassing you. Rannulf—”

“We have stayed rather late, Lady Beamish,” Lady Effingham said firmly, getting to her feet, “my niece having decided to prolong the entertainment and make herself the center of attention. You have been most kind to her, for which condescension I thank you on her behalf. But it is time we took our leave.”

The carriages had to be brought around and all the extra baggage necessitated by a change of clothes after the garden party loaded up with the valets and personal maids who had come from Harewood. But within half an hour the guests had all been seen on their way and Rannulf was able to escort his grandmother to her room. She was almost gray with fatigue, he saw, though she would not admit as much.

“That was all very pleasant,” she said. “Miss Effingham looks particularly pretty in pink.”

Had she been wearing pink? He had not noticed.

“But she has very little countenance,” she added. “Of course, she has had only her mother’s example to follow, and Lady Effingham has an unfortunate tendency to vulgarity. The girl was flirting at dinner and afterward with every gentleman within range of her, just because you were not beside her, I believe, Rannulf. It is regrettable behavior in a young lady I still hope will be your bride. You are pleased with her?”

“She is only eighteen, Grandmama,” he said. “She is just a child. She will grow up, given time.”

“I suppose so.” She sighed as they reached the top of the stairs. “Lord Braithwaite has a comic genius.

He can create hilarity out of the most ordinary circumstances and is not afraid to mock himself. But Miss Law! She has the sort of talent that makes one feel humble and honored in its presence.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Poor lady.” She sighed again. “She is beautiful beyond belief and does not even know it. Her father must be a puritanical, joyless sort of clergyman. How could he possibly say such dreadful things of that glorious hair of hers?”

“I daresay, Grandmama,” he said, “he has seen some of his male parishioners getting an eyeful of her and has concluded there must be something sinful about her appearance.”

“Foolish man! It is a dreadful fate to be poor and female, is it not?” she said. “And to be offered the charity of someone like Louisa Effingham? But at least Miss Law has her grandmother. Gertrude is fast coming to dote on her.”

What’s done cannot be undone. That line she had spoken as Lady Macbeth kept running through Rannulf’s head after he had seen his grandmother to her dressing room and had retired to his own room.

How very true. He could not go back and ride on alone for help after coming across the overturned stagecoach. He could not restore her virginity. He could not erase that day and a half or those two nights when they had talked and laughed and loved and he had been prepared to pursue her wherever she went, to the ends of the earth if necessary.

He could not go back and change any of that.

He had fallen somewhat in love with Claire Campbell, he admitted to himself at last. Not just in lust.

There had been more to his feelings than that. He was not in love with Judith Law, but there was something ... It was not pity. He would have been actively repelled by her if he could do no more than pity her. It was not lust even though he definitely and ignominiously wanted to bed her. It was not... He simply did not know what it was or was not. He had never been much of a one for deep emotions. He had colored his world with faint, bored cynicism for as far back as he could remember.

How could he define his feelings for Judith Law when he had no frame of reference by which to measure them? But he thought suddenly of his quiet, morose, stern, always correct, always dutiful elder brother, Aidan, who had taken a commission in the cavalry on his eighteenth birthday, just as it had been planned all his life that he would. Aidan, who had recently married without telling anyone in his family, even Bewcastle, and had then just as abruptly sold out in order to live with the wife he had married only to keep a solemn vow made to her dying brother, a fellow officer in the south of France. Rannulf had accompanied Aidan home from London to his wife’s property on the first stage of his own journey to Grandmaison and had met Lady Aidan for the first time—and the two young children she had fostered.

Rannulf had watched, transfixed, outside the house as the two children had come racing eagerly to meet Aidan, the little girl addressing him as Papa, and he had scooped them up and given them his fond attention just as if they were the most dearly loved products of his own loins. And then he had looked at his wife as she came more slowly after the children and enfolded her in his free arm and kissed her.

Yes, Rannulf thought, that was his frame of reference. Just that moment when Aidan had set his arm about Eve and kissed her and looked young and human and exuberant and vulnerable and invincible all at the same time.

There was only one word to describe what he had witnessed.

Love.

He strode impulsively into his dressing room and found his cloak in the wardrobe there. He dug around in the inside pocket until he found what he was searching for. He drew it out, unwrapped the brown paper from about it, and gazed down at the cheap little snuffbox with the ugly pig’s head carved on its lid.

He chuckled softly, closed his hand about the box, and then felt almost overwhelmingly sad.