The First Snowdrop

Chapter 8

Three days later tempers were becoming somewhat frayed. Prudence, forgetting her early excitement over being given a big part, grumbled to Anne that Great-Aunt Jemima had gathered them all together under false pretenses. They had been invited to a two-week house party, but instead they had been recruited as a slave gang. All she had wanted was free performers for an entertainment for all her guests on the night of the ball. She could easily have hired a group of players to come and act at the house. She could well afford it. Everyone knew what an old moneybags Great-uncle Roderick was. A girl should be in London already, waiting for the Season to begin in full swing. A girl should be having fun, especially when she was only nineteen years old. It was fine for Constance, maybe. At sixteen, her sister could not expect much social activity. She might well think it fun to be involved in staging a dramatic production. But for everyone else…

Jack was loud and indiscriminate in his complaints. Grandmamma had clearly forgotten what it was like to be below the age of forty. Did she really believe that one could derive entertainment from cavorting around a stage all day and all night, bullied and harangued by a dry middle-aged stick who would be satisfied with no less than perfection? It would not be as intolerable, perhaps, if one were not surrounded so exclusively by one's cousins. Hortense was pretty enough, and Prudence had a certain spirit that one might admire. Constance was too young to be noticed, though she promised well. But how could one get excited about females with whom one had romped as a child?

He did not add aloud to anyone that the only female who might have brightened his stay was proving quite elusive. She made life interesting, of course, but one never quite knew where one stood with old Alex. He had married the girl a few years before, Jack gathered, because he had felt he had compromised her in some way, and then he had left her and presumably forgotten her very existence. It was only fair that another fellow should be free to try his luck with her. But Alex had jumped to her defense that first afternoon, and he had a disconcerting habit of turning up at the wrong moment, just as if he were any ordinary jealous husband.

There had been the afternoon before, for example, when Claude had announced that he needed only Maud and Martin for rehearsal. Jack had seen Anne, book in hand, wander off along the tree-lined driveway toward the main gates almost two miles distant. He had been quick to follow and to catch up with her out of sight of the house.

"Anne," he had said, favoring her with the smile that usually brought color to the cheeks of any female, "I see that you too feel the need for air and exercise. Do you mind if I walk with you?"

"Not at all, Jack," she had said in the quiet voice that had come to intrigue him. And he was gratified to note that she had blushed.

He had given her time to get used to his presence, walking silently at her side and looking up into the treetops. "Are you happy to be here?" he had asked. "The grounds are quite splendid, are they not? I imagine it is quite a welcome change for you to be here after living at Redlands for so long. A drab old place, as I remember."

"Oh," she had said, turning to him an animated face, "it is no longer so. I have had an ornamental garden created before the house. It stretches for fully half a mile. It looks lovely even at this time of year with box hedges and lawns and graveled walks and a fountain in the middle of it all. But soon it will be quite glorious. I can hardly wait to get back home so that I might not miss the flowers beginning to bloom."

"Indeed?" he had said quietly, looking steadily at her. "I might have known, Anne, that you would not live there fretting. You are a beautiful little creature who would have to spread beauty around you."

Anne had looked startled and blushed hotly. "Oh," she had said, "what a strange thing to say."

"I should like to see what you have done to the old place," he had said. "May I visit you there, Anne, this summer?"

Her lips had parted as she looked earnestly at him. Jack had been reaching out to take the book from her hand so that he might draw her arm through his when Alex had appeared from nowhere. He had apparently come through the trees almost abreast of them, and had fallen into step the other side of Anne after giving his cousin a long and level look. Jack could not think of a more frustrating way to spend an afternoon than in the presence of a woman whose interest one was trying to fix while her husband looked on silently. Alex had said not a word after his initial greeting to the pair.

What Jack wanted was some outside interest. There had to be some attractive and unattached females within a radius of five miles of Portland House. It was Peregrine who thought of the vicar's brood, with whom they had all played as children. They must all be grown up by now. Surely if one rode into the village and paid a call at the vicarage, one might find two or three of them still at home. It would be a great relief to find some young people who were not constantly preoccupied with drama.

That same afternoon, then, saw Jack, Peregrine, Freddie, Prudence, and Hortense on their way to the village, the men on horseback, the girls in an open barouche. Claude had called a rehearsal for Alex and Anne alone.

Anne was the only one of the family to have memorized her part quite reliably. Even those who had only a few lines to remember had a disconcerting habit of piping up with accurate words spoken in the most inappropriate moments of the script. The duchess bullied at almost every mealtime, and Claude fumed, asking rhetorically if anyone thought he actually enjoyed his task, or if they believed that he had wanted the job in the first place, but no one ever seemed smitten enough by conscience to rush off, book in hand.

Only Freddie was apologetic. If he only had Alex's brains, he said, or even Jack's, he would be able to remember that he must not speak all his part at once, but must pause to allow other people to speak between his lines. He considered it quite provoking of Mr. Goldsmith to write a play where everyone spoke just a sentence or two and then had to pause to listen to others and remember when to start speaking again and what words to say. However, he was willing to concede that it might be all clear to him if only he had been blessed with Alex's brains.

Not only did Anne know her part, but she had thought herself into the role and thoroughly enjoyed acting out the part of Kate Hardcastle. She could not talk to Alexander in her own person. She always felt unsure of herself, unsure of his attitude toward her, and shy and tongue-tied. She felt unattractive with him, as if she were still the dull, overweight creature she had allowed herself to become when living with her brother after the death of Dennis.

Even the fact that Alexander had come to her room every night since his arrival and had made love to her each time, twice even the night before, failed to boost her confidence. Although he always stirred her to such passion and satisfied her utterly, she was not at all sure why he did so. He rarely said anything, though he always stayed for the whole night, and he was invariably grim and distant during the daytime. Did he merely wish to put the stamp of his possession on her, to remind her that she was totally subject to his will? There was never the faintest hint of love, or even of affection, in his behavior toward her.

But when she was acting, Anne could forget herself and become Kate Hardcastle, the woman she would like to be. She loved the scene in which Alexander as Charles Marlow met her for the first time, knowing that she was the daughter of the house, and was so shy that he stammered his way through the interview, not once looking her fully in the face. She loved the reversal of roles, when she could be confident and amused, helping Marlow through the interview and at the same time falling in love with his handsome person.

But today they were to practice the scene in which Marlow sees Kate dressed in her plain country clothes, mistakes her for the maid, and flirts with her to the point of an attempted seduction. She enjoyed playing along with his error, giggling and inviting his advances without in any way behaving improperly. She wondered what would happen when they reached the part in which Marlow stole a kiss from her.

But Merrick was wooden. He knew the lines for this scene. It was only halfway through the play and he had spent more time on this than on the later scenes. But he found it very difficult to throw himself into the part. Or maybe it was the other way around. He found it too easy to identify with Marlow, poor fool. Merrick had never understood how Marlow could have married Kate willlingly at the end of the play, when he had appeared an utter fool so many times in her presence. How could he have ever recovered enough self-esteem to be easy in her presence, to assert himself as her husband?

Not that he had ever before taken the play very seriously. It was an amusing piece with a very clever and intricate plot. But now, suddenly, it had taken on a very unpleasant reality for him. As if he had not appeared often enough at a disadvantage before Anne, he must now act out a part in which he became doubly foolish. He found it almost impossible to enter into the spirit of the farce.

Claude fumed and paced back and forth across the polished floor of the small ballroom in which they rehearsed. Anne was great, he said. She was Kate Hardcastle, surely as Goldsmith had imagined her. And she had never acted before, never even seen a play performed before. How could Alex be so utterly lifeless? He was flirting with a pretty woman. Then, he must flirt! It was not as if he were suddenly thrown into the company of an utter stranger. Anne was his wife, for heaven's sake. Claude's rhetoric faltered when he realized what he had just said. They all knew that Alex and his wife had been estranged from the start, and none of them knew what the state of affairs was now, though much speculation went on when the pair was not present.

"I want my tea," he blustered, covering his confusion, "but I positively refuse to allow the two of you to leave this room until you have done something to this scene. If you dare put in an appearance in the drawing room, I shall instruct Aunt Jemima to refuse to serve you so much as a cup of tea. You work it out between you. I shall return in half an hour." And he stalked from the room, leaving a startled and silent pair behind him.

The party from Portland House caused quite a stir as they rode through the village. It was generally known that the duke and duchess were gathering their family around them for a few weeks in preparation for the grand ball that was to be held in less than two weeks' time in honor of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was many years since all the family had been gathered together here. There had been the time when Master Alexander had lived there, a perfectly quiet and nicely behaved young gentleman until he was joined by Master Jack, Master Peregrine, and the young ladies. Then they had all been holy terrors. The only one of the whole pack who had been invariably courteous to all the lesser mortals of the village was Master Frederick, who had always stayed to smile and nod after the others had taken to their heels, having upset an applecart or done something equally mischievous. But then, everyone had suspected that poor Master Frederick did not have all his wits about him.

Now those who were on the street or close to a window as the barouche passed, followed closely by a group of horses, saw that indeed all those naughty children had grown up into remarkably handsome and fashionable ladies and gentlemen. The vicar's wife was one who saw them coming. She shrieked to her girls, who were all in the room with her, variously employed, and rushed to the study to inform her husband that the young people from the house were approaching. Her son was there too, perched on the edge of his father's desk, swinging a leg and mending a pen.

Thus it was that by the time Hortense and Patience had been helped from the barouche and the men had all dismounted and secured their horses to the picket fence that surrounded the vicarage, the buxom figure of Mrs. Fitzgerald was curtsying in the doorway, the thin, slightly stooped figure of the vicar behind her rubbing his hands together, a gaggle of girls behind them, each striving to get a view of the visitors. Only Bertrand Fitzgerald dared venture out of the house. He came bounding down the pathway, right hand extended.

"Jack, Perry, Freddie!" he exclaimed, shaking hands heartily with each one in turn. "How bang up to the minute you all look. I say, this is famous. Where's Alex?"

"Rehearsing," Freddie explained, "for Grandmamma's play, y' know. Has brains, has Alex. Big part. Must practice lots. I just have a small part. No brains, y' see. Can't hold the lines in m' head."

He spoke the last words to Mrs. Fitzgerald, who was smiling and curtsying in front of him. Bertrand had already been claimed by the girls.

"What, Fitz," Hortense cried, pushing past Peregrine, "are we invisible just because we are females? For shame."

"Well," Bertrand said, standing back and looking admiringly at his former playmates, "aren't you the grand ladies all of a sudden? I wouldn't have recognized either of you without tangled curls and smudged noses and tears in your dresses."

Jack had immediately singled out the prettiest and the youngest of the three Misses Fitzgerald. "Rose," he said, taking her hand and holding it far longer than was necessary, "the last time I saw you, you had so many freckles one might not have put a pin between them. I would not have guessed then that you would grow into such a beauty. And to think that I have already wasted three days at Portland House."

The seventeen-year-old Rose blushed deeply and smiled, totally enslaved.

"Come along, Frederick," the oldest Miss Fitzgerald said in her rather masculine, no-nonsense voice. "You shall tell us all about the play inside. Here you are blocking the pathway so that no one else can get near the door."

"How right you are, Ruby," Freddie said, looking behind him in surprise. "Damme, but I didn't notice. You're a sensible female. Always were, I remember." He allowed her to take his arm and lead him inside.

It was noticeable that all members of the party were in a considerably more cheerful frame of mind one hour later when they were on their way back home. Finally they had contacted sanity and normality again.

Merrick and Anne looked into each other's eyes for a few uncomfortable moments before he turned away and began pacing back and forth in front of her.

"Why must you take this whole damned thing so seriously, Anne?" he said. "Are you trying to put us all to shame?"

"No!" she protested. “I am merely trying to do my best. Grandmamma wants us to perform this play for an audience. It seems to me that we owe it to her to make the performance as good as we are able."

"What do you owe Grandmamma?" Merrick asked, coming to a stop before Anne and glaring at her. "A public place in the family? Are you reveling in it, Anne, and are you hoping that if you act like her blue-eyed girl, she will persuade me to take you back home with me? Is that what you want? To be the Viscountess of Merrick, to be shown off to all the ton?"

There were tears in Anne's eyes, but she kept her chin up and looked steadily back at him. "No," she said, "you know I could not be so conniving, I think. The duchess has been kind to me, Alexander, and she has made me feel a part of her family. I have never before felt part of any family."

"I cannot act this scene with you, or any of the other scenes," Merrick said. "Can you not understand that I want no part of you? How can I stand with you here, speaking words of love and admiration, watched by Claude and frequently by several of the others? I would prefer to be alone, trying to forget your existence."

His words were deliberately brutal, and he turned away as she bit her lip. He could see that she was trying to control her facial muscles so that she would not cry before him. His words were foolish, anyway. How could he say he wanted no part of her when he could not stay away from her at night? How could he claim to be trying to forget her existence when he had made love to her each night with such obvious hunger? He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. He took a deep breath.

"I do not know the words of the scene as well as I should," he said. "I had better sit down and read through them again before Claude returns."

"Alexander," she said. Only the slightly higher-than-usual tone of her voice indicated her distress. "Can you not forget who I am while we are acting this play? Can you not pretend that you are Charles Marlow and that I am Kate Hardcastle? Must we show everyone in your family that there is so much bad feeling between us? I shall not impose more of my company upon you than these rehearsals call for, and I shall be quite content to return to Redlands after the ball. You need not be afraid that I shall try to remain with you. Why would I want to stay where I am considered nothing? Why should I deliberately court a life of abuse and misery?"

Her face was very white and very set, Merrick noticed when he looked at her, startled. It was the first sign of spirit he had ever seen in her. He bowed formally, picked up his book from a table where he had flung it earlier, crossed to the opposite end of the ballroom, and seated himself with his back to her, the book open on his lap.

He failed to notice during the ten minutes that elapsed before the return of Claude that the book was upside down. Damn it, but he hated her. He wanted to hurt her. He had never in his life felt so out of control of his destiny. She was nothing. She was a nobody, without vitality or personality. He could no longer say she was without beauty; she was damned pretty, in fact. But she was so bland. Her answer to everything seemed to be to stare accusingly at him out of those large gray eyes, which were as often as not filled with tears. He wanted to shake her, slap her, provoke her somehow to… what? He did not even know. Did it matter to him what she did? He did not even want her in his life. She did not fit into any of the plans he had ever made for himself.

He was beginning to hate himself as much as he hated her. Maybe that was why he disliked her so much, in fact. He could not act like his usual self here, knowing that she was in the same house. He wanted to ignore her, or at least to treat her with the contempt that he felt she deserved. He wanted to make it obvious to her that he had wed her out of a sense of honor but that he had no intention of ever letting her share anything else of his life except his name. But she drew him like a drug. He tried to convince himself each night when he went to her that he was merely using her, displaying to her in the most insulting manner possible that to him she was a mere convenience, but the trouble was that he was too damned hard to convince.

Last night he had not even been able to content himself with having her once. He had woken up during the night to find his cheek resting against her soft curls. Her head was nestled as usual against his shoulder. He had turned his head, and immediately his nostrils had been filled with the very distinctive smell of her, that clean soap smell. He had tried to control the desire that had arisen in him as he became more aware of the warmth of her, of the softness of her flesh touching his. He had lost the battle. He had taken her almost in anger, and when she had woken with a little whimper as he thrust inside her, he had been further enflamed. He recalled now that, instead of crying with pain or fright, she had clung to him, her fingernails drawing blood from his back, her passion quickly matching his own.

She was making him her slave, and she must know it. And he hated her for it. He would not let any woman, least of all her, take away from him his freedom to control his own actions. He had ten more days of this torture to endure before he could pack her off back to Redlands, where she belonged, and begin to forget her and get his life back in order again.

Merrick turned in his chair as the door at the other end of the ballroom opened and Claude entered again. With him, surprisingly, was Grandpapa, leaning heavily on a cane and peering fiercely at Anne, who was sitting on the floor in the spot where Merrick had left her, clasping her knees and looking no older than a child.

"Now, what is this?" the duke asked gruffly. "Claude tells me that you are acting like a wooden soldier, Alex. It won't do, you know. You used to be one of the family's star turns. You two are having problems with your marriage, eh? Can't understand why, Alex. She's a pretty-enough little thing and nicely behaved."

"Grandpapa," Merrick said harshly, crossing the room again, "the condition of our marriage is a matter entirely between Anne and me. I will not permit even you to interfere in that."

"And quite right too, my boy," the duke said, looking at his grandson from beneath drawn brows, "and my marriage is my concern. At the moment the happiness of Her Grace depends a great deal on the success of this play. I don't necessarily understand why it is so important to her, but it is. And what is important to Her Grace is important to me. From now on, you will know your lines, my boy, and you will act them as What's-his-name intended them to be acted when he wrote them. And your feelings for your wife will not be allowed to intrude. Is that clear?"

Merrick's hands formed into fists at his sides as he glared back. The two men took each other's measure for long moments as the pair of spectators looked on with bated breath.

Merrick relaxed suddenly. "I always said that your bark was worse than your bite, Grandpapa," he said, "but I never knew anyone whose bark was quite so fierce. Now would you kindly leave so that Claude can start bullying Anne and me again?"

The duke left.