Author: Beverley Oakley
Category: Nonfiction
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“No Harry, I don’t want—” She managed to drag her mouth away to say the words, but she saw in his eyes that he registered nothing. His expression was glazed while he seemed to be working at something in his breeches.
Something that was now against her thigh.
She was terrified. What was happening?
She tried to scream. Harry wasn’t listening to her. There was no tenderness in his kiss. It was rough. His movements were self-interested and brutal.
And, she suddenly realised with awful clarity—he was about to ruin her.
If ruin was this rough manhandling with all this poking and prodding, she wanted nothing to do with it.
She’d thought love was about prolonged, tender kisses.
What a fool she was.
“Please, Harry!” she whimpered. Then, when he ignored her, “I don’t want—” Her breath came in frightened gasps, and she wriggled ineffectually. But she was like a butterfly, pinned to the wall.
“Relax, my darling. Relax and you’ll enjoy it,” he muttered between kisses. “Let me show you how much I truly love and adore you.”
Lizzy kicked and squirmed and managed to tear her mouth away to protest more forcefully this time. “I want you to—”
His mouth fused with hers on the word stop. Her nightmare was not about to end. Harry said he loved her. He’d told her this was what love was. Love. Marriage. A union of body and soul.
Despair overwhelmed her, making her limp.
If this was what marriage was about, then Lizzy wanted none of it.
Chapter 19
Theo took the long way from Quamby House on his way to the village to check on the chaise-and-four. He could have cut across the fields from the back, but a more gentler meandering route around the lake would take him past the folly where he’d last seen Lizzy.
If he passed her on a walk and she was alone, he could apologise. He’d like one final opportunity to hopefully convey something of what he felt, without committing too much of his heart and compromising his integrity. For the truth was, he was marrying against his inclination but doing so for his honour.
And Amelia’s safety. That, after all, was what this was about.
On a small knoll by the folly, he stopped to watch a mother duck shepherding her ducklings across the flat surface. A weak sun bathed the landscape in its glory, and all was silent and unmoving.
Except the ducks. The gentle scolding and splashing of water reminded him of home. Watching the ducks in the pond at the bottom of the garden of his own childhood home had been an enjoyable pastime when he’d been a boy and he and his sister would launch their paper boats to watch the ducklings scatter.
Such pleasure at these ruminations was interrupted by a noise that was at odds with nature’s rustles and birdsong. He raised his head and listened. The sound issued very distinctly, yet muffled, from the nearby folly.
He tensed as he heard it again. He’d thought it was a cry, the first time, but now it sounded more like a moan. Theo hesitated, embarrassed at having perhaps interrupted some trysting couple, but immediately he remembered that Lizzy had come this way. And that Dalgleish had preceded her. He thought of the two of them the previous night, laughing together, and his gut clenched.
Lizzy’s inclination for Theo had been superceded by Dalgleish’s charms, and although Theo knew he should have felt pleased for her, the truth was that jealousy speared him.
He was on the verge of moving away when the cry was repeated, and this time it was plainly one of protest, not ecstasy.
Theo’s senses were suddenly on high alert. Was Lizzy within those walls? Suffering something she did not want at the hands of Dalgleish?
Spinning on his heel, Theo leapt over the uneven riverbank and tore across the snow-encrusted grass towards the folly. The air frosted in front of him and the cold seared his lungs as he ran, hoping he’d soon find that his instincts were wrong.
If Dalgleish were doing something against Lizzy’s will, then he wouldn’t know what had hit him. Lizzy, a total innocent, would have no idea of what it was to be ruined—until it was too late.
And Theo was not going to let that happen if it was within his power.
Throwing open the door, he hesitated as he oriented himself in the dim light. The curtains were drawn, but a candle burned on a low table. It took him a second to locate Lizzy pressed against the wall, Dalgleish supporting himself with one hand against the stonework while the other fumbled with Lizzy’s skirts.
Her frightened eyes stared over Dalgleish’s shoulder, straight into Theo’s, but they registered nothing, and for a moment, Theo wondered if he’d inadvertently stumbled upon what might have been a prenuptial act of mutual passion.
Until a second glance confirmed that Lizzy’s eyes were glazed with horror, and that she was standing mute and unresisting as this man who’d won her trust was attempting to do the unspeakable.
Suddenly, he was reliving Catherine’s horror all those months before, after Jane and Amelia had sent him in pursuit of the man who’d stolen her at the behest of her uncle. The man who intended to wed her the following day, but who was laying claim to her early so she’d be in an impossible position to say no.
Theo had been too late to save Catherine.
But he was not too late to save Lizzy.
“Get your hands off her, you filthy swine!” he bellowed, hurling himself onto Dalgleish and knocking him to the ground.
With a whimper, Lizzy slid down the wall, crawling towards the bed as the two men grappled with one another.
“How dare you interrupt a lover’s tryst,” snarled Dalgleish, throwing Theo off and rising to his feet with his fists clenched.
The sight of two buttons undone on the front fall of Dalgleish’s breeches was more than Theo could take. “You took advantage of an innocent girl who trusted you!” Theo leapt forward, ducking as Dalgleish swung a meaty fist in his direction. “You call yourself a gentleman?” He stepped back, adroitly missing a second thrust, pivoted, then landed a satisfying blow to the other man’s nose.
Blood spurted and Dalgleish lunged, grasping Theo round the neck as his full weight took them both to the ground. “Lizzy and I are to be married. She came willingly,” Dalgleish hissed in Theo’s ear just before Theo broke free, staggering to his feet and swinging round to check on Lizzy.
Shocked and pale, she clung to the four-poster. “I didn’t mean this to happen!” Her voice shook. “Stop it, please! Both of you!”
“Did he hurt you, Lizzy?” Theo asked, his question cut short as Dalgleish came up from behind, grasping his neck linen in an attempt to choke him as he pushed him back against the wall.
With Dalgleish holding the advantage and using his full weight against Theo, Theo realised he must now be experiencing the same desperate, choking feeling as Lizzy had, just moments before. Struggling, he ground out, “Release me! I welcome your advances as much as Lizzy did, Dalgleish!”
“And I do not welcome yours, McAlister.” Stepping back, Dalgleish aimed a blow at the side of Theo’s head.
He caught him full on the temple, but as Theo went down, he managed an uppercut that split Dalgleish’s lip before colliding with his nose.
“Stop!” screamed Lizzy, scrambling up from the bed and regaining her power and energy. “Stop it, both of you!!”
And, as Theo looked up, he saw she was brandishing a heavy candle sconce, and that from her standing position, she posed a fearful threat to both of them now grappling with each other at her feet.
The fulminating fury that radiated from her was impressive. “Just leave! Both of you!”
Theo rose shakily from where he’d been thrown by Dalgleish’s backhander. The throbbing under his right eye was making him feel ill, and his vision was blurred. Dalgleish had aimed well.
Dalgleish, also rising, breathed heavily. “Lizzy? No need to be upset.” He reached out a hand which she swatted away, once again raising the heavy stone sconce with fearful intent.
Clearly,
Dalgleish perceived it safer to beat a hasty retreat, for he deftly avoided the heavy object as he stumbled out the door.
But when Theo made a similar attempt to comfort Lizzy or at least assure her safety, she was equally unforgiving.
Unyielding, her dignity was impressive. “Why did you come here, Theo? It wasn’t to ask me to be your wife; I know that. But thank you for rescuing me. Now go and be with the woman you love and let me be.”
He tried to speak, but she dropped the candle sconce and put her hands to her ears. “Just go, Theo. You can’t help me anymore.”
Chapter 20
“You look supremely pleased with yourself, Antoinette.” Fenton, who was reading the news sheet looked up, asking slyly, “Does that expression not foment a certain degree of alarm, Fanny, my dear?”
Fanny, who’d been engrossed in the latest fashion plates in Ackermann's Repository glanced up from the sofa as Antoinette removed her bonnet and shawl, shaking off the snow before she sat down beside her.
“Where have you been, Antoinette?” Fanny understood exactly what Fenton meant, however she was prepared to give her sister the benefit of the doubt. “You’re not one for lonely rambles in the snow.”
“I’ve just come back from helping our Lizzy discover what she really wants before I then chanced upon a friend of mine, and we found a lovely little spot for an aperitif.”
Fanny regarded her sister with suspicion. Antoinette’s hair was a little disordered, leading Fanny to suspect her friend was the rather handsome and well-made Italian visitor who seemed to know no one, but whom she’d observed Quamby salute with surprising equanimity when he passed him in the corridor. Antoinette was in the habit of inviting all manner of strangers to events like this. As was Quamby.
“Not in the drawing room, obviously. And furthermore, a rather unusual hour for an aperitif,” she said. “Quamby was lamenting your absence at luncheon. He wanted to discuss the accommodations made for Lord Leighton’s arrival.”
“That’s days away,” said Antoinette with a dismissive wave of her arm. She peered over Fanny’s shoulder at a fashion plate of a smart red-velvet spencer and gown of grey wool and sighed. “I can’t say I like Lord Leighton very much. I am surprised Miss Harcourt has agreed to marry a man who must be at least fifteen years older than herself.”
The news sheet Fenton was reading in his wingback chair by the window alcove rustled, and his face appeared over the top. “Perhaps she’s marrying him for the same reasons you married Quamby, who is more than thirty years older than you, sister-in-law.”
“I shouldn’t think so for a moment.” Antoinette peeled off her gloves. “Miss Harcourt appears perfectly innocent of men, and hardly in need of a hasty marriage to legitimise—”
“I think Fenton was referring to a proclivity for older men and their steady natures and ability to provide security that some younger women find attractive,” Fanny said, cutting Antoinette off before one of the servants should enter the room.
Antoinette’s mouth curved into a smile, and she was about to answer when there was a knock on the door, accompanied by the parlourmaid’s announcement, “Mrs ʼOdge would like an audience an’ says it can’t wait a moment, ma’am.”
The gorgon-like look on their visitor’s face as Mrs Hodge marched into the centre of the Aubusson rug made Antoinette’s answer redundant, and raised to high alert Fanny’s suspicions as to what her sister had been up to.
It would appear, she feared, that Antoinette’s meddling had resulted in something catastrophic, and now all three of them were about to hear the worst of it.
“I demand that your guest…that…that…gentleman—nay, thug, for that is what he is!— should be given his marching orders upon the instant!” Mrs Hodge’s anger was so great she was all but incoherent. The green-velvet toque upon her head trembled like a jelly—or a rather large toad, Fanny thought, as Antoinette asked with sudden concern, “Surely not Mr Dalgleish?”
Fanny darted a suspicious look at her. Antoinette looked distinctly pale, but immediately coloured with relief as Mrs Hodge snarled, “No, Mr McAlister!”
There was a silence at this until Fenton, always the last to be stirred out of his often-laconic calm, asked, “And what is Mr McAlister’s crime, pray tell?”
“Where do I begin?” Mrs Hodge took a few steps to stand in front of the fireplace then swung round to face them all—her hands on her hips and her small eyes glittering with outrage. “You need only look at him to see the stain of his misdemeanours. A cut lip and a bruised jaw.”
“Poor Mr McAlister,” Fanny remarked, earning herself a fulminating look from Mrs Hodge, who went on, “He should have been horsewhipped. His injuries are far too minor for what he has done!”
“What has he done that has so outraged you, my dear lady?” Lord Quamby, who’d arrived in the drawing room, adopted the most conciliatory tone of which Fanny knew he was capable since she knew how much he disliked Mrs Hodge. “I’m sure his crimes pale into insignificance when set against…mine, for example.”
Mrs Hodge glared at him. “I’m sure you don’t know what you’re talking about, my Lord!” she snapped before paling at the realisation of her want of conduct, though her contrition was short-lived for she rushed on, “He has become emboldened by his failure to be properly brought to justice for what happened to that poor heiress last year, so now he’s got my poor Lizzy in his sights.” She shook quite theatrically before adding grimly, “Mr McAlister set upon Mr Dalgleish when he and Lizzy were taking an innocent walk by the lake. Yes, that’s what I heard. Completely unprovoked it was, as McAlister has clearly got it into his head to try and turn Lizzy’s head.
“Good lord,” Fanny murmured. She turned to Antoinette. “Do you know anything about this, my dear?”
Antoinette looked confused. “Why, this is dreadful. I took Lizzy to the folly to meet Mr Dalgleish…”
She trailed off, and Fanny asked sharply, “What are you talking about, Antoinette?”
“Well, I knew Mr Dalgleish wanted to propose so I led Miss Scott to the folly where they could be alone. With Mrs Hodge’s approval. At least, I was quite sure I had her approval,” she added quickly.
“Unchaperoned?” Mrs Hodge raised an eyebrow before saying, “Well, indeed, a couple needs privacy when a proposal is in the wind. And you knew I endorsed the union. But obviously Mr McAlister, that wolf in sheep’s clothing, became jealous and took it into his head to attack Dalgleish in the most unprovoked manner.”
Fenton, who had put down his newspaper with a loud crackle and sigh, now sounded confused. “If my sister-in-law led Miss Scott to the folly to meet Mr Dalgleish, then back to the lake where Mr McAlister was supposedly lying-in wait, why did nobody see this crime? Are you quite sure you’ve been properly informed, Mrs Hodge?”
Mrs Hodge threw her hands up in the air. “The details are unimportant! Both men had severe facial injuries indicating a fight had taken place when I passed them in the corridor, and Mr Dalgleish told me Mr McAlister had set upon him with no provocation whatsoever.”
“And your serious allegations against Mr McAlister are based on what Mr Dalgleish told you?” Fenton asked. “Backed up by a cut lip?”
“Mr Dalgleish is a man of great integrity.” Clearly, she was not to be dissuaded for her furious rant went on with even more fervour, “Mr McAlister ought never have been allowed through the doors of Quamby House with his past so…blackened. Everyone knows he ruined Miss Harcourt’s elder sister not one year ago, yet has he been properly brought to justice?”
“I had rather thought there was less substance to those allegations than warranted anything more severe than the cold shoulder.” Fenton looked at Mrs Hodge as if he dared her to contradict him. “Granted, the girl died, but there was nothing to suggest that she didn’t go willingly with Mr McAlister.”
“He left her to die alone and ill in a tavern frequented by cut-throats—”
“That is not quite true.” Fanny had had enough, but Mrs Hodge was
not to be deflected.
“There’s no time for that now,” she snapped. “I want Mr McAlister to leave. He is not to attend tonight’s ball where my Lizzy is likely to be enticed into his arms, and goodness knows where else he might take her.”
Fanny was aware of the frisson of disgust that descended upon the room. The earl was the most genial and accommodating of men—to a degree. But he was not one to be told what to do. Mrs Hodge had crossed a line and Fanny knew it, even if she didn’t.
Lord Quamby settled himself a little more firmly into his chair. “I am the host of this evening’s entertainment, and the guest list is something decided by myself and my wife.” Although he smiled, there was a warning in his eyes. Even in his foppish, old-fashioned rig-out and outmoded wig he suddenly seemed every inch the powerful, prominent man he was.
Mrs Hodge seemed to sense it, too, for she faltered before saying in a more ameliorating tone, “But then, why would Mr McAlister want to stay when he has been roundly rejected?” She sniffed. “And there are not too many who’ve rushed to embrace him into their midst. No, Mr McAlister is persona non grata, to be sure, and I’m sure you’re right, my Lord. If Mr McAlister knows what’s good for him, he’ll take himself off long before the ball tonight.”
Chapter 21
Alone and trembling, Lizzy hunched on her bed in the grand, high chamber she occupied at Quamby House and tried not to cry.
A shaft of afternoon light slanted across the bed where she’d spent the last two hours, unmoving, since she’d returned from her dreadful experience at the folly.
What had just happened to her? Her mind was in a muddle, but she could not rid herself of her confusion.
Everything had started off well enough, but then, so suddenly, she’d seemed to find herself out of her depth. Mr Dalgleish’s kisses had started in a way that had her toes tingling and a warm feeling creeping up her legs and into her lower belly. For a moment, she’d believed she could find what was needed within herself to like the arrangement she now felt was her only alternative.