-21-

Eliza

If there was one thing Eliza truly despised it was to sit idle, particularly when there were tasks to be done that she was itching to apply herself to. She had tried to entertain her mind with a book as Jane sat at her lacemaking—it was clear that her friend wasn't so much unknotting her thoughts as avoiding them—but she could not focus on the pages. Afore long she began strolling, taking turn after turn about the lady's parlour, and thence a little further into the neighbouring room where she came upon a game of peg solitaire to occupy herself with.

She was in this adjoining room, perusing the artworks there, some of Cedarton in its former grandeur, having tired of the game when Linfield presented himself to his wife.

"May we speak, madam?" he said. "I am relieved to find you alone."

Through the open doorway, she saw Jane lift her attention from her bobbins. "Linfield." She cast a tremulous look in Eliza's direction, but Eliza made sure to step back into the shadows so that she wouldn't be observed. She did not intend to leave her friend alone with this man, even if the devil was her husband, nor did she wish him to be aware of her presence. Better she remained a silent witness to whatever manner of tête-à-tête he intended to have.

Jane turned in her chair so that she faced him and settled her hands in her lap, presenting herself as the very model of an obedient wife. She had always possessed a mildness that Eliza could not wear even as a mask.

"Have you come to tell me the Cluetts have departed?" Jane asked.

There had been no evidence of such a thing, and they surely would have heard the commotion in the hall, and indeed the courtyard beyond the windows.

"I have not," he replied stiffly.

Linfield did not sit, but took up a position before the fireplace, with his back to the blaze, selfishly seizing most of its comfort for himself. He was a peacock of a man, spoiled and so certain of his own value, that he could not comprehend his various obvious faults. Eliza could already envisage him somehow making this whole episode Jane's fault.

"They will be remaining."

"No!"

Though Eliza could no longer see her, Jane's pain was evident enough from her cry, and thus, thank heaven, meekness was dispensed with.

"You cannot mean it. Linfield, please. You surely do not mean me to accept your mistress in our home? Only the cruellest… Why must you punish me thus? What have I done? I wish you would tell me so that I might make it right. Have I not been a good wife to you? I am more than ready than to fulfil my duties, have been since we spoke our vows. If I displease you, then you have only to say, and I will alter my ways."

"Madam, your actions have no bearing on the matter. Our guests will stay. It is my decision, and I have made it."

Pompous whelp!

Jane began to pace. Eliza caught glimpses of her as she passed back and forth before him, her head bowed, and her pretty face so riddled with anxiety as to make her seem twice her age. "Is it my talk of spirits that has offended you so, turned your heart so thoroughly against me?"

"Madam, you did not possess that to begin with. Let us not pretend that this arrangement between us was made as a declaration of love. I was bullied into it, as I suspect were you. And as to your theatrics, they are irritating, but given there is precious little in the way of amusement to be had in this place, I suppose I should at least thank you for the entertainment of them."

Certainly then, he did not afford them any belief, but nor did he speak as though he'd had a hand in creating the disturbances. It was possible that he was a fearfully good actor, but from what Eliza had observed of Lord Linfield so far, he was a shallow creature, not likely capable of anything so complex as the level of deception such a ruse would surely require.

"As to the matter of Mrs Cluett, you are erroneous in your assumption. She is not my mistress, nor ever has or will be."

"But I saw—"

"Whatever you imagine you saw, madam, I assure you, you are quite mistaken. You do after all frequently see things that are not there."

Jane stomped to a halt and whipped about to face him. "Linfield, your falls were down. Despite what you may think, I am not such a nit that I cannot discern what is plainly happening before my face. Whether you call her your mistress or not, you were trysting with her."

"It was no tryst," he snarled. "As if I would choose…" He threw up his arms in frustration, thence cast himself onto the settee before the fireside, a position from which Eliza could see his reflection. "She is not the sort of person one would tryst with. She cornered me." He lifted his feet up, so his heels were pointed toward the sash windows, then grasped a teaspoon from off the plate of offerings Mrs Honeyfield had earlier supplied and drummed it against his thigh. "Is this tea still warm?"

"What?" Jane crossed to the table and tested her hand against the side of the pot. "'Tis warmish. Should I ring to have some fresh brought?"

"No, no. Pour it. I need something to wet my throat, and I don't suppose you've anything stronger to hand."

"I should think you'd be appalled if I did."

"Aye," He took the offered cup and spoke into it. "I should think I might. One wouldn't want a lush as a wife."

"Well, I don't much care to have one as a husband."

Much to Eliza's surprise, Linfield snorted in mirth. He set his heels back on the floor again. "Why madam, I see you are not quite the timorous mouse you've been pretending to be. Perhaps we shall manage to get along together after all."

"You are not forgiven," Jane snapped. "Do you truly expect me to believe that Henrietta waylaid you in such a way that you could not be free of her? If you wanted to get away, you surely could have done so. Therefore, it is reasonable for me to suppose that you did not wish it, that you were in fact a willing participant, that you even encouraged her to act—"

"Is that my mother's bergamot marmalade?" he asked, squinting at the table, and cutting Jane's building tirade to an abrupt cessation.

"It is," Jane snapped, halting her march. She glared at him; fists tightened in frustration.

"Oh, sit yourself down." He reached for a plate and knife and began ladling marmalade onto a thick cut slice of bread. "All this frenzy over nothing. Calm yourself, Lady Linfield, afore you bring on another fainting fit. Let us just speak plainly to one another, I'm tired of all this obfuscation." He gestured with the dripping knife, thus splattering the tablecloth with a multitude of orange blobs. "As gobblepricks go, I cannot say I was captivated by Mrs Cluett's talents. 'Tis said she was once famed for the bliss she afforded a fellow by sucking his sugar-stick, but I fear her talents are lost with her youth. I was not risen to a stand, and therefore I will not be availing myself of her company again."

Jane's cheeks bloomed red over his coarseness. "You won't?" she asked, dubiously.

"No."

She regarded him thoughtfully, as he chewed and swallowed, and washed the repast down with a long swallow of tea. "I'm not rightly sure I understand you."

"You understand me." He threw her a foxy grin. "My use of flash language does not make me so incomprehensible.

Jane sat. "But you refuse to send her away."

Linfield started on another slice of bread. "Best damn marmalade ever. Love it, I do. Mama's best…" He chewed and swallowed. "Janie, George is an old friend, and the weather is awful inclement. It wouldn't be very Christian of me to turn them out into the cold now, would it? Particularly as they have no place to go, and we're only weeks away from the Christmas season. I'm sure you don't wish to see them dead in a dell because we couldn't find it in our hearts to be forgiving. I think you're not such an unkind a woman as that."

Lord, but he was a manipulative devil.

"Shall we speak of other things? I thought I might attend you tonight."

"Tonight!"

"Yes. You are, of course, rightly aggrieved by my neglect of you. So, I will attend you in your chamber."

"My chamber. Linfield my room is blackened, the bed burned down to cinders."

"Well… whatever chamber you please. There are rooms aplenty in this place, either move yourself or Miss Wakefield to another of them."

"But I should wish to be close by her," Jane protested.

Linfield prevaricated by producing a kerchief and daubing his lips clean. "Janie, it need only be for one night, then you may bunk together if it pleases you. I can understand these things. How one might seek companionship during the night. It is something I'm partial to myself. Which I suppose brings me to another delicate topic. Suppose we speak about the arrangements in more detail."

"Detail?"

"Yes, dearest." He washed the words down with another swallow of tea. "I realise that you might not be terribly informed…. Might be best if I readied your mind for the occasion."

"My mind?"

Jane was clearly either so befuddled or angered by him that her voice had been almost stolen from her.

"In case you have a preformed notion of how things should proceed, based on what you have heard, or been told, by…"

"By?"

"Your mother? She might have hinted at what to expect… in the marriage bed."

"No," Jane said. "No, she did not…. Well, perhaps a little." It was obvious to Eliza that Jane added the latter realising that her knowledge of the marital act must be seen to have come from somewhere. If Linfield was at all acquainted with Jane's mother, he would not have proposed or ever believed her a source of such wisdom, Mrs Morley being as hard and brittle as an old broom handle, a sour spendthrift, and not the sort to spare an anxious bride some kindly, or even informative words.

"Well, dismiss whatever nonsense you've been told. It won't be like that."

"It won't?"

Poor Jane, she was clearly addled to her core.

"No. Well, perhaps a little. But, not really. That is to say, our," —here Linfield made a strange arrangement with his fingers— "our bodily parts will still come together." His complexion became increasingly peaky as he spoke. "However—"

"Are you trying to ask me to do what that woman was doing to you?" Jane blurted.

Linfield rose to his feet. "Hen's teeth, woman! Good God, no." He smashed his cup down onto its saucer, so that it made an appalling clatter. "I would never. Gracious…" He seemed most overcome, one hand flying to his hair and combing through the unruly strands of it, and the other forming a death grip around the handle of the cup he'd likely just cracked. "It's not the sort of thing one asks from one's wife…. Not at all. I'm not a monster, you know."

He backed away from her, as if she were some kind of hereto unidentified beast.

"Oh," Jane remarked, a tad more brightly than one might have expected given the rather tumultuous nature of their conversation and prior relationship. "Only if it was, then—"

He cut her off with the slash of his hand. "Madam." He shook his head most insistently. "I intend to have my goujat attend me while at the task. That is all I am trying to say."

"Your goujat?" Jane repeated dubiously, her confusion now mirroring Eliza's own. She had never heard of such a thing. Well, not outside of whispered stories of the olden days when the marital act was to be witnessed so that all parties knew the couple were truly man and wife, but then all were invited in to observe, not merely one figure.

Jane followed her husband's agitated waddle across the hearth rug with her nose screwed up in perplexity. "Linfield, do you mean to say you wish a servant to witness us?"

"Witness? No. He will attend me. And no, not a servant. Why the devil would I wish that?"

"But you said your valet."

"I did not." He turned and reared, positively aggrieved, then stared down his nose at her, lips aquiver, while two ruby spots bloomed on his cheeks. "Perish the thought. My valet, indeed. That would hardly inspire anyone to the act. Be like doing it with your father watching." He shuddered. "No, Mr Whistler will attend me."

It was all Eliza could do to stop herself blurting out Jem's name as Jane did.

"Mr Whistler!" she cried, her whole-body forced into stillness from the shock of it. "Linfield, you cannot seriously mean that. I do not understand. Why should it be necessary for him to watch us?"

Eliza could no more fathom a reason than Jane. If Linfield had perhaps said he wished Doctor Bell to observe them… Well, it would still have been most strange, but might be ascribed to some medical matter he did not wish to reveal, but Jem? To have Jem present made no sense at all. Why?

Meanwhile, Linfield gave a taciturn sniff, as if Jane's reticence were the confounding part and not his intentions. "He shan't be lingering about like some twit at the opera," he said. As if that were a foremost concern. "He'll participate."

If it were possible for someone to look more aghast, Eliza could not imagine it, although perhaps seeing her own reflection might have countered that notion.

"Not that he'll touch you. No, of course not. That would be entirely unacceptable. He'll be my aide de chambre. "

Jane worried her head from side to side. "Forgive me, husband, but I do not understand."

That made two of them, unless Linfield was really so hopeless, he couldn't manage to find his own cock well enough to put it in his wife's cunny and actually needed someone to do it for him. In which case, surely, he could have simply asked Jane to help line them up.

"It's entirely normal," Linfield said in such a reedy voice as to make it obvious he was lying. "Just isn't talked about. Trifle awkward. Not the subject for polite circles."

Eliza did not understand why he was insisting on this, or why he was lying to Jane's face to convince her of its convention. Why on earth would Linfield wish Jem to attend him while he was bedding his wife? Did Jem know? Had he agreed to it? There was no rationality to it. None. Except…

She reeled back in horror and clapped her hand to her mouth to stop herself from blurting a reaction to her thoughts. Following the incident of Pennerley being shot in the leg, certain rumours had circulated, many of which persisted even now Bella and Pennerley were wed, about the nature of the marquis's attachment to Lord Marlinscar. Of course, men formed fast friendships. Plenty idled away days together engaged in gentlemanly pursuits, but for some, it was suggested, the attachment was deeper than one of platonic love. That they did things that they really ought only to have been done with a member of the opposite sex when connected by the bounds of marriage. Was this demand of Linfield's thus a declaration of such an attachment between him and Jem?

Surely not… She could not believe it to be so. Not when Jem had made such declarations of love to her.

Yet, she could also hear him as clearly as if he were standing by her now insisting, I'm not the man you suppose me to be. Was he in truth bound to Linfield faster and in more ways than she'd supposed? That they were—dare she even think it—lovers? Lovers in the way that she and Jane had stupidly supposed Linfield and Henrietta to be.

Had they got everything hopelessly wrong?

Was this the reason for Linfield's reluctance to bed his wife? He was in love with another… with Jem? Her Jem?