Neither Thea nor her husband slept soundly that night; both discovered singly the striking loneliness of being wide awake in a house full of sleeping people.
After Thea ran from the library it took Matlin a quarter hour to follow her up the stairs. In that time he had dispatched the better part of a decanter of brandy and had ordered another bottle brought to his dressing room. He slept, after unsuccessfully striving to drown his horror, guilt, and confusion, only to wake reluctantly after noon; his head was pounding and his stomach was in rebellion, with the guilt unabated. Lord Ocott, come to fetch him for a drive, shook his head disgustedly.
“If you insist upon rumfuddling yourself as a regular thing, boy, I don’t doubt you have problems with that pretty wife of yours.” Ocott had no idea how heavily his words weighed on Matlin or why his nephew only shook his head miserably and turned to the wall.
Dorothea, without Matlin’s recourse to brandy, lay awake in her bed for most of the night, and, when wakened with the chocolate tray, she sat up heavy-eyed and exhausted. It was easy, as she dressed, to ask herself over and over how she could have done it, what in God’s name had possessed her to blurt out such a thing. She had destroyed, in that moment, any chance she and Matlin could have had together. Where had it come from; how could she have allowed herself to be goaded into telling that abysmal lie? What in God’s name was she to do, she wondered miserably, as the months went by and it became obvious that there was no child.
Lewis entered the room just as Thea finished clasping a bracelet on her wrist. It was a slender gold and pearl bangle, one of the few jewels which had come to her from her mother; it was old fashioned but oddly comforting, a little piece of her own past. She looked up and smiled wearily at Lewis.
“My lady asks would you come to her when you’re ready, ma’am. In her dressing room.” Lewis examined Thea with a critical eye. “If I may be so bold, ma’am, might I suggest a touch of rouge? My lady had eyes that sharp for picking up when a body’s feeling peaked-like.”
Thea thanked Lewis and, after a grim glance in the mirror, did apply a dot of rouge to each cheek. The ruse did not fool Lady Ocott.
“Good God, lamb, it that’s how a night of theatre and admiration affects you, I shan’t so much as let you see the pantomime at Christmas-time. You look as if you hadn’t a moment’s sleep, and here I was, all set to take you to Bond Street with me.”
Thea began to apologize. “I won’t embarrass you by going along with you....”
“Fiddlesticks. A cool cloth across your eyes for half an hour, and wipe that paint off your face—how I could have chosen such a grossly inappropriate color for you is beyond me!—and you’ll be perfectly viewable. Whatever it is that troubles you today, my lamb, you scored a very pretty triumph last night, and I have no intention of letting that advantage go to waste. If I cannot wangle a voucher to Almacks’ for you by the end of the day, I am a far poorer strategist than I think I am. Now come here, lamb, and lie down. Lewis, fetch a cloth and the eau de cologne.”
In an hour Thea admitted she did feel a little better. She stubbornly refused to tell Lady Ocott what the matter was between her and her husband, but the older woman did not seem fazed. “You will tell me when you’re ready, I don’t doubt.” Dismissing the problem as easily as that, Lady Ocott bundled Thea into her pelisse and took her off to spend money at the glovemaker’s and parfumerie, and incidentally to encounter half-a-dozen of the hostesses of upcoming events as they stepped from their carriages or out into the street from shop doors. Again Thea had the sense that she was being artfully, beautifully managed, but Lady Ocott was so cheerful and unfeignedly delighted with each encounter that it was impossible to do anything but imitate her delight as best she could, going through the motions of conversation while a tiny, vicious voice inside her head repeated over and over that she had spoiled everything with her lie.
As they were descending from a shoemaker’s where Thea had placed an order for three pairs of kid slippers, they encountered a cloud of young women bent on entering the same door. One of them looked from Lady Ocott to her companion, then bent and whispered into the ear of her nearest companion, who turned and whispered a reply. Lady Ocott feigned disinterest and swept past them, but Thea caught the first woman’s glance as she passed: mocking, curious, infinitely superior.
“Who was that?” she murmured to Lady Ocott.
The older woman sighed gustily. “I had hoped she might have disappeared by now, sent off to rusticate by her husband’s family. Heaven knows they’ve cause enough. That, lamb, is Lady Towles.”
Thea stopped in her tracks and turned to look behind her. Lady Towles, who had been Adele Frain before her marriage? This certainly warranted a closer look, and the opportunity to see the woman Matlin had wanted to marry, had called for out of his delirium.
It appeared that Lady Towles had the same idea. Her friends had continued into the shoemaker’s shop, and she stood alone, posed with one foot on the step and displaying a neatly turned ankle in what Thea thought a deliberately coquettish manner. Everything about Lady Towles was deliberate and opulent, from the deep chestnut of her hair to her figure to her expression of sensuous amusement. Her high-necked satin pelisse draped negligently about her shoulders and her muslin dress was both modish and alarmingly transparent for street dress. She was undeniably beautiful, but for the first time since she had met Douglas Matlin, Thea was conscious of disappointment in him. This was his Adele?
“He was very young, then, my dear,” Lady Ocott murmured behind her.
Thea turned away guiltily. “Was it so obvious, what I was thinking?”
Lady Ocott laughed. “My God, who wouldn’t think such a thing? Just as she was thinking you an insignificant little squab, and wondering whatever did Douglas see in you? Adele Frain could never fancy anyone passably attractive next to herself.”
“She is rather overwhelming.”
“Overwhelming? Dear heaven, my sweet life, she’s like being smothered in hothouse roses! Well, you’ve seen each other now; so that bit of suspense is done with, but do be careful of her, lamb. She’s no more scruples, or morals, I might add, than an alley cat. She attaches men just for the fun of it. Not,” she added fairly, “that I think she’d have any luck with Douglas. That charm has run its course, anyway. Well.” Lady Ocott squeezed Thea’s arm affectionately. “Who could compare the two of you? Adele Frain was a lapse of taste on Douglas’s part, if you ask me. We all owe her undying gratitude for being unable to forego having her cake and flirting with other men.”
Aside from her amusement at Lady Ocott’s peculiar imagery, Thea remained unconvinced. She did not argue the matter. With conscious dignity she tucked her hand in her companion’s arm and they started back for Bond Street. All the way back to the chariot, while Lady Ocott busily pointed out agreeable window-displays, Thea thought of Matlin and of Lady Towles. Was that what he wanted? No wonder he had been disappointed in his marriage from the first....
She stumbled and would have fallen had Lady Ocott not had a firm grip on her arm.
“Dorothea, really. I misdoubt that Douglas has spared more than a thought in the last year for that wench,” she assured Thea obliquely. “And look, see who is coming toward us? Smile, for mercy’s sake, my love: it’s Emily Cowper, and you do want to make an impression.”
Thea did not have time to ask why she had to impress Lady Cowper, but she smiled, made an effort to chat easily, and was rewarded for her efforts when, just as she was about to continue on her way down Bond Street, Lady Cowper turned, took Thea’s hand in her own, told her that she was a pretty little thing and must certainly come to the assemblies. “I will send a voucher to you,” she promised, and left with a smile of significance for Lady Ocott.
“Well, my dear, and did I not tell you? Vouchered for Almacks’, and before tea at that. I think we have done very well for today. Let us go home, by all means. I am famished; aren’t you?”
o0o
Where a patroness of Almacks’ had shown favor it seemed that all but the least fashionable or the most iconoclastic were likely to be agreeable. Within a week of that first visit to the theatre invitations began to arrive with her morning chocolate, and her name was included as a matter of course in Lady Ocott’s invitations. Slowly she was acquiring a circle of acquaintances who greeted her in the street or in the Park; she was recognized at parties and sought out. She was a heroine, as Matlin had once prophesied. At tea she was surrounded by girls just out of the schoolroom who begged her to tell the story of her escape from Spain. At breakfasts eager dowagers tssked and commiserated loftily over the trials she had undergone. At evening parties a seemingly endless stream of young men asked her to dance and flirted gently with her.
It should have been heaven, the fulfillment of a fantasy. Had anyone told Thea three months before as she shelled peas in the convent kitchen that she would someday waltz at Almacks’, be greeted by lions of the ton and have her dress complimented by George Brummel himself, she would have scoffed delightedly. She found, now, that delight was remarkably short-lived.
“And you lived in a convent with nuns?” she was asked for the hundredth time, by a debutante in sausage curls and sprigged muslin whose sole idea of conventual life was drawn from Mrs. Radcliffe and Horace Walpole. Thea was trying to see if Matlin was among the throng at Lady Ocott’s card party; she answered something absently and kept looking.
“And Sir Douglas married you there?”
“Yes. To save my reputation,” she added unnecessarily.
“How exciting it must have been!”
Thea tried to curb her impatience; had she not thought the same thing herself, once? “If you call it exciting to be seasick from Oporto to Bournemouth,” she murmured. Matlin was nowhere to be seen. Another girl had shouldered through and was asking something. Thea answered absently. She was all nerves and raw ends; she had not seen Matlin for days, and was certain that he had decided not to honor his aunt’s party. He was probably at his club or meeting with someone from the Foreign Office. Lord Ocott, with the kindest of intentions, had made it easy for his nephew to spend his time away from the house and away from his wife.
Someone was asking another question.
“I’m sorry, I beg your pardon?” Thea scanned the crowd again by habit. No sign of Matlin.... She smiled nervously at the pretty brunette who stood beside her now. Behind her a young man who might have been her twin was plucking idly at her shoulder and advising her not to make such a cake of herself. “Give over, Bess. Let a man take his chance without you gabbling.” He smiled at Thea ruefully. “That is, if you don’t mind, ma’am?”
Bess pouted artistically for a moment. “Lady Matlin, this ill-mannered wretch is my brother Tony.”
“Anthony Chase, ma’am, entirely at your service.” He bowed his dark head over Thea’s hand. At his side Bess Chase made a sisterly moue of disgust, and for a moment brother and sister fell into lighthearted bickering. Thea listened to them in amazement. They seemed so young, or was it simply that she felt years older? Chase was certainly a few years her senior. Done with their wrangle, the Chases turned back to Thea with identical expressions of expectant good will, and because Matlin was nowhere to be seen and because it was her duty to be a good hostess, and because there was something particularly engaging about Bess and her brother, Thea smiled and prepared to answer more questions.
o0o
Although he had deliberately kept himself from any social engagement that might include his young wife, Matlin had thought he could not avoid his aunt’s party without creating talk. At the last moment, however, he was summoned by Canning himself with a report to be translated; so, while Thea watched in vain for him he was bent over a desk trying to make head or tail of a smuggled-in dispatch from Spain. He had been increasingly caught up in the affairs of the Foreign Office; he had no defined place or job and made himself useful by sharing his information and translating the Spanish he spoke so poorly. Canning liked him, thought him sensible, observant, and given to laudable devotion to his work, a trait uncommon in a young, new-wedded man.
“Doesn’t that pretty young wife of yours damn my soul for keeping you so much from her side?” he asked when he gave Matlin the report to translate.
The word Matlin heard was young. He smiled unhappily and replied that his wife was far too much occupied in cutting a dash to fret over his absence.
“Well, if you think so, my boy; but don’t think we cannot spare you of an evening. I hear Lady Matlin has become quite the thing; you may want to stake your claim amongst her beaux.”
“Beaux?” Thea, being sought after at evening parties, tricked out in those damnably low-cut evening dresses, importuned no doubt, trusting people as she did. He lost sight of the real Thea in a fantasy he was weaving about her endangered innocence.
Only later, sipping brandy at Whites’, he told himself that the only person who had hurt Thea was he; the only man who had taken advantage of her innocence was he; the only one who had no right to ask anything of his wife was he himself. He drank too much, was assisted home to Hill Street by a crossing-sweep, and narrowly avoided being taken up for impertinence to the Watch. Again, he had avoided meeting his wife.
It was not possible to spend all his time at Whitehall or at Whites’; even the private suppers hosted by his friends ended some time. He must return from time to time to the Ocotts’ house, and while his own smaller house in Charles Street was under lease to a doctor from Lincolnshire, he could not retire there. So he picked among his invitations and chose parties at which Thea was least likely to appear. It was inevitable that in these circles, admittedly not always the best, he should encounter Lady Towles.
He was at a card-party at Marlborough House where he chatted with one of the Lamb cousins and wondered when he could decently retire to the library; there something more substantial than iced cup was being served.
“Douglas, old man! Say hello to a chap, won’t ye?”
At the sound of that voice and the clap of a solid, meaty hand on his shoulder, Matlin turned and found himself looking into the protuberant brown eyes of Sir Charles Towles. Sir Charles wore an outrageously cut coat of green superfine, and the starched points of his collar poked into the puffy rounds of his cheeks. His fair hair, which had earned him the nickname “Taffy” amongst his cronies, had been lavishly pommaded and forced into unconvincing curls about his ears and forehead. There were beads of sweat along his upper lip.
“Hello, Towles.” Matlin made the greeting as cordial as possible. He had never been a part of Sir Charles’s crowd and could not understand the reason for his enthusiastic greeting now. Then, as he caught a glimpse of chestnut hair just beyond Towles’s shoulder, Matlin thought he understood. In a moment his surmise was confirmed: Lady Towles joined her husband.
“Douglas, my dear friend.” She extended her hand to him with a meaningful smile. Matlin took her hand coldly, bowed over it, and let it go.
“Adele. I felicitate you both, of course. I had not heard of your marriage until very lately.”
“Oh, yes, you were out of the country, weren’t you?” Lady Towles’s voice was sweet. She poised her hand delicately on her husband’s sleeve and watched Matlin through her eyelashes.
Oblivious to undercurrents, Sir Charles nodded emphatically. “Quite an adventure, eh, Matlin? Must tell me all about it over a bottle or two some night, eh? And where’s your wife? Understand you married a Spanish Señorita; is that it?”
“My wife’s mother is Spanish. She was raised in Somerset, and is quite as English as you are yourself.” Matlin’s tone was barely civil.
Lady Towles picked coquettishly at her husband’s sleeve. “Charles, dear love, I am perishing of thirst. Won’t you fetch me some lemonade?” It was not a request. Sir Charles regarded his wife with a bleary, somewhat knowing eye, shrugged, and began to shoulder through toward the refreshment room.
“Puppy,” Lady Towles said with a shudder. It was obvious she wished Matlin to witness her distaste for her husband. Then she turned and smiled brilliantly at Matlin. “Douglas, I have a bone to pick with you: you have not even left your card since you returned to Town. Now, my dear, is that kind? I really had thought....”
Matlin cut through her persuasive voice. “Adele, I really do not see that you and I have anything more to say to each other. As I recall we said it all before I left.”
“You went away. How was I to tell you how sorry I was?” She hinted at a pout. When Matlin did not answer her she glanced across the room. “Are you worrying about Taffy? For heaven’s sake, Douglas, one must marry someone, and we all thought you were dead. I’m sure I cried for weeks. Then Taffy asked for me, and what was I to say but yes? Don’t hold him against me, Douglas. He’s very sweet, in a stupid sort of way, but....” She smiled up at him and touched his sleeve lightly. Her message was very clear: Douglas Matlin could have Adele Towles at any time.
“I am married as well,” he heard himself saying. Was he really invoking Thea against Adele Towles? Somehow the image of Thea, who would barely come up to Lady Towles’s chin, was vastly refreshing to him. “I don’t hold Sir Charles against you, Adele.”
“Oh, but really, that baby?” Adele dismissed Thea as utterly negligible. “It’s said you married the girl to bring her out of Spain with her name intact. A chivalrous gesture, I agree, but hardly something to base a marriage on.” She ran her fingers up his a few inches, delicately. He was surprised at how blatant a gesture it was.
“I seem to have missed what is common knowledge to everyone else, my lady. Dorothea is my wife, and I have not the slightest wish or intention of causing her the least moment of discomfort. I care very much for her.”
“Words of passion,” Lady Towles mocked. “If you could but hear yourself. I’m not proposing that you make your little schoolgirl uncomfortable.” As she pressed closer to him he was aware of her scent, jasmine, somehow hot and overpowering in the crowd. “Are you determined to be a bore? Don’t let Taffy bother you; the poor dear is so addle-pated he would not know what happened two feet in front of his....”
Matlin shook off her arm and stepped away to look at her. “I cannot believe we are having this conversation, still less that you have virtually offered me carte blanche. I am flattered by the offer, Adele, but my answer remains no. I’m not certain which of us has changed the more in two years; probably it is me. Good evening.”
He left her standing there and pushed his way forcibly through the crowd and into the library, where William Lamb was dispensing punch. Accepting a cup, he drank it down, then took another.
“Hold fast, man, what the deuce d’ye think you’re doing?” Lamb muttered.
“Trying to wash a taste from my mouth. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Lamb.”
“Well, you know best, but I’ll thank you not to get yourself foxed at my mother’s card party. Not to be inhospitable, you understand.”
“Oh yes, I understand.” Matlin held his punch cup out for more punch.