The Wildest Rake: a stunning, scandalous Restoration romance Page 12

  A cold shiver ran down her back. Had he, perhaps, already done so? Had he really gone to Stelling? Or was he secretly visiting Germaine?

  The stab of doubt passed. She persuaded herself that her husband would not be fool enough to get involved with the cold-eyed Germaine again. Lavinia had sworn that it was over long before he married. He had too much common sense to be dragged back into Germaine’s corrupt world.

  Indeed, the more Cornelia learned of the Court and its encircling planets the less she could understand how Rendel had ever allowed himself to become part of it.

  The King, in his lazy, dissolute pursuit of pleasure; the greedy, loose-living women who surrounded him, the wild Court gallants who roamed the streets by night beating up the night watch and assaulting the women who were unfortunate enough to cross their path, the gamblers, pimps, bullies —these were like the scurrying insects one finds when one lifts a stone.

  She could feel pity, sympathy, for the King, could even understand why he had plunged into a life of dissolute pleasures, but she could feel nothing but contempt for those who, like parasitic insects, lived off his desires, feeding them at a price, selling themselves and their consciences.

  However much she pitied the King, she could not forget the corruption which surrounded him. He was like a flower growing on top of a dung heap. The darkness and heat within, the decay and corruption, only emphasised the richness of the flower whose roots went down deep into it.

  She did not yet know the secrets of her husband’s mind and heart. She was sure that Rendel, however, could not long be happy in the hot-house atmosphere of the Court. It had not needed Lavinia to point out how hard he worked at his Commons business. She had not lived with him during these months without becoming aware of his capacity for such mundane matters as the studying of new Bills, clause by clause; the long hours of reading through old laws to find out loop-holes, the serious discussions with his colleagues into the small hours.

  Her background had taught her that life without work was like meat without salt: savourless. A life of pleasure soon palled. One needed purpose, point to one’s existence.

  Yet still she longed for his company, and hated herself for that sweet treachery

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Next morning, she was sitting in the long gallery, the scent of the garden drifting in through the open windows, the hot sweetness of the wallflowers combining with the fragrance of the lilac, when a servant hurried in with a letter on a silver salver.

  It was from her father. She read it twice, frowning anxiously. Her mother, it seemed, had fallen down the stairs in the night, breaking her hip.

  The Alderman assured Cornelia that she must not be disturbed. He would keep her aware of her mother’s condition. Andrew had already been to tend to her, had made her as comfortable as he could. There was need for Cornelia to come as yet. She must take care of herself at this anxious time.

  As yet, thought Cornelia, staring at the hurried words. As yet.

  There was an ominous ring in those two words.

  Cornelia knew very well, from her sick visiting under Andrew’s guidance, how easy it was for old people to weaken once they had become immobilised. For an active woman like her mother, weeks spent in bed could be really dangerous, both for her physical and for her mental condition.

  Within an hour, under violent protest from Nan and the housekeeper, she had packed a few necessaries and was on her way to the city in the coach.

  Nan, seated beside her, watched with anxious ferocity as the coach jolted them to and fro. Cornelia was propped up with mounds of silk-covered cushions, her feet on a footstool, her shoulders swathed in a stifling velvet cloak.

  She smiled and teased Nan, who would not lighten her tight-lipped indignation.

  ‘The Alderman had no right worrying you while you were ill. He was always the same. All men are weak, useless wretches. They lean on women from the day they’re born. First their mother, then their wife, then their daughter . . . we are props to their weakness all our lives. ‘

  Cornelia shook her head. ‘I am going for my mother’s sake, Nan, not to support my father. If anything were to happen to my mother, and I not there, I would be miserable eternally. My place is beside her.’

  Nan growled. ‘So she has broken a bone. Many women do so. She will be up and about in no time.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Cornelia soberly.

  ‘This will not please your husband,’ Nan scolded.

  ‘He will understand,’ Cornelia replied, with more certainty than she felt, for Rendel would, she knew, be worried if he heard that she had travelled so far so soon.

  She found her mother grey with pain, lying tense and still in the four-poster bed, her features rigid with the effort to surmount the waves of pain which kept sweeping down upon her.

  When Cornelia approached the side of the bed Mistress Brent, turning her head very slowly, sighed reproachfully at her husband, ‘Oh, why did you send for the child? She is not strong enough yet. ‘

  ‘I am much better, Mother,’ Cornelia said, taking her mother’s chilled hand in both her own. ‘How are you?’

  Mistress Brent gave a thin smile. ‘I shall do very well, I thank you.’

  Cornelia sat down on a stool beside the bed and smiled at her. ‘We are a fine pair of invalids, are we not? First one, then the other. I have come so that we may keep each other company in our misery. We will read and gossip together, just as though I had never left home.’

  Her mother looked at her with mock severity. ‘I do not remember that we ever gossiped together, child. I am not, I hope, much of a gossip. That is all very well for the common women around the street fountains, chattering as they fetch water, but I am not so foolish, I hope.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ cried Cornelia softly, seeing the effort it cost her to speak at all. ‘What has Andrew given you for your pain?’

  ‘I am sure I do not know. He has left me many instructions. I am to drink tansy tea every hour, rest, take several spoons of physic.’

  Cornelia smiled, patting her hand. ‘Tansy tea, indeed. I am very sure it would do you more good to have a cup of sweet chocolate.’ She went to order some to be made, and they sat together, drinking and talking slowly, unless Mistress Brent drifted off to sleep.

  Andrew came that evening. He was surprised, and shocked, to see Cornelia, but they had little chance to exchange more than a few words, for which she, at least, was grateful, since she felt ill at ease with him now.

  Her love for him had suffered a complete change. Having known him all her life so well, she could not cease to love him, but she knew very well that the reality of that love had undergone a strange alteration. It was now a mere affection, warm and strong, but no longer what it had been. Her heart did not beat when she saw him. Her breath did not catch. Perhaps, she thought sadly, she had never loved him as she had imagined—being romantic by nature, she had mistaken sisterly affection for love, and had persuaded herself that her pulses beat, her temples burned at the sight of Andrew.

  It had taken that meeting with Rendel to bring her to her senses.

  She should have known from the beginning. She would have known, had not Rendel behaved so badly. Her anger and revulsion had made her blind to what was happening between them.

  She caught herself up suddenly. She knew now that she loved Rendel.

  But did her husband love her?

  Or merely desire her?

  She did not know because Rendel had no intention that she should ever penetrate the smiling mask he wore.

  Hope made her tremble with the anticipation of joy. Why, she thought, did he need to wear a mask, except to hide his feelings from her? He had never hidden his desire. That he had expressed openly and bluntly from the start.

  What, then, did he hide? And why?

  Mistress Brent was plainly uneasy whenever she saw Andrew and her daughter together, but gradually, as the time passed, she began to notice little things which, revealingly, betrayed Cornelia’s new state of
mind, and she began to relax.

  Cornelia would not have raised the subject, but when her mother hesitatingly broached it, she did admit that she no longer loved Andrew in the old way.

  ‘I am glad,’ murmured her mother. ‘For I know that Andrew has decided to marry Ellen, and it is a good match for both of them. Very suitable and right.’ She sighed. ‘I am glad you are happy, child. I was anxious about your marriage. We were wrong to force you against your will—but I am sure it will all prove happy in the end.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cornelia agreed. She determined to visit Ellen that afternoon and find out if it were true that she and Andrew were to marry. Ellen might stop him killing himself with work. Someone must do something soon. Andrew looked more grey and weary each time she saw him, as though demons drove him endlessly towards his death.

  When Ellen saw her at the door, she looked briefly alarmed, then smiled with the old warmth and welcomed her into the house.

  ‘The doctor is visiting a patient,’ she said.

  ‘I came to see you, Ellen,’ Cornelia replied, kissing her on the cheek.

  Ellen’s eyes looked into hers, sharp and penetrating. ‘To see me?’

  ‘My mother tells me,’ Cornelia began hesitantly, as Ellen gestured to her to sit down in the cosy kitchen, ‘that you are to be married.’

  Ellen poured ale into two wooden cups and put them on the broad, scrubbed deal table. ‘Have you come to forbid the banns, Mistress Cornelia?’ she asked bluntly.

  Cornelia flushed scarlet. ‘Ellen!’

  Ellen looked at her frankly. ‘Aye, well, I know how it was with you two long ago. You always doted on the man, and he was fair silly for you. But you’re a married lady now, and with a handsome gentleman for a husband. . . ’

  ‘Ellen,’ Cornelia broke in hurriedly, ‘I came to wish you happy, that is all.’

  Ellen looked hard at her in silence for a while, then she smiled with her usual broad good humour.

  ‘I beg your pardon, then, indeed I do. I will let my tongue run away with my brains, you know, my dear. I should not have spoken so free.’

  ‘You said only the truth,’ Cornelia admitted. ‘I did love Andrew very dearly. I still do.’

  Ellen’s mouth tightened.

  ‘But as a brother,’ Cornelia went on quickly. ‘I have no other thought of him than that, Ellen. Truly. And it is as a sister that I have come to you today, to beg you to make him take more care of himself. He looks so old. I was quite shocked to see how rapidly he is ageing. Why, he is but thirty, and he looks at least ten years older. When you are married, persuade him to take more rest.’

  ‘I will try,’ Ellen said sombrely. ‘I doubt it will do much good. He is a stubborn man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cornelia sighed. ‘He is very stubborn.’

  They talked for a while, then Ellen picked up her basket from a chair and said that she had to take some food to one of Andrew’s patients in the tenements around the Walbrook.

  ‘So he has talked you into sick visiting, too?’ Cornelia asked with amusement.

  ‘He is a saint,’ Ellen laughed. ‘But it is a hard life trying to live up to his expectations. I daresay he will gallop me into my grave soon enough.’

  Cornelia kissed her. ‘As you have taken to sick visiting, come and visit my mother one morning. She will be glad to see you.’

  ‘I should like to,’ Ellen said. ‘I would have come before, but I did not care to intrude.’

  ‘Foolish Ellen. Promise to come.’

  Ellen promised, smiling, and next morning kept her promise. Mistress Brent was, as Cornelia had prophesied, glad to see her, and Cornelia left the two of them together for a comfortable gossip. Mistress Brent might claim to hate gossiping, but her daughter, indulgent but shrewd, knew that it was the breath of life to her, and knew too that Ellen, being so much in Andrew’s company, would hear far more of the choicest, latest, most fascinating gossip than any other woman in the neighbourhood.

  When she came back she found them laughing over some incident, and was glad to find her mother looking slightly less grey about the mouth. The pain of the broken hip was acute, she knew, but Andrew had warned the family, that it was the mental effect that was most to be feared, for depression could so easily set in after a serious accident like this.

  Andrew arrived just as Ellen was leaving, and looked at her with calm approval.

  ‘Ellen has been making my mother laugh,’ Cornelia told him with a return of her old playful intimacy.

  Ellen looked from one to the other of them, and if her sharp eyes took in Andrew’s smiling indulgence as he replied, she gave no sign of it.

  ‘Wait for me, Ellen,’ he told her ‘I will not be long.’ But she said that she had to hurry back to cook her children their midday meal.

  Andrew went up to Mistress Brent’s chamber alone. When he came down he looked cheerfully at Cornelia.

  ‘Yes, she looks much better. Is that to Ellen’s credit, or mine, I wonder? Does she take her physic?’

  ‘Reluctantly,’ Cornelia smiled. ‘The pain is bad at night.’

  ‘I can do little for the pain,’ he sighed. He looked at her searchingly. ‘And you, Cornelia? How are you? You look bonny enough today. I was anxious when I first saw you— you had a blue look about the mouth which did not please me. It is gone now.’

  ‘I feel very well,’ she smiled.

  ‘I am sorry about the child,’ he said brusquely. ‘I was very distressed.’

  She nodded and turned away. ‘Such things happen to all women, I suppose. Since it happened I have been regaled with many sad tales of miscarriages and infant deaths.’

  He looked white and swore beneath his breath. ‘Women are monsters. What horrors have they filled you with?’

  She shrugged. ‘The truth, I fancy, Andrew. My own mother lost all her babies but me. I knew these things before. I had not known them as I know them now—with the resignation of acceptance. They were not to happen to me, you see. But it did happen. Now I am armed against fate.’

  He looked at her with grim, angry blue eyes. ‘I would that you had never had to know, Cornelia. I did not want you to know such hard things.’

  ‘Hard truths,’ she said.

  ‘You are too delicate, too beautiful for such a world,’ he groaned. ‘Like my mother, you should have been better protected. It cannot be God’s will that such as you should be placed in such peril.’

  She looked at him with a new comprehension. She saw, suddenly, that Andrew was tender and vulnerable inside the calm shell of his dignity, that he feared life, and had dedicated himself to making life less terrible for other human beings just because he could not bear what it did to them.

  That was why he worked until he was grey with weariness, why he had repressed his love for her.

  Andrew felt that he lived in a world too terrible to bear.

  She was sorry for him in a new way. To love and be in terror for what one loved was a dreadful way to live.

  It was not just his love for her that made Andrew so vulnerable. He loved the whole of humanity in that way. He saw the world from a strange angle, saw a wave of destruction poised above it, ready to strike, and ceaselessly built fragile walls of sand with which to dam up that destroying tide, but all in vain.

  She could not think of any way in which she could offer him comfort. Her own certainty, newly acquired, in the positive and abiding glory of life was too fresh and unfamiliar for her to have words to describe it to him.

  ‘We have to take both good and bad, Andrew,’ she said, fumblingly. ‘Life offers us both. I will not pretend that I am not very sad to have lost my baby, but I have found other things.’

  He looked at her pityingly. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, but she could see that he did not believe her.

  She made a last effort. ‘Even when it rains,’ she said, smiling, ‘there is the smell of wet flowers and the clean look of the streets and the freshness everywhere . . .’

  She thought of the bright dawn sky, the song of
a thrush in the lilac outside her window, the rush of exultation she felt when Rendel held her in his arms. Her eyes shone at him, radiant.

  Andrew turned away. ‘I am glad you are happy,’ he said thickly.

  When he had gone, she felt depression sink into her mind. She had failed him. She had not managed to communicate to him the confidence she felt in life; indeed, she suspected, she had only increased his terror.

  A few days later her mother, waking to the pale morning light when Cornelia brought her the breakfast tray, gave a scream of terror as she lifted her arm.

  ‘Child, child ... in my armpit ... a buboe . . . Oh God, God, it is the plague!’

  Cornelia almost dropped the tray, then, recovering, bent over her in alarm, only to have her shrink away.

  ‘No, you must not come near. . .Send for Andrew. . .’

  ‘Mother, calm yourself. I have been with you all these days. If you have the plague I will have been in the same danger. Let me see the lump. It may be something quite harmless.’

  But, when she probed gently, she broke out in a cold sweat of fear.

  Hard, hot to the touch, the swollen buboe was unmistakable. She touched her mother’s forehead. It was burning. Now, looking at her with terror and pity, she saw that her eyes seemed sunk in her head, her face blotched with fever.

  Mistress Brent fell back, sobbing. ‘I have it, I have it! God have mercy on me....’

  Cornelia ran down the stairs, then stopped dead as she saw her father come out of his counting-house at the back of the hall.

  ‘Father,’ she cried shrilly. ‘Do not come near me. . . Mother has the plague.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Like a slow, creeping tide, the plague had been spreading its contagion around the outskirts of the city for a month or so; an isolated case here, another there, then a whole rash of them together. London, used to such small outbreaks, had taken little notice.

  It was still only the beginning of June. The summer was not in full flood. The King was in residence in the capital, and his presence was reassurance enough for the faint-hearted. He would have fled the city had there been any serious danger, surely.