Page 21 of A Gentleman's Offer
‘Mama was most worried too,’ Meg said. There was a great deal to untangle in what her sister had said, but she could not help but notice this glaring omission and address it. She feared their mother’s actions would always be a bone of contention between them – for the first time it occurred to her that perhaps her father had intended it so when he forced her to make her terrible choice.
‘Was she?’ There was a hint of bitterness in Maria’s voice. ‘That will be why she has rushed to London to help you in your search for me. Has she even written to enquire about me since you arrived? I can see the answer in your face: no, she has not. I knew my aunt would summon you, and that you would come immediately – I don’t think I ever believedshewould. And I have been proved right, have I not?’
Meg said defensively, ‘Mama is obliged to finish her novel by the agreed date so that she can be paid. We need the money to live, though it is little enough in all conscience. You must know that Father does not… But I don’t mean to fall to pulling caps with you, Maria, over Mama or anything else. I’m just so glad that you are safe and well. I’ve been excessively worried about you; increasingly so as time passed with no word.’ This was as close as she meant to come to pointing out that if it was true that Maria could not have reappeared without causing a great bustle, she could, surely, have sent a message quite easily. Just a short letter by an anonymous messenger would have made an enormous difference. She wouldn’t have had to reveal her whereabouts, even, merely that she was in good health and under no duress. It would have meant a great deal.
‘You’re angry with me,’ Maria responded instantly, her face troubled, oddly defenceless without her glasses. Meg should have known she couldn’t hide any part of her feelings from her twin for long. ‘You think I should have told you that I was here, with Primrose, or at least that I was safe.’
‘You must have known how concerned I would be. I’m not angry, truly I’m not, though I must admit I have had moments of… exasperation at how hard you had made it to find you. But I don’t care, really, and I won’t upbraid you. I’m sure you had your reasons.’
Maria took her hand and squeezed it, drawing her to the sofa. ‘Let’s sit down. We won’t be interrupted, and I do owe you an explanation for dragging you into the middle of such confusion and leaving you alone to deal with it. It’s true, I know – I could have written to you before I left, even, and explained what I meant to do. Asked for your help.’
‘Why didn’t you? That’s what’s hurt me, Marie – the fact that you’ve been keeping secrets from me, when I have kept none from you. At first I was annoyed with you, and then I began to feel that I must have been a very poor sister all these years, if you believed you could not share…’
‘Never that!’ Maria said swiftly. ‘I promise you, never. I know our father has done his best to drive us apart, and our mother put her own interests above ours – above mine, certainly. But I have never blamed you for any of it. You were as much a victim of their selfishness as I was.’
It was hard to know what to say. ‘Mama would tell you that it was more complicated than you will admit; that, however difficult it was for you to live with him, and however much you have believed yourself abandoned by her – she knows you feel that, Marie, and it pains her greatly every day – it would have destroyed her, and done me almost as much harm, to live with him and constantly be at outs with him. You cannot claim she broke up a happy home – you must remember that it was never that, when we all lived together. The endless arguments that you above all of us hated so much. I remember you begging me in tears not to provoke him so, instead to behave meekly, as you did, and I recall too telling you that I did not know any other way to be.’
Her sister sighed deeply and said, ‘I do understand, Meggy. I have felt abandoned – that is the perfect word – but just lately I have gained a new perspective on it. It is hard, I suppose, to acknowledge that one’s parents are human beings who have their own lives to live. How easy, to arm oneself in self-righteousness and say that they should sacrifice all for their children, and how foolish. We are grown women now, and should know better. I do know better. I could not ask such a sacrifice of her, and more than that, I know she’s right to think that you and he could never have rubbed along together in relative peace as he and I have done all these years. It’s ironic, really, that it should be so.’
Meg did not have time to ask the meaning of this last rather odd remark, for Maria went on, ‘I have so much I need to tell you, and yet here I am, being a coward and putting it off. How did you find me, in the end?’
‘We thought we would track down all the servants who have left Lord Nightingale’s employ in recent years, and see if any of them might be sheltering you, or at least if they knew something of your whereabouts.’ Meg saw her sister’s eyebrow quirk at the word ‘we’, and was aware that she was blushing. Maria must know that she had been spending a great deal of time with Sir Dominic; if nothing else, Lady Primrose would have told her as much. She went on hastily, ‘Jenny Wood – you remember her?’
‘Oh, Jenny,’ said Maria with a little triangular smile and an oddly conscious look, ‘of course I do.’
‘Well, she ran away from her position in Lord Purslake’s house without giving notice, just about the time you disappeared. We thought that the timing of her flight might be a sign that you were together, though it turned out to be nothing more than a freakish coincidence. But we tracked her down to a most extraordinary house in Covent Garden – a brothel, Marie, can you credit it? – and she told us that if anyone would know where you were, it would be Lady Primrose. She said that even if she had appeared to know nothing, I should question her more closely, for she was sure to be in your confidence. So I came to see Lady Primrose, alone, as she suggested. She was my last hope. And Jenny was right.’
Maria showed herself quite willing to be side-tracked, and Meg could not fail to notice it. What could her secret possibly be that made her so very reluctant to reveal it? ‘Sir Dominic took you to Jenny’s mother’s bawdy house, Meg?’ she said, her eyebrow quirking once again in the way Meg remembered so well. ‘How shocking, and how interesting! I must say, you do appear to have grown excessively close to him in the short time you have been in London. I thought you would have to tell him the truth of your identity, since you could not know whether he had driven me away by some ill-treatment, and you could hardly go on pretending to be me in your interactions with him when you did not know what manner of man he is. But I didn’t imagine he’d actually be helping you so actively, least of all taking you to brothels!’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Marie! You know perfectly well why he went there, and why I had no option but to accompany him. And does all that matter, in any case? You still haven’t told me why you ran away, and surely that is more important just now.’ Meg had no desire to discuss her feelings for Sir Dominic, and really, they could be of no relevance to the coil, of Maria’s own making, that they found themselves in.
‘It could matter a great deal. It could be the perfect solution to all our problems, in fact – yours as well as mine – if you think you might like to marry him in my place.’
21
Meg was speechless. ‘I might…?’
Maria said urgently, clasping her hand, ‘Please hear me out before you fly up into the boughs, Meggy. I must tell you that I wasn’t consulted at all in advance about this match my father made for me; I didn’t have the least idea that he had any sort of scheme in mind. You know what he’s like, so you won’t be at all surprised. He didn’t even condescend to tell me himself – he informed my aunt, and she, poor thing, was obliged to pass on the news that I was to be married quite soon, to a man of my father’s choosing, and one I had never met. She was distressed for me, but she is so greatly in awe of him, and so dependent on him for the necessities of life, that she will never stand against him – I learned long ago that there is no point imagining she will.’
Maria paused for a moment, then went on with a little difficulty, ‘Aunt consoled me by pointing out that Sir Dominic is a great catch: one of the most eligible men in London, in fact. I must admit it’s true. He is not yet thirty, handsome, and rich, from a good family, has excellent manners, appears to be both intelligent and amiable, and for a wonder there is no breath of scandal attached to his name. How many other young gentlemen in society can claim as much? If he has had mistresses in keeping, which you’d imagine he must have done, he has been admirably discreet about it. Our father might easily have chosen many a worse man than such a paragon of perfection, Aunt said, and even in my shock and anger I could see that this was true. Someone old, like the man they made her marry, someone perhaps diseased, or otherwise highly disagreeable in person or reputation. I do not delude myself that Father cares a button for my wellbeing, since he loves nobody but himself. But still…’
She jumped to her feet and took a restless turn or two about the small, stuffy room. ‘I suppose I have always been so conformable to his wishes – or so he has always believed – that it never occurred to my father that I might object or cause the least difficulty. He doesn’t care, naturally, what I actually feel about the fact that he has the right to dispose of me, and my fortune as he chooses; I am a woman, and women count for nothing in his eyes. Less than nothing. It’s merely that he has a great dislike of confrontation – he would as soon argue with his horse, or a piece of furniture, as with any woman. And you know, Meggy, for a while, I actually thought I could do it. Marry Sir Dominic, with all that that implies. God knows I was eager enough to get out of that dreary house and away from my father.’
Meg said, trying to puzzle her way through this when she could see that there was still so much that she did not understand, ‘So you agreed at first.’
‘I did. I thought, Well, it will rescue me from my father’s control, not to mention his bad temper and selfish indifference to my welfare. It could hardly be any worse than the half-life I was living, and might be better. It was to be an old-fashioned marriage, of course, with no talk of love on either side. Sir Dominic would no doubt leave me in peace to live as I wished, once I had given him the child or children he must need to secure the future of his name. I could promise in good conscience never to present him with a brat fathered by another man, or give any such cause for gossip, and we would go our separate ways, live entirely detached lives, as so many couples do, asking nothing more of each other than public courtesy. A cold-blooded arrangement, but one I thought I might be able to countenance. So yes, I agreed when he came and asked me. On my father’s strict orders, my aunt was listening, to make sure I said all I should, and nothing I shouldn’t. But Father need not have worried, not then. It was all excessively civilised and barely human.’
‘What changed?’
Maria was standing by the small Tudor window, her back to her sister, gazing out through the thick, distorted ancient glass, and Meg saw that her hands were clasping the windowsill so hard that her knuckles stood out white against the old wood. ‘I could not bring myself to do it,’ she said at last. Her voice was constricted. ‘As the day of our wedding grew closer, the reality of it began to bite. They had me ordering up gowns and night-rails, and however discreet they were, my aunt and the shop woman between them, it was clear that they were designed to tempt him, to make him desire me. Dhaka muslin so fine you could see your hand through it, the woman was at pains to tell me. Your hand, indeed! And I realised, as I should have realised before, that Icould not. I simply could not, however much sense it made. So I panicked and I ran.’
‘He is so repulsive to you?’
‘He is a man.’
Meg leapt to her feet, feeling sick with distress, and went to her sister’s side. ‘Oh, my dear, you have been hurt, I had no idea and I am so sorry?—’
Maria laughed in what appeared to be genuine amusement. ‘I promise you I haven’t. He has done nothing to give me a special disgust of him, poor man, and nor has anyone else. I have not been outraged or assaulted or anything of that nature.’ She turned and looked Meg in the face and said bravely, ‘He is a man, my sweet sister, and I am not made that way. I’m not like you, and I cannot pretend to be.’
