Solemn Vows (26 page)

The dance was now over, and the revellers began to make their way to the vestibule with its dazzling chandelier and majestic oaken doors. The commotion of footmen, grooms, and restless horses could be heard outside in the summer air. The butler, Jacques, and his conscripted underlings were busy sorting out wraps and hats and gloves, and bowing curtly at increasingly rapid intervals. Several of the regular servants had begun snuffing out the candles, and the big room began to darken by degrees. Looking weary and bored, Sir Francis stood on the porch and bade farewell to all and sundry. Marc hung back until he saw Chastity and her black-robed aunt lift the near-comatose Prudence towards the rear exit, which led to the women’s apartments beyond.

He was just about to depart when Ignatius Maxwell clapped him on the shoulder and said heartily, “Do join the governor and me for a nightcap and a cigar, young man. We hear you are the toast of the town!”

I
F
S
IR
F
RANCIS WAS WORRIED
about his eccentric behaviour yesterday evening, he showed no sign of it during the twenty minutes or so that he and Marc and Maxwell spent in casual conversation in the receiver general’s den in the wing of Somerset House reserved for his use—and any privacy he might require from time to time. Obviously, the governor still had full confidence in his aide-de-camp. Marc endured their compliments as best he could, taking refuge in the French brandy and a West Indian cigar.

“And I must tell you, Ignatius—confidentially, of course—that I intend to make this young Turk here my military secretary as well as principal aide-de-camp. Poor old Burns will be ready for half-pay within the month. But Marc here—”

Marc was on the verge of a protest—just how he might have worded it he would never know—when Sir Francis suddenly pitched forward in his chair. Maxwell caught him before he toppled to the floor.

“It’s nothing, nothing,” the governor mumbled. “A bit too much Champagne and one too many cigars.”

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Maxwell said with some alarm.

Marc’s alarm was as real as Maxwell’s but had more sinister sources: was this another attempt? Was the madman still loose and determined to have his way? Marc cursed himself for having been so caught up in his own personal problems
that he had not bothered to keep a close eye on the very man whose safety was his foremost responsibility. How simple it would have been for an assassin to slip something poisonous into one of Sir Francis’s drinks amid the noise and bustle of the gala!

They both bent over the stricken governor.

“I’m just … very tired,” he said in a voice suddenly weak. He was also grey around the gills.

Maxwell nodded at Marc and said to Sir Francis, “You’ll stay in my apartments tonight, Governor. I’ll ring for Jacques, and we’ll have you tucked in, in a wink. One of the officers can escort Angelina back to Government House.”

Sir Francis made no protest, and Marc was relieved to see the colour returning to his cheeks. Fatigue, drink, and the exertions of the evening seemed to be the worst of it.

“Would you mind informing the governor’s footman, Lieutenant, that his master will not be needing the carriage tonight?”

Marc agreed, then quietly withdrew. He put on his jacket and shako cap, and made his way through a maze of hallways towards the ballroom. He had just stepped into it when he met a concerned man in livery, looking for Sir Francis. He seemed much relieved at the news Marc conveyed, and trotted out through the massive doors, still manned by two stout servants. Otherwise the vast space was empty, silent, and growing dark as the final few candles burned themselves out. Marc had taken just one step back towards Sir Francis—the
governor’s safety was still his responsibility—when he heard Jacques’s voice behind him.

“Excuse me, sir. Mrs. Maxwell’s in a bad way. I’ve been summoned to the master’s rooms. Would you mind just keeping an eye on her till I am able to get back to her?”

“Where is Miss Maxwell?”

“She has gone to her room, and my knock failed to rouse her, sir. I’m afraid she is fast asleep. And Mrs. Moncreiff has gone home with her daughters.”

“Should I go for a doctor? Is she seriously ill?”

Jacques actually blushed, then stared at his shoes as he said, barely above a whisper, “Not exactly, sir.”

Dead drunk and about to stir up a ruckus of some sort, he might just as well have said. But the message was clear nonetheless, and Marc had no choice but to temporarily abandon Sir Francis and head in the direction Jacques indicated, while the butler made for the safer domain of the male Maxwell. The corridors were unlit, so Marc had to tiptoe along until he spotted a door partly ajar with a flickering light of some sort behind it. With a mixture of disgust and pity, he eased the door open and stepped inside.

At first he could see little, as the only source of illumination seemed to be a candle-lamp on a small table set against the far wall. Cautiously he edged towards it.

“Over this way, lover.” The voice was that of Prudence Maxwell, slightly slurred but showing little sign of physical distress.

As Marc drew nearer, he noticed—with a start—that he was not in a sitting room or antechamber: he was in the lady’s boudoir. A canopied four-poster bed stood before him in vivid outline. In the pool of light splashed across it, he could see a rumpled, rose-embossed comforter, and the pale, rougeless face and sprawling coiffure of Prudence herself, who peered up at him with blurry-eyed curiosity.

Marc started to backpedal: “Please excuse me, Mrs. Maxwell, I had no idea you were abed when Jacques asked me to look in.”

“Oh, it’s you, Lieutenant,” Prudence breathed, and blinked sharply, as if that might somehow bring him more fully into focus. “You’ll do just fine.”

“I’ll have Jacques wake one of the maids.”

“Jacques has already done what he was told to do. Now be a good lad and come sit beside me. I’ve a dreadful—”

“Please don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning.”

“—itch. Way down here!” She threw back the comforter with a single sweep of her hand. “And I never regret anything in the morning.”

Prudence Maxwell was as naked as Godiva, though the image she presented upon the silk sheets of her feather bed was more akin to a Rubens nude—all pink and plump and enticingly hollowed. Her prodigious breasts stared up at Marc with their stiff, blind eyelets.

“Climb aboard, sailor. This brig needs her sails trimmed.”

The second and a half that it took Marc to avert his gaze
was all the time Prudence needed. She lunged halfway off the bed, braced her plummeting weight on one outstretched hand, caught her balance, and seized Marc by the left wrist. Thinking she was about to crash unaided onto the hardwood floor, he had sprung forward to assist her, and the combination of his leap and her seizing precipitated them both back onto the bed. Whereupon she began to tear at his clothes as if she were plucking a warm chicken. He felt his shirt ripping, but the more he tried to find a decent and workable purchase on his assailant, the more he inadvertently stirred her ardour by brief clutches of breast, hip, thigh, or buttock.

“I’ve got to have you, you beautiful man!”

“But think of your husband—”

“I am thinking of the son of a bitch!”

She had almost succeeded in trapping his thighs in a scissors hold when they heard a noise in the hall (the door was still ajar), as if someone heavy had just stumbled.

“That’s him now!” Marc gasped as he attempted to pry her nearest thigh away from his pant leg without having the manoeuvre misinterpreted.

“He never leaves his apartment,” she hissed and, to refocus her lover’s attention, made a grab for his privates. “He’s in there now screwing that little bitch from Brantford!”

The next stumble was not only louder, it was right outside the door. And it was followed by a singularly primal, male grunt.

“Jesus! I thought he’d gone. You better get out of here fast.”

“How?” Marc said. He looked wildly about him. There were one door and two windows too high and narrow to be of use. Under the bed was a possibility, but hiding there could be more daunting than merely confronting a cuckolded husband.

“He gets into such terrible rages,” Prudence said, and there was genuine fear in her voice.

Just before blind panic seized him, Marc had one rational thought: at least the governor must have recovered.

“The closet!” Prudence screamed through her teeth. “It runs all along that wall over there. Get inside. Quick! Please!”

Marc sprinted for the closet, deep in the far shadows of the room, pulling his tattered uniform together as best he could. He fumbled about for a door handle, found one, yanked the door open, and practically somersaulted into the silks and brocades and other gauzy attire exclusive to the female sex. He eased the door shut just as the interloper clumped into the room.

“Ah, darling. You see how ready I am for you? What took you so long?”

Marc had to admire the lady’s aplomb.

Maxwell—no doubt thwarted earlier in his pathetic attempt to seduce the young woman from Brantford—had apparently decided to offer his favours to his long-suffering wife. Marc heard a thick body thump onto the bed, followed quickly by a slurred moan, then a muffled male gurgle: “My God, you are ready!”

Well, Marc thought, as he thrashed softly among dresses and shifts and petticoats like a bumblebee in a web and tried not to listen to the groans and wheeze of the aging fornicators: this is surely the ultimate humiliation. It was at that moment that he realized the latch on the outside of the closet door had slipped back into place during his frantic entry. He was trapped.

“Ah, yes, lover, yes, yes!”

The room beyond fell suddenly and blessedly silent. Moments later a pair of mismatched snores vied for supremacy.

Desperately, Marc searched along the length of the closet, trampling on dresses as he did, but none of the other doors had been left unlatched, and none could be opened from the inside. He could force one of them open, but the noise might waken one of the spent lovers, and with his luck he knew which one it would be.

He was here for the night. Or longer.

Deciding that he might as well try to sleep—at least it would be Prudence or her maid who would open one of these doors in the morning—he sat down and lay back against the rear wall and was just beginning to take note of the fact that his bladder was alarmingly full when the wall abruptly gave way. He found himself lying flat on his back and staring up at what had to be the ceiling of another room. The adjoining room! He nearly laughed aloud for joy! Prudence’s closet obviously served the occupants of both chambers. He had fallen through an unlatched door on the opposite side.

A tight but definitely female squeal brought him upright and twisting around to see whose privacy he had now invaded. The squeal erupted again, as if a maid had just identified a mouse in her bed.

Marc slammed his eyes shut, but not before—in the light of several candles—they had taken in the essentials of a young woman standing naked in front of her four-poster bed.

“I’m sorry, Miss Maxwell,” Marc whispered, though he wasn’t sure why. “I can explain everything tomorrow, if you’ll just pull a robe on and show me the door.”

There was no answer. Was she terrified? With good cause, he thought. Finally he detected a faint rustling noise, waited for thirty seconds, then opened his eyes just a slit.

Chastity Maxwell remained frozen not ten feet away, her youthful beauty caught nicely in the candle’s glow. She was staring at him. There was fear or concern of some kind in her gaze, but she made no move to cover her breasts or the golden thatch at the vee of her thighs. What on earth did she want? Marc’s heart sank. Not again!

Still she said nothing but began to jerk her head furiously and roll her eyes to a low window on the outer wall, which was wide open to the midnight breeze. On the third or fourth swivelling of head and rolled eyes, Marc got the point. She wanted him to go out through the window quietly, afraid no doubt that her mother might have heard her suppressed shrieks and taken it upon herself to come staggering in from the hall to beat back the barbarous threat to her
daughter’s maidenhead. Marc smiled his understanding, and Chastity continued to watch him silently as he crept over to the window, hoisted himself up onto the wide ledge, twisted around so that his legs hung down outside, ready to cushion his drop to the ground, and began to lower the trunk of his body over the outside sill—while trying not to stare at the beautiful young woman standing there like Galatea, nude before Pygmalion. Just as Marc was about to drop, Chastity moved back to the bed. At the same time, a second un-clothed figure unfolded itself from under the flounce around the lower part of the four-poster and rose up over her.

It was Hilliard.

Marc was so shocked he forgot to brace his legs and feet, and as a result he crashed heavily to the ground twelve feet below.

A needle-sharp pain shot up the length of his right leg, and he collapsed in a heap. The unmuted scream he let out might have awakened the soundest of sleepers. Grimacing and cursing silently, he listened for any signs of disturbance within the great house, but all was quiet. He rolled over into a sitting position. He was in a garden, and somewhere close by he could make out a street lamp. He was home free. But when he tried to get up, his right ankle rebelled, and gave way under his weight. It was seriously sprained. He was not sure he could walk, or even limp. My God, was this the final humiliation? Was he going to have to crawl to Mrs. Standish’s on his hands and knees?

“Require some assistance from the local police?”

Marc looked up into the shadowy face peering down at him. The nose glowed like a beacon, and never had Marc been so happy to see it. “Cobb!”

“That’s what the wife calls me when she’s in the mood,” Cobb said, tucking his truncheon back into his belt. “I pert near split yer noggin with this here, Major. Took you fer the burglar that’s been upsettin’ rich folks down here.”

“Would you mind helping me to my feet?” Marc said. “I’ve turned my ankle.”