Tallie's Knight (24 page)

Magnus could not
remember a time when his parents had not fought, lavishly and long. The bitter
recriminations and violent rages. And each time ending with his mother giving
his father that sultry come-hither smile, the smile which had invited him to
her bed once again. And his father gratefully accepting —honour, dignity and self-respect
forgotten— until the next time he discovered her with a handsome footman, a
good-looking stable boy, one of his friends or even a passing gypsy.

Magnus had grown up
swearing he would never let a woman make a fool of him that way. He’d resolved
never to marry, never to allow a woman close enough to cause such damage. He’d
thought it no hardship —until he’d held a sleeping toddler in his arms and
realised he was depriving himself of children. And so he’d married. Thinking he
could handle it. Believing he could keep his wife in her proper place —at arm’s
length.

But he’d chosen
Tallie, naive, innocent Tallie, who needed a protector more than any female he
knew. Who’d undermined his defences from the moment he married her. No, from
even before that —he would never forget the sound of her sobbing in the maze
that day. He should have walked away then —only he hadn’t been able to leave
her alone and unprotected, to fend for herself in the world.

Bedraggled little
orphan that she was then, he’d never suspected how much he would come to desire
her. Magnus closed his eyes in despair.

He had never desired
a woman so much in his life. And that had been prior to last night —last night,
when she’d accepted his embrace with a joy and a sweet, loving passion that had
left him shaking inside. And even now, hours later. He’d thought he could slake
his desire for her —he only craved her more.

Man of the world that
he was, thinking he’d experienced everything a man and woman could do together
—he’d never known it could be like that, two coming together as one, an
explosion of sensation and emotion filling a void inside him he had never known
existed.

When one blurted,
tearful declaration of love had shattered a lifetime’s resolution and sent him
spinning towards the abyss.

I love you, Magnus.

Magnus remounted his
horse and spurred it onwards.

*
       
*
       
*

He returned in the
evening. Tallie was overjoyed to see him, and hurried forward for his kiss, but
he turned away to remove his coat and hat. When he turned back to face her, his
visage was impassive and coolly polite.

“Did you have a good
day?” he said, walking past her to a sideboard and pouring himself a drink.

“I… all right,” she
faltered, a little thrown by his coolness.

“Enjoy the shopping?”

“N… I… er, yes, I
suppose so. We did a lot of it. Monique insisted.”

“Very good. It is
almost time for dinner, so I suggest you make yourself ready. We have been
invited to dine with friends of Laetitia who are also visiting Paris —Lady
Pamela Horton and her husband Lord Jasper. Shall we say one hour?” And with
that he laid his glass aside, stood up and left the room, leaving Tallie
staring after him.

What had happened?
Was he angry with her for some reason? Why was he treating her as a polite
stranger would? Where was her husband of last night? The man who’d called her
sweetheart —twice— and held her tenderly in his arms while she wept? And then
made magnificent, glorious love to her —not once, but three times in one night.
Four, if you counted the wondrous morning episode.

Hurt and confused,
Tallie allowed herself to be dressed in her new finery. As Monique added the
final touches to her hair Tallie stared at herself in the mirror and ordered
herself to stop moping. She should be thrilled —she was going to dine out with
her husband and his friends. In Paris —the most romantic and exciting city in
the world.

And she was wearing
the finest and most fashionable clothes she had ever worn in her life.

But she didn’t feel
thrilled at all. All she could do was wonder what had gone wrong, why Magnus
was acting so distant and cold towards her when only that morning he had made
love to her and kissed her goodbye so tenderly. Oh! It was foolish to repine,
Tallie told herself sternly.

It wasn’t his fault
if he did not love her —it was a marriage of convenience, after all. He hadn’t
been cruel —not even cross or irritable. Only reserved and distant. And very
polite. It would be foolish in the extreme if she allowed herself to fall into
a fit of the dismals merely because her husband was polite to her.

On that bracing
thought Tallie left her chamber and joined her husband in the entrance hall.

“Lord and Lady d’Arenville.”
The footman’s announcement caused a small stir in the spacious and elegant
salon. Lady Pamela, a tall, elegant woman dressed in a ravishing green dress,
came forward and greeted Magnus warmly.

“Magnus, you wicked
man, you’re late. And this is your little wife. How do you do, my dear?” She
cast a quick, indifferent glance over Tallie, who at once felt small and plain,
despite her fashionable dress. “Now, Magnus, there are a dozen people who wish
to renew acquaintance with you. Oh, and here is Jasper. Take care of Lady d’Arenville,
my dear.” And, slipping her arm through Magnus’s, she led him away to join the
throng.

Tallie watched with
dismay, then recalled it was not comme il faut for a wife to dwell in her
husband’s pocket. She didn’t wish to embarrass him, particularly on this, their
first social engagement as a married couple. She turned to smile at Lord
Jasper.

“Champagne, Lady d’Arenville?”
he said, and without waiting for her reply he beckoned a footman over and
handed her a glass.

“That’ll do the
trick, my dear. Now, who do you wish to meet? Anyone you know?”

Tallie shook her
head.

“Ah, well,” said Lord
Jasper and shepherded her over to a small knot of people. He quickly introduced
her and a moment later left. Tallie gripped her glass and did her best to join
in the conversation, much of which concerned people she didn’t know and places
she hadn’t been to.

It was very difficult
when one had spent most of one’s life in Miss Fisher’s, where pupils had been
expected to be silent except when laboriously practising conversazione once a
month over weak tea and stale cakes. Miss Fisher’s conversazione had been
nothing like this.

It seemed an age
before dinner was finally announced. Tallie was heartily glad of it —Magnus
would come to take her in to dinner and she could relax for a time. And
besides, she was ravenously hungry.

Tallie dipped her
spoon in the lemon sorbet and tried not to stare down the long table to where
her husband was sitting. With Lady Pamela.

Talking and smiling
and showing every sign of enjoying himself.

Sighing, she turned
her head and shouted once more at her neighbour. He was an elderly general, and
deaf as a post. His deafness, however, did not prevent him from firing question
after question at her, obliging her to shout responses into his ear trumpet.

She glanced at her
other neighbour, a tall, thin, depressed-looking Polish man, who spoke no
English, very bad French and had the appetite —and the table manners— of a
starved gannet. His dinner was the only company he required.

On the other side of
the table a lively middle-aged Frenchwoman flirted light-heartedly with her
neighbours. She caught Tallie’s eye several times and smiled in a friendly
fashion. Tallie smiled back shyly, wishing it was possible to join in, but it
would be dreadfully bad manners if she tried to talk across the table. No, she
was stuck with the General and the Gannet.

She glanced up to the
head of the table. Lady Pamela had her hand on Magnus’s sleeve, whispering in
his ear. Tallie sighed, and shouted once more into the general’s ear trumpet.

At long last the ladies
retired, to leave the gentlemen to their port, but by that time Tallie’s throat
was quite sore from all her shouting.

In any case, almost
nobody spoke to her. The friendly Frenchwoman had left early and everybody else
seemed to have known each other almost from the cradle.

She might as well be
a Hottentot for all she had in common with these people, she thought, sipping
her tea. Lady Pamela was just like Laetitia —all she did was talk about people
who weren’t there, and the nastier the story, the more everybody laughed.
Tallie sat with a teacup on her lap and smiled and tried to look interested and
smiled some more, feeling as if her jaw would crack if she had to go on smiling
much longer.

The Hottentot
princess sat chained to the chair of the foreign invaders. She was hostage for
the good behaviour of her husband, the Prince of all the Hottentots, but her
spirit was not daunted and she did not feel betrayed by her husband’s absence.
These were her enemies, these foolish, arrogant people who spoke so freely in
front of her. The Hottentot princess smiled at her enemies, but it was the smile
of a sleeping tiger. Little did they realise she understood every word they
said.

Very soon her dashing
husband would come to rescue her.

“Tallie, my dearest
love,” he would say. “Let me rescue you from these evil ones whose tongues wag
like chattering monkeys. You mean more to me than any kingdom or throne. I will
take you to a place far away from here, where we can be alone.”

The beautiful grey
eyes of the Prince of all the Hottentots would darken, and he would bend and
add, in that wonderfully deep voice which never failed to send shivers of
delight through her, “And then, my beloved Tallie, we will make love all night
long, and again in the morning, too…”

But at the end of a
very long evening, Magnus brought her home, wished her goodnight, perfectly
politely, and went to his own chamber.

Miserably, Tallie
curled up into a small huddle in the middle of the large bed. It had become
plain during the course of the evening that Magnus was angry with her. She had
displeased him in some way. Some dreadfully significant way. Several times
during the evening she had caught him staring at her, and the expression in his
eyes had sent an icy chill down her spine.

It was if she had betrayed
him in some way… almost as if he hated her.

Tallie had obviously
failed him, but she could not imagine how.

True, she hadn’t been
very successful at the dinner, but she had tried —and he knew she’d mixed
little in society. And besides, he’d been cold and distant to her before that.

But how could a man
spend all night making passionate, tender love to his wife, and in the morning
kiss her and call her sweetheart, and then return in the afternoon acting as if
she had tried to destroy him?

When all she had done
was love him?

Over and over in her
brain, Tallie’s thoughts churned, until she felt quite sick with misery.

The next day, when
she awoke, Monique brought her the news that her husband had gone to stay with
friends near Versailles. He would return in a week. Or two.

The first night
Magnus was away Tallie cried herself to sleep. She had visited an art gallery
during the day. The second night he was away she cried herself to sleep again.
But during the day she had attended an outdoor puppet show, and gone for a
promenade with Monique and Claude in the park. She might be unhappy, and upset
with her husband, but she didn’t want the world to know it.

The next morning
Tallie had a visitor: the French lady she’d seen at Lady Pamela’s —Madame
Girodoux. Tallie was feeling utterly blue-devilled, but didn’t have the heart
to say she was not at home.

Besides, she was
lonely. Company might cheer her up.

Madame Girodoux swept
into the room. She was a widow in her forties, very thin, very fashionable and
very sophisticated, but there was kindness in her narrow, sloe-dark eyes. She
seated herself beside Tallie on the chaise longue and chatted for a short time,
but in the middle of a story she suddenly broke off, took Tallie’s hand in hers
and said, “You must forgive my forwardness, my dear, but I was an unhappy young
bride once, and I recognise the symptoms.”

At her words Tallie
burst into tears.

“Now, chérie,” said
Madame Girodoux sometime later, “it seems to me as though your young man ‘as
bitten off more than ‘e can chew.”

Tallie blinked.

“What do you mean?”

“It was a manage de
convenance, n’est ce pas?

Tallie nodded.

“But you ‘ave fallen
in love, oui?”

Tallie nodded again.
Madame Girodoux smiled.

“I think per’aps you
are not the only one.”

Tallie blinked again.

“I have noticed your ‘usband
watching you —it is not the look of a man who is indifferent.”

“No, he… I think he
dislikes—”

“Nonsense! I have ‘eard
of your ‘usband before this. They call him The Icicle, non?”

Tallie nodded.

“Well, I see no ice
in ‘im when ‘e looks at you, my dear. I see fire.”

“Fire?”

“Oui. Fire, to be
sure. Absolument. And when ice meets fire, something must crack —and it is not
the fire, believe me. Your ‘usband is afraid, but ‘e will return and the ice
will disappear.”

She patted Tallie’s
hand.

“E will not be able
to stay away from you for long, petite —‘e will be back soon. That will make
you ‘appy, non?”

She eyed Tallie
shrewdly.

“Your bed is lonely,
non?”

Tallie felt a fiery
blush flood her face.

Madame Girodoux
chuckled.

“Yes, I thought so.
The bed has a way of melting ice. May I give you some advice? I ‘ave been
married twice, you know, both times very ‘appily —though the first one started
badly.”