CHAPTER TEN #4
Her hand slipped out of his clasp. “Then you will force me to vanish in secret.”
He was silent, a heaviness settling about his heart.
From the depths of his being, he asked, “Do you know what you are asking me to do?”
There was a cry in her own heart, but she forced it down. “I know.”
He felt dead. It did not seem as if his voice belonged to him. But he said the words nevertheless.
“Then so be it.”
It was eleven of the clock before Denzell left his room the next morning. Even then he was moving with some care, for fear that the dreadful symptoms that had attacked him might start up again. The headache had reduced to a bearable level, but any sudden noise or movement made him start and wince.
His hosts, he was informed by the manservant Mayberry, had repaired to the garden, whither Denzell followed them, having rejected with loathing an offer of breakfast and requesting that some hot coffee might be sent outside.
He paused on the threshold of the rear door that led from a small back parlour to the neat patch of lawn behind the house, lifting one hand to shut out the glare and frowning under it towards the chestnut tree.
Unice, looking cool in her muslin, was seated in one of the iron garden chairs dotted about the tree, the infant Julia in her arms, while Osmond, in his shirt-sleeves, lay at his length on the grass, his two boys gambolling about him.
The sight of this contented domestic bliss did nothing to lighten Denzell’s grey mood, belied somewhat by his having allowed his valet to help him into his olive-green coat and waistcoat. Moreover, the shrieking welcome of Felix and Miles served to make him close his eyes in anguish.
Osmond laughed out. “That’ll teach you to roll in drunk as a wheelbarrow at three o’clock in the morning, Hawk!”
Denzell held up a hand. “I thank you, the lesson has already made its mark.”
But Unice was eyeing him with a grave look in her face. “It is not in your style, Denzell.”
His shoulders shifted, as if a full shrug demanded too much of him. “Much that I do these days is not in my style.”
He carefully sat himself down under the chestnut tree, thankfully leaning his back against the trunk and closing his eyes again to the persistent and unwelcome memory of last night’s events.
He had been as good as his word. Returning to the Rooms, he had conducted himself in a manner that had drawn down even Sir John Frinton’s censure upon his head.
During a brief lull in his flirtatious perambulations among a selection of young women whose faces he had not even seen clearly, having been performed in a travesty of his erstwhile game and over a sensation of blankness that had dulled all feeling, the old roué had approached him with the faintest of disapproving frowns between his brows.
“To what, my dear young sir, do we owe this sudden excursion into your old tricks?”
Denzell had been unable to summon the vestige of a smile. “To circumstance, Sir John.”
“It would be well,” the old man had returned tartly, “if your circumstance did not inconvenience a series of vulnerable young women with hopes raised unnecessarily.”
Denzell’s jaw had tightened. “I cannot help that. There is more at stake here than you know.”
The light of compassion had entered the other’s eyes. “Matters go against you, do they? Is there anything I can do, my boy?”
“Nothing, I thank you.” He had grimaced. “Unless you care to ensure that my remains are suitably interred in a hackney cab later tonight?”
Sir John’s brows had risen. “You are not, I trust, contemplating a violent end?”
“I am contemplating a violent inebriation!”
The aged exquisite had laughed. “You may rely on me, dear boy.”
He had been as good as his word. Better, in fact.
For not only had he accompanied Denzell to the Gentleman’s Rooms, matching him glass for glass — deuce take it, the man had a head like a rock!
— but he had seen him escorted into his own coach and personally deposited the body into the hands of Osmond Ruishton himself.
Denzell came out of his reverie to discover his hosts calling for Dinah and the infant’s new nurse, both of whom were within earshot.
His eyes flicked open, to find that the boys were being led off to the larger ground beyond the garden to play, while the baby was lowered into a basket crib and removed to a position just outside the house.
“Now then,” said Osmond on a determined note.
Denzell glanced from one to the other of them. Unice was still watching him with that solemn look in her face, while Osmond was frowning.
“What?” he demanded.
“Yes, that’s just what we want to know,” said his friend. “Not like you to be secretive with us, Hawk. And just because we didn’t accompany you to the Rooms last night, does not mean we haven’t heard of your doings.”
“Doubtless Sir John told you,” groaned Denzell.
“Dash it, Hawk,” said Osmond for answer, “what should take you to get into a sudden burst of flirtation with every pretty girl in the room —”
“Except Verena,” put in Unice.
“— and then, just as though you’d exhausted the supply of eligibles, go off to drink yourself to death in the Gentleman’s Rooms?”
Denzell put up his fingers to knead at his aching brow. “What would you have me do? I was obliged to demonstrate to Mrs Peverill that she was mistaken in supposing me to be interested in Verena.”
“I should think you did that all right!”
“But, Denzell, why?” asked Unice. “Why were you so obliged?”
He dropped his hands and looked up at her. His voice was bleak. “Because Verena wished it. And, if you must have the full sum of it, I steeped myself in liquor because I could not otherwise bear the command she has laid upon me.”
It took Unice and Osmond some little time to drag the whole story out of him.
But it was told at last, to the accompaniment of a cup of hot strong coffee which his hostess pressed upon him, poured from the pot the butler sent out by the hand of one of the maids, and a good deal of critical comment from Osmond at least, who was inclined to think Denzell should count himself well out of it.
“I mean to say, Hawk, if you have been unable to win the girl out of her indifference —”
“She is not indifferent,” Denzell interrupted, and winced at the discomfort his own raised voice cost him. “She is — I will not say ‘in love’ because the very thought of love is anathema to her — but she does care for me. She very nearly said as much.”
“Did she indeed, Denzell?” asked Unice eagerly. “I must say, that is very much the impression I had myself — if only she will allow herself to feel it.”
Denzell nodded, and his features dropped, drawing down into despair. “There’s the rub.” He laid down his empty cup. “And as long as her mama is in question, I don’t believe she will allow herself to feel it.”
Osmond snorted. “Dash it, Hawk, this ain’t like you. Never known you to be so defeatist.”
“Circumstances alter cases.”
Unice was looking thoughtful. “Is there not some way in which her mama might be accommodated — within your future with Verena, I mean?”
“What future? According to Verena, we have no future.”
“Yes, but that is because she is unable to think beyond the present necessity. There are always other solutions. Why should not Mrs Peverill live with you both at Tuttingham, for example?”
Denzell’s features lightened for a moment. He stared at Unice. “I had not thought of that.”
“Think of it now then,” Unice urged.
But Osmond was shaking his head. “That’s no use. You don’t suppose Verena will agree to have the whole story let out to Lord and Lady Hawkeridge, do you? Dash it, the woman has left her husband! It ain’t a thing you bruit about lightly, Unice.”
“But no one could blame her for leaving such a husband,” Unice protested. “Why, I should suppose Lady Hawkeridge must be the first to condemn such brutal practices.”
“She would, of course,” Denzell agreed, but he sighed too. “Yet I believe Osmond is in the right of it. Besides which, Verena will not wish to have her mother sue to strangers for an asylum.”
Unice was daunted for a moment, but she rallied. “Not strangers, Denzell. They would be her parents-in-law.”
“You are forgetting, Unice,” Denzell said, “that I have first to overcome Verena’s reluctance even to consider the question of marriage — let alone allowing her mother to become the pensioner of myself or my parents. She has a great deal of pride.”
“Yes, false pride. I declare, I am very much of a mind to talk to her myself.”
“I doubt it would do any good.”
“I agree with Hawk,” chimed in Osmond. “If he can’t persuade her — given that she does care for him — then I don’t see her paying any mind to you, my love.”
“And before that, I must persuade her also there are men who do not demonstrate their love by beating their wives.”
“Well, if she won’t accept even that, then there’s nothing for it, Hawk. You’ll have to do as she asks.”
“I have already given my word that I will.”
“There you are then. Forget the girl, dash it.”
“That,” said Denzell flatly, “is impossible.”
“Pooh! It is only because you can’t have her that you want her so badly. Mark my words. Within a month or two, you’ll be mooning over some other wench.”
“Osmond Ruishton! I don’t know how you can be so blind to your best friend’s deepest feelings.”
“Well, but —”
A commotion at the rear door interrupted them. There was a hubbub of raised voices within the room behind. Mayberry came through the open door, and was rudely shoved aside. Verena herself pushed past him, and stood glancing frantically about the garden.
Hatless, out of breath, and plainly distraught, she cast about until she spied the trio around the chestnut tree.
“Denzell!” she cried, and, lifting her muslin skirts, began to run towards him.
Denzell, for a moment blank with surprise, no sooner took in her distressed condition, than he leapt to his feet, disregarding the instant twinge to his head the sudden movement caused him.
He took two strides before she reached him, and had only time to seize the hands she was holding out before words started tumbling from her mouth.
“Denzell, help me! Oh, pray help me! What am I to do? He has prevailed and it is all in vain. Mama has gone!”