Beloved Enemy, page 47
She was just completing this when little Lizzy burst into the kitchen. “Please, Mistress Courtney—” she began breathlessly.
“Whatever is it, Lizzy?” Ginny spun round. “You are supposed to be at home looking after Esquire Courtney.”
“He sent me to fetch you ‘ome,” the girl said, sniffing. “Says he’s not feelin’ well, and you’ve to come and physic him.”
“What is he complaining of, girl?” Susannah asked, wiping her hands on her apron, exchanging a look with Ginny.
“His hip and stomach,” the girl replied. “He won’t let me do anythin’ for him, and shouted at me when–”
“Very well, Lizzie, that will do,” Ginny broke in swiftly, conscious of the flapping ears in the kitchen. It was too humiliating to have her husband discussed in this way, even though his vagaries were well known to everyone here and she was well aware of the pity they felt for her. “You may find your dinner here, and stay to help as you may. I will not need you at home until after the party, and I am sure Mistress Harrington could use another pair of hands.” With a small jerk of her head at Susannah, she walked out of the kitchen into the hall. “I am sorry, Susannah, but I must go to him. I will try to come back early in the morning.”
“What’s to do?” Robert Harrington came into the hall followed by Alex, the jovial question on his lips. “You both look as if you’ve been visited by a ghost. Has the syllabub not curdled?”
“Oh, it is no laughing matter, Robert. Giles has sent Lizzy to fetch Ginny home. He is not well, it seems, but of course there is nothing the matter that—”
“Susannah!” Robert thundered, and his wife stopped on the verge of gross indiscretion with a horrified gasp.
“I do beg your pardon,” she whispered, stricken with remorse, gazing at General Marshall standing behind her husband, looking every bit as shocked as he must feel at this appalling display. She had been criticizing someone else’s husband, not just in the presence of the wife, but in the presence of a stranger. “Pray forgive me, Ginny.” The plea was directed as much at her husband, however, as at her cousin by marriage.
“Think nothing of it, Susannah,” Ginny said briskly, hoping to avert Robert’s wrath. Suannah stood in some considerable awe of her husband. “It is most inconvenient, and you cannot be blamed for finding it so. I do myself.”
“It is your husband who needs you,” Robert stated in frigid tones. He could not take his cousin to task for her lack of respect in this matter, but he could make his displeasure felt at the unseemliness, at the unwomanliness of her sentiments.
“Quite so, Robert.” Ginny met his eyes directly. “And we are all aware of the facts, are we not?” Unable to stand against the candid challenge in the gray eyes, Robert coughed and turned away.
“Alex, let us continue with our discussion on those earthworks.” He marched back into the parlor. Alex, after one look at Ginny, followed. “My apologies,” Robert said gruffly. “I cannot imagine what you must be thinking of us that the women of the Colonies should have such unbridled tongues and show so little respect.”
“I was not thinking that at all,” Alex said. “You have said something to me about Mistress Courtney’s husband in the past, if you recall. It would be hard for a woman to show respect for such a man–a drunkard and a wastrel, if I may use your own words.”
“Maybe so,” Robert sighed. “But such matters lie only between husband and wife, and Mistress Courtney should keep such sentiments to herself. As for my wife–”
“Come now, you cannot blame her,” Alex cajoled. “She has so much to think of, and to lose her right hand so abruptly.... It would incline a saint to indiscretion.”
“Ah, I suppose you are right.” Robert Harrington smiled in resignation. “A glass of brandy? We had best stay immured in here if we do not wish to be swept under the carpet in all that zealous activity.”
Ginny paddled back to her cottage, furious at her husband for the selfish command that she knew to be unnecessary. He had wanted to accompany her to Harrington Hundred, and only the lack of invitation had kept him away. What he saw as a deliberate slight had also made him livid, and his refusal to allow her to complete her work for Susannah was presumably the consequence. And now she would not be able to walk along the river after dinner.... It was that thought, rather than having had to abandon her Salamagundy, that fueled her disconsolate irritation, Ginny realized without too much surprise. But she was in no conciliatory mood when she tied up her canoe and stomped up the garden into the house.
“Giles?” There was no sign of him in the kitchen and no immediate response to her call. She called again, going to the stairs. A weak moan came in reply. “Malingering hypocrite,” Ginny muttered, ascending the stairs that opened directly into the upstairs chamber. Her husband lay upon the bed, fully clothed, his eyes red and angry and unfocused, the whiskey bottle beside him. “What is the matter,” she asked with scant sympathy, “that you should drag me away in this peremptory fashion?”
“Your place is with me.” He struggled up until he was sitting on the bed. “My damn hip is paining intolerably, and you have no right to be anywhere but here, seeing to my comfort and my needs.”
“I left Lizzie to do that,” Ginny retorted, anger, disappointment, and disgust putting her beyond caution. “I will prepare a poultice for your hip and bring you laudanum.” She picked up the whiskey bottle, but Giles lunged for it, wrenching it out of her hand.
“Yes, you left some half-witted girl-child to look after me,” he said furiously. “What is there at Harrington Hundred that is so much more appealing and important than serving your husband who is owed your loyalty and obedience?”
“Everything,” Ginny muttered, then gasped with pain as he twisted her wrist.
“What did you say, soldier’s whore?” he hissed. “Is that it, then? The mere sight of a soldier is sufficient to–”
“Stop it!” Ginny yelled, pulling at her wrist, heedless of the pain. With a final twist, she broke his grip. “You have no right to talk in that way.” Except that he did have the right. She turned away from him, back to the stairs, rubbing her wrist. “Do you wish me to prepare a poultice for you, or would you prefer I bring you more whiskey to drown the ache?”
Giles dived for her but tripped and fell to his knees. A look of surprise crossed his face at finding himself on the floor, but he seemed to forget about following Ginny and dragged himself back to the bed, falling across it with a groan.
He would be unconscious in a short while. Ginny’s lip curled in utter contempt as she went back downstairs. They would be having dinner now at Harrington Hundred, and she was very hungry. She ate a giblet pie she had left for Giles. He would be unable to stomach it now, once he came out of his stupor. Spiced gruel was about all he could take these days, and even that sometimes aggravated his stomach after a particularly heavy bout. How would he be tomorrow, at the party? Perhaps he would not be able to go, which would mean that she would not be able to attend either. They would both sit in lonely bitter enmity in their house while the revels went on ... and Alex... Oh, it was all hopeless. There was no future to anything. Ginny went out of the house. She would walk herself into exhaustion; then at least she would be able to sleep.
Alex paddled slowly up Piper’s Cut, looking out for the house. He did not know what he would do when he saw it, and particularly what he would do if he saw Giles Courtney. Paddle on by, presumably. There was so much bustle at Harrington Hundred that his departure after dinner had drawn no surprised comment. Indeed his host had remarked enviously that he wished he could do the same, but Susannah would not look kindly upon her husband’s desertion at this juncture.
The small, square house came into view as he rounded the bend. Smoke curled from the chimney, and the garden around was neat and well tended. As he would have expected of Mistress Courtney’s husbandry. The canoe and rowboat were tied up at the bank so she was not out upon the water this evening. Lifting his paddle, Alex allowed the canoe to drift, noticing the lean-to under the trees where two horses were tethered. Either she was within doors, tending her husband, or she was out and about on foot. Well, there was no reason why he should not paddle by, keeping his eyes open. The creek was a public waterway, the marshes on either side alive with game fowl, and his musket rested in the bottom of the canoe as ample evidence of his hunting intentions.
He came across Ginny some hundred yards downstream from the house, sitting on the bank dabbling her toes in the water. Her face lit up when she saw him, then an expression that he had never before seen and had thought never to see on that courageous, challenging countenance, an expression that filled him with nameless rage appeared in the gray eyes as she looked nervously around. She was afraid. Then the look was gone as swiftly as it had appeared. “Round the next corner,” she said. “I will race you.” She was on her feet, picking up her shoes and off and running on the instant, leaving him to follow as fast as the paddle would allow him.
When he rounded the corner, there was no sign of her, and he stopped in midstream, looking around. There was nothing but the marshes, where curlews rose and called, and the wooded bank. Then he heard an unmistakable chuckle from somewhere above. Looking up, he saw her in the crotch of an oak tree, peeping impudently at him through the copper leaves. “Can you climb trees, General, or are you grown too full of consequence for such childish sport?”
“You’re going to pay for that,” he threatened with a mock scowl, paddling to the bank and tying the canoe. The tree was not an easy climb, particularly as Ginny tossed twigs and leaves down on him as he clambered up to where she sat astride a thick branch, her back resting against the tree trunk. “Gypsy,” he declared, swinging astride the branch facing her. “Disrespectful hoyden.” Putting his hands on her shoulders, imprisoning her against the trunk at her back, he kissed her, subjugation in mind. Ginny laughed and twisted against his mouth but eventually yielded, her head going back as her lips parted and her arms went around his neck.
“What brings you here, sir?” she inquired, when at length he released her.
“A promised meeting along the river bank with a gypsy,” he replied. “A kiss to claim. Must we stay up here?”
“Not if you do not care for it. But it is very private.”
“Yes, but devilishly uncomfortable, and I think caterpillars are crawling down my back.”
Ginny chuckled, swung her leg over the branch so that she was sitting sideways, then launched herself into the air. Alex gasped, open-mouthed, then relaxed as she caught onto a branch opposite and swung like a monkey some six feet from the ground. “You had better catch me, sir.”
He jumped down, coming up in front of the swinging figure, putting his arms around her waist. “Let go then. I have you safe.” She dropped into his arms, her hands on his shoulders, smiling down at him as he held her up. Then he let her slide through his arms to the ground. Ginny straightened her skirts, reached up to pluck a twig from his shoulder. Alex took her wrist with a frown. “How did you do this?”
“Do what?” she said with an assumption of carelessness, glancing idly at her wrist where an ugly bruise was purpling against the bone. “Oh, if you climb trees, you expect a few scratches.” She shrugged nonchalantly, but Alex’s frown deepened.
“That is not a scratch, and it did not come from tree climbing. How did you do it? And don’t lie to me, Ginny.”
“I do not entirely recall,” she said with bland but necessary disobedience. “And it does not hurt in the slightest.”
Alex’s lips tightened as he remembered that look in her eyes, but there was nothing he could do if she would not confide in him. And there was little he could do if she did, he thought bleakly. The only thing he could do for her was to avoid endangering her further.
“Do not look so somber,” she said suddenly, softly pleading. “We are quite safe here, and it is surely too rare an opportunity that we should waste it. It will be dark soon, and you will have to return to Harringtons’, or they will send out a search party for you.”
“And your husband will be looking for you,” he said directly, tipping her chin, forcing her to meet his eye.
Ginny tried to evade him but could not. “I do not suppose he will be looking for me for quite some time,” she said matter-of-factly. “He is in a swinish, whiskey-sodden stupor, if you wish to know the truth.”
Alex sighed and asked painfully, “Has he beaten you, Ginny?”
“Not so far,” she said shortly. “And you need not fear that I would stand for it if he did. You should know me better than that.”
And with that, Alex had to be satisfied. He left her soon after, paddling back as dusk turned to full night. Never had he felt so helpless, so totally without a plan of action or even the possibility of forming one. She was dearer to him than life itself, and he knew that he could not possibly leave her again, now that he had found her.
But what future did they have? He could stay here, buy land, and make his life as a planter. It was a good life for those with the drive and energy to make it work. He would be close to her and they would love–hugger-mugger and in constant fear of discovery, the voice of reality chimed. The secret scramblings, the fear, would eat into them, eventually destroying what they had. And he was a soldier, not a planter, a man with a life of power waiting for him at home. He could take her with him, wrest her from her husband to live with him in disgrace, a social outcast, a declared adulteress who could not be married because she had a husband already. And his career would be destroyed utterly under the harsh moral climate presently operating in England where adultery was now a hanging offense.
Everywhere he turned, Alex saw only the thorny thicket of an impossible dilemma. There was only one sensible answer for the rational man. He must leave her and go home. But he did not think he was a rational man any longer.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ginny woke at dawn steadfastly determined that nothing was going to keep her from the party. The birds were greeting the new day in ecstatic chorus, and she ran downstairs, out into the dewy morning, barefoot, shivering slightly in the early chill. An autumnal mist rose from the creek and marsh, but there was nothing to indicate that the mellow warmth of this October was at an end. The sun was a red, hazy ball low in the sky, promising a clear day.
She fed the chickens, watered the horses, and put them to graze. In Lizzy’s absence, she had to milk the two cows, but none of these tasks seemed particularly arduous this morning, and she was humming cheerfully as she dragged the tin bathtub into the kitchen and filled it with steaming water from the cauldron hanging on the arm over the fire. Before getting into the tub, she took the bucket to the well in order to refill the cauldron, struggling beneath its filled weight as she set it upon the arm again and swung it over the fire to heat up should she need more.
There was no sound from upstairs, Giles being still deeply asleep, and Ginny pulled her shift over her head and slid into the tub, dipping backward to wet her hair before washing it. Today, for the first time since leaving Alex at Preston, she was going to wear the turquoise gown with the quilted taffeta petticoat that she had made herself last month. She would wear the tortoiseshell combs in her hair, and her prunella shoes with the rosettes.
The creak on the stairs interrupted these pleasant musings, and she sat up in the water, drawing her knees up, crossing her arms over her breasts in a defensive reflex. Giles stepped down into the kitchen, blinking blearily, then his eyes fell upon her, sitting in the tub, her wet hair hanging down her back, her creamy shoulders bare.
“Well, well,” he said slowly, crossing the room toward her. “Who are you making yourself beautiful for, wife of mine?”
“I was just taking a long-overdue bath,” Ginny said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice as Giles knelt down by the tub. “If you would care to bathe, there is fresh water on the fire. I will just–”
“Why so anxious?” he said, taking her hands and uncrossing them. “It is your husband, remember, who wishes to look at you. Am I not entitled to do so?”
Ginny could feel the shudders of revulsion creeping up her back. Then his hand cupped one breast, and she thought she would scream, except that his mouth came down on hers, stifling all sounds. He never kissed her, had never taken a leisurely interest in her body before. He was interested only in the act of coition, and his consistent failure to perform that act brought down vicious accusations upon her head. She twisted her head, but he caught the wet mane on her shoulders and held her head still as his tongue pushed into her mouth, rough and inexpert, his fingers squeezing her nipples hurtfully, although she sensed that he did not intend to inflict pain; he just did not think in terms of her comfort, as was usual with him.
“No... please...” she heard herself beg and knew it to be a mistake.
Giles drew back from her, his face darkening. “What is the matter? Is this not what you are accustomed to with your paramour? Will you deny your husband what you give so freely elsewhere?”
“Giles, do not talk like that,” she pleaded desperately now. “It is only that you surprised me, and it is early in the morning... but... but we must make haste if we are to reach the Harringtons’ before the other guests.” She could hear her babble and despised herself for it, but if he was going to insist on her cooperation, here and now, she did not know how she would bear it in silence.
“There is time,” he said, pulling her upright. “Dry yourself and come upstairs. I am in need.”
She could not refuse him, not without making matters between them completely intolerable. She could not afford to give him yet further ammunition for his jealous accusations that her own needs were gratified elsewhere. Ginny knew that he did not believe in his accusations, that they were made simply to wound her, but it would not take much. So she lay like a stone, while drink and ill health took their invariable toll of Giles and, as always, he was left frustrated and angry, insisting that it was her fault because she was as cold as ice and enough to dampen any man’s ardor.
