A Dangerous Fortune(82)
After Hugh she took another partner; but then the other men stopped asking her. As ten o’clock turned to eleven and the brandy appeared, convention was abandoned: white ties were loosened, some of the women kicked off their shoes, and Maisie danced every dance with Hugh. She knew she ought to feel guilty, but she had never been much good at guilt: she was enjoying herself and she was not going to stop.
When the piano-playing footman was exhausted, the duchess demanded a breath of air, and maids were sent scurrying for coats so they could all take a turn around the garden. Out in the darkness, Maisie took Hugh’s arm. “The whole world knows what I’ve been doing for the last six years, but what about you?”
“I like America,” he said. “There’s no class system. There are rich and poor, but no aristocracy, no nonsense about rank and protocol. What you’ve done, in marrying Solly and becoming a friend of the highest in the land, is pretty unusual here, and even now I bet you never actually tell the truth about your origins—”
“They have their suspicions, I think—but you’re right, I don’t own up.”
“In America you’d boast about your humble beginnings the way Kingo boasts about his ancestors fighting at the battle of Agincourt.”
She was interested in Hugh, not America. “You haven’t married.”
“No.”
“In Boston … was there a girl you liked?”
“I tried, Maisie,” he said.
Suddenly she wished she had not asked him about this, for she had a premonition that his answer would destroy her happiness; but it was too late, the question had been raised and he was already speaking.
“There were pretty girls in Boston, and pleasant girls, and intelligent girls, and girls who would make wonderful wives and mothers. I paid attention to some of them, and they seemed to like me. But when it came to the point where I had to make a proposal or back off I realized, each time, that what I felt was not enough. It was not what I felt for you. It wasn’t love.”
Now he had said it. “Stop,” Maisie whispered.
“Two or three mothers got rather cross with me, then my reputation spread around, and the girls became wary. They were nice enough to me, but they knew there was something wrong with me, I wasn’t serious, not the marrying kind. Hugh Pilaster, the English banker and breaker of hearts. And if a girl did seem to fall for me, despite my record, I would discourage her. I don’t like to break people’s hearts. I know too well what it feels like.”
Her face was wet with tears, and she was glad of the tactful dark. “I’m sorry,” she said, but she whispered so softly that she could hardly hear her own voice.
“Anyway, I know what’s wrong with me now. I guess I always knew, but the last two days have removed any doubts.”
They had fallen behind the others, and now he stopped and faced her.
She said: “Don’t say it, Hugh, please.”
“I still love you. That’s all.”
It was out, and everything was ruined.
“I think you love me too,” he went on mercilessly. “Don’t you?”
She looked up at him. She could see, reflected in his eyes, the lights of the house across the lawn, but his face was in shadow. He inclined his head and kissed her lips, and she did not turn away. “Salt tears,” he said after a minute. “You do love me. I knew it.” He took a folded handkerchief from his pocket and touched her face gently, mopping the teardrops from her cheeks.
She had to put a stop to this. “We must catch up with the others,” she said. “People will talk.” She turned and began to walk, so that he had to either release her arm or go with her. He went with her.
“I’m surprised that you worry about people talking,” he said. “Your set is famous for not minding anything of that sort.”
She was not really concerned about the others. It was herself she was worried about. She made him walk faster until they rejoined the rest of the party, then she let go of his arm and talked to the duchess.
She was obscurely bothered by Hugh’s saying that the Marlborough Set was famous for its tolerance. It was true, but she wished he hadn’t used the phrase anything of that sort; she was not sure why.
When they reentered the house the tall clock in the hall was striking midnight. Maisie suddenly felt drained by the tensions of the day. “I’m going to bed,” she announced.
She saw the duchess look reflexively at Hugh, then back at her, and suppress a little smile; and she realized that they all thought Hugh would sleep with her tonight.
The ladies went upstairs together, leaving the men to play billiards and drink a nightcap. As the women kissed her good night Maisie saw the same look in the eyes of each one, a gleam of excitement tinged with envy.
She went into her bedroom and closed the door. A coal fire burned merrily in the grate, and there were candles on the mantelpiece and the dressing table. On the bedside table, as usual, there was a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of sherry in case she got peckish in the night: she never touched them, but the well-trained staff of Kingsbridge Manor put a tray beside every bed without fail.
She began to take off her clothes. They might all be wrong: perhaps Hugh would not come to her tonight. The thought stabbed her like a pain, and she longed for him to come through the door so that she could take him in her arms and kiss him, really kiss him, not guiltily as she had in the garden, but hungrily and shamelessly. The feeling brought back an overwhelming memory of the night of the Goodwood races six years ago, the narrow bed in his aunt’s house, and the expression on his face when she took off her dress.