Rebel Heiress by Jane Aiken Hodge

Author:Jane Aiken Hodge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Alone, at last, in the sanctuary of her room, Henrietta sat for a while, quite still, hands close folded in her lap, defying the tears to fall. It was all too horrible for their easy solace. Charles Rivers and Lady Marchmont. Lady Marchmont and Charles Rivers. It had been there all the time, so obvious that she could not see it. Such an easy dupe as she had been; led by the nose; a convenient screen for their amours. How could she not have guessed? And yet, how could she have imagined anything so sordid? And, all the time, throbbing below her own pain and shame, exacerbating them almost beyond endurance, was her anguish for her father.

As she sat there, hating herself, she could hear carriages rolling away down the drive. Now that Lord Marchmont had gone, his political friends were leaving too. No wonder they did not stay; no wonder they tended not to bring their wives and daughters. How much did her father know? How much suspect? Something, of course. Why else had he returned home so unexpectedly only the other night and thus precipitated her disastrous engagement. If only she could hurry after him, catch him before he left, tell him the whole wretched story and beg him to take her with him, away from it all.

She could not do it to him. He had already refused, on good grounds, to take her with him. Nothing she said would change him now; it would merely mean that he went on his dangerous mission haunted equally by anxiety for her and by rage with his wife. It was all misery, all wretchedness together, and, in many ways, the worst of all was that try how she would she could not quite bring herself to hate Charles Rivers. When she reminded herself of how he had betrayed her, of how, even today, he had pretended to set her father on his way and then crept back to keep his shameful assignation with Lady Marchmont, she could not help remembering the warm pleading of his arm around her, the intoxication of his kiss. Admitting, now, that she had loved him at first sight, she could not resist the seductive argument that it must have been mutual. ‘Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?’

He had flung it at her that he would do his best to get himself killed. She could not bear it; could not imagine facing the news, and her own responsibility for it. If it happened, she would never forgive herself. So — what to do? Having abandoned the thought of writing to her father, she began instead to compose a letter to Charles Rivers and found it just as impossible. The fifth illegible and much-crossed sheet had just joined its fellows in her waste-paper basket when a little scratching on her door heralded Lady Marchmont.

She was pale, but composed. ‘I know.’ She recognised Henrietta’s instinctive recoil. ‘You do not wish to speak to me; nor do I blame you, but, Henrietta, we must talk.

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