Miss Marianne's Disgrace

The bang of a dropped board echoed on the floor above them. She thought he wouldn’t answer, but to her surprise, he did.

‘During my time as a surgeon in the Navy, I saw horrors so awful, if I wrote them into my novels, readers would think I’d exaggerated for titillating effect.’ He snapped his fingers and the dog strolled to his side. He dropped his hand on the dog’s head and ruffled the silky fur. ‘For a year or two after I left the Navy, the memories used to trouble me. Usually it would happen at night, but once in a while a familiar smell or something equally trivial would bring them back during the day. Eventually, it stopped and I thought myself past such episodes, but it happened again when I attended to your friend. It’s why I left so quickly. I didn’t wish to explain it to you, or anyone else. It’s not something people outside my family are aware of, or something I’m proud of.’

‘Then why tell me about it?’ It was insults people usually heaped on her, not confidences.

‘You remind me of my sister, someone who might understand and not mock me for it.’

The faint connection they’d shared outside the study at Lady Cartwright’s whispered between them once more. Sir Warren was offering her honesty and respect, treating her like a real person, not a tart to be pawed or derided. It was how she’d always longed to be viewed by strangers, especially gentlemen.

‘No, I couldn’t.’ She fingered a small embroidered flower on her dress. ‘It makes me a little ashamed of how much I pore over my own troubles. They’re nothing compared to yours.’

‘What troubles you, Miss Domville?’ His voice was low and strong, like a physician trying to sooth an anxious patient.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about me?’ She flicked her hand at the study. ‘I’m sure the neighbours rushed over to tell your mother the stories the moment the removers left.’

‘We weren’t here when the removers left and they didn’t remove much. I bought the property lock, stock and barrel.’

‘And no one informed you at Lady Cartwright’s?’ At times, it seemed as if the only topic anyone could discuss.

‘I was delayed and missed the dinner. I left the party as soon as I finished with Lady Ellington. Why don’t you tell me the real story, then I’ll know the truth when Lady Cartwright gives me the exaggerated version.’

Honesty. He was holding it out to her again except this time it would be her sharing instead of him. She shouldn’t, but she was tired of dragging the past and the secret of her lineage around like a heavy chain. Perhaps with this gentleman who treated her like an old friend instead of a pariah, his concern for her as genuine as Lady Ellington’s, she could take the first step to being free of it. ‘You’ve heard of Madame de Badeau?’

‘She was the French courtesan who tried to ruin the Marquess of Falconbridge.’

She nodded as she twisted the slender gold band encircling her little finger. She should leave him as ignorant as everyone else of the truth about her relationship to the woman. She didn’t know him, or have any reason to trust him, except for the strange calm his presence created in her. It reminded her of the first day she’d arrived at Lady Ellington’s after Lord Falconbridge had stumbled on her trying to run away from Madame de Badeau’s. The gracious woman had taken Marianne in her arms as if she were a long-lost daughter. Not even Mrs Nichols or Mrs Smith had ever hugged her so close. Marianne had earned Lady Ellington’s affection by helping her nephew and his wife avoid ruin. Sir Warren owed Marianne nothing, yet he still looked at her as Lady Ellington had that first morning, as if she was as deserving of care and respect as anyone else. She should stay silent, but under the influence of his sincerity, she couldn’t hold back the story any more than she could have held back the tears of relief in Lady Ellington’s embrace.

‘All my life, I and everyone else thought she was my sister. What few people really know is she was my mother. She had me long after her husband, the Chevalier de Badeau, died. She passed me off as her sister to hide her shame. I don’t even know which of her many lovers was my father.’ Her stomach clenched and she thought Mrs Steven’s lemon cakes might come up. She shouldn’t have told him. No one outside the Falconbridge family knew and there was no reason to expect his discretion. If he repeated the story, then the faint acceptance Lady Ellington provided would disappear as everyone recoiled further from the illegitimate daughter of a whore.

She waited for his reaction, expecting him to curl his lip at her in disgust or march into the sitting room and demand his mother have no further dealings with her. Instead, he nodded sagely as if she’d told him her throat hurt, not the secret which had gnawed at her since she’d riffled through Madame de Badeau’s desk four years ago and found the letter revealing the truth.

‘Your mother isn’t the first woman to pass her child off as her sibling,’ he replied at last.

‘You’re not stunned?’ She was.

‘No.’ He turned back to his desk and slid a book off of the top of the stack, an ancient tome with a cracked leather cover and yellowed pages.

His movement left the path to the music room clear. Marianne could bolt out the door, leave him and her foolishness behind, but she held her ground. She wouldn’t act like a coward in front of a man who’d been to war.

He flipped through the book, then held out the open page to her. ‘Lady Matilda of Triano did the same thing in 1152.’

Marianne slid her hands beneath the book, running them over the uneven leather to grasp it when her fingers brushed his. She pulled back, and the tome wobbled on her forearms before she steadied it. It wasn’t fear which made her recoil from him as she used to the men at Madame de Badeau’s. It was the spark his touch had sent racing across her skin. She’d never experienced a reaction like this to a gentleman before.

She stepped back and fixed her attention on the beautiful drawing of a wan woman holding a rose, her blue and red gown a part of the curving and gilded initial, trying not to entertain her shocking response to Sir Warren’s touch. She stole a glimpse at his hands, wondering what they’d feel like against her bare skin. She jerked her attention back to the open book, wondering what she was going on about. She’d spent too many years dodging the wandering hands of Madame de Badeau’s lovers to search out any man’s touch now.

‘She hid her son to keep her brother-in-law from murdering the child when he seized the Duchy of Triano,’ Sir Warren explained, his voice soothing her like a warm bath. ‘The truth came out ten years later when the uncle lay dying and Lady Matilda revealed her son’s identity to secure his rightful inheritance.’

She returned the book to him, careful to keep her fingers away from his. ‘A lovely story, but my mother’s motives weren’t so noble.’

‘You’re not to blame for what your mother did.’ He set down the open book on the desk.

‘You’re the first stranger to think so. Lady Cartwright and the others are determined to believe I’m just as wanton and wicked as Madame de Badeau and they only think she’s my sister. I’m not like her. I never have been.’ It was a declaration she wished she could make in front of every family in the country and London, one she wished deep down even she believed. She was Madame de Badeau’s daughter, it was possible her mother’s sins were ingrained in Marianne and nothing would stop them from eventually coming out.

‘I can see you’re not like her. Not like most women. I recognised it the moment you insisted I help Lady Ellington and then refused to leave her side.’

‘What I did was nothing,’ she whispered, as unused to compliments as she was to embraces.

‘It was everything. I’ve seen men sacrifice themselves for their fellow sailors, hold down their best friends while I sawed off a mangled limb. I’ve also watched cowards leave their comrades to suffer while they steal provisions, or hide in the darkness of the surgeon’s deck with a minor wound to avoid fighting. I doubt Lady Cartwright or any of her other guests would have done half as much as you did for your friend.’

She stared at him, amazed by this near stranger’s faith in her and how freely he offered it to her. It frightened her more than her belief in her own weakness. If it was easily given, it might easily be revoked. She eyed the door to the music room, wanting to be through it and at the keys of the piano and away from this uncertain familiarity. She’d revealed too much already, foolishly making herself vulnerable. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to play now.’

‘Of course.’ He pulled open the door, revealing the stately black instrument dominating the area in front of the large, bowed window at the far end of the room.

She strode to it, relief washing through her. Music was her one constant and comfort, though even this had threatened to leave her once. ‘It’s beautiful.’

She slid on to the bench and raised the cover on the keys. Flexing her fingers over the brilliant white ivory, she began the first chord. The pianoforte was as well tuned as it was grand and each note rang true and deep. They vibrated through her and with each stanza she played, her past, her concerns, Sir Warren and everything faded away until there was nothing but the notes. In them the only true happiness she’d ever known.

* * *

Warren didn’t follow her into the room. He leaned against the door jamb and watched as she drew from the long-silent instrument beautiful music laced with a strange, almost effervescent melancholy. Lancelot came to his side and leaned against Warren’s leg as Warren scratched behind the dog’s ears.

The pianoforte faced the window overlooking the garden. She sat with her back to him so he couldn’t see her face, but the languid way she moved in front of the keys, her arms losing their stiffness for the first time since she’d happened into his study, didn’t escape his notice. The intensity of her focus and the graceful sway of her body in time to the music told him she was no longer here, but carried off by the piece to the same place he drifted to whenever a story fully gripped him. He was glad. She was too young to frown so much or to take in the world, or his compliments, with such distrustful eyes. He wished he could have brought her as much peace as her playing but, like him, her past still troubled her and she had yet to conquer it.

It wasn’t the past facing him today, but the future. No matter how much he wanted to stand here and listen to her, he had to return to work. He needed the money. He left the door open to allow the notes to fill the study. As Warren settled in at his desk, Lancelot stretched out on the hearthrug and returned to his nap. Warren picked up his pen, dipped the nib in the inkwell and settled it over the last word, ready to write, to create, to weave his tale.

Nothing.

The deep notes of the piano boomed before sliding up the scale into the softer, higher octaves.

He read the last paragraph, hoping to regain the thread of the story. It wasn’t so much a thread as a jumble of sentences as dull as the minutes of Parliament.

The higher notes wavered, then settled into the smooth mid-tones like water in the bottom of a bowl.

He dropped his head in his hands and rubbed his temples. Today wasn’t going any better than yesterday, or last week or the past year.

He glanced over the top of the pages to where the medieval book lay open. Lady Matilda’s sad yet determined stare met his from the vellum. He reached out and ran one finger over the black lines of her face and eyes. The pensive notes of the pianoforte slid beneath the image, the despair in the lower octaves contradicted by the hope ringing in the brief tinkle of the higher ones.

He chewed the end of his pen as he listened to Miss Domville playing, his teeth finding the familiar grooves as a new story began to separate itself in his mind from his worries and frustration. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The image of a regal lady wearing a fine blue kirtle over a red-velvet dress slid through the mist blanketing a thick forest. Lady Matilda, one slender hand on a damp and knotted oak, paused as if finally ready to reveal what she’d been keeping from him. He rolled the scarred wood of his pen between his thumb and forefinger as he watched the elusive lady threatening to vanish into the mist-covered trees.

‘Come on, out with it,’ he growled, frustrated by her coquetry. He needed her to guide him and help release the steady stream of ideas being held back by this interminable block.

Behind the teasing curve of Lady Matilda’s smile, the melody of Miss Domville’s playing curled like smoke around him and the woman. In the vibrating notes, Lady Matilda’s tale suddenly revealed itself.

He opened his eyes, slid a clean sheet of paper on to the blotter and began to write. The words flowed as fast as the notes of first one piece and then another as page after page took shape beneath his pen. He was so engrossed in the story, an hour later he failed to notice when the music faded into nothingness, the cover pulled down over the keys and soft footsteps left the music room.

The only things which remained were his story and the faint scent of peonies.

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