Nicola Cornick - The Notorious Marriage

She took a sip of her wine, if only to give herself breathing space. Damnation! How could she have been so unconscionably foolish? She had been set up like a green girl and now had very limited options. The poet was nowhere near as harmless as he pretended and her dénouement looked to be only a matter of time. She shuddered at the thought.

Sir Charles smiled at her. It was not reassuring. His lips were thin and wet-looking. Eleanor, realising suddenly that staring at his face might give quite the wrong impression of her feelings, looked hastily away.

‘How far are we from London, sir?’ she asked casually.

Sir Charles’s smile became positively vulpine. ‘At least ten miles, my lovely Lady Mostyn. We are benighted, I fear. You must simply…accept…your fate, my love, my dove.’

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. ‘The carriage—’

‘Will not be ready until tomorrow, alas.’ Sir Charles spoke contentedly. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. Here we shall stay in our pastoral heaven with only our love, the darkness to leaven…’

Eleanor, privately reflecting that Sir Charles’s poetry was the hardest thing to tolerate so far, nevertheless thought that it could be useful. If she could but flatter him…

‘Pray treat me to some more of your verse, sir,’ she gushed, with what she knew to be ghastly archness. She hoped that his vanity was greater than his intellect, or he would know at once precisely what she was doing.

Sir Charles wagged a roguish finger at her. ‘Ah, not yet, my pet! I believe our landlord is waiting to serve us a feast fit for a king…’

‘Well, let us see what he can bring,’ Eleanor finished a little grimly.

Sir Charles looked affronted. ‘No, no, my love, it does not scan!’

The door opened to admit the landlord with the dinner tray. Eleanor, who considered him a most unpleasant character, was nevertheless pleased to see him, for his arrival afforded her time to think—and time when the odious Sir Charles could not press his attentions for a space, unless he was inclined to do so over the dinner plates and with an audience. Eleanor thought this entirely possible. It seemed that Sir Charles was so in love with himself and his pretty poetry that he could not envisage rejection, and probably an audience would add to his enjoyment.

While the landlord laid out the dishes, she measured the distance to the door with her eyes, then reluctantly abandoned the idea of trying to run away. They would catch her, she was in the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. How had she ever got herself into this situation? Her foolish idea of taking a lover, or even two, mocked her. Here was Sir Charles, proving another of Lady Salome’s adages, which was that reality was seldom as exciting as imagination. What folly had possessed her to accept his escort on the journey from Richmond back to London, when only five minutes before, her sister-in-law, Beth Trevithick, had looked her in the eye and told her that Sir Charles was an ill-bred philanderer who would try his luck if only given the chance? Eleanor had tossed her head in the air and allowed the baronet to hand her up into his curricle, and had not even noticed as they had fallen behind the other carriages and finally become separated altogether.

But this was not helping her to effect an escape. She allowed Sir Charles to hold a chair for her, watching under her lashes as he took the seat opposite and pressed her to accept a slice of beef, for all the world as though this were some Ton dinner rather than a squalid seduction. Eleanor accepted the beef, and some potato, wondering if either would be useful as a weapon. Probably not. The beef was too floppy and the potato too wet, though she supposed she could thrust it in his face and try to blind him with it. Her first plan, to hit Sir Charles over the head with the fire irons, had been crushed when she realised that there were none. The dinner plate would be a better option but it would probably crack, leaving him undamaged.

Eleanor sighed and tried to force down a little food. Even if she were able to escape Sir Charles for a time, she still had the landlord to contend with and she was alone and benighted in the middle of the country. All the same, there was little time for finesse in her planning. She had to come up with an idea, and quickly, and in the meantime she had to lull her seducer’s suspicions by flattering his diabolical poetry.

‘I remember a poem you wrote for me but a few days ago,’ she began, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘Something to do with beauty and the night…’

‘Ah yes!’ Sir Charles beamed, waving a piece of speared beef around on the end of his fork.

‘Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright, She walks in beauty, like the night, And brightens up my lonely sight…’

‘Yes…’ Eleanor said slowly, bending her head to hide her smile as she calculated how much the poem owed to Lord Byron and William Shakespeare. ‘How many other words rhyme with bright, Sir Charles? There must be so many to inspire you!’

‘You are so right, my brightest light!’ Sir Charles proclaimed fervently. He seized her hand. ‘Lovely Lady Mostyn, your instinctive understanding of my work persuades me that we should be as one! I know that you have your scruples, virtuous lady that you are, but if you could be persuaded to smile upon me…’

Eleanor, tolerably certain that she was being spared the second verse so that Sir Charles could get down to the real business in hand, modestly cast her eyes down.

‘Alas, Sir Charles, your sentiments flatter me, but I cannot comply. You must know that I am devoted to my absent spouse…’

Sir Charles let loose a cackle of laughter. ‘So devoted that you let Probyn and Darke and Ferris dance attendance upon you! I know your devotion, Lady Mostyn! Aye, and your reputation!’

Eleanor resisted the impulse to stick her fork into the back of his hand. Despite his ridiculous habit of talking in verse and his overweening vanity, Sir Charles would not prove easy to overcome. And all this talk of love was a hollow fiction, to dress up his lust. He was filling his wineglass for a third time now and his face had flushed an unbecoming puce.

‘Eat up, my little filly! The night is becoming chilly and I need you to warm my—’

‘Sir Charles!’ Eleanor said sharply.

The inebriated baronet had come round the table to her now. His hand was resting on her shoulder in a gesture that could have been comforting and paternalistic—for all that he was only two years her senior—but it was neither of those things. His fingers edged towards the lace that lined the neck of Eleanor’s modest dress. Her temper, subdued for so long and with difficulty, triumphed over her caution. She pushed his hand away, repulsed.

‘Kindly stand further off, sir, and avoid any inclination towards intimacy! I may be marooned here with you but I have no intention of using the occasion to further our acquaintance! Now, is that clear enough for you or must I express myself in rhyming couplets?’

The angry, dark red colour came into Sir Charles’s face. He leant over Eleanor’s chair, putting a hand on either armrest to hold her in place. His breath stank of wine and meat and his person smelled of mothballs. Eleanor flinched and tried not to sneeze.

‘Very proper, Lady Mostyn!’ Sir Charles was still smiling, his teeth bared yellow in his flushed face. ‘I suppose I should expect a show of decorum at least from one who was raised a lady but has never managed to behave as such!’

He moved suddenly, grabbing Eleanor’s upper arms, and she was sure he was about to try to kiss her. It was disgusting. She pulled herself away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. She was shaking now. It was no more or less than she had expected but the reality made her realise how hopelessly out of her depth she had become.