Paula Marshall - The Deserted Bride

Bess was airy. This interminable meal was nearly at an end, and she was flown with good food and wine, and the exhilarating sensation of danger which surrounded her husband.

“Why, sir, that is easily done. One treats them as one treats Pompey, you understand. A little petting, good food, flattery—and the will to show them who is master here whenever it is necessary.”

Bess was immediately aware that this frivolous answer was an unwise one, but it had slipped out of her, and his answer, she was later to understand, was typical of him—for he took her meaning and embroidered upon it—as a good fencer may turn his opponent’s skill against him to secure a hit.

“Mistress,” he said softly, leaning forward to take her goblet of wine from her. “You mean mistress, not master—but I take your meaning, and I promise you I shall be very wary of you if you attempt to pet me, feed me, or flatter me—and then try to prove to me who is master here—or is it the other way round, lady, and you wish to be mistress?”

“Any way which you wish,” said Bess, full of good food, good wine and magnanimity, “for you have the right of it—seeing that Atherington now has a master, as well as a mistress. Be brief in your answer, sir, I see that the feast is over, and Gilbert is unsure which of us should rise to say so.”

Drew laughed, and the sound of it echoed in one of those strange silences which often fall in the company of men and women assembled together. He took her hand and urged her to her feet.

“My friends,” he announced. “We have eaten well. My wife and I bid you adjourn to the Great Parlour where I am told that musicians are assembled to play to us as we recover from the pleasures of the feast. Lead on, Gilbert, and let the company follow us.”

Be damned to it! Drew had spent the whole afternoon with his wife and her Council, he and his Comptrollers examining books, papers and accounts, and at the end of it none of them could discover anything untoward with which she and they might be reproached. On the contrary, it appeared that Atherington was being more efficiently run than any of Drew’s other estates.

His lawyer and principal man of business, John Masters, had been particularly severe in his questioning, especially over the matter of Sir Braithwaite Hamilton, but he could not shake the men before him. They stoutly maintained that m’lord had been sent all proper and pertinent details of his illness and their response to it, and it was not their fault if matters had gone awry at the other end.

Bess had said little, Drew noted glumly, leaving her advisers to speak for her. She had intervened only on one occasion when Masters had complained that some vital accounts relating to the sinking of new coalpits near Bardon Hill had been lost.

Before Walter Hampden could answer she had said, “Oh, I ordered that a new book should be opened in another name, so that what was going into and out of the pit in terms of money should be clearly distinct from our other affairs. I believe it to be in the small pile before you. It is the new one in the blue cover.”

So it was, and John Masters was left to retreat as gracefully as he could, to his own and Drew’s annoyance. Was there no way in which he could turn the tables on the wench? He had hoped that all the food and drink which she had consumed at the banquet would have made her sleepy, but no such thing.

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