Lady Blakeney, in her previous life as Marguerite St. Just, had been known primarily for her comic endeavors. With her charming smile and mobile features - and no small amount of talent - she could scintillate as any number of Beatrices, Susannas and Agneses, and it was indeed rumored that one very funny, but very royalist play had been allowed to run several weeks longer than otherwise, so that several government officials might go furtively to see her performance. However, let it not be supposed that she lacked a similar gift for tragedy. Marguerite could fill her eyes with tears, cause her lower lip to tremble, thread a delicate tremor through her voice, and paint upon her face an expression of piteous sorrow that would have had the first five rows in tears, be they ever so hardened.
Unfortunately, it was having no effect whatsoever on her husband's valet, standing immobile and immovable before the door to Percy's study.
"Come, Frank! Do let me in. Surely you don't mean to stand guard all day."
Frank's face was stone, his voice the epitome of bland courtesy.
"That was the order left me by Sir Percy, my lady."
Marguerite set her hands on her hips and adopted the scolding air of a competent housewife.
"And who is to tend to Sir Percy's rooms, then? Is my husband to come home to his things in a state of dusty turmoil!"
Frank half-bowed.
"Begging your ladyship's pardon, but I have arranged for one of the footmen to tend to Sir Percy's suite. He has followed me these last three days to be sure of accomplishing things just so," he added, forestalling the immediate protest on his mistress' lips.
Marguerite folded her arms with a great show of righteous indignation.
"And all this was arranged by Sir Percy, this is so?"
Frank inclined his head in a respectful positive.
"Sir Percy made it quite clear to me, my lady, that I was to take whatever steps necessary to secure his study against all comers from the period of the morning of December 24th until his expected return late this evening."
Marguerite shifted, ever so slightly, from offended hauteur into aggrieved innocence.
"Oh, Frank! You surely don't think Sir Percy meant to include me in that ban?"
"It grieves me to differ from your ladyship, but unfortunately I do."
"Frank. How on earth could you have arrived at so dreadful a conclusion?"
"Possibly because Sir Percy himself particularly stressed it. My lady."
"And all because my Christmas present is in there!"
"That is something I can neither confirm nor deny, my lady."
It was time, Marguerite decided, to play up the absurdity of the thing. Goodness knew it wouldn't be difficult.
"For goodness sake, Frank. I am a woman grown and the wife," she went on with lowered voice, "of the finest, bravest, and most daring man of the last decade, if not ever. Do you think that I am a child, who wouldn't be able to resist peeking at a package? Surely if I wanted to gain entrance into Percy's study, I could have done so any time this past week. I do have my own key, after all."
"As Sir Percy expressed it to me, your ladyship, it was his understanding that you would consider yourself honor-bound to not begin the search until Christmas Eve."
Her position would have been greatly strengthened, Marguerite could not help feeling, if she were not currently sporting straw from the hayloft in her hair, coal dust from the cellar along the bottom of her gown, and a long streak of dust from the attic down one cheekbone.
"The thought of any 'search,' Mis-ter Benyon," she declaimed haughtily, "is simply laughable."
"I in no way disagree with your ladyship."
Marguerite looked sharply at him, but Frank's face remained the same open model of flawless domestic deportment, eyes prudently lowered. With one last, desperate gamble, she drew herself up quite straight and brought the picture of the Comtesse de Tournay into her mind, grimacing inwardly.
"Frank. As your mistress, I demand that you permit me immediate entry to this room. Or I shall be forced," she added suddenly, caught up in the role, seeing his head begin to shake, "to recommend that you seek a new situation...!"
She regretted the words the instant she saw them, for Frank immediately let fly at her a look of such hurt, astonishment and betrayal that her heart melted. She put a hand on his arm quickly, dwindling in a moment from an arrogant baronet's wife into a pretty young girl with a charming hesitancy in her manner.
"Oh, Frank. I didn't mean that. You know I didn't. I shouldn't even have joked. I am sorry."
Frank lowered his head, as if to hide sentiments unbefitting a man and a servant. His always rigid shoulders had positively begun to droop.
"It grieves me deeply if I have failed to give satisfaction in my position, your ladyship. But Sir Percy's orders..."
Marguerite patted his arm swiftly.
"Yes, yes, I know. 'Tisn't your fault. I'll take it up with that errant husband of mine when he comes home. But here, Frank...oh, do look at me! I won't believe I'm forgiven until you look at me."
Benyon raised his eyes obediently if reluctantly, though only to her chin.
"Your ladyship, of course, has nothing to apologize for."
Marguerite shook her head, still trying to catch his gaze.
"It's good of you to say so, but really, I'm worrying you dreadfully. Here, Frank."
She drew herself up.
"I give you my word I'll not try to go in there today. All day."
Frank's eyes met hers, querying.
"Your ladyship's word?"
Marguerite laid a theatrical hand on her heart.
"My word of honor. You can tend to your duties and not stand here all day like a silly sentry. I will make no attempt to go into my husband's study today or tonight."
Frank inclined his head.
"Your ladyship's word is, of course, sacred."
And then, under Marguerite's astonished gaze, the crushed frame straightened, the sad eyes brightened, and the tremulous expression of a wounded man blurred into one of supreme satisfaction.
"I must sincerely thank your ladyship for freeing me for more urgent duties. Now with your permission..."
And without waiting for permission, he released his arm from her hand, executed a smart bow, and took off briskly down the hall with...yes, he was! The terrible thing was positively whistling!
Marguerite struggled for breath for an instant and finally seized enough to cry out in appalled tones.
"FRANK!"
The picture of the proper valet, Frank paused instantly, turned, and bowed.
"Your ladyship?"
Marguerite groped for words, and at last settled on the worst she could, at that moment, think of.
"You are exactly like your master!"
Frank's already beaming face brightened further, and he made another bow.
"Your ladyship does me too much honor. If there is nothing more...?"
Marguerite made a brief and highly eloquent gesture whose meaning - "Yes, get out of sight NOW!" - could not have been plainer, and Frank pursued his whistling way.
Marguerite gave way to her feelings with a single vigorous kick...but her husband's study door was solid oak.
Muttering French imprecations, she went to change.
* * * * * * * * * *
The study door leered at her most impertinently all afternoon, but Lady Blakeney, thoroughly conscious of Frank's eyes upon her, set herself to the most mature, settled, adult Christmas Eve ever spent.
Quietly she supervised the setting out of the holly. Demurely she read a book of Christmas fables to a parcel of tenants' children, and gave them each a sugarplum. Like one to the manor born she listened smilingly to the carolers, and like the most obedient child ever seen took herself to Christmas Eve service with her prayer book in her hand. Never did her footsteps falter even once in passing the study door, and she took care to spend nearly every waking moment in plain view of anyone who would wish to see her.
But she kept herself always in the west side of the house, where the windows faced the road from Dover.
And slowly, as the hours wore on, Marguerite's activity became less a studied pageant to prove the valet wrong, and more an anxious attempt to keep her thoughts from wandering. The paths before her thoughts were dark and thorny ones, and difficult to retrace.
Afternoon passed, and Sir Percy did not come.
Teatime came and went, and she listened for the hoof beats as she poured...but Sir Percy did not come.
Supper came and went, and she saw Frank's face a little paler than it had been before, a little more marked with worry. And Sir Percy did not come.
He was not there when she returned from church, not there when she sat in the library and stared unseeing at her book, not there when she took her candle and went up to bed.
Not there when, after several sleepless hours, Marguerite rose, lit her candle, and padded her way silently to the small closet of a room a few doors down from her husband's suite.
It did not surprise her to see a light under the door. She rapped slightly.
"Frank?"
The door opened as if he had been waiting there. Frank was still dressed, though his cravat was loosened and his jacket removed. His face looked tired and uncertain in the wavering light of her candle.
"My lady?"
Marguerite's eyes were huge and shadowed in the dark hallway, and she looked both older than her years and very, very young, standing there before him.
"I'd like to be released from my promise, Frank."
His brow creased for a moment, and then he nodded.
"Of course, my lady."
A small smile glittered briefly on her face and then vanished.
"Thank you."
Before the whisper had fully reached his ears, she was gone.
Marguerite all but ran to the study, on swift, light feet. She unlocked the door, pulled it open, pushed it behind her as if she fled pursuit, and leaned against it with a deep, shuddering sigh.
Then she clambered like a child into the immense dark chair before his desk, buried her face in the padding, and breathed deeply.
For many months now, this had not been the Bluebeard's chamber it had been when she was a young bride. Now this was Percy's room - peculiarly his, of course, and not one she would flippantly enter without him, but a place where she was no longer a furtive intruder but a welcomed guest. There was a small armchair now in the corner beside his mother's portrait, a delicately upholstered and very soft chair where she would sometimes sit, sewing or reading or scribbling to Armand on the little side-table carved to match it. Often whatever employment she had brought with her was merely a blind for her true purpose: to sit there and watch him as he worked, absorbed and unawares, to breathe in his scent and feel his nearness. Sometimes he would look round and catch her watching him, and smile a little uncertainly, a little bashful to find her so absorbed. And sometimes he would then hold out one hand, and she would cross to him with a smile, and he would gather the whole armful of her into his chair, her billowing skirts crowding them both.
And sometimes she came here when he was gone, when things were very, very hard, and sat quietly as an obedient child in his chair, or ran her fingers along the smooth wood of the desk, or stood with her arms wrapped tightly around her before the maps of Paris and the coasts and wondered where he was in all that labyrinthine, dangerous space.
After a few moments of slowly breathing in the rich scent of wood and brocade and, yes, still a vestige of him, she felt strong enough to rise and go to the windows, pushing back the drapes. Percy's study looked the wrong way for the road from Dover, but the clear moonlight pouring in made her feel better, brighter. She wandered a bit around the room, running her hand along the smoothness of her own chair, tapping a tattoo against the ink-stained little table, sharing a glance with the vivid portrait.
At last, half idly, she began trying the drawers of his desk. Most of them were unlocked - this room was kept locked always, and only she and Frank of all the household had the key. There were a few filled with receipts, accounts, letters from lawyers; one locked one which contained, she knew, papers pertaining to France. As a matter of honor, she left the carefully wrapped package with her name in flowing letters untouched in the third drawer. The bottom drawer stuck, and after a moment she knelt down in front of it, placed both hands on the knob, and pulled.
When the creaking wood finally gave, the drawer slid with enough force to send Marguerite backwards onto her behind. She straightened and then, in spite of herself, laughed.
Because even her settled, orderly, brilliant husband, it appeared, had a junk drawer.
It was a large drawer, deeper than the others, and filled inches deep with all the detritus a study can produce. There were bits of ribbon and string that had probably once been tied around documents; there were a few spoilt quill pens or drafts of letters too stained with ink to be sent; even, she noticed with a frown, a piece of teacake now petrified to the consistency of granite.
She brushed a few papers aside, delving into the deeps, and her fingers came suddenly in contact with something smooth and leathery.
Gingerly she drew the object out, feeling it take the shape of a book as various papers and other, less identifiable debris slid away. She carried it to the moonlight, plucked at the string around it, and let it fall open in her hands.
She wasn't sure what she had expected, but surely not this...her husband's handwriting, sure and strong, coursing across the page in an outburst of emotion she had never imagined. Flipping to the beginning, she saw the spidery, wavery lines of a child, and Marguerite felt, suddenly, that this was perhaps something that not even she had a right to. She began to close the book.
Then her eyes caught, suddenly, her own name, and her eyes flew to the date at the top of the page.
25th December, 1791 I have never been particularly fond of Christmas, and this holiday did not begin in a way likely to change my mind.
Father never saw much point in it, not that I can blame him; I think it was a relief to us both when I was old enough that we could let even the pretense of a holiday celebration drop. With my mother upstairs, and every day the same to her...what could I have expected of him? What could anyone? And now I had this holiday. If I could have contrived to be away, I would have, but the Committee does not like to work through the holidays any more than the next man. Things were quiet, all that could be done was done, and Ffoulkes packed me off home with that worried look in his eye that he knows full well irritates me above all else. Home? Home to a wife I cannot speak to, who holds me in contempt.
Instead she found the servants lined up neatly to meet her the day she arrived, and Frank, his face carefully immobile, had bowed deeply, welcomed her to Richmond, and presented her with a note where her husband begged his pardon, made his excuses, and promised to be back from his hunting trip within the week. Or the fortnight, at the most.
Barely a month afterwards. That cold, long Christmas.
...after that silent supper, we found ourselves in the library. I would have given anything for a horde of carolers to wander by...for a sudden visitor from town...for a stable fire, a flood, an earthquake, in fact, for anything to take us away from ourselves, remove the fog of disgust and hopelessness in that room. But of course there was no catastrophe, and so in due course we created our own.She could not remember how it had started, and paged ahead, not wanting to be reminded. Whoever had spoken first, whoever had replied harshly, however it had begun...she remembered how it had ended. Remembered the sick, exhausted feeling; remembered the tears clogging her throat, remembered being appalled at the harshness of her own voice. Remembered tearing past him - hating him, yes, hating him for the suave way in which he opened the door for her - and seizing her cloak and disappearing into the snowy night, knowing that if she remained an instant longer in that gilt-encased house with that heartless man she would smother and die.
I did not know she had left the house. So when I went out for my own breath of air, I thought myself utterly alone...and I was glad. I wanted to be alone. That was a new feeling - the wanting, that is, not the being alone. I rather wanted to revel in it, for at least a little while. If a walk in the brisk night could convince me that I did not miss her with every breath I took, then I would walk for miles in a blizzard.She'd been so blindingly angry, she remembered, and so wickedly glad to be away from all eyes, in a place where no one would see or care what she did when she was angry. She had flung every French curse word she'd learned in a long career of theatre at an inoffensive tree; she had kicked at snow banks and boulders, bruising her feet; she'd run until her shoes were soaked and her chest ached and her throat burned with the frigid air.
And finally she had found herself in a small grove near the back of the house, and she had gathered a pile of snow and ice and packed it into balls, and with the fury of a firing squad she had thrown them, one after another, at a great oak tree.
I heard sounds, of course, but I took it for a deer or some other animal out and about, or even one of the servants contemplating the stars.She'd seen him emerging from the trees just beside her target just an instant too late; she'd called out a warning seconds after the snowball thudded into his stomach and he doubled over with an audible grunt.
I don't know what I was thinking. It was an embarrassing enough situation, given how we had last parted...surely there were a hundred better ways to walk away with my dignity, and hers, intact. But somehow, at that moment, under that sky, dignity did not seem like the most paramount of concerns. And even in moonlight and from almost a hundred feet away, I could see she had been crying...and it hurt me. I wanted to see her smile.
By twenty minutes later, they had both been drenched and freezing, hands and cheeks and noses burning, chests aching from the cold and from the laughter. Anger had evaporated with the sweat. She had not wanted to go inside and had agreed only when she saw him shivering. She had slipped going back to the house and he had caught her, and when his arm was around her she felt warmer than mere body heat could account for; when he felt her steady on her feet and began to remove his arm she had seized it, marveling at her own daring, and linked together they had walked the rest of the way to the house.
She remembered giggling uncontrollably at Frank's carefully blank expression, while a smug smile played around Percy's lips. She remembered sitting in front of the fire as her clothes gently steamed, ignoring Percy's insistence that she go and change, his warnings that she would catch her death, because she had known that going upstairs, drying the snow, removing her soiled gown and returning in a clean one would break the spell. He would not be this stranger with the ready smile, when she returned; he would be her husband again, and she would not know how to speak to him.
She remembered that his fingers had brushed hers when he handed her a mug of cocoa, and that the touch had simultaneously curved her lips in an unstoppable smile and made her want to cry. She remembered watching him furtively, out of the corner of her eye, as he tended the fire.
She remembered wanting to kiss him, and stopping herself.
I think she has never looked so beautiful as there in that ruined gown, damp and smudged and flushed with cold, holding her red hands to the firelight and wincing as the feeling came back. I have never wanted so badly to hold her, and known so clearly that I did not dare.
She had fallen asleep, finally; she remembered fighting it, forcing her eyelids awake again and again, letting slip drowsy bits of desultory conversation, shaking her head vigorously whenever Percy suggested that she go up to bed. She remembered waking finally in the predawn chill, the fire down to embers, Percy gone; remembered making her way up to her bedroom like a child who has snuck away, slipping into bed with a sense of delicious triumph. She remembered the warmth of the dry nightgown against her skin, and smiling as she drifted into dreams.
I didn't want to risk waking her; I was afraid of how she might look at me when I did. So I covered her warmly, told Frank to tell her maid, and left her there sleeping with a smile on her face. I wanted to stay and watch her...but I was afraid. I was afraid of the moment when she would wake, and look at me with the same distant eyes again. And yet...and yet...! What is it? The end of whatever madness made me throw a snowball at her? The brandy in the cocoa? Or something sparkling in the air, this night that's meant to be of miracles? For the first time in many days, no, for the first time since that news of St. Cyr...I have hope. For her, for me, for us. I have hope. I believe that we will change this, somehow; that we will make it better; that I will find a way to fulfill that vow I still mean with all my heart, to love, honor and cherish, and to earn her love in return. I have
Or perhaps it is merely that, in my madness, I did what I would not have dared any other night. Before I left her drowsing in her chair, I leaned over, and I kissed her brow. Tonight, I will have hope. Even if it vanishes with the daylight. I think I owe her that much.
Outside she could see dawn beginning to break; pale fingers were spreading across the horizon, soft blue shading into palest rose. Her wandering fingers left her brow and traveled to her cheeks, there to find tears. Her hand then curled slowly into a fist, and she pressed her wedding ring to her lips.
"I should have known Frank was no match for you."
He was leaning against the doorway, still in riding clothes and great caped coat, and his face was drawn with exhaustion. But his eyes were bright and all his limbs intact, and he was grinning at her. And he was there.
Marguerite let the book fall to the floor and made a single small noise like a sob caught backwards in her throat, and was in his arms. She held him so tightly he let out his breath in a sudden grunt, and breathed in the scent of linen, dust, sweat, him, and felt tears squeeze out through her closed eyes and drop onto his shirt. And his arms were around her, and his face was in her hair, and his voice was in her ears.
"Joyeux noel, beloved," he whispered. She could only hold him tighter, and finally managed his name.
"Percy."
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
"I'm sorry I'm late, dearest. Nothing for you to worry about...only a very mundane case of missing the tide, and spending twelve infuriating hours cooling my heels in the grubbiest inn in Calais. I rode like the de- that is to say, like the wind."
She raised her shining face to his, and saw worry spring into being on his own countenance. He removed one hand from her waist to touch gingerly at her cheeks.
"Here, my love. You've been crying. None of that..."
She reached both hands behind his neck and, with a little laugh, drew him down to her lips. He pulled back a moment later, breathless and grinning.
"You could tell me that that's all I get for Christmas, my love, and I'd consider that I must have been a very good boy indeed."
He shifted an arm round her waist, and turned towards the door.
"Now come, angel. I'm appallingly dressed and, in the interests of Christmas charity, intend to undress and redress myself, to say nothing of attempting a shave, and let Frank sleep the sleep of the just. But it would be good to have you talking to me while I do so."
Marguerite leaned contentedly against his shoulder and went willingly enough a few steps; then she suddenly paused just before the threshold of the study. Percy moved a step onward and then realized her absence; he looked back at her questioningly.
"Margot?"
She looked up at him hesitantly.
"Percy?"
"Yes, my dearest?"
A little smile teased itself from the corners of her mouth.
"First...may I have my present?"
Sir Percy's laughter penetrated far enough to undo his charitable intention of not wakening his valet, who had not in fact been to bed. Frank looked up with a swift breath of relief and a slow smile; then he extinguished his lamp and quietly sought his couch.
He knew enough to know Sir Percy would be in dire need of a bath, a change, a shave. So said all his valet instincts.
He also knew enough to know Sir Percy, at this moment, wanted most to be alone with his wife. And Frank let them be.