He had little patience left but he waited for a few moments until an old maid with a lit candle came to the door.
"I apologize for calling so late, but I must retrieve my wife, Mistress Demelza Poldark," he insisted as formally as he could manage with the stakes so high. "Presently," he added, when the woman looked distrusting.
"The guests are all abed, sir, it wouldn't be fitting to allow you aloft. Please," she opened the door a fraction, "wait in the parlour while she is fetched?"
She was no barrier for him and he quickly got around her into the grand hall. "I shall be most discrete, I assure you," he tucked his fingers into his coat and plucked out a coin at random. When it came away as a sixpence, he frowned and dug again, all the while looking around for the grand staircase he knew to be in here somewhere. He took out a more suitable coin and passed it into the woman's hand, which had caught on quick and waited for the coin.
"Thank 'ee sir. Most discrete, if you please sir," the woman chided, but went away without worry – for she did certainly recognize him, he was sure.
He found the stairs and took them two at a time, unsure what he might find in the darkened manor, surrounded by sleeping socialite lions. He came to the top and looked down both sides of the hallway, slowing his breath to listen. He wished he had brought a candle, but he was used to fewer windows at home than those that enlightened this corridor, and turned to where he believed he heard sound, to the left.
Almost as quickly as he was confirmed in his suspicion, he recognized the sound as speech – in fact, recognized Demelza's cornish lilted speech instantly.
From a near whisper, it lifted to a slightly breathless sort of plea, and through one of the doors he could make out, "... Call it weakness if you will, but I cannot give myself to any man-,"
And there was another voice, one that made Ross' ears burn for it was so familiar, even as he could not make out the exact words – but he could recognize the laughter of Captain MacNeil, and rushed to one door to listen more intently, hands grasping a door frame, his eyes wide and his breath short. For MacNeil, an old comrade, to come to bed his wife … he could not ignore the disregard.
"Except my husband," Demelza was finishing, and now he could sense at a kind of fear in her tone, one that he did not like any more than the rage rising in his chest. She had gotten herself into a mess, hadn't she?
The sound was not from this door, but from behind him, and he spun to face another, down a narrow part of the corridor, and went to it, where he swore he could hear their breathing – the rustle of Demelza's dress. She began to speak again but she was interrupted.
"My angel," Captain MacNeil cooed, and it made Ross' blood boil as he wrapped his hand dangerously around the door handle. "It does you credit to be so delicate," he admired, and Ross could all but picture her sinking into the praise, perhaps rethinking her loyalties.
Worry creased his rage, and again he doubted his wife. He almost released the door handle, to leave her to it.
"But think for a moment of me," the Captain was chiding persuasively, "who has been looking forward to this encounter…" there was a pause which made Ross' stomach drop, wondering if the other man was stealing a kiss, "as a mortal's taste of heaven."
Demelza's silence was not the encouragement that MacNeil was evidently waiting for, and he greeted it with, "Your duty now is not to your husband, but to me," in as commanding a tone as it seemed his gentry would allow.
Ross didn't quite think it was enough to convince her, if she truly meant to tread backward, away from this sordid soiree. She sounded rather chagrined and like to return home on her own if she could remove herself from her sticky situation, but it did not sound as though that would be easily done. It dawned on Ross that she may change her mind at any moment, remain for the night and fall into bed with the other man. He was not proud of the thought, but he recalled her humble beginnings and wondered if she may slip into servitude and allow MacNeil to do as he pleased.
A wet noise broke into his reverie and he started a little, as a stone statue pinned against the door to his wife's room. A kiss – interrupted.
"Malcolm, please," Demelza sounded weary but breathless, as if caught in a riptide. At the least, Ross knew her well enough to know this was not her impassioned voice.
If he had been raging afore, his blood did burn now, caught between a deep concern that felt like panic and unadulterated ire at how another man's first name sounded on her tongue. A few more wet kisses Ross heard, in between his wife's meek refusals.
She'd had no qualms about beating him with the back of her hand upon his return from Trenwith some nights ago, and he could not understand why this had gone on so long without her stopping it. There was a strange voice in his head that sounded much like Prudie, willing Demelza to just clobber him one.
The next one - "Malcolm, stop," she cried weakly, voice bouncing as she was set off her feet across the room, further away from the door - set off distinct alarm bells in Ross' mind, and he felt his hand begin to turn the knob before he was consciously aware that he now had to stop this.
He could recall Demelza trying to stop him.
Don't go there tonight.
Her attendance tonight was in conflict with no rule he had imposed – for he never suspected she would stray. Pray god she would believe him when he told her later, when all was forgot, that he had learnt his lesson.
