Trollheart

She endeavoured to keep her voice from shaking, and holding his gaze firmly whispered “Careful, my love (it was clear the epithet was dripping with sarcasm) - it’s still illegal for a man to hit his wife, you know, even a lord like yourself. I wouldn’t,” she went on, grinning as she watched his hesitation turn to frustration, the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead, “want to have to call faithful Sir Saul back, to witness an assault and instigate proceedings against his own client!”

Checked by her threat, which he knew her not only capable of carrying out, but willing to do so, and knowing Saul Galt seldom turned down a case by which he could turn a profit, Lord Nathan Wetherwood let his hand fall, and contented himself with a derisive snort. “If you were a man I would …” he began, but she countered with

“If you were a man, I never would have had to.”

This almost caused him to raise his hand again, but he disguised the action by suddenly developing an interest in his graying hair, and smoothed it down. The anger seemed to leave him as suddenly as it had come, and he looked older than his sixty years. Grasping the back of her chair, he said in a quieter and more controlled voice “Why, Beatrice? Why did you do it? Was it something I did?”

She stared at him, her eyes hard. “I think we both know it was more someone you did, Nathan!” she snapped. He let go of the back of the chair, began pacing around the room, his hands behind his back.

“Oh, Beatty!” he wailed. “She meant nothing to me, you know that.”

She turned in her chair to regard him with pitiless eyes. “Which one, Nate? Remind me, would you? Was it Sarah? Or Megan? Or - no, it couldn’t have been Jane. Maybe Rose? Stella? Surely not Barbara! Now you told me you really liked her! How could she have not meant anything to you?”

Her words cut through him, the more because he knew he had no defence against them. For the who-knew-how-many time he cursed ever having got married. A man is supposed to enjoy himself, spread himself around, partake of the good things in life. Society understands and accepts that, and no lord or earl or baron who ever looked outside of his marriage for, ah, companionship, would be taken to task for it. How could the pot accuse the kettle, after all? These things were part and parcel of being highborn, of being of noble birth. He, and his like, were different to other people, better than them. And so the laws that governed a marriage of common folk did not necessarily always apply to that of a man of breeding. It was understood.

But what she had done! No, no: nobody could understand that, and nobody would forgive it. And this remembrance (if he needed reminding) gave him his weapon, and he used it with all the relish and force he would had it been a full-sized battleaxe.

“At least I slept with the opposite sex!” he sneered.

In response, her voice was quiet. “You would rather I had slept with men?” She didn’t really expect an answer to the question, but he gave one anyway.

“I would have found it easier to forgive,” he admitted. Her temper snapped; she exploded.

“Easier to forgive?” she screamed, not caring who could hear outside the heavily-panelled walls of the library. Everyone knew anyway; you couldn’t keep this kind of thing secret, not in high society, where your every move was scrutinised by those just waiting for you to slip, eager to take you down. “You think I want or need your fucking forgiveness?”

She may not have cared about decorum - that ship, for her, had long sailed, but as a member of the upper class, he still had an image to worry about, and he looked furtively around as she railed at him, as if expecting to see, gathered just outside the room, the entire staff. “Darling!” he held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Please! The servants …” She cut him off with a harsh laugh.

“Oh, the servants!” she mimicked. “You think they don’t know what’s going on? Do you? You think anyone in this cloying, suffocating, soul-draining mausoleum is unaware, both of your and my improprieties? You’ve surely marked how they look at you, as they look at me: they know, Nathan. Oh be sure, they know.” She stopped suddenly, all the fight leaking out of her at once. She hung her head. In a much quieter voice she asked him “Why, Nathan? Why did you do it? Was I not enough for you?”

He looked embarrassed, though whether that was because he had hurt her, or was more on account of fear that someone might come in or hear, she could not say. “These … these things,” he began in a more faltering voice than he would have liked. He coughed, started again, this time trying to force more authority and bravado into his voice than he felt. “These things are allowed. Expected even, from such as ourselves.”

“Allowed. Expected.” She rolled the two words around on her tongue, a bitter taste. “What about what we expected when we spoke our wedding vows, Nathan? What about till death do us part? What about forsaking all others?”

“Words,” he muttered. “Just words.” He looked up at her suddenly. “You surely didn’t expect -”

“I expected that I would not be humiliated by the man I loved!” The rage poured back into her, as if someone had refilled her. He responded in kind, his eyes flashing, pointing at her.

“Humiliated!” he repeated. “Aye, indeed! And you made sure I came off the worst in that bargain, didn’t you, Beatty?”

It was her turn to be ashamed. “It wasn’t planned,” she assured him. “I had never had any need of anyone but you before. But when I learned of - of - “

“My discretions,” he helped her out. Her eyes flashed again.

“Oh yes!” she snarled. “Your indiscretions. Indeed. A different … indiscretion … every week, yes? Well, when I learned what you had been doing, yes, of course I wanted to hurt you. Who would not?”

He nodded. “I might - I would have understood if you had gone with a man - damn it, a hundred men! I would have - I did - deserve it. But, Beatrice! A woman!” His face was ashen, the blood leeched right out of it as he recalled her response to his philandering.

“It wasn’t planned,” she repeated, though the shame she had felt when she had first said that, a moment or two ago, was gone now. Why should she be ashamed? He had cheated with women, and so had she. What difference did it make? Except of course that it did, for this was a male-dominated society, and the law, the weight of opinion and the sympathy would always be on the side of the man. “I met her the night I first found out. I had no intentions of … well, it just happened.”

“But that was not the only time,” he challenged her, almost intimating that had it been, he might have been able to forgive and forget. But it had been far from the only time, and they both knew it.

“Once I had been with … with her,” Beatrice sighed - she had never revealed the name of her mystery lover, nor would she ever. Nathan had powerful friends, and they would find her. For a moment the fleeting thought: Maybe she’s better where she is. Safe. But then she shook her head. Nobody deserved to live like that. Anyway, Nathan did not know her name, nor would he ever. “Once I had been with her,” she continued, “I realised I had been lying to myself all my life. Men cannot give me what I want. You cannot give me what I want.” She looked at him. “Even after all you’ve done, Nathan, all you’ve put me through, I find I am sorry for hurting you in what must seem so cruel a manner. But I repeat, and I hope you believe me when I say, I did not mean to cause you such pain.”

He growled. This was going nowhere, and they both knew it. “Well,” said he, in a businesslike tone, “you did, whether you meant to or not. But you will no longer. I assume you read the letter I left in your room?”

She nodded. “I noted, too, the presence of Sir Saul, departing as I was arriving. Though you are old college friends, I am not so naive as to think he was paying you a social call.”

“No indeed,” said Lord Wetherwood, turning his back on her. “Wheels have been set in motion, Beatrice, as they say in the legal profession. Once everything is finalised, I will require you to vacate Clandon Hall. It should not be long now.”

She opened her mouth, as if to say something, then thought better of it, and simply said in a quiet voice “As you wish, Nathan.” She heard his footsteps retreat, stop, as if perhaps he either expected her to say something more, or it could have been that he was considering speaking, then the tread resumed and the dull echo of her husband’s footsteps faded slowly away as he walked out of the library.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018