Love is the Enemy

Chapter 1 ~ 1848-3

Faded and of a shape which had been fashionable two or three years ago, it was a bright blue that Nerina had always known was unbecoming to her. But invariably she had to wear clothes that were like that, because they were her cousin Elizabeth’s cast-offs.

Lady Elizabeth Graye was fair-haired and blue-eyed and looked her best in shades of sky blue or blush-pink. On Elizabeth such colours were perfect, on Nerina they were disastrous.

The cousins were about the same height, but there the resemblance ended. Nerina had inherited the flaming red hair and mysterious green eyes that had made her mother an acclaimed beauty wherever she went. Indeed it was that particular combination coupled with a magnolia-white skin that had made the penniless younger brother of the Earl of Cardon run away, while he was still at Oxford, with a concert singer.

That they had been happy had abated not one iota the family’s wrath and indignation and, when they were drowned while yachting off the coast of Devon eleven years later, everyone said that it was exactly what they had expected to happen all along.

Nerina had been brought to Rowanfield Manor to be brought up with her cousin Elizabeth. They were the same age and it should have been of advantage to both children to have companionship, but, as Nerina was to learn later, Lord Cardon had loathed his younger brother and was irritated almost unbearably by any remembrance of him.

Perhaps he had grudged him his happiness, perhaps it was a more obscure emotion than that based on some twist and turn of their childhood relationship. Nerina was never to know what it was, except that as she grew older she sometimes suspected that her uncle had been repulsed by her mother and that he placated his dignity by punishing her for any humiliation he had suffered.

But whatever the reason, she only knew that from the moment she came to Rowanfield Manor she was made to feel apologetic for being alive. Everything she did was criticised and it was almost impossible for her to do anything right. But as she grew to maturity she became aware that at times her uncle’s interest in her was obscurely horrible. She shrank away from him and he punished her for it swiftly and relentlessly.

She could remember all too vividly her shame at his beatings, realising subconsciously from the very first that her mental humiliation was more intolerable than the physical pain she suffered.

The cab drew up at the back door. There was no one about and Nerina knew that the servants would all be busy on the lawns and in the front of the house. They were invariably short-staffed and on occasions like this Lord Cardon’s meanness or penury would make him expect the work of two people from every one employed.

“If you will put my trunk in the yard,” Nerina told the cabman, “I will have it taken in later.”

With asthmatical wheezings and chokings and the creaking of ancient bones the cabman lifted the box from his cab onto the flagged stones of the back yard. It was not heavy, but he was an old man and he wiped the sweat from his brow when he had finished.

Impulsively Nerina added the last sixpence in her purse to the money she had ready for him in her hand. He glanced at the sum suspiciously and then seeing that she had tipped him generously, he raised a finger to his forelock.

“Thank you, miss, thank you kindly.”

He climbed into the box of his cab, whipped up the tired underfed horse and turned down the drive. Nerina watched him go. She put off the moment when she must enter the house until the cab was almost out of sight and then she turned sharply and walked swiftly down the stone passage that led past the kitchen and the servants’ quarters towards the green baize door that divided it from the other part of the house.

There was no one about, but in the distance she could hear the chatter of many voices and the strains of music from a string band. It took her but a few minutes to hurry up the back stairs to the second floor and reach the big low bedroom she had shared with her cousin Elizabeth.

The room was empty, but Elizabeth’s things lay scattered on the bed and over the dressing table. The muslin gown she must have worn that morning, her stockings, frilled petticoat and hair-ribbons, a dirty handkerchief, lace mittens and a lawn chemise were all thrown down in untidy disarray, as if Elizabeth had waited until the last moment to change and her maid had had no time to tidy up before being required to help in other parts of the house.

It was unlike Elizabeth to be untidy or unpunctual, Nerina thought with a little frown and, picking up one of her ribbons from the floor, she wound it over her fingers, smoothing away its creases. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the dressing table and made a grimace in dismay. She had no idea that she could look so dirty.

She had only been able to afford the cheapest seat in the train in an unclosed carriage. The smoke from the engine had been terrible and the wind had blown her hair about until she looked very unlike a prim and respectable Governess.

Nerina pulled her bonnet from her head. Her hair fell in heavy curls on either side of her face, framing it with a vivid fire that seemed to catch the sunlight and reflect it back again. The lashes that framed her green eyes were naturally dark and curly, but Nerina, looking at her own reflection, did not see any beauty in them or in the aristocratic perfection of her tiny tip-tilted nose. She saw only the superficial dirt that defaced her white skin and the fear that made her lips quiver however hard she pressed them together.

“I will not be frightened, I will not,” she said out loud and suddenly her hands were clenched and she flung back her head as if she would free it from invisible shackles. “I am not afraid, I am not. I hate men, I hate all of them! They are beasts and devils and, if I could, I would make them all suffer for what has happened to me!”

She stood for a moment tense and stiff, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms and her eyes closed with the almost unbearable intensity of her feelings. Then she ran across the room to bury her face in the cool clean water of the wash basin.

It took her some time to wash and change, and when at length she was ready, having borrowed a clean muslin gown of her cousin’s, she felt calmer and more courageous.

She decided that she would go down and brave out her arrival in front of the other guests. Perhaps if her uncle got over the first shock of seeing her while other people were there it might make it much easier for her later on when she had to give him an explanation as to why she had returned.

Slowly and purposefully Nerina walked along the passage to the grand staircase. Of exquisitely wrought ironwork it had been added to the house at a later period and several rooms on all three floors had been removed to accommodate it. As she reached the first floor landing, she heard another carriage arrive at the front door and a moment later saw a man step into the hall. She stood still for a moment, watching his arrival.

He was tall and dark and, as he took his polished top hat from his raven dark hair, Nerina thought that he was one of the most distinguished-looking men she had ever seen.

She watched him cross the hall, following a footman through the drawing room onto the terrace where she knew that her uncle and aunt would be receiving the guests.

As he went, he glanced up at her as if inadvertently she had attracted his attention. For a moment she saw him full face and was surprised at his expression. It was almost as if anger smouldered behind his eyes and in the sharply etched line of his lips. There was contempt and disdain, Nerina thought, in the glance he gave her and an arrogance beyond all bearing in the way he slowly turned his head away again.

‘Another bad-tempered man,’ Nerina thought and knew that she hated him as she hated all others of his s*x.

They were all the same, she thought, as she descended the stairs, sanctimonious hypocrites when they appeared in public amongst their own class and all too self-revealing when it came to their relationships with other women and particularly unprotected Governesses like herself who had to earn their own living through no fault of their own.

Nerina felt a sudden desire to hurt someone as she had been hurt. She thought how she would like to wound or maim a man such as had just passed through the hall. To know him to be in subjection to her, to know that he was mortified or abased would, she thought, be a pleasure and a satisfaction beyond any she had ever experienced. Yet even while she thought of such things she laughed at her own imagination.

A man was always the Master and always the conqueror. What chance had a woman against their born superiority and their natural suzerainty?

Nerina felt suddenly helpless and knew that she could not face her uncle and aunt standing on the terrace expecting to greet another County notability, their hands instinctively outstretched before they realised who she was.

Swiftly she crossed the hall and opened the door of the morning room. Through the room, which was seldom used, was a conservatory with a door at the far end of it leading into the garden. No one noticed Nerina as she let herself out of the conservatory and, crossing a small part of the flower garden, she vanished behind the rhododendron bushes that bordered the lawns.

Keeping out of sight of the crowds, Nerina made her way by small unfrequented grass paths behind the bushes until she had partially encircled the garden and was facing the house from the other side of the lawns.

The warm red brick of Rowanfield Manor, which had been built at the time of Queen Anne, made a perfect background for Lord and Lady Cardon’s guests. In their big hooped skirts the women themselves looked like inverted flowers as they moved gracefully amongst the rose beds or stood listening to the band which, wearing Hussar uniforms ostentatiously ornamented with gold lace, played spirited tunes from the operas.

There was a big marquee on one side of the garden and a croquet tournament in process on the other. Nerina watched for a moment from the bushes and then, afraid of being seen, slipped away towards a small building that lay just ahead of her. A summerhouse, it had been built by Lord Cardon’s father who had quite without justification fancied himself as an architect. The summerhouse, which had occupied his fancy when he was nearly eighty, was an elaborate edifice that reminded one a little of a Japanese Pagoda with a Grecian foundation, but which had all the damp discomfort of a religious grotto.

The mixture was not surprising for the Earl changed his mind several times in the execution of his plans and the local contractor and the estate carpenter had many wordy rows as to how his Lordship’s wishes should best be achieved. The resulting building, which when completed was extremely ugly, had fortunately been mellowed by time and a climbing honeysuckle that obscured the more crude outlines and gave the whole edifice a somewhat tipsy rusticity quite out of keeping with its builders’ intentions.

But whatever its appearance, the summerhouse had been to Elizabeth and Nerina a source of unending joy, for they had discovered that in lowering the roof to suit another of the ancient Earl’s requirements, a small attic had been inadvertently contrived. This was just large enough for the children to sit in upright and they had made it their secret hiding place, having found that it was easy to effect an entrance by a series of footholds in the wooden panels that the walls of the summerhouse had finally been covered with.

It was here they had told each other their innermost secrets. It was here they had kept their most treasured possessions and it was here they had feasted on food stolen from the larder or given to them by an indulgent cook. It took Nerina but a few seconds now to climb up the back of the summerhouse, to open the door that gave access to the low attic and to crawl through it, closing the door behind her.

The attic was, to her surprise, cleaner than she had expected. To its furnishings of dolls’ tea sets, tattered books and a heap of jam jars, someone had recently added a satin-covered cushion that Nerina had never seen before. She was surprised at its appearance, but without too much speculation as to how it had come there she used it to sit on and look out of the window.

The window had been made many years earlier when she and Elizabeth had knocked a hole in the patterned mosaic of polished wood. The honeysuckle obscured the crime and by moving some of its bugled blossom Nerina now had a panoramic view of the whole garden.

In the distance she could see her uncle and aunt standing on the terrace, a party of guests filing past them and then descending the wide grey stone steps onto the lawn. Outside the marquee Elizabeth in her new gown of frilled pink organdie was entertaining two young men. Even at this distance Nerina could see that she was nervous and her mittened hands were clasping and unclasping the handle of her sunshade.

Nerina could recognise a large number of people walking about the grounds. She could see the Lord Lieutenant of the County, pompous and loud-voiced, his face purple with the heat, his eyes searching the crowds as if he was concerned about missing someone more important than the person he was talking to.

She watched the Vicar of Rowan, looking rather like a crushed black beetle as he cringed before the Bishop of the Diocese, magnificent in purple, the jewelled Cross on his fat stomach catching and reflecting the rays of the sun.

Settling herself more comfortably on the cushion and cupping her face in her hands, Nerina watched the people with enjoyment. It was nice to see and not be seen and it was pleasant to know that it was some hours now before she need face her uncle.

It was then she became aware that two people had detached themselves from the little crowd watching the croquet tournament and were walking straight towards the summerhouse.

She recognised the woman at once. Elizabeth had admired Lady Clementine Talmadge for years, but Nerina had always felt vaguely antagonistic to her, even though she always went out of her way to be charming to the ‘dear children’ as she called them.

Lady Clementine was looking ravishing this afternoon in a crinoline of pale yellow organdie over watered silk. Yellow feathers trimmed her bonnet and her shoulders were draped with a scarf of crystallised gauze.

Her dark hair framed her oval face with its long slanting eyes. There was something sensual about her that was irresistible and her very femininity was a challenge. Even to Nerina her beauty seemed almost deliberately provocative. It was impossible not to be aware of her small swelling breasts beneath the tight-boned bodice of her gown and the cumbersome hoops of the crinoline succeeded on Lady Clementine in being neither modest nor a womanly protection.

There was something primitive and feline in the way she moved and in every breath she drew. She was as uncivilised beneath the polished surface of her environment as a woman of the jungle. She was the daughter of a Duke, the respected wife of a Nobleman, a person of consequence in the County, but the look she gave the man who walked beside her now was frankly and unashamedly rapacious.

Nerina, watching Lady Clementine, had not, until she intercepted that strange sidelong glance which she did not entirely understand, noticed her escort. Then, as they reached the door of the summerhouse, she saw that it was the man who had crossed the hall when she was about to descend the stairs, the dark man with burning hatred in his eyes and an expression of contempt and disdain.

She listened to their footsteps crossing the wooden floor beneath her and then she heard Lady Clementine say,

“But, Rupert, this is such a surprise. I had no idea that I should see you here today.”

“I left London last night,” Sir Rupert replied. “I had to see you immediately, something has happened.”

“What is it, Rupert?”

There was a note of alarm in Lady Clementine’s voice.

“You look strange and unlike yourself.”

“There is every reason for me to look strange,” Sir Rupert replied. “Clementine, I have to find myself a wife immediately.”