The Distant Kingdom Page 5

  ‘I thought Juliana sang delightfully. Handel is, of course, rather a difficult composer to enjoy until one knows the music well.’ It was not true, of course, but she knew that Maria Jamieson was ignorant enough to believe it, and the amused smile Captain Blagdon sent her seemed to make the lie worthwhile.

  Mrs Jamieson, who was too set up in her own conceit to believe poor Miss Whitney capable of malice, merely looked coldly at her, turned to their companion and said:

  ‘I promised Mama that I would fetch you. She wishes to ask you something.’

  ‘And we must not keep the colonel’s lady waiting. Goodbye, Miss Whitney, we shall meet again.’

  She watched him go, already lost.

  ‘Well,’ said an indignant voice at her elbow, ‘I hope he does not marry her.’

  ‘Oh, Juliana, how could he? She is married to Major Jamieson.’

  ‘Well, he might easily be killed, and Marcus must marry someone soon, and she is the right age, and so pretty; he seems to like her. Look at that!’

  Perdita watched the beautiful Mrs Jamieson touch his arm as he smiled down at her, and wished that she too could have been small and rounded, with soft, black-lashed eyes and tiny, white hands. Then her common sense returned and she remembered that she would prefer not to think or behave as Mrs Jamieson did, and if that was the price for looking like her it was too high.

  They saw Captain Blagdon kiss her hand, turn for a moment or two to her mother and then saunter off towards Captain Thurleigh.

  ‘Perdita, do you think that perhaps we should go?’

  Perdita turned her head to smile at her father.

  ‘Perhaps we should, Papa. I shall just go and say goodnight to Lady Beaminster and then I shall come. Juliana, shall I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  Driving back through the small town, in the soft scented moonlight, Perdita regained some of the serenity that Mrs Jamieson had destroyed. Edward took her hand in his and told her of his pride in her and relayed as many of the compliments he could remember, adding:

  ‘Even I did not know that you could sing like that.’

  ‘It is my one talent, Papa. Uncle George taught me, though Aunt Mary always thought it was a shocking waste of time.’

  ‘What did she want you to do instead?’

  ‘I am not certain, but she seemed to be determined that I should never learn to enjoy myself.’ She said it without bitterness, and it was a moment before he could bring himself to say:

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. For so many years she was ill and needed me to do things for her, but she used to seem pleased when Uncle George taught me things.’

  ‘You must miss him now.’ The moon, which was full that night, shed almost as much light as the winter sun in England, and by its illumination he saw a strange expression of disgust pass over his daughter’s face like a sharp wind riffling the surface of a still, deep lake. He might have asked her about it, but she prevented him by saying luxuriously:

  ‘Isn’t that moon wonderful? There is so much here that is beautiful that I cannot understand why so many people dislike it.’

  ‘Unlike you and me, Perdita, they cherish happy memories of England, and for every sight, sound, and scent that is different from those they knew in Buckinghamshire, they hate this country. They can find no value here, and live defensively, trying to surround themselves with as much of Buckinghamshire as they can. It is very sad. Tell me,’ he went on in a different tone, ‘did you enjoy this evening?’

  ‘Beyond anything I have ever done, Papa. I always like singing of course, but tonight so many people were kind. Not Mrs Jamieson; that would be too much to expect! But nearly everyone else I talked to, even Juliana’s brother.’

  ‘Delightful fellow, I understand; but rather strange. Don’t lose your heart to him.’

  ‘Do not be absurd. I am not a girl,’ said Perdita as the extraordinary possibility first presented itself to her. ‘I have always known that there would be nothing like that for me.’

  ‘Now it is you who are being foolish. But be careful. Captain Marcus Blagdon is not a man for you. But there are plenty of others: Mortimer Blandfield could hardly take his eyes off you this evening.’

  Perdita blushed, shocked at the crudity of her father’s thoughts, and said as soon as she could compose herself:

  ‘Please Papa, do not. You sound as though you wished to be rid of me. You must not expect it. Even if I had not already known that I should never be married, I should have discovered it by now.’ She saw that he was about to expostulate and continued calmly: ‘On the ship I overheard Mrs Flaxman talking to another lady, who said, “I sympathize with you; Miss Whitney will be very difficult to get married off, even in India.” And you see, Papa, I should so much rather not try. I have been very comfortable with you.’

  Rather impressed by her dignity, he patted her hands and said briskly:

  ‘As far as I am concerned, I should be delighted if you were to stay with me for ever, but I thought all young ladies wished to be married. There, let us leave this topic.’

  ‘You are good to me, Papa,’ was all she said, while the image of Marcus Blagdon rebuilt itself inside her eyelids.

  Over the next few weeks, as she came to know Captain Blagdon better, she often had to remind herself of her father’s warning. He continued to behave delightfully, escorting Juliana and herself on rides and flower-collecting expeditions in the hills around the town and still she found him kind. There seemed to be no meanness in him: melancholy, perhaps, and an uncertainty beneath the charm, but nothing else. He showed no desire to criticize other people’s shortcomings, unlike the other English she had met, or fear of exposing his own. He was even prepared to confess to a biting paralysing fear during a tiger hunt with Captain Thurleigh the previous year. The captain, who had been with them at the time, had laughed at that, and told Miss Whitney not to believe a word of it; Blagdon had bagged the beast with no trouble at all. Dutifully, Perdita had laughed with him, but did not revise her opinion of Captain Blagdon. She found him admirable as well as charming, and could sense no threat in his manner of the kind that made her avoid Mr Blandfield whenever she could.

  Edward Whitney watched the quartet with foreboding, because he was afraid, in spite of Perdita’s denial, that she might lose her heart. But Lady Beaminster had no such fears: of all the women at Simla that year, she would have chosen Perdita as a companion for her children; there was no possibility that Marcus might form an attachment to her. She even watched complaisantly as Juliana made Marcus teach poor Miss Whitney to dance one morning in her drawing room.

  Lady Beaminster had decided to follow up her recital with an evening party, to which Perdita had received an invitation. She had confessed to Juliana that she did not know how to dance and the girl insisted that she must learn. Protesting that it would be impossible, Perdita nevertheless watched Juliana and Marcus, followed and eventually learned the steps they had demonstrated, finding considerable pleasure in making her body obey her. But when Juliana told her to practise with Marcus, Perdita found herself tripping over her own feet, bumping into her partner and generally reverting to the clumsy, heavy-footed creature she was used to being.

  Marcus, who was always rather touched by Miss Whitney, took enormous trouble to calm her embarrassment and gradually persuaded her to try again, talking to her throughout so that she could not concentrate on her shortcomings. When he decided that she had gained enough confidence, he made Thurleigh partner Juliana and asked his mother to play for them so that Perdita could practise dancing in a set. She was perfectly sure she would never dare to participate in a real dance, but she was profoundly grateful to them and added extraordinary kindness to the list of Marcus’s virtues, which seemed to grow every day.

  Perhaps the attribute for which she was most grateful was that he never made her feel uncomfortable in the way her uncle and Mr Blandfield had done, and she responded to that by talking to Marcus as freely as she t
alked to her father and trying to banish the sadness she detected at the back of his eyes.

  Captain Thurleigh, on the other hand, could wither her with a single glance or a contemptuous word, and she wondered more and more why the two men were such friends. The one was all gentleness and weary kindness; the other, a frightening mixture of harshness and puzzling joviality. He would occasionally address jocular remarks to Perdita, and she usually found that her fear of him prevented her understanding them. The words he used were familiar, but the meaning almost always escaped her and she would look at him with a sickly smile on her lips and the fear patent in her expression while she tried to make a suitable reply.

  Juliana watched, saddened that Captain Thurleigh’s initial admiration, engendered by Perdita’s singing, should have dwindled into contempt. She herself found him amusing, and admired his flashing dark eyes and strong, arrogant face. He looked magnificent on a horse, his seat excellent and his control of the animal absolute, and she could well believe some of the tales she had heard of him at the Station. His men would follow him to hell, one young gentleman had told her, and she was only excited when an older officer muttered sotto voce, ‘And they have all too often’. To her, he seemed a very suitable friend for her brother: brave, celebrated, dashing and just very slightly brutal. He seemed the epitome of manhood. But she knew that Perdita did not like him, and so she tried to control her admiration. Just occasionally, she thought that if she were not already in love with her botanist, she might fall victim to this handsome soldier.

  Had she but known it, if she had evinced any signs of such a thing, Lady Beaminster would have cut short their stay in the Hills immediately. Her ladyship disliked the captain, and had been seriously displeased when she learned that the colonel had granted him leave to accompany her son on his furlough. The ostensible reason was that Captain Thurleigh had suffered several bad bouts of fever and needed to recover in the more clement air of the Hills, but Lady Beaminster could see no signs of illness in his clear brown skin, flashing eyes, and boundless energy. She thought him a dangerously unsuitable friend for her son.

  Chapter Four

  Perdita and her father dined alone on the night of the ball, and he was pleased by her increasing assurance. She sat opposite him in her low-cut ivory gown, a string of pearls he had given her glowing gently round her neck, her goldy-brown hair curling around her oval face, and at last a gleam of happiness in her fine eyes. He was afraid that it had been put there by Blagdon’s attentions and wondered how he could stop her erecting false hopes on impossible foundations, without destroying what she had gained.

  In fact he need not have worried; Perdita had no expectations of Juliana’s brother. She was merely lost in delight at knowing that she loved him, for that was not something she had ever expected to feel. When she woke in the early morning she might lie in her bizarre silver bed thinking of herself as eighteen and well born, receiving his love, but she always knew the absurdity of her fantasies and had no trouble in remembering that she was in fact 26-year-old Perdita Whitney, daughter of a merchant. She sometimes chided herself for the absurdity of her dreams, but she could not resist succumbing to their novel and delectable pleasure.

  She had told herself very sternly that she was not to expect him to dance with her, and so she was only a little disappointed to find that he was not present when she and her father arrived in the ballroom of his mother’s house. After greeting Lady Beaminster properly, Perdita turned to Juliana, who was looking enchanting in a pale pink muslin gown that was lavishly trimmed with lace. It was more modestly cut than Perdita’s, as was suitable for a girl who would still have been in her schoolroom in England, but no one could have denied its elegance, or the fact that it became Juliana far more than some of the extravagant toilettes did the other guests.

  Edward Whitney was pleased to see that Juliana seemed genuinely glad to see Perdita, and that her apparently sincere compliments brought some pleased colour into his daughter’s cheeks. Determined that she should enjoy herself, he made her dance the next country dance with him, although dancing was a form of exercise he found irritating in the extreme. As soon as he had led her to a chair at the edge of the room when the music had stopped, he was greeted by his old acquaintance the collector, who begged the honour of a dance with Miss Whitney. Perdita, who had just caught sight of Marcus arriving with two friends, and looking quite exceptionally magnificent in his regimentals, for once smiled happily at the plump little man at her side, and rose to take her place in the set with him. She was more nervous dancing with him than with her father, but she did not make too many mistakes, and when it was over and he offered to take her to the verandah for a breath of air, she went willingly.

  When he led her away from the lamps and a group of other guests chatting by the long windows, she was disconcerted, but the moon was shining and she told herself that not even Mrs Flaxman could have seen anything improper in walking a little apart with so elderly a gentleman. In fact, Mr Blandfield was in his late forties, and considered himself a bit of a dog, handsome don’t ye know, and good with the ladies. As soon as they were hidden from the other guests, he took one of her cool hands in his own unpleasantly warm clasp and said, panting slightly:

  ‘My dear Miss Whitney, I have something to ask you.’

  Perdita, who had been looking entranced at the mountains and thinking how lovely they looked swathed in starlight, and how strange that the shadows should be deep violet rather than black, tried to pull her hands away, and said as politely as she could:

  ‘Yes, Mr Blandfield?’

  ‘Now, don’t tease. You have been so very encouraging until now. And you know quite well what I want.’ He rubbed the palms of her hands with his thumbs and she tried to pull away. His hands tightened and she was reminded sickeningly of her uncle. Mr Blandfield gave up waiting for her to speak and said:

  ‘You know that I have a deep regard for you, Perdita, and you have been so sweet tonight that I can’t wait to ask you to be my wife.’

  Horrified, Perdita tried once more to pull her hands out of his and felt the strength under the sweaty plumpness that gripped them. She wanted to scream at him to let her go, but her embarrassment was such that she said only, ‘Mr Blandfield, please do not.’

  He lifted her hands, one after the other, to his full red mouth and planted a wet kiss on each. She wrenched them away at last and was frightened to see in his face the expression that used to distort her uncle’s, compounded of anger, pleading and something else she could not define. She tried to speak, but could think of nothing to say. She felt one of his hands grip her breast as the other reached round her waist, and saw his wet lips open as his face came down towards her own. Revolted and very much afraid, she pushed at his chest violently and backed right against the wall of the house, saying breathlessly:

  ‘I think you must be ill. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.’

  She saw his hands coming at her yet again, and before he could close in on her, she turned away and ran into the house to find her father. Lost in her dreams of Marcus, she had hardly registered the attentions of her father’s corpulent acquaintance; the knowledge that she could have aroused in him such beastliness by her vague courtesies filled her with shameful horror. She half turned and believed he was pursuing her. She blundered back into the ballroom, looking desperately for her father, and was badly jolted when she heard a quiet voice say: ‘Miss Whitney, you are distressed. Is there some way I can help?’ She turned to see Marcus Blagdon, as gently calm and civil as usual, and said:

  ‘No, I do not think so. But thank you. I was just looking for my father, but I cannot find him.’

  ‘No. I believe that he is playing cards in the smoking room. I shall fetch him for you in a little while, but why not walk with me for a moment on the verandah? It will help you to recover.’ He watched in consternation as her blue eyes dilated, and he said softly:

  ‘Something has frightened you. What has happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’
she said, and then added absurdly, ‘I don’t know. It was all a mistake. I do not know what to do. Oh, where is Papa?’

  ‘Tell me what happened. Come.’ He escorted her into Juliana’s small sitting room where he said, ‘I cannot allow one of my mother’s guests to suffer so without helping. Tell me.’

  And so she did tell him, exactly what Mortimer Blandfield had said and done. She allowed her own horror to escape, and the shame she felt at having aroused such frightening passion without even knowing that she was doing so.

  He was extremely angry and did his best to comfort her despite the waves of fury that beat through him. It was intolerable that this shy, worried woman should have been so exposed to Blandfield’s importuning, and he determined exactly what he would say to the wretched man. In the meantime he talked quietly to her of how men are sometimes driven by their natures to do things which they instantly regret, and he assured her that she had never behaved with the slightest impropriety. Gradually he had the satisfaction of seeing her grow calmer, and soon judged it time to restore her to her father’s care. He took her back into the drawing room and left her with his mother while he went off to the card-room.

  She had told Lady Beaminster that she had a headache, and so when Edward came up to them to take her home, their hostess saw nothing amiss although it was still early.

  He did not mention what had happened until they reached his house, when he took Perdita into the drawing room, made her sit down and gave her a glass of wine.

  She shook her head, but he said:

  ‘Drink it, Perdita. It will help to calm you. Blagdon told me what happened, and I can understand that you found it very unpleasant, but you must not exaggerate. The poor chap only tried to kiss you, I gather.’ She shuddered at the memory, but obediently took the glass from him and sipped some wine.

  ‘It was not so much what he did as what he said, that I … that I had encouraged his advances. And I did not, Papa. I am sure of that. What is it about me that makes people behave so?’