It was only
five weeks after she had first encountered him that Salinger
suggested that she run away with him to Gretna Green. He had
convinced her that her family would never countenance his suit. He
was impoverished and his reputation was such that no respectable
family would ever consider him as a likely candidate for her hand.
He had been a rake, he confessed, but she had reformed him, turning
his life around. Because of Rachel, he was a new man and he would
show the world that it was so.
After he and
Rachel were married.
Fine
words indeed. She had believed every one of them.
Despite
the fact that she did not want to disappoint her parents, Rachel
had agreed to run away with him. They would surely understand when
she reappeared as Mrs. Dorian Salinger, with a loving, devoted
husband beside her. It might, perhaps, be expected that they would
be disappointed, even hurt. But they would see, in time, that
Dorian was the right man for her and they would forgive her
transgressions.
Or so she chose
to believe.
Perhaps
she had secretly harbored doubts about her midnight assignation.
Perhaps, deep down, she had realized that a man of two and thirty
might have a past that did not bear closer study, that there were
reasons why he had shied away from meeting anybody who knew her
well, and that she was not behaving very wisely. It must have been
the case because, despite Salinger’s instructions to tell nobody,
she had left a note for her mother, telling her of her plans, the
better to spare her feelings. If Mama had discovered her gone, she
would have been frantic. In retrospect it had been the one sensible
thing that Rachel had done in weeks.
The trip to
Gretna Green was to take some little time, Salinger had told her
when they were in the coach, heading away from London. They would
need to stop for the night at an inn and complete their journey on
the morrow. Rachel had been uncertain but she had agreed, assuming
that they would have separate bedchambers.
How wrong she
had been.
She had assumed they would be
traveling through the night for some time
but when the carriage drew to a stop after only forty minutes she
was bewildered. They had not even left the suburbs of London. By
the time it did, Rachel was well on the way to changing her mind.
Mr. Salinger had indulged heavily in wine, so much was obvious. The
seductive manner was still there, but it had no longer been as
smooth. Then he had tried, rather forcefully, lurching across to
her side of the carriage and pulling her into his arms. Rachel had
allowed herself to be kissed – this was the man she adored, after
all and they were soon to be married - but she had found she did
not like the stultifying lack of breath the ardent press of his
lips against her own had produced, or the intrusive manner with
which his hands traveled over her body. And she had
really
disliked the wine
soaked reek of his breath. It had been the first true intimacy
between them and Rachel had made the unwelcome discovery that she
did not care to be manhandled in such a forceful way. She had
thought their first true kiss would be magical, intense,
life-changing.
She had been
wrong.
It had been an
unfortunate time to make such a discovery.
Things had
deteriorated even further when they arrived at the inn.
‘
Why are we stopping?’ she had asked uncertainly, trying to
peer out the window. An unprepossessing lantern had swung over a
doorway but there was little enough light.
‘
I told you… it is too far to travel tonight.’
‘We have
not traveled very far.’
‘
Do not worry,’ he had murmured, stroking her cheek. ‘Your
parents will never find you here.’
But it
had not been her parents she had been worried about. It immediately
became apparent, as soon as she set foot over the threshold, that
the inn Dorian Salinger had taken her too was far from respectable.
The innkeeper’s wife was a blowsy creature with a sly, knowing
smile that Rachel had not cared for at all. The place smelled of
stale alcohol and musty humanity and she had hardly been surprised
when the woman had shown them into a bedchamber that contained a
large bed, a dresser with a ewer and bowl atop, a single chair and
nothing more.
What she
had begun to suspect in the carriage became a reality in that
bedchamber and she had looked at Dorian Salinger with eyes that saw
clearly for the first time in weeks.
‘
We were never going to Gretna Green, were we?’ she had said
quietly when the door had shut and they were alone together. She
had been surprisingly quiet, despite the fact that she had wanted
to wail, to rend her hair and gnash her teeth at her own
stupidity.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he admitted, giving her that smile that
had sent her heart racing with heady delight. She was almost sorry,
when she noticed it no longer did so. If she were going to be
deflowered, she would have liked to have experienced it still
wrapped in the heady glow of blind infatuation. Unfortunately, she
could not claw the feeling back. ‘It is not that I do not want to
marry you,
ma petite
, it is just that I cannot.’
‘
You cannot?’ she had repeated. When he had next spoken, she
almost anticipated his words.
‘
Unfortunately not. I am already married, you see.’
She did
see. Suddenly she had seen all too clearly. The past weeks had all
come together in a tremendous rush of images and with those images,
a sickening understanding of just what a little fool she had
been.
‘
I want to go home!’ The words had burst out of her like a ball
of lead from the barrel of a pistol.
‘
I am sure you do. But we have come so far. It would be a pity
to go back now, don’t you think?’
‘
Not so far,’ she had whispered, taking a step back towards the
door. ‘We hardly came any distance at all.’
‘Oh, but
you are wrong. Tonight is the culmination of a very long journey.
You have nothing to fear, my love. I promise you, you will enjoy
what is to come.’
The most
extraordinary thing, in retrospect, was that he thought she would
still be willing to be seduced by him. Perhaps he had thought that
he had pulled her so far under his spell that she would agree to
let him make love to her, even knowing his true situation. Perhaps
he’d had reason. After all, what kind of fool would run off with a
man in the middle of the night?
Her kind of fool, obviously
.
Within
the space of a minute, five weeks of careful seduction had
unraveled and Rachel had seen Dorian Salinger for who he truly was.
A good looking creature, certainly, but going to seed thanks to the
faint lines of dissipation that life was beginning to etch on his
face. The brooding self-assurance she had so admired was nothing
more than vainglorious self-interest. The scales fell away from her
eyes in an instant, leaving her with the sickening knowledge that,
in all likelihood, she was going to be raped by a man she had
assumed would love and protect her for the rest of her
life.
Most of
the time she had been speaking, her gaze had remained fixed on her
folded hands. It was easier to recount how stupid she had been, how
naïve but her last word had brought an oath so savage from Worsley
that she looked at him, startled.
‘I think
I need to find Salinger,’ he said, his voice holding an edge like
ripped silk, coldly cutting. ‘I think I need to find him and teach
him a lesson in consequences.’
The words
startled Rachel. She had been so caught up in her recounting, so
familiar with the story, that she had forgotten how an honorable
man might regard it upon first hearing.
‘
There is no need,’ she assured him.
‘
Oh, I think there is!’
‘
No, really. Mr. Salinger did not have his way with me that
night. Or any other night,’ she added, rather wryly. ‘Indeed, he
was in no condition to continue on with his plans for seduction, I
can assure you.’
This brought
the earl up short. He stared at her frowningly for a long moment,
before sudden understanding seemed to dawn and the black cloud
lifted from his face.
‘
What did you do to him?’
Rachel
smiled. There wasn’t an element about that night that she did not
regret, but what she had done to Mr. Salinger was the one aspect of
that nightmare that had always lifted her heart a little, although
it probably shouldn’t have. A nice young lady should have swooned
upon learning of Dorian Salinger’s plans, although where that would
have left her was anybody’s guess. Quite likely in a world of
trouble. The one thing that had saved her, however, was the
righteous fury that had stolen over her, transforming her from a
stupefied female into an enraged hellion. When Salinger had turned
away to remove his great coat, Rachel had moved forward, reaching
for the heavy brass ewer on the dresser and had brought it squarely
down on the man’s head with all the force of a woman who had been
betrayed, not just by the man intent on her ruin, but by her own
common sense. The blow had been startlingly successful and Salinger
had collapsed onto the floor in an insensate heap. Perhaps the
alcohol had assisted but, whatever the reason, he had been
satisfyingly felled.
‘
Well done!’ Worsley said approvingly. ‘I trust you hit him
again, just to be sure he would stay down.’
Rachel shook
her head. ‘I already thought I’d killed him. I didn’t know what to
do.’
‘
What did you do?’
‘As it
happens, nothing. I sat down on the side of the bed and tried to
think. I had no real idea where I was and no real idea how to get
home. I had brought some little money but hailing a hackney in the
middle of the night seemed a monumental task. I thought that
perhaps I would get the innkeeper or his disagreeable wife to
secure me one but I did not know what kind of arrangement they had
with Mr. Salinger. To be honest, shock had set in and I was
shaking, In fact,’ she confessed, ‘all I really wanted to do was
burst into tears.’
‘
Under the circumstances I can hardly blame you. Very few women
would have managed the situation so well.’
‘
You are very kind to say so, but I do not consider it one of
my better moments. Then the door burst open and Papa and George
came in –
‘Wait.
Your father and brother arrived? How the devil did they get
there?’
‘Mama had found the note quite soon after I had left.
George had dined with us and had
only just left the house. Mama had one of
the servants run after him. I’m afraid the note came as a dreadful
shock. They had known very little of my involvement with Mr.
Salinger, you see and to learn that I had run away with him…
Anyway, George knew the man, or knew of his reputation. One of
Salinger’s cronies had been talking of him at White’s two nights
before, and happened to mention that he had some ‘fresh young
filly’ lined up. George hadn’t thought much of it, apart from
deploring both Mr. Salinger and his friends but he did recall one
line in particular. “The lucky dog will be spending a farthing at
the Three Farthings in Coventry before the week is through, you
mark my words.”’ George was not particularly familiar with Coventry
but it did not take a great deal to discover the whereabouts of the
Three Farthings. I cannot recall ever seeing my father angry, but
if Salinger had not been collapsed on the floor in a heap, I do
believe he would have done him an injury.’
‘Your father is a very sensible man.’
Worsley said grimly. After a
moment’s silence he went on. ‘If your father and brother found you,
how did it come to light what had happened? Why did they not simply
smuggle you back home and allow everybody to pretend that the whole
sorry affair never happened? Salinger would certainly have never
said a word.’
Rachel sighed. If not for one catastrophic event that
night, her life would have been very different. She had tried not
to dwell on it; it had been due to her own foolishness that she was
in that seedy little inn at all. But if Sampson Hordern, a young
libertine with excellent connections and a weakness for gossip had
not been in the corridor at the very moment Rachel, along
with
her
father and brother, had emerged into it, things would have been
very different. His eyes had traveled past them, taking in the
bedchamber, the figure of Salinger slumped across the bed (where
George had dragged him the better to determine if he were alive or
dead), before moving back to Rachel. She had known at once that he
recognized her. The problem with being one of the Season’s Beauties
was that everybody recognized her. Mr. Hordern had a female tucked
beneath one arm and a bottle in the other and had obviously been
the worse for wear, so much so that they had all hoped that he had
not really taken in the meaning behind the tawdry scene he’d
witnessed.
It had been a
faint hope.
George
had arrived mid-morning at St James Square to announce that he had
been to his club where the hot topic of conversation was Rachel’s
abortive tryst with Salinger the night before. Never mind that
nothing had been consummated or that her seducer was nowhere to be
found. From that day forward, Rachel was effectively ruined,
everybody assuming the worst, as people were wont to do.