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Her landlady looked both alarmed and fascinated, but did not let down her own dignity sufficiently to ask for an explanation. It was beneath a lady, and she wanted to be thought a lady, which prevented her exhibiting anything so vulgar as curiosity.
As soon as she had eaten, Hester began her task, doing her best to imitate Drusilla’s flowery, erratic hand.
My dearest love,
I am still on fire from the joy of our last meeting. Of course I do understand the necessity for secrecy, at least for the time being, but the tenderness of your eyes was enough to thrill me to my very heart …
This was quite fun to write in such an unbridled strain. She would never in the world write like this if she were putting her own name to it, no matter what she felt. She continued.
I long for the time when we may be alone together, so that this pretense may no longer be, when you can take me in your arms and we can give ourselves to each other with the passion which I know you feel, as I do, tearing me apart. I ache for you. My dreams are filled with the sight of you and the sound of your voice, the touch of your skin against mine, the taste of your mouth …
Oh, dear! Had she gone too far?
But the aim of this was to be as excruciatingly embarrassing as possible. The man who received this must regard Drusilla Wyndham with an abhorrence verging on terror.
She proceeded.
I know all the things you dare not say. I do not misunderstand your occasional coldness towards me when we chance to meet in public. I burn inside, my heart melts to be able to tell the world that we are lovers, albeit yet to dare the final act, but I shall wait, knowing it will not be forever, and that soon, soon my darling, you will cut the ties that bind you to your wife now, and we shall be free to be together for ever.
Your one true love,
Drusilla
There now! If that did not make the man squirm, then he was a rake and a cad and possessed of no decency at all!
Naturally she had chosen only married men, or those about to be.
She reread what she had written. Perhaps it was a bit extreme? What Drusilla had done was appalling, but such a letter might damage her irreparably, several almost certainly would, which would make Hester morally no better than Drusilla herself. And she realized with a wave of misery that even Monk was not sure that he had not somehow caused her hatred.
She tore up the letter and put the little pieces into the wastebasket, and began again.
This one was much more moderate, inviting misinterpretation, but phrased in such a manner that it could, at a stretch of the imagination, and with a great deal of charity, be explained reasonably innocently.
That was better. Please heaven she had not softened it too much, and it would still cause the necessary misgivings, and mistrust of anything Drusilla might say, the flickers of personal fear, the fellow feeling with another man who had had his words or his actions misconstrued by a vain and overeager woman.
She wrote several more. By the time she put her pen down at a quarter to ten, her hand ached and her eyes were stinging.
Two days later Lord Fontenoy opened his mail at the breakfast table. It appeared the usual collection of bills, invitations and polite letters of one sort or another. There was none which occasioned any unusual interest, and certainly no alarm … until he came to the last one.
Lady Fontenoy, who had been reading a letter from her cousin in Wales, heard him splutter, and looked up, then with some anxiety forgot her own mail entirely.
“My dear, are you all right? You look quite unwell. Is it distressing news?”
“No!” he said overloudly. “No, not at all,” he amended. “It is something quite trivial.” He strove to invent a plausible lie, something to account for his pale face and shaking hands, and yet not excite her curiosity so that she expected to read the wretched thing … which of course he could refuse, but he did not wish her suspicion aroused. He had a really most agreeable domestic life, and desired intensely to keep it so. “No, my dear, it is simply a most foolish letter from someone who desires to make trouble in a quarter I had not foreseen. It’s unpleasant, but nothing to cause undue worry. I shall deal with it.” Perhaps he was reacting too strongly. He recalled the phrases used. They had initially appalled him, but on second thought, they were ambiguous, capable of less demanding intent.
“
Are you sure?” Lady Fontenoy pressed. “You do look very pale, Walter.”
“I swallowed my tea a little hastily,” he replied. “I fear it did not go quite the right way. Uncomfortable. Please don’t distress yourself. How is Dorothea? That is a letter from Dorothea, is it not?”
She realized that was the end of the conversation. She accepted that he would not mention it again, but she knew perfectly well that the letter he had received had shaken his composure very thoroughly, and she was not at ease for the rest of the day.
Sir Peter Welby was also highly upset by his morning mail. Being still a bachelor, now on the brink of a very fortunate marriage, he breakfasted alone, apart from the distant presence of his manservant.
“Good God!” he expostulated, when he had read the alarming missive. If that should fall into the wrong hands, it could be very damagingly misconstrued. It could all become very ugly indeed, if read by someone unkindly disposed.
“Sir?” his manservant said questioningly.
