The barouche drew up outside a tall, well-maintained house in Cambridge Gardens, North Kensington, and three women descended, looking about them with the curiosity of those on unfamiliar territory. Kensington was a perfectly respectable place, of course, but unfashionable and definitely not frequented by the ton.
"What a strange place for Judith to choose," observed Isobel.
"What a strange thing for her to choose to do," Cornelia responded with more point, as she lifted the hem of her dress and shook ineffectually at some clinging substance. "How did that get there?" She directed a hostile stare at the material, as if it alone were responsible for its less than immaculate appearance.
Neither of her friends bothered to answer the clearly rhetorical question. "Walk the horses, we shall be about an hour," Sally instructed her coachman, before raising the knocker on the blue-painted door.
"It doesn't seem like a hotel." Isobel's experience of hotels was limited to establishments such as Brown's or Grillon's.
However, the door was promptly opened by a maidservant, who asserted that it was indeed Cunningham's Hotel, and Mrs. Cunningham would be with them directly.
Mrs. Cunningham was a respectable female in shiny bombazine, all affability as she welcomed three such clear members of the Quality to her establishment.
"We are visiting Lady-" Cornelia stopped as Sally trod on her toe.
"Mrs. Devlin," Sally put in swiftly. "We understand that Mrs. Devlin is staying here." Judith's note, delivered to Sally by Sebastian, had warned them she was staying at Cunningham's Hotel under Marcus's family name.
"Oh, yes." Mrs Cunningham's smile broadened. "She has the best suite at the back-nice and quiet it is, as she wanted, looking over the garden. Dora will take you up and I'll have some tea sent up."
They followed the maidservant upstairs and along a corridor to double doors at the rear of the house.
Judith was sitting in a chair by the window, in front of a chess board, when her friends entered. She sprang up with a glad cry. "Oh, how good of you all to come. I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself and horribly lonely."
"But of course we would come," Sally said, looking around the sitting room. It was pleasant enough, but nothing to the yellow drawing room in Berkeley Square. "Whatever are you about, Judith? Your note didn't explain, and Sebastian wouldn't say anything."
"Thinking," Judith replied. "That's what I'm about, but so far I haven't come up with any sensible thoughts… or even comforting ones," she added.
"Well, what's happened?" Cornelia sat on the sofa. "Why are you in this place?"
"It's a perfectly pleasant place," Judith said. "I have a large bedroom as well as the sitting room, and the woman who owns it is very attentive-"
"Yes, but why are you here?" Isobel interrupted this irrelevant defense of the accommodations.
Judith sighed. "Marcus and I had a dreadful fight. I had to get away somewhere quiet to think."
"You left your husband?" Even Cornelia was shaken. "You just walked out and came here?"
"In a nutshell. Marcus has forbidden my gaming and intends to control every penny I spend." Judith fiddled with the chess pieces as she told as much of the story as she could without revealing Brussels. "So, since I can't possibly accept such edicts," she finished, "and Marcus is determined that I will obey him, what else could I do?"
Isobel shook her head, saying doubtfully, "It seems a bit extreme. Husbands do demand obedience as a matter of course. One has to find a way around it."
The maidservant brought tea. "Mrs. Cunningham wants to know if you'd like some bread and butter, ma'am? Or cake?"
"Cake," Isobel said automatically, and Judith chuckled, feeling a little more cheerful. She'd been fighting waves of desolation all day… desolation and guilt, whenever she thought of how that moment of willful passion on the road to Quatre Bras had ruined all their carefully laid plans. And Sebastian had so far uttered not a word of reproach.
"But what are you going to do, Judith?" Sally asked, having sat in silence for some time, absorbing the situation.
"I don't know," Judith said truthfully. "But you can't just disappear. How would Marcus explain that?" Sally persisted. "The family…" She stopped with a helpless shrug. The might and prestige of the Devlin family were perhaps more apparent to her than to Judith. She'd been married into it for five years. The thought of damaging that prestige, of inviting the wrath of that might, sent a fearful shudder down her spine.
"Maybe I'll just be conveniently dead," Judith said. For some reason, the thought of her mother came to her. Her mother had died quietly in a French convent, leaving barely a ripple on the surface of the world… if you didn't count two children.
"Judith!" Cornelia protested. "Don't talk like that." "Oh, I don't mean really dead," she explained. "I'll disappear and Marcus can put it about that I've died of typhus, or a riding accident, or some such."
"You're mad," Sally pronounced. "If you believe for
one minute that the Devlin family will let you get away with that, you don't know anything about them."
Judith chewed her lip for a minute. She had a horrible feeling that Sally was probably right. "I'm not thinking clearly at the moment," she said finally. "I'll worry about the details later. Tell me some gossip. I feel so isolated at the moment."
"Oh, there's a famous story going around about Hester Stanning," Isobel said. "I had it from Godfrey Chauncet." She lowered her voice confidentially.
Judith listened to the on-dit with half an ear, her mind working on some way in which she could still play her part with Gracemere. Maybe, for the denouement, Sebastian could arrange a private card party and she could make an unexpected appearance…
"Don't you think that's funny, Judith?"
"Oh… yes… yes, very funny." She returned to the room with a jolt.
"You weren't listening," Isobel accused, eyeing the chocolate cake that Dora had brought in. "I wonder if I dare have another piece. It's really very good."
Judith cut another slice for her. "I was listening," she said.
"When you fight with Carrington, do you lose your temper?" Cornelia asked with the air of one who'd been pondering the question for some time.
The question brought such a wave of longing washing through her that Judith was for a moment silent, lost in the memories of the times when they'd fought tooth and nail and then made up with ferocious need. "Yes," she admitted. "I have a dreadful temper, and so does Marcus."
"Good heavens," Cornelia said. "I can't imagine Forsythe losing his temper. I wonder if I should try to provoke it. It might add a bit of excitement to life."
Judith couldn't help laughing. "You're too levelheaded and even-tempered, Cornelia. You'd start arguing with yourself instead of your husband, because you'd immediately see the other point of view."
After her visitors had left, she sat in the gloom of late afternoon. Cornelia and Sally and Isobel really didn't understand. They'd stand by her, of course. They'd keep her company and keep her secret, but they couldn't begin to understand what would drive a woman to take such a desperate stance. Never having tasted freedom- the sometimes uncomfortable freedom of life outside Society-they couldn't imagine doing anything so drastic. Judith didn't blame them for it. On the contrary, she envied the simplicity and security of their lives.
It was getting dark, but she didn't ring for Dora to light the candles. The growing shadows suited her mood and she could feel herself sliding deeper and deeper into a pit of wretchedness. She hurt every time she remembered what Marcus had said to her, what he believed her to be, every time she recalled that, believing such things of her, he had still made love to her in the way he had, with such trust, such honesty, such absolute oneness with her in body and spirit. She had entrusted herself to him in those moments, as he had entrusted himself to her. And yet all the time…