The Dollar Prince's Wife. Paula Marshall
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‘Cobie!’ she shrilled.
‘Violet,’ he said, and bowed, like the old-world Southern gentleman he had pretended to be, and then, monstrously, he couldn’t resist it. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You know very well what you can do for me,’ she told him, the light of battle on her lovely face. ‘What you haven’t been doing since Dinah walked into Moorings.’
So, his worst forebodings had come true. Since Dinah had arrived, a fortnight ago, he had watched Violet humiliate her daily, along the lines of that first afternoon in the library. In the last few days he had taken to avoiding the girl to save her from Violet’s tongue, where in the beginning he had sought to amuse her.
She touches my hard heart, he thought, wryly. She didn’t touch Violet’s. Neither did he wish to touch Violet, and again, he regretted ever having become involved with her.
Desolately he knew that Violet’s public ill treatment of the child was to punish him, as well as her. Violet brooked no rivals, and ridiculously, improbably, she saw poor Dinah as a rival.
As usual he thought quickly, then offered her, ‘I could hardly be your cavaliere servente while Kenilworth was hovering, Violet. Not seemly.’
‘Kenilworth is not hovering, Cobie. He knows perfectly well why I asked you, as he asked Daisy Masham.’ She put out a hand to him. ‘You may escort me upstairs. Our rooms are quite near.’
There was nothing for it. He had meant to try to leave Moorings early without offending her—but she was now determined to be offended unless he did what she asked.
Every fibre of his body revolted at the notion. And when, having taken her arm, and he had begun to walk her up to her room for her poor sister’s sake, if for nothing else, she said, in a poisonously sweet voice, ‘Oh, and by the way, Cobie, there is one more favour you can do me—do the both of us.’
He took her hand and put it to his lying lips. ‘Of course, Violet, my darling, and what is that?’
She shook her head, ‘Oh, it’s Dinah again. Too ridiculous, the poor child obviously thinks that you have a tendre for her. All that attention you’ve given her—playing to her on the guitar…chess games…talking to her in the library…walking with her in the gardens…encouraging her to think of going to Oxford—has quite turned her head. I think that you ought to disabuse her of the notion that you are interested in her—very firmly. I warn you, if you don’t, I will. She really ought to have nothing to do with such as you,’ and her eyes were on him, hard and cruel.
He knew immediately what she meant, and the kind of blackmail she was subjecting him to. Somehow, she had read him, seen the pity he felt for her unloved sister, and was threatening that, if he failed to do as she asked, Dinah’s public humiliations would continue—might even grow worse. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and Violet, astonishingly, was jealous.
For a moment the world reeled about him. Violet had touched some memory in him which she could not know existed. Long ago he had been kind to a waif even more abused than poor Dinah, more even than Lizzie Steele—and his heedless kindness had led directly to her death. Dinah was in no danger of physical death, but she could not, he thought, stand very much more of the treatment which Violet was meting out to her without her inner self being in serious danger.
He had gone quite still again. He stood motionless. He was fighting the red berserker rage which Violet, by her cruelty, had roused in him. He was helpless before her, and she knew it. Sleep with me, humiliate Dinah—and I will leave her alone. All he could do was control himself and offer her what she wanted. At the same time his busy brain was working—after a fashion which would have astonished Violet.
‘You ask a lot of me,’ he said at last.
‘Really, Cobie, really? You surprise me. I had not thought that you favoured children. I thought that you left that to others,’ and she laughed.
Like Sir Ratcliffe, Cobie thought, and Arthur Winthrop—and who else?
‘She is lonely,’ he told Violet gently, ‘and not very happy.’
‘And you make her so? You take a lot upon yourself. After all, it is my sister of whom we speak, not yours. It is I who am concerned about her welfare. It demands that you disillusion her. And be sure that you do it in such a way that I will know that you have done so.
‘Otherwise, my dear, otherwise, I shall immediately send her to my deaf, strict and bad-tempered old aunt in the country to be her permanent companion.’
‘Pax,’ he said, with the sweetest smile he could summon, throwing up his hands like a schoolboy. ‘I think that this is all a great pother about nothing, but have it your way, Violet.’
‘Oh, I intend to do so,’ she told him, mockingly, ‘and now we are here, Cobie. Here is the door to my room. Choose, like the man in the story—the lady—or the tiger?’
‘Oh, no choice,’ he told her carelessly. ‘The lady every time.’ He pushed her through the door, rather ungently, and told himself, that if one must sacrifice one’s principles—not that I possess any—this is as pleasant a way to do it as any. The unpleasant part will come tomorrow, with Dinah.
He was particularly good value that night, Violet thought, unaware that in his mind Cobie was treating her like the whore she was.
Chapter Four
M r Grant had been dodging her for the last few days, Dinah thought desolately, which was not surprising. After all, he came here to be with Violet. She was sitting in the Elizabethan Knot Garden looking blindly at the flowers and remembering what she had seen that morning.
She had risen early in order to go riding before anyone else was about, and when she had turned into the corridor where Violet had her suite of rooms, she saw Mr Grant quietly closing Violet’s door: it was obvious that they had been spending the night together.
Shock kept her quiet, so that he had no idea that she had seen him. She had known, of course she had known, that he had been invited for Violet’s pleasure. She had known it since she had first seen him in the library. She had tried to put the knowledge out of her mind in those few, early days when she had walked and talked with him. I like him, she told herself firmly, not because he’s beautiful, but because I like talking to him. He’s so clever, it’s like talking to Faa.
Listening, always listening, because no one ever included her in their conversations, she discovered that he was thought to be something of a charming fool. How could anyone think any such thing? It wasn’t simply that he knew a lot, could play the guitar and the piano divinely, but she had grasped at once that even his most innocent remarks frequently carried a double meaning.
Listening, always listening, she noticed that he was particularly good with Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, whom Dinah disliked intensely. He wasn’t bad with poor Rainey, either. Dinah knew that her half-brother was dissolute and not very clever. It was not that Mr Grant made fun of his hearers, but that he tailored what he said to what they were. Of course, he did it with everyone—except Mr Van Deusen.
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