Free Court of Foxes by Christianna Brand Page B

slept alone that night and undisturbed, Catti Jones curled up on the couch at the foot of the great bed. Next morning very early she was wakened and while she dressed, was brought a cup of chocolate and a hot roll. By seven the coach was at the door with more bobbings and bowings, the staff saw them off and the door of her new home closed after her. So this is greatness, she thought: this is grandeur! A moment of love without passion; an hour of passion without love — for the rest, an oasis of ponderous boredom, never free for a moment from servile eyes watching, respectful ears listening, from eager hands working at what one would very much rather do for oneself. With her husband she had exchanged no more than a perfunctory word of greeting as, in his three-caped great coat, he joined her in the hall and handed her down to the coach, Catti Jones scrambling in to perch on the seat opposite them, clasping milady’s dressing-case since no jewel-box had been brought with her. From under white, lowered lids she flicked up a glance rather anxiously at their two faces. What might Catti have told him of that mad attempt last night to see his brother? Not for one moment, she thought, would my lord of Tregaron accept any nonsense about hopes of bringing about a reconcilement. He looked very grave, and for a moment she was afraid. But after all… You had but to go up close to him, stand with your hands behind your back, raise your lips to his, yet not kissing him… Shame filled her at the readiness with which the thought sprang to her mind, but it was not the shame that had come on that first occasion, in those first early days when she had discovered the power of her body over his senses; she knew that, little by little, that shame was dying, that shame would die. Such gifts, after all, were but weapons, put into a woman’s hands.
    The coach rolled and rumbled over the cobbles, every turn of the iron-shod wheels taking her further away from all those she knew and loved. Cold, aloof, withdrawn, her husband sat in silence; she looked over at Catti’s face, and Catti was looking down with a hangdog air. Traitorous bitch! she thought; and was for a moment disconcerted when, as though in reply, the girl returned a look of dislike and resentment hardly less violent than her own. A fine pair, she thought, to be travelling with, two hundred miles.
    At midday the coach drove off along a side road and at last stopped at an inn. There was a flutter and a flustering, a great deal of bowing and protesting, but the accommodation was villainous and the meal not much better. They ate in chill silence, broken only by necessary civilities; in silence resumed the drive. But at the Cheltenham inn that night he came to her room, dismissed the maid with a wordless gesture, threw himself across her body and began, at first violently and then with slow, sensuous mouthings that turned her bowels to a sickness of desire, to kiss her white shoulders and breast: possessed her briefly, rose and still with hardly a word spoken, was going to the door. Unsatisfied, filled with shame at her body’s longing, she sought to conceal it in anger. She said:
    ‘Your lordship has, I now perceive, but one use for a wife.’
    He stopped, his hand on the door. ‘Have you some complaint to make of my love-making?’
    ‘I think only that there is very little love in it,’ she said, and as he remained silent, ventured, almost timidly: ‘I think that a man and his wife should be not only lovers but friends.’
    He came back and stood over the bed. ‘A man and his wife — and all his relations?’
    ‘Having no family of my own, of course I — I hope yours will be my friends. Your mother; and your sister also—’
    ‘And my brother?’ he said. ‘Is he also to be your friend?’
    So now she knew. ‘It was only that—’ She stammered and faltered. ‘The girl perhaps told you? May she not have misrepresented the situation? It was only that I thought the hand of a