A Highly Respectable Marriage

by Sheila Walsh

  Chapter Five

  The Duke of Heron, in happy ignorance of the judgement being passed upon him, drove home in excellent spirits. He had found the recent interlude amusing, even stimulating after a fashion. Not that he had any expectation of meeting the Carlyons again. In spite of Lady Margerson’s fond machinations, the plain fact was that they moved in very different worlds. Their paths were unlikely to converge ‒ and today, though pleasant, had been no more than the gratification of a passing whim.

  He was still smiling quietly to himself when he arrived home. There a letter awaited him. He noticed it the moment he entered the hall; opulently pink, it graced one of a pair of handsome ormolu tables set either side of the staircase. He surrendered his hat and shrugged off his driving coat, handing them into the charge of a waiting footman, before picking it up.

  His name was penned in a careful immature hand. He fingered the letter pensively, as though reluctant to break the seal, and a faint exotic perfume assailed his nostrils. His eyes lifted in faint query to his butler, Pinkerton.

  ‘The missive arrived not more than an hour since, your grace,’ said that most astute of servants, recognizing in his master’s demeanour the now familiar indications of waning passion. As he confided later to his grace’s valet over a restoring glass of port, ‘Whosoever this particular barque of frailty might be, her days are numbered, Mr Glyn, you mark my words!’

  The Duke, meanwhile, removed to the Yellow Saloon, where he scanned the incoherent protestations of devotion scrawled across the scented page, their underlying note of desperation filling him with a vague contempt. Poor Irena ‒ an exquisitely beautiful creature, but greedy. He had lost count of the trinkets he had lavished upon her, not begrudging her one of them until last evening. His reluctance to provide instantly an emerald necklace to compliment the pair of earrings with which he had presented her two days previously had provoked teasing and then petulance. Finally her huge violet eyes had filled with tears ‒ a grave error on her part, as his hasty departure had no doubt confirmed to her. Hence this rather grovelling plea for forgiveness.

  Heron sighed. Well, she should have the necklace. It would serve as well as any other as a parting gift.

  He was standing over the fireplace watching the last of the letter curling up the chimney when his secretary, Ambrose Varley, entered the room bearing a sheaf of documents. The pungent aroma of the smouldering scented paper rose like incense on the air. His eyes met the Duke’s.

  ‘A suitably symbolic valediction, Ambrose?’

  ‘If you say so, sir,’ said the secretary politely.

  ‘I felt sure you would approve,’ murmured Heron.

  After almost two years in his grace’s service, Mr Varley was still unsure how to deal with the Duke’s levity on such occasions. He was a studious young man with a gravity beyond his twenty-four years, his dress as neat, as inconspicuous as everything else about him. Yet, if asked, he would readily admit that he enjoyed his work. He might deplore the Duke’s butterfly existence ‒ his numerous erratic liaisons with ladies of ‘a certain kind’, but it had not taken him long to discover that there was a great deal more to his employer than was immediately evident; and if occasionally he ripped one up, or was overly sardonic, he was also scrupulously just, never bore malice and could, when one least expected it, be quite disarmingly affable. One thing he was not, however, was predictable.

  Mr Varley said diffidently, ‘I wonder if I might ask your grace to favour me with a few minutes of your time?’ The papers cradled in his arms rustled significantly.

  ‘Business, dear boy? Ah, well ‒ if you must.’ A faint sigh of resignation accompanied the words. ‘But in the library, I think. This room reeks of that damned perfume.’ Heron strolled to the door, indicating that his secretary should accompany him.

  ‘Do I then burden you so heavily with work?’ he mused a few moments later, perching on the corner of his desk and watching lazily, arms folded, as Mr Varley set down his bundle of papers.

  The young man demurred, looking apologetic. ‘It is the somewhat pressing matter of your wards, sir. The lawyers have now completed the necessary documents ‒ and await your instructions. I have a letter here …’ He riffled expertly through the correspondence.

  ‘Have I ever told you, dear boy, what a prince among secretaries you are?’

  The young man looked up, colouring slightly. ‘Your grace is most kind, but I cannot think that I am in any way …’

  ‘You can hardly fail to have been made aware of the present speculation concerning my wards.’

  ‘I never heed gossip, sir.’ It was almost a reproach.

  ‘Very commendable,’ said the Duke dryly. ‘But you must surely have wondered?’ A perceptible deepening of colour in the young man’s face betrayed the accuracy of this conjecture. ‘Yet never by word or sign of any kind throughout these dealings have you exhibited the least curiosity. I find that quite remarkable.’

  ‘I did not consider it to be any of my business, sir,’ replied the young man simply.

  ‘I see.’

  A wry grimace touched Heron’s mouth. Would that he could have viewed Mariette’s indiscretions and their unhappy outcome with the same detachment. Poor foolish Mariette ‒ estranging herself from those who truly loved her, throwing away all that he would have lavished upon her for the hope of a prize that was always beyond her reach. So ready to be seduced by the oh, so charming Duc de Berri, handsome nephew of the late French king; so sure that once she had borne his children, he must eventually marry her.

  His heart still contracted as he imagined her despair upon discovering that she was but one of many, that the Duc had already, it was rumoured, contracted a marriage with an English clergyman’s daughter. If only she had come back to Clearwater then! Instead she had been summoned by the Comte de Lille, now head of the Bourbon dynasty in exile. He had been shocked to hear of her treatment at his nephew’s hands, and remembering her family from happier days, had insisted that she take up residence with her children at Hartwell in the Vale of Aylesbury, where he was endeavouring to maintain the vanished splendours of French court life in diminished circumstances.

  It was from there that she had finally written to the Comtesse, begging for her forgiveness. From the letter it was clear that she was deeply unhappy, far from well and worried about her children’s future should anything happen to her. Not all at the court, it seemed, were so charitable as the Comte, or so ready to accept the Duc’s bastards with grace. Mariette begged that, should anything happen to her, Madame de Valière would adopt the children and care for them in memory of one who had forfeited the right to ask such a boon, but bitterly regretted her past wickedness.

  Clearly his grandmother was too old and infirm to give any such undertaking, but just as clearly Heron could not bring himself to ignore so passionate a plea from one for whom he had once cared so deeply, nor could he deprive Grandmère of the solace that Mariette’s children might bring to her remaining years. He must adopt the children himself.

  Matters were precipitated by Mariette’s unexpectedly sudden death, together with the imminent cessation of hostilities. Delicate negotiations ensued.

  The Comte, whilst conscious of a family responsibility for the children, was not averse to the possibility of being relieved of their embarrassing presence before he returned to France as king. Their father had approved the arrangements with great cordiality, promising to keep himself in touch with them and do his part by them whenever so required. And so all was decided.

  ‘Your grace?’

  The Duke came out of his reverie to find Ambrose putting a letter into his hand. He cast a cursory glance over the spidery handwriting.

  ‘Well? So far as I can tell it is a typical lawyer’s communication of the kind I pay you to deal with. Is there something about this particular one which renders it an exception?’

  Mr Varley was beginning to wish he had left well alone.

  ‘You will recall, sir, that a lady in the Comte de Lill
e’s retinue has been caring for your late cousin’s children since their mother’s sad demise …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, now that the Comte has been proclaimed King Louis XVIII, he must return to France. As you will see from that letter, he is to leave for London very shortly and from there he will proceed to Paris ‒ ’

  ‘Pray spare me the tedious detail of Louis’s itinerary, Ambrose, and come to the point.’

  Mr Varley heard the faint rasp of impatience and hurried on. ‘Very simply then, sir. The lady concerned quite naturally wishes to leave with his majesty, and is somewhat anxiously awaiting your decision as to how soon you will be ready to accommodate the children.’

  Heron handed him the letter and stood up, an undefinable glitter in his eyes. ‘Then we must inconvenience the lady no further. I take it the nurseries at Clearwater are ready to receive the children?’ Mr Varley nodded. ‘Then I fail to see your difficulty?’

  ‘It is only that …’ Mr Varley rushed the words and then hesitated, swallowed and continued lamely: ‘It is only that I wondered if your grace might not, in the circumstances, consider going down to Hartwell yourself in order to escort your charges to Clearwater?’

  There was a small uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Did you indeed?’ said the Duke softly. ‘And whatever gave you the crass-brained notion that I might conceivably wish to play wet-nurse to a brace of mewling infants?’

  ‘I thought … but no matter. I will of course arrange matters exactly as your grace pleases.’

  ‘Very magnanimous!’

  Reproach was clearly evident in the way Mr Varley collected up his documents and clutched them possessively to his chest. In turning to bow, he encountered the Duke’s thin sardonic smile.

  ‘Sometimes, Ambrose, I fear I am a sad disappointment to you,’ he murmured.

  ‘Not in the least, your grace,’ said the young man stiffly. ‘It is no part of my function to question your grace’s behaviour.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Heron’s expression softened into something approaching a boyish grin. ‘A very proper answer, in fact. Only do come down out of the boughs, dear boy!’ he urged, adding by way of mitigation: ‘You should know by now that I never act to please others!’

  Inexplicably, the words put him in mind of Miss Carlyon and her young rip of a brother. As Mr Varley was about to leave the room, he asked casually, ‘Ambrose ‒ do you recall talk of a Colonel Carlyon ‒ in connection with some kind of Army scandal?’

  Mr Varley admitted to nothing beyond the vaguest of recollections.

  ‘Would you like me to make inquiries, sir?’

  ‘No, no,’ said the Duke, a little irked to find himself a prey to curiosity once more. ‘It is of no importance.’

  And this might well have ended the matter, but for William.

  Their paths crossed two days later as the Duke drove home from an assignation made on the previous evening which had proved a sad disappointment. He was consequently preoccupied and feeling not a little annoyed with himself when he first became aware of a small disconsolate figure some way ahead of him scuffing up the dust with unwilling feet.

  He might not have spared the boy a second glance but for the distinctive quiff of fair hair which stood up in a vigorously aggressive manner from the crown of his head.

  Driving smartly past William, he brought his team to a halt and turned to watch the child. He was a sorry sight, one knee gaping out of his trousers to expose an angry graze and his collar torn. If this were not enough, he also looked very much as though he had been rolling in a muddy field, and despite the lowered head Heron was able to discern a distinct puffiness around one eye.

  ‘That must have been quite a mill!’ he observed conversationally as William drew level.

  The boy’s head jerked up with a curious mixture of guilt and defiance, one hand going up instinctively to shield his eye.

  ‘One is moved to wonder,’ continued his grace, ‘how your opponent faired. I trust you gave a good account of yourself?’

  ‘I made his nose bleed!’

  The intense satisfaction in the confession surprised the Duke. He had not somehow equated William’s character with physical violence.

  Finding himself under scrutiny, William looked down as though not aware until that moment of his general condition.

  ‘Oh, Lor’!’ he groaned in disgust. ”dora will kill me!’

  The Duke’s mouth twitched. ‘That would be a pity.’ He leaned down to offer the boy a hand. ‘You had better come home with me and we’ll clean you up a bit. My man has an infallible panacea for black eyes.’

  William cheered up considerably at the prospect of riding in such a bang-up rig, but as his glance travelled over the spanking coachwork and what little he could see of the interior, he hung back, shaking his head.

  ‘P’raps I hadn’t better,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’m sure to make the seat dreadfully muddy.’

  The Duke discovered somewhat to his surprise that he was not proof against the look of yearning in a small boy’s eyes. ‘That is of trifling account, my child.’ He was bland as he turned to his groom. ‘We are not so small-minded as to let a little mud cast us into the suds, are we, Grimble?’

  The groom, more used to incurring the length of his grace’s tongue should so much as a speck of dust sully any part of his elegant equipage, muttered agreement, only the faint twitching of a muscle in his cheek betraying the true nature of his feelings in the matter.

  William needed no further urging. He seized the hand reached down to him and if Heron noticed how he winced as he clambered up he tactfully refrained from comment. Instead he allowed himself to be quizzed comprehensively upon the skills necessary to the expert handling of a team of high-couraged cattle and was amused to find himself being critically appraised and congratulated as he demonstrated a few of the techniques which had made him such a distinguished member of the Four in Hand Club.

  William was equally enthusiastic about the house in St James’s Square when they arrived. With all the aplomb of the seasoned traveller he declared it to be miles beyond anything he had ever seen and the several footmen standing about the hall were more than once obliged to adjust their expressions under the austere eye of his grace.

  He seemed particularly taken with the staircase and spent some moments in rapt contemplation of its soaring grandeur before Heron recalled him to the necessity of mounting it.

  ‘Oh yes, sir, of course,’ said William thoughtfully.

  In the ducal bedchamber Mr Glyn awaited them, dapper, hands neatly folded before him and looking, as William confided to the Duke in an audible whisper, ‘as prim as pie’. However, with the prospect of cakes and cordial as an inducement, he needed little persuading to relinquish his clothes into the hands of this rather forbidding personage.

  His grace’s valet viewed the advent of a grubby small boy into his well-ordered life with severe misgivings. His grace had evinced some odd quirks in his time, but this was a new and disturbing departure.

  But by the time William had submitted stoically to having his cuts and bruises anointed and his fast-swelling eye treated with a herbal compress, the ingredients of which were known only to himself, Mr Glyn was obliged to acknowledge that he was a likeable, well-mannered child ‒ if a shade too inquisitive for his liking.

  Later, enveloped in one of his lordship’s shirts which came down to his ankles and provoked an outburst of giggling, William curled up in one of the deep comfortable armchairs in the Yellow Saloon to await the promised repast.

  Mr Varley, presently passing the door of the Yellow Saloon on his way to his own room, was surprised by the sound of childish laughter. He put his head round the door and was regaled by the spectacle of a small boy, somewhat battle-scarred, with two footmen in attendance, being plied with a mouth-watering array of pastries and cakes under the indulgent eye of the splendid Pinkerton, while the Duke lounged in an opposite armchair viewing the proceedings with equanimity.

  ‘Yes
, I know, Ambrose,’ he said, interpreting his secretary’s reactions with uncanny omniscience. ‘Not my usual style, I agree. May I present Master William Carlyon, whose recent foray into the noble art of pugilism, notwithstanding that he gave a good account of himself, left his clothing in a somewhat disreputable condition. Glyn is endeavouring to rectify matters with his usual aplomb. Meanwhile, we thought refreshments would be in order.’

  ‘Very proper, sir,’ said Mr Varley with commendable composure.

  It was only when William sat back replete and everyone else had left the room that the Duke turned the conversation once again to the fight.

  ‘Do you make a habit of indulging in bouts of fisticuffs?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Only if I must.’ William grinned with engaging honesty. ‘Courtney says I’ve no science at all. I just go tearing in all arms and legs ‒ mere flourishing, he calls it, though it usually gets results. Fighting can be jolly satisfying sometimes, I suppose, but mostly I think it a shocking waste of effort.’

  Heron was amused and intrigued by this unusually mature observation. ‘But in this instance you felt ‒ er, compelled to offer violence?’ he persisted gently. ‘Your protagonist offered you an unacceptable insult, perhaps?’

  ‘Not me! He might insult me until he turned puce and I wouldn’t care!’ William, red-faced, was clearly labouring under some powerful emotion. At last it could be contained no longer. ‘Clive Broughton is a ‒ snivelling little bagpipe – all wind and bluster and no bottom whatever! He don’t understand the first thing about real courage and … and duty, and going on when everything is against you.’ He drew a deep painful breath betokening sore ribs and ended in disgust: ‘He blubbered like a baby when I gave him one in the breadbasket, then he ran away!’

  ‘Clearly a most despicable youth,’ observed Heron to whom matters were suddenly becoming much clearer. ‘Defending the family honour, were you, child?’ he added quietly.

  William climbed down from the chair, managing in his ridiculous garb to achieve a quaint dignity that reminded the Duke irresistibly of the boy’s sister.