The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  The first lists of casualties were published a few days after the battle. The names seemed to go on forever, and were expected to double when many of the worst injured succumbed to their wounds. General Picton was gone, as was Ponsonby of the Scots’ Greys, their heroic deaths instilling as much pride as regret in what was left of their regiments. Deirdre scanned the lists with a heavy heart, recognizing the names of many of the officers who had squired her at various dos in Brussels. The omissions, however, occasioned much heartfelt relief to their friends. When Tony Cavanaugh exclaimed that Roderick Ogilvie’s name was not among the casualties, Mrs. Dewinters got up without saying a word and left the room, leaving Deirdre and Tony to look after her in wonder.

  That night over dinner, Mrs. Dewinters made it known that she would be returning to London the following morning since there was no longer anything to keep her in Brussels. An uncomfortable silence descended over their party, and Deirdre could almost feel the pitying looks which were cast in her direction. It seemed that everyone was aware of the woman’s past relationship to Rathbourne, and speculated on whether their affair was over and done with or merely suspended until such time as it was decently possible for Rathbourne to renew the liaison in light of his nuptials. Deirdre tried to appear natural but inwardly she was seething. The embarrassment of her predicament was one more bone of contention that one day soon she hoped to settle with her husband. She sawed into the piece of rare sirloin on her plate, stabbed it with her fork, and purposefully chewed the tender morsel into gratifying oblivion. When she raised her eyes to Cavanaugh’s, she saw the gentle raillery in his barely suppressed grin, and she tried to reciprocate, though she feared that she had failed miserably.

  He found her later in Armand’s chamber, where she was attempting with indifferent success to teach her brother some of the finer points of the game of picquet. Cavanaugh pulled up a chair and watched silently as they played out a hand, with Deirdre giving a running commentary, and Armand watching her every move intently.

  “Pity I hadn’t known that little play when I accepted Rathbourne’s challenge that night at Watiers,” he said ruefully as Deirdre gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them expertly.

  “I doubt if that would have made a jot of difference,” mused Tony. “Picquet is Rathbourne’s game. I hear he made a study of it after some chit bested him at some houseparty or other years ago.”

  “Now you tell me,” groaned Armand.

  Tony flashed an apologetic half smile. “I never did find out—did you manage to come up with blunt to recover your vowels?”

  “I took care of it,” said Deirdre, and looked curiously at her husband’s cousin.

  Armand threw out a card. “Tony offered me a thousand to help me out. But it was only a drop in the bucket. I shan’t forget it in a hurry, though, Tony. You’re the best of fellows.”

  “Oh, don’t mention it. I felt responsible. How was I to know what Rathbourne was about when I took you to see him? He only told me that he wished to speak to you.”

  Deirdre’s eyes lifted from the perusal of the cards in her hand. “So it was a deliberate attempt to put Armand into dun territory!” she exclaimed, and immediately regretted saying as much to a stranger.

  Cavanaugh looked startled. “Oh, I say, surely not. Rathbourne is not that vicious. I think it was merely his way of warning Armand away from…” He faltered, and ended miserably, “I beg your pardon.”

  “Mrs. Dewinters,” Deirdre added gratuitously. “Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, Tony. You haven’t shocked me, I assure you. Gareth has taken me into his confidence.” It was far from the truth, but it galled her to think that everyone believed her the complete dupe.

  “It’s Maria I came to talk to you about,” he began diffidently. “I thought I might give her my escort to London, if you don’t mind, since you are in no position to leave at present. I should be back within the week, and then we can return to town together, if you like.” His hand moved to his cravat and he adjusted it with compulsive fingers, quite ruining the effect of its intricate folds.

  Deirdre wondered at his embarrassment. He could hardly look her in the eye. And then, it came to her.

  “Has Rathbourne asked you to look after Mrs. Dewinters as well?” He shifted uncomfortably, and she said gently, “You needn’t answer that. Of course you must escort her. But don’t trouble about us. There’s no saying how long we may continue in Brussels. You mustn’t allow Rathbourne to take control of your life, you know. He will if you don’t stand up to him, oh yes he will! I give you my word that we shall make for Belmont, just as soon as Armand is better. Now go to London with an easy conscience, and take up the threads of your own life.”

  He protested, but Deirdre soon overcame every objection he raised, and the matter was finally settled between them. Her composure outwardly remained unruffled, but inwardly she staggered from the disclosure that Rathbourne was in some sort still tied to his former mistress.

  One episode ended very happily for Deirdre, however, and that was the business of Lustre. Deirdre could not bring herself to mention the loss of the prize bit of blood to Lord Uxbridge. Happily, Lustre was returned without a scratch. Lord Uxbridge assumed that the horse had been requisitioned or stolen, which amounted to the same thing, and Deirdre chose not to confess her own culpability in the matter.

  She spent part of each afternoon reading to the Earl in his private parlor. He managed to get about on crutches tolerably well, and never complained in her hearing, though she knew that he often suffered dreadfully. Deirdre’s admiration for the man grew apace, and she was sensible of the fact that in the months she had come to know him, her opinion of his character had undergone such a change that she would never have recognized the Earl as the object of the scathing diatribe she had once made to her friend Serena.

  On one occasion, she was reading to him from Waverley, a novel which Uxbridge particularly favored, by an unknown author, though rumor had it that it was written by Walter Scott, when the door was pushed open and a lady in traveling clothes with a young infant hanging on her skirts took a few steps into the room and halted. Deirdre put down the book in her hand, and looked inquiringly from Uxbridge to the woman whose eyes were brimming with tears.

  The Earl raised himself on one elbow, extended his hand, and said, “Oh Char, oh my dear,” in a voice that Deirdre would not have recognized as his own.

  Lady Uxbridge, for so Deirdre supposed the lady to be, then flung herself upon her husband, who gathered her and his young son in his arms. Deirdre slipped from the room unobserved.

  A short time later, she was sent for to be formally introduced. What Deirdre had expected in Uxbridge’s Countess was a far cry from the lady who smiled so warmly at her. Char Wellesley was said to have stolen the sought-after Lord Henry Paget, as Uxbridge then was, from his wife, one of the reigning beauties of the ton. On first impression, Deirdre would never have given the Countess a second glance, and she wondered how Uxbridge could prefer the quiet mouse of a woman to the dazzling Caroline Villiers, now the Duchess of Argyll.

  Second impressions were more favorable, however. It was very evident that Uxbridge and his wife were devoted to each other, and Lady Uxbridge was friendliness itself, showing every courtesy to the slip of a girl who, so she avowed, had shown such kindness to her husband. That Deirdre had also married Rathbourne, an obvious favorite with Lady Char, was very much to Deirdre’s credit.

  “I was so relieved when my dear Paget told me that yours was a love match,” said Lady Uxbridge confidingly, as the two women shared a pot of tea in Uxbridge’s private parlor. Dr. McCallum had called only moments before and was with the Earl in the next room. “I know Rathbourne has told you all about our wretched sufferings and the guilt I don’t suppose we shall ever be free of.”

  Deirdre did not know what she should say and busied herself with her cup and saucer. Her reticence went unremarked by the older woman.

  “But those days are best forgotten. Now tell me all about you
and Gareth.”

  The expurgated version of the courtship which Deirdre hesitatingly embarked upon was close enough to the facts, so she consoled herself, that no one could call her an unmitigated liar. It seemed to her, however, that since she had fallen in with Rathbourne, she was habitually spouting a twisted version of the truth. It troubled her greatly, for it had always been in her nature to be transparently honest.

  It came to her that that was not entirely the case, for when she was an infant, her stepfather had very gently broken her of a mendacity that was fast becoming a habit by encouraging her to forgo a treat whenever she found herself telling a half-truth. He had put her on her honor, and she had doggedly owned up to every falsehood. His pride in her success had filled her with pleasure. The memory was a happy one, and she was overcome with nostalgia. She could not remember when she had last thought of her stepfather with anything but hostility. She allowed the memory to revolve slowly in her mind, and in some odd way, she felt soothed, as if a throbbing wound had lost some of its power to hurt her.

  Lady Uxbridge’s soft accents recalled her to the present, and she dutifully accepted a marzipan from the proffered dish of sweets. “Delicious,” she murmured politely.

  When Dr. McCallum called Lady Char to the sickroom, Deirdre offered to amuse the small boy, whose nurse had suffered dreadfully from mal de mer on the crossing to Ostend, and who had taken to her bed as soon as the swaying coach had pulled in at the hotel. Young Clarence, four years old and just beginning to test parental authority to its limits, had other ideas and nothing could persuade him to remove from the vicinity of a father whom he had not seen for three months. Lord Uxbridge, happily for the little urchin who seemed to be able to twist his doting papa round his thumb, vociferously aided and abetted the boy. Lady Char and Deirdre exchanged a smile and Deirdre withdrew to leave the little family to their reunion.

  When Deirdre descended the stairs alone Solange could not hide her disappointment. The Dawson children had been removed from her care days before when Mrs. Dawson had collected her offspring and returned to her lodgings to await a summon from her husband to join him in Paris when British forces should take the city—a foregone conclusion, since the allies were meeting little opposition as they streamed southward into France.

  Deirdre looked in on Armand and found him sleeping, and went in search of her aunt. The hotel was almost empty of patients, since most had already been removed to England, and time hung heavily on her hands.

  “How is Lord Uxbridge?” asked Lady Fenton, looking up from a letter she was writing to one of her many offspring.

  “Oh, I think his recovery is assured with Lady Char now in attendance.”

  Lady Fenton sniffed. “It’s just as well Armand is ready to be moved. No one will think it odd in you to leave for home at this juncture.”

  Deirdre looked questioningly at her aunt as her fingers idly turned the pages of the morning paper. She noted that a small frown of concentration furrowed her aunt’s brow.

  “We must, of course, be polite to Lady Uxbridge as long as we are confined under the same roof, but it won’t do to become too friendly with her. Not that I have anything against her personally, you understand. I don’t know the woman. But to court her friendship would taint you in the eyes of the ton.”

  “I cannot believe I am hearing this.”

  Lady Fenton faltered under Deirdre’s cool appraisal. “She’s not accepted anywhere,” she went on to explain. “If you were known to be taking her up, no one of any significance would ever darken your doors. I’m not saying that’s how it should be, Deirdre. I am only telling you how it is in our circles.”

  The paper was laid aside and Deirdre said mildly, “But Lord Uxbridge is accepted everywhere, is he not?”

  “Oh well, he is a man. No one expects gentlemen to behave any better than they should. I can tell by your face that you think I’m being hypocritical. Perhaps you are right. But just remember, I didn’t make the rules. None of the Pagets will have anything to do with her, and I doubt if Uxbridge’s sister, Lady Capet, will show herself here now that the Countess is in residence.”

  “People can be so cruel and unforgiving!” Deirdre said feelingly.

  “So they can. But just remember your own sentiments when St. Jean eloped with that woman and left your mother to fend for herself. The cases are not dissimilar, and I don’t recall you ever having a good word to say about your stepfather.”

  A vivid recollection came to Deirdre of the last time she had seen her stepfather before his death. She had watched from an upstairs window as he had ascended the front steps of their dismal lodgings. He wanted to visit with his children, so her mother had informed them gently that morning over breakfast. To Armand, it had meant little. To Deirdre, it brought emotions so confused and painful that she had become wretchedly sick. She hated him for his rejection, and tried to smother the longing to be held comfortingly in his arms. In her child’s logic, she had long since divined that if only she had been his real daughter, as Armand was his real son, he never would have deserted her mother, and they would still be living happily together.

  She had hidden herself in the attic, refusing to come from her hiding place even when she heard his dear voice calling her name. When she finally descended the stairs after he had gone, her mother said little, but looked at her with sad, reproachful eyes and had given her a small velvet box, a gift from her papa. Inside was the St. Jean emerald, the only thing of value he had left. She had never seen him again.

  She shook her head as if to deny that the child of her memory could possibly be related to herself.

  “Think about it, Deirdre,” she heard her aunt’s voice say as if from a distance, “and you will see that I am right.”

  “Oh no,” said Deirdre. “Oh no. I think I am just beginning to see how wrong I have been about everything.”

  In the days that followed, Lady Char and Deirdre were often in each other’s company, and in spite of her aunt’s misgivings, Deirdre could not help responding to the Countess’s shy overtures of friendship. In the course of conversation, they spoke of Uxbridge House in Burlington Gardens and naturally Deirdre mentioned her friend Serena, the Uxbridges’ next door neighbor. After that, any reservation on Deirdre’s part vanished, for Lady Char said without rancor or any hint of self-pity that Serena Kinnaird was the only hostess in London whose home was open to her. Within an hour of making Lady Char’s acquaintance, Deirdre had known that she liked the woman; after a week, she regarded her as one of her closest friends.

  She attempted to pen a letter to Serena, explaining all that had happened in the fortnight since she had last written. To justify how she had come to marry a man she had vehemently declared she detested, however, as well as to account for her becoming on the best of terms with a couple whose conduct she had at one time severely condemned, was beyond her capabilities, and she gave up the attempt. She simply wrote that she would be home by the beginning of July and that there was much that she had to tell her friend. To her husband, she wrote not one word, nor did she receive any communication from him.

  As it happened, Deirdre and Armand came home to London with great, though unexpected, ceremony. The Prince Regent, having placed the royal yacht at the disposal of Lady Uxbridge, and having declared that “he loved Uxbridge, that he was his best officer and his best subject,” thereupon elevated him to the title of Marquess of Anglesey. It was in the royal yacht, as friends of the newly created Marquess and Marchioness, that brother and sister made the return journey from Ostend.

  “Although,” said Lady Char with a hint of amusement in her voice, “they could make me the Angel Gabriel’s assistant, and it still wouldn’t make a jot of difference. Some portals are harder to enter than the pearly gates.”

  They spent a night on board the royal yacht in the harbor at Deal and set off early the following morning for London in the crested carriage of Anglesey, as Uxbridge was now called. Lord Clarence and his nurse, with Lady Anglesey’s abigail, wer
e in the carriage which followed. As they crossed Westminster Bridge, a number of people recognized the Marquess or the crest on his carriage. Soon there was a boisterous throng of well-wishers which made passage impossible. Before the occupants of the coach knew what was happening, the horses were removed from their traces and men harnessed themselves to the carriage and dragged it through the cheering crowds. They entered the park by Storey’s Gate, which was normally reserved for royalty. Numerous horsemen turned aside to accompany the carriage on its triumphal journey up St. James Street. Finally, they turned into Burlington Gardens.

  On the steps of Uxbridge House, Lord Anglesey addressed a few words to the jubilant crowds before ascending the steps on his crutches. It could not be doubted that the tumultuous welcome had made a deep impression on him, as indeed it had on everyone present.

  Deirdre and Armand took an immediate farewell of the Angleseys with promises on both sides of a future reunion either in town or at their respective country residences. Since Rathbourne House on Picadilly had been shut up for the Season, and Deirdre was loath to open her husband’s house for only one night and be compelled to give directions to a set of servants who were completely unfamiliar to her, she had made up her mind that they should spend a night or two in a hotel. She said as much to her friend Serena, to whose home they had repaired as a matter of course since she lived practically on the doorstep of Uxbridge House.

  Serena would have none of it and prevailed upon her reluctant friend to accept her hospitality for a few days. “For I think that there is much that needs to be discussed between friends who have been, or were at one time, closer than sisters,” she said in a tone which Deirdre found more disconcerting than she was willing to allow.