Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire

by Juliet Landon

  ‘Never mind that. Tell me why Boston has suddenly offered for you.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. I didn’t say he’d offered.’

  ‘Well, he has, hasn’t he?’

  ‘The whys and wherefores are neither here nor there, but he’ll soon find out that I don’t intend to accept any man of my father’s choosing. Would you mind passing that little dish of olives, please? Thank you.’

  Lord Rayne’s handsome face could not conceal a fleeting expression of deep scepticism. ‘Is it only his reputation, or is there something else you’ve taken a dislike to?’

  She nibbled around the olive, studying her teeth-marks. ‘You know my thoughts on the subject,’ she said in a low voice. ‘When I marry, it will be to a man of my own choice, not one who bounces up to my father’s front door and declares his interest. I’ve seen too many unhappy women caught in that manner, and I’ve seen the ways they devise to make life tolerable. Look at your sister, for example.’

  ‘Dorna? Unhappy? What nonsense, Cat. It was not an unsatisfactory first marriage that made her the way she is. She’d have gone her own way no matter who she was shackled to. She’s her mother’s daughter.’ Lord Rayne chuckled. ‘So, the proud Miss Caterina Chester rejects all suitors unless they’ve been personally hand-picked by her. So where do I come in, my passionate Cat? Am I to be hand-picked?’

  ‘No, my lord. Not again,’ she said with a rueful smile.

  ‘I see. And what about Boston?’

  ‘Certainly not. One could never be sure of a man like that.’

  ‘That, my dear child,’ he said, ‘is just about the daftest thing you’ve ever said to me. If you can’t be sure of a man like Boston, you may as well stop looking. He’s the most dependable man I know, bar none. Now, I’m here to be obstructive, not to sing his praises. Drink up. It’s almost time for the ladies to withdraw.’

  Tilting her glass, she peeped through the mouthful of pale wine and the distorting pattern at the handsome face and challenging eyes she had studiously tried to avoid for the last two hours. Warped though her view was, there was no avoiding the determination written upon every line of his face, in his unflinching regard of her, in his bold and upright posture and the tender caress of his long fingers upon the stem of his glass. Holding her eyes with his own, he lifted it and paused before touching the rim to his lips like the slow ritual of a dance and, without a word to indicate who they were toasting, they drank to each other, both silently picking up the other’s gauntlet.

  The company stood as the ladies left the room, Caterina’s mind darting off-course down its own dark track where two unyielding arms caught her, hard thighs pressed shamefully close and warm lips … no! God in heaven … what foolishness! Hauling her mind back up from the depths, she sought Sara’s hand for safety. ‘Cup of tea, dear one?’ she said. ‘Shall we go and talk to Lady Caroline over there?’

  ‘Caroline Lamb? Do we know her?’

  ‘Not yet, but we soon will.’ Pulling the white shawl around her shoulders, she could not suppress a shiver as the hair on her scalp prickled, settling her thoughts back into place and making her aware yet again of the dangers of owning a too-romantic imagination.

  The two sisters soon discovered, however, that no woman of their acquaintance possessed the imaginings of Lady Caroline Lamb, who had expected to find her beloved Lord Byron as one of the party. He had not turned up, and now the otherwise intelligent and interesting young woman could speak of nothing except what might have happened to him, short of being swallowed by an earthquake.

  Sara was made so uncomfortable by it that she drew her sister gently away rather than listen to any more of the hysterics. ‘You won’t find me revealing my heart in that fashion,’ she said, once out of earshot. ‘If the man I want doesn’t turn up, I shall do what Lady Dorna does and find another. Such a silly fuss. Who is this Byron man, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, Sara … You must have heard of him. He’s all the rage. He’s the one who wrote that book of poems when you were fourteen, called Hours of Idleness—don’t you remember? Everyone’s started to take notice of him now.’

  ‘Oh, him. I thought that was by an old man.’

  ‘No, he’s young and handsome, and highly immoral, and all the ladies are in love with him, except us.’

  ‘Well, I hope for her sake he turns up or she’ll be a wreck in twenty-four hours. Perhaps Sir Chase will stand in for him, if he doesn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Mr Constantine Ensdale says that Sir Chase arrived unannounced, as he often does. They don’t mind, because he’s an old family friend. There’s always a room ready for him, Constantine says.’

  ‘How convenient,’ said Caterina.

  It was not long before they realised that Sir Chase, not Lord Byron, was to be the main topic of conversation among the ladies, and that few details of either his character or appearance had escaped their attention. Almost without exception, they wished he would bestow upon them one of his cool lingering looks from those bold hazel eyes, and most had noticed Lady Dorna’s particular good fortune with the beau. ‘What’s he like?’ the newly married Mrs Bannerman wanted to know, eager for comparisons. ‘He looks so severe. I’m sure I’d swoon if he looked at me like that.’

  Lady Dorna agreed, with an inappropriate cheerfulness, ‘Yes, dear, you probably would, but I think Sir Chase would expect more from a woman than a well-placed swoon. He would not do for you, Mrs Bannerman.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the young lady.

  Caterina came to her aid. ‘From what I’ve heard, Sir Chase would not do for any of us except as a temporary diversion. His reputation puts him well beyond our reach.’

  ‘Don’t rely on reputations,’ said a quiet voice coming from one end of the striped sofa. All eyes turned to the elderly dowager, Lady Inchall, whose frail lace-covered figure belied a mind as sharp as a razor. ‘I believe it’s better to make your own mind up about people rather than rely on hearsay. By their very nature, reputations are biased, you know.’

  ‘Forgive me, my lady. I stand corrected,’ said Caterina.

  ‘You are young.’ The old lady smiled. ‘That’s all there is to forgive.’

  ‘Do you know Sir Chase well?’

  ‘Since he was a young lad, Miss Chester. He was full of spirit and adventure even then, the bane of his father’s life and the idol of his mama’s. He’s learnt discipline over the years, but the energy is still very much there.’

  ‘Discipline, my lady? That’s not what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Reputations again? We all have them. Lady Dorna has. So have you. And so have I, for that matter, but only we know the reasons for them.’

  ‘I have? A reputation?’

  ‘Indeed. After two broken engagements, why would you not?’

  ‘Oh, dear. I had not thought—’

  ‘That it could be of interest to anyone else? That only goes to prove my point, that what we get up to is not essentially to amuse others, but to fulfil a need inside us that is not being met. Do you not agree that it could be so?’

  ‘I’m sure you must be right, my lady, but does that mean that any man whose life consists of one amorous pursuit and extravagance after another is trying to fulfil a need? If so, could he ever be expected to find what he’s looking for?’

  ‘Rather than continue the chase, you mean?’ Lady Inchall smiled at the pun, lighting up her wrinkled face with a network of silken strands. ‘Men have different values, my dear,’ she said kindly. ‘What may seem like an extravagance to one may seem perfectly normal to another. Some men cannot bear the idea of pursuit while others find it essential to their enjoyment. And, indeed, he can be expected to find what he’s looking for, and to know whether it’s right for him, too. A man whose experiences are greater than most is not likely to repeat the mistakes he made as a novice, is he? Not unless he’s a fool. It’s true that they’ll be sitting in there …’ she nodded her lace-topped head towards the dining-room door ‘… discussing us as if we
were horses, but the pity of it is that most of them know more about horses than they do about women. I think Sir Chase is probably an exception to that, which is why women respond to him so immediately. It shows, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You, too, my lady?’ said Lady Dorna, whose fan had sunk lower and lower as she listened.

  ‘Me, too, Adorna dear,’ said Lady Inchall, chuckling mischievously. ‘You wait till your legs start to wobble and your wrinkles multiply, and I’ll wager you dream of having a fine lusty man in your bed just as often as you do now. Eh?’

  Lady Dorna fell back upon the cushions, laughing merrily behind her furiously overworked fan while others smiled, enjoying the luxury of truth.

  Caterina nodded, thinking that she liked the dowager Lady Inchall and that when she herself was elderly, she would dispense similar pearls of wisdom to self-absorbed young women who thought they had all the answers.

  It was already getting late, and while Lady Caroline Lamb loudly bemoaned the men’s absence, the two sisters enjoyed the female company in the drawing room littered with Lady Ensdale’s collection of embroideries, some of the stumpwork pieces dating back over one hundred years. On one small side-table stood an open mahogany box holding a brass-mounted glass dial that moved.

  ‘Lord Ensdale’s newest toy,’ called his wife, waving a teapot at them in mid-pour. ‘It’s a something-meter,’ she chirruped. ‘Chase knows about naval machines. Ask him what it is, dear.’

  Caterina thought she must be mistaken, for Sir Chase had been in an army regiment, not the navy. Browsing through some family travel diaries and chatting to friends, they were interrupted at last by a loud burst of laughter from the dining room, followed by the men’s entry, bright red uniforms and deep blue naval tunics mingling with black-and-white evening dress, ostrich plumes, the flash of diamonds, the wink of gold and pearls. The ladies, yawning only moments before, suddenly sat up and smiled with expectation, their eyes plotting the progress of Sir Chase and Lord Rayne, deep in conversation.

  Deprived of her chaperon, Caterina smiled at the two Ensdale brothers as they came to engage Sara and herself in conversation, and so easily did the moments pass that, when she next looked up to find Lord Rayne, he had been captured by a tall brunette whose plumes dusted the plasterwork ceiling.

  But without needing to look, she knew who had come to stand at her back, and before she could move away, Sir Chase became part of the group until the Ensdales took Sara off to look at their mother’s Queen Anne dolls’ house. ‘You are not joining the card tables?’ she said to him, watching the trio depart.

  ‘No, Miss Chester. I’m joining you instead. Shall we sit?’

  ‘But what about Lady Dorna?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I believe she’s expecting you to keep her company.’

  ‘And I’m expecting you to keep me company. Come, if you please.’

  The large room was well stocked with tables of all sizes, sofas and chairs, folio stands and marble busts of Roman generals, but Sir Chase led her to the far end towards a deep velvet-covered couch with bowed animal-legs and gold-tasselled cushions. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘we can hear ourselves speak.’

  Not best pleased by this easy capture, Caterina placed herself well into the corner, wondering how to broach the difficult subject of her father’s guile without becoming quarrelsome. ‘Perhaps you should do the talking, Sir Chase, for you do have some explaining to do.’ Arranging her silver skirt more carefully over her knees, she took a sidelong glance at his skin-tight breeches of silk stockinette, fearfully expensive and worn only by men with well-muscled legs. Her eyes travelled upwards over the white brocade waistcoat, gold chain, pearl buttons and impeccable cravat to his square chin, and she was reminded again of that exhilarating career around Richmond Park only yesterday morning. His steady eyes reflected her thoughts of his hands holding hers, her thigh against his, her shoulders leaning as they cornered at speed. She blushed and looked away. ‘You might wish to explain your purpose in making such a ridiculous offer to my father without speaking of it to me first. Yes, I understand that it was a wager, intended to give my father a chance to be free of the debt at my expense, but do good manners not dictate to you that I ought to have been consulted?’

  ‘And if you had been, would you have agreed?’

  ‘No, of course I wouldn’t!’ she snapped. ‘You must have known that.’

  ‘Both your father and I knew that, which is why you were not asked. As you say, it’s a wager, and it’s up to me to win it, isn’t it? Whether you help your father over his difficulty is entirely up to you, but we agreed to keep the good news from you until after this weekend. For reasons best known to himself, he sent me a message to say he’d changed his mind about that.’

  ‘It was my doing, Sir Chase. It’s not so difficult for me to tell when Papa has something unpleasant on his mind, though I had never thought in my worst nightmares that he could have involved me in something quite so underhand as this. You will understand that I can have nothing to do with such a scheme.’

  ‘Ah, so you winkled it out of him, did you? Pity. I would rather you’d heard it from me first. I could probably have said it with more tact.’

  ‘I would rather not have heard it at all, sir. I have already made you aware of my views regarding marriage, and I can assure you that when the time comes, I shall be responsible for making my own choice. I dare say my father would have you believe I’m getting desperate.’

  ‘On the contrary, Miss Chester, he assured me of no such thing. He gave me the distinct impression that it’s he and your stepmother who are desperate.’

  ‘With a debt of twenty thousand guineas to pay off, who would not be?’

  ‘Mrs Chester has been told of the debt, then?’

  ‘Certainly not, Sir Chase. She must never know of it.’

  ‘And you are not inclined to help your family out? Well, well.’

  Incredulous, she stared at him. ‘Help them out, sir? Would you marry to your father’s instructions to pay off a debt that was not of your making? Would you be the object of a wager, Sir Chase?’

  ‘If the lady proposed was yourself, I would jump at the chance.’

  ‘Poppycock, sir! Don’t try to bamboozle me with such flummery. I’m not such a gudgeon as you think, you know. I hope I may call myself a dutiful daughter, but only a goosecap would go along with this kind of tomfoolery. I have my pride, and I have my aspirations, and neither of these lead me towards men like you.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I seem to recall something similar to that when we spoke yesterday. Men of my sort, wasn’t it? Yet you seemed rather vague about the details. Are you any nearer explaining them today?’

  She was not. Men of his sort occupied women’s fantasies, safely hidden where they could do no damage. They were not easy to explain. She took a deep breath, fearful of the words even before they were spoken, feeling the heat of them and the scorn they would provoke. ‘I have been brought up, Sir Chase, to avoid excess of any kind, and in the life you lead—’

  ‘Oh, please spare me the hypocrisy!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  As he winced at her intended lecture and shook his head, his craggy face registered both frown and laughter. ‘You have been brought up, Miss Chester. Yes, I can see that. But don’t try to sell me that nonsense about disapproving, when you know you’d do exactly the same if you were in my position. That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it? The fact is that you’re not. No, it’s no use looking daggers at me. The reason why you’re so annoyed with your father is that he’s taken the reins out of your hands again—’

  ‘That’s not true, sir!’

  ‘And that’s once too many, isn’t it? You see, I know what it is you want, something you’ve never yet been offered, something deep inside you waiting to be used. It’s called passion. It’s what your father refers to as silly nonsense.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘I heard it in your voice when you sang, and I can see it
in your eyes. I felt it as we drove together, wildly. You were breathless with it, and guilty with it, too. You are angry with men, your father, your brother, those pathetic creatures who offered for you, and me in particular because you’re interested, for once, and you dare not say so because you’re insulted by the urgency of it all. Blame your brother for that, and don’t try to answer me. Go to bed and think about it. We have a few days together, and by the time we’re ready for home I’ll have a better answer from you.’

  ‘You can have your answer now, Sir Chase,’ she said, panting a little. ‘I can earn money. I can pay you. Just give me enough time, and I can pay you back, every last penny.’ Her words tumbled out, headlong.

  ‘That isn’t the answer, and I won’t wait. No.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Shh … hush, m’dear. I know what it costs you to plead, so we shall say no more about that kind of solution. It’s not for you, and I won’t have you pleading. You’ll marry me. Become used to the idea.’

  ‘No, sir, I shall not. We live in different worlds.’

  ‘You think so, do you? Is that what you thought when we sat side by side and sprung my team over the turf yesterday? Eh? Is it?’

  ‘That was a mere moment or two.’

  ‘Wrong, there were other moments, too. We both know that.’

  ‘We have nothing else in common. It will take only a day or two for you to find that out.’

  ‘Yes, we have,’ he whispered.

  His arm lay along the back of the couch, his hand drooping near her shoulder. But now, in the silence, as she acknowledged the full import of his quick uncompromising reply, one forefinger touched the bare skin of her upper arm just below the petalled sleeve, sending a shock through her body that instantly washed away the snub she would like to have delivered. The finger bent, caressed, and withdrew, leaving its memory behind to linger upon her arm, holding her motionless.

  ‘Yes, we have. And if I can discover so much about the real Miss Chester already, just think how soon I shall find the rest of her. Different worlds, indeed.’

  In some respects, Sir Chase had to agree that their worlds were different, if the hullabaloo at Paradise Road was anything to go by. No wonder the father was at his wits’ end and the daughters longing for escape. ‘You’ve been invited to sing, I believe,’ he said, gently changing the subject.