Lady Camberwell gave a lazy laugh. “Come now. All the world knows that Charles never discusses his… hobbies.”
“Ah, but that was before he was married,” said Margery, looking straight into Lady Camberwell’s beautiful eyes. The gentlemen were triumphantly piling up roses at their feet, but their actions went unheeded.
Lady Camberwell gave a little nod and then rose to her feet. “A most interesting discussion, my lady,” she said. “It is as well we were only talking about birds. Gossip, in this society of ours, can be a dangerous thing.”
“Indeed it can,” replied Margery earnestly. “Only think how they applaud a man who has many lovers, and smile indulgently and call him a rake. But a lady… ah, now, there’s the rub. Gossip like that could tear her reputation to shreds an’ you take my meaning.”
“Perfectly,” said Lady Camberwell with a tight little smile. As she moved away, she heard Freddie bleating, “I didn’t know Charles was interested in birds,” and Lady Amelia’s warning “Hush.”
Lady Camberwell met the marquess at the entrance to the ballroom. His mocking smile glinted down at her. “Do you come with me, my lady?” he whispered. “We did not finish our discussion.”
He looked so handsome. Lady Camberwell gave a mental little sigh of regret. “I have the headache, Charles,” she said firmly. “You must excuse me.” She pushed past him almost rudely.
He looked after her with his eyes narrowed and then shrugged. He would lie in some woman’s arms tonight, no matter who, to try to assuage this aching desire for revenge.
He looked across the lawn to his wife. She was sitting surrounded by masses and masses of white roses. A light breeze was lifting her hair and her face was alive with amusement as she listened to Viscount Swanley. The marquess swore under his breath. There was always Mrs. Harrison.
Toby and his brother jolted home together in the confines of a closed carriage. “Know what?” asked Lord Brenton, suddenly breaking the silence. “She’s hot stuff!”
“Hold on,” said Toby angrily. “If you mean Lady Margery, then you’re wrong.”
“Pooh!” said Lord Brenton. “You know and I know that Charles was fooling around in the shrubbery with Lady Camberwell. Margery knew it and she didn’t turn a hair. Welcomed the woman to the table and prattled on about birdwatching. She’ll soon be looking for her own lover.”
“Not Margery!”
“Yes, Margery! Pa was right, you know. He said he could always tell the flighty ones. Think about it, Toby. I can tell by the way she looks at you.”
Toby thought. It was a painful process, since he was not in the habit of thinking very much about anything.
“I couldn’t… she wouldn’t,” he said finally.
Lord Brenton nudged him in the ribs and winked fatly in the darkness of the carriage. “Take it from your elder brother,” he said. “She could and she would.”
The Marquess of Edgecombe presented his card to a trim parlor maid at a slim house in Half Moon Street and requested her to inform Mrs. Harrison that she had a late visitor.
“Very good, my lord,” said the girl, scurrying up the stairs and throwing the handsome lord an appreciative look over her shoulder.
There was a murmur of voices from above and a sudden shriek of “No!”
A few minutes later, the parlor maid came hurrying down the stairs with her eyes lowered. “Please, my lord. Mrs. Harrison, she isn’t home.”
“I see,” said the marquess, slowly reflecting that he did not. He took his hat and cane from where he had so confidently thrown them on the sofa and made his way out into the night. First Lady Camberwell, and now this!
He must be losing his touch.
CHAPTER TWELVE
With an abrupt change in the weather, fog and frost descended on the streets of London: thick, yellow, choking fog which crept into the clubs and drawing rooms, soiling the Brussels lace of the curtains and bringing with it a marrow-freezing chill.
Lady Margery felt immeasurably listless and depressed. She and her husband moved about their town mansion like polite strangers. The chilling weather had allayed the ripe smell of the sewers, but little else could be found in its favor. The marquess’s frozen manner seemed an extension of the weather itself. Margery had flirted gaily with Toby and Lord Brenton and Viscount Swanley and even Freddie—although the latter seemed to spend most of his time in Amelia’s company—but to all this the marquess seemed to turn a blind eye.
Toby was particularly gratified by Margery’s attentions and felt he was changing into quite a ladies’ man. He affected large nosegays in his buttonhole and had even taken to wearing scent and—wonder of wonders—confessed to having baths at least twice a month. His sporting cronies shook their heads over this, prophesying everything from pneumonia to the plague, and Toby would have dropped this new fashion had not Freddie and Viscount Swanley confessed that they themselves took baths regularly, and as for the marquess, it was rumored that he took a bath almost every day!
That was enough for Toby. He had no intention of going to such extremes as Edgecombe, but on the other hand he had actually begun to enjoy his twice-monthly immersion in hot water. And, as he confided to the marquess, it certainly kept the dashed livestock at bay and he didn’t want to end up like old Ellington, whose wig crawled like a zoo!
Margery began to feel that her life had always been the same, as grim winter settled over London. Sometimes she felt that she, Margery, was the chaperone and Amelia the debutante as Lady Amelia attended more and more balls and parties, always escorted by the ever-attentive Freddie.
“How kind Freddie is,” thought Margery. “Not many young men would take such trouble to be kind to a middle-aged lady.”
The marquess also felt that his life had become stale, flat, and unprofitable. The pain Margery’s appearance caused him had remained undiminished, but he had no longer tried to set up an affair with any other woman.
He was brooding over this one evening while the yellow snakes of fog wound themselves round his library and his wife was off somewhere dancing in the arms of some other man. He prowled moodily along the bookshelves, searching for something to read to pass the long hours before bedtime.
A wisp of lace at the corner of the sofa caught his eye and he stopped his pacing to pick it up. It was one of Margery’s handkerchiefs. Without thinking, he raised it to his nose, smelling the light fragrance she usually wore. He was suddenly attacked by such a rush of passion that he crumpled the fine linen and lace in his fingers into a ball and threw it back on the sofa.
Damn her!
He thought of Mrs. Harrison again and wondered why she had refused to see him. He mounted the steps to his dressing room three at a time and jerked open a drawer in his dresser. He picked out a small jewel box and opened it. A small flower made of sapphires and diamonds winked up at him in the candlelight. He had bought it as a gift for Margery and had never given it to her. He rang the bell and sat down at a desk and began to write hurriedly.
When the servant replied to his summons, he handed him the jewel box and a note and told him to deliver it to Mrs. Harrison in Half Moon Street immediately.
“And if that doesn’t fetch her, nothing will,” thought the marquess grimly. He walked downstairs to the library to wait.
His answer arrived in a remarkably short time. Mrs. Harrison thanked his lordship for his munificent gift and was desirous of having a few words with him.
His only thought as he shrugged himself into his benjamin and collected his curly-brimmed beaver and cane was one of triumph. No longer would he sit around his home waiting for the sound of his wife’s step on the stairs like a lovesick youth.
Mrs. Harrison was as seductive as he had remembered, but to his surprise he was ushered into the drawing room instead of being taken straight to the bedroom.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the widow fell silent and sat twisting her handkerchief in her plump, beringed hands. She was wearing his gift at her bosom and the gems winked and
sparkled in the light.
The marquess was about to make a general remark about the weather, to end the awkward silence, when Mrs. Harrison burst out with, “I can’t believe it, my lord. I can’t!”
The marquess’s thin brows snapped together. “What can’t you believe?”
“That you’ve got what… what she said you ’ad… had.”
“Who is she?” snapped the marquess.
“Your wife,” said Mrs. Harrison simply.
“You are mistaken. You have not met my wife. Come, my dear, we have more pleasant things to discuss.”
Mrs. Harrison shrank back against the sofa cushions. “But I did… meet your wife,” she protested. “It was at Vauxhall when you went off with that other fellow, the stupid-looking one.”
The marquess easily identified Freddie from this unflattering description and he began to remember. He remembered Freddie’s uncharacteristic insistance on a “private coze” and Mrs. Harrison’s sudden disappearance.
“Tell me what she said,” he asked.
His face was very white and stern, and Mrs. Harrison was beginning to regret her greed in accepting the brooch. She began to babble. “She said as how you was in the habit of a-taking your pleasures in Seven Dials and she said… she said you ’ad the…”
“Did she say I had the pox?” asked the marquess incredulously.
Mrs. Harrison nodded dumbly.
“The intriguing little minx,” said the marquess slowly. “The jade!”
Mrs. Harrison looked at him with a dawning glimmer of hope. “You mean her ladyship was lying?”
“Of course she was lying,” said the marquess savagely. “Do I look as if I need to find my pleasures in the most squalid slum in London?”
Mrs. Harrison eyed him appreciatively, from his impeccably tailored evening coat to his breeches and silk stockings and the fine fall of old lace at his neck and wrists.
“No, that you don’t,” she said on a sigh. “And to think, your lady had me really scared. She must love you very much.”
“What a strange idea of love… going round telling the world and his wife that I have the pox,” snarled the marquess.
Mrs. Harrison opened her mouth to point out that Lady Margery had only been trying to break up her husband’s latest flirt, but closed her mouth again. A happily married man was not in her own interests.
The marquess mentally picked his little wife up by the throat and banged her head against the wall. Outwardly, he smiled slowly into the widow’s eyes and said softly, “We are wasting valuable time.”
Toby, his brother Archie, and Perry were, at that moment, sitting over their forgotten drinks in Watier’s, staring at Freddie in amazement.
Toby was the first to find his voice. “Marry!” he said. “You! Marry Lady Amelia. You must be mad. She’s old enough to be your mother!”
“He’s right,” said Viscount Swanley. “Not the thing at all, Freddie. They’ll say you’ve got the same weird tastes as Prinny. He likes his game well hung.”
Freddie wished he had not spoken. How could he explain the attractions of a placid smile, a beautiful pair of shoulders, a warm feeling of having come home at last?
“Don’t like the company she keeps, either,” said Lord Archie suddenly. “Lady Margery ain’t all she should be.”
“Steady on!” cried Perry.
“Well, she ain’t,” said Archie stubbornly. “Led you all a fine dance, didn’t she? I’m told, moreover, that Amelia Carroll ain’t got a feather to fly with. Stands to reason she’d snap up a rich young man.”
“There will be no more discussion on the subject,” said Freddie firmly. “But as far as Margery is concerned, I don’t think her marriage is very happy, and she is simply using us to escort her to balls and functions because her husband will not.”
Freddie got to his feet and gave his friends a quaint little dignified bow. “Furthermore, I’m going to avoid your company until you learn to speak of my lady friends with a bit more respect.”
He marched away, leaving the three to look after him. “It’s the wine,” said Toby after a long silence. “Finally addled his wits.”
“He ain’t been drinking at all,” drawled Perry. “I wrote a poem about it. It goes like this:
“‘Oh, Serpent in the goblet cup—’”
“How can it be a ‘goblet cup’?” sneered Archie. “It’s either one or t’other.”
“It’s known as poetic license,” said Perry stiffly.
The pair of them began to squabble in a half-hearted way, leaving Toby to his jumbled thoughts. Earlier in the evening, Archie had again been hinting that Margery could be his for the asking. “Of course, she’ll play all coy,” Archie had said. “Girls like that like a show of force. Saves face, as the Chinamen say. Bet if you swept her away to some cozy little nest, she’d cry and struggle just for show and then she’d just melt in your arms.”
No lady had ever melted in Toby’s arms, and the thought awakened a lot of old dormant feudal fevers. Vague ideas for an abduction began to form in his mind, aided by the old French brandy in front of him and by the unreality engendered by the thick bands of yellow fog which were floating across the clubroom.
Thoughts raced and chased each other through his head with all the rapidity of Lord Alvanley running the mile in under six minutes along the Edgware Road. The dandy set were deep in games of macao, losing and gaining fortunes with well-bred ease. Brummell had brought elegance and cleanliness to these young men, many of whom had served in the army with great gallantry. They were witty, amusing, and urbane, and Toby envied them from the bottom of his country heart. He affected the dandy style of dress himself but fell short of Brummell’s maxim that a true dandy should be inconspicuous in his dress. Toby’s squat, burly figure was not made for fashionable lean lines, and it had taken the efforts of three footmen to get him into his coat. He was wearing his cravat in the mathematical, a style with three creases in it, couleur de la cuisse d’une nymphe émue. He had felt all the crack when he had surveyed himself in the long glass before leaving his lodgings, but now the image that peered back at him from one of the large mirrors on the other side of the room showed him a depressing picture of a bucolic squire lately come to town. He sighed heavily and his Cumberland corset let out a protesting squeak. How could he be expected to seduce anyone? His coat was so tight that he could hardly raise his arms.
The Marquess of Edgecombe came awake with a start, climbing up through fathomless pits of sleep. The watch was crying the hour on the street outside. Two o’clock in the morning. He fumbled for his tinderbox and in the dim light of the dying fire saw a candle beside the bed and lit it.
He felt absolutely dreadful. Mrs. Harrison had performed her part well, and with each heave and sigh and groan he had tried to blot out the memory of other lips against his own, fresh and generous. He lay among the relics of his dead passion and felt miserable. His partner turned sleepily in the large bed and the acrid aroma of stale sweat and heavy musk assailed his nostrils. He had meant somehow to revenge himself on Margery, but he was left the sufferer.
The candle flame grew brighter, illuminating the frowsty, cluttered room. A great wind heaved and racked the buildings and streets of London, stealing icy fingers of cold into the bedroom and sending weird shadows dancing on the walls.
The heavy silk of the bed hangings moved gently and he found himself staring straight at a large cockroach. It clung to the silken hangings, glittering, fat, and obscene, and the marquess shivered suddenly with a mixture of repulsion, distaste, and cold.
He had frequented many bedrooms such as this, but never before had he endured such self-disgust. He climbed slowly from the bed so as not to disturb the figure sleeping beside him.
How triumphantly he had lain here a few hours before, waiting for her to undress. She had posed seductively, striking various attitudes in the manner of her kind as her maid had removed her outer garments. He had felt virile, amused, in command of the situation. Then the maid had
been dismissed, after loosening her mistress’s stays.
The heavy stays had fallen to the floor and the marquess had closed his eyes in sudden pain. It seemed as if great mounds of white flesh had been released from their prison. The vision of his wife’s slim, high-breasted body had flashed before his eyes to taunt him. That was what had made him go through with it, he decided.
The wind outside tore furiously at the shutters, bringing with it a picture of clean, wild country and pure air. He made up his mind. He would call on his father and stay with him. He would then travel abroad and stay away from England until the hurt caused by the humiliation of his marriage had healed.
He dressed quietly and quickly and let himself softly out of the bedroom.
The wind roared along Half Moon Street and there was an almighty crash as a chimney stack was blown clear from its mooring and came crashing down onto the cobbles. A small moon racing high above, between ragged clouds, emphasized his sudden feeling of loneliness. He would go to Watier’s and drink and talk and perhaps play macao until the pain lessened, and then he would ride to his father’s estate.
Some remnants of fog still clung in the corners of the cardroom. He sat down heavily beside Toby Sanderson and called for brandy. Toby was still in conversation with Perry and Archie, and all betrayed by their cautious speech and movements that they had been drinking heavily.
“Been amusing yourself, Charles?” queried Archie with a leer.
The marquess gave him a cold look, drank off a bumper of brandy in one gulp, and turned to Toby.
“I thought you might be with my wife this evening, Toby,” he remarked lightly. He drained another bumper of brandy.
Toby looked at the marquess nervously. “Not me,” he said hurriedly.
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