“That makes a change,” said the marquess in the same deceptively light voice. His three friends watched as another liberal glass of brandy followed the first two down the marquess’s throat.
The marquess became aware of a smell of bad drainage from somewhere behind him. “Hallo, Ellington,” he remarked without bothering to turn his head.
“Glad to see you’re fit and well,” said Lord Ellington while they all hurriedly buried their faces in their scented handkerchiefs. Dear God, thought Perry, Ellington gets riper by the minute. “I was walking along Half Moon Street,” continued Lord Ellington, as usual blissfully unaware of the effect of his aroma, “and I saw you nearly getting hit by a dashed great chimney pot. Ah, well, the devil looks after his own, and talkin’ about devils, wasn’t that the fair Harrison’s house you was coming out of?”
“So?” said the marquess, helping himself generously from the decanter.
Lord Ellington slapped him on the back with one grimy hand. “‘So,’ he says. What a dog you are, Charles! Newly wed and all and still sampling the delights of the night.”
“You see, my wife understands me completely,” said the marquess simply. He felt he had just said something wrong, for Perry was looking at him strangely, but the brandy was affecting his brain very quickly and he had a sudden desire to make bad worse.
“A toast to my beautiful wife,” said the marquess, getting to his feet. “A toast to the modern woman. I allow my wife the same liberty as I allow myself. Come, gentlemen! You are not drinking.”
“See! See!” whispered Archie, nudging Toby so violently that he spilled some of his drink on the table.
A black servant deftly mopped it up and then stood close by to be on hand. In his experience, a table such as this would soon put more brandy on the floor than in their mouths. Ah, well, only a few more years and he would be able to open his public house in the East End.
Ellington laughed noisily and strolled away, leaving the members of the table to put down their handkerchiefs and sigh with relief.
“Weird weather,” commented Perry conversationally. “First demned fog, then demned storm. It reminds me of—”
“The modern woman,” said the marquess, paying no attention. “They want their freedom? Then let ’em have it. God knows, there are enough female rakes in this society of ours.”
Archie leaned forward with his protruding eyes gleaming. “You should not talk so of your wife in public,” he said, carefully adding another brand to the marquess’s fire. “Respectable lady, your wife.”
“Pah!” said the marquess with a hectic glint in his eye. “That one is any man’s for the taking.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he would have given anything to take them back. He looked wildly round at his friends and wondered if he were going mad. Mumbling some incoherent good-evenings, he all but ran from the club.
“Pay no attention,” said Perry. “Charles is drunk.”
“In vino veritas, heh, Toby?” said Archie slyly.
“Oh, tol rol,” said Toby, waving his fat fingers in the air in a sort of dismissive way. But already his brain was busy. Hadn’t Charles practically given him leave to seduce Margery? It looked as if his, Toby’s, earlier ideas of women were right. They were minxes all. Sighing and simpering and protesting gentility while all the while they were no better than that Mrs. Harrison. He thought of clasping a yielding Margery in his arms—in a looser coat, of course—and felt no end of a buck.
He came to a sudden decision. “Heh, Archie, ’member what you was suggesting? Well, I have a plan. Sorry, Perry, not for your ears.”
He moved closer to Archie and bent his great head and began to whisper. Perry drank idly until snatches of their conversation began to reach his ears: “… gamekeeper’s cottage… deserted… grounds of Tuttering… Lady Margery…”
Perry stiffened. They wouldn’t, they couldn’t! He suddenly decided to call on Charles in the morning and warn him that his ill-advised remarks may have put wrong ideas in the fat heads of a certain pair of country gentlemen.
The marquess reined in his horse and looked down at the shabby figure crouched over a flower bed near the entrance to the ducal estate of Delham. The figure wore a shabby tweed coat and its head was covered with a stained and battered tricorne. Nonetheless, he had no difficulty in recognizing his father, the tenth Duke of Pelham.
“Hullo, father,” said the marquess, dismounting from his horse.
The duke’s aged, weatherbeaten face peered up at him curiously for a few seconds and then his blue eyes, very like his son’s, cleared in recognition.
“Charles, my boy,” said the duke, with a marked lack of paternal enthusiasm. “Have you finally brought Margery to see me?”
“No, father. My wife is occupied in town.”
“Well, well, well. Seems odd to me. Not allowed to see my own daughter-in-law. But come inside and we’ll talk.”
The duke cast a longing look back at the flower bed, heaved a heavy sigh, and trotted up to Delham Court beside the tall figure of his son.
The great house was much as Charles had remembered it from childhood, dim and silent and redolent of dry rot and damp dogs.
“Come in, my boy. Come in,” said the duke, leading the way into a ground-floor saloon. “Now we can be cozy.”
The marquess’s lips twisted in a wry smile. The vast, chilly saloon stretched into infinity and a minuscule fire of sea coal flared on the vast black hearth. The duke pottered from side to side of the great saloon, picked up a gardening book, removed his hat, straightened his wig with one earthy finger, and to all intents and purposes forgot about his son’s existence.
The marquess sighed. It was always a mistake to come back. Always a mistake to come searching for the home that had never really existed outside his imagination. As a boy, he had rarely seen either his father or mother, having been brought up by the nurse, then the tutor, then Eton and Oxford, and then another tutor to take him away on the Grand Tour. His mother had died when he was at Oxford, and he was ashamed because he had been more upset over the death of his old nurse. His head throbbed and ached from the effects of the brandy and he longed for bed.
He gave a gentle cough, but his father remained immersed in his book. Charles looked at him sadly for a minute or two and then got to his feet and quietly left the room.
The duke was vaguely aware later that someone had arrived and that he should perhaps be arranging something for their comfort. But after all, that was what one kept servants for. He returned to his book.
The marquess slept long and heavily, only awakening as a fiery sunset burned out the end of the winter’s day. The rooks were wheeling and diving over the bare brown fields. Trees threw their skeletal arms up to the red and blazing sky like lost souls stretching up out of hell.
Faintly, somewhere in the great house, the marquess heard the sound of the dressing gong. His father was a stickler for protocol, and he would be expected to present himself attired in evening coat and knee breeches for dinner.
As he rummaged through his jewel box, he thought of the brooch he had so carelessly bestowed on Mrs. Harrison. If only there were someone, just anyone, to confide in. But one did not share the secrets of the marriage bed with one’s friends.
Dinner was a long and solemn affair. Father and son sat at either end of a long polished table. The duke had his book propped against the saltcellar.
Remove followed remove until at last the port and nuts were brought in and the army of servants withdrew.
“Father!” said the marquess in an imperative tone.
The duke looked along the length of the table until he realized that his son and heir was seated at the other. He carefully and reluctantly marked his place in the book. “Hallo, Charles,” he said genially. “When did you arrive?”
“I arrived this morning,” said the marquess testily, “and before you forget my existence again, perhaps you would favor me with your attention.”
“Of course
, of course, my boy,” said the duke, his eyes staring longingly at his book.
The marquess picked up the decanter and strolled languidly down the length of the table and drew up a chair next to his father. He gently lifted the book from the saltcellar and turned it face down on the table, ignoring his father’s annoyance and distress.
“You’re going to ask me for money,” said the duke almost pettishly.
“I have plenty of money of my own,” pointed out the marquess.
“Then what else can you want?” asked the duke patiently.
“Strange as it may seem,” said the marquess slowly, “I would like to hear what my mother was like.”
The duke stared at him in surprise and then turned to stare at a portrait of his wife, which hung above the fireplace, as if expecting the painted mouth to open.
“Well, there she is,” he said, waving a feeble hand to introduce the portrait. “Ain’t as if she died when you was a child.”
“But I never knew her, you see,” said the marquess gently. “I saw her very briefly during my childhood—and you too, sir, for that matter.”
“That’s natural,” protested the duke, retreating behind his favorite argument. “That’s what servants are for. You had the best nurse, the best tutors.”
The duke stared myopically into his glass.
“Alicia,” he said at last. “Pretty name. I still miss her, my boy. Still miss her. People thought she was a cold, autocratic woman. But she wasn’t, at least not with me.”
He stared again at his glass, again forgetting his son’s existence and talking almost as if to himself. “Fire and passion, that’s what she was.”
His son stiffened suddenly.
“Fire and passion,” mused the duke, his face alight with memories. A log fell in the fireplace and sent a sudden sheet of flame up the chimney, and the wind began to rise again outside.
“We were lucky, very lucky,” the old voice went on. “It was a suitable match, but a love match for all that. I had everything a man could desire, a handsome wife in the drawing room and a passionate seductress in the bedroom.”
“But surely women—society women—are not supposed to—er—behave with any abandon in the bedroom,” said the marquess in a husky voice.
“Eh, what?” said the duke. “Oh, hallo, Charles.”
“Father,” said the marquess, slowly and patiently. “It is important for me to know… for you to tell me. I had thought that women of our class did not indulge in strong passions.”
“Why not?” asked the duke, looking properly at his son for the first time. “Women are the same all over, ain’t they? You can’t say we neglected your education along those lines. Didn’t I fix you up with the best courtesan in London soon as you were old enough? Didn’t she teach you anything?”
“She taught me that an experienced woman can supply what she is paid for,” he said dryly. “After that I had one abortive affair with a certain society lady, and the fire and passion that she gave to me meant all the world. I gave her my love and my heart. In return she supplied that fire and passion to several lovers apart from me, with happy, carefree indiscrimination. When I taxed her with it, she laughed in my face and called me a green boy. Since that time I have paid for my pleasures.
“A wife… well, I expected nothing more than that she should comport herself properly and supply me with an heir. On our wedding night, she seemed to burn in my arms. And I was shocked. No gently nurtured female should show such abandon.”
“Fiddle,” said his father. “It’s all the fault of your damned Methodist-ridden generation, your milk-and-water misses. In my day, we expected our women to match our passions.”
A slow feeling of panic began to grip the marquess.
“Had you told me this earlier—” he began wrathfully.
The duke picked up his book. “How was I to know you would be so stupid?” he countered.
He pulled a branch of candles nearer and proceeded to read, unaware that he had rocked his son’s well-ordered world to its very foundations.
Unnoticed by his father, the marquess rose and left the table. He must return to London as soon as possible. He had behaved like a fool. Some of the remarks he had made at Watier’s seemed to burn into his mind as he groaned aloud.
The duke mistook his anguish for indigestion.
“Try rhubarb cordial,” he said kindly. “Best thing. Works every time.”
But the duke spoke to empty air.
The marquess had gone.
Lady Margery smiled sweetly at the gentleman on the sofa next to her. “Pray go on, sir,” she said. “Ormolu interests me vastly.”
Her companion plunged into a long dissertation and Margery smiled and nodded, her thoughts elsewhere. Why had she decided to attend this party? There was no need now that there was no husband to mark her absence. Someone over by the window exclaimed that it had started to snow, and she let out a little sigh of relief. That would be a good excuse to leave early. She looked round for Lady Amelia, but as usual her companion had disappeared, no doubt on the arm of Mr. Freddie Jamieson. She envied them their comfortable friendship.
Had she but known, Freddie was feeling anything but comfortable as he rose from his knees and stared at Amelia in dismay. “But I say,” he expostulated. “After all, why not get married?”
Amelia looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. How could she explain that it was impossible for a woman of her years to marry such a young man? How he would regret it when she was an old woman and he still in his prime? “Say no more tonight, Freddie,” she whispered. “I would not have anything spoil our friendship.”
“But dash it all,” said Freddie. “I want more than friendship.”
Amelia looked at his fair and foolish face. She had learned to love this bashful and sometimes stupid young man as she had never loved anyone before. Why should they not have a discreet liaison? Would he be shocked? But that way they should have a little time together. She looked up at him appealingly and opened her mouth.
“Freddie!”
But it was not Amelia who had called his name. Viscount Swanley was standing in the doorway. His clothes were mud-stained and his hair was tousled.
He strode into the room. “It’s Toby,” he gasped. “He’s gone mad. I think he’s just abducted Lady Margery.”
Amelia leapt to her feet, her own worries forgotten.
“You must be mistaken,” said Freddie soothingly. “Toby would never do a thing like that.”
“But he has, I tell you,” yelled Perry. “I wasn’t coming here at all. I passed his traveling carriage on the road and I thought I heard someone screaming. Well, I had overheard Toby and his brother plotting something, but I didn’t pay much notice ’cause I thought they were in their cups. Then I remembered Margery was here and I thought I’d call in and make sure. Fellow she was talking to last, he says Toby comes up and says it’s starting to snow and that you, Lady Amelia, are already waiting in his carriage.
“She goes into the carriage and then cries out, ‘Amelia isn’t here!’ The door is slammed and the carriage races off.”
Amelia had gone very white.
“We’ll chase ’em,” said Freddie. “Do you know where they have gone?”
“Toby said something last night about a deserted gamekeeper’s cottage at Tuttering.”
“My wagon is faster,” said Freddie. “Let’s go.”
“I’m coming with you,” cried Amelia.
“Better let ’er,” said Perry gloomily. “With any luck, we may be able to save Margery’s reputation.”
“Just what was that about my wife’s reputation?” said a cold voice from the door.
Impeccable in evening dress, the tall figure of the Marquess of Edgecombe stood in the doorway.
His two friends leapt on him and hustled him outside. “No time to tell you, Charles,” gasped Freddie. “Tell you on the road.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Margery struggled against the stifling
gag, staring at Toby with horror. This could not be nineteenth-century England!
He had been so solicitous, so convincing at the party. When she had put her head inside his carriage and found it empty and had turned round to protest, she had received a vicious shove which had sent her sprawling forward among the straw on the floor. Toby had jumped in after her and tried to gather her in his arms as the carriage lurched forward. She had fought and struggled and screamed for nearly a mile until Toby had taken out a large Belcher handkerchief and ruthlessly gagged her and bound her hands.
From the strong smell of brandy on her companion’s breath, Margery realized with dismay that he had fortified himself for the ordeal.
She was disheveled and shivering and her cloak and dress were torn.
Toby sat sulkily nursing his scratched face. It had not turned out the way he had expected, and he felt a dull resentment against the world in general. He fortified himself from his flask and began to feel more cheerful. As soon as he reached Tuttering, he would have all night to exercise the considerable masculine charm his brother has assured him he had.
Then he noticed that the coach, which had previously been hurtling along at a great rate, had slowed considerably. He let down the window and leaned his head out and asked his coachman what the deuce he meant by dawdling at this cursed pace. A blizzard was blowing full strength and the coachman’s protesting voice came faintly through the storm. If he went any faster they would end in the ditch, he said.
“Spring ’em!” snapped Toby, slamming the window up again. The coach gave a great lurch and bounded forward.
Frantic thoughts chased each other round in Margery’s brain. If only he would remove the gag, then perhaps she could plead with him. What would her husband say?
As if in answer to her unspoken query, Toby said, “It ain’t no use you sitting there looking at me as if I was some sort of monster. No use pretending to be so hoity-toity either. Charles told me about you. Said you was any man’s for the asking.”
Margery realized with a dull surprise that hearts did break. How else could she explain the great wrenching pain in her bosom?
Lady Margery's Intrigue Page 15
