As he was always so embarrassingly pleased to see her, and so excessively gratified if she accorded him even a half smile, that she began to feel as if some skilfully contrived web was closing round her.
She was prepared to admit that she admired Lord Bruce tremendously, that his war record was something her father would have loved to hear about, that she sympathised with his injured foot and his lack of one arm, and that she even enjoyed talking to him—occasionally. But Lady Fanny’s insistence that she should entertain him on every possible occasion was beginning to affect her like a nightmare.
She was not afraid of remaining a spinster, and she did not intend to marry Lord Bruce. And Lord Bruce, she was certain, was daily coming nearer to making her an offer of marriage.
The Season was getting into its stride, and all sorts of parties and balls and routs were taking place daily. London was a hive of activity, and the atmosphere of liveliness and gaiety was infectious. Lady Fanny’s proposed ball for her niece was to take place on the last day of May, and since the house in Hill Street was so small Lord Capel was lending his house in St. James’s Square for the occasion. Lady Fanny became immersed in preparations for this event, and Harriet was required to lend her as much assistance as possible. There were guest lists to be drawn up, invitations to be written and despatched, flowers to be ordered and confectioners to be consulted, to say nothing of the vital business of ordering all the food and the wines. It was such an important and highly esteemed affair that no detail could be overlooked, and visits to St. James’s Square were undeniably necessary.
On the occasion of the first visit Lady Fanny invited Harriet to accompany her. Pauncefoot opened the door to them, but apart from a faint glimmer of surprise in his eyes Harriet could not be entirely certain that he recognised her. The house was dust-sheeted and silent, a faint odour of disuse following them as they paraded through the rooms.
Harriet recognised the little anteroom where she had been incarcerated for over an hour, and she of course recognised the library immediately. It seemed even more oppressive than the other rooms, opulent beyond belief with its gilded cornices and its ornate arches, the flowing velvet curtains before the windows and the deep leather chairs. The great desk was carefully shrouded in a holland cover, but it took little effort on her part to see the Marquis seated behind it, reaching for his writing materials, regarding her with those velvety dark eyes of his. His dark blue coat and his impeccably fitting white satin waistcoat were there before her eyes, just as she so plainly saw his shapely hands with the carefully tended nails mending an awkward pen which he was preparing to take upstairs with him to his room, and then casting it aside impatiently. She watched him pick up another...
Lady Fanny turned to her. Harriet did not realise that she studied her for a long time, with considerable interest, before she spoke. And when she spoke Harriet started so violently that she found it necessary to apologise.
“I was thinking what a—what a very handsome desk that is!” she said.
Lady Fanny smiled strangely.
“It is over-large for the room, but I’m afraid my brother has somewhat unconventional tastes. I personally could not endure to have a room so ponderously ornate as this in my house. I would call upon someone with the most modem ideas and a great deal of skill to refurnish it for me, and of course I could not endure for a moment those dreadful leather chairs,” waving a hand to indicate them. “They are most cumbersome and in every way offensive to the eye—”
“But very comfortable,” Harriet heard herself say defensively, recalling that she had occupied one of them for far longer than she had believed she would be able to endure, and that she had been petrified lest the owner of the house had her ejected by force.
Lady Fanny smiled again and pinched her cheek.
“Oh, yes, of course, I forgot that you have seen this room before. And no doubt it had a different aspect while you were concealed behind the curtains.”
“Will—will the Marquis of Capel be attending your niece’s ball?” Harriet enquired, not in the least certain why she had to ask such a question.
“I should think not. No, I am fairly certain he will not, since for one thing Annabel is not his niece—she is the daughter of my late husband’s widowed sister—and for another he is so much preoccupied at Capel that I’m sure he will have little time to spare. I am given to understand that they have quite a party there, and Rowena Harnsworth is at her most radiant and beguiling everyone who has not already succumbed to her charms. So you may be sure Capel would be very loath to leave such excellent entertainment. And certainly he would not regard a young girl’s coming-out as of very much importance.”
“I see,” Harriet said.
Lady Fanny subjected her to a quizzing look, and then walked briskly to the open door.
“Well, come along, my dear, we have much to do,” she said. “We have not yet inspected the ballroom, and there is the question of deciding upon a room for the card players ... If my memory serves me we always used the Purple Drawing room. It is not too large, and if the night is cold we can always see to it that there is a good fire.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
On the night in question there was no need of a fire, for the last days of May were unseasonably warm. Lady Fanny complained that it was quite oppressive, and she would not have been in the least surprised if, at the height of the ball, the heavens opened and the garden which provided some delightfully tucked-away nooks and comers for lovers was drenched by a sudden downpour. At the same time she was grateful for the garden from which she was able to gather numbers of fresh blooms to supplement the quantities arriving in baskets from local florists, which filled the great house with a steadily increasing fragrance.
The task of arranging these flowers was allotted to Harriet, and it was she who decorated the long tables in the supper-room with white and yellow roses. The Grecian figures in the hall were also garlanded with roses, and great sheaves of purple iris strained towards the painted ceiling. Lady Fanny was most impressed. She was even more impressed when Harriet decided the staircase should be banked with white camellias, and the little gallery where the orchestra would set up their instruments was transformed into a kind of flowery bower also.
“My dear,” she declared, “you have quite a knack with these things. You will make quite a remarkable hostess one of these days.”
Harriet, while she appreciated the compliment, saw no necessity to comment on such an unlikely event, and Lady
Fanny suggested she should return to Hill Street and order a late luncheon for herself and her hostess, when it would be time to begin the business of her toilet which, from her ladyship’s own experience, was likely to take a considerable while. Harriet was glad to escape to her room, where the dress she was to wear that evening was already spread out on the bed, and Lady Fanny’s maid was attaching some white satin ribbons and a cluster of silver rosebuds to the high waistline.
The dress was a present from Lady Fanny, one the Duke’s daughter had insisted on making to Verbena’s governess, and Harriet could hardly believe that she would be wearing it. It was of white silk gauze, as transparent as the wings of a moth, although underneath it was a long satin petticoat which prevented her feeling uncomfortably naked—although Lady Fanny herself frequently shocked her friends by her daring mode of dress. Verbena, released from her lessons that day, was enchanted by the dress, and she begged permission to remain with Harriet until her toilette was completed and Lady Fanny’s carriage was at the door to convey them to St. James’s Square.
For the first time Harriet saw the Marquis of Capel’s great town house at its best—as it must often have appeared in the past. It was not yet quite dusk, but lights streamed from the house and a strip of bright scarlet carpet extended from the front door to the pavement where the guests would alight from their carriages and sedans. An awning of similar colour, much embossed with gold thread, was stretched above it. In the brilliantly lighted entrance hall
Pauncefoot, resplendent in the Marquis’s livery of green and gold, stood prominently at the head of his little band of similarly attired footmen, and the moment Lady Fanny was assisted from her carriage he darted forward to receive her with exaggerated bows and gyrations, his magnificently powdered head bent almost to the dust at her feet. As Harriet followed her up the steps he unbent sufficiently to cast her an appraising glance. His eyes grew wider as he took in the details of her gauze and satin, with Lady Fanny’s pearls crowning the whole effect, and Harriet smiled at him in a completely understanding manner, recollecting how mistrustful of her he had been when she had dared to request an interview with the Marquis one recent Sunday morning.
If Pauncefoot also recollected that morning—which he undoubtedly did—nothing was given away by his expression. His attitude to her, as well as Lady Fanny, could not have been more subservient. Harriet recognised that this was a real triumph.
The evening commenced with the arrival of the first guests. Lady Fanny had already taken up her position at the head of the grand staircase, with her niece Annabel standing shyly on her right hand to be presented to each guest in turn. Lady Fanny’s appearance was sufficiently startling to merit more astonished glances in her direction than were ever directed at the fair-haired young girl in her drifts of white muslin and pale blue silk roses who was supposed to be the centre of attention for the evening; but since she was almost painfully shy, this no doubt was something for which Annabel herself was grateful. Only when the orchestra started up, and the first young man—carefully vetted beforehand by Lady Fanny herself—asked her to dance, did Annabel’s expression lighten, and within a short time she was enjoying herself hugely and the ball was pronounced a success.
Harriet, with no official status and therefore introduced very casually to a comparatively limited number of people, was able to appreciate die novelty of the experience right from the outset, and when Lord Bruce appeared at her elbow in all the glory of his regimentals and announced that he proposed to devote himself to her for the entire evening she was able to relax completely and enjoy herself. The music was lively, but owing to his disability the Duke of Coltsfoot’s younger son was unable to dance, so Harriet accompanied him quite happily into the conservatory where they sat amongst the trailing vines and the potted plants and listened to the music and talked.
The talk was desultory, for Harriet’s foot was tapping unconsciously in time to the quadrille and the country dances, to say nothing of the latest innovation, the highly controversial waltz. To follow intelligently such subjects as farming in Wiltshire and fishing in Sussex rivers became a little difficult after a time. Lord Bruce decided she was in need of some refreshment and left her to procure a glass of negus or lemon-water, which she said she would prefer as it was warm inside the conservatory. It was during his absence that a gentleman who had been observing her with a certain amount of pleasure while she was seated with the mamas in the ballroom came in hopefully to enquire whether she would be so good as to stand up with him in the polka, which according to the programme was to be the next item.
Harriet, who would have loved nothing better than to dance the polka with almost any unknown gentleman at that moment, shook her head and smiled regretfully. She thanked him and declared that she was not dancing.
The gentleman withdrew. A few seconds later, another slightly younger man made his appearance and actually ventured to argue with her when once again she shook her head and informed him that she had no intention whatsoever of taking the floor. His downcast looks very nearly caused her to change her mind, but the recollection that Lord Bruce would be returning at almost any moment enabled her to be quite firm. The young gentleman departed, wondering why it was that the prettiest ones were always the most difficult to persuade, having decided that Harriet was “damned nearly the prettiest one at the ball”.
Unfortunately for Harriet, who was growing a little tired of her incarceration in the conservatory, Lord Bruce had run into a brother officer in the refreshment room. As he was also a veteran of Waterloo and the two had not seen one another for some time, they had quite a lot to talk about and Lord Bruce found it difficult to get away. He had every intention of going in search of lemon-water as soon as the moment presented itself, but for the time being his friend had attached himself very firmly, and although Harriet was far from forgotten he hoped she would wait patiently for his return.
But Harriet was haunted all at once by her memories of that night in the library and all that had followed as a result of it. The music was making her feel acutely restless and, combined with the knowledge that this was the Marquis of Capel’s house, that the very chair she sat on belonged to him and the smooth lawn outside the windows was one which he had frequently trodden, somehow affected her in an intolerable way. Finally, she suddenly jumped up from her chair and started pacing restlessly up and down, prey to uncomfortably clear visions of the Marquis’s handsome face.
She felt suddenly stifled by the atmosphere inside the conservatory, and wrenched open the door which led to the garden. Lady Fanny had talked of secret nooks and arbours which might appeal to lovers, but as she stole along the paths beneath the stars it seemed to her that she had the garden to herself. There was no one about, and behind her in the house the dancing seemed to be at its height, the music so entrancing that apparently no one was willing to forgo a single moment of it. Harriet, a slender wraith in her white dress, with the silver roses nestling at her waist and a real white rose caught up in her curls, stood very still in the middle of a path which apparently led to nowhere, apart from a little arbour shrouded in palest jasmine flowers. The waning crescent of a young moon hung in the sky above, and Harriet paused to admire it, and to think how sweet and fresh the night air was—how wonderfully reviving after the close confinement of the conservatory.
Something moved near the arbour, and she realised that it was one of Lady Fanny’s romantically-minded couples who had emerged on to the steps which led down to the paved walk. The man was exceptionally tall with well-held shoulders, and even in the indifferent light the arrogance of his head and the curious clarity of his dark profile struck her as remarkably similar to an attitude and features she had come to know very well in recent weeks. His companion was an exquisitely slender and graceful creature in a shimmering gown, and her arm was linked in that of her escort. Before they descended the steps she paused and stood on tiptoe to look directly up into his face, the disparity in their height being quite considerable, and to Harriet’s horror—because she was quite unable to avoid acting the part of an audience—after a light and provocative laugh which rang like silver bells in the silence of the night, she kissed him deliberately.
The Marquis of Capel’s response—and Harriet had no doubt at all that it was the Marquis—was immediate. He promptly clasped her in his arms, and in return for that one seductive kiss he kissed her so many times that Harriet, petrified in the middle of the path, could not doubt his ardour. With the memory of similar kisses pressed on her own face at no distant date rushing up to cover her in a wave of excruciating embarrassment, she turned and ran back along the path like a frenzied nymph until she reached the door to the conservatory.
It was most mercifully empty of anyone who looked in the least like Lord Bruce with a glass of lemon-water in his hand, or any other gentleman likely to implore her to dance with him, so she took refuge in a bowery corner of it where there was an enormous palm tree. She pressed herself behind the stout trunk until the lovers from the arbour had entered shortly after her and made their way into the ballroom.
Even after that she refused to desert the protection of her palm tree, and it was many minutes before a measure of her normal composure had been restored to her. One thing was certain: she could no longer face the light-hearted company in the ballroom, and even the prospect of seeing Lord Bruce now struck her as more than she could endure. It did occur to her to wonder what had happened to him after he had gone in search of refreshment for her, but his reason fo
r absenting himself was of no importance. She felt as if some dreadful final humiliation had deprived her of all of her dignity, and more than anything she wanted to escape from the house. So badly did she wish to leave that she was looking round from behind the palm tree like a wild creature in an attempt to decide the best means by which she could achieve this desire without attracting any attention to herself, when a voice called her name, somewhat peremptorily. She knew at once that it was not Lord Bruce trying to discover where she was hiding.
“Miss Yorke!” the masculine voice called. “I believe you expressed a wish for a glass of lemon-water.”
Harriet remained hidden, very still and silent.
The Marquis of Capel sighed.
“How contrary women are,” he complained. “My brother has been waylaid by a bevy of stout matrons, and I’m afraid it is unlikely he will free himself from their clutches for some considerable while—perhaps not until the supper-dance, which I believe you have promised him. But in the meantime I have given him my word that I will see to it that your desire for this wholesome stimulant is not overlooked, and I beg you to come forth from that tangle of vines and receive it from my hands. I’m afraid I have spilled a little of it...” dusting a few trickles from his immaculate person with an even more immaculate handkerchief “but I’m sure you will forgive me. If you are really thirsty...”
Harriet stepped forth tentatively, with a frozen face, from her place of concealment. She had decided that there was no dignity in cowering away from him.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and held out her hand for the lemon-water.
The Marquis relinquished it. He continued to dab lightly at his white satin waistcoat with his handkerchief.
“A curious concoction,” he remarked, “lemon-water.” His eyes were on her gauzy gown, and in particular he noted the white rose in her hair, and the silver roses at her waist. “Very nice,” he commented. “Very, very nice!”
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