by Sheila Walsh
Pandora found this teasing quixotic mood more difficult to deal with than outright hauteur, perhaps because she was unused to such treatment. She schooled herself to meet his eyes with some measure of calm though her pulse was jumping in the oddest way.
‘Please, my lord Duke!’ she pleaded. ‘Someone might come!’
The faint curl of his lip suggested that he cared nothing for the possibility.
‘Lady Margerson would have the fairy tale played out to its accepted conclusion, did you know?’ He seemed to wait intently for her answer.
‘No! That is … You are talking in riddles, sir.’
‘Her ladyship holds the conviction that you would make me an admirable wife.’
For a moment Pandora was bereft of speech. Her eyes widened in shocked disbelief.
‘You don’t agree?’ His voice was now silk-soft.
She prized her tongue from the dry roof of her mouth. ‘I think it is the most shatterbrained notion I ever heard!’ she said flatly ‒ and then stopped, aware that once again she had spoken without care. She waited for the veil of hauteur to descend, the anger to make itself felt. But, for the second time in their brief acquaintance, he gave a great shout of laughter which softened and transformed the classical features and brought a warmth to his eyes.
‘That must surely put me in my place!’
She looked at him uncertainly, recognized the genuine good humour in his response and gave him back a crooked half-grin.
‘I do beg your pardon! My wretched tongue again. I only meant that I don’t understand how Lady Margerson can for one moment have supposed that you would entertain such a …’
‘Shatter-brained notion?’ he supplied in a droll voice. ‘But then, her ladyship is an incurable romantic, you see, whereas ‒’ a hint of the old mockery crept in ‘‒ you and I, my dear young lady, are essentially realists, are we not?’
She didn’t feel at all like a realist as he patted her foot and gave it back to her. He appeared amused by the speed with which it was snatched away out of sight beneath her skirts. He was about to rise when his glance was caught by the paper tossed aside upon the sofa carefully folded back at the advertisement page.
‘So? You are still set upon finding employment as a governess or somesuch?’ he said. ‘Must you really pursue that particular road to independence? I cannot feel that it will answer.’
Astonished that he should be interested enough to comment, she asked a little shyly, ‘Why ever not?’
His eyes mocked her. ‘Because, Miss Pandora Carlyon, you are not sufficiently subservient!’
Before she could form the words to refute this criticism, the door behind them flew open and William irrupted into the room, excited, dishevelled, the words tumbling out in a rush.
‘’dora, there is the most bang-up rig you ever saw down in the street … with a team of real prime goers! Do come and look. Binns says it belongs to a duke, but I expect he was fudging me ‒ I say!’
He stopped short upon beholding the somewhat intimate-seeming tableau before him. As Heron came unhurriedly to his feet, William took in the magnificently caped driving coat, the elegant garments beneath it, and his eyes grew round.
‘I say!’ he said again. ‘Is it yours, sir?’
Amused, the Duke nodded assent.
By now Pandora too had risen. Affection, aggravation and relief were almost equally mingled in her breast as she viewed her brother’s muddied nankeens and crumpled shirt, and the streak of dirt across his face.
‘Oh, William!’
He grinned unrepentantly. ‘Yes, I know, but I’ve had a perfectly splendid afternoon. I remembered there was to be a balloon ascent in Green Park, so I went along and one of the gentlemen in charge ‒ Mr Oliver ‒ let me help.’
‘You didn’t make a nuisance of yourself, I hope,’ she said swiftly.
‘Of course not. Mr Oliver said I’d been tremendously useful to them. He reckoned I had a quick brain and that I might well make a considerable aeronaut myself one day if I will only apply my mind seriously to studying the principles of flight. And he wasn’t bamming either, because he actually offered to take me up sometime if only you will give your permission. You will, won’t you, ’dora?’
She gave a mock shudder. ‘You can’t possibly expect me to answer a question like that now, you abominable little shag-rag! The only place I wish you to fly at present is upstairs to wash and tidy yourself before Miss Prossett catches sight of you.’ She saw that the Duke was watching with a kind of languid interest. ‘But first you shall let me make you known to the Duke of Heron. My lord Duke, this is my younger brother, William.’
‘How do you do, sir.’ William, not content with the usual formal bow, extended his hand in the friendliest fashion ‒ and too late Pandora saw that it, like the rest of him, was streaked with dirt.
Heron regarded the hand pensively, then with a barely perceptible sigh he clasped it firmly and found himself in the (for him) novel position of coming under the frank scrutiny of a grubby schoolboy who possessed the same direct gaze and openness of manner that characterized his sister. The same freckles too, only more of them.
‘I haven’t met a real duke before,’ William confided cheerfully. ‘We are pretty sure that Lord Wellington will be made one soon, of course ‒ only that isn’t quite the same thing, is it? As actually being born a “top of the trees” nobleman, I mean.’
Pandora didn’t know where to look, but Heron rose valiantly to the occasion, murmuring that he had never given the matter much thought, but he rather fancied that the man was more important than the title, which earned him an enthusiastic nod of approval.
‘And Lord Wellington will make a splendid duke,’ prophesied William, ‘for though he is a very jolly sort of person in general, when he is out of humour he can cut up as stiff as anyone!’
This masterly assessment of the great man’s character brought a distinct chuckle from the Duke, who was enjoying himself more than he had thought possible. William, much encouraged, grinned and returned with the tenacity of the enthusiast to the subject closest to his heart at that moment.
‘Do you know anything about balloons, sir?’
‘The bare rudiments, only,’ Heron confessed, feeling this admission to be a sad let-down. ‘I fancy I read Cavallo’s History and Practice of Aerostation in my youth,’ he added in mitigation.
‘Well, that is something, I suppose, for it means you must have been interested once ‒ but the History is sadly out of date now, you know. Mr Oliver said he would be pleased to make me free of his own notes, which is splendid for he knows a great deal. I daresay he wouldn’t mind you seeing them, too, if you would care to,’ William added magnanimously, ‘because it would be jolly useful to have someone else to converse with, and Frederick hasn’t the least idea.’
Pandora, all too aware that with very little encouragement, William would be well astride his hobby-horse and virtually impossible to halt, chivvied him towards the door with the admonition that he must not expect other people to share his obsessions, and that his grace would think him positively rag-mannered, carrying on in that over-familiar way, a charge that was stoutly refuted.
‘I only wanted to know what the Duke thought about the future possibilities of being able to travel through the air ‒’ came the eager voice.
‘No, no! Not another word!’ cried Pandora and pushed him out of the door, closing it behind him and turning back to the Duke, red-faced and apologetic. He bade her think nothing of it.
‘A bright boy,’ he noted on the ghost of a laugh. ‘He is obviously destined to go far.’
She responded with her quick crooked smile. ‘Yes, but he does need proper guidance,’ she sighed, unaware of how much her worry showed. ‘In fact, William’s future is my most pressing motive for wishing to leave here and find myself a paid position.’ And without quite knowing why, she found that she was telling him briefly of the situation in which they found themselves, how very unsatisfactory she felt it to be, and the way in which Mr
Lewis had promised to help.
‘Mr Lewis, of Althrop, Pickering and Lewis?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’ She sounded a little anxious. ‘I did have the feeling that I could trust him to do what was right.’
‘I am sure you can,’ Heron reassured her. ‘I don’t know the gentleman personally, but the firm is a much respected one.’
‘Good. Because his idea did appear to have a lot of merit in it. And if only I can see William settled satisfactorily, I shall then be able to arrange my own life accordingly.’
‘Very resourceful,’ drawled the Duke. ‘That will be your Army upbringing, no doubt?’
He was at once aware that he had said the wrong thing for she pokered up and replied distantly that he was at liberty to think what he chose.
‘Curiously enough, I was not trying to be offensive,’ he said quietly.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It is I who am by far too sensitive.’
There was a bleakness in her smile. ‘I daresay I shall grow a harder shell in time.’
The Duke had been preparing to leave, but now he took out his snuff box and tapped it thoughtfully with one slim finger. ‘Do you need to grow a shell?’
Pandora stood, head high, watching him. ‘Surely Lady Margerson has told you?’
His hand hovered for a moment more over the snuff box before flicking it open. ‘She may well have done so, Miss Carlyon, but her ladyship does have a wonderful facility for saying a great deal without actually telling one anything as you ‒’ he inclined his head ‘‒ if I may say so, know to your cost!’
‘My father was Colonel Carlyon,’ she said abruptly.
‘Should that convey something to me?’ he murmured, his eyes veiled by their heavy lids so that she could deduce little from his expression. He took a pinch of snuff with a deft unhurried turn of the wrist, inhaled it and snapped the case shut.
The Duke’s apparently casual attitude caught Pandora on the raw and drove her on to the offensive. She could not quite keep the bitterness from her voice, or the slight tremor.
‘If Octavia is to be believed, the whole of London knows about him!’
‘Your sister errs, ma’am. If it has escaped my ears, then most assuredly the whole of London does not know whatever they are supposed to know.’
‘Oh.’ Pandora bit her lip. ‘Well, there was an unfortunate incident … and some poor woman lost her son as a result of it. She is quite deranged with the shock and has been accusing Papa of the most dreadful things … and the rumours have spread …’
If she had expected to discompose him, she was quite out. The Duke regarded her steadily for a moment. His curiosity was aroused, but for once he forbore to gratify it, saying only in a matter-of-fact way: ‘That must be very distressing for you, my dear child. But people are frequently thoughtless and, more often than not, ill-informed. You would do well not to refine too much upon idle comment.’
His words, as practical as they were kind, fell so unexpectedly upon her ears that for one awful moment it seemed certain that she would make a fool of herself. She turned away and stood smoothing her dress with trembling fingers, swallowing convulsively to free her throat. To give her time to recover, the Duke remained looking down into the fire for a few moments and then walked to the door.
‘Thank you,’ she said huskily, pulling herself together as he took his leave. ‘It is silly of me to mind so much when I know that Papa had nothing to be ashamed of. I would mind less, I think, if he were still alive.’
Pandora had no wish to linger in the drawing room once the Duke had departed. Indeed, her one aim was to retire to the relative privacy of her own room before Octavia returned. Not that she had any expectation of the visit being kept from Octavia ‒ but the angry inquisition which would most surely follow the disclosure was bound to be trying to the nerves and she needed time to compose herself and marshal her thoughts into some kind of order.
In the bare garret room the small cracked mirror on the shelf beside the window gave back her reflection with unflattering starkness. She loosed the pins which confined the less wilful strands of her hair, and set free, it slithered to her shoulders, unrelentingly straight, making her face appear narrower than ever ‒ a face which years spent in the open had weathered to a freckled unfashionable brown.
The purpose of the Duke’s visit still mystified her, though already it was beginning to assume an aura of unreality. She picked up her hairbrush and began to attack the offending tresses with more vigour than science. A rueful grin crooked the corner of her mouth; one thing was certain ‒ he had not been slain by her incomparable beauty!
‘I do not understand!’ cried Octavia like a disagreeable echo of these reflections a short time later. ‘Why was Heron here? Binns said that he actually asked for you!’ Her tone evinced outraged incredulity.
She had come bursting into Pandora’s room without ceremony no more than minutes after returning home, quite unable to believe that fate could have played so cruel a jest upon her. She prowled restlessly back and forth, hampered by the lack of space, her manner petulant as she stopped now and then to finger Pandora’s few possessions. She seized upon a brown velvet spencer which lay with the braid ripped off awaiting new trimmings, eyed it with contempt and dropped it back on the bed.
‘I mean ‒ what possible interest could Heron have in you?’
‘None at all,’ Pandora acknowledged, unaccountably depressed to hear her own views so brutally confirmed. To put an end to the tiresome inquisition she said with scant regard for accuracy: ‘His grace came merely to bring a message from Lady Margerson.’
Octavia stared ‒ and then gave a rather shrill titter.
‘That woman! I know she is considered a law unto herself, but really! To be treating Heron as an errand boy?’
‘Perhaps it is because she has known him from the cradle.’
‘Has she?’ It was such titbits of information dredged from Pandora’s somewhat imperfect recollections of what Lady Margerson had said which were an unremitting source of aggravation to Octavia Hamilton, that this insignificant girl whom she had thought to patronize as a poor relation, had been able to lay claim to Lady Margerson’s acquaintance, a distinction she herself had long coveted in vain. Her ladyship was odd, but though one might effect to ridicule her, she did move in first circles ‒ a fact which was becoming more painfully obvious by the minute. Octavia had never meant to house Pandora and her odious little brother for so long; it was only when Lady Margerson had written to the girl shortly after her arrival in London and looked like to take her up that she had changed her mind. But to her increasing chagrin, and in spite of many broadly delivered hints, Pandora had not only failed to exploit the heaven-sent opportunity to serve her own ends, she had also resolutely resisted (quite maliciously, in Octavia’s opinion) the least inclination or indeed one might think obligation to introduce her family to Lady Margerson. And as for this latest piece of work … Heron! A desire to wound made her spiteful.
‘Lud! It really is the most absurd thing I ever heard! The town’s most notorious rake, seeking audience with my little sister! How he must have laughed to see you!’
‘Is he truly that?’ Pandora was diverted from outright indignation by Octavia’s description of the Duke.
‘My dear child, is it not apparent?’ Octavia’s voice was shrill. ‘Why, his taste in women is exquisite ‒ his mistresses high-fliers every one! But although his generosity towards them is prodigious, it is also fickle for none can sustain his fancy beyond a matter of weeks. I heard recently that he was badly crossed in love several years back by some little French émigrée ‒ and has held women cheap ever since, with the exception of Lady Sarah Bingly, of course.’ Her voice took on that note of vague envy which the mention of society’s most accredited beauty always aroused. ‘If anyone can bring him to heel, she will.’
‘How awful,’ said Pandora. ‘I believe I feel quite sorry for him.’
‘Sorry!’ Octavia almost shrieked the word. ‘You thin
k Heron is to be pitied ‒ when he may indulge his slightest whim? When not a door in London is barred to him? Not a mother with daughters to bestow who does not pursue his acquaintance in spite of his reputation? Lud, Pandora, no one but you could think to pity such a desirable rake! Or are you so innocent that you did not perceive at a glance the kind of man Heron is?’
‘Of course I did!’ Pandora retorted indignantly. ‘But what you have said only makes me more sorry for him than ever. I can think of nothing worse than to be fawned upon for what one has rather than for what one is.’
‘That is sanctimonious twaddle, my girl, and coming from you, it is almost laughable! Perhaps it will please you to know that there are some things even Heron can’t plan for. It seems that he has had the émigrée’s children foisted on to him ‒ ’tis being said that perhaps he fathered them in the first place!’ Octavia laughed. ‘Not that such talk will bother him any more than the children will. He is rich enough to buy an abbey and may have them cared for without making the least push to involve himself.’
When Octavia finally tired of baiting her and left, Pandora picked up the half-renovated spencer and began absently to ply her needle. She was not the innocent that Octavia had accused her of being. To be sure, Papa was used to tease her by calling her his little air dreamer, but one could not grow up among soldiers without learning a great deal about the basic realities of life.
So it was not the Duke’s morals that troubled her, though she could not approve them; rather, though Octavia had poured scorn on her reasoning, she thought it very bad for anyone to be so indulged. She could think of nothing more guaranteed to induce a lack of purpose than being able to gratify one’s least whim, and if what Octavia had said was true, it would seem that the pursuit of pleasure was the Duke’s sole reason for existence.
And yet? She remembered how he had been with William ‒ suffering his chatter, encouraging him in that amused, indulgent way he had. It was more than Frederick had deigned to do in all the weeks they had been here.
Surely such a man could not be entirely lost to the more worthwhile precepts of life?