Author’s Note
After fifteen years of war against Napoleon Bonaparte, many of the soldiers returning to England, whatever their position in life, found peace more difficult to cope with than war.
Those with country estates found that there was vast unemployment. The farmers were doing extremely badly after a very poor harvest and many country banks went bankrupt.
There was a general air of dissatisfaction and depression over the whole country. In London the bucks and beaux returned from the Army to the gaiety and pleasure that centred around the Prince Regent, but even he was getting older and there was not the joie de vivre there had been at the beginning of the century!
Chapter One 1817
The Marquis of Heroncourt watched the last of his guests walk down the long flight of stone steps from the front door to where carriages were waiting to carry them back to London.
They had all thanked him profusely for a most delightful visit, but Lady Isme Churton had come back to say in a soft voice that only he could hear,
“I shall be looking forward, dearest Drogo, to seeing you tomorrow night.”
The Marquis smiled vaguely and, as if there was no need for him to reply, she ran down the steps with a grace that she was famous for and stepped into the last remaining carriage.
Then she bent forward to wave her gloved hand through the window, her face with its slanting eyes and provocative mouth framed by her fashionable bonnet with its high crown and lace-trimmed brim.
The Marquis of Heroncourt waved in return and then, as the carriage moved off, he turned to his last remaining guest, Charles Toddington, standing beside him, and said,
“Well, thank God, that’s over!”
Major Toddington’s eyes twinkled.
“I had no idea, Drogo, you were feeling that the party had gone on too long.”
“Far too long!” the Marquis said positively. “Never again, and I am serious, Charles, will I ask anyone, however attractive, to stay for a week!”
Charles Toddington laughed.
Then he said,
“I thought you were being a little over optimistic in supposing that even the most alluring of our beauties would last that long!”
The Marquis walked through the marble hall with its statues of Gods and Goddesses and a magnificent marble fireplace that had been specially sculpted for that particular position.
Then he went through an open door that led into the small library where he habitually sat when he was alone or with one of his more intimate friends.
He walked determinedly across the room to the window and stood looking out as if he had never before seen the formal garden with its yew hedges, its fountain and unique topiary work.
Then he said and his voice was harsh,
“It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, that we should admit to being bored when we have just spent a week with not only the most acclaimed beauties in the Beau Monde but also a number of gentlemen who are noted for their wit and talent to amuse.”
Charles Toddington sat down in an armchair and crossed his legs.
“I agree with you, Drogo,” he said, “and the fault obviously lies with us rather than with them. So the question we should be asking ourselves is – what is wrong?”
“I can tell you what is wrong,” the Marquis said. “It is the monotony and the unutterable boredom of finding that every day is the same as the last, with nothing unusual happening except that somebody has lost or won a fortune at cards or a new face has cropped up like a mushroom in Piccadilly which in a few days will be supplanted by another!”
Charles Toddington threw back his head and laughed.
“Quite poetical! At the same time I know exactly what you are saying because I feel the same.”
“You do?” the Marquis enquired. “Then tell me the reason why and it seems incredible that I don’t care if I never again set eyes on the people who have just left my house.”
Charles’s eyes twinkled.
“You will make an exception where Isme is concerned?”
The Marquis shook his head.
He did not reply because, as all his men-friends knew, he never discussed his love affairs.
Even so Charles Toddington understood and was astounded.
It seemed extraordinary that the Marquis should tire so quickly of a beauty who had been acclaimed as an ‘Incomparable’ from the moment she entered the Social world.
Now, after two years of widowhood, she was at the height of her beauty and pursued by every eligible bachelor in London.
He had in fact been quite certain that his friend the Marquis was ‘hooked’ at last and had even spent some time trying to decide what he should give him as a wedding present.
And yet he had felt in the last two days of the house party that had gone on too long that the Marquis was growing restless and Lady Isme was overplaying her hand.
The daughter of the Duke of Dorset, she had made a very bad marriage for anyone so beautiful and her father had been hoping for a more illustrious son-in-law than a raffish unreliable Baronet whose fortunes were as vacillating as his heart.
There is no doubt he would have made Isme, who was far younger than he was, extremely unhappy had he not been killed at Waterloo and thereby conveniently passed out of her life.
Even before the conventional time of mourning was past, she had been feted and acclaimed and it seemed as if even the bells of London rang with her name and praised her beauty.
When she first saw the Marquis of Heroncourt after he had returned from the Duke of Wellington’s Army back into civilian life, she knew that he was the husband she had always wanted.
He was also exactly the son-in-law her father had desired, only to be surprised by his daughter’s insistence that she was in love and nothing else was of any consequence.
“I hear you have Heroncourt running after you, Isme,” he had said to her a month ago.
“There is no secret about that, Papa!”
“It’s the best news I have heard for a long time,” the Duke said urgently. “Grab him while you can and don’t make a mess of your life a second time.”
There was no need for the Duke to elaborate for his daughter knew he was referring to the disaster her marriage had undoubtedly been.
She could only thank her lucky stars that Frederick had not returned from the war.
She had been so positive in thinking when he swept her off her feet with his ardent and very experienced lovemaking that they would be ideally happy.
Only to be disillusioned as only somebody very young could be when she faced for the first time the crude facts of life.
Frederick Churton was everything that was undesirable in the permanent relationship of marriage.
He found it impossible to resist a pretty woman, just as he found it impossible not to throw away what little money he had on the most reckless extravagance and without a thought for tomorrow.
He gambled for stakes that were too high, he drank too much and it was only people who had a very slight acquaintance of him who found his ardent pleasure-seeking amusing and enjoyed his company.
He was flirting with other women even before he and Lady Isme had finished their honeymoon.
She soon found that the poetical eloquence that had been so fascinating when he made love to her rapidly lost its charm when she realised that it had been repeated and repeated to hundreds of women before her and would continue to be heard again by no fewer in the future.
‘How could I have been such a fool?’ Lady Isme asked herself desperately.
When she learned of her husband’s death, she did not pretend to her father that it was anything but a welcome release.
“You were so right, Papa, and I promise you that I will never make another silly mistake,” she said.
There was no question of her making a mistake where the Marquis was concerned.
He was everything she wanted in a husband from the point of view of Social position, wealth and possessions, besides being the most attractive of the beaux who centred around the Prince Regent.
‘We shall make a perfect couple,’ Lady Isme told herself, knowing that, while there was always the fear that one might emerge, at the moment there was no beauty on the horizon to make her afraid that she would be toppled from her pedestal.
She was indeed so provocatively beautiful that it seemed extraordinary that the Marquis should have decided in such a short time that he was no longer interested.
Watching him as he walked from the window to stand in front of the fireplace, Charles Toddington thought that it was not surprising that women fell into his arms almost before he was aware of them or even asked their names.
It was not only that he was remarkably good-looking, he had an air of consequence about him and what Charles thought was an aura of leadership that made it impossible for anyone, man or woman, to ignore him.
He had been an outstanding Officer in Wellington’s Army, receiving two medals for gallantry and having deserved a dozen more.
The men who served under him had adored him and would have been prepared to march through the gates of hell should he have asked it of them.
Although he could, as Charles knew, be hard at times and ruthless in getting his own way, he was always completely fair and could be surprisingly compassionate, which somehow seemed at variance with his other qualities.
Aloud Charles said,
“The trouble with you, Drogo, is that you have too much and that leaves you nothing to fight for.”
“What do you mean – too much?” the Marquis asked sharply.
“Exactly what I say,” Charles replied, “too many personal qualifications, looks and talents, as well as too many possessions. I doubt if you have even had time to count them all and, where women are concerned, too much damned charm so that they cannot avoid falling in love with you.”
“Shut up, Charles, you are making me feel sick!” the Marquis retorted. “What you are saying is really nothing to do with what I am feeling at the moment.”
“Then what is wrong?” Charles asked simply.
“I can give you the answer to that,” the Marquis replied. “I am missing the war! I am missing the tension, the excitement, the fear, if you like, the feeling that one could never relax and be certain that a stray bullet would not knock one for six.”
“That is one aspect of war,” Charles said, “but you seem to have forgotten the discomfort of sleeping in the open or in some filthy building infested with fleas, going for days without food and finding it when it did arrive to be completely inedible, drinking the local wine, knowing as one did so that it was so raw as to be poisonous!”
The Marquis laughed.
“I suppose both our pictures are true, but I still say it is the monotony of peace that is making me feel as though I am being suffocated in a goose-feather bed and only a cold shower could make me breathe again.”
Charles did not reply and after a moment the Marquis continued,
“I know you are thinking that I am ungrateful and, as you said, I have so many possessions I should be going down on my knees to thank God for them. At the same time I feel half-dead and I miss the constant planning we had to do in order to keep alive.”
“Well, all I can say,” Charles Toddington commented, “is that I prefer peacetime soldiering. It may be all ‘spit and polish’ and if there is one thing that is boring, it is charging about on a Barrack square. But at least I have a comfortable bed to sleep in at nights and there is no need for one to be lonely in it!”
He saw the expression on his friend’s face and laughed.
“All right, Drogo,” he went on, “I know what you are thinking! But you know as well as I do, if you are honest, that when we go back to London you will be back on the chase, finding yourself intrigued, fascinated and finally captivated by a pair of alluring eyes that seem different from any eyes you have seen before.”
“That is just the point!” the Marquis said bitterly. “They do seem different from anything one has seen before until one takes a second look. Then to one’s consternation one finds they are exactly the same! The same old tricks, the same old enticements, the same twist of the lips, touch of the hand and hey presto! Where does it all lead one?”
“Into bed.”
“Exactly!” the Marquis agreed. “Then one finds despairingly that there is nothing new and one is back looking again for a pair of eyes that are different.”
“My God, Drogo, you do have the glooms badly and no mistake! I can only hope that somebody will challenge you to a duel or that you will wake up tomorrow morning and find you are bankrupt! That should sweep away your depression!”
“I am being serious, Charles,” the Marquis countered in a tone of reproach.
His friend laughed.
“Far too serious for me! If you are depressed, so am I!”
“But is there nothing we can do about it?”
“I suggest we take two of your fastest horses and gallop them until they and we are totally exhausted!”
“I suppose there is nothing else we can do,” the Marquis said, “and perhaps after all it would have been wise to have asked one or two of the party to stay on.”
“They would have been only too eager to accept,” Charles replied. “And I have no wish to watch you stifling your yawns at dinner, as you did last night, when Quentin was telling his most outrageous stories.”
“I have heard them all before!”
“So have I, now I come to think of it,” Charles agreed. “So you must be right, Drogo! We must find ourselves a whole collection of new friends whose jokes, tricks and allurements will be new at least to us.”
“For how long?” the Marquis asked.
Charles rose from his chair and stretched his arms.
He was the same height as the Marquis and they were the same age. They had known each other since children and had been close friends at Eton and joined the Household Cavalry on the same day.
To the Marquis Charles was the brother he never had and to Charles, who was not at all well off, Drogo made all the difference in his life.
A life that was luxurious, glamorous and amusing.
Although he was taking it lightly and teasing him, Charles was actually perturbed that the Marquis was becoming disillusioned so quickly with life as a country gentleman with large estates that should have occupied both his time and his mind.
Unfortunately they were so well run for him and so excellently administered that there was really nothing for the Marquis to do.
Although the Prince Regent was constantly demanding his company and there was not a door in London that was not open to him, the Marquis grew quickly more bored in London than he was in the country.
At least here, which was his ancestral home and the most magnificent of the houses he possessed, he had his horses, his dogs, his private Racecourse and a dozen more distractions to occupy his time.
Although Charles had seen the disillusionment and restlessness growing in the Marquis in the last month or so, he had not realised until now how far it had developed.
Now wondering what he could suggest in order to arouse the Marquis’s interest, while there appeared to be nothing except what he called the monotony of day-to-day activities, he could only say a little more urgently than he had before,
“Go on, Drogo, order your best horses, we must take some exercise.”
“I suppose that is the palliative for all ills,” the Marquis said sourly. “If you tire yourself out physically, it is then too much of an effort to think.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Charles said. “You know as well as I do that nothing would stop you thinking. What we are trying to find is something to stop you complaining.”
The Marquis laughed.
“Now you a
re making me ashamed of myself, which I am sure you intended. Damn you, Charles, you have always been so infernally cheerful and grateful for small mercies!”
“I don’t call being at Heron Hall a small mercy,” Charles argued, “and riding your horses is a very large benefit for which I am prepared to express my gratitude very volubly.”
The Marquis put out his hand to tug at the bell-pull.
“You are quite right, Charles,” he said. “We will ride until we are too tired to think of anything but enjoying an excellent dinner, thankful that we have no one to entertain but ourselves.”
He was certainly now feeling more cheerful, Charles thought, and he was quite certain that once they had been riding for several hours the Marquis would be back to his normal self.
It was unlike him to be so introspective and yet Charles knew uncomfortably that there was some truth in the fact that they both missed the excitement of war and were finding it difficult to adjust to a quiet uneventful peace.
A servant opened the door.
“Two horses for Major Toddington and myself,” the Marquis ordered, “and tell Groves I want the fastest we have in the stables.”
“Very good, my Lord,” the servant said, “and there’s a lady here who wishes to see your Lordship.”
“A lady?”
“Yes, my Lord. And she has a young gentleman with her.”
The Marquis frowned.
“Callers!” he said to Charles. “We have no wish to be delayed at the moment.”
The Marquis turned to the footman.
“Who is the lady? Did she give her name?”
“No, my Lord, she said you wouldn’t know her, but she had to see you on a very important matter.”
“Well, order the horses and show the lady in!” the Marquis said.
“Very good, my Lord.”
As the servant closed the door, the Marquis added to Charles,
“I have a feeling that the importance of her mission is nothing more than a demand for money for the local Church or a complaint that my cows have ruined her front garden or some equally trivial incident.”
“Perhaps you will be surprised,” Charles murmured optimistically.
“There is not a chance of that,” the Marquis said. “Surprise is something we have left behind us in France, and I bet you a ‘fiver’ my guess is right and she is either begging or complaining.”
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