Rake's Progress: A Novel of Regency England - Being the Fourth Volume of A House for the Season

by M. C. Beaton

  In all her misery and bewilderment, Esther could reflect only that there was a lot to be said for the efficiency of an army man combined with the talents of Miss Fipps. How had they managed to find, not only a bouquet for herself, but a nosegay for Amy, and huge vases of flowers for the room at such short notice? She stumbled her way through the responses, pausing only to raise her eyebrows when she thought she heard the vicar mumble, “Oh, get on with it, do!”

  No sooner were she and Lord Guy pronounced man and wife than the double doors leading to the hall were thrown open and a small orchestra, magically found by Mr. Roger and dragged from a nearby hotel, began to play the wedding march.

  At the supper, Mr. Roger toasted the health of the bride and bridegroom. Mellowed with wine, the vicar got to his feet and made his speech, which was surprisingly urbane and witty. He was at that stage where he had drunk enough to be clever and not yet enough to become maudlin. Lord Guy made a graceful speech. He considered himself the happiest of men, he said, looking down at his bride thoughtfully, as if measuring her for her coffin.

  Esther, unused to much wine, drank a great deal. At first it worked, giving her a feeling of elation, making her feel sure he really loved her and was not just doing what he considered to be his duty.

  But as the supper drew to its close and the tired children were taken upstairs to the nursery, she found she was becoming sober again. And very frightened.

  At last, it was time to go upstairs to bed with her lord. Miss Fipps cried a little and kissed Esther warmly. Mr. Roger kissed her as well and then held back the vicar, who was advancing on Esther with a lustful gleam in his eye.

  Lord Guy held out his arm and escorted Esther from the room.

  They stood and faced each other in the hall. Esther was wearing a white silk slip with an overdress of silver net held with silver clasps. On her red curls gleamed a diamond tiara, Miss Fipps having pointed out that when it came to weddings, diamonds were not “exploded.” It was a gown she had chosen to wear for her début at Almack’s. She would never see the inside of Almack’s now, she reflected inconsequentially.

  She looked up at him bravely. “Now you have done your duty, my lord,” she said, “I bid you good night.”

  A wicked smile curled his lips. “My love and my life,” he mocked, “I have not even begun to do my duty.”

  He swept her up in his arms, carrying her as easily as if she had been Amy and not a strapping woman of nearly six feet.

  “Don’t struggle,” he said, as he carried her up the stairs. “I am still quite prepared to shoot you.”

  “I don’t know where my bedroom is,” pleaded Esther. “I have forgotten.”

  “You will sleep in mine.” He kicked open a door and carried her into a spacious bedroom and tossed her on the bed. Her sparkling tiara rolled off her head and clattered onto the floor.

  “Guy … please,” she begged as he began to rip off his clothes.

  “Esther, I am still very angry with you. Do not make me more angry, I beg.”

  As his small-clothes followed the rest of his clothes, Esther put her hands over her eyes. There was a creak as he climbed on the bed. He jerked down her hands and crouched over her. The room was in darkness, lit only by the flames of the fire, which sent a red glow over his lean, muscled, naked body.

  “Now you,” he said, reaching for the clasps of her dress.

  “Not like this,” said Esther miserably. “Not like this, my lord. You go on as if you were about to punish me.”

  He gave a soft laugh. “Oh, my love, do you not realise how angry you make me? I hate it when you look at me with those large, terrified eyes. Here, let me hold you. It will be all right. Everything will be all right.”

  He began to kiss her slowly and caressingly, the inexperienced Esther not knowing what great a rein he was keeping on his emotions. He kissed her until he felt her begin to respond. He held her tightly against the length of his naked body, enduring the discomfort of silver clasps digging into his skin until he felt her body turn pliant and eager under his touch. Esther never could understand afterwards how he managed to remove all her clothes without her being aware of it. Then his voice in her ear said, “This is going to hurt a little. Hold me tightly and remember I love you more than life itself.”

  That wonderful statement of love carried Esther over the pain and bewilderment of losing her virginity. When he was ready to take her again, she melted into his arms, burning with passion, knowing at last what he meant about there being another kind of burning. The third time he had her, she did not know where he began or she ended, either physically or mentally.

  At last, during the long length of a lazy morning punctuated with languid kisses and uninhibited caresses, Esther said softly, “What happens now? Do we stay in Brighton?”

  “For a few days,” he said. “We will travel to Yorkshire to stay with my parents and make arrangements for Peter and Amy. We will be married again in my family chapel.”

  “But what of the house in Clarges Street? What will you do with that?”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I paid for the whole Season in advance. The servants there are so self-sufficient, they will do very well without me.”

  “And Manuel?”

  Lord Guy began to laugh. “Do you know what I am going to do with Manuel? I am going to send that ambitious little writer enough money to take himself back to Portugal. He deserves to be punished for his folly, but I no longer have the heart to do so.”

  “Rainbird. He never replied to my offer.”

  “He won’t leave the others. Do you know, I was getting jealous of that fellow. It always seemed to be Rainbird says this, and Rainbird says that. But I am indebted to him for his masterly idea of a children’s party. Had he not hit on the idea of me rescuing you, I perhaps would never have been able to hold you in my arms and kiss you like this … and this …”

  “You mean,” said Esther when she could, “that the whole party was a plot?”

  But he did not reply. Instead his lips moved to her breast. Clarges Street, Rainbird, Lizzie, and all the rest whirled away in a delicious warm blackness as rake and reformer set out once more to explore each other.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  The insatiate itch of scribbling.

  —WILLIAM GIFFORD

  Rainbird walked back to Clarges Street after another futile visit to Berkeley Square. Graves, the butler, jealous and suspicious of Rainbird, refused to give him any news of his mistress, and this last visit had slammed the door in his face.

  Where were all the lucrative ton parties they had expected Lord Guy to give? thought Rainbird. One Cyprian debauch could hardly be said to qualify as a London society event.

  He had been sorely tempted to accept Esther’s offer, if only to put Graves in his place. And yet, thought Rainbird, determined to be fair, he himself would take it badly were some other butler to usurp his position in Clarges Street.

  Joseph greeted him when he arrived in the servants’ hall.

  “Looks like a packet from my lord,” said Joseph. “Come by the morning post, it did.”

  “Remarkably quiet down there,” said Rainbird, glancing down at the floor. Manuel had been shouting and screaming for the whole week of his incarceration. He broke open the seal.

  His face fell as he read the contents. The others clustered around. “My lord,” said Rainbird heavily, “married Miss Jones in Brighton. But,” he went on, “he is not returning to London. He has given me a draft to his bank for our wages until the end of the Season and also enough to enable two of us to take Manuel to the coast and put him on a ship. It seems that wretched man is to be rewarded by being sent back to Portugal to continue his writing. Let’s hope he turns out to be a good writer, for he has proved to be a bad servant.”

  “That’s very good news, Mr. Rainbird,” said Lizzie, who was secretly sorry for Manuel. “And to pay our wages is very handsome. And perhaps Mr. Palmer will find us another tenant. The Season has only just be
gun.”

  “I had hoped for parties,” said Rainbird. “Good pickings to be had during the Season. Oh, well, surely the bad luck of this house is at an end. No one’s been killed or ruined lately. There is also a letter from Lady Guy. She says … let me see … if I still wish a post in her employ, to write to her … she gives the Earl of Cramworth’s direction in Yorkshire.”

  “You weren’t thinking of leaving us!” cried Lizzie in distress.

  “No,” said Rainbird crossly, “but you were.”

  “That was different,” said Lizzie, hanging her head. “I didn’t rightly know what I was doing then.”

  “What else does she say?” asked Dave.

  “She says she is grateful to me for everything and her only regret is that she ruined her reputation. Well, that’s saved, thanks to my lord.”

  Before he had left London for Brighton, Lord Guy had given Rainbird a short letter to copy and deliver to all the newspapers. It carried a spirited account of Esther’s rescue of Charlotte. The newspapers, glad to have something cheerful to report now that the mob had been brought to heel, had published it. Prints had subsequently appeared in booksellers’ windows showing Esther as a stern figure of Britannia, clutching Charlotte to her side, and lecturing decadent society on its evil ways.

  “I’d better take the cratur doon some food,” said Angus. “Shall I tell him the good news—that he’s to go to Portugal?”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Rainbird. “Manuel is unnaturally quiet. He may be waiting behind the cellar door to attack us. I still think you ought to have bound him, Angus.”

  “He’s nae match for the likes o’ me,” said the cook.

  Angus put a plate of sliced beef, some bread and pickle, and a small tankard of beer on a tray. Rainbird put down the letters and lit a candle and followed the cook to the head of the cellar steps.

  “It is very quiet down there,” said Rainbird uneasily. “Let me go in first, Angus.”

  He walked down the cellar steps and stood listening for a moment. Then he put the candle on the floor by the door, unlocked it, and let it swing open.

  Silence.

  “Manuel,” called Rainbird.

  “Shine the light,” said Angus.

  Rainbird raised the candle and shone it into the cellar.

  Manuel was sitting at a table, his head lolling back and his eyes closed.

  “Saints preserve us,” whispered Angus behind him. “The man’s dead.”

  Rainbird’s hand holding the candle began to shake.

  “It’s this damned house!” he cried. “It’s haunted. Death, nothing but death and violence! It means to keep us here, Angus. It’ll keep us here until we rot.”

  A plaintive little voice said, “I am not dead. I wish I were.”

  “Manuel!” cried Rainbird, nearly crying with relief. “You are free and we have good news for you. Come upstairs.”

  He and Angus MacGregor led Manuel out of his cellar-prison and up to the servants’ hall, where the others were all gathered.

  Rainbird found Manuel a seat at the table and gave him back his notebook, cuttings, and letters, which Lord Guy had included with his letter.

  Then he told him slowly and carefully that my lord had sent money so that Manuel might be able to return to Portugal to continue his writing.

  Manuel looked around in a dazed way. “Me, I am to be set free?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Angus curtly. He was rapidly getting over his relief at finding Manuel alive.

  Manuel’s black eyes began to shine. “It must be because milord thinks I am the good writer. Here! I shall read to you.”

  He began to read out a report of life in Portugal. Angus started caustically to correct Manuel’s English, but when the servant did not take offence but only listened intently and marked down the corrections, the cook became enthusiastic. He drew up a chair beside Manuel and listened with growing interest.

  “I must say,” said the cook, scratching his red head when Manuel had finished, “that you have a fine turn o’ phrase. But that doesn’t change ma mind about ye. I still think you are not a very pleasant character, you with your knives and all those nasty things you wrote about us in that book o’ yours.”

  Manuel spread his hands. “I only wrote those things because I knew you were suspicious and might search my room. Life has not been easy. The other English servants in the barracks, they were cruel to me. I decide I despise English servants. But not now. You forgive me?”

  The others looked at each other doubtfully, but Lizzie had enjoyed Manuel’s writing and was relieved he was free. “Yes, we do,” she said. “Fancy you being a Frenchman. If you wasn’t French, we’d get you to show us some of them Spanish dances we heard of.”

  “I know them,” cried Manuel, leaping up. “See, I show you. I have not the castanets, but perhaps two spoons …?”

  Joseph fetched his mandolin and Angus produced two spoons. “I don’t know if I’ve got this right,” said Joseph cautiously, strumming some opening chords.

  Soon Manuel was nimbly leaping about, clacking the spoons like castanets.

  “Now the lady’s part,” he said, seizing Alice by the hand. “And she must have a lace mantilla.”

  Laughing, Jenny produced a lace curtain from her workbasket and they pinned it on Alice’s golden hair.

  The others laughed and applauded as Alice moved through the steps of the dance at her usual slow pace, amiably submitting to Manuel’s teaching.

  Rainbird, feeling suddenly depressed, slipped out of the room and went upstairs to be by himself.

  Was the house really unlucky? Here they were at the beginning of the Season without a tenant. But their wages were to be paid and that was something to be thankful for….

  From downstairs came a high cackle of laughter. Manuel. Well, hearing Manuel laugh at last was surely a miracle. Miracles did happen. They had had a great deal of unexpected good fortune during the past few years. Soon they would have their freedom, soon they would be the masters and not the servants. All it would take was a little more time, and a little more luck.

  Feeling cheerful again, Rainbird went back downstairs to join the party.