Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  The young man bowed gracefully, as though he were about to dance, and taking her gloved hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. His skin was so tanned it seemed gilded in the candlelight, and his lips were as red as gules, and his eyes …! Oh his eyes were the colour of pale honey and so heavily lidded they made him look sleepy or arrogant or faintly predatory. In her present state of unexpected confusion, she couldn’t decide which. He’s like a leopard, she thought, all black and gold and handsome and smooth-skinned and full of power. ‘Honoured to make your acquaintance,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Calverley Leigh was a man with a double reputation, renowned among his fellow officers as a rattle and a Romeo. He was equally proud of both titles, although his friends and cronies would have been surprised had they ever heard him confess it. For the lethargic wit and insouciant charm that seemed so natural to him and made him such irresistible company for both male and female alike were not inborn accomplishments. They had been gradually and painstakingly acquired during his seven years with the Duke of Clarence’s Light Dragoons.

  As a child he had been skinny and awkward, with few talents and fewer prospects, the insignificant third son of an insignificant younger daughter of one of the lesser landed gentry. He’d had the ill fortune to be the final and belated offspring of that most rare of eighteenth-century accomplishments, a love match. So although he was the baby of the family he was a singularly neglected one, being separated from his sister and his two elder brothers by a gap of more than eight years, and from his parents by a chasm of style and attitude.

  His father, whose proudest boast was that one of his distant cousins was racing manager to the Prince of Wales, ran a stud farm on the lower slopes of the Sussex Downs and bred horses for the cavalry. He was inordinately fond of his horses and took far more care over their breeding than he ever did over the upbringing of his children, maintaining that horses were a valuable source of income while children were nothing more nor less than than a noisome expense. He and his wife spent most of their time travelling abroad in search of pleasure and good breeding-stock. In fact they were away so often and for such long periods that there were times when young Calverley found it quite difficult to remember what they looked like.

  However one consequence of this intermittent neglect was that he was allowed considerable freedom. When he was nine he was required to attend school, as both his brothers had done before him, and was sent on a daily trek down to the Grammar school in the nearby town of Steyning, but nobody paid any attention to him while he was there, so he was able to sit out his time in the low-ceilinged room, doing as little as he could, listening to the sound of passing hooves and day-dreaming.

  For like his father before him, horses were Calverley’s passion. He learnt to ride almost as soon as he could walk and from then on he spent every minute he could in the saddle. By the time he was ten, the grooms and ostlers declared with some pride that he could be trusted with any horse on the stud, even the youngest and most mettlesome. By the time he was fourteen and a long-legged, sharp-tongued gangly youth, he was so steeped in the art of handling horses that it was second nature to him. He knew when to coax and when to whip, when to encourage and when to reward, and the more he was able to control his mounts, the more he loved them. When he was fifteen his father gave him a fine cavalry horse of his own, which he called Jericho. Soon the rapport between them was so close they could have been one creature. In fact his school master, who said he never saw them apart, used to call them the Centaur, and even his mother, on one of the rare occasions when she actually noticed him, said he had ‘a dammed good seat’.

  It was almost the last thing she ever said to him, for two days later she took off on another one of her jaunts abroad, and never came back. His father returned without her, suddenly stooped and aged, his eyes red-rimmed and his breath foul with gin, to tell them all that she had taken ill of a fever, ‘in county Sligo’ and had died and been buried there. ‘In county Sligo!’ he said, over and over again, as if it were Sligo’s fault. ‘A malevolent county, boys, ’Od rot it! Why, oh why did we ever go to county Sligo?’

  Calverley noticed her absence but he didn’t miss her. Jericho was still alive and full of energy, galloping him out of the farm and away from sorrow. ‘I love you better than any creature alive,’ he told the animal, and Jericho flicked his ears and snorted and gave every indication that he understood entirely. ‘Whilst you are living, nothing will ever go wrong for me.’

  But his mother’s death brought changes, as it was bound to. Within a year his sister had married a farmer and gone to live in Warwickshire, and both his brothers had taken the portion his father had set aside for each of them and gone too, the first to the abominable county Sligo to work with his uncle there, the second to Canada, which was a deal worse than Warwickshire, so his father said, ‘being there ain’t the least possibility of a visit there, neither one way nor t’other.’

  And Calverley was suddenly alone on a stud farm that grew more and more dilapidated, with a father who sank further and further into drunkenness and melancholy. There was only one thing to be done about such a situation, and he did it. He begged his father to give him his portion early and as soon as he was eighteen, he bought himself a commission in the cavalry, casually letting it be known that he was related to Colonel Leigh, the Prince of Wales’ racing manager, and choosing the Duke of Clarence’s regiment because the blue and white uniform was so attractive and he thought he would look handsome in it.

  It was the making of him. Good food and constant exercise put muscle on his scraggy bones, he grew taller and he acquired elegance. But best of all, within a year he had been sent to the Austrian Netherlands, where he discovered to his immense satisfaction that his superlative horsemenship brought him recognition and kept him out of danger on the battlefield, whether in the triumph of Neerwinder or the defeat at Hondeschoote. At the end of that campaign, the Clarence’s were sent home to defend the south coast against Napoleon’s threatened invasion, and now it was his mocking tongue that was valued and admired. ‘Such a rattle!’ his fellow officers would say, urging their society friends to include him at balls and dinners and supper parties, ‘You must invite him, me dear. He’ll have the table on a roar I guarantee.’

  And so he did, with pithy comments about their absent friends and acquaintances, and mocking accounts of manoeuvres that didn’t turn out as planned, and piercing vignettes of the folly of the overfed, the vain and the pompous. He was very popular. The court jester to the regiment. And his popularity soon made him much sought after by the ladies. Which led, in its turn to the acquisition of a second and even more enviable reputation.

  He made his first tentative conquest two days after his nineteenth birthday and was proud of it although it gave him less pleasure than he expected, and despite the fact that the lady spurned him and called him a ‘heartless wretch’ and refused to see him ‘ever again’. But as she’d also told him, during their more passionate moments, that he was ‘devilish handsome’ and that the sight of him quite made her swoon, he was encouraged to try again elsewhere and with more expertise. And it was true. He was handsome. The mirror of her face had told him that. Soon he had learned an entirely new vocabulary in which to flirt and cajole and tease and persuade, and it wasn’t long before he realized that the techniques he’d been using all his life to handle horses could be used with equal and more rewarding effect to handle women.

  By the time he was twenty-four and travelling to London to mount guard over the King’s review of volunteers, he was convinced that there wasn’t a woman in England he couldn’t ride if he had a mind to. But better still, and far more comforting in the night hours when doubts still needled in to assail him, he had made up his mind to use his charms, while he still possessed them, to find himself a rich woman to marry. With the French war set fair to continue for years and little likelihood of a campaign to take him away from the country, he felt he was admirably placed for the pursuit, for ther
e was just enough danger in the air to excite the ladies he courted but not enough to take him away from them. It was true that an invasion was always a possibility, at least during the months of spring and summer, and an invasion would certainly put him to the test at home, but he gave it little thought. For although he drilled and prepared for battles, he was in no hurry to embark on another real one. Life was perfectly satisfactory without such alarms.

  As he stood before the bandstand that August evening with his two fellow officers lounging beside him, he was scanning the room for possible conquests, automatically dividing the ladies there into three categories, as though he were sifting them for market, the impossibles, the heiresses and the seducible.

  ‘There’s a deuced pretty creature,’ he admired, looking at Sophie Fuseli as she pouted and preened and touched her thick curls.

  ‘She ain’t for you, Leigh,’ Hanley-Brown said. ‘Married to an artist, damme if she ain’t. Little feller with white hair, d’you see?’

  ‘German, I’ll lay any money,’ Calverley drawled. ‘Looks like a gnome.’

  ‘How much?’ Hanley-Brown wanted to know, for like every officer in the regiment he was ready to gamble on everything and anything.

  ‘A guinea?’

  ‘You’re on.’

  ‘Ah, the perversity of beauty!’ Lieutenant Fortescue sighed. ‘To give her heart to such a creature and leave us languishin’.’

  ‘That ain’t the way of it, Forty,’ Calverley said, observing her closely through those half-shut, sleepy-looking eyes. ‘Mark how she moves. She don’t move toward him, poor gnome, never the once. A lady whole of heart, you may gamble on it.’

  ‘How much?’ Hanley-Brown said again.

  But Fortescue was looking at Nan. ‘How of the little filly beside her?’ he asked.

  Calverley examined the little filly, knowledgeably. ‘A trim figure, I’ll grant you,’ he said, ‘but not to my taste.’

  ‘They dress but poorly,’ Hanley-Brown said. ‘You’ll not find your heiress here. Unless you fancy the dowager with the pearls.’

  The dowager with the pearls was sixteen stone if she was an ounce. ‘I need an heiress,’ Calverley said, ‘but not that desperately. No, no, my choice is made for this evening. An hour’s dalliance with the delectable and heart-free wife to the artist.’

  ‘No more?’ Hanley-Brown teased.

  ‘I could kiss had I a mind to.’

  ‘Two guineas say you can’t, damme.’

  ‘Taken,’ Calverley said at once. ‘Take cover in the long walk when I give the sign, and you shall see ’twill be done before midnight, I’ll warrant you. Request an introduction.’

  But the Master of Ceremonies was already rolling across the room towards them with the German gnome in tow. And ten minutes later he was kissing the delectable lady’s hand and gazing ardently into her beautiful blue eyes.

  Sophie Fuseli was charmed by her new acquaintances and invited them all to join her party at the supper table. It was a lively meal for the soldiers were good company. Mr Leigh made them all laugh with his imitation of the troup sergeant subduing the newest recruits, and of course there were now three more partners for the dance. By the end of the meal, arrangements had been made and cards marked, and Calverley Leigh had begged the very next dance from the bewitching Sophie, and her husband, poor fool, had obligingly stepped down to allow him the honour.

  As he led his new admirer onto the floor he looked back at Hanley-Brown and winked. And his eye was caught by the direct gaze and dark brows of the little filly, and for a fleeting second before the dance began he recognized passion, and wondered.

  But then he was flirting with the beautiful Sophie, who knew all the right responses and gave them effortlessly. ‘How if I were to tell you I consider you the most beautiful lady in the room?’

  ‘Then, given the company, I would think you either blind, sir, or ungallant.’

  ‘Love is blind, ma’am, is it not?’

  ‘Aye, and strikes swiftly. So I am told.’

  ‘An arrow to the heart, I do assure you.’

  ‘Such pain, sir. I would be loath to give such pain to any man, especially were I to love him.’

  ‘I see you have a tender heart, Mrs Fuseli, besides great beauty. Many must love you for it.’

  ‘Aye, so they say,’ she answered lightly. ‘But women are weak, are they not, and men deceivers. How may we know when any of that sex speak true?’

  ‘Maligned, dear lady,’ he cried. ‘Maligned, I vow it. Some of us would die ere we deceived.’

  ‘I am glad on’t,’ she said, smiling her delicious smile and not believing a word.

  Oh, she was just the companion he was seeking. Hanley’s two guineas were virtually in his pocket. What a splendid choice he’d made!

  Nan was dancing with old Mr Pomeroy, who was talking about the war. He always talked about the war, and he was always very boring. ‘Indeed, yes, Mr Pomeroy,’ she said, as the handsome lieutenant caught Sophie Fuseli about the waist. And she wondered how it would be when she was being held like that, and admired his long, long legs as they went tripping away along the dancing line. The dance after next, she thought, savouring her anticipation.

  And the moment when she stood beside him on that floor was every bit as delightful as she’d fancied. He was so tall. The top of her head was barely on a level with his chin. So beautifully tall and he smelled so fresh, as if all his clothes were new or newly laundered, fresh and clean with just a trace of salty sweetness. And oh, so handsome, looking down upon her so tenderly with those beautiful eyes. What a pity he’d asked her for a set dance, for that meant they would be moving apart from one another on every turn, and he would only put his arm round her for the gallop.

  ‘Do you live hereabouts, ma’am?’ he asked politely, during the first figure.

  ‘I live in Chelsea, just along the river.’

  ‘But not born here, I think?’ Turn and turn about.

  ‘No,’ she agreed, as they met up again at the end of the turn, and he swayed her body into his side ready for the gallop. What bliss to be held so! ‘I was born in Suffolk, near Bury St. Edmunds,’ she said as the gallop began.

  ‘Place I know well,’ he said, surprising her. ‘Carried out manoeuvres there. Camped at a place called Fornham. The locals would have it a village. I can tell you ‘twas no such thing.’

  ‘A church, a farm, a smithy and a mill, and six low cottages, no more.’

  ‘You know it well.’

  ‘I should do sir, I was born there.’ Turn and turn about.

  ‘You were born dancing I believe,’ he said, catching her into his side again. Oh, the delight of the easy intimate movement! ‘You have the lightest foot of any lady in the hall.’

  She took the compliment entirely seriously. ‘’Tis a pastime I enjoy, sir.’

  ‘But only when you have a partner who is your equal for energy and speed, I rather think. The old gentleman who was so presumptuous as to offer the schottische was no match in all conscience. He went hobbling off defeated with the dance half done.’

  ‘Old gentlemen do not have quite the same energy for dancing as young gentlemen,’ she said. ‘’Tis true.’

  ‘Nor young ladies either,’ he answered, smiling sleepily at her with those beautiful eyes. Turn and turn about.

  He considers me young, she thought, taking his second easy compliment as seriously as the first, and looking back brightly at him over her shoulder as she followed the figure. Until that moment it hadn’t occured to her to think of herself in those terms at all. She had simply been a business-woman, neither young nor old. Now she knew that she wanted to be young, and she wanted it passionately. Young and beloved, like so many of the other women around her that evening. Or at least young and admired by this handsome officer.

  ‘You should dance until you are too exhausted to set your foot to the ground,’ he said, and the observation was made in tones so tender, he could have been talking of love.

  ‘A gentlema
n may dance when he pleases,’ she said, ‘but a lady must wait for a partner, more’s the pity of it.’ And then she was quite alarmed at herself, because she had spoken carelessly and might have given him the idea that she was fishing for partners, which she didn’t think she was doing because it wasn’t her style at all.

  But he answered her seriously and in the same tender tone. ‘Then you must do me the honour for every single measure, ma’am, until the ball is over.’

  ‘Only three are unmarked,’ she said, admiring him more openly than she knew, and doubly happy because he’d asked her so warmly and because three dances were just the right number to have available. More and she would have appeared a wallflower and too eager, less and she would have had no time with him at all. Or no time worth mentioning.

  ‘Then may I consider them mine?’ Turn and turn about.

  Oh yes, yes, yes, she thought, as she skipped away from him. You may indeed.

  So they trod three more measures together and each more pleasurable than the last. But her next dance was with old Mr Pomeroy again, who huffed and puffed and smelled most vilely of stale sweat and musty jacket, and would insist on talking to her all the time, so that she couldn’t look to see where the dashing Lieutenant was dancing. And with whom. Oh, if only there weren’t such a crush!

  And when her garrulous partner walked her back to their party, Sophie was missing too. ‘Gone to promenade, I daresay,’ her husband said, carelessly. It was a great nuisance, because Nan wanted to talk to her. ‘She vill return for ze second interval.’

  But she wasn’t back until two dances after the interval, and then she and Mr Leigh came strolling across the dance floor together, very nearly arm in arm.

  Nan’s heart sank at the sight of them. Oh, surely he hadn’t fallen for Sophie. That would be unbearable. And for the first time in their acquaintance she felt jealous of her friend and wished she wasn’t quite so beautiful. ‘You been away so long,’ she said, ‘we quite thought you were gone home.’