by M C Beaton
“Perhaps,” sighed Amanda, suddenly very tired. “Go and sleep on the chaise longue, Richard, at the foot of the bed, and I will awaken you early and give you money for the stage. I am sure it is all unnecessary—the secrecy, that is—but I am too fatigued to think.”
“Very well”—Richard yawned—“but I must say Hawksborough is an amazingly tenacious man. Anyone else would simply have been glad to get the jewels back.”
Lord Hawksborough led Lady Mary gently away from outside Amanda’s bedroom door.
He had been leading her along to her own room to say good night to her, and had been busy examining his strange new feelings of distaste towards his fiancée when she had stopped outside Amanda’s door and whispered to him to listen.
Faintly through the thick panels came the sound of a man’s voice.
“Aren’t you going in?” demanded Lady Mary. “She has a man in her room!”
Lord Hawksborough urged her down the corridor. “Well,” she demanded, “what do you think of your Miss Prunes and Prisms now?”
“I am very tired,” he said quietly. “I will talk to Amanda in the morning. Good night, Mary.”
She gave him a baffled look, but he was already turning away, and he had not kissed her good night.
Lord Hawksborough walked back to Amanda’s room and tried the door.
Locked.
He was assailed with such a wave of jealous fury that he thought he would die. Amanda Colby was no innocent. His strange passion for her was because she obviously knew to a nicety how to fuel it.
What a fool he had been.
He would deal with her in the morning. It was morning, dammit. He looked at the clock. Six! He set his mind to wake at nine and at last lay down on his bed and tried to compose his mind for sleep. But he was overtired—too overtired to sleep, and the rage would not leave him. A sane corner of his mind was telling him he was being ridiculous to become so exercised over a young girl when he was already engaged. But his emotions cried that somehow she had deceived him with her air of innocence. That she had made a fool of him, by God!
And so it was at eight in the morning that Amanda awoke to a summons from a footman outside her door. His lordship wished to see her immediately.
Without waking Richard, Amanda splashed water on her face and scrambled into her clothes. She brushed her hair furiously and then tried to braid it, but her fingers could not seem to manage to get it under control, and so she compromised by twisting her hair into a hard knot on the top of her head. Wearing a dull blue kerseymere gown—a new addition to her wardrobe—she ran down the stairs. The servant had not said where Lord Hawksborough was to be found. He was not in the library.
By dint of asking various servants who were going about their duties, she was startled to learn that his lordship was in his bedchamber.
Feeling very nervous, she followed the magnificent livery of one of the footmen elected to guide her. She did not think for a moment that Lord Hawksborough wished to see her for any mild conversation at this unearthly hour of the morning.
At Fox End, Amanda would have already been up and about two hours ago, but she had become accustomed to London hours and knew hardly anyone ever arose before noon.
Lord Hawksborough was invisible behind a cloud of lather when she entered, and his valet was stooped over him with a razor. Amanda made to withdraw, but Lord Hawksborough waved her into a seat at the other side of the room.
Amanda sat down primly and waited with a beating heart. It could not be the jewels. He would not have troubled to let himself be barbered were that the case. Amanda felt sure he would have come to her bedroom and broken down the door had he found out.
At last his lordship was shaved and the valet dismissed.
He stood up, still in his dressing gown, and looked her up and down with hard, assessing eyes. “Amazing!” he remarked.
“My lord?”
“Come here!”
He had a devilish glint in his eyes, but Amanda reminded herself that he was her host and that she had nothing to be afraid of—provided he had not found out about the robbery.
She walked towards him and stood meekly, her hands behind her back, her eyes downcast.
“Now we shall see,” he said half to himself.
He picked her up and tossed her on the bed and threw himself on top of her.
“Charles!” screamed Amanda, her eyes wide with shock.
“It’s no use screaming,” he said grimly. “My servants are too well-trained to interfere in my pleasures.”
His mouth clamped down on hers, and Amanda was swept with a mixture of passion and sheer fright.
It was only when he raised his head and ripped open the front of her dress with one savage wrench of his hand, and she saw the blind mask of anger that was his face, that all passion fled and sheer instinct for survival took over.
“Charles!” she screamed in horror. “You are trying to rape me!”
“Not rape… take,” he said, one hand clipping her hands behind her back and his mouth sinking down to kiss her left breast.
Shocked, stunned, and bitterly disappointed in him, Amanda began to cry. Great tears rolled down her face and she sobbed and gulped.
He rolled off her immediately and sat up.
“I think Kean has a rival,” he said coldly.
“I don’t understand!” wailed Amanda.
“Don’t play the innocent virgin with me, Amanda,” he said harshly. “I find I have not the stomach to take you after all. But do not insult me or my mother by harbouring lovers in your bedchamber. Who is he?”
“Who…? Richard! It is Richard!”
“Stuff!”
“It is,” said Amanda, wriggling away to the other side of the bed. “I let him in last night. He had come to town to spend a few hours drinking with friends and had not the money for a hotel. He threw pebbles at my window after I had left you with Lady Mary. I let him in.”
“Take me to him!” he barked.
Amanda looked down at her ripped gown in despair.
He followed her glance, and, with an impatient exclamation, strode to the wardrobe and pulled out another dressing gown. “Here, put this on,” he said, throwing it at her.
Amanda wrapped herself in the dressing gown and tied the sash about her small waist and held the fold of the material tight about her throat. It was too big for her, and folds of it trailed about her feet.
Richard sat up with a groan as they entered the room. “I had best be leaving.” He yawned.
Then he caught sight of Lord Hawksborough and flushed to the roots of his hair.
“If you are making your way back to Oxford to continue your studies, Colby,” said the viscount in measured tones, “then I suggest you do so. In future, should you decide to honor us with your presence, then may I suggest you use the room allotted to you.”
“I did not want to disturb the servants—” began Richard.
“I pay my servants very good wages,” said Lord Hawksborough. “It is their job to be disturbed. If you will now go to your own bedroom, I will send my valet to assist you in your toilet.”
He stood aside and held open the door while Richard, who had slept in his clothes, scrambled to his feet. Then Richard noticed Amanda wrapped in the folds of a man’s dressing gown, and his eyes grew wide.
“I spilled coffee on my gown,” said Amanda hurriedly. “His lordship sent for me because a man’s voice was heard coming from my bedroom and everyone imagined the worst. Please go, Richard!”
Richard left the room, glad to get away from his lordship’s angry face.
Lord Hawksborough slammed the door behind him and turned to Amanda. “I offer you my apologies, Amanda,” he said. “I have behaved disgracefully. You may be sure I shall not touch you again. There is something between us which should not exist. It would be better if we avoided each other’s company in the future.”
“But—” began Amanda dismally.
“I cannot remember having behaved so badly in
the whole of my life,” he said savagely. “You’re a Circe, Amanda!”
Amanda began to feel guilty. The guilt was irrational, she knew, but like most guilty people, she started working herself up into a rage.
“This thing that you say is between us, my lord,” she said angrily, “is perhaps, merely a figment of your imagination. I was naturally overwhelmed at receiving an excess of civility from a peer in your position. I am not yet used to the ways of gentlemen, or to the ways of the world.”
“Obviously,” he said coldly. “Or you would not accept an apology with such bad grace.”
“I was under the impression I had not accepted it at all,” flashed Amanda.
“I have no intention wasting more time bandying vulgar words with you,” he said with great hauteur. “I am very tired. Good day to you, ma’am.”
He gathered the folds of his dressing gown about him and strode to the door.
The bottle of Otto of Roses which Amanda had seized and thrown in a blind rage smashed against the doorjamb inches from his face.
The whole room was permeated by the heavy smell of roses.
He turned around, not just his head, but all in one piece.
“I am sorry,” babbled Amanda.
He turned again like a clockwork toy and walked out into the passageway.
Amanda ran after him and caught his sleeve. “Charles!” she pleaded. “You must realise how very angry you can make me.”
He tugged his sleeve to get it free, and only succeeded in pulling her against him.
“I think… yes, I really think I am going to demand an explanation,” came the silky voice of Lady Mary.
Her blue eyes took in the scene. Lord Hawksborough and Amanda, both wearing dressing gowns, were standing close together. Amanda looked dishevelled and her lips were swollen. The whole passageway stank of Otto of Roses.
The silence seemed to stretch forever. “The first time I met this little girl,” went on Lady Mary, her fine eyes going from one to the other, “she smelled like a Covent Garden brothel. I recall wondering if this were one of your traviatas, Charles.”
Amanda, despite her distress, vividly remembered spilling the perfume over her arm on her first evening in London.
“Come with me, Lady Mary,” said Lord Hawksborough heavily. “It is not what you think.”
Lady Mary raked Amanda up and down with a contemptuous glance, and edged her way past, drawing her skirts about her as if the very touch of Amanda’s hem would contaminate her.
Amanda sighed and went back into her room and shut the door. She was bone-tired. She slumped into a chair and stared vacantly into space.
At last she roused herself from her numbed state to turn the problem of Lord Hawksborough over in her mind. She did not love him. He roused her senses, that was all. It was surely nothing more than rampant lust. He had not behaved at all like a man in love, thought Amanda, whose ideas of how men in love behaved were still well-grounded in the gothic novels she had read.
There had never been the slightest hint of a worshipful expression in his lordship’s eyes. He had untrustworthy eyes, those strange silver eyes which were so good at masking his feelings.
She must struggle out of this infatuation and concentrate on saving the family fortunes. Her mind turned to the elderly Lord Box, who had accompanied them to the play. He had been quiet and courteous and kind. He had laughed in a shy way at her mildest witticisms. He was said to be a widower and vastly rich.
The idea of marriage to Lord Box began to seem attractive to Amanda, particularly when it was followed with a pleasing dream of breaking the news of her engagement to Lord Hawksborough.
Having come to some sort of decision, Amanda decided to go to bed.
But the door burst open and Susan marched in and crashed down into a chair beside the fire and stared moodily at the flames. “Rot!” she said at last.
“Rot what?” asked Amanda, wishing she would go away. Her head was beginning to ache with stress and lack of sleep.
“Dalzell is on the point of proposing to me. I asked Lady Mary for her advice, because I think she is a very mondaine lady, and she said, ‘You had better snap him up.’ ‘Why?’ says I. ‘I am accounted attractive by more gentlemen than Dalzell, and Dalzell is a milksop.’ And she says, ‘You are an Original, dear Susan, and Originals quickly grow unfashionable. You are well enough in your way, but you have hardly got the sort of face that would launch a thousand ships. Perhaps a small coal barge.’”
“How malicious, and how untrue,” said Amanda warmly.
“But Lady Mary is so sensible. It was she who spoke to Mama on my behalf and told Mama to stop criticising my appearance.”
“Indeed! I was under the impression that suggestion came from your brother.”
“Charles? Charles would not trouble with me.”
“On the contrary, he is very concerned about you.”
“How do you know?” said Susan rudely. “And what are you doing wearing one of Charles’s dressing gowns?”
Wearily Amanda altered and retold the lie of the spilled coffee.
“Well, in any case, what am I to do about Mr. Dalzell?”
“Do you have anything in common?” asked Amanda.
“No. I tried to talk hunting with him, and all it elicited was a poem. It goes, ‘Diana, like the moon above…’ although why on earth he should call me Diana when my name is Susan, I’ll never know.
“‘Diana, like the moon above,
Silent, chaste, serene
Mistress of the hunter’s love
In the woodland green.…’
“Pah!”
“Then it is all very simple,” said Amanda, stifling a yawn. “You hold him in contempt. Above all, you are not in love with him—”
“Love? When did love ever get in the way of a society marriage?” said Susan crossly.
“I’m tired, very tired,” said Amanda, putting her hands to her throbbing temples. “I shall see you later, Susan.”
“But what shall I do about Mr. Dalzell?”
“A very kind thing to do would be to make it plain to him that you would not favour his suit. ’Twould be very cruel to encourage him only to repulse him. I gather that London is still thin of company, but there will be plenty of unattached gentlemen during the Season who will share your country interests. You are an attractive girl, Susan, when you are not scowling and angry. Besides, you listen so intently to everything a gentlemen says to you, and that seems to be more seductive than any beauty.”
“All right,” said Susan, getting awkwardly to her feet.
She suddenly smiled down at Amanda, a smile so sweet and blinding, so like her brother’s, that Amanda’s heart gave a painful wrench. “I like you,” said Susan. “You’re a great gun.”
She bent and kissed Amanda on the cheek and then cheerfully clumped from the room, slamming the door behind her so that the very furniture seemed to shudder.
“Well,” said Amanda Colby, putting her hand up to her cheek. “Well, well, well… and I thought she was not like her brother at all.”
And then Amanda reminded herself that thinking about Lord Hawksborough’s smile was certainly not going to help her forget him.
But she wrapped his dressing gown tightly about her and fell asleep, facedown on the bed, her hand buried among its silken folds, still holding it across her breast.
7
Whatever Lord Hawksborough had said to his fiancée by way of explanation seemed to have banished her anger and fear. Once more Lady Mary was glowing. Once more she was forever by his side.
Nonetheless, she often watched Amanda when she thought the girl wasn’t looking, watching to see if Miss Colby showed any signs of warmth towards Lord Hawksborough. But it appeared that, for Amanda, Lord Hawksborough had ceased to exist.
She was busy encouraging the attentions of Lord Box.
Amanda found Lord Box very soothing. He took her driving in the Park, he escorted her to the opera, always including Aunt Matilda in h
is invitations.
He was a small dapper man, not overly wrinkled considering his fifty-five years. He wore his hair powdered, despite the iniquitous flour tax, and was always formally, if soberly, dressed.
His mouth was thin and apt to droop at the corners, and his nose was an odd lumpy shape. But he was kind, Amanda persuaded herself. She was now nineteen years old and often looked younger. Had Lord Hawksborough, or his mother, or society for that matter, guessed there was any possibility of an attachment between Lord Box and Miss Colby, then Lord Hawksborough would have forbidden the friendship, as would his mother; society would have tittered cruelly, and the press would have lampooned Miss Colby with malicious wit.