by Gaelen Foley
“Of course,” said Coldfell. He poked his daughter’s arm in stern reproach and pointed for her to go with Hawk.
Hawk coolly offered her his arm, playing the affronted bridegroom. Even her father seemed to feel he was entitled to sit Juliet down and chasten her. She looked frightened and overwhelmed as she put her hand on his arm and walked slowly by his side.
“No need to gawk, my good people,” Hawk declared, still in a high and mighty countenance, but he felt a gigantic, secret laugh building inside of him. How shocked they would be at his final, ultimate defection! By God, he’d go over to the Whigs, to boot! How delicious the scandal was going to be! He could almost taste the air of freedom, climbing toward it. “This way, Juliet.”
He tugged her by her hand toward the modest doorway and small staircase that led down to the mezzanine. The moment they were out of everyone’s sight on the stairs, he pulled her more firmly, hurrying her. He turned and mouthed the word to her, “Come!” She furrowed her brow in question, but he shook his head and led her toward the arched French window that overlooked the King’s Place courtyard to the back of Almack’s. He opened it and pointed below. Obediently she peered out, then her face lit up with joy as she saw Griffon waiting down there for her. She waved.
Hawk turned her by her shoulders to face him, willing her to understand. He enunciated each word as clearly as possible. She stared at his mouth, waiting. This time they were determined to communicate.
“Juliet.”
She nodded anxiously.
“Do—you—love—Griffon?”
A dreamy look came over her face and she nodded with her young heart sparkling in her eyes. Then she gave him a wince of pure apology, but Hawk laughed.
“It’s all right. Do you want to marry him?”
Her eyes widened. Another breathless nod.
“Climb up and I will help you escape.”
Her eyes widened. She hesitated—stole another glance down at her beau—then nodded eagerly.
He whistled for Griffon then helped Juliet climb out the window. Hawk slowly lowered her by her hands into the young man’s waiting embrace. He followed her out the window, dropping from the ledge by his hands. He landed agilely on the cobblestones below and turned to the beaming young couple, beckoning them impatiently. They ran out to the front and Hawk rushed them both into his coach, but Griffon turned back to him and shook his hand, pumping it in both of his.
“I’m sorry for my outburst, Your Grace. I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. I trust your judgment—I trust your situation that you can provide for a wife.”
“She shall want for nothing.”
“Good. Now I’m going to trust you with my coach, as well, so mind you don’t scratch it. Go. William—Gretna Green!” he ordered. “And drive these bloods as fast as they can run! It won’t be long before Coldfell’s on your trail.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Hang it all!” Griffon said suddenly. “What about my stallion? You remember him? The big white one? He’s tied up in the Rose and Crown yard!”
“I’ll see to the horse. Inquire at my house when you get back—”
“No, you must take him as a gift for what you’ve done for us tonight.”
Hawk waved off the generous offer. “Just go! You’ll never get a second chance, Griffon. Coldfell will never let you near her again. Her son will be an earl with four seats in the Commons, and you will be his father.”
“Your Grace,” he whispered in awe, holding Juliet near him, “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Have a long and happy life together, and stick to your ideals when you use the power you’ll gain. That will be thanks enough.” He pushed the coach door shut, then William urged the team into motion.
“Hawkscliffe!” Griffon shouted down the street, waving out the window as the town coach rolled away. “You have the heart of a poet!”
Hawk waved, praying that he might be given a poet’s eloquence as he ran into the livery yard, swung up onto Griffon’s pearl-white stallion and charged off to win his lady’s heart.
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”
Bel and her father sat enthralled in her theater box while the astonishing Edmund Kean, playing as Richard III, tore across the battlefield stage crying out the history’s most famous lines at the climax of the fifth act. Though she knew the play well, both she and her father stared, thunderstruck, as King Richard did battle with his nemesis, the earl of Richmond, and was slain.
Kean delivered a death scene not to be equaled in Christendom. There was a moment of cathartic silence as the audience, trampled by the poet’s pen, could only gaze at the dead villain-king in lingering shock. The theater was perfectly silent. Then, before Richmond could speak his triumphal piece, all of a sudden, the center doors at the back of the theater creaked open.
Bel felt a flicker of annoyance at the interruption as she gazed at the stage, still spellbound. Suddenly a ripple of gasps moved in a wave through the audience, starting in the back. Whispers and wordless exclamations whirred. Shouts followed.
How rude, Bel thought, turning indignantly, then her jaw dropped as a huge white horse bearing a magnificent black-haired rider clambered into the theater and down the center aisle. Even Mr. Kean looked up from his demise upon the stage.
Bel stared in disbelief. The duke of Hawkscliffe urged the shying horse to the front of the theater, heedless of the amazed cries that filled the air.
“What is he doing?” Bel breathed in shock, gripping her father’s forearm.
“I have no idea,” Papa murmured.
The horse whinnied nervously and tossed its head, flipping its white forelock. The audience was in an uproar. The stage manager and his assistants rushed out to try to stop him, but Robert reeled the horse away in a graceful pirouette, its long plume of tail dusting the stage, then he made the stallion rear up.
“Stand back!” he shouted in a voice of thunderous command. “I have come on the most urgent business. You shall have your show!”
“Leave him be!” someone in the audience shouted.
“Is that Hawkscliffe?”
“It can’t be,” people were saying.
Edmund Kean said something to the stage manager, who in turn threw up his hands then called his assistants back before the horse kicked anyone.
With a slight, devilish smile, Robert guided the tall white horse back to a vantage point just below Bel’s theater box. With a sweeping gesture, he produced a gorgeous red rose and lifted it, holding it out to her. The courtly gesture won him cheers, whistles, applause. Even Mr. Kean laughed.
The roguish smile Robert sent her made her heart somersault with crazed, incredulous joy.
Her heart beating wildly, Bel reached over the railing and accepted the rose, abashed to be brought to the public’s attention, because everybody knew who she was—“the Magdalen,” the papers now called her—the penitent whore.
“Come away, my lady,” he said softly.
“Have you gone completely mad?”
“I was mad ever to let you go. Take me back. You won’t be sorry, I swear,” he said. “Marry me, lovely.”
“Robert!”
The whole audience leaned in as he turned to her father.
“Sir, I love your daughter more than anything in this world,” Robert loudly announced, his rich baritone ringing out across the theater. “Do I have your blessing to ask for her hand?”
“You do, Your Grace,” Alfred said with a fond chuckle.
“Papa!” Bel protested.
There were ripples of laughter at her mortification; people stomped their feet on the floor and cheered.
“Robert, you are making a fool of yourself!”
“Yes, my darling, that is the point. If we’re going to make a scandal, let’s make it a good one.”
“Oh, you maddening—!” she said, exasperated past the point of speech.
Bringing the horse nearer, he offered her his h
and with a soft, beguiling smile. “Come away with me now. Don’t hesitate. You know that I love you. This is our chance.”
“Say yes!” someone in one of the nearby rows hollered. “Say yes to him!”
Others joined in.
“Don’t be daft, girl! He loves you!” a big Cockney woman shouted from the pit.
“Go!” they all started shouting, cheering Robert on.
“I’m sure it’s nobody’s business!” Bel exclaimed.
He flashed her a dashing grin. “The ayes have it. Come, Bel. What good is anything if we’re not together?”
Tears rushed into her eyes. His dark eyes shone with all the promise of the future he was offering. He waited faithfully, his hand outstretched, braving a very public rejection. God knew he deserved it, too, after all he had put her through.
She looked anxiously from the clamoring audience to her father. “Papa, what should I do?”
He gave her a teary-eyed smile. “Why, my dear, you should follow your heart, of course.”
“What about Mick?”
“He only wants your happiness, as do I. He’ll understand.”
“Oh, Papa!” She hugged her father hard. He chuckled fondly as he released her.
Then the noise built to a crescendo; the whole audience cheered as Bel daringly climbed over the railing with a scandalous show of ankle that would have surely made the brazen Georgiana Hawkscliffe laugh. She took Robert’s hand. He steadied her as she stepped down, gingerly lowering herself onto the horse behind him.
He drew her hands around his waist. “Put your arms around me,” he whispered, “and never let me go.”
“I love you!” At her joyous sob, she felt the rumble of his deep, tender laugh.
“Well, you’d better, bonny blue, because this time, our arrangement is permanent.”
He turned and gave her a light, lingering kiss full of velvet promise for the night to come. Tears brimmed under her lashes as he ended the kiss and held her gaze for a moment, love glowing in his dark eyes. “I missed you,” he whispered. Then he turned forward again, smiling more roguishly now.
“Hold on tight.”
She clasped her hands around his lean middle.
With that, he pressed his heels into the horse’s sides, and they galloped out of the theater and rode off into the stars.
Notice in The London Times Society Page 23rd September, 1814
After a private wedding ceremony in the chapel at Their Graces’ ancestral pile in Cumberland last week, the Duke and Duchess of Hawkscliffe embarked to Vienna to take their honeymoon amid the festivities of the Great Congress.
Lady Jacinda Knight and her companion, Miss Carlisle, also joined Their Graces for the Continental holiday.
Adding to the family’s happiness is the news that the decorated war hero Colonel Lord Damien Knight will be made a peer upon his arrival home from the Peninsula. We eagerly await the chance to express our thanks and congratulations to his lordship, who is expected to return before the month is out.
Elsewhere in Town, reports have reached us that the Duke of L— and the Marquess of W— were heard to exchange words in their longstanding rivalry for the favours of the notorious Harriette Wilson. . ..
HISTORICAL NOTE
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love, or the severity of my father, or the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble Lord, which induced me to leave my paternal roof and place myself under his protection, does not now much signify: or if it does, I am not in the humour to gratify curiosity in this matter.
So begins The Lady and the Game, the memoirs of Harriette Wilson. Her firsthand account of high life in the Regency demimonde was a primary source for this novel. The Cyprians’ house in York Place actually belonged to Amy, the eldest of the famous courtesan sisters—Harriette had her own house in the New Road in Marylebone and later, in Trevor Square, Knightsbridge—but I condensed locations for the sake of unity. In real life Amy and Harriette, fierce rivals, could not have lived civilly under the same roof. In 1815, the year following my story, Harriette, aged thirty-five, moved to Paris as her fame in London began to wane. Amy turned respectable; Fanny died young; Julia Johnstone bore a total of twelve children. The youngest Wilson sister, Sophia, landed a viscount.
Marguerite Gardiner, who is also mentioned in the story, started out in life as a poor Irish girl of great beauty and ended up the Countess of Blessington, as well as a famed writer and confidante to Lord Byron. It is hoped the reader will forgive the author for taking the liberty of placing Lord and Lady Blessington’s nuptials within the dates of this story; in actuality, they did not marry until 1818.
Politically the Tories’ only foray into reform was in removing the death penalty for minor offenses and working toward a more humane penal code. Greater change would have to wait until after 1831, but when it came, it was driven in part by the vision and ferocious energy of Henry Brougham (later Lord Chancellor and First Baron of Brougham and Vaux). “Wickedshifts,” as the diarist Creevy calls him, directed the attention of Parliament in 1816 to the whole question of charitable endowment and obtained a select committee to investigate the education of poor children; in 1820 Brougham became the defense lawyer in the trial of Queen Caroline. One wonders if his relationship with a free spirit like Harriette helped to shape his amazingly forward-thinking views on the rights of women.
The reactionary and repressive attitudes of the Tories, as exemplified by Sidmouth and Eldon, resulted in the government’s failure to take any positive steps to deal with the problems of postwar England and led to public protests, one of which ended in the “Peterloo Massacre” of 1819. A savage attack on the Tory magnates still exists in Shelley’s famous poem “The Mask of Anarchy.” Wellington did not seem to suffer as badly in public opinion as the others did and later became prime minister.
As for Viscount Castlereagh and his ongoing battle with depression, after all his brilliant service, especially as foreign secretary, he took his life in 1822, slitting his throat with a penknife in his dressing room.
Finally, those familiar with the history of Lady Oxford and her “Harleian Miscellany” will no doubt recognize her as the model for my scandalous and beautiful Georgiana, duchess of Hawkscliffe and her variously sired brood. This grand dame of the ton was, of course, the inspiration for my new series about the Knight brothers, the first installment of which you have just read—and which I sincerely hope you will continue to enjoy.
—G.F.
P.S. The twins are next!
Gaelen Foley is an award-winning author of The Pirate Prince, Princes, and Prince Charming. She resides in Pennsylvania with her husband and two spoiled bichons frises, and is hard at work on her next novel. Readers can write to the author at: P.O. Box 522, Library, PA, 15129, or e-mail her via her Web site at www.gaelenfoley.com
Version history
V1.0—July2004—Proofread and formatted.