by Jane Feather
“It’s not easy for me to discuss my private affairs,” he said.
“As if I don’t know that.” She sat up and looked down at him, frustration now in her eyes. “If you won’t tell me about something that concerns me so closely, you can’t blame me for asking other people. You can’t have it every way, Jack.”
He was silent for a moment and then yielded. “Well, there you have me, I must admit.” He pulled her down beside him again, fitting her head into the hollow of his shoulder. “Very well, I will tell you the whole. It happened some twenty years ago. I had just attained my majority.”
“Frederick was thirty,” she said, calculating quickly.
“Yes, and already debauched,” he responded, his voice cold as ice. “It’s a simple tale swiftly told. I was in love with a lady, a very young lady, all of sixteen. Your brother decided that he too was in love with her. I suspect it was her fortune he was in love with, but that’s unworthy of me.” Sarcasm dripped like vinegar from his tongue.
“As it happened, she returned my affections not his, so your brother abducted her. He intended marrying her over the anvil. I stopped their flight on the second day. Frederick was wounded badly in the duel I forced upon him, but by then the lady’s reputation was ruined.”
“Well, why didn’t you marry her yourself? That would have saved her reputation.” She lifted her head from his shoulder to look at his expression.
“Her family didn’t consider me an eligible suitor,” he said aridly, tucking her head back into the hollow of his shoulder. “They were willing to sacrifice their daughter for moral scruple, I’m afraid. I had a certain dubious reputation myself, and since I was in the process of gambling away my entire fortune at the tables, with hindsight one can hardly blame them.”
“You lost your entire fortune?” She raised her head again, intrigued but also slightly shocked.
“Yes, and then made another,” he returned.
“Through gaming?”
“Yes, my dear, at the tables.”
“You must be very good,” she said, awed. “So much of it is a matter of luck.”
“Yes, but not all, as I endeavored to show you this afternoon. Some foolish young man in Bruges lost his entire fortune to me over the space of a week.”
“And then you did it again with my brother.” She lay on her side, propped on an elbow as she idly twisted a finger into the nest of springy dark hair on his chest, hoping to bring the subject back to the night that had ruined Frederick.
“I suppose you could call it a habit,” he said with a careless mockery.
“No wonder they call you the devil incarnate,” she stated.
Jack laughed slightly and caught her busy hand. “Now I’ll have an answer in return. Where’s the letter that you took from my strongbox?”
“Ah.” She exhaled slowly. “In the secretaire.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned it?” He sat up, uncurled himself into a standing position, and bent to throw a log onto the fire.
Arabella was momentarily distracted by the curve of his backside, the glimpse of his balls, the hairs curling on the lean muscular thighs. But it was only for a second, simply a conditioned reflex. The passion was gone now. She crossed her arms over her breasts, abruptly aware of her nakedness.
“Why didn’t you post it?”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck as he turned away from the fire. “At the time I didn’t want you to have an alternative to my proposal. I wanted time to persuade you. And then, if you remember, you came around rather quickly to my way of thinking, so I saw no point in sending the letter, and then, to be quite candid, I forgot all about it.”
“It was dishonest.”
He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.”
She chewed her lip, frowning deeply. “Why was marrying me so important to you that you would resort to trickery?”
Jack reached for a dressing gown before he answered her. “I usually get what I want,” he said finally. “I wanted you, and the more you resisted me the more I wanted you.”
For some reason this blunt, self-centered answer had the ring of truth. She stood up and thrust her arms into the sleeves of the peignoir Becky had laid out on the bed. “You didn’t have even a twinge of conscience?”
“Maybe a twinge,” he confessed.
“But why did you want me?” she persevered.
He turned to the decanter on the dresser and poured cognac into two goblets. He continued with his back to her. “Perhaps I thought it would be a generous move. It was my act that deprived you of your family protection and it seemed only right to make some kind of reparation. I needed a wife. You were there.” He shrugged. “It seemed obvious.”
Only then did he turn to face her again. He passed her a goblet.
Arabella took it, regarding him in frowning silence. It sounded so simple, and so in keeping with a man of Jack’s reputation. A rogue, a rake, a gambler. He went out for what he wanted and he took it by whatever means came to hand. But she knew that was only a part of the man. Just as she knew he’d only given her a part of the story. But she had gone far enough for one night.
He raised his goblet in a toast. “Of course, my sweet, the more I got to know you, the more I realized that marriage to you could be a lot more than a union of convenience.”
She inclined her head in silent acknowledgment and he reached over to touch her goblet with his own. “Let us drink to the future.”
Much later, as she lay in her husband’s arms listening to the steady rhythm of his sleeping breath, watching the firelight flicker on the painted, molded ceiling, Arabella found sleep elusive.
What kind of woman had his sister been? Why on earth had Jack never mentioned her, never talked of his loss? The Terror had taken so many lives, it was an all too common story.
But if he wouldn’t tell her, she would simply have to find out for herself. Maybe someone in the circle of émigrés that she’d befriended would have some information.
She needed Meg more than ever. Letters were no real substitute for that sharp, insightful mind and the post took forever. By the time Meg’s responses to Arabella’s outpourings arrived, they were almost irrelevant. However, Sir Mark was being difficult about the idea of his daughter paying an extended visit to London. Maybe a prod from Jack would move things along, Arabella thought, sleepily now but with a touch of indignation. It was Jack’s house, after all. Or at least that was how Sir Mark saw it. A warm invitation from the master of the house might do the trick.
Fond though she was of Sir Mark, she knew only too well what a stickler for the proprieties he was. And he still considered Arabella in the light of a daughter. Her lofty position in Society didn’t change anything in that respect. No, Jack would have to issue a pressing invitation.
Chapter 16
Arabella fanned herself vigorously as she waited with the crowd of courtiers in the antechamber to the Great Drawing Room in St. James’s Palace for her summons to be formally presented to the Prince of Wales’s bride, Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Despite the freshness of the April afternoon, it was hot in the chamber, with a huge fire burning in the massive grate and wheels of candles hanging brilliantly from the gilded, painted ceiling, and as always the air was laden with heavy perfumes, clouds of scented hair powder, and sweat. The noise was deafening as the throng chattered like a rookery of crows.
She felt herself wilting in the archaic Court dress that remained de rigueur for the queen’s twice-weekly Drawing Rooms. The ridiculous ostrich feathers in her hair were drooping, and the St. Jules diamonds seemed to weigh a ton, pressing into the crown of her head, pinching her ears, making her neck ache. She maneuvered the wide hooped skirts of her white crape gown around a dainty gilt table adorned with a set of exquisite snuffboxes and remembered just in time to twitch her three-foot train away from the pedestal before it twisted itself around the delicate stem of the table, bringing priceless artifacts raining down upon the uncarpeted floor.
She finally reached her
quarry. “How long does this kind of thing last, George?”
George Cavenaugh laughed but without much humor. “As long as her majesty chooses. Sometimes she’ll keep us waiting until dark. It’s her way of punishing the opposition. When she’s obliged to include Whigs in a Drawing Room she makes sure we suffer for it.”
“How charming,” Arabella murmured, plying her fan with increased vigor. “How is she treating Lady Jersey?”
Her companion’s lip curled. “With impeccable courtesy, of course. Her ladyship is, after all, a lady of the princess’s bedchamber and so an intimate at Court. Her intimacy with the prince’s bed is not an issue on such an occasion.”
“I imagine it will be for the princess.” Arabella looked around the antechamber. “I think we’re moving a little.” There was a slight surge forward towards the massive doorway leading into the Great Drawing Room and she and George rode the tide until they were within a few feet of the entrance. Inside, the line stretched the full length of the enormous room to where the queen with her eldest son and his bride sat enthroned at the far end. Lesser members of the royal family flanked them.
“We’re going to be here until dark,” George said, sounding resigned. “And I’m famished. You’d think they’d provide some refreshment. Where’s Jack, by the way?”
“He went in search of refreshment,” Arabella said. “He’s not in the best of tempers, I should warn you.”
“None of us are,” George responded. “Including the prince. He looks black as thunder and keeps glaring at that poor girl he’s married.”
“Was forced to marry,” she amended. “He told me Parliament and his father threatened to cut off his allowance and refuse to pay his debts if he didn’t marry Caroline.” She shrugged her bare white shoulders. “A pragmatic decision, I would have said.”
Of course, pragmatic decisions about such matters sometimes turned out rather unexpectedly, she reflected. She glanced automatically over her shoulder and saw Jack, steadily making his way towards them in the company of a flunky carrying a tray. He moved easily through the crowd, a word here, a touch on the shoulder there, and the Red Sea parted for him. As she watched, the countess of Worth stepped into his path.
Arabella felt her throat close. She wanted to look away, offer some light carefree comment to her companion, but her eyes would not move. She watched as Lilly laid a hand on Jack’s arm and he paused, smiling down at her. They were too far away and the chatter too loud for Arabella to hear what was said, but she saw her husband look a little grave, then nod. Lilly smiled, touched his arm again in a gesture of unmistakable intimacy, and stepped back.
George Cavenaugh said abruptly, his voice unnecessarily loud, “Have you any further news from your friend in Kent? Is she to visit soon?”
“I hope so,” Arabella said, knowing perfectly well that George had seen what she had seen. “Sir Mark Barratt is a little reluctant to give his permission but I have every hope of persuading him soon. I’ve known Meg since childhood and I own I’ll be glad of a little female companionship.”
“Ah, ma’am, you cut me to the quick,” George protested with a gallant bow. “Your cicisbeos are not sufficient?”
“Don’t be absurd, George.” She tapped his arm with her fan in mock reproof. “You know damn well I’d laugh in the face of a cicisbeo.”
“Hearing that language, he’d probably fall into a dead faint,” Jack said at her elbow. “You are in the queen’s antechamber, my dear. Try to remember it.”
“It’s impossible to forget,” she retorted. He was not going to know by her manner that she had witnessed that little scene. And certainly he was not going to know that it bothered her. She took a glass of wine from the flunky’s tray, and something that looked like a rather limp and exhausted cheese tartlet.
“Jack, you work miracles,” George said, helping himself likewise.
“Oh, I intend to work another one, my dear George,” Jack said airily. “Or at least, Arabella is.” He drew out his card case and selected a card. “Madam wife, I would like you to write on this.”
“What with . . . oh.” She saw that the flunky’s tray also held an ink standish and a quill.
“Our friend here will hold the tray steady,” Jack said.
He had the reckless, laughing light in his eye that she was learning to love so much, but she couldn’t help a quick glance behind to where Lilly Worth stood. They had a bargain, Arabella reminded herself. She had no right to complain. But she still wanted to tear the woman’s eyes out. What had Lilly been asking Jack?
The earl of Worth came up beside his wife at that point and Arabella picked up the pen. “What should I write, sir?”
Jack dictated with a solemnity belied by the glint in his eye. “Dear sir, I am like to swoon. I beg you, please, to invite the dss and her hsbnd to meet your wife before disaster strikes.”
“What about me?” demanded George as Arabella, laughing now, obediently wrote the shorthand on the back of the card.
“And our dear frnd G.C. Also like to swoon,” she added in her faultless penmanship.
“Calumny,” George stated. “But any port in a storm.”
Jack took the card, waved it around to dry the ink, and then with his usual aplomb moved towards the double doors where the majordomo stood on guard. They watched as he spoke to the majestic gold-embossed figure.
“He’s done it,” George said in awe. “I don’t know how. Not even a duke can gain entrance when Queen Charlotte denies it.”
Jack remained standing in the entrance as the majordomo made his stately progress to the enthroned royalty, where he made an adroit step behind the prince, managing to bow as he did so, and presented the card to the prince in a sideways maneuver.
The prince read the card and his sulky countenance changed. He laughed and tucked the card inside his gold-laced scarlet coat. He spoke over his shoulder to the majordomo, who immediately bowed and returned across the drawing room. The prince then addressed his mother, ignoring both courtesy and his wife as he spoke across his exhausted-looking bride. Queen Charlotte frowned, clearly displeased, then she gave a stiff nod. On this occasion her oldest son’s wishes should be granted.
The majordomo spoke to a flunky and the man made his way to where the St. Jules and George now stood together. “Her majesty will receive your graces now, with Mr. Cavenaugh.”
Arabella chuckled. “You truly are the devil incarnate,” she murmured. “Poor Prinnie will be in such bad odor with his mother after this.”
“Oh, trust me, love, he’s enjoying every minute of it,” Jack returned softly. “He’s been beaten down enough with this marriage, a small rebellion is little recompense, but it’s something.”
Arabella composed her features. She knew from her debutante presentation that she must keep her head up, her posture faultless, her hoops perfectly disciplined. It was a hard walk through the swords and drooping feathers, the swinging skirts of the crowd as they swept past the queue of people waiting their turn for introduction and reached the holy grail.
Arabella preceded her husband and George. She walked slowly to the queen and curtsied to her knees. She had done this once before, but this time she didn’t have to wait for the queen to kiss her forehead. She was no longer the debutante daughter of a peeress. She was the wife of a duke. She rose slowly, and curtsied to the Prince of Wales, who winked at her. As she was presented to Caroline, Arabella’s eyes met those of the new Princess of Wales. The young woman smiled almost hopefully, Arabella thought, smiling back. Then she completed the ritual curtsies to the less important members of the royal family, curtsied deeply once more to the queen before walking backwards out of the royal presence, keeping her eyes firmly on Queen Charlotte.
So much easier for men, she thought once she’d reached the haven of the antechamber. A bow, however deep, was easier to accomplish than a curtsy, although the sword required an adroit maneuver, but moving backwards was a great deal easier in knee britches than in a hooped skirt with a three-foot
train to match. Not to mention drooping ostrich feathers. However, it was done, and in that instant of eye contact with Princess Caroline, Arabella had felt an immediate fellowship. The woman had looked both sad and determined. Under no illusions about her place in her husband’s heart . . . yet utterly determined to take her rightful place as the next queen of England.
“So, let’s make our escape.” Jack and George had reached her now. “Supper at the piazza, I think.” Jack took her elbow. “Well acted, Arabella. Even I had difficulty guessing how much you loathe this kind of ceremony.”
“You are, of course, accustomed to women who don’t need to act in these situations,” Arabella said, and then wished she’d bitten her tongue. The earl and countess of Worth had moved up the line so that they now stood abreast of them in the antechamber.
“How did you manage that, Fortescu?” demanded the earl. “We’re going to be here till sundown. And my lady is feeling faint.”
“If you faint, ma’am, you’ll be excused,” Arabella said to Lilly. “I’ve seen several ladies do that, and it is insufferably hot in here.”
Lilly’s china-blue eyes sharpened and it was very clear to Arabella that Jack’s mistress didn’t care to receive advice from his wife. She couldn’t help but take a certain ignoble satisfaction in the woman’s irritation.
George Cavenaugh made matters worse. He said, “I do believe Lady Arabella is right, ma’am. If you swoon, we will carry you out, and not even the queen will take offense.”
Lilly fanned herself and turned away towards her husband. “I believe, my lord, that I would like to be presented to the Princess of Wales. It’s not so very hot in here, I find.”
“Of course, my dear. As you wish, my dear.” The earl took her arm. “It won’t be above an hour or two, I’m certain.”
Arabella nodded at them in the semblance of a curtsy as her husband and George bowed. She laid her hand on Jack’s arm and with her head high sailed from the antechamber.
“Is that letter from Miss Barratt? Jack asked as he wandered into Arabella’s bedchamber later that evening. He was unbuttoning his shirt with one hand, holding a glass of port in the other.