by Darcy, Norma
“Thank you for reminding me,” said his lordship dryly.
“Well you have,” reasoned his friend. “There have been women you’d dropped, throwing themselves into the Serpentine just because you’d found yourself a new lover.”
Lord Marcham picked up his tankard and drank from it. “There was only one lady who did that and she was as mad as a box of frogs,” he said, setting down his ale again. He turned to Sir Julius with a look of extreme distaste on his face. “And do we have to talk about this?”
“You ran wild for years. I think your mother was never more glad than when you were sent to the Peninsular. She said it saved you from yourself.”
“Getting shot at is hardly the method I would choose,” said the earl caustically, glancing down at his leg. “Trust me, when you have a lump of shrapnel in your thigh that won’t let you walk or stand or even sleep, the very last thing you are thinking about is being intimate with a female.”
“Does it still pain you, Rob?”
His lordship shrugged and absently rubbed his thigh. “Like any woman, she bothers me now and again.”
“Well, ten to one she’s a harpy,” said Sir Julius.
“Who? The shrapnel, my mother or Miss Blakelow?”
Sir Julius rolled his eyes. “Miss Blakelow, of course.”
The earl looked doubtfully at him, picked up a freshly baked bread roll and pulled it apart. “A harpy who’s the epitome of moral perfection? Hardly. She sounds terribly straight-laced to me.”
Sir Julius rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Then it’s not likely you were intimate…so why does she have it in for you?”
“Heaven only knows.”
“What do you plan to do?”
His lordship reapplied himself to his breakfast. “Do? Why nothing, of course,” he said, lavishly slathering butter on his roll.
“Nothing?” repeated Sir Julius, aghast. “You have to do something.”
“What would you have me do, Ju?”
Sir Julius put up his eyeglass and examined his friend through it as though he were an extremely rare specimen. “Pay Miss Blakelow a visit at the very least.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know…threaten her, pay her off…or something.”
“And would not that provide more material for her next publication? And what’s more, confirm that her information is accurate?”
“Well…yes, but you cannot let her get away with bad mouthing you. No, no, March, it simply will not do.”
“She hasn’t bad mouthed me. You said yourself that she has not mentioned me by name. How do I know that she is referring to me?”
“Because there are too many circumstances that are familiar. And people who know you and who are intimate with your past cannot fail to make the comparison. And those that don’t will speculate that it’s you anyway. You can’t just let it go.”
“Certainly I can,” replied his lordship coolly. “I will not give the woman the satisfaction.”
“What you need is revenge.”
“No, what I need is to finish my breakfast in peace.”
Sir Julius ignored him. He set his rather limited intellect to the task and tapped one extremely long finger against his nose, thinking.
The earl smiled. “I can smell burning,” he murmured.
“What would be the ultimate mortification to a spinster woman of high moral principle?” demanded Sir Julius suddenly.
His lordship snorted in amusement and replied off hand as he reached for his coffee, “To be ruined by a rake.”
Sir Julius Fawcett’s face split into a wide smile. “That’s it! Damn me if it ain’t. Seduce the girl.”
Lord Marcham did a double take. “Ju, I was funning. I am not in the habit of seducing moralising spinster bores. Besides, she may not be a girl at all. She could be ninety for all we know.”
His friend’s smile grew. “Her father was Sir William Blakelow and he was five and sixty when he died, so she has to be younger than forty.”
“You relieve me,” murmured the earl.
“There’s no telling what she looks like though. Those sorts of women are usually spinsters for a reason…but that won’t matter to you will it?”
His lordship pulled a face. “I have standards, Ju.”
“You don’t have to actually like the girl, just pretend that you do. Miss Blakelow is going to fall in love with you.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“You need to stand up to her, March. Or who will be next? It could be anyone…” and he ran a finger between his neck and his cravat as if the garment choked him.
“Even you?” asked the earl softly.
Sir Julius shuddered. “I do not want to even think about it.”
“You have enough material to keep our dear Miss Blakelow writing for another ten years.”
“Do not joke about such a thing, I implore you.”
“In fact, I might even send her some stories to get her started.”
“Robert, I count you as a good friend, but really, I deplore your sense of humour. This is serious. We have to do something.”
“I really don’t care, Ju,” murmured his lordship.
“Don’t care?” he repeated. “You have to care. She wrote a very neat pamphlet condemning your morals and your lifestyle. It has been published to wide acclaim and every Christian church-going busy body across the land has lapped it up. She knows that people love a scandal and they love gossip and they love both in relation to the Earl of Marcham.”
“Then I applaud her business acumen. Can I eat my breakfast now?”
A grim smile settled upon Sir Julius Fawcett’s thin lips. “Well, she will soon discover that to be the object of desire of such a man is not at all pleasant. She will soon discover that any woman whose name is linked with yours, is inevitably tarnished by the acquaintance even if you have exchanged nothing more than words. To be talked about in that fashion is not very nice. She will discover what it is like to be on the receiving end of some of the vitriol she has poured onto others.”
“Do you know Ju, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that she has made you angry.”
Sir Julius smiled. “I am angry, I admit, but so are you.”
“Me? Am I?” replied the earl with a laugh. “How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion? I have already told you that I care nothing for what this nobody has to say.”
“You hide it well, but I know you. I have known you for years. I saw you get that leg wound. I was there, remember? I know what it means when you get that look in your eyes.”
“What look?” said his lordship, laughing and spreading his hands.
“The one that you’d get when we were loading our weapons ready to fight the Frenchies,” said Sir Julius, fixing him with a knowing look. “You, dear boy, are preparing for battle.”
Lord Marcham smiled but the expression did not reach his eyes. “Indeed? How well you think you know me. But I assure you that I am utterly uninterested in anything that woman has to say or do.”
“Hmm,” said Sir Julius. “And I’m Genghis Kahn.”
Chapter 3
The big black door was about to slam in her face.
But the young woman, who had waited a month for the appointment with the earl and who had ridden two miles in the rain to his estate at Holme Park, was not about to be undone at the last hurdle by his lordship’s pompous butler. She thrust her foot into the rapidly closing space between the door and the frame, resisting the urge to yelp as the impact seemed to crush every bone in her foot.
“I must see Lord Marcham,” she said, pushing the door back in the startled servant’s face.
“I have already informed you that his lordship is not at home to visitors,” said Mr. Davenham, his voice becoming high pitched with panic in the face of this determined young lady.
She brushed past him and into the hall and stood looking about her. It was a large affair with a polished marble floor and paintings of lords and ladies past frowning down
at her from all sides.
She was a trim woman, tall, and by no means in the first flush of youth. Mr. Davenham thought her around the age of thirty and someone’s governess to boot.
She was dressed entirely in black, suggesting a recent bereavement, and the overlarge clothes hung off her slender frame, suggesting that they were someone else’s cast offs. The garments were well made but outmoded and shabby, as if they had been made some time ago. Her face was pink and flushed from the exercise of riding and she possessed a short slim nose and generous lips that were curved in a smile guaranteed to break down the butler’s defences. Under her bonnet could be seen the frill of a mob cap and a pair of green eyes hidden behind ugly spectacles.
If Mr. Davenham had been fortunate enough to have seen her without the spectacles and the cap and the prim clothing, he might have thought her an attractive woman, but as it was he thought her a country dowd and someone’s poor relation at that. The suspicion that she was about to claim some link to Lord Marcham and wheedle her way into his purse was not lost upon the butler, nor was the thought that she might be some lightskirt from the earl’s colourful youth and about to foist a lovechild upon him. Equally alarming was the thought of what his lordship would do to him if he let her anyway near him. He ran a forefinger between his collar and his neck, already imagining his master’s hands around his throat. He watched the young lady tuck away a long tendril of chestnut hair. It curled gently against her cheek and had escaped from the prim arrangement of her headdress.
“Well, he will be at home to me, when he hears what I have to say to him,” she replied, stripping off her gloves. “I have an appointment of some weeks standing. My father’s man of business arranged it and I am not about to be turned away at the last fence by you or anyone else. I know that his lordship has a policy of not receiving visitors, but this is not a social visit, I can assure you. I am here on business and I must ask you again to please inform Lord Marcham of my arrival.”
“His lordship is indisposed,” said Mr. Davenham, his slightly protruding eyes almost popping out of their sockets.
“If he is truly indisposed then I am sorry for it, but if he is, as I suspect, avoiding me―”
“Wait! Ma’am, you cannot go in there!”
The woman had moved swiftly across the hallway towards a closed door from behind which she could hear masculine laughter and excited shouts of encouragement. She placed her hand upon the door knob.
The butler looked at her so fearfully that she almost burst out laughing.
“Madam please, his lordship will turn me out of the house if I let you in there! Come into the parlour and I will fetch my master to you.”
She smiled at him kindly. “What a silly creature you are to be so afraid of your master. He must be a tyrant indeed to instil such fear in you,” she marvelled. “But never fear. He will not seek retribution from you, I promise. Forgive me Mr. Davenham, but I really will not be put off my purpose this time.”
She turned and flung the door wide open and for a moment she stood there in stunned disbelief; the scene before her was one that she had not ever encountered before.
The room was low-lit, the curtains still drawn, even though it wanted only fifteen minutes until midday and the candles burned low in their sockets. Around the table were perhaps ten or twelve gentlemen of differing ages, some older with their wigs askew, others younger, who had cast aside their coats or undone their cravats, their chins scratchy with unshaven stubble, their eyes bleary with drink and lack of sleep. The room reeked of alcohol, and the table was littered with empty bottles, wineglasses and the remains of supper. Several young ladies in varying states of undress sat on the laps of the gentlemen, one couple was engaged in a very indecent embrace on a sofa against the wall. Rose petals were strewn across the table cloth and standing in the middle of the table as the centrepiece was a woman, clearly in the process of stripping off her clothes for the entertainment of the gathered male company. The shouts of men she’d heard had been encouragement to remove the last item of clothing, a rather expensive looking but decidedly indecent undergarment. The half dressed woman had halted her disrobement as the door was opened and stared agog at the prim woman looking so coolly back at her.
To the woman standing in the doorway it seemed that twenty pairs of eyes had swivelled in her direction. Every instinct told her to flee. She most definitely should not be in such a place. She was undoubtedly shocked. She knew that Lord Marcham had a certain reputation, indeed, everyone knew it. But this? Who could have expected his debauchery to have sunk him so low?
“Who’s this, Marcham?” asked an elderly gentleman, turning in his chair towards her to have a better look. He was slurring his words badly and he raised his eyeglass and stared at her impertinently through it for some moments. “Have you brought your housekeeper to entertain us? Or is she the village schoolteacher?”
The woman swallowed hard, lifted her chin and stared back.
“Nothing to do with me, Henry,” said a deep voice from the far end of the room.
“I have come to see Lord Marcham and I wish to see him in private,” she announced in a firm and clear voice.
“I’ll bet you do,” someone muttered and there was a rumble of suggestive laughter.
“Mind your manners, John,” softly chided that same deep voice, but sounding amused nonetheless.
“What do you want with him?” demanded the elderly gentleman named Henry.
“It is a private matter of business,” she replied.
“Never ‘eard it called that before,” said one young woman clad in an indecently low cut gown.
“Get her up on the table!” suggested a skinny man with a droopy nose, waving his arm aloft. “Let’s see what’s under that mourning garb.”
Several men slapped the table in appreciation of this idea.
“Yes!”
“Capital idea!”
“Molly’s a great sport but we seen it all before! Let us have something new to look at!”
The lady’s hand gripped tightly upon the small pistol buried in the pocket of her cloak. “I have a long standing appointment to see Lord Marcham at eleven thirty this morning,” she said firmly, trying to control the rising sense of panic that was threatening to send her flying from the room but taking strength from the feel of the pistol in her hand.
“Oh, March never keeps his appointments,” said another man with bright blue eyes and a kindly face. “Anyone can tell you that. Famous for it.”
“Which one of you is Lord Marcham?” she demanded, her eyes travelling from the handsome man with the blue eyes to another man’s puce cheeks to another who had thick grey eyebrows like caterpillars.
“I am Lord Marcham,” said a man seated at the far end of the table. He stood up and came towards her, smiling at her in a way that made her feel as if she wanted to take a bath. He was clearly still drunk and his dress was in considerable disarray. He had long ago discarded his coat and cravat and his very hairy chest could be seen at the low neck of his shirt.
She baulked a little but stood her ground, gripping the pistol ever more tightly in her fingers as he came nearer. Was this Lord Marcham? She had not set eyes on the earl in years, but even so, he looked very different from the man she remembered. He offered her his hand and she chose not to take it. There was another rumble of laughter. He pulled out a chair from the table and invited her to be seated in it with a gesture of his hand. She remained where she was.
“Oh, Prudence, will you not come near the fire at least?” he asked. “You are soaked through.”
The rain had percolated through her thick cloak to her gown underneath and steam was slowly rising from her back. She would have dearly loved to have warmed herself before the fire but she did not trust him an inch and stayed where she was.
“Won’t you take off your cloak, my dear?”
Given that every man in the room was already speculating how she looked under her cloak, she declined.
“And what is your
name, fair Cyprian?” he asked smiling, and his friends laughed at the very idea.
“You are insulting, sir.”
“Am I indeed? And why, may I ask, are you dressed in widow’s garb? I don’t remember requesting such an outfit. Does your Madame imagine any man wants to see a woman dressed in such a fashion?”
He reached out a hand to untie the ribbons on her cloak and she slapped him away. “I am in mourning sir,” she said, glaring at the man’s friends who seemed to fairly lick their lips in anticipation.
“Are you?” he replied, walking around her as if examining a prize heifer. “You are playing the part of the prude rather too well, my dear. Teasing is all well and good and I like it as much as the next man but if you want to get paid, you’ll take off your cloak and be quick about it…”
“I beg your pardon?” she said blankly.
The man waved a hand at the lady in the thin chemise. “Molly here has kept us more than well entertained without you but you are a little late for the party, wouldn’t you say? You were supposed to have been here yesterday. But I’m sure that we can make up for lost time.”
Before she knew what he was about, he had seized her by the waist and brought her against his bony body and kissed her hard on the mouth. She clamped down her teeth hard upon his lower lip and he yelped in pain. She followed this by raising her knee in a swift but unladylike assault on his unmentionables and the man doubled over, grunting in pain. Guffaws of laughter followed from his friends.
“Enough,” said the man with the deep voice, wearily rising from a chair at the far end of the table.
“She kicked me!” the man said, doubled over. “The little shrew!”
“Larwood, calm down.”
“Look! I’m bleeding! I’ll take her upstairs and show her what―”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. I rather think that there is some mistake. This young woman is not one of your…er…entertainers.”
The woman pulled the gun from her pocket and aimed it with a remarkably steady hand at the figure that had come forward into the firelight.