She slipped quietly out, forcing herself to take time to close the door slowly and carefully behind her. She made her way down the drive, keeping to the black shadow of the yew trees, for a treacherous moon was bathing everything in a silvery glow.
The iron gate wailed like a banshee, but Deirdre could no longer school herself to wait for possible repercussions. She let it swing behind her with a clang and ran out into the road, looking this way and that.
No one.
She gave a little gasp of disappointment, and then a gasp of fear as an arm came from behind and slid round her waist. She whirled about.
‘Guy!’
‘I thought you might see me and come looking for me,’ he whispered. ‘Walk with me a little way. Will they miss you?’
Deirdre shook her head, thinking how handsome he looked in the moonlight with his teeth gleaming white and his eyes glinting in an exciting way.
Her father’s remark about a fox after the hens came into her mind, and she said nervously, ‘I hate this furtive meeting. Oh, how I wish you could call at the vicarage and that papa would be sensible.’
‘I came because someone told me your father was chasing you with a whip,’ he said in a low serious voice. ‘I could not sleep. I was worried about you. Believe me, I do not like these clandestine meetings either.’
‘Is it not amazing,’ said Deirdre softly, ‘we should become such friends? It is as if our minds were twins.’
‘I think it is because I am tired of simpering, giggling females,’ said Guy. ‘I admire a woman with a brain. Oh, I confess your sister, Annabelle, dazzled me with her beauty, but that was before I learned some sense.’
‘Yes,’ said Deirdre in tepid agreement. She would have liked Mr Wentwater to say he was dazzled with her beauty as well as her brain.
‘Oh, Mr Wentwater,’ said Deirdre, stopping in the moonlit lane, and clutching hold of both his hands, ‘I must tell you. The most dreadful thing has happened.’
The wind sighed over their heads and a shower of damp leaves blew about them.
‘Tell me. Why was your father chasing you? If there is anything I can do to help?’ said Guy, pressing her hands and holding them to his chest.
‘Papa has a marriage arranged for me. I am to go to London tomorrow and stay with Lady Godolphin so that some creature called Lord Harry Desire can look me over, check my teeth, and say whether he will have me or nay.’
‘This is outrageous! Your father already has two rich marriages in the family. What does he need with another?’
Deirdre sighed and the wind over the high hedges on either side of the road seemed to pick up the sigh and send it blowing across the bare autumn fields. ‘We are in low funds again,’ she said.
‘Papa spends a great deal of money on the hunt. This Lord Desire must marry in order to inherit his uncle’s fortune, he needs a wife, Papa needs the money, I am to be the sacrifice.’
He released her hands and turned a little away from her so that his face was in the shadows. Deirdre waited, straining to hear him say that he would marry her himself.
‘I had hoped,’ he said at last, ‘that we might come to know each other better . . . that I might establish myself with the county and come to be on calling terms with your family. We have really only just met.’
He gave an awkward laugh. Deirdre shivered and pulled her cloak tightly about her shoulders.
‘But,’ he brightened. ‘There is no guarantee this Lord Harry will want to marry you. Then you may return home and we can all be comfortable again.’ He chuckled. ‘I am sure you will know precisely just how to give him a disgust of you. An intelligent woman like yourself . . .’
‘Oh, Guy, how our minds do run together,’ said Deirdre, forgetting her disappointment in him. ‘That is exactly what I plan to do.’
‘You must return,’ he said, tucking her arm in his and leading her back towards the vicarage. ‘I do not want your father to get out his pack and hunt me out of the county again.’
‘What!’ Deirdre stood still, and Guy cursed himself for the temporary slip. She obviously had not heard of his humiliation at the hands of the vicar. She must never know how much he hated her father for that day when he had been hounded, literally, down the summer roads with the vicar’s pack in full cry behind him. She must never guess how he had dreamed and plotted revenge. She must never guess that her one attraction for him was that he saw her as an instrument of revenge.
‘Papa did what?’ pursued Deirdre.
He laughed and tugged at her arm so that she had, perforce, to fall into step beside him. ‘You misunderstood me. I meant, I hope Mr Armitage doesn’t hunt me down. A joke, you see.’
The parlour lamps were out and the house was in darkness. It would be even more difficult getting back, thought Deirdre. For this time, she did not know where her father was.
But the magic of Guy’s presence gave her courage. She glanced up at the firm line of his jaw, the whiteness of his clean linen, his handsome profile, and felt almost unworthy of such an escort. He was worlds removed from her ranting, vulgar father and his petty machinations.
‘Goodnight,’ he said softly, holding open the gate, and pulling it gently closed behind her.
She turned and faced him through the bars of the tall gate, feeling the cold bite of the iron on her ungloved hands.
‘Goodnight,’ she echoed softly.
He leaned forwards, and she leaned towards him as well. He kissed her very gently through the bars; a fleeting, chaste kiss.
Deirdre’s face blazed with naked love and adoration and Guy watched her intently, feeling a surge of power.
Deirdre floated into the house, not even noticing that the hall door was still unlocked, not even trying to creep quietly up the stairs.
Had her father confronted her at that moment, then Deirdre would have confessed her love, and her idyll with Guy Wentwater would definitely have been over.
But no one met her on the stairs and she reached her bedroom without seeing a soul.
For a long time she sat beside the window, lost in dreams.
Tomorrow, she would go to London. On Monday, she would meet Lord Harry Desire.
And if she played her cards aright, she would be back home very shortly after that, unengaged, and free to pursue her romance with Guy.
After such a failure, her father would surely be glad to marry her off to anyone.
THREE
‘If you do not help me, Betty,’ said Deirdre Armitage severely, ‘I will make sure you slave at the vicarage until the end of your days and die a spinster.’
‘If you don’t do as vicar says,’ sniffed the maid, Betty, ‘then you won’t be getting married to anyone neither, what with Mr Armitage not having any money and Miss Minerva and Miss Bella being gone to heathen parts.’
‘Lady Sylvester and Lady Peter to you, miss,’ said Deirdre tartly. ‘Don’t be a grouch, Betty,’ she went on in a wheedling tone. ‘Everything will be all right when Minerva and Bella come back from Paris – Paris isn’t heathenish, Betty. Think of the hats! – and I will make papa let you marry your John. But if you aid Papa in forcing me to wear that terrible wig, then I shall do all in my power to encourage him in the idea that we cannot afford to pay John Summer any more money.’
‘But I’ll get the blame o’ it!’ wailed Betty.
Deirdre was about to make her curtsy to Lord Harry Desire.
She had told Lady Godolphin that Betty would manage very well as lady’s maid. Betty had been told to curl and arrange one of Lady Godolphin’s second-best, nutty-brown wigs and to make sure not one offending red curl escaped from beneath it.
The gown which had been chosen for Deirdre by her father and Lady Godolphin was of white muslin embroidered with rosebuds, a dressmaking masterpiece which combined innocence with decadence to a nice degree. The bodice was cunningly boned at the back and fitted at the front to push up Deirdre’s breasts into two mounds over the low neckline. The skirt was short enough to show almost the whole of h
er ankles.
‘I know what to do,’ said Deirdre. ‘I will drop this wig in the basin of water and say it fell off my head when I was washing my face. I will take the blame. Come now. I will wear this scandalous dress.’
Betty had not been told of his lordship’s aversion to red hair.
So after scowling doubtfully at Deirdre’s hair and then at the wig, she suddenly smiled and said she was sure Lady Godolphin had ‘been in her altitudes’ when she gave the instructions. Anybody could see Miss Deirdre would look much better with her own hair, although it was a pity the rosebuds on her dress were so pink, not to mention the broad pink sash which tied under her bosom.
In other circumstances, Deirdre would have been terrified because, in a way, she was to be guest of honour. The musicale was simply a piece of stage management. But her aching, tender, delicate love for Guy Wentwater made her feel she could endure anything.
Instead of chiding herself for the speed with which she had fallen in love with a man of doubtful reputation, like many dazzled lovers before, she only prided herself on ‘falling in love at first sight’. And like many another love-blinded girl, she was convinced that the rapport of her mind and Guy’s was a rare and precious phenomenon.
She stood patiently while Betty dressed her and arranged her hair in an elaborate Grecian style, taught her by Annabelle’s lady’s maid.
Satisfied that the combination of pink and white muslin with her flaming red hair was sufficiently repellent, Deirdre completed the effect by putting a pink silk stole about her shoulders.
‘I look quite dreadful, Betty,’ said Deirdre gleefully, as she pirouetted in front of the long glass.
Betty surveyed her young mistress. The maid thought privately that Deirdre had never looked better. The pomade she had added to Deirdre’s hair had darkened it to a deeper red, and the pink and white gown showed her excellent bosom and delicate ankles to perfection. The odd combination of pink and white with her red hair and green eyes made Deirdre look oddly and excitingly exotic. Betty decided it would not be wise to praise Miss Deirdre Armitage. Too much vanity had nearly ruined Miss Annabelle and was well on the way to ruining Miss Daphne.
‘You’ll do,’ was all Betty said, and Deirdre went downstairs satisfied that her appearance was quite horrible.
Lord Harry Desire was lounging in quite the latest manner on a sofa in the drawing-room. It was hard to tell from the beautiful blankness of his expression what he was thinking.
At one point, he did put up his glass and stared about the room in a dazed sort of way.
With the exception of the still-not-present Deirdre Armitage and Mr Anstey, Lady Godolphin’s simpering cicisbeo, there was no one else present under the age of fifty.
Lady Godolphin had not wanted his lordship’s eye, or Deirdre’s for that matter, to be attracted by anyone else. Even the soprano who was to star at the musicale was fat, florid and fifty and her accompanist turned the pages of the music with a shaking, liver-spotted hand.
Lord Harry recognized old Lady Chester who looked and smelled as if she had been brought out of moth balls for the occasion.
High cracked voices discussed humours and agues and spleen. Lady Godolphin looked the youngest present. She was enjoying herself because all this creaking old age about her made her feel rejuvenated.
But she joined in the conversational illness competition with relish by saying her doctor had told her she had rheumatism but she herself was convinced it was Arthur’s Eitis.
She had moved onto a lively dissertation on her Haricot Veins when the door opened and Miss Deirdre Armitage came in.
Lady Godolphin sprang from her chair with amazing alacrity. The vicar uttered a loud oath which caused a shocked murmur of old voices and a fluttering of feathers.
‘I’ll pretend she’s someone else,’ thought Lady Godolphin, speeding across the room, ‘and get her upstairs and into her wig as soon as possible.’
But right behind Deirdre, Colonel Arthur Brian made his appearance.
Lady Godolphin blushed like a schoolgirl under her paint. She opened and shut her mouth but no sound emerged.
Deirdre smiled benignly on the company, made her curtsy, and walked in the direction of a single chair placed in the farthest corner of the room.
‘Hey!’ said the vicar, blocking her way. His little shoe-button eyes gleamed as hard as jet but he forced a jovial smile on his face. ‘Come along, my girl. There’s a handsome gentleman dying to make your acquaintance.’
‘Delighted, Papa,’ said Deirdre demurely, deliberately sinking in a low obeisance in front of an antediluvian gentleman by the name of Mr Sothers.
‘Not him, you buffle-headed jade,’ howled her father. There was a stunned silence and the vicar looked around wildly. ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ he said, baring his teeth in an awful grin. ‘We will have our little family jokes. My Deirdre is a naughty puss.’ He took his daughter firmly by the upper arm as if he were arresting her, and marched her over to Lord Harry.
Lord Harry Desire uncoiled himself from the depths of the sofa and stood up and made a magnificent bow.
Deirdre studied him from under her lashes with great amusement. This was going to be much easier than she had thought. He was a very handsome man, she reflected, but the sheer stupidity of his expression robbed him of any attraction he might otherwise have had.
He stood smiling down at her in a vacant, amiable manner.
‘Sit down, sit down!’ said the vicar heartily.
He gave his infuriating daughter a mighty push and she collapsed on to the sofa. Lord Harry sat down gracefully next to her and looked at her with a polite, social expression.
Deirdre played with the sticks of her fan.
‘I went to the play the other night,’ began Lord Harry amiably. ‘Saw Mrs Siddons as Queen Catherine.’
There was a silence.
The vicar, hovering on Deirdre’s other side, hissed, ‘Well, stoopid, ask him how he liked it!’
‘How did you like the play, my lord?’ asked Deirdre dutifully.
‘Very much,’ said his lordship after a great deal of serious thought. ‘I was wearing my cravat in a new style, entirely my own. Petersham said it looked like a frozen waterfall. But although I confess I was pleased at the compliment, I did not find it very apt. Sculptured snow would have been better, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ said Deirdre. ‘I have no interest in fashions whatsoever. My mind would have been on the play.’
A look of almost hellish glee lit up Lord Harry’s lovely features but when Deirdre looked up to study the effect of her rudeness, his face was once more a correct and social blank.
‘Do you know why you are here?’ asked Lord Harry, as the vicar gave a great shrug and moved out of earshot.
‘Yes,’ said Deirdre. ‘I am here to meet you.’
‘Do you know why it is important you should meet me?’
‘I believe my father has marriage in mind,’ said Deirdre forthrightly. ‘But, of course, as you can see, we should not suit at all.’
‘Why, pray?’
Well, the answer to that one was, ‘Because you are a stupid lummox and I am not,’ but Deirdre felt she had already been rude enough.
She gave a little laugh. ‘For a start, you may have noticed I have red hair. My father tells me you can’t abide red hair.’
‘Did I say that?’ exclaimed Lord Harry. ‘By Jove, that’s right, I did. You see, red hair in a lady has a terrible effect on me. I fall in love with ladies with red hair . . . well, almost on sight.’
‘Then it is as well that I am reputed to be something of a blue-stocking,’ said Deirdre quickly. ‘For that will surely give you a disgust of me.’
‘It certainly would if it were true,’ said Lord Harry earnestly. ‘But you may be easy on that score, Miss Deirdre, for I do not find you intelligent at all.’
Deirdre let out an outraged gasp but the angry retort died on her lips, for the soprano had commenced to sing.
Her name was Madam
e Vallini. She was possessed of a loud and piercing voice, the delight of the back rows of the gallery who could proudly claim to hear every note.
In a private drawing-room the effect was quite horrendous.
Under Deirdre’s fascinated gaze, Lord Harry produced a snuff box from the tails of his morning coat. He flicked it open and took out a small white ball of wax. Then he produced a penknife from another pocket, neatly cut the wax in two, rolled each half in his fingers, and then solemnly popped the resultant wax plugs in each ear. He leaned back at his ease, half closed his eyes, and, it appeared, sent his mind off on a holiday.
‘How Guy will laugh when I tell him about this coxcomb,’ thought Deirdre with amusement.
Then a great wave of sadness engulfed her.
Guy.
Oh, to be back in Hopeworth, walking along the country lanes under the clean, windy country sky, listening to the sound of his voice.
Papa would not understand, she realized. How could someone as earthy as her father grasp the spirituality of the meeting and joining of two souls. Guy had talked to her of the army, or the great Battle of, Waterloo. He had treated her as an equal.
Two large tears trembled on the edge of Deirdre’s long lashes.
Through a hazy blur, she saw with surprise that her indolent companion was holding out a large serviceable pocket handkerchief.
She flushed, but took it, and dabbed at her eyes. He would presume she was affected by the music, thought Deirdre.
She knew that at some period when the singing was over, the vicar and Lady Godolphin would contrive to leave her alone with Lord Harry.
She must try to impress on him the downright unsuitability of this proposed alliance.
Then all at once Deirdre suddenly felt as if Guy were with her in the room, as if he were communicating with her in some way.
She smiled to herself. She knew, in a flash, where he was. He was sitting in the old little-used library in Lady Wentwater’s dark mansion. He was leaning his chin on his hand, looking out over the shabby lawns, thinking of her.
All her loneliness and distress fled and she felt loved and comforted and sustained.
Deirdre and Desire Page 4