Deirdre and Desire

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘You look enchanting tonight,’ said Lord Sylvester, studying the little fairy-like creature that was Deirdre. ‘I am glad to see some colour in your cheeks. Lord Harry told me he had sent a notice of the termination of your engagement to the newspapers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre in a small voice. ‘Thank you, Lord Sylvester, for interceding on my behalf.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. I was surprised to observe you seemed to be afraid of Lord Harry.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Deirdre quickly. Then all of a sudden, she became weary of lying. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I was. I do not know quite why,’ she added.

  ‘You certainly have nothing to fear from Lord Harry,’ said Sylvester gently. ‘He is one of the kindest men I know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre in a suffocated voice.

  Deirdre remembered why she was so frightened of Lord Harry. She was frightened of him because of what happened to her body when he touched her. But her silly dream-love with Guy was what had made that physical reaction seem so terrible.

  But Lord Sylvester and Minerva were very much in love. There was a radiance about them when they were together. And yet, their love seemed to be of the purest. They never even held hands that Deirdre could see.

  Perhaps there was a love which did not involve physical contact, thought Deirdre naively. The fact that her sister and brother-in-law had a son meant nothing to Deirdre since she did not know how babies were conceived.

  She knew how the beasts of the fields went about it, but if anyone had ever told her that it was the same performance between humans, well, she simply would not have believed them.

  And so Deirdre was sure her emotions when Lord Harry held her had nothing whatsoever to do with love. Lust, yes. Even Papa on his rare appearance in the pulpit pointed out lust was a dangerous and disgraceful thing and one of the worst of the seven deadly sins.

  The carriage stopped and Lord Sylvester helped her to alight and saw her safely to the door. He made his apologies for not entering to see Lady Godolphin but explained he was anxious to return to his wife.

  Deirdre heaved a sentimental sigh. A little hope came back to her. Perhaps one day, some man would love her as Lord Sylvester loved Minerva: a pure and precious love, free from the hot, heaving, sweating emotions of lust.

  Lord Harry had not yet arrived so Deirdre took it upon herself to explain to Lady Godolphin that their engagement was at an end.

  ‘Oh, lor’,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘Your nipples is off!’

  Deirdre glanced down at the bosom of her dress, and then realized Lady Godolphin meant ‘nuptials’.

  ‘Didn’t he want you?’ asked Lady Godolphin sadly.

  ‘We decided we should not suit.’

  ‘Ah, love.’ Lady Godolphin sighed gustily. ‘I try to forget it but all the poems remind me. Never read poetry, Deirdre. It’s too sad. Listen to this one,

  ‘“When Love with incontinent wings

  Havers around the gates;

  And my divine Algae brings

  To whimper in the grate;

  When I lie mangled in her hair,

  And frittered in her eye;

  The Gods, that want not in the air,

  Know no such livery.”’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘I do not think I have heard that one,’ ventured Deirdre cautiously.

  ‘It’s by Lovelace,’ said Lady Godolphin in surprise. ‘You know, the man who wrote the thing about, “I could not love thee dear so much, loved I not horrors more.”’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ said Deirdre, realizing that if one sorted out Lady Godolphin’s malapropisms, it might take all day, but at least one could understand what she was talking about.

  ‘Will Mr Anstey be joining us this evening?’ asked Deirdre, hoping he would not for she had taken him in dislike and thought it disgusting for a woman of Lady Godolphin’s great age to have such a young, if unprepossessing, lover.

  ‘No,’ sighed Lady Godolphin. ‘He has made a fool of me. He has held me up to Reticule. He went off to live with Lady Chester who must be a hundred if she’s a day. So now society thinks he was only hanging around my skirts for my money.’

  ‘Is there no one else?’ asked Deirdre, hating to see the normally robust and cheerful Lady Godolphin look so woebegone.

  ‘No,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘I’m too old.’

  ‘Not you!’ Deirdre wanted to scream. It was horrifying hearing Lady Godolphin admit to being old. Although Deirdre had often longed for the reprehensible old sinner to settle down and act her age, there was something appalling in the fact that she was obviously now trying to do just that. Even her gown was subdued, being of brown silk shot with gold. A turban of modest proportions covered her head, and, wonder upon wonders, she was wearing no paint at all.

  At that moment, Lord Harry was announced.

  Apart from casting a look of gloomy lechery at his legs, Lady Godolphin behaved like a sad and respectable dowager.

  Lord Harry kissed Deirdre’s hand.

  Deirdre looked at him with something like awe, seeing him for the first time as many women saw him.

  He was wearing a dark blue evening coat with pearl-coloured kerseymere breeches with strings to the knees, white silk stockings and thin pumps.

  His only jewel was one enormous diamond pin in his cravat, which might have looked vulgar on another man, but only added to Lord Harry’s air of magnificence.

  His thick glossy black curls, Grecian profile, clear blue eyes and tall slim figure were enough to seduce the eyes of any lady with a clear brain and normal digestion.

  Deirdre held on to her idea of that pure and celestial love as a barrier to all those nasty, gurgling churnings around her insides, and the prickling nervous feeling in the palms of her hands.

  ‘So you are not to be married?’ asked Lady Godolphin after they had all been helped to glasses of wine.

  ‘No,’ said Lord Harry equably.

  ‘Then you had better return my present,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘Cost me a mort of money.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Lord Harry and Deirdre in chorus, and then they looked at each other and laughed.

  Lady Godolphin’s present to them had been an enormous oil painting of a singularly well-endowed Roman matron stabbing herself in a half-hearted way while she rolled her eyes upwards to a stormy sky. She was wearing only a thin wisp of gauze about her massive thighs which seemed to stay up by magical means since she was stabbing herself with one hand and pointing up to heaven with the other. Various hirsute and swarthy Romans rampaged about the background, avenging her, or something-or-other. Lord Sylvester had said it was probably meant to be Lucrece, since Lady Godolphin had proudly presented it as a French picture, called Le Crease.

  Lady Godolphin gloomily shook her head at them both, muttering something about the folly of youth, and said it was time to leave.

  It was with some surprise that they discovered Lord Harry’s high-perch phaeton drawn up outside with his Swiss manservant, Bruno, hovering on the backstrap instead of a groom.

  ‘My dear Desire,’ said Lady Godolphin. ‘An open carriage! In this weather!’

  It had not snowed very hard during the day so there was only a thin coating on the ground. Snowflakes were falling through the foggy air; large, light, lace snowflakes drifting slowly down under the flickering lights of the parish lamps.

  ‘We are only going a step,’ said Lord Harry cheerfully. ‘I have plenty of rugs and hot bricks.’

  ‘But there is barely room for three,’ wailed Lady Godolphin.

  ‘What! A sylph like yourself? Come along, Lady Godolphin.’

  Grumbling awfully, Lady Godolphin was pushed from the back and pulled at the front until she reached the high perch of the seat. Lord Harry sat on one side of her and Deirdre on the other.

  Deirdre gazed about her dreamily, thinking it was wonderful to be perched so high above the London streets, watching the hypnotic dance of the light snowflakes.

  She h
ad the beginnings of a sort of excited, suffocating feeling, such as she used to have at Christmas.

  Christmas past had been rather disappointing. The boys had come home from Eton and had become very grand, strutting around like Bond Street beaux, and affecting languid airs which sat comically on their cheerful schoolboy faces.

  Lord and Lady Brothers’ mansion was a blaze of light. Thin strains of music drifted out into the foggy air. After all the worry and self-hate and tension of the past months, Deirdre felt her whole body and mind begin to relax. She would enjoy this one evening. She would imagine she was a respectable young miss with her handsome fiancé and not a disgraceful widgeon who had only such a short time ago been hell-bent on ruining herself.

  As they mounted the staircase to the ballroom, Lord Harry slipped her engagement ring into her hand. ‘Put it on,’ he whispered. ‘All the world will know tomorrow we are not to be married but tonight we do not wish to be badgered by questions.’

  Deirdre nodded and slipped on the ring.

  More than ever before she was conscious of admiring eyes, envious eyes, jealous eyes as the ladies of the ballroom watched her enter on Lord Harry’s arm.

  Lord Harry danced beautifully. Deirdre found it very hard to pay attention to her steps or listen to her partners when Lord Harry always seemed to be in her direct line of vision, flirting outrageously with one female after another.

  She had had the pleasure of performing one country dance with him and was wondering whether he meant to ignore her for the rest of the evening when he came up and led her into the steps of the waltz. The feel of his hand on the small of her back sent fireworks shooting up her spine, the pressure of his other gloved hand in her own made her go numb down one side. He held her the regulation twelve inches away, but she was conscious of every movement of his body. When the dance ended, she promenaded with him as was the custom, but dreading the moment when he would leave her and dance off with someone else.

  But he said, ‘Let us sit down for a little.’

  He led her to a sofa in the corner, behind a bank of hothouse flowers. Deirdre fanned herself languidly because she was once again locked in that dreamy state, and the ballroom was hot. He went to find her a glass of lemonade and immediately she became anxious and worried in case someone would ask her to dance before he returned.

  But he was soon back, handing her a glass, and settling himself comfortably beside her on the sofa.

  ‘Here’s to liberty,’ he said raising his own glass.

  ‘Liberty,’ echoed Deirdre, sipping at her lemonade and wishing he had brought her something stronger to ensure that this relaxed dreamy feeling she had in his company did not go away.

  ‘Lady Godolphin is not in plump currant,’ he said. ‘The horrible Mr Anstey left her for richer, if more withered, pastures.’

  ‘Yes, she is very sad,’ agreed Deirdre. ‘She was quoting poetry, and getting all the words wrong. Something about love with incontinent wings.’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ he grinned. Then he began to quote softly,

  ‘“When Love with unconfined wins

  Hovers within my gates;

  And my divine Althea brings

  To whisper at the grates;

  When I lie tangled in her hair,

  And fettered to her eye;

  The Gods, that wanton in the air,

  Know no such liberty.”’

  ‘Quite,’ said Deirdre huskily, staring into her glass. Then she essayed a laugh. ‘I wish I could remember how Lady Godolphin put it, but it was vastly different, I assure you.’

  ‘She should have married Colonel Brian,’ said Lord Harry. ‘Trouble is, he’s always hanging about her, quite obviously dying of love. Now if he were to start paying attention to some other female, no doubt she would come about. Which reminds me, I am promised to dance with Lady Coombes, and I think you probably have an anxious partner looking for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre reluctantly, wishing they could sit together like this and not have to dance with anyone at all.

  A niggling thought entered her mind, a nasty little voice whispering that she had had ample opportunity to enjoy Lord Harry’s company these past few months but all she had done was run away from him.

  From then on Deirdre danced and danced. Soon it would be two in the morning and soon it would be time for Guy to wait for her in Green Park.

  But at one-thirty Lord Harry appeared at her side, yawning, and said he really must go home. Lady Godolphin would not be returning with them since she did not want to ‘freeze to death’ and had sent for her own carriage.

  The night outside was cold and clear. Snow sparkled and shone in broad pools under the street lamps, and, far above the huddled black houses of London a small winter moon rose high in the starry sky.

  ‘It is a beautiful night for a walk, Bruno,’ said Lord Harry over his shoulder to his shivering servant on the backstrap. ‘I suggest you make the most of it.’

  ‘Ver’ good, milo’,’ said Bruno gloomily. He climbed down and strode off into the night.

  Lord Harry drew on his York tan driving gloves and set his team in motion.

  ‘Come and sit beside me, Deirdre,’ he said. ‘You will get cold sitting all the way over there.’

  Deirdre slid along until she was next to him. He put an arm around her shoulders, holding the reins bunched in one hand, the horses ambling very slowly over the diamonded cobbles of the snow-covered streets.

  Deirdre was all too conscious of his hip against her own although they were both bundled up in cloaks and blankets.

  His arm tightened about her and she gave a submissive sigh and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  After they had been moving along in this dreamlike state for some time, he slowed his team to a halt and looked down at her.

  ‘Keep the ring, Deirdre,’ he said softly. ‘You need not wear it on your fourth finger.’

  She looked up at him, puzzled and bewildered by all the things she felt for him and could not yet analyse.

  ‘And since we are to become friends,’ he went on, ‘you might at least kiss the lover goodbye.’

  Her lips trembled and she put up a timid hand to his cheek.

  He took it in his own, and then bent his lips to hers.

  This time, because it was all over, she did not feel afraid of him. He would never kiss her again, so there was no harm in kissing him back . . . no harm at all.

  And so she gave herself gladly, if innocently, up to hot, dizzy, heady passion, totally absorbed in the contours and feel of his mouth, the faint smell of cheroots, wine and cologne from his body, and the feel of his long fingers cradling her face.

  They sat on the high-perch phaeton, right outside the gates of Green Park at two in the morning, totally absorbed in each other, oblivious to everything else.

  Deirdre did not even know where she was.

  Guy Wentwater stood frozen to the spot and stared in mounting savage fury at the two locked lovers, so brightly illuminated by the light of a lamp.

  The carriage he had hired for the elopement was waiting out on the street. The driver kept rising up on the box and staring into the darkness of the park as if wondering what on earth this strange Mr Wentwater was doing.

  At last, the phaeton moved off.

  Guy Wentwater marched out and got into the black stuffiness of the closed carriage, biting his nails and sweating from every pore.

  He hated the whole Armitage family more than he had ever hated them before, but this time, he hated Deirdre Armitage much, much more than he had ever hated the vicar. He felt she had deliberately stage-managed the whole thing to humiliate him.

  And now Silas Dubois would learn there had been no elopement and Silas would ruin him.

  Deirdre, Squire Radford, the maid, Betty, and Lord Harry Desire set out for Hopeworth the following day.

  They were to break their journey that night at a posting house.

  Deirdre was glad to escape from London before curious callers started to
arrive, eager for gossip about the broken engagement. Squire Radford was puzzled. Paradoxically, Deirdre and Desire seemed closer than they had ever been before.

  The snow had melted and a squally wind was hurtling grey clouds across the sky.

  Weary with thought and confused emotion, Deirdre was glad to be going home. She wondered what Guy Wentwater had thought when she did not appear. Deirdre had been so wrapped up in and by Lord Harry’s embrace that she did not even know they had been parked outside the gates of Green Park in full view of Mr Wentwater.

  Guy, she thought, would assume she was getting her revenge – which she was, in a way.

  ‘Good hunting weather,’ observed Lord Harry. ‘I wonder if the vicar has run his fox to earth.’

  ‘I hope he has,’ said Squire Radford in his dry precise voice. ‘It will take his mind off his troubles. He has had many of late. Besides, he hopes to cut a dash. He took back with him a new coat of hunting pink.’

  ‘Why is it called pink?’ asked Deirdre idly. ‘I assume you mean a scarlet coat.’

  ‘It is named after Mr Pink,’ said Lord Harry. ‘He was a tailor who was left with a vast amount of red military material when the American war came to an end sooner than expected. So he turned to making hunting coats. Hence pink.’

  ‘Perhaps this fox does not exist,’ said the squire, pulling a bearskin rug more closely about his knees. ‘There is a legendary animal which had been plaguing Mr Armitage for some time. It is seen first here and then there, and certainly hounds pick up the scent but they always end up wandering around in baffled circles. Mr Armitage is sure this fox can climb trees.’

  Deirdre giggled. ‘Papa often sees foxes which don’t exist, particularly when he is in his cups.’

  There was a reproving silence, and Deirdre felt she had just behaved like a bad child.

  ‘When I get home,’ she vowed to herself, ‘I will read the newspapers every day and . . . and . . . I will learn Latin, and all sorts of things.’ She wondered how long Lord Harry would stay with them this time. She had never really got to know him. She put a hand up to her lips, remembering his kisses. How strange that he was able to be so polite and formal with her now!