The Incomparable Countess

by Mary Nichols

  ‘You will forget her,’ his father had said, making it sound like a command. ‘You are too young to know what is best for you. Be guided by me and your mama, as we were by our parents.’

  In the old Duke’s day, parents often arranged the marriages of their offspring without any reference to them; it was a matter of lineage and inheritance, still was in some quarters. If a man wanted love, he did not go to his wife for it; there were always others… Oh, but how unsatisfactory those others had been! And however unfashionable it was, he had wanted a wife he loved. Was it too late? Did he even want to risk a second try?

  ‘Don’t you think so, your Grace?’ He heard Augusta’s question but had no idea what had gone before and could not answer it.

  ‘I am sorry, Lady Harnham, I was in something of a brown study…’

  ‘I was speaking about the opera we saw tonight. I own the costumes were very fine, but I thought the singing not so good and the story a little weak. What did you think?’

  He smiled ruefully; he had paid scant attention to the opera, being too aware of Frances sitting not three feet away. She was even more lovely than she had been at seventeen, but now it was the loveliness of an ice maiden, unapproachable. ‘I agree wholeheartedly,’ he said, for want of anything else to contribute.

  ‘Then all I can say is that you have no soul,’ Frances said.

  He turned his head to look at her and it seemed there was a message in his eyes, a message she could not interpret. ‘Oh, Countess, I assure you that I have.’

  ‘Then you must allow the soprano had a magnificent voice.’

  ‘It was certainly very loud and my Italian is wanting for I could not make out a single word.’

  ‘Did you not make the Grand Tour, my lord?’ Augusta asked.

  ‘No, I came unexpectedly into my inheritance before I could go and the tumult in Europe soon put an end to travel for all but the army. Now, of course, we have peace and the young men are able to go again. My younger brother, John, is in Italy at this moment.’

  ‘Do you think the peace will last?’ Frances asked, anxious to move away from personal issues. ‘It seems to me that this carving up of Europe between the victors can only lead to more trouble—’

  ‘Talking of trouble,’ Lavinia put in, ‘What do you suppose will happen to the framework knitters? I read in a pamphlet—’

  ‘Lavinia, where did you come across a pamphlet?’ her father asked. ‘Their publication has been suppressed.’

  ‘That won’t stop people printing and reading them. The framework knitters are being driven to starvation right on our doorstep. Loscoe Court is not so very far from the unrest.’

  ‘Lavinia,’ he said sternly, ‘you do not understand and it is hardly a fitting subject for a young lady to introduce at the supper table.’

  Lavinia fell into her usual sullen silence after this put-down and, the meal being finished, Augusta decided it was time the ladies withdrew and left the men to their port. She rose and led Frances and Lavinia to the drawing room.

  ‘I hope they are not going to prose on all night,’ Augusta said, after the tea tray had been brought in. ‘It is very late.’

  She had her wish, for the men wandered in fifteen minutes later, smelling of port and cigar smoke and soon after that James took his leave, saying he would wait on his stepmother the following morning. ‘Though I ain’t going to promise to be there on the dot of ten,’ he said as he kissed her hand. He bowed low to Lavinia. ‘Perhaps, my lady, we shall meet again soon.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Perhaps we shall, my lord.’

  ‘We must go too,’ Marcus said. ‘Countess, if you wish to stay, I will send my carriage back for you.’

  ‘No, I am ready to leave. I have a busy day tomorrow.’

  Augusta laughed as she rose to summon a servant to fetch hats and capes. ‘When do you not?’

  A few minutes later, the Loscoe carriage was bowling away in the dark. No one spoke for several minutes. Lavinia, still resentful, sat in the corner, her head lolling on the upholstery which padded the back of her seat.

  ‘Vinny is half asleep,’ he said, as they turned from the Strand into Pall Mall where the new gas lamps shed little pools of yellow light, revealing a drunken dandy getting out of a chair and falling to the ground from where he had to be helped by the link boy, who was seventy if he was a day. ‘If you do not object, my lady, I will take her home first then we will go on to Duke Street.’

  If Frances was dismayed at the thought of being alone in the carriage with him, she did not betray it, but answered evenly, ‘I have no objection, your Grace, but you do not need to accompany me. I can easily send your coach back…’

  ‘Oh, I do not doubt it, but I am not so lacking in manners that I could allow a lady to return home alone from an evening spent in her company.’

  ‘I am used to travelling about alone, your Grace.’

  ‘What is that to the point? Besides, I need my coach, I have to go out again.’

  ‘If I had known that, I would have taken my own carriage to the theatre rather than inconvenience you,’ she said, remembering what Lavinia had told her about his nocturnal excursions and wondering where he was going after he left her. To more congenial company than she was, she did not doubt.

  ‘You are not inconveniencing me.’

  They fell silent, and yet there was so much they could have said. The right words, spoken softly, might have healed the hurt of so many years; gentle explanations might have bridged the gulf that lay between them. He knew it. She knew it. But, perhaps because they had a witness, the silence remained unbroken. Or was it that too much time had passed? When they reached Stanmore House in St James’s Street, she remained in her seat while he saw Lavinia safely inside.

  A few minutes later he returned; this time he sat beside her. They were so close her gown was brushing his pantaloons, his arm against hers. She could feel his warmth, imagined she could hear the beat of his heart. Or was it her own?

  ‘Vinny is exhausted,’ he said, as he gave the coachman the office. ‘I gave her into the hands of her governess and no doubt she will sleep until noon.’

  ‘I doubt it, your Grace, she is young and resilient, but had you forgot she is engaged to sit for her portrait again tomorrow? I can easily postpone it, if you wish.’ It would be better if he did, she thought, because she had just remembered James was going to call on her and they would be there at the same time.

  ‘I do not wish. And do you think you could refrain from all this “your Grace” nonsense? You used not to be so stiff.’

  ‘I did not know you as a duke then.’

  ‘True, but even so, I recollect you dispensed with using my title.’

  ‘That was a long time ago and I was young. I knew no better.’

  He turned to look at her, though he could see little in the gloom of the carriage, even though they were passing beneath a street lamp. All he saw was her profile, looking straight ahead. She had taken off her hat and it lay on her lap. ‘No better than what?’

  ‘No better than to assume a familiarity I had no right to. You were far above my touch and it is a pity I did not realise it at the time.’

  ‘Oh, Fanny, have you still not forgiven me?’

  ‘There was nothing to forgive. We were friends and then we went our separate ways. That is life, your Grace.’ She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.

  ‘Marcus, please,’ he corrected. ‘Or, if that is too much for you, Stanmore will do. That is what my friends call me and I wish us to be friends.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. You are teaching my daughter and painting her portrait. We are bound to be thrown together a little, especially if we attend the same functions, and…’ He paused, knowing he was going too fast; there was no sign that she was softening. The ice was still solid, though she had turned a little towards him. ‘I do not want to be at odds with you.’

  ‘I was not aware we were at odds, sir. I have not quarrelled with you, nor do I
intend to. You are, after all, my employer.’

  She meant that as a set-down, he knew, but it only served to inflame him. How could she remain so cool, so unconcerned, when he was burning with a desire he found hard to control? Did she not know it? Could she not hear it in the tone of his voice, the quick intake of his breath? She was not a schoolgirl, not missish; she had been married and should be able to sense how he felt and meet him halfway. Unless she was truly indifferent. And could he blame her for that?

  The carriage drew to a stop outside Corringham House, but neither moved. The coachman, who had no doubt learned to be discreet and not be too quick to open the door and let down the step when his master escorted a lady home, sat waiting for a signal to do so. Marcus was in no hurry to give it. He smiled gently and picked up her hand to kiss the back of it.

  The touch of his lips on her skin made her shudder with a desire she could not stifle. He could still do that to her, even after the passing of years, and she was very much afraid that he had seen it, or felt the trembling of her fingers. ‘Fanny, I have missed you. All the years…’

  ‘Too many,’ she murmured.

  ‘Not enough to erase memories of how you were, your love of life, your fire…’

  ‘The fire of youth,’ she murmured, wondering if she ought to open the door herself and jump out before she gave herself away and something happened she would later regret. ‘You had it too, as I recall.’

  He turned her hand over and kissed the palm. ‘Fire is not specific to youth, my dear.’

  She sat unmoving, afraid to move, afraid to utter another word, tense with a longing she had not felt since he had walked out of her life seventeen years before. Before she could withdraw her hand, he moved his lips to the inside of her wrist, and then kissed her fingers one by one. The passion she was trying so hard to subdue coursed from her fingertips to her whole body and set her in such a quake, she thought she would explode. She certainly could not speak.

  When she did not protest, he lifted his head and looked into her face. He could see little but her eyes, wide open, bright with surprise, and then her eyelids flickered and the pupils darkened with an ardour so intense he could have sworn he felt the heat of it. The ice was melting. Encouraged, he twisted in his seat so that he could cup her face in both his hands. She opened her mouth to object, only to have it covered by his own mouth. Her protest, if indeed it was a protest, died as she felt herself respond.

  Her whole body was crying out for him and she clung to him, allowing the kiss to deepen, feeling his hands shift from her face to shoulders. Her hat fell to the floor and her cape fell back as he slipped one arm about her and drew her close against him. She put her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck, drawing his head even closer. Seventeen years of hunger went into that kiss.

  Want of breath forced them to draw apart. ‘Oh, Fanny, how I have longed to hold you like that again.’

  ‘Have you?’ She was breathless, her breasts heaving under the thin green silk of her gown. He saw it, saw the creamy mounds rising above the low neckline, and though he wanted to touch, he knew he must not.

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘I know no such thing.’

  ‘Oh, come, you are a woman of the world, not a green girl…’

  With a supreme effort she pulled herself together and was once more in control of her turbulent emotions. ‘I have seen nothing of you for seventeen years and suddenly you are here, expecting me to fall into your arms…’

  ‘Oh, but you did, my sweet, my incomparable Fanny, you did.’

  His voice held a note of triumph, but what he had said was so palpably true she could not even pretend to be affronted, and she certainly did not want a war of words with him; she had a fair idea she would lose it. ‘You took me by surprise.’

  ‘Did I? Now, I thought otherwise. I thought you, too, were remembering…’ He wondered whether to tell her he still loved her, that he wanted to make up for all the wasted years, but as he had already told her he was not contemplating marriage, she would make the same assumption she had made seventeen years before, that he was looking for a chère amie; better to leave it unsaid.

  ‘A kiss. What’s a kiss?’ She was scornful. ‘Something and nothing. What passed between us seventeen years ago was a pleasant interlude which we, as mature adults, can look back on with amusement. And trying to resurrect it can only lead to disappointment, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, hastily picking up his cane from the opposite seat and tapping on the roof to remind the coachman of his duty. ‘A pleasant interlude, nothing more. I beg your pardon for my presumption.’

  She picked up her hat, adjusted her cape and bodice as the coach door was opened and the step let down. ‘Goodnight, your Grace,’ she said, stepping down.

  She did not hear his answer as she walked, back stiff, head held high, towards the house. Creeley had been watching for her and the door was flung open as she reached it. In a dream she thanked him and went past him, up the stairs to her bedchamber. In a dream she flung her hat on the bed and kicked off her shoes, before crossing the room to stand looking out across the rooftops of London, silhouetted against a starlit sky. Away in the distance she could hear a carriage, the sound of its rumbling wheels and the clop of the horses’ hooves diminishing into silence.

  He had gone and she must pretend that kiss had never happened, just as she had pretended his kisses had never happened before when she was young and heartsick and it was the only way she could make herself go on. She had promised herself no man would ever hurt her like that again, and that, if she ever saw Marcus Stanmore in the future, she would remain aloof. And what had she done, almost the minute he had come back into her life? Fallen for that silky charm, dropped her guard, allowed him to kiss her. What a ninny she had been!

  Would he, too, pretend it had not happened? Could they meet and converse, could she go on calling him ‘your Grace’ and talking about art and orphans and parenthood like the friends he spoke about? What a strange way he had of showing friendship! He had once before hinted she should become his mistress—was that what he was dangling after, a pleasant interlude? She had been the one to use those words, not him, though he had been quick enough to agree, as if she had given him the opening he desired.

  She had to disabuse him of that idea. But how? Could she refuse to receive him when he called? It would also mean that Lavinia would no longer have lessons and he would cancel the portrait. And what would her friends say to that? In no time it would be all over the ton that the Duke of Loscoe and the Countess of Corringham had quarrelled so violently that she would not let him into her house. And why they had quarrelled would be the subject of endless speculation.

  She turned as Rose entered the room to help her undress. ‘Did you enjoy your evening, my lady?’

  Frances took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Yes, Rose, I did, very much.’

  And that was no lie, she told herself, as Rose helped her off with her clothes and slipped her nightdress over her head. Regret it she did, most heartily, but she had enjoyed that kiss. George had never kissed her like that, not in ten years of marriage. In spite of her dilemma, she smiled wryly as she climbed into bed. Wanton, that’s what she was. Frances, Countess of Corringham, was a wanton. She was also in love.

  Marcus did not go home but ordered his coachman to take him to White’s. ‘I shan’t need you any more tonight,’ he told him when he set him down outside the club. ‘I’ll walk home.’

  He had arranged to meet Donald Greenaway; though they might have a hand or two of cards, the purpose of the meeting was to exchange information and very possibly go on with their search for Harriet Poole. If he had known that Frances and his daughter were speculating about his nightly excursions and drawing their own conclusions, he would have chuckled. Far from enjoying himself, he had been combing the great city for a woman and child who seemed to have disappeared.

  Donald was convinced that finding her husband first would serve them bes
t and that he would be found among the low life of the city, the harlots and petticoat merchants, thieves and vagabonds, and they were creatures of the night. It was certainly the time when informers could be found and bribed for information. And so night after night, they had patrolled the streets, entered filthy taverns, questioned the people who lived in the rookeries. But so far they had had no success. Were the Pooles still in London? If not, where should he be looking?

  Donald was waiting for him in one of the smaller rooms, watching a game of faro. He rose when he saw him and came over to shake his hand. ‘I’d nigh on given you up.’

  ‘I had an evening engagement.’

  ‘Oh, accommodating, was she?’

  He smiled crookedly, remembering that kiss. She had been asking for it, wanting it as much as he had, or so he had thought. Had he misread the signals? Had it really meant nothing to her? If she was telling the truth when she said it was something and nothing, then she was an accomplished flirt, a tease. Perhaps he was not the only one to enjoy the favour of her lips. What about Sir Percival Ponsonby? Were there others? Why did it matter so much? He shook himself. ‘You are off the mark, my friend, it was a visit to the opera with friends, nothing more.’

  ‘You know, Stanmore, you are becoming a dull old fellow. This Mrs Poole seems to have taken your wits as well as your heart. I said you could leave the finding of her to me and I meant it. You should learn to enjoy yourself. I know a curvaceous little Cyprian…’

  ‘No, thank you.’ He looked about the room at the card players. ‘Do you want to play?’

  ‘No, for then we cannot talk. Come into the corner and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.’

  Marcus called the waiter over to order two bumpers of brandy, and they settled themselves into armchairs, facing each other and close enough to converse in low voices.

  ‘Poole is definitely in London,’ Donald went on, after the waiter had gone. ‘I had it from a Bow Street Runner…’

  ‘What business has a Runner with him? Has he broken the law?’