by M. C. Beaton
Amaryllis would have been summoned to the drawing room for a dressing-down the minute she arrived home had not the Marquess of Merechester insisted she should be allowed to go straight to her room and straight to bed.
Lady Warburton, charging into Amaryllis’s bedroom to have it out with her, was further forestalled by the presence of Lady Evans, who was sitting beside Amaryllis’s bed, reading quietly.
When her temper had abated by dint of giving both her daughters a tongue-lashing, Lady Warburton calmed down enough to take stock of the situation. There had been a certain something between the Marquess and Amaryllis when they had arrived back together. Although they did not look at each other and the Marquess seemed as haughty and indifferent as ever, he had stepped in to make sure Amaryllis was promptly taken care of, and later he had been heard telling Mr. Chalmers that she had behaved very bravely.
Lady Warburton decided to worry. She could not turn Amaryllis out. She had boasted for so long about her own generosity in giving the girl a home. Girl? Hardly. Amaryllis was now a lady of mature years.
Thinking over the various men who at one time or another had had some interest in Amaryllis, Lady Warburton now regretted she had not encouraged any of them. She should have married her off long ago.
Mr. Chalmers would not make any approach to Amaryllis. She was the ex-fiancée of his best friend. Besides, he was possessed of a considerable fortune, and it would do very well if he would fix his affections on Agatha.
Lord Donnelly strode through the hall, whistling blithely, and Lady Warburton gave an exclamation of disgust and marched across the drawing room and closed the door.
Donnelly would have to go, and she would need to see to the dispatching of him herself.
Amazing that Warburton, who could be so brutal in business and who had a title of his own, had not the strength to rid his home of one impoverished Irish peer.
All that Irish wastrel was after was a soft bed and money as well. If he ran true to form, he would start fleecing the guests at her card parties.
And then there was the ball to arrange. Lady Warburton was not of a romantic or impractical turn of mind except when it came to her daughters.
She had indulged in many rosy fantasies where Lord Warburton held up his arms for silence in the middle of the ball and announced the engagement of Cissie to the Marquess of Merechester. Possibly even a double engagement with Agatha becoming affianced to Mr. Chalmers.
But now there was the problem of Amaryllis. Why couldn’t it have been Cissie who had been trapped under that wretched carriage? And what had Amaryllis and the Marquess done while they were down there in the darkness?
Like most people with practically no interest at all in the joys of sex, Lady Warburton often assumed the rest of the world to be plagued with deep, dark French lusts, the French epitomizing everything that was base and carnal. Everyone knew the French were fornicators, and the vicar had nearly lost his living by preaching about forgiven sinners going to heaven. Shocking! Imagine going up there and finding that holy place polluted with chattering and leering Frogs! Much more comforting to think of them being toasted in hell.
Her mind turned back to the problem of Donnelly. A picture of Donnelly singing a duet with Amaryllis came into her mind just as her husband lumbered into the room.
“The girls seem determined to make a saint out of Amaryllis,” he grumbled. “Why on earth did they force her to walk home? It’s the talk of the servants’ hall.
“Evidently Cissie pushed her so hard as she was trying to get into the carriage that she nearly fell. Cannot they be more discreet?”
“It was not Cissie’s fault,” said his wife hotly. She was already regretting her outburst of temper. “Poor Cissie and Agatha are more sinned against than sinning. Amaryllis’s manner is enough to try the patience of a saint. She was most insolent to them… and in public, too. I do not like the feeling that I sense has sprung up between that wretched woman and Merechester since the accident.”
“Didn’t notice,” grumbled Lord Warburton. “Seems as indifferent to her as ever.”
“I want to be sure,” said his wife fretfully. “I do not like to see good money wasted. First there’s this house party, and then there’s the expense of the ball. And I must get rid of Donnelly, since you seem quite unable to do it.”
“He don’t listen, that’s why. He’s a leech!” said Lord Warburton. “Best get his quittance from you. That sort of thing comes easier to a woman.”
Lady Warburton frowned down at her long, polished fingernails. “Donnelly is in need of money, I suppose?”
“As usual.”
“Perhaps,” she said, looking up, “It might be an idea to give him some.”
“What? You’ve got windmills in your attic.”
“Don’t be vulgar. I am speaking sense. The trouble with you is you don’t listen, Warburton. It is one of the many, many, many irritating things about you.”
“What do you mean, many irritating things about me?”
“Dear me.” Lady Warburton yawned delicately. “Do you wish me to list them all?”
The strains of “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” sung in a pleasant Irish tenor floated under the door.
They listened in grim silence.
“And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.”
There is nothing like a good strong resentment against a third party for soothing the most savage of marital breasts.
Lord and Lady Warburton exchanged glances of shared dislike and contempt for the caroling Irish peer.
“I was about to suggest something,” said Lady Warburton.
Lord Warburton had already forgotten their argument as he had so quickly forgotten the thousands that had preceded this latest one.
“About Donnelly?”
“Yes, about Donnelly.”
“Tell me, my love.”
“I keep thinking how wonderful it would be if Donnelly pretended to be in love with Amaryllis. He could even go so far as to propose marriage. At the moment, Merechester’s treatment of her has hurt her. She would do anything to get away from us,” added Lady Warburton with a certain complacency.
She enjoyed having Amaryllis at her mercy, and the fact that Amaryllis was unhappy gave that feeling of power an added fillip. Lady Warburton was not a particularly wicked woman; only a very forceful, energetic, and stupid one whose natural outlets had been warped by pride and a furtive consumption of patent medicines.
“If,” she went on, “Amaryllis thought marriage to Donnelly would get her away from here, then she would accept him.”
“But if he is not going to marry her, I don’t see the point,” said Lord Warburton irritably.
“Oh, you are so stupid. An Amaryllis taken up with the attentions of Donnelly is an Amaryllis who would have no time for sweet dalliance with Merechester.”
“But how is this to be achieved? We cannot command Donnelly to woo Amaryllis.”
“Oh, yes, we can… if we are paying him to do it.”
The sun of understanding dispersed the gloomy mists of Lord Warburton’s indifferent intelligence.
“By George!” he said, slapping his knee. “You are a downy one, Lady Warburton. Very downy.”
Lady Warburton smiled smugly. “Will I speak to him, or will you?”
“You, definitely, you,” said her lord hurriedly.
Lord Donnelly quickly slipped the silver snuffbox back onto the table as Lady Warburton swept into the Yellow Saloon. He had just been about to transfer it to the pocket in his tails.
Lady Warburton stopped and gazed at the snuffbox so intently that Lord Donnelly thought he could almost see a dotted line stretching from her pale cold eyes to where it lay on the table.
Then she suddenly smiled at him, a magnificent smile, revealing strong yellow teeth.
“Pray be seated, my lord,” she said smoothly. “I have a business proposition to put to you….”
Stripped to the waist, the Marquess of Merechester studied himself in the looking glass. There was a large purple-and-yellow bruise across his ribs to the left, and a red and angry mark like the map of Africa across his right.
But nothing had been broken.
His valet came in quietly and started to warm his master’s cambric shirt in front of the fire.
The Marquess sat down at the toilet table and began to pare his nails.
What on earth had made him kiss Amaryllis? He could only remember his own violent and passionate reaction to the feel of her body against his and to the softness of her lips. He now could not remember if she had responded to him.
She had been very quiet and shaken on the road home. He must stop thinking about her. No doubt she had become one of those warped spinsters who encourage bullying and would shrink at any possibility of escape from the Warburtons.
His valet heated up the curling tongs on a small spirit stove. “No, I don’t need my hair curled,” said the Marquess over his shoulder. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Roberts.”
Roberts sighed. The Marquess’s hair curled naturally, it was true. But Roberts considered a gentleman of the ton should go to the dinner table with his hair crimped and frizzled and pomaded. He often thought of looking for a new position. There was too little excitement in working for the Marquess.
Roberts envied his friend Mr. Dexter, who worked for young Lord Bartlett. Lord Bartlett required all the art a first-class valet could supply. His thin hair required two hours work of an evening, Mr. Dexter had boasted. His corsets were of the finest, and it took the strength of two footmen to lash him into them. He wore paint. He wore buckram wadding. He scented his handkerchiefs. Now, with someone like that, thought Roberts enviously, the hours would fly past. Mr. Dexter had said it sometimes took all day to prepare his master for the evening, and half the night to unpin, unbutton, and unprepare him for bed.
The Marquess’s broad shoulders owed nothing to padding, he did not wear paint, and, horror of horrors, he preferred to blacken his boots himself.
The Marquess refused furthermore to experiment with new shopkeepers.
He bought his hats from Lock’s, his snuff from Fribourg & Treyer, his hair powder—which he wore very rarely—from Delcroix’s, and his boots from Mitchell’s in Bond Street, and, of course, his coats were tailored by Mr. Weston of Old Bond Street.
In fact, the Marquess was no advertisement for the valeting skills of Mr. Roberts. He even kept the secret of his boot blacking to himself—or so Mr. Roberts thought. He had begged his noble master many a time for the blacking recipe. Did he add champagne, like Brummell? Some said half a pint of honey did the trick. But the Marquess would smile tolerantly and say: “I have told you many a time, Roberts, that I use Waring’s blacking, a great deal of spit and polish, and a lack of hysteria.” But Roberts would not believe him. That black mirrorlike gloss must come from some magic ingredient.
Armored in impeccable tailoring, clean linen, and the best jewels from his collection, the Marquess went downstairs prepared to be aloofly polite and kind to Amaryllis and to tell Lady Warburton, whom he privately damned as being as “vulgar as Oxford Street,” that he must take his leave on the morrow.
Amaryllis was sitting quietly in her accustomed corner. She looked as drab as ever, her temporary fashionable rebellion having died out. She felt she would surely be in disgrace for having the insolence to lie under a carriage with the Marquess of Merechester, and was nervously awaiting reprisals.
The fact that Lady Warburton had been singularly quiet on the subject Amaryllis gratefully put down to the fact that Lord Donnelly had elected to sit next to her and thread her needles and choose her silks.
Then Lady Evans appeared on her other side, also armed with sewing, and asked for Amaryllis’s help in choosing colors.
The Marquess was talking easily to Cissie, who was looking up at him adoringly. Although he did not look at Amaryllis, he could hear the rattle of Lord Donnelly’s voice as he talked to her. He found himself becoming more and more irritated by Lord Donnelly’s bantering manner.
Mr. and Mrs. Giles-Denton had joined the party about Amaryllis, and he could hear them asking about the accident.
“I do wish they would not fuss over Ammy so,” pouted Cissie. “There was no need for her to walk, but she is sadly inclined to go off into fits of the sulks at the slightest provocation.”
“Indeed?” said the Marquess acidly. “And she was not provoked in any way?”
“Of course not,” said Cissie hotly. “You do me a grave injustice.”
“My apologies,” rejoined the Marquess smoothly. “Anger brings color to your cheeks and a sparkle to your fine eyes, Miss Cissie. You should become angry more often.”
“There are other emotions, sweeter emotions, which can produce the same effect, my lord,” said Cissie, lowering her eyelashes.
“You are right,” replied the Marquess, raising her hand to his lip s. “A bottle of burgundy can produce quite the same sparkle.”
Cissie tittered with laughter, and, seeing that he had finished with kissing her hand, snatched it away and gave him a playful slap on the wrist with her fan. Until she hit it, he had not been aware that his wrist must have been bruised in the accident. He winced and glared at her, gave a small bow, and walked off to speak to Mr. Chalmers.
Cissie promptly followed him, and so, when he was about to begin discussing his proposed leave taking with his friend, he found to his annoyance that Cissie was at his elbow.
Amaryllis, left alone again with Lord Donnelly, watched this bit of byplay with emotions which ranged from burning jealousy when the Marquess kissed Cissie’s hand to amusement when she was snubbed.
“I wish you would look at me like that,” said Lord Donnelly in a low voice.
Amaryllis looked at him in surprise. “I do not understand you, my lord.”
“You watch Merechester with such interest, and yet those beautiful eyes of yours just seem to slide off me. You are all set to break my heart.”
Amaryllis laughed, a surprisingly enchanting, rippling laugh. “I do not think you have a heart to break, Lord Donnelly. I think it an extremely flexible organ.”
“I thought so myself until I met you,” he said urgently. He tried to take her hand, but Amaryllis edged a little away from him on her seat.
Lord Donnelly cursed himself for a clumsy fool. He was going too fast, too soon. The girl was starved for a bit of gaiety. The frivolous approach was best.
“Now you’re the sort of lady who thinks that love does not exist,” he said in a bantering tone.
“I believe it does,” replied Amaryllis cautiously, “but so many people seem able to think themselves into that state, and quite often because they wish to gain money from it.”
Lord Donnelly all at once looked as if some older, sharper, more cunning person were peering out at her from behind his bright eyes.
Then his face became relaxed and boyish again as he said easily. “Oh, true love exists for sure, and even in this hardhearted society of ours. Did you hear tell of Lord Oxford?”
“Yes,” said Amaryllis, “I—”
But Lord Donnelly went on regardless. “’Tis written that when folks went to dinner with him, he would only whisper so that even the person sitting next to him could not distinguish what was said. And at precisely the same time, every evening, no matter who was present at the dinner table, he would join his forehead to his mistress’s—and she forty, brick-faced and with black teeth—and he would sit like that for a quarter of an hour without speaking.”
“That is not called love,” said Amaryllis firmly. “That is called madness.”
“And isn’t love madness?”
“It is indeed,” said Sir Gareth-Evans who had come back to join them.
At that moment, the butler announced dinner.
Amaryllis found herself next to Lord Donnelly with Mr. Giles-Denton on her other side.
Amaryllis was at first startled and
then amused by Lord Donnelly’s tremendous enthusiasm for eating. He managed to devour great helpings of everything from the thick grouse soup removed by crimped cod and oyster sauce, through the lark puddings and cold game pie, into the partridges removed by plum pudding, and was still going strong when it came to snipe removed by charlotte glacée.
Most of her conversation was with Mr. Giles-Denton, since Lord Donnelly was obviously too busy to talk. At last, even Lord Donnelly’s appetite began to show signs of flagging, and he ate only two apricot tartlets and a bowl of champagne jelly to finish up the meal.
“That’s better,” sighed Lord Donnelly. “There’s nothing better than a fine woman at one’s side and a fine meal inside.”
Amaryllis stole a glance at the flatness of Lord Donnelly’s waistcoat. Where did he put such masses of food?
Trained in the fasthanded ways of the Warburton household, Amaryllis had eaten sparingly. She knew the dishes would be taken away to the kitchens to be refurbished and disguised so that they might be served up again at the next meal.
In every other household that Amaryllis had known, the servants ate the same food as then-masters. But the Warburtons made the servants cook and eat plain fare.
“The gentlemen are thinking of going out with the hunt tomorrow, Miss Duvane,” said Lord Donnelly. “But I’m not a hunting man,” he lied, “Come driving with me.”
“Yes,” said Amaryllis, and then immediately wondered why she had accepted.
“You make me the happiest of men.”
“You will find me very tiresome company,” said Amaryllis firmly. “I feel perhaps I should not go driving with you tomorrow. I have a great deal of work to do. Cissie’s ball gown must be ready in time.”
“Faith, with all the money the Warburtons have, you’d think they would be able to order one from town,” said Lord Donnelly loudly.
Lady Warburton caught that remark but pretended not to hear.
“And what will you be wearing yourself, Miss Duvane?” asked Lord Donnelly. “Or is that by way of being a state secret?”
“No secret at all, my lord,” Amaryllis privately wondered whether she was going to be allowed to attend the ball. Then she wondered whether the Marquess meant to stay for it.