Lord Hadleigh's Rebellion
Paula Marshall
Russell Chancellor, Lord Hadleigh, found the love of his life over a decade ago, but she was forced to marry elsewhere.When a chance meeting at a house party unites him with Mary Wardour once more, both realize that the feelings between them have never died. Mary is now a widow and free to marry. Russell needs to marry or forgo his inheritance.But they have to discover the truth behind the secrets and betrayals that drove them apart before they can hope to find future happiness together. . . .
Lord Hadleigh’s Rebellion
PAULA MARSHALL
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Prologue
Spring, 1817
‘Oh, damn and blast everything,’ Russell Chancellor, Lord Hadleigh, exclaimed aloud as he walked along Bruton Street, causing several passers-by to look at him in some alarm.
The more he thought about his current errand, the worse he felt. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been thinking recently of breaking off his long connection with Caroline Fawcett, but he had hoped to do so gradually so that when the end came it would not be too much of a shock for her.
Instead, though, that very morning his father, the Earl of Bretford, had issued an ultimatum to him in such strong terms that there was no denying him—unless he were ready to find himself turned into the street, penniless, with only his title left to him and nothing else…
He had arrived home from the Coal Hole just before dawn, thoroughly out of sorts with himself, having drunk too much and, for once, gambled too much. He had scarcely had time to lay his throbbing head on the pillow before Pickering, his valet, was shaking him awake.
‘What the devil are you at, man?’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know that I arrived home only an hour ago?’
‘Yes, m’lord, but your father sent for me not five minutes gone, saying that the matter he wished to discuss with you was urgent. He demanded that I inform you that he wishes to see you in his study immediately and will not brook any delay.’
‘Did he, indeed?’ Russell swung his legs out of bed, which set his poor head protesting in the most unkind way. ‘Have you any notion of what has brought this about?’
‘None, m’lord, except…’ and his valet hesitated.
‘Except what, Pickering? For God’s sake, have you caught my father’s habit of being unable to finish his sentences?’
‘No, m’lord, only that he seemed to be rather more angry with the way the world wags than usual.’
At this dire news, for his father’s foul temper was notorious throughout society, Russell gave a slight moan before allowing Pickering to help him to dress. On the way out of the room he caught sight of himself in the looking-glass on the tall-boy opposite to his bed, and decided that he looked more fit for the grave than enduring the roasting which he was sure his father was going to give him.
I’m over thirty years old and he treats me as though I were a boy in his teens, was his last unhappy thought before the footman opened the double doors to the study where his father was impatiently pacing the room. It was small wonder that the carpet was showing such visible signs of wear.
‘There you are, Hadleigh. By God, at the rate you’re going your rowdy life will soon begin to show on your face—’ He stopped abruptly before adding, ‘I never cease to wonder how unlike you are to your brother, Richard—’
He stopped again.
The sense of being second rate, a disappointment and a failure, was so strong in him that Russell could not prevent himself from filling the gap which his father had created.
‘I am not so far gone that I cannot remember my brother’s name, sir. Nor that I am somewhat surprised that you should send for me at this ungodly hour to tell me what I already know.’
At this weary piece of impudence his father’s face turned from red to purple.
‘You are pleased to be insolent, Hadleigh. I have had enough of you. You are so lost to everything but pleasure that I tremble to think of what might happen to the estate when I am called to my last rest and you inherit. Although there is no male entail attached to the estate, it has always been the custom of the Chancellors to pass it on to the elder son without a quibble. I, however, am beginning to quibble. Nay, more than that—’ He stopped again.
‘More than what, sir? I am all agog to learn the end of the sentence.’
Remembering his unpleasant riposte later, Russell flushed with shame. At the time his disgust with himself seemed to have translated itself into a disgust with everything.
‘It is this, Hadleigh. I am serving you with an ultimatum. I wish you to marry and settle down. To begin with, you are to dismiss that woman you have been keeping, immediately, this morning, if possible. I would have you marry some decent young woman—someone like your brother’s wife, Pandora. His judgement in marrying her is as sound as yours is faulty. If you refuse me in this, I shall immediately send for the lawyers and arrange matters so that Richard inherits everything but the title. I shall also at that point discontinue your allowance. You would then have to fend for yourself.
‘I am not, Hadleigh, about to condemn you out of hand. I shall give you three months to marry someone who will bring honour to our name, provide the Chancellor family with more male heirs, and settle down to bring honour to it yourself. Failing that, I shall turn you away.’
White to the lips, Russell asked, ‘Does Ritchie know of this, sir? After all, he has already provided you with a male heir.’
‘Indeed not. It would not be proper that he learn of it before you have had a chance to redeem yourself. As for him providing me with a male heir—you know as well as I do that a man of sense would wish to have as many grandsons as possible, the death rate among little boys being what it is.’
Ritchie had once said to Russell that he had lived in his older twin brother’s shadow all his life. The truth, he thought, was somewhat different: he had lived in Ritchie’s. Ritchie, who had become his father’s darling, Ritchie, the soldier-hero, the serious man, the man of duty. Ritchie, who had already fathered a son.
‘I wish I had been the younger twin of whom nothing was expected,’ burst from Russell’s lips almost without him willing the words.
‘That, Hadleigh, is what I complain of—your innate frivolity. I have no more to say to you, except that I expect you to do as I ask—or face the consequences. I have been corresponding with my friend, General Markham, whose only child is a daughter and consequently his heiress. He and I hope to arrange a match between the pair of you. He is giving a house-party at Markham Hall next week, and I would wish you to join it so that you might become acquainted with her. I hope you grasp that the matter is urgent. I am not prepared to allow you to continue your irresponsible way of life any longer.
‘You may leave. I want no verbal assurances from you, only deeds.’
His father sat down and began to write, lifting his head up only to say, ‘You know where the door is, Hadleigh. Kindly use it. I have no wish to see you again until you have done all that I have just asked of you.’
So, here he was, several hours later, about to give Caroline her congé, not as he had once imagined, at his wish, but at his father’s. If I had any courage at all I would have told him to go to the devil and set out to make my own fortune. But how? I am trained for nothing. I wanted to be a soldier. That was denied me. I was the heir, Ritchie was to be the soldier. I asked my father to allow me to manage our estates at Eddington in Northumberland, but was told that that was cousin Arthur Shaw’s job. What’s more, he said, he had no wish to deprive him of it in favour of an untrained, overgrown schoolboy.
Russell’s unhappy train of thought stopped at this point. He had no mind to revive for himself the misery which had resulted from his father’s other brutal interference in his life thirteen years ago. Not that that was entirely his father’s fault, but had he been kinder then…who knows, things might have been different.
No, I will not think of that…The past is dead and gone and that time will not return again. What time had done was to bring him to Caroline’s door before he was ready to face her. The unhappy truth was that he disliked the notion of telling her that he wished to end their liaison so much that he had continually put it off. Now his father had forced his hand and he must bite the bullet.
Somewhat to his surprise there was a hackney carriage standing in the street outside and Caroline’s little page was loading bags into its boot. He ran briskly up the steps, his door key in his hand and let himself in, calling her name with an urgency which surprised him. He was even more surprised when the drawing room door opened and Caroline, looking as lovely as ever, walked into the hall, dressed for the street and carrying a large leather bag.
‘You?’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought that you had forgotten that I lived here. Have you any notion of how long it is since you last visited me?’
Shame struck Russell all over again. It was truly his day to feel like a cur! Oh, he would pay her off with a lump sum, but the cruel fact remained that he was casting her off.
‘Not lately, I know,’ he almost stammered. He had stammered as a boy until a tutor with a cane had banished it—lately it had begun to come back again.
‘True,’ she said, smiling at him coldly. ‘Well, I will relieve you of the need to visit me again. I have tired of your capriciousness and have decided to leave you. I was about to post you a letter informing you of my departure. Fortunately that will no longer be necessary since I can now tell you so in person.’
‘Leave me?’ he heard himself saying witlessly.
‘Yes, leave you. It has been borne in upon me for some time that you have tired of me and did not know how to tell me so. I entered on our liaison for the foolish reason that I was in love with you. Oh, I knew that you would never marry me, but you assured me that you had decided that you would never marry anyone. I stupidly believed that that meant that we could play house together until we became Darby and Joan. I am still in love with you, but I refuse to be a millstone around your neck. I have recently met a worthy merchant who has decided to make an honest woman of me. We are to marry next week.
‘And, no, I want no farewell presents from you of any kind. The one wish that I have to leave you with is that I hope that you may never suffer as I have done in loving someone as hopelessly as I have loved you. Farewell, Lord Hadleigh. Let us remember the happy days we had together and wish each other well. Now I must leave. The carriage, and my new life, awaits me.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’
‘You mean that you would have preferred to cast me off, and not me you?’
‘No,’ he said again, but, of course, she was right.
She reached up to pat his cheek with her gloved hand. ‘Remember me a little, is all I ask.’
With that she was gone, out of the house and out of his life.
The decision had been made for him, but Russell felt no better for that—only worse, seeing that this was the second occasion on which a woman had abandoned him. Between his father and his mistress he had been shown a vision of himself with all his shortcomings made plain. All that remained was for him to go to Markham Hall to court a woman whom he had no wish to marry in order to recover his father’s favour. Woman was perhaps a misnomer. He seemed to recall that Angelica Markham was only eighteen years old.
He arrived home to find that his father was out, so he could not inform him that his long-standing affair with Caroline Fawcett was over. At a loose end—as usual, he thought bitterly—he wandered into his father’s study, intending to ask his secretary, Mr Graves, when he would return. The secretary was not there, either. He began to leave, but something, he never knew quite what, led him to walk to the secretary’s tall desk, which stood before the window, to examine the papers on it.
There was a small pile of them that contained the accounts and the other details of the family estate at Eddington. Moved, again by he knew not what, he began to inspect them, the accounts first.
When he was at Oxford he had discovered that he had a bent for mathematics. Where others of his age found the subject boring and spent more time either amusing themselves or preparing for a political life by concentrating on the classics, he had played with numbers. They had always fascinated him. He remembered Dr Beauregard saying…
No, forget that, forget everything to do with Dr Beauregard, particularly his daughter.
He could not, alas, forget what lay before him while he rapidly totted up the lines of figures. Now, having done so, he thought, nay, he was sure, that something was wrong. He added them up again, to reach the same answer and to turn back to an earlier sheet. He had just finished checking that when the door opened and Graves came in.
‘Ah, m’lord, were you looking for me, or your father?’
‘My father, but I find that I do have a question for you about these accounts.’
‘Indeed, m’lord. I wonder what you think that you have found.’
‘If I am not mistaken, Graves, there are some discrepancies here which I ought, perhaps, to discuss with you.’
Graves, who was well aware of the lack of consideration and respect which the Earl had for his heir, always addressed Russell in a manner which showed that he shared his master’s opinion of him. He shook his head and there was a slight hint of mockery in his answer.
‘I, too, have checked these figures and have discovered nothing untoward. I fear that you must be mistaken.’
‘I, however, fear that I am not,’ returned Russell in a voice which Graves had never heard before. ‘You will do me the courtesy—’
Graves did the unforgivable: he not only interrupted his superior, but refused to do as he had been ordered. ‘I am a busy man, m’lord. I have gone through these accounts and reports most carefully and find nothing wrong with them. May I suggest that you raise this matter with your father, who, I assure you, has the utmost faith in my ability and my integrity. He, too, always checks my work, and that done for him by Mr Arthur Shaw, his agent at Eddington, and so far all has been to his satisfaction.’
For a moment Russell was tempted to seize the impudent swine before him by his cravat and threaten to throttle him if he continued to refuse to discuss the matter. Only the thought that his father would be sure to take Graves’s part prevented him. Yes, he would speak to his father, but he knew full well that his answer would be the same as his secretary’s: a refusal to listen to what his son might have to say.
And so it proved.
His father had been quite jovial at dinner, so much so that over their port at the end Russell had felt able to lean forward and remark, ‘By chance, sir, I saw the accounts from our estate at Eddington. I thought that I detected evidence of something wrong there. I wonder if you would allow me to—’
He stopped. His father’s face was rapidly turning purple with anger, as it had done so often when he had been a boy, and his old helplessness in the face of that anger had returned to plague him.
‘Come, Hadleigh, what do you have to say to me that is so urgent that you see fit to badger me over a glass of port? Why do you hesitate? Pray continue.’
‘I was wondering, sir, whether you would allow me to go there and see if all is well. As I recall, neither you nor any other member of the family has visited Eddington, preferring our home in Norfolk instead. Perhaps it is time that one of us did. You are occupied in government, Ritchie is reorganising the estate he has inherited, so that leaves me.’
‘So it does, Hadleigh, and why in the world you think yourself fit to go to Eddington and trouble my good agent there is beyond me.’
‘But I am your heir. My name is Hadleigh, which is taken from a village not ten miles from Eddington and I have reason to believe, from looking at Mr Shaw’s reports, that it might be useful if I visited the land to which I owe my name.’
Russell knew, by the expression on his father’s face, that it was hopeless to continue: his final words confirmed that he was right.
‘Confine yourself to matters of which you might know something,’ his father almost snarled. ‘Arthur Shaw is a good, hard-working fellow—unlike yourself—and I will not have him distressed by your meddling in affairs with which you have nothing to do, and of which you know nothing. That is my last word to you, sir.’
Russell was tempted to try to continue to plead his case. Unfortunately his scrutiny of the accounts and reports had been cut short by Graves so that he had been unable to gather enough evidence to convince his father that he had right on his side. He was also dismally aware that even if he had his father would continue to snub him. To press the matter further might, he feared, result in him saying something unforgivable, but what would be the point of that in the face of his father’s intractability?
Fortunately he would shortly be out of the house for some little time, even if the errand he was sent on to Markham Hall was not one which he would have chosen. At least, while he was there, he might forget for a time that he was not only unloved, but also despised.
Mary Wardour moved a chess piece on the board which stood beside her before beginning to fill yet another sheet of papers with numbers and arcane signs. She was halfway down it before there was a respectful knock on the door.
She sighed. Gibbs, the butler, of course. What was it now? Was she never to have a whole afternoon of quiet and peace?
‘Come in,’ she called, laying down her quill pen on the stand before her.
Gibbs entered, looking rather more solemn than usual. ‘A lady to see you, madam,’ he began, but got no further before the lady in question pushed urgently past him.
‘No fuss,’ she trilled. ‘I will announce myself. You may leave us.’
Mary gave an inward groan. Of all the people in the world who had to interrupt her just when she had thought that she was about to solve the tricky problem of the knight’s move, this particular woman was the last she would have welcomed.
‘Lady Leominster,’ she said, rising. ‘Pray be seated. I quite understand that your fame is such that you need no announcing.’
The Lady chose to interpret this as a compliment.
‘Oh,’ she declaimed, ‘and I am sure that you will be delighted to have a short rest from your labours. I am, I own, a little surprised that you should frowst indoors on such a fine sunny day. But no matter, I have come to reprimand you, you naughty thing. It is a godmother’s privilege, after all. You so seldom go into society these days that you are in danger of becoming that strange thing, a female hermit. This will never do. To that end I have prevailed on my cousin Markham to invite you to his grand house-party next week.’
Mary’s expression was so mutinous that she raised her gloved hand. ‘No, do not refuse me. It is high time that you married again.’
She put her head on one side and studied Mary’s face as though it were a fine painting brought out for her to admire.
‘Quite lovely,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, quite lovely. With that complexion, those dark eyes and even darker hair, any man would be proud to call you wife. And your fortune, of course. We mustn’t forget that.’
How many more of society’s taboos could the old trout ignore or break? Wasn’t it enough that she had burst into the room without so much as a by your leave when Gibbs must have assured her that the mistress was not at home?
‘Yes,’ said the Lady, and then, as though issuing an order from on high, ‘Yes, of course, you must marry again. Thirty is not such a great age for a widow.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ exclaimed Mary and goodness, where had that come from? After all, her marriage to Dr Henry Wardour had not been an unhappy one, despite the great difference in their ages and that it had been arranged between him and her father and presented to her as a fait accompli.
‘Do admit that it must have been off-putting’ exclaimed her tormentor, ‘to marry an old fellow like Dean Wardour. I suppose that is why you feel condemned to carry on his work.’ She waved a disparaging hand at Mary’s pile of papers and the chessboard, having ignored another taboo—that one did not raise such intimate matters as the nature of a couple’s married life with one of the partners in it.
She was so determined to make her point that she leaned over and struck Mary smartly on her writing hand with her glove before continuing with increased vigour. ‘It’s all very well for an old codger to trouble himself with such abstruse matters as mathematics. A handsome young man would soon give you other things than that to think about. All the more reason, then, to accept the General’s invitation.’
The only reason which Mary could think of which would make her accept the invitation was that it might enable her to dismiss the old harpy sitting opposite to her so that she could get back to continuing her late husband’s work—which was also her work.
‘How long would I be expected to remain at Markham Hall? Not too long, I trust.’ If that grudging acceptance made her sound nearly as elderly as her late husband, then so be it. Fortunately it seemed to please the harpy if her crocodile’s smile was any guide. And there’s a couple of mixed metaphors which would have set my late husband grieving if he had heard me utter them!
‘My dear, I am up in the boughs, I do assure you. I will inform the General myself that you will be delighted to renew your acquaintance with him and dear Angelica. You do remember dear Angelica, don’t you?’
If dear Angelica was the girl who had sulked and moped her way through her come-out party, which Mary had unwillingly attended only after another session of bullying from the formidable lady opposite to her, then Mary remembered dear Angelica.
‘Oh, yes, Lady Leominster. Of course I remember her.’
Who, indeed, could forget her tantrums? One could only pity the unfortunate man who might lead her to the altar. Fortunately again, the Lady took her utterance at face value, leaving Mary to regret being such a cat when thinking about, and speaking to, others, but happy that she was able to disguise her true feelings.
Her reward was a smacking kiss from the Lady, who rose and announced dramatically that she was off to persuade—by which she meant bully—her niece Phoebe Carstairs to visit Markham Hall as well. ‘Another gel who does not know what’s best for her,’ she sighed.
If I knew what was best for me, then I wouldn’t even consider putting a foot in Markham Hall, let alone visit it, was Mary’s rebellious thought before resuming her work with a brain that was now more concerned with how she was to endure a week of total inanity when she might be enjoying herself by finally getting this confounded white knight to behave itself.
The black knight had been much more obliging.
Chapter One
Markham Hall was a truly beautiful building. It dated back to early Tudor times and was a dream of rich crimson and gold bricks and mellowed stone. All the later improvements, designed to increase the comfort of the family and the family’s guests, had been added at the back so as not to spoil the illusion that the Hall was still an Early Tudor fortress that had been transformed into a mansion.
It was said that good Queen Bess had lived here for a short time when her Catholic sister Mary had been on the throne, but no proof of this had ever been offered except a contemporary portrait of her as a young woman which hung in a prominent place in the Great Hall.
A large number of visitors were arriving that late April afternoon. There were several carriages on the gravel sweep before the main doorway, which was actually a gate which opened on to a quadrangle around which the original house had been built. A bevy of footmen, grooms, coachmen and various servants were carrying luggage into the Hall.
Two footmen, one of them carrying a large green umbrella, ran forward to greet Mary’s driver and to open the door of her chaise for her so that she might descend and be escorted indoors, together with her maid, Jennie, and her companion, Miss Eliza Truman, away from the light rain which had begun to fall.
Inside all was beauty and comfort. Mary’s suite of rooms overlooked the rolling countryside where a folly in the shape of a ruined miniature tower stood high on a hill. Peter’s Place, it was called, after a fabulous huntsman who had run with the Quorn Hunt, Leicestershire’s pride, two hundred years ago.
Mary had scarcely time to change out of her travelling clothes into a light mauve gown and settle herself on the sofa in her little withdrawing room before the butler and a footman arrived with the tea-board.
‘Lady Markham thought that you might care for some refreshment after your journey from Oxford. We dine late here in the Great Hall. The General likes to call it supper. The family and the guests assemble in the Stuart room at the sounding of the first bell and meet to converse before the meal.’
‘Very civilised,’ murmured Mary, eyeing the teapot and the biscuits known as Bosworth Jumbles.
The butler bowed. ‘The General and his Lady send word that they hope that you will enjoy your first visit to Markham Hall. They are looking forward to meeting you again. Should any of your wants remain unsatisfied, then you have only to ring for the housekeeper, Mrs Marsden, and she will look after you.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Truman when the butler had bowed himself out, ‘I have encountered less state when my late patron visited royalty. The tea, however, is most welcome.’
Mary had forgotten what visiting her wealthy contemporaries was like. She was not sure that she wished to live a life of such formality, if only for a fortnight. She had brought her work with her, but doubted whether she would ever find time to solve the latest problem which she had encountered. Her companion, though, obviously revelled in being waited upon so assiduously, suggesting that they might ring the housekeeper for more hot water when they had drunk their first cup.
The rain outside had stopped and the sun was shining. Mary said, ‘Do so, by all means, but I should wish to take a walk in the grounds. If you wish to rest after our journey, there is no necessity for you to accompany me.’
‘At least take your maid with you. It will be expected.’
Mary sighed. Peace and quiet was all that she wanted. ‘Indeed, no,’ she replied gently. ‘I am sure that I shall be perfectly safe.’
‘But who will carry your umbrella?’
‘Why, I shall. Now, will you please excuse me? I shall not be long.’
Her umbrella in her hand, a short jacket over her dress, Mary made her way downstairs and out into the open after asking a somewhat surprised footman the best way into the gardens. He escorted her to a large door at the back. One path from it led to the stables, another to a series of formal gardens before taking a sharp turn into the Park itself.
The gardens had been improved during the last century, almost certainly by Capability Brown, Mary decided, before she ventured into the Park where she admired in turn the ornamental bridges, the artfully placed stands of trees, and the lake and its miniature stone quay where two small pleasure boats were moored.
Mary was compelled to admit that everything she saw pleased her, particularly the fact that she was the only person present to admire the unfolding vistas which Brown had so carefully devised. The scene before her was so beautiful that she began to wish that she had not left her sketchbook and water-colour paints at home. For a time she sat on a rustic bench placed exactly where the view before her was at its most lovely, and it was with a sigh that she rose and returned to the Hall.
A different route back through the formal gardens seemed a good idea until she heard men’s voices coming from one of them when she approached the trellised archway which led into it. She was about to turn and retrace her steps in order to avoid them when she heard a voice which memory told her was familiar.
No! It could not be him! It could not!
He spoke again, and laughed at the end of a remark which set the rest of those present laughing, and this time she was sure that she recognised the voice of the man who had made it. Whatever the cost she must find out if her supposition was correct so that she might be prepared when she met him later at dinner. To have come upon him without warning would have challenged even her own calm self-control which was legendary among those who knew her.
She moved forward in order to look into the enclosed garden so that she might see the company assembled there, but not be seen by them. And yes, it was indeed Russell Hadleigh whom she thought that she had heard, whose pleasant baritone voice she had immediately recognised, even though it had been thirteen years since she had last listened to him speaking.
He was seated among a group of young men before an iron table on which stood, not tea, but bottles of port, Madeira and white wine. Unbuttoned might be the best word to describe them all, including Russell, Mary thought wryly, especially, perhaps, Russell. She also recognised Peregrine Markham, her host’s son and heir, but the other young bloods were unknown to her. It was, perhaps, fortunate, she thought later, that she was not near enough to hear what they were saying—which, judging by the nature of their laughter, was not very proper.
Peregrine Markham suddenly stood up, which set her moving away before she could be seen and recognised. She had no wish to speak to any of them, let alone Russell Hadleigh, before she had had time to compose herself. Indeed, how she made her way safely back to her room she never knew, her brain was in such a whirl.
Mary had hoped never to see him again, and had she known that he, too, was going to be a visitor at Markham Hall, she would never have given in to Lady Leominster’s bullying and agreed to go there. By great good luck, though, seeing him without his being aware of her presence meant that she could prepare herself for the inevitable moment when they would meet before dinner. It was essential that he should not know how much the mere sight of him still had the power to disturb her.
The disturbance was, of course, ridiculous. How could his betrayal of her thirteen years ago still have the power to upset her? Worse than that, how could the mere glimpse of him set her heart beating so rapidly as though it were only a day since he had last walked away from her after giving her such a loving kiss?
The Judas kiss of treachery, she had thought later. The memory of it had caused her so many bitter tears until, as the years passed, she began to forget him and his broken promises—which made her present strong reaction to him so unexpected.
I grow maudlin, to allow him to affect me so powerfully. Why, I even started to ask myself whether he would recognise me, as I recognised him. Oh, he has changed. He is no longer a handsome, slim boy, but a man with a cynical face, all that charming innocence which he once possessed has quite gone.
‘My dear, have you been over-exerting yourself?’ asked her companion when she re-entered their drawing-room. ‘You look quite flushed. I do believe that it was a mistake to undertake a walk after a hard day’s travelling.’
‘Not at all,’ Mary replied, a little distressed that her recent experience had overset her to the degree that Miss Truman was able to remark upon it. ‘What you are seeing is merely the glow of exercise’—and what a lie that was! ‘The grounds are quite remarkable and worthy of the brush of a master painter.’
‘Indeed,’ said Miss Truman, quite deceived by this explanation. ‘I have read about their excellence, and now I am privileged to enjoy it. I have also heard that the General’s chef is known for his excellence and I am looking forward to dinner—or supper, as always he calls it—with the keenest anticipation.’
Would that I were, was Mary’s internal reaction to that!
Russell Hadleigh was not feeling much keen anticipation, either. He had not yet met the young woman whom his father, and hers, intended that he should marry, but was shortly about to do so. He had met her brother, Peregrine, always known to his associates as Perry, several times before, and had taken him in mild dislike. The notion of him as a brother-in-law did not attract.
Perry Markham was a gambler who took losing badly. Despite his recent bout at the tables, gambling was not an addiction with Russell. He could take it or leave it. It occasionally served to relieve a little his boredom with his empty existence. He could not understand a man allowing it to dominate his life as Perry Markham allowed it to dominate his. He wondered whether the General knew exactly how much his son was losing at the tables—and how much he was drinking to cover the pain of his losses there.
Russell had forsworn drinking that afternoon for the amusement of watching the others indulge themselves overmuch. It was during a pause in the idle conversation of young fellows with too much time on their hands, and too little to do in it, that he had seen a female hovering near the arch which led into the garden in which they sat. He could not quite see her face, but he thought that she looked young—or had he hoped that?
He had hoped that she might enter and bring a little brightness to an afternoon which was dull despite the sun which had begun to smile on them all. Alas, the sight of so many young fools—and he counted himself among them—must have caused her to turn away and deprive them of the pleasure of her presence.
Now his valet was dressing him for the evening with his usual loving care. It was an odd existence, he thought, which turned so much on dress and the other minor minutiae of a man’s existence. He had recently asked his father if, when the next election came along, he might be allowed to stand at one of the seats which the family controlled—a small borough whose name gave him his title. To become an MP would give him an interest in life and allow him to bring some experience of power and management to the time when he finally inherited.
‘You are not ready to do that, sir. Nor steady enough,’ his father had growled at him.
‘I am older than Lord Granville was when he first went into Parliament, and quite as steady,’ he had replied.
‘But you are not Lord Granville,’ his father had snorted.
What could he say to that, other than, ‘But I understand that he was only in his early twenties when he became an MP and I am over thirty. By then he had been an Ambassador to Russia.’
This did not answer, either. He wondered afterwards why his father had taken him in such dislike that he would not give him the opportunities which other heirs to noble names had been offered. Had what had happened thirteen years ago been enough to damn him as a serious person? Surely not—but the thought was always there.
Instead he was at Markham Hall to propose marriage to a young woman whom the on dits said was a frivolous, flighty piece—and that solely to please his father and not himself. Well, he was about to find out whether the on dits spoke truly or were simply baseless rumours.
Downstairs he found himself before the Tudor drawing room which opened on to the Great Hall where the General and Lady Markham, Perry and Angelica standing beside them, were receiving their guests. Angelica was pretty enough and fortunately bore little resemblance to her brother Perry, whose looks were not of the first stare, to say the least.
‘I understand that you are acquainted with my son, Peregrine,’ the General said, ‘but I believe that you have not yet been introduced to my daughter, Angelica.’
Russell allowed that he had not and turned his attention to her—to find that she was a beauty in the current mode, with bright blue eyes, flaxen ringlets and a prettily rounded figure beneath a pink silk frock decorated with cream rosebuds. She offered a curtsy to his low bow and simpered at him, saying in a little girl’s fluting voice, ‘So happy to meet you at last, Lord Hadleigh. I have heard much of you from my brother.’
Had she, indeed? And was that a recommendation or not?
‘And I am delighted to meet you, Miss Markham.’
‘Oh, please call her Angelica,’ interrupted Lady Markham cordially. ‘We are all friends here, I trust.’
‘Angelica.’ He smiled and bowed again. ‘So I must be Russell.’
It was the least he could say. He could only wonder what her conversation would be like. Well, he would shortly find out, for his valet had informed him that the Servants’ Hall had it that he was to sit next to her at dinner. Her conversation? Had he run mad? Persons of his rank married young women for their dowry, not their conversation.
He gave a bow and a nod to Perry, who also simpered at him. After the General and his Lady’s enthusiastic reception of him, Russell dismally realised that they, and his father, and now Perry, had settled between them that he was to marry Angelica. He wondered what all the hurry was about.
At last he was free to enter the drawing room, which was rapidly filling up with the General’s guests, most of whom knew one another. It was his duty to be pleasant to the other guests, and one thing which Russell did know was how to be pleasant. He thought that he might even be able to do it in his sleep!
It was when he had finished talking to the Honourable Mrs Robert Chevenix, whose husband was a crony of his father’s, that he saw a young woman sitting beside a middle-aged female who was obviously her companion. The young woman’s dark head was turned away from him, but there was something strangely familiar about her whole posture. It was not until she turned towards him, and he at last saw her face, that he knew who she was.
Mary Beauregard! Mary, his lost love whom he had last seen thirteen years ago. Somewhat to his surprise, she was still very much like the young girl he had once known. Oh, her face had matured, but in the doing had served only to add to her quiet beauty, not detract from it. Her skin was as creamy as he remembered it, and her dark eyes…
Those dark eyes in which he had once drowned—he would never forget them. Those eyes that, alas, were faithless like the lips which had promised him eternal love when he had last seen her. An eternal love which had only lasted a week.
Now, thirteen years later, he ought to be able to look at her coldly without the sight of her enchanting him as it had once done, but he couldn’t, and what sort of man did that make of him? It was a question which he did not immediately answer, because at that moment she saw him. Instead, a new question sprang into his mind.
What did she see when she looked at him?
Was she as inwardly disturbed as he was?
Only the eye of love, or of hate, could detect the faintest quiver of her mouth, or the hand which shook when she raised it to smooth down the fichu of her dowdy dress, but Russell saw both telltale signs and wondered which of the two contrary emotions was afflicting him and, quite possibly, her.
He bowed, his face, usually so mobile, a mask—the impassive mask which he wore when he chose to play cards. He said as coolly and distantly as common politeness would allow, no more, no less, ‘Mrs Wardour, I believe. We meet again after many years.’
Mary looked up at him. Near to, as he had seen the changes time had wrought in her, she saw more plainly those which had altered him. One thing that struck her again was the cynicism written on his face, in the curl of his lip, in the knowing eyes which looked at her, and seemed to dismiss her.
‘Yes,’ she replied, as cool as he. ‘I am, however, now the widow of Dr Henry Wardour.’
This statement shocked Russell out of his deliberately chosen indifference to her and the company in which they found themselves.
‘I must commiserate with you upon his death, he must have been a good age.’
‘But not so very old,’ she riposted. Mary would never have supposed that she could outface her one-time love to the point where she retained her self-control and he did not. ‘He was only in his early fifties. Such a difference in age on marriage is a commonplace in our society. Indeed, I gather that you are here invited here as a possible suitor for Miss Markham so I find your surprise at my marriage a little misplaced.’
What in the world had happened to the ardent young woman whom he had once loved that she could speak to him in the tones of a cold shrew?
‘Your rebuke is a just one,’ he admitted, and could not say more, for at that point they were joined by Perry Markham, since the Markhams’ reception line had ended and dinner was almost upon them.
‘So, Hadleigh, you have already made yourself known to Mrs Wardour, but then, no pretty woman ever fails to gain your attention, eh,’ and he poked a stiff finger into Russell’s ribs which set him moving away.
‘You mistake, Markham. Mrs Wardour and I knew one another many years ago—and we were renewing an old acquaintance, were we not?’
Mary’s response to that was to offer both men a stiff smile.
‘Too many years ago for us to be able to claim that we are old friends,’ she said.
If this frosty answer surprised Perry Markham it did not surprise Russell.
‘Well, in that case, old fellow,’ went on Perry, smiling at Mary, ‘I shall not be encroaching on a long-time friendship if I inform you that I am to escort Mrs Wardour into dinner. But fear not, you are to take in my sister Angelica, who cannot wait to further her acquaintance with you. She will be along any moment to claim you, so you will forgive me if I ask Mrs Wardour to join me so that I may show her my father’s famous collection of porcelain.’
Both Russell and Mary were only too pleased to end their unwanted and unhappy tête-à-tête—with the exception that Mary had no wish to become more intimate with Perry, and Russell was not greatly looking forward to squiring Angelica, whom he suspected was exactly the kind of vacuous young creature whom he had always tried to avoid.
However, they both separately thought that in an imperfect world one cannot always have exactly what one wants—which was a conclusion which they both took into dinner with them!
The Great Hall was justly named. It was hung with faded banners covered with the honours of bygone battles. The dining table ran the length of the room before a giant hearth. On the wall facing the hearth were placed antique Tudor settles before low wooden tables. Flambeaux provided light even on this spring evening for the Hall’s windows were high and small and their glass panes were dull with age. All in all it was scarcely a friendly place, and the formality which seemed a feature of the Markham household was very present in it.
Matters were not helped for Russell by Angelica having been placed on his left hand and Mary on his right. Mary had Perry Markham on her right and he was monopolising her attention while Angelica was doing the same for Russell. Unfortunately, her conversational powers were as limited as he had feared.
Having assured her that he had been to Astley’s Amphitheatre, the home of horses, and acrobatics, but not lately, he then had to confess that he had not been overly impressed with Master Betty, the famous boy actor. Yes, he had seen the ballet at the Opera House, but no, he was not greatly taken by that either.
‘What, then, do you prefer?’ she simpered at him.
‘Shakespeare,’ he told her, ‘in particular when Kemble plays the great parts, such as Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth, but his brother Charles is also admirable in lighter roles.’
‘Oh, Shakespeare!’ She pouted. ‘I was taken to see Macbeth in my come-out year. What a disappointment! Everyone was ranting at everyone else and people were being killed on stage. I wonder that anyone should pay to go to see such dreadful things.’
She ended with a delicate shudder and a widening of her blue eyes. ‘On the other hand, I quite liked As You Like It when they made it into a pantomime. The clowns were so funny, much better than all that boring talk. Have you visited the Prince Regent’s home at Brighton? They say it is most fantastic. I confess that I was greatly surprised when I was presented to him. He was so fat and ugly—and so old. I cannot abide old men and women.’
‘Yes,’ Russell said, ‘I have visited the Pavilion and quite like it. As for the Regent being old, I fear that, if we live long enough, we all come to that in the end.’
Angelica’s shudder was a prolonged one this time. ‘Pray do not let us speak of it. Tell me, have you read The Secret of Harrenden Castle? Now there is a horrid book which I do like—you never actually see the bodies in it.’
So this was the woman whom his father wished him to marry! Had he given up his lively Caroline for this vacuous young thing? He thought of his brother’s wife Pandora with her frank ways and her keen interest in everything about her. Now there was a treasure if there ever was one, even if she were something of a surprising treasure for quiet Ritchie to have won.
Angelica, who, to give her her due, was finding it as difficult to talk to Lord Hadleigh as Lord Hadleigh was finding it difficult to listen to her, gave up at this point. Why did her papa wish her to marry this dull old man? She had imagined that he might be a jolly fellow like Perry and his friends, but no such thing. He was as solemn as a judge and as dreary as the parson on Sunday morning when he was droning on and on in his sermon.
All in all, it was a great relief for them both when the dinner ended and the ladies withdrew to leave the gentlemen to their cigars and their port. But not before Russell, the devil prompting him, had leaned sideways to whisper in Mary’s pretty little ear, ‘Are you finding all this as tedious as I am?’
Mary, who had been as bored by Perry as Russell had been by his sister, said sharply, ‘Indeed not, and if I were it would be a gross insult to our hosts’ hospitality to say so.’
Russell bowed his head and murmured, ‘Rightly rebuked. You were always much more aware of the niceties of life than I was.’
‘Was I, m’lord? I fear that I have quite forgot the details of any conversations which we might once have had,’ and she turned away from him to address Perry again, as though to speak to him was wearisome.
The anger which seemed to overcome Russell these days was upon him again. He murmured to her back, ‘Now, madam, that I do not believe, nor should you ask me to believe it.’
Mary’s head swung sharply round. ‘What you might believe, m’lord, is a matter of total indifference to me. Pray allow that to terminate our conversation,’ and she turned away from him again to address a bemused Perry.
‘I had not understood that you were so well-acquainted with Lord Hadleigh, Mrs Wardour.’
‘Once, long ago,’ she replied as carelessly as she could, and, more to punish Russell than because she wished to ingratiate herself with Perry Markham, added, most graciously, ‘Pray call me Mary, Mr Markham.’
‘Only if you will address me as Perry,’ he responded gallantly.
Angelica had found the young Honourable Thomas Bertram, known by his friends as the Hon. Tom, to be a more amusing dinner companion than Russell, who now whispered into Mary’s ear, ‘If we are all to be so informal, Mrs Wardour, then you might oblige me by calling me Russell—as you once did.’
She swung round again, to murmur under her breath so that Perry might not catch what she was saying, ‘Certainly not, you forfeited that right long ago. Pray cease to badger me: it is not the act of a gentleman to twit a lady so mercilessly.’
Well, that was that, was it not? And Russell, who was already regretting his baiting of Mary, said slowly, ‘I apologise, Mrs Wardour, but the temptation to address you as I might once have done was too great for me.’
How dare he? How dare he after he had treated her so lightly all those years ago! Mary turned away from him for the last time, saying, ‘I would be extremely happy, m’lord, if you refrained from addressing me at all,’ and gave Perry her whole attention for the rest of the dinner.
She would not be drawn into conversation with him, not now, or ever again. He deserved nothing from her, and nothing was all that he would get. She had done her duty to her hosts by speaking to him at all and from this evening onward she would be careful to avoid his company.
Russell ate the rest of his dinner in silence and it might as well have been straw that he was consuming. Angelica offered him the odd word now and then, and it was a great relief when the meal ended, the ladies retired, cigars were offered, and the port began to circulate.
Talk became general, and, as Mary had earlier thought, the men being alone together it became unbuttoned. The younger men at the bottom of the table began to talk prize-fighting, their seniors, politics. Russell, caught between the two, said nothing.
Presently Perry, avoiding his father’s eye, leaned forward and said to his fellows, sub rosa, as it were, ‘To avoid the stifling dullness of the Leicestershire countryside in spring I have two diversions to offer you, gentlemen. Tomorrow a Luddite is to be hanged at Loughborough for an attempt on the life of a local mill-owner. I thought that we might make up a party and compare how these matters are organised in the country compared with those in town.
‘On the following day there is to be a mill not far from here between two bruisers, both from London. One is Sam Tottridge, who gave Tom Cribb a hard time before he lost—and Tom’s a tough customer, being champion of England. T’other is a man of colour, known as Yankee Samson because he comes from some godforsaken corner of the States. What say we make up another party to watch that? I’ll run a book on the match if that is agreeable to you all.’
He turned to Russell, who had sat there quietly trying to make his one glass of port last until it was time to join the ladies. ‘How about you, Hadleigh? Are you game?’
‘Not for the hanging,’ said Russell as coolly as he could in an effort not to give offence to his host’s son. ‘I find no pleasure in watching a man being strangled to death to the cheers of his fellows, particularly when the man in question is a poor devil who has lost his livelihood. As for the boxing match, I shall decide that on the day. I prefer to put the gloves on myself occasionally rather than applaud a man who does it for me.’
‘Oh, well, suit yourself, Hadleigh. Tottridge is worth watching, believe me, and the black has a good reputation, too. As for murdering Luddites, I beg to disagree with you there. Hanging’s too good for them. Not turning parson, are you?’
It was plain that Perry Markham had drunk more than he ought. Russell smiled. ‘Not at all. Merely growing old, I suppose.’
‘Doesn’t seem to take others that way. Never mind, though. You can always stay at home with the ladies and play back-gammon and help to wind their wool for them.’
Several of Perry’s hangers-on laughed sycophantically at this. Russell merely smiled, and answered him, again pleasantly, ‘What a splendid notion, Markham. I thank you for your suggestions on how to pass my time. You have, I believe, a good library, and that might serve to catch my interest.’
Several of his hearers sniggered at this, and Russell was relieved that the General ended this rather unpleasant conversation by announcing briskly, ‘Time to join the ladies. They will be wondering what has become of us.’
I doubt that, thought Russell, watching the rest of the party stagger rather uncertainly towards the drawing room, although some of them might welcome our arrival to save them from boredom.
I also wonder whether Mary will be kinder to me after dinner than she was during it!
Chapter Two
Russell was among the last to arrive in the drawing room where some of the ladies were busily talking, others were playing a hand of whist, and the quieter souls were happily engaged in their canvas work, Mary Wardour among them.
There was a chair near to her and on impulse he walked towards it, and pulled it round so that he half-faced her and her companion, who was also stitching purposefully away. Thus placed, he had quite deliberately trapped her into a situation where their conversation would be so public that she would be loath to rebuke or reprimand him as she had done at dinner.
‘Mrs Wardour,’ he said, smiling at her.
Mary looked up at him and, despite herself, it was as though something wrenched inside her. She was a girl of seventeen again and her young lover was smiling at her: his mouth had a little curl at the end and his eyes…
She shook her head. What in the world was she thinking of? Lord Hadleigh was no longer her young lover and she had tried to forget him and all his works. Alas, here in this crowded room, surrounded by the curious, careless and the malicious, she must say and do nothing which would damage her own reputation.
‘Lord Hadleigh?’ she said and inclined her head.
‘Mrs Wardour,’ he said again, as though he were memorising her name, ‘we were well-acquainted long ago, I believe, and we meet again after many years. I think that we should be doing one another a kindness if, from now on, we behaved as though we were meeting for the first time.’
Was he drunk, to make such a monstrous proposition to her? He looked and sounded sober, unlike Perry Markham, who had obviously over-indulged and was lurching into the room and now trying to avoid her, probably as the result of finding her a dull partner at dinner since she had shown no interest in racing or the delights of the London stage.
Russell Hadleigh was plainly waiting for an answer from her. What could she say to him? Not what she wished to, here in public, that was for sure. To have exclaimed, ‘Go away and cease to trouble me,’ would certainly set society’s tongues a-wagging, and no mistake!
Instead she said, as coolly as she could. ‘If that is what you wish, m’lord, it would only be civil of me to agree to such a polite request.’
‘Splendid,’ was Russell’s answer to this rather cold concession. He leaned forward a little confidentially, adding as he did so, ‘Then if I proposed that we should take a circuit of the picture gallery together, you would not refuse me, I trust. I understand that you have visited Markham Hall before and would surely be qualified to show its treasures to me.’
‘I, m’lord?’ Mary could not help replying. ‘Would it not be more appropriate for you to ask Miss Markham to display the family treasures? After all, I gather that she is the real reason you are here.’
Good God! Had rumour already given Angelica Markham to him as a bride? Rumour also said that Mary Wardour had been invited for Perry Markham’s sake. Was that as false as the one relating to Angelica? If he had been dubious about making her Lady Hadleigh before he had met her, now that he had, any dubiety he had previously experienced had been reinforced: he had not the slightest intention of marrying the girl. He was only too happy that the moment the Hon. Tom Bertram had arrived in the drawing room Angelica had made a dead set at him. They were each well suited to the other.
‘Oh,’ he said, as carelessly as he could, ‘you should take no note of gossip of that nature. I am here—why am I here?’ he continued. ‘I am not quite sure, but looking for a bride is far from my mind at the moment,’ and he gave her his most dazzling smile again, a smile which poor Mary remembered only too well.
‘Nor am I looking for a husband,’ returned Mary shrewdly, for she knew full well why she had been invited and Perry Markham was certainly not to her taste.
Miss Truman, who had been listening to their odd conversation with some interest, now took a hand in it.
‘I think, my dear,’ she said to Mary, a light note in her voice, ‘that it would only be proper to introduce me to Lord Hadleigh, seeing that you have had such a long acquaintance with him.’
Now, what to say to that? was Mary’s somewhat frantic thought. She could scarcely tell her companion the unhappy truth of her first acquaintance with Russell, who had now risen to his feet, waiting for the introduction which would inevitably follow.
The rapport between him and Mary, once so strong, but now almost forgotten, was strongly revived. He grasped that she was somewhat overset by her companion’s innocently made remark and, however badly she might have treated him in the past, he had no desire to embarrass her in the present.
He bowed to both women. ‘My friendship with Mrs Wardour was long ago, when we were little more than children. We have, alas, seen nothing of one another for many years, until this very day.’
Mary and Miss Truman both rose on that, and Mary, thankful for Russell’s intervention, if for nothing else, did the pretty by making her companion known to him.
‘I believe, m’lord,’ Miss Truman said, ‘that I had the honour, some years ago, of being for a short time the companion of your brother Richard’s wife, then Miss Pandora Compton. Circumstances parted us and we lost touch. I trust that she is in health.’
‘Very much so. She is now the mother of a lively and handsome boy.’
‘Which does not surprise me,’ Miss Truman said, ‘since my dear Pandora is both lively and handsome herself.’
Russell gave a smile of such pleasure on hearing this that Mary was bitten by a sudden sharp and unwanted pang. What in the world would make her indulge in such folly as being jealous of the unknown Pandora Chancellor? she asked herself furiously. Lord Hadleigh could compliment the whole female sex and bed whom he chose. It was no business of hers if he admired his brother’s wife. But, alas, it seemed it still was, since she was being weak-minded enough to allow him to charm her all over again. It was as though thirteen years had never passed.
‘Indeed,’ he replied, serious now.
‘And I am sure that my dear Mary would be happy to show you the picture gallery. She is extremely knowledgeable about such matters. You could not have a better guide.’
It was quite plain to both her hearers that Miss Truman was busy matchmaking. She had already decided that Perry Markham was not a person whom she could recommend her employer to marry. Lord Hadleigh, now, was quite a different matter. Not only was he handsome, but she had already been informed that he had been decent enough to refuse to join the party which was attending the hanging on the morrow while, on the other hand, the wretched Perry was the ringleader in the unhappy affair.
As for Mary, after such a recommendation from Miss Truman, she had no choice but to agree to Russell Hadleigh’s wish to have her as his escort and the pair of them rose to carry out Miss Truman’s bidding.
The eyes of most of the room watched them leave it. Later, General Markham was to say fiercely to his son when he cornered him in his room, ‘You must know how essential it is that you offer for Mary Wardour. Most of our problems would be solved by such a marriage. But instead of fixing your sights on her, you fool about with a pack of young men whom you have brought here against my wishes. As a result of that, you have allowed Hadleigh to corner her when I wished to fix his interest on Angelica. Do you wish to live permanently in Queer Street?’
Perry hissed back at his father, ‘May I remind you, sir, that it was not I who lost the family’s money by gambling on Boney winning at Waterloo, but it is I who will have to pay for it by marrying a blue-stocking of a widow who is older than I am and has no interest in any of the things which amuse me.’
‘Delay much longer in offering for her,’ his father exclaimed, trying to goad his son into doing as he wished, ‘and the whole world will soon know that we are bankrupt. So far I have been successful in staving off ruin, but my creditors are growing weary of waiting for pay day.
‘As for her lack of interest in your idle life, what has that to do with not wishing to marry her? Get her with an heir or two and you and she may go your own separate ways. No need to wish to play Romeo and Juliet together. After all, I am the heir to my cousin, Viscount Bulcote, and since, unfortunately, he is as poor as a church mouse, too, we have no salvation there. On the other hand, Mrs Wardour might care to be called Lady Bulcote—if Russell Hadleigh hasn’t snapped her up first.’
Russell Hadleigh wasn’t snapping anyone up, least of all Mary Wardour. In fact, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was about. He had told himself to avoid her, that he had nothing more to say to her, nor could she have anything to say to him, and yet, when dinner was over, the mere sight of her had set him mooning after her as though he had been twenty again!
Once they were out of the room and in the vast Entrance Hall, one door of which led to the picture gallery, Mary turned to him and said in the frostiest tones she could summon up. ‘You can really have little wish to spend the next half-hour in my company inspecting paintings about which you must care little. May I suggest that we part—possibly to return to our suites and then, after a decent interval, to the drawing room.’
‘Indeed not,’ was his answer to that. ‘Not only do I have no wish to return to the drawing room, other than in your company, but I do wish to see the General’s paintings. I missed the Grand Tour because of the war, my Oxford education was ended prematurely for a reason of which you are well aware, and, as I grow older, I have become determined to fix my interest on other pursuits than gambling, drinking and attending race meetings and boxing mills. An idle life is beginning to tire me.’
Whatever could he mean by speaking of his education ending prematurely for a reason which she well knew? Had he not ended it himself when he had abandoned her so cruelly?
She was about to tell him that in no uncertain terms when something about him stopped her. The empathy for her which Russell had experienced a little while ago—that memory of their lost happy time together—now overcame her. Whatever else, she knew that he was not lying to her. After all these years he wanted her company. Not only that, his interest in the paintings was genuine, not a trick to enable him to begin deceiving her all over again.
‘Very well, since you put it so movingly, Lord Hadleigh, I will do as you ask. You must, however, remember your request that we meet as strangers and practise a self-denying ordinance, as the saying has it. Refer to the past again—however remotely—and I will leave you at once.’
‘So noted,’ he replied in a comic parody of a clerk registering the commands of his superior, and again it was as though the years had rolled back and he was teasing her as he had done then. ‘Lead on, Mrs Wardour. You may begin my education.’
He had not been lying to her when he had said that he wished to see the contents of the picture gallery, or else he was a superb actor. He showed a keen interest in the paintings, which ranged from a fourteenth-century panel of the Madonna and Child by a pupil of Duccio to the latest works of the English masters. Lawrence had painted the General himself and they debated briefly whether he deserved to stand alongside the great masters of the past.
‘Reynolds, perhaps, or Gainsborough at his best may merit such an honour,’ was Russell’s verdict, ‘but Lawrence is an extremely competent journeyman, no more.’
‘I think that you know more about painting, Lord Hadleigh, than you suggested earlier.’
‘That is my brother Ritchie’s influence,’ he confessed. ‘He is a gifted water-colourist—but then he is a gifted everything, unlike his slightly older brother.’
There was no bitterness in Russell’s words, nor in his voice, but there was something there which told Mary not of envy or of jealousy, but of a certain wistfulness, of something missed and lost.
‘I have not had the good fortune to meet your brother,’ Mary said, surprised at how easy talking to Russell had become. ‘I remember that he went to Oxford a few years before you when I was still little more than a child.
‘Oh, few people have met him. He resigned from the Army after Waterloo in order to restore the estate which had been left him while he was still a serving officer. He spends most of his time in the country and visits London rarely. As for Oxford, he was excessively precocious and was only fifteen when he matriculated. My father also thought it best that we did not attend there at the same time.’
Again there was that odd note when he referred to his brother. A mixture of pride and something else, hard to judge.
By now they had completed their tour. Russell motioned to a long sofa which stood in front of one of the glories of the collection: a Tintoretto showing the god Jupiter in the shape of a bull abducting Io. The sky above them was a miracle of colour.
Once seated, Russell stared at the painting and a thought which was difficult to resist popped into his head. I ought to have behaved like Jupiter all those years ago and carried Mary off before she had time to change her mind about me. Had I done so, we should not now be sitting primly side by side—and like Ritchie I might be starting a little family of my own.
What would happen if I tried to kiss her now—which would be much less than Jupiter did to Io, of course—but it would serve for a new beginning with her. Merely to sit by her has my unrepentant body behaving as though I am twenty again.
No, I must not! I promised to behave myself, and behave myself I will.
Mary, seated beside him, her hands in her lap, and her mind a whirl of conflicting sensations, was also affected by the painting’s subject. She tried to drive both memory and desire from her. In an effort to banish the unwanted feelings which were beginning to overwhelm her, she turned towards Russell in order to say something banal to him which would return her wandering senses to their proper condition of calm self-control.
She began to speak.
Only to discover that Russell was also turning to her and also beginning to speak.
What they were about to say was never to be known.
As many times before in their lost past when they had found themselves similarly afflicted, they began to laugh. Laughter released them from the unnatural state in which they had been living since they had found one another again.
Russell gave a little cry, something between a moan and an exclamation of exaltation, and put one arm around her. With the other he tipped her face towards him and began to kiss her on the lips. Mary responded by kissing him ardently back. The kiss, which had, at first, been a gentle one, began to change its nature and ascend into passion. That, and their sudden unwanted recollection that they were in a public room where they might be discovered by their fellow guests at any moment, ended the kiss abruptly and left them staring into each other’s eyes aghast.
Laughter and passion had alike flown away.
‘Forgive me,’ said Russell hoarsely.
‘I cannot forgive myself, let alone you,’ Mary said breathlessly. ‘Whatever possessed me to make me start kissing you back? No, do not speak of the past,’ she went on, ‘I see by your expression that you are about to.’
Well, that was true enough, particularly since the present had become unbearable. It was a long time since merely the presence of a woman had roused Russell so rapidly. Even with Caroline true passion had been missing—something which explained why their relationship had deteriorated so rapidly.
He thought of Ritchie’s eyes following Pandora around the room: his rapt expression when she had been cuddling their child. He cursed himself. What was the matter with him that Ritchie and his doings seemed to exist as some kind of reproach to his own empty existence?
Mary saw his face change and, before she could stop herself, put a hand on his arm.
‘What is it, Russell? What troubles you?’
‘Nothing,’ he said abruptly. ‘Only that I am selfish to tease you so, and to jump on you just now, without warning. Whatever could you think of me?’
Honesty won, as it usually did with Mary. ‘I thought how much I was enjoying being jumped on. I suppose that means that I wasn’t really thinking of anything at all. Until I remembered our situation.’
Russell began to laugh and his body began to behave itself. He remembered that one of the reasons why he had loved Mary was her transparent honesty—which made her subsequent behaviour so surprising.
‘You did not find me repellent, then?’
Truth won again. ‘No, I never did.’
The smile which she gave him served to set his recovering body on edge once more.
This would never do. Russell rose, put out his right hand, said, ‘Allow me,’ and lifted her. ‘Is it your wish that I escort you to the drawing room?’
Before Mary could answer him, the door to the gallery was opened by Perry Markham, followed by the Hon. Tom Bertram and a giggling Angelica.
Perry made straight for them, saying, his voice lurching like his walk, ‘We have come to see what could be occupying you so. Not the paintings apparently, Hadleigh, since you had your back to them.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Russell, raising the quizzing glass which he rarely used and inspecting Perry through it. ‘I have been admiring your Duccio, a very rare specimen that, and the Tintoretto behind me. That, too, is a nonpareil, or so both my brother and Mrs Wardour assure me. For my part, I prefer something less showy, like the tiny Watteau—a great favourite of yours, I dare swear.’
Perry goggled at him. Dutch O, What HO, and Tint O—whoever he was! What in the world was the fellow spouting about? Perry Markham might be the heir to rooms full of rare paintings, but he knew nothing about any of them.
‘You see how well Mrs Wardour has been instructing me,’ continued Russell sweetly, using all the charm for which he was justly famous. ‘Pray do tell me, which is your favourite painting? I would be delighted to inspect it.’
Perry gazed wildly around the room before pointing at a Fragonard oil of a pretty courtesan and saying, ‘Oh, that, I suppose.’
‘Really,’ teased Russell, swinging around and bringing his glass to bear on it. ‘I can’t read the painter’s name from here. Do tell me who he is.’
Perry continued to goggle helplessly at him. Mary, to save the poor wretch from further embarrassment, said helpfully, ‘It’s by Fragonard and its title is Girl with One Slipper.’
The Hon. Tom, not so fuddled as his host’s son, exclaimed, ‘I like it, but it’s a trifle warm, is it not? Shouldn’t be hung where the ladies can see it.’
‘Really!’ exclaimed a tittering Angelica, who was behaving as though she, too, had spent the evening drinking, ‘Do let me look,’ and she swayed over to the painting, past the amused Russell and inspected it closely.
‘It looks quite ordinary,’ she announced disappointedly.
Mary, whose attempt to spare Perry from Russell’s naughtiness had backfired badly, and who was determined to reprimand him in private for roasting the poor ignoramus so mercilessly, announced, ‘Oh, dear, Lord Hadleigh, I am most dreadfully thirsty. I should imagine that by now lemonade and other light refreshments will be being served.’
‘Quite so,’ agreed the Hon. Tom. ‘We came here to get away from them.’
Russell, bent towards her and put out a gallant arm. ‘Allow me, Mrs Wardour. I, too, feel in need of light refreshments. I have no wish to be overset by the heavy.’
‘Stop it,’ Mary hissed furiously into his ear when she took his arm. ‘I am having difficulty in keeping a straight face while you engage in your nonsense—and he is our host’s son.’
‘Delighted to oblige you,’ Russell almost carolled, so pleased was he that Mary was at last treating him as a fellow human being and not an obstruction in her path. ‘You must continue to instruct me in proper conduct during the remainder of my stay here, most improving, exactly what I need.’
‘Did he really mean that?’ asked a baffled Angelica when Russell and Mary had disappeared through the door. She was the only one who had heard Russell’s reply to Mary. Fortunately, she had not heard Mary’s remark which had provoked it.
‘Mean what?’ asked Perry, who was now fuddled in a double sense. Firstly through the amount he had drunk and secondly through Russell’s nonsense about painting and artists.
‘About Mrs Wardour instructing him.’
Perry shook his head—and then wished he hadn’t. He thought that it might be about to fall off. The Hon. Tom, who was uneducated, but not a fool, said slowly, ‘He didn’t mean any of it. He was roasting us.’
‘Was he, by God!’ exclaimed Perry making a staggering run for the door. ‘I’ll teach him what’s what and no mistake.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said the Hon. Tom. ‘In the condition you’re in he’d make mincemeat of you. They say he’s as good with the gloves, the foils and the pistols as that brother of his. Besides, you’d only be proclaiming that he’d riled you. Refuse him the satisfaction. What’s more, your pa wouldn’t like it.’
‘Pa never likes anything Perry does,’ offered Angelica helpfully.
‘There!’ said the Hon. Tom. ‘Leave it. You’ll have forgotten everything by morning, I dare swear.’
‘He always has done before,’ was Angelica’s brutal finale to the whole unhappy encounter. Did they really want her to marry someone who spent his time admiring paintings?
Which, if Mary and Russell had heard her, would have had them agreeing that it was the most sensible thing anyone by the name of Markham had said, or thought, all night!
‘That was really exceedingly naughty of you,’ Mary told Russell reprovingly, once they were safely out of the picture gallery. ‘You must have gathered by now what a nodcock Perry Markham is, but there was no need to have made a fool of him quite so mercilessly.’
‘No?’ replied Russell, haughty eyebrows raised. ‘He began the whole wretched business by jeering at me and mocking me, most mercilessly, after dinner for not wishing to see that poor wretch hanged tomorrow. I was only giving him a taste of his own medicine—and before two others, not before the entire assembled men of the company. I consider that he got off lightly—but I promise not to do it again if it distressed you.’
‘And you really are not going to watch the hanging tomorrow?’
‘By no means. I take no pleasure in behaving like the ancient Romans in the Colosseum who cheerfully watched gladiators slaughter one another, even if I do admire their architecture and their writings. By the by, I hope that none of the ladies will be in the party, although I suspect that quite a number of women will be present.’
Mary shuddered. ‘It is bad enough speaking about it without being there. Will all the men be going?’
‘Most, I suspect. But let us speak of more pleasant things before we rejoin the others.’
‘Indeed. There is one question which I should dearly like to ask you, and that is, did you ever meet Lord Byron before he started out on his travels again?’
‘Several times. I heard him make his speech in the Lords on behalf of the hand-loom weavers who were losing their livelihood because of the new machines. I thought it very fine. I also think it is a great pity that he never bent his energies more towards politics than pleasure. After all, he is his own man, unlike others who have their choices made for them. I agree that he writes some immortal poetry, but his private life of unbridled pleasure does not bear inspection. I gather that now he is in Europe he still mixes writing divine poetry with living a sybaritic life.’
How easy, Mary mused later, while retiring for the night, it had been for them to fall back into the half-serious, half-jesting mode of conversation which they had enjoyed before their affair had come to its sorry end. There was no doubt that their minds worked in harmony. Earlier that evening Miss Truman had commented that Lord Hadleigh had the reputation of being a lightweight in life and love.
After talking with him again, Mary thought that she was wrong. She was, however, gaining the impression that something was awry in Russell Hadleigh’s life, and that he envied his younger twin, Ritchie, not only for his happy marriage but for having a settled aim and career. He must also have watched Ritchie achieve a certain amount of justly earned fame for his exploits as a soldier, leaving the Army with the rank of colonel and a reputation for courage and enterprise.
She shook her head. Why should she waste her time thinking about the problems of her one-time lover, however much, if truth were told, he still attracted her?
But the past was the past and must remain dead. A thought which she took to bed with her after reading a little of one of Mr ‘Monk’ Lewis’s lurid romances, a Tale of Terror called Feudal Tyrants. Mary had a passion for such novels, which had shocked her husband whose taste in literature was fixed on the arid and the philosophical. He considered it to be her one weakness.
Whether it was Mr Lewis’s vivid descriptions of past times which excited her brain, or whether it was meeting Russell Hadleigh again that did the damage Mary could not decide on the following morning. Whichever it was, during the night—was it in a dream?—she found herself walking in the gardens of her father’s home in Oxford. She was seventeen again and beside her was a handsome young man who had arrived that morning to be her father’s pupil.
Dr Beauregard was not one of Oxford’s official dons, but he was a mathematician with a European-wide reputation and it was a habit of some of the professors to send their brighter pupils to him for further training.
‘I am expecting a new young man this morning, Mary,’ her father had earlier told her, ‘so I am afraid that you must forgo your work with me today. Wilkinson thinks that he has a very good mind and would profit from spending some time in my company. What is surprising about him is that he is a young nobleman—it is not often that they display such rarefied talents, although one must not forget Henry Cavendish, of course.’
He was, Mary knew, referring to Henry Cavendish, the grandson of the second Duke of Devonshire, who had made some remarkable discoveries in chemistry.
‘No, Father,’ she replied, teasing him gently. ‘No, I promise not to forget Henry Cavendish.’
He fixed her with a stern eye. ‘See that you do not, my dear. Knowledge must always be treasured and never lost. The young man to whom I have referred is the heir of the Earl of Bretford. His name is Russell, Lord Hadleigh, so you must address him as m’lord. He has a courtesy Viscountcy, I understand. I think, that after I have assessed him today, it is likely that you may both profit from taking your lessons together with me. We shall see.’
Lord Hadleigh! What a delightful name. It was like those in the Tales of Terror which her father grudgingly allowed her to read. ‘All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl,’ he had said once.
Well, she wouldn’t be a dull girl with Lord Hadleigh as a fellow pupil—although whether she would enjoy taking her lessons with him was quite another thing! She had learned—to her distress—that if she ever told anyone, male or female, of any age, that her papa was teaching her advanced mathematics and that delightful piece of arcane mystery, calculus, they were sure to look at her as though she had sprouted two heads.
Aunt Charlotte Beauregard had once told her never, ever, to let any young man know how clever she was, for that was sure to end any chance of marriage for her. Years later, Mary learned that an extremely clever mathematician and geometer named Annabelle Milbanke had succeeded in marrying Lord Byron despite that; but since the marriage had proved to be an absolute disaster, perhaps Aunt Charlotte had been right.
At the time of Lord Hadleigh’s arrival, however, such warnings troubled Mary not at all. When their maid, Polly, arrived in her room to tell her that her papa wanted to see her in his study downstairs, Mary had run down eagerly, knocked on the study door and found her papa seated behind his desk. A tall young man was standing facing him.
He turned and bowed when Mary entered. She was immediately struck dumb at the sight of him. He was so extraordinarily handsome: a cross between the statues of the young Hercules and the God Apollo who stood in the entrance hall of the Beauregards’ home.
But Russell, Lord Hadleigh, possessed one great advantage over them: he was warm flesh and blood, not cold stone. He had fair waving hair—he had removed his mortar-board with its nobleman’s gold tassel when she had entered—and bright blue eyes above his classically handsome face.
Her father was saying something: introducing him, no doubt. Mary curtsied in a kind of daze. She thought that he was informing m’lord that he and she were to study together with him and, if so, how would she ever be able to say anything sensible before such masculine perfection?
It was almost as though he knew how overthrown she was, for he was saying in a voice as beautiful as he was, ‘I am delighted to meet your daughter, Dr Beauregard. It is rare to find such intellect as she must possess and such beauty combined in one person,’ and he bowed to her at the end of his speech.
‘No doubt,’ said her father drily, ‘but, if you are to study together, looks must give place to diligence and, dare I say it, inspiration. Mathematics needs that as much as poetry or painting.’
Lord Hadleigh nodded solemnly. ‘Indeed, sir, and it shall be a pleasure to try to discover it from your teaching.’
That was the beginning. Lord Hadleigh was to arrive on the following morning for an hour’s teaching for as many weeks as her father cared to instruct him. He was not so advanced as Mary was, but it was amazing, she thought, how quickly he caught her up. He did not pass her. They cantered together along the paths which earlier mathematicians had laid down for them. Isaac Newton was Dr Beauregard’s God. Once he had hoped to surpass him. Now he devoted his life to trying to find someone who might overtop even Newton.
The morning of Mary’s walk with Lord Hadleigh he had rubbed his eyes halfway through the lesson and exclaimed, ‘At the rate we are progressing I fear that the pupils may yet outclass the master. Perhaps that is not surprising: after all, Newton was a very young man when he had his most original ideas. Mary, my love, I grow tired. Take Lord Hadleigh on a tour of the gardens; by the time you return I shall doubtless be refreshed.’
When she recalled this detail of her dream Mary grasped, for the first time, that her father was beginning to succumb to the illness which was, in due course, to carry him away from her forever. In her dream, though, which was not really a dream but time recalled, she thought nothing of this, only that she would be alone with her new friend.
He was, however, already more than a friend. They had sometimes been playfully naughty in their supposedly serious discussions with her father. At first he had reprimanded them; later he had encouraged them, for in it he could see forming the inspiration which had left him, but which he hoped he was passing on to them. So, on that late spring morning, walking in the garden, something more than scholastic inspiration was beginning to pass between the pretty seventeen-year-old girl and the handsome twenty-year-old boy.
They walked down a pleached alley to a herb garden, where later all the scents of summer would fill the air, but which, like the pair of them at present, only offered hints of a beautiful maturity.
Lord Hadleigh duly admired everything, although an older Mary ruefully knew that her father’s garden was but a miniature of those gardens he must have known which surrounded his father’s great country houses.
They looked into one another’s eyes. Russell, for so she was coming to think of him, was not innocent. He had already learned the delights which came from pleasuring women—and being pleasured by them. But Mary was, and knowing that he went slowly with her. Not only had he no wish to seduce his tutor’s daughter, but he was beginning to care for her for her own sake. Such charming innocence, allied to such remarkable learning, was not to be besmirched. Both were to be respected.
So he sat by her on a rustic bench and they talked together of small things. She asked him what it was like to belong to a family since she was an only child whose mother had died young.
‘A large family?’ he replied, and there was a note in his voice similar to that which sounded when the older and more disillusioned Russell Hadleigh spoke of his brother and of his sister, long married to a Scots laird and long lost to him. ‘My father is not what is known as a family man, you understand. Ritchie and I were friends when we were boys, but he saw fit to part us when we grew older. Twins should not be over-dependent on one another, he said, but must learn to live alone in the world.’
‘I would wish to have had a sister, or a brother,’ she told him. ‘Someone to whom I could talk freely.’ She gave him a shy glance. ‘As freely as I find that I can talk to you.’
Something happened to Russell then, she was sure. For his face grew shuttered and what he then said surprised her at the time, although later she understood, or thought that she understood his unspoken meaning. ‘I do not wish to be your brother.’
This declaration, she remembered, saddened her a little at the time, but she continued to talk to him. He had a dog at home, he told her, one Rufus, which had grown old and which he had left behind when he came to Oxford.
‘Father will not allow me to have a dog or a cat,’ she said sadly. ‘He does not approve of pets. He calls it light-minded to wish for one.’
‘And you do wish for one?’
‘Yes, very much.’ She wanted to add, I should not feel so lonely, but thought that it might be weak-minded of her to confess such a thing.
‘If I were your papa,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘I would allow you to have any kind of pet you wanted. A bird, perhaps. Ritchie had a parrot until it died of old age. Being Ritchie, he taught it to speak a little.’
‘How kind you are,’ she told him, before looking at the little watch which hung from her waist. ‘I think that it is time that we returned. Papa considers punctuality to be one of the great virtues. He says that most females do not treasure it.’
‘Nor most males, either,’ returned Russell, which set her laughing and saying,
‘You see, that is what a kind brother would say.’
Mary did not remember exactly what had happened on that long-ago spring afternoon, only that it was the start of something which in the end became more than friendship, more than the love of brother and sister, but which ultimately became more powerful and dangerous than either.
Now, older and wiser, she contemplated the day ahead. The women of the party, deserted by their men, had arranged to visit a neighbour who had recently improved his gardens. Rumour claimed that they were magnificent, including not only a cataract tumbling down an artificial hill, but also not one, but three, follies.
I’m not really in the mood for follies, Mary thought. Instead I’ll cry off and spend a quiet day in the library with my chess set for company. I grow tired of female small talk. Once there she could hide away from everything, including a past whose happiness had not yet been touched by pain.
Chapter Three
Russell Hadleigh yawned and put down his book. The morning was not yet half-gone. He had arrived down to a late breakfast to find that, for once, the other men in the house party had forestalled him. They were all agog and all eager to be off to the hanging. Thinking of it certainly wasn’t putting them off their fodder, the Honourable Thomas told Russell a trifle gloomily.
‘Put you off yours, has it?’ asked Russell, contemplating the Honourable Thomas’s half-empty plate.
‘Doesn’t do to say so,’ was the rueful reply. ‘A fellow’s supposed to look forward to such things. I’d cry off if I could, but they’d all jeer at me for being lily-livered.’
‘Well, by that I am lily-livered,’ said Russell. ‘For, as you know, I’ve no intention of joining the party.’
‘Well, you’re Hadleigh, Bretford’s heir, and even if Perry does come on a bit strong with you, you’re grand enough to do as you please. I’m only a wretched younger son, tolerated because I’m one of the crowd who makes up the numbers. Doesn’t do to offend—though I suppose I might kick over the traces one day.’
Enter assorted gentlemen, thought Russell, remembering the instructions in various stage plays: courtiers and hangers-on of the great, the rich and the powerful. He shivered a little. I suppose that I have them, too—or would if I liked the notion of a crowd of sycophants walking around me all day. He disliked the thought: it was yet another thing which Ritchie didn’t have to trouble about since he was a younger son who did have money—but not enough to attract the parasites.
‘So there it is,’ moaned the Hon. Tom dolefully, adding another slice of ham to his plate. ‘What will you do while we are junketing?’
‘Read a little, walk a little, ride a little: admire the scenery.’
‘Leicestershire doesn’t have scenery,’ said the Hon. Tom. ‘It only has countryside. Countryside ain’t scenery.’
With this last remark he wandered off towards where Perry was holding court: something which he would not be able to do if his father were to be gazetted bankrupt.
Really, Russell thought gloomily, all that he was doing at Markham Hall was practising idleness in different surroundings from those he was used to.
His valet fetched him nuncheon some time after noon, and he ate it in his room, looking out over the park and towards some low hills in the distance.
I am becoming solitary. I think I’ll go and be solitary in the library.
Yes, the library was solitary. Not a soul was in it. It was a typical gentleman’s collection, he saw, his eyes roving along the shelves and his hands thrust in his pockets. He was bored with himself and, to that degree, was bored with life—until he reached the table in the window.
On it stood a small and exquisite chessboard, whose finely wrought miniature men were set out as though in the middle of a game. On one side of it was a pile of unused paper, on the other, another, smaller pile on which had been written lines of what appeared to be mathematical symbols.
Intrigued, Russell picked them up and studied them. It soon became plain to him, although it would not have done to many, that the symbols were the complete record of the game on the board until it had been abandoned for the time being.
The piece that was being studied on the last page was the white knight, and the calculations on the paper showed all the different consequences of moving it from its present position on the board—and the consequences for all the other pieces if each possible move it could make was analysed!
Russell could not prevent himself from picking up a clean sheet of paper and the pencil which had been left on the table and begin to list the further changes which followed on from those on the last sheet of paper. He was so absorbed in this task that he did not hear the door open and someone enter.
A cool voice said in his ear, ‘Pray, what are you doing with my work, m’lord?’
Russell started up. It was Mary standing beside him, Mary who had left the chessboard in the library, secure in the knowledge that no one would visit it, or, if they did, would stare goggle-eyed and uncomprehendingly at both the board and her papers.
‘Nothing,’ he said, his mind still on the ramifications of the latest move. ‘I am merely doing my own work—and not interfering with yours.’
She gave a little laugh which was neither kind, nor unkind, but neutral. ‘Then you haven’t forgotten our numbers since we worked together with my father.’
‘Indeed not, Mary, although I own I am a little rusty—but the rust is fast disappearing as I begin to work with them again. And pray call me Russell as you used to when we last played with numbers.’
‘I was not playing with numbers today, m’lord, I was working with them.’
Mary’s stress on the word m’lord was slow and deliberate. This troubled Russell not at all. Since he had sat down in front of the chess board something had happened to him, something which he had not felt for years. He felt not only liberated, but full of a sense of power, of achievement. The ennui which had marred his recent life had disappeared. He felt himself equal to anything.
‘Nor am I playing with numbers today, Mary. I am fascinated by what you have been doing, which is, I suppose, trying to work out a logical means of countering every move your opponent makes in a real game. That, if you could succeed, would be an achievement worthy of Newton or Pascal themselves. I have, in my own small way, been trying to see if I could join you in your exercise.’
His face was so eager, so alight with interest that for a moment time disappeared and they were boy and girl in her father’s study again. Time re-ordered itself, but the effect of that brief spasm was to set Mary answering him as she would have done then.
‘Perhaps you would allow me to examine your work, Russell?’
Russell! He had seen the slight quiver that had passed across her face before she answered him—and then she had called him Russell! He had said, or done, something which had unwittingly restored some of the rapport which they had once shared.
‘Willingly,’ he said, and handed her the sheets of paper which he had filled with his calculations.
Mary sat down beside him and began to inspect them. Presently she laid the papers carefully down on the table and looked at him for a long moment before saying slowly, ‘How long did it take you to do that, Russell—I mean, m’lord? I have only been absent a short time—’ She stopped and shook her head.
Russell was suddenly overwhelmed by a great sense of anticlimax. He took Mary’s shaking head to mean that she was disappointed by what he had done. The feeling was the more acute because he thought that what he had written down was worthwhile, the logical conclusion of her own calculations.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly, ‘if what I have just done was all a nonsense. It is a long time since I did any serious work with numbers…’ Mary, her eyes shining, had put her hand on his arm to stop him from explaining himself.
‘Not at all,’ she exclaimed. ‘If you haven’t done anything like this lately then what you have accomplished here is remarkable. I could not have done all this in twice the time. It is an area where you always surpassed me in the past. I was better at looking at the principles involved, you were more accomplished with the detail. That is why Father said that we made such a good team: our strengths differed.’
She was speaking with all the eagerness of the girl who had sat by him in her father’s study. It was as though for Russell, too, that time had returned. He leaned forward, sharing her eagerness, saying, ‘You really mean that, Mary? You are not deceiving me to keep me in countenance?’
‘Not at all. Oh, if we could only work together again…what could we not do.’ Now it was her turn to stop briefly, before saying, ‘Forgive me. I am talking nonsense. You have a life of your own and we parted for good long ago.’
He wanted to say, I have no life which holds any meaning. Instead, without thinking, he took the hand which she had used to check him earlier and kissed it.
‘Tell me the ultimate of what you are trying to do, Mary, and perhaps, while we are at Markham Hall, we might find time to work together again.’ She made no attempt to resist him, but the light which had filled her face and make her look almost a child again was gradually fading.
Mary said sorrowfully, ‘You know full well, m’lord, why we may not do that. Any opportunity we once had to work together disappeared long ago.’
‘That was then, Mary, this is now.’
Russell’s ardour was all the greater because the strange combination of mathematics, the presence of Mary, and the notion that they could be together again, was having a profoundly erotic effect on him. He knew that most men and women would be amused by the notion that anything so dry, so abstract, as the higher mathematics could rouse a man as he was now roused!
Later he was to tell himself that power, and the sense of power, is an aphrodisiac, and if excelling at playing games with numbers made him feel powerful, then it was neither strange nor unnatural, but only to be expected, that he should become roused. When, added to all that, the woman who was with him was, in her quiet way, as beautiful as she was clever, it was no wonder that his breathing had begun to shorten dramatically.
He was a boy again and the world was opening up before him as it had done then.
‘You have just said that you were favourably impressed by what I have already done—how much more, then, could we not do if we worked together? Before we do, however, I think that we ought to play one another at chess. I have to confess that it is many years since I last engaged in a game.’
The sad truth was that after Mary had left him the mere sight of a chess board had been enough to distress him. They had played so many happy games together, encouraged by her father who thought that the brain was excited by it: that it acted as a form of inspiration.
What to say? He looked so eager, so pathetically eager, and if the truth were told she was remembering that the game which had once been such a source of pleasure to her had become just another chore, an intellectual puzzle to be solved. To sit opposite to him again would be like revisiting her lost girlhood. On the other hand, if she allowed him to tempt her into giving way on this, was she simply paving the way for yet another piece of treachery on his part?
Why she agreed to play against him Mary never knew.
‘Very well, but it will only be one game, I am not promising anything more than that.’
It was a surrender, though, and they both knew that it was.
‘Allow me to record the state of the current game first,’ she said and, taking his answer for granted, rapidly wrote it down before rearranging the pieces.
‘You may have white,’ he said, once the pieces were rearranged.
‘Indeed, not,’ said Mary haughtily. ‘I want no favours from you.’
Russell laughed. ‘How that takes me back. I remember that you never did. Shall we let chance settle the matter?’ He took a coin from his pocket and saying ‘Heads or tails? I say heads,’ he prepared to toss it up.
‘No,’ said Mary, laughing across at him as she had done so long ago. ‘Allow me to inspect the coin first. I seem to remember that you had two and one of them possessed two heads and the other two tails. You played that trick on me once, but never again.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ Russell grinned back at her and threw the coin to her. ‘It is a good one and you may do the tossing. Am I right to trust you?’
Oh, yes, it was just like the old days when laughter and banter had filled their time together after the hard work of study was over.
Mary said reprovingly, ‘You know that I never cheated you. There,’ and she tossed the coin up, caught it on the palm of one hand and covered it with the palm of her other.
The smile she gave him when she exclaimed, ‘Now, Lord Hadleigh, which is it? Heads or tails?’ nearly destroyed him.
‘Tails,’ he finally achieved.
‘Tails it is,’ she announced, lifting her hand. ‘Why is it that you always win, even when you are not cheating me?’
He could not prevent himself from saying, now suddenly sober, ‘Now Mary, you know as well as I do, that I did not always win.’
Either she did not take his meaning—that she had ended their affair and married another—or she preferred not to. She swung the board around to give him the white pieces and said quite simply, ‘Let the battle begin.’
That, too, was said in memory of the old days and with the same calm amusement which she had used then. It was for her beautiful quiet that he had always loved her. He had been a noisy boy—unlike Ritchie—and he was fascinated by her calm self-control and wished that he possessed it.
Time and the passing years had sobered him, and he was not sure that it had been for the better. Meeting Mary again, though, had revived some of his old exuberance, his zest for life, the sense that anything was possible for him if only he put his mind to it.
‘Prepare to be dealt with as the Romans dealt with Hannibal,’ he announced grandly, ‘particularly as you have no elephants.’
‘But I have knights instead,’ and she moved the Black one—to which Russell countered with his White—and battle was fairly joined.
The afternoon flew by. Early on someone—who?—looked in on them and retreated at the sight of their rapt faces, at the fair head and the dark bent over the board.
Once Russell raised his head to stare into Mary’s eyes. ‘You are bamming me,’ he said accusingly as she moved a minor pawn. ‘What the devil—if I may be so frank—did you do that for?’
‘Since you read my notes you should know exactly why—and the devil had little to do with it.’
Oh, but he had, thought Russell a few moves later. He desperately wanted to win this game. To prove what? That he might have lost to her years ago, but he could not lose now—although it seemed likely that he was just about to do exactly that.
And then he saw a way out of his dilemma when he was on the point of being mated. Mated! There was a double meaning there, was there not? Mate in chess meant death—but in life it meant the possibility of birth. Which one was this? And if he were not to win, for he could not, might he not force a draw and in the doing hold both death and life in balance: the perfect equilibrium! He moved his White knight for the last time.
‘Stalemate!’ he announced triumphantly.
And so it was.
Neither of them had won—or lost.
The perfect ending.
Mary did not think so. ‘That was not supposed to happen,’ she exclaimed, indignant for once. ‘I must have made an error in my calculations.’
‘Ah,’ said Russell, laughter on his face. ‘But then you were playing yourself, not me. I think the ending is perfect, for neither of us have lost face.’
‘Or both of us have,’ countered Mary, beginning to smile herself. ‘I wonder what Father would have said.’
‘That we are well matched, but then, we always were.’
Mary’s smile disappeared. ‘I think that we ought to stop now,’ she said. ‘The others will be returning at any moment.’
‘But you will give me a game again tomorrow, will you not? And allow me to assist you with your calculations?’
His face when he said this was as earnest and serious as he could make it. To be with her again was all and more than he might have expected. It was not simply that she stirred him as no other woman had, but their meeting of minds was something that he had never experienced with anyone other than Ritchie when they had been boys together.
She could not refuse him. Forgetting everything which had earlier passed between them, she remembered only the exhilaration of the last two hours—and gave him the reply which he so dearly wanted.
‘If you promise to behave yourself and not pester me about the past, then yes, we may do as you wish, only providing that you are reasonably discreet.’
‘Bravo!’ was his response to that. ‘As we have already noted, the men of the party are preparing to journey to the boxing mill so we might as well agree to meet here at two of the clock. I see that there is a chess set and board on one of the cupboards which looks as though no one has used it for years. I propose to take it to my room and engage in a little useful practice. You will not find me such an easy mark tomorrow, I hope.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ returned Mary saucily. ‘For the present then, adieu. I shall expect you here on the hour tomorrow,’ and she left him to pick up the spare chessmen and the board, wondering what kind of a fool she was to put him in a position where he could let her down all over again.
Eliza Truman was waiting for her in their suite. She said nothing at first, but after Mary had rung for the tea-board to be brought up to them, she remarked, her voice as neutral as she could make it, ‘By chance I visited the library and saw you there with Lord Hadleigh, playing chess. It is not for me to advise you—you are, after all a widow, no longer in the first stare of your youth—but are you wise to allow him to cultivate you? His reputation is that of a man who has no wish to settle down.’
‘In that,’ returned Mary, ‘he is like many others.’
‘Indeed, but those others are not pursuing you.’
Mary sat down and stared at her companion. ‘What makes you believe that he is pursuing me?’
‘The way he looks for you—and after you. And you are surely not pursuing him.’
Mary’s answer was not as totally honest a one as those she usually made. ‘I am not sure what his motives are for seeking me out. Other than that in our long-ago acquaintanceship we frequently played chess together and, since he was at a loose end, as I was, we agreed to play a game. That is all.’
But enough, perhaps, was a comment which Miss Truman was wise enough not to make. Instead she asked, a little pointedly, perhaps, ‘May I enquire who won this suddenly decided-upon match?’
‘No one. It was a draw. Ah, splendid, here comes the tea-board, now we may refresh ourselves,’ which, Mary thought, was as good a way as any other to put an end to that line of conversation.
Before dinner, Perry Markham, in high spirits after the hanging, was entertaining a few of his cronies in his room. It was quite a merry affair since port and wine were circulating freely. ‘Can’t wait until after dinner to down a few glasses, can we?’ being part of Perry’s cheerful invitation to his small court. ‘Hanging’s thirsty work. Astonishing how many of the plebs were drunk before it began, wasn’t it? It’s a wonder they were wide awake enough to enjoy themselves when the fun started.’
The Hon. Tom, who had been quietly sick in the middle of the so-called fun, had blamed his own malaise at the hanging on too much ale in order to keep up his reputation for being part of Perry’s hard-living set. In consequence he had felt compelled to refuse to drink in the evening. He sat in a large armchair looking woebegone.
‘Not too set down to miss picking a few pockets, though,’ he said mournfully. ‘I lost my purse and my handkerchief.’
‘Oh, come on, Tom, do cheer up,’ roared Perry. ‘I’ve a fine piece of news, hot from my man Dawson, to pass on to you all. It seems that m’lord of Hadleigh, who was too fine and delicate-minded a gentleman to come to Loughborough with us, spent the afternoon with Mrs Wardour playing chess—in the library of all places. Didn’t know anyone used it these days.’
This, as he intended, drew a great deal of appreciative and already tipsy laughter.
‘Thought she was invited here for you, not him,’ said one would-be know-all, ‘and that Angelica was his target. Not like you, Perry, to let another put his oar in before you.’
‘Game’s not over yet,’ spluttered Perry, ‘and it’s not chess I’m talking about. As for Angelica, she’s more interested in Tom, isn’t she? But there’s no hope for you there, old chap—the General wants a richer prize than your good self, more’s the pity. I’d prefer you as a brother-in-law rather than that high-minded ass, Hadleigh, who looks down his nose at me every time we meet.’
The ringing of the first bell for dinner, informing the guests that they were to meet in the drawing room, ended this Parliament of Fools. There was a rush for the door as a result of which the Hon. Tom was last out, still nursing his grievances against life and hoping that the sight and sound of Angelica would cheer him up.
He was lucky. Angelica was standing before the hearth, admiring herself in the huge mirror which stood above it, while ostensibly chit-chatting with Mary. She saw the Honourable Thomas reflected in it when he came through the door. Ignoring all the conventions relating to politeness and good manners, she broke off her conversation with Mary in mid-sentence, turned and almost ran to him.
‘So there you are, at last. I thought that the hanging was over before noon. We all expected your party back in the mid-afternoon, but no such thing. It has been a most boring day. I have seen enough gardens and follies to last me for the rest of my life!’
‘Come to that, my dear girl, I never want to witness another hanging, but we won’t tell your brother so, will we?’
‘Mrs Wardour must have had a dull day, too. Or at least a dull afternoon. I gather, that of all things, she spent it playing chess against Lord Hadleigh.’
The Hon. Tom was left to reflect how rapidly gossip ran round a country house. He wondered uneasily whether his pursuit of Angelica had been watched closely enough for the news to reach her father. It wouldn’t do for him to open a real campaign for her hand until Lord Hadleigh had left without making an offer for it.
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