A Sister's Secret (25 page)

‘Oh, how boring,’ she said.

‘The thought of going to bed bores you?’ said Captain Burnside.

‘Oh, did I say that?’ she asked in confusion.

‘You did, marm, but I still think we should retire.’

‘Yes,’ she said a little reluctantly. ‘It is very late. And we shall be late again tomorrow night, for it’s Lady Chesterfield’s ball.’ She looked up at the captain as he
came to his feet. ‘You will see Cumberland again.’

‘So I believe. Well, I know my role, marm. I’m to pay the closest attention to Annabelle, and not to allow her to disappear with the duke. I shall wear my uniform, and in it will make further progress in my task of sweeping her off her feet.’

Caroline said coldly, ‘It will be self-satisfying to have her fall in love with you?’

‘The situation being what it is, it’ll be a certain way of—’

‘Wait.’ She rose in some agitation. ‘Your uniform. It is the uniform of what regiment?’

‘The Ninth Dragoons, marm.’

Caroline rushed into an upbraiding of him. ‘Oh, you creature, you wretch, only minutes ago you led me to believe, to infer, it was otherwise! What are you, sir, if not the most infuriating wretch?’

Captain Burnside bowed deferentially. ‘I am, marm, your respectfully loving servant.’

And Caroline wanted to beat him, pummel him – and to laugh.

Cumberland, on arrival at the Humphreys’ house, had alighted with them, and his coachman had taken the carriage back to the mews.

‘Ye’ll give me a bed for the night, Robert?’ he said, as they entered the house near the Strand.

‘Why, of course, Your Highness,’ said Robert.

‘A warm bed?’ murmured Cumberland, and Robert cleared his throat and Cecilia grew dusky, for they both knew what that meant.

‘As always, Your Highness, it’s a pleasure to accommodate you,’ said Robert. ‘The settlement, sir, I must find the amount.’

‘Seventy, I fancy, but ye may defer it until ye are more
prosperously funded,’ said Cumberland, but his glimmering smile was for Cecilia, not Robert.

‘That’s damned generous of you, sir,’ said Robert.

‘I cannot but feel that in return I must go up to warm the bed for you at once, Your Highness,’ said Cecilia.

There was warmth indeed when Cumberland slipped into the bed later – the warmth of her fulsome body in her silk night shift. And he brought the warmth of his own body, masculine and rugged. His manipulative hands divested her of her shift, though in no rough way.

‘Cumberland, oh, gentle you may be,’ she breathed, ‘but so disconcerting.’

She turned on to her side and he drew her naked body into his arms. Cecilia smothered her moans in his shoulder.

‘By God, ye’ve a handsome shape,’ he murmured, ‘that ye have, and a beautiful belly.’

‘Will you have me swoon?’ she gasped faintly.

‘I’ll have ye attend on me for the moment, my beauty. Ye’ve known Caroline since she first met Clarence. Did ye also know that fellow Burnside?’

Cecilia, heated, breathed, ‘Cumberland, I am expected to gossip with you?’

‘For the moment.’

‘Then no, I never knew Captain Burnside.’

‘But ye’ve been a close relation and a close friend to Caroline, ain’t ye?’

‘She’s a sweet woman and deserved better than Clarence gave her.’

‘But ye never met Burnside until now?’

‘No, but then I cannot claim to know her every friend and acquaintance. Cumberland, I beg you, if this conversation is to continue, hold me not so close, for I’m without a stitch and cannot endure my own nakedness.’

‘It’s warmly endurable to me,’ murmured Cumberland, allowing her ardent breasts to cushion his chest. ‘Now, since I’ve a personal interest, oblige me, sweet woman, by finding out precisely how and when Caroline first met Burnside. She’ll confide in ye, though she’ll ride her high horse at questions from others.’

‘Cumberland – oh, heaven keep me from abandonment – are you jealous of the captain? You see him as a rival concerning the favours of Caroline? But she will not offer or yield favours; she has an American puritanism, and Clarence was an offence to her.’

‘I’m not here to have ye question me, but to have ye pleasure me and oblige me. Ye’ll pleasure me as ye always do, generously, and oblige me by finding out how and when Caroline first met Burnside, and why she’s hosting him in her house. Ye’ll enquire as a woman can, innocently and innocuously?’

‘How can I not when you are so good to Robert?’

‘Ah, my obliging friend Robert.’ Cumberland’s murmurous voice was ironic. ‘A position in the Quartermaster’s commissariat in a month or so? Entailing little more than approving and signing indents and contracts, though the commission to be won is entirely unofficial and to be discreetly and quietly negotiated with the contractors. But there, y’see, his gift of cheerful good-fellowship should ensure he’s consistently in profit.’

‘Cumberland, I vow myself overwhelmed,’ breathed Cecilia, ‘and cannot deny you rapturous pleasure. And for the sake of my own needs, that you quicken so shamelessly in me, take your pleasure now, I beg.’

His muscular body was wholly the master of her fulsomeness, her groans stifled by his lips. The sheets whispered and rustled, and entwined bodies plunged, her belly fast to his loins.

The ballroom, illuminated by a profusion of candlelight from an array of hanging chandeliers, swam with moving colour. Gentlemen richly dressed and officers in uniform complemented ladies dazzlingly gowned. The most renowned beauties of London’s aristocracy shimmered and glided, and powdered bosoms floated past each other in the dance. They dipped and swayed, rose and fell.

Annabelle, gloriously arrayed in ultramarine blue, a perfect foil for her pale honey complexion and shining fair hair, was sitting out this dance and still fanning herself to relieve the warmth of the previous one. If the French had perfected the artistry of dancing, the English had given it an exhilarating liveliness. The exchange of kisses in some dances, such as the gavotte, had come to an end in the stiff formality of the French court. Not so at the English court. And the cotillion, the gayest of dances, was at its liveliest in a London where society took its inspiration from the irrepressible behaviour of the Prince of Wales.

Captain Burnside, in the uniform of the 9th Dragoons, his scarlet jacket tailored to precision, stood beside Annabelle’s chair.

‘Oh, I declare myself in heaven,’ said Annabelle, pearly fan whisking. ‘Such delicious fun, Charles, such sweet excitement, and see, there is the Duke of Cumberland deigning at last to participate, and with who else but his hostess, Lady Chesterfield. Oh, for sure, Lord Chesterfield will spend the whole time surveying the behaviour of the duke.’

‘Or enquiring into the whereabouts of Lady Chesterfield,’ smiled the captain.

‘And you are being surveyed,’ said Annabelle, ‘for you surely are cutting a superb dash. You are catching the eye of every lady here.’ She felt she had the sweet advantage of all of them, however, because Charles was her own official escort for the evening, and no other man had the air he had. ‘Even Caroline, who has become so cool and grand, sighed to see you looking so gallant and dashing.’

‘I didn’t remark it,’ said the captain, watching the quadrille, commonly reputed to have been brought to England in its simplest form by William the Conqueror. Now it had many of the intricate graces of the minuet. Caroline, partnered by Mr Wingrove, handsome in a dark blue coat and high-chinned in a lofty, starched cravat, was smiling and animated. Mr Wingrove moved with gallant assurance, his hand in hers, leading and guiding. Caroline, gliding, had chosen to adorn herself in pure, silken white, as if she had cast aside her widow’s untrue mourning for ever. She had worn black, in any case, only for the funeral, and none had reproached her for not wearing it again.

How wonderful it was to feel so much natural enjoyment of the occasion. Lady Chesterfield’s annual ball was always a highlight of the London season, its brilliance and its popularity of a kind that left the uninvited grinding their teeth. One or more of the royal dukes
were always present, and usually the Prince of Wales. This year, however, he was in sulking absence, refusing to leave Brighton. Last year, Lady Chesterfield had firmly detached her sixteen-year-old niece from his scented, overpowering amorousness. If Cumberland took what he wanted in the fashion of an arrogant, omnipotent prince, the Prince of Wales helped himself in the fashion of a man so flattered and spoiled he thought no female could, or should, deny him. That Lady Chesterfield should coldly denounce him simply because he had been cuddling her swooning niece’s breasts made him quiver with outrage. The chit was swooning out of pleasure, was she not?

Caroline, quite among the most beautiful women present, executed her steps with matchless grace and sweet enjoyment. Mr Wingrove was an excellent partner, so sure and so accomplished. The orchestra, composed of some of London’s finest musicians, drew the dancers into rhythmic response. Jewels glittered in elaborately coiffed hair. Caroline had meant to wear her diamond-encrusted clasp, but had been unable to find it. She remembered when she had last worn it, on the evening when she had played cribbage with Captain Burnside, had fallen asleep and he had audaciously carried her up to her suite. But she could not remember taking it off or where she had put it. Helene had promised to make an industrious search for it.

The quadrille, prolonged, came to an end at last. She placed a hand on Mr Wingrove’s arm, and he threaded a measured and careful way through the throng to where Annabelle and Captain Burnside awaited them. Caroline seated herself beside Annabelle, and her fan went to work.

‘There, I declare myself hot but enchanted,’ she said. ‘Mr Wingrove, how very enjoyable that was, and how very accomplished you are.’

‘Oh, modestly so, Caroline,’ said Mr Wingrove, ‘although I confess that as a student I foresaw the social necessity of being able to partner a lady in well-versed style at a ball. Accordingly, I took instruction from Monsieur and Madame Campion at their school off the Strand and received their first-class diploma. If that has helped to make the quadrille so enjoyable to you, I ask for nothing more.’

Caroline, glimpsing the lift of Captain Burnside’s head and noting his familiar search of a ceiling, said winningly, ‘But, dear Mr Wingrove, it was more than mere enjoyment. It was quite exhilarating, and have I not already declared myself enchanted?’

Mr Wingrove bowed in modest acknowledgement, and Annabelle was sure the captain was thinking things he would rather not give tongue to. She was also sure he was in love with Caroline. He must be. His eyes followed her often, and he took on the whimsical expression of a man wondering in all good humour why she was so cool to him, perhaps. Annabelle thought it was all very well for Caroline to be distant with men because one of them had not made her a very good husband, but of all things it was beyond anything to be cool towards Charles while gushing over Mr Wingrove. Well, perhaps not gushing, but warmly enthusiastic.

The crowded ballroom, a riot of dazzling satins and silks, hummed and buzzed with voices. Laughter bubbled and burst, and young ladies used their fans to peep at who was who. Cumberland stood on the far side, gathering to him merely by being there a ring of people, mostly ladies.

Lady Chesterfield, handsome and extrovert, sailed in pink-gowned benevolence towards Caroline, who came up from her chair, as did Annabelle.

‘Caroline, my dear, my niece Emma wishes to meet
you. She has vowed you entirely the most beautiful vision. Emma, my sweet, come.’

A slim, willowy girl of almost seventeen floated up, dark hair shining, lashes lifting, her daffodil-yellow gown full-skirted and flowing. Her brown eyes smiled at Caroline, then glanced at Captain Burnside. Lady Chesterfield, to whom Captain Burnside had been presented on arrival and earned her approval, introduced her niece all round. Emma’s smile was at its prettiest not for Caroline, but for the captain.

‘Delighted,’ he said as she gave him her hand.

‘Oh, I am too,’ she said in girlish pleasure.

With most guests waiting for the next dance to be called, Lady Chesterfield said to Caroline, ‘May I leave Emma with you for a while? And perhaps Mr Wingrove or Captain Burnside will be gallant enough to oblige, for she is longing to dance.’

‘Caroline, I’m sure, will take the greatest care of her,’ said Mr Wingrove, ‘and I shall be entirely happy to accompany her in the dance of her choice.’

‘So kind,’ smiled Lady Chesterfield. ‘There, Emma.’ She sailed away, and Emma at once took two floating steps that put her beside the captain.

How delicious, thought Annabelle, it isn’t Caroline she was dying to meet, but Charles, and she has quite turned her back on Mr Wingrove.

The orchestra struck chords that were an invitation to the gavotte.

‘Miss Winthrop,’ said Mr Wingrove, that being Emma’s name, ‘I am accounted reasonably—’

‘Do you dance the gavotte, sir?’ asked Emma of the captain.

‘H’m,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Reasonably, young lady, reasonably.’

Annabelle gurgled. Caroline felt for the hurt Mr Wingrove.

‘Oh, I think I can dance it reasonably too,’ said Emma.

‘Then shall it be my pleasure?’ said the captain.

‘So kind,’ said Emma breathlessly, and glowed as she laid her gloved hand on his red sleeve, cuffed in blue and piped in gold. Under the forgiving eye of Mr Wingrove, and the amused eye of Caroline, who felt the captain for once was going to find it hard to come off best, he advanced with Emma to take up position for the dance.

Mr Wingrove was not sure now whether he should favour Caroline or her sister. One or the other must be left to kick her heels unless help arrived. It did, in the shape of Cumberland. Black-coated, with white pantaloons and a crisp, white cravat, he seemed to materialize silently out of a sea of colour. His shadow, cast by a huge chandelier, fell across Annabelle’s white shoes. His bow was not perfunctory, but sweepingly deliberate.

‘Good evening, my dear Annabelle. Ye’re a delicious picture. And Lady Caroline, ye’re queenly, b’God.’ He ignored Mr Wingrove. ‘Annabelle, I fancy ye’ll excel in the gavotte. So will ye favour me?’