Deirdre and Desire (11 page)

It was then his sharp old eyes saw a girl carrying two bandboxes walking quickly along the road on the other side of the pond. He watched until she had disappeared from view, wondering who on
earth she could be, abroad at this time of night.

Deirdre half walked, half ran in the direction of Lady Wentwater’s.

Over the River Blyne she went, by way of the hump-backed bridge. The river chattered and gurgled underneath, restless and busy like the thoughts in her head.

She now felt disloyal. A gentleman such as Guy Wentwater would not say he loved her or make a firm arrangement to elope with her and just forget about it.

No. Some unforeseen circumstance must have prevented him.

And that is why she was on her road to join him, complete with bandboxes and newly written letter to mother back on the pincushion at home.

Deirdre planned to make her way round to the back of the house and see if Guy had left the window of the morning-room open. She must try to find his bedroom.

How delighted he would be to see her, she told herself firmly. For had not God himself spoken to her, giving her permission to elope with Guy, and was he not yearning for her at this very
moment? Every fibre of her being told her it was so.

To her relief, the window had been left unlocked. She gently opened it and crept inside.

Opening the door from the morning-room which led into the hall, she stood very still, listening intently. The sound of laughter and masculine voices was coming from the drawing-room. Then she
heard Guy’s voice. ‘By Jove, it’s good to see you fellows. Of course you are welcome to stay. Aunt has bags of room.’

Still clutching the two bandboxes, Deirdre crept across the hall. The drawing-room door was open and a yellow oblong of light sliced across the darkness.

Deirdre looked in.

Guy was lounging at his ease with a bumper of brandy in his hand. Two friends were seated facing him around the fire. They seemed uncouth, they did not seem like gentlemen, but, strangely,
Deirdre did not feel alarmed. Their unexpected arrival must have been the reason for Guy abandoning her.

They were so merry and at ease together. They all belonged to that fascinating world of men – a world which Deirdre envied as much as she feared.

At times she chafed at being a woman and having to listen to silly women’s prattle. She longed to discuss philosophy and world events and politics. Guy had accepted her as an equal.
Therefore it followed his friends would do so too.

She took a deep breath and entered the room, still carrying the two bandboxes.

Guy was facing the door. He looked straight at her in dawning surprise and then his blue eyes sparkled with drink and malice.

His friends followed his gaze.

One of them, thickset and burly, with greasy, pomaded locks plastered to his low brow, twisted round.

‘The deuce!’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

‘A drama from Astley’s Amphitheatre,’ drawled Guy. ‘The Maiden From the Vicarage Leaves Home. Allow me to present Miss Deirdre Armitage.’

Both men arose and made their bows. The thickset one was introduced as Mr Benjamin Rowse and his thin companion as Mr Bill Wilson. Both were obviously well to go.

‘There’s a story here,’ crowed the one called Bill. ‘Do tell, Guy. What wickedness have you been up to?’

Guy rose to his feet and walked to where Deirdre stood. He reached forward and for one blissful moment Deirdre’s world righted as she thought he was about to take her in his arms. But,
instead, he seized her by the upper arm and dragged her towards the mantel.

‘Look in the glass, Miss Deirdre,’ he laughed. He moved his grip to her shoulders and thrust her face forwards. Deirdre stared at her reflection. Her bonnet was awry, there was a
smudge on her nose, and great purple shadows under her eyes.

‘Yes, hardly a fashion plate, are you?’ he jeered.

‘Guy!’ cried Deirdre, wrenching herself free. ‘What has come over you? What happened? I do not understand the cruelty of your manner. You said you loved me. You promised to
elope with me.’

Her eyes grew soft and pleading. ‘I-I am here, Guy, and I have brought my belongings with me.’

‘Oooh, how touching!’ said Guy, mincing about the room with one hand on his hip while his friends roared with laughter.

Deirdre’s face turned hard and set.

‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said, walking to the door, her back very straight.

‘Wait a bit!’ called Bill Wilson. ‘Guy may be too nice in his taste but Benjie and me ain’t above a bit o’ fun with a redhead.’

He clipped her round the waist with one beefy arm and thrust his great red face towards her own.

Guy Wentwater smiled lazily and closed the drawing-room door. ‘I agree she is not to my taste, my friends,’ he said lazily, ‘but don’t let me stop your sport.’

Appalled, Deirdre tore herself free from Bill’s grasp. Benjie rushed to guard the door. Guy sat down in his chair again and picked up his glass and settled back with the air of a
connoisseur about to watch a good play.

Now Deirdre looked like the fox of her father’s imaginings. Green eyes blazing, she backed away from them towards the fire.

A canterbury filled with old newspapers stood beside the hearth.

She picked one up in one lightning movement, set it alight, and threw the blazing pages full at Guy who jerked back violently in his chair so that he overbalanced and fell on the floor, tearing
at the blazing paper which covered his chest.

‘Back!’ hissed Deirdre as the other two closed in. Why didn’t the servants come? Should she scream? No! One thing burned in Deirdre’s mind. No one must know she had been
here.

Bill and Benjie began to move nearer. Deirdre edged closer to a brass stand on the other side of the fireplace which held a selection of riding whips, polo sticks, umbrellas, and sword
sticks.

She seized a sword stick and managed to jerk the blade out of its sheath before Bill found the courage to try to seize her hand.

Slicing the blade through the air in great sweeps, she held them off until she had reached the door.

Then she wrenched it open and ran instinctively to the morning-room. It was as well she did. For the great door at the other end of the hall was barred and bolted for the night and by the time
she had unlatched and unlocked everything, they would have been upon her.

She fled down the Hopeminster road which led from Lady Wentwater’s estate into the village of Hopeworth. She did not stop running until she had reached the gates of the Hall, determined to
rouse the lodge keeper should she hear sounds of pursuit. For Deirdre now felt there was no way her humiliation and stupidity could escape detection.

But no sounds of chase came to her ears. The night was cold and quiet and still. Deirdre sank down on to a tussock of grass beside the gates of the Hall and buried her face in her hands.

Never again would she believe in God. He had tricked her, she thought illogically, following quite a common line of reasoning – ‘He did not help me, therefore I won’t believe
in Him.’

And as for the marriage of true minds! Piffle! And men? Worse. Some were better mannered and better dressed than others, but
au fond
they were all the same: great, hairy, selfish,
hot-handed, slavering satyrs.

Out of the whole pack of them, she hated her father the most. If he had behaved like a true father, then all this would never have happened.

There is nothing more comforting than finding someone else to blame and so Deirdre lashed her rage up against the vicar.

‘You do seem to make a habit of sitting around by the roadside,’ came a plaintive voice from somewhere above her head.

Deirdre started and looked up. Impeccable and urbane as ever, Lord Harry Desire stood smiling down at her in the moonlight.

Deirdre looked up at him sullenly. ‘Have you come to jeer and torment me?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said amiably, ‘only to find you. Daphne awoke and found your bed empty and raised the alarm. Betty said you had been running around earlier with two bandboxes. The
good vicar decided you had run away from home.’

If only, thought Deirdre wildly, she could keep her stupidity over Guy a secret!

‘I left a letter,’ she said.

‘Well, I don’t think anyone has found it yet,’ he said.

‘I must get back and tear it up,’ thought Deirdre.

‘Thank you,’ she said, rising and brushing down her skirts. ‘I am ready to go home now. I couldn’t sleep. The letter explained all that, you see.’

‘The bandboxes!’ cried a voice in her head. ‘You left the bandboxes!’

‘No bandboxes this time?’ went on Lord Harry as if reading her thoughts.

Deirdre began to walk down the road with him. She felt very, very tired. She never wanted to see her father again.

There was only one way in which a gently brought-up young girl could free herself from home.

Marriage.

‘I will marry you,’ she said abruptly.

Lord Harry strolled along in silence. Oh, God, thought Deirdre, even this fool does not want me.

Dark figures were scurrying here and there through the village.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Deirdre.

‘You,’ smiled Lord Harry. ‘Mr Armitage has sounded the alarm.’

He called out to one of the figures. One of the village boys came running up.

Lord Harry fished in his pocked and handed the boy a shilling.

‘Go and tell everyone Miss Deirdre has been found,’ he said. The boy grabbed the coin and ran off, moving from one figure to the other.

The vicar met them half way down the lane leading to the vicarage.

Even in the moonlight, it was possible to see his face was dark with rage.

Lord Harry put his arm round Deirdre’s waist as she braced herself for the tirade to come.

Before the vicar could open his mouth, Lord Harry said quickly, ‘Congratulate me, Mr Armitage. Your daughter has done me the great honour to accept my hand in marriage.’

The vicar opened and shut his mouth like a landed cod. Rage was replaced by joy which was promptly replaced by worry.

Did Deirdre want this marriage? Or had she simply broken down under pressure?

‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘But where on earth did you go in the middle of the night, girl? I have been worried to death.’

Another lie coming up, thought Deirdre wearily.

‘I decided to go out for a walk so that I could make up my mind,’ she said, not looking at her father. ‘Lord Harry found me and I told him of my decision.’

The vicar looked at her narrowly. He did not believe a word of it. Deirdre did not look like a girl who had just been proposed to by an eligible man. She looked . . . numb.

Mrs Armitage had been having one of her famous Spasms, but rallied remarkably on hearing the news. The girls were all delighted, clustering shyly round Lord Harry in their nightgowns and curl
papers.

Deirdre accepted hugs and kisses and champagne, wishing all the time she could go to bed.

Somehow, she was sure, the real reason for her journey out into the night would soon be revealed.

She had left those wretched bandboxes. If Guy had not hidden them, Lady Wentwater’s servants would find them, and she could not explain that they were clothes meant for the poor when they
contained all her best gowns.

Only someone as stupid as Lord Harry would have believed her.

‘I’ll have a word with you in the morning, Deirdre,’ said the vicar, and Deirdre nodded dully.

As she finally went up the stairs to bed, the remembrance of that letter on the pincushion made her teeth begin to chatter. She quickened her steps and burst into her bedroom, her candle held
high.

And there was the letter. Just where she had left it.

She snatched it up and tore it into shreds and hurled it into the embers of the fire.

‘I didn’t read it,’ came a soft voice from the doorway. Daphne was standing there, watching.

‘Just as well,’ said Deirdre, forcing a laugh. ‘It was nothing but a series of household notes I meant to give Mama in the morning.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Daphne, moving into the room. ‘When you were missing and after I had sounded the alarm, I saw the letter and I thought you had run away from home. But
letters are so final. I thought if they could find you and bring you back, then no harm would have been done.’

‘What an imagination you have, Daphne,’ said Deirdre with a laugh that ended as a sob. ‘Only see how tired I am? I am nearly in tears over nothing at all!’

Guy Wentwater tossed and turned, trying to get to sleep. But despite the amount of brandy he had drunk, sleep persisted in eluding him.

His glee over the humiliation of Deirdre Armitage was beginning to turn sour but he would not yet admit to himself that he was heartily afraid of the Reverend Charles Armitage.

There had been his own ignominious hounding out of the county by the vicar. And then there had been that fellow who had tried to break up Annabelle’s marriage. He had heard the stories
about that. The vicar had whipped him out of the church and the local boys had debagged him and thrown him in the village pond.

Perhaps it would be best to say nothing about it, except perhaps to Silas Dubois, who would enjoy the story. He would leave out the bit about how Deirdre had battled her way free from three
grown men. Best tell it that she had left in tears.

Benjie Rowse and Bill Wilson would not remember the name of the girl in the morning. He would make them keep their mouths shut anyway.

But those bandboxes! Burn them. No, that wouldn’t do. He would need to wait and see what happened.

If Deirdre didn’t talk, then he was safe.

He should have planned some sort of revenge that the vicar would never know about. Even now Mr Armitage could be riding up the road with that dreadful pack of hounds howling before him.

And then the door of his bedroom opened and a tall figure walked in.

‘Who’s there?’ cried Guy, struggling up against the pillows.

‘Desire,’ said a polite, social voice.

Guy swore under his breath and lit the candle beside the bed.

Lord Harry Desire ambled forward and sat down elegantly on the end of the bed.