Deirdre and Desire (12 page)

‘How did you get in?’ blustered Guy. ‘I locked all the doors and windows.’

‘I picked the lock,’ said Lord Harry pleasantly.

‘Why?’

‘To see you, my friend.’

Guy reached out to the bell rope which hung beside the bed. With one graceful, fluid movement, Lord Harry raised his cane and struck Guy across the wrist, a sharp stinging blow.

‘Now, now,’ said Lord Harry soothingly as Guy cursed and rubbed his wrist. ‘We do not want to wake the whole household, now do we?’

‘What do you want?’ demanded Guy.

‘I came to find out about a visit Miss Deirdre Armitage made to this house earlier tonight.’

‘That little redhead!’ sneered Guy. ‘Never saw her.’

Lord Harry’s fist flew out and struck Guy full and hard on the mouth.

He yelped with pain and tried to leap from the bed, only to find his shoulders held down by two powerful hands.

Lord Harry’s face looked as beautiful and pleasant as ever. Guy looked wildly this way and that, searching for another assailant, for this graceful lord who was smiling at him so
disarmingly could surely not have dealt him such a ferocious blow.

So Deirdre hadn’t talked. And this idiot was in love with her.

‘Very well,’ said Guy, leaning back against the pillows and trying to affect a world-weary air. ‘I would have told you had I not been trying to protect the poor girl’s
name. She got it into her head I was going to elope with her because she didn’t want to be pressured into marrying
you.
’

He looked quickly and eagerly into Lord Harry’s blue eyes for signs of hurt but Lord Harry smiled blandly down on him and begged him to go on.

‘She said she loved me and she would be waiting for me at the crossroads at two in the afternoon,’ said Guy. ‘She came to see me on the day of the garden party. I heard my aunt
returning, and fearing for Deirdre’s reputation, I just said, “Yes, yes,” and pushed her out of the back way, thinking when she heard no more from me that would be an end of
it.

‘But the silly chit . . .’ Lord Harry’s hand moved and Guy quickly changed it to ‘. . . I mean, Miss Deirdre arrived in the middle of the night with those wretched
bandboxes and started begging and pleading which was most embarrassing because I had two friends with me at the time.’

‘Are they still here?’

‘Yes, but you don’t want to bother with them.’

‘We’ll see. Go on.’

‘Well, that’s all there is to it. When Miss Deirdre found out I wasn’t going to marry her, she fled out the back way. And that’s that.’

There was a silence. Guy eyed the bell rope, wondering if he could reach it. This lord could throw him from one end of the room to the other, and the servants would not come. They had once
interrupted one of his noisier revels and he had commanded them never to appear unless called for. And his aunt slept like the dead.

Lord Harry gave a little sigh, and stretched out his legs, and studied the glistening leather of his hessian boots. Then he raised his eyes to Guy’s.

‘Now this time,’ said Lord Harry in the same easy social tones, ‘you will tell me the truth. Begin at the beginning.’

Guy twisted this way and that and fiddled with the bedclothes. ‘Let me get up and put on some clothes, and then we can talk,’ he pleaded.

‘No,’ said Lord Harry equably, ‘begin at the beginning.’

Guy thought furiously. Obviously this wretched lord must be madly in love with the girl. Therefore, if he told another story saying he, Guy, had been in love with Deirdre but stopped himself
from eloping with her out of the purest motives,
that
might perhaps be accepted.

So he began with much of the truth: the stolen moments in the churchyard and in the lane. Then he proceeded to lie. He said that much as he loved Deirdre, he knew her father would cast the girl
off if she married him, and Deirdre would eventually regret the estrangement from her family, and so he had turned her away.

There was another long silence when he finished.

Again Lord Harry sighed.

‘Again,’ said Lord Harry. ‘Start at the beginning and get it right this time.’

‘Look here!’ blustered Guy. ‘You force your way in here and . . .’

He broke off and gazed in horror down the length of a couple of yards of cold steel. Lord Harry had drawn his swordstick and was holding the point of the blade to Guy’s throat.

Guy had never felt more terrified in his life. There was something horrible and monstrous about the placidity of the beautiful face looking at him.

‘Well, you can’t blame me,’ he babbled. ‘You see, it was all like this . . .’

Two hours later, Lord Harry Desire, carrying two bandboxes, softly let himself out of Lady Wentwater’s mansion. His knuckles were sore and bleeding, but he was sure that neither Benjie
Rowse nor Bill Wilson would dare say a word. All three men would be gone from Hopeworth in the morning.

He whistled jauntily as he walked back in the direction of the village.

Squire Radford heard the whistling and swung his stick-like legs over the edge of his bed and felt for his slippers. He walked to the window and looked out.

In the pale grey light of dawn Lord Harry Desire was walking on the other side of the village pond, carrying two bandboxes. His elegant reflection was mirrored in the cold glassy waters of the
pond until a bustling duck cut across it and sent little pieces of Lord Harry’s reflection shimmering across the surface.

How odd, thought the squire. Some young girl goes out in the middle of the night with two bandboxes, and now here is Lord Harry Desire walking back with them. Perhaps they are different
bandboxes. Perhaps it was a wager.

He sighed and turned back to the warmth of his bed. He would dearly have loved to meet this Lord Harry. But for the first time ever no invitation had come from the vicarage, nor had the vicar
called.

‘Charles must be up to something bad,’ mourned the squire. ‘I only wish I knew what it was.’

Deirdre awoke in the morning with a pounding headache. The day was all hard and glittery with bright sunlight splintering off the glass bottles on the toilet table.

Betty had already been in and made up the fire and opened the curtains.

Daphne had already awakened and gone downstairs.

Deirdre turned over and buried her face in the pillows as the memory of terrible yesterday flooded over her.

But she could not hide in her room forever. Her father wanted to see her. She twisted round and looked at the clock. Eleven! How could she have slept so deeply and so late with all this trouble
awaiting her?

Well, by now the news would be out. Guy and his coarse friends would have made her the laughing stock of the village. Lord Harry would be disgusted because even such a fool as he must have some
sort of pride.

As for her father . . .

Deirdre shuddered and climbed from the bed to make a hasty toilet. She was half way down the stairs wearing one of her best ensembles, a round gown of fine cambric under a pelisse of emerald
green rep sarsnet with a rich silk cordon with full tassels about her slim waist, when she realized with a shock that this very gown was one she had packed and left in the bandboxes.

With faltering steps she made her way back into her room and pulled at the doors of the tall marquetry wardrobe as if she were opening Pandora’s box.

Her clothes hung in serried rows, gowns and mantles and cloaks and pelisses. Her shoes were neatly lined up like a regiment underneath. She ran to the clothes press and pulled open the drawers.
Her underwear lay in neat folded piles of muslin and cambric, silk and lace.

She sat down on the bed, her heart beating hard. Someone had entered the bedroom while she slept and put away the contents of the bandboxes. And there were the wretched boxes themselves, neatly
stacked on the top of the wardrobe!

Betty! Of course, it must have been Betty.

Some servant from Lady Wentwater’s had delivered the bandboxes and Betty had put the contents away.

Now, her secret would be out. Well, better to get it over with.

Deirdre walked slowly downstairs and across the hall. Her father poked his head around the study door. ‘A word with you, Deirdre,’ he called.

This was it!

Deirdre squared her shoulders and walked in.

‘Sit down,’ said the vicar in a kindly voice.

Deirdre sat down, wondering at his manner.

The vicar sat behind his desk. He fiddled with a snuff box and then he fiddled with the quill of a pen.

At last he looked up. ‘Want to marry Desire, do ye?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ said Deirdre faintly. ‘I told you so last night.’

‘Well, hey, that’s all holiday with me but it’s Clarence House to a charlie’s shelter, you’re only doin’ this to please me.’

‘When did I ever try to please you, Papa?’ said Deirdre, shocked into honesty.

‘Never,’ said the vicar with a relieved grin. ‘Well, that’s all right and tight then. Set a date?’

‘No, Papa.’

‘Well, well, you’ll want to wait until the girls get back from furrin parts.’

‘Possibly, Papa. I will need to ask Lord Harry.’

‘Oh.’ The vicar’s face fell again before this unusual display of meekness.

He studied her face anxiously. She was upset about something, and, yes, she was frightened too! Why should he feel so guilty? He had not forced her into anything. If only she would look
happy.

His face cleared. She hadn’t had her breakfast. An empty stomach, in the vicar’s opinion, was responsible for most of the humours and sadness in the world.

‘Run along then,’ he said more cheerfully. ‘Have your breakfast and we’ll talk later.’

Still Deirdre hesitated, unable to believe her father had heard nothing about Guy Wentwater.

‘Betty should have awakened me earlier,’ said Deirdre. ‘It is my duty to see the girls off to school.’

‘They ain’t going anywhere today,’ said the vicar. ‘We were all up and about half the night.’

Deirdre went slowly out into the hall where she nearly collided with Betty, the maid.

‘Oh, Miss Deirdre!’ said Betty. ‘Them bandboxes arrived this morning but you were that tired, I put ’em all away whilst you were asleep. You must have been fair mazed to
pack all your best stuff to give to the poor!’

‘What?’ said Deirdre, blanching. ‘Bandboxes? What bandboxes?’ she asked, while her thoughts raced this way and that.

‘Well, that’s what I said to Lord Harry. He was standing right where you are, ever so early, and looking down at these bandboxes. “What’s this?” I asked, and he
says they arrived from somewhere because you’d put good clothes in ’em by mistake. So I says they must be from the Hall, ’cos that’s where you was takin’
’em.’

‘And what did Lord Harry say to that?’ asked Deirdre anxiously, rernembering she had told him she was taking them to the poor of Hopeminster. So many lies!

‘Well, miss, he just looked at me absent-minded like and then he says for me to hang them away and not be rousin’ you on account of you being up last night. Ever so thoughtful, he
is.’

‘Yes,’ said Deirdre, walking away to the dining-room. How fortunate Lord Harry was so . . . so
unaware
of things. But if he hadn’t been there at those opportune moments,
then her father would definitely have found out about Guy Wentwater.

Guy Wentwater.

The dining-room was empty, so Deirdre helped herself to some tea, hardly noticing it was stone cold, and sat down and thought about Guy Wentwater, and the more she thought about him, the more
bitter about life and love she became.

He had tricked her, her mind had tricked her with fantasies of spiritual rapport, her God had tricked her, therefore He did not exist, she reminded herself fiercely.

But her love for Guy had been a powerful and heady drug, so suddenly cut off, that a great part of Deirdre’s mind longed for reassurance.

If he had walked in the door at that moment and said he had been drunk and apologized humbly for his behaviour, then she would have forgiven him so that she could plunge back into that secure,
rosy, exalted world again.

But the memories were dark and filled with humiliation. The malice in his eyes still haunted her.

She absent-mindedly ate two pieces of cold toast.

But he
had
been drunk, her mind nagged. Very. And gentlemen were strange when they were in their altitudes. Why, even her own father had become disgracefully drunk after a successful hunt
last year and had ridden his horse right into the Hall and up the stairs.

Her brow darkened as she thought of the vicar. It was all his fault, him with his painted face, coarse manners, lack of breeding and awful, awful creaking corsets.

The door opened and Lord Harry Desire sauntered in.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘For what?’ demanded Deirdre wearily.

‘To go driving with me. If you recall, we made the arrangement last night.’

Deirdre could remember no such arrangement but she was too overset to say so. She meekly remarked she would fetch her bonnet and hurried upstairs.

She pulled on the first bonnet that came to hand, which was, fortunately, the one designed to go with her gown. It was of green curled silk and vastly fetching. She remembered it had recently
nestled in one of the bandboxes and that she had planned to wear it for Guy. Two large tears hung on her lashes. She brushed them angrily away and went down to join his lordship.

It was only when Deirdre realized they were turning in at the gates of Lady Wentwater’s ivy-covered mansion that she burst into speech.

‘We cannot call here!’ she said desperately. ‘We are not expected.’

‘But we are,’ he said, reining in his team in front of the house.

A groom came running from the stables to take the horses. Lord Harry jumped lightly down and then helped Deirdre to alight.

‘I met Lady Wentwater at the garden party,’ he said, ‘and promised to call. Are you all right? You have gone very white.’

‘Yes,’ said Deirdre, feeling her knees beginning to tremble. ‘Yes, let us go in.’

For she had decided her monumental luck could surely not hold out any longer. Better get it over with.