Deirdre and Desire (13 page)

Lady Wentwater received them in the drawing-room. There were no signs of the fracas of the night before. All was dark and gloomy and quiet. Sunlight filtered through the fluttering ivy leaves
which cloaked most of the windows, creating a subterranean effect.

‘I’m glad you’ve called,’ wheezed Lady Wentwater, her small currant eyes the only thing alive in the doughy mass of her face. ‘It’s gone so quiet since Guy
left, although I should be glad of that. Why, the noise he and his friends made carousing till all hours! Not that I heard them, I sleep so sound, but my maid told me the servants thought an army
had invaded, it got so bad, and at one point she thought she heard a woman’s voice, but that can’t be the case since there are no lightskirts around here, except Maggie Trumper, who
everyone knows is no better than she should be. But Guy had told them all, the servants that is, not to interfere when he was entertaining, but my maid said at one point they heard one of the
guests crying blue murder for help and it was as much as they could do to stop themselves from running in to see what the matter was.’

‘Mr Wentwater has gone?’ asked Deirdre, her lips feeling numb and stiff.

‘Yes. Off he went this morning. I’ll miss the lad but I wish he’d keep better company. Those friends of his! Such a mess. Faces all beaten up. But they will fight among
themselves when they’re in their cups.’

‘Did he say anything about . . . about me?’ asked Deirdre in such a soft voice that Lady Wentwater had to strain to hear her.

‘Nary a word,’ said Lady Wentwater maliciously. ‘But he sent his regards to Miss Emily up at the Hall.’

She turned and engaged Lord Harry in conversation while Deirdre sat in a daze.

She was free! Free from public humiliation. By a series of strange coincidences, she had escaped. One of Lady Wentwater’s servants must have found the bandboxes and sent them to the
vicarage without saying a word.

What a miracle!

She sat on in a daze of relief until it was time to go, barely noticing when Lady Wentwater offered her congratulations on their engagement.

When they were driving sedately along the road again, Lord Harry’s first words hit her with the effect of a bucket of cold water.

‘I would like to be married very soon,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ faltered Deirdre. ‘I am afraid I rushed you into things. Perhaps you don’t want to marry me at all.’

Indeed I do,’ he laughed. ‘So much so that if you were to go back on your word, I would sue you for breach of promise.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Deirdre, forcing a laugh. ‘Only ladies do that. Only a lady is allowed to sue.’

‘Then I shall make legal history,’ he said with great good humour.

‘We can at least wait until my sisters return from Paris,’ said Deirdre.

‘Oh, why?’

‘I would like them to be there when I am married.’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘So long as you promise to marry me as soon as they return.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Deirdre. Something would arise to save her before then. For had not Minerva said they would not be returning until the following spring?

‘In that case, my love,’ he said easily, ‘I will take myself off to Town today. I have trespassed on your family’s good nature long enough.’

He reined in his horses at a quiet bend in the road and kissed her gently and passionlessly. ‘You will not break your promise?’ he said, his voice unusually serious.

She looked up into his clear blue eyes, childlike, innocent, candid eyes, and realized there was no escape.

‘No, I will not break my promise,’ she said.

‘Remember,’ he said lightly as he set his team in motion again, ‘should I not be wed when my uncle dies, then I inherit nothing.’

‘Where does the money go? I mean who inherits it?’ asked Deirdre, although she barely heard the answer since she was still hoping that some miracle would happen so that she need not
be kept to her promise.

‘Oh, some distant relative. Very unpleasant. Silas Dubois.’

They drove on in silence.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ asked Lord Harry cheerfully. ‘Your home is all a-bustle.’

The short driveway was blocked by two magnificent travelling carriages. Liveried servants were bustling here and there.

The door of the vicarage flew open.

Minerva and Annabelle stood on the step, their arms held out in welcome. Deirdre’s older sisters had come home.

So she would need to marry Lord Harry Desire.

She
despised
the man. Oh, he was pleasant enough. But she, Deirdre Armitage, who had prided herself on being the most intelligent of the sisters, was to be tied for life to a handsome
fool.

Minerva must do something. Minerva had always been able to solve any problem.

But two minutes of her sisters’ company shattered her hopes. They were delighted with her choice of husband. They thought Lord Harry was the finest young man on the London scene. Her
elegant brothers-in-law, the Marquess of Brabington and Lord Sylvester Comfrey, had also emerged from the vicarage and were thumping Lord Harry on the back and welcoming him to the family.

The vicar stood behind a curtain in the study, watching Deirdre’s face.

She looked miserable. She looked trapped.

He cursed himself. Despite his fears, Lord Sylvester had come across with a hefty sum of money and without even one mumble of reproach.

So there had been no need to sacrifice his daughter.

But she had promised to marry the man.

So what was he to do?

SIX

The Armitage girls were becoming famous for good marriages and short engagements.

In the months preceding her wedding, Deirdre saw much of her two elder sisters and had ample opportunity to unburden herself.

But Annabelle and Minerva had become so fashionable, so
mondaine
, that to confide her infatuation for Guy seemed impossible. The six sisters were all rivals in a way. Annabelle had grown
fonder of Minerva than she had ever been, but the old rivalry was still there. Minerva had produced a son, a lusty, adorable baby boy, while Annabelle, as yet, showed no signs of blessing her
husband with an heir. And so she envied Minerva and was apt to sympathize with Minerva overmuch about the sad existence of a mother being kept away from the joys of society by a small baby –
carefully ignoring Minerva’s advantages of having a nanny, a wet-nurse, and a large staff of adoring servants.

Deirdre in her turn had always been jealous of Annabelle’s glorious golden beauty. She was also jealous of Minerva’s stately manner. But she had always consoled herself with the fact
that she, Deirdre, was the
brains
of the Armitage family? How could The Brains confess to such a piece of stupidity. How could she say, ‘I fell in love with a villain, and only agreed
to marry Lord Harry to get myself out of a humiliating mess’?

Then
not
marrying Lord Harry meant staying at home with Papa, and Deirdre still detested the vicar and considered hirn the worst of men: vulgar, posturing and bullying.

Deirdre was much in Town, as her two elder sisters threw themselves enthusiastically into the arrangements for the wedding.

But a visit to Lord Harry’s family was impending and Deirdre knew she not put it off any longer. Lord Harry’s father, the Earl of Carchester, had estates to the north of London.

Perhaps Lord Harry, sensing her reluctance, had decided that more than an afternoon’s visit would be too much for her, or perhaps it was because a longer visit would entail inviting the
rest of the Armitages, but it transpired that he and Deirdre would call on the Earl of Carchester and family for tea, and return to London the same day.

Deirdre was dreading the visit. She imagined a whole family of Lord Harrys, stupid, amiable, dressed to perfection.

She had not been alone with him since Hopeworth. He had seemed amazingly content to see her in the company of others, and although there were occasions when he could have contrived to see her
alone, he did not make use of them.

Deirdre had rehearsed a whole series of conversations with which to while away the time on the journey. Silence was too intimate a thing.

She dreaded his making any more of those warm advances. Sometimes, she imagined herself struggling to protect her virtue in some quiet lane, which showed the frantic state of Deirdre’s
mind that she could even consider such an elegant and languid man as Lord Harry Desire wishing to deflower her under the eyes of two footmen at a damp roadside when he could have her in a warm bed
in only a few months’ time.

So it was with great relief and surprise that Deirdre found out at the last moment that Lady Godolphin was to accompany them.

Deirdre was dressed in a gown of jaconet muslin made with a gored bodice finished with a tucker of fine embroidery. Over it, she wore a cambric pelisse with long sleeves falling over her hands.
A bonnet of white sarsnet with raised spots, bound and trimmed with Danish blue satin, ornamented her head.

Lady Godolphin was also dressed in her finest – or what she considered her finest. Because of the youthful years of her lover, Mr Anstey, Lady Godolphin had blossomed out in girlish
fashions.

Her muslin gown was a miracle of pink and white gores and tucks and flounces. Her flaxen wig gleamed like the sun above, and rouge burnished her withered cheeks like the autumn russet bloom on
fallen crab apples.

It was embarrassing to Deirdre to find out that Lady Godolphin’s search for youth did not stop at her appearance. She tittered and giggled and slapped Lord Harry’s wrist with her fan
and referred to herself and Deirdre as ‘we girls’.

Lord Harry smiled vaguely at all Lady Godolphin’s sallies and then fell asleep in a corner of the carriage.

They were using his travelling carriage. The day was cold and brisk but Deirdre longed to open one of the windows since Lady Godolphin’s perfume was worse than the Reverend
Armitage’s, being a mixture of musk, lavender water, rose water, Joppa Soap, sweat, garlic, and Something That a Lady Does Not Talk About.

‘It’s all very romantical,’ sighed Lady Godolphin, smiling on the sleeping Lord Harry. ‘Such a beautiful young man. Ain’t got much in his cock-loft, but then
that’s all to the good. He has got good legs.’

Deirdre blushed and turned her head away.

‘I said, his legs are good,’ went on Lady Godolphin cheerfully. ‘Can’t abide a man with skinny legs. Now, Mr Anstey ain’t well-endowed in that direction. Arthur has
lovely legs, but he’s so old.’

‘Do you mean Colonel Brian?’ asked Deirdre faintly.

‘Yes. Him. I told him I didn’t want to be calloused, but that we were obviously not meant for each other. Of course . . .
well
!’

Lady Godolphin’s eyes were bulging from her head as she stared out of the carriage window. The horses had slowed down as they negotiated the steep slope of Highgate Hill. Deirdre leaned
forwards to see what had caught Lady Godolphin’s attention.

Outside a hostelry on a rustic bench in the chilly sunlight sat Mr Anstey and Lady Chester – the octogenarian Lady Chester.

Lady Godolphin leaned back quickly, biting her lips. ‘No, I won’t go and ask him what he’s doing,’ she said aloud, although obviously talking to herself.
‘It’s a chance redervows. He’s sorry for the poor old bat, that’s all.’

She began to fan herself vigorously, looking the picture of misery.

Deirdre felt dreadfully embarrassed and wished Lord Harry would wake up. A large tear rolled down Lady Godolphin’s cheek, turning red as it rolled down through a patch of rouge.

Picking up her parasol, Deirdre stabbed Lord Harry in one of his delicious legs.

‘Ouch!’ said his lordship, rubbing his leg. His summer-blue gaze came to rest on Lady Godolphin’s distressed face.

‘You should not become so exercised, ma’am,’ he said gently. ‘It quite ruins your unique beauty. What is wrong?’

‘I am a trifle sick from the motion of the carriage,’ said Lady Godolphin, looking woebegone.

He pulled a silver vinaigrette from out of his pocket and handed it to her.

‘So I am not the only one who is too cowardly to talk of my folly and humiliation,’ thought Deirdre.

She gave Lady Godolphin’s hand a squeeze, her own eyes filling with sympathetic tears. Did Guy really hate her so much? Oh, if only by some miracle he would appear again and tell her he
had been insane with drink and that he was dying with love for her! Sometimes the weight of shame seemed too much to bear.

She often started from her dreams with the sound of his jeering voice in her ears.

Lord Harry looked hopefully at Lady Godolphin as if waiting for something, but she soon sniffled herself into silence and then nodded off.

Deirdre looked out of the window, hoping he had not noticed her own distress.

To her relief, he went to sleep again.

She fell to wondering about his family. He had said he had three younger brothers and two little sisters. His brothers were called William, Paul and Jonathan. The girls, Amy and Elizabeth. The
brothers were not married. That made it all very unnerving. Perhaps they would think Lord Harry had been trapped and would talk him out of marrying her – which would serve her ends but be a
very uncomfortable operation all the same.