Deirdre and Desire (16 page)

Minerva had even volunteered to read to her and kept giving her nasty little glasses of tonic because she ‘needed building up’.

Deirdre would gladly have stayed at home at least one evening to play with baby Julian, but she was told that young misses like herself should be gadding about, and not sitting around the house
like old, married ladies.

And so the more conspicuous Lord Harry became by his absence, the more Deirdre began to wonder about the strange and tumultuous reaction of her body to his kisses. Did lust have a place in
love?

On that morning she had awoken with a craving to be left alone with her thoughts, and so she had escaped from the house, meaning to walk as far as Green Park. She did not have her maid with her
or even a groom, but it was early and all the bucks and bloods who might annoy a solitary female could be guaranteed to be fast asleep for at least another five hours.

A small, slight man with a huge nose stared into her face intently, almost popping his own under the shadow of her bonnet to do so. Deirdre shrank back with a little cry and the man murmured
some apology and scurried away.

The hour was nine in the morning. Nothing really came alive in the West End until ten. How still and white and deserted the streets seemed!

There was that strange little man again!

Deirdre was sure she saw him scuttling across the end of the street. She stood still. There was something eerie about it all.

There he was! But it turned out to be the shambling figure of the watch. He touched his hat as he passed. Deirdre half turned towards home. But the broad expanse of Piccadilly lay just ahead.
And if she returned, Minerva would find her and immediately begin making plans for her day.

She bent her head and hurried into Piccadilly. There were a good few people about. Shopkeepers taking down shutters; shopkeepers who served the rich and therefore kept the same hours.

Crossing sweepers were busy with their brooms. A child rolled a large metal hoop this way and that, admiring the patterns it made in the snow. Another ran a stick backwards and forwards across
the railings.

Deirdre entered Green Park, only walking a little way in so as not to be too isolated from the road. She brushed the light snow from a bench and sat down and tried to marshal her thoughts.

At last she came to the conclusion that she had treated Lord Harry unfairly. She was the one who had asked him to marry her. It was only fair to the man to tell him of her fears and doubts. In
the depths of the country when he had said he would sue her for breach of promise, it seemed believable, since, if he did not marry, he did not inherit his uncle’s money.

But in Town, it was all too obvious that a great many ladies would be only too eager to marry Lord Harry if he dropped the handkerchief. And why was she afraid of him? He had been all that was
kind and gentlemanly. His family was horrible, but then look at her own father!

Deirdre stood up at last feeling better than she had done for a long time. She
would
talk to Lord Harry. Getting him to understand simple things was often very hard, she thought, but she
could try.

She began to walk towards the gates of the Park.

A tall figure was standing right in her path.

Deirdre shied like a frightened horse and put her head down, ready to scuttle round him if he persisted in trying to block her way.

‘Deirdre? Is it you?’

Deirdre looked up in amazement into Guy Wentwater’s face.

‘
You!
’ she said in accents of loathing.

She gave him a great push and then hurried past him as fast as she could, the iron ring on the soles of her pattens striking sparks from the pebbles.

He hurried after her, caught her in a strong grasp and twisted her about to face him, his eyes pleading and anxious.

‘You must listen to me,’ he said intensely.

Guy had been rousted from his bed in his lodging only a short time before by Silas Dubois and ordered to ‘go to it’.

He was frantic. He was tired of his shadowy wandering life and had a mind to settle down as a country gentleman. Marrying Emily Armitage would have made the vicar rage and would have supplied
him, Guy, with a respectable wife with a respectable dowry. Now he would need to find some other girl. For when his seduction of Deirdre Armitage became known, he would need to hide out in another
part of the country and hope the vicar died of apoplexy. If he could, on the other hand, not seduce her but merely encourage her into some folly that would drive her to cancel the wedding, then
there was still hope.

But he must re-engage her affections fast, or Silas would spread the awful secret of his birth all over the place.

‘Leave me alone,’ said Deirdre savagely, ‘or I shall scream for the watch.’

‘You must hear me,’ said Guy, holding her fast. ‘You
will
hear me. I am as much in love with you as I ever was. Yes, I treated you shamefully. But it was for your own
good.’

‘Indeed?’ said Deirdre, standing very still now.

‘Yes,’ he went on eagerly. ‘You must realize I was afraid our marriage would not work. Your family would never speak to you again. I was afraid you would grow tired of being
estranged from them. I was frantic when you turned up at my aunt’s. I had to be cruel. I felt I had to give you a disgust of me, to drive you away. I was drunk, yes. That I freely admit. But
I have not known a night’s sleep since then.

‘Only look at me and say you forgive me.’

Deirdre kept her head bent.

‘You were courting Emily as far as I could see,’ she said at last.

‘Ah, that was merely to throw sand in everyone’s eyes. The minute I heard you were affianced to Desire, I felt ashamed. I felt responsible for you throwing yourself away.’

Deirdre looked up at him at last, her eyes as green and cold as the North Sea. ‘I am hardly throwing myself away by becoming affianced to a kind and handsome lord.’

‘Of course you are angry with me,’ he said in a coaxing voice. ‘I deserve more, much more. How can I make you forgive me?’

Deirdre suddenly felt infinitely weary. It had all been too much. All her troubles churned round in her head; her fear of Lord Harry, her hatred of her father, her low self-esteem, all
culminating in a great sickening wave of hot self-disgust. She wanted to punish the whole wide world – starting off with herself.

Deirdre took a deep breath. ‘By eloping with me,’ she said quietly.

Guy’s mind raced. Gone were his hopes of Emily’s hand in marriage. He need not marry Deirdre, of course. Perhaps he could hide her away somewhere and return her to her family
unscathed. Perhaps she would be too ashamed of herself to tell them where she had been. She had obviously told no one of her last try at eloping with him.

But then there was Harry Desire. But he would not want to have anything to do with a girl who jilted him right before the wedding.

‘Very well,’ said Guy, feeling her penetrating gaze on his face. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Deirdre. ‘I mean tonight, but at two in the morning. Wait for me here.’

‘You are sure you will be able to escape unnoticed?’ asked Guy anxiously.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Deirdre simply. ‘Now, let me go. I must return. It is cold.’

Guy tried to embrace her but she pushed him firmly away. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘It is too public.’

She broke free from him and hurried off over the snowy ground, moving so quickly that her cloak billowed out about her slight figure.

Guy watched her go, his heart beating hard. He must think where to take her. He must pray she told no one of what she planned to do.

Deirdre walked on, her mind filled with a savage elation. She had no longer any romantic thoughts about Guy Wentwater. She thought him shallow and common. And so, she was bent on marrying
him.

We all have a little of the death wish in us ready to rear its ugly head when we fall out of love with ourselves. The depressed commit suicide. But that is not a genteel act. The polite
gentleman either commits suicide by regular instalments of hard liquor or by journeying unarmed into the more squalid parts of the city. Young ladies find a rotter to ruin them.

By marrying Guy Wentwater, Deirdre could flagellate herself and make her father thoroughly miserable into the bargain.

Fate seemed determined to aid her in her proposed action, for the vicar had left for a brief visit to Hopeworth on urgent parish business (good hunting weather), leaving Squire Radford behind as
a sop to his shaky conscience. The squire had been attacked by an acute attack of rheumatism and was confined to his bedchamber.

Minerva had suddenly become aware that she had spent a great deal of time away from her beloved child while looking after Deirdre and trying to keep her away from Lord Harry. But Lord Harry was
keeping himself away, and so Minerva was determined to spend the whole day at home, fussing over her baby to her heart’s content.

Lord Harry Desire was paying a visit to his uncle, Mr Jeremy Blewett.

Mr Jeremy Blewett looked very old indeed. He was, in fact, fifty-two, but a life in India under a hot sun combined with a formidable capacity for strong spirits had aged him until he resembled a
little dried-up mummy.

He had been talking about death for such a long time that it came as a surprise to everyone to find him still alive. Apart from his eyes which were very bright and twinkling, the rest of him
looked dead, and quite often smelled it, since he had a horror of bathing.

‘What brings you here . . . as if I need to ask?’ cackled Mr Blewett as Lord Harry strolled into his bedchamber. ‘Come to see if I’ve written that will yet? Well, it
won’t be written till the wedding’s over.’

‘You don’t need to worry your pretty little head one way or t’other about my bachelor state,’ said Lord Harry amiably. ‘I don’t need your
moneybags.’

‘’Course you do,’ sneered Mr Blewett. ‘Carchesters never knew how to keep money.’

‘They never knew how to make it either,’ responded Lord Harry cheerfully, ‘until I came along.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve started working for a living!’ exclaimed Mr Blewett.

‘No, nothing so horrible. Gambling is my salvation.’

‘I should have known. White’s and Brooks’s have been the sepulchres of many a fortune.’

‘Not them. The Stock Exchange. I have a genius for speculation. I am possessor of quite a large fortune, uncle. Wealth has descended on me suddenly. So, you see, you will need to concern
yourself with bullying Silas Dubois.’

Mr Blewett looked sulky. ‘I never meant to leave him a penny anyway. He doesn’t like me and hasn’t the grace to hide it.’

‘It serves you right for being such a miserable old sinner. Anyway, you don’t need to leave me any money, and I don’t need to get married.’

‘Don’t love the girl, eh?’

‘I did not say that. I am merely pointing out that due to my exceptional talent for moving around stocks and shares, I am at liberty to marry anyone I please, and when I please.
Nonetheless, you can trundle out your bath chair for the wedding and arrive like the bad fairy in time to bring down curses on my nuptials.

‘But do, please, put the horrible Silas out of his misery. He’s perfectly capable of killing you just to get your money if you tease him too much.’

‘That great walking nose! Never! Don’t trip over the other relatives on the way out. They gather around me like vultures.’

‘And don’t you adore it. It’s what keeps you alive, dear uncle, all this manipulating and string-pulling.’

Mr Blewett gave a harsh cackle of laughter. ‘Perhaps you have the right of it, Harry. But I’ll probably leave you the money anyway. You never cared a rap for my bullying and you
don’t creep around me in that fawning way Dubois has.’

‘Oh, I am fond of you in my fashion,’ said Lord Harry airily.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘To see my beloved. A thing I hardly do these days. By the time I meet her at the altar, I shall have quite forgot what she looks like.’

Lord Harry sailed out, and nearly collided with Silas Dubois who was standing outside.

‘I wouldn’t lurk there, dear boy,’ said Lord Harry earnestly. ‘The door is so thick, you can’t hear a word through it, and you’re only likely to get a
terrible earache from pressing your ear to the keyhole.’

Lord Harry went off quickly down the stairs before Mr Dubois could think of a reply.

Mr Dubois went into the bedroom.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ snapped Mr Blewett huffily. ‘Still waiting for me to die, Silas?’

‘Of course not,’ said Mr Dubois, his small mouth curving up under the shadow of his nose in what he hoped was an affectionate smile. ‘I passed Desire on the stairs. There is a
rumour he might not wed after all.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Blewett, looking slyly out of the corner of his eyes at Mr Dubois. ‘Needs to get married.’

‘I hear he has been speculating on ’Change to some effect,’ said Mr Dubois.

‘All a hum,’ said Jeremy gleefully. ‘The terms of my will still stand. If Desire weds, he gets the money. If he don’t, you do.’

Silas grinned. By tomorrow morning, everyone, including this horrible old carcase of a man, would know that Lord Harry’s intended bride had eloped with Guy Wentwater.

‘What you so happy about all of a sudden?’ snapped Mr Blewett.

‘Only happy to see you so well and in such good spirits,’ replied Silas Dubois, coming forwards and solicitously plumping up Mr Blewett’s pillows.

His hands stilled for a moment. How easy it would be, he thought, to jerk out this silk and lace pillow and hold it down on the old man’s face!

Silas became aware that Mr Blewett was staring up at him with a sort of unholy glee on his face, almost as if he could read his mind. He quickly finished plumping the pillows, and sidled to the
foot of the bed.

Why commit murder? Tomorrow would see a change in the old man’s thoughts. And he could not live much longer anyway.

Deirdre went into the morning room to find Minerva busy writing a letter to Mrs Armitage who had remained behind at Hopeworth with the younger girls.

‘Where is His Lordship the baby?’ asked Deirdre.