Deirdre and Desire (22 page)

The rest of the party was made up of the vicar and the squire, Lady Chester and Mr Anstey, Colonel Arthur Brian and, of course, Lady Godolphin.

The atmosphere was strained to say the least. The vicar and squire were exhausted from their day’s Wentwater hunting. Mr Anstey was more effete, more mincing, and more posturing than
Deirdre could remember him being before.

Lady Chester kept sending him killing glances from out of her rheumy old eyes when she was not flashing triumphant ones in Lady Godolphin’s direction.

As Lady Godolphin put it,
sotto voce
, ‘Asking her was a fox’s paw.’

Colonel Brian looked embarrassed and kept drinking rather more wine than was good for him.

Deirdre started at every sound of carriage wheels in the square outside.

Her heart sank as the interminable dinner dragged on, and on. Of course he would not come. She had behaved so badly. How could she expect him to come? She had told him they would not suit, she
had shown everyone in the world that she was afraid of him. So it was silly to keep jumping at every sound.

In fact, he was probably staying away because he heard she was to be there.

It was only a simple dinner, but the awkward atmosphere and the general lack of appetite made it seem more than it was.

Deirdre tried to keep her mind off the absent Lord Harry, by identifying and counting the dishes, until she had a large ornamental menu printed inside her brain.

By the time the tablecloth was removed and the port and sherry, walnuts and sweetmeats stood reflected in the polished wood of the table, everyone was slightly tipsy in a silent and surly
way.

‘Well, it seems as if Lord Harry is not coming. Waste o’ money,’ grumbled Lady Godolphin who had been coerced into holding the dinner so that Deirdre could resume her
acquaintanceship with Desire. Of course, she had taken the opportunity to renew her own acquaintance with Mr Anstey, fondly picturing that young man spurning Lady Chester and darting to her
side.

But Lady Godolphin was clutch-fisted and Lady Chester was not, and so out of sheer pride Lady Godolphin was forced to favour her former beau, Colonel Brian, with her attentions.

Mr Anstey fingered the new ruby pin in his stock and smiled fondly on Lady Chester.

The evening was bad, but worse was to follow. No sooner had they all been set down at the opera than a stern matron descended on their party.

‘Oh lor’,’ muttered the vicar to Deirdre. ‘’Tis Lady Mason, Lady Chester’s daughter.’

‘Mama,’ said Lady Mason awfully, ‘what is this I hear? Is
this
the famous Mr Anstey of whom I have heard so much? Is
this
the ne’er-do-well who preys on
elderly ladies for their money? You are the laughing stock of London society.’

‘’Pon rep,’ bleated Mr Anstey, falling back before the venom in Lady Mason’s bulging eyes, ‘I dote on your Mama.’

‘Fustian, you mountebank, you man-milliner, you
counter jumper
!’ hissed Lady Mason. ‘Mason!’ she called over her shoulder. Her thick-set, brutish husband came
ambling up. ‘Mason, this is the creature who has been battening on Mama like a leech.’

‘Oh, it is, is it?’ said Lord Mason with an awful glare and fingering his dress sword.

Mr Anstey looked to his party for help. Mr Armitage and Squire Radford seemed completely absorbed in watching the passing crowd outside the opera. Lady Godolphin was clutching tightly on to
Colonel Brian’s arm and staring straight ahead.

Lady Chester looked terrified of her daughter.

‘I say,’ bleated Mr Anstey, ‘you musn’t say things like that.’

‘What are you going to do about it, hey?’ sneered Lord Mason. He stripped off one glove and smacked Mr Anstey across the face with it.

‘Name your seconds,’ he growled.

‘I won’t!’ screeched Mr Anstey, and he turned and fled into the crowd as fast as his spindly legs would carry him.

Lady Chester began to cry but was strong-armed off by her daughter and son-in-law.

The depleted party made their way silently to Lady Godolphin’s box.

The opera was Gluck’s
Orpheus and Eurydice.
Watching and listening, at first, more for Lord Harry’s arrival than anything to do with what was going on on the stage, Deirdre at
last became caught up in the story and the music.

And when Orpheus clasped the dead Eurydice in his arms and broke into that famous lament, ‘Che faro senza Eurydice’ (I have lost my Eurydice), tears poured unchecked down
Deirdre’s cheeks as the beautiful music rose and fell in the hushed opera house.

And then a hand appeared in front of her nose holding a large pocket handkerchief. She took it gratefully, and, only as the last note of the famous aria died away, did she remember the last time
a hand had reached in front of her with a handkerchief. She twisted her head and looked up into the clear blue eyes of Lord Harry Desire who was standing behind her chair.

On stage, Eurydice was restored to life by Amor, and Deirdre was brought back to the present world by the light touch of Lord Harry’s hand on her shoulder.

After the opera was finished, Lord Harry made his apologies to Lady Godolphin. ‘You didn’t miss anything,’ said her ladyship, ‘except a lot of curst scenes and
historicals. That old trout, Lady Chester, was arrested by her daughter, Lady Mason.

‘Mason himself challenges Anstey to a duel and Anstey runs away like the arrant, useless coward he is. My Arthur would never have behaved so cravenishly.’ She pressed the
Colonel’s hand. Colonel Brian glowed with pleasure and murmured, ‘
Dear
lady,’ in a deprecating way.

Lord Harry took his hand from Deirdre’s shoulder and she gave a shiver, as if suddenly cold.

When she thought he was not looking, Deirdre glanced up at Lord Harry. He immediately turned and looked full at her. She dropped her eyes and blushed painfully. A terrible blush. She could feel
it beginning somewhere around the soles of her feet and coursing in a red tide right to the top of her head.

Inwardly, she cursed the glaring lights of the opera house. Eyes seemed to stare at her curiously from all sides. Through an embarrassed red mist, she dimly saw Lord Harry turn away and say
something to Colonel Brian.

At last, they all battled down the stairs in the press of people.

‘No one ever wants to sit quietly in their box until everyone else has gone,’ thought Deirdre crossly. ‘Being
tonnish
seems to involve a sad degree of
crushing.’

Then the press of the crowd thrust her against Lord Harry, who put a protective arm about her, and Deirdre promptly forgot about everything and everyone else.

He would not hold her so if he did not care!

But her heart plummeted as she saw that his
other
arm was around Lady Godolphin’s shoulder to protect
her
, Colonel Brian having been thrust back into the crowd.

But she would have an opportunity to talk a little to Lord Harry at Lady Godolphin’s – for surely he would come back with them for wine and cakes – and then she might be able
to judge if he had any warm feelings towards her.

But no sooner were they all in Lady Godolphin’s carriage and Lord Harry had left in his own than it transpired they were all to go on to a rout at a Mr South’s.

There was a little comfort in the fact that Lord Harry was to join them there.

And so after an hour of waiting in a line of other carriages, they alighted at Mr South’s mansion and pushed and shoved until they had reached the top of the stairs. Lord Harry was already
there, and talking to a dashing matron nearly as tall as himself. She had red hair.

Wedged in a press of bodies with a glass of wine in one hand and a biscuit in the other, Deirdre at last found herself trapped in one of those ‘interesting’ conversations of which
she had dreamed. An intense young man, jammed up against her, subjected her to a strong lecture on the disgraceful state of the economy, the miserable harvests, the sheer ingratitude of the
Luddites, and the deviousness and stupidity of the Prime Minister.

In her dreams, she had always replied wittily and intelligently, but she found herself mumbling, ‘Indeed,’ and ‘How true,’ while all the while her green eyes kept
straying across to where she could see Lord Harry’s handsome head.

He was looking down at his companion with a lazy, seducdive, slightly predatory expression.

‘And as for Napoleon,’ Deirdre’s companion was saying. ‘He should have been beheaded on Tower Hill. Do you know he lives like a
king
on St Helena? Do you know . .
. ?’

‘I don’t care,’ said Deirdre rudely, ‘whether he is surrounded with a harem of dancing girls and eats from gold plates. He is locked away and will never frighten the
world again.’

‘Good Gad,’ said the young man, trying to raise his quizzing glass but finding his arms jammed to his side. ‘You are a blue-stocking.’

‘I am not a blue-stocking,’ said Deirdre crossly. ‘I have said nothing to give anyone that idea.’

‘Young ladies,’ said the young man firmly, ‘should not have views on anything. Their role is to listen to men since their minds are of the inferior variety.’

‘They can become bored just like any man. Oh, do excuse me,’ said Deirdre, her voice rising on a note of agony as she saw Lord Harry evidently moving off with the redhead. What if he
left
with her? What if he married her?

She elbowed her way frantically through the crowd and came up against him all at once. Of his companion, there was no sign.

‘You look as if you are fleeing from wolves,’ said Lord Harry. ‘I will find us a quiet corner.’

Magically, the crowd parted to let them through and they were soon ensconced in two chairs in a corner, half hidden from the room by a carved screen.

‘Someone was talking
at
me,’ said Deirdre, ‘and I felt suffocated.’

‘A rout must be a crush to be a success,’ he laughed. ‘You are not fashionable, Miss Deirdre, unless you enjoy having sharp elbows rammed in your side, and someone jumping on
your feet. Why are you in London? You will become worn to a frazzle with all this junketing back and forth.’

‘Papa found out about . . . about Mr Wentwater. He means to hunt him down.’

‘If anyone can find Mr Wentwater, Mr Armitage can. Is it so important? He behaved badly, but you did throw yourself at him, and, I think, you have had your revenge.’

Deirdre grasped her fan very tightly. He could not know of that second elopement. Papa had not time to tell him. Did he know
everything
?

To change the subject she said lightly, ‘Are you still of a mind to wave your uncle’s fortune goodbye?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said seriously. ‘I have to get married sometime, don’t I?’

‘Why?’

‘Among other things, I would like a son.’

‘Oh.’

‘Would you like to have children?’

Deirdre knit her brows. Children. How
did
one have them? She had studied the women of the village and knew now that the baby was obviously carried inside the belly.

But how did it get
out
? She had some idea that perhaps the navel widened into a sort of door from which the baby would spring fully-clothed like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus.

It would be all very simple if one could pull babies out of one’s head.

Did having them have anything to do with all those warm sensations inside her body when Lord Harry kissed her? Like cheese being churned. Did babies
solidify
inside one after a certain
amount of the right kind of kissing? And was that why one was never supposed to let a gentleman do more than press one’s hand?

‘You have not answered my question,’ pointed out Lord Harry with an amused look at her troubled face.

‘Of course I would like to have children,’ said Deirdre.

‘How many?’

‘Do I have a choice?’ asked Deirdre naively.

‘Perhaps. My uncle is anxious for me to have children since no one else in my family shows any signs of becoming wed,’ said Lord Harry. ‘Of course, Silas may marry someone just
to pip me at the post.’

‘Silas?’

‘Silas Dubois – my rival for uncle’s fortune.’

‘How very odd,’ said Deirdre. ‘I know I have heard that name before. I was passing the morning room when I was staying at Minerva’s one time, and she was talking to her
husband and I heard her say, “Do you ever hear anything of that dreadful Mr Dubois? I confess I sometimes still have nightmares when I think of him.” I did not want to stay and
eavesdrop on their conversation, so I heard no more.’