Deirdre and Desire (27 page)

‘But
you
are not waiting until you get married,’ said Deirdre.

It’s different for such as me,’ said Betty. ‘I had to do it.’

‘Well, I did
not
!’ howled Deirdre, breaking the sticks of the fan she was holding in her agitation. ‘Yes, I went to his lodgings but nothing
happened
!’

‘Oh, come, miss, and you with that great bruise on your neck.’

It just happened. He just . . . oh, what’s the use?’ said Deirdre wretchedly. ‘Everyone is creeping about me as if I am going to a funeral, and then there is this havey-cavey
wedding, tucked away in the fields of Islington. And now with everyone in the family being so shocked, it has got about London, and
this
was in a print shop in Bond Street.’

She reached over to a small table and held up a coloured cartoon.

Betty looked at it, her eyes wide with horror. In it, Deirdre Armitage in a state of undress was sitting on Lord Harry Desire’s knees.

Underneath there was a poem. It read:

‘Oh,
miss
,’ said Betty. ‘It’s a
mercy
he is going to marry you.’

‘I cannot understand why he should not make an effort to convince Papa that nothing happened,’ said Deirdre fretfully. ‘Oh, God. Would that I had never met him!’

‘Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now,’ said Betty, picking up the hairbrush. ‘Them gossips will have forgot the whole thing in another few weeks.’

But Deirdre worried and worried. Her father seemed to think that if she saw her fiancé at the wedding rehearsal, then it would be soon enough.

She could not talk openly about it, for the scandal had to be kept from the twins and from Frederica and Diana. Also, it was as if she were to be punished by the parsimony of the wedding
arrangements, and she was kept busy, endlessly making and stitching petticoats and handkerchiefs.

The wedding rehearsal was a solemn affair, more like a funeral.

The church was small and dark and smelly. The vicar who was to perform the service was an old University friend of Mr Armitage.

He was one of those muscular Christians who pride themselves on the ease with which they can talk freely on all sorts of delicate subjects, and he teased the young couple jovially about their
haste to be married, and was only silenced when Lord Harry Desire roused himself from his reverie and threatened to call the parson out.

‘Thank goodness that part’s over,’ sighed the vicar, after Deirdre had been firmly marched away from Lord Harry and into the family carriage. ‘Now we’ve only got
tomorrow to worry about.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Armitage. ‘It is all very unfortunate. We had two grand weddings already, Mr Armitage, and that is something to be grateful for. Town depresses me these days
and I have a monstrous severe pain in my hip. I confess I shall be glad to return to Hopeworth when this is all over.’

‘Why are you getting married in such a poky church?’ asked Diana, after a whispered consultation with Frederica.

‘Shh!’ reproved Mrs Armitage. ‘There are things it is better you should not know.’

Suddenly a fit of rebellion assailed Deirdre. She was
not
going to be meekly marched to the altar on the morrow and handed over to Lord Harry Desire. She
must
know what he had been
about to confess. What if it were something terrible? There was still a chance to escape. The only way to escape was to ask him.

And, if it were something too terrible, then she would escape this time by facing up to her family.

There was no Guy Wentwater to elope with. What a fool she had been over him. At least she wasn’t going to be married to
him.
Deirdre briefly wondered where he was.

At that moment, Guy Wentwater was sitting in a hostelry in Bristol waiting for the tide. He signed his name to the foot of the letter he had just written, and then read it over
to make sure there were no mistakes in grammar or spelling.

He read: ‘My dear Miss Emily, By the time this reaches you, I shall be on the High Seas, bound for the West Indies. I have a certain deal of Business there. As you will have perused in the
journals, I am accounted as something of a Hero, by virtue of having struck down one Silas Dubois. They praise me more than I deserve since I was merely protecting my person from a vicious, savage,
and armed murderer. He was great and powerful and quite brutal in his madness and I am relieved to have defended myself so ably.

‘Give my warmest regards to Yr. Family. I hope to return to further our acquaintance. Meanwhile, I remain, Yr. Humble and Devoted Servant, G.W.’

Guy looked at what he had written and frowned. Should he, perhaps, have said something about hoping she would wait for him? Then he laughed. With such a face, Miss Emily would still be unwed by
the time he returned.

TWELVE

Deirdre found herself more worried and agitated than ever as evening arrived. At last she summoned Betty.

‘Betty,’ said Deirdre, ‘I wish you to do something for me. Pray put on your bonnet and cloak and take one of the footmen with you and call on Lord Harry and tell him I must
speak to him.’

‘Mr Armitage won’t like it,’ said Betty. ‘Nor will Lady Sylvester.’

‘Papa is at some coffee house with Squire Radford, Mama, the girls, and the twins have gone to make a brief call on Lady Godolphin, and Minerva and Sylvester are gone to the play.
Please
, Betty. You will be ruining my life if you do not.’

Betty hesitated. In truth, she was sorry for Miss Deirdre. The wedding was to be a poky little affair.

‘I’ll go, miss,’ she said at last. ‘But you must get him to say he called round of his own accord.’

‘I will, Betty. I promise. Now wait there until I write something.’

Betty waited patiently until Deirdre had scribbled a letter. ‘Tell him to return with you, if possible,’ urged Deirdre, ‘for Mama will be coming home soon.’

When Betty had left, Deirdre changed the simple gown she was wearing for one of her best. She went downstairs and sat by the drawing-room window, waiting to see when Lord Harry would arrive.

At last, when she felt she could not bear to wait any longer, a carriage drew up, the door opened and Lord Harry’s tall figure alighted on the pavement.

Deirdre flew into the hall and opened the door herself.

‘Come in quickly,’ she whispered. ‘I do not want the servants to know you are here. Come into the library.’

As she led the way, Deirdre noticed Lord Harry was wearing evening dress and had his chapeau bras tucked under his arm.

She realized she would need to say her piece quickly. He was obviously en route for the opera.

Deirdre lit the fire which had been made up and then turned and faced him.

‘There is something I must know, my lord . . .’ she began.

‘How severe you look. And will you not call me Harry?’

‘Very well . . . Harry. Please sit down.’

He sat down in an armchair and Deirdre sat on a chair facing him on the other side of the fire and studied him intently.

‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

‘With all my heart,’ he answered in his usual light manner.

‘I feel . . . I feel you might have tried to make Papa understand that nothing at all happened between us,’ said Deirdre miserably, all her worries beginning to come out in a rush.
‘And you bit me. And you said you had something to tell me about wickedness, but Papa interrupted us and now I don’t know what to expect, and I am to have this poky, little wedding as
if I were in disgrace, and no one but family is to attend.

‘And I am to wear Annabelle’s old wedding gown, and
I am frightened.
’

She looked at him, trembling a little, waiting for him to answer.

He got up and walked to her, and, with one swift movement, gathered her up in his arms. Then he returned to his chair and arranged her comfortably on his knees.

Deirdre was reminded of the cartoon. ‘And, oh Harry, they have the most awful drawings of us in the print shop,’ she wailed.

‘I will begin at the beginning,’ he said, holding her tightly and giving her a little shake, ‘and you will listen patiently.

‘Now, I saw you nearly two years ago in the Park with your sister, Annabelle. You were laughing and teasing her and I could not rest until I discovered who you were. I found out you were
very young. Your sister had just become married to Brabington. I had to go to the wars but somehow I was determined that when I returned, I would seek you out.

‘Shortly after my return your father visited me at White’s. You can imagine my amazement. I was being offered marriage to you. I still thought you too young and thought it
disgraceful of your father to push you into an unwanted marriage, and so I amused myself by telling him I didn’t like girls with red hair and I didn’t like clever ones either.

‘I wanted you to fall in love with me, but when you really seemed so frightened and miserable and I had ascertained you no longer had any warm feelings towards Wentwater, I decided to
agree to a termination of the engagement and then to wait and hope that you would come to miss me.

‘Imagine my surprise when I found you back in London so soon! I was persuaded you were not indifferent to me. I was afraid you might run away from me again and so I compromised you –
with your help, of course, my love. And you are not to have a poky little wedding. Your father will find I have made other arrangements for the wedding breakfast since I have invited all London
society from Brummell to the Prince Regent.

‘And the church is to be especially decorated and my army friends will form a guard of honour and society will talk about it for years.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Papa?’

‘I couldn’t be bothered,’ said Lord Harry lazily. ‘I am paying for it, but he would bluster and shout so much before I got a chance to tell him and that does make my head
ache.’

Deirdre played shyly with his top waistcoat button. ‘You are so generous, and I am sure I love you, only it is a pity,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that love-making could not be
like this . . . just being together and being comfortable.’

‘Oh, it is, most of the time. I am sorry I bit you. I was simply making my mark, you know, like putting a gold mark on things, except I do not yet have gold teeth. You are naturally afraid
of the intimacies of marriage. It would be strange if you were not. When I said I had been wicked, I simply meant that I had not told you I had been in love with you for a long time.’

‘Do we . . . do we need to go in for any intimacies right away?’ asked Deirdre. ‘I mean, could we not become better acquainted first?’

‘Of course,’ he said, sinking down into the depths of the chair and arranging her head comfortably on his shoulder. ‘We could sit many evenings just like this. It would not
trouble you if I merely kissed you?’

Deirdre shyly shook her head.

He bent his head and kissed her gently. Deirdre felt the stirrings of passion and decided since he had been so generous, it would only be courteous to kiss him back with some of the enthusiasm
she felt.

With equal generosity, Lord Harry replied in kind.

Deirdre finally broke free and sat up on his knees and looked down into his blue eyes.

‘I love you Harry,’ she said simply.

He mutely held out his arms and she threw herself against his chest with such force that the chair overbalanced and decanted them both on to the library floor.

And then somehow Deirdre could not seem to stop kissing him, and clothes were becoming an increasing irritation, and when his hand moved down the front of her gown and held one firm breast, it
seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Upstairs, Betty waited patiently. The hours passed. The family had long since gone to bed. She had told Lady Sylvester that Deirdre was asleep with the headache and did not want to be
disturbed.

She had not taken a footman with her and so she hoped the rest of the servants were not aware of what was going on and that his lordship had had the sense to lock the library door.

At last Betty fell asleep, sitting in a chair beside the fire in Deirdre’s bedroom.

She was awakened at five in the morning by Miss Deirdre Armitage creeping into the room.

Betty struggled out of the chair. ‘Oh, Miss Deirdre,’ she said crossly, ‘you do take advantage of a body’s kindness. Now into bed this minute or I’ll never get you
up in time to go to church.’

The wedding was hailed as an outstanding success. People talked for months about the glory of the choir and the beauty of the flower arrangements, of the reception in striped
marquees on Islington Fields and of how the Prince Regent himself had put in an appearance and had danced with Deirdre. The vicar, once he got over his first stunned shock at seeing so many
fashionable guests, began to fret and gnaw his nails and worry about the cost of everything and say he always knew Desire was an idiot.