Deirdre and Desire (3 page)

Like Lord Chesterfield, he considered women to be ‘children of a larger growth’, and ‘a man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them as he
does with a sprightly forward child.’

By the time he had reached Town and had made use of his daughter Minerva’s town house, he was once more happy within himself.

Barbered and pomaded and laced into a pair of Cumberland corsets under a sky-blue coat of Bath superfine and the latest thing in canary-coloured pantaloons, the vicar creaked and swaggered his
way down St James’s Street and turned in at the door of White’s.

White’s Club had changed little since the vicar’s salad days, although the entrance had been moved lower down and the old doorway turned into a bow window. The subscription fee had
been raised to eleven guineas and the entrance fee from ten to twenty guineas. Beau Brummell passed fashionable judgement on London from his seat in the bow window.

Swift had called White’s ‘the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies’ but White’s was, in fact,
the
club. Certainly it was the place to hunt down
such an Exquisite as Lord Harry Desire.

The club was remarkably quiet although it was three in the afternoon. It transpired there had been a heavy gambling session the night before and no doubt everyone was still sleeping off the
effects. He espied Colonel Brian, and, after some hesitation, approached him.

The elderly colonel had been the paramour of Lady Godolphin, a distant relative of the vicar’s wife who had brought out Minerva. Lady Godolphin, that ancient Mrs Malaprop of society, had
believed the colonel to be married, when in fact his wife was dead. The colonel had put all that right by asking her to marry him. He had been accepted. For a month afterwards, Lady Godolphin had talked of little else but the preparation of her torso – her
word for trousseau – and then, quite suddenly, it had all fizzled out. The gossips would have it that the colonel had jilted her. But no one could find the truth of the matter since both parties refused to discuss the subject.

‘I say, Colonel,’ said the vicar breezily, ‘I haven’t seen you this age. You do not seem to be in plump currant.’

For the colonel looked sadly woebegone.

The colonel looked carefully at the painted and groomed vicar for several moments and then his face cleared. ‘Charles Armitage!’ he exclaimed. ‘I would not have known
you.’

‘Course not,’ said the vicar with awful vanity. ‘I’ve growed fashionable.’

‘Quite,’ said the colonel nervously, taking a step back to escape from the overpowering smell of musk which hovered round Mr Armitage like a great yellow cloud. ‘How are your girls? Well, I trust?’

‘Minerva and Annabelle are in Paris.’

‘The whole of society seems to be in Paris,’ sighed the colonel. ‘The town is remarkably thin of company. It will be a drab Little Season.’

‘I plan to call on Lady Godolphin later,’ said the vicar airily. ‘Care to accompany me?’

The colonel shook his head sadly, and looked at the floor.

The vicar was longing to ask him the reason for his disaffection with Lady Godolphin, but the thought of his real reason for being in the club made him drop the question he had been about to
ask, and demand instead, ‘Know Harry Desire?’

‘Slightly. I saw him a minute ago.’

‘I would like an introduction,’ said the vicar. ‘I have a private and personal matter I wish to discuss with him.’

‘Very well,’ said Colonel Brian. ‘He is in the coffee room. If you would do me a small favour in return . . .?’

‘By all means.’

‘When you call on Lady Godolphin, tell her Arthur sends his warmest regards. No. Do not ask me anything.’

‘“Arthur sends his warmest regards,”’ repeated the vicar impatiently. ‘Now, lead me to Desire.’

Lord Harry Desire was sitting barricaded behind a newspaper in the coffee room. He looked up as the colonel stood behind him and cleared his throat. Colonel Brian then introduced the vicar and took his leave.

The vicar sat down opposite Lord Harry and studied him intently.

Lord Harry stared back, his gaze empty, blue and limpid.

He was not quite the fashionable rakish Exquisite the vicar had expected. The first thing that struck the vicar was the man’s incredible beauty. Lord Harry had thick, black, glossy hair
falling in artistic disarray over a broad white forehead. His blue eyes were clear and innocent like the eyes of a child. The lids were curved, giving him the lazy, sensual look of some classical
statues. His mouth was firm, but there was a certain air of languid effeminacy about him caused by the girlish purity of his skin and by the slimness of his tall figure.

His clothes were beautifully tailored, reflected the vicar with a pang of envy. His bottle-green coat sat on his shoulders without a wrinkle and his buff-coloured pantaloons looked as if they
had been painted on to his legs. His hessian boots shone like black glass. His cravat rose from above his striped waistcoat in intricately sculptured folds.

‘You’re younger than I thought,’ said the vicar abruptly.

‘I am remarkably well-preserved for my thirty years,’ said Lord Harry earnestly.

‘Aye well, just so,’ said the vicar.

There was a long silence. Outside, someone was murdering Mozart on a barrel organ.

‘Well, well,’ said the vicar, rubbing his chubby hands together. ‘Well, well, well,’

Lord Harry continued to survey him with a pleasant smiling look.

‘You must wonder what it is I want to speak to you about,’ said the vicar desperately.

‘Oh, no,’ said Lord Harry gently. ‘I never wonder about anything. It is too fatiguing. And I am sure you will tell me in your own good time.’

The vicar looked at him in irritation. Then he thought instead of the nabob uncle’s fortune and leaned forwards and patted Lord Harry’s knee in an avuncular manner.

Lord Harry looked at the vicar, looked at the hand on his knee, and looked at the vicar again. His expression did not change, but the vicar’s face reddened and he hurriedly withdrew his
hand.

‘See, it’s like this here,’ said the Reverend Charles Armitage, beginning to perspire, ‘I heard you was in need of getting married so you could inherit your uncle’s
fortune.’

Lord Harry surveyed him blandly. The vicar felt himself becoming angry. Why didn’t the young clod
say
something? This was worse than he had imagined it would be. Better get to the
point.

‘I have this daughter, see. Deirdre. Eighteen. Beautiful. I ain’t got the blunt, you need the wife, what say we strike a bargain?’

A flicker of something glinted in his lordship’s blue eyes and then was gone.

‘Indeed!’ he said politely.

‘Well?’ said the vicar impatiently. ‘What about it?’

‘Does she have red hair?’ asked Lord Harry, looking vaguely in the direction of the chandelier. ‘I can’t abide red hair.’

‘Dye,’ decided the vicar to himself. He thought briefly of God the way one thinks of a nagging, bullying parent, slightly closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said,
‘No.’

‘And she is in Town?’

‘No,’ said the vicar. ‘But she will be. In four days’ time.’

‘I met your eldest daughter,’ mused Lord Harry. ‘Lady Sylvester Comfrey. Very beautiful and very wise. She told me how she despised men who put pride in dress before pride in leading a virtuous life.’

‘Oh, Minerva will have her little joke,’ said the vicar jovially, privately cursing his eldest for her priggish moralizing.

‘Is your daughter – Deirdre – vastly clever?’

The vicar looked at Lord Harry from out of the corner of his little shoe-button eyes and wondered whether Lord Harry wanted a clever wife. Lord Harry looked back with an expression of absolute
vacancy on his beautiful face.

‘Oh, no,’ said the vicar. ‘Very womanly. Pretty little thing. Domesticated. Been well-trained. See here,’ he went on, improvizing rapidly, ‘she will be staying with
Lady Godolphin next Monday and we shall be having a little
musicale.
Perhaps you would like to attend?’

There was a long silence. A bluebottle, brave survivor of summer, buzzed against the glass. A log shifted on the fire and several clocks began to chime the half hour.

‘Yes,’ said Lord Harry at last. ‘I will be there.’

‘Good, good, send you a card,’ gabbled the vicar, now desperate to escape.

Lord Harry raised one long, slim, white hand as the vicar rose to his feet.

‘You are sure your daughter’s affections are not otherwise engaged?’

‘No,’ said the vicar, glad to be able to tell the truth at last. ‘Deirdre’s never even looked at a man, if you know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Lord Harry pleasantly.

‘Well, don’t trouble your brain with it,’ said the vicar, patting him on the shoulder. ‘We look forward to the pleasure of your company on Monday.’

‘What an idiot!’ muttered the vicar to himself as he left the club. ‘Never mind. He’s a manageable idiot and Deirdre will be quite happy with a complacent
husband.’

He set off at a brisk pace in the direction of Lady Godolphin’s house.

He needed all the help he could get!

TWO

Deirdre Armitage sat reading a novel she did not like to Lady Wentwater whom she did not like either.

The drawing room was dark and musty. Lady Wentwater was white and doughy and musty. As she read, Deirdre wondered about Lady Wentwater’s nephew, Guy. No one had seen him in the county
since the time it had seemed he was enamoured of Annabelle.

Rumour had it that the vicar had frightened him away. Guy Wentwater had said he was a slave trader, and although he had long quit that ghastly means of earning money, the Armitage family were
happy that he chose to stay away.

Then Deirdre’s thoughts turned to the story she was reading. It was called
Ludovic’s Revenge
by A Lady of Quality and Deirdre judged it quite the silliest tale she had ever
read. Everyone seemed either to turn scarlet or go ‘ashen pale’. Men and women fainted with amazing regularity and there wasn’t even a decent ghost.

Deirdre took a quick glance at the clock. Then she closed the book firmly.

‘It is late, Lady Wentwater,’ she said. ‘I must return home.’

‘Then come tomorrow.’

‘Daphne will come tomorrow,’ said Deirdre, privately vowing to give her sister’s hair a good yank if she did not.

‘Oh,
Daphne.
I will need to shroud every looking glass in the house or I won’t hear a word out of her,’ snorted Lady Wentwater. ‘Too taken up with herself, she
is.’

‘She has reason to be,’ said Deirdre, who, though she privately agreed with Lady Wentwater, did not like criticism of any of her sisters. ‘She has become even more beautiful
than Minerva or Annabelle.’

‘Aye, and she knows it. Why, Guy! When did you arrive?’

Deirdre gave a little gasp and leapt to her feet, turning to face the monster slave trader.

Guy Wentworth stood smiling at her, looking so handsome, so normal, and so, yes,
ordinary
that Deirdre lost her fears and was able to drop him a curtsy with an air of composure.

‘Permit me to escort you home, Miss . . . Deirdre. It is Miss Deirdre, is it not?’ smiled Guy.

Deirdre nodded, but added that she was perfectly capable of seeing herself home.

To her annoyance, he walked with her to the door.

‘We have not seen you in some time, Mr Wentwater,’ said Deirdre, praying that he would leave her at the main door.

‘No, I have just returned from Paris. I finally sold out.’

‘Sold out? Then you were in the military, sir?’

‘Yes,’ he sighed, looking grave. ‘I know what you and your family think of me, Miss Deirdre. Have you ever considered the disgust I feel for myself? The barbarous trade I
briefly engaged in was the senseless folly of a young man. I fought for my country at Waterloo. It was one way to prove to myself that I am not quite so evil.’

‘Oh, tell me about Waterloo,’ pleaded Deirdre, quite forgetting that she had wished only a moment before to be quit of him. ‘Everyone says such subjects are not fit for female
ears. But it was a wonderful victory.’

He gently took her arm in his and walked with her down the drive. His tale of glory and bravery and courage and death fascinated Deirdre, who hung rapt on his every word.

She could not help admiring his tall, slender figure, the quiet elegance of his dress, and the hard lines about his mouth, ‘put there by suffering,’ she told herself.

They reached the vicarage all too soon.

He seemed to recollect his surroundings with a start. ‘Forgive me,’ he said in a low voice, ‘if I do not come any further. I do not wish to embarrass your family. In fact, I would be grateful if you would not mention that I am in
Hopeworth. It will be
our
secret.’

‘Yes,’ said Deirdre breathlessly, for he had taken her hand and was holding it in a tight clasp. ‘But if I told them how brave you are, how you have made your amends . . .
well, they would see things diferently
now.
As I do.’

‘I cannot risk losing a friendship so new and so precious to me,’ he said. ‘Other people might not have your generosity of spirit.