Life Mask (18 page)

'I think her a heroine,' said Eliza. 'People have abused her for the secret wedding, but doesn't it show strength of mind? Instead of succumbing to the predictable carnal intrigue with the Prince, she held out against all his pleas and threats until he married her.'

She was looking across the tea table, nowhere near Derby, but he knew she was talking to him and his face began to scald.

'If the reports of their sending a child abroad are true, she's had to make a terrible sacrifice. It's not her fault that her husband tried to disown her as a harlot for the sake of his debts,' she finished sharply.

There was a silence. Derby thought the guests were probably wondering what they'd stoop to for the sake of £300,000.

'She is very pious for a Catholic,' observed Mrs Hobart.

'She has self-respect,' Eliza said.

'Yes,' said Derby, the single syllable like a pill in his throat. Eliza glanced over at him. 'The Prince shouldn't have asked what she couldn't give,' he went on in a neutral tone, as if he weren't talking to the woman he adored. 'Since by the Royal Marriages Act he was prevented from offering Mrs Fitz a valid union, he should have respected her principles and bitten his tongue.'

'Given her up, you mean?' asked Richmond, confused.

'Or loved her, but at arm's length.' Derby cleared his throat.

'You're very high-minded tonight,' said Dick Edgcumbe with a snort.

Derby could tell that the group was puzzling over this stern condemnation of the Prince by a Foxite, since that Party had always been so indulgent to their royal patron. And amused by the very notion of Europe's most famous royal lecher attempting platonic love.
Be careful what you say,
he told himself,
or you'll end up a laughing stock.
This was absurd, this indirect communication with Eliza, but what if it was Derby's only chance? What if he waited and said nothing tonight, and didn't lay eyes on her for another two months?

Lady Mary helped herself to a pinch of scented snuff from an exquisite egg-shaped box with her husband's portrait on it and handed it on to her sister.

Derby had to drag in the theme of reconciliation somehow. 'Fox still hasn't forgiven Prinny for his lies. How sad,' he said too vehemently, 'when people who care for each other let the cord of friendship snap.' He looked everywhere in. the room but at the actress. 'One stupid little row to end so many years of intimacy!'

Another silence. Mrs Damer sneezed into her handkerchief. 'Mm. Marvellous stuff, this Bolongaro. Would anyone like some?'

'Is it violet-scented, like the Queens?' asked Mrs Hobart.

'No, she takes Macouba, I believe; too flowery for me.'

As the tea kettle was filled up again by the footman, Mrs Damer turned to the silent chaperone. 'Are you and your daughter happy in your present lodgings, Mrs Farren?'

The sudden question threw the woman into a pop-eyed panic.

Her daughter came to the rescue. 'Great Queen Street is just a few minutes from the theatre and it suits us well enough.'

'I ask,' said Mrs Damer, giving Derby a glance so brief that only he would notice, 'because I happen to know of a house just round the corner from here on Green Street'—she gestured through the wall—'which is falling vacant next month.'

'Which?' Eliza wanted to know, after a slight hesitation.

'The one with the bow window.'

'Oh, that's in a fine terrace,' said Walpole, who'd been born in Mayfair and knew every inch of it. 'But no mews for stabling, alas. I have trouble enough in Berkeley Square—'

'Miss Farren doesn't keep a carriage,' said Derby, before he could stop himself. Eliza looked over at him and he feared his remark had sounded proprietorial.

'Green Street would be an excellent address, wouldn't it?' she asked her mother. Mrs Farren looked back with a pent-up face.

Derby's heart was thudding. Was it possible? She'd be living in the heart of Mayfair, five minutes' walk from Derby House. They'd almost be neighbours. But could she afford it, on a salary of £17 a week not counting Bens? He resisted a mad impulse to send over to Derby House for his pocketbook, so he could fling banknotes into his beloved's lap.

The conversation trailed off into other matters: fashions and the latest from Versailles (where the Princesse de Polignac was now the Queen's unrivalled favourite), and the weather. Derby heard none of it. At the end of the evening he stood beside Eliza in the hall. 'Might I have the honour to drop you and your mother home, Miss Farren?'

A tiny silence. 'Thank you, that would be kind.'

Joy started up between his ribs.

E
VEN IF
he wasn't running a horse on Derby Day at Epsom, the Earl always went down to Surrey to cast his blessing on the race that bore his name. This year the Farrens went with him, since Eliza had a few days' breathing space before the Haymarket's summer season, and Derby assured her that Epsom was much quieter and more respectable than Newmarket; nowadays it was very rare for disappointed bettors to horsewhip a jockey.

Though most gentlemen were watching from horseback or their carriages, strung along the edge of the course, Derby led his guests to reserved seating at the top of a small stand. Three rows below sat Prinny, beside Mrs Fitz; Eliza was glad that she wasn't the only lady attending this race. A breeze lifted the carefully shaped curls off her jaw. Down at the track a crowd was milling, held back only by a chain strung between posts.

'To be strictly fair,' said Derby, settling the tails of his buff coat under him, 'Bunbury and I invented the race together over a long night's drinking at Brooks's. At the time, you see, most runs were for four-year-olds or older—strong, heavy goers—over courses of at least four miles, with handicaps, which tested nothing but stamina.'

'A worthy quality,' said Eliza, straight-faced. Wasn't Derby that kind of horse himself? Stamina was his main advantage as a suitor; God knew, she could have had her pick of handsomer men.

His eyes registered the tease. 'Certainly, but what about sheer, glorious speed? Bunbury and I came up with the idea of setting younger horses over a shorter course, say, three-year-olds over a mile and a half with level weights. Speaking of novelties—' He pulled out a silver watch and flipped it open to show Mrs Farren a tiny spinning hand. 'What do you think that shows, madam?'

The older woman's eyes were a vacant blue when she stared up from her knotting. (Eliza had recently persuaded her mother that the making of decorative braids was a genteeler way of occupying her hands than needlework.)

'Fifths of a second,' he told her.

'How very ... accurate, My Lord.'

Eliza let out a giggle. 'You must forgive me, Derby, but I really can't—I simply don't understand the appeal of sports.' Derby laughed. Oh, it was good to be on these pleasant terms again. There was so much about this man that Eliza liked: his intelligence, his humour. 'Of course I can see it's pleasant if one's own horse wins,' she corrected herself, 'or the horse one's put a guinea on. But I can't see its importance.'

'What if one stands to win iooo guineas?' he suggested. 'The Derby's a sweepstake, not a cup; we each put in 150, the runner-up gets 100 and the winner all the rest.'

The figures staggered Eliza. 'Well, then the money would matter to me, I suppose,' she said carelessly, 'but not the race in itself. It's only animals running along a field, after all.'

'Best keep your voice down in this company,' Derby whispered theatrically.

'I'm sorry, I'm being very rude,' she said, giving him one of her slow-ripening smiles.

'No, no, I appreciate your candour, Miss Farren, and I take your point. These are just games. It's an English preoccupation, all this racing and football and prizefighting; French visitors think us obsessed with speed and violence. But then, isn't much of life composed of games? What do you do at Drury Lane but play dress-up, like my daughters did at five years old, with papier mâché trees and folding knives?'

Eliza looked away, pricked into resentment. Is that what he thought of her career? 'A game, perhaps, but a serious one.'

He shrugged. 'One can take any game seriously. The more one knows about a game and the more one spends on it—whether time, thought, or money—the more serious it becomes.'

'Well,' she said with a rueful nod at the racecourse, 'I certainly know very little about this one, so I'll shut my mouth.'

'Please don't,' Derby told her fondly. 'What would you like to know?'

Where to start? The jockeys were leading out the horses, with their stubby tails. 'Are these all ... males?'

'No, no,' he assured her, 'colts and fillies together; we don't exclude the gender sex from the turf! In fact, some of the great Derby winners have been fillies, many of them sired by Eclipse—the best stud horse I've ever seen, a chestnut stallion who won eighteen races in a row. Gunpowder, that chestnut colt of Colonel O'Kelly's'—pointing at a horse, but Eliza couldn't tell which one—'he's by Eclipse.'

'So ... many of these horses are cousins, as it were?' she asked.

'Oh, all of them,' Derby assured her with a grin. 'It's worse than the House of Lords. There are really only three sure male lines: Eclipse, who was great-great-grandsired by the Darley Arabian—Herod, out of the Byerley Turk—and of course Matchem, from the Godophin Arabian. Then there were ten great foundation mares—'

'Oh, stop, I beg you, my head's in a spin already.' She pushed her curls out of her eyes. Derby was so forbearing, it was hard not to punish him sometimes.

'I know the pedigrees are bewildering, but talent's mostly in the blood,' he told her.

'Has training no part to play?' she asked drily.

'Oh, it's essential, but it can't add that spark of genius.' Derby scanned his programme. 'Ladbroke's entered a filly called Dora Jordan, I see. Seems thick-legged and skittish to me.'

Eliza hid a smile. 'Tell me about your horse; this is his first race, I believe?'

'Well, he was named for one of your husbands.'

Mrs Farren's head shot up.

'In the theatrical sense, I mean! Sir Peter Teazle: I chose the name after seeing
School for Scandal
for the fiftieth time.'

Eliza knew Derby came to almost all her performances, but she hadn't realised he counted them. 'Your colours are green with a white stripe, aren't they?—so that must be Sir Peter,' she said, staring down at the line of seven horses.

'Gad, no, that's a nasty biter of a filly, belongs to some City man who rides her himself, so as not to have to pay a jockey,' said Derby. 'Our colours were almost identical and the rogue wouldn't switch, so I did;
noblesse oblige
and all that. My man Sam Arnull's in black with a white peaked cap, at the end,' he said, waving to the rider.

'Oh, very tonish,' said Eliza, trying to make up for her mistake.

'Sir Peter's by Highflyer out of Papillon, he's got the true neat Arabian head and plenty of bottom.'

Mrs Farren was staring fixedly at the horse's rump. 'I believe
bottom
is sportsman jargon for pluck, Mother,' Eliza murmured in her ear.

'Ah, there's Lord Grosvenor,' said Derby, pointing out an ageing aristocrat who was leaning over the rail talking to a groom. 'He spends £7000 a year on his Newmarket stables. It'll ruin him in the end, though he owns most of Mayfair—'

Since Mrs Damer's dinner party Derby had made no reference to the vacant house on Green Street, but Eliza knew it was on his mind; she could hear it like an echo behind his words. She and her mother were still mulling over the figures, trying to decide whether they could afford not just the rent, but the extra servants the move would require.

'Here comes dear Bunbury, he's the president of our Jockey Club, you know. Our number have swelled past a hundred, which alarms the snobs. Really, the Derby might just as easily have been called the Bunbury,' he added with a laugh, 'except that he and I tossed a shilling for the honour of naming the race and I won.'

'You have a knack of winning.'

'Oh, it's no knack,' he said seriously, 'it's a habit of mine, as much as port or snuff.'

'And how exactly do you do it?'

'I have patience,' he said with a small shrug. 'I watch and I wait. I never gamble unless I'm sure I'll win. Though the irony is I haven't won my own race.'

She kept her gaze on her lace apron. Did he mean the Derby? Or did he mean her? Oh, their conversations had been littered with traps, ever since their terrible row at Richmond House. Sometimes it was as if the last six years had never happened and they were making their first tentative acquaintance—but there was a freshness to it, too.

'And I spend a lot of money,' he admitted. 'I breed 3000 cocks a year and keep a stable of horses; you can't buy victory, but you can certainly shorten the odds.'

'His Lordship plays very high,' she told her mother.

'When I bet at all, yes. Well, since I have so much it would seem ungracious to count pennies. But I never bet on chance.' Mrs Farren was looking confused. 'Well, not unless I'm begged to make up numbers at a card table. I get no thrill from the random throw of the dice,' Derby explained.

'Then—'

Eliza finished her mother's thought. 'What do you bet on?'

'Knowledge,' he told them. 'For instance, if I know my fighting cock is better than the other man's I back him. If I'm not sure about the matter I don't bet. Similarly, if I believe a certain bill will be rejected by the Lords I might lay a stake on that at the Club.'

'He rarely loses,' Eliza remarked.

'When you do, My Lord,' said Mrs Farren, 'it must smart.'

He let out a long laugh and his ugliness lifted like a mist, Eliza thought. 'How perceptive of you, madam. It hurts like the devil—if you'll excuse the phrase—because it proves me not unlucky but stupid.'

'Oh, hardly,' Eliza objected. 'Misinformed, perhaps. There must be so many unknowns.'

'That I grant you. I believe Sir Peter's a winner,' he said, his eyes besotted as he picked out his horse from the line, 'but I haven't staked the deeds to Knowsley on him!'

The pistol made her jump. They were off, galloping thunderously away from the line. The crowd was howling and Derby was on his feet, straining to see over taller men. She stood up, but the horses were a blur of brown. 'Where's Sir Peter?'