A Regency Charade (10 page)

“Dissipation and debauchery?” Alec’s grin widened. “I hope, Major, that you are merely speaking figuratively.”

“Figuratively?” Ferdie echoed in mock horror. “
Figuratively
?” He pulled himself up from his chair and towered over Alec threateningly. “Since when does an officer of the line speak
figuratively
? Up, man, up on your feet! We’ve things to do.”

“What things?” Alec demanded, laughing. He was feeling relaxed and diverted for the first time in days.

“What things? Why, we’ve tactics to study, strategy to plan, logistics to arrange, complicated maneuvers to execute. Why are you sitting there gurgling like water in a blocked drain? This is no laughing matter. Up, man, I say!”

“You sound just like Colonel Osgood the night before Salamanca,” Alec chuckled.

Ferdie permitted a self-satisfied smile to break through his severe expression. “Do I really? As witlessly wild as all that?”

“Yes, indeed. Remember how he ran about in all directions, shouting contradictory orders at the top of his lungs—?”

Ferdie burst into a hearty roar. “Yes, with his sash trailing along behind until he tangled his feet in it and fell over on his face!” He fell into his chair, and the two friends threw their heads back, chortling heartily over the shared recollection. Ferdie, when he’d recovered himself, fixed a baleful eye on his friend. “But I wasn’t joking, Alec, in the main thrust of what I said. It’s time you got out and about.”

“What?” Alec demanded, raising a satiric eyebrow. “Are you back to dissipation and debauchery?”

“Yes, I am. This is London, the center of the stylish world, and
we
are heroes …
heroes
, I tell you … in addition to being still young, charming and handsome. We have put our lives on the line for God, King and Country, and it is now time to reap the rewards. We shall have wine, women and song, Alec. Wine, women and song. It’s all ours for the taking.”

Alec cocked his head and favored his friend with a look of tolerant disparagement. “This hedonistic philosophy is a new side of your character. When did you develop it?”

“As soon as I divested myself of the uniform. I’ve been living a life of complete and vacuous pleasure-seeking, and I’ve been enjoying every moment of it. I’ve almost forgotten how it feels to wake to the sound of the bugle, to ride for endless hours in the broiling sun, to charge into a brutal melée and feel certain I’ll not ride out alive …”

Alec nodded sympathetically. The Peninsular Campaign had been a long, harrowing experience which had left its mark on them all. Whatever means a man might choose to recover from it was probably justified. “I’m glad to hear that you’ve found a way of life to suit you. In what way, exactly, do you go about seeking this pleasure of yours?”

“Aha! So I’ve caught your interest, have I?” Ferdie chortled with satisfaction. “Then I’ll be happy to tell you. I sleep away half the day—the mornings are good for nothing. At noon, I breakfast. In the afternoon I ride in the park and flirt with the ladies. I take tea wherever my fancy and the lure of a pair of pretty eyes lead me. I spend my evenings at the theater, the opera or, more often, the ballroom—I always have a number of invitations to parties, balls, and soirées, handsome bachelors being at a premium. Later I make an appearance at White’s for cards or dice, and I end the evenings, as often as not, with an enchanting game-pullet of my acquaintance.”

Alec’s eyebrows rose in genuine astonishment. “Are you quite serious? That is dissipation and debauchery indeed. Do you really intend to spend your life so wastefully?”

“Perhaps not all of it. I shall settle down, I suppose, in due course. I’ll become, no doubt, a good husband, a father, a landowner, a good Englishman. But damnation, Alec, we’ve spent
years
in army camps and on battlefields. Aren’t we
entitled
to indulge in a bit of hedonism for a while?” He met Alec’s dubious eyes with an expression of earnest defensiveness. “Hang it, man, I was on the town less than a
year
before military duty called.”

Alec dropped his eyes thoughtfully. “I’ve never been on the town at all,” he admitted with a tinge of regret.

“I thought not. And what good did your rectitude ever do for you?”

“No good at all.”

“There! You see? That’s exactly my point. Perhaps if you’d
had
some experience as a profligate and a rake, you’d have known better than …” He stopped himself and glanced guiltily across at Alec. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“No. It’s all right. I was thinking the very same thought myself.”

Ferdie’s grin reappeared. “Well, then, what are we waiting for?”

Alec looked up, a dawning excitement in his eyes. “But … we’re not boys any more; you know. Isn’t it too late for this sort of nonsense?”

“Never too late!” Ferdie exclaimed, jumping up again. “Come on, fellow, on your feet! Together we shall raise a dust the like of which London has never seen!”

Carried away by Ferdie’s enthusiasm and his own wish to change his way of living, Alec jumped up and grinned warmly at his friend. “All right,” he shouted with a swing of his fist into the air, “let’s
charge
!”

Under Ferdie’s expert supervision, Alec ordered a complete wardrobe of civilian clothes—from stylish “shamoy” riding breeches to an evening coat of the softest superfine cut to fit like a second skin. Then, accoutred in the very height of fashion, the two set out on a round of festive doings that kept them busy most of every day and night. Alec became a member of both White’s and Brook’s, as if one gambling club were not enough; he started on a round of parties and dinners, for which the number of invitations increased daily as more and more hostesses began to notice and appreciate his charm and impeccable appearance; he began to engage in sporting activities like riding, boxing and shooting, all of which he fully enjoyed; and once or twice he accompanied Ferdie to a
salon
run by members of the “muslin company,” but these excursions left him feeling deucedly uncomfortable, and he wondered secretly if he were really cut out for a life of dissipation.

For some inexplicable reason, Kellam greeted his master’s new, libertinish preoccupations with grunts of disapproval. “Turned in after three again, didn’t ye?” he’d mutter, clucking his tongue. “I’d go bail it wuz bobbery an’ ladybirds, ladybirds an’ bobbery.”

“Isn’t that what you told me London was
for
? If maids and mischief are good enough for
you
, why not for
me
?” Alec asked reasonably.

“I don’t go about callin’ meself a
gentleman
,” Kellam retorted cuttingly. “What I does wiv my time ain’t suited fer no gent. It queers me what yer lay is, anyhow. You ain’t the sort—”

“I’ll thank you not to tell me what sort I am, you jackanapes. I don’t see why you think I’m only suited for brooding about the house like an old dotard.”

“’Cause y’aint any ’appier now than ye wuz when ye wuz broodin’, if y’ asks me.”

“I’m
not
asking you!”

“Y’ see? Yer temper is more worser than it wuz before.”

Alec grabbed his coat from his batman’s hand and made for the door. “Only because my man is a ‘more worser’ nuisance than a vexatious mother-in-law! Goodnight, you nodcock. Don’t wait up for me.”

Kellam’s impudent views notwithstanding, Alec was quite convinced that he was having a fine time. For the most part, Ferdie’s program of dissipation suited him very well indeed. Of course there were moments when he felt bored or embarrassed or unhappy, but most of the time he enjoyed himself hugely. He was a good boxer, and his afternoons at Jackson’s boxing salon were very satisfying. He liked riding in the park with Ferdie, stopping and exchanging masculine banter at every turn with the new acquaintances he’d made. He enjoyed the card games at the clubs where, for a few hours, he could actually forget to think about his troubles. He even enjoyed the evenings’ social gatherings, where he noticed that several very pleasing young ladies—and several not so young—cast interested looks in his direction. Yes, he told himself, he was having a very good time.

It was not to be expected that he would enjoy every moment. He
did
have bad times once in a while. Occasionally he would be appalled at the superficiality of his pursuits. Once in a while he would be struck with an unaccountable loneliness right in the middle of a crowd. The worst moments occurred when someone would approach him and ask about his “lovely wife.” Most of the
ton
had heard he was married, for Lady Braeburn was known to have been residing at Tyrrell House for years. Priss had evidently lived quietly, not going about a great deal, but she could scarcely have been expected to hide herself in the attic. She had some few acquaintances among the
ton
, and when Alec appeared in public without her, her absence was noted. He realized that several persons whispered about it behind his back. Nevertheless, it was a dashed nuisance when someone came up and asked bluntly, “Why is your lovely wife not with you? I haven’t laid eyes on her these three months.” Alec had to answer, of course. He took to murmuring something vague about her being “otherwise engaged,” and he became quite adept at turning the subject.

This was another instance where his life was made more difficult by his wife’s stubbornness. If she’d agreed to the annulment six years ago, he would
now
be able to go about as a single man, and no one would even have known that he’d ever been married. By this time, of course, even when Mr. Newkirk managed to obtain the nullity decree, the news would be greeted with the same disapprobation, shock and gossip that a divorce would occasion. This realization exacerbated his discontent, and his irritation with his wife increased.

Another realization broke into his consciousness as his participation in the social whirl increased—
women didn’t seem to permit their knowledge of his marital state to interfere with their desire to flirt with him
! He didn’t admit to Ferdie that this perception shocked and repelled him. The poet John Donne had evidently been quite correct in his assessment of the female character—there wasn’t a pure and faithful creature in the lot.
Unmarried
females flirted with him as readily as they did with more eligible men, and
married
women made such blatant overtures that he was often left almost speechless. At one moment a lady would whisper the most suggestive invitation into his ear, and at the next, under the eye of her husband, she would become completely innocent and demure. The game they played so well filled him with revulsion. After only a few weeks on the town, he developed a number of amusingly cutting responses to make to these invitations, he began to view the whole sex as a group of ill-disguised courtesans, and he looked upon the entire world with a new and bitter cynicism.

But, he would have insisted staunchly if anyone had asked, he was having a very good time indeed.

Chapter Eight

“I tell you, Alec, you are making a huge mistake. This one’s a
diamond
!”

“Enough, Ferdie. I’m not in the least interested. I’ve no wish to indulge in one of those pointless little flirtations with insipid young ladies.”

Ferdie shook his head and surveyed his friend with grudging admiration. Alec looked at home to a peg as he leaned against the door-jamb of the ballroom at the Chapenhams’ and surveyed the dancers with an air of utter boredom. From the top of his hair (cut in a dashing “Brutus”) to the tip of his shiny leather evening shoes, he was top-of-the-trees. His whole attitude suggested the jaded sophistication of the true Corinthian. He, Ferdie Sellars, had made a man-of-the-world of his once reclusive friend. The only problem was that he had not been able to convince Alec that his newfound cynicism toward women of the
ton
was becoming obsessive. His friend Alec seemed happy, indulging in all manner of sporting activities and games of chance, and he’d even found himself a
chère amie
to satisfy his need for female companionship, but he preferred to avoid all close contact with ladies of his own station. Alec had tried to convince him that it was only proper that he should do so, being still married in the strictly legal sense, but Ferdie suspected that his tendency to avoid females of the
ton
had deeper roots. The fellow seemed to hold all ladies in aversion.

Tonight was a case in point. Here was this delectable creature positively panting to meet him, and he would have none of it. “I tell you, old chap, that you’re a stubborn fool. This girl is a veritable out-and-outer. Look! There she is now, on Lord Chapenham’s arm. There, to your right. In the emerald-colored dress.”

Alec held up his quizzing glass and scrutinized the young lady Ferdie had been trying to take him to meet. She was indeed a diamond. Her Titian hair was piled on the top of her head in a charming Grecian mode, its color startlingly attractive in contrast to the green of her gown. Her features were small and perfect, her skin fair (its light sprinkling of freckles only enhancing the perfection of her face), her form slim and graceful, and her green eyes mischievous and inviting. “Yes, I see what you mean,” Alec had to admit. “You’re quite right. She
is
a diamond. At least on the surface.”

“And what’s more,” Ferdie pressed on, “she asked specifically to meet you. I don’t know how you manage it, you fox. What
do
the ladies see in you?”

Alec ignored the badinage. “She asked to meet me?” he asked suspiciously. “Why?”

Ferdie shrugged. “How should I know? I
told
her I was the more interesting and agreeable fellow, but it did me little good. It’s you she’s after.”

“What nonsense.” Alec lifted his glass and studied the girl again. She was laughing flirtatiously at a remark that her elderly escort had made, and something in the way she held her head reminded him of Priss when she … But he didn’t permit himself to finish the thought.

“Come now, Alec,” Ferdie persisted. “You must have some curiosity as to why such a tasty morsel wants to meet you.”

“No. None at all.”

“Well, if you don’t, I do. Besides, what harm can there be in it? Come along and let me introduce you.”