Lady Lucy's Lover (7 page)

“We have not completed our business,” said Lucy in a hard clear voice. “I have here fifty thousand pounds and I wish my husband's bills back and all the papers he signed.”

“These gorgeous ladies,” sighed Mr. Barrington with mock jollity. “They should not addle their pretty heads with business matters.…”

“Know your place, my good man,” snapped Lucy, “and do not dare to patronize me!”

She returned Mr. Barrington's glare, although she was suffering from feelings of shock and dismay that the Duke, the very man who had warned her against Barrington, should turn out to be one of his clients.

“I will be with you directly, Your Grace,” said Mr. Barrington.

At the Duke's reply, Lucy took a deep breath of relief.

For the Duke smiled pleasantly and said, “I have no business with such as you, Barrington, nor am I like to have. I am waiting to escort Lady Standish home.”

Mr. Barrington picked up a handbell on his desk and rang it furiously.

“If you are ringing that thing to summon your yahoos, you will find them gone to the nearest tavern,” said the Duke, moving forward.

“Give Lady Standish
all
the papers she requires, Barrington, and do it now, if you please.”

Lucy glanced up quickly at the Duke's face. He had not raised his voice but somehow his tall figure seemed to emanate cold anger.

For a long moment Mr. Barrington and the Duke stood looking at each other.

Mr. Barrington rapidly came to a decision that it would be politic to give Lady Standish what she wanted. But somehow he would ruin the Standishes, somehow he would get the Marquess back into his clutches.

“Very well, Your Grace,” he said mildly. He lumbered off into an adjoining room where he could be heard shuffling through files and papers.

Lucy clenched her hands into fists in her lap to hide their sudden trembling. She glanced up at the Duke's stem profile and he turned and looked down, immediately aware of her gaze. His lips curved in a smile and one eyelid drooped in a mocking wink.

It all seemed like a dream to Lucy. In no time at all, she found herself perched up beside the Duke on his phaeton, clutching a sheaf of bills and papers and breathing in deep gulps of sooty London air.

The Duke had dismissed his groom. Lucy waited rather apprehensively for the lecture that she was sure he was about to deliver. But he merely said pleasantly, “It is a wonderful day. If you are not too anxious to return home immediately, we may drive to the Park and enjoy the air.”

Lucy nodded shyly. The Duke proceeded to enliven the short journey by entertaining Lucy with stories of the Lady Jehus who made driving in the London streets a risky adventure. There was Lady Archer, for example, who was the terror of the West End from the pace at which she drove; then there was Lady Stewart with her famous four grays; and a Mrs. Garden from Portland Street who won a considerable bet by driving her phaeton and bays from Grosvenor Gate through the Park to Kensington in five and a half minutes.

On reaching the Park, he pointed out the Prince Regent, driving with St. Leger in a carriage and pair, with blue harness edged with red, the horses' manes decorated with scarlet ribbons and the Prince's plumes on their crests, the carriage itself lined with rose-colored satin and festoons of rich gold braid.

Then there was Lord Rodney, driving his nag-tailed horses, and Lord Petersham driving his brown carriage and brown horses and dressed from head to foot in brown and all for the love of a Mrs. Brown, and Mr. Tommy Onslow, the T.O. of the cartoonists, and Mr. Charles Finch wearing a servant's livery. And…

The Duke broke off for a second and then said, “These carriages kick up so much dust. Let us find a quieter part of the Park.”

To his relief, Lucy agreed without demur and he was able to swing his phaeton round and away from the fascinating spectacle presented by a very tipsy Marquess of Standish, driving Harriet Comfort, before his fair companion managed to see it.

The Duke drove at a very slow pace until they were away from the fashionable crowd and then reined in his horses.

“You must be wondering what I was doing in Mr. Barrington's office,” began Lucy.

“No,” he said quietly. “What you were doing was easily understandable. But I do feel compelled to offer you a word of advice.”

“Which is?” asked Lucy nervously.

“It is this. You cannot prevent your husband from the consequences of his folly forever.”

“But he will be so relieved, so overjoyed to find I have taken the load of debt from his shoulders that he will… will be more prudent in future.”

Poor thing, poor silly little thing, thought the Duke angrily.
She was about to say, “so that he will take me in his arms and say he loves me.”

“It is very hard to be prudent when one is a hardened gamester,” he said. “London abounds in hells, all capable of taking the estates away from the best families in England. There's the House with the Red Baize Door in Bennet Street, the Pigeon Hole at Ten St. James's Square, Mrs. Leache's and Mr. Davis's in King Street, and hundreds of others. I have witnessed the frenzy of the losers. I have seen proud men, weeping like statues without moving a muscle of their faces, and with nothing to show they were alive but the tears running down their cheeks.

“There is a record of a ruined man seizing the edge of the table in his teeth and dying in the act. The company fled horrified and he was found by the watch, dead, with his eyes open, his face distorted, and his teeth driven far into the wood of the table. A Frenchman was seen to ram a billiard ball down his throat, whence it was removed by a surgeon; an Irishman put a lighted candle into his mouth. A gamester, whose nonchalance at repeated losses was remarked upon, opened his shirt and showed his chest all lacerated by his own fingernails.

“My dear Lady Standish, your only solution is to persuade your husband to return to the country. He is very young, not much older than yourself, I believe.”

“But… but it is not fashionable in the country,” said Lucy weakly.

“No,” he agreed with an edge to his voice. “There are all those unfashionable tenants who rely on us for a livelihood and decent housing. If our estates go on the gambling table, what becomes of them?”

“I will try,” said Lucy like a patient child responding to the severe lecturing of a stern parent.

He turned and looked at her in sudden compassion. He wanted to tell her that he would do everything in the world to help her be happy. And then he remembered that Lady Standish was married and that her marital troubles were none of his business. His mind clamped down on these strange new emotions, and he gently set his horses in motion.

“How solemn we have become!” he said lightly. “I gather you are to attend the Ruthfords' masked ball tonight?”

“Yes,” said Lucy, “but you, Your Grace, have other plans?”

“Perhaps I might change them,” he found himself saying, much to his irritation. This friendship with Lucy Standish must cease. He was becoming too… interested.

It was late afternoon and long shafts of golden sunlight were slanting through the translucent spring green of the trees.

The air was warm with a hint of summer. Lucy found herself wishing she would never reach home—home with all its agonies of lost love and rejection. It would be pleasant to drive on forever beside this austere companion, on out into the spring countryside far from the dirt and glitter of the city.

But when he lifted her down from the carriage, after having called on one of the Standish footmen to hold the horses, and she felt his hands at her waist and saw those strange silver eyes holding her own, felt the trembling of her legs and the way her treacherous body seemed to be melting towards him, she became aware of a sense of danger, aware that any journey with the enigmatic Duke might not end in the tranquil way it had begun.

She could not analyze, could not understand the effect his very lightest and most impersonal touch had on her whole body. Gathering her wits, she entered the house to be told that the Marquess of Standish was at home. Lucy was quite confident that the Duke would shortly be proved wrong. Men thought they understood men—but surely no one understood a man better than his own wife.

The subsequent row was of such a magnitude that even the prophetic Duke of Habard would have been startled.

It was as well that Lucy forebore from explaining that the Duke of Habard had been witness to the business transaction.
It was as well the Marquess had not seen her with the Duke in the Park. He considered she had disgraced him enough.

She had behaved in a grossly unfeminine way, he railed. He had had a good run at the tables and would have shortly come about. Barrington was a sterling fellow. All the Fashionables went to Barrington. Damme, if the story got about, he would have to leave Town.

And that was when poor Lucy suggested leaving Town might be a very good idea indeed.

And that was when the Marquess told her that he should have known better than to marry a country bumpkin with straw for a brain. She was a yokel, insipid, a disgrace to any man of breeding. He
hated
her with all his heart and soul!

“There are other men who find me attractive,” shouted Lucy, quite overwrought.

“Oh, no doubt some Cit or mushroom fascinated by your title,” he sneered. “No man of the ton would give you a second glance.”

“And
you
consider it a mark of good breeding to consort with poxy harlots like Harriet Comfort,” said Lucy, suddenly as cold as she had been hot with fury a moment before.

The Marquess drew himself up to his full height. “Harriet Comfort is fashionable,” he said awfully. “You, madame, are not.”

“Oh, Guy,” sighed Lucy. “Do, please do stop making such a cake of yourself.”

“I shall go where I am wanted,” said the Marquess, retreating, stiff-legged, like a hound before a formidable adversary.

“I'm sure every card-sharp and ivory turner and lightskirt in Seven Dials will give you a resounding welcome,” said Lucy sweetly.

The banging of the drawing room door was his lordship's answer to that.

For a few moments, Lucy felt exultant. The worm had turned. She had told him what she thought of him. But then she was overwhelmed by a great engulfing wave of despair for lost love.

But this time, she did not cry.

At least Lucy did not wait until the last minute, hoping her husband would join her. She was grateful for the pretty gold mask which hid most of her face. Her hair was intricately twisted up on top of her head and threaded with topazes on thin gold chains. A heavy topaz and gold necklace was around her neck and her tunic dress of white silk was ornamented with a gold key pattern.

The ballroom was crowded. No one—not even Ann—now troubled to ask the whereabouts of the Marquess. But the gossips were busy. Most of the guests had been informed of the Marquess's appearance in the Park with Harriet Comfort and of how the Duke of Habard had driven Lady Standish away from that shameful sight. Lucy received many looks of pity and began to feel irritated since she did not know the cause. She assumed they were sorry for her because she had had to arrive alone. But then so did quite a number of married ladies—well, one or two. She put on a commendable show of a young matron without a care in the world.

Lady Londonderry was there, wearing so many jewels that she had to be followed around by her footman carrying a chair since her ladyship could only take a few steps at a time, burdened as she was by the glittering weight of diamonds and rubies and pearls.

The Dandies were very much in evidence, polishing their wit at someone else's expense as usual and talking in their convoluted Tom and Jerry cant.

People came and went. Unlike Lucy, most of the Fashionables prided themselves on accepting at least twenty-four invitations a day and they usually could only manage to honor each occasion with ten minutes of their presence.

Although it was a masked ball, it was not a fancy-dress affair and most people were immediately recognizable. At midnight, there was a general unmasking with everyone exclaiming in surprise as if they were not very well aware of who their partner was.

It was after supper, somewhere around 1:30 in the morning, when most of the Fashionables had returned from their other engagements and when there was a lull in the dancing that the Marquess of Standish made his appearance. He had a female on his arm. Both were masked.

Lucy turned quite white. For the lady on her husband's arm was wearing diamond earrings and a diamond pendant, the same that her husband had tried to give to her and then had taken back.

The Duke of Ruthfords moved forward to greet the late guests. He had a high penetrating voice.

“Ah, Standish!” he cried. “You are come too late. The unmasking was at midnight, so you see you must unveil.”

The Marquess murmured something. He staggered slightly showing he was in his usual tipsy state.

“No! No!” cried the Duke. “You shall not take away this fair charmer.”

“Unmask!” cried the other guests, crowding into a circle around the Marquess and his companion. Lucy was jostled and shoved to the front of the circle.

Behind the slits of his mask, the Marquess's eyes held a hunted look, as if he had suddenly sobered up and found himself in the middle of a nightmare.

At least it's not Harriet Comfort, thought Lucy. This woman has red hair.

The Marquess hesitated, looking this way and that.

“Why not?” laughed his companion. She lifted her hands and untied the strings of her mask.

“No,” said the Marquess hoarsely.

“Come along, Standish,” laughed the Duke of Ruthfords. “We all know it's you.”

The lady let her mask drop to her side and stood facing them defiantly, the other hand fingering the diamond pendant at her throat.

It was Harriet Comfort in a red wig.

There was a shocked murmur. Standish had gone too far this time. He had brought London's leading Cyprian to one of London's most exclusive balls.