The Random Gentleman (4 page)
The newcomers were of course aware that something very important was the
raison d’etre
for this dinner, and were, each according to his or her own nature, making coy or prying references to it, when Farwell appeared at the open doors yet gain to announce “His Majesty, the King!”
At once all the ladies present curtsied deeply, and the gentlemen bowed.
“And where,” demanded His Majesty jovially, “is the charming Belinda?”
The Duke felt the familiar lift of spirit which had always been his response to a challenge. Social disaster loomed over the old soldier beside him and the man’s granddaughter—George IV was notoriously jealous of his dignity and had had to suffer so many slights during his Regency that he was quick to take offense even when none was intended. Almost without a pause after the King’s question, Osric Dane stepped forward with a wide, mischievous smile on his well-cut lips.
“A word in your private ear, Your Majesty,” he said, clearly enough so that all the polite yet avid auditors could hear him.
Majesty, pleasantly titillated, met the Duke’s smile with one of his own. His eyes sparkled in anticipation. “What’s to do, Osric?”
“My intended has—” the Duke paused provocatively, not daring to cast a glance at the rigid old soldier beside him, “—
caught the mumps
, Sire! We’ve removed her beyond the hazard of infecting
you
, of course!” He chuckled. “You must forgive the child! She really didn’t
mean
to do it!”
Caught by surprise, the King began to chuckle, as much at Dane’s expression of humorous dismay as at the information vouchsafed. The guests, relieved by royalty’s amusement, joined the laughter heartily. The astounded Farwell, entering to announce dinner, was first startled and then comforted to observe a scene of universal merriment.
The King, with laughter still shaking his obese body, bent over to whisper a salted comment into Dane’s ear. Then with the beautiful Lady Freya upon his arm, he led the way into the dining room. Farwell had already had the extra place setting removed. The King, well pleased with the elaborate decorations, and well aware of the toothsome and lavish meals prepared by the Earl’s cook, was delighted with his table companions, the two most attractive women in the room. He settled his enormous bulk into a comfortable chair and prepared to enjoy a pleasant evening.
When all the company had been seated, and the footmen began to serve the luscious meal, the Duke cast a quick glance down the table at his host, and encountered so grim a look that he immediately felt his own temper ruffling, and began to wonder if anyone but himself could have snatched success from the jaws of disaster. For certainly the old boy hadn’t had a word to say in response to the King’s catastrophic question!
Feeling very superior, the Duke set himself to charm the King and the other guests, and succeeded so well that, when the ladies withdrew and the gentlemen sipped their brandy, the King was pleased to tell the Earl that he had never had a pleasanter dinner. The royal guest taking his departure half an hour later, the party broke up with enthusiastic congratulations to the Earl and Belinda’s chaperone, Lady Tulliver, on a most enjoyable evening.
When all the guests but Osric Dane and his sister had departed, the Earl said in a grating voice, “Will you join me in my bookroom for a few minutes, My Lord Duke? I believe we have something to discuss.”
The Duke’s smile was icily civil. “I am sure you are right, sir.”
At this point, the Lady Freya surprised everyone by announcing, in a voice as cold as her brother’s, that she believed the discussion should take place in the Gold Salon, with herself in attendance.
“For I shall take leave to inform you, sirs, that I am as deeply involved as either of you in this matter, having acted as Belinda’s sponsor into the
ton
, and having come to love the girl for her sweetness and merry spirit. I am convinced that neither of you is considering
her
feelings in the slightest.”
This remark naturally pleased neither of the gentlemen, and sent Lady Tulliver into another of her spasms. Going to the bellpull, Lady Freya summoned Farwell and asked him to send Mrs. Munn to them at once. Then she bent over the weeping Lady Tulliver.
“You must permit Mrs. Munn to help you to your room, ma’am. I am sure your dresser will be able to give you a soothing posset to assist you to sleep. For it has been a—a demanding evening, has it not?”
Lady Tulliver, with a piteous glance at the two iron-faced gentlemen, was understood to agree, and the words “most considerate,” “my wretched nerves,” and “so alarmed for the poor child” were gasped out before Mrs. Munn entered to escort the poor lady from the room. At which point Freya cast a look of dislike at the two fuming gentlemen and said baldly, “Now let us discuss this miserable business without roundaboutation, if you please! You have made a fine mull of it between you, have you not?”
Both gentlemen received this thrust with every evidence of surprise and anger. Freya silenced their protests with a firm, “Be quiet!” which shocked them into silence. Freya turned first to her host. “I must apologize for my brother’s lack of tact in making no effort to heal the breach between himself and your granddaughter. In his defense it might be urged that he had no possible way of avoiding the King’s summons the night of my ball, nor of removing himself from George’s presence before giving leave to go, thus delaying his arrival until after Belinda had left. On the other hand, even granting the extreme provocation she endured from Dulcinia Wegg, it was childish of Belinda to have left the ball in such an obvious huff. You, sir, should have advised her so, and restrained such a show of pique as she presented.”
“Hot-at-hand, was she?” sneered the Duke.
“Could you wonder at it, My Lord Duke, when the whole ballroom was abuzz with speculation as to your reasons for failing to show your front?” snapped the Earl. “And for one who vaunts himself as a past master in resolving difficult situations, you showed neither resource nor, indeed, common courtesy in dealing with Belinda. Likening her to a snake! Calling her a schoolroom chit! Making her a figure of fun in the
ton
—as you did again tonight!” The fierce eyes glared at the younger man from under beetling eyebrows.
“Have you finished?” the Duke said between closed teeth.
“He may have done so—I have not,” said Dane’s sister. “Permit me to tell you that, while there are excuses for the General’s folly, there are none for yours. I find your conduct reprehensible. After all, as we are so frequently reminded, your forte is diplomacy. A sixteen-year-old boy could have handled events more smoothly than you have done this past three days!”
At his glare of outrage, his sister began to enumerate coldly. “First, the night of my ball. You could surely, with all your
nous
and skill, have maneuvered that fat old fribble to release you early for my party! I suggest that you were taking out your own ill-humor upon your hostess and upon the unwelcome bride chosen for you.”
Both men presented faces of horrified alarm at such unforgivable plain-speaking.
“Oh, let us have the gloves off,” said Freya, wearily. “You owe it to a girl who has been so hurt she is fleeing from the only security she knows!”
“I must inform you, My Lady, that not only will I not insist upon the match, I will actively oppose it. My son must have been out of his mind when he wished for the connection!” snapped the Earl.
Before the affronted Duke could get his breath to reply to this insult, Freya had rattled in again. “
Second
,” she continued the attack upon her brother, “your smug complacence was so great that you made no effort to heal the hurt your ill-advised comments had dealt a young woman who might have expected at least common civility from her future husband! Did you call to offer your apologies? Did you send flowers or even a charming gift? No, you allowed pique or arrogance to dictate your actions. If this is the way you have behaved in the capitals of Europe, I cannot understand your reputation as a Nonpareil.”
“I shall not listen to this fishwife’s harangue!” the Duke ground out. “Lord James, I bid you good-night! Freya, do you accompany me, or may I send back the carriage for you?”
“I shall come with you, brother,” said Freya. “My Lord, I pray you will permit me to call tomorrow to learn if you have had word from Belinda!”
“Good-night, Lady Freya,” said the Earl in a voice from which all human warmth had departed.
With one lingering, anxious glance, the woman hurried after her brother. When he heard the outer door close behind them, the Earl strode over to the mantel and leaned his head upon his clasped hands on the cold marble. He stayed in that position for a long time.
* * *
The brother and sister sat silently in the luxurious coach which carried them to the Lady Freya’s house. Her brother, seething with fury at the attacks he had been subjected to, could not trust himself to speak. Freya was silent through fatigue and worry over the whereabouts of Belinda. Arriving at home, they dismounted and went in through the doors the butler was holding open for them. Freya halted in the hallway.
“Will you have a drink? Coffee?”
The Duke did not pause on his way to the great staircase. “Nothing, thank you,” he said coldly.
“But we have to talk—to decide what to do about Belinda,” protested Freya.
“I shall do nothing about her. You, of course, will act as you wish.” He paused at the foot of the stairs, the light of many candles making his hair shine like new-minted gold. “I shall be leaving quite early in the morning. So this will be good-bye as well as goodnight.”
If he thought to bring her remorsefully to a sense of her own shortcomings, the Duke failed in his purpose. His sister straightened and glared at his handsome, irascible countenance.
“I have never been so little in charity with you as this minute, brother! Go, then! Run away like a petulant child from the mischief you’ve made! But if anything happens to that girl because of you—!”
“It will not be my fault if an ill-behaved hoyden gets herself into a scrape!” snapped His Grace, furiously. Then, turning, he ran lightly up the stairs.
Osric Dane rode his stallion, Ben, away from his widowed sister’s elegant London mansion very early the following morning. During a sleepless night he had penned a formal apology to the Earl for anything he might have said the previous evening which could have offended the old martinet. Couched in diplomatic language, it was calculated to soothe any but the most savage beast. He did not, however, so far abandon cautious self-interest as to make any promise of reparation, or seek an appointment to discuss any future development of the arranged marriage. In fact, it was His Grace’s devout hope that the Earl would have had such a bellyful of that arrangement that he would wish never to hear mention of it again . . . thus allowing My Lord Duke to escape the trap in which he had so nearly been caught.
Himself a high stickler, Dane was aware that his conduct, while successful in preventing an open scandal, could perhaps have exposed the Earl’s grandchild to the spiteful laughter of the ill-disposed. With a sardonic smile he recalled the pretty Wegg girl and her gawky friend hanging on his lips at Freya’s ball when he took out his annoyance at the snare in which his father had ridiculously entangled him. He shook his head.
Conduct not up to your usual standards, my boy!
he chided himself. To speak disparagingly of any lady in public—what had he been thinking of? And then at the Earl’s dinner party, had it been annoyance or relief he had felt on learning that the chit had run away rather than meet him? Although he still felt some resentment at the Earl’s hostile reception of his efforts, he was coming to realize that his exercise in lightning diplomacy might have been considered to lack sensitivity and compassion
It was so rarely that My Lord Duke experienced remorse over his own actions that he did not recognize the emotion, but as he left London behind him and directed Ben into the sweet-smelling countryside, he acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling. This discomfort fanned his anger against the chit who had precipitated the whole imbroglio. Since he had left his sister’s home without requiring breakfast from her servants, he found the pangs of hunger exacerbating his ill-humor. By the time he decided to stop for a luncheon at a small inn, he was in a fury at the Earl, Freya, George IV, his own valet, his groom—both of the latter were actually blameless, since he had failed to notify them of his abrupt departure—and, above all, at Miss Belinda Sayre, the source and cause of all his discomfort.
His anger was not assuaged by the wretched service and deplorable cuisine at the hostelry of his choice. Over a greasy stew of unrecognizable meat and revolting vegetables, My Lord Duke felt his resolve hardening. This Belinda must be brought to a full acceptance of her own shortcomings in forcing a situation wherein a blameless, much put-upon gentleman was compelled to flee from the amenities of London and the company of his peers, rusticated like a naughty child in surroundings which offered him nothing but disgust. Rising abruptly from the dirty table, he summoned the host by the simple action of pounding upon the floor—also dirty—with the chair upon which he had been sitting.
