100. A Rose In Jeopardy (6 page)

A high clear girl’s voice, as sweet and melodious as a flute, rang out from a table not too far away,

“Champagne! Julius, you really are too kind.”

Marian. It could not be!

Lyndon parted the branches of the palm so that he could peer through.

It
was
her!

His ex-fiancée, sitting a couple of tables away with his best friend from his schooldays, the redheaded rowing champion, Julius Maberley!

Marian looked strikingly beautiful with her glossy brown hair piled up like a Grecian Goddess and her cheeks and lips glowing pink in the light of the candles.

Lyndon felt his heart melting as he watched her.

He had forgotten how exquisitely beautiful she was, with her delicate heart-shaped face and her long eyelashes that fluttered like the wings of a tiny bird.

But what was happening now?

Marian was reaching out across the table to lay her white-gloved hand over Julius’s.

Lyndon’s heart contracted painfully in his chest.

How could this be? Only a few days ago she had still been insisting that she loved Lyndon and that she was determined to win him back and marry him.

He fumbled in the pocket of the cloak and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, one of the many letters she had written to him.

“Darling,

You are being an utter fool to make so much fuss about something so silly
.

Your Papa’s good friend, Mr. Merriman, was an absolute poppet – if he hadn’t been there on the stairs to catch me, who knows, I might have had a horrible fall.

I didn’t mean to kiss him, it just sort of happened and anyway, darling, I know you will come round. All girls love to flirt a bit, we just can’t help it. It’s you I love, Lyndon. There will never be anyone else for me and I shall die if I don’t see you.

Please, please, darling boy, stop being so silly.”

Lyndon pushed the letter back into his pocket.

Was it really so silly of him to be upset that the girl he loved had allowed one of his Papa’s drunken cronies to take her in his arms and then press a horrid lecherous kiss against her lips?

His stomach tied itself in a knot as he remembered Marian’s pretty face, laughing at him there on the stairs of his parents’ Mayfair home, when he had tried to pull her away from the clutches of Mr. Algernon Merriman.

When he would not see the funny side of it, she had run out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

And then his Papa, sprawling drunkenly across the stair carpet, had yelled at him, told him he was being an idiot and a silly over-sensitive fool.

Even his Mama was not very sympathetic, when he told her what had happened.

“That’s just the way your father is,” she said, a cold little frown on her aristocratic face. “His mind is only on the next wager he can make.”

With a deep sadness and rage, Lyndon realised that she was right and he felt ashamed of his Papa.

“You expect too much of Marian,” Lady Brockley continued. “She’s a very young and high-spirited girl and there will be a terrible fuss from her family if there is any problem with the engagement.”

But Lyndon could not marry a girl who behaved as Marian had done and who did not understand how much she had hurt him.

She did not believe him when he had told her this.

She called at the house in Mayfair, even though he would not speak to her and then she wrote him many letters sometimes three or four a day insisting that she still loved him and that she wanted to marry him as soon as possible.

Thank goodness he had not given in!

As Lyndon watched her through the fronds of the palm tree, he felt the pain in his heart turn to an icy anger.

She was smiling tenderly at his old friend, Julius, and gazing up at him with her huge eyes.

Not so long ago she had looked at Lyndon like that. His instinct had been right. Marian had never truly cared for him.

He had done the right thing by walking out then and there, escaping from his Papa’s rudeness, his Mama’s coldness, Marian’s flirtatious behaviour and the relentless insistence of all of them that he should marry her.

Now Julius had taken Marian’s little hand in both of his and was stroking it.

Good old Julius! His very best friend for so many years. How could he betray Lyndon like this?

But he only had to look at Marian, at the reflection of the candle flames making little stars in her dark eyes and her sweet lips parted in a smile, to know why.

Julius had fallen completely under her spell, just as he had done and then something came into Lyndon’s mind that cast a chill over his whole body.

Julius came from a very wealthy family indeed. He might not be a Lord, like Lyndon, but his family was even wealthier than the Brockleys.

Perhaps it was not Lyndon that Marian had cared for as much as the houses in Mayfair and Epsom – and the substantial Brockley fortune.

The hubbub of the crowded
café
filled his ears and he felt hot and exhausted.

He pulled the hat from his head and fanned it back and forth to try and make a cool breeze.

Then the palm fronds rustled by him and an angry face topped with a shock of red hair peered through.

“Hey! It’s really not on, spying on people like that! I’ll have to go and speak to the manager,” Julius thundered. “They’ve no right to let in disreputable types like you.”

And then he gasped with shock as he saw Lyndon.

Lyndon clapped the hat back on his head, but it was too late.

Marian was now at Julius’s side. She had seen him too.

“If that doesn’t beat everything,” she exclaimed. “First he won’t even speak to me and now he’s following me around.”

She slid her arm through Julius’s and gave Lyndon a proud, cold little smile.

“Come along, darling,” she proposed seductively.

Julius stared at Lyndon.

“You’d better leave,” he suggested, his face almost as red as his hair.

Lyndon put his hat on with a flourish and dropped a few coins on the table to pay for his food.

“I wish you a pleasant evening,” he said and turned his back on them.

The long black cloak swirled around his body as he walked out of the hotel, ignoring the stares of the guests in the lobby.

It was twilight outside now and, as he strode along the pavement, he wanted to keep on walking until London was far behind him.

What was there to stay for?

His friends, his family, the woman he had loved, all meant nothing to him now.

And, in his brand new disguise, he was free to go wherever and be whoever he liked.

All he had to do was decide on a destination.

Through a cloud of cigar smoke, Rosella could see that Mr. Algernon Merriman had fallen forward onto the table and was fast asleep, his cheek resting on his arms.

The flickering candlelight illuminated a bald patch on the crown of his head, which she had not noticed before.

It was a long time since Rosella had dined with any gentlemen at New Hall, as her Aunt Beatrice had very few guests, but she knew that Lord Brockley and Mr. Merriman should leave the table and go to the smoking room to enjoy their port and cigars.

A strange whistling noise, accompanied by a series of loud grunts, came from Algernon. He was snoring.

Rosella could not bear it any longer, so she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet.

“If you will excuse me, my Lord,” she began, but Lord Brockley waved his cigar at her, indicating that she should sit down again.

“Where are you going?” he demanded and a ring of smoke escaped from his thin lips, expanding slowly before dissolving into a misty cloud that hung over the table. “We haven’t had our little discussion yet.”

Rosella’s head swam and she felt as if she could not breathe.

“It is very late now, my Lord,” she said, thinking longingly of her cool quiet bedroom.

“This is my house,” Lord Brockley asserted, “and late or early, while you are staying here, your time is my time.”

There was something about the tone of his voice that made Rosella suddenly shiver.

“Your fortune,” he continued. “What is it?”

And then he smiled the cold smile she had seen that afternoon, as she lowered herself onto her chair again.

“I – don’t have a fortune.”

“Nothing?” His bushy eyebrows rose. “Surely you must have
something
.”

Rosella was very glad that she was sitting down, as her whole body was trembling now.

“No, my Lord.”

She pictured the bag of sovereigns that her aunt had given her, safely locked in the drawer of her dressing table. He must never know of its existence.

“Your family, then. Where are they?”

Lord Brockley’s eyes glinted in the candlelight.

“Why did they not come for you when my sister died?”

“I have no family – ”

“How can that be?”

He frowned at her.

“My Mama and Papa – died.”

Fighting to keep her voice calm and level, Rosella explained about her family estate and how everything had been inherited by her elderly cousin.

“Then you must go to him.”

Rosella shook her head.

“He will not help me. He did not want me, when I became – an orphan.”

Lord Brockley grunted.

“That is no surprise. Children, nothing but trouble. Even one’s own. Well, there is nothing for it. You must find yourself a husband.”

Rosella did not know what to say.

“Perhaps you have some young admirer, who will take you off my hands?”

Rosella shook her head.

At that moment Algernon twitched in his sleep and made a loud spluttering noise, throwing out his hand and knocking a wineglass over.

Lord Brockley sighed impatiently.

“I am surrounded by useless fools,” he said. “I had fancied a game of cards after dinner. But look at him!”

Rosella did not want to look at Mr. Merriman, lying across her aunt’s beautiful mahogany table like an overfed pig dozing in its sty.

But she could not have seen him clearly even if she had tried as her eyes were blurred with stinging tears.

“So, Rosella,” Lord Brockley went on. “You have no fortune, no family, no beau to take you off my hands, so you had better make yourself useful. Get that old fool out of my sight and take him to his room.”

“But – ”

Rosella’s skin crawled at the thought of touching Algernon.

Lord Brockley slapped his hand on the table.

“Get to it!” he shouted. “And just remember whose house this is!”

Rosella jumped up and went around the table. She lifted one of Algernon’s plump arms and he rolled his head and sighed, “brandy.”

He did not open his eyes, even when she shook his arm and there was no way that she could move his heavy sleeping bulk.

“I can’t – ” she began, but before she could say any more, Mrs. Dawkins came into the dining room.

“The coffee, my Lord,” she announced, placing a large silver pot on the table.

Then she saw Rosella.

“Oh, my Lady, you mustn’t – ”

Lord Brockley banged his hand on the table again.

“Get him out of here and into his bed,” he shouted. “Or he will be good for nothing in the morning!”

Mrs. Dawkins scurried around the table and took Algernon’s other arm.

Between the two of them, they managed to heave his heavy body onto its feet. Algernon lifted up his head and blinked a couple of times.

“Can you walk, sir?” the housekeeper asked him.

“No!” he spluttered, as his head fell forward again.

“Please try, if you can,” Rosella suggested, as her shoulder was already aching with the weight of him.

“Oh, my angel!” he smiled woozily. “Hold on tight to me, that’s the ticket.”

At a snail’s pace, Rosella and Mrs. Dawkins helped him to make his way to the door of the dining room and then across the hall.

It was very difficult, as he was most reluctant to take a step if he did not have to and he was much too heavy for them to carry.

“Just let me rest,” he groaned, sitting down with a bump on the stairs. “And be with my little sweetheart.”

Rosella felt his hand gripping her arm and trying to pull her down with him.

“No!” she cried, her voice catching in her throat. “You must go to your room. Get up.”

He shook his head.

“Shan’t!” he muttered in a childish voice.

“His Lordship will be exceedingly angry,” Rosella whispered, glancing over her shoulder, as she half expected Lord Brockley to be watching their slow progress.

But there was no sign of him. He must be still at the table, sipping his coffee and finishing his cigar.

Her words had the desired effect, however, as, with much puffing and blowing, Algernon heaved himself onto his feet and stumbled up the stairs clinging to the banister with one hand and onto Rosella with the other.

Mrs. Dawkins brought up the rear, administering a shove to the small of his back whenever he looked as if he was coming to a halt.

When they reached his bedroom door, he gave out a loud groan, staggered in and tumbled onto the carpet.

“What shall we do?” Rosella asked, looking at Mrs. Dawkins, who was still catching her breath.

“Come to me, my sweetheart!” he gurgled, reaching out to catch hold of Rosella’s skirts.

Mrs. Dawkins turned red with embarrassment.

“My Lady. Please, come away. You must not go into a gentleman’s bedroom, it would not be proper.”

“I don’t want to,” Rosella replied. “But we cannot just leave him there.”

“I will send for one of the footmen or perhaps two of them to help him into bed,” Mrs. Dawkins suggested. “Oh, Lady Rosella. What a night! I don’t think I’ve ever seen two gentlemen eat and drink so much. Smoking those cigars at table. And now this! Will it always be the same from now on, do you think?”

“Let’s hope not, Mrs. Dawkins,” Rosella answered.

But deep inside herself, she knew that what she had seen tonight was just the beginning of her difficulties with Lord Brockley and Algernon Merriman.

*

A bright ray of sunlight, which had found its way through the thick curtain material and onto his narrow hard bed, woke Lyndon.