Lady Lucy's Lover (5 page)

Lucy had a sudden picture of scrambling home only to find an empty house. Her face hardened. She would stay. But somewhere inside she was beginning to dread what her husband would say. And then it seemed quite terrible that she should dread anything about the man she loved so much.

“Thank you,” she replied. “You have gone to a great deal of trouble on my behalf, Your Grace.”

He merely smiled and began to lead her through the crowd towards his phaeton, stopping now and then to talk to his friends and to introduce her. He managed to convey a subtle atmosphere which implied that he was proud of her company. Lucy reflected wryly that he must be well mannered inside as well as out.

At one point when the dispersing crowd was shoving past in all directions, she stumbled against him and he quickly put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. The effect of his touch was startling, to say the least. It seemed as if her whole body had begun to throb. He quickly dropped his arm and Lucy blushed, wondering if these odd tumultuous feelings coursing through her body had been transmitted to him.

She was glad to retire to the private luxury of a bedroom and private parlor at the inn. The Duke promised to call for her at seven-thirty. After he had left, she glanced at the little watch pinned to her bosom. Quarter to seven! She dared not lie down on that inviting bed and go to sleep.

She contented herself by rearranging her hair and bathing her face and arms. Then she opened the latticed window and looked out.

The window overlooked a square of garden at the back with a few rustic chairs and tables. A lilac tree, heavy with blossom, stood gracefully in the shadow of a mellow old wall. A flowerbed was glowing in the late evening light with a jumble of flowers. The breeze had died and the air was still and sweet.

She leaned her elbows on the sill and let the peace of the evening seep into her bones. And then, unbidden, came that old yearning feeling, that longing for the innocent days of her courtship. She remembered one golden day, walking through the gardens at her family home, hand in hand with Guy. The feel of his hand holding her own had set her trembling with anticipation and excitement. And yet no adventures of the marriage bed had ever been able to conjure up in her the sexual sweetness of that simple contact. Of course, friends other than Ann Hartford had warned her of the Marquess's rake-hell life. But he had seemed so much in love with her, so
sweetly
in love.

It had been exciting planning the redecoration of the townhouse in London, yet when it had been completed, not one of her suggestions had been followed. Everything was new and fashionable and characterless.

The Marquess always talked at great length about what and who were fashionable and what and who were not.

He had a sister, Georgina, who rarely came to town.

But one day when they had been walking along Piccadilly, Lucy had seen Georgina coming towards them, accompanied by her maid.

“There's Georgina, Guy,” she had cried.

“'Fore George!” her husband had hissed. “Don't she look a frump. Cut her, Lucy!”

And Lucy, too amazed to do other than obey her husband, had affected not to see Georgina, who was left looking after them and calling her brother's name in a loud, amazed voice.

“It's quite the thing,” Guy had assured her. “Brummell cut his brother when the fellow appeared in Town wearing country clothes.”

But the Duke of Habard was fashionable, reflected Lucy, and he did not seem to cut anyone. He was equally pleasant to everybody. This seemed a very treacherous thought, so Lucy twisted a curl in her finger, and dreamed of her marriage returning to its first glory.

When a knock came at the door, she whirled around, her mind full of Guy, young and eager, as he had been only a little under a year ago in the sunny days of their courtship.

She ran lightly across the room and swung open the door, her husband's name dying on her lips.

The Duke looked enigmatically down at the face below his, which had for a brief second blazed with warmth and love and yearning. The next instant, she had lowered her eyes and said in a slightly shaky voice, “I am ready to go, Your Grace.”

As she moved to pick up her reticule, she noticed that a tray of refreshments was laid out in the private parlor adjoining the bedroom and was now destined to remain untouched—by Lucy at least. No doubt the inn's servants would be grateful to my lady for her forgetfulness.

The Duke talked easily and urbanely as they walked down the stairs and out again to his carriage. But all the while, he was thinking of that brief, blazing, passionate transformation and could not help cursing the absent Marquess. No doubt Harriet Comfort had kept her claws firmly embedded in his flesh.

Willis's Rooms were crowded and the dinner was almost informal in its jollity. Lucy sat at the head table, facing the room, with the Duke at her side, uneasily aware she was being awarded all the courtesies which would normally have been offered to his Duchess, had he been married. The Duke rose before the dinner and made a short, brief, witty speech and then sat down to loud applause.

And then all at once the Marquess was there, flushed and schoolboyish, pulling up a chair without waiting for permission and placing himself between the Duke and Lucy.

He immediately turned to the Duke and started to babble out fulsome apologies. He had been delayed in Town on business matters and the pole of his carriage had broken on the road to Blackheath and…

The Duke firmly and pleasantly cut short the Marquess's apologies. “I am glad to see you well, Standish,” he said, “for I was informed by your wife that you were suffering from a recurring problem. But if you will find a place at my other side, I will be able to pay better attention to you. Of course, you will wish to make your most humble apologies to your wife, although I am grateful to you. I cannot say in all honesty that your company was missed, for it is a long time since I spent the day in such delightful company.”

“What! Heh, yes o'course. Sorry, Lucy.” The Marquess drew up a chair on the other side of the Duke. The Duke turned his attention to Lucy and began to talk to her quietly about the various people in the rooms.

The Marquess fretted, trying unsuccessfully from time to time to attract the Duke's attention to himself.

It was damnable of Harriet to let him sleep so late and then to laugh at him. But what would he do without her? This Barrington appeared to be a friend of hers and she had promised to take him to meet Barrington on the morrow. That way all his bills and troubles would be taken care of.

After the toasts, the conversation became more noisy and general. The Marquess had drunk quickly and steadily and now found he had the courage to break in on the Duke's conversation with Lucy.

“I say,” he said loudly, “I heard the most vastly amusing
on-dit
.”

The Duke politely turned to the Marquess and raised one eyebrow. It was all the encouragement the Marquess needed.

“Well, it appears,” he began very loudly, “that a certain Duke of V. and his Duchess were traveling in Sussex. They stopped at this inn. The landlord was a very surly fellow and the Duke told him if he did not improve his manner he would haul him before a justice of the peace. But the landlord did not correct his manner. ‘By Gad,' says the Duke to the Duchess, ‘I've a good mind to bring out my
dedimus
right now.' ‘Oh, if you must, you must,' says the Duchess wearily. ‘But can't you wait until this fellow leaves the bedroom'?”

And the Marquess leaned back in his chair and laughed loud and long at his own joke. Then he realized the Duke was looking at him with an expressionless face and Lucy with a puzzled one.

“What does
dedimus
mean?” asked Lucy, leaning slightly across the Duke.

“Well, hey,
dedimus
is a sort of right to act as your own Justice of the Peace. But don't you see,
that's
not what the Duchess thought he was going to take out.”

“Have some more wine, Standish,” said the Duke in freezing accents.

“Very good of you, sir. Oh,
Lucy
. You're such a widgeon. You still don't understand. What does a man take out when he's about to make love to a woman?”

“Oh, I see,” said Lucy, shrinking back so that the Duke's tall figure blocked her from her husband's view. She was embarrassed, desperately embarrassed for Guy. His voice had been very loud and penetrating and several of the ladies were looking at him in disdain. Then when she had leaned forward to ask him that question, her bosom had brushed against the Duke's arm, and a whole thunderclap of tumultuous sensations had been added to the one of embarrassment.

Guy rallied magnificently. He stopped drinking anything stronger than lemonade. He asked the Duke quiet, polite questions about who was running at Newmarket, and what were the prospects of the latest pugilist, and could he hope to rival Mendoza or Cribb.

He threw an occasional affectionate, teasing remark to Lucy. The Duke began to thaw visibly. Standish was a charming fellow after all. It was a pity he could not be more faithful to his wife, but then, who was?

The Duke found himself, however, becoming slightly intrigued by Lucy Standish. He could not think why she had seemed so colorless to him at the ball. She was young and bashful and occasionally gauche. But when she was happy as she was now, she outshone any other woman in the room. And then an image of Lucy, shining and passionate and yearning as she had been when she had opened the bedroom door of the inn, thinking that he was her husband, came back to him, and all at once he felt unaccountably sad and wished to be rid of the Standishes as soon as possible.

And so it was the Marquess who drove Lucy back to town under a small, pale, late spring moon. She fell asleep very quickly, her head on his shoulder, and he felt quite a rush of tenderness towards her.

After all, if such a Notable as Habard found Lucy attractive, then it would do his own social position no harm to be seen to be paying a little more attention to his wife!

“You were quite right to come to me, Lord Standish,” said Mr. Barrington jovially.

The Marquess began to relax visibly. Mr. Barrington's office was admittedly a bit dirty and seedy and there had been a few suspicious-looking characters hovering around in the street outside, but Mr. Barrington himself had quickly dispelled any sinister first impressions caused by his place of business.

He looked more like a Yorkshire farmer than a bill broker. He wore an old-fashioned bag wig set slightly askew on his large round head. His cheeks were round and ruddy and his small eyes were very blue and twinkling. He was wearing an old single-breasted militia coat deprived of its facings and trappings, over a short, sort of shriveled-up waistcoat, old white moleskin breeches, and hessians badly in need of some Warring's blacking.

Harriet Comfort had taken a chair over in the corner by the window and appeared to divorce herself from the proceedings.

“All you do, my lord,” went on Mr. Barrington, “is to get all your creditors to send me your bills of exchange and that way a gentleman like yourself will not be plagued with duns at his door. Of course, I am a businessman and, should your bills go over the limit, well, I do charge a bit of interest. But I am not a pressing man, not a pressing man.”

“It's very good of you,” said the Marquess.

“Not at all. Not at all. Your parents are dead, my lord? Sad. And your uncle, the Duke of Hardhamshire would not, I gather, help you out of any… er… financial embarrassment?”

“Good Gracious! No! He's a tartar. A martinet. He doesn't understand that one must keep a good table and dress well and… and…”

“And gamble, my lord? You dropped ten thousand pounds at Watier's the other night.”

“You are well informed,” said the Marquess haughtily.

“But I am generous to young men in bad financial straits, my lord.”

“I do not see why you should be,” remarked the Marquess, becoming suspicious.

“Well, I shall tell you, although it pains me deeply. I had a son who was very wild. He played deep and got into the River Tick and appealed to me to pull him out. I told him he was old enough to stand on his own feet. He… he… blew his brains out.”

A tear escaped from one of Mr. Barrington's blue eyes and rolled down one plump, rosy cheek. The Marquess looked down in sudden embarrassment.

“I…I have his miniature here,” said Mr. Barrington, fumbling in a capacious pocket. He handed the small case over to the Marquess, who opened it up. It was a portrait of a handsome youth with large girlish eyes and a sensitive mouth. He had, in fact, blown his brains out—but he was not Mr. Barrington's son but one of his late creditors.

“So you see,” said Mr. Barrington, pausing to blow his nose on a large handkerchief, “that explains my concern.”

The Marquess nodded and tried to look sympathetic—although now that Mr. Barrington had established his good faith, the Marquess could not stop feeling elated by the idea of having the mountain of debt removed—for a time anyway.

“You own extensive property,” said Mr. Barrington, returning the miniature to his pocket. “Have you never considered selling any of it?”

“No,” said the Marquess harshly. “I would kill myself first.”

“Ah, well, with me to take care of you, there is no need for that, no need for that at all.”

Mr. Barrington got down to business and the Marquess cheerfully signed everything put in front of him. He would buy a diamond pendant for Lucy. They were going to the Ruthford's ball that very evening. Habard had said he would not be present so there was no need to be overattentive to Lucy.

On the other hand, he would not like her to find out that the vast amount of money her parents had paid him in order that he would marry her had already been dissipated.

To do the Marquess of Standish justice, he was firmly convinced that Lucy knew of the deal, knew that her parents had in effect bought him for her. It was one of the reasons he felt he did not have to always be with her, although at heart he was fonder of her than most people in his self-centered life.