The Launching of Roger Brook (10 page)

Her words recalled Roger to his impending fate; yet he still hesitated. Even provided with a little store of gold, to abandon everyone he knew and the only way of life he understood, for a lonely and perhaps perilous existence, was no light undertaking. Certain aspects of the unknown had always had greater terrors for him than the known, and to be cast out of the world of security and comfort that had been his ever since his birth, into one of uncertainty and hardship, filled him with misgiving.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Georgina, I can’t do it. You forget that I’ve led an even more sheltered life than you and am not yet sixteen. That is too young to face the world alone, even for the few months that you suggest.’

‘Ah!’ she sneered. ‘There you’ve hit upon it. You’re not a man, as you would like to think. Only a timorous little boy.’

‘I’m nothing of the kind!’ he declared angrily.

‘Well, you behave like one,’ she retorted. ‘And you are certainly not a man yet; any girl could tell that with half a look at you.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘What I say! And disabuse yourself of the idea that a midshipman’s uniform could turn you into one. It couldn’t; any more than being presented at Court turns a girl into a woman.’

Roger flushed to his temples. ‘Oh, you mean that!’ he said softly.

For a moment they sat there staring at one another. The tower was now swaying slightly again and they both had that strange feeling of being utterly alone, entirely divorced from the everyday existence that was going on far below them. As the blood mounted to Roger’s face he could feel his heart beating wildly. Georgina’s dark eyes were unnaturally bright. Her red lips were a little parted and she was smiling at him; a queer, enigmatic, mocking little smile.

Suddenly he pulled her towards him and their mouths met in a violent kiss. Her lips seemed to melt under the pressure of his and the feel of the soft contours of her body against his own set his brain on fire. The kiss ended only when they were forced to draw breath, and a second later he exclaimed:

‘By heaven! I’ll show you if I’m a man, or not!’ Then, as their mouths hungrily closed on each other’s again, he
thrust her back against the cushions and crushed her to him in a fierce embrace.

For several minutes they lay there, now lost to all sense of time, place, age, or convention; their youthful passions rising to fever pitch from a series of avid caresses during which his trembling hands became ever more audacious.

Suddenly she pushed him roughly away from her with a breathless cry of: ‘Tie, Roger! Stop it now! I’ll let no man handle me so unless he loves me.’

‘But I do! I do!’ he blurted out, now wrought up to an ungovernable pitch of excitement. ‘Georgina, I’ve always loved you! I’ve loved you since the very first moment I set eyes on you!’

‘It isn’t true! I’ll not believe it!’ she whispered, her face now as flushed as his. But she did not attempt to repel his renewed caresses, only whispered again: ‘Roger! You mustn’t! Desist now, I beg. You’re not a man, only a boy, and ’tis folly to pretend otherwise.’

‘I’ll show you that I’m a man,’ he muttered, and as their lips met again he pressed her down beneath him. For a moment their two hearts palpitated wildly against one another and he stared down into her face with eager yet fearful eyes; then he gasped: ‘Do you want me to prove it?’

Her only reply was a half-hysterical laugh and a tightening of her soft arms round his neck.

Roger sat staring out of the turret window that overlooked the vast sweep of the bay but his eyes no more took in the ancient Abbey of Christchurch or the waves creaming against the jagged rocks of the Needles, than they had the details of the view from the roof of his own home first thing that morning.

His face was red, his hair tumbled and he had great difficulty in keeping his hands from trembling. Never before had his young soul plumbed such depths of abject misery.
Only a short time before he had been fired with a mad elation and almost swooned with rapture in the intoxication of a hitherto unexperienced pleasure. It had been all too short, yet, while it lasted, far beyond his wildest imaginings. But now, the awful consciousness of all that his act implied was fully borne in upon him. It seemed that for the past twenty-four hours his evil angel had held undisputed sway over his affairs. A midshipman’s commission had been sprung upon him without warning; he had got drunk and defied his father; and now he had seduced Georgina.

He did not dare to look at her, as he was desperately afraid that she would either burst into floods of tears or wither him to the very soul with one outraged glance from her black eyes.

Then she whispered: ‘Roger, what ails thee, m’dear? Doest thou not like me any more?’

Her whisper brought him some relief. She was not angry, only frightened. ‘Indeed I do,’ he gulped, still not daring to turn his face to hers. ‘I—I think you’re adorable. And have no fear. I’ll make an honest woman of you. We’ll have to wait until I’m old enough to marry, but I’m willing to wait as long as need be, if you are.’

‘Roger,’ she said, in a much firmer voice. ‘Come here. Come back and sit beside me.’

He turned then, and was staggered to see that she had already tidied her hair, smoothed out her skirts, and was sitting there, a picture of demure amusement, quietly laughing at him.

‘Don’t you—don’t you mind?’ he faltered.

‘Of course not, you silly fellow. For me, it wasn’t the first time.’

‘D’you mean you’ve done that sort of thing before?’ he said incredulously, his relief struggling with a sudden newborn jealousy.

‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘It has just as much attraction for a woman as a man, and it’s absurdly unfair that men should love where they list while girls are supposed to go through life like marble images.’

‘Who was it with?’ he demanded truculently.

‘’Tis none of your business. Yet I don’t mind telling you. In London I favoured one of my beaux far above the rest. Old Aunt Sophie was so exhausted from sitting up for me to all hours on rout seats and stiff-backed gilded chairs that
she slept most afternoons. My little fool of a cousin, Dorothea, took some evading but two or three times a week I managed to give her the slip and go out shopping with my maid. Jenny was a sensible gel and easily bribeable, so I used to send her to do my shopping and spend the time pleasuring my lover in his rooms in Jermyn Street.’

Quite illogically, in view of his recent act, Roger was frankly horrified. ‘D’you really mean that you actually went to a man’s rooms of your own free will and let him seduce you?’

‘Well, what if I did,’ she shrugged. ‘I see no reason why
you
should look so shocked about it. But as a matter of fact, he didn’t seduce me. I’d lost all I had to lose last spring, before I went to London.’

Roger’s new feeling of jealousy returned with redoubled force at the thought that someone in the neighbourhood had been the first to enjoy Georgina’s charms, and the not unnatural assumption that on that first occasion she must have been forced to it against her will, made him positively seethe with anger.

‘Tell me his name,’ he cried. Tell me his name, and, by heaven, I’ll kill him.’

‘You won’t; and you couldn’t if you tried, my littlest gallant. ’Twas Captain Coignham.’

Roger’s eyes almost popped from his head. ‘What!’ he gasped, ‘Not the highwayman?’

‘Yes, indeed. I know of no other.’

He groaned. ‘Oh, Georgina; and I’ve warned you so often that ’tis dangerous for you to ride alone in the forest.’

His fervid imagination swiftly conjured up a wild scene of the screaming Georgina being dragged from her horse, pulled in among the bushes, brutally raped and left dishevelled and swooning. Yet his morbid curiosity got the better of him and he could not resist adding: ‘It must have been simply terrible for you; but how did it happen?’

‘’Twas not so terrible,’ she smiled reminiscently. ‘We came face to face no great distance from the Queen’s Elm. I’ve always felt that jewellery was made to be worn, not kept locked up in a box. I had that day a fine sapphire ring on my finger and a diamond aigrette in my hat. He greeted me most polite, but bade me hand them over. I parleyed with him a little and begged him to let me at least keep the ring, since it had been my mother’s. He declared that I could
keep both the ornaments if I was willing to ransom them with a kiss a-piece. He was a personable fellow, well groomed and of good address, so I considered the saving of my jewels cheap at the price. We both dismounted and he gave me the first kiss. ’Twas a long one and the fellow knew his business. Then he picked me up in his strong arms and carried me through the trees to a mossy bank, as he said, to give me the other in surroundings more suited to my beauty. Call me a brazen hussy if you will, but I’ve not a shadow of regret over that sunny day last spring when I came upon Captain Coignham in the forest. ’Twas a fine romantic way to lose one’s maidenhead.’

Roger remained silent for a few moments. He had often heard of the notorious highwayman but never seen him. Georgina’s story of the encounter was so unlike anything he had expected that he found the grounds for anger cut from beneath his feet. The fellow was reputed handsome and, despite his monstrous impertinence, appeared to have behaved with the utmost civility; while Georgina had clearly proved his willing victim. Roger was wondering now if, in view of her previous adventures, he was still called on to pledge himself to her. Convention demanded that any girl a gentleman took to wife should go to her bridal chamber as spotless as an angel; no matter what pranks she might get up to later if the couple decided to go their separate ways, providing only that she cloaked her amours with a reasonable decency in order to protect his name.

Yet, he reflected, she had not been called upon to tell him anything, and he had made his avowal before she had spoken. Even if she was not the languorous, golden-haired creature of his dreams she was still one of the loveliest people he had ever set eyes on, and her soft embrace so recently enjoyed had given her a new enchantment for him. More, where would he ever find a girl whose interests tallied so closely with his own; in all their many hours together he had never known a dull moment in her company. The episode with the highwayman was a misfortune that might have happened to any imprudent girl and, once seduced, the affair with the London buck could be excused by the unconventional way in which she had been brought up, coupled with her zest for any form of daring and adventure. With sudden resolution he decided that convention could be damned, and that in any case a gentleman must
stick by his word, so, from every point of view he should go through with it.

‘A penny for your thoughts, Roger,’ she said softly.

‘I was just wondering,’ he replied with a smile, ‘how soon we can get married. I fear we won’t be allowed to until I’m seventeen, but that isn’t very long to wait. The devil of it is, though, that I’ve got no money.’

‘Oh, Roger, you darling,’ she sighed. ‘You haven’t really been thinking of marrying me, have you?’

‘Of course. That is unless you’ve promised yourself to the fellow in London?’

She shrugged her shoulders airily. ‘What, Harry! Lud, no! He’s married already; and even if he weren’t I wouldn’t have him. He’s devilish handsome, but a hopeless wastrel.’

‘You’ll promise to forget him, then. And we’ll consider it a settled thing. God alone knows what the future holds for me, but as soon as I’m in any situation to do so I’ll speak to your father.’

Taking his hand she drew him down beside her, and said seriously: ‘Roger, m’dear, I’m deeply sensible of the honour that you do me. More especially since I’ve been unmaidenly enough to declare myself a piece of shop-soiled goods. But I’ve no intention of pledging myself to any man as yet.’

‘But you can’t go on like this,’ he protested. ‘After taking three lovers while barely seventeen, ’tis over-time already that you became respectable.’

‘Four,’ she corrected, with a little laugh. ‘I met the wickedest, handsomest young spark that ever I did see at the Lansdowne House Ball, and we met again while attending old Q’s water-party at Richmond. He tumbled me in a punt and I simply could not bring myself to resist him.’

‘Georgina!’ he suddenly wrung his hands, ‘how could you! It needs but such looseness through another season for your name to become a byword. Then none will marry you.’

She shook her dark curls. ‘Dear Roger! You don’t understand. What if I have had four lovers? I hope to have forty more, should I find forty men that please me. Nay, I’ll take a hundred before I die, and the finest and handsomest men in the realm among them. As for marriage, set thy fears for me at rest. Dost thou not realise that I am an heiress?’

‘Your father is reputed a warm man, I know,’ he nodded.

‘He is far richer than you think. This place and the house
in Bedford Square represent but a small fraction of his fortune.’

‘How so? I have heard it said that old Mr. Thursby died in good circumstances, but never that he left your father great riches.’

‘True, but papa has brains, and has made a mint of money for himself. ’Tis his interest in engineering and machinery—the very things people count him crazy for—that have brought him his wealth.’

‘You have never told me of this before.’

‘I did not know it myself until he presented me during the season to the Duke of Bridgewater, who, it seems, is one of his partners in a company. ’Twas His Grace who made the first canal, to supersede the system by which coal was carried on pack horses from his mines at Worsley to Manchester. But ‘twas Mr. Josiah Wedgwood who first interested papa in such schemes.’

‘What, the Mr. Wedgwood who makes such lovely plaques and urns of pottery?’

‘The same. ’Twas Mr. Wedgwood who discovered the engineering genius of young James Brindley, then a workman in his employ. Together they constructed the Grand Trunk canal that links the Trent and the Mersey, so that Mr. Wedgwood’s pottery could be carried from his works at Etruria to the ports at a saving of no less than seventy per cent. Then papa also has an interest in Mr. Samuel Compton’s spinning mule, which, ’tis said, will prove vastly superior to the spinning jenny. ’Tis from such undertakings that of late years papa has piled up a great fortune.’