The Victory (19 page)

To escape his thoughts, Chetwyn turned his attention to
the boy who sat rigid with apprehension beside him. 'Don't
worry,' he said kindly. 'It won't be as bad as your first day at
Eton,' Robert smiled nervously. 'You were at Eton, I
suppose?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Colleger?'

‘No, sir. I was at Dame Shepherd's.'

‘
No, you don't have the look of having endured four years in College. When I remember how the tugs lived in my time,
it's a wonder to me any of 'em survived to tell the tale.'

‘
It's still pretty bad, sir.' Robert ventured, pleased with the
attention.

‘
Not that we oppidans lived in luxury,' Chetwyn smiled. 'I
remember being cold and hungry most of the time. Until I
became House Captain, that is.’

He lapsed into a musing silence. It was when he was House
Captain that he had first met Edward. They both lodged at
Dame Weston's, where Edward was fag to an ingenious
tyrant called Stevens, from whose cruelties Chetwyn had
rescued him. They had been happy days, then and after
wards, until family pressures had forced him to marry. And
now — his thoughts circled again, like a donkey harnessed to
a mill.

Robert was not offended by his silence. He was happy to
have been noticed so kindly by the noble earl, and not to be
obliged to speak to the terrifying countess.

*

They were forty at dinner at Castle Howard, and Chetwyn was placed between the Marchioness of Stafford and Lady
Julia Howard, Carlisle's daughter. Further down the table, he
saw Lucy engaged in conversation with Lord Morpeth, the
eldest son, and from her bright eyes and her gestures he
would have wagered Lombard Street to an orange she was
talking about horses.

Yet further down the table, he saw young Robert silent
between two older women, each talking to her other neighbour. As he looked, Robert's eyes met his, and at once the
boy's cheeks coloured, and he dropped his gaze to his plate.
Lady Serena, Chetwyn was glad to note, was on the opposite
side of the table from him, and therefore prevented by
etiquette from speaking to him, which Chetwyn thought
would have finished the poor child altogether.

After dinner, in the period before the rest of the guests
arrived for the ball, the ladies were escorted upstairs, and the
gentlemen assembled in an anteroom. Chetwyn wandered
from group to group, listening to the conversation. It was all
about the war: he heard the words Toney' and 'invasion' on
every side, together with bitter complaints about the Govern
ment's inefficiency. So great had been the rush to volunteer
that it had recently been forced to forbid any further enrol
ment, as there was no officers or arms for the new recruits.
All was confusion and mismanagement.

Noticing Robert watching him from across the room,
Chetwyn walked over to join him. It was rather agreeable, he
thought, to see the boy's eyes raised so admiringly to him.
They were wide, shy, hazel eyes, he noticed, with a delicate
pencilling of dark eyelashes.

‘I was thinking, over dinner, of the last time I dined here,' said Chetwyn, almost at random. 'A long time ago it was, too. Christmas '75, if I remember rightly.'

‘Yes, sir?' Robert said encouragingly.

‘
I wasn't much older than you are now,' Chetwyn said. 'At
dinner I sat next to the most beautiful woman I have ever
known: Jemima, Lady Morland. She wasn't an acknowledged
beauty ... it was something in her, something more than
mere looks.'

‘
Yes, sir,' Robert said again, longing for the eloquence to
tell the earl that he understood just what he meant. But the
earl looked at him kindly, and smiled as if he had heard his
thoughts.

‘
Yes. Well, it was a happy occasion, as I remember. I'd just
won a good deal of money on a horse — a colt called Persis,
you may have heard of it — and, to tell you the sort of man I was then, I'd spent my winnings on a new suit of clothes.' He
chuckled at the memory. 'Beautiful clothes we used to wear,
too, in those days, not like these dull, plain things. Silver roses
and silver lace, it had, and loops of silk ribbons, and true-
lovers' knots at the waist and knee. Oh, it was a splendid suit!'

‘
You must have looked very fine in it, sir,' Robert said.
Chetwyn looked at him enquiringly, and the boy blushed, but
did not lower his eyes.

‘
I expect you'd laugh until you were sick if you saw me in it
now, but that was how we dressed in those days. And so, you
have finished with Eton, and are going — where? If we
weren't at war, I suppose you'd be off on your Grand Tour?'

‘I'm going up to Oxford in the autumn, sir.'

‘Are you indeed! Which college?'

‘Christ Church, sir.'

‘
Oh yes. The Morlands go to The House. I was a Balliol
man myself — not that I took the degree, but that was never
what one went to Oxford for.'

‘
That's what Lord Ballincrea says,' Robert volunteered.
'My mother didn't want me to go to Oxford, but cousin
Maurice said that if I didn't go I wouldn't get to know the
right people.'

‘
Quite right,' Chetwyn said. The ladies were beginning to
come back, now, and the first of the ball-guests was arriving.
'My house is very close to Oxford, at Wolvercote. I shall be
there in the autumn, for the shooting. You must come and
visit me.’

The boy's face lit with pleasure. 'D-do you really mean it,
sir?' he stammered.

Chetwyn had spoken casually, but was obliged now to be
serious about it. 'Of course. Come and stay with me, and we'll
take a gun out together ... Ah, Ballincrea, good dinner,
didn't you think?'

‘
Excellent, as usual,' Ballncrea said, joining them that
moment. 'Hello, Robert. How are you enjoying your first
great occasion?'

‘
V-very much, cousin Maurice,' Robert turned to him
eagerly. 'Lord Aylesbury's just said I can go and visit him at
Wolvercote for the shooting.'

‘
With your permission, of course, Ballincrea,' Chetwyn said
with a lazy smile.

‘My dear Aylesbury, I'm the child's trustee, not his father,'
Ballincrea protested. 'I'm sure you can be trusted not to lead
him astray. Ah, here are James and Edward. Good God,
Edward's powdered! What a difference it makes!'

‘Yes, it does,' said Chetwyn. 'He looks ten years younger.’

The women of their party rejoined them soon afterwards,
and they stood watching the arrivals and listening to James's
account of how he had persuaded Edward to powder his hair. He was interrupted every few moments by gentlemen coming
up to ask a dance of Lucy.

‘
You're very popular, my dear,' Lady Serena remarked
with a faint edge of disapproval. 'I'm sure by now you must
be engaged right up until supper.'

‘
The men like to dance with me because I talk to them,'
Lucy said. 'There must be nothing worse than having to spend half an hour in the company of a beautiful ninny-
hammer with no conversation.’

Lady Serena looked as though she were glad she had never
spoken so plainly in polite company, and even Chetwyn was
forced to bite his lip so as not to laugh. Just then, Carlisle's
major-domo announced with a loud beginning and a marked
diminuendo, 'The Countess of Strathord, and His Grace the
Duke of Mumble-Cough.’

Everyone looked towards the door.

‘
What
name did he say?' Lucy began, and then realised
that the diminutive figure beside the unknown duke was
Héloïse, and that she was looking straight at James, as if there
were no-one else in sight.

*

’I can't believe you're here,' James said for the third time. 'I can't believe I'm really dancing with you. Tell me you're not
a dream.'

‘
Is this not real?' she asked, placing her hand in his at the
demand of the dance and smiling up at him as she turned
under his arm.

‘
Damn gloves,' he replied. 'I want to touch you, not white kid. You look so pretty, Marmoset! No, not pretty, that isn't
grand enough.'

‘
I am not pretty at all, my James; I never have been. But I
think I look well,
n'est-ce pas?
Flon has not lost her skill. She
was so pleased to have something important to work on
again.’

The gown was of almost transparent white gauze over a
pale-pink satin slip, with a long train and triple sleeves shaped
like flower-petals. She wore a tiara of diamonds, which
glittered like frozen fire in her dark hair, and around her throat was the diamond collar which King Charles II had
given to her great-great-grandmother Annunciata.

‘
You are crowned with stars,' James said. 'Dark and starry,
like the Queen of the Night.'

‘But she was a —
sorciére?'

‘
Sorceress.'

‘
Eh bier,
the same. And I am a good Catholic, my James, so
do not speak nonsense, please. Oh!' she lifted her hands in an involuntary gesture of happiness. 'I am so glad to see you!'

‘
And who, pray, was that young man who brought you
here?’

She gave him a wicked look. 'Monsieur le Duc? He is very
handsome, is he not? My papa was acquainted with his family
in France, but they are all dead, and he is in exile now,
le
pauvre.
He stays with a family who live near me. His is much liked, and goes everywhere, and so I am invited too, which is
very pleasant.'

‘
So I imagine. And what does the neighbourhood think
about it?' James growled.

‘
But naturally, they all think we will marry, because we are
the same age, and both French,' she said lightly. 'But we are
not very well matched.'

‘How so?'

‘
Because he is very beautiful, and I am very plain,' she
laughed, tilting her face up to him. 'But he is such a nice boy,
he pretends not to notice, and makes everyone think he
admires me very much!’

They reached the top of the dance, and he took both her
hands to whirl her down between the rows of blurred faces
and glittering jewels to the bottom of the set. 'But you won't
marry him, will you? Will you?'