The Duke's Messenger
Read The Duke's Messenger Online
Authors: Vanessa Gray
Copyright © Vanessa Gray 1982
The right of Vanessa Gray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United States of Americe in 1982 by The New American Library, Inc.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Lady Sanford’s smart black town carriage trundled up South Audley Street toward Portman Square. The last evening of the month of October, 1814, had turned chilly, and the older of the two occupants of the vehicle gathered her fur-lined pelisse close about her.
Euphrynia Sanford, having reached what she spoke of — when absolutely required — as “mature years” was not one to disregard her own comfort. Fortunately her late husband had thoughtfully left her sufficient funds to indulge her strong bent toward luxury. So it was that even on a ride of no more than half a dozen city blocks she was warmed, not only by her miniver-lined cloak, but by two lavish fur rugs tucked about her small feet.
She stole a glance at her niece. Her dear sister’s child, Miss Elinor Aspinall, allowed her own cloak to fall open at the throat. When one is young, reflected Lady Sanford with some regret, high spirits take the place of warm wraps.
Not that Nell’s spirits were exuberant, Lady Sanford decided. Indeed, the child had for several days fallen into the mopes, for no discernible reason unless it was the approaching end of her first London Season.
The function toward which the coach was even now carrying them was perhaps the last event of its kind before the
ton
went its diverse ways for the purpose of celebrating the Christmas holidays at their various country seats.
The ball was being given by the revered Duchess of Netwick, a lady noted for her fanatic adherence to ways now considered sufficiently antique to be quite laughable. Such amusement was exhibited strictly in private, of course. No one with any pretensions to respectability would take the hazard of being removed from her grace’s carefully pruned guest list.
“But,” said Lady Sanford, as though continuing a conversation interrupted, “her
cachet
is excellent, and one must expect the supper to be palatable. I heard that Gunther’s has a new shipment of ice, so the confections are bound to be better than those at Devonshire House. I particularly dote on his fruit ices. I vow I was in a mind to cut him entirely off, but then I remembered his fine sugar plums, and I cannot deprive myself of them, not even for the sake of principle.”
Nell appeared abstracted. Lady Sanford realized that this alarming state of not listening, of suddenly absenting herself from present company in favor of long, absorbing thoughts of her own, was growing on Nell.
From Phrynie Sanford’s own experience, such an air of otherworldliness was an infallible indication of tender passion — amour, one might say, as opposed to the entirely practical emotion whose aim was marriage.
She was strengthened in this belief, since a number of eligible suitors had appeared and made their offers, which Nell, quite kindly, turned down. There was Morrow, for example, whom Nell quite properly avoided, but Phrynie could not fault her in that respect. That family had more than its share of notoriously unstable eccentrics. It seemed clear to Phrynie that Nell was not willing to settle for suitability, or even a strong affection.
What more did she want?
With apprehension, Phrynie cast her mind over the eligible bachelors of whom they had seen much during the past six weeks, for somewhere in their acquaintance must lie Nell’s sudden interest.
“Nell, dear,” she probed delicately, “are you greatly disappointed in these last few months? Have you enjoyed London?”
“Aunt, I’m sorry. Do you think me ungrateful? Indeed, how could anyone be unhappy here? The Tsar’s visit, and the Victory Celebration, and the parties, and the outings — I dearly loved Richmond — and the Tower menagerie — and such amusing entertainments…” Her voice died away. “Indeed, Aunt, I am most grateful.”
While her aunt was entirely aware that Nell was not a raving beauty, the girl was entirely amiable and had a fine pair of speaking gray eyes, fringed with long dark lashes that had had a certain effect upon quite a few young men.
As though idly, Lady Sanford murmured, “Do you think Soames will offer?”
“Oh, dear, I hope not! A veritable Tulip, Aunt! His collars are so stiff he cannot turn his head, and his padded coats are laughable. Morrow said the other day that he thought Soames was merely a broomstick, held upright by his ridiculous apparel!”
“But,” objected her aunt, “I shall hope you are not judging a gentleman by his tailor.”
“Oh, no, I am not — but one must admit,” said Nell with a trace of wistfulness, “that appearance does count for something. Surely one’s appearance is a signal of one’s intellect?”
“Intellect?” murmured her aunt in a bewildered fashion. She was suddenly aware that she had seriously underestimated her niece.
Phrynie had taken Nell under her protection for the girl’s first Season. It was a duty that for the most part she enjoyed. Since the accident — when Nell’s parents had succumbed to the entirely mistaken idea held by George Aspinall that he could feather a team to a peg around a milestone hidden in frosty grass, even though the metalled surface was covered with a new layer of freezing rain — there was no question of Phrynie’s clear responsibility.
Perhaps she would have been better advised to probe the inner workings of this biddable young lady’s mind, rather than spending time in Henrietta Street choosing Irish poplins, French gloves, and Indian muslins. Phrynie now suspected, darkly, that Nell might prove to be a rather formidable person. For the first time, she felt a qualm about Nell.
“Not that I begrudge any of these past months, my dear,” said Phrynie, clinging to known landmarks. “But I confess I cannot understand your reluctance even to consider any of the offers you have had.”
Phrynie had, Nell discovered, the most disconcerting way of swooping into a conversation by a side door, leaving her audience to sort out whatever formal beginnings had been omitted. By this time, Nell had become expert at filling in her aunt’s ellipses.
“Aunt, I am dreadfully sorry, but I cannot think you would truly wish me to face Nigel Whitley over the breakfast table for the next forty years!”
“Hardly so long,” murmured Lady Sanford. “The Whitleys have a weakness in the chest, which has a sad tendency to cut them off in their prime.” She thought a moment. “Not that even their prime is to be admired, I confess. But you realize, do you not, that the Whitleys are possessed of sufficient wealth to make you very comfortable?”
“Yes, Aunt. But not Nigel. Indeed, he makes me vastly uncomfortable, with that lisp. Besides, his hands are damp!”
Fortunately for Nell, the journey was short. They were already pulling into the line of carriages stretching halfway around the square. “Later, Aunt. I am excessively grateful for your concern for me, and I do not know how I would have gone on without you. But as much as I wish to make a good match, I cannot think that my brother would approve of Nigel Whitley.”
“That Tom!” explained Phrynie in a dismissing tone. “Why doesn’t he make his appearance, then, instead of leaving you to make your way alone? Surely he should circulate in society to lend you countenance.”
And, thought Phrynie, to allow me to gather my wits. She had, she realized, probably spent no more than a waking hour a day in her own home since April. Nell had, so far, not been known to refuse an invitation.
“Incidentally,” she continued, “I should also like him to explain why he himself isn’t in the petticoat line? The Aspinall name is likely to die out unless he comes up to the mark!”
Since this was not the first time Lady Sanford had unburdened herself on the subject of her wayward nephew, Nell did not find it necessary to respond. Taking all in all, she thought, Tom’s absence was in the ordinary way more to be desired than his presence.
Tom was a law unto himself, as their aunt knew well, disappearing and surfacing again without regularity or explanations, but more often than not, with disconcerting effects on his nearest kin.
Nell recalled with a shudder the most recent occasion upon which Tom arrived at Lady Sanford’s town house, accompanied, for a reason never divulged, by a rawboned tomcat of belligerent tendencies, which at once found expression in a spirited encounter with the Sanford poodle.
It was entirely possible that in Lady Sanford’s vigorous reaction to that episode could be found the primary reason for Tom’s prolonged absence from the capital. Nell missed him, but she understood that her brother followed pursuits of his own, and she had long ago ceased to ask questions to which the only answers provided were vague and evasive.
*
The town house of the Duchess of Netwick occupied half a block on Gloucester Place, just off fashionable Portman Square. The palatial house and vast grounds were surrounded by a high iron-grille fence, broken in the center of the Gloucester Place frontage by great gates into which were wrought representations of the heraldic beasts which formed a part of the duke’s ancient coat of arms.
A broad avenue leading from the street to the house was no more than three carriages’ length, illuminated on both sides by flaming torches in the manner of bygone days. The house itself was ablaze with candlelight from every window, and the entrance doors, in spite of the chill, stood open. Even through the closed windows of the coach, Nell and Lady Sanford could hear the shrill hum of many voices mingled with snatches of music.
“We are late!” said Nell, disappointed. “The dancing has begun.”
“Nonsense!” said Phrynie. “This is only the arrival music.”
Unsettled by an unwonted note in her niece’s voice, she looked sharply at her. “Nell, you are not as a rule so anxious to be the first on the floor.” Unless, thought Phrynie, you have already promised the first dance?
“We’re almost at the door, Aunt,” said Nell, avoiding unwelcome conversation. And on the instant, the door to the carriage was flung open by a footman, and the ladies were helped to alight.
The cool air struck unpleasantly after the warmth of the coach, and they hurried up the steps and into the foyer. Nell murmured, “What a squeeze!”
It was indeed, thought her aunt. Nell had upset her in a way she didn’t quite comprehend. She studied her niece unobtrusively.
She was proud of Nell’s appearance — her long black tresses dressed in a style improvised by Lady Sanford’s most excellent maid Mullins, an arrangement doubtless to be attempted in many a boudoir on the morrow. Nell wore to perfection her new gown, in blossom pink crape over an underslip of matching sarsenet, pink satin ball slippers, and French kid gloves in the same delicate hue.
Not every woman could wear pink, even that pale hue that resembled a strawberry fruit ice, but Nell’s complexion was fresh and delicate. Nell, thought her aunt fondly, could wear anything!
Halfway up the staircase to greet their hostess, the explanation of Nell’s behavior came to Lady Sanford, somewhat in the manner of an exploding girasol. Nell’s glance was brushing across the crowd of faces above on the stairs and below in the foyer, restlessly, as though seeking one particular face in the throng.
Lady Sanford, herself an experienced flirt, recognized in Nell that same questing look that she herself had often worn — with, she thought, a little more decorum than Nell displayed!
Nell’s seeking glance was, without question, the anxious search of a woman in love.
Not that love was to be despised, not at all. Phrynie Sanford in fact spent much of her time enjoying the various permutations of the tender passion. But Nell, with a marriage still to make and a life to establish, must not throw her cap over the windmill. This of all times was the proper moment to keep one’s eye on the main chance, although Lady Sanford would never permit such a vulgar phrase to escape her lips, There would be time enough later — Phrynie judged from her own experience — to explore the farther shores of love.
Promising herself to keep a more than watchful eye on her niece this evening, she promptly lost sight of her charge, being pleasantly distracted by the Marquess of Darnford, an old friend. More than friend, if the truth were known, but Lady Sanford had no intention of allowing that particular truth to out.
Darnford’s eyes swept over her with unconcealed admiration. She was gratified that she had decided upon a new gown of cornflower-blue crape, cut daringly low across her bosom. The dress was fashioned to have a sweeping fullness in the folds at the back, providing a satisfying swing of fabric at every step.
The duchess received her guests at the top of the crowded stairway. She was attired without regard for her spreading obesity in a green brocade gown and matching turban embellished with the enormous Netwick emerald. The jewel itself was remarkable, supposed to have arrived in England in the previous century hidden in the baggage of a Netwick general returning from the troubles in India.
Now that the Season was drawing to a close, and all political eyes were focused on the congress now gathering in Vienna, there was almost an air of nostalgia about the company. One last great gathering, so it seemed, before the gaily colored flock, feathered by W. H. Botibol,
plumassier
of Oxford Street, scattered for the winter.
Her Grace the duchess had not stinted on her ball. At least seven violins played from a bay artfully screened by masses of potted trees from the conservatory, and already waiters slipped swiftly among the guests, bearing trays of refreshments to restore the guests from the rigors of a three-block carriage ride.