The Romance (10 page)

For his part, Lord Gyre considered it was as well the ferocious little Lizzie was acting as chaperone. He glanced sideways at Belinda’s pink lips and wondered what it would be like to kiss them, wondered if he could rouse passion in her. Ladies were not supposed to feel passion, only women did, and yet, Belinda was unusual. He was intensely aware of the light scent she wore and the slim yet voluptuous body under the thin muslin gown. Had he had serious intentions towards Belinda Beverley—and he had not!—then the very presence of his ex-mistress would have put paid to them. So while Lizzie fretted privately that they were making their way too slowly, Belinda and Lord Gyre sat wrapped in their thoughts.

*      *      *

Mrs. Ingram had been found in that masculine sanctum, the billiard-room, by Lord St. Clair. Billiards was an old indoor game which had fallen into abeyance rather like the game of trap and ball, although the latter was still flourishing in America under the name of baseball. The
Morning Post
had recently stated: ‘Billiards are becoming very fashionable; it is
an amusement of a gentlemanly cast—giving at once activity to the limbs and grace to the person.’

There was even an undisputed billiards champion, a Mr. Andrews, who had reached such a degree of perfection that no one in Europe could rival him. He lived on nothing but tea and toast and was obsessed with the game. He could have made his fortune but was an inveterate gambler. One night, he won ten thousand pounds from a colonel who arranged to meet him the next day to go with him to the City and transfer stock to him for the amount owing. Being in a hackney coach, they tossed up for who should pay for it. Andrews lost the first toss and would not give up. By the time the pair reached the City, he had lost all, and when the coachman stopped to let them get down, he was ordered to get up again and drive them back, as they had no occasion to get out. He retired to Kent to live on a small annuity which was so tied up that he could not gamble it away and found contentment at last, living on a pittance.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded St. Clair. Mrs. Ingram smiled, took a cue and bent over the table, exposing a generous bosom. ‘Looking for a game,’ she said.

‘Ladies don’t play,’ sneered St. Clair.

‘This one does. I tell you what, I’ll lay you a wager.’

‘What wager?’

‘If you lose, you kiss me. If you win, you get five hundred pounds.’

‘You’re mad!’

Mrs. Ingram gave an almost boyish grin. ‘Confident, that is all. Do we play, or are you frightened a mere woman will beat you?’

‘Not I!’ said St. Clair. ‘If you have five hundred pounds to throw away, that is your business.’

Lord St. Clair prided himself with his expertise at billiards. He was mortified when Mrs. Ingram beat him easily. ‘It’s not fair!’ he cried petulantly. ‘It is because I am playing with a lady. I let you win!’

She gave him a slow seductive smile. ‘You must want to kiss me very much.’

He did not, but a bet was a bet. He approached her and pursed up his lips and closed his eyes.

She took his weak face between her hands and kissed him very gently on the lips. He found to his surprise that the experience was comforting. She released him and said huskily, ‘I fear you have won my heart.’

Saint Clair goggled at her. Then he grinned, what he thought a wicked, doggish sort of grin. ‘Teach you to play with fire, lady.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs. Ingram lowered her eyelashes. He noticed for the first time that they were long and thick and black. He found himself attracted to a lady for the first time. But somewhere in his not-too-agile brain alarm
bells were beginning to sound. His father would certainly not approve of Gyre’s cast-off, and he, St. Clair, had not been in the way of keeping a mistress and shrank from the idea.

‘M’father wouldn’t like it,’ he blurted out and fled from the billiard-room.

Mrs. Ingram sat down on the window-seat. She was unfazed by St. Clair’s remark. But although she had hitherto meant to distract St. Clair from Belinda, now she began to wonder whether she should really try to get St. Clair to marry
her
. That would involve somehow meeting the earl and charming the old boy. She summed up the pros and cons. She was of good ton despite her doubtful reputation and was rich, but she was older than St. Clair. Still, it might be amusing to try. And she thought Gyre and the fair Belinda were very well suited.

Then there was the challenge of Mannerling. Like Miss Trumble, she had never considered herself superstitious, and yet she felt somehow the house was against her. If she married St. Clair, she could persuade him to sell. All this plotting and planning cheered her. She did not regard Jane Chalmers or the giggling, simpering twins as any competition whatsoever. Belinda, she felt sure, did not in her heart of hearts want to marry St. Clair, and yet there was the peculiar hold this house had on the Beverleys.

That evening an impromptu dance was held. Musicians had been summoned from
Hedgefield. Gurney and Mirabel danced with the twins, St. Clair with Belinda, and Lord Gyre took Lizzie onto the floor. Mrs. Ingram sat and fanned herself and watched and waited, noticing with amusement the way St. Clair’s eyes kept straying in her direction. Perry noticed those glances too and his eyes narrowed with speculation. He wondered whether he might offer Mrs. Ingram a bribe to use her wiles on St. Clair and then decided against it. Everyone knew Mrs. Ingram was rich.

So they danced on, Belinda uncomfortably aware of the marquess, he of her, and St. Clair looking, always looking, to where Mrs. Ingram sat fanning herself.

Lord Gyre called for a waltz and asked Belinda to dance, and Lord St. Clair persuaded himself it would be only polite to talk to Mrs. Ingram.

‘Such a hot evening,’ said Mrs. Ingram languidly. ‘I have been looking out at the rose garden. I think I will leave you to your dancing and take a turn in the evening air.’

‘I would accompany you, dear lady,’ said Lord St. Clair gallantly, ‘but I cannot leave my guests.’

‘Why not?’ She tickled his nose with the feathered end of her fan.

‘S’pose I could,’ he said, feeling that odd quickening of the senses.

‘There is no need to make a fuss. We could
just slip away for a little.’ Her large eyes flirted at him over the fan.

He had that heady feeling of being a rip, a slayer of ladies’ hearts. ‘I shall dance you to the door,’ he whispered.

No one but the ever-watchful Perry saw them go. Belinda, with Lord Gyre’s hand at her waist, was feeling quite dizzy with a whole series of new emotions. Lord Gyre noticed the heightened colour on her cheeks and decided it would be only fair to the girl to try to make her fall in love with him. She was too good for such as St. Clair.

Somehow, in the peace of the rose garden, Lord St. Clair found himself telling Mrs. Ingram all his woes, about being pressured into marriage, about never being able to please his father.

How warm and sweet the comforting darkness of the rose garden was, and how sympathetic was Mrs. Ingram. No one had ever listened to him like this before. As a crescent moon rose in the dark-blue sky above and a heady scent of roses surrounded them, he droned on about the beatings he had had from his tutor and his father, how he just wanted an easy life roistering around with his friends.

‘You will become tired of running around sooner or later,’ said Mrs. Ingram at last. ‘You will want a son. A fine young man like you should have someone in his own image.’

‘But marriage and all that…’ Lord St. Clair
waved a hand as if to encompass all the trials of wedding and wooing.

‘It might be easier than you think,’ cooed Mrs. Ingram. ‘You have great sensibility and that makes you worry too much. A companionable lady who understood you would be just the thing.’

Perry, who had noticed the couple were missing and had tracked them down to the rose garden, stood listening behind a bush. He rubbed his hands gleefully. Here was news at last for the earl. Mannerling was as good as his!

The following day, Lord Gyre rose early and, wrapped in a banan, made his way to the morning-room. He planned to spend a peaceful hour before anyone else was awake reading the newspapers. But when he pushed open the door of the morning room, he saw Belinda seated at the table, her head bent over a newspaper. She
was wearing an old blue cotton gown and her hair had not been put up. Shining, black and curly, it lay on her shoulders.

He would have retreated, but she looked up and saw him, and said, ‘Good morning, my lord.’ Her eyes were wide and friendly. Once again he experienced that sharp feeling of pique that this beauty should be so apparently unaware of him as a man.

He sat down opposite her. ‘Anything of interest?’

She smiled. ‘Only things that enrage me.’

‘Such as?’

‘Wife-selling.’

‘Ah. Well, that does not go on in our rarefied stratum of society.’

‘Just listen to this: “A man named John Gorsthorpe exposed his wife for sale in the market at Hull; but owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had gathered together, he was obliged to defer the sale, and take her away. About four o’clock, however, he again brought her out and she was sold for twenty guineas, and delivered, in a halter, to a person named Houseman, who had lodged with them for four or five years.” Is that not dreadful?’

The marquess’s eyes mocked her. ‘Twenty guineas is a fair sum. The lodger must have wanted her badly.’

‘Then if that does not shock your cynical soul, do but listen to this! “One of those
disgraceful scenes, which have, of late, become too common, took place on Friday se’nnight at Knaresborough. Owing to some jealousy, or other family difference, a man brought his wife in a halter and sold her at the market cross for sixpence and a quid of tobacco!”’

Belinda rustled the paper furiously. ‘Women are not gaining any more respect or equality in this modern world. We are retreating into the Dark Ages.’

‘Not really. Such sales have been going on among the lower orders since time immemorial.’

‘And since times immemorial,’ flashed Belinda, ‘nothing has been done by the authorities to stop this dreadful trade. So it is not only the lower orders who have not progressed but the higher orders, too.’

‘There are worse ills abroad in the world—murder, rape, and pillage.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said tartly, ‘because it is a world run by men!’

‘You are indeed a bluestocking, Miss Belinda.’

‘Not I. If I were a bluestocking I might have more dignity and sense than to try to sell myself for this wretched house.’

Then she looked at him aghast, hardly able to believe what she had just said. Outside, a cloud crossed the sun, plunging the morning-room into darkness, and a sudden wind blew around the house like a great sigh.

A faint tinkling sound reached their ears. The chandelier.

The Beverleys were not Roman Catholics, and yet Belinda crossed herself. ‘Forgive me, my lord,’ she said, and Lord Gyre wondered whether it had been an apology to himself or to God.

Sunlight streamed into the room again. ‘I sometimes chafe at the restrictions put upon women,’ Belinda went on. ‘The terrible tyranny of marriage and after that, a baby each year. Mostly, I am content to play the game, to wear pretty clothes and to flirt. But were I a man, I could fight in the wars and perhaps gain enough prize money to—’ She broke off in confusion.

‘You were about to say, “…gain enough prize money to buy Mannerling.” You interest me, Miss Belinda, and not just because of your pretty face. You appear intelligent, except when it comes to Mannerling, and then all your good sense disappears. You think Saint Clair would be an easy man to live with because you know he detests the country and you imagine a marriage in name only. But he is under his father’s thumb, and his father will want grandchildren as soon as possible. Then think of the days when you are both old and you have a fop without brains or character to take care of in your declining years.’

Belinda looked at him haughtily. ‘There will be servants enough to take care of him.’

‘Ah, but as you have brought to my attention, women have no say in anything. Once you are married to Saint Clair, you are his to do with exactly as he likes.’

She suddenly remembered how the marquess had looked naked, and the thought flashed into her mind that there could be, for her, perhaps, some man whose domination she would enjoy. Then she blushed painfully and deeply again.

‘We have fallen into the way of talking too openly,’ he said gently. ‘Such is not usual between a man and a woman. You are very outspoken, and yet I confess I would not have you any other way.’

A piercing stab of happiness entered Belinda’s heart at those words, and her face became almost translucent. He rose and leaned over her, and her heart hammered against her ribs.

Then the door of the morning-room opened and Lizzie came in. The marquess sat down suddenly and Belinda said crossly, ‘What are you doing up and about this early, Lizzie?’

‘Looking for you,’ said Lizzie, her green eyes darting suspiciously from one to the other.

‘Excuse me, ladies,’ said the marquess. He bowed and left the room.

‘What was going on?’ demanded Lizzie. ‘I thought he was going to kiss you!’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Belinda. ‘Lord Gyre was merely leaning forward to take up a
newspaper.’

‘I think you are going to be like the others,’ said Lizzie, meaning their elder sisters. ‘I think you are going to throw away a chance at getting Mannerling back.’

‘Not I!’ said Belinda with a lightness she did not feel. Had he been going to kiss her? What would that have been like?’

Gurney Burke opened the door of the morning-room a little, saw the girls and was about to retreat when Lizzie’s next words froze him.