“Because I’m so dull and conventional, you mean?” he asked. “Because I always have my nose in a book?”
“You mustn’t imagine insults where none are intended. Besides, you know perfectly well that if I meant to insult you I’d do so without roundaboutation,” she rebuked.
“Then what is so puzzling about my choice of friends?”
“I only meant that you’re contemplative and serious,” she answered, looking down at her hands. “Lord Berne has probably never had a serious thought in his entire life. I cannot understand what would make his company rewarding for you.”
Jack smiled ruefully. “I can’t expect all my friends to be Aristotles. I’d probably be bored to death if they were. Maybe I cling to these fellows because they make a change from the monotony of my own company. Is that so odd? Would you wish all your bosom bows to be exactly like yourself?”
“Egad, no,” she answered with a show of horrour. “I should throttle them all in five minutes. Only I haven’t any bosom-bows. Nor will I get any,” she added, glancing towards the house, “if anyone learns I’ve been entertaining you all this time unchaperoned.”
She rose and Jack was obliged to follow, though it was not at all what he would have preferred. For nearly an hour they’d talked and she hadn’t berated him or hit him once. He hadn’t felt so serene in weeks.
Perhaps it was simply the vehemence of her behaviour—the flurry and collision and high emotion—which triggered so much emotion in himself. Maybe now that she had settled somewhat into her new life, she would not agitate him quite so much.
The end of this tranquil interlude, could Jack but have known it, appeared early Wednesday afternoon in the form of a cloud of dust. This gradually resolved itself into a pair of sweating horses pulling a dashing black curricle upon whose seat Lord Berne was perched. He’d decided that while rivals were all very well in the case of puerile infatuations, they would not do at all when it came to a Grand Passion. The enemy must be routed. There would be no more clandestine embraces in gardens or anywhere else, save where Lord Berne played the male lead.
The viscount did not customarily abuse his cattle, and would have arrived with a deal less lather if he hadn’t needed a potent excuse for stopping at Rossing Hall. Jack’s uncle might have easily enough walked over or around Lord Berne had that young man been lying mortally wounded in his path, but for dumb animals Lord Rossing had compassion.
For the weary horses’ sake, then, he grumblingly allowed Lord Berne entrance. This did not mean the reluctant host wished to talk to his guest, however. He promptly abandoned Lord Berne at the library door and headed in the opposite direction.
Wasting no time, Tony launched his offensive as soon as he entered the library. Citing Atkins’s report of what had transpired in the garden, the viscount demanded to know Jack’s intentions toward Miss Desmond.
Being not only greatly taken aback by this unlooked-for assault but altogether unable to satisfy himself upon this very subject, Mr. Langdon was utterly incapable of responding.
Since Lord Berne had no intention of heeding any reply in the first place, Jack’s stammering bewilderment spared his having to feign attention. The viscount mounted his attack.
“You cannot toy with her affections, Jack. I know what her father is and what he’s done, and I know what people say of her mother, but that is no reason to take advantage of an innocent girl.”
“Take advantage?” Jack repeated, dazed. “What are you saying?”
“You know very well what I mean. You think—” Lord Berne stopped short to stare at his friend in consternation. “Oh, Lord, what am I saying? Forgive me, Jack. I must be mad.” He began pacing, speaking rapidly as he did so. “I don’t know what’s happened to me. I tried to stay away, truly I did. But she draws me. No woman has ever—no, you will not believe it. You’ll laugh—no, your heart is too generous for that. Oh, Jack, your friend is brought low, indeed.” Lord Berne threw himself into a chair.
“Good God, Tony, what on earth is the matter?”
“The matter,” the viscount repeated bitterly. “Everything is the matter. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think. Oh, Jack, I love her. Can you believe it?”
“Well, yes, actually, I can. You’re always in love with somebody,” said Jack rather unsympathetically.
“Never like this. When before could I find no comfort elsewhere? But how can I think of my comfort, knowing the undeserved burdens that innocent angel must bear? An ill fame, not of her making, blights her youth even before it blossoms. How can I find happiness anywhere, knowing the world is determined to destroy any chance of hers?”
His stunned foe sank into a chair.
Lord Berne got up from his to recommence his agitated march upon the carpet. “She wishes nothing to do with me, and I cannot blame her. Yet how can I keep away when there remains any hope I might be able to help her? Perhaps that would make her think a little more kindly of me. Only a little, Jack. I know I can’t expect her to care—and I’m sure she deserves a worthier fellow. Yet if she’d but smile kindly upon me once, I think I could live on that, and die, if not happy, then a better man for it.”
Any expression of selflessness was so utterly foreign to Lord Berne’s character that Mr. Langdon might be excused for blinking once or twice to assure himself he was not dreaming. This could not be Tony Melgrave who strode back and forth before him declaiming upon his unworthiness of the seraphic being known as Miss Delilah Desmond. Tony deserving of her—of any woman’s—scorn? Impossible, Jack told himself.
Aloud he said, “I see what the matter is, Tony. She’s the first woman in your experience who did not collapse helpless into your arms the instant you smiled upon her. The novelty of the experience has obviously been too much for you. You’re merely frustrated, and having never been so before you confuse the emotion with love.”
“Why should you believe me?” Lord Berne ceased his pacing to take up a tragic pose at the mantel. “You know what a paltry, insensible beast I am. No one would believe me, and there’s no one to blame but myself. Perhaps my family has indulged me overmuch, but I cannot blame them. A man makes his own character. Only I bear the guilt, and only I can make amends.” He turned upon his friend a gaze so desolate that Jack experienced a profound twinge of guilt.
“No more,” said Jack hastily. “You’re making yourself overwrought, which always makes you behave recklessly. I’ll ring for wine and you must try to collect yourself.”
“I’m perfectly collected. You needn’t fear I’ll do myself—or your neighbours—an injury. I’ve thought the matter over long and hard, and I cannot bring myself to believe the situation is hopeless.”
Lord Berne moved from the fireplace to perch on a chair opposite his friend. “You’ve seen her recently?”
Jack admitted he had.
“Did she speak of me? Did she mention what I said to her when we last spoke?”
“You were mentioned only in passing.”
The viscount nodded sadly. “She suspected I wasn’t in earnest, and my going away only confirmed her suspicions. But enough self-pity. I’d better tell you what I proposed.” He proceeded to repeat the scheme he had suggested to Miss Desmond.
“So that explains the business at church,” said Jack. “No wonder she was complaining of the visitors and calling herself a curiosity piece.”
“Then they’ve begun to relent?” the viscount asked eagerly. “They’ve welcomed her?”
Jack admitted that such appeared to be the case.
“Then there’s hope!” Lord Berne exclaimed. “That’s all I wanted. My way is clear now. I will not rest until she’s securely established, until no one will dare breathe a word against her.”
The wine was duly provided, but it refreshed neither party. Lord Berne was too busy talking to remember to drink his, and Jack was too busy with his troubled thoughts to taste what he drank.
Mr. Langdon examined his own feelings and found them base. He was tormented only by lust, wh
ich had certainly not inspired him with any true compassion for its object or any heroic plans for her future happiness. He’d thought only of his own needs and railed inwardly against her for arousing them. There was nothing of finer sentiments in this, nothing remotely worthy of the name Love. Being a just man, he felt he must ease his friend’s mind regarding the “intentions” referred to earlier.
“I hope, Tony, you won’t give the business in the garden another thought,” he said, feeling very awkward. “You see, she tripped and stumbled into my arms and... and I lost my head. I got soundly slapped for my impertinence. I was also told in no uncertain terms that my attentions were profoundly unwelcome. That was and is the end of it, I promise you.”
After a moment’s reflection, Lord Berne responded magnanimously that he had been over-hasty in seeing evil where it was not, and pronounced himself satisfied.
Not to be outdone in generosity, Mr. Langdon revealed that the subject of their discussion would be dining at Rossing Hall this very evening. He said he’d be most pleased if Tony would make one of the party, and later avail himself of a guest chamber.
“I’ll make it all right with my uncle,” Jack added with a weak smile. “Now you’re here, he’ll think the damage done. Besides, if he can tolerate Blenkly, he can endure your company as well, I expect.”
Having transformed himself into a model of unselfishness, Lord Berne offered to absent himself from the house for a while—after, that is, he had washed and changed—to spare Lord Rossing unnecessary irritation. There was no need to explain that his chosen place of exile would be the house next door. Jack was intelligent enough to recognise the impossibility of his friend’s doing anything else.
Lord Berne was just turning into the front walkway of Elmhurst when he came upon Mr. Atkins, who’d recently been turned out.
Mr. Atkins’s lot was not a happy one. Following his last interview with Lord Streetham, the publisher had returned to London to nurse his cold and contemplate ruin. No sooner had he arrived than he’d had the idea of appealing to Desmond’s greed by forging a letter offering more money for the manuscript. The reply had been most disheartening. Today he’d come hinting at legal action, only to meet a stone wall of injured innocence.
Desmond had claimed to be the victim of scoundrels. His manuscript had disappeared, he’d insisted. After observing that one couldn’t get blood from a stone, and assuring the publisher something would turn up, and vowing an unspeakable vengeance upon those who had stripped him of the fruits of his labours, the Devil had politely eased Mr. Atkins out the door.
Now the publisher was faced with the unenviable task of discovering whether it was his business partner or his author who was playing him false, and the hopeless task of wrenching the manuscript from either of these fellows’ grips.
Mr. Atkins cast an unfriendly eye upon Lord Berne. Had the earl not placed so much confidence in this young coxcomb, the matter might have been handled in a properly businesslike way from the start.
Lord Berne immediately took umbrage at being glowered at by this low, sweating tradesman.
“Still nosing about, Atkins?” said he. “Looking for more scurrilous tales to carry to my father? You’d better take care. Neither Mr. Desmond nor Lady Potterby will be best pleased to hear how you lurk about the property spying upon the family.”
Mr. Atkins answered that he had not been spying on anyone. A man was entitled to professional interest in the products of his trade, he hoped. “I only wanted—”
“My good man, what you want can be of no possible interest to me, I am sure,” said Lord Berne in perfect imitation of his father at his supercilious best. “I hope you will not tax my credulity too far by attempting to persuade me Lady Potterby now cultivates literature in her garden. She’s growing a library there, perhaps, and you were curious about her choice of fertilizer? Or did you suspect your publications were the manure used to enrich her soil? Indeed, that would explain your obsessive interest. Good day, sir,” his lordship concluded, rudely bushing past him.
Mr. Atkins stood a moment staring after the viscount in mute indignation. “Insolent, sarcastic puppy,” he muttered to himself. “You feign to misunderstand me, do you, and insult my trade—as though it did not pay for your coats from Mr. Wes-ton and your starched cravats and all the rest. Manure, indeed. My work enriching the soil and—”
And then Mr. Atkins had a vision—of a spade handle standing a foot or so from an embracing couple. He saw as well Mr. Langdon coatless and spattered with dirt. Mr. Atkins asked himself, much as Lord Streetham had a few days earlier, why two members of the idle upper class should take to agriculture on such a punishingly hot day.
Lord Berne discovered to his regret that he’d been overtaken by Time’s winged chariot, for he was shown into the house just as the two ladies were about to go upstairs to prepare for the dinner party. He therefore had the honour of a mere ten minutes’ visit, during which he found no opportunity to speak privately with Miss Desmond.
Still, he made the most of the precious minutes. He appeared as subdued, chastened, and decorous a visitor as any fastidious duenna could wish. His speech had just the right air of mournfulness to persuade any onlooker he was the hapless victim of a merciless conqueror. The sad, furtive way in which his gaze helplessly sought Miss Desmond’s left no doubt as to whom this tyrant could be.
“Plague take the fellow,” the Devil muttered under his breath, when the viscount had taken his dejected leave. “Kemble is a clownish amateur compared to him.”
The fair despot might have been touched by the moving sight of a young lord in the last stages of romantic decline had she been able to spare him her attention. This was impossible, because Delilah’s mind was taken up entirely by Mr. Atkins. His reappearance had been most disquieting, and she had not been at all appeased by her father’s entertaining reenactment of his performance.
If they had not been engaged for the evening, Delilah would very likely have dashed out to the garden, dug up the manuscript—had it been there to be disinterred—and either burned it or thrown it into the duckpond. Unfortunately, they were engaged, and she must bathe and dress and then sit still for an eternity while Joan battled with her mistress’s unruly hair.
Chapter Ten
The dinner party turned out to be a foreshadowing of the reception Delilah might expect in London. Even the tentative acceptance she’d recently achieved in Rossingley was not reflected in the manner of Lord Rossing’s more prominent guests.
Lord and Lady Streetham were more patronising than ever, while their Gathers counterparts simply pretended Miss Desmond was an uninteresting piece of furniture. Since the former were now, like the latter, houseguests of the Wembertons, even that heretofore kindly group appeared stiffly ill at ease.
Delilah’s situation was not at all improved by Lord Berne, who hovered about her constantly, despite his mama’s apparently inexhaustible supply of stratagems to call him back to Lady Jane’s side. Though Delilah wished he would consider her predicament and not make such a cake of himself, she was not entirely displeased with his behaviour.
Lady Jane was all sharp angles. Her chin was small and pointed. Her nose was narrow and pointed. Her eyes were very black and very sharp, and her voice, in perfect keeping with all this staccato, was high and clipped. She had curtly acknowledged their introduction with a snap of her chin, as though she were a pair of scissors and would like to snip Miss Desmond out of the scene altogether. Lord Berne’s devotion was some recompense to Delilah for this rudeness.
Still, it was a relief to be seated by Mr. Langdon at dinner, with Lady Jane and Lord Berne the length of the table away. As usual, Mr. Langdon was the soul of courtesy. He did not gaze upon Delilah with moonstruck eyes nor heap fulsome compliments upon her aching head.
After dinner, though, he had to remain with the gentlemen, while the ladies retired to await them in the drawing room.
There Lady Potterby was drawn into conversation with Mrs. Blenkly, while Delilah, po
intedly ignored by Lady Jane’s allies, struggled to keep up something like a conversation with an excessively nervous Miss Wemberton. The latter was too tender-hearted to snub Miss Desmond, yet too aware of the ill-feeling towards her to converse enthusiastically. She kept glancing uneasily across the room at her mother, who was deeply engrossed with her houseguests.
“Is it wise, do you think, Eliza,” Lady Gathers was saying, “to allow Mary to sit with her?”
Though Lady Wemberton was torn between loyalties, Lady Gathers’s hint that Mary might be easily led astray was not at all acceptable.
“A few minutes’ conversation will hardly corrupt my daughter,” said Lady Wemberton, drawing herself up. “Besides, Millicent is a dear friend. One cannot choose one’s relations, you know.”
“One can decide whether or not to acknowledge them,” Lady Gathers retorted. “But I daresay she grows senile and you tolerate her frailties for old times’ sake.”
“I can hardly cut the grand niece without cutting the great aunt,” said Lady Wemberton.
“Yes, I suppose that is also Lord Berne’s problem,” snapped Lady Jane.
“The young men must sow their wild oats, my dear,” said Lady Streetham, hastening to her darling’s defence. “If he had any respect for that creature he would not subject her to such unseemly ogling.”
“Indeed, you know you would blush, Jane, to be regarded so,” Lady Gathers concurred.
All the same, the ladies must have agreed it was more unseemly that Lady Jane not be regarded at all, for they soon united to place that paragon center stage.
The men had scarcely appeared when the ladies began hinting for music. Naturally, Lady Jane must perform first, since she had precedence over the other maidens.
“I knew it,” Lord Rossing muttered to his nephew. “Sooner or later we must be treated to a lot of amateurish caterwauling and applaud it as musical accomplishment.” More audibly he pronounced himself enchanted with the prospect, and begged Lady Jane to offer the company her Euterpean tribute.