Runaway Bride Read online

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘you are just come from Watier’s Club. You must, I apprehend, be the first lady of any pretensions to respectability who ever set foot there.’

  She was silent, enraged by that word ‘pretensions’. So that was what he thought her, a hoydenish country girl, always in scrapes, pretending to a respectability she could not compass.

  If he was aware of her fury, he ignored it. ‘We must think of a story,’ he said, ‘to explain your late arrival. Trust no one with the truth. Not even Lady Beresford, nor Pamela, nor Marsham, though she is such a confidante of yours, nor your own maid. No one, I tell you. This is no subject for girlish confidences.’ She seethed, but he went on, ignoring her increasingly furious silence. ‘First, we must make some change in your costume. For many of the men at Watier’s will doubtless come on to Devonshire House before the night is out. If there was time, we should find you a new one altogether. But time is of the essence. What’s to be done?’

  Jennifer thought rapidly. ‘My cloak,’ she said, ‘it is black, as you see, but lined with silver. It is but to turn it and I will present quite a different appearance.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, as she did so. ‘And if you will be ruled by me, you will discard that highly becoming headdress. There could be no mistake about that. No, give it to me.’ He took the coronet with a crescent moon on it which she had designed with so much pride, twisted off the moon, and returned it to her. ‘There, now wear it the other way round. And, remember, no word of the change to anyone.’

  ‘But Pamela will notice. We planned our costumes together.’

  ‘Pamela?’ He paused for a minute, thinking. ‘Pamela?’ he said again, a question in his voice, then went on. ‘No matter. Tell her you changed your mind before you left home. That will help to explain your tardiness. But not enough. No young lady would be wilfully so late as this for the greatest ball of the season.’ He paused, thinking, then, ‘I have it. We will say that I arrived unexpectedly at my grandmother’s...offered to escort you to the ball...had to procure a domino...and kept you, most ungallantly, waiting. You may be as angry with me about that as you please. It will, no doubt, be a relief to your feelings. But,’ the carriage was moving forward again, ‘here we are.’

  ‘But the servants?’ she asked as the carriage again paused for a moment. ‘Marsham?’

  ‘I will take care of them. And I trust, for her own sake, that Marsham is not so deeply involved in this night’s business as I find myself suspecting. Remember, not a word of Miles Mandeville. I have done myself the honour of bringing you here.’

  ‘I am vastly obliged to you.’ Fury trembled in her voice, and she could not prevent herself from adding, ‘I am sorry it is so distasteful to you. I apprehend you find the company at Watier’s more to your liking, since you went there first.’

  He was about to make some reply, whether of explanation or, more likely, of rebuke when he was interrupted by the carriage’s stopping at last at the entrance of Devonshire House. He helped her to alight.

  ‘Remember,’ he said again. ‘You have been waiting this half-hour or more for me to bring you. You can be as much out of patience with me as you please.’

  ‘I do not think,’ she withdrew her hand from his arm, ‘that that will overtax my powers as an actress.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He took her arm more firmly and led her into the splendid entrance hall. ‘You do it to a nicety. And here, if I mistake not, is the Duke himself and with him,’ his arm tightened warningly on hers, ‘is, I fear, an acquaintance of yours.’

  With horror, Jennifer recognised the pirate from Watier’s. Would he recognise her? Had she made a sufficiently drastic alteration to her costume? Too late now, if she had not. She went forward boldly on Mainwaring’s arm. Only he was aware how cold her hand was, and could feel it tremble.

  The entrance hall was so thronged with people that it took them some time to make their way to where the Duke and his companion stood. Watching them anxiously from behind her mask, Jennifer saw the pirate start at sight of her, turn and say something to the Duke, who was unmasked as were many of the other costumed figures. He turned at once to survey her as she approached.

  ‘Come,’ Mainwaring said, ‘no trembling now. Your only hope is to brave it out.’

  The crowd parted. The Duke came forward and greeted them courteously.

  ‘But,’ he added, ‘you are come so late, I think I must ask you to unmask and make your apologies in person.’

  This suited Mainwaring admirably. ‘With pleasure,’ he said, removing his mask. ‘I have but had it on these few minutes and I find it plaguily inconvenient. How does your grace?’

  ‘Mainwaring!’ said the Duke. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. I thought you still in the country a-wooing.’

  ‘I am but just now returned and would hardly have ventured here so soon, but I paid a visit to my grandmother and found her charge, Miss Fairbank, languishing for lack of an escort to your house. You must blame all our lateness on me, I promise you it was no wish of Miss Fairbank’s, but I had to procure myself a domino. I fear she is quite out of charity with me.’

  ‘Miss Fairbank?’ The Duke darted a questioning glance at the pirate, who had stood just behind him, an interested auditor of all that passed.

  ‘Yes. Your mask, Miss Fairbank.’

  Jennifer, who had waited with unwonted docility for her cue, now unmasked and saw the Duke’s start of surprise.

  ‘Let me present my grandmother’s ward, Miss Fairbank,’ said Mainwaring, and Jennifer made her deepest curtsy in acknowledgement of the Duke’s low bow.

  ‘Remarkable,’ exclaimed the pirate behind him and the Duke turned.

  ‘It seems that you owe Lord Mainwaring and Miss Fairbank an apology, Lovell.’

  He came forward. ‘I confess it freely. I am the victim of the most damnable coincidence—I beg your pardon Miss Fairbank. You must forgive me, Mainwaring,’ he turned a little away from Jennifer who was exchanging compliments with the Duke. ‘I am but now come from Watier’s where Harriette Wilson is peacocking it in a costume most remarkably like Miss Fairbank’s. Only, now I consider, the cloak was of a different colour and the crown another style.’

  ‘No small difference, surely,’ said Mainwaring dryly.

  ‘No, I apprehend it is not. And now I come to reflect, I see how I was mistaken. Harriette’s costume had not the—what shall I say—none of the distinction and elegance of Miss Fairbank’s. But you must forgive my mistake, Mainwaring. I truly believed you were some good friend of Harriette’s, passing her off here for a wager.’

  ‘You did me too much honour,’ said Mainwaring sardonically. ‘Harriette, I collect, is most particular in her affections. The Beau himself has sighed away many a night under her window, if she is to be trusted, and how should I be so honoured?’

  ‘Aye, but you see I did not know it was you, Mainwaring. To tell truth, I thought it some freak of Ponsonby’s.’

  ‘You are now the wiser. But, tell me, by what secret token did you recognise Harriette at Watier’s since, I apprehend, she must have been masked like the rest?’

  ‘So she was indeed, and putting up a devilish good imitation of a prude, I assure you. But Mad Mandeville had smoked her and spoiled her game by whispering about the room who she was. After that, her protestations, of course, were useless.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mainwaring, and indeed he did, much more than Lovell could understand. He now realised the full extent of the conspiracy against Jennifer. Someone had seen to it that his grandmother was asleep when Jennifer was ready to go to the Ball. Someone, too, had arranged that Lady Beresford could not fetch her and had sent, instead, Miles Mandeville, who had not only lured her to the Cyprians’ Ball but had ensured that she would be molested as much as possible by putting it about that she was the notorious Harriette Wilson. He smiled grimly to himself. There would be a score to settle with Mr Mandeville. In the meantime, he found himself perturbed about his grandmother. By what means had
she been put to sleep? Had she been drugged? He must lose no time in ascertaining. The Duke and Jennifer, he was pleased to see, were getting on famously. Jennifer, her first hurdle safely past, had recovered colour and composure and was blossoming under the Duke’s compliments. Lovell, too, seemed even more taken with her in her own character than he had been when he thought her London’s most famous courtesan. Under the balm of their admiration, she was visibly relaxing, soon she would be enjoying herself. He could safely leave her and take care of the loose ends of the conspiracy that still threatened her. Anyway, she was so visibly out of patience with him, so clearly preferring the Duke’s company to his, that there was little purpose to be served by staying here to dangle after her in hopes of a dance. And why should he wish to do so? Having gone so far as to ask himself the question, he wisely did not stay to answer it.

  Hearing Jennifer accept the Duke’s hand for a forthcoming quadrille, he broke into the conversation to suggest that they should first find Lady Beresford.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Jennifer, ‘and Pamela. I long to see her costume, for I designed it as well as my own.’

  This admission brought on a fresh spate of compliments from Lovell and the Duke, but Mainwaring took her arm and led her into the card rooms, in one of which he knew he should find Lady Beresford losing money as usual.

  Seeing Jennifer on Mainwaring’s arm, Lady Beresford paled, played the wrong card and burst into a flood of apologies to cover her confusion. But Mainwaring had noticed it all. Still, he thought, she had a right to be surprised, since everyone thought him still in the country and he knew well that if he had not told her he considered himself pre-engaged to Miss Purchas she would have hoped for his hand for his cousin Pamela. It must be more surprise than pleasure to see him with the unknown heiress. Her high colour and ill humour, too, might well be attributed to her invariable ill luck at cards. But was that all that discomposed her, he wondered. He had never loved his scheming aunt since he had caught her in a self-interested falsehood when he was a knowledgeable boy at Eton, and he was all too ready to believe that she was the mainspring of the plot against Jennifer’s good name. If so, let her beware. Of course, he assured himself, his concern for Jennifer was purely protective, for was he not in honour bound to that insipid white mouse of a girl in the country? But since he had taken Jennifer up, and had, indeed, put her in the position to be an object of Lady Beresford’s jealousy, he was bound to take care of her.

  He greeted his aunt with his usual courtesy, explained to her that he had been the cause of Jennifer’s lateness, and added, for good measure, that he was anxious about his grandmother, who had been strangely fast asleep when he arrived at her house, and proposed, therefore, to leave Jennifer with her and go back to Grosvenor Square to make sure that all was well with the Duchess.

  Lady Beresford, who had been alternately crimson and pallid around her rouge as he spoke, now exerted herself to greet Jennifer and wonder where Pamela was. ‘We have so longed and worried for you, my love, you can have no idea. Pamela was bound she would not dance till you were come, but then, of course, she was overpersuaded. The Duke, you know...’

  Poor Lady Beresford. She had never been able to help lying, even when it was not strictly necessary. It was a pity for her story that the Duke himself appeared at this moment to claim Jennifer’s promised hand for the quadrille. Jennifer, who had been a silent audience to Mainwaring’s interchange with his aunt swept a haughty curtsy to them both and went away on the Duke’s arm, determined to enjoy herself if it killed her, furious that Mainwaring should insult her by leaving at once, without even doing her the common courtesy of asking her hand for one dance. Of course, if she could possibly have justified it, she would have taken great pleasure in refusing him, but that was nothing to do with the matter.

  She was particularly charming to the Duke as he led her to the room where the quadrille was about to begin and he found himself seriously considering her as a possible duchess. What matter that his heart had been broken by Caroline Lamb, his ambition thwarted by Princess Charlotte? Must he always remember them?

  As they approached the set, Jennifer saw Pamela, on the other side of the room, drop her fan. It was picked up for her, with assiduous gallantry, by her partner—Miles Mandeville. Passionately Jennifer now wished that her own partner was Mainwaring instead of the Duke. He would know what to do, how to protect her from Mandeville. But, to her relief, she saw that the Duke was taking her to the very top of the set. Her normal bashfulness and uncertainty of her own capacity to support such an honour were quite lost in relief at seeing Pamela and Mandeville find a modest place at the bottom.

  And, surely, she consoled herself, as she made her opening curtsy to the Duke, Mandeville would never try to shame her here. The risk to himself would be as great as that to her. And—she was dancing with the Duke. That, in itself, was considerable protection. She would do very well without Mainwaring. She flashed the Duke a particularly brilliant smile as they passed each other in the intricacy of the dance and for a moment Lady Caroline was forgotten, Princess Charlotte unimportant. When the dance was over, he did not offer to take her back to her aunt. The great doors of the supper room downstairs had been thrown open. She must be his partner, too, for this. So, over cold chicken and champagne, she forgot her terrors of Miles Mandeville. He could hardly touch her here.

  And indeed Mandeville had only summoned up courage to come to Devonshire House because he felt it imperative to explain his failure at once to Lady Beresford. But, arriving, he had found her immobilised at the card table; to approach her there would have made their meeting dangerously conspicuous. He had been obliged instead to find Pamela and lead her out to dance, telling her, as the opportunity offered, as little as he dared about the evening’s fiasco, urging her to forget the whole affair and accept whatever story Jennifer should choose to tell in explanation of her late arrival. The sight of Jennifer at the top of the set with the Duke at once enflamed his rage at her escape and increased his terror of the possible consequences to himself. He had not expected her to be so powerfully befriended.

  CHAPTER X

  Arriving in Grosvenor Square, Mainwaring demanded imperiously to be taken to the Duchess at once. The footman looked embarrassed and muttered something about the lateness of the hour and her grace’s indisposition. Mainwaring’s frown had once subdued a French outpost. The man wilted and fetched Marsham. She, in her turn, told him with suitable regret, that his grandmother was seriously unwell and could not see him. She, too, rashly, ventured something about the lateness of the hour. His explosive reception of this was interrupted by the clamorous ringing of the Duchess’s own bell. Marsham’s look of surprise and alarm told him much that he needed to know. She had not expected her mistress to wake again tonight. Ignoring her renewed protestations, he followed her upstairs and was close behind her when she entered his grandmother’s boudoir.

  The old lady was sitting up on the sofa, her cheeks flushed, her scarlet wig awry, her eyes flashing fury. ‘I have been asleep,’ she said to Marsham. ‘Me! Asleep after dinner like an old dotard in a country vicarage. Why did you not wake me, Marsham? What excuse have you to offer? And where is Miss Fairbank? It is long past time for us to leave for Devonshire House.’

  Marsham had hardly begun her flustered apologies when the old lady saw Mainwaring behind her. ‘George,’ she said with pleasure, ‘the very person. It is not often you come so exactly when needed. Marsham, summon the carriage and tell Miss Fairbank and Betty to attend me. It is but to repair my toilette and you shall escort us to Devonshire House, George.’

  ‘But Miss Fairbank is there already,’ began Marsham.

  Mainwaring interrupted her: ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he darted a formidable look at Marsham. ‘This is not the first time I am come to your house tonight. I came some hour or so ago and found Miss Fairbank all impatience to be gone and—I hope with your approval—I took her there myself.’

  Marsham went scarlet. The old lady beamed. ‘Excell
ent, George. You were always one for action. And how does the child take?’

  ‘Beyond anything, ma’am. When I left she was leading the quadrille with the Duke himself.’

  The old eyes sparkled. ‘Just what I hoped. George, I owe you much for this night’s work. But still I wish I could be there.’ Her hand went up to her lopsided wig. ‘It is but to prink a little...’

  But Mainwaring had noticed her distended pupils which confirmed his suspicion that she had been drugged. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said firmly. ‘You cannot be altogether well. You know yourself you never sleep in the daytime. This drowsiness of yours can be no good omen. Stay here, I beg, with me. Miss Fairbank is well enough. Pamela is in the set with her, Lady Beresford in the card room near by and the Duke her devoted slave. You and I will await her here, like Darby and Joan over your fireside.’

  The Duchess smiled and sank back among her scarlet cushions. ‘Very well, George, if you can play Darby while Miss Fairbank conquers the world, I’ll be your Joan. And you shall entertain me with the tale of your country wooing about which, I may tell you, you have been most unconscionably slow. Marsham, you need not wait. Tell Betty she shall put me to bed when Miss Fairbank returns.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am,’ protested Mainwaring, when Marsham had flounced from the room, furious at this preference of Jennifer’s raw country maid over herself, ‘I do not recommend your waiting up for Miss Fairbank. I doubt the ball at Devonshire House will end before morning and I am sure her partners will not let her leave before then, even if Lady Beresford should consider going before she had lost the greatest possible sum at loo.’

  ‘Ah, George, you never loved your poor Aunt Beresford, and indeed she is but a frippery creature, but then consider that ramshackle husband of hers.’

  ‘You are right, ma’am. He is enough to try the patience of a saint. And Aunt Beresford is no saint. But—he is of her own choosing; you know you had no hand in the match.’ He was tempted to go on and tell his grandmother just how far from saintly he suspected Lady Beresford of being, and of the night’s plot against Jennifer. But the old lady looked far from well. The effect of the drug he was sure Marsham had administered had not entirely worn off. This was no time to agitate her. And, clearly, she had struck on suspicion of Marsham for herself. He need do no more. So, to distract her, he launched forth upon the story of his adventures in Sussex.