Dishonour and Desire

Greeting her singing teacher with a kiss to both cheeks, she helped Sara to uncover the harp and sift through the music sheets, settling into the seriously enjoyable music-making that had been her lifeline during the last problematical years. From the start, she had been sought to add glamour and talent to the most select house parties, soirées and private charity concerts, sometimes with Sara, sometimes with her teacher, and often with an orchestra. It was not a voice, they told her father, that one kept to oneself.

Before long, the family at Sheen Court began to gravitate towards the door that only grown-ups knew how to open silently. In a slow trickle with fingers to lips, they went to sit on the window-seat at the far end, or took up positions on the pale upholstered chairs against the cream panelling. Lured by Caterina’s rich mezzo-soprano voice, they listened entranced to the music of Mozart, Gluck and Handel and to some by her late mentor himself, who’d had a piece written for him, a castrato, by Joseph Haydn.

Standing to face the harp and the piano so that she could watch her teacher’s expressions, Caterina was hardly aware of the growing audience until Sara whispered to her during a pause, ‘Lord Elyot’s here.’

‘Don’t look, then,’ Caterina whispered back. ‘Shall we go from bar fourteen, signor? That trill needs polishing, doesn’t it?’ Taking a pencil, she made a note on her music, glancing towards the little crowd gathered in the distance. Lord Elyot was indeed there with his brother, and wife, and a guest, a man as tall as himself who she had seen only that morning at Paradise Road in circumstances very different from this.

She had never suffered unduly from nervousness while performing, but now she felt an uncomfortable churning sensation beneath her lungs, and when the piano accompaniment began on bar fourteen, her voice was not prepared for it. ‘Sorry, signor. Again, if you please?’

Watching his head lift as he counted her in, she began again, this time coming in on the beat, facing the room in a conscious effort to show that, this time, she was totally in control as she had not been earlier, when she had last spoken to Sir Chase.

She would rather have avoided another meeting with him, but it was not possible, for Lord and Lady Elyot were interested to hear from him that he and Miss Chester had already been introduced and that he would be happy to meet her again. If they had expected Caterina to share this eagerness, they soon saw that the opposite was the case when she replied to his congratulations with chilling courtesy. Taking the hand of five-year-old Adrian, Caterina led him to the piano stool for a quick two-finger duet. The last thing she wanted was a display of ill humour, for that would have raised too many questions, but nor did she wish to engage any man’s attentions who was coolly relieving her father of twenty thousand guineas for so little return.

On the way back to the green drawing room, however, it was clear that Lady Elyot had noticed. ‘What is it, Cat dear?’ she said as they walked a little way ahead of the rest. ‘You didn’t mind us bringing Sir Chase in, did you? He was very keen to hear you.’

‘It’s not that. I don’t mind who hears me. I don’t like the man, that’s all.’

‘But he tells me you only met this morning. What is it you don’t like?’

‘Oh, only what’s generally known, I suppose. He sets my bristles up. I know some think he’s all the crack, but dressing well doesn’t excuse a profligate.’

‘Cat! What are you saying? That’s coming it a bit strong, my dear. My lord would not have invited him to the house if he was as bad as all that.’

‘Lord Elyot invited him?’

‘Yes, love. They’ve been to the stables. Sir Chase was a captain in the same regiment as Nick and Seton, and they’ve been friends for years. You won’t have seen him until now because he spends most of his time in London and his other properties, when he’s not at Mortlake. Of course these men get up to all kinds of tricks, but I find it’s best not to enquire too closely about that. Even Nick won’t tell me about the pranks they played in the Dragoons, occasionally.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’re right about that part, but the less I see of him the better I shall like it.’

Lady Elyot had been watching Sir Chase while Caterina was singing and she was quite sure that his thoughts were running along different lines. It would be interesting to see, she thought, how long it would take him to win her to his side, for by all accounts Sir Chase was not a man to give up when he met opposition. And she was sure he’d set his sights on her niece. Was that why he’d been to see Stephen?

Caterina’s brush with Sir Chase was not yet over, however, for when Signor Cantoni had taken his leave of them to visit another pupil, Sara wished to delay her departure to practise her harp pieces on her own. ‘Then perhaps I could persuade you to drive me home?’ said Caterina to Lord Rayne with a smile, making a show of linking her arm through his.

‘Can’t you walk?’ he said, rudely.

‘Seton!’ said his sister-in-law. ‘How very discourteous.’

‘It’s all right, Aunt,’ Caterina assured her. ‘He’s only teasing.’

‘No, I’m not!’ he said, innocently.

Then it went slightly askew, for although Sir Chase understood the squabble well enough, he saw his chance to be alone with the unwilling lady again. ‘Allow me,’ he said, stepping forward. ‘My curricle is waiting outside, ready to go. I would be happy to drive Miss Chester back to Paradise Road.’

‘No…er, no, thank you,’ Caterina said, holding tighter to Lord Rayne’s arm. ‘There’s really no need. Really.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Lord Rayne. ‘Problem solved. He’s not a bad hand with the ribbons, Cat. You’ll be quite safe. Friend of the family, and all that.’

Angered by the way this had gone wrong, she pulled her arm from Lord Rayne’s without another word, for there was no more to be said without making a fuss which only Aunt Amelie and Sir Chase himself would understand. At the same time, the thought of sitting close to him in a curricle was both disturbing and vaguely exciting for reasons she chose not to investigate. Suffice it to say that she would rather have walked than accept a lift from Sir Chase Boston, after their earlier encounter.

Unfortunately, no choice was left to her but to accept his offer in silence, leaving Lord Rayne in no doubt that he had let her down badly. Taking her leave fondly of Lord and Lady Elyot, and of the children, she left Seton out.

‘Cutting me already, Cat?’ he said as she walked past him into the sunshine.

‘Yes,’ she said, throwing her shawl around her shoulders, ‘but I never did care much for your amateur style of driving, anyway.’

She heard sharp whistles at her insult, then laughter from Lord Elyot at his brother’s expense. ‘Brava, Cat!’ he said. ‘Serves the ungallant wretch right.’

But now she was being escorted towards a flashy sporting curricle, the small body of which was on a level with the top of the wheels, the cushioned seat well above the horses’ backs as it was in her aunt’s vehicle. But whereas the phaeton had four wheels, this one had only two, and instead of the usual pair of horses, Sir Chase drove four matched chestnuts as alike as peas in a pod. Her failed attempt to be unimpressed must have showed on her face for, as she stopped to stare, he watched to see her eyes widen before resuming their flinty annoyance.

Climbing up to such heights held no fears for Caterina. With one lift from Sir Chase’s steady hand, she was on the seat and already squeezing herself into the corner, suddenly remembering something to be returned. ‘Lord Rayne,’ she called down, fumbling inside her reticule, ‘would you try to be a little more obliging and pass this to Aunt Amelie for me, please? I found it in the phaeton.’

The tiny scrap of lace handkerchief fluttered down into his hand. ‘Blowing hot and cold, Cat?’ He laughed. ‘One minute the cut, next minute dropping the handkerchief? What’s a man to believe these days?’

The curricle tipped a little as Sir Chase climbed up beside her, pressing himself into the space with a closeness she had no choice but to suffer. ‘Believe what you like, whelp!’ he called to his friend. ‘You’ve missed your chance.’ He glanced at Caterina with a half-smile at her rigid posture, her grip on the edge of the hood, her feet tucked away to avoid his black boots spread into her space. ‘Ready?’ he said.

It would have made little difference, she thought, if she’d said no, when he was taking up the long whip with a quick flip, his nod to the groom coinciding with his command to the wheelers, the move-away so smooth as to be hardly noticeable. For the first few minutes, Caterina was engrossed in the business of driving a four-in-hand, and with his skill, keeping the team in perfect unison down the elm drive through flickering shadows, swinging out of the gates onto the gritty mud track leading to Paradise Road. She was impressed, though she would never have paid him the slightest compliment, nor would she have hinted at the considerable thrill she was deriving from the experience.

But it was she who broke the silence in an effort to score a point. ‘What happened to your policy, Sir Chase?’ she said, watching how he looped the reins.

‘Which policy, Miss Chester? I have several.’

‘The one that forbids you to offer lifts to your debtors.’

‘But I am not offering a lift to a debtor. Your father and I have settled the problem very amicably. And anyway, it was not you who owed me, was it?’

‘Settled? Already?’

‘Yes. Why? Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Yes…but…how did you do it so soon? Have you given him more time, or has he sold you something?’

‘Neither. We’ve come to an agreement. That’s all there is to it.’

‘But that can’t be all there is to it,’ she persisted. ‘He could not possibly have raised that kind of money immediately. I know he couldn’t. What has he sold you, exactly? The house?’

‘Ask him,’ he said, knowing it would get her nowhere.

‘I will.’

‘Good. Now, perhaps we can talk about pleasanter matters.’

‘Pleasanter than the sound of wagers being paid? Why, sir,’ she said, acidly, ‘what could be sweeter than that?’

‘The sound of your singing, Miss Chester, for one thing.’

She could not bring herself to snub him again while accepting his protection, so, rather than bite back, she bit her tongue instead.

It was not far from Sheen Court to Paradise Road and, as they skirted the edge of Richmond Park with a stretch of open road before them, Sir Chase drew the horses to a standstill beneath an old oak whose branches were barely in leaf. Keeping the reins in his hand, he slewed round on the seat, placing one foot on the top of the footboard, looking into her angry eyes.

For a few conflicting moments, her antagonism flared. She had never taken kindly to being placed in a situation against her will but, while she would like to have asked him why they had stopped, she would not give him the satisfaction of doing what he would expect of her. Her wait gave her another chance to glare at him and to notice again his penetrating arrogant eyes narrowed against the sun, seeming to read the language of her silence like an expert, and it was her eyes that swung away to avoid any further reading. Even then, she felt his scrutiny as she had done during her performance earlier; she felt his long legs much too close for her comfort, and she was aware of his deep chest and disconcertingly powerful physique. She gulped, suddenly breathless.

‘Well, now, madam,’ he said, softly, ‘tell me how well acquainted you are with Rayne. Is that bickering you do a cover for something deeper between you, or is it a brother-sister affair?’

Even from a friend, she might have found this question impertinent. From him, it was brazen interference. ‘Sir Chase,’ she said, as sweetly as her anger would allow, ‘being my father’s creditor does not allow you free access into my affairs, however much you may wish to the contrary. When I begin to show an interest in how many affaires you’ve had in the past year, then you may ask me again about my private life. Is that agreed?’

His mouth, firm and well shaped, broke into a wide smile just short of a laugh, his eyes widening at her bold set-down. ‘Hah!’ he yelped, throwing back his head. ‘How I love it when you bite so. How many affaires have I had? Is that what bothers you then, madam? Eh? Do you really want to know?’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I do not.’

‘I thought not. Do you often use that kind of language?’

‘I rarely have the need to speak to people of your sort.’

‘My sort? What is my sort?’ His voice was intimately teasing, unlike the brotherly teasing of Lord Rayne.

‘This is a ridiculous conversation. Please drive on.’

He lowered his head a little to look into her face, where a slow surge of colour had almost reached her ears. ‘Well, then, let me tell you, Miss Chester, since you raise the question, that I never seduce chits, jades, tabbies or dowdies. There, now, that should put your mind at rest. Any other concerns?’

‘Please…’ she whispered, looking away. ‘Take me home.’

‘Have you ever handled a team of four?’

She shook her head.

‘Would you like to try?’

She would, but it would give him pleasure to teach her, and she did not want to encourage his friendship, even at her own cost. She had always wanted the chance to drive a four-in-hand, and now she looked lovingly down the reins at the beautiful restless chestnuts, at the track ahead leading to Paradise Road, to Red Lion Street, along King Street and on round The Green where strollers would see Miss Caterina Chester driving a curricle and four. They would not see a sight like that too often. Damn the man. Why must it be him, of all people?

Her too-long hesitation was her answer. Without another word, he took her left hand and placed it on top of his own. ‘Now,’ he told her, ‘take the reins up from my fingers, off-wheel between these two, near-wheel and off-lead between those two, and near-lead on top. That’s it. Now, just do as you’d do with a pair and we’ll walk them, then we’ll turn them. Use your right hand to loop the reins up when you turn, as usual. Start up the wheelers first when you’ve given the command to walk on, or the leaders will pull them off their feet. Don’t worry, I’ll take over when you start to tire.’

Talking her through each move, he murmured encouragement and instructions as the horses responded to her light contact with their mouths, walking until they reached the first bend, then turning as she drew up the reins with a roll of her hand. One hand, never with two. ‘You’re good,’ he said. ‘Very good. Are you getting tired?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Keep going. Another right turn ahead. Keep well to the left…well done.’

As if by mutual consent, they passed Number 18 Paradise Road without a glance, following the route into the town along a series of right turns to bring them along the side of the large Green, bordered by houses, where she had to admit that her arm was aching from the strain. Drawing the curricle up, she handed the reins back to Sir Chase with some reluctance, thankful that he had not insisted on changing places, but when they turned on to Hill Street instead of heading for home, she understood that he had not finished showing her the joys of driving a curricle and four.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, quietly.

He put the horses to a brisk trot up the hill. ‘They need exercise,’ he said, ‘so I thought we’d take them across the park. And you look as if you enjoy having the wind in your hair.’

‘Do I?’

He turned to smile at her before giving his attention to the horses, as if he knew how she would have protested if she had not so wanted to fly up the hill in the sunshine behind a matched team with an expert whip at her side. She did not return his smile, but her glance told him he was not wrong, and that although she was nowhere near liking him, she would put up with him for such an adventure.

Caterina was thinking that she had never seen such skill, that the thrill of hurtling along in an over-powered light curricle was rather like being shot from a bow, flying, soaring on the breeze. Past the Roebuck they went, past the workhouse, the Wick and the Queen’s until Sir Chase slowed down to pass through Richmond Park Gate.

Then he pulled up. ‘Now you,’ he said. ‘First a trot, then we can try a turn or two.’

She took the reins, searching her mind for a middle way between a show of enthusiasm and her former disapproval. The park road was open to them, the horses responsive and keen, and she would have liked to let them go. But Sir Chase knew. ‘Keep them to a trot,’ he warned her. ‘They don’t break that rhythm until you tell them to. You’re in charge, not them.’

Her arm began to ache again, but it was exhilarating, exciting and completely engrossing, not allowing her mind to wander or to think over the disturbing events that had led to this, or about what might follow.

After a mile or so, Sir Chase took over once more to gallop the team at top speed through the park where other drivers and riders stopped to watch. He was recognised by a group of the militia from the barracks at Kew who called and waved, while ladies out walking watched in admiration the lovely young woman with the flying red hair. He had no need to warn her to hold on when she swung and swayed into every turn, careering like a comet towards some distant target, bracing one foot between his on the footboard, the other on the top edge, not quite ladylike but alert, filled with a vitality so intense that it caught at her breath and tried to make her laugh. This was freedom. Escape. Sun, wind and speed. This was even better than the applause after a recital. Uncaring that she leaned on him as they took bends like a Roman chariot in the arena, or that her knee pressed his thigh, her enjoyment was heightened by his sheer skill, for not once did she feel the slightest danger with him in control.

He knew the tracks well, bringing them full circle back to the gate on top of Richmond Hill where he walked the team as far as the Terrace. From there, the view across the town and the wide silver-blue stretch of the Thames spread below them, a giant counterpane of new spring greens, and for some time they sat in silence like two eagles on a cliff, ready to take flight again whenever they pleased. Caterina felt no need to talk, and Sir Chase had no need to ask if she had enjoyed her liberty, having only to look at her to see the sparkle in her eyes, the pink in her cheeks, the wildly tumbling hair like dark fire.

‘Better move,’ he said. ‘They’re sweating.’

‘Yes.’

Without a smile, he looked intently at her. ‘Do you need to tuck your hair up before I take you home?’

There was something alarmingly conspiratorial about the question in that deep gravelly voice that implied his awareness of her parents’ censure if they were to see her wind-blown state. Once more, she found herself wondering whether he had said similar things to the women he had known. With her shawl, she made a hood to cover her hair, wrapping the ends around her neck, tucking her feet neatly into one spot, pressing her knees together, sitting primly to await his approval.

Leaning his whip against his thigh, he pulled off one kid glove with his teeth and held it in his lips while brushing a speck of dust off her nose with his thumb, catching her eyes with the merest hint of amusement.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, shocked by the tenderness of his skin, by the contact she had allowed, as if she’d taken a first step without moving.

Replacing his glove, he took up the whip and moved off at a walk down the hill. ‘That was more or less the route your brother and I took yesterday,’ he said. ‘But then it was muddy.’

Caterina frowned at him. ‘Four-in-hand against his pair?’

‘No! Of course not. We both had a pair, but we drove them in tandem.’

‘But Harry’s never driven tandem before. And how could he ever have passed you on that narrow track?’

‘He could if he’d been a better whip and if his team had been as good as mine. But he isn’t, and it wasn’t.’

‘I still don’t think you should have accepted his wager.’

‘And how do you think that would have been interpreted?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does to me. Look what I’d have missed by refusing it.’

It would have been easy enough to pursue that line, to be told how her brother’s stupidity had been turned to Sir Chase’s advantage in two ways, by money and association. But she preferred not to hear anything from him except regret for his relentless pursual of the debt, which she was quite sure he would never give up.

The drive had not only blown away her cobwebs, but it had also given her a glimpse of the fearlessness and sheer proficiency that had earned him his reputation for heroics. Yet she had felt something more significant than blind courage or audacity, more than daredevil antics or the masculine urge to impress a woman. She had felt completely safe and understood, and there had been moments when her dislike and resentment of him had dissolved in their silences, intensifying her awareness of him as a companion quite unlike any other man. She could never like him, of course, but nor could she suppress the regret that they could never truly be friends. She would tell those who had seen her driving his curricle and four that he was just an acquaintance. A friend of her father’s.

Stephen Chester was understandably taken aback to hear that Sir Chase Boston had already driven his daughter around Richmond without actually abducting her. Naturally, he did not expect to see her return full of smiles and approval; she certainly did not do that. But nor did she have much to say, either good or bad, about the experience, only about the means her father had used to pay back the debt.

Closing the study door quietly behind her, she took her father by the hand and sat him beside her on the window-seat in view of the garden. ‘He told me to ask you,’ she said, ‘obviously not thinking you’d tell me. But I think you should, because I know what the debt amounts to and any demand for that kind of money is going to affect us all, not only you. We shall all have to share in any hardships it’s going to cause. Is it the house, Father? Have you decided to sell it? The other one, too?’

‘I’d like a little brandy, my dear, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘You’ve already had one, Father. You know Hannah doesn’t like it.’

Father had had three, to be precise, and what Hannah didn’t know would hardly concern her. ‘Yes, dear, I know. Just a small one.’

Caterina obliged, sure that this would loosen his tongue, but dreading what she was about to hear. She had developed a love for this house on Paradise Road as great as that for their much larger home in Derbyshire, and the thought of losing them would be like losing two beloved friends. Gently, she removed the glass from his grasp and replaced it on the table. ‘Now, tell me the worst,’ she said. ‘I can bear it. We’re all in this together, remember, and we shall all have to do whatever is necessary to help. Harry will have to be recalled from Liverpool to start earning some money, and I shall go and see the manager at Covent Garden. He’s told me more than once that there’s a place for me with the company whenever—’

‘Caterina…stop! That’s not it. It’s not the house.’

‘Not the house?’ she said, blinking. ‘Well, what else is there?’

‘We…Sir Chase and I agreed not to say anything until your return from wherever you’re going this weekend.’

‘From Sevrington Hall? Why ever not? You mean, before you know how much you can raise…Father…what is it? What have you agreed to? What is it you don’t want me to hear immediately?’

His hand had retaken hers upon his thigh where his nervous fingers were dragging at her skin with an ungentle caress, too unfamiliar to be soothing. She drew her hand away, full of sudden misgivings and an awareness that the matter concerned her personally more than all of them, that her offers of help were about to fall with a thud at her feet. And as her father struggled to find a way of explaining, her own realisation grew that his long talk with Sir Chase, the latter’s air of satisfaction and his flippant ‘ask him,’ his interest in her reasons not to marry, his questions about dowries, his assurance that the debt had been settled ‘very amicably’ were all to do with her. Only her.