Jack Compton's Luck

Darcey smiled, ‘Afraid not, old fellow. I come from the other branch, but I am Lacey’s distant cousin.’

Jack said drily, ‘You know, Miss Chancellor…I mean, Lacey, most of us present at this ball are related to one another. In Regency times the gentry and nobility called themselves the cousinry because of all the intermarrying that went on among them.’

‘Welcome then, cousins,’ said Lacey giving all three a brilliant smile. ‘And will one of you kindly offer to assist me to some supper? I find dancing the Charleston most exhausting—and thirsty work into the bargain.’

‘So I noticed,’ remarked Jack, dry again. ‘And since that was my first sight of the new dance I shall be happy to feed the dancer.’

He offered Lacey his arm and skilfully steered her away from Rupert and Darcey in the direction of the supper table, leaving them to stare after him.

‘Well cut out,’ said Darcey with a grin to the somewhat offended Rupert, who was not accustomed to be sidelined by the man he thought of as his country cousin. ‘Something tells me that Fighting Jack is not yet quite dead. That was very neatly done.’

Lacey thought so, too.

‘I really came here with Darcey,’ she told him, but her smile took away any sting in her comment.

‘So I noticed,’ repeated Jack drolly. ‘I have to tell you that, while I am happy to escort you to the supper room, I am not able to partner you in the Charleston. I was exposed to it for the first time tonight.’

He was trying to be as calm with her as he could, which was difficult for him. Her nearness, her scent and her ready smile were having a disastrous effect on his body, to say nothing of his mind. He had never been so unsettled by a young woman for years.

‘Were you shocked?’ she asked him. ‘I believe that many in English society are.’

‘Not so much shocked as surprised,’ he told her. Something made him add. ‘After taking part in the war there is little that could shock me. And that’s quite enough of that,’ he added, for he had astonished himself by referring to the war. It was a taboo subject with him as it was with many ex-soldiers.

Lacey nodded. ‘I can understand that. You know, I’m really pleased to have met you. My half-brother has bought an estate near to yours in Sussex. He is transferring most of the treasures from the family home to it and one of my tasks while I am in England is to catalogue and rearrange them for him. Over the years there was a lot of unwanted furniture and bric-a-brac consigned to the attics at Liscombe Manor that he believes might be valuable. The Historical Manuscripts Commission has also written to him, asking if he has any interesting old letters, papers and accounts hidden away. If I tire of the London season I shall take up residence at Ashdown and enjoy myself there.’

Jack looked at her with new respect over his plate of canapés. ‘Do I take it that this sort of thing is a hobby of yours?’ He was also delighted to learn that she might visit Sussex.

‘More than a hobby.’ She was suddenly impelled to tell him the truth which she not yet confided to anyone in England, not even her Chancellor relatives—apart from her half-brother who had been sworn to silence. ‘If you promise not to give me away, I can tell you that I am a trained historian with a PhD.’

Jack looked at her with new respect. He also thought that she must be a little older than she seemed. The careless grace of the flapper which she had displayed on the dance floor certainly concealed from the world that she was a most learned lady.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I was aware that women in the States were freer than ours and were invading all the professions hitherto reserved for men, but I never thought that I should meet one. And if I had, I should have expected her to be something of a gorgon, not a lady who looks like a model or a movie star and can dance like a professional.’

Lacey, who had been about to sip her champagne, began to laugh. ‘That was a compliment…I think. Did you mean it as one?’

Jack decided to be candid. ‘I don’t know what to think or even what I meant. Other than that you have bowled me over. There I was, under the impression that you were as light-minded as Darcey and Rupert, and then you tell me otherwise—that you’re a lady academic, no less. Do they really not know?’

‘Certainly not, and you are not to tell them. They might not wish to dance the Charleston with me again if you do!’

‘Then why don’t you dance the waltz or the foxtrot with me once we have finished supper and you are quite recovered from your previous exertions?’

‘Willingly,’ she said and laughed up at him. ‘To dance either of them with Fighting Jack would make my evening.’

Darcey and Rupert watched them with amazement. Or rather they watched Jack with amazement. Lacey’s frank and cheerful way with Jack was no surprise, but Jack’s behaviour was quite another matter. For years they had accepted him as the dour man he had become since he had returned to England—and now he was behaving as though he were twenty again.

Rupert wanted to go over and twit him, but Darcey put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I want to see what happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object.’

‘The latter being Jack, I suppose. OK, then—it might be fun,’ Rupert said.

They were even more amazed when a little later Jack and Lacey strolled off to the dance floor to take part in the slow foxtrot which the musicians had begun to play in a slightly faster tempo than usual.

As she had expected, Lacey found that the slow fox was a perfect dance for Jack since he was able to perform it gracefully, if decorously, guiding her round the floor, and holding her at a little distance from him. There were no sudden swoops and bends from him when they turned and glided in perfect time with the music.

He did say once, shortly after they had made the first circuit of the floor, ‘I was always intrigued by this dance’s name. Slow fox, indeed! The only foxes I have ever seen were fast ones.’

‘From horseback, I presume. Do you still hunt?’

‘No time,’ he said briefly, which was not the whole truth, but half of it. He was not about to tell her that the Compton fortunes had declined to such an extent that they could not afford to keep hunters any more. Their once-huge estate had shrunk to being a small working farm.

Since his very touch, as well as his nearness, was disturbing her, Lacey tried to dismiss these unwonted feelings by looking up at him and asking, if only to keep her mind off them, ‘I never did get to hear any of the details of the jolly japes which earned you your nickname. What exactly were they?’

Jack looked down at her sparkling eyes, which were beginning to trouble him more and more, and replied in what he hoped was an offhand manner, although he had never felt less offhand for years, since having her almost in his arms was doing terrible things to him.

‘Now that would be telling, and I don’t intend to play the sneak on my young self. Broadly they came under the heading of what a Yankee I met in the war said was called hell-raising in the States.’

On the last word he looked down at her intently and, whether he knew it or not, his expression was such that for a moment she could seen in him the lively, reckless boy he had once been…And then it was gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Now, that,’ she told him severely, ‘is more intriguing than ever, since hell-raising back home covers such a multitude of sins.’

‘Then I suggest that you use your lively imagination—I’m sure that you have one—to work out exactly what mine must have been.’

‘Wine, women and song?’ she merrily proposed. ‘The rake’s classic path to hell?’

‘Something of the sort—but I visited hell later on in quite a different place from Oxford or London.’

Lacey refused to ask him to elaborate on where he had found hell, for she thought that she knew the answer. To restore the conversation to its previous, lighter, level, she said provokingly, ‘I don’t want to use my lively imagination about your past, whose sinfulness has undoubtedly been exaggerated by the time that has passed since then. Instead, to punish you for your lack of frankness, I shall insist that on the next occasion when the Charleston is played you will join me on to the floor again so that I may teach you how to dance it!’

Jack stopped dead—nearly causing a collision behind him by doing so and gathering a lot of amused, angry and surprised stares into the bargain.

‘You wouldn’t! Oh, yes, I do believe that you would. What a spectacle I shall present if I allowed you to do any such thing,’ he exclaimed, resuming the dance again.

‘Exactly—a splendid one, I’m sure. I shan’t take no for an answer. You are not to refuse me when I come to collect you for it. If you do, I must tell you that I have a nice line in throwing comic conniption fits—scenes to you—which I stage to punish boy friends who let me down.’

Jack said, ‘But I am not your boy friend.’

Lacey raised her fine black brows at him in derision. ‘If you’re not, then tell me why you have been flirting with me ever since we were introduced, and why, before we met, you looked at me as though you could eat me.’

‘None of it was intentional.’ Jack tried to make his voice as stiff as possible.

‘That makes it worse, not better. Come on, Fighting Jack, live up to your nickname and dance the Charleston with me.’

Her face, nay, her whole body, was so alight with mischief that suddenly Jack could refuse her nothing. ‘Very well, on your own head be it. Take the consequences, Miss Lacey Chancellor, and live with them.’

‘Great!’ she sparked back at him. ‘That’s the ticket.’

‘Happy to hear it,’ he murmured, wondering what on earth he had let himself in for—and what this was doing to his reputation.

Each of them was so engrossed in the other that neither of them noticed that the music had stopped and the dance had ended until they saw that people were leaving the floor and staring at them as they still revolved.

Lacey murmured wickedly, ‘No need to wonder about making a spectacle of yourself, you are already one.’

‘Too true—and I put it down to my unfamiliarity with this life. I do hope that we shan’t be blackballed and not allowed into a society hop again. I don’t worry for my sake, I’m only in London for a short time, but I shouldn’t like to put an end to your fun.’

Where was all this coming from? Jack asked himself. It was years since he had engaged in social badinage and now it was as though time had rolled back again, or as if he had never been away from town, the season and its functions.

Lacey seemed to be enjoying herself, too. ‘Oh, I don’t think that you need to worry about that. I am that curiosity of nature, a rich American who is not quite a barbarian and is not quite one for whom anything goes. Now, you may take me back to my aunt who, for some reason, is looking most disapproving, but you’re not to forget the Charleston lesson which I am determined to give you even if I have to drag you on to the floor.’

Jack could not stop himself. ‘Are all American women as downright as you are, Lacey? Or is it the Chancellor in you? I seem to remember, years ago, someone saying that all the women of the junior branch of the family were strong-minded beauties.’

There, he had said it, his first compliment to a woman in years.

‘Both,’ she told him. ‘American women are not like yours. On top of that, I believe that a distant ancestress of mine was noted for her looks and her strong mind at a time when women were supposed to boast of the former and not of the latter.’

By this time they had reached Aunt Sue, who greeted them with a frozen face even after Jack had been introduced to her. This was so unlike her that Lacey wondered what was wrong. Had she and Jack perhaps overdone things on the dance floor? Surely not.

She was, of course, perfectly polite, even if cold. Jack did not appear to notice that anything was amiss when Miss Susan Hoyt, Lacey’s mother’s cousin, was introduced to him as Lacey’s companion.

‘Not my duenna,’ Lacey said laughing. ‘Rather a friend to see that I am not lonely and, since Aunt Sue has spent a lot of time in England, to show me the ropes, as it were, and to make sure I don’t say, or do, the wrong thing.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that you’d never do that,’ smiled Jack in a comic tone that suggested that she probably might, ‘so Miss Hoyt’s task must be an easy one.’

Not even that provoked a smile from Aunt Sue and once he’d wandered off, after promising again to be taught the Charleston, she asked her aunt, ‘What’s wrong? Is it something I’ve done?’

Her aunt shook her head. ‘No, not at all. There is something which I have to tell you, but here is not the place for it. When we get home will do. Are you really promising to teach Mr Compton the Charleston on the dance floor? Is it wise?’

Lacey laughed, ‘Perhaps not, but I managed to pierce his icy English reserve several times and I thought that making him dance the Charleston might unfreeze it altogether. Come on, Aunt Sue, you’re not usually a spoilsport.’

‘There are reasons,’ said her aunt ambiguously, shaking her head. ‘But have your own way, dear, you usually do.’

Lacey thought that she was past the age when she could be reprimanded by a companion, even one as kind as Aunt Sue usually was. Bees did not usually buzz in her bonnet but tonight there was a distinct noise of a hive having been disturbed by something. Not to worry, she would concentrate instead on trying to unsettle Fighting Jack even further—perhaps to the point where she made him behave as though the nickname still suited him!

Chapter Two

‘Old Mother Leominster’s dance was even more eventful than hers usually are,’ was Rupert Compton’s somewhat inelegant remark to Darcey Chancellor later. They had spent the evening and the hour after midnight in enjoying themselves with a variety of flappers. Neither of them had any real expectations of inheriting anything and, since Darcey was already pledged to his long-time, if also penniless, love, they were not regarded as either threats or possible husbands.

‘Something between a gigolo and a cavaliere servente,’ was Darcey’s rueful comment to Rupert, who wasn’t sure what he meant by the second half of the sentence but didn’t say so. He assumed, rightly, that it was something more respectable than a gigolo, but both words were damned un English so far as he was concerned.

They had lost sight of Jack, who had come across an old friend from his Army days who had stayed behind in Europe when Jack went to Palestine and had got involved with Allenby’s lot and ‘that bounder, T. E. Lawrence’: the friend’s description, not Jack’s. Jack’s attempt to explain the intricacies of Middle East politics was lost on him and he was thankful when he heard the strains of the Charleston begin to filter into the supper room.

‘Forgive me, lady waiting,’ he offered, and set off at the double. Wouldn’t do to offer Miss Lacey Chancellor the opportunity to stage a conniption fit in Lady Leominster’s august halls.

She was where he had left her, with the dragon aunt. She was looking about the ballroom, a trifle anxiously, he thought, but her face brightened up amazingly when she saw him.

‘I thought that you’d taken the coward’s way out,’ she told him, offering him her hand—which he took with the usual electric effect on both of them.

‘Never,’ said Jack, after taking it and leading her on to the floor, ‘and I promise not to throw a conniption fit if I make a cake of myself in the dance.’

Rupert, together with Darcey and a group of other spectators, watched Jack join the romping Charlestonites, with a look of total disbelief on his face.

Darcey exclaimed, ‘Told you the fur and feathers would fly if those two got together. Who else would tease old Jack into making an exhibition of himself!’

‘Only he isn’t,’ said Rupert gloomily. ‘Just watch him go. Do you believe he’s never danced the damn thing before? And how did she get him to do it with her?’

‘Clever girl that she is,’ said Darcey slowly, ‘she used what we told her about Jack accepting challenges. She challenged him, that’s what. All I have to say is that it’s a damned sight safer than some of the other things he got up to. No breaking his neck in this.’

‘Break his leg more likely,’ grumbled Rupert. ‘You know I suggested that he had a go for her and her fortune before he even saw her. Do you think that’s what it’s about?’

Darcey shook his head. ‘Not Jack, from all I’ve heard of him, he’s not a fortune hunter. Just a chap who can’t refuse a challenge.’

Lacey panted at Jack when she saw him rivalling her in agility, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had danced this before?’

‘Because I haven’t,’ Jack panted in reply once he had recovered enough breath to answer her. ‘But I watched you and Cousin Darcey enjoying yourselves and it didn’t strike me as particularly difficult. I can only wonder, though, what Queen Victoria would have made of it if it had arrived in England in her reign.’

‘Or most of the other things we do these days,’ gasped out Lacey, after several more hectic minutes, ‘such as women smoking and driving motor cars, to say nothing of short skirts and Eton crops.’

By now they had arrived at the musicians’ corner; when he saw Lacey and Jack’s spirited rendition of the dance, their leader stood up and played his saxophone pointedly in their direction.

She waved back at him, so Jack did too. Who was it who had once said, ‘It’s my night to howl?’ He couldn’t remember, which didn’t matter, because he was too busy enjoying himself after a fashion which he couldn’t have anticipated when he had reluctantly agreed to accompany Rupert to ‘old Mother Leominster’s’, to worry about such irrelevancies.

Inevitably the dance came to an uproarious climax during which those who could not keep up with the musicians’ increasingly rapid tempo stood back to admire Lacey and Jack’s performance which had become more and more inventive. Both of them were separately whirling and twirling before coming back to face one another again, slapping their knees and bending their legs in a rhythm which was almost professional.

The moment that the music ended the spectators gave them an ovation. They had been so involved with each other and the dance, that, as in the slow foxtrot, they had forgotten that the rest of the world existed. When the clapping broke out, they stopped, stared at one another, and Jack asked Lacey, ‘Good God! Never say that was for us?’

‘Afraid it was,’ she said, her campaign to unfreeze Jack having succeeded even beyond her wildest dreams. She was not sure how he was going to take it, and was tremendously relieved when he began to laugh.

‘Minx,’ he choked at her, taking her hand and piloting her off the floor.

He was amused to hear someone whose face he vaguely remembered call out to him as they made for the supper room and a much needed drink, ‘So Fighting Jack rides again, good for you, old chap.’

‘I told you that I should make a spectacle of myself and never live it down.’

‘Aren’t you pleased you did?’ Lacey responded pertly. ‘Now, be a good fellow and bring me a drink, a long cool one, no alcohol, I’m tight enough already without having the excuse of drinking very much to account for it.’

‘Excitement,’ said Jack soothingly. ‘Sure you don’t want a gin and it—or some champagne?’

‘Quite sure. Lemonade and lots of it.’

He reached the bar to find Rupert there on his own, Darcey having discovered another flapper to squire.

‘My word, you were going the pace, old fellow, weren’t you? Took what I suggested to you earlier seriously, did you?’

Jack, who had forgotten Rupert’s advice about Lacey’s fortune, ordered her lemonade and a glass of champagne for himself, before saying, ‘What was that, then?’

‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten that she’s an heiress? The one I recommended you to go for.’

‘Oh, damn that,’ said Jack cheerfully. In his present mood the cloud which had hung over him for so long seemed to have disappeared and it had been Lacey Chancellor who had dispersed it. ‘She’s a jolly good sort—and would be with, or without, a fortune. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for years.’

‘So I saw,’ returned Rupert glumly, his own evening not having been much of a success. ‘And while you’re feeling so happy, could I touch you for a couple of hundred? I’m a bit short at the minute and you can probably stand it.’

‘Not really,’ replied Jack, frowning. ‘Besides that, I don’t lend money to either friends or relatives, it’s the best way to lose them in my experience.’

‘But I really am most awfully strapped, old chap.’

Jack sighed. ‘Let me be honest with you. I’m just about keeping the whole boiling back home from falling into instant bankruptcy. Apart from my reservations about lending money at all, I simply don’t have that much ready cash to spare. I’m surprised to learn that you are having trouble given that you have a well-paid position at Coutts Bank.’

Rupert made a face. ‘It’s the gee-gees, I’m afraid. I made a few horrid bets lately. Lost a packet on the Grand National to make matters worse, and I’m no longer at Coutts.’

Jack refrained from advising Rupert not to gamble and particularly not to bet on the horses. He thought it would be a waste of time. Instead he said, as gently as he could, ‘I’m sorry, but I have Will to think of and young Robbie, Max’s boy, as well as the estate. We’re even more strapped for cash than you are, I’m afraid. I try to put a brave face on things and you ought to have asked yourself why I’m staying in a cheap lodging house. The flat in town went long ago.’

‘Oh, God, Jack!’ Rupert’s face crumpled as though he were about to cry. ‘Everything’s gone since the war, hasn’t it? Nothing is ever going to be the same.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Jack said, ‘but we have to keep a stiff upper lip and do what we can. Now, I must take Lacey her lemonade. I’m sorry to have to let you down, but there it is.’

If Lacey wondered why Jack had taken so long to fetch her drink, she didn’t say so. Instead she told him more about her half-brother’s decision to move to Sussex.

‘I’ve just found out that Richard’s new country home, Ashdown, is not far from yours,’ she said.

‘Why did he sell Liscombe?’ Jack asked. ‘It’s a handsome house, and its Arabian stud was famous.’

‘Richard isn’t interested in horses so he sold the house and the business to a trainer. He wanted somewhere nearer to London, and the London-to-Brighton train is so fast and frequent now that it makes it easier for him to leave town for the country. Liscombe was somewhat out of the way.’

‘Well, when you are finally ensconced at Ashdown you must be sure to visit us. Will, my brother, will want to meet you. You must both come to tea, lunch or dinner, whichever you fancy. I have to repay your niece for teaching me the Charleston, don’t I, Miss Hoyt? And you for allowing her to do so.’

‘I suppose,’ almost sniffed Aunt Sue, which had Lacey wondering all over again whatever could be the matter with her. It was not like her to be discourteous or short, particularly with someone like Fighting Jack, whose understated charm was beginning to overwhelm her. Something which she would not previously have thought possible.

After that, Jack had to follow the conventions which said that he must not monopolise one of the early season’s successes. He bowed his way away, to allow other young men to fill her dance programme, and hoped that Miss Lacey’s eager acceptance of his offer of entertainment at Compton Place was truly meant. Not only that, he had promised to look out for her at his cousin Lady Lynch’s reception and ball, which was taking place in the following week, and dance the Charleston with her again.

It would mean that he would have to stay in London longer than he had intended, but never mind that. He had had few opportunities to enjoy himself since he had left the army, and the pull of Miss Lacey Chancellor was so strong and profound that he could not ignore it.