A society scandal!

Jack Bellingham knows something strange is going on, and Lydia Wenthorpe seems to be at the centre of the intrigue. He has enough to do trying to trace the owners of a cache of jewels he discovered when fighting in the French wars, but when Lydia appears to be after the jewels herself, Jack resolves to find out exactly what she’s up to…

Lydia fears discovery above all else, and finds herself torn between wanting Jack near her and wanting him as far as way as possible! She needs a way out of her dilemma, fast!

Devil-May-Dare
Mary Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LORD WENTHORPE paused on the top stair with his hand on the polished wood balustrade, wondering what had put the notion into his head to go up to the old schoolroom floor; he had not been there in an age, not since Lydia and Tom were knee-high to a grasshopper. He had only ventured into this wing of his considerable mansion then because Nanette had upbraided him for not taking an interest in his offspring’s education. Dearest Nanette — who would have thought that the darling of the Parisian stage would make such a splendid mama? He stopped to remember and then wished he had not. The memories were painful, laughter and tears, happiness and unending sorrow. But life was like that. He sighed and turned to retrace his steps; let the memories stay locked away.

The sound of merriment came from a door along the corridor which was not quite closed. Tom, down from Cambridge with his friend, Frank Burford; they were no doubt playing some prank on Lydia. Would they never grow up? He had glimpsed Lydia from his bedchamber that morning, long before most ladies would have dreamed of rising, galloping across the park with poor Scrivens so far behind her as to be useless to help if she took a tumble. Not that she would, he was confident of her horsemanship, but he could have sworn she was riding astride. He could ask the groom of course, but Scrivens was loyal to his mistress and he would not put him in the position of having to tattle on her. When would she learn to behave like the lady she purported to be? Eighteen — no, he corrected himself, nineteen, and still behaving like a schoolroom miss, and that in spite of acting as his housekeeper for the last six years. There were plenty of young ladies of her age already married. He ought to be thinking of getting her a husband. She was not wanting in sense and had no difficulty making decisions and giving instructions to the indoor staff; she would make some young blade a fine wife, so long as she managed to quell her tendency to mischief.

It was his fault, of course; he had let her grow wild with only her brother for company, while he mourned the passing of their mother. If his darling Nanette had still been alive, Lydia would not now be something close to a hoyden. He had prevaricated too long. Resolutely he moved towards the schoolroom and pushed the door open.

Lydia, in pink satin breeches, yellow stockings, brightly striped waistcoat topped by an old-fashioned coat with huge patch pockets and enough silver lace to bedeck a field marshal, not to mention a hugely knotted neckcloth, was mincing up and down in front of the two young men, who sat on the schoolroom chairs watching her. She stopped in front of them to make an elegant leg which made the white powdered wig she wore slip sideways over one ear to reveal her own dark hair. She righted it and then put up the quizzing glass which dangled from a ribbon round her neck and peered short-sightedly through it. ‘Demme,’ she said, affecting the voice of a pink of the ton. ‘Demme, if I don’t teach you young pups some manners.’

The young men hooted with laughter.

‘Miss Wenthorpe, if you don’t make a most fetching dandy, I’ll consume my best beaver!’ cried Frank.

Lydia took another turn up and down, stopping to twirl the quizzing glass, then added, ‘You think I am man enough for you, sir?’

‘I’ve got it!’ cried Tom triumphantly. ‘Manners maketh man.’

Lydia dropped her pose and laughed. ‘You’d never have guessed if I hadn’t given you a hint.’ She looked up and saw her father in the doorway. His frown told her she was in for a scolding, but she was by no means subdued; her papa’s scoldings were only ever of the mildest and nothing to be afraid of. ‘Papa, we were playing charades.’

‘So I perceive.’ She did, indeed, make a very passable male. She was tall for a woman, long-limbed and slim-waisted. She had high cheekbones and strong, dark brows and her violet eyes, so like her mother’s, gazed back at him without the least sign of being cowed. ‘Go and change out of that frippery into something more becoming a daughter of mine, and come to me in the bookroom,’ he said gruffly, disappointed not so much in her as in himself. He turned to the young men who were scrambling to their feet. ‘Could you not think of something more manly to do? A gallop perhaps.’

‘Sir, it has been raining, all day,’ protested Tom.

‘The rain has ceased. A brisk walk to curb your high spirits before dinner, I think.’

The young men exchanged meaningful looks and left the room with alacrity, leaving Lydia to face her father. ‘In ten minutes, miss, in the bookroom,’ he said and turned on his heel.

Lydia, indignant that he should be so up in the boughs over something so innocent, marched off to her room to remove the offending garments. Charades was a game they had played ever since they had left the cradle. Had not Mama encouraged them in it? Had she not kept a huge basket full of costumes for that very purpose and showed them how to use stage make-up to produce almost any face they desired? Mama herself had often played a male when there were not enough men to take all the parts in the little plays they produced. Papa had always been indulgent, so what had put him into such an ill humour now?

Within the stipulated ten minutes she presented herself at the library door and knocked. Her father’s voice bade her enter and she crossed the threshold to stand before him, hands clasped in front of her blue cambric skirt and her head, now neatly arranged in classic-style ringlets, downcast so that all she could see of him was his shining top boots and well-fitting buckskins.

‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a straight-backed chair on one side of the hearth.

She obeyed and lifted her eyes to his. ‘It was only charades, Papa.’

His craggy features softened; he could not remain out of humour with his daughter for long. ‘I know, and though you may see no harm in it and I own I would not have done so myself a few years ago, we must remember you are no longer a child and must begin behaving like a lady and not a hoyden.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘It is not as if you and Tom were alone; young Burford was a witness…’

‘But I have known him since he was in leading-strings and his mama used to bring him to play with us in the nursery.’

‘Nevertheless, he is a young man, a personable, lusty young man, and you must be aware of that.’

‘I was not — I did not think…’

‘No?’ he smiled. ‘But the time has come for you to learn how to go on in Society. You must come out and start looking for a husband…’

‘But, Papa, I have met no one I like well enough.’

‘Nor will you if you remain in Suffolk.’

‘Leave Raventrees! Oh, Papa, I don’t think I could bear it…’

‘You will do as I say.’

‘But you have not left the country for years, ever since…’ She stopped, not wishing to hurt him by reminding him of the reason he had lived in seclusion for so long.

‘Nor do I intend to. I have been thinking. Your aunt Agatha can bring you out.’

‘Aunt Aggie!’ she exclaimed. ‘But she is…’

He smiled briefly. ‘She is old and somewhat eccentric, but she is acquainted with everyone of any importance and she knows how to go on. Besides, I can think of no other who would do it.’

‘Am I that bad?’ Lydia whispered.

He chuckled. ‘Not so incorrigible that you cannot be taught correct behaviour and how to display to best advantage. And that,’ he added severely, ‘is not in dressing up like a popinjay. You are a beautiful young lady, Lydia, a trifle on the tall side, but there must be some eligible bachelors who are taller…’

‘Is that all that matters?’ she cried. ‘That he should be tall?’

‘And have a decent background, with a good title and a fortune to match yours. I would not wish him to be too old, either, nor too free and easy with the ladies, for your sake…’

‘That seems to me to be something of a high order,’ she said. ‘Supposing Aunt Aggie finds such a one and I say we will not suit?’

‘You will not be coerced, my dear, you have my word, but I beg you to consider carefully before you reject a promising suitor. Marriage is a far better state than spinsterhood, I can assure you.’

‘Has Aunt Aggie agreed?’

‘Not yet, because I have only now thought of it. I shall write to her tonight. As soon as I have her reply, I will order Wenthorpe House to be opened and Tom can escort you to London. It won’t do him any harm to acquire a little town bronze.’

Lydia was downcast, not only because she was to leave her beloved home, but that she was to be parted from her over-indulgent papa, but no amount of arguing would make him change his mind, and two weeks later she found herself being driven post-chaise with Tom and her maid for company, while everything she held most dear receded further and further behind her.

The heavy rains of the previous few days had left the roads in a shocking state and they were thrown from side to side as their coachman and postilion negotiated the potholes. By the afternoon of the second day Betty, who always travelled badly, was sitting in the corner looking whey-faced and Tom was wishing he had chosen to ride alongside. ‘I’ll be relieved when we stop for the night,’ Lydia said, righting herself after having been thrown across the carriage almost into her brother’s lap. ‘I shall be black and blue at this rate. Why could we not have waited until the roads improved? It is still very early in the Season.’

He smiled. ‘You know Papa; when he gets an idea into his head, nothing will serve but it must be attended to without delay.’

‘I have never known him so impervious to reason. All over a simple game.’

‘Oh, it was not the charades so much as his own conscience which smote him. You know, it really is time you were taken in hand…’

‘Not you, too,’ she said. ‘I would have thought you would have understood.’

‘Most assuredly I do, but I also realise that my little sister…’

‘Not so little,’ she said with a wry smile.

‘Very well, my not-so-little sister must grow up and, if she does not, spinsterhood is not a state to be envied.’

Her protests were lost in a great swaying and creaking of springs, followed by a terrifying sound of rending wood accompanied by the shouts of their coachman and the screaming of the frightened horses. She was catapulted on to the opposite seat and then the whole carriage slid over sideways and she found herself sitting on one of the doors with Betty, screaming at the full extent of her not inconsiderable voice, on top of her. Tom found the door which was immediately above their heads and hauled himself out.

Lydia extricated herself and stood up. ‘Are you hurt, Betty?’

The maid’s shrieking subsided to sobs as she endeavoured to right herself. ‘Oh, we should never have come; we should have stayed at ’ome where it’s safe.’

‘You said you wanted to come,’ Lydia said, concluding from this that her maid was unhurt. ‘I gave you a chance to stay at Raventrees.’

‘What, and leave you to the mercies of a new maid who don’t know your ways? I ain’t so unfeeling.’

Lydia smiled. ‘Then don’t look so dismal. At least you are not now being rocked to death and we shall have to stay somewhere hereabouts until the carriage is repaired and that will give you time to recover.’ As she spoke she put her head out of the door.

The carriage lay on its side with one of the uppermost wheels still spinning; their boxes had been thrown from the roof on to the muddy road and one of them had sprung its straps and deposited lace-trimmed garments into the water-filled hole which had overturned them. One of the horses had freed itself from the traces and was galloping across a field while Tom endeavoured to free the others who struggled against their harness. Watkins, the coachman, bent over the inert form of Scrivens who had been riding postilion. She looked forward and then back the way they had come but the road, which divided fields of newly sprouting corn, was empty; there was not a building or another traveller in sight.

‘Bend over!’ she commanded Betty. ‘I must get out and see to Scrivens.’

Reluctantly her maid complied, and with a great heaving and a shocking display of petticoats Lydia stood on her maid’s bent back, hauled herself out of the carriage and jumped down on to the road, leaving Betty wailing, ‘What about me?’

She ran to where Scrivens lay in the ditch beside the road and knelt beside him in the wet mud. ‘Is he badly hurt?’

‘I don’t think so, Miss Lydia, he’s got a rare hard head on ’im,’ said the coachman, who was feeling over the inert body for broken bones. ‘See, he’s coming round.’ A groan and a fluttering of eyelids from the unfortunate servant seemed to bear this statement out. ‘Now, miss, if we was to help him up…’

Betty, who had somehow managed to scramble out of the coach, came running across the road, trying to hold her skirts clear of the mud, which was more than her mistress had attempted to do. ‘Oh, is he hurt?’

Scrivens, by this time, was in a sitting position and shaking his dazed head, but appeared not to be badly injured. Lydia left him in the care of her maid and returned to her brother, while Watkins set off across the field to catch the runaway horse. Tom had freed the remaining three and was looking down at the broken wheel and splintered axle of the coach, scratching his dark head.

‘What’s to be done?’ she asked him.

He looked up at her. ‘I shall have to ride one of the horses to fetch help.’ Adjuring her to watch over their belongings, he flung himself on the postilion’s mount and set off for the nearest village, where he hoped to procure a conveyance to bring them on and to arrange lodgings, for assuredly the coach could not be mended before nightfall. Watkins returned leading the errant horse and Lydia and Betty began gathering up their belongings and pushing them back into the broken trunk.

‘They are ruined, that’s what they are,’ Betty grumbled, holding up a pair of frilly nether garments. ‘They’ll never come clean.’

‘At least no one was badly hurt,’ Lydia said, snatching them from her and bundling them in with the rest before the two men could see them. ‘We could have all been killed. I wonder how long Tom will be? It will be dusk soon and I do not fancy being set upon by highwaymen. I wish I had asked him for his pistol.’

‘Oh, miss, you don’t think…’ The sudden sound of an owl hooting in the trees beside the road made Betty fling herself behind her mistress with a cry of alarm.

‘Don’t be a little goose,’ Lydia said. ‘There’s no one there.’ She stopped speaking as the sound of horses and crunching wheels came to their ears, and this was followed by the sight of a travelling chaise coming round the bend behind them at a spanking pace. It was drawn by a perfectly matched pair of bays and Lydia stood and watched its approach with a gleam of admiration in an eye accustomed to evaluating horseflesh. When the equipage drew to a halt beside them, it became obvious that, although the horses were of the highest order, the coach was even older than their own and certainly more ramshackle. She was wondering what ninny could bear to harness such prime beasts to such a vehicle when its occupant flung open the door and jumped into the road. He was very tall indeed, something she almost always noticed first in a man, being so tall herself, and what with that and his long, aquiline nose it seemed as if he was looking down on them with a loftiness which was belied, however, by the twitch at the corners of his firm mouth. He swept off his tall beaver, revealing brown curls cut short in the latest style, and bowed over a leg encased in mustard-coloured pantaloons and polished hessians. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’ He looked about him for her escort, but, perceiving none but the servants, turned back to her. ‘May I offer you assistance?’

Lydia hesitated, for what assistance could he offer except to take them up, and she was reluctant to agree to that, not knowing him from Adam. He might be a highwayman, a ne’er-do-well, a thatch-gallows of the worst sort — anything. ‘Sir…’ she began, uncomfortably aware of her muddied skirts and that her bonnet had slipped down her back on its ribbons and her hair had come unpinned. ‘Sir, I do not know you.’

‘As there is no one else to do it, let me introduce myself,’ he said, taking her right hand in his and raising it to his lips, without taking his glance from her face. To her consternation, she found herself looking straight into his eyes. They were nut-brown and had a depth which seemed to draw her down into them, like a whirlpool pulling a fallen leaf into its vortex, powerless to resist. They seemed to say, Here I am; escape me if you will. Disconcerted, she tried to pull her hand away, but he held it fast. Then he smiled and the extraordinary sensation faded. ‘I am Jack Bellingham,’ he said, releasing her. ‘Marquis of Longham, second son of the Duke of Sutton…’

‘How can you be a marquis if you are only a second son?’ she put in, still feeling weak.

He gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Because, ma’am, my elder brother died a month back on the hunting field.’

‘Oh, I am sorry.’

‘And now you are assured of my credentials, will you allow me to help you?’

‘Assured?’ she queried, her common sense returning. ‘Just on your say-so, that is poor assurance. You could have said you were the Prince Regent and I none the wiser.’

He laughed. ‘Have you ever met the heir to the throne?’

‘No.’

‘Then I forgive you.’

‘For what?’

‘For the insult. His Highness is somewhat older and a great deal fatter than I.’ He paused to walk round their overturned coach and inspected the broken wheel, while she endeavoured to set her bonnet to rights and brush the mud from her clothing with a kid-gloved hand. ‘I doubt you will ride further in this vehicle this side of a se’enight, certainly not tonight…’

‘My brother, the Honourable Thomas Wenthorpe, has ridden one of the horses to fetch help,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘He will be back directly.’

‘How long since he left?’

‘Half an hour, perhaps a little longer.’

‘Then he cannot possibly be back before dark; the next village is ten miles away and I doubt he will be able to hire a conveyance immediately, certainly not one to take all that.’ And he pointed at the two large trunks, one of which would no longer shut and revealed rather more of her most intimate apparel than she liked. She felt herself colour, but he appeared not to notice and went on, ‘Of course, if you prefer to take the greater risk of being left by the roadside, I will continue on my way. I am in a great deal of haste.’

‘Then you had best go on, my lord. I have servants with me.’

‘Damn your scruples, girl,’ he said. ‘I cannot leave you. Get in and cease your protests.’

She opened her mouth to tell him just what she thought of his top-lofty attitude but changed her mind when Betty seized her hand. ‘Please, Miss Lydia, don’t let him leave us here; it will be dark soon and I’m afeared…’

‘I fancy I am the lesser of two evils, Miss Wenthorpe,’ he said with a smile which infuriated her. ‘And I promise to keep my baser urges in check.’

‘I am afraid one of my servants has been hurt…’

‘Badly?’

‘I do not think so, my lord, but I do not like to leave him.’

He looked across at Scrivens and, perceiving that he was now on his feet and dusting himself down, said, ‘He can ride with my driver. Now, are you coming or not?’

Lydia looked along the road for signs of Tom returning and then across the darkening fields, where the hedges and trees were beginning to throw sinister shadows, and decided he was right. ‘I did not mean to be ungrateful,’ she said. ‘I should be most obliged to you if you would take us up…’

‘Certainly I will, but not your luggage; there will be no room for it and, besides, I do not wish my chaise to go the way of yours.’

‘Watkins will stay by our belongings and wait for Tom, if you will be so kind as to convey me and my maid and Scrivens to the next posting inn. No doubt we will come upon my brother on the way,’ she said, too polite to make a reference to the incongruity of the magnificent bays and the scuffed old coach, though her curiosity was almost overwhelming. ‘I have a small overnight bag, if that is not too much trouble.’

While Scrivens, who would not for the world have complained that his head ached and his shoulder was so painful he did not know how to haul himself up there, took his place beside the driver, their rescuer leaned into the overturned vehicle, pulled out her bag and marched off to his own carriage with it. He put it in the boot and turned to hand Lydia up. Afraid of sensations she did not understand, she was reluctant to give him her hand again, but it would have been churlish to refuse, so she allowed him to help her into the carriage. As soon as Betty had seated herself beside her mistress, he took the facing seat and called to his driver to proceed.

When they had safely negotiated the blockage in the road and were once more on their way, Lydia sought to express her gratitude for his help and began an explanation of how they came to be on the road and why their coach was not as roadworthy as it should have been. ‘It has not been out of Suffolk for years,’ she said. ‘And our coachman knows the roads around our home so well there has never been the least chance we should fall into a hole.’ If she had hoped that this statement might persaude him to similar explanations, she was wrong; he appeared not to wish for conversation. He had obviously discharged his duty as he saw it but that was as far as he was prepared to go; polite exchanges and confidences were no part of it. Very well, if he wanted to be a stiff-neck, so be it; they would soon be off his hands.

She turned to watch out of the window for Tom, but mile succeeded mile and they met no one. Surely they could not have missed each other on the way? ‘Do you know the road well, my lord?’ she asked.

He came out of a brown study to answer her. ‘Tolerably well.’

‘Then how much further is it to the posting inn?’

He smiled suddenly and his grim expression lightened so that she became aware of the humour behind his hazel eyes. ‘I am poor company, Miss Wenthorpe, I realise that, but be assured I am as anxious to arrive at my destination as you are.’

‘And what is your destination?’

‘Ultimately London, but for tonight a good bed and a change of horses.’

‘Have these already been bespoken, my lord?’

‘Indeed yes, my man came on ahead. And you?’

‘Arrangements were made before we left home, though I collect we were meant to go a little further before nightfall, but what with the bad roads and the accident…’ She paused for another look out of the window for her brother. ‘I do hope Tom has been able to find somewhere for us to stay while the carriage is fetched and repaired.’

‘Ah, your brother…’

The tone of his voice brought her up sharply. Surely he did not think she was travelling unescorted and had invented a brother? Or did he think Tom was not her brother, but her lover? If he thought that of her, what else was he thinking? Oh, how she wished she had braved the darkness and waited by the damaged coach. ‘I do hope he has not encountered some difficulty,’ she said, trying to remain calm.

‘You will soon see; we will be at the King’s Head in a matter of minutes.’

And if Tom is not there, she thought, what then? What would she do? What would the Marquis do? She glanced sideways at him beneath the brim of her silk-ruched bonnet while pretending to be looking out of the window. He looked decidedly uncomfortable trying to keep his long legs tucked out of the way of her skirts, but apart from that he seemed entirely composed. His well-fitting coat of blue superfine seemed not to need padding at the shoulders and his waist had no need of stays. She supposed him to be about thirty, though it was difficult to tell because his features were tanned and there were tiny lines running from the corners of his eyes, as if he had spent long hours out of doors screwing up his face against the sun, but he was certainly old enough to be married and have a brood of offspring. She fell to wondering what kind of a husband and father he made — probably very cool and distant, except when roused to anger. She did not think she would care for his anger, though perhaps it would not be any worse than his present indifference. He had resumed his thoughtful expression with his chin resting on the folds of his impeccable neckcloth between the points of his collar, almost as if he had forgotten she was there. What was he thinking of, apart from what a devilish inconvenience she was to him?

It was not so much the inconvenience of having unexpected passengers which had put Jack in a browse but the notion that fate had taken a hand in his affairs and was conspiring to prevent him reaching his destination. His own travelling carriage had overturned the first day out from home and, though his horses had not been injured, thank God, he had been obliged to buy this antiquated coach to continue his journey. And now to find himself not alone in this particular misfortune was the outside of enough. He only hoped the vehicle was sturdier than it looked and would convey them all safely to the next posting inn and even more sincerely trusted that his passenger was telling the truth and there really was a brother to take charge of her; he had enough on his hands as it was.

As Captain Jack Bellingham, he had returned from service with Wellington’s army at the end of the war, expecting some respite from continual fighting, only to be faced with another kind of conflict at home. In the six or seven years he had been out of the country his father had grown prematurely old and even more inclined than before to take refuge in the bottle. He had let the estate go to ruin. And his heir, Jack’s elder brother, far from helping to set matters to rights, had made them worse by drinking, womanising and gambling. His death on the hunting field when in his cups had left Jack, who had never regarded himself as a future duke, as heir not only to extensive land and property but to all the debts and problems as well.

One of these latter was a neighbour called Ernest Grimshaw who had taken advantage of the general neglect and encroached on woodland which most certainly belonged to the Longham domain. He had cut down any number of fine trees and sold the timber so that, where before the war there had been a fine stand of oaks, larch and elm, there was now nothing but an ugly scar of stumps and bracken, and, what was worse, the game had naturally disappeared with the trees. The man had had the temerity to show him some ancient map on which the wood was clearly marked but the devil of it was that it was not shown inside the Longham boundary. He had defied his lordship to turn him off or deprive him of the not inconsiderable revenue the timber provided. Jack was on his way to meet the lawyers, but he had a feeling in his bones that he was going to need all his wits about him to win through. It would have been easier and certainly a great deal cheaper to have let the fellow get away with it and concentrated on the rest of the estate, but that was not Jack’s way; he would be blowed if he would let some land-thieving cit get the better of him.

It was not that he was particularly in want of funds; his personal fortune, inherited on the distaff side, was more than adequate, even setting aside the fortune in gold and jewels he had brought out of France with him. It was plunder, of course, but, since he had found it in a French sergeant’s knapsack after the battle of Toulouse and it had obviously been plundered by him in the first place, the finding of its original owner, so his one-time batman and now his valet had told him, would be well-nigh impossible, even if he or she were still alive. He ought to be grateful to the unknown Johnny Blue-coat and lose no sleep over something which, in Tewkes’s opinion, was a stroke of good luck. Jack intended to make a push to discover the true owner of the cache, but that would have to wait upon the business with Grimshaw being satisfactorily concluded.

He had said nothing of it to his father, who would, he was sure, take the same view as Tewkes, that anything acquired on a battlefield was a fair prize and meant to be used. His father, who had never cared a straw for his younger son, was, now that he was the heir, insisting on him marrying and continuing the line. Jack had had little time and even less inclination to marry while he was a serving soldier; following the colours was not something he would subject any wife to and leaving her at home seemed to defeat the object of the exercise. He had seen too many marriages fail because of long separations to take the risk. He was home now and, while he owned he ought to be thinking about marriage, to do so simply to produce an heir went against the grain. He would not stand in line, fawning over eager débutantes, just to please his profligate father. He grinned as the old coach jolted over a particularly bad rut; arriving in town in this dilapidated conveyance would certainly not endear him to the fortune hunters. He smiled to himself; if he were to allow the gossipers to think his pockets were to let, he might gain the breathing space he needed.

He lifted his head to find Lydia surveying him with wide violet eyes and a tiny twitch to the corners of her mouth which might have been the beginnings of a smile. In his experience young ladies usually fell into a swoon or burst into floods of tears when confronted with a mishap of this magnitude; that she could smile made him feel a deal more comfortable. ‘We are slowing down,’ she said. ‘You will soon be rid of us.’

Chastised, he said, ‘I apologise, Miss Wenthorpe, I am afraid I am poor company. Please forgive me.’

‘Oh, it is I who need forgiving for the intrusion.’ They were pulling up in the yard of an inn and the driver was shouting to one of the ostlers who had run out to meet them. ‘If we can find my brother, I am sure he will add his thanks to mine.’

But Tom was nowhere to be seen. On enquiring after him, she was told that he had been there but as there were no spare horses or carriages of any sort he had gone to a farm along the road in the hope of borrowing a cart.

‘A cart?’ She could hardly believe it and she knew that the Marquis, who stood immediately behind her, was laughing at the picture thus created in his mind of her and her maid sitting atop their luggage on a farm cart! ‘Whatever was he thinking of?’

‘Better than walking,’ the innkeeper said, with a shrug. ‘And he could bring on your luggage, not to mention the broken wheel to be repaired.’

‘Eminently sensible,’ commented the Marquis. ‘But we did not meet him on the road, so where is he?’

‘The horse he rode was lame and he had to walk to the farm — all of two miles further on, it be — and if the farmer were not at home or the cart loaded and needing to be unloaded it would take time. Ten to one he’s still there.’

‘Could you not have lent him a horse?’ Lydia asked.

‘Ma’am, we have no spares, as I told the young gentleman.’

‘I thought I saw two looking over their stalls in the stables when we came into the yard.’

‘They are bespoke for his lordship.’

‘Oh.’ She turned to the Marquis. ‘You have taken the last two horses. How are we to go on?’

If this was a hint to relinquish the animals to her, he did not take the bait. ‘I’ll lay odds your carriage wheel will not be ready by tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And by the day after your own horses will have been rested.’

‘One of them is lame; you heard the landlord say so. What about the ones you brought today?’

‘They go back to Longham,’ he snapped. ‘I do not leave prime cattle like that for any Tom, Dick or Harry to spoil.’

‘But we must go on — my aunt is expecting us tomorrow evening at the latest; she will be very worried if we do not arrive.’

He did not see that it need be any concern of his but he could no more abandon her now than he could when he’d first come upon the overturned coach, especially as her brother, if he truly was her brother, seemed to have left her to manage on her own. Confound the pair of them! ‘I will deem it a privilege to convey you and your brother on tomorrow,’ he said, then, turning to the innkeeper, ‘Have you a room for Miss Wenthorpe?’

It seemed the Marquis had also bespoken the only spare room but he gave it up with every appearance of cheerfulness, saying he would do very well on a settle in the parlour. By the time Tom arrived, it was quite dark and Lydia was being entertained by her rescuer to an excellent supper of fish in oyster sauce, boiled beef and apple flummery.

Tom was cold and wet and dismal and not inclined to be gracious when he discovered that Lydia had arrived in the village in comparative comfort, had washed and changed, and was sitting unchaperoned in the dining-room with a man to whom she had not been introduced. It really would not do, and he told her so in no uncertain terms when, at last, they left the dining-room to retire for the night and he was able to speak to her alone.

‘What would you have had me do?’ she retorted. ‘Sit under the broken carriage and freeze to death while you took your time bringing a farm cart? His lordship has been kindness itself…’ Kindness was not really the right word, she decided; he had been vastly entertaining, sarcastic and charming by turns, while remaining unfailingly polite. He had been solicitous for her comfort and sent the inn servants scurrying to please her, and then sat without speaking for several minutes watching her eat, as if he had never seen a woman with a hearty appetite before. Her concentration on her plate had not been so much hunger as a reluctance to raise her head and find those searching eyes on her.

‘You need not have dined with him,’ Tom said, unconvinced. ‘It is hardly the thing. He is a stranger.’

‘But he gave up his room for me, and a very fine room it is too; I could not be so ungrateful as to refuse his company, and we were not alone — the dining-room was full.’

‘We should have gone on to Watford where our rooms were booked.’

‘How?’

He had no answer and gave her none, but turned to grumbling that he had been obliged to dine on left-overs and was to sleep with Watkins and Scrivens above the stables and if he did not catch his death of a chill then he would be more than surprised. She made light of his catalogue of complaints, saying he would feel more the thing after a good night’s sleep and, taking her leave, went up to her bedchamber where Betty was waiting to help her undress.

It was a squeeze for them all to pack into the Marquis’s chaise the next morning, even though they left Watkins and Scrivens behind to see to the repairs of the coach and follow on when these had been completed and the horses rested. Tom, still sulking a little, sat beside his lordship facing Lydia and Betty and it seemed to Lydia that the Marquis was having even greater difficulty with his long legs. By the time they stopped for nuncheon they were all glad to get out and stretch their cramped limbs. The inn was the one where she and Tom would have stayed the previous night but for the accident, and their fresh horses were waiting for them; but now, of course, they had no carriage to harness them to. Tom was all for riding one of them but he would not leave Lydia alone in the carriage with the Marquis, especially as they were approaching London and might set the tongues wagging with unfavourable gossip about her before she had even set foot on its flags. It would not be a very auspicious start to her come-out. Jack, seeing and sympathising with his dilemma, decided he, too, would prefer to ride, even if the mounts were a couple of mediocre carriage horses and he was hardly dressed for it, and thus the calvalcade entered the metropolis and pulled up at the door of Wenthorpe House in Portman Square.

Mrs Agatha Wenthorpe, widow of Lord Wenthorpe’s younger brother, had arrived from her own home in Edgware a few days previously and had immediately set about opening up the house, which had remained unoccupied, except for a handful of servants, for years. She had engaged more staff, ordered all the windows opened and fires lit in every room. The dust-covers had been removed, the carpets beaten, floors scrubbed, furniture polished and flowers brought in and arranged in vases on every table and ledge big enough to receive them so that overriding the lingering fusty smell of disused rooms was the scent of soap and beeswax, narcissi and pansies.

It was some years since Lydia had seen her aunt and in that time the lady had become even more eccentric in her appearance. She was sitting in one of the small downstair parlours with her feet on a footstool by the fire, reading one of Miss Austen’s novels through a very thick quizzing glass, when they were announced, but rose quickly to greet them. She was a short, dumpy woman, made even broader by the caging she wore in her very old-fashioned gown of coffee-coloured brocade with its wide over-sleeves. Her face was heavily powdered and a patch on her cheek disguised an ugly pockmark. On her head she wore a startling red wig. Lydia had loved her as a child and she saw no reason now to change her opinion. She hurried forward and allowed herself to be embraced. ‘Dear Aunt, such an adventure we have had,’ she said, after Mrs Wenthorpe had released her and held her hand out for Tom to kiss, which he did, thankful that she could not see his smile at her extraordinary dress.

‘Aunt, may I present the Marquis of Longham?’ Lydia said, turning to Jack who had been prevailed upon to come in to meet Mrs Wenthorpe. ‘He has been a prodigious help, for without him we would have been delayed for days and days.’

‘Indeed? Then I must add my gratitude to my niece’s,’ she said, putting up the quizzing glass and eyeing him up and down with great candour. ‘You will stay for supper?’

Jack, without a trace of discomfort, bowed low over her plump, bejewelled hand. ‘Alas, I have pressing business, ma’am.’

‘Then you must call when you are not so pressed. We cannot let you go unthanked.’

‘I have been sufficiently thanked, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And now that Miss Wenthorpe is safely in your hands, I must take my leave.’ He bowed again to Mrs Wenthorpe and then to Lydia and, with a, ‘Good evening, Wenthorpe,’ to Tom, left the room.

‘Well!’ said Aunt Aggie, letting out her breath in a long sigh. ‘There’s a top-lofty male if ever I saw one. He could not get away fast enough. What have you done to him, Lydia?’

‘I, Aunt? Why, nothing. I do believe that is his usual manner. I really think he did not want to rescue us and now he is glad to have us off his hands.’

‘Why should he not wish to help? Is there something wrong with him?’

‘I hardly know, Aunt, but his carriage was worse then ours. If it had not been drawn by the most beautiful pair of bays I have ever seen, I would have taken him for an impostor. And, you must admit, his manners leave much to be desired…’

‘I expect he took a leaf out of your book,’ Mrs Wenthorpe said in mild rebuke. ‘But we can soon put a town polish on you and then you will have any number of offers. Tomorrow we must shop for clothes…’ She stopped because Lydia had barely been able to conceal a smile at the thought of her outrageously dressed aunt Aggie selecting clothes for her. ‘I do not pretend to be all the crack myself and I am too old to change my ways, but I know someone who will see that you are dressed properly. I shall take you to my great friend, Lavinia Davies. Tonight we will sup quietly and go to bed early, for we have a busy day ahead of us.’ She turned to Tom. ‘What had you planned, young man?’

‘Oh, I shall amuse myself, never fear,’ he said. ‘A visit to Weston’s for a new suit of clothes, a few hands of cards at White’s, a ride perhaps. And don’t you think we had better buy a new town carriage? Even supposing our travelling chaise can be repaired, it is as old as the ark. Not having ridden in it since before I went to Cambridge, I had not realised how old-fashioned and unsound it was. It is hardly suitable for town use; Lydia cannot go to balls and routs in it, nor to the park, and expect to be noticed by the ton — unless it be for being a frump.’

‘I am not a frump!’

‘I did not say you were, but I am sure that is what the Marquis thought when he saw you looking as though you had been tumbled in the hay. And as for our equipage…’

‘Damn the Marquis!’ his sister said with feeling. Was that why he had looked at her so hard and long?

‘Lydia!’ Mrs Wenthorpe was shocked into reaching for the glass of claret at her elbow. ‘That is not the language of a lady.’

‘I am sorry, Aunt, but if I have to weigh up every man I meet with nothing but marriage in mind, then I would as lief not marry at all.’

‘But you must, child! That is what you are here for and why I am here, to make sure you come out in a manner fitting your station and wealth and to make sure you are not gulled by unsuitable offers.’ She smiled and laid a hand over Lydia’s. ‘You will enjoy it, my dear, and I am sure you will find someone to suit before the Season is over.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then I will have failed your dear papa, and so will you.’

Lydia fell silent on the subject. It would do no good to argue and she would have to pretend to be enjoying herself, even flirt a little, but that did not mean she was committed. Unless, by some miracle, she fell in love, she would put off making a decision; that was — and she smiled to herself — if anyone offered for her, which was not at all a certainty. She was too tall and not especially beautiful and she was certainly outspoken, none of which would endear her to would-be husbands who, for the most part, only needed a breeding machine. It was not that she was against marriage and having children, but she had, in her growing up, had plenty of time to observe the disastrous marriages of her acquaintances and compare them with the loving relationship of her own parents, and nothing less than that would do.

CHAPTER TWO

THERE could not have been a greater contrast between Mrs Wenthorpe and the modishly attired Mrs Davies, but neither seemed to pay any heed to that, and after a cosy exchange of the latest on-dit they took Lydia to visit a dressmaker where Mrs Davies bespoke dresses for morning wear, for walking and for carriage rides, dresses for assemblies, for breakfasts, for the opera, for balls, and a dark blue velvet riding habit with a jacket frogged in the Polish style, to be worn over a white silk shirt with ruffles at throat and wrist. From there they went on to buy a tall beaver hat with a curly brim and a peacock feather to go with the riding habit, bonnets, caps and shawls, underlinen, mantles and muffs, shoes, dancing slippers and half-boots of crimson jean.

Lydia sincerely hoped the expense her father was being put to would be worth his while and was beginning to feel guilty that she had no intention of allowing herself to fall into the marriage net simply because he though it was time she was wed. If he wanted grandsons, let Tom produce them. The idea of Tom as a father was so amusing, she was still laughing when he joined them for luncheon at three o’clock, having taken a leaf from her book and decked himself out in the latest fashion.

‘Why do you laugh?’ he asked, affronted. ‘These pantaloons are the latest thing and I spent a devilish long time tying this neckcloth.’

‘It isn’t that,’ she assured him. ‘You look bang-up. I was wondering if you might enter the marriage stakes instead of me. After all, you are the one who has to produce Wenthorpe heirs, not I.’

‘But you are the one Papa has fixed his mind on and you ought not to disappoint him. The whole thing must be costing him a prodigious amount.’

‘And I wish that it did not,’ she said. ‘I do not like being groomed like some thoroughbred to be paraded in the selling ring.’

‘Oh, my dear, it is not at all like that,’ protested Aunt Aggie. ‘You will enjoy it and I am persuaded you will be the belle of the Season and have any number of offers to choose from. It is the young gentlemen who are being paraded, not you.’ She rose from the table and smiled at them both. ‘Now, as I have not spent such a fatiguing morning in years, I shall go and lie down. Tom, you will look after your sister.’

‘But Aunt, I am going to choose a new carriage.’

‘I’ll come too,’ Lydia said, rising quickly. ‘It won’t take above a minute to fetch a bonnet and mantle.’

Since her aunt did not object to this, a footman was sent to bring a hackney to the door and brother and sister set off for Mount Street, where the coach-builders, Robinson and Cook, had their premises.

Tom was torn between ordering a barouche which would have been suitable for Lydia and her aunt, and a high-perch phaeton, a showy vehicle which had enormous wheels and high seating which was known to be unstable in inexpert hands. He wanted to show off his driving skill and Lydia, who considered herself a good whip, was also tempted, but she knew her aunt would disapprove on the grounds that young ladies who drove high-perch phaetons were considered fast. While they were thus debating, the Marquis of Longham arrived on the same errand.

He was wearing splendid riding breeches of soft buckskin and well-cut riding boots which emphasised his long, muscular legs. His corded coat with its high collar covered a yellow brocade waistcoat and a neckcloth of moderate dimensions; the whole effect was discreetly modish. Greeting them cheerfully, he bowed over Lydia’s hand and then, with those hazel eyes twinkling with mischief, looked about him at the vehicles on display, some of which were only half complete, and enquired if it had not been possible to repair their carriage after all.

‘Not at all, my lord,’ Lydia said, affecting a haughtiness which was so unlike her that Tom turned to her in surprise. ‘A travelling chaise is hardly the thing for town; even you must admit to that. We have come to bespeak a light carriage.’

‘Surely not this one?’ his lordship said, pointing at the high-perch phaeton Tom had been admiring.

‘What is wrong with it?’ Lydia demanded, annoyed that he should question their judgement. ‘It looks a very handsome carriage to me.’

‘Oh, no doubt of it,’ he said calmly. ‘But surely you were not intending to buy it for yourself, Miss Wenthorpe?’ He looked her up and down as if measuring her up for the vehicle in question, though, in truth, he was thinking how attractive she looked and how the colour of her costume set off the deep colour of her eyes.

‘Why not?’ She was so stung by his attitude, she forgot her attempt at hauteur. ‘I’ll have you know I’m considered to have a sound pair of hands on the ribbons.’

‘That I do not doubt,’ he said, appraising her with one eyebrow lifted higher than the other, which made her think he was laughing at her. ‘But have you considered your aunt’s feelings? She will have to accompany you when you go out and I hardly think someone of her years would find it to her liking.’ He did not add that he thought the worthy matron would find it extremely difficult even to climb into its seat without an undignified push from behind, nor what the gossips would say if Lydia were seen driving it.

‘And I’ll wager the truth is that you are determined to have the vehicle for yourself in order to cut a dash in Hyde Park,’ she said, knowing he was right about her aunt and annoyed that he should have the effrontery to point it out to her. ‘Let us not disappoint you. I dare say we can manage with a barouche.’

‘Why not a park phaeton?’ he suggested, without denying her accusation. ‘It is light enough for you to drive, if that is what you have in mind, and not too dangerous if handled sensibly. If you wish, I’ll undertake to teach you to drive it.’

If this was an effort to placate her, it had the opposite effect; she could drive as well as most men and not even Tom would presume to suggest she needed lessons. ‘I am sure your lordship has more pressing business,’ she murmured, stifling her inclination to tell him so. ‘We would not wish to impose on you.’

Anyone but the Marquis of Longham, she told herself, would have recognised the put-down for what it was, but he simply smiled and said, ‘Not at all.’ Then, deciding he would get nowhere with her, he turned to Tom. ‘How say you, Wenthorpe; will you consider this one? It is wide enough to seat three at a pinch and low enough slung not to turn over in a tight corner.’

Tom accepted the offer of help with alacrity and the two men began a long discussion about the merits of the carriage in question and the colours in which it should be finished, and, the deal being done, arrangements were made to collect it two days later.

‘In the meantime,’ his lordship said, ‘may I offer to convey you home?’

Tom agreed at once without consulting Lydia, who had been silently watching the Marquis’s handling of the transaction and secretly admitting to herself that Tom, left alone, would not have done half so well. Not until they were once more on the street did she realise that the conveyance was the self-same coach which had brought them to London. She had already been ungracious and could not compound that by refusing to get into it, and thus they arrived at Wenthorpe House in the same ramshackle way they had the day before.

The arrival of Tom and Lydia with the Marquis in attendance had not gone unnoticed the first time it had happened. It seemed incomprehensible to the ladies of Society that Miss Wenthorpe, who was so obviously in London looking for a husband, should turn up in that skimble-skamble state and should have for an escort a man whom no one knew. That he was handsome and dressed in the pink of fashion none disputed, but his mount! Did one ever see such a broken-backed mule? And as for the carriage, it was twenty years old if it was a day. Surely Wenthorpe was not that pinched in the pocket? If he was, the tattlers did not see how his daughter could be safely brought out. And to compound everything by driving about town in that self-same vehicle was enough to set the neighbourhood tongues wagging even more furiously.

Servants, tradesmen, not to mention candlestick-makers and chimney-sweeps, were sent far and wide to find out what they could. They returned with the intelligence that the horses had been hired and the carriage belonged to the Marquis of Longham, the only surviving son of the Duke of Sutton, who, like their present monarch, was as mad as a hatter. As for Lord Wenthorpe, as far as could be ascertained, there was nothing wrong with his credit and Miss Wenthorpe stood to come into a considerable portion on her marriage.

‘That, of course, would account for Longham dancing attendance on her,’ they said over the teacups, having heard accounts of the profligate ways of the Duke of Sutton and his elder son and assuming the younger was cast in the same mould. It was their duty to rescue her from this mountebank. And if their informants should be wrong and the Marquis was not a spongeing toadeater but a man of consequence, then all the more reason to detach him from Miss Wenthorpe and speedily attach him to their own daughters. They were prepared to expend any amount of time and energy on the project. And thus it was that so many invitations poured into Wenthorpe House, Lydia and her aunt were hard put to it to decide which to accept.

In spite of this, Mrs Wenthorpe held to her original view that Lydia ought to try her wings at small functions and not come out in a blaze of glory at a high-stepping affair, where one false move, one little slip could ruin all their plans. ‘Besides,’ she said, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘keep ’em waiting, that’s what I say. Make ’em dangle a little.’

Her aunt’s choice of phrase did nothing to make Lydia feel any better about coldly setting out to catch a husband, but if she had to, then she would take her time. Accordingly, they accepted invitations to quiet little suppers and tea parties, drove in the park in the new phaeton, drawn by a pair of greys which, though not up to the Marquis’s bays, were creditable enough to win admiring glances, made up a party to visit Vauxhall Gardens with Tom and Frank Burford as escorts, were seen at the theatre and the opera, were almost squeezed to death in the more popular routs and generally conducted themselves with genteel reserve. In the course of three weeks they had made the superficial acquaintance of almost everyone who was anyone, but no young man had been singled out, so that it became a kind of game to be noticed by the nubile Miss Wenthorpe.

Occasionally the Marquis of Longham was seen in Lydia’s company, but always within a party, and his behaviour gave the tongue-waggers no cause to think he was making any progress with her if that was his intention. Indeed, Lydia herself was inclined to think him too high in the instep by far and, though always polite, she would not go out of her way to show him any favouritism. When he chose to unbend and make himself agreeable, then so might she, but until then she would keep him at a distance.

It was the only thing on which she and her aunt disagreed, for Mrs Wenthorpe had, on closer acquaintance, taken a shine to the young man and enjoyed his company, especially as he did not appear to think her dress anything out of the ordinary. In fact he had, on one occasion, complimented her on her looks. ‘And he was not funning me,’ she asserted over nuncheon one day. ‘He is the very embodiment of good taste and sensitivity.’

‘He’s bought a bang-up rig — prime cattle and a spanking new curricle,’ Tom said enthusiastically. ‘He let me take the ribbons the other day and felicitated me on my handling of them.’

‘You mean he did not go back and buy the high-perch phaeton after all?’ Lydia asked, choosing to ignore the fact that the Marquis had not actually said he intended to buy it.

‘Apparently not,’

‘Then I was right. He pretended to want it only to prevent us from having it.’

‘And glad I am he did,’ Agatha put in with a twinkle in her myopic eyes. ‘Can you imagine me riding as high as the house-tops in one of those?’

‘Do you know his circumstances, Aunt?’ Tom asked. He saw in the Marquis an entry to the ton and invitations to places that young ladies like his sister had no idea existed, or, if they did, spoke of them behind their fans with bated breath and a sense of daring. He liked the cut of Longham’s jib, his self-assurance, his air of command and he had every intention of modelling himself on this aristocrat with the long nose and the haughty bearing. ‘Has he taken you into his confidence?’

Mrs Wenthorpe smiled enigmatically. ‘If he had, I would not break it to satisfy your curiosity, young man. All I know is that he is a soldier, or he was, and highly thought of by Wellington, so I suppose he must have been a good one, but since the peace he has been little seen in Society. His father, the Duke, is a buffle-head without a feather to fly with and his brother was a dissolute rake and he will have his work cut out to bring everything to rights.’

‘Well, I take no note of the gabble-grinders,’ Tom informed them cheerfully. ‘He ain’t one to shout the odds about his affairs, plays his cards close to his chest, but that don’t mean he’s dished up. But if he offered for Lydia…’

‘That would be an entirely different matter,’ his aunt said. ‘Then it would be my duty to make enquiries…’

‘But as he has made no such offer,’ Lydia put in with some asperity, ‘and I would not accept him if he did, we need not trouble ourselves about him.’

Her aunt sighed. ‘He is not likely to offer when you give him so little encouragement.’

‘I am not going to lick boots to find a husband, Aunt Aggie, and I am sure Papa would not expect me to.’

Mrs Wenthorpe smiled. ‘No, but he might hope that you would make just a little push, my dear.’ She smiled suddenly and her blue eyes lit with mischief. ‘No matter, it is still early in the Season.’ She paused to pick up a gilt-edged invitation card to a ball to be held at Thornton House, Park Lane on the following Friday week. ‘Let us see what this brings forth, for everyone who is anyone will be there.’ She tapped the card against her chin, pretending to think. ‘Now, who shall be your escort? I think Longham, don’t you?’

‘Frank Burford has already asked me,’ Lydia put in quickly.

‘Frank?’ Tom repeated. ‘You haven’t been such a ninny as to agree?’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, Frank is a capital fellow, I’ll allow,’ he said. ‘But you may as well have stayed at home and saved Papa a deal of blunt if you are going back to Raventrees on his arm. You’ve known him since he was in short coats.’

‘I’m comfortable with him and, as he has been so good as to ask, I have accepted.’

‘I hope you have not held out any false hopes, Lydia,’ her aunt said, rising from the table. ‘It would be most unfair of you.’

‘Not in the least,’ she said cheerfully, putting down her napkin and following her aunt from the room. ‘I know he has a penchant for little Miss Thornton, but so far she has not deigned to notice him.’

‘Miss Thornton!’ exclaimed Tom, deciding that as there were no other men with whom to smoke and drink he might as well join his sister and their aunt in the withdrawing room, where they settled themselves to await the arrival of the tea tray. ‘She’s a little above his touch, don’t you think? I cannot see her mama agreeing to that match.’

Lydia was inclined to agree with her brother when, ten days later, they took their turn in the long line of guests waiting to be received by Lord and Lady Thornton, and realised what a lavish affair it was. And all in the cause of marrying off their daughter.

The ballroom was filled to capacity and noisy enough to have been a battlefield. The orchestra which was tuning up on a dais at the far end of the room could hardly be heard above the din of people greeting acquaintances, being introduced and exchanging the latest on-dit. The heat from the gas lamps was already intense and ladies’ fans were much in evidence, not only for cooling purposes, but for whispering behind.

‘What a squeeze!’ said Frank, resplendent in a yellow brocade coat and matching satin knee-breeches, tied above his white silk stockings with ribbon bows. He looked a little ridiculous, Lydia thought, but not for a minute would she have hurt him by letting him know her thoughts, any more than she would have wounded her aunt by commenting on her lavish rose satin décolleté ballgown with its wide panniers, a fashion at least a generation out of date.

Tom pushed his way through the crush and found a seat for his aunt before wandering off to find himself a partner for the cotillion which was then forming, and Frank led Lydia on to the floor. She was engaged for every dance after that by a multitude of young men, to all of whom she was charming, laughing and thoroughly at ease, aware that she looked her best in the cream silk gown Mrs Davies had helped her to choose. The very simplicity of its high waist and softly falling skirt displayed her slim figure to perfection and its not too low neckline and puffed sleeves set off pale shoulders and a throat encircled with nothing but a rope of beautifully matched pearls. Her hair was drawn back in a Grecian style with a top-knot and ringlets woven with more pearls. Nothing could have been a greater contrast to most of the other gaudily attired young ladies with their beads and feathers, rubies and emeralds.

It was late in the evening when she spied the Marquis of Longham, standing by himself just inside the door as if he had only then arrived. His pose was nonchalant, and Lydia, who was dancing a Chaîne Anglais with the Honourable Douglas Fincham, youngest son of the Earl of Boreton, was forced to admit to herself that his figure was made for tight jackets and close-fitting pantaloons. Not long before, these would not have been allowed at a ball, knee-breeches being the accepted dress, but now only Almack’s stuck to the old ways, and here was a man for whom the new fashions must have been made. His long-tailed black evening coat was exquisitely cut to his broad shoulders and narrow waist, while his black pantaloons served to outline muscular thighs that drew a sigh of admiration from many a débutante. Lydia told herself severely, but not very honestly, that she was immune.

‘For someone who don’t have a feather to fly with, he’s in prime twig,’ commented her partner, who considered himself no end of a fine fellow. He was very young and extremely chubby, like a round young puppy. His shoulders were padded and his waist corseted and his collar points scratched his cheeks whenever he moved his head. His enormous cravat was tied into an intricate pattern of loops and folds, while across his pink and yellow striped waistcoat hung a multitide of chains and fobs. Beside the elegantly clad Marquis, he looked a veritable macaroni. ‘But it don’t signify,’ he added. ‘Everyone knows his father is batty and has lost his fortune.’

‘Where did you hear that?’ Lydia asked, forgetting her determination never to listen to gossip.

‘It is common knowledge,’ he said airily. ‘His creditors will be hammering on his door before the Season is out, unless he can find himself an heiress.’

‘And I think you would be wise to refrain from such scandal,’ she said sharply, making him redden from the wilting points of his collar to the roots of his fair hair. ‘He might call you out for it.’

‘Why, I set no store by Canterbury tales,’ he said, speedily recovering from this rebuke, having little imagination and an extraordinary idea of his own worth. If a young lady gave him a put-down, it only meant that he should try the harder to engage her attention.

Correctly judging his character, she set about teasing him so that by the time the dance ended and he returned her to her aunt he did not know whether to be elated or resentful. Aunt Aggie was in lively conversation with one of the dowagers who sat in regal splendour along the side of ballroom, making sweeping and quite scandalous statements about all and sundry, but she was attentive enough to look up at her niece with a humorous quirk of her brow and a flutter of her fan behind which she was heard to murmur, ‘A veritable pea-goose, my dear. Do send him about his business or he will cling like a leech.’

Lydia stifled a giggle but she was saved having to take her aunt’s advice because Douglas drifted off, and she joined Tom and Frank who stood near by waiting to claim their partners for the next dance. Frank had already stepped forward to stand before Miss Thornton, when Lady Thornton pushed herself between them and drew the Marquis towards her daughter.

‘Well, of all the put-downs!’ Lydia exclaimed, feeling very sorry for the dejected Frank, as he turned away to seek solace in the card-room while Amelia Thornton, pink of face, set off with the Marquis. ‘Lady Thornton is making a fool of herself with her daughter besides, throwing her at every unmarried man in the room from old Lord Winters who is sixty if he is a day to Douglas Fincham who was only yesterday taken out of short coats; the only thing they have in common is a title — or the expectation of one — and a fortune. As for the Marquis of Longham, I thought he had more sense than to be used in that fashion.’

‘He could hardly snub the poor girl by refusing,’ Tom said, reasonably. ‘That would have made matters worse.’

‘I feel sorry for poor Miss Thornton, for she will not be allowed to make up her own mind,’ Lydia went on, her own sense of justice making her admit Tom was right. ‘I’ll wager if I were to present myself as an eligible man, Lady Thornton would have me stand up with her.’

Tom turned to stare at her. ‘I say, Lydia, you wouldn’t dare,’ he said, then added, as he saw the gleam in his sister’s eye, ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’

‘Why not?’ The sight of the Marquis of Longham dancing a quadrille with Amelia Thornton and showing every sign of enjoying it made Lydia feel as if it was she and not Frank who had been snubbed, and filled her with an illogical desire to do something entirely reckless.

‘You’d never pull it off,’ he said. ‘Lady Thornton will see through you and then you will be sent home to Raventrees in disgrace, and what will Papa do with you then? No, no, you cannot.’

‘Cannot?’ she queried, raising one arched brow. Ever since they had left the cradle, Tom only had to say she would not dare to do something than she needs must do it. ‘Will you take a small wager that I cannot, Thomas? Shall we say twenty pounds?’

He stared at her for a moment and then laughed. ‘You’re on! Twenty pounds say you cannot hoodwink Lady Thornton into accepting you as a man and allowing you to dance with her daughter.’ He paused. ‘You’ll have to gull Miss Thornton as well or she will kick up a fuss before you have taken half a turn about the room.’

‘Naturally, everyone must believe it. I shall let Miss Thornton into the secret when the dance is ended.’ She smiled, her boredom vanishing in this new challenge to her acting ability. ‘I’ll need a title and a name which is credible but not too easily discounted. It had better be French; their nobility is in such a tangle since the Revolution, no one will suspect.’ She paused, then laughed. ‘I know, we will use Mama’s name. How does Comte Maurice de Clancy sound to you? I am the only son of a French émigré who came to England to escape the Terror when I was but a babe, which accounts for my being able to speak both languages perfectly. Oh, how glad I am that Mama insisted on speaking French to us! And if I assume an accent, it may help to disguise the fact that my voice is somewhat high.’ She sighed. ‘I am very much afraid I shall have to be a very effete suitor.’

‘But you need a fortune, and how is that to be contrived? You can be sure Lady Thornton will want to know about that before her daughter is allowed to stand up with you.’

Lydia thought for a moment. ‘Jewels smuggled out by my parents during the Revolution, caskets of the stuff, gold too, and none of it trusted to a bank. Given that piece of nonsense, the tattlers will do my work for me, then it will be enough if I give the appearance of being well-breeched. Her ladyship will never be able to disprove it before my wager is won.’

‘When is this deception to take place?’ her brother demanded. ‘It must be done publicly, you know, and I must see it with my own eyes.’

She laughed, realising the occasion had to be right; she could not expect to deceive her aunt, however short-sighted she was, or Frank Burford, who had already seen her dressed as a man. ‘I will tell you when I am ready.’

They were interrupted by the Marquis who, having returned Miss Thornton to her mama, was now bowing in front of Lydia and claiming the waltz. She smiled a mischievous little smile which both intrigued and alarmed him and allowed herself to be led on to the floor.

She had spent hours in the schoolroom learning the steps of the waltz with her brother and such friends who lived in the neighbourhood of Raventrees, though she had never danced it on a crowded ballroom floor, but she need not have worried, for her partner was expert and was so tall that he made her feel small and feminine, an unusual sensation for her. They moved as if moulded together and she hardly noticed that he was holding her closer than the regulation twelve inches.

‘It is a refreshing change to dance with someone without being tickled under the chin by a feather head-dress,’ he said, referring to the fact that her head was on a level with his shoulder and not the middle button of his waistcoat.

‘And I to find I am not looking over my partner’s head,’ she responded quickly. ‘You know, one of Papa’s criteria for a husband for me is that he should be tall.’

He was slightly taken aback that she should be so outspoken about it but recovered himself quickly. ‘What other requirements would a suitor need before he could approach the eligible Miss Wenthorpe?’ he asked. ‘A title, perhaps? And a fortune?’

She laughed, knowing he was bamming, but she was her brother’s sister and if she had allowed a teasing to bother her she would have had a very unhappy childhood. ‘Plain Mr is a title of sorts and a guinea might be a fortune to some poor beggar, so I suppose I could reasonably say yes to that.’

‘And handsome?’

‘Handsome is as handsome does.’

‘And should he be head over heels in love with you?’

‘Oh, that above everything,’ she said, turning her head to laugh up into his face. He was regarding her with a slightly lop-sided smile and a light dancing in his eyes which disturbed her. It was as if he had thought of some jest but was unsure whether to share it with her. ‘You do not agree with that, I see.’

‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘I concur whole heartedly. Do you think you will find such a one here?’

‘Probably not,’ she said. If her wager were to succeed it would have to be done when his lordship was absent, for he would, she was certain, see right through any disguise; he seemed to be able to look right into her heart and make it beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She was beginning to regret the impulse which had made her throw out such a challenge. It was madness. She smiled to herself. Mad and bad and heaven help her if she failed!

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ he offered, as they whirled round the floor in perfect unison, with his hand comfortably about her waist.

‘Oh, no, my lord,’ she said, colouring. ‘Not even for a golden guinea.’

He laughed, so that the dowagers closest to them looked up with startled expressions and then began to whisper among themselves that Miss Wenthorpe was far too forward and it would be her just deserts if no one offered for her except that scapegrace Longham, who would undoubtedly make her miserable. ‘Then I must remain in ignorance, for I have no intention of bidding any higher.’

‘I perceive, my lord, that you always consider carefully before you lay out your money.’

‘Now, I wonder what you can mean by that observation?’

‘I collect you were going to purchase a high-perch phaeton.’

‘Was I? Then I changed my mind. It was an unnecessary extravagance.’ He was enjoying the exchange, teasing her and titillating her curiosity. If she passed on what he had said to others, the town would soon believe he was mean-spirited as well as down on his uppers. Serve ’em right, he thought. He would not have his bride chosen for him by gossips or avaricious mamas, and if Ernest Grimshaw were to hear that he was without the blunt to pursue his case, then so much the better. ‘Would you join me for a drive in the park one afternoon?’

‘But how can I do that if you did not buy the phaeton?’ she queried, lifting her eyebrows at him and proving that she, too, could tease. ‘Surely you do not intend to drive me in that old coach of yours? I am still black and blue from my last outing in it.’

‘It’s that or nothing,’ he said, trying in vain to keep a serious face. ‘Do you dare?’

‘My lord, you should know I never refuse a dare.’

‘Then I will call for you the day after tomorrow. Shall we say at two?’

Oh, she should never have been so rash, she decided, as she lay sleepless in the early hours; it was almost as if the two glasses of champagne she had consumed had bemused her senses. Accepting the Marquis’s dare was enough to put her beyond the pale, but the wager with her brother was almost criminal and certainly cruel. She began to wonder how she would feel if she were Amelia Thornton and such a prank were played on her. Mortified and humiliated were the words that came to mind. No, she could not do it and she would tell Tom so. If it cost her twenty pounds, then so be it.

But her brother was nowhere to be found when she rose towards noon and went in search of him. His bed, she discovered, had not been slept in and his valet vouchsafed the opinion that Mr Wenthorpe had gone on to play cards after escorting her and her aunt home after the ball; Barber had been told not to wait for him, so he could not be sure. Forced to wait for Tom’s return, she decided to go for a ride and, ordering her horse to be saddled, she went to her room, changed into the blue velvet habit, perched the beaver on her curls and made her way to the stables, determined to gallop off her fit of the blue devils.

The day was fine, with a promise of spring, and Hyde Park was full of horses and carriages, barouches, phaetons, curricles, tilburys and gigs, each one containing its share of fashionable ladies, demireps and débutantes, together with their escorts, all wanting to be noticed, and the pace they were setting was slow, if not actually stationary. Riders were also out in great numbers on high-stepping thoroughbreds, neat little cobs and hired hacks. She saw Lord Longham sitting astride a huge black stallion, engrossed in conversation with a modishly dressed lady in a barouche across the railing which divided the Row from the carriageway. They were laughing together, oblivious to others around them. Lydia reined in; she was in no mood to exchange polite nonsense when all she could think of was that foolish wager. He looked up and their glances met and held. Disconcerted, she wheeled her mount away and cantered off.

Finding herself in what might pass in the metropolis for open country, she set the horse to gallop with Scrivens vainly trying to keep up. ‘It won’t do, Miss Lydia,’ he called after her. ‘It won’t do. At ’ome in Raventrees it don’ matter, but in London…’ When she returned home she was in a much better humour and even the scolding her aunt gave her for being late for nuncheon failed to dampen her spirits.

It was Tom who managed to do that. She met him on the stairs on her way to change out of her habit. His face was grey from lack of sleep, his hair was tousled and his cravat tied so carelessly it resembled nothing so much as a dishcloth. ‘Tom, have you been up all night?’ she demanded.

‘Got caught up in a game at White’s,’ he said.

‘Oh, Tom, you haven’t lost a great deal of money, have you?’ She looked directly into his face, but he could not meet her eye. ‘Oh, you buffle-head! What will Papa say?’

He caught her hand and pulled her into his room, where he shut the door firmly. ‘It ain’t that much and he need never know.’

‘How much?’

He hesitated, then mumbled, ‘Five hundred.’

‘Five hundred!’ she squeaked, shocked to the core. ‘How could you possibly have let it happen? Did you give them vowels?’

‘Yes. I promised to pay by the end of the month.’

‘How? Your allowance will never cover it.’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘No, but I thought of a capital hum. I wagered five hundred that you would persuade Lady Thornton you were an eligible bachelor and would stand up with Miss Thornton at a ball.’

‘You did what?’ She sat down heavily on the bed, hardly able to believe her ears.

‘You can do it, you know you can,’ he went on, unperturbed. ‘It’s only like playing charades.’

She was almost angry enough to slap him. ‘Who did you make this outrageous bet with?’

‘Douglas Fincham. I have either to give him five hundred guineas by the end of the month or you have to become a man for an evening.’

She stared up at him. ‘Oh, Tom, Tom, what have you done?’

‘It was your idea in the first place, or I would never have thought of it.’

‘It was a cork-brained idea. I changed my mind almost at once and decided to pay you the twenty pounds and forget the whole thing.’

‘But Lydia, you can’t,’ he said in anguish. ‘It will ruin me. I shall never hear the last of it. I shall be ostracised.’

‘Serve you right.’

‘Oh, Lydia, you can’t mean that. I’ve got you out of any number of scrapes in the past…’

‘Childish pranks,’ she said with asperity. ‘They were not like this at all.’ She paused as the implication of what he had done came to her. How could she face everyone if it became public knowledge that she fancied herself as a man? She would lose what friends she had and the Marquis of Longham would be confirmed in his belief that she was the most outrageous hoyden in the country. She would never be able to look into those searching eyes again. ‘Did you enter it in the betting book for all the world to see?’

‘No, for it would not do for it to become public or Lady Thornton might hear of it. It was a private bet.’ He stood looking down at her, unable to believe that she was prepared to renege on a wager; such a thing was unheard of, either for her or for him or anyone else who valued their reputation. ‘That don’t mean it don’t have to be honoured,’ he said. ‘Besides, Fincham…’

‘You could not have chosen a worse person to gamble with,’ she put in sharply. ‘He will never keep his tongue between his teeth if you do not pay up.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he said miserably.

‘We can’t let it come to that.’

He brightened considerably. ‘You’ll do it?’

‘I have only to deceive Lady Thornton?’ she queried, her heart sinking. ‘I may take Miss Thornton into my confidence?’

‘No, you have to convince everyone and that includes Miss Thornton,’ he said. ‘And you have to complete the dance and leave undiscovered.’

‘Supposing I cannot do it?’

‘Oh, you can, you know you can. Oh, Lydia, do this for me, I beg you.’

‘I don’t see why I should make a fool of myself so that you may not make a fool of yourself,’ she said. ‘You must tell Papa.’

‘Lydia, I’ll die sooner than do that. Please…’

‘How many other people know of this wager?’

‘Only Frank Burford and a steward at the club.’

‘Frank?’ she queried. ‘Is he in it too?’

‘Well, you know old Frank. He must needs put his stake in.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘He has already seen you in disguise, don’t forget.’

‘In the schoolroom! That hardly counts and, besides, I had costumes and make-up there.’

‘What costumes and make-up do you want? I’ll undertake to obtain them for you. It would not do for you to be seen buying such things.’

‘I don’t know, I shall have to think about it. How am I to disguise curves I should not have and fill out those places where I am lacking…?’

‘A tight waistcoat, padded shoulders and a little more fullness in the breeches. I am sure you can contrive.’

‘Does it have to be a ball or will a small supper dance suffice?’

‘It was not stipulated.’

‘Then we will aim for a quiet evening where the lighting is likely to be more subdued than at a grand affair and the fashions need not be so up to the mark.’

‘Then you will do it!’ It was surprising how his weariness left him and his face came alight at the prospect of this burden being lifted from his shoulders. ‘Oh, Sis, I knew you would. You’ve saved my bacon.’

‘Only if I succeed.’ It was madness to contemplate it, she knew, but if she could pull it off and the young Comte de Clancy was afterwards to disappear never to be seen again no harm would be done and Papa need never know what a young fool his son had been. ‘I ought to have a rehearsal,’ she said. ‘Somewhere where we are not known.’

‘I heard there is a fair on the Heath; what say you to that, two young men out for a lark?’

‘Oh, very well,’ she agreed, entering into the spirit of it now the die was cast. ‘But how shall we get out of the house?’

In the event it was not difficult, because Mrs Wenthorpe decided to retire early after the exertions of the previous evening and as soon as she was safely in her room with a late-night drink of chocolate Lydia hurried to Tom’s room, where she borrowed one of his suits of clothes and took it back to her own bedchamber.

There was very little difference in their height although he was broader than she was. A little padding in the shoulders of the frockcoat and a sash, half hidden by the waistcoat, to pull in the waist of the pantaloons soon put that right. That done, she surveyed herself in the long glass and then began on her face. Lampblack was used to emphasise her brows and make them thicker and the dregs from her coffee-cup used to darken her complexion. Pads of cotton stuffed into her cheeks made her face seem rounder and would also help to change her voice. Then she pushed her hair up under a wide-brimmed felt hat and decided she might do in a poor light, but in daylight or in the bright lights of a ballroom she would have to improve the make-up. She would not be able to change her hair colouring with dye, which she would have liked to do as an extra precaution against being recognised, because she would afterwards have to reappear as Lydia Wenthorpe, so she would have to wear a wig.

Tom called to her from the other side of her bedroom door and she ran to open it, standing before him, quizzing glass in hand. ‘How do I look?’

‘Bang-up,’ he whispered in admiration. ‘Not even Aunt Aggie would recognise you.’

‘I hope she may not see me. Are you ready?’

‘Yes. We’ll hire a rumbler down the road.’

The night was dark and the gas lamps shed a poor light, which suited Lydia, and they took care not to linger when they came under their yellow glow. A hackney was found and in a very short time they were deposited on the outskirts of the fair and were soon swallowed up by the mělée of people, old and young, male and female, gentry and artisan, who had come to enjoy themselves.

They attracted no attention as they wandered between stalls which offered a huge variety of goods from sweetmeats and mussels, to poems and broadsheets proclaiming the latest news. Prize-fighters, stripped to their waists, defied anyone to take them on, slack-rope walkers tottered precariously above their heads, barkers shouted for custom to view the bearded lady or the two-headed sheep. All around them were jugglers, fire-eaters, performing dogs and fortune-tellers.

‘Shall you have your fortune told?’ Tom asked. ‘If you can fool a fortune-teller, it would be a capital test.’

‘Should I?’ It had been so easy up to now and being lost in the crowds was certainly of little use as a test for her disguise. ‘You’ll wait close at hand?’

‘I’ll be right outside.’

Thus reassured, Lydia entered the tent where a gaudily dressed gypsy, all dangling earrings and bracelets, sat at a table. ‘Sit ye down, young feller,’ she said, indicating a chair opposite her and whipping the cover from a glass ball on the table. ‘Which is it to be, the crystal or the palm?’

‘The crystal.’

‘Cross my palm with silver. A tanner will do but if you really want to know the future a fore-coach-wheel would be the least of it.’

Lydia dug into her pocket and extracted a half-crown and put it into the gypsy’s open palm.

‘Ah, my lovely,’ the old crone said. ‘I do not need a crystal ball to tell me you are not what you seem.’

‘Oh?’ Lydia raised one blackened brow.

‘You would have me think you are a young gentleman of fashion…’

‘And I am not?’ Lydia queried, keeping her voice huskily low.

‘No, barely out of the schoolroom, you are. Your clothes are too big and no doubt belong to an older brother and your voice is scarce broken. Slipped your leash for a night, is that it? I do not think I care to take your money, for your future lies in a spanking from your papa and that needs no second sight.’

Lydia gave a low chuckle, determined not to let her pose lapse. If the old hag thought she was dealing with a boy, at least she was halfway to her goal. ‘What can you tell me that does need a crystal ball?’

The gypsy put her hands around the glass and peered into its depths. ‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘It is all misty, nothing is clear; it is as if someone were trying to deceive me. This I do not like.’ She looked up with bright boot-button eyes. ‘But this I do see — a fortune in gold and jewels, and a tall, dark man who is not pleased. Beware of trying to deceive him, young miss.’

‘Miss?’ she queried, taken aback.

‘Thought you’d take me for a fool, did ye?’ the old woman cackled. ‘But it takes more than clothes and bootblacking to hoax a Romany princess. Do it for a wager, did ye?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Lydia said, afraid of the gleam in the woman’s eye. ‘I meant no harm. I can see you are, indeed, very clever and I will remember what you say about the tall, dark man.’ With the gypsy’s cracked laugh ringing in her ears, she ran from the tent and straight into the broad chest of the Marquis of Longham.

CHAPTER THREE

STARTLED, Lydia stifled the Oh! she had on her lips and changed it to a husky grunt, as he took a step backwards and looked down at her. ‘Look where you’re going, boy.’

‘Pardon, monsieur.’ Why had Tom not seen the Marquis and waylaid him, or tried to warn her? If it was his idea of a test for her disguise, then it was a very dangerous one. ‘My fault entirely.’

The Marquis was regarding her in the same lop-sided way he had used at the ball and she was afraid he had penetrated her disguise. Oh, what a fool she had been to suppose she could get away with it! He was far too perceptive and if he recognised her now the whole masquerade would be at an end for she would never dare to repeat it in their own social circles. She was swamped by a feeling of relief at the thought of not having to do it, followed immediately by the dread of what Douglas Fincham would do. Tom was a fool and she was an even bigger one. And she would rather anyone but the Marquis know it.

‘No harm done.’ He touched the curly brim of his tall beaver and strode away to be lost in the crowds.

She let out a huge sigh and turned to look for Tom. He was standing on the edge of a knot of people watching a boxing match and had his back to her. She went to stand beside him and nudged his arm. ‘Fine look-out you turned out to be.’

He turned and grinned. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Who did you think it was, Lord Longham?’

‘No, why?’

‘I just bumped into him.’

He seemed unconcerned, as he craned his neck to see the end of the bout. ‘Did he recognise you?’

‘If he did, he did not say so.’

‘There you are, then!’ He began pushing his way through the spectators to reach the front as the fight ended with the amateur challenger being carried off unconscious. The barker began haranguing the watchers for a new challenger. ‘Who’ll go a round with the champion?’ he shouted. ‘Who fancies themselves at the fisticuffs?’ One round, that’s all, one round and still standing and twenty yellow Georges will be yours. Come on, ain’t there a fighter among ye?’

Tom pushed his way to the front and had his hand on the rope before Lydia realised what he intended. She pulled on his coat-tails. ‘No, Tom, he’ll kill you.’

While Tom turned to remonstrate with her, his opportunity was lost because another contender had climbed into the ring. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said, more unnerved than she liked to admit by her encounter with the Marquis. ‘I’ve had enough for one night.’

‘After this bout,’ he said, turning back to the ring and gasping with surprise because the man who was stripping off his coat and waistcoat was none other than Jack Bellingham. ‘Oh, this will be a rum ‘n and no mistake.’

He would not leave and they were so near the front that Lydia could see every bruise the protagonists inflicted on each other and hear every grunt of pain; she found herself wincing and wishing she could look away, but she could not take her eyes from the two men, one huge and thick-set with cropped hair and a thick bull-neck which disappeared into massive shoulders, and the other, as tall as his adversary, but whose broad shoulders tapered to a slim waist and hips and whose long, supple legs were serving him well as he moved lithely about the ring. Jack Bellingham had boxed before, that much was evident, and he was giving as good as he got as they weaved and ducked and threw punches while the crowd yelled their support and Tom cried, ‘Go to it, Jack! Send him to grass!’

The heavy pugilist, frustrated that he could not get the early knockout he was accustomed to, began to slow as the crashing punches with which he floored his less experienced challengers were, for the most part, knocked harmlessly aside. But the Marquis was not having it all his own way and Lydia winced and had to put her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out whenever the fairground pugilist landed one of his ox-felling blows and Lord Longham’s head rocked back with a sickening crunch. The round seemed never-ending and both boxers were visibly tiring when the crowd began to yell, ‘The bell! Ring the bell, he’s done it!’

But the barker was reluctant to do so, hoping his man could still floor the challenger and save him his twenty guineas. The fight went on, with both men becoming more and more exhausted until Lydia was sure they would fall together in a heap and neither be declared the winner, in which case the challenger would leave empty-handed. In the midst of her concern for him, she fell to wondering why he had gone into the ring in the first place. He was surely not short of twenty guineas, nor could he possibly enjoy being punched black and blue. And Tom had thought he would have a go! How glad she was that he had been prevented, but if the Marquis won her ninny of a brother might even now fancy his chances on the next bout. She pulled on his arm. ‘Tom, let’s go.’

He turned to her, grinning. ‘What a mill! I ain’t going before the end. Wait for me beside the gypsy’s tent if you’ve no stomach for it.’

She turned and was trying to push her way out when the spectators, furious at the delay, began a concerted rush towards the barker, shouting again for him to ring the bell. Realising his danger, he complied and Lydia looked back to see Jack’s hand raised in triumph. He was hoisted on to the shoulders of the nearest spectators, among whom her brother, grinning from ear to ear, was prominent. Tom was not in the least concerned about her, nor the fact that she was being buffeted about by the exultant mob. If he brought the Marquis over to her… Oh, how could he have forgotten their predicament? She felt herself go hot all over and was sure that sweat was trickling down her forehead and face, making tracks in her make-up. She could not face the Marquis a second time. She forced her way out of the crowd and found a hackney. Climbing in, she bade the driver wait and sat inside trying to compose herself while the spectators, knowing the entertainment was over for the night, dispersed in great good humour.

She sat on until Tom appeared with Lord Longham at his side and began to look about him for his ‘cousin’. Shrinking back into the shadows of the hackney, she heard him say, ‘I left him here somewhere, told him to wait, had to come and offer my felicitations before I left. What a mill! Where do you train? Oh, drat Maurice, where can he be?’

‘Tired of kicking his heels and gone home perhaps?’ The Marquis sounded weary, as well he might. The flickering light round the booth was poor, by Lydia was surprised to see no outward evidence that he had been in a gruelling fight, apart from a slight pinkness around his left eye and a cut on his right brow which sported a plaster. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Wenthorpe, I’ll take this hackney and get off home myself.’

‘What?’ Tom sounded vague. ‘Oh, yes, of course, take it; I shall have to stay and look for L… Maurice.’

Lydia could not let that happen. ‘Tom!’ She sat forward, glad the fairground lights were being snuffed out. ‘Mon Dieu, where ‘ave you been ‘iding?’ She pretended a prodigious yawn. ‘Do come ‘ome; I am dead with l’ennui.’

Tom’s face lit with relief and he grinned. ‘Maurice! What a capital fellow you are to hold the last cab.’ He turned to Jack. ‘Will you join us?’

If she had hoped the Marquis would refuse, she was disappointed; he accepted cheerfully. She shrank to the opposite side of the carriage and pulled her hat down as Tom got in beside her and squeezed up to make room for the Marquis.

‘My cousin, Maurice, Comte de Clancy,’ Tom said, by way of introduction. ‘Jack Bellingham, Marquis of Longham. You should have waited, Coz, for it was a capital fight and the Marquis stood up for the round and earned his twenty pounds. Had it not been the last bout, I would have made a challenge…’

‘Poof,’ she said, affecting the voice of the Comte. ‘You Engleesh, I will never comprehend why you like so much the fighting.’

The Marquis laughed easily, though he must have been aching in every limb. ‘That is why we win our wars.’

There was an uneasy silence until Tom said, ‘My cousin has lately come from Canada; his father, my uncle, was French, you know. He took his family there at the beginning of the war to escape serving Bonaparte. He died there and so did his wife, but now the war is over Maurice has returned to claim his land and fortune. He came to England to see lawyers…’

‘I hope he may have luck with the lawyers,’ Jack said.

‘You ‘ave ‘ad trouble with the law, monsieur?’ Lydia put in, feeling she ought to make some contribution to the conversation.

‘A trifling matter,’ he said, then, to her consternation, added, ‘I am sure we have met before.’

She was about to deny it, when Tom dug her in the ribs and muttered, ‘Gypsy tent.’

‘Mais I ‘ave thought that also,’ she drawled. ‘I am not sure for there is not light enough to see.’

‘It is your voice, I think,’ Jack said, and Tom stifled a chuckle and turned it to a cough.

‘Ah je me souviens,’ she said. ‘We — how do you say? — bumped outside the gypsy tent, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Of course.’ He seemed to accept that. ‘And did you learn anything of value from the fortune-teller?’

She gave a low chuckle. ‘If the ‘ag speaks true, I will ‘ave once more my fortune. She spoke of gold and jewels, and a dark man. I am to beware of ‘im.’

‘Did she say why?’ Tom asked.

‘Non. The crystal does not tell much for ‘alf an Engleesh crown.’

Having said as much as she intended to on any subject, she lapsed into silence and Tom took up the conversation by asking where the Marquis lodged. On being told he had rooms at Albany, he ordered the driver to go there first, saying he would then drop his cousin off before going home himself. When the Marquis offered to share the cost of the hackney, Tom said it was his pleasure; after all, his lordship had furnished him with excellent entertainment and it was the least he could do.

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