Miss Darby's Duenna (11 page)

“If you do not trust me, sir, I wonder you should wish to marry me!”

“If you intend to play me false before the ring is even on your finger, I wonder it myself!”

Now that the hateful words were out, the betrothed pair could only stare speechlessly at one another, each horrified that the other had spoken in earnest. Olivia, seized by the sudden fear that Sir Harry was on the brink of breaking the engagement, interrupted before he could speak the words she did not want to hear.

“I wish to return to my party, sir!” she demanded.

“What? Is your future husband not to enjoy the favors you bestow so readily upon another?” Without waiting for an answer, Sir Harry pulled his intended bride ruthlessly into his arms and crushed his lips against hers. She did not struggle against his embrace (or perhaps she could not, so tight was his hold on her), but he could feel the pounding of her heart against his chest. The taste of her lips and the warmth of her slender form in his arms effectively robbed Sir Harry of his anger, and his kiss grew gentler. “Oh, Livvy,” he groaned as his lips traced the long-familiar yet unexplored planes of her face. So intent was he upon this exercise that he unwittingly loosened his hold on Olivia—whereupon she wrested herself free and administered a stinging slap to his cheek. Stunned into immobility, Sir Harry could only stare helplessly as his gentle bride turned and ran back up the path the way they had come.

Olivia, having won her freedom by violence, was dismayed to find it so very unwelcome. Too late, she discovered that it was better to be clasped in the arms of a livid Sir Harry than not to be so clasped at all. In her distress, and half-blinded by tears, she took a wrong turn and soon found herself quite lost, with no idea how to reach her party and no very clear recollection of the turns she had taken. It was in this condition that Lord Mannerly found her.

“Miss Darby!” called the marquess, picking up his pace so that he might fall into step beside her. “Is something the matter?”

“I—I seem to have lost my way,” replied Olivia, valiantly blinking back the tears she did not want to be called upon to explain. She needn’t have worried; Lord Mannerly took one look at her swollen lips and tumbled locks and formed a very accurate estimation of her evening’s adventures. “Pray, my lord, will you escort me back to my party?”

Instead, Mannerly steered her to a stone bench recessed into a dark alcove. “Of course. But perhaps you had best rest here a moment and compose yourself.”

“Y-you are very good, sir.”

“Not at all,” replied the marquess modestly, offering her his handkerchief. As Olivia dabbed at her eyes, Mannerly seated himself beside her and draped a comforting arm about her shoulders. “Now, Miss Darby, what has happened to upset you, and how may I be of service?”

“There is—nothing—that you can do,” came the watery reply. “There is nothing anyone can do.”

“Surely it is not so bad as all that!” chided the marquess gently, drawing her head down to rest on his shoulder. “Tell me the truth. Has Sir Harry been unkind?”

Olivia’s only response was a sob, which Lord Mannerly understood to be a reply in the affirmative.

“There, there, my dear,” he murmured into the dark curls tickling his chin. “There are other men, you know—men who would know how to cherish such an exquisite creature as yourself.”

The marquess’s words became kisses, whisper-soft kisses that trailed from the top of Olivia’s head down to her ear. Olivia did not encourage his advances, but neither did she repulse them. After all, she reasoned (when she was capable of reason at all in the face of Mannerly’s sweet onslaught), since she had already been tried and convicted, why should she not allow herself the luxury of committing the crime?

Sensing her surrender, the marquess stepped up the intensity of his assault. His mouth moved from her ear to the hollow of her throat, where Olivia’s pulse beat tumultuously. Still meeting no resistance, he slowly bent her backwards.

Not until her back pressed against the hard, cold stone of the bench did Olivia come to her senses.

“I—I must return to my party,” she protested for the second time that evening, as she struggled to sit upright.

If Mannerly was at all embarrassed, he gave no outward sign. Urbane as ever, he straightened his cravat and offered his arm to his mortified companion. “I am, as always, yours to command, my dear.”

Inwardly, however, the marquess’s emotions told a very different story.  For perhaps the first time in his life, Lord Mannerly was completely nonplussed. The sundry other females of his acquaintance, from the buxom Drury Lane orange girl who had marked his coming of age to the notorious French comtesse who had relieved the monotony of his Parisian exile, had all parted with their rather dubious virtue with scarcely a backward glance. To be sure, his experience with women was wide and varied, but the seduction of a young lady of quality was a new undertaking for him, and one, it would seem, at which he was far from expert. To the marquess, the discovery of his own ineptitude was more disconcerting than the fact of Miss Darby’s lack of response to his advances. The thought that Sir Harry Hawthorne might be his superior in matters concerning the fairer sex was so absurd that he dismissed it with a snort of derision, and yet the very idea that any woman might prefer that green youth to himself galled him beyond all bearing. Suddenly it was vitally important that he succeed in his seduction of Miss Darby. It was more than a matter of revenge; the reputation of the House of Mannerly was at stake.

Chapter Nine

When the wine goes in, strange things come out.

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER,
Die Piccolomini

Sir Harry, bereft of his love, lingered for some time alone in the secluded bower, idly pacing back and forth and shuffling his feet in a manner fatal to the beauty of his soft leather evening pumps. But Sir Harry was indifferent to such sartorial concerns. He had set out, at great risk to himself, to woo and win his lady and had ended by quarreling with her, receiving nothing but a very sore cheek for his pains. At last he roused himself from his reverie sufficiently to dispatch a lackey to Mr. Wrexham and the ladies, informing them that he had found his grandmother feeling unwell and was escorting her home.

Having accounted for the absence of both his personae, he set out to assuage his heartache by indulging in the usual vices favored by young men suffering the pangs of unrequited love. He proceeded to White’s, where he drank too much brandy and wagered too much money at faro.

As one losing turn yielded to another, he waxed eloquent about the vagaries of the female mind and the folly of falling in love.

He was still engaged in “bucking the tiger” (albeit without much success) at three o’clock in the morning, when Lord Mannerly entered the gaming room.   Sir Harry, seated with his back to the door, was unaware of the presence of his nemesis. Calling for another bottle in slurred accents, he placed his wager on the jack, and groaned when the exposed card was removed to reveal a queen.

“So close, and yet so far away,” sighed a fellow player, a young officer whose own success at cards was only slightly greater than Sir Harry’s. “But perhaps you are lucky at love instead.”

Sir Harry, painfully aware of the angry red welt on his left cheek and vaguely sensing an insult through the fog of his inebriation, wheeled unsteadily about and seized his fellow gambler by the front of his scarlet coat. “And jusht—just—what do you mean by that, sirrah?”

The officer, who intended no insult, did not expect his expression of sympathy to be met with belligerence, and took umbrage at Sir Harry’s rough handling of his person. “Why, only that your pile of vowels is almost as large as your pile of guineas was when you came in! Now, unhand me, you ruffian, before I draw your cork!”

Upon hearing this heated exchange, a small crowd gathered as gamblers all over the room abandoned their own games to watch the scene unfolding at the faro table. The older men were concerned with
maintaining the dignity of their establishment; the younger men were primarily interested in getting a good view of the mill which seemed imminent. Only Lord Mannerly remained in his seat. Flicking open the lid of his enameled snuffbox, he placed a pinch of snuff on his wrist and raised it to his nose, inhaling deeply as he silently observed the proceedings.

“Damn it, I’ll not have Livvy’s name ban—bandied about this way!” declared Sir Harry, lurching to his feet.

“So you accuse me of dishonoring a lady, do you?” demanded the soldier. “Perhaps you would care to repeat the accusation over pistols at Paddington Green! Name your second, sir!”

“Come, Eversley, can’t you tell when a man is half-seas over?” Mannerly did not even raise his voice, but the room fell silent the moment he spoke. “In his present condition, Sir Harry’s opinions can be of no particular importance to you.”

This seemed to satisfy the military gentleman, but Sir Harry took instant affront. “I am not—
hic—
drunk!” he asserted, unmindful of the empty bottle at his elbow. “I can hold my liquor with the best of ‘em! Why, I—”

“Nonsense, boy, you are quite foxed,” repeated the marquess.

“
I
am foxed?
You,
my lord, are the fox—in the hen house, no less! Well, she’s mine—
hic—
do you hear? I won’t stand for it, Mannerly!”

“Indeed, it is a wonder to me that you can stand at all,” observed the marquess.

“I won’t let Livvy’s name be bandied about in pub—public!”

“Then, as you are the only one bandying names about, I suggest you take yourself home,” replied the marquess in a voice that brooked no argument.

The other men moved aside to give Sir Harry access to the door. There was nothing he could do but gather the tattered remains of his dignity, along with the pile of vowels, and quit the room.  As he stumbled noisily down the curved staircase to the ground floor, Lord Norville was moved to express the hope that the lad—a good sort, really, and not at all himself tonight—would reach his home without tumbling into the Thames.

“I shall see him home.” Lord Mannerly rose from his chair, prepared to suit the word to the deed.

“In his present mood, I doubt he will wish for an escort,” warned Norville. “He seems to fancy a grudge against you, Mannerly.”

“He will never know I am there,” promised the marquess, and quitted the room in Sir Harry’s wake.

As soon as his footsteps faded away, the gaming room became a whirlwind of activity.

“A pony says Lord Mannerly beats Sir Harry to the altar with the Darby chit!” shouted one gamester above the hubbub.

“Make it a monkey!” said another.

“I’ll cover that bet!” cried a third. “Garçon! The betting book!”

* * * *

Sir Harry, unaware of the commotion he had left behind, staggered off in the direction of Curzon Street. Pools of feeble yellow light from the streetlamps penetrated the fog sufficiently to illuminate his way, although not so brightly as to reveal a second figure following at a discreet distance. Arriving at his town house, he tried the door and found it locked. He raised his cane to rap for Coombes to let him in, but some still-cognizant corner of his brain realized the folly of this action, and stayed his hand. Gradually it all returned to him: his disguise, the events at Vauxhall, and “Lady Hawthorne” supposedly asleep in her bed. No, he could not enter the house where he might be seen; to do so might raise questions, the answers to which would bring discovery, and with it disaster. Sir Harry stepped back to ponder the matter, applying all his powers of concentration (which, at that moment, were not much) to the problem.

The façade of his house jutted out some six feet beyond those of its immediate neighbors on either side, giving the house the benefit of a narrow side window on each floor in addition to those in the front and back. Beyond contributing to the window tax, these windows had the advantage of bringing sunlight into the rooms during the daylight hours, but at this particular time, Sir Harry was more interested in their potential for clandestine entrance. In keeping with the century-old fashion for
rus in urbe,
a large stone urn had been positioned in the corner formed by the adjoining walls, from whence sprang a stout ivy which climbed the wall to the roof.

Inspired, Sir Harry strode over to the um, took hold of the ivy, and tugged with all his might. Upon finding that the plant would indeed support his weight, he removed his shoes, tucked them into the waistband of his breeches, and began to climb—a difficult feat for any man, but for one in his present inebriated condition, one nothing short of miraculous. He was perhaps some twelve feet off the ground when a slight sound from the street caught his attention. He looked down, and the sight of
terra firma
so far below was sufficient to shock him into a state approaching sobriety. However, he managed to maintain his hold on his leafy ladder, and at length reached the upper window. He rapped on it as loudly as he dared, and was soon rewarded by the sight of Higgins on the other side.

“Sir Harry!” cried his faithful servant. “Whatever are you doing out there, sir?”

“Trying to come inside, you nodcock! Open the window and let me in!”

Bobbing his head in agreement, Higgins threw open the sash and, seizing his master by the arm, dragged him over the casement. Sir Harry landed in a heap on top of his hapless valet, whereupon the shocked manservant uttered, “Sir, you reek of brandy!”

Sir Harry would have reiterated the claim that he could hold his liquor with the best of them, but the sound of a footstep in the hall recalled him to his purpose.
“Shhh!
See who is at the door, Higgins.”

Higgins dragged the heavy brocade curtain across the open window, then shoved his master behind the drapery with such force that he almost knocked poor Sir Harry back out. Then, pausing only long enough to don his own wig and dressing gown, he crossed to the door just as a knock sounded on the other side of its paneled surface.

Sir Harry, watching from his hidden vantage point as Higgins opened the door, beheld a vision. Olivia wore a silk wrapper over her nightdress, her dark hair unbound and spilling over her shoulders in long, loose waves. Looking at her, Sir Harry felt an ache somewhere inside his chest, one that had nothing to do with the copious amounts of liquor he had poured down his gullet.