Love and Lady Lovelace

M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney

Copyright

Love and Lady Lovelace
Copyright © 1982 by Marion Chesney
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795320651

For my friend
Madeline Trezza

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

One

A well-sprung travelling coach bowled through the Oxfordshire woods at a smart pace. Its occupants were a fashionable lady dressed in the latest mode (yellow straw hat á la Pamela, loose pelisse of appleblossom sarsnet over a muslin gown) and an elderly companion in a neat round gown, plain bonnet, and kid half boots.

The younger woman craned her neck and stared up at the delicate tracery of spring leaves and cried, “Oh, Tabby! It is so good to be home again.”

Her companion, Miss Tabitha Wilkins, gave a sniff. “I told you so, Lady Lovelace,” she said. “I told you over and over again that there was no place like England but you would go dragging me about these heathenish places.”

“Italy is hardly a heathenish place,” laughed Lady Lovelace. “Never mind, Tabby, we shall soon be at Beaton Malden and no place could be more English than that!”

“If it’s still there,” said Miss Wilkins gloomily. “I don’t know what you were about, my lady, giving Beaton Malden into the care of Mr. Bertram. You’ve got a perfectly good steward in Mr. Worthy, perfectly good.”

“Oh, Tabby,” expostulated Lady Lovelace. “Beaton Malden is the best-run estate in England. Even Bertram could not do much to it in a year. Now, spare me your dark looks. Why don’t you like my cousin?”

“Mr. Bertram Warrell is a charming wastrel,” said the companion. “You know my opinion of him but you keep asking me, as if by some chance I should have changed my mind.”

“You just don’t trust anyone young,” said Lady Lovelace severely. “Bertram suggested looking after the estate because he wanted to try his hand at taking some responsibility. Most commendable in a man of only one-and-twenty. He will have managed quite well, Tabby. You’ll see.”

“I hope so. Goodness knows, my lady, you’ve fought and struggled hard enough to gain Beaton Malden.”

An impish smile curled the ends of Lady Lovelace’s pink lips. “Yes, I did, didn’t I, Tabby?” she laughed. “But now I am a free woman. There is no need for me to marry ever again.”

Miss Tabitha Wilkins’s shrewd gray eyes turned on her mistress, noticing the exquisite little face with its huge hazel eyes, the gold and brown curls peeping saucily from under the wide brim of the straw hat, and gave a wintry smile. “Does my lady never envisage being in love?”

“Love!” exclaimed Amaryllis, Lady Lovelace, with all the wisdom of her twenty-seven years. “Love is the only weapon we poor females have. But that is all it is—a weapon. I have made my fortune using love, love has never used me.”

“Fustian,” mumbled her companion, but Lady Lovelace was gazing out of the carriage window at a waterfall tumbling down through the rocks and trees, glinting and flashing in the sun, and did not hear.

Lady Lovelace was a widow twice over. She married a wealthy squire when she was seventeen and acquired her first fortune on his death two years later. At twenty-one, she married the rich and ailing Jeremy, Lord Lovelace and added his fortune to her own when he died on her twenty-fifth birthday.

Lady Lovelace had good reason for her seemingly cold-blooded attitude to love.

She had not been born an aristocrat but the daughter of a poor country parson. Her mother had died when she was a small child and her father died on her sixteenth birthday, leaving her to take care of her two younger sisters with no money and no future at all. And so she had married the squire, thus securing a home for her beloved sisters, Sarah and Bella. No sooner had the squire died than Sarah and Bella had started demanding a London Season and their older sister, Amaryllis, found she could refuse them nothing.

She gave her hand in marriage to Jeremy, Lord Lovelace, and gave her sisters the Season and aristocratic connections they craved. Both married well.

After the death of the elderly Lord Lovelace, Lady Lovelace had diligently attended to the demands of her late lord’s estate, Beaton Malden. She spent long hours in the saddle, visiting the farmers and tenants, discussing livestock and crops. She knew that she was in danger of having the label of eccentricity pasted on her, for Society did not approve of “lady farmers,” the women who ran their country estates single-handed, but she no longer cared for the opinion of Society. She firmly believed in the patriarchal kind of care of estates and tenants, sensibly believing that people worked with a better heart if they were reasonably fed and housed. But her sisters, Sarah and Bella, had come on a visit with their staid husbands, moaning that their beloved Amaryllis was being damned as a quiz—and just look how it was affecting their reputations!

And so Lady Lovelace had found a competent steward in Mr. Worthy and had made plans for a journey to Italy. But her weak spot was not only the love she had for her selfish sisters but for her cousin, Bertram Warrell. It was paradoxical that Lady Lovelace, who claimed to despise love, should be such a victim of it. But she would have been vastly surprised had she been told such a thing and secretly believed herself to be very hardhearted because she had not loved either of her husbands, although, as she very well knew, that was one thing they had thankfully never found out. She had been a very tender, good, and loving wife to both of them.

Perhaps if either marriage had been blessed with children, then Amaryllis would have found an outlet for her strong maternal streak. As it was, it all flowed toward her sisters and to Bertram Warrell, and all three made the very most of it.

Miss Tabitha Wilkins, her companion, had been rescued by Lady Lovelace from a genteel life of near starvation. Lady Lovelace had found her fainting in the village street of Beaton Malden in front of a baker’s window. She had taken the old lady home and had summoned the best doctor in the district, who had promptly diagnosed malnutrition. On her recovery, Miss Tabitha had grimly refused to accept charity and so Lady Lovelace had hired her in the post of paid companion. She enjoyed Miss Wilkins’s astringent remarks and allowed her a great deal of license. Lady Lovelace would have been startled to find that her “Tabby’s” gruff remarks covered a whole world of love and gratitude and devotion.

But then Lady Lovelace was not good at recognizing love in any shape or form. Just as she was unaware that she gave it so freely.

“We’re home,” said Miss Tabitha Wilkins gruffly, turning her head away so that her young mistress should not see the sentimental tears standing out in her eyes.

Beaton Malden, the house and estates from which the nearby village took its name, had been the property of the late Lord Lovelace and now belonged to his widow. It was like a young village in itself. There was the large and elegant house, designed in the Italianate style and built in the last century. There was a home farm and extensive gardens. Meat and poultry were produced on the home farm and slaughtered there; vegetables, fruit, and flowers were grown in the gardens and glasshouses; butter was churned, beer was brewed, wines, cordials, and medicines were concocted, eggs preserved, soap and candles made, and laundry washed in great quantities. There was a carpenter’s shop where furniture was made and repaired along with gates and fencing, and a blacksmith’s forge for shoeing horses and making farm implements. All these many departments had their expert in charge. And the great army of people who were employed to keep the house and estate running smoothly depended on Lady Lovelace for their livelihood.

“Oh, there’s Mackintosh!” cried Lady Lovelace, waving to the familiar figure of the Scottish head gardener. To her surprise, he touched his cap and bent again to his work. No smile. No welcome.

“Well, that’s odd,” said Lady Lovelace, sinking back against the carriage upholstery in surprise. “His spleen must be disordered. I’ve never known Mackintosh to be grumpy before.”

The carriage swung around under the porticoed entrance and the Lovelace butler, Foster, came out onto the steps, flanked by two footmen. All three stared grimly off into the middle distance.

“Dear me,” said Lady Lovelace. “Shades of the French Revolution. How angry they look. Do you think they are about to string me up to the nearest lanterne, Tabby?”

“They’ve had a year of your cousin, my lady. ’Tis enough to make a saint look sour.”

“Now, Tabby, you go too far. Why, Foster! As you can see, I am arrived home.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

“Well, don’t stand glowering at me. What is the matter?”

“It is not for me to say, my lady.”

“Well,” snapped Lady Lovelace in exasperation, “if you won’t say why you are so twitty, who will? You irritating old bu… butler!”

Foster continued to stand rather in the attitude of a man facing the firing squad. Lady Lovelace’s temper mounted.

“Don’t stand there like Saint Thingummy on the whatsit, Foster, or I shall be strongly tempted to shake you. We shall go into the house and I shall find out what is amiss if it takes all day.”

“Very good, my lady,” said Foster in that particularly irritating type of hollow voice which only the best butlers can adopt when they want to convey to their superiors that life is full of withered fruit.

Lady Lovelace walked through the entrance hall and up to the drawing room on the first floor. She noticed that the staff were not assembled to meet her. Then she decided they had probably not received her letter announcing her arrival and were a little put out. But that still did not explain Foster’s attitude.

She untied the strings of her bonnet and threw it on the sofa and walked over to the fireplace where an applewood fire of miniscule proportions was burning on the hearth.

“Now, Foster,” said Lady Lovelace. “You may begin.”

Mr. Foster pulled down his striped waistcoat and looked at the highly polished toes of his flat shoes. He had forgotten his mistress’s rather autocratic manner. She still looked disconcertingly like a girl just out of the schoolroom with her huge eyes and tumbling curls and tiny stature.

“Well?” she was demanding ominously.

The butler took a deep breath and fixed his protuberant gaze on the marble fireplace, where a white marble god was tearing the white marble clothes off a placid and bucolic white marble Greek lady. “My Heart is Heavy,” he said portentously, “on account of not having been paid a Groat since your ladyship departed for Foreign Shores.”

“Really, Foster, can’t you speak a little plainer? Nobody pays anyone in groats anymore so it is not in the least surprising that you have not received one.”

Of course, Lady Lovelace knew exactly what he was talking about but the whole idea of one of her staff not receiving any wages at all was too terrible to face.

“I have not received a penny, my lady, if I may put it that way,” the butler was saying, “and neither has any of the other staff.”

“What!” Lady Lovelace thought wildly of all the footmen and housemaids and dairymaids and gardeners. “It’s not possible. How has this come about? Send Mr. Worthy to me.”

“Mr. Worthy is working for the Earl of Chaphem.”

“What!” I must stop saying “what,” thought Lady Lovelace. But what else can one say but “what?”

“He was dismissed,” pursued the butler with gloomy relish, “after the first month of your ladyship’s absence.”

“Why was I not informed of this?”

“If you remember,” intoned Foster, addressing the fireplace, “your ladyship desired to be free of the cares of the estate and therefore left no address.”

“Get me Mr. Bertram Warrell immediately,” said Lady Lovelace. “This is outrageous!”

“I fear I cannot summon Mr. Warrell.”

“In Heaven’s name, why not?”

“He has Departed to the Other Shore.”

“Gone to America!”

“No, my lady, the bourne from which no traveler returns.”

“Dead?”

“As a doornail, my lady.”

Miss Tabitha bustled forward, her face red with anger. “Off with you, Foster. Cannot you see that my lady has had enough?”

“Leave me, Tabby,” said Lady Lovelace faintly. “How did Mr. Warrell die?”

“He was shot, my lady.”

“Where?”

“In the heart, an it please my lady.”

“I did not mean in which part of his anatomy. Where did this take place?”

“In a certain gambling establishment. Mr. Warrell was cheating at cards.”

“But that is ridiculous. All the ton cheat at cards. You know that, Foster. Even the Duchess of Devizes marked her cards with a hatpin the last time she was here. That was surely not the reason he committed suicide?”

“Oh, he did not commit suicide, my lady. He was shot by Mr. Jimmy Andover. Mr. Jimmy Andover had lost a fortune to Mr. Warrell and found Mr. Warrell cheating at cards. He challenged Mr. Warrell to a duel. Mr. Andover, regretting the duel and knowing himself to be an excellent shot and Mr. Warrell to be a poor marksman, fired in the air, my lady.”

“And hit Bertram by mistake!”

“No, my lady. The duel was finished and both parties were repairing to their respective carriages when Mr. Warrell attempted to shoot Mr. Andover in the back. Mr. Andover was very angry, my lady, and promptly turned about and shot Mr. Warrell through the heart.”

“This cannot be true. Bertram was weak and silly but never vicious.”

“As your ladyship pleases.”

“You obviously do not agree.”

The butler gave a little cough. “There was a great deal written about the incident in the newspapers, my lady. The seconds of both parties testified to Mr. Warrell’s attempt to shoot Mr. Andover in the back.”

“I insist that you go and lie down,” said Miss Tabitha. “You have had a very great shock, my lady.”

“Yes,” said Lady Lovelace dully. “But I have a great deal of responsibility. I have no time to mourn Bertram’s death. I must find out what he has been doing with my funds. I… I… gave him carte blanche, Tabby. He was so young. He seemed so determined to make a go of it. We… we… laughed over his determination to turn farmer and… and… I was so sure he would do well….”

Her eyes filled with tears but she pushed her companion away. “You must leave me now, Tabby,” she said gently. “I have so much work to do.”

Miss Tabitha Wilkins saw little of her young mistress in the following weeks. Lawyers and bankers from London came and went. Lady Lovelace was closeted in the estates office with them, trays were sent in with her meals, tenants and farmers arrived for lengthy consultations.

At last Amaryllis Lovelace appeared in the dining room one evening to join her companion for dinner.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been much company, Tabby,” she said wearily. “I now know the extent of the damage that Bertram has done. I am ruined. Unless I can come about in the next few months, Beaton Malden will have to go under the hammer.”

“Take out a mortgage, entail the estate,” suggested Miss Wilkins.

“Oh, Tabby, Bertram even thought of that! What a fool I have been. I allowed him complete control of my finances and he gambled and gambled and gambled. The poor silly boy couldn’t win even when he was cheating. I think the only time he won anything at all was when he was playing Jimmy Andover.”

“What will you do?” asked Miss Wilkins, thinking that if the “poor silly boy” were alive at that moment she would cheerfully have strangled him with her bare hands.

The companion suddenly thought of an idea. “I know,” she said cheerfully. “Ask your sisters. Their husbands are very rich.”

“Oh, no,” said Lady Lovelace with a slight blush. “I could not do that, Tabby. They would help me, of course,” she added firmly as she caught the cynical gleam in her companion’s eye. “But they are both expecting babies and it is not the right time to burden them with my cares.”

“Then what can you do?” asked Miss Wilkins.

Lady Lovelace’s beautiful eyes lit up with a mischievous twinkle. “I shall do what I have done before, Tabby. I shall marry a very rich man, so rich that when he finds out I have no fortune, he will not mind in the least. The state of my finances must be kept very quiet. I have all the disadvantages of being twice a widow, being past the first blush of youth, and not having any money at all. Both my husbands knew I was poor and did not care because, you see, Tabby, they were both so very old.”

Her eyes looked wistful for a moment. “But this time, Tabby, if I must be married again, I would like to marry someone nearer my own age… and… and… perhaps have children, you know. I think I should like children.”

“About time, too,” snapped Miss Wilkins, rudely, to cover up the fact that what she wanted to say was, “Oh, how awful that you should have to go through this again. Sell this place! Must you always be mother to the undeserving? First those nasty, giggling, selfish sisters, then that villain Bertram, and now acres of servants who would probably serve just as well under a new landlord.”

But Lady Lovelace had not heard her acid remark. She was talking aloud, thinking out her strategy. “I must become the fashion, Tabby. All the crack, you know.

“I must appear witty, which is quite easy, you know, for one is never really supposed to be actually witty since intelligence is not at all fashionable. My toilette must be a tiny bit daring but in a ladylike manner. I must capture a husband in the first month of the Season, for I really don’t think we can afford more than a month. I must become an Exclusive and be invited to all the very best places and never of course dance anywhere on Wednesday but at Almack’s. Don’t look so worried, Tabby-cat. I can assure you, I am no more or less mercenary than any other female on the marriage mart. Yes, I think a youngish man. Not necessarily attractive but rich. Oh, dear, he must be very rich… if I am ever going to get us out of this coil!”

“Saved all the money you ever gave me,” said Miss Wilkins, staring fixedly at her plate. “Have it. Don’t want it m’self.”

Lady Lovelace felt a lump rising in her throat. She had not broken down, no, not once, since she had realized the full extent of the disaster, but that simple offer from Miss Wilkins nearly overset her.

“No, Tabby,” she said gently. “I did not fail before, and I shall not fail this time. I would go into the poorhouse before I would touch one penny of your earnings. Dear Tabby.”

She reached her hand across the table but Miss Wilkins, dying of embarrassment and inarticulate love, affected not to notice it.

Lord Philip Osborne, youngest son of the Duke of Dunster, leaned on the rail of the ship which was bearing him slowly across the Indian Ocean, back home to England.

The sun beat down on his uncovered head; the water stretched for miles, hard and blue under a hard and blue sky.

He was thirty-four years of age and had come to the conclusion that his life had been wasted. All he had ever wanted to do was satisfy his interest in agriculture and farm some land. But as the youngest son, he stood to inherit very little. He had therefore made the army his career and had ended up a sepoy colonel in India. After years of army life so far from home, he was tired of harsh colors and foreign voices. Tired of the petty politics of regimental life. Tired of the memsahibs and their lack of understanding of the Indian and the petty snobberies they had brought with them from England. Tired of himself because he had not been greedy enough to make his fortune. He had some prize money and a pension, that was all.

He wanted to spend his life under gray English skies looking at wet, green England fields. He wanted to put down roots. He wanted money.

“I want a lot of money,” he told the uncaring ocean, not aware he had spoken aloud until an amused voice said in his ear, “And how do you propose to go about it, Phil?”

He turned from the rail and smiled down into the eyes of his friend, Mr. Harry Bagshot.

“I don’t know, Harry. Have you any ideas?”

“Well,” said Mr. Bagshot, pulling his lower lip. “You won’t take any of mine and I’ve offered you money often enough. I think you should marry an heiress. Lots of the chaps do.”

“But isn’t that a trifle unfair? Surely a girl, heiress or not, would expect me to be in love with her?”

“Oh, no,” said Harry blithely. “Not in London. No one marries for love, you know. In fact, it’s quite frowned on. Not at all the thing. One marries for money or a title. Now there are plenty of rich Cits who want to marry into the aristocracy. Their daughter gets the title, you get the money, everybody’s happy. ’Course it’s a good idea to pretend you’ve got a bit of money at first. Otherwise you don’t get invited to the best places. You know what people think of younger sons.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Philip. “Good enough to make up a table at a dinner party but not good enough to marry.”

“Exactly. Now just look at yourself. You’ve got everything but money. When it comes to sports, you’re a top sawyer so all the men like you, and all the ladies think you’re Adonis.”

“Spare my blushes!”

“Fact,” said Mr. Bagshot, looking up at his tall friend. “I sometimes think you don’t know how handsome you are! Now take me, f’r instance. I’m glad I’ve got money. That’s what makes me attractive.”

“I never think it matters much what men look like,” said Lord Philip. “Surely it’s a matter of personality.”

“Only to another man,” said Mr. Bagshot gloomily.

Mr. Bagshot was, in fact, not unattractive. He was small in stature but he was slim and had twinkling blue eyes and an unruly mop of chestnut curls and a puckish face.

Lord Philip, on the other hand, was often described as Byronic, although that was not the case. There was nothing wild or poetic in his attire. His coats were tailored to perfection. His locks were carefully arranged in the style known as the Windswept. From Calcutta to Bombay, he had been dubbed as the Beau Brummell of India. He had jet-black hair and a lightly tanned skin. His eyes were bright green and heavy-lidded. He had thin black brows which gave him a somewhat satanic appearance. His nose was high-bridged, his mouth firm, if a trifle thin, and his chin square.

His movements were slow, languid, and lazy, belying the hard muscle and sinew of his slim figure.

As far as the ladies were concerned, he had never set himself to please, and many disappointed hopefuls had claimed to have been repelled by his icy manner. One colonel’s lady had described him as being “insufferably polite at all times.”

He did not gamble much and he drank little. Mr. Bagshot suspected at times that Lord Philip was a bit of a Puritan. He was undoubtedly a rigidly self-disciplined man.

“I might do it,” said Lord Philip suddenly, his back to the rail. “I might just do it.”

“What?”

“Find myself an heiress.”

“That’s the stuff,” said Mr. Bagshot. “We’ll be home in time for the Season. I’ll trot you around all the Fashionables. But you’ll need to… to… well, flirt, and unbend a little.”

Lord Philip smiled down at him. “If,” he said lazily, “I find it a chore, I shall gaze into my heiress’s eyes and therein I shall see some green pastures and good farming land and she will find me the most passionate of men.”

“You know,” said Mr. Bagshot, “I don’t know who you’ll form a tendre for… but, damme, when you look like that, I declare I feel sorry for her already!”

Two

Society in London in the Regency was so much a kind of club that you could be said to be “in” or “out.” Only the “in,” or the Exclusives, as they called themselves, went to Almack’s.

Almack’s, the famous Assembly Rooms, was to be found just off St. James’s Street, in King Street. In the preceding century an enterprising Scot named Macall had juggled the letters of his name and founded Almack’s, thereby supplying Society with a secure rendezvous. Admission was by ticket only, called “vouchers of admission,” and the subscriptions were harder to secure than a peerage. You had to be scrutinized, put through your paces, and have your bloodline picked over by six formidable patronesses, who did, in fact, everything short of examining your teeth before you were finally accepted.

And all this for a superficially unexciting weekly event. A ball was held every Wednesday evening throughout the Season. There the very flower of the English aristocracy danced against a dull backdrop of plain, badly lit rooms and refreshed themselves with weak bohea, weak lemonade, thin slices of brown bread and butter, biscuits, and stale cake. This was all part of the very snobbery of Almack’s. Rich bankers and suchlike people might lavish hospitality on their guests, but at Almack’s, the guests themselves were the entertainment.

It is doubtful whether Lady Lovelace would have been allowed past these august portals had the patronesses had any length of time to study her background. A parson’s daughter who had married and outlived two elderly men would be suspect, to say the least. But Amaryllis had met Sally, Lady Jersey, at a party in Naples and had not liked her one bit, thinking her a vulgar, pushing woman, but she had carefully concealed her thoughts, and Lady Jersey, far from home and disoriented, had found Lady Lovelace charming.

On hearing that Amaryllis had arrived in London, she had sent her vouchers for Almack’s without really consulting her fellow patronesses and so Lady Lovelace was “in.”

The late Lord Lovelace had not favored the Season, considering anything that took him away from his beloved Beaton Malden a sheer waste of time. And so he had not maintained a town house.

Amaryllis had therefore rented one in Green Street and had already established a modest salon and a modest reputation as a beauty and a wit by the evening of Almack’s opening ball.

She had calculated the amount of money she would need to pull herself and her dependents out of the River Tick to a nicety and, although she had several possible suitors on a string, not one of them had enough wealth to suit her needs. When she had been in Naples, Amaryllis had spent money and entertained lavishly, and Lady Jersey was quick to put it about that the young widow was an heiress of considerable means.

This tantalizing piece of gossip worked its way up and down the clubs of St. James’s and finally came to the ears of none other than Lord Philip Osborne.

Rather in the manner of Lady Lovelace, Lord Philip had spent much of the money he had on setting himself up in style so that he would be able to attract an eligible fortune. He had so far put off stepping out into the world to look for a suitable partner since he thought he would stand a better chance with the daughter of some rich merchant. But the sheer mercenary aspect of his hunt made him hesitate. He was not familiar with any rich merchants and the idea of scraping acquaintance with them for the simple end of marrying one of their daughters went against the grain. He knew he was shortly about to dislike himself heartily as soon as he began his pursuit, and so he put it off from day to day.

At his friend Harry Bagshot’s insistence, he had learned to gamble enough and drink enough to have himself accounted “no end of a good fellow.” He was a good judge of horseflesh and his curricle and pair were the envy of every blood in town.

He had put himself in the hands of Weston, the tailor, and soon the dandies at the opera were craning their necks to see what Lord Philip was wearing with the same intense interest as they studied the famous Beau Brummell.

He had received vouchers for Almack’s, as had Mr. Bagshot. Harry Bagshot ruefully said he owed his own invitation to Lord Philip’s friendship rather than to any qualities that he himself might possess. In an effort to further his friend’s ambitions, Harry Bagshot had carefully put it about that Lord Philip was “a veritable nabob.” In fact, he had overdone it, and Lord Philip was happily unaware that Society considered him to be one of the richest men in England.

On the afternoon before Almack’s opening ball, Mr. Bagshot joined Lord Philip in the library in White’s Club in St. James’s Street, bubbling ever with news.

“I say, Phil,” he began. “You’ll never guess. I have the most tremendous news.”

“Why on earth don’t you remove your hat, dear boy?” said Lord Philip, looking at his friend’s curly-brimmed beaver.

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Bagshot, momentarily diverted. “One doesn’t remove one’s hat till one has been in the club over ten minutes!”

“Mad,” shrugged Lord Philip. “You’re all mad. Sit down and tell me the news that I can see bursting out of your ears.”

“I’ve found you an heiress,” said Mr. Bagshot, plumping himself down. “She will be at Almack’s tonight.”

“What? No rich merchant’s daughter? Who is this lady?”

“Lady Lovelace. Widow. Sally Jersey met her in Naples and says she’s as rich as Golden Ball. This Lady Lovelace is not in the first blush of youth….”

“Aha! There’s the rub! An antidote.”

“Not a bit of it. Toby Sommers says she’s vastly pretty and no end of a wit. He was at her salon t’other day—she has a salon on Mondays—and Maria Friend was there, you know, the bluestocking?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Oh, listen and stop interrupting or you’ll never find out anything. This Maria, she says to Lady Lovelace, she says, ‘Have you read Jane Austen? I just adore Jane Austen.’”

“To which your paragon replied?”

“To which Lady Lovelace replied, ‘I never read Jane Austen. Her books are so full of utterly commonplace people.’ There!”

“What an extremely silly remark to make,” said Lord Philip with distaste.

“Oh, you are such a stick-in-the-mud, Phil. Everyone thought it was monstrous funny.”

“Everyone is a coxcomb. I do not think I want to meet this Lady Lovelace.”

Harry Bagshot surveyed his friend. “I did not know you were looking for true love.”

“I’m not. I’ve made it quite clear to you, Harry, that I am looking for a fortune.”

“Then I’ve found you one.”

“There must be a certain amount of compatibility. I cannot see me sharing a marriage bed with a woman who makes pompous and stupid remarks about an author who is a genuine wit.”

“What a stoopid thing to say. When I share my marriage bed, I won’t be discussing novels, dear fellow. I say,” Harry looked furtively about the room and lowered his voice, “you ain’t, well, one of those?”

“One of what?”

“One of those,” whispered Harry, turning pink to the roots of his hair under Lord Philip’s cool, green gaze.

“I think the hot sun of India has addled your brains. Are you by any chance in fear and dread that I might form a tendre for you?” Lord Philip had taken out his quizzing glass the better to scrutinize his friend and one green eye, hideously magnified, stared awfully at the outraged and scarlet Mr. Bagshot.

“I didn’t mean that,” howled Mr. Bagshot. “I meant… are you a virgin?”

Lord Philip dropped his quizzing glass and looked with dawning amusement on his furiously blushing friend.

“No,” he said gently, “I am afraid I am not. It is possible, you know, to sample the delights of the marriage bed without actually being married. What on earth put such a totty-headed notion into your brain-box?”

“Well, I mean to say, taking a young woman in dislike just ’cos she don’t like Jane Austen.”

“I do not object to her dislike of Miss Austen. I object to her feeble attempt to set herself up as a wit at the expense of a writer who is one.”

“Well, you’re a hard man, Phil.”

“Perhaps you are right. I shall attend Almack’s and look at the… er… merchandise. There! Does that please you?”

“Now you’re being sensible. Remember to wear knee breeches and arrive before eleven o’clock or they won’t let you in.”

“Knee breeches” was not to be taken too literally. What was frowned on was the full-length informal trouser or pantaloon, a garment said to resemble two Continental towns in being Too-long and Too-loose. The more common and equally acceptable costume, introduced by Brummell, was the form-fitting black tights showing a modest amount of striped silk stocking encased in a flat black dancing slipper.

No one, but no one, was allowed into Almack’s after eleven o’clock. George Tickner, the American publisher, overheard the following dialogue at Almack’s.

“Lady Jersey, the Duke of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted.”

“What o’clock is it?”

“Seven minutes after eleven, your ladyship.”

“Give my compliments—give Lady Jersey’s compliments to the Duke of Wellington, and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of exclusion is such that hereafter no one can complain of its application. He cannot be admitted.”

“I won’t disgrace you,” said Lord Philip. “I really think all these silly despotic rules are ridiculous. The trouble with Society is that it has nothing better to do than play at being exclusive. Oh, don’t look so. I shall charm your heiress.”

“Lady Lovelace is supposed to be very frivolous,” said Mr. Bagshot doubtfully. “I trust you don’t mean to be strong and silent.”

“Not in the least. I shall be strong and garrulous.”

The object of this discussion was lying on a chaise longue in the drawing room of her house in Green Street reading a copy of Pride and Prejudice.

“I thought you didn’t like Miss Austen,” remarked Miss Wilkins, leaning over her shoulder.

“Oh, because I made that silly remark everyone is talking about? I have to say things like that, Tabby. That’s what passes for wit. Now, if I said anything at all witty or intelligent, no one in Society would find it in the least funny.”

“I have heard of a possible husband.”

“Really, Tabby! Don’t lean over me like that. Come around where I can see you. How did you find out and who is he?”

“While you were engaged in denigrating Miss Austen,” said Miss Wilkins dryly, “I was talking to Miss Armitage’s companion.” Miss Priscilla Armitage, a gushing young debutante, had attached herself to Amaryllis, after meeting her at a supper party at Vauxhall. Miss Wilkins went on, “Miss Armitage, it appears, had great hopes of attracting the attention of the latest star on the London scene.”

“Who is…?”

“Who is Lord Philip Osborne. No, don’t look up the peerage. I did that. He is the youngest son of the Duke of Dunster and stands to inherit practically nil. But he went out to India with his regiment and is come back a nabob. Not only is he extremely rich, but he is reputed to dress as well as Brummell, drive to an inch, and to be prodigious handsome in a devilish kind of a way.”

“La! This paragon will not be searching around for a widow in her twenty-seventh year.”

“I don’t see why he should not find you attractive,” said Miss Wilkins. “You have never really been courted, my lady. As I understand it, your first husband, Squire Rumstead, took advantage of your predicament and practically proposed marriage over your poor father’s coffin.”

“Well, perhaps. But he was a kind man. A little bit noisy and loud in his cups but so contrite afterwards. And he was so kind to little Sarah and Bella.”

Miss Wilkins primmed up her mouth and turned her head away, as she always did when Lady Lovelace mentioned her sisters.

“Do you think this Lord Philip will be at Almack’s?” asked Amaryllis.

“Bound to be,” said Miss Wilkins. “He’s all the crack.”

Amaryllis sighed. “I shall try to engage his attention but I fear it is looking too high. I keep hoping Mr. Worthy will work some miracle and perhaps I may not have to get married at all. It was amazing kind of him to return so swiftly to my employ. He will put the land in good heart again. But the returns from the harvests are a long way away and there is so much debt. So very much. You know, Tabby, it seems as if Bertram was not a particularly pleasant young man after all.”

“So the whole of London Society would have us believe, my lady.”

“Well, so… but to return to our muttons. I think perhaps I should use a little paint, Tabby.”

“Never!” said Miss Wilkins, appalled. “Your skin is beautiful, my lady, and the blanc that these women plaster themselves with has a lead base and you will end up dying of cosmetics.”

“I bought a packet of Spanish papers, Tabby. Now, they would not hurt anyone. I don’t know why they’re called Spanish because they are made in China and they are so easy to carry. See, I have it here. The box holds twenty-four papers. Is it not cunning?

“See, there is a small black paper for the eyebrows. This one which looks green actually gives a very fine red for the cheeks and a white one for the neck and forehead. You just wet the tip of your little finger and then transfer the color from the paper to your face.”

“Handsome is…”

“As handsome does. Oh, Tabby. If I am going to succeed in alluring the devilish Lord Philip, then I must endeavor to appear a little younger.”

“You don’t look a day above nineteen!” said Miss Wilkins stoutly. “Good health is the only beauty aid anyone needs.”

“Oh, dear. You sound just like Miss Armitage. She has a stern regime. She rises at six in the morning, takes a walk at a brisk pace for up to three miles to work up an appetite for a simple breakfast of broiled beafsteak (lean and underdone), plain biscuits, and a half pint of Scotch ale.”

“I don’t know why you cultivate her company, my lady. Miss Armitage is all airs and fancies.”

“Nonsense! Miss Armitage is just what I need. She would make anyone’s remarks appear witty. And she does giggle so. You are making me nervous, talking about this Lord Philip. He will probably not notice me. Unfortunately, Sally Jersey has made everyone in London think I am a great heiress and so far I have attracted a great deal of unwanted attention from every gazetted fortune hunter in London.

“Ah, well, my Tabby. We shall arm ourselves to the teeth in all our finery and see what the evening will bring.”

Amaryllis had heard enough about Almack’s not to be disappointed by the plain rooms and plain food. The dancing floor was roped off like a sort of cattle pen. But the guests were magnificent in their finery and Amaryllis could only be glad that she had taken such pains over her appearance.

She was wearing a round train-dress of Moravian muslin, let in all around with fine footing lace and fastened up the side with gold embossed clasps. Her brown-gold curls were confined with a gold filet and her flat dancing slippers were embroidered with gold thread. She had not been used to much in the way of company apart from the elderly friends of her husbands, and was inclined to view any mortal under the age of forty as being in the prime of life.

She cheerfully danced quadrilles and gallops and reels and country dances with various young men, most of whom had not a feather to fly with and were obviously hoping to make her fortune their own.

“Has he come yet?” she asked Miss Wilkins.

“Lord Philip? No, not yet. Perhaps he will not come. It only lacks fifteen minutes to the eleventh hour.”

“I shall sit down with you, Tabby, if we can but remove ourselves from the view of my fortune-hunting partners for a few moments. Behind this plant under the gallery will be just the refuge I need. Sit beside me, Tabby. How I wish I were home! It is all very fatiguing. I think perhaps I should put it about that I have lost all my money on ’Change. I cannot see any possible suitors for the forest of gallants devoted to my imaginary fortune. Ah! Lucky Miss Armitage! Who is that she is dancing with?”

Miss Wilkins peered round a pillar. “From his looks and dress, I would say that that is none other than Lord Philip. He must have just arrived.”

“Indeed! He is very handsome. Miss Armitage is suitable for him, don’t you think? She has those pale blond looks which the ladies swear are so unfashionable and all the men seem to admire. And her father is a general so it is a military family and that must appeal to him. Only see. She has made him laugh!”

“Then you should be encouraged,” said Miss Wilkins sourly. “For if Priscilla Armitage can make him laugh, then you, my lady, will send him into enraptured whoops.”

“What a terribly long dance it is, to be sure,” said Amaryllis, impatiently tapping her little foot. “I have decided not to try to attract him, Tabby. I am suddenly weary of the whole thing. Let us retire to the refreshment room and fortify ourselves with weak tea and stale bread.”

The dance finished at last. Lord Philip found it extremely long, too. Although he was often separated from his fair partner by the movements of the dance, she nonetheless contrived to say a very great deal to him any time the figure brought them together.

“Where is your fair widow?” he demanded of Harry Bagshot, after he had thankfully delivered Miss Armitage to her next partner.

“In the refreshment room,” said Mr. Bagshot. “I just saw Toby Anstruther following her there. I know him so I can arrange an introduction.”

The two men walked into the refreshment room. Mr. Bagshot made straight for an extremely pretty lady who was standing flanked by an elderly dragon of a female with a sour expression. “Ah, Toby, m’boy,” cried Mr. Bag-shot. “Always with the prettiest of ladies, heh! Allow me to introduce Lord Philip Osborne. Met him in India.”

Toby Anstruther reluctantly introduced Lady Lovelace and her companion.

Lord Philip and Amaryllis covertly surveyed each other while Mr. Anstruther and Mr. Bag-shot exchanged hearty, pointless gossip.

Amaryllis saw a very tall, slim man with strange, glittering green eyes in a lightly tanned face. He wore his black hair unpowdered. His evening coat was molded to his broad shoulders and his black tights revealed a pair of long muscular legs. His cravat was an intricate snowy piece of sculpture, lightly starched.

Lord Philip looked quizzically down at the pretty, diminutive figure before him. She had a pointed elfin face with very large hazel eyes fringed with heavy black lashes. Her curls were shining and glossy and he found himself wondering what oil or cosmetic she had used to achieve the effect, and after a few moments realized with surprise that her hair was purely and simply very clean indeed.

“Since Harry and Mr. Anstruther seem to have so much to talk about,” he said lightly, “they will excuse us, I think, if we wander off and chat for a little.”

He steered her expertly to a small sofa in the corner. Mr. Bagshot and Mr. Anstruther turned and looked after them with their mouths open. Miss Wilkins, after a little hesitation, whisked herself off to join the chaperones in the ballroom.

Amaryllis felt strangely breathless. Here was no elderly gentleman to be easily charmed, but a disturbingly handsome man who was looking at her in a strangely calculating way.

“May I compliment you on your gown?” he began. “Your beauty quite overshadows that of any other lady in these rooms.”

“Sir, you flatter me.”

“On the contrary. I speak the truth.”

“You speak the truth in manner so bored and so indifferent that it quite takes the charm from the compliment. On the other hand, had you said it in any other tone then the flattery would have been too much.”

“I maintain an attitude of bored indifference to mask the confusion of my emotions, my intense delight in your company.”

Amaryllis raised her eyes to his in amazement. His own looked down into hers, as cold and green as the arctic seas.

“I shall be the envy of every man at the ball,” he went on, spoiling his additional gallantry by impatiently flicking a piece of fluff from the sleeve of his coat.

“Then I am surely the envy of every woman,” laughed Amaryllis with a lightness she did not feel. “Everyone talks of naught else but our latest nabob.”

“Dear me? Am I accounted so rich?”

“Yes.”

“And you? You find that renders me attractive in your eyes?”

“Really,” said Amaryllis quite crossly. “If someone has an attractive personality, then that is all that is important.”

“And you find mine attractive?”

“La! I hardly know you.”

“Nor I you. But that does not stop me from finding you attractive. Immensely so.”

“You are embarrassing me quite dreadfully,” said Amaryllis, becoming increasingly annoyed with him. Did he have to sound as if he did not mean a word of what he was saying?

“My humble apologies. What does one usually talk about? I am not in the way of being in Society.”

Amaryllis looked at him again to see if he were by any chance mocking her but his expression was quite serious.

“Well, one talks about the latest on-dit, the races at Newmarket, who is about to marry whom… that sort of thing.”

“I must learn. For none of that interests me in the slightest.”

“No doubt you consider yourself intellectually above such trivia?”

“Yes.”

“My dance, Lady Lovelace.” Amaryllis looked up gratefully into the round, florid face and small black eyes of Toby Anstruther. All she wanted to do was escape from this infuriating lord who made her feel breathless, awkward, and gauche.

She arose in a flurry of silks and then hesitated with her hand on Toby Anstruther’s arm.

Lord Philip had risen punctiliously to his feet.

“Lady Lovelace,” he said gently.

“Yes?” replied Amaryllis impatiently.

“May I have the honor of the next waltz with you?”

Amaryllis smiled her relief. “I have not yet obtained permission to waltz, so I must refuse.”

Lord Philip raised his thin eyebrows. “So one needs permission, does one? Amazing! I shall secure that permission, madam.”

“In that case, how can I refuse?” mocked Amaryllis, tugging at Toby Anstruther’s sleeve. As she walked toward the ballroom, she hoped that one of the stern patronesses would give the arrogant Lord Philip a much-deserved setdown.

She tried to analyze the turmoil of her feelings as she nimbly executed the steps of a reel to Neil Gow’s fiddling. At last she decided that she did not like Lord Philip. He was arrogant and cold and, she suspected, very unkind. But at least he would soon find that permission to perform the waltz was not easily given and certainly not at the last minute. So that was all right. It would be better to put any idea of a younger type of man out of her mind and return to the gentlemen she knew best—the elderly.

Accordingly, when the waltz was announced, she went to take her place beside Miss Wilkins. Her large eyes blinked in astonishment. For no sooner had she sat down and arranged her skirts, than Lord Philip was bending over her hand, a mocking smile on his face.

“How did you obtain permission?” she asked, as he put his arm around her waist.

“Ah, that is my secret.” He smiled. “How enchantingly you dance!”

And Amaryllis, who had just trodden on his toe in her confusion, scowled quite horribly at his middle waistcoat button.

She was intensely aware of his nearness, his maleness, and the pressure of his hand on the small of her back.

After a few moments, he said, “The top of your head is quite enchanting, Lady Lovelace. I appear to have been studying it for quite some time.”

She looked up then, defiantly, an irritable burst of anger taking away her shyness. “You seem to take delight in teasing me.”

“Ah, no. I am trying to change the expression in those beautiful eyes.”

“From what, I pray?”

“From wariness and calculation, to adoration.”

Amaryllis felt a stab of sheer fright. Was that how she looked? Had her mercenary motives become writ large on her face for all the world to see?

She tried to laugh but in her ears it sounded like an inane titter.

Amaryllis searched around the room for something or someone to talk about to take his attention from her eyes.

“Oh, there is Mr. Brummell,” she said with relief. “I did not know he was present this evening.”

“Are you a devotee of Brummell?”

“I leave that to the men,” said Amaryllis. “Take away Mr. Brummell’s tailor and… why!… you have nothing left.”

“Ah, no,” he mocked. “Take away Mr. Brummell and his tailor would have nothing left. As our Beau points out, he makes his tailor, his tailor does not make him.”

Amaryllis bit her lip in vexation. All her beaux so far had greeted all her sallies with chortles of glee and had hailed her as a wit. She did not like to be contradicted.

“I suppose you slavishly copy everything that Mr. Brummell wears,” she countered.

“Not all. Most things. You ladies have your fashion plates to tell you what to wear, we gentlemen have our Mr. Brummell, who has the advantage of being a moving fashion plate.”

“Oh, what are we talking about Beau Brummell for?” said Amaryllis pettishly.

“I don’t know. You tell me. You introduced the subject.”

“I see you are determined to argue with me,” said Amaryllis in a low voice.

“I? Never. I am merely debating with an intelligent woman whose beauty sets my senses reeling.”

Her eyes flew upward to his to be met again with that cool green gaze.

“Then why do you look so,” snapped Amaryllis. “Your expression makes all your compliments appear trite.”

“True love is trite,” said Lord Philip. “And I am in love with you.”

I think I have her with that one, he thought cynically as her eyes dropped and a delicate blush mantled her cheek.

“My hard expression,” he went on, pressing his hand firmly into the small of her back and yet managing to keep her at the regulation twelve inches away from him, “is because I try to mask my feelings. I have never been in love with any woman before and I don’t quite know how to go about it.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Amaryllis breathlessly. “You are funning.”

“Drive with me tomorrow,” he said urgently. “At least accord me that honor. If it embarrasses you, I shall talk only of the fashionable scene. You will drive with me tomorrow. At five.” And without waiting for her reply, he kissed her glove and strode off in the direction of the refreshment room, leaving her to be claimed by her next partner.

Amaryllis danced on in a daze. All this was so much more than she believed she could handle. But he had said he loved her. And she would see him tomorrow. Of course, he was an attractive man but it was only his fortune in which she was interested. Somehow, her step became lighter and her eyes shone brighter, and several most eligible elderly men sighed as they watched her, and would have been quite prepared to lay their fortunes at her feet. But the subtle poison of love, unknown to Amaryllis, was already seeping through her veins toward her heart and she did not notice or pay heed to any other man at the ball for the rest of the night.

Three

“Well, how did it go? I did not see you after your waltz with Lady Lovelace.”

Harry Bagshot was sprawled in an armchair in Lord Philip’s lodgings, watching his friend being shaved by his valet.

“Very well,” mumbled Lord Philip from behind a mask of lather. “Wait until I am finished.”

Harry swung his booted foot and admired the gloss of his toe cap.

At last Lord Philip was finished and the valet dismissed.

“Well?” pursued Harry impatiently.

“I did quite well,” said Lord Philip. “I am taking her driving this afternoon. I think her attention is caught.”

“You looked so grim when you were dancing with her that I quite thought you were paying her insults instead of compliments.”

“I was merely mocking her. A certain type of woman finds that approach irresistible.”

“I begin to feel sorry for Lady Lovelace. I’ve been wondering, Phil, is it necessary to go through with this? I mean, what about the succession? I have heard your father is poorly.”

“He affects bad health, that is all,” shrugged Lord Philip, arranging his cravat in front of the looking glass. “But even if he did die, there’s my eldest brother, George, and his eight children, six of them boys, then there’s James, the next in line, and his five brats, all boys and then there’s brother Perry who’s been married not above a six month and already his bride looks as if she is about to drop another little Dunster into the family pool.”

“But I mean, well, couldn’t you live at home, dear boy? Your father wouldn’t turn you out. Get all the farming you wanted.”

“Oh, yes, he would,” said Lord Philip, rummaging in his jewel box for a stickpin. “I had a letter from him the other day, cursing me for having sold out of my regiment and reminding me that it is my concern as to how I support myself.”

“That must hurt very much,” said Mr. Bagshot sympathetically. “Your own father.”

Lord Philip swiveled around and surveyed his friend with some surprise. “If I were at all fond of my father, I suppose it would hurt. But he is, and always was, a stranger to me.”

“But your mama…”

“Look, Harry, my dear, dear chap. How on earth was I ever supposed to know my parents, brought up as I was at Dunster Abbey? I was never held in my mother’s arms. I was taken from her womb by the midwife, who promptly handed me to a wet nurse. I lived my young days in the nursery wing, and sometimes on occasions such as my birthday or Christmas, I was taken downstairs and introduced to my parents.

“My mother would give me a chilly smile, my father would pat my head and say, ‘Well, which one’s this, heh? Never could tell one from t’other.’ And then I was taken back to the nursery wing. Then, of course, there was Eton and then a couple of years at Oxford and, when I was old enough to have the honor of dining downstairs with my parents, why, I no longer wanted it.”

“Well, my parents are both dead,” said Mr. Bagshot, “but they were marvelous and I adored them. When I set up my own nursery, I’ll have the little brats around me all day long, I can tell you that. But to return to the fascinating Lady Lovelace… I know it is done, Phil. I mean I know that most of London Society marries for money. I cannot understand, therefore, why I should feel uneasy on your behalf.”

“Neither can I,” said Lord Philip dryly. “I do not like myself at all for what I am doing but I refuse to let it stop me. Love is a luxury wallowed in by poets and sentimental spinsters. The way we are going on, Harry, one would think it actually existed.”

“Well, it does,” said Mr. Bagshot vehemently, and then blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Dear me, deary, deary, deary me,” said Lord Philip, raising one thin eyebrow. “Who is the lucky lady?”

“Miss Priscilla Armitage.”

Lord Philip opened his mouth to say that no man in his right senses could ever be enamored of Priscilla Armitage, turned over the remark in his mind, decided it was unnecessary and unkind, and said instead, “I wish you well, Harry. Now, I am quite finished. Shall we go to the club and forget about the ladies for at least an hour?”

Lady Lovelace was ready and waiting a good half an hour before Lord Philip was due to arrive. She had taken extra pains over her dress. Her gown was of jaconet muslin, made with a gored bodice and finished with a tucker of fine embroidery. Her cambric pelisse, called a “fugitive coat,” had long sleeves falling over her hands.

Her curls had been teased into the style known as à la Grecque and topped with a Lavinia hat, a variation of the Gypsy hat which had been in fashion for several years. She fidgeted with the ivory handle of her lilac parasol and wondered if it might have to do service as an umbrella since the sky outside was becoming darker by the minute.

Miss Wilkins was lying down in her room, being prey to violent attacks of migraine, so Amaryllis had no one to talk with to while away the minutes until Lord Philip should arrive. Amaryllis had boldly made use of one of her Spanish papers, the green one that turned the cheeks “a becoming red,” and felt satisfied with the result and was glad Tabby was not around to raise her eyebrows in shock.

By five o’clock, she had quite decided he would not come. He was a strange man. He had been merely funning. She may as well go upstairs and remove her bonnet and lie down before it was time to go to the opera.

She had taken a step toward the door of the drawing room when the rumbling of wheels on the cobbles outside made her stop. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs and she was amazed at her own agitation.

A heavy knock sounded on the street door and Amaryllis scampered back across the room and sat primly on a sofa and arranged her skirts.

“Lord Philip Osborne,” announced Foster, the butler.

Amaryllis noted with a tinge of awe that Lord Philip managed to look as impeccable in morning dress as he had done in his evening wear. His swallowtail coat of Bath superfine was stretched across his shoulders without a wrinkle. His cravat looked as if it had been sculptured rather than arranged, his fine leather breeches hugged his thighs like a second skin, and his Hessian boots had a shine which Amaryllis thought must be from a secret recipe of his own rather than from Warren’s Blacking.

His black hair was carefully arranged in the Windswept, and he carried a curly-brimmed beaver and a pair of York tan gloves in one hand and a silver-topped cane in the other.

He was as armored by fashion as if he had put on a full suit of armor. He was so well groomed, he appeared quite formidable, and Amaryllis felt that if only he had had a spot of grease on his waistcoat, a wrinkle in his coat, or one hair out of place, he would have seemed slightly more human and approachable.

He made her a magnificent leg and then drew her arm through his. “I think we shall have time to enjoy our drive before it rains,” he said, leading her out of the house to his carriage, which was a phaeton with large yellow wheels drawn by two magnificent black horses. A tiny tiger in scarlet uniform was holding the horses’ heads. He had a wizened little face and a look of age-old cunning in his eyes. It was hard to know whether the tiger was a boy or a dwarf.

Feeling a very long way away from the ground, Amaryllis settled back as Lord Philip picked up the reins.

“Jimmy is forty years old,” said Lord Philip, setting off at a smart pace, driving his team well up to their bits.

“Jimmy?…”

“My tiger. You were wondering about his age.”

“I was not,” snapped Amaryllis, ruffled at having her thoughts so easily read.

His attention became totally engaged in negotiating the press of traffic on their way to Hyde Park. Amaryllis carefully slid a small steel mirror from her reticule and studied her face. She gave a little gasp of dismay.

The day was cold and blustery. The wind had already whipped a high color into her cheeks which, combined with the rouge from the Spanish papers, made her look like a wooden Dutch doll. She cast a furtive look at her companion but he was staring straight ahead, devoting, it seemed, his whole attention to his team, so she carefully took out her handkerchief and, turning slightly away from him, began to scrub her cheeks with it.

And then that now-familiar mocking voice of Lord Philip’s began to quote:

What form! What naϊveté! What grace!

What roses decked that Grecian face!

‘Nay,’ Dashwood cries, ‘that bloom’s not Harriet’s;

’Twas bought at Reynold’s, Moore’s, or Mariot’s

And though you vow her face untainted

I swear by Heaven, your beauty’s painted.’

“My lord,” said Amaryllis between her teeth. “I wish you to take me home or set me down immediately.”

One green eye slid round, surveying her with amusement.

“You must not be angry with me, Lady Lovelace,” he said. “I was merely amazed that such a lily should consider gilt necessary. I would not hurt you for the world, for you mean all the world to me.”

The latter part was said in such a deep tone of sincerity that Amaryllis blushed redder than any color her Spanish papers could supply and fell into an awkward and embarrassed silence.

I’m really quite good at this, thought Lord Philip smugly. I think I hit the exact note of sincerity.

He would not have felt so secure if he could have read his companion’s thoughts.

If he were not so rich, thought Amaryllis with a sudden flash of insight, I would think him a fortune hunter with a blatant approach. I feel ashamed of tricking him, but he is so wealthy, he will not notice my absence of fortune.

Moved by the same sudden decision to go ahead with the game to its limits, both simultaneously turned and confronted the other with a blinding smile.

Why! He DOES adore me! thought Amaryllis in wonder.

By George, thought Lord Philip, I do believe she is in love with me.

The phaeton bowled into the park with its occupants, with the exception of the tiger, in a high state of pleasurable tension.

But before they could reach the Ring, where the Exclusives promenaded at the fashionable hour, a great gust of cold, damp wind sent a cloud of red dust and a flurry of raindrops down upon them.

“Oh dear, I should have brought an umbrella instead of this silly parasol,” wailed Amaryllis, clutching her hat. “And see! Everyone is leaving. We will have to go home.”

As if he had not heard her, Lord Philip continued to drive into the park, turning his carriage away from the Ring and toward a stand of oak trees.

He reined in his horses under the trees and said over his shoulder, “You may be excused for half an hour, Jimmy.”

“Wot ’m I s’posed to do, guv’nor?” came the tiger’s Cockney voice.

“I neither know nor care,” said Lord Philip. He flicked a sovereign over his shoulder. “Go buy yourself a pint of wet or talk to the deer or commune with nature.”

“Very well, guv,” came the tiger’s more cheerful voice.

There was a silence. The carriage dipped slightly as the tiger let himself down. The rain pattered on the leaves above their heads.

“I was going to say, ‘Alone at last,’” said Lord Philip in an amused voice. “Somehow I feel compelled to make trite remarks when you are with me, Lady Lovelace. Love makes us all utter banalities. The poets have taken all the best words away.” He turned and took her hands in his.

“What else can I say, Lady Lovelace… Amaryllis… except that I love you to distraction, that you have my heart… that I wish to make you my wife.”

She made an ineffectual move to tug her hands away. Her face was turned away from him, shadowed by the brim of her hat. He realized that if she looked in his eyes, she might see all the calculation there that he had accused her of showing, and decided to take action.

He put one strong hand under her chin and suddenly and roughly jerked her face round to face him and bent his head and kissed her.

In the split second before their lips met, both had decided to fake as much warmth and passion as possible, and both were quite amazed at their acting ability.

Amaryllis felt she was whirling around in a pink cloud of dizzying sweetness where the only stable thing in a mad world was the pressure of his lips moving seductively against her own.

He drew back and looked down at her. His eyes were alight with warmth and laughter and tenderness. He gently untied the strings of her bonnet and placed it behind him and ran his fingers through the glossy chestnut of her curls.

A heavy raindrop plopped down between the leaves and landed on her mouth and he kissed it away, feeling the fresh taste of her lips. Involuntarily, his arms tightened around her.

“Marry me,” he whispered. “You must.”

Amaryllis said, “When?”

He stiffened slightly. He had been prepared for maidenly blushes, maidenly modesty. Then he reminded himself severely that she was not a schoolroom miss but a mature widow. She looked so dashed young, that was the problem.

“As soon as we can, my darling,” he said. “I do not wish anyone to know of it until after we are married. I hate all the trappings of a public wedding.”

“So do I,” Amaryllis fervently agreed and both smiled upon each other lovingly since neither wanted any gossip to step in before the marriage and talk about embarrassing things such as lack of fortune.

“Church weddings are so unfashionable,” murmured Amaryllis, leaning her head against his chest. “We could be married quite quietly from my home in Green Street. Tabby shall be my only witness.”

“And Harry Bagshot mine.” He laughed. “We shall be oh-so-secretive and keep our love to ourselves lest the jealousies and gossip of the common world should sully it.”

Well, that’s that, thought Lord Philip in surprise. I did not think it would be so easy.

He felt he should release her and talk of sensible things like special licenses and where they should go on their honeymoon but she was wearing a light, flowery perfume which his experienced nose diagnosed as Sans Pareille and her perfumed curls were tickling his chin and the weight of her delectable bosom was against his arm and before he quite knew what he was doing, he had tilted her face up to his again and was kissing her eyelids and her nose and her mouth. He had parted her lips and was delicately exploring the inside of her mouth with his tongue when an impatient cough sounded in his ears.

He straightened up, releasing Amaryllis abruptly, and looked down. His tiger, Jimmy, was standing, arms folded, water dripping from the end of his nose, eyes averted.

“Hop up, Jimmy,” said Lord Philip. “We are going home.”

“And abaht time too,” muttered the tiger.

Amaryllis blushed, realizing the odd spectacle they must make. The rain was so heavy that the trees had finally failed to provide sufficient shelter and both of them were dripping wet.

They drove to Green Street in a dazed silence. At last Amaryllis found her voice.

“When will I see you again?” she asked shyly.

“When we are married,” he said. “In one week’s time. I will get a special license.”

“A… a… week! S-so s-soon?”

“Why not? We are to be married after all.”

“Y-yes. Of course,” said Amaryllis, beginning to think furiously. The sooner the better, she decided at last.

“Shall I not see you before then?” she asked.

“It would not be wise,” he said. “My very love for you would show on my face for all the world to see.”

“Oh,” was all Amaryllis could think of to say to that.

He helped her down from the carriage in Green Street and stood holding her hand.

“Till next Thursday,” he said softly. “Do you read Milton, my love?”

Amaryllis looked at him in wonder.

“I have read Paradise Lost, my lord….”

“Philip,” he corrected gently. “I am being foolish. Our afternoon brought to mind a quote of Milton’s, that is all. Something to do with your name. Never mind.”

He bent and kissed her hand and waited until Foster opened the door before climbing into his phaeton and driving off.

Amaryllis wandered dreamily into the drawing room.

“My lady is wet,” said Foster.

“Yes,” said Amaryllis vaguely. “Oh, Foster. Do you read the poems of John Milton?”

“Yes, my lady. I have been known to indulge in that pastime.”

“Can you recall a poem with an Amaryllis in it?”

“Yes, my lady. ‘Lycidas.’ The quotation as I recall, is, ‘To sport with Amaryllis in the shade.’”

“Quite, Foster. That will be all.”

Amaryllis broke the news of her forthcoming Wedding to Miss Wilkins and swore her to secrecy.

Miss Wilkins was at first inclined to be shocked at the speed of the proceedings and considered the secrecy unnecessary, but Amaryllis insisted. Some jealous matron might ferret out the penury of Beaton Malden and carry the tale to Lord Philip’s ears.

Miss Wilkins at last reluctantly agreed to act as maid of honor and to hold her tongue. But privately, she considered the whole thing very strange.

Amaryllis swung from periods of dark despair to elation. Despair when she dreaded what he might say when he found she had no money at all, and elation at the memory of his kisses and of his voice saying he loved her.

Then she remembered that she did after all possess Beaton Malden. Mr. Worthy had written to say that they should start to come about in about another year’s time. So she was not absolutely penniless.

After three days had passed, Amaryllis decided that she had better include her butler and housekeeper in the secret. Both Foster and the housekeeper, Mrs. Jarrett, received the news with wooden-faced aplomb. They promised not to let any intelligence of the matter filter down to the lesser mortals of the servants’ hall.

Mrs. Jarrett was a plump lady with frizzy hair of an improbable shade of gold and given to wearing necklines which were a trifle immodest in a servant. But she was very good at her job and, furthermore, Amaryllis suspected she had been the mistress of Lord Lovelace at some point in that late peer’s life before he had married Amaryllis. Foster, as usual, looked as dignified as an archbishop, with his portly figure encased in dark coat, striped waistcoat, and knee breeches. He had a large hooked nose, which he privately thought made him look exactly like the Duke of Wellington, and he had a small, pursed rosebud mouth, which gave him an air of permanent disapproval.

During the week before the wedding, Amaryllis curtailed her social visits, frightened now to bring herself too much before the eagle eye of Society.

Priscilla Armitage called on several afternoons and, in her state of nervous apprehension, Amaryllis found that young lady’s innocuous prattle well-nigh unbearable, although she chided herself privately for her impatience, putting her feelings down to the fact that she had not been much in the way of entertaining young ladies, apart from her sisters.

But there was no getting away from the fact that Priscilla was extremely smug. She was pretty in a fair, blue-eyed way and would have looked like a doll except that her nose was a trifle long. The few skills she had she considered very artistic and Amaryllis often had to endure Priscilla’s insistence on entertaining her with a rendition of the “Woodpecker,” banged out on a tinny spinet in the little-used Yellow Saloon on the ground floor.

According to Priscilla, every man in London, including Lord Philip, was dying of love for her.

Amaryllis considered all this a fiction, since she had so far seen no evidence of it, until two days before her wedding, when Mr. Bagshot arrived on a thin excuse when Priscilla was visiting and promptly began to exhibit all the symptoms of a young man head over heels in love.

Amaryllis’s first selfish and dismayed thought was that if Mr. Bagshot married Priscilla then she, Amaryllis, would be compelled to spend a deal of tiresome time in Priscilla’s company since Mr. Bagshot was Lord Philip’s best friend.

The weather had been quite dismal. London was shrouded, day in and day out, by a damp, clinging, humid mist which made you perspire out of doors and freeze in.

The day before the wedding, Amaryllis felt she could bear it no longer and sent a note to Lord Philip telling him the whole thing was off.

Instead of rushing to her side to clutch her in his arms and kiss all her fears away, Lord Philip had sent her a curt reply saying, “Fiddle! I shall be present with the preacher, my lady, on the morrow. Fear of wedding is fear of bedding. It happens in the best-regulated families. P.”

“Infuriating man!” exclaimed Amaryllis. “Impertinence. He is no gentleman! I shall not marry him.”

But she did.

Amaryllis was to remember her wedding as being a very hole-in-the-corner affair. Foster and Mrs. Jarrett stood sentinel at the door of the drawing room. Mr. Bagshot was best man, Miss Wilkins maid of honor.

The rain pattered steadily against the windows. The wind howled in the chimneys. Both Amaryllis and Lord Philip were in morning dress. The drawing room with its rented furniture had the slightly cold, shabby air about it that furniture has when it does not belong to the occupants of the house.

Amaryllis was wearing a lilac-and-gray morning gown which looked suspiciously to her groom like half-mourning.

He was impeccable in blue swallowtail coat and knee breeches.

The gentleman who was to perform the service was weaving slightly and hanging onto a lectern, which had been set up in the drawing room, for balance. He was the vicar of Saint Twoddy’s-in-the-Fields, and he emanated spirits rather than spirituality. He prayed long and incoherently for the Dear Departed while the ladies knelt and the gentlemen stood with their hats over their faces. Lord Philip had deliberately chosen a prelate as far removed from London Society as possible. Now he wished he had attended more to character than to geography.

When it finally dawned on his small congregation that the vicar, Mr. Jumbles, was under the impression that he was officiating at a funeral rather than a wedding and Mr. Bagshot stepped forward to whisper in that gentleman’s ear, Amaryllis was prey to a strong fit of the giggles and Lord Philip was rigid with anger.

The bewildered prelate focused his rheumy eyes on the couple before him, fumbled through the pages of The Book of Common Prayer, and to everyone’s relief, obeyed Mr. Bagshot’s muttered instructions to “get on with it.”

Mr. Jumbles caught hold of enough sobriety to marry them before relapsing into a wine fog. He exhorted everyone not to cast the first stone and while they were wondering when he would either come to his senses or be done, he quite suddenly collapsed on the floor and went to sleep.

The subdued party filed into the dining room for the wedding breakfast, leaving him to sleep it off.

Miss Wilkins was so upset she could not eat. She blamed Lord Philip for this mockery of a marriage. Mr. Bagshot was feeling guilty. He wished he had never suggested to his friend that a rich heiress might be the answer. Lord Philip was wishing himself a thousand miles away. He dreaded to think what his bride would say when she found he had very little money. He tried to remind himself that his squeamish guilt made him possibly unique among the members of the London Season. Great lip service was paid to love—but everyone who was anyone knew it was something you found outside of marriage.

Well, he had promised to endow her with all his worldly goods—viz., one army pension, one beggarly allowance from his father, and his tailor’s bills.

By the time the meal limped to its final course—cheese and red herrings—the wedding party was mute and depressed. Mr. Bagshot thought fervently that when he took his Priscilla to the altar, the whole of London town would know about it.

At last Lord Philip appeared to make a Herculean effort to rouse himself. He told amusing stories, he positively chattered, he passed the decanters around the table and begged Foster and Mrs. Jarrett to join them, he took wine with Mr. Bagshot, he took wine with Mr. Foster, he took wine with his new bride and finally raised a brimmer to Miss Wilkins.

His gaiety, however forced, was infectious and the little company began to relax and chatter quite easily. Flushed with wine and dizzy with food, Amaryllis almost managed to forget she was married, until, at last, her brand new husband put down his glass and turned to her with a smile. “It is time we were on our way,” he said.

The couple were to spend their wedding night at a posting house, near Richmond, famed for its food. Since they had only a little way to go, Lord Philip had suggested it would be more romantic if they dispensed with maid and valet.

The reason was that he hoped to tell his bride as soon as possible that his financial situation was not what he had led her to believe. And since Amaryllis also planned to make her confession, she had readily agreed to this rather bizarre arrangement.

Soon the happy couple were seated high on the box of Lord Philip’s traveling coach. The rain had ceased to fall and a chilly, blustery wind was bustling about the London streets, bringing memories of November.

Foster and Mrs. Jarrett returned to the house after waving good-bye to their new master and set about decanting the reverend into a hack.

Lord Philip drove at breakneck speed. His leaders were a bit wild but his wheelers soon steadied them, and Amaryllis began to enjoy the exhilarating pace and realize that the deed was done, and as soon as she had confessed to his lordship that her estates were mortgaged to the hilt, then she could be comfortable again.

She had envisaged a quiet thatched country inn, but the Seven Wanderers turned out to be a modern posting house with an air of quiet luxury.

She was surprised and upset to find that Lord Philip had bespoke their rooms under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Baxter. Lord Philip hurriedly explained that he did not want any passing traveler to learn their identities and spoil their first night. It all seemed sensible enough but she could not rid herself of an uneasy feeling that she was a Scarlet Woman and not wed at all.

If she had not felt so guilty herself, she would have been completely outraged. But she was reluctantly glad of the secrecy, and forced down her niggling worries.

Soon they were alone over dinner in their private parlor. A cheerful little fire crackled away busily on the hearth to dispense the chill of the English summer. Amaryllis talked idly of this and that but could not bring herself to mention Beaton Malden.

People in Society considered it vulgar to talk about their estates anyway. It was an age when people boasted of their place in the ranks of the elegantly idle. It was unfashionable to know the extent of one’s resources. One did not describe one’s land but only one’s rent roll. So-and-so was worth so many thousands a year. It was never mentioned where these thousands came from.

Lord Philip talked wittily and at length of his military service in India, and their first meal alone together passed cheerfully enough until the port and walnuts, when that large double bed in Amaryllis’s room began to loom on the horizon. Amaryllis began to wish they had talked of more intimate matters but, as it was, it was two married strangers who finally arose and gloomily braced themselves to face a night of passion.

Lord Philip had bespoke two rooms and Amaryllis had a wild hope that perhaps she might not have to fulfill her marital duties on the first night, but, as he turned to leave her outside her bedroom door, he said over his shoulder, “I shall join you presently,” and she suddenly felt very lost and forlorn.

Well, she thought resolutely, at least I am not a virgin. All I need to do is think very hard about something else until it is all over.

The fact that it had been marvelous when he had kissed her she did not account as much when it came to the night’s performance facing her. Kissing was something else.

She had never enjoyed the intimacies bestowed on her by her late husbands. But then, what woman did?

She gave a last brush to her hair and smoothed down the lace of her nightgown, tied a saucy wisp of a nightcap on her head, and climbed into the four-poster bed and snuggled down under the quilt.

Amaryllis was just about to fall asleep when the door opened and her husband walked in. The small, high-ceilinged room was faintly lit by the red glow of the dying fire and when he removed his dressing gown, she was startled to see that he was naked under it.

Neither of her husbands had ever come to bed naked, both elderly gentlemen having a preference for voluminous flannel nightshirts.

She suddenly wished he would speak. Say something. Anything.

He spoke.

“Amaryllis, my love, there is something I must tell you….”

She was sitting up in bed and, in the faint rosy light, her eyes looked enormous in her small face.

“No matter. It can wait until morning,” he said, climbing into bed.

Amaryllis sank back against the pillow. She lay rigid as a board, eyes staring up into the blackness, hands clenched into fists. Ten minutes, fifteen at the most, and then it would all be over.

He gathered her in his arms and began to kiss her, slow, long, lingering kisses. At first she was too frightened to respond but at last her senses took over and she began to return his kisses with increasing passion until, with an impatient sound in the back of his throat, he threw back the bedclothes and eased her nightgown over her head and threw it on the floor.

All at once he was on her, inside her, around her. Commanding her senses, controlling her body, until she cried out in a wild glory of surrender and at last subsided limp and shaking and totally in love under his relaxed body.

She fell asleep only to be aroused, somewhere around dawn, by his busy, exploring hands and demanding mouth.

Again, Amaryllis, all passion spent, fell back over the cliff of sleep and did not awaken until a servant rattled at the doorknob, only to be sent away by Lord Philip’s imperative demand that they be left in peace.

Hungry and debilitated, nerves throbbing and burning beneath the naked skin, they made love a third time, aware this time that it was love they were making, both elated and afraid of their new commitment to each other.

It was two in the afternoon before they sat down to a combination of breakfast and dinner in their private parlor, sometimes gazing into each other’s eyes, sometimes gazing dreamily out at the green fields and winding river, smiling in the sunshine.

“Let us walk for a little, my love,” said Lord Philip at last. “There is something I must tell you.”

“I have something to say to you as well, Philip,” said Amaryllis shyly. She no longer felt afraid. He loved her and he would understand.

They walked hand in hand out of the inn and down through the pretty gardens which led to the river.

Lord Philip swung her around to face him, looking down at her intently, his handsome face serious.

“Amaryllis,” he said gently. “I fear I may have misled you as to the extent of my fortune. I am no nabob but a fairly penniless ex-soldier with a small pension.”

Amaryllis looked at him in dawning horror. “But your clothes… your horses and carriages….”

“I have paid for my horses but that is all. My tailor’s bills are quite staggering. It is all a facade. A man’s wealth is judged by the horseflesh he owns. You see, it was important to present myself as a wealthy man so that I could meet…” His voice trailed away.

“So that you could entrap a wealthy heiress,” said Amaryllis in a small, thin voice.

“Well, put like that it seems inhuman but, after all…”

“I have no money.”

“What!”

“I have no money,” said Amaryllis again. “I was hoping to repair my losses by making an advantageous marriage.”

The water chuckled lazily past, a little breeze whispered through the reeds by the river, high above a skylark poured down his summer song. There was a long silence.

“You tricked me,” said Lord Philip finally.

“I? I did not pose as a wealthy nabob. It was you, sirrah, who hustled me into this shameful marriage. And to add insult to injury, you pretended to love me… did you not?”

“At first,” began Lord Philip, “I did indeed pretend, but…”

“Ooooh!” breathed Amaryllis, putting her small hands up to her flaming face. She remembered her abject surrender of the night before. What had seemed like the ideal consummation of two people deeply in love now seemed like the vulgar writhings of abandoned lust. “Well, I only pretended to love you,” she said in a trembling voice. “I am a good actress. Very good.”

“Oh, yes, madam,” said Lord Philip grimly. “You fooled me.” His eyes were cold and hard. He wanted to hurt her. His mouth curled in disdain.

“Slut.”

“Mountebank!”

“Jade!”

“Sleazy, nasty, old man!”

“You are not exactly spring lamb yourself,” said his lordship in an icy rage. “I take it you have no assets whatsoever?”

Amaryllis thought furiously. Why had she allowed this rushed marriage? Her lawyers would soon have found out his penury had she allowed them to demand a marriage settlement. Now he probably owned Beaton Malden. But he should not have it. Never! She would come about.

“No,” she said baldly. “You have tailors’ bills. I have dressmakers’ bills. It will not help matters if we stand here bandying insults. The marriage must be made void.”

“I agree,” said Lord Philip savagely. “That reverend was so foxed that I doubt if he will remember a thing about it. You have only to tell your servants it was a joke….”

“I shall tell them the truth,” said Amaryllis coldly. “They will not talk and neither will Miss Wilkins. So you are free, my lord. Free to return to your hunting ground and seduce some other poor female.”

“That is exactly what I mean to do. And you?”

“This time,” said Amaryllis, “I shall find a gentleman.”

The summer wind played among the chestnut tresses of her hair and moved the soft muslin of her gown against her body. Lord Philip suddenly felt he would die from rage. If only she had said she loved him, then he would gladly have found a way they could both manage on his pension. But the fact that last night had meant nothing to her was past bearing.

He took a handful of sovereigns from his pocket and pressed them into her hand.

Amaryllis looked wonderingly down at the gold. “Pray, what is this for?”

“Oh,” he said carelessly, “I always pay my doxies.”

He hoped she would strike him, rage at him, show some emotion. But her beautiful eyes held a world of infinite contempt as she moved slowly away from him, across the sunny lawns, toward the inn.

He stayed for a long time, looking at the moving water. When he finally returned to the inn, it was to be told that his wife had commanded a post chaise and had left. She had also paid their shot at the inn.

He felt infinitely grubby.

And he hated her the more.

Four

Exhausted and close to tears, Amaryllis arrived back at the rented house in Green Street as the pale light of a perfect summer’s evening gilded the cobbles.

“Come into the drawing room, Foster,” said Amaryllis to her butler, “and bring Mrs. Jarrett with you. Also tell Miss Wilkins to join us immediately.”

Amaryllis sat in a high-backed chair, refusing to speak to Miss Wilkins until Foster and Mrs. Jarrett had joined them.

She asked the servants to sit down and to serve themselves wine and biscuits. Surprised, and somewhat alarmed at the rare honor, Foster and Mrs. Jarrett sat nervously on the very edge of a backless sofa and gingerly sipped small glasses of Vintage Yesterday. The few remaining cases of good wine were reserved for guests.

With only a slight tremor in her voice, Amaryllis began.

“You are all to forget about my marriage. It is null and void. Lord Philip has no money. I was deceived. He thought I was an heiress, or he would not have married me.”

“But his father is the Duke of Dunster,” exclaimed Miss Wilkins.

Foster gave a discreet cough. “The youngest son, I would like to point out.”

“Lord Philip has no money,” repeated Amaryllis firmly. “The reverend who performed the service was fortunately well to go. It is possible that he will not remember anything about it. There is no need for anyone to know. I shall just need to find a suitable husband.”

“But that will be bigamy,” said Miss Wilkins, raising her mittened hands in horror.

“So? If I do not wed soon, then perhaps our good servants will receive no wages at all,” replied Amaryllis.

“But, my lady,” burst out Mrs. Jarrett, “I am sure me and Mr. Foster here could manage without wages until the estate begins to pay again—and that goes for the other servants. If you is in love with your good man—forgive me for being so bold—then it seems a shame to cast him aside like a withered glove.”

Despite her misery, Amaryllis smiled. “No, Mrs. Jarrett. I am not in love with Lord Philip so you need not consider him a… er… withered glove. Nor is he in love with me.”

Miss Wilkins studied her young mistress’s face, noticing the strain and the misery in her eyes.

“Have you not paused to consider that you deceived him?” she said gently.

“I shall tell you about it sometime, Tabby, but not now. Take my word that he did deceive me in a certain way that made me take him in dislike. I simply want you to know that I am still Lady Lovelace and I wish to forget about Lord Philip.

“I do not want to see him again, although I suppose I will have to since the world of Society is so small. Thank you all for your understanding. Foster and Mrs. Jarrett… you may go.”

The two upper servants rose to their feet and made their exit. When they were safely esconced in Mrs. Jarrett’s parlor and discussing a bottle of the best burgundy, Mrs. Jarrett suddenly said, “Well, it’s a rum to-do, Mr. Foster, and that’s the truth. It ain’t no use me a-looking for another situation because housekeepers’ jobs are as scarce as hens’ teeth.”

“And butlers’,” said Foster gloomily. “If Beaton Malden were only one of them grand palaces, perhaps we might make a bit o’ money. Did you know, Mrs. Jarrett, that the housekeeper of Warwick Castle retired the other day with thirty-five thousand pounds?”

Mrs. Jarrett nearly dropped her glass. “Thirty-five thousand pounds! How could a housekeeper make that kind of money?”

“Vails, Mrs. Jarrett. Vails. People always come in droves to see around the castle and she was the one who took them around and took the money.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Jarrett, the light of comprehension dawning on her pug face.

As well it might.

To a great number of the aristocracy, visitors were a bugbear, and most preferred the private life of town. In the country, one lived a public life. Any Tom, Dick, Harry, or Jane who took it into their heads to have a guided tour of your castle, palace, or country mansion had simply to knock at the door. Some families had started to build private wings in order to escape running into strangers at every hour of the day, not to mention a constant stream of tenants and farmers calling to lay their grievances before the master or mistress.

The upper servants were the only ones who enjoyed these public visits since they were usually given at least a sovereign.

“The trouble with Beaton Malden,” went on Foster, “is that it’s not on any common road and although it’s a fine place, it doesn’t have much in the way of history, you know, like a castle or an abbey.”

“You mean, if we had a deal of folk a-calling, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about our wages?”

“Exactly. But I cannot see how it is to be done. We do not even have a ghost or a priest’s hole or anything of that nature.”

“We didn’t,” said Mrs. Jarrett, savoring her wine. “But we have now.”

“I do not comprehend you, Mrs. Jarrett.”

“Well, I do now call to mind that his late lordship is in the habit of haunting the picture gallery.” She laid a finger alongside her nose and gave the butler a fat wink. “You’ve seen him yourself, Mr. Foster, now haven’t you?”

Foster gave a broad grin which seemed to vanish up into his face under the shadow of his nose. “Now, how could I have forgotten a thing like that? I wish my lady well this Season, Mrs. Jarrett, but we’ll drink to his lordship’s ghost as… well… insurance, shall we say?”

“I have my jewels, Tabby,” Amaryllis said. “Pooh, this is dreadful wine.”

“But you musn’t sell your jewels,” wailed Miss Wilkins. “If you start going about without any jewels, everyone will know that you are near destitute!”

“No, they won’t. I shall have them copied in paste and no one will be any the wiser and that way we can survive in style until the end of the Season and a little after. I danced at Almack’s with the Earl of Harrisfield. He seemed much taken, I think, although I did not pay much attention at the time.”

“The Earl of Harrisfield,” said Miss Wilkins repressively, “is all of sixty and nearly in his dotage.”

“La! A charming age,” said Amaryllis in a brittle voice. “I shall hunt him down this evening. I am a thruster when it comes to the chase of elderly gentlemen. Now, I am going to bed for an hour. Wake me at midnight, Tabby, and ask Foster to find out where the Earl may be found.”

“I feel Lord Philip has hurt you badly,” said Miss Wilkins, watching her anxiously.

“Nonsense,” said Amaryllis roundly, for she would not even admit to herself how badly Lord Philip had wounded her.

Miss Wilkins said, with a painful blush, “I feel I must caution you before you refuse to acknowledge your marriage…. I mean, what if there is a child?”

“I have survived two marriages without children,” said Amaryllis. “I am not likely to breed now. Do not mention Lord Philip’s name again. The whole episode is such a bore. You must rest also, Tabby. Tonight, we hunt down the Earl!”

“I said, I don’t want to discuss it,” snapped Lord Philip over his shoulder to his friend Mr. Bagshot. “I’m curst tired and this cravat has a life of its own and you cannot seem to understand a simple request. The marriage never took place and that is all I am going to tell you, Harry. Now, we will toddle along to the opera and I will search for another heiress.”

Mr. Bagshot sat gloomily swinging his leg over the arm of his chair and watched his friend’s reflection in the looking glass. He had hardly been able to believe it when Lord Philip’s Swiss had arrived at the club with a rather peremptory note asking Mr. Bagshot to present himself at Lord Philip’s lodgings.

“You know what?” ventured Harry Bagshot at last as Lord Philip successfully tied his cravat at last in the Trône d’Amour.

“No. What?”

“You ain’t cut out to be a fortune hunter.”

“Oh, I am, dear friend. Do you hope to see Miss Armitage at the opera?”

Mr. Bagshot’s face brightened. “That’s the only reason I’m going. Can’t see what this fuss about Catalini is all about. I think she screeches.”

“Well, since neither of us is really going to see or hear the diva, it is of no matter. Come along, Harry. Romance awaits you, and, with any luck, a fortune awaits me!”

Amaryllis awoke at eleven o’clock in the evening and struggled to consciousness. She knew there was something very important she had to do. Then she remembered Lord Philip’s perfidy and a wave of pain engulfed her. She rolled over and turned her face into the pillow, biting the silk of the cover to stop herself from crying out. Then she remembered also that the hunt must go on and no time was to be lost.

She rang for her maid and demanded that Foster be sent to her immediately. The butler arrived in a few moments with the intelligence that the Earl of Harrisfield had gone to the opera and was to be found at Ranelagh afterwards.

“Then Ranelagh it shall be,” said Amaryllis.

“Tell Miss Wilkins to make ready, and Simpson”—to her maid—“lay out the pink gown with the spangles. Oh, and Foster, I shall want the carriage in exactly three-quarters of an hour.”

It was a scrambled toilette but Amaryllis did not want any time to think.

Miss Wilkins was refreshed after her nap but troubled and uneasy about the night that lay ahead.

In no time at all, they were “making the round” in the famous Rotunda and bowing and smiling to several acquaintances.

The Rotunda at Ranelagh was one of the finest buildings in London, a fine circular room some 150 feet in diameter, built in 1742 by Mr. Jones, the architect of the East India Company.

In the middle was a circular bower composed of all kinds of firs in tubs, from twenty to thirty feet high. Underneath them were orange trees, with small lamps in each orange, and below them all sorts of the finest auriculas, and festoons of natural flowers hanging from tree to tree. There were booths for tea and wine, gaming tables, and dancing.

On the canal which ran through the gardens was a sort of gondola adorned with flags and streamers and bearing a small orchestra.

Ranelagh in Chelsea was more fashionable than Vauxhall, and the Exclusives loved to promenade there after the opera or the play.

The fat and florid Prince of Wales was there, surrounded by his cronies. He was dressed exactly like his idol, Brummell, but the severe fashions instigated by the Beau did not flatter Prince George’s portly figure.

Amaryllis was delighted by her first close sight of royalty and almost forgot her woes, when suddenly the crowd parted and she saw, down, it seemed, a channel of people, Lord Philip talking to a meek little miss. The tableau was brightly lit, as if the performers were on a stage. Lord Philip was smiling down at the blushing girl. What looked like the girl’s parents stood a little to one side, smiling in approval. Behind them stood Harry Bagshot with Priscilla Armitage on his arm. He was staring at Lord Philip and the young girl and he looked worried.

Then the crowd closed in and the scene was lost to view. Amaryllis was almost gasping with hurt. She wanted to run away, to run home, to bury her head under the pillow, to blot out the memories of this man’s body moving so passionately on top of her own. She… she saw the Earl of Harrisfield.

Amaryllis took a deep breath. This was war. Never, never should that deceitful lord begin to guess how much he had hurt her.

Taking her companion’s arm in a firm grasp, Amaryllis made her way across to the Earl.

“Be careful,” hissed Miss Wilkins. “You are going to walk right into him!”

“That’s the idea,” murmured Amaryllis. “Oh, I declare! You are such a wit, Tabby!” The latter was said in rather a shrill voice as Amaryllis laughed up into Miss Wilkins’s face so that she would appear not to know where she was going. Her plan worked and she bumped full into Lord Harrisfield’s corpulent stomach.

“Ooops!” said that gentleman, quickly recovering himself as he recognized Amaryllis as the pretty widow he had seen at Almack’s.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Amaryllis, all pretty confusion. “You must forgive…”

“Forgive, ma’am! Stuff and fiddle! Grateful. ’Pon rep! Name’s Harrisfield. Servant.”

Amaryllis sank into a low curtsy and introduced herself and Miss Wilkins.

“Delighted! Acquaintance! Make the round, heh!” Lord Harrisfield offered a pudgy arm and Amaryllis took it, as Miss Wilkins grimly fell into line behind them and prayed to God to protect her foolish mistress.

It was not that the Earl was exactly repulsive. But he was rather old and creaky, both literally and figuratively speaking, since his corsets squeaked abominably at every step he took.

He was a fat man above the average height. His florid face was quite hidden under a coat of white paint and his blue eyes were crisscrossed with small red veins. He wore a nut-brown wig of youthful curls. His mouth was small and rather petulant but he affected an elliptical mode of speech and a jolly, breezy manner.

“Take you out. See canal. Pretty. Very,” said his lordship.

“But surely Lady Harrisfield will be looking for you?”

“Ain’t one. Was. Dead. Quite.”

“Oh, very well, in that case…”

“Don’t like,” said the Earl, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Miss Wilkins. “Get rid of. Have fun. Heh?”

“No,” said Amaryllis severely. “I am a young widow and I need to be careful, especially when I am escorted by such a dashing Pink of the ton as yourself.”

Lord Harrisfield visibly preened and his corsets moaned under the strain.

No sooner had they stepped outside and into the gardens than Amaryllis became aware that Lord Philip and his new lady love were walking straight toward them. She expected him to cut her but, to her horror, he stopped.

“Ah, Lady Lovelace,” he said smoothly, “allow me to introduce Miss Belinda Fang. It is her first Season.”

Miss Fang curtsied and murmured she was “hoffly pleased.”

She was even more insignificant close to than she had looked from a distance, thought Amaryllis savagely. But she was wearing quite the most magnificent diamonds that Amaryllis had ever seen, and obviously that was part of her attraction for Lord Philip.

“It is very romantic in the gardens,” commented Lord Philip languidly. He pressed Miss Fang’s hand and Amaryllis edged closer to Lord Harrisfield.

“We could explore the gardens a little further if you would but step aside, my lord,” interposed Miss Wilkins from behind Amaryllis.

Amaryllis flashed her a smile of gratitude over her shoulder but the Earl was studying Lord Philip with new interest. “I say. Nabob. India. Jewels. Curry. Interestin’ talk. Ladies follow.” And before Amaryllis could guess what he was about, he had lumbered forward and seized Lord Philip by the sleeve. Somehow Miss Belinda Fang ended up walking beside Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins while Lord Philip and the Earl went off down the walk in animated conversation.

Amaryllis forced herself to make polite conversation. Waves of fatigue were beginning to engulf her. Only her vast hate for Lord Philip kept her senses sharp.

“I believe this is your first Season?” she asked Miss Fang.

“Yes,” whispered that young lady.

“And you are enjoying it?”

“Hoffly nice.”

“And you have known Lord Philip for some time?”

“’S evening,” volunteered Miss Fang.

“Fang,” mused Amaryllis, “I don’t quite recall any…”

“Wouldn’t,” said Miss Fang. “Pa’s a Cit.”

Really, thought Amaryllis crossly, Miss Fang and Lord Harrisfield do not believe in wasting words. She gathered from Miss Fang’s brief remark that her father was a merchant in the City and therefore the Fangs were not gentry or aristocracy.

“Those are very beautiful jewels you are wearing, Miss Fang,” pursued Amaryllis.

“Hoffly nice,” said Miss Fang and gazed longingly after Lord Philip. She was, decided Amaryllis, like a little Pekingese, with her bulging eyes and long frizzled hair falling on either side of her face like shaggy ears.

Suddenly Amaryllis experienced a pang of pure fear. What if Lord Philip were telling the Earl something about her to give the Earl a disgust of her? But when the gentlemen at last stopped and turned around, the Earl’s face was as stupidly cheerful as ever.

Lord Philip drew Miss Fang’s arm through his own. How long and sensitive Lord Philip’s hands were, thought Amaryllis suddenly. Those hands that only such a short time ago…

But he was saying good-bye, his eyes avoiding Amaryllis’s wide gaze. And he was gone. And the gardens were dull. And she was tired.

But Amaryllis remembered Beaton Malden and all the people who were dependent on her for their livelihood and so she marshaled her forces and smiled upon the old Earl, who was thoroughly enchanted with her and forgot his gout for quite half an hour.

Miss Fang sometimes wondered in the weeks to come why Lord Philip was so warm and attentive on some occasions and, on others, quite cool. Her mother, Mrs. Emily Fang, knew the reason but did not confide in her daughter. Mrs. Fang was a shrewd matron who had studied the ton as one studies a foreign race until she had mastered its modes and manners and speech. Her husband was a bluff merchant with neither airs nor graces, and although her daughter, Belinda, had been finished and polished as assiduously as a piece of Chippendale, she remained uncompromisingly common in speech and manner.

Mrs. Fang therefore carried the social burden for the three of them. She was ambitious. The Fangs were wealthy. Now they needed a title in the family. Lord Philip had made no pretensions of wealth to the Fangs and Mrs. Fang liked him for that.

But she did not like the way his eyes would fasten on Lady Lovelace at a ball or a party or that that was what seemed to warm his attentions to her daughter.

She knew, however, that Lord Philip was after Belinda’s money. She also knew that his lordship had rightly guessed that the Fangs were after his title and that was why he had been honest about his lack of funds. After some thought, Mrs. Fang decided that Lord Philip was in love with Lady Lovelace and that Lady Lovelace had rejected him. But Belinda was in love with Lord Philip and Mrs. Fang knew Lord Philip would not be unkind to his wife and so she encouraged the match.

Meanwhile, Harry Bagshot was falling deeper in love with Priscilla Armitage. Priscilla was well aware of it and had sulkily decided to accept him since she was determined to leave the Season engaged to anyone. Harry interpreted her sulky looks as smoldering passion and her long, bored silences and abstraction as intellectual thought. It was unfortunate that Harry could not see clearly and was blinded by love or he would never have done what he did.

London Society awoke one morning at the end of the Season to read in the social columns that Lady Lovelace was engaged to the Earl of Harrisfield and that Lord Philip Osborne was engaged to Miss Belinda Fang.

That was the momentous day when Harry Bagshot proposed marriage to Priscilla Armitage and was coldly accepted. Flushed with love, Harry took her driving in the park and decided to unburden himself.

“I say,” he began. “I’m frightfully worried about old Philip.”

Priscilla yawned and tried batting her eyelids at a simply gorgeous guardsman who was cantering past. The guardsman hurriedly averted his eyes and Priscilla yawned again.

“What?” she asked in a bored voice.

“I said I was worried about Phil,” said Harry Bagshot. “He really shouldn’t be marrying anyone.”

“Why not?” asked his beloved in tones of vast disinterest.

“Well, it’s like this. I mean we’re to be married, Priscilla, and I know you’re the soul of discretion. Also you’re so wise and I would dearly appreciate your advice. The fact is… dash it all… Phil’s married already.”

Now he had Priscilla’s full and fascinated attention. “But how… why?”

“I’ll tell you. At the beginning of the Season, Phil asked me to be best man. He said he was marrying Lady Lovelace.”

“Amaryllis! The sly minx! And she said naught to me! I shall tease her!”

“No! You musn’t! It’s a secret. Look, I’ll explain. They were married by this bowzy preacher with only me and that companion of Lady Lovelace and two of the servants. But it was a marriage all right. Well, we had the wedding breakfast and they went off on their honeymoon—one night at some inn—and then damme if Phil didn’t return the next day saying the marriage never existed as far as he was concerned. That very night, he’s out at Ranelagh paying court to Miss Fang and Lady Lovelace is trotting the round with old Harrisfield.”

“So they’ll both be committing bigamy!”

“I s’pose so. Look here, my love, you won’t breathe a word of this. I’ve decided what’s best to be done. I’ll have a stern talk with old Phil and try to talk some sense into his head.”

“The preacher will see the notices,” said Priscilla.

“Oh, not he. I doubt if he even reads his Bible! Furthermore, I’m blessed if that fellow will remember a thing about the wedding. He collapsed in a drunken stupor immediately the ceremony was over and we had to scrape him off the carpet.”

“I should have a little chat with Amaryllis.”

“No, you musn’t. I gave Phil my word I wouldn’t breathe a word of this, but we’re to be married and it’s different telling you. Now promise you won’t say a thing.”

Priscilla nodded her head, her eyes shining. “Not a word shall pass my lips.”

It was a week later that the ax fell. Amaryllis was to look back, in future years, at what she considered the two most distressing days of her life and associate them with bright sunshine and color. The first was, of course, the day after her wedding.

The second was the Duchess of Courtland’s breakfast.

“Breakfasts” were those affairs which began at three in the afternoon and went on all night. The Duchess of Courtland had added a charming villa in Kensington to the Courtlands’ many possessions. It lay near enough to Brampton Park Nursery to enjoy the fragrant smells of flowers and just far enough away from London to escape the almost constant rain of soot which fell on the city, winter or summer.

Kensington was the garden center of England and as Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins rode out in their carriage along the Cromwell Road, they met many carts loaded with vegetables, and women carrying flat baskets of strawberries on their heads, proceeding toward the capital.

The Courtlands’ villa was a stately home in miniature. The breakfast was to be served on tables laid out in the charming gardens. Only about twenty couples had been invited, which meant there was space enough and room enough to sit in the sun and hear the birds twittering in the branches of the arched trees above and listen to the lazy plashing of the many fountains.

Since there were so few guests, Amaryllis had been sure that there would be no danger of meeting Lord Philip and his new fiancée, but no sooner had she joined the Earl of Harrisfield and had seated herself beside him at one of the tables than the couple she had most dreaded to see arrived arm in arm and looking quite delighted with each other. Not only that, but Mr. Bagshot and his fiancée, Priscilla Armitage, arrived as well.

Now, Priscilla really meant to keep that fascinating bit of gossip about Lord Philip to herself. But she was a rather shallow girl, insensitive to anyone else’s feelings but her own. She was also a snob and very anxious to impress the haughty Duchess of Courtland.

Not only that, but no sooner did Lord Philip and Amaryllis realize that each was at the party than they began to sparkle fondly on their respective affianced, and to Priscilla’s jealous eyes looked the picture of happiness.

Priscilla had been delighted to find that she and Harry were to be honored with seats at the Duchess’s table. The enterprising Miss Armitage promptly set about to try to engage the Duchess’s attention but Her Grace appeared monumentally bored by each conversational sally and kept turning her bony shoulder on the gushing Priscilla.

Harry Bagshot then discovered that the ribbons of his knee breeches had become untied—silk having quite a remarkable propensity for untying itself—and so he excused himself and disappeared toward the house to repair his appearance.

Priscilla saw her chance and took it.

“Your Grace,” she whispered, “is it not exciting to have two prospective bigamists at one’s party?”

The Duchess’s pale cold eyes turned and fastened on Priscilla’s flushed and eager face with disdain.

“Fustian!” said the Duchess in her loud, penetrating voice. “I fear the hot sun has deranged your wits.”

“But it’s true!” whispered Priscilla earnestly. “Mr. Bagshot—my fiancé—told me that at the beginning of the Season he attended a havey-cavey wedding as best man and now that married couple is here—but engaged to someone else—I mean each engaged to someone else.”

“If you are telling the truth,” said the Duchess awfully, “then you will kindly identify these people immediately or take yourself off.”

Priscilla was cornered. Everyone seemed to be listening. “Lord Philip and Lady Lovelace,” she muttered. She could see the figure of Mr. Bagshot in the distance and prayed that the Duchess would let the matter drop.

The Duchess of Courtland got to her feet.

“I have just received the intelligence that Lord Philip Osborne and Lady Lovelace are, in fact, married. Lord Philip, is this true?”

Lord Philip took one brief glance at Amaryllis’s white face. He rose to his feet to deny the whole thing. But Harry, on returning, had heard the Duchess’s question and before he could stop himself he had blurted out, “Priscilla! How could you? You gave me your word that you would not say anything. No one need have known. The vicar was so foxed he wouldn’t have remembered a thing.…”

His voice trailed off as he realized the full extent of the damage he had done.

There was an awful silence.

The birds sang, the fountains played, and the air was sweet with the smell of flowers.

All eyes were fastened on Lord Philip and Lady Lovelace.

Lord Philip walked to where Amaryllis was sitting. “Madam wife,” he said in a completely expressionless voice, “allow me to escort you home.”

There was really nothing left to do but to rise and take his arm and walk away. Away from the world of the Exclusives, away from the staring eyes. A babble of shocked exclamations reached their ears as they arrived at the house. Lord Philip called for their carriages and turned to Miss Wilkins, who was walking a few paces behind them.

“I pray you, Miss Wilkins, return home and await my… wife. I have a few words to say to her.”

Miss Wilkins hesitated. Amaryllis gave a stunned little nod. It all seemed so unreal. Over and over in her brain ran the one thought that Lord Philip did not yet know about Beaton Malden and should not, if she could possibly manage it.

He helped her into his high-perched phaeton and then sprang up and gathered the reins.

Mr. Bagshot came stumbling across the lawns toward them, crying, “Phil, I say, Phil!”

But Lord Philip and Amaryllis both stared straight ahead at the horses’ ears as the phaeton gathered speed and bowled off down the short drive before Mr. Bagshot could reach them.

After some time, Lord Philip stopped in the leafy lane that was the Brompton Road. “Down, Jimmy,” he called to his tiger, who was perched on the backstrap. There was a mumbling and grumbling from behind and then the carriage swayed as Jimmy nimbly hopped down into the road and began to walk rapidly in the direction of that famous tavern, The Grapes.

The sun filtering through the green leaves of the lime trees which bordered the narrow road cast shifting patterns across Amaryllis’s white face.

“Well,” said Lord Philip after a long silence. “This is a sad coil.”

“You might at least apologize for your gabbling friend,” replied Amaryllis.

“Harry? Yes. I still don’t know what prompted him to tell that hen-witted creature, Priscilla Armitage. Harry is the soul of honor—as a rule.”

Amaryllis took a deep breath and said in an even tone, “You still have not apologized. I curse the day I met you, sirrah. My reputation is ruined. I have no money and no prospect of getting any now. What else is there for a woman to do? Marriage is the only respectable profession open to us.”

“One can always work. You could become a companion or governess.”

“No, I thank you. A governess has a horrible life. Neither servant nor master. Neither fish nor fowl. In danger of being molested by the sons of the house or driven out of her wits by nasty, spoiled children. A companion earns a pittance and I am too young to molder out my days in a state of decayed gentility.”

He studied her averted face for a long moment, his hands idly playing with the reins.

“This is silly,” he said at last. “We are married and may as well make the best of it. I, at least, have my pension and, when I sell my horses, it should give us a little to set us up comfortably. We could purchase a little place with a few acres.”

For one wild, mad, elated moment, Amaryllis thought that he was trying to say he loved her. She looked up into his face, His eyes met hers, cold and slightly bored. She began to tremble with hurt.

“Love in a cottage,” she sneered. “No. I am not interested in a life of genteel poverty—if that is all you have to offer.” And all the while, her heart was begging him to say one word of love.

“I should have known you were entirely mercenary, although”—here his green eyes raked insolently over her body—“you act the part of passionate lover so well that you could deceive most men for quite a long time. That is it! I have hit on the very thing. You could become Harriet Wilson’s rival.”

Harriet Wilson was London’s most famous courtesan.

Amaryllis gasped and struck him on the cheek. He jerked her into his arms and kissed her savagely. For one moment, both surrendered mind and body to that embrace with an intense longing, an intense passion for the other to declare one word of love to prove the marriage was not a sham. But Lord Philip’s pride was every bit as great as that of Amaryllis.

He tore his mouth free and whistled for his tiger, Jimmy, who was sitting on a bench outside The Grapes surveying the antics of his master with an amazed expression.

He drove her to her home in Green Street in icy silence. He let her scramble down as best as she could and picked up the reins.

For one moment he hesitated. She looked so small and vulnerable and lost, standing alone on the pavement in the golden sunlight.

But he hardened his heart and fought down the niggling voice of conscience which was trying to tell him that he was damning her for all his own faults.

He cracked the whip and bowled out of Green Street and, much as she hated and loathed him, Amaryllis stood and watched him go until he was out of sight.

Five

The end of an Indian summer found Lady Lovelace in residence at Beaton Malden. She had fled London after the fateful breakfast in Kensington and had spent some months in seclusion in a quiet watering place on the south coast, unfrequented by the aristocracy. She had shut the world out.

Miss Wilkins had at last suggested that Amaryllis should write to Lord Philip through her lawyers with a view to obtaining a divorce, but Amaryllis could not bear to think of him or hear his name mentioned. At last, she returned to Beaton Malden at the end of October. For the first time a glimmer of hope began to shine on her financial position. The last of the money from her jewels had been used to pay the servants, but Mr. Worthy reported a bumper harvest and that the staff, inside and outside the house, were prepared to wait for their wages, provided they were housed and fed.

If Amaryllis were prepared to live very quietly and not entertain in any way, then he was sure they would come about.

Mr. Worthy was living up to his name. Amaryllis was moved to tears when she learned that he had not drawn his wages since his return to her employ. He was a serious young man, devoted to the science of agriculture, and he had pointed out mildly that his reward was in being allowed to run things by himself and introduce as many new methods as he pleased.

Amaryllis, guilty at having neglected her duties, spent long hours in the saddle during the day, calling on the tenants, checking roofs and walls, and making a meticulous report of all necessary repairs. She was glad of the exercise and the excuse to be absent from the house, for there seemed to be a constant stream of callers, and not all of them ladies or gentlemen either, desirous of having a tour of the house.

“We really must stop this flow of visitors,” Amaryllis had said to Foster and Mrs. Jarrett. “You must be exhausted. I am sure you have enough to do without having to parade a party of gawking people all over the place who should know better how to employ their time.”

But Foster had merely smiled and said he and Mrs. Jarrett found it no trouble at all. He further pointed out that he would not allow any of these guests to enter a room where my lady was seated. That is all very well, thought Amaryllis, but I cannot seem to move from one room to the other without running into a party of staring, goggling people. It was never thus when my lord was alive. What can be the sudden attraction?

One late afternoon, two weeks after she had arrived home, Amaryllis had been riding over her estates with a saddlebag full of medicines from the stillroom at Beaton Malden to give to the sick. She finished her last call, which was on the very outskirts of her property, and turned her horse’s head toward home.

Far away in the distance she heard the call of a hunting horn and, faintly on the wind, came the shrill cries of the whipper-in. The Malden and Daxtead Hunt had found its fox. Amaryllis was glad that her sex excluded her from riding with the hunt. Only very coarse women did that. She was enough of a countrywoman to have no sympathy at all for the fox and diplomatic enough to refrain from voicing her real feeling about the matter, which was, “Why don’t they just shoot the beast?”

It seemed a vastly expensive exercise to kill one animal when dogs and guns could have completed the job so much more quickly and cheaply. But she had learned early in life that hunting was not a sport, it was a religion.

In any case, she disapproved of the Malden and Daxtead Hunt for she was sure they often used bag foxes—that is where the fox has already been caught and is released from a bag to supply the gentlemen of the hunt with a day’s sport.

Amaryllis reined in her mount. She found she was atop a small ridge which afforded an excellent view across the flat country of Oxfordshire. Against a bank of black clouds, Beaton Malden stood out in the distance, the white columns of its Italianate front standing out clearly against the sinister backdrop of the rising storm.

And then, all of a sudden, she was struck by a tearing feeling of pain and loss, and Lord Philip’s green eyes seemed to mock her. The pain was so bad that she let out a little gasp and clutched her middle.

Amaryllis had firmly kept her emotions at bay all that long summer. She had refused to think of her strange marriage, of Lord Philip’s deception, or of the mind-shattering passion of her one and only night with him.

But emotions will not be kept down, and the harder you try, the bigger the backlash. And so Amaryllis’s feelings roused up with all the back-kicking energy of an ungelded carriage horse in the springtime.

Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Oh, if only he was suffering as she suffered.

A wild wind swept up over the bare stubble of the fields, sending whirlpools of leaves dancing up to the darkening sky. An icy blast of sleet stung her cheek and she realized she would have to ride hard to save herself from a soaking.

The baying of hounds and the cries of the huntsmen were carried on the wind. “Silly fools,” muttered Amaryllis. “I hope they break their necks.”

And on that uncharitable thought toward the gentlemen of the Malden and Daxtead Hunt, she spurred her horse for home.

Lord Philip had not the slightest idea where he was. He pulled out his hunting horn and blew a blast on it, and listened hard. The only sounds which came to his ears were the lash of the rain on the ground and the soughing and moaning of the branches above his head.

His horse plummeted and plunged. “Hold hard, you great brute,” he said irritably. “I’ll get off and walk. Will that please you? For if I don’t, you’ll throw me in the ditch.”

He dismounted and, gathering up the reins, began to stumble his way out of the shelter of the trees and across a soggy clay field.

Lord Philip had long since sold his horses and carriage, had paid off all his debts, and had removed himself from London to stay with an old army friend in Wiltshire. He had not seen or heard of Harry Bagshot since the day of the breakfast. He had continued to live quietly at his friend’s small country house. Then his friend, a Colonel Freddie Jackson, had announced that they were going to stay for a bit with Sir Peregrine Russell at his place in Oxfordshire, where they were promised some capital hunting.

Sir Peregrine turned out to be Master of Foxhounds of the Malden and Daxtead Hunt. Neither Lord Philip nor his friend, Freddie Jackson, had had much time to get acquainted with their new quarters or the neighborhood before they found themselves in the saddle and after the fox. For the hunt met on the morning after they arrived.

It was hardly the Quorn, it was hardly a regular hunt, made up as it was of a motley crowd of gentry and farmers who seemed more interested in the number of stirrup cups they could sink than in the chase. The hounds were a fat, lazy, overfed lot, but at last they gave tongue and the hunt was off across the fields. No one could really call Sir Peregrine a thruster. He dithered, he panicked, he shouted wild instructions and countermanded them in the next breath. A long chase ended nowhere and it was discovered that some of the village boys had drawn red herrings across the fields for the simple pleasure of seeing the hunt heading off in the wrong direction.

After a lot of baffled circling under a lowering sky, the hounds at last picked up the right scent and decided to humor their master by actually trying to find the fox. It was then that the storm had struck. All at once it was like riding through a thick, black, howling cloud.

Lord Philip had been lent his present mount by his host. It was a great splayfooted beast with a cranky disposition and an alarming tendency to buck.

Lord Philip, following the faint sounds of the chase, had ridden him hard and spurred him toward the dim outlines of a dry-stone dike. The horse had dug in all four hooves with such force that Lord Philip had catapulted over his head and into a bog on the other side.

After various trials and tribulations, with both man and horse struggling about in the storm, Lord Philip decided he was hopelessly lost.

As he stumbled over the field, leading his mount, he searched in the darkness for some sign of a light. He was soaked to the skin, his sodden jacket clung uncomfortably to his body, and cascades of water poured from his hat down the inside of his shirt.

Suddenly the rain ceased and a small moon appeared high above, tearing through masses of ragged black cloud. In front of him an animal turned in its tracks and stared at him, its eyes glinting in the moonlight, before it scampered off toward the blackness of the wood on the far side of the field.

It was the fox.

Lord Philip reflected bitterly that at least the fox had the advantage of him in that it obviously knew where it was going.

With a savage howl, the wind struck across the field, the moon was blotted out, and the rain came down in torrents again.

But before the moon disappeared, Lord Philip had caught the glint of metal of two tall gates some distance to his left, on the opposite side from the wood, and so he began to slither and stumble toward them.

Groping around in the blackness, he found a handle and, sending up a prayer that it would not be locked, turned it and pushed the gate.

To his infinite relief, it swung open, and he led the horse inside and closed the gate behind him. There was no light to indicate that there was a lodge but he could feel the smooth surface of a drive beneath his boots.

He mounted his horse again, trusting to the sound of its hooves to keep him from straying from the road. From the sudden blacker blackness, he judged he was in a drive bordered by tall trees. The wind, blocked by the trees, raged away somewhere above his head. The weary horse clattered around a bend in the drive and he was able to make out the bulk of a large mansion. There were many lights, some stationary, some moving about as servants crossed from room to room.

With a sigh of relief, he urged his horse forward until it was under the shelter of the portico. He thanked heaven for his scarlet coat. Any stray huntsman knew he had only to ring a doorbell and be afforded immediate shelter for the night. It allowed you to ride through someone’s garden, demand their best brandy, and all with the firm idea that you were doing them a favor. Such was the magic of a scarlet coat.

He searched around in the blackness of the portico until he found the handle of the doorbell and gave it an energetic pull.

It must be near midnight, he reflected.

The bobbing light of a candle could soon be seen approaching through the hall windows. There was a great rattling of chains and bolts and bars and the doors suddenly sprang open to reveal two liveried footmen.

He explained his predicament, saying he would see his horse bedded down for the night before entering the house. One of the footmen went to fetch a lantern and then led him through the darkness along the side of the house and through two courtyards until they reached the stables.

A half-dressed groom hurriedly put on the rest of his clothes and set about attending to his lordship’s horse, whistling between his teeth, pulling the horse’s ears, and asking innumerable questions about the chase which Lord Philip answered as best he could.

When Lord Philip had seen his horse drink a bowl of hot gruel and had seen it wrapped tenderly in blankets hot from the saddle room fire, he felt free to return to the house and see to his own comfort.

He was so tired with the buffeting of the wind and his clothes were so uncomfortable that he failed to ask the name of his host. He recollected his manners as soon as he was standing in the warmth of a large hall before a blazing fire. But the footman who had escorted him back to the house had disappeared to find the housekeeper.

The hall was not a great baronial affair but a square, pleasant room with a handsome carved wooden staircase rising from the center of it to the upper rooms. There were two old settles on either side of the fire. Several suits of armor stood sentinel in the gloom of the corners, and a fine Chippendale table stood near the door, with a silver tray on it for callers to leave their cards. A faded tapestry depicting a French hunting scene hung on one wall and several dim landscapes, badly in need of cleaning, ornamented the other three. The hall smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke, potpourri, and beeswax. His stomach gave a protesting rumble and he realized he was very hungry indeed.

He heard a light footfall on the stair and looked up.

For a long, long moment Amaryllis and Lord Philip stared at each other.

Then both began to speak at once.

“How dare you…”

“I was hunting and…”

“Come here….”

“And lost the way.”

“Have you not plagued…”

“I would not have come…”

“Me enough?”

“Had I known you lived here.”

As she spoke, Amaryllis had descended the stairs and was standing in front of him, affording him an excellent vision of heaving bosom and angry eyes.

“Listen!” he said furiously. “I lost my way during the storm. I was in need of shelter. Now, by your leave, I will take my unwelcome presence elsewhere. Simply give me the direction of some hostelry.”

Amaryllis stood back a little and saw the condition he was in for the first time. He was as muddy as Hungerford Stairs and his clothes were beginning to steam in front of the fire.

Her anger left her abruptly, leaving her feeling strangely tired and numb.

“You may stay,” she said in a flat voice. “The storm is too bad.”

“Perhaps you had better ask your host, madam,” he said.

“My…? Oh, I live here. I mean, it’s mine. It belonged to my late husband—Beaton Malden, that is—and he left it to me.”

“But you said…”

“Later,” said Amaryllis quietly. “Mrs. Jarrett is here. Mrs. Jarrett, take Lord Philip to the Blue Room and tell cook to send up something for supper. Set it in the drawing room.”

And without another word, Amaryllis turned and left him.

Feeling stunned, his head reeling, Lord Philip followed Mrs. Jarret up the stairs to the second floor. She did not betray by one flicker of an eyelid that she had seen him before, merely tuttutting in a motherly way over the state of his clothes, saying she would see if there was something of the old master to fit him.

Two servants carried in a copper bath and, placing it in front of the fire, began to fill it with hot water. Lord Philip decided to stop fretting his brains until after he was washed and dressed.

He proceeded to pry off his adhering boots with the aid of a bootjack while another well-trained servant softly entered the room and shifted the top log on the fire to make it blaze and then lighted the toilet-table candles. Then a man in the livery of groom-of-the-chambers entered and laid out clean linen, dress clothes, and shiny thin shoes on a sofa in the corner. A long-necked bottle of white brandy, accompanied by hot water, lemon, sugar, nutmeg, and a plate of biscuits, made its appearance on a massive silver tray.

By dint of helping himself quickly to a large tumbler of brandy and drinking it down quickly without bothering about the other ingredients, Lord Philip managed to keep both fatigue and churning thoughts at bay.

He bathed and scrubbed himself vigorously, disciplining himself not to hurry until he was dressed and brushed and groomed to the best of his ability. The clothes were a little slack about the hips and tight about the shoulders but at last he decided his appearance would have to do and rang the bell for a servant, who arrived very quickly, bearing a chamber-candle to light his lordship’s way downstairs.

The drawing room into which he was ushered was a pleasantly feminine room, with chairs and sofas upholstered in rose-and-cream silk and rose silk hangings at the windows. Lamps and candles had been lit about the long room. Books and magazines were scattered over a long table in the center. A workbasket displaying an assortment of colored threads and silks was lying open on the floor near one of the armchairs which were placed at either side of the fire. A spinet with the lid laid back was in one corner. Several sheets of music lay on the top. On a marble stand by the door, a magnificent vase of hothouse flowers blazed in the candlelight.

In front of the fire, a small table covered with a white cloth had been set up.

Lord Philip turned from his inspection of the room as the door opened and his hostess walked in. She had changed into the spangled gown she had worn at Ranelagh.

Her hair was dressed in a simple style, loose curls falling from a knot at the top of her head. He would have spoken but she held up a finger to indicate the presence of the servants carrying in his supper and so they sat in silence until a cold supper and a bottle of wine had been set out for him. Amaryllis sent the servants away and faced Lord Philip across the small table.

“Eat first,” she said. “We will talk afterwards.”

He nodded in agreement, feeling he could deal with her better on a full stomach, although he found her steady gaze on him as he ate disturbing, to say the least.

At last, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and poured another glass of wine for both of them. The little gilt French clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out one o’clock in the morning.

“Now, Lord Philip,” said Amaryllis. “You are wondering why I did not tell you I owned Beaton Malden.”

He shrugged, feeling that he had at last guessed the answer.

“You are obviously a rich heiress after all,” he said. “You were furious when I told you I had no money. You obviously thought I was after your fortune… and so you lied to me.”

For one brief moment, she wanted to lie to him, to tell him he had guessed the truth, but the thought went as quickly as it had come. Her rage when she first saw him standing in the hall had been so deep and so intense that when it had gone, it had left her feeling drained of all emotion.

She raised her eyes and saw only a handsome man with a tired, rather drawn face whose green eyes looked at her so searchingly.

“No,” said Amaryllis. “That was not it. That was not it at all.”

A log shifted in the fireplace with a sound like a sigh and the wind outside hurled itself against the windows.

“I was desperately in need of money,” she went on. “I had managed well for a long time. Did I tell you I had been married twice? No? Well, that was the case. Each time, I married an elderly gentleman for his money. The first one was because, when father died, my sisters and I were left destitute. I had to marry or we would all have landed in the workhouse. The second time was because my sisters craved a Season in London. And so I married again. This time, Lord Lovelace. He understood why I was marrying him—as my first husband did. I did not go to London with my sisters. They were “brought out” by a relative of my late husband. They did not aspire to Almack’s or the haut ton but circulated enough and had enough of pretty dresses and jewels to satisfy them. Both married well. My husband died and I was left very comfortably off. He loved this place and when he was dying I promised to look after it to the best of my ability. I became part of that despised race, a ‘lady farmer.’

“Well, I invested well and my money doubled and trebled. I hired a certain Mr. Worthy as steward and decided to go abroad for a year with Miss Wilkins. I traveled extensively and extravagantly.

“I unfortunately left complete control of my money and estates to my cousin, Bertram Warrell. I will not sully his memory by telling you the extent of his ills, but enough to say he not only dissipated my entire fortune but mortgaged Beaton Malden to the hilt as well. He is dead.”

“Why did you not turn to your sisters for money?” asked Lord Philip, who had read self-sacrifice between the lines of Amaryllis’s story. “You had done enough for them.”

“Ah, how could I? I knew they would be too embarrassed to ask their husbands for money. Besides, I had come about before and felt sure I would again. So I set out to marry for money.

“Now, I seem very mercenary but I assure you that I made both my husbands very happy when they were alive. I planned to marry some elderly gentleman who would supply some of his fortune in return for affection and fidelity. I had to do it, you see. So many people here to pay wages to, to feed and clothe and house. And I had given my word to Lord Lovelace.

“And so I met you. I would not have entertained the idea of marrying you but you appeared to be in love with me. And I believed you rich.

“When you told me you had no money, all I could think of was that you had seduced me by a trick. I was determined you should never have Beaton Malden, for I feared you would be like my cousin and milk the estates for every penny you could get. Well, things remain the same. You shall not own a stick of the place. I shall fight you in the courts.”

“I have no intention of taking Beaton Malden from you,” he said. “I think since we have finally met again, we should discuss arrangements to have our marriage nullified. We could,” he smiled wryly, “arrange it on the grounds that it was not consummated.”

Amaryllis studied him closely. When he had said he did not want Beaton Malden, she had realized he spoke the truth.

“What was your reason for wanting to marry an heiress?” she asked curiously.

“I was weary,” he said, turning his wine glass round in his long fingers. “I was tired of military service, tired of foreign voices and foreign soil. I always wanted to farm some land. My father has never really liked me very much so there was no hope of any help from him. Harry… Mr. Bagshot… returned with me on the ship from India. He suggested I marry an heiress. All I wanted was some land, some horses, some dogs, and a home. Unfortunately, Harry spread it around that I was a rich nabob. Someone gossiped that you were a rich heiress. And so… there we were. It all seems a rather grubby episode now. But we did deceive each other.”

“And pretended to be in love with each other,” said Amaryllis in a low voice. He did not reply, so she went on, “What will you do now?”

“Well, the Fangs are still determined on my title and have offered all sorts of help in freeing me from this marriage. It seems as if poor Belinda still wishes to wed me.”

“Then you have no worries,” said Amaryllis brightly. “I shall not stand in the way of a divorce.”

“Thank you.” His face looked drawn and tired. “Divorce or no, I do not think I shall marry Belinda. I have discovered that I am not a true Exclusive. I do not think I could live the rest of my life with someone I do not love. But enough of me. What about you? Will you have to sell Beaton Malden?”

He listened intently as Amaryllis told him of the loyalty of the servants, of their offer to remain without wages, of how Mr. Worthy was doing wonders with the land and that they had had a bumper harvest and that it looked as if things might be on a safe footing soon and she could start to pay off some of the mountain of debt.

“I envy you,” he said with a sigh when she had finished. “Take my advice and stick to your land and property. Do not be beholden to anyone.” His eyes flashed with the old mocking glint and her heart turned over. “Don’t you think you have been married enough?”

She gave a reluctant smile. “Perhaps. You are right. It is very hard work, and Mr. Worthy is very good. But his approach is so scientific. He forgets the tenants are flesh and blood. One must always call on those who are sick and then there are the young ones who need schooling—oh, so many things. A husband would naturally…” she broke off with a blush.

“A husband would naturally take some of those duties from your shoulders,” he finished for her. “Do not look so embarrassed. I am leaving in the morning, you know. I am visiting Sir Peregrine Russell along with a friend of mine, Freddie Jackson.”

Now that he so clearly did not want Beaton Malden—or herself—Amaryllis found herself full of strange desire to have him stay. This she put down to maternal feelings. He was a still-young man who longed to own some property. Well, why should he not stay at Beaton Malden for a little? Perhaps if he helped in the restoring of the Beaton Malden fortunes, he would feel part of it and would forget his penniless state for a little while.

“Things have changed between us,” she said, “now that we do not have to pretend we are in love. And I am sure our marriage can be easily annulled. I do not know if any of my neighbors in the county know the gossip but if they do it is no matter. For the moment, we are married. So why not stay here for a little? You could help me with the running of things. Please say you will. I badly need some help. I think we could perhaps be friends. We are a couple of ex-adventurers.” She impulsively held out her hand.

She meant him to shake it but he rose and stooped over it and, turning her hand over, dropped a light kiss on her palm.

“Friends?” he queried, his green eyes glinting with mockery.

“Yes,” said Amaryllis breathlessly.

“I can’t really desert Freddie just like that.”

“Then invite him too,” said Amaryllis impatiently.

“Very well,” he said slowly. “We shall be friends… if that is really what you want.”

And Amaryllis felt so elated and so happy that she was quite sure that was exactly what she did want. Firmly she thrust the memory of their lovemaking from her mind. By the time she had bid him good night and finally settled herself for sleep, she had convinced herself that that one night of honeymoon had been nothing more than an unfortunate episode in which two desperate people had tried to will themselves into being in love. But all that was over now and they were grown-up, mature people who could meet as sexless equals on a basis of pure friendship.

Amaryllis took an immediate liking to Colonel Freddie Jackson, who arrived the next day in a carriage which carried Lord Philip’s baggage as well as his own. He was a tall man about Lord Philip’s age, dressed in impeccable morning dress. He had a quantity of sparse light hair which was teased into fluffy curls. His eyes were a washed-out blue and held all the vague innocence and wonder of a very small child.

Freddie, it seemed, was delighted to escape from Sir Peregrine’s hospitality, although he was too polite to say so direct. He merely said it had been a difficult morning, for Perry had brought his hunting horn down to breakfast and started complaining that he had been unable to get a single note out of it. “So,” sighed Colonel Freddie, stretching his polished Hessians out to the cheerful blaze of an applewood fire, “he begins to bang it on the breakfast table and shake it and worry it and then he raised the demned—pardon, ma’am—thing to his lips and puffs and puffs and all of a sudden this tremendous blast fit to bust the eardrums goes sounding for miles.

“Well, the windows of the breakfast room were open, it being sunny and mildish after the storm, and the next thing his demned—pardon ma’am—hounds is broke loose from the kennels and comes charging and belling and giving tongue like they’ve never done for any fox afore. Well, the leader o’ the pack, Danny Boy, he ups on the table and shoves his great muzzle straight into the cold game pie and all the other animals follow suit with the exception of old Tan Bounder, who’s the laziest and meanest hound that ever was. He just sits and watches the others being cuffed and beaten off the table by the servants and he grabs the table cover in his teeth and gives an enormous pull and the whole lot goes a-sliding on the floor, teacups, coffee cups, jellies, preserves, the lot. Lady Perry, she screams and leaves off shooing the hounds and hits Sir Perry on the head with the coffeepot. So I’m glad I’m here,” he finished simply. “I’m sure Agatha will like it too.”

“Agatha?” asked Amaryllis and Lord Philip in unison. The small party was seated—or rather, hiding out—in the morning room as a large group of visitors was being shown over the rest of the house.

“My sister,” said Freddie. “She was going to join me at Perry’s, but of course now she’ll come here—that is, if it isn’t putting you out too much, ma’am?”

“Not at all,” said Amaryllis.

“Agatha?” queried Lord Philip again. “I cannot bring to mind your sister.”

“Never saw her, that’s why,” said Freddie. “Went and married a Cit. She’s a widow now. Only twenty-six. No children.”

From the picture gallery upstairs came a scream and the sound of a fall.

Amaryllis held up a restraining hand as the gentlemen leapt to their feet. “’Tis only one of the lady visitors fainting. For some reason they always do that. Tight lacing and a predilection for visiting country houses in all weathers seem to go hand in hand.”

“You seem to have an uncommon lot of visitors,” said Colonel Freddie. “That’s the third lot since I arrived.”

“I had begun to think it was usual. Foster, my butler, told me it was.”

“Not by a long shot,” said Freddie. “If I had this lot, I would bar the gates.”

Amaryllis smiled. “The servants do not seem to mind.”

“No, why should they?” said Freddie cheerfully. “Look at all the money they’ll be getting.”

Amaryllis looked at him in surprise. Of course! No wonder Mrs. Jarrett and Foster were pleased with the flow of visitors. Amaryllis was glad they were making money and therefore did not pause to wonder about the reason for the sudden increase in visitors.

She turned to Freddie. “When do you expect your sister?”

“Oh, ’bout tomorrow. She’ll go to Perry’s first and then she’ll come along here.”

Foster entered with the post on a silver tray. “There is Colonel Jackson’s and Lord Philip’s correspondence as well, my lady. The post boy brought it along from Sir Russell’s.”

“Very good, Foster. Ah, here is one for you, Colonel Jackson, and, let me see, three for you, Lord Philip, and several for myself.”

The three settled back in the comfortable chairs of Amaryllis’s pretty morning room, which faced south across the lawns to the lake, and began to read their post.

Lord Philip gave an angry exclamation. “I wrote to the Fangs from your place, Freddie, saying I was going on to stay with Sir Peregrine and now Mrs. Fang says that they will be in the vicinity and will call. Perry will tell them I am here. What a confounded nuisance.”

“I have bad news as well,” said Amaryllis, looking up from a crossed and recrossed sheet of parchment. “Priscilla Armitage is threatening to pay me a surprise visit.”

“All we need,” said Lord Philip gloomily, “is my old friend Harry Bagshot to complete the picture.”

“Mr. Bagshot,” announced Foster from the doorway.

“I’m terribly sorry to burst in on you like this, Lady Philip,” said Harry rushing forward and making a clumsy bow.

“Lady Philip?” echoed Freddie, staring from one to the other.

“I’ve been looking all over for you, Phil,” said Harry Bagshot. “What a job I’ve had of finding you. Knew you was still mad at me. You never gave me time to apologize.”

“I would really rather you hadn’t troubled, Harry,” said Lord Philip coldly.

“I say, why did he call you Lady Philip?” asked Freddie plaintively.

“Oh, lor’,” said Harry, collapsing into the nearest chair. “I’ve done it again! Look, please forgive me, Phil. How was I to know that Priscilla would chatter so? As a matter of fact, I called her some very hard names. Never want to set eyes on her again. Broke off the engagement that very day.”

“Well, if you sit here much longer, you are most certainly going to meet her. She is already on her way to pay me a visit.”

The small figure of Mr. Bagshot seemed to crumple in the chair.

“Miss Armitage!” announced Foster.

Priscilla swept forward and embraced Amaryllis, crying all the while into a lace handkerchief liberally scented with onion.

“Oh, Amaryllis, do… do forgive me… my life is ruined. Oh, Harry!” she cried on espying that gentleman. Then she dropped in a dead faint on the floor. Her cheeks were still very pink and Amaryllis glared down at her suspiciously.

“Foster!” called Amaryllis. “Fetch a bucket of cold water and throw it over Miss Armitage.”

Miss Armitage immediately came to life and scrambled to her feet with alacrity. Looking from Mr. Bagshot’s miserable face to Amaryllis’s cold one, Lord Philip’s bored one, and Freddie’s stunned amazement, she really began to cry in earnest without even having to resort to her onion juice-soaked handkerchief.

With a little sigh, Amaryllis moved forward. “Do not take on so, Priscilla. I will take you to your room and we will talk about things later. I am sure you must be exhausted after your journey. Mrs. Jarrett shall send your maid to you and then you can be comfortable.” And, still talking, she led the weeping girl from the room.

“What’s this about Lady Philip?” pursued Freddie.

“A slip of the tongue,” snapped Lord Philip. “Wasn’t it, Harry?”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” burbled Harry. “Always was like that you know. Never could get people’s names right.”

A carriage crunched over the gravel of the drive at the front of the house. From the sound of the subsequent commotion it seemed as if several people had arrived.

“More visitors wanting to see the house,” said Freddie.

“Oh, no,” said Lord Philip. “I feel in my bones that the Fangs have arrived. Now, as I recollect, there is a billiard room at the back of the house. I suggest we repair there before we are further trapped!”

They escaped just in time, for it was indeed the Fangs.

Amaryllis had invited Mr. James Worthy to join them for dinner that evening. She had told Mrs. Jarrett to instruct the cook that no special fare or exotic French dishes were to be sent to the table. The guests must eat what the household usually had, which was good plain fare. She placed Miss Fang next to Mr. Bagshot and Priscilla next to Fang père, with Miss Wilkins on his other side. Lord Philip was placed next to Mr. Worthy, with herself on his other side. Freddie was then flanked by Mrs. Fang and Priscilla.

Although round tables were considered the height of vulgarity, Amaryllis had had the long dining table carried out and replaced with a round table from the Yellow Saloon on the first floor. That way, she would not need to worry about precedence or who took the head of the table facing her.

Priscilla had recovered enough to make several tittering and snide remarks about parvenus and round tables but Freddie put up his quizzing glass and stared at her with such open horror that she flushed and fell silent, contenting herself by throwing sulky looks in the embarrassed Mr. Bagshot’s direction.

Perhaps the only person who seemed to enjoy the dinner was Lord Philip, who had taken an immediate liking to the steward, Mr. Worthy, and was soon plunged deep in animated conversation of crop rotation and cattle and sheep. Amaryllis found she had to entertain Mr. Bagshot, who was glad to turn his attention from Miss Fang, who blushed every time he spoke to her and said everything was “hoffly nice.”

The port and madeira were at last going the rounds, the ladies taking wine with the gentlemen. “Taking wine” is an exhausting business. You select someone to take wine with and raise your glass and nod to that individual, who raises his or her glass and nods to you, and so it goes on throughout the meal and, of course, if you are taking wine with a heavy drinker, why, your head is nodding like a mandarin by the time you get to the port and walnuts stage.

At the beginning of the meal, a footman had bent over Amaryllis’s shoulder and whispered to her the intelligence that Colonel Jackson wished to take wine with her. Amaryllis raised her glass to Freddie and both nodded. Freddie turned out to have a formidable capacity and, of course, if you have agreed to take wine with someone, you can’t very well give up in the middle of the meal.

Amaryllis was just about to rise and lead the ladies to the drawing room when there was a rattling of wheels on the drive outside. She turned to Foster, who was standing by the sideboard. “Foster, if by any chance that happens to be visitors to see around the house calling at this unearthly hour, they must be sent packing immediately.”

“Very good, my lady.”

Amaryllis decided to wait until whoever it was had been sent about their business before taking the ladies to the drawing room. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that Freddie was raising his glass and trying to catch her attention. She refused to look in his direction. She felt she simply could not bear to drink another glass of wine. Her head was swimming and the room and its occupants seemed fuzzy, as if she were seeing them through gauze.

Foster entered the room and went quickly to his mistress. “Colonel Jackson’s sister, Mrs. Jordan, has arrived.”

“Oh, dear. I mean, how splendid. Colonel Jackson, your sister is here.”

“What, Agatha?” said Freddie, bounding to his feet.

“Yeth, me, Fweddie!” cried a little voice from the doorway.

All the men got to their feet and stared at Freddie’s sister in a bemused sort of way.

Freddie’s sister, Agatha, was one of the most enchanting-looking women Amaryllis had ever seen. She had a little heart-shaped face and a tiny red mouth—small enough to please the highest stickler. She had huge blue eyes and curls of midnight black rioting from under an ermine shako. She carried a large swansdown muff. She had divested herself of her pelisse and was wearing a scarlet merino gown with black stripes, cut very low over her white bosom. It should have looked vulgar and certainly would have on any other woman. But somehow it added to Agatha’s saucy appeal.

Amaryllis hurried forward. “We are just about to retire to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their wine, Mrs. Jordan. Have you eaten?”

“Oh, yeth,” smiled Agatha. “Beaucoup, vraiment.”

Miss Fang could be heard asking a question as to whether the newcomer were French, not having grasped that most of the ton interlarded their conversation with French phrases.

“I think we should join the ladies,” said Lord Philip suddenly.

There was a cheerful chorus of assent.

Amaryllis looked sharply at Lord Philip. He was gazing at the vision that was Mrs. Jordan, a smile curling, his mouth, a predatory look in his eyes.

Men, thought Amaryllis, near to tears. She moved hurriedly to lead Mrs. Jordan to the drawing room and therefore missed the speculative look that Lord Philip cast in her direction.

“I wonder…” mused Lord Philip as he followed the ladies. “Now could it be that the iron Lady Lovelace could actually be made jealous…?

Six

Amaryllis awoke early the next morning and lay turning over the events of the previous evening in her mind. Priscilla Armitage had sworn that she would not tell any of the guests about Amaryllis’s marriage, although Amaryllis felt wearily it was bound to come out, what with Mr. Fang muttering about divorce in corners and Belinda whispering to Lord Philip that she forgave him.

Mrs. Fang herself had tackled Amaryllis over the matter of her marriage, obviously wishing to be reassured that Amaryllis and Lord Philip were not living as man and wife. Why Priscilla Armitage had chosen to come on a visit was vague, since she was not the sort of girl to be troubled with remorse, but Amaryllis at last decided that having failed to secure a husband at the Season and having found out through the grapevine that Mr. Bagshot was traveling into Oxfordshire to find Lord Philip, Miss Armitage had assumed—correctly as it turned out—that her ex-fiancé was to be found at Beaton Malden and wished to see if she could reanimate his affections.

There did not seem to be much hope of it, for Mr. Bagshot now appeared terrified of Priscilla. Both Priscilla and Belinda Fang, reflected Amaryllis, were lucky in that they had doting and indulgent parents. The Fangs were prepared to pay for the divorce, if necessary, in order to supply their daughter with a title, and Priscilla’s parents had allowed her to travel to the country with only her maid in order to hunt down a man who had shown quite clearly that he did not want to have anything to do with her.

Rain pattered steadily against the windows of the bedroom and Amaryllis wondered drearily what on earth she was supposed to do to entertain her guests.

There was also Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan had rapidly shown that she had no time for her own sex at all. Although she had been polite to Amaryllis in a cursory way, she had been quite offhand with the other ladies. Her attentions to Lord Philip had been blatant.

He was a womanizer, thought Amaryllis savagely. He had lain in her arms and it had been the most marvelous thing that had ever happened to her. But it had all been a sham. He did not mock or tease Mrs. Jordan but paid court to her in a quite gentlemanly way which made Amaryllis grind her teeth.

Not yet understanding why this should hurt her so badly, she turned her face into the pillow and wept.

At last, she sat up and dried her eyes. Life had to go on. Lord Philip and Lady Lovelace could never be anything to each other, not even friends. She would tell him he must leave that very day and take Colonel Jackson and his sister, Agatha Jordan, with him. That way the Fangs would leave too, Mr. Bagshot and Priscilla could go as well, and she would be left alone to be as miserable as she liked. And with that cheering thought, she rang for her maid, dressed, and marched downstairs to the dining room, hoping to have her breakfast in peace and quiet before she had to face her unwanted guests.

As she descended the stairs, Foster was waiting in the hall with the intelligence that Sir Peregrine Russell’s footman had ridden over with a letter for her.

It transpired that a hunt ball was to be held at Sir Peregrine’s that very evening. Sir Peregrine realized that it was very short notice but he had not known till the other day that her ladyship was in residence. He included Lord Philip and Colonel Jackson in his invitation and also any other guests Lady Lovelace cared to bring.

Still reading the letter, she walked into the dining room. All her guests were already there, even Mrs. Jordan, who was the sort of lady Amaryllis could have sworn would not have arisen before noon.

Mrs. Jordan was waving a piece of grilled kidney on her fork in front of Lord Philip’s face and urging him to try it. It was “dewicious.” Lord Philip was looking as bored as a man could look, but no sooner did he set eyes on Amaryllis than he turned and smiled slowly and seductively into Mrs. Jordan’s eyes.

Amaryllis found herself announcing the news of the hunt ball in a rather shrill voice.

Agatha Jordan put a possessive little hand on Lord Philip’s sleeve and said, “Oooh, do wet’s go!” Lord Philip smiled at her lazily and said he expected Agatha to keep all the dances for him. Mr. and Mrs. Fang immediately accepted on behalf of their daughter, both of them nailing Agatha with fulminating glances.

Mr. Fang was a City merchant and looked it. He was a round person—round face, round body, round eyes—dressed in rusty black and wearing an old-fashioned wig. He was usually quiet and retiring in society, preferring to leave the “push” to his wife. Mrs. Fang was thin and elegant and very self-possessed. When it came to their beloved daughter, however, husband and wife were united in seeing that Belinda should get what Belinda wanted.

They had thought it would be a simple matter of arranging Lord Philip’s divorce as discreetly as possible. They had not reckoned on Agatha Jordan but, having got over their initial shock, they were determined to find a way to remove her from the field.

It was hard to say what Belinda thought of this new rival for Lord Philip’s affections, for she hardly ever raised her eyes, and her conversation consisted of monosyllables.

Priscilla Armitage was talking away at a great rate to Harry Bagshot, who was staring down moodily into the depths of his coffee cup as if wishing he could leap in and drown.

Colonel Freddie Jackson was staring from face to face in a puzzled way. He sensed the undercurrents in the room but could not quite make out what the trouble was. At last he decided it was because the wind was in the east and everyone’s liver was being adversely affected.

Amaryllis sat down at the table beside Miss Wilkins and muttered, “I do not feel like going at all. Also, it would be lovely to have the house to myself.”

“Oh, but you must go,” said Miss Wilkins. “It would not be at all the thing to let your guests go on their own. Besides, you have that vastly pretty ballgown, the green one with the blond lace, that you have never worn before. I realize this situation is vastly painful but…”

Clear and cold, Lord Philip’s voice interrupted Miss Wilkins. “Perhaps our hostess will favor me with a waltz?”

Amaryllis smiled bleakly on him, did not reply, and turned again to Miss Wilkins. Agatha Jordan looked across at Amaryllis with a bright gleam of calculation in her eyes and then she said to Lord Philip, “You are such a gentleman to even consider dancing attendance on us eldewwy widows.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Fang sweetly, “although Lady Lovelace is not exactly a widow since she is at the moment married to Lord Philip, a state of affairs which we all hope to remedy as soon as possible.”

Agatha looked blank and rapidly recovered her poise. “Oh, you naughty man!” she cried. “You should not flirt with me if you are mawwied.”

“I never could resist a pretty face,” said his lordship casually. “No, it’s no use goggling at me, Freddie. I am not going to explain my marriage over the breakfast table.”

“Especially since you are so soon to have it annulled,” said Mrs. Fang.

“Oooh, mama!” cried Belinda. “I don’t think… Philip… I mean… I don’t know.”

“You make my affairs a great deal too public, ma’am,” said Lord Philip. “I would like to make this plain. Lady Lovelace and I are married. She prefers to be addressed, however, by her late husband’s name. Whether we will divorce or no is a matter to be settled between Lady Lovelace and myself. It is not the least concern of anyone else.”

“I don’t want to marry you,” burst out Belinda, amazing the company by uttering a whole sentence.

“You are overwrought,” exclaimed her mother. “You do not know what you are saying.”

But it seemed as if the shy Belinda, having once found her voice, was reluctant to stop talking. “I don’t want to marry a lord and live in the country. I hate the country. It’s so countrified. And it rains a lot. I’m frightened of all these servants. I’m sorry, mama, I thought I was in love with Philip, but I hain’t. I’d rather marry him.” And she pointed her fork at the startled Mr. Bagshot.

“Oh, really,” said Priscilla, all heaving bosom. “Your manners may be all right in the City, but they will not do for a gentleman’s home. In Society, we don’t behave so.”

“We don’t chase after men who don’t want us, in the City,” snapped Belinda. “Poor Mr. Bagshot.”

“You’re all tewwibly vulgar, if you ask me,” said Agatha.

“Nobody asked you, you trollop!” screamed Priscilla and ran from the room.

“Hrmph! Think they’ll hunt today?” said Colonel Freddie firmly and clearly.

“Shouldn’t think so,” said Mr. Bagshot gratefully. “Terrible gale blowing. Ground’s like soup.”

Glad of the diversion, Amaryllis said, “I don’t think the Malden and Daxtead Hunt have ever really caught a fox. Do you know, it is said they have bought so many bag foxes from Leadenhall Street and set them loose that the countryside is quite overrun.”

“Where is Mr. Worthy to be found?” asked Lord Philip.

“In the estates office—that’s what was my husband’s study at the end of the west wing.”

“If you will excuse me, I will go there now,” said Lord Philip. “Ah, here is Foster with the post. Anything for me?”

“Just one, my lord,” said the butler, handing him a letter, which, from its battered appearance, bore witness to its travels around the countryside as it was forwarded from place to place.

“Thank you.” Lord Philip took the letter, made his bow to Amaryllis, and left the room.

Amaryllis wished to escape herself. She wanted to be private, to turn over that phrase of his in her mind, “whether we will divorce or no.” Could it mean that he might not want to divorce her? Then her heart sank. Perhaps he now wanted the marriage to stand so that he could get his hands on Beaton Malden. What did she know of him, after all? Look how blatantly he had flirted with Agatha.

And did the Fangs not realize how mad the whole business was? One simply did not buy husbands? Oh, yes, one most certainly does, whispered her conscience.

Amaryllis forced herself to discuss plans with the guests as to how they should best spend their day, although she longed to be shot of the lot of them. No one seemed very interested in anything until Foster stepped forward. “If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, my lady? I should be only too happy to take the ladies and gentlemen on a tour of the house and grounds.”

“Oh, splendid idea, Foster. They would be delighted,” said Amaryllis, firmly ignoring the tepid reception of this suggestion. “I’m sure everyone would love to start directly after breakfast. And now, if you will all excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”

Miss Wilkins rose with her and both made their exit. Foster followed them from the room. “Mr. Worthy begged me to tell you, my lady, that Mrs. Smith over at Baggets End is poorly with the fever.”

“Thank you, Foster,” said Amaryllis. “I shall fetch some medicine from the stillroom and ride over. Find me a bottle of the best port and some calf’s-foot jelly and some sugarplums for her children. By the way, I noticed the other day that the furniture in the Long Gallery had been moved around. I do not remember giving any instructions.”

Foster’s face was a mask. “I shall attend to it, my lady.”

“Lady Lovelace?”

Her heart missed a beat at the sound of that now familiar voice.

“Lord Philip?”

“I would like a word in private with you, Lady Lovelace. If Miss Wilkins will excuse us.”

“Certainly, my lord. Tabby, you are looking peaked. Why don’t you lie down, and when I return from the Smiths, we can discuss our toilettes for the evening. Lord Philip, if you will follow me to the morning room….”

The morning room was a comfortable retreat, decorated in panels of pale gold silk. All the favorite paintings and porcelain seemed to have found their way there. The wind sent great sheets of rain hurtling against the windows.

“I could not help overhearing that you plan to ride out today,” said Lord Philip. “I would suggest you leave it until the weather clears.”

“Oh, no,” said Amaryllis simply. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I am very strong, my lord. I shall not melt. What was it you wanted to discuss with me?”

“Pray be seated,” he said, waiting until she had settled herself in a small armchair on one side of the fire.

He sat down opposite and Amaryllis studied his handsome face, the strange slanting black eyebrows, the firm mouth, and felt a dull ache at her heart and wondered why.

He crackled open the letter he had just received. “Well, here’s irony,” he said. “I have… or rather had… this uncle that I have never seen. He was the youngest son of his family and so he joined the East India Company. He made his fortune in India, a fact of which I was completely unaware… until now. He has died shortly after his return to England and has left his entire fortune to me. It is considerable, I assure you. Enough to buy me the land I crave. Mr. Worthy has agreed, with your permission, of course, to help me in my search.”

Amaryllis said the first thing that came into her head, which was, “Then you don’t need to stay married to me?”

He looked at her in some surprise. “That was never the case, surely, since we both discovered that the one had tricked the other?”

Amaryllis flushed miserably. “I thought you wanted Beaton Malden.”

“And would stay married to you in order to get it? I thought I had made it plain I had no interest in your property except to supply some help and advice. And I could have sworn you believed me.”

“Oh, I did. I d-do,” stammered Amaryllis miserably.

“Then why the deuce…?”

But Amaryllis shook her head and bit her lip and looked remarkably like a guilty schoolgirl. How could she tell him that she had just realized she had hoped that somehow he would come to love Beaton Malden as much as she and would decide to stay, and then they would be friends and she need not be alone anymore?

Friends? sneered an inner voice, but she refused to listen.

“I suppose you will want to stay married to me now that I am a rich man,” he countered.

“How dare you!” gasped Amaryllis. “Go and marry whom you please. Mrs. Jordan would suit you very well, I think.”

“Yes, she is vastly pretty, is she not?” he asked lightly and Amaryllis had a sudden beautiful and fleeting daydream in which the Malden and Daxtead Hunt killed Mrs. Jordan in mistake for the fox.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs in their shining Hessian boots out to the blaze, propping his heels on the fender. His eyes were mocking again.

“You know what I think about the pair of us, Lady Lovelace? I think we are not mercenary at all. Mercenary people do not sacrifice themselves for others. I am talking about you. Where are those wretched sisters of yours, by the way? Do they never come to call?”

“They have their own families now.”

“And since you have fulfilled your part of marrying for a comfortable amount of money to supply them with a home and then having to marry a fortune to supply them with a Season, they no longer need you?”

“That is not true,” said Amaryllis hotly, but at the same time, she realized it was. Her sisters had never really had any affection for her. They forced me into that second marriage, thought Amaryllis, suddenly weary, with as much feeling as a farmer has when he sends his bull out to stud.

And yet, she mused, I do love them. I still do, and I got a great deal of pleasure out of trying to make them happy.

But the more you gave them, the more discontented they became, said her ever-niggling conscience.

Lord Philip studied the expressions flitting across her face and found himself prey to unmanly feelings of tenderness.

She looked so small and defenseless. She was what? Twenty-seven? And yet the years did not yet seem to have touched her. Her skin and hair glowed with health and she carried about with her an aura of untouched innocence. But look how ruthlessly she pretended to love me, he thought, and hardened his heart. He had expected to enjoy telling her that he had come into a fortune. He did not expect to find himself wanting to comfort her and protect her.

He found himself saying, “Look… Amaryllis… it looks as if neither of us needs to marry for money. Thanks to Mr. Worthy’s efforts and the loyalty of your tenants and servants, it seems as if you should find yourself solvent in not too long a time hence. I am prepared to finance your losses.”

“I don’t want your charity,” cried Amaryllis. “That is not what I want of you.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Nothing!” said Amaryllis wildly.

“Are you in love with anyone?”

Amaryllis raised her large eyes and stared full at him in dawning horror. Yes, I am, she thought with a sudden, awful realization. I am in love with you and have been since that first moment I set eyes on you.

She dropped her eyes and bit her lip and looked the picture of misery. “No,” she mumbled.

“In that case,” he said, “I see no reason why the marriage should not stand. I shall now be in a position of wondering if every woman wants me for my fortune alone, which is ironical considering that I myself was recently in the other camp. You, I feel, have surely been married enough for the moment. I shall not interfere in your life and I have no doubt that you will respond by not interfering in mine. We shall each have our freedom.”

Freedom to flirt with Mrs. Jordan, thought Amaryllis.

“We have not had any time to get to know each other,” went on Lord Philip. “Now is our opportunity. We can be friends.” He gave her a beautiful smile of singular sweetness. “Now I shall go and bury myself in the estate books.”

She did not reply. He got to his feet and stood looking down at her, wondering what she was thinking and why she looked so sad.

“Perhaps you feel tied to this unwelcome marriage?” he said gently. “Would you like me to consult my lawyers and put a divorce in motion?”

“I don’t know,” said Amaryllis fretfully.

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Then if you don’t know, I shall behave like a husband and make the decision for you. Let the marriage stand for the moment.”

Amaryllis studied the beaded toes of her slippers as if she had never seen anything so fascinating before. She did not look up until the door gently closed behind him.

The wind was still howling outside but the rain had ceased for the moment. All at once, she felt she needed action. She was tired of thinking and worrying. Tired of this awful realization that she loved him.

Soon she was mounted on her favorite mare, Bessie, sitting easily in the sidesaddle, and warmly wrapped up against the biting wind. The saddlebags were laden with comforts for the invalid. Amaryllis often rode without the escort of a groom since she very rarely rode further than the boundaries of her estates.

The wind howled through the skeletal branches of the trees and sent miniature waves scurrying over the gray surface of the lake. Black, ragged clouds tore across a dull sky and the air carried the sharp, metallic smell of approaching snow. Down came the rain again, rapidly changing to sleet as the wind shifted from east to northeast.

By the time Amaryllis reached Mrs. Smith’s cottage, it was snowing heavily, and all at once she found herself wishing it would snow and snow and snow, great white drifts, which would make the journey that night to the hunt ball impossible so that she might not have to watch him dance with Mrs. Jordan and flirt and hold her hand.

That she might not have to suffer.

Alas for Amaryllis’s dreams of being snowed in. She had only been at Mrs. Smith’s for half an hour when the wind dropped.

By evening, when they all assembled in the hall to await the carriages being brought round, only a few tiny flakes of snow were drifting down outside.

It was unfortunate that Belinda Fang was a merchant’s daughter. Amaryllis had felt she looked very well in her green crêpe gown edged with blond lace and her paste ruby-and-diamond necklace blazing at her neck. But no sooner did Belinda set eyes on that necklace than she said, “Oh, Lady Lovelace! Why do you wear paste? I thought everyone in the ton wore real jewels.”

“Well, I most certainly do,” giggled Agatha Jordan. “My diamonds are weal!”

Amaryllis affected deafness, although she was uncomfortably aware of the startled look in Lord Philip’s green eyes.

Agatha had moved forward to stand close to Lord Philip. “Remembwer, you wanted to dance all the dances with me,” she said.

“Did I say that?” said Lord Philip lightly. “You are quite right about me, you know. I am a terrible flirt and am apt to forget that I am a married man. Now I shall dance as many dances as possible with my wife, and that should restore me to your good graces, Mrs. Jordan.”

Agatha pouted, and Amaryllis suddenly felt a lifting of her heart and decided to ignore Belinda’s remark about the paste jewels and wear them after all. She had been just about to retreat to her bedroom and remove them.

“Hope you’ll favor me with a dance, Miss Belinda,” said Freddie Jackson.

“Of course,” said Belinda. Mrs. Jordan’s eyes remained fastened on Lord Philip.

“She’s really becoming quite obsessed with him,” muttered Miss Wilkins.

Amaryllis did not even have to ask who Miss Wilkins was talking about. Agatha Jordan’s beautiful blue eyes took on an almost greedy look when they fastened on Lord Philip.

Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins had the mixed joy of sharing a carriage with Lord Philip and Mrs. Jordan—although how that particular arrangement came about, Amaryllis was never quite sure.

Her emotions felt too jumbled and her nerves too overset to even think of competing with Mrs. Jordan and so she contented herself with looking out of the window at the passing country-side.

An inch of snow had fallen, transforming the black countryside into a sparkling fairy tale, frosting the evergreens, and muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.

Sir Peregrine’s manor was only a few miles from Beaton Malden and it seemed a very short time before they were rolling up a smooth drive and swinging around in front of the house and stopping at the entrance.

Amaryllis found herself impatient with the whole idea of the ball ahead. She wanted to be alone with her husband—yes, her husband. She did not want to compete for his attention, to live for the fleeting press of a hand during the waltzes and reels, the gallops and quadrilles. Hunt balls were hardly romantic affairs since the guests always seemed to become affected with the boisterous manners of the hunting field and whooped and danced and drank too much.

The dance was to be held in a long room on the ground floor with a fire burning brightly at each end. It was alight with the blaze of hundreds of candles.

Sir Peregrine Russell, attired in the dress uniform of the hunt—bottle-green coat with gold facings and canary-yellow breeches—had taken upon himself the role of Master of Ceremonies, and no sooner were his guests all assembled in the ballroom than he ran from one group to the other, clapping his hands like a country boy trying to scare the crows and urging them all to take their places for the first country dance.

Amaryllis was partnered by Harry Bagshot, Lord Philip with Agatha Jordan, Priscilla with Freddie Jackson, Belinda with a Mr. Dennis O’Brien, an Irish guest of the Russells, and Mr. and Mrs. Fang with each other.

Fiddles, horn, and bassoon struck up and off they all went, with Sir Peregrine calling out, “Hands across, down the middle—or do I mean up the middle—oh, dash it all—I mean, down the middle and up again!”

And Amaryllis tried to shut Lord Philip from her mind and smiled so dazzingly on Harry Bag-shot that he became quite nervous and kept stumbling and wondered whether he had some fatal fascination for women.

Dance followed dance. Amaryllis tripped each measure gracefully, chattering brightly to each partner, was not asked to dance by Lord Philip, and wished she were dead.

The supper dance loomed nearer and nearer as the hour approached one in the morning. You had to be really serious about a lady to partner her in the supper dance, perhaps because you took that lady in to supper afterward and it was assumed you had to be really serious about her to want to watch her eat.

“If he asks me, I shall refuse,” vowed Amaryllis.

But somehow when the supper dance was announced and the fiddles struck up the opening strains of a lilting waltz theme and suddenly Lord Philip was bowing low in front of her, Amaryllis found she could not refuse to dance with him, although she persuaded herself it was because she did not wish to make a scene.

Pouting Agatha was borne off by Harry Bagshot, Belinda Fang by Freddie Jackson, and Miss Wilkins by the vicar.

Well, it being a hunt ball, there was none of that stiff formality or order of precedence one finds at a formal dance. The guests filed sedately enough into the supper room and then fell on the tables, jostling and pushing and treading on each other.

Crossed tables were laid out with turkeys, chickens, hams, tongues, lobster salads, spun-sugar pyramids, jellies, tarts, creams, custards, pineapples, grapes, peaches, nectarines, ices, plovers’ eggs, prawns, and fifty sponge-cake foxes with gold and green and canary-yellow rosettes for tags to their brushes. Solid groups of green wine bottles were placed at strategic points down the tables, and in the middle of the crossroads formed by the two tables was a huge washtub of ice filled with champagne bottles.

Some gentlemen were so carried away by the sight of all this food that they forgot they were not on the hunting field and fought to fill their plates, urging their fair partners on with cries of “Hoic holloa! Hoic holloa!” and an occasional scream of “Tallyho!”

Soon everyone had managed to find a seat at table and the air rang with conversation. “Dash, I’ve dropped my fork!—Fanny, you’ve dropped preserve on your dress, you stoopid thing!—Frost tonight, old man. No hunting tomorrow. Ground’s too hard for the hounds’ paws.—You may think her very fine, Cressida, but mark my words her gloves are sadly ball-soiled!—I take wine with you, sir.—The scent was good and I thought it prudent to leave the cover and try my fortune in the open.—Cut him quite dead, my love. Annihilated him!—Waiter, bring a clean glass!—Oh, do be careful, mama is watching.—Have you heard? They say she murdered her husband and there she sits as cool as cucumbers!”

The last remark rang out in a temporary lull in the buzz of voices. Everyone looked startled and then hurriedly began to chatter again.

Lord Philip and Amaryllis sat side by side, eating little and drinking quite a lot.

Rattling and prattling, jabbering and tattling, the supper went its merry way. Lord Philip talked quietly to Amaryllis about what he had found out about the estates from Mr. Worthy and added that he had not gone on Foster’s tour of the house with the others but he had gathered from Agatha that Foster was better than Garrick.

“Really!” Amaryllis was surprised. “There’s perhaps more to Foster than meets the eye.”

“I believe you have some fine pictures in the Long Gallery.”

“Yes,” replied Amaryllis, aware of his eyes on her mouth and hoping he could not see the slight trembling she felt.

“Although I quite forget what most of them are. I hardly ever walk in the gallery now. It is always full of visitors. Do but look! That fat lady over there keeps staring at me quite horribly.”

Lord Philip took out his quizzing glass and leveled it at the staring lady, who flushed and looked away.

Amaryllis giggled. “You can be very stiffly on your stiffs when you feel like it.”

“I wish I could make love when I feel like it.”

“Well… well… I am sure there are plenty of ladies willing to oblige.”

Lord Philip took her hand under the table and began to gently rub his thumb backward and forward against the palm of her hand. His eyes looked intensely down into hers and all at once they were alone, the chatter and hum and hubbub of conversation rising and falling about them like the sea, the elaborate silks and satins of the guests and their eating, chattering faces moving far, far away until they whirled and merged into one blur of color.

At last, Amaryllis found herself overcome with such waves of physical longing for him that she gently withdrew her hand and drank a brimmer of champagne without pausing for breath.

“Speech! Speech!” several voices called, and Sir Peregrine rose to his feet. His speech was brief but his toasts were many. They were exhorted to toast the King, the Prince of Wales, their sweethearts, “success to fox hunting,” the army, the navy, Lady Russell, and “confusion to Napoleon.”

Then Mr. O’Brien rose to give thanks to Sir Peregrine and urged the guests to toast their Master of Ceremonies, then his good wife, then each other, then their horses, the hounds, and even the fox.

Amaryllis began to feel quite dizzy with wine and excess of emotion. The ladies were already retreating and leaving the gentlemen to their songs and stories and bottles.

Lord Philip assisted Amaryllis from her seat and drew her arm through his. “We will go home together, I think,” he said.

“What of my guests?”

“Rot the guests,” said Lord Philip cheerfully. “My beloved Amaryllis, you are staggering.”

Amaryllis had been going to protest that she did not want to be alone with him, but with that “beloved Amaryllis” ringing in her ears, she seemed to float along beside him as he made their adieux. Several of the women looked at her quite oddly and one seemed to hiss, “murderess!” but that could not possibly be so. Amaryllis smiled on everyone in a bemused way, curtsied right and curtsied left, and then somehow she had found her cloak. Miss Wilkins was saying something with a half-anxious, half-tender smile about my lady obviously not needing her and then she too melted into the background.

Outside, under the myriad lamps slung through the evergreens, the snow sparkled and glittered and shone. A few perfect snow crystals drifted lazily down on the still air.

All Amaryllis could think of was the enclosed darkness of the carriage and being alone with Lord Philip. Would he kiss her? she wondered dreamily. Snowflakes shone in the aureole of her hair as she stood outside on Lord Philip’s arm, waiting for the carriage to be brought around.

The coach rolled to a stop, the Lovelace arms shining on the varnished panels. Lord Philip smiled down into her eyes as the footman lowered the steps.

“Coo-eee!”

Reality came rushing back.

Amaryllis found that she was standing in the cold outside a country mansion in the falling snow and that Agatha Jordan and Harry Bagshot were bearing down on her.

“We thought we would come too,” said Agatha brightly. “So wowdy and wuff. I hate hunt balls.”

“There is another carriage, you know,” said Lord Philip. “There is no need for us all to cram into this one.”

“Oh, but there’s simply masses of room,” said Agatha, pushing forward so that Amaryllis and Lord Philip, before they quite knew what was happening, had stepped aside and allowed her to scamper quickly into the carriage.

Lord Philip cast a look on his friend Harry which spoke volumes.

Agatha lisped and prattled merrily on the road home. Harry seemed completely épris and Amaryllis could only wonder at his penchant for falling in love with quite dreadful females. In the light from the carriage lamps, Agatha’s eyes glowed as they looked at Lord Philip.

Amaryllis felt she should be glad of her chaperones. She had been about to allow this man to make love to her, this man who did not love her at all. But oh! how she wanted him, and oh! how she hated Agatha.

The journey home seemed endless but at last they were there. Agatha made jolly suggestions that they should send for the tea tray and chat around the fire but Amaryllis dully pleaded fatigue and escaped to her room as quickly as possible.

Her maid, Simpson, was waiting up for her, and soon Amaryllis was in her nightgown and wrapper before the fire while the maid brushed her hair.

There was a scratching at the door and Amaryllis called, “Come in,” her heart beating hard. But it was only a housemaid with a glass of warm milk.

Wearily Amaryllis dismissed both housemaid and lady’s maid and sat in front of the fire, sipping her milk and trying not to think.

She sat for a long time while the fire burned clear and bright, throwing the corners of the room into black oblongs of shadow.

The door opened and Lord Philip walked in. He was still in his evening clothes. He knelt down beside her as she sat in the chair and put his hands on her waist.

Amaryllis’s lips trembled. She wanted to tell him to go, she felt she should tell him to go, but her head seemed to be so heavy that it leaned toward him of its own accord until her lips met his. He gathered her in his arms and drew her gently down onto the floor in front of the fire.

Sometime during the night, a little part of Amaryllis seemed to stand outside herself, looking down in horror at the naked Amaryllis, twisting and turning and writhing and groaning in an utter abandonment of love; at the man who held her in his arms, whose hard, muscled body, glowing red in the light of the dying fire, seemed able to drive her to heights of passion she never knew existed.

As the red light of dawn crept through the curtains, Amaryllis awoke shivering with cold, still lying on the floor in Lord Philip’s arms in front of the now-dead fire.

He awoke too and smiled down at her lazily and then, scooping her up in his arms, carried her to the bed.

“I feel quite wide-awake now,” yawned Amaryllis.

“You won’t feel wide-awake for much longer, my sweeting,” he said, sliding beneath the covers and pulling her against the length of his naked body.

“I won’t? But Philip I… oh, Philip!”

Seven

When Amaryllis awoke again, she had some confused idea it was still night. The room seemed very dark. She stretched languorously and turned her head to the pillow next to her own. Empty.

She slowly climbed down from the bed and went across the room and pulled back the heavy curtains. A faint glimmer at the edge of a black cloud was the last sign of the fast-disappearing sun. There were frost flowers on the lower panes and the room was icy cold.

She rang the bell for her maid, who quickly arrived with two housemaids, and together they began to relight the fire, lay out Amaryllis’s clothes, and prepare her ladyship for another day.

Amaryllis wanted to ask where Philip was but somehow found she could not. She had slept so deeply that she had not been aware of his leaving.

Simpson, the lady’s maid, was lighting the candles on the toilet table, for the day was now very dark indeed.

“My lady!” she said. “I cannot find the diamond-and-ruby necklace we wore last night.”

“It must be there somewhere,” said Amaryllis. “I left it on the toilet table.”

“Well, it’s gone, my lady.”

Amaryllis felt a clutch of fear at her stomach. Could Philip have taken it? Then she relaxed. Surely he had heard Belinda saying that the jewels were paste. On the other hand, at that moment he had seemed to be deep in his own thoughts and it was possible he had not heard.

She could not wait to get downstairs and find him.

The guests had already breakfasted but were all still in the dining room, mulling over the events of the ball, when she entered.

Her eyes flew from face to face. No Philip.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down next to Freddie Jackson. Her guests seemed struck dumb. Miss Wilkins was obviously still in her room but the rest were all present.

“Where is Lord Philip?” asked Amaryllis.

Foster walked forward. “He has left, my lady.”

“Gone!” Amaryllis stared wildly around at all the faces. “He can’t have gone.”

Had his pleasure, taken your necklace, and fled, mocked a voice in her brain.

“P’raps he was frightened you would put poison in his coffee,” giggled Agatha. There was a shocked silence, and then everyone began to talk loudly and incoherently about the weather.

Amaryllis stood up and put her fists on the table and leaned forward so that her face was almost touching Agatha’s.

“Just what was the meaning of that last remark?”

Agatha blushed.

“I’m surprised at you, Mrs. Jordan,” said Harry Bagshot severely.

“Well,” said Agatha defiantly, “I was only joking because I thought it was funny, and nobody believes a word of it. Lord Philip looked a bit green about the gills when we told him but the rest of us thought someone must be funning.”

“Explain!” grated Amaryllis.

Harry Bagshot looked uncomfortable. “Well, there were these two old trouts at the ball last night. A Mrs. Benson and a Miss Apple. They was saying as how the reason Lord Lovelace’s ghost walked the Long Gallery was ’cos he had been murdered.”

“I shall sue both of them,” said Amaryllis sitting down suddenly. “What a farrago of lies! As for you, Mrs. Jordan, I find you malicious and unpleasant. Foster, see that Mrs. Jordan’s trunks are corded immediately and put in the carriage. She will be leaving this morning.”

“Oh, I say,” mumbled Harry Bagshot miserably. “It’s just her kittenish sense of humor.”

“Cattish sense of humor, you mean,” snapped Amaryllis.

Agatha Jordan pushed back her chair. Somehow she had lost her babyish lisp and her eyes were as hard as sapphires.

“Will you escort me to London, Harry?”

“To the ends of the earth, an you will,” said Harry gallantly.

“I would just like to say you have behaved abominably, Agatha,” put in Colonel Freddie. “There always was a vicious streak in you.”

“Yes, indeed,” put in Priscilla Armitage, furious because Harry was obviously smitten with Agatha.

“Why am I the one who’s in disgrace?” screamed Agatha, while the Fang family murmured, “Tsk! Tsk!”

“I’ll tell you who’s a disgrace. She’s a disgrace,” and she pointed at Lady Lovelace.

“First of all we are told that her marriage with Lord Philip was in name only and that they are soon to get a divorce and yet they go around smelling of April and May and he visited her bedchamber last night. I’m beginning to wonder if she did poison Lord Lovelace!”

“Jealous cat,” said Belinda gleefully.

Agatha burst into tears and fled from the room, to be followed almost immediately by Harry Bagshot.

“I shall get to the bottom of this murder business,” said Amaryllis grimly. “Foster, find me the direction of the two ladies, Benson and Apple, and I shall ride over to wherever they live and confront them.”

Foster had turned quite white. “If you please, my lady,” he said. “I would beg a word with you in private.”

“Very well, Foster,” said Amaryllis. “Let us hope what you have to say can throw some light on this matter.”

There was a silence after she had left. Mrs. Fang rose to her feet. “Come, Belinda,” she said. “The sooner we quit this house the better. The whole visit has been a disaster.”

“Exactly,” pointed out Mr. Fang. “You’ll never get this sort of Gothic business in the City. At least, with my friends, I know when a man is married or not.”

“Want to stay here and finish breakfast,” mumbled Belinda, casting down her eyes and fiddling with a piece of red herring on her plate.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Fang. “But don’t be long. We have packing to attend to.”

“What a morning!” exclaimed Priscilla when the Fangs had left.

Neither Colonel Freddie Jackson nor Miss Belinda Fang answered her. They were both sitting, quite still, looking at the table cover, Belinda emanating an atmosphere which positively screamed that she wanted to be alone with Freddie.

Priscilla shrugged and got up from the table. She felt she had had enough. First Harry and that horrible Agatha and now Belinda and the Colonel. Perhaps she would just go in search of that nice Mr. Worthy. He had seemed quite enchanted with her beauty the other day but she had not encouraged him because he was, after all, a mere steward. But now he began to take on new glamour. Priscilla left the dining room and walked with rapid little steps in the direction of the estates office.

There was a long silence after she had left. Outside, snow had started to fall from the darkening sky. Both Belinda and the Colonel watched it dancing and eddying over the lawns.

The Colonel cleared his throat. “Pretty, ain’t it? Snow, I mean.”

“Hoffly nice.” Belinda appeared to retreat back into her former quiet self.

Freddie stuck his eyeglass in one eye and looked at Belinda’s bent head. “Well, now, you seem to me like an intelligent gel. What do you think about this murder business?”

“Fustian,” whispered Belinda, head still bent. “Couldn’t murder anyone. Lady Lovelace, that is.”

“Knew’d you was bright, the moment I set eyes on you,” beamed Freddie. “Hey, what d’ye think of Philip’s marriage? Don’t still want to marry him, I hope?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then what d’ye think? Think they’ll stay married?”

“Yes. In love. Always know,” said Belinda, blushing furiously.

“Lay you a monkey you don’t always know,” teased the Colonel. “Now take me, for instance. What d’ye make of me?”

“Hoffly nice.”

“I mean, now, would you say I was in love?”

“Don’t know,” said Belinda, blushing so hard that the tip of her nose turned bright red.

“Ah, aha! There you are! I am in love. And do you know who it is I love?”

“No,” said Belinda, wriggling in her seat.

“Well, I’ll tell you. I’m in love with that beautiful cold game pie in the middle of the table. Love game pie. Can’t get enough of it. Now, I’ll bet I’ve said something to make you laugh.”

The blood fled from Belinda’s cheeks. She looked straight at the Colonel. She looked exactly like a Pekingese viewing the kitchen cat.

She stood up, picked up the game pie, and rammed the whole dish upside down on the Colonel’s head.

“I hope you will be very happy together,” said Belinda, and marched from the room.

Meanwhile, Priscilla had finally found the estates office at the end of the west wing.

It had a glass door through which she could see Mr. Worthy bent over his books. All he needed was a little encouragement, thought Priscilla. He would naturally be overwhelmed that a lady such as herself should show an interest in him. The dear man was so shy.

Mr. Worthy was trying to work out the immense advantages of buying a threshing machine, and setting against it the immense disadvantages of having so many men deprived of winter work. Threshing was a job which kept the men busy in the barn all winter. He finally decided that, for the moment, the threshing machine must be put aside.

Amaryllis did not approve of employing casual labor. Casual workers were uncertain of their employment and therefore unreliable. Mr. Worthy agreed with her. He was old enough to remember the riots of 1796 caused by bad harvests and subsequent starvation. Good harvest or bad harvest, the workers must not starve. Beaton Malden must run like a well-oiled machine.

He became aware that he was not alone and looked up. Priscilla was standing smiling at him, standing with her toes turned in and the tip of her thumbnail between her teeth. It was her ingénue pose.

He rose to his feet and bowed. “How can I be of assistance, Miss Armitage?”

She did not reply, merely giggled and twinkled her eyes at him.

It did not occur to Mr. Worthy for a moment that Priscilla might be flirting with him. What did occur to him, however, was that she had been drinking and was in a shocking condition for a young girl. He touched the bell beside his desk.

Priscilla did not notice. She had decided to give him the ultimate encouragement. She closed her eyes, stretched out her arms, and puckered up her lips.

Then she heard Mr. Worthy’s voice. “Ah, Mrs. Jarrett,” he was saying. “Miss Armitage is a trifle under the weather and I think she should lie down. Pray escort her to her room.”

Priscilla’s eyes flew open and she stared unbelievingly at the housekeeper. Too dazed to protest, she allowed herself to be led away.

Only when they reached the hall did the full extent of her humiliation strike her and she roughly shook off the housekeeper’s arm. Mrs. Jarrett was quite convinced Miss Armitage was indeed drunk and showed every sign of bearing her forcibly off to her room, but at that moment there was the sound of a carriage arriving, and, at the same time, a footman came to inform Mrs. Jarrett that my lady and Mr. Foster were in the Long Gallery and wished to see her immediately.

Mrs. Jarrett hurried off and Priscilla lingered in the hall, curiosity as to the identity of the newcomer overcoming her hurt feelings.

Two footmen opened the double doors and the Earl of Harrisfield walked in, shaking snow from his coat.

“’Lo,” he said cheerfully. “Weather. Beastly. Lady Lovelace. Home? Marriage all a hum, I hear. Marry me.”

Priscilla, aching for revenge against the world in general and the whole household in particular, tripped forward.

“Oh, poor Lord Harrisfield,” she cried. “Do not stay in this house. We have been most dreadfully deceived.”

“Bit early. Drinking the port, what!” said his lordship, retreating before her.

“No, no! I am not drunk. Pray listen. Mr. Bagshot has spurned me and Lady Lovelace is still married to Lord Philip and not only that! She has been accused of murdering Lord Lovelace!”

“Fustian,” said the Earl, drawing off his gloves.

At that moment, Agatha strolled into the hall, dressed for traveling.

“Mrs. Jordan,” said Priscilla. “This is the Earl of Harrisfield. I have just told him poor Lady Lovelace has been accused of murder. Tell him it’s true!”

Agatha was not averse to plunging a knife into her hostess’s reputation. “Oh, certainly,” she said calmly. “Where is Harry? I must leave this terrible house. She’s quite liable to murder one of us next.”

At that moment Harry Bagshot joined them. He cast a scared look at Priscilla, made a sketchy bow in the Earl’s direction, and hustled Agatha out to his carriage.

“I’m going,” said the Earl. “Bless m’soul. What!”

“Take me with you,” pleaded Priscilla, all eyes and teeth. “I am alone here and unprotected.”

Lord Harrisfield looked at her consideringly, at her neat figure and blond hair.

“Well, well, well,” he grinned. “Let’s be off. I’ll protect you. How soon… ready?”

“A few moments,” said Priscilla. “I shall fetch my maid.”

The Earl felt less cheerful after she had gone. He had traveled to see Amaryllis with the idea of proposing marriage since he had heard rumors that her marriage was about to be annulled. But a murderess! He started uneasily at every footfall and was immensely relieved when Priscilla arrived back in the few moments’ time she had promised.

As they settled in his carriage, Priscilla thanked him over and over again, calling him her Sir Galahad.

Privately she cast a calculating eye out at the thickening snow. They would not get very far and would have to put up at an inn for the night. Perhaps she could lose her maid somewhere on the road. Then the Earl would just have to marry her. She cast a sidelong look at him. He was quite old, but he was an Earl and she would be a Countess, and that way she could recover from the humiliations of Beaton Malden.

“The Long Gallery, if you please, my lady,” said Foster in a wooden voice.

“Very well, Foster,” said Amaryllis. “I trust you can throw some light on this matter of me being hailed as a murderess.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Foster walked before her, carrying a candle in a flat stick, for the day was dark. He pushed open the door of the gallery, which led off a landing on the first floor.

The room had long windows down one side and family portraits down the other. Under the portraits were glass cases containing rare china, war souvenirs, and old family documents. The gallery was cold because Amaryllis had given instructions that fires were only to be lit in rooms used by herself, her guests, or her servants. The state rooms were to stay fireless.

“Well, Foster?” demanded Amaryllis, looking up at a portrait of Lord Lovelace’s father, who stared back down at her with haughty disdain.

“An it please my lady, I would like Mrs. Jarrett to be present.”

“Oh, very well, Foster,” said Amaryllis testily, “only don’t take all day about it.”

Foster rang a bell and told the footman who answered to fetch Mrs. Jarrett.

Snow was piling up on the sills of the windows and blotting out the prospect of the park. A few deer could just be made out, sheltering under a stand of spruce.

“Is hay being put down for the deer?” asked Amaryllis.

“I believe so, my lady.”

“Ah, here is Mrs. Jarrett. Mrs. Jarrett, you may not be aware of it but there is gossip circulating in the district that I poisoned my late husband. I gather that you and Foster can explain how this has come about.”

Mrs. Jarrett threw her apron over her head and began to cry, the keys at her waist jingling with each heaving sob.

“Oh, dear,” said Amaryllis helplessly. “Do make her stop, Foster. This room is very cold and I shall catch the ague if this goes on much longer.”

“Pull yourself together, Mrs. Jarrett,” ordered Foster. “We may as well tell her ladyship the whole thing.”

After a few moments, the housekeeper’s flushed and distressed face appeared from the folds of her apron.

“It’s like this, my lady,” said the butler, standing to attention. “With us not getting any wages and all, well, me and Mrs. Jarrett hit on a scheme to get some money. You see, although a few people call here during a year to have a look around the place, Beaton Malden doesn’t have any attractions like, say, Warwick Castle. And so we hit on a scheme. When some folks did arrive one day, I told them that the ghost of his lordship walked the Long Gallery. Mrs. Jarrett, she… oh, well, may as well tell you all, my lady… she dressed up in his lordship’s clothes. We had the curtains drawn and only one candle at the end there and the door at the far end just a little ajar. Mrs. Jarrett, just as I was talking about his lordship’s ghost, she would walk past the open door, a-moaning and a-wailing. She wore his lordship’s old white satin evening dress, my lady, and his white wig, and she painted her face white. Quite horrible she looked, my lady.

“Word got about and people began to come in droves. Well, one day, there were these two ladies, a Mrs. Benson and a Miss Apple. They says to me, they says, ‘But we thought ghosts only walked when they had been murdered to death,’ and I says, ‘That’s as may be,’ or something of that nature, and they took it to mean that my lord had been murdered and they must have invented the poison bit by themselves.

“Well, the money kept coming as the people kept coming. The aristocracy, saving your ladyship’s pardon, is clutch-fisted but the lower orders would fork out generous, often a sovereign from each of them. And that’s why we done… did… it, my lady.”

“But that’s wicked!” gasped Amaryllis. “And how could you both be so greedy? Dragging my name in the dirt and all to get yourself money!”

Foster stood rigidly silent, staring straight ahead as if facing a firing squad.

“I’ll tell her ladyship if you won’t,” cried Mrs. Jarrett.

“He done it out the goodness of his heart, he did. Why, he’s been paying all the staff right up to the minute out of them earnings. Wanted to surprise you at Christmas by telling your ladyship it wasn’t necessary for you to go a-worritin’ and a-frettin’ over the wages.”

“Is this true, Foster?” asked Amaryllis.

“Yes, my lady. We didn’t mean no harm.”

“Oh, Foster,” said Amaryllis, her eyes filling with tears. “How good you are, how very good you both are!”

She rushed forward and threw her arms around the butler and kissed him on the cheek.

There was a shocked silence.

Amaryllis realized she may as well have tied her garter in public. Such a breach of protocol had shaken Foster rigid. There was only one thing to do: ignore her social lapse and carry on as if nothing had happened.

“It looks as if we shall manage now, Foster,” said Amaryllis. “Now, since you and Mrs. Jarrett have proved to have such ingenious brains, perhaps you can tell me how we are to save my reputation. The two ladies you mentioned, Mrs. Benson and Miss Apple, were evidently at the hunt ball last night and gossiping for all they were worth.”

Foster backed away from Amaryllis in case she should forget herself again.

“I think, my lady,” he said after a long pause, “that since the gossip seems to be general, my lady should allow me to send a notice to the local newspaper, the Daxtead and Malden Gazette, saying that this gossip is libelous slander and that my lady will be forced to take the culprits to court if it continues. I mean, my lady would never advertise such a statement were my lady guilty.”

“Very well, Foster, and find me the directions of those two ladies and I will write to them personally.”

“There is one more thing, my lady…”

“Which is…?”

“Shall we say ‘Lady Lovelace’ or ‘Lady Philip’?”

Oh, my lost love, wailed Amaryllis’s heart. Gone with all my love and my paste jewels. He must have been lying about his inheritance. Only look how he tricked me before. He knows I shall be too ashamed to set the Runners on him.

But aloud she said, “‘Lady Lovelace’ will do. You may go now; Mrs. Jarrett too. But remember! No more haunting. And spare us these unwanted guests. Tell them at the north and south lodges that all visitors are to be turned away while I am in residence.”

“Very good, my lady.”

“And Foster. I wish you to explain financial matters to Mr. Worthy. Tell him how you came about finding the money to pay the servants. That money is to be paid back to you and Mrs. Jarrett when the estate is solvent again.”

“Oh, my lady. Thank you, my lady,” chorused the butler and the housekeeper.

“Very well. Leave me now. I wish some time to myself.”

But no sooner had they left than the door opened again and Colonel Freddie Jackson came sidling apologetically in.

“Wanted to ask your advice, Lady Lovelace,” he said. “I’m in the most terrible fix.”

“Let us go somewhere more comfortable, Colonel Jackson,” said Amaryllis. “I am chilled to the bone.”

“But I might run into her,” said Freddie in anguished tones.

“My lady.”

“Yes, Foster. What is it now?” asked Amaryllis as the butler reentered the room.

“I have just learned, my lady, that the Earl of Harrisfield called.”

“Dear God and saints preserve us!”

“Exactly, my lady. James, the second footman, was in the hall. It appears my lord wished to ask my lady’s hand in marriage, having heard rumors that my lady’s marriage was to be annulled.”

“Drat those Fangs,” said Amaryllis. “Go on.”

“Miss Armitage was in the hall where Mrs. Jarrett had left her when she received your summons, my lady, Mrs. Jarrett having been instructed by Mr. Worthy to remove Miss Armitage on account of her having drink taken.”

“Priscilla. Drunk! Impossible!”

“That’s as may be. In any case, my lady, Miss Armitage, she ups and tells the Earl of Harris-field as how you are a murderess.”

“Which, of course, he did not believe.”

“Not at first. Not until that Mrs. Jordan comes in looking for Mr. Bagshot because they were leaving together and she confirms what Miss Armitage has just said.

“James, the footman, he says that Miss Armitage was making sheep’s eyes at my lord and in James’s humble opinion, my lord did not quite believe all this business about murder but that he saw Miss Armitage being young and pretty and eager for to go with him and he seized his chance. James put forward the suggestion that Miss Armitage was thinking of marriage and the Earl of Harrisfield was thinking of something else.”

“I don’t care. Just so long as both of them have left my house.”

“They have left, my lady, and Mr. Bagshot and Mrs. Jordan.”

“And the Fangs?”

“Well, now, my lady. The fact is…”

“Thank you, Foster,” said Freddie. “I would prefer to explain matters to Lady Lovelace myself.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“Now, Colonel Jackson…” said Amaryllis firmly when the door closed behind the butler.

And so Freddie, with many stops and starts and apologies for his “warm” language, recounted the episode of the game pie.

“I was funning, do you see?” said Freddie anxiously. “I was rather taken with the little thing and meant to tease, you know, dash it all. Flirt a bit.”

“Oh, dear,” said Amaryllis, thinking of poor Belinda. First Lord Philip, then Harry Bagshot, who seemed to have interested her at one point, and now the Colonel.

“I think,” she said carefully, “that if you are not really interested in marriage then it would be only fair to let Miss Fang depart with her parents. Why are they still here, by the way?”

“Snow,” said Freddie with a gesture toward the howling whiteness beyond the windows.

“And do you want to marry Miss Fang?”

Freddie looked hunted. “No, not I! Not the marrying kind.”

Amaryllis gave a little sigh. “I think perhaps if you apologized to Miss Fang you would feel more comfortable. You must make it plain, however, that although you were flirting with her, that is all it was.”

“It will be very embarrassing.”

“Well, so will having her lowering at you over the dinner table. Why not try to make everything all right? There is nothing worse than seeing two people who are not open and honest with each other,” said Amaryllis with some passion.

“I doubt if Philip will be back this evening,” said Freddie.

“I doubt if he will be back at all,” snapped Amaryllis.

“Oh,” said Freddie innocently. “I shouldn’t say that. I’m here, you know, and he’ll want to see me.”

“Of course,” said Amaryllis in a thin little voice, “we do not for a minute imagine that he would want to see me.”

“Well, I’m his friend and you’re… oh, lor’, you’re his wife.”

“Where has Lord Philip gone?” said Amaryllis, turning her face toward the windows.

“Didn’t exactly say. Actually, he said something about he would be back soon and I assumed he had just gone to call on Sir Peregrine. But if he’s gone to town, why, he could be away weeks if this weather lasts.”

“Would you say Lord Philip was trustworthy?” asked Amaryllis.

“Soul of honor, ’pon rep! Knowed him since we were in short coats.”

A little of the pain at Amaryllis’s heart began to leave. He had known that necklace was merely paste. She was sure he had looked startled when Belinda had mentioned the fact. Why must she always think the worst of him? She must trust. Perhaps, knowing it to be only a bauble, he had taken it as a souvenir.

She sent Freddie to find Belinda and took herself off the morning room to warm herself in front of the fire.

It was there that her lady’s maid, Simpson, found her. Simpson looked quite white. She was carrying Amaryllis’s jewel box.

With a dramatic gesture, she threw open the lid and presented the empty interior to her mistress.

“It is all right, Simpson,” said Amaryllis in a calm voice. “I gave them to Lord Philip to take to London. There were some of the settings I did not quite like. He is leaving them at the jewelers to have them altered.”

Simpson did not know the jewels were fake. Color began to flood back into her face.

“Oh, why did you not tell me this morning, my lady, when I noticed your ruby-and-diamond necklace had gone from the toilet table?”

“I forgot,” said Amaryllis flatly. “I was very tired. Tell Foster to bring me the post, if there is any, and please leave me.”

“Very good, my lady.” Simpson bounced out jauntily, all her worries over. Amaryllis sat very still, staring at the fire, willing herself not to think.

Foster came in with the post. He put it on a small table next to her and stood for a moment, looking at her anxiously, but all she said was, “Thank you, Foster. That will be all,” and so, with another worried look at his mistress, he left the room.

Amaryllis flicked over the letters until she came to a fat one. She recognized her sister Bella’s handwriting and crackled it open. Both her sisters had combined to write the letter, Sarah’s lines crossing over Bella’s. Both were extremely agitated over all the rumors circulating around that their dear sister, Amaryllis, was socially damned. That she had married Lord Philip Osborne and then both of them had tried to commit bigamy before the Season was over.

And wasn’t that just like Amaryllis? the letter went on. Always thinking of herself and never of her sisters. No wonder poor Bertram had come to a bad end. There was bad blood in the family, only thank goodness they were not tainted with it….

Amaryllis read no further. With one jerky movement, she threw the letter on the fire and watched it while all the nasty words, all the ungrateful phrases curled and shriveled and blackened in the heat.

The door opened and Miss Tabitha Wilkins came in. She took one look at Amaryllis and said, “Nothing is that terrible. Nothing can be that terrible.”

Amaryllis ran to her like a child to its mother.

“Oh, Tabby,” she wailed. “He’s gone. With all my jewels. And Bella and Sarah are such nasty, vulgar cats.”

How inadequate poor Miss Wilkins felt! She would have given anything to take her mistress’s hurt on herself. But there was nothing she could do but listen and murmur and console as Amaryllis raved against the world, and the indifferent snow whispered against the windows.

Harry Bagshot was in seventh heaven. The weather had been too bad to allow them to travel further than the outskirts of Oxford. By many little whispers, many little warm pressures of the hand Agatha had let him know that the night to come was going to be wonderful.

It seemed to him immeasurably exciting that this beautiful widow, whom he had not even kissed, was shortly to be all his for the taking. From the heights of his love, he found it possible to pity his poor friend Philip. Look where marrying for vulgar money got you! Now he, Harry Bagshot, prided himself that having been burnt in the fire of Priscilla Armitage, he was now as good a judge of women as he was of horseflesh.

Agatha had recovered her lisp and her kittenish ways as the miles from Beaton Malden fell away beneath the wheels of Harry’s traveling coach.

They were lucky in managing to engage rooms at the Five Jolly Porters, a hostelry famed for its food and comfort. It was a Tudor inn, all cunning beams and brasses and chintz.

There were many other travelers forced to put up for the night before they could reach Oxford. The roads were rapidly becoming completely blocked.

When Agatha and Harry were sitting over an excellent dinner in the huge dining room of the inn, the landlord approached them and said he wondered if they could possibly give up one of their rooms to an old man and his daughter. He obviously took Harry and Agatha for husband and wife. Harry hesitated in a gentlemanly way, but Agatha, with a winsome smile, said they would be only too happy to oblige the old gentleman and his daughter.

Harry could hardly eat, he was in such a state of ecstasy. How kittenish, how suggestive, was his fair partner. The way she ate oysters, sliding them into her mouth and running her tongue over her lips, was fit to drive a man mad. By the time they arose to mount to their bedchamber, he could hardly walk.

No sooner had he closed and locked the bedroom door behind them than Harry seized the fair Agatha in his arms and began to kiss her passionately.

It was then he received his first setback. For Agatha had the most simply apalling bad breath. It was as if some small animal had died inside her and was slowly decomposing. Well, that could be taken care of. He fished a tin of musk pastilles from his pocket and laughingly popped one in her mouth and fell to kissing her again before she could get a chance to ask him what he was doing.

The sad fact is that quite a lot of women who wriggle and pout and lisp and do wonders to suggest the delights of sex in store are really remarkably tepid when you get them in the feathers. The same can, of course, be said for quite a lot of Don Juans.

For such a glowing, beautiful woman, she seemed strangely flabby under the covers. His passion was over quickly and Agatha immediately fell asleep, obviously quite satisfied.

Harry found he could not sleep. He lit the bed-candle and began to pace up and down the room.

It was then he noticed that her reticule had fallen on the floor and all the things were spilling out of it. He automatically bent to pick it up and replace the objects.

That was when he found a small note addressed to Lady Lovelace. The seal, although it had been broken, he recognized as Lord Philip’s.

Taking it around to the candlelight, he sat down and read. It was a passionate declaration of love. Lord Philip ended by saying he was taking her paste jewels to London to replace them with real ones and to see the lawyers about his inheritance and that he hoped to be in her arms again as soon as possible.

Harry shivered. He shook Agatha roughly by the shoulder. “Why have you got a letter to Amaryllis Lovelace in your reticule?”

“Oh, that,” mumbled Agatha sleepily. “Thought it’d be fun to let her think her lord had gone off without a word.” And with that she fell asleep again.

Harry slowly began to get dressed. All he could do was to head back to Beaton Malden as soon as the weather allowed and deliver this letter to its rightful owner.

His heart was heavy. As the pale dawn light arose over the fantastic Tudor chimneys of the inn, he crept from the room, his boots in his hand.

He had to arouse the landlord so as to pay his shot and then awaken the sleepy hostlers to have his carriage brought around.

It was raining heavily and the thick snow was already turning to slush. If they picked their way slowly and carefully, they could perhaps make the journey to another inn where he could hide from Agatha. He never wanted to see her again.

The roads were still atrocious and he was forced to put up at a hedge tavern a few miles distant for several days until the weather cleared and a false spring began to smile on the sodden countryside. He had had nothing to do during the time but commune with his soul.

As soon as he was ready, he told his coachman to make speedy tracks for Beaton Malden. The roads were rutted and bumpy, and they had not gone very far when there was a sudden sickening lurch and the carriage heeled over on its side.

He climbed out, shaken but unhurt. One of the nearside wheels had broken. There was nothing for it but to tell his groom to unhitch one of the horses and ride for help.

He sat on a milestone beside the road, hoping against hope that Agatha would not come by and spot him.

He was aroused from his meditations by the sound of a carriage approaching along the road. He was about to hide behind a hedge when he saw that it was a gentleman’s traveling carriage.

Agatha would hire a post chaise.

The carriage came alongside and stopped.

“Why, Mr. Bagshot!” cried Belinda Fang.

How glad he was to see the Fangs! How tremendously pleased he was that they were not Agatha! How sweet and innocent Belinda looked!

He forgot all about going to Beaton Malden. He cheerfully accepted their offer of a lift to London.

And Lord Philip’s letter to Amaryllis lay forgotten in his pocket.

Back at the Five Jolly Porters, Agatha Jordan was making arrangements for the journey to London. She was furious with Harry Bagshot. It had been a disgusting episode.

Not only that, but the elderly gentleman and his daughter who had taken one of their rooms had turned out to be the Earl of Harrisfield and Priscilla, and they had quarrelled and shouted and fought about who had compromised whom until the roads were clear enough to allow Agatha to escape.

Eight

Two weeks had passed since Lord Philip’s departure. The false spring had not lasted long and hard frost had closed down upon the land.

Amaryllis entered upon a period of listless inactivity. She found she could neither sew nor read nor concentrate upon anything. She could not think about Lord Philip and damn him and get him out of her mind. No sooner did his face arise before her mind’s eye than she flinched from it and tried to force herself to think about something else, anything else.

With all the guests gone—Freddie Jackson had removed himself to Sir Peregrine’s—rigid economies were brought into force again. Meals were plain and meager and fires were confined to the morning room, the servant’s hall, and Mr. Worthy’s office.

Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins practically lived in the morning room, taking all their meals there.

Miss Wilkins had tried and tried to talk Amaryllis into a happier frame of mind until she realized that all her efforts were only making Lady Lovelace more miserable.

The only excitement in the long dark winter days was when the Malden and Daxtead Hunt had pursued the fox across the Beaton Malden gardens. Sir Peregrine had leapt the wall of the kitchen garden in fine style and had ended up in the melon frame, and both horse and rider had to be bandaged and sent home.

Amaryllis felt lonely and depressed. There seemed nothing to look forward to, nothing to dream about, nothing to hope for.

One evening just after the candles had been lit, she heard the sound of a carriage in the drive.

She did not bother rising to her feet, merely assuming it was some of the country house visitors who had slipped by the lodge.

She heard Foster’s voice in the hall. “I will see if her ladyship is at home, my lord.”

“I’ll see for myself, Foster,” said that heart-wrenching, mocking voice. “In the morning room, heh? I’ll announce myself.”

Amaryllis looked wildly around. Miss Wilkins was lying down with one of her headaches in her room. Before she could think what to do, the door opened and there he was. His face looked even more handsome and devilish than she had remembered. He was wearing a many-caped driving coat and carried a curly-brimmed beaver in his hand.

“This place is like an icehouse, my love,” he said cheerfully, divesting himself of his coat and throwing it on a chair. He turned and held out his arms.

“Come kiss me, Amaryllis. I have dreamt of nothing else.”

“My jewels, please,” said Amaryllis, backing away from him.

He gave a little frown. “Do your jewels come before me, madam?”

“Oh, yes,” said Amaryllis sweetly.

The love on his face ebbed, to be replaced with cold contempt.

He rang the bell. “Foster,” he said, never taking his hard gaze from Amaryllis’s face. “Bring in that jewel box in the hall.”

Foster inclined his head and went to order one of the footmen to perform the task.

“Open it,” said Lord Philip when the servants had gone.

“I don’t need to,” said Amaryllis wearily.

“Then be damned to you!” said Lord Philip, picking up his coat and hat. “You are the most mercenary baggage…”

“I? Mercenary? You, sirrah, only returned the jewels because you found they were paste!”

He had marched to the door as she spoke. Suddenly he stopped. “You received my letter?”

“I received no letter. You left none.”

“Oh, yes, I did. I left you a letter explaining I was taking your paste to London to replace it with the real thing.”

“Oh, Philip! Oh, you are only saying that to make me feel awful.”

Foster was summoned again.

Yes, he confirmed, his lordship had left a letter for my lady. Mrs. Jordan had offered to take it to my lady.

Amaryllis dismissed the butler. “She must have hidden it, Philip. I thought you did not know my jewels were paste and that you had stolen them. Don’t look so angry. Look at it from my point of view. Oh, Philip, I have been so wretched!”

“Well, they’re as real as real can be. The jeweler did a beautiful job. Do you want to see them?”

“No.”

“Do you want to kiss me?”

Amaryllis blushed by way of reply and held out her arms.

Foster took his ear from the other side of the door. He scuttled off to the servants’ quarters to relate the good news that Lord Philip must have come into a fortune because he had been able to change my lady’s paste jewels for the real thing.

Sometime later, Amaryllis stirred sleepily in Lord Philip’s arms as they lay in front of the morning room fire.

“I hear singing,” she said.

He moved his mouth lazily against hers. “You must be hearing angels.”

“No. Listen!”

Lord Philip sat up and cocked his head on one side.

From somewhere in the servants’ quarters, a voice was raised in song.

A captain bold of Halifax

Who lived in country quarters

Seduced a maid who hanged herself

One Monday in her garters….

Oh, Miss Bailey, unfortunate Miss Bailey.

“Dear me,” said Amaryllis. “That sounds like Foster. Why is he singing vulgar songs?”

“Celebrating,” said Lord Philip. “They’re celebrating my wealth.”

“How do they know?”

“I don’t know,” he yawned. “Probably been listening at the door. My love, what a marvelous blush! It starts at your toes and goes right up to your forehead. Forget Foster. I shall give you something to blush about….”

Down in the servants’ hall, Miss Wilkins was being regaled with the glad news. She had gone in search of Foster after finding the door of the morning room locked.

Smiling with relief, Miss Wilkins graciously agreed to take the top of the servants’ table and join them in the toasts. Amaryllis was happy and that was all that mattered.

Miss Wilkins sipped champagne and smiled dreamily. Now she would have time to worry about herself. The vicar had been so charming at the hunt ball….