Buch lesen: «A Kind And Decent Man»

Chapter One

‘Promise you will, Victoria.’ The whispered words were thready and Victoria Hart inclined her head closer to her husband.

A thin-skinned, thick-veined hand trembled out and rested upon the crumpled black satin of her hair. He stirred it beneath his fingers. ‘Promise me, my dear, that you will write to him and tell him. I want you to do it now…this minute.’

‘Hush,’ Victoria soothed, closing wet grey eyes to shield her grief from him. ‘You can write yourself when you are feeling a little better.’ The words were gasped out as she battled against the tears threatening to close her throat at such futile comfort. She half turned for a sideways glance at Dr Gibson by the shadowy doorway. Leaping flames in the hearth revealed his stooped silhouette and the negative swaying of his head.

Her husband attempted a wry, appreciative laugh at her sweet, hopeless encouragement but it made him wheeze and he fought to regain his breath. ‘Will you do it now, for your poor old Danny?’ he eventually squeezed out on a long, painful sigh. ‘And will you promise that Samuel takes it today for the letter-carrier? For I want him to receive it in time. He is all the kin I have, apart from you.’ As he sighed into the silence, there was a faint, appealing smile for his beautiful young wife.

Victoria nodded her dark head beneath his fleshless palm and cold, dry fingers drifted across her warm, wet cheek before falling back to the coverlet.

‘Thank you, Victoria.’ Relaxing at her wordless vow, Daniel Hart allowed speckled lids to droop over colourless eyes. ‘You know what you have promised me, my dear. No widow’s weeds…not for your Danny. Nor moping about indoors away from the young people you like. Never deprive yourself of your youth, or anyone of your sweet company. It is what I want, you know that, and others will too. It is a condition of my bequest, witnessed and sealed.’ A dry chuckle preceded his next words. ‘What care we for convention…you and I…eh, my dear?’ He patted her slender white fingers in a gesture of dismissal.

As the rustling of her skirts told him she had risen from kneeling by his bedside, he murmured, ‘There is something else you have to promise me, Victoria.’ Into the rasping silence he finally breathed, ‘Promise me you won’t cry any more…’

David Hardinge, Viscount Courtenay of Hawkesmere in the county of Berkshire, paused while dictating and smiled. So infrequent a show of consideration and humour was this that Jacob Robinson, clerk and general factotum to the Viscount, actually ceased his frantic note-scribbling to stare at his master. He peered through his dusty spectacles at the lean profile presented to him as his employer settled broad shoulders comfortably back into his leather wing chair and brought the source of his amusement closer, savouring it. Startlingly blue eyes scanned an ivory black-edged card as he shoved back his chair and leisurely settled his highly polished top-boots on the edge of his highly polished mahogany desk. He reread the few lines of elegant black script while his long fingers sought on the desk for the cheroot curling a gentle drift of smoke towards the lofty ceiling of his walnut-panelled study. With the cigar stuck between his white teeth, his narrowed blue eyes flicked upwards, contemplating the ornate plaster coving. As his mind sped back seven years, the card was tapped idly against a manicured thumbnail. A few seconds of reminiscence had his teeth clenching on his cheroot and the card flipping casually across the desk to land in front of Jacob. ‘Send condolences and usual regrets at being unable to attend.’

Juggling his lapful of letters and ledgers, Jacob finally freed an index finger, stabbed it onto the card and slid it closer. Once he’d read it, he wondered what it was about a distant cousin’s funeral, notified to him by the man’s widow, that could possibly give the Viscount cause to smile in that unpleasant way. ‘Sad business…’ he volunteered, hoping to find out.

His sympathy was ignored. David Hardinge leafed impatiently through a lengthy document. ‘Have this delivered back to Mainwaring by hand this afternoon with a note stating that if he alters terms and conditions again the deal is off. The contract of sale I issued last month is the only one I will sign.’ Piercing blue eyes fixed on the clerk as David realised the man had noted nothing down but was apparently fascinated by the notification of Daniel Hart’s demise. ‘Have you got that dictation?’ he enquired silkily past the cigar clamped at one corner of his thin mouth.

‘Sad business…’ Jacob persisted, meaningfully pointing his sharp nose at the card on the desk.

‘Is it?’ David Hardinge asked, feigned concern spuriously softening his tone. The cigar was jerked from his teeth and he studied its glowing tip.

‘Oh, yes…’ Jacob opined, pulling his lips into a sorrowful droop. ‘Poor Mrs Hart. Not married more than seven years, I’ll warrant. Widowed so young. I met her just the once, you know, at your brother’s funeral. So charming a young lady, I recall.’ He shook his greying head, reflectively sucking his teeth. ‘Of course you were fighting alongside Wellington at the time, were you not, and missed laying your brother to rest, so perhaps you wouldn’t know her. It’s hard to believe that young master Michael’s been gone these five years and that I’ve worked man and boy for the Viscounts Courtenay for more than twenty-five years and—’

‘And there’s no real need for it to continue beyond today,’ David mildly threatened, while long fingers ground out his cigar so thoroughly that he singed them, shook them, swore audibly and scowled at Jacob’s censorious look.

Oh, he knew charming young Mrs Hart, and she could damn well go to hell alongside her husband for all he cared. But he didn’t, he reminded himself. He hadn’t cared for seven years or more, not since her father had unceremoniously tossed his marriage proposal back at him and sneered in his face for his effrontery. David had known his youthful hell-raising was a minor consideration; it was his lack of money and status that was the genuine stumbling-block. Vice in bridegrooms was customarily overlooked so long as the prospects were right.

But, in fairness to the man, all of Charles Lorrimer’s objections had been quite valid. And, in his own defence, in the six months he had gently courted eighteen-year-old Victoria Lorrimer, his behaviour and morals had been impeccable. Those of his parents, however, had continued to swill around in the gutter, to the vicious amusement of the haut ton. Paul Hardinge and the courtesan, Maria Poole, he had scandalously married by then had no further affluence or influence to buy acceptability.

In the distant days of childhood, he had been fiercely loyal to his parents, believing them to be the butt of malicious gossip. But the craving for reciprocal love and attention had slowly eroded, finally extinguishing in his mid-teens when he’d abruptly had to accept that his mother was an unreformed whore and his father a drunken sybarite who had gambled away practically every asset the Courtenays had amassed over two centuries. Henceforth David had unswervingly believed what he was often maliciously told—that his destiny must be tainted and shaped by theirs—and had lived his life accordingly.

Until he’d seen Victoria Lorrimer. For six months he’d believed in salvation. He’d lived in daylight hours and serenity.

Within a month of his proposal the only woman he had ever believed himself capable of loving had married Squire Hart of Ashdowne in Hertfordshire, who, with typical bitter irony, happened to be some distant relation of the Hardinges. His father’s great-aunt had married into the Hart clan in 1680, as he recalled.

Daniel Hart had a comfortable estate and wealth, and, at fifty-two, was some thirty-four years Victoria’s senior and a mere fifteen years younger than her own dear papa.

His own dear papa had been dead of syphilis within six months and his older brother Michael had inherited the viscountcy and the escalating debts bequeathed by their wastrel father. When Michael had succumbed to smallpox two years into his birthright, after a valiant but unsuccessful battle to repair the Courtenay fortune and standing, David had gained nothing other than a title he didn’t want and continuing ignominy. But he had risen to the challenge. If there was one thing David Hardinge had learned by the age of twenty-five, as he then was, it was how to survive, need no one, and decimate adversity through cunning and doggedness. He was grateful to Paul Hardinge for one solitary thing: his traditionally thorough education. His honed intellect was applied to his business affairs with the diligence of any trained banker. With the same typical irony, now he no longer cared, he found he had the respect and admiration of his peers, who ruminated enviously on how astonishingly he had turned about the Courtenay fortunes.

And now that David had money enough, he liked to enjoy the fruits of his interminable labour. He even allowed others to enjoy at his expense. He knew he had a reputation for being a generous man and was thus persistently targeted by women who, through necessity or choice, kept company with gentlemen. In short, he had a thoroughly pleasurable, if licentious lifestyle, and no intention of moderating any of it…ever again.

The devastation that had ripped into him on learning Victoria Lorrimer had married was now simply a hazy memory. Since then he was sure he had barely spared her an idle thought. He reluctantly conceded that odd; after all, thinking of her had for six months monopolised every waking hour and kept him hot, frustrated and celibate the night through. But then, at just twenty-three and still surprisingly reluctant to fully relinquish youthful idealism, despite the sewer in which he was reared, courting a beautiful, enchanting virgin to marry and play house with had seemed so appealing. A wry choke of laughter escaped him at the fairy-tale quality of it, causing Jacob to launch a quelling look his way and sniff, ‘I don’t see any humour in funerals myself.’

‘Jacob,’ David gently threatened, ‘if we don’t get through this correspondence in the time I have allocated to it, which is—’ he consulted his gold fob-watch ‘—five minutes more, you’ll be unamused to find yourself seeking alternative employment without a character.’ Abruptly swinging his long legs off the desktop, he shoved back his chair and stood up. He stretched and flexed his powerful shoulders before wandering idly to the large casement window. A hand eased a niggling cramp at his nape as he gazed down onto the quiet elegance of Beauchamp Place. Cream-stuccoed Palladian splendour soothed his restless gaze before blue eyes met a scene that elicited a smile of genuine amusement.

Richard Du Quesne, splendidly attired in a striking burgundy greatcoat trimmed with luxurious gold frogging, was sauntering towards his residence as though he hadn’t a care in the world. This despite the fact that clutching at the man’s arm was the mistress he had been trying to offload. Dickie Du Quesne was his closest friend—a true companion of similar taste and habits who shared a good deal of David’s history, time and vices.

Sensing eyes on him, Dickie glanced up at the study window and grimaced his bored disdain for his friend.

A shrug of exaggerated sympathy met this. David drew a long finger leisurely across his immaculate silk cravat before closing his hand and explicitly indicating with his thumb along the street. She might be a countess, the wife of an impecunious, much cuckolded earl, but he had no intention of enduring her presence in his house this morning. Roberta Stewart knew her relationship with Dickie was in its death throes and had been casting about for an equally wealthy replacement. David knew himself as prime target. Since he had finished with her some months before Dickie had taken her on, her constant pathetic attempts at seduction aroused disgust rather than lust.

David currently had set up two fresh, eager young mistresses, one at either end of town; that way, whether finishing the evening at Cheapside or Mayfair, he had a willing body close by should he require it. When neither Annabelle Sharpe’s creamy skin and thick auburn tresses nor Suzanna Phillips’s rosy charms and wispy blonde curls held any allure, he allowed himself to succumb to sexual enticements. And he received plenty. Ambitious seamstresses, impoverished widows, bored titled ladies all constantly prowled in his vicinity, flirtatiously displaying their interest and availability. As he was so popular, he could afford to be choosy…and cautious. He had no intention of losing his own robust health to a dose of the pox or risking the appalling ravages that had preceded his father’s death.

Thinking of widows brought Victoria Hart’s pale, pointed face, smoky eyes and silken black hair floating into his mind’s eye. A self-mocking twist of thin lips acknowledged that, seven years it might be, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten her delicate beauty. Lean hands braced at either side of the casement showed steadily blanching knuckles. She was probably grown fat and matronly in her wedded bliss, and had several brats clinging to her rustic skirts.

He casually pushed himself back from the window, concentrating on his promenading friend. Once rid of Roberta, Dickie and he would take their usual stroll to Watier’s for an afternoon of cards, dice or whatever pursuit took their jaded fancy. He idly pondered whether the bare-knuckle fight on the cobbles in Haymarket would go ahead this afternoon, but it occupied his mind only briefly. He collected his thoughts with iron discipline. His meeting with his clerk was not yet finished and business always took priority.

He had grown up having very little money, now had more than he was ever likely to need, and knew which state of affairs he preferred. Unlike a lot of his peers, commerce was accorded serious respect: he oversaw the execution of every single enterprise. He had a reputation as a fair yet unforgiving master. Those keen to feather their own nests at their employer’s expense gave Viscount Courtenay an extremely wide berth.

His boot had once sent an amateur opportunist sprawling down his elegant front steps, causing Dickie to say admiringly that it took one to know one. That irreverence had earned his friend a playful cuff…David was professional…especially when devious. He slanted a glance at the old retainer who had stayed with the Lords Courtenay through fair, foul and fair again. Jacob was an inquisitive, irreverent old buffer, but he was extremely efficient and unwaveringly loyal and trustworthy. David knew that his half-hearted threats to put him off were now a source of amusement to them both. In fact, he’d really grown quite fond of him.

‘Make sure that Mainwaring has that response regarding the sale of the property in Chelsea and deal with all other matters as we discussed.’

Jacob’s short, wiry body carefully unfolded from the chair. He cradled his day’s work in one arm while the other hand sprang to catch his spectacles before they slid from the end of his nose.

Reaching over his desk for another cheroot, David lit it and drew deeply until the tip ruddied. He speared long fingers through his dark mahogany hair, aware of the length of it and that he should get to his barber some time this week. In all other respects he was immaculately turned out as usual: a shirt of finest white lawn, a deep chestnut silk cravat similar in shade to his thick hair, and buff breeches of excellent quality and a style that snugly emphasised the considerable muscular length of his legs.

‘Mr Du Quesne,’ Jeremiah Clavering, his butler, intoned from the doorway, allowing David’s comrade, well wrapped into his exquisite greatcoat, entrance to the cosy study.

As he caught the draught from the corridor, David stirred the glowing coals with the tip of his expensive leather boot. It had been a long, hard winter and these February mornings were invariably solid with frost. A sideways grin at Dickie acknowledged his glowing red nose, white cheeks and blond hair, lank with cold. His freezing friend immediately sought a place by the roaring fire.

‘Nippy out there?’ David needled.

‘I’d taken two extra turns of the square with that silly bitch before someone hove into view and I managed to dump her. I’m not sure Wainwright will still be speaking to me…Damn!’ he exclaimed, through chattering teeth. ‘He’d best not consider returning her home a favour and cancel my duns.’

David laughed down into the leaping flames. As the chill from his friend’s body permeated his comfortable warmth, he shifted to allow Dickie the best position in front of the hearth. ‘You did well,’ he soothed. ‘Had you brought her in here, I would not have been best pleased. You’ll get your money from Wainwright—’ He broke off, noting Jacob was hopping from foot to foot, shifting and balancing documents in his arms while making grabs at the door handle. He strolled over and held the door wide. As the clerk exited under his braced arm, David instructed, for no reason he could understand, ‘Forget that letter to Mrs Hart. I’ll convey condolences myself at the funeral.’

It was certainly comforting to see so many paying their last respects to her dear Danny, was Victoria’s consoling thought as she buried her small, trembling hands further into her sable muff.

This February morning was bright with winter sunshine but bitterly cold; the grave-diggers had laboured long and hard to scoop out her husband’s final icy resting place.

Parson Woodbridge dropped a fistful of dark soil into the grave and it hit Daniel Hart’s coffin with a splattering thud. He inclined his head at her and she stepped unsteadily forward on numbed legs at the signal. The mixed sheaf of fragrant herbs and flowers she had collected that morning was released into the earth-dark void. Despite her solemn promise to Daniel that she would not cry, she felt melancholy tears heating her hastily closed eyes. Withdrawing her gloved fingers from their warm nest, she pressed them to her eyelids, chafing delicate skin with the black lace veil shrouding her small, sculpted face. Damp, inky lashes slowly unmeshed to expose luminous damson-grey eyes and she raised her head, again composed…and saw him.

She squinted through a teary film and an involuntary gasp of recognition was heightened by fierce frosty air abrading her throat. He was standing a way off, absolutely still—a solitary figure divorced from those by the graveside stamping frozen feet and huddling close together for warmth. She was sure he was staring at her as intently as she was at him, despite her veil and matted lashes distorting her view. And she quietly knew that after seven years he would look as she remembered him even though his features were indistinct. He looked statuesque outlined against a washed winter sky, and quite frighteningly imposing. He seemed more powerfully built. Perhaps he had grown broader, or perhaps it was just an illusion created by his heavy black greatcoat. A steamy haze froze before his face and this undeniable proof that he was not a figment of her imagination but a living, breathing man simultaneously cheered and alarmed her.

He must have just arrived, walked up alone from Hartfield to the chapel, for he hadn’t left with the mourning party. He was a head taller than any man here and impeccably attired; she would never have missed him.

Victoria dragged her gaze back to Parson Woodbridge’s kindly face as he concluded the funeral service and indicated to her that the pair of grave-diggers would like to continue about their business.

It was too final! She couldn’t yet relinquish the man who had cared for her, provided for her and her relatives. It was too soon.

Despite the empathy radiating from the friends and neighbours grouped about her, she felt alone and frightened, and that stomach-churning anxiety was now oddly intensified by the shadowy, remote figure on the edge of her vision. She suddenly wished that Daniel hadn’t insisted she write and ask him to come. Why had he? There had been no bond between them other than a distant kinship that neither man had ever sought to acknowledge or build on.

She became conscious of people looking more purposefully at her. Stiff fingers were being warmed with puff-cheeked breaths and chilled cloaked bodies batted with rigid arms. They were patiently awaiting a signal to leave.

‘Are you ready, Victoria, my dear?’ the parson enquired kindly as he took a pace towards her. ‘Come, my child, you’ll freeze,’ he coaxed, taking her arm gently and turning her about. ‘You can return later, when these men have done their work, with another pretty posy and a nice hot toddy inside you.’ He lifted a bony gloved hand to his bulbous nose set in a curiously gaunt face. ‘I do believe this is twice its normal size,’ he gently joked as he led her away. Sheeny grey eyes raised to his painfully purple proboscis and Victoria choked a hysterical giggle. She gratefully held his arm as they slowly made their careful way back down the frost-glistening grassy hillock to the shingle path that wound to Hartfield. The mourning party, approximately a score in number, fell into step behind them. A quiet murmuring among its members could be heard, conveying gladness that the ceremony was satisfactorily accomplished, and that a fire and a warming drink awaited them at Hartfield.

They would pass close by him, Victoria realised, for he had not so much as budged an inch from his isolated spot. Raising her head as she drew level, she turned; courtesy decreed she acknowledge him. Glistening grey eyes were immediately entrapped by a steady sapphire gaze. Powerless to break free, she glided on until looking across at him became impossible and she finally twisted her veiled face away and exhaled.

The blonde woman climbed the last mound. Pausing to draw a spiteful breath, she spied the snaking trail of mourners trudging away towards Hartfield. But her narrowed green eyes were almost immediately skimming back to the churchyard, targeting the sole remaining figure. Her interest quickened at his virile attractiveness, but it was his obvious affluence that drew forth a calculating smile.

Ignoring the open grave, the tall, impressive man strolled the rimed grass towards the shingle path. Feline eyes tracked him until he latched the lychgate, when they pounced forward onto the slightly built young widow far in the distance and close to the saintly parson.

The woman’s generous mouth thinned in malice. Wrapping herself more closely into the warmth of her thick cloak, she picked a careful path across the slippery turf. She glared boldly at the two labourers who began whispering as she approached. Leaning on shovels, they watched curiously as she stared down at the coffin partially obscured by a few scoops of rich dark soil.

Muttered curses, loud and crude enough to make the grave-diggers exchange an appreciative look, preceded earth piled along the edges of the grave being sent hurtling unceremoniously back into the void by a small booted foot. Then, with a dramatic swirl of her cloak, the blonde woman was hastening back across the fields in the opposite direction to the mourners and Hartfield.

‘Here, drink this,’ Laura Grayson urged her friend as she held out the glass of mulled wine.

Victoria gave her a grateful smile but her eyes were discreetly watching the door, sliding over familiar faces to find one she hadn’t seen for so long.

She felt neglectful now and ill-mannered. She had not so much as nodded to him in welcome or recognition. All she had done was stare like an idiotic fool. She so hoped he would enter the house and take a little refreshment before leaving. He had no doubt travelled from London. He must be tired…thirsty. Guilt and shame suddenly swamped her. He obviously felt shunned; she had written and invited him to attend the funeral, as Daniel had bidden her, yet done nothing to greet him. Daniel would have been rightly horrified by such lack of hospitality.

Her aunt Matilda entered the drawing room and immediately made for the roaring fire, a glass of warm wine grasped in each hand.

‘Your aunt Matty seems in fine form,’ Laura said wryly, but her troubled hazel eyes searched Victoria’s strained countenance. ‘Daniel would hate to see you looking so peaky. Remember those promises you made,’ she gently reminded her.

Victoria gave her friend a wan smile, then directed a speedy, searching glance at the ancient gentleman ensconced close to the wide hearth. It judged him to be quite comfortable and cosy. ‘Would you mind my papa, Laura, while I ensure everyone has some refreshment before they leave? It is so terribly cold and some have travelled far.’ Having received an immediate affirmative to this request from her friend, she hurried away.