From Hell to Heaven

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1831-2

“Well, you and I, Linden, know that he only won by a foul, but it will not do any good to say so.”

“No, of course not,” the Marquis agreed, “but I will do my best to see that damned jockey gets his deserts. I bet you any money you like that Branscombe knew what he was doing when he engaged the man.”

“Of course he did!” Peregrine agreed. “He was determined to beat you by fair means or foul.”

“That does not surprise me,” the Marquis said. “Branscombe has always been the same ever since he was at Eton. He has to be top and if you remember even there we were always running neck and neck for some position or other.”

Peregrine laughed.

The rivalry between the two boys had been the talk of the school and the other scholars had divided themselves equally behind one or the other. It had been very much the same when they had both gone to Oxford University.

He himself had always disliked the Earl because he knew that, despite his success in the field of sport, he was fundamentally unsporting.

He was not averse to taking an underhand advantage in any contest when he intended to be the winner.

Some boys and young men sense with an almost clairvoyant perception the flaws in each other and Peregrine had always been quite sure that there was a canker somewhere in the Earl of which not many people were aware.

The Marquis was different.

Although he had his faults, he was in his friend’s mind a gentleman who would never do anything that was not completely straight and honourable.

“What are you thinking about?” the Marquis enquired as they cleared the worst of the crowds and the horses were able to move more quickly.

“You, as it happens.”

“I am flattered!” the Marquis said sarcastically. “But why?”

“I was comparing you to Branscombe, to his disadvantage.”

“So I should think and I am not looking forward to the dinner this evening.”

The Derby Dinner given by the Stewards of the Jockey Club was always a spectacular occasion and every winner of the Derby enjoyed the congratulations and the honour that was accorded to him on that particular evening.

It would be particularly irksome, as Peregrine knew, for the Marquis to have to pretend that he enjoyed the Earl’s company and to repress the knowledge that their horses had only been equal owing to foul riding by his jockey.

“Let’s hope we need not stay long,” Peregrine said in an effort to cheer up his friend. “There are some very attractive little ‘pieces of muslin’ arrived from France at the Palace of Pleasure whom you may find interesting as soon as we can get away.”

The Marquis did not reply. Peregrine remembered that his friend usually found such houses a waste of time and so he asked quickly,

“But I expect you have arranged to meet Lady Isobel.”

There was just a note of doubt in the question as if he realised that recently the Marquis had not been seen as often as might have been expected with Lady Isobel Sidley.

This was surprising, for she was not only an acknowledged beauty in London Society but was also quite obviously wildly passionately in love with the Marquis to the point where the whole Social world knew all about it.

Lady Isobel had, Peregrine had often thought, been born too late. Her impetuous indiscretions were such as had been admired fifteen years ago by the Prince Regent.

He had loved pretty women and he had certainly not wished them to be moral or prudent.

Unfortunately Lady Isobel had never learned to control her feelings and her infatuation for the Marquis, which she had made no attempt to disguise, had already shocked the Queen.

There was a distinct pause.

Then with his eyes on his horses the Marquis said,

“No. I shall not be seeing Isobel. To tell you the truth, Peregrine, I am no longer interested.”

His friend turned to stare at him incredulously.

He had thought that perhaps the Marquis might remonstrate with Isobel or curtail some of the time they were seen together in public, but that he should have finished with her completely was incredible.

“Do you really mean that?” he enquired.

The Marquis nodded.

“I am bored.”

There was no obvious reply to that and again there was silence as they drove on.

Peregrine was thinking that it was typical of the Marquis to be so ruthless and make a decision that most men in his position would find it hard to implement.

But the Marquis was very blunt and, if he was bored, then whoever was boring him would be shown the door and there would be no appeal against his decision to finish either a love affair or a friendship. And immediately.

“Does Isobel know this?” Peregrine asked at length.

“I have not yet told her in so many words,” the Marquis replied, “though I intend to do so when the opportunity arises. But I believe that she must have some inkling, as we have not seen each other for over a week.”

Peregrine remembered seeing a groom in Sidley livery delivering a letter at the Marquis’s house when he had been with him that morning.

He was certain that Lady Isobel would be very voluble on paper if she could not have the chance of saying what she thought in person.

Suddenly he saw storm clouds ahead and only hoped that he would not be involved in them.

Then, as if he knew that this was the moment when he must tell the Marquis what was on his mind and what had been worrying him considerably all day, he said,

“Are you ready to hear something that will annoy you?”

The way he spoke rather than what he said made the Marquis look at him sharply.

“Does it concern Isobel?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her,” Peregrine said quickly. “It is something I feel that I have to tell you and I have been waiting for a propitious moment.”

“Which you think is now?”

“I suppose it is as good a time as any,” Peregrine said a little ruefully. “As a matter of fact I was remembering that in the old days Kings cut off the heads of messengers who brought them bad news.”

The Marquis laughed.

“Is that what you are afraid will happen to you?”

“At least for the moment your hands are engaged with the reins!” Peregrine replied.

The Marquis laughed again.

“I will not hit you, you fool, whatever you tell me, and now you have aroused my curiosity I am naturally speculating as to what it can be.”

“It concerns Branscombe.”

The Marquis groaned.

“I am trying to forget him before I have to see his smug face at the dinner tonight.”

“According to him, Her Majesty admires him enormously and thinks that he looks just as a gentleman should.”

“God help us!” the Marquis ejaculated. “And incidentally Branscombe does not consider himself a gentleman but a Nobleman, which entitles him to be more self-satisfied, more blown up with his own importance and bumptious than he is already!”

“It’s a pity we cannot tell him so,” Peregrine laughed.

“What are you going to tell me about him that I don’t know already?”

“I will be surprised if you do!” Peregrine remarked. “You are aware that the Queen is anxious that those who are in attendance at Court should be ‘properly and respectably’ married?”

“The Princess Lieven told me,” the Marquis replied, “that the Queen said, ‘we want all those dear people who are closest to the King to be as happy and compatible as we are’.”|

The way the Marquis mimicked the Queen’s voice made it sound sickly sentimental and Peregrine said quickly,

“Be careful, Linden, or Her Majesty will have you up the aisle before you are aware of it!”

“I assure you that she will do nothing of the sort!” the Marquis retorted. “I have no hesitation in declaring that I have no intention of marrying any woman before I wish to do so, even if I am sent to the Tower for disobeying the Royal Command!”

“That I can well believe,” Peregrine smiled, “but Branscombe has agreed with the Queen that it is an excellent idea and has already mentioned privately to one or two people the name of the woman he intends to marry.”

The way Peregrine spoke told the Marquis that what he was saying was significant and, because he knew it was expected of him, he asked,

“I presume you intend to tell me who the unfortunate female is?”

“The Princess Lieven told me in confidence because she claimed that she was too frightened to tell you herself,” Peregrine replied, “that Branscombe intends to marry your Ward as soon as she arrives in England.”

The expression in the Marquis’s face was one of sheer astonishment.

“My Ward!” he exclaimed. “Who the devil – ?”

He stopped.

“You cannot mean Mirabelle?”

“Exactly! Mirabelle Chester!”

“But the girl is still at school. She has seen nothing of the world and is not arriving in England for another month.”

“That is true,” Peregrine agreed, “but naturally people have been talking about her.”

“By which you mean,” the Marquis said sharply, “that they have been talking about her fortune!”

“As usual you have hit the nail on the head!”

The Marquis gave an exclamation that was almost an oath.

“You are not telling me that Branscombe needs money!”

“The Princess told me again in confidence,” Peregrine replied, “that he has secretly been looking for an heiress for some considerable time. Apparently he said to someone who reported it to the Princess that, much as he disliked you, he could not deny that the Chester blood was nearly compatible with his own!”

The Marquis exploded.

“Nearly, indeed!”

“When he heard of the extent of your Ward’s fortune,” Peregrine went on, “he decided that she is exactly what he needs.”

The Marquis’s lips tightened before he asked,

“But for Heaven’s sake why?”

“I gathered from the Princess’s rather garbled explanation that he found on his father’s death that the old Earl had not left him all he expected.”

“He will marry her over my dead body!” the Marquis exclaimed. “As Mirabelle’s Guardian, I would never give my permission for her to marry Branscombe.”

There was silence.

Then Peregrine said,

“You will have to give substantial grounds for your refusal.”

The Marquis did not answer for a moment, but his friend knew by the expression on his face that he was realising it would be very difficult for any Guardian to refuse the Earl of Branscombe as a suitor.

Whatever might be felt about him privately, publicly he was the holder of a great and honoured title, the possessor of an estate that, like his ancestors, was part of the history of England and he certainly enjoyed the favour of both the King and the Queen.

The Marquis had already considered his responsibilities towards the daughter of his first cousin.

Edward Chester, who had died two years ago, had been one of those brilliant but restless people, who was only happy when he was exploring strange parts of the world or risking his life quite unnecessarily in adventures that would have appalled more cautious men.

Although his travels had been often extremely uncomfortable and dangerous, in the course of them he had become enormously wealthy.

Someone who had befriended him had left him shares in a gold mine that had suddenly borne fruit and in another part of the world land he had written off as a dead loss had become valuable overnight when oil was found on it.

Perhaps because he was not particularly interested in stocks and shares, those he had bought in a haphazard fashion always seemed to boom the minute he acquired them.

When he was killed, as everybody expected he would be, attempting to cross a range of mountains that were considered impassable, his daughter, Mirabelle, found herself to be the possessor of a huge fortune and a Guardian to administer it for her whom she had never even seen.

Mirabelle’s mother had been half-Italian and, when Edward Chester had left on his last expedition from which he never returned, he had deposited his wife and daughter in Italy.

It was unlikely that the letter which had been despatched to him telling him of his wife’s death had ever reached him and the Marquis had learned, first of Mrs. Chester’s death and then of his cousin Edward’s within a month of each other.

All this had happened last summer and, while he was wondering what he should do, he had received a letter from Mirabelle’s aunt who she was staying with in Italy.

The Contessa told him that as her niece was attending an excellent school in Rome, she thought it would be a mistake for her to come to England until she was out of mourning.