Lost Laughter

Chapter One ~ 1818-2

This would be no new departure in the Ockley family.

In most generations there had been an Ockley who had followed the dictates of his head rather than his heart and had taken a wife who had brought him either money or land.

As that had been their only asset, the Viscount often reflected cynically as he looked at their portraits hanging on the walls in the family house and thought them an extremely plain if not ugly collection of women.

When he had been camping out on some mountainside in Portugal or fighting in the heat and dust of France he had found himself thinking romantically of the type of woman he would marry.

He would not have been human if he had not been conscious of his own good looks and the fact that female hearts undoubtedly fluttered in their breasts when he appeared.

He wanted a wife who would be a complement to himself and he hoped that together they would breed plenty of children who would ensure that any future family portraits were an improvement on those of the past.

Niobe had seemed the answer to the soldier’s prayer and from his long experience of women the Viscount was aware that his kisses excited her and there was a gleam in her eyes when she looked at him and which he naturally expected.

When he had driven down to Surrey on Monday morning, he did not hurry his horses, despite his impatience to reach Niobe, because they belonged to Freddy.

He told himself that the correct time to call on her would be in the afternoon.

He had spent the whole of the weekend perfecting his plans for their elopement and was very conscious that in the inside pocket of his close-fitting well-cut but unpaid for driving coat he carried a Special Licence.

‘Sir Aylmer may well be annoyed,’ the Viscount ruminated, ‘but once we are married there will be nothing he can do and, as Niobe has her own money, he cannot cut her off with the proverbial shilling.’

It certainly had seemed as if everything was as he wished it to be and yet there was a small nagging doubt in his mind because Niobe had been so insistent on a grand Society Wedding.

It was not in fact the first time that she had mentioned it.

He recalled her saying that the Prince Regent had attended the marriage of one of her friends and she would feel chagrined if he was not the Guest of Honour at hers.

The Viscount had, of course, met the Prince Regent on various occasions, but had felt no particular wish for a closer acquaintanceship, finding the long-drawn-out dinners at Carlton House boring and the musical evenings that usually followed made him yawn.

What he enjoyed was frequenting the gaming rooms, the houses of pleasure and the dance halls with his friends who often attended such places merely as spectators or to have what might be described ‘as a rowdy evening’, which unfortunately invariably cost money.

At the same time they were very amusing, as were the night Steeplechases, the Race Meetings at Newmarket or Epsom and the hard-drinking dinner parties that always followed a day on the turf.

“I am sure that His Royal Highness will be delighted to be present at our Wedding,” the Viscount had said swiftly because it was expected of him.

He knew as he spoke that it was extremely doubtful that the Prince Regent would be there and, if Niobe was disappointed, there would be different pleasures that he could offer her.

As he drove down the well-kept drive and saw Sir Aylmer’s enormous mansion in the distance, the Viscount forgot everything but his desire to be with Niobe.

She was waiting for him in the salon, which, if he had noticed it, he would have thought over-luxurious to the point of poor taste.

But he had eyes only for Niobe herself who rose from a seat by the window as he entered looking, he thought, even lovelier than when he had last seen her.

Her gown matched the colour of her eyes and revealed the exquisite shape of her body and, while a critic might have thought that she was wearing too much jewellery for a young girl in the country, the Viscount saw only the curve of her enticing lips.

He put his arms around her.

“No, Valient. No!” Niobe insisted keeping him at arms’ length with her long white fingers.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” the Viscount enquired

“You are not to kiss me until you have heard what I have to tell you.”

“I have a great deal to tell you too.”

“You must listen to me first.”

Because he wished to please her, he forced himself to concentrate on what she was trying to say to him.

“I am afraid that this news will upset you, Valient, but Papa agreed that I should tell you myself.”

“Tell me what?” the Viscount quizzed her.

He had dropped his arms at Niobe’s insistence, but now he stood very tall and elegant beside her and he found it hard to think of anything but her beauty and the softness of her lips that he so wanted to kiss.

“What I have to tell you,” Niobe said, “is that I have promised to marry the Marquis of Porthcawl!”

For a moment the Viscount found it hard to understand what she was saying. It was almost as if she was talking to him in a foreign language.

Then, as the words penetrated his mind, he felt as if someone had struck him a heavy blow on the head.

“Is this some joke?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she replied. “Papa is delighted. We are to be married next month.”

“I don’t believe it!” the Viscount exclaimed. “If this is your father’s plan, then we must do what we have already intended to do and run away at once.”

He knew even as he spoke from the expression on Niobe’s face that she would not go with him, but still he had to hear her say so.

“I have a Special Licence with me,” he said. “We will be married and then it will be impossible for your father to take you from me.”

“I am sorry, Valient, I knew this would upset you. Although I love you and I would like to have been your wife, I cannot refuse the Marquis.”

The Viscount drew in his breath.

“What you are saying,” he said slowly, and his voice was bitter, “is that you have been playing me along just in case Porthcawl did not come up to scratch, but now he has you are prepared to drop me like a red hot brick!”

He knew as he spoke that this was undoubtedly the truth.

“I am sorry, Valient,” Niobe stressed again, “but I hope after I am married that we can be friends.”

It was then that the Viscount lost his temper.

He had always had a temper. It was something that he had inherited from a long line of Ockleys, a temper that was seldom aroused, but, when it was, it exploded like the charge of a cannon.

Afterwards the Viscount could not remember exactly what he had said to Niobe. He was only aware as he spoke, not shouting but speaking with a bitter intensity words that cut like a whip, that she went very pale.

When she did not reply and he felt that there was nothing more that could be said, he had stormed from the room, intent on putting the greatest distance possible between himself and the woman who had so cynically betrayed him.

Now that he found it a little easier to breathe and the constriction in his chest was not so violent, he was aware that his horses, because of the speed that he had driven them at, were sweating and he himself felt unpleasantly hot.

The idea of heat drew his mind to something strange. He looked down on the floor of the phaeton and saw to his surprise that a rug was lying there in an unusual position.

Then, as he looked at it more closely, wondering why he should have brought a rug with him on such a hot day, it moved and he stared in sheer astonishment as a face appeared from under it.

It was a small oval face with two dark eyes looking at him somewhat apprehensively.

“May I come – out now,” a small voice asked. “I am very hot.”

“Who are you?” the Viscount asked sharply, “and what the Devil are you doing here?”

In answer the rug was thrown to one side and a girl, who appeared very slight and small, climbed onto the seat beside him.

She was wearing a somewhat crumpled gown and her dark head was bare except that hanging down her back, tied to her neck by two ribbons, was a most unfashionable bonnet.

The Viscount looked at her in amazement, then back at his horses and at her again before he asked,

“I suppose you have some reason for being in my phaeton?”

“I am ‒ running away.”

“From whom?”

“From my ‒ Uncle Aylmer.”

“Are you telling me that Sir Aylmer Barrington is your uncle?” the Viscount asked in a tone of fury.

“Yes.”

“Then in that case you can get out! I have no wish to have anything further to do with the Barringtons for the rest of my life!”

“I knew you would feel like that.”

“You knew?” the Viscount snapped. “What have you to do with the diabolical way that I have been treated by them?”

“Nothing,” came the reply, “except that I watched you being dangled on a string just in case the Marquis fell off the hook at the last moment.”

The fact that this was what he had thought himself made the Viscount so angry that he pulled his horses to a standstill.

“Get out!” he stormed. “Get out and be damned! And you can tell both your uncle and his daughter that I hope they rot in Hell!”

The way he spoke and the anger on his face should have intimidated the girl sitting beside him.

Instead she looked at him with commiseration in her eyes before she began,

“I am sorry, but actually – although you will not believe me – you have had a very lucky escape.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” the Viscount enquired.

“You don’t know Niobe as I do. She is spiteful and unkind and would have made you extremely unhappy.”

“I don’t believe that Niobe is any of those things and, if you speak like that, I shall slap you!” the Viscount threatened.

‘That would be nothing new,” the girl answered. “When Uncle Aylmer beat me – this morning, I decided I must – run away. That is why I am here.”

“Beat you?” the Viscount echoed. “I just don’t believe you!”

“I will show you the marks if you like,” the girl answered. “He is always beating me. When I first came to live with them, he did it – because Niobe told him to and after that he enjoyed it!”

The Viscount stared at her in sheer astonishment.

He did not want to believe what he was hearing. But there was an unmistakable ring of truth in the way the girl spoke that was more convincing than if she had cried or expostulated at his disbelief.

He turned sideways to look at her.

She seemed to him very young and little more than a child.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I am eighteen.”

“And what is your name?“

“Jemima Barrington.”

“And you really are Niobe’s cousin?”

“My mother was Sir Aylmer’s sister. She ran away from home with my father who was a distant cousin and they were very poor but very happy. When they died and I was an orphan, Uncle Aylmer took me to live with him. And that is why I know that you have had a lucky escape.”

As the conversation returned to him, the Viscount was scowling again.

“I am sorry for you, but you know as well as I do that I cannot involve myself with your troubles. I will take you wherever you want to go as long as nobody hears about it.”

“I don’t suppose that anybody would be interested,” Jemima replied. “Niobe hates – me and Uncle Aylmer finds me – an encumbrance.”

She gave a little sigh before she added,

“Who worries about a ‒ poor relation anyway?”

“Is that what you are?”

“My mother preferred love to riches. She was the exception – to the rest of the family.”

The Viscount thought that this was most probably true.

Niobe had certainly preferred a more important title than the one he himself possessed.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Jemima went on,