The Outrageous Lady

Chapter One 1806-2

To vie with these characters and a great number more, there was the scandal of the Prince’s supposed secret marriage to the Roman Catholic Mrs. Fitzherbert, his now disastrous marriage to Princess Caroline of Brunswick and his ever-growing mountain of debts.

But there was another side to the Prince Regent’s character, which those who knew him well found irresistible.

He had great personal charm, remarkably good taste, was astonishingly knowledgeable on a variety of subjects and could be surprisingly generous to those who touched his heart.

His servants adored him and a great number of his friends found the manner in which he was treated by his father excused all his excesses.

It was not, however, a Society in which a woman could take part and not find her reputation suffer in consequence.

But the more Lady Roysdon was talked about, the more she flouted convention with the help and connivance of the Earl of Sheringham.

But now her companion and playmate, the man she had ordered about for four years, was straining at the leash and she knew that it was going to be difficult to hold him.

Actually she had fled from London to Brighton after an episode that had left her feeling ashamed.

She wanted to be free not only of the pointing fingers, which would undoubtedly make the most of her latest escapade, but also of the Earl himself.

He had always said that he disliked Brighton and in previous years had not followed the Prince Regent to the spa that had developed simply because of his Royal interest in it.

Yet when the Prince Regent had arrived three days ago the Earl had come with him and Lady Roysdon knew that the peace and quiet she had sought in the house she had rented in the Steine was at an end.

He had monopolised her from the first moment she arrived at the ball this evening, sweeping aside the other men who clamoured for her attention with an air of authority that infuriated her.

She told herself over and over again that she was not the Earl’s property and that he had no rights over her while her husband was still alive.

But she felt as if he was piercing her defences with weapons against which she had no answer and that he had become frightening in his determination to own her.

Now, as he waited for her to put her arm in his, there was an expression on his face that made her draw in her breath.

Quickly she said,

“I left my wrap in the hall. Will you fetch it and bring it here? If I go myself I am certain to be waylaid and people will know I am leaving.”

“That is true,” the Earl agreed, “I will fetch it for you and order my carriage at the same time.”

She did not protest and he added,

“I will also send a message to your coachman to go home.”

“Thank you, D’Arcy.”

He looked at her as if he was surprised at her sudden capitulation to his wishes. Then, with a faint smile on his face, he said,

“Mind you are here when I return. Perhaps I should lock the door in case some gallant seeks you out and persuades you to dance with him.”

“I have no intention of dancing any more tonight,” Lady Roysdon said almost petulantly. “I want to go home. A party that drags on too long is always fatiguing.”

“You are right. We should have left earlier.”

“Then don’t let’s linger talking about it,” Lady Roysdon replied sharply. “I am tired, I want to rest.”

“If I let you,” the Earl said with a twist to his lips.

Then he opened the door, passed through it and shut it firmly behind him.

As soon as he had gone, the expression of lassitude on Lady Roysdon’s face disappeared.

For a moment she stood listening as if to be quite certain that the Earl was not returning at once.

Then moving swiftly across the room she climbed out of the open window.

She lifted herself in her narrow gauze gown quite easily over the sill and out into the darkness of the garden.

For a moment she stood as if taking her bearings and then she set off across the lawn to where in the distance beyond a row of shrubs she saw the flicker of lights.

She guessed that they came from carriages, cabriolets and phaetons awaiting their owners.

She found her own carriage without much difficulty.

The coachman, Hancocks, who had been with her husband’s family for many years, was dozing on the box, but Jake, a young man she had engaged as both groom and footman since she came to Brighton, was chatting with a number of other servants.

As Lady Roysdon appeared, they stared at her first in astonishment, then quickly slipped into the obsequious manner that was expected of them.

Jake picked up his cockaded hat from where he had flung it carelessly on the ground and put it on his head.

“You wish to leave, my Lady?”

“Yes.”

He hurried to open the carriage door and lifted the fur-lined rug from the seat so that he could lay it over her knees.

“Home, my Lady?”

“Yes, home,” Lady Roysdon agreed, then added, “and tell Hancocks not to travel on the highway. There is, I believe, another road over the Downs.”

“I knows it, my Lady.”

“Then hurry!”

“Very good, my Lady!”

The carriage door was shut. The footman climbed up on the box and the horses moved forward, passing the long line of waiting carriages extending to the front door.

Lady Roysdon sat back in the shadows just in case she should be seen as they passed the front of the mansion and they moved down the drive at a smart pace.

After barely a quarter-of-a-mile they turned off the Brighton Road onto a narrow dusty lane.

Lady Roysdon had her reasons for choosing another route.

She was well aware that the Earl’s horses and there were four of them, pulling a lightly-sprung travelling chariot, would easily outpace her own pair.

She would not put it past him to draw them to a standstill and insist on joining her whether she wished it or not.

She knew how difficult it would be in a confined space, alone in the darkness, to keep the Earl at bay, and even to talk to him in such circumstances would be to invite danger.

The road over the Downs was longer and the surface was none too good, but to Lady Roysdon it was safer and that was all that mattered.

She settled herself comfortably in a corner of the well-padded carriage and pushed the fur rug off her knees onto the ground.

She bent forward to let down the window.

Now she could feel the breeze blowing from the sea and it swept away the oppression that she had felt ever since arriving at the ball to find the Earl waiting for her.

She wondered what she could do about him because, although two years ago she might have thought differently, she now knew that even if she was free tomorrow she would never marry him.

There was something about him that repelled her physically even though she found him amusing.

It was in fact because he amused her that she preferred him to all the other gentlemen who had laid their hearts at her feet.

They tried in every way possible to persuade her that fidelity was a joke not a virtue and was something that no lady of fashion contemplated for long.

But when their blandishments and pleadings had taken them nowhere, the majority of them had drifted away in search of easier prey.

But the Earl remained.

‘I shall have to be rid of him somehow,’ Lady Roysdon decided.

But while she could sound very determined on the subject when she spoke of it to herself, she knew it would be quite a different matter to convince the Earl of her intention.

That she had in fact driven him almost to the edge of madness was, she knew, no exaggeration.

Never in his thirty-six years had he ever been thwarted in obtaining anything he desired and, because she was the exception, she had become an obsession.

He was almost insane in his determination that she should surrender herself to his demands and acknowledge him the victor.

She did not know why, but in the last month her attitude had changed towards him.

She began to find him very different from the man on whom she had smiled and to whom she had given her friendship since first she came to London.

She began to feel that there was something rather menacing about the narrowness of his eyes and something cruel in the hard line of his thin lips.

She had heard stories about him, of course.

Was there anyone in the Social world who was not talked about disparagingly? Or about whom there were not innumerable anecdotes of an unsavoury nature?

But she never listened to scandalous tales about her friends and, although she could not help hearing some of them, she seldom believed what she heard.

Yet now where the Earl was concerned she began to be suspicious.

With the suspicions came the feeling that he was gradually enveloping her in a net that she would not be able to escape from.

For the first time since she had come to London and lived on her own, a wife without a husband to protect her, Lady Roysdon wished that she knew a man she could turn to for sympathy and understanding.

It had always been the Earl who had got her into scrapes and then got her out of them.

It had always been the Earl who advised her and, because he was an extremely influential member of the Social world and a very experienced man, his advice on the whole had been to her advantage.

It was only now that she felt as if she was suddenly defenceless against him and he was gradually stripping her of every refuge there had been in the past.

Deep in her thoughts Lady Roysdon had ceased to notice where they were going and only when suddenly the coach came to a grinding halt did she wake from her reverie.

She looked out to see that they had stopped apparently in a wood, for there were trees on either side of the carriage.

Then a tall figure appeared in front of the window, opened the door and said,

“Would your Ladyship be gracious enough to alight?”

For a moment she thought that the Earl had caught up with her after all.

Then incredibly in the light from the moon and from the lanterns on the side of the carriage she saw that the man who had spoken was masked.

He must be a highwayman!

There was a pistol in his hand and behind him she could see his riderless horse. She thought wildly that she must scream, but was then too proud to show any form of weakness.

Slowly and with a dignity that belied a sudden trembling within her breast she stepped from the carriage.

The moonlight was bright enough for her to see quite clearly another highwayman who had his pistol pointing at Hancocks and Jake on the box.

The highwayman who had told her to alight was tall and broad-shouldered and while she could not see the expression in his eyes behind the black mask that covered half his face, there was undoubtedly a faint smile on his lips.

“What do you want?” she asked curtly. “Or is that an unnecessary question?”

“Quite unnecessary, my Lady,” he answered. “And may I say that the emeralds at your neck are a quite superfluous adornment to your beauty.”

“I am not interested in your compliments,” Lady Roysdon retorted coldly.

“Then I shall have to make do with the emeralds, though I must add that they pale beside the loveliness of their owner.”

Lifting her chin disdainfully to show what she thought of his impertinence, Lady Roysdon undid the necklace and held it out to him.

He took it from her without taking his eyes from her face and casually dropped it into a canvas bag he held in one hand.

As he did so, she realised that he was dressed in a very different manner from the way she had expected.