A Hazard of Hearts

Chapter One ~ 1808-3

“‘Out of my way, sir,’ he said.’

“The gentleman stared at him.’

“‘Will you kindly pay a closer attention to your manners, sir?’ he replied.

“‘My manners are my own affair,’ Uncle Giles said in an intentionally provoking tone and taking his gloves he slapped them against the stranger’s face.”

“Oh no!” Serena cried.

“He did it deliberately,” Nicholas went on. “There was obviously only one course for the stranger to take. He asked for your father’s card, handed him his own and said that his seconds would call upon him in a few hours. I went up to Uncle Giles and offered him my services. He accepted them and took my arm genially enough. ‘We will go to my rooms in Half Moon Street, Nicholas, my boy,’ he said and somehow he seemed quite cheerful. But I was staring at the stranger’s card. I had seen the name engraved there – Mr. Michael Blacknorton.’

“‘Uncle Giles,’ I cried, ‘you must be crazy. Do you know who that man is? He is a much-vaunted shot with a pistol.’

“‘I thought I recognised him,’ your father answered and I knew then that I had not been mistaken. As I suspicioned, he had picked the quarrel on purpose.”

“Why? Why?” Serena asked.

“You know why,” Nicholas answered her. “Cannot you understand, Serena? He had lost Staverley and – you.”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“Mr. Blacknorton’s seconds were round within an hour,” Nicholas continued. “I tried to insist on rapiers, but your father agreed immediately to pistols. He sat drinking and talking until the dawn broke and then we went to a field outside the village of Chelsea. Surprisingly Uncle Giles seemed cheerful and almost at peace with himself. He shook my hand and said,’

“‘Look after Serena as best you can, Nicholas and tell her to forgive me. I don’t deserve her prayers’.”

Nicholas’ voice broke. There was a moment’s pause before Serena asked with tears running down her cheeks,

“Did he hurt Mr. Blacknorton?”

“He fired into the air,” Nicholas answered, “and I think Blacknorton meant only to wing him, but your father turned as if to be square to the bullet. It struck him just above the heart and he died almost instantly.”

“Oh, Nicholas, if only I could have been with him!” Serena sank down in the window-seat and hid her face in her hands.

“There was nothing any of us could do,” Nicholas said. “Peter Vivien was with me and I left him to make all arrangements to have your father brought back here while I came on ahead to tell you what had happened and – to persuade you to marry me.”

“It’s kind of you, Nicholas, but – we have never loved each other.”

Nicholas Staverley became slightly red in the face.

“I have always been very fond of you, Serena. We have been together more or less all our lives. We would get along famously, I daresay.”

“Without love? Dear Nicholas, I know you mean it very kindly, but it would ruin your life and you know it.”

“That is nonsense, Serena,” Nicholas said, speaking as though they were in the schoolroom again. “We are fond of each other and we know one another well. We could live at The Gables for the time being.”

“Within sight of Staverley – when it is no longer ours?” Serena asked softly and there was a bitterness more than of tears in her voice. “I have not forgotten, Nicholas, that you have lost it too. One day it would have been yours and Staverleys have lived here since the reign of Henry VIII. Oh, Nicholas, I am sorry, both for you and for myself.”

In answer Nicholas walked across the room and sat down beside her in the window.

He put his hand over hers and held it close.

“For the Lord’s sake, Serena, listen to me. You don’t understand! You cannot wed Vulcan!”

“Why not? Presuming that he will offer for me.”

“I don’t even trust him to do that. He is a bad fellow, Serena! No, I am not talking in an exaggerated way. It is fashionable at the moment to be dashing and a roué, but he is all these things and more. He is inhuman. Everyone is afraid of him and there are all sorts of rumours always being repeated and whispered about him.”

“What sort of rumours?” Serena asked.

“I don’t really know. I have always kept out of his way because people have said such things about him. But you can ask anybody in London and they will tell you that no respectable woman can afford to be seen in his company. There are women always about him, of course, he attracts them just as sugar attracts flies, but he only takes what he wants and leaves them disconsolate and broken.”

There was so much misery in Nicholas’ voice that Serena looked at him, sensing instinctively that he had a special reason for speaking so vehemently.

“But what can I do?” Serena asked.

“You cannot wed him,” Nicholas said firmly. “I will ride over to the Bishop, ask him for a Special Licence and we can be married before Vulcan arrives.”

“Would that be – honourable?” Serena asked.

Nicholas hesitated for a moment.

“There is no question of being honourable where the Marquis is concerned. I believe even the Prince of Wales said to him the other day, ‘Justin, I never actually believed in the Devil until I met you’.”

“And because he is bad you suggest that we behave badly, Nicholas?”

“Faith, Serena, how you do catch up on a fellow!” Nicholas said impatiently, getting to his feet. “I say the only way out of this coil, and a sorry coil it is, is for you to marry me and, when Vulcan arrives to claim you, he will find you are already tied.”

Serena rose to her feet and walked across the room. For a moment there was only the soft rustle of her dress to break the silence. At the end of the room there was a portrait of her father. It had been painted about fifteen years earlier and he looked young and joyous and carefree as he sat on a great roan mare and held his three-cornered hat in his hand.

Serena stood for a long time looking at the portrait.

At length she said quietly,

“I never remember his doing a dishonourable thing, Nicholas. He was a hopeless gamester, he would gamble on anything. I recollect when I was a child I told him that I thought it was going to rain. It was of vital importance that it should not rain that day because I had been promised a picnic by my Nurse. I desired the treat so much that I felt pessimistic about it taking place, I suppose. Anyway, he laughed at me and said,

“‘I will wager you that it does not.’

“‘But it will,’ I said miserably, ‘I know it will.’

“‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘if it does not, I will give you a pony. You have been asking for one long enough.’

“I gave a shout of joy, but he lifted his hand.

“‘Not so fast, not so fast, what do you stake in return?’

“I thought wildly of my small possessions. He noticed the doll that I always carried in my arms.

“I adored that doll. It was called ‘Louise’ and I went nowhere without her, she even slept with me at night.”

“‘Your doll against a pony,’ he said.

“I agreed, but even as I did so there was a lump in my throat and I knew that even the joys of a picnic and a pony would never compensate me for the loss of Louise. I was right, it never did. I lost the wager, of course, and later that afternoon I took Louise to my father.

“‘Do you – really – want Louise, Father?’ I asked.

“He saw the pleading in my eyes, but he shook his head.

“‘A debt of honour must always be paid,’ he said firmly and took the doll from me. He locked her up in the cupboard in his study. I used to go in there without anyone knowing and speak to her through the closed door.”

“Did you ever get her back?” Nicholas asked.

“I was too proud to ask for her,” Serena replied, “and I think it was four or five years later that my father, looking for some lost deeds, came across Louise.”

“‘What in the name of fortune is that thing doing there?’ he asked and I thought then of the nights I had crept into the deserted study and asked Louise if she was all right, of the times that my arms had felt empty and aching because there was no Louise to hug. I did not tell him what I felt – I could not, but I knew then that one should never gamble with the thing one loves.”

Serena’s voice was choked, and she threw out her arms with a gesture of despair.

Nicholas went across the room to her.

“You are going to marry me,” he asserted masterfully.

“But I am not,” Serena replied through her tears.

“Don’t be so bird-witted, Serena,” Nicholas said sharply. “I know what is best and you will do as I bid you.”

Serena laughed even as the tears were falling down her cheeks.

“Oh, Nicholas, you are so funny. You never could make me obey you even though you were three years older and you are not going to succeed now. I am going to stay here and face it out. Maybe, when his Lordship sees me, he will not want me.”

“To tell the truth, Serena,” Nicholas said, “I don’t believe for one moment that he will marry you. Everyone in London has tried to catch him at one time or another and no one has succeeded. There is someone now who is very much in love with him and he will not have her.”

Nicholas’ voice changed and suddenly Serena understood that here was where Nicholas was personally concerned in the story.

“Who is she?” she asked softly.

“Lady Isabel Calver,” Nicholas answered. “You will never have heard of her, she is a widow. She was married when she was only a child in the schoolroom and her husband was killed fighting against Napoleon. She is lovely, Serena, the loveliest woman I have seen in my life and Vulcan will have none of her.”

“In which case, Nicholas, he is not likely to wed me,” Serena answered, “but, dear cousin, thank you for asking me and thank you for your thought of me. I do appreciate it, I do really.”

“That is very nicely said, Serena,” Nicholas replied awkwardly. “But I know that you are making a mistake. The fellow is not to be trusted. If he does not marry you, he will somehow contrive to get his hands on your fortune.”

“He will have to be clever to do that,” Serena said. “You know what the Trustees are like.”

“Well, there is nothing more I can do,” Nicholas said.

“There is nothing any of us can do,” Serena said, “except remember – that my – my father is on his way here.”

“I had not forgotten, Serena.”

“Will you speak with the Vicar?” she asked. “I will inform the household. But first you must have something to eat, Nicholas.”

“I will for I am tired to death. I have been up all night, worrying myself into a fever about you. You will live to regret the day that you would not agree to my plan.”

“Maybe,” Serena replied, “but at the same time, Nicholas, the Staverleys have never run away0 and I am not going to be the first to start, not even though it means marriage with – with the Devil himself.”