The Daring Deception

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1840-3

“You mean you are not with child?” the Marquis asked sharply.

“Of course not,” she replied, “but Papa would not question it if I did tell him that I was having one. The result of three delightful nights that we spent together before I went abroad. Nearly three months ago, Ivon. It is just about the right time for me to be sure that I am not mistaken.”

There was a silence and then the Marquis asked her,

“Are you blackmailing me, Karen?”

“What a horrible word,” she replied. “No indeed, my dear Ivon, I am only telling you to accept the inevitable with a good grace. I want you! I love you!”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word love,” the Marquis commented.

“Then what I am offering you is a very good substitute,” she replied. “I do find you as desirable as you find me. What more could any man or woman ask of marriage?”

“What indeed,” he remarked bitterly.

“And so, my dear Ivon, when we return to London, I shall tell Papa that you wish to speak to him and we can be married, now let me see, in April as soon as the Season starts. I shall make an entrancing bride, even though it is my second journey up the Aisle! And you will be a breathtakingly handsome bridegroom.”

Karen had risen as she spoke and the Marquis heard the rustle of her wrapper as she slipped her arms into it. Then she moved across the room in the darkness with an assurance that made him think that this was not the first time she had visited this particular bedroom at Quenton.

He heard her unlock the door and turn the handle.

“Good night, dear, dear Ivon,” she said, “my husband to be!”

The Marquis had sat up for a long time without moving. It seemed to him as if he was in a trap from which there was no escape. He was well aware that Karen, having once made up her mind, would not swerve from her determination to marry him and there was in fact little he could do about it.

If, as she had threatened, she told Lord Dunstable that she was with child and that the father refused to marry her, Lord Dunstable would undoubtedly go to the Queen.

The gay roistering days of the Regency were over. The easy acceptance of loose morals countenanced by William IV, who had ten illegitimate children, was now well forgotten in the new strait-laced respectable regime of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

In 1850 the slightest breath of scandal was frowned on and Society ladies eager to follow Queen Victoria’s lead could, the Marquis knew, make things very uncomfortable for him.

He could defy them. He could tell the whole lot to go to the devil. But he knew, if he was honest with himself, that he would dislike not being invited by the great hostesses, not being sought after by Statesmen and Politicians and not being acclaimed a sportsman and a man of honour by his friends.

And yet to be married to Karen, knowing her for what she was, would be, he thought, to walk barefooted into Hell. He could not imagine what his private life would be like once she was his wife,

She might be enraptured with him now, but he knew enough of her reputation and her past to realise that her lovers succeeded each other in quick succession.

She had a man’s attitude towards possession, she must satisfy a passionate desire but once the urgency of it was past she would forget that the moment ever existed.

Any woman, even Sheila Courtley, would be preferable as his wife to Karen Russell.

*

When his valet called him in the morning, the Marquis gave orders for his clothes to be packed. He had driven his own phaeton to Quenton, but a groom had ridden one of his best horses there. The Marquis preferred to exercise on his own horseflesh.

He now decided to ride some of the way home. He felt that only by moving fast could he put the greatest possible distance between himself and Karen.

“I have to get back to London,” he told his friend Johnny. “I wish I could have stayed for another day’s shooting but only last night I remembered a very important engagement.”

“Male or female?” Johnny smiled.

“Male! Entirely male,” the Marquis replied with a firmness that made his friend glance at him in surprise.

He would have been even more surprised if he had learnt that the Marquis, riding across country, was exclaiming under his breath against the whole female s*x.

“Damn them! A man would be well rid of the whole cursed lot of them!” he vowed.

And his horse’s hoofs pounding across the hard ground seemed to repeat, over and over again,

“Damn them! Damn them!”

‘I am a rat in a trap,’ the Marquis told himself. ‘I am a fox that is cornered by the hounds and I cannot escape!’

He had ridden on blindly, trusting his own instincts to find his way to Baldock. He would have done so without too much trouble had it not been that the weather had worsened until driving snow, sleet and hail had made it impossible to see more than a yard in front of his face.

He struggled ahead until he realised it was hopeless and was thankful to find an unknown inn, The King’s Head, although it proved to be just as its exterior suggested.

The information from his landlord that he was still five miles from Baldock had been no consolation for an extremely badly cooked dinner, for a draughty room and a suspicion that the bed was none too clean.

However, there was nothing to be done about it and the Marquis was more concerned with his private affairs than with his comforts.

‘God Almighty! What can I do?’ he asked himself after the landlord had brought another bottle of wine and withdrawn, wishing him a pleasant night.

Looking at the bottle set on the table by the fireside, the Marquis had no desire to sample it. He knew exactly how it would taste, just as he knew only too well the unhappiness and the frustration that lay ahead of him in the future.

How could he have been such a fool as not to realise what Karen was like? How could he not have anticipated that she would want to keep him permanently at her side, simply because the advantages to her of such a marriage were obvious.

‘It is not often I underestimate myself,’ the Marquis thought with a bitter twist to his lips.

He threw himself down on the armchair in front of the fire. He wondered despairingly if he should go abroad but knew that to exile himself from his estates, from his sport and from his friends, was too great a penalty to pay even to avoid marriage. A marriage with Karen!

‘The Devil take it! If any man should have to pay for his sins, I shall pay for mine. I wish I could never again see another woman in the whole of my life.’

He closed his eyes and, as he did so, he heard the door open. He did not turn his head as he supposed that it was the landlord.

But when he heard the door closing very quietly followed by a soft rustle, he turned in astonishment to see that a woman had entered his room.

She was very small and there was snow on the shoulders of her dark blue riding habit and the scarf she wore over her head was soaked.

She stood staring at him and, as she was standing at the other side of the room, it was difficult to see what she was like.

Then she said in a small soft frightened voice,

“Can – you hide – me? Please will you – hide me?”

The Marquis rose slowly to his feet.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I am escaping,” she answered, “and they are after – me. I have not much time. They will realise – I have come here. My horse can go no – further.”

The Marquis moved towards her and saw that she was young, much younger than he had supposed at his first glance.

“What are you running away from?” he asked. “School?”

“No, indeed,” she replied. “But from the – man that styles himself my Guardian.”

“Your Guardian,” the Marquis repeated.

He looked down at her face as he spoke and realised that she was in fact very frightened. He saw too that her habit was splattered with mud. There was mud on her cheeks and there was a white look around her mouth, which told him that she was extremely cold.

“Come near the fire,” he suggested.

“No, I dare not,” she answered. “He will be here at any moment – he will search the inn – and if he forces me to go back with him – he will beat me again – ”

“Beat you?” the Marquis asked.

“Yes, indeed – he has beaten me cruelly – to make me – do as he wished.”

There was a throb of terror in her voice that made the Marquis half-believe that she was telling the truth.

“Perhaps you deserved it,” he remarked.

She looked at him uncertainly and then, with a swift movement he had not anticipated, she slipped off her riding jacket and turned her back.

She was wearing a white garment that was cut very low, almost as if it was an evening gown. And on her bare skin there were deep weals crossing and recrossing each other. They were purple and bleeding. Below on the white muslin there were congealed blood stains so that the garment above the waist was dyed crimson.

“Good God!” the Marquis expostulated. “Who could have done such a thing to you?”

“The man I spoke about,” answered the girl.

She pulled her coat back around her shoulders. Even as she spoke there was the sound of voices below.

“He is – here!” she said in a whisper. “He has – arrived. I thought he would not be – long, I could hear them – just behind me.”

“Where have you put your horse?” the Marquis asked.

“I have hidden him in a cowshed. They may not find him tonight,” the girl replied.

The voices were growing louder and there was a sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted wooden stairs.

“He is – coming! He is – coming!” she whispered and the Marquis thought that he had never before seen such terror on a woman’s face.

Quickly he made up his mind.

“I will hide you,” he said, “but God knows, if they do discover us, we shall both be in trouble!”

“Shall I get in the wardrobe?” she asked, looking at a huge carved wooden cupboard which stood at the far end of the room.

The Marquis was about to consent and then, from past experience he knew that it was too obvious a hiding place.

“Behind the window curtain,” he said curtly, “and don’t make a sound.”

She sped across the room, while the Marquis went to the wardrobe and took the key from it. He went back to the fireside and, laying the key on the table next to the bottle of wine, he threw himself into the chair and filled his glass.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

“What the devil do you want?” he asked and his voice was slurred and thick and that of a man who had been drinking.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord, but there be a gentleman ’ere who wishes to speak with you.”

“Tell him it is too late, I have retired,” the Marquis replied.

“You must excuse my intrusion,” a voice came and, pushing past the landlord, a man came into the room.

He was tall, dark and might have been good-looking had it not been that his eyes were too close together and there was a hard twist about his mouth, which was somehow repulsive. He was still wearing his hat, but now at the sight of the Marquis he removed it slowly from his head, revealing dark hair that was touched with grey at the temples.

“What do you want?” the Marquis asked, lolling back in the chair, the glass of wine held so negligently in his hand that the wine was in danger of slopping onto the floor.

“I hope you will excuse me, my Lord,” the man replied. “I am Sir Gerbold Whitton. The landlord here informs me you have but shortly arrived.”

“So what has that got to do with you?” the Marquis asked in the truculent tone of a man who resents being questioned.

“It is just that I would ask you two things,” Sir Gerbold replied. “First, if on your journey here, you had sight of a girl riding a horse and secondly whether she has entered this room since your arrival?”

He glanced as he spoke towards the big wardrobe at the far end of the room.

“I don’t know what the Hell you are talking about,” the Marquis said. “I am tired, I want to get to sleep.”

“I appreciate that,” Sir Gerbold replied, “but it has been a bad night for travelling. That is why I am certain, my Lord, that you would have noticed any other traveller.”

“I saw no one,” the Marquis answered slowly.

“And since you have been – ?”

Sir Gerbold stopped speaking. He had seen the key on the table beside the bottle of wine.

“I am sure you will not mind,” he went on, after a moment’s pause, “if I satisfy myself by looking in the wardrobe. I think I see the key beside you.”

“Wardrobe? What wardrobe?” the Marquis asked. “Oh that! There is nothing there, I can assure you. I searched it myself as it is just the sort of place that robbers hide in.”

“I would like to assure myself that there are no robbers there at the moment.”

“I tell you there is no one,” the Marquis retorted. “Are you doubting my word?”

“No, indeed,” Sir Gerbold replied in the genial tone of a man who is determined to be pleasant whatever the circumstances. “But I wish to prove that you are not mistaken.”

There was silence for a moment and then the Marquis said,

“Are you a betting man?”

Sir Gerbold looked surprised.

“What do you mean by that?

“I will wager you, five, no ten sovereigns, if you have it on you, that there is nothing that you are looking for in that wardrobe.”

Sir Gerbold hesitated and glanced again at the key.

“I will take your bet,” he said curtly.

“Then let us see the colour of your money,” the Marquis suggested, drawing some coins from his breeches pocket and throwing them on the table.

Reluctantly Sir Gerbold put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a case. From it he selected two five-pound notes and set them down on the table and, as he did so, there was an eagerness about him that could not quite be disguised.

He picked up the key.

He went across the room, his heavy riding boots noisy on the uncarpeted boards, inserted the key in the wardrobe, turned it and flung open the door.

He stared and then peered into the corners.

“Nothing there,” the Marquis chuckled. “You lose your bet, sir, and now goodnight.”

Sir Gerbold looked round the room and his eyes lighted on the heavy dark curtains that covered the windows. He had taken a step towards it, when he heard the Marquis say,

“And now get out!”

He looked back towards the fireplace to see the Marquis standing up, a pistol in his hand.

“I have had enough of you and your damned impudence,” he said drunkenly. “Get out or I swear I will blow a hole through you!”

“You are being extraordinarily offensive,” Sir Gerbold said, but his voice was uncertain.

“Get out!” the Marquis repeated angrily. “I will not have people walking about over the bedroom I have paid for, accusing me of being a liar. You wish to fight, sir? I will fight you, but at the moment I want my room to myself.”

Sir Gerbold retreated towards the door.

“Go on! Get out!” the Marquis repeated in the voice of a drunken man who had suddenly lost his temper.

He lurched towards Sir Gerbold as he spoke, who went from the room slamming the door behind him.

The Marquis turned the key noisily and rammed home the bolt.

“Damned impertinence!” he said in a voice that he knew would be heard outside.

He turned to see the girl come from between the curtains and quickly put his fingers to his lips.

He walked back towards the fireplace and she followed him on tiptoe. They both waited without speaking until they heard Sir Gerbold’s heavy footsteps going down the stairs.

Then breathless and shaking, she said,

“Thank you – how can I ever – thank you? You have – saved me!”