The Magnificent Marquis

CHAPTER ONE - 1868-1

CHAPTER ONE

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1868The Marquis yawned and sighed,

“I must get up now.”

The woman lying beside him moved a little closer.

“Don’t go yet, darling Rex,” she murmured. “It’s so marvellous and exciting when you love me.”

“It is indeed,” replied the Marquis, “but I have an engagement for early tomorrow morning and I must catch a little sleep.”

A soft arm wound round his neck.

“I heard just today,” she whispered, “that George is worse – and the doctors do not think he will live very much longer.”

There was a little pause before she carried on,

“Then maybe, darling, we can be together for ever. It will be the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.”

It was with the greatest difficulty that the Marquis did not flinch.

He merely responded,

“Take care of yourself and don’t do too much.”

Despite the soft hands holding him back, he climbed out of the bed.

He dressed himself quickly with the expertise of a gentleman who could manage without a valet and then walked back towards the bed.

The dark-haired and alluring beauty, with whom he had spent so much time these past weeks, was waiting for him.

She held out her arms, but he just took one of her hands in his.

“Thank you, Silvia, for a memorable evening.”

His lips touched her skin and then he turned to the door.

She gave a little cry.

“Rex! Rex! Please kiss me again.”

He pulled the door open and looked back.

“I have to leave you. Go to sleep, Silvia, and dream of me.”

“You know I will,” she pouted.

He ran down the stairs, pulled open the front door and let himself out.

He only had a short way to walk to his own house and he set off at a quick pace.

He was aware that he was running away from yet another trap – and there had been so many of them.

Because he was tall and exceedingly handsome women had pursued the Marquis ever since he had left school.

They found him irresistible.

Each one believed he would stay with her forever, but unfortunately for them he soon became bored with each affaire-de-coeur.

Even he was sometimes shocked at how quickly it all came to an end.

When he first met Lady Alsted, he had thought she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever come across and he naturally imagined that she would be different from all the others whose favours he had accepted.

However, it was exactly the same scenario.

It had happened to him so often that he felt he knew the routine by heart.

There were the rendezvous they would arrange so that they would not be talked about.

If the husband was away or, as in the case of Lady Alsted, he was in the country having suffered a stroke, they had to be careful where they met.

He could only visit her when the entertainment for the evening was over and all the servants had gone to bed – half the gossip in Mayfair originated with the staff and they invariably knew what was happening in every house.

Even if they did not see who came in so late, they would have been told to leave the front door unbolted and this meant, of course, that the visitor had a key of his own.

The Marquis reached Park Lane, where his house was only a short distance away.

He had never expected that Silvia would want him to marry her.

He had grown so used to having love affairs with married women whilst their husbands were fishing, shooting or travelling abroad.

He had not, rather stupidly he now thought, taken into account that where Silvia was concerned her husband was seriously ill and likely to die.

Now, after all she had said to him this evening, he was aware that she was seeking marriage – which he had always shied away from.

He had witnessed too many of his contemporaries and friends married off to young girls, simply because their parents thought it a suitable match.

When he talked to them later, usually after only just a year or two of marriage, they had confided in him how incredibly bored they were.

Now the only possibility of having any amusement was to have a clandestine affaire-de-coeur with another married woman.

The great beauties of the Beau Monde were always available for the gentlemen of Society from the Prince of Wales downwards.

In fact, as the Marquis well knew, it was considered a privilege by most husbands for his wife to be pursued by His Royal Highness.

However, where the Marquis was concerned, it was the women who pursued him – not for his title, although it was an especially old one, but because he was undoubtedly the most handsome man in Mayfair – and the most cynical.

At twenty-eight he had been successful by sheer intuition and intelligence in avoiding the matrimonial traps that had been set for him – even by his elders who believed they were doing him a favour.

“I have found the right wife for you, Harlington,” some distinguished older gentleman would say to him at a Reception or in White’s Club.

They might even call at his own house and then the visitor would explain that his daughter, his niece or in the odd case his granddaughter was so incredibly beautiful and would be exactly the right chatelaine to sit at the end of the Marquis’s table at Harlington Priory –

And in addition she would, of course, provide him with the necessary son to carry on his name.

He would realise why they had come almost before they began talking and when they received a rebuff, they would not only be upset but considered it an insult.

Yet on the whole he much preferred that approach to being embarrassed by endless ambitious mothers, who would try to pin him down and force him to listen to the amazing qualities of their daughters and how suitable they would be in providing him with an heir.

The Marquis was certainly wise enough never to be left alone with a young girl, as he knew that he might easily be accused of ruining her reputation.

And he recognised only too well, he would then be obliged by the unwritten laws of English Society to make reparation and that meant asking for her hand in marriage.

So far he had managed by using his wits to remain a bachelor.

Only he knew how at times he had been in a tight corner and had only avoided a bride with what he called an ‘inch to spare’.

Now as he reached his house in Park Lane, a night duty footman let him in.

He bowed respectfully and the Marquis walked up the majestic staircase towards the Master suite.

He never ordered his valet to wait up for him and as he undressed, he thought that to avoid a tearful scene with Silvia Alsted, he must leave London.

And the quicker the better.

If there was one scene that really bored him, it was the tears and reproaches of those he had enjoyed himself with.

“What have I done?”

“Why do you no longer love me?”

“What has happened?”

“Who has caused mischief?”

He knew the questions only too well and made up his mind to avoid them at all costs.

This meant that he needed to go abroad or if it was the shooting season at least to Scotland.

Now at the end of May that exit was not available, so he wondered where he would particularly like to visit at this time of the year.

Paris was eternally enchanting and he had so often enjoyed himself there with its many irresistible courtesans and cocottes.

At the same time he resented having to leave his comfortable house in Park Lane and The Priory, which was particularly lovely in the spring and summer.

Yet his major difficulty with the country was that, apart from riding, there would be very little to do.

Later on in the autumn there was shooting and then hunting to fill up the days, as well as house parties, which even without any hostess had been voted some of the most interesting and amusing. Of course it helped that the Prince of Wales had been a frequent guest.

But he had still not decided where he should go.

Because the Marquis was tired and his lovemaking with Silvia had been very fiery, he fell asleep quickly.

*

He was called at half-past eight, as he had given no orders for it to be later.

The first letter he saw on the pile that had been put beside his place at the breakfast table was from No. 10 Downing Street.

Surprised, he started to wonder why the Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, was writing to him.

He had the uncomfortable feeling that he would be asking a favour of him.

‘I am supplying no favours to anyone at the moment,’ he told himself firmly, ‘and the sooner I leave London the better.’

By the time he had opened his other letters and read the newspapers it was nearly eleven o’clock.

He thought that as he had a luncheon engagement it would be best to see Mr. Disraeli first.

Forty minutes later the door of the Prime Minister’s office opened and an official announced,

“The Marquis of Harlington has just arrived to see you, Prime Minister. Shall I ask his Lordship to step in?”

“Yes, of course.”

Mr. Disraeli was sitting at his writing desk and rose when the Marquis entered, looking exceedingly smart.

It passed through the Prime Minister’s mind that he looked as if there were no difficulties in his world.

“It’s nice to see you again, Rex, and thank you for coming so quickly in answer to my letter.”

“I imagine it must be urgent,” replied the Marquis, “but if it means my journeying to some outlandish spot at a moment’s notice, I am afraid that the answer is ‘no’.”

Mr. Disraeli laughed.

“It’s not quite as bad as that!”

The Marquis sighed.

“I might have guessed that you did not want to see me without an ulterior motive behind the invitation!”

The Prime Minister did not answer, so he went on,

“As I have already intimated, I have no wish to visit some wild, obscure and uncivilised spot just because you are having a little difficulty with the natives.”

The Prime Minister laughed again and then poured out a glass of champagne for him from a bottle in an ice cooler in a corner of the room.

“It’s really too early in the morning,” the Marquis protested, “but I do see it is a particularly fine vintage, so it must not be wasted.”

He sat down in a comfortable armchair opposite the fireplace and the Prime Minister sat down in another.

“What I want, Rex, is to ask you to help me in your usual brilliant way with a rather obtuse problem.”

The Marquis groaned.

“I might have known! But, as I have already said, you know the answer.”

“I think you might find this quite interesting, Rex. As far as I can remember, although I might be wrong, you have not been to Egypt for some time.”

“Egypt?” exclaimed the Marquis.

“Yes, Egypt. I want you to find out for me what the current situation is concerning the Suez Canal that is in the process of being built.”

“I thought the English had decided a long time ago, Prime Minister, they would have nothing to do with it?”

“Palmerston firmly opposed it from the beginning, saying that it would be to our commercial disadvantage, especially with regard to India.”

“I remember that, but that fellow, de Lesseps, who organised the whole scheme, has persevered with it without our approval.”

“He has indeed,” Mr. Disraeli answered. “The Suez Canal is, in fact, nearly completed.”

“Then we must at least commend him for sticking to his guns!”

The Marquis was well aware that although the idea of making a Canal through the Isthmus of Suez had often been proposed before, notably by Napoleon Bonaparte, it was only fourteen years ago that Monsieur Ferdinand de Lesseps produced a practical scheme for constructing such a Canal.

He was a retired French Diplomat, but he had been brought up in Egypt where his father was the French Consul.

Apparently since boyhood he had been fired with enthusiasm for a French project of carving a Canal through the Suez Isthmus, but the Sultan’s Viceroy at the time had refused to countenance such an idea.