Caught by Love

Chapter ONE ~1820-1

Chapter ONE ~1820The Marquis of Broome stifled a yawn.

He was finding the hot airless atmosphere of Carlton House more intolerable than usual and he wondered how soon he would be able to leave.

Although he admired the Prince Regent for quite a number of reasons, he was growing increasingly bored with the endless parties that succeeded one another and there was very little variety.

The only thing that ever changed was the Prince Regent’s heart.

At the moment the Marquis thought that Lady Hertford was on her way out and that her place as Royal Favourite would doubtless be taken very shortly by the Marchioness of Conyingham.

Whichever large fat elderly woman it might be, he ruminated, her conversation would be very much the same and she would betray her ignorance of the feelings in the country every time she opened her mouth.

One thing that the Marquis really enjoyed at Carlton House was the collection of paintings that the Prince Regent added to almost weekly together with the furniture, the statues and the objets d’art that made the Royal Residence look more and more like a Museum.

He yawned again and this time one of his friends, Lord Hansketh, who was passing, stopped to say,

“Are you bored, Ivo, or merely tired from your excesses of last night?”

“Bored!” the Marquis replied briefly.

“I thought that you chose the pick of the bunch,” Henry Hansketh continued, “I found my charmer talked too much and, if there is one thing I find tiresome, it’s a yapping woman as the dawn breaks.”

The Marquis did not reply and his friend remembered that it was one of his rules never to discuss the women he was interested in, whether they were Ladies of Quality or ‘bits of muslin’.

“I should think ‘Prinny’ will retire soon,” he ventured to change the subject. “It is one blessing that, as he has grown older, he does not wish to stay up so late.”

“I agree with you,” the Marquis replied. “I remember times in the past when it was inevitable that the sun should be in the sky before the Prince Regent struck his feathers.”

Lord Hansketh laughed and repeated,

“‘Struck his feathers’, I must remember that, Ivo. It’s one of your better bons mots!”

“I will make you a present of it,” the Marquis drawled. “You will doubtless use it anyway.”

His friend grinned.

“Why not? You are always wittier than the rest of us and so it is one thing that we can steal from you with impunity.”

However the Marquis was not listening. He saw that the Prince Regent was offering his arm to Lady Hertford, which meant that he was readying himself to escort her from the Chinese Drawing Room.

He calculated that with any luck he would be able to leave Carlton House in the next ten minutes.

As if his intention had transmitted itself, Lord Hansketh asked,

“What is your next appointment, Ivo? I wonder if I can guess who will be waiting for you.”

“You can save your more odious innuendoes for somebody else,” the Marquis replied. “As it happens, as soon as I leave here, I am driving to Broome Hall.”

“At this time of night?” Henry Hansketh exclaimed.

The Marquis nodded,

“I have a horse I am particularly eager to try out before the Steeplechase next Saturday afternoon.”

“Which, of course, you intend to win!”

“That depends on how good this particular stallion is.”

There was silence between them for a moment and then Lord Hansketh exclaimed,

“Of course! I know what you are talking about. You bought quite a number of animals at poor D’Arcy’s sale and I suppose that this is one of them.”

“You suppose right,” the Marquis agreed with him drily, “And as it happens I was very annoyed when D’Arcy purchased Agamemnon at Tattersalls one day when I was unable to be there.”

“Agamemnon,” Lord Hansketh repeated. “I remember the animal. A magnificent beast! It caused quite a commotion when it took at least three men to bring him into the ring.”

He saw a faint smile on the Marquis’s lips before he responded,

“I was told how wild he was and, although I offered to buy him from D’Arcy, he was intent on keeping him so that he could force up the price. But he never had a chance of controlling the animal himself.”

“Which, of course, you will be able to do easily,” Henry Hansketh said mockingly.

“It is what I intend to do,” the Marquis answered quietly.

He spoke with a self-assurance and confidence in his own ability that was characteristic.

An extremely handsome man, he was taller than most other men in the room and there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his slim athletic body.

The Marquis of Broome was greatly admired for his many successes in the sporting world. In fact he had quite a public following and was cheered on every Racecourse.

At the same time those who considered themselves his friends found him unpredictable and in many ways an enigma.

Although every beautiful woman was prepared to lay her heart at his feet, he was known to be so fastidious about those who he showed an interest in that he had earned the reputation of being heartless and often completely callous.

“He is cruel – cruel,” one beauty had sobbed to anyone who would listen to her.

This was strange, because the Marquis was violently opposed to any form of cruelty where sport was concerned.

He had been instrumental in making bull-baiting taboo in the Social world and had been known to thrash a man with his own whip if he saw him ill-treating a horse.

But the tears of a woman left the Marquis unmoved, however pathetic she might appear or however lovely she looked when she was weeping.

As was fashionable, the Marquis, like all his contemporaries, regularly had a ‘fair Cyprian’ under his protection.

This was invariably an ‘Incomparable’, who was pursued by the bucks and beaux of St. James’s Street and whom he would carry off under their noses much to their chagrin and jealousy.

“If you ask me,” Lord Hansketh had grumbled at White’s Club confidentially to a friend, “I don’t believe Broome has the slightest interest in the women he installs in his house in Chelsea and covers with diamonds, except that it infuriates all of us who are unable to compete when the stakes are so high.”

“If you are telling me that Broome did not really want Linette, I think I shall blow a piece of lead through him,” replied the man he had been talking to.

Henry Hansketh laughed.

“You have as much chance of doing that, Charlie, as flying over the moon. Have you forgotten how quick Ivo is with a pistol? Nobody has ever been known to win a duel against him yet.”

“Damn him! Why does he always pass the Winning Post first whether it is with horses or women?”

Henry Hansketh laughed again.

“You are envious, that is what is wrong with you! But because I am very fond of Ivo, I realise that he is not really a happy man.”

“Not happy?” Charlie exclaimed incredulously. “Of course he is! How could he not be happy with all that wealth and so many possessions that I have ceased to count them?”

“I still think Ivo is missing something in life,” Henry Hansketh persisted,

“And what is that?” Charlie asked aggressively.

Lord Hansketh did not reply.

As he had driven home from White’s to his lodgings in Half Moon Street, he was thinking that in all the years he had been a close friend of the Marquis, he had never known him to fall in love.

They had been quite young men when they had first served in the Duke of Wellington’s Army and there Ivo, who had not yet inherited his father’s Marquisate, had been not only the best-looking Officer in the Life Guards but the most dashing, the bravest and undoubtedly the most admired.

When he and Henry were off duty they had enjoyed the company of attractive women, whether they were of the Beau Monde or were ‘ladies of the town’.

But while their friends sighed over, pursued and captured the women of their fancy, the Marquis remained completely self-sufficient and, if he ever yearned after a woman, his closest friends were not aware of it.

But women certainly yearned after him and Lord Hansketh, who was continually with the Marquis, was well aware of the numerous scented notes that arrived from first thing in the morning until last thing at night at his magnificent house in Berkeley Square.

Whether he opened and read them and whether he ever replied remained a mystery, but they were undoubtedly on his desk.

Yet it was true to say that the gossips found it hard in their endless chatter to find anything about the Marquis’s love life that indicated marriage.

Henry Hansketh was at this moment wondering if the Marquis was going to Broome Hall alone or whether he would suggest that he should go with him.

If there was one thing he really enjoyed, it was riding the Marquis’s superlative horses. Moreover they had been friends for so long that they always had a great deal to discuss and the hours they spent together were not only intellectually enjoyable but inevitably amusing.

Then Henry Hansketh remembered that unfortunately he had promised the Prince Regent that he would be in attendance tomorrow morning when he visited Buckingham Palace to enquire after the health of King George III.

His Majesty was deteriorating day by day and, now in his eighty-second year, he was greatly emaciated.

Because the eternal waiting depressed the Prince Regent, he usually asked somebody he trusted and was fond of to accompany him on his calls of duty.

“When will you be back?” Lord Hansketh asked now.

The Marquis, who was watching the Prince Regent making a number of somewhat prolonged farewells at the end of the drawing room, replied,

“I am not sure. Wednesday or perhaps Thursday.”

“If you have not returned by then, I shall come and join you, Ivo.”

“That will certainly encourage me to stay in the country,” the Marquis answered. “I cannot think why anybody wants to be in London when there is hunting and steeplechasing to be enjoyed in the Shires.”

“I agree with you. We should keep all this bowing and knee-bending until after the hunting season is over.”

“The one blessing is that the King is supposed to be really dying this time. Prinny is talking of cancelling his parties and that should let us off the hook for a little while.”

“You have cheered me up,” Henry Hansketh replied. “But I cannot help suspecting that this filial affection will not last for long.”

The Marquis did not reply, but there was an expression in his eyes that was more eloquent than words and Henry Hansketh was quite certain that, while he himself would find it impossible to escape any of the Carlton House parties, the Marquis would somehow manage it.

The Prince Regent was now definitely moving towards the door, while all the ladies, as he passed them, sank down into a deep curtsey and the gentlemen bowed their heads from the neck.

Fat, florid and yet with an indefinable charm that no one could deny, the Prince Regent, with Lady Hertford clinging onto his arm, finally disappeared from sight and the Marquis exclaimed,

“Now I can go! Can I give you a lift, Henry?”

“No, thank you,” his friend replied. “I have two or three people to talk to before I leave. Don’t stay at Broome Hall longer than you have to. All the same I envy you the fresh air and, of course, the battle you will be enjoying with Agamemnon.”

The faint twist on the Marquis’s lips told him that it was most certainly what he was looking forward to.

“I think it would be best,” the Marquis said after a slight pause, “if you definitely joined me on Thursday evening or Friday. Then, however much we are needed here, we need not return until Monday.”

“All right, Ivo,” Henry Hansketh agreed. “I had promised to dine with a certain very attractive lady on Friday night, but I will make my apologies and join you at Broome Hall.”

The Marquis did not wait to hear his friend’s acceptance, taking it for granted, and was already walking quickly from the Chinese Drawing Room, having avoided with some dexterity the Princess de Lieven, the wife of the Russian Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

She was an acknowledged wit and had also pursued the Marquis for some time without gaining her objective.

He hurried down the graceful double staircase, which had amazed those who saw it when the house was first finished and into the splendid hall decorated with Ionic columns of brown Siena marble.