CHAPTER ONE ~ 1827-1
2023 Words
CHAPTER ONE ~ 1827The Duke of Eaglefield walked out through the long window of the Banqueting Room and into the garden.
He moved some distance away so that the music he had left behind him was only faint and fading.
Then he sat down on a garden bench and looked out to sea.
The stars were beginning to come out overhead and the moon was rising up the sky.
In the silver light everything looked very romantic.
The Duke, however, was not looking at the beauty around him.
Sitting there on a wooden seat he was thinking that he had escaped from the Festivities.
They entranced the King so much that he gave party after party in the Chinese Pavilion at Brighton.
For most people the edifice itself looked fantastic if out of place in a town like Brighton.
The contents, valuable though they might be, were definitely inappropriate for England and a number of them had come down from Carlton House, the King’s London Palace.
They had been discussed, criticised and laughed at ever since, as the Prince Regent, he had spent a fortune on them.
Now, having turned his attention to his house in Brighton, he had spent over one hundred thousand pounds on it already and he had not finished yet.
The banqueting room, however, where he was entertaining lavishly tonight, had been a new addition.
Only the Prince Regent, the Duke thought, could have imagined anything so fantastic as the enormous chandeliers shaped like waterlilies and the outside of The Chinese Pavilion was supposed to resemble the Kremlin in Moscow.
In the Banqueting Room, spreading fruity palm trees had a silver dragon peeping through them.
They only resembled, the Duke now thought, the dream of somebody who was ‘not quite right in the head’.
He had suddenly felt the heat in which the King always kept his rooms.
Besides which the chatter and laughter of the women and the incessant intrusion of the orchestra was more than he could bear.
He therefore escaped when he hoped that no one would be looking in his direction.
Now he drew in several deep breaths of the salt air coming from the sea on a light wind.
If he wanted to be alone, however, he was to be disappointed.
There were then footsteps behind him and he stiffened, feeling angry at the unwanted intrusion.
Then a voice came,
“I thought I saw you slip out, Theo. What are you doing here?”
The Duke gave a sigh of relief. The intruder was only Harry Hampton, his oldest friend, for whom he had a deep affection.
He and Harry had grown up together and they had played frequently as children.
They had gone to Eton in the same term and, after leaving Cambridge University, where they were at the same College, they both joined the Household Brigade.
The Duke had ceased soldiering, however, after he had inherited the Ducal title.
But, because he had missed Harry, he had insisted on him resigning from the Household Brigade.
Harry sat down on the seat beside the Duke.
Anyone watching them would have thought that they were the two best-looking young men they had ever seen.
The Duke, particularly, was outstandingly handsome and he had dark hair brushed back from a square forehead and classical features.
Harry was fair, but the two men were almost the same size.
Because they were both extremely athletic, there was not one ounce of surplus fat on either of their bodies.
“What made you come out here?” Harry asked. “Was Lady Antonia being tiresome?”
“I was bored,” the Duke replied, “bored to tears by the same jokes, the same food, the same music and, if you want the truth, the same faces!”
Harry laughed.
“I see what you mean,” he sighed. “At the same time what is the alternative?”
“That is just what I have constantly been asking myself,” the Duke answered.
“Somebody must have upset you for you to feel so strongly about it,” Harry observed ruminatively. “I saw Lady Antonia being flirtatious with that long-nosed man whose name I cannot remember.”
“She is trying to make me jealous,” the Duke said, “because she has set her heart on my giving her the pair of chestnuts that I bought a week ago from Penny Wakehurst.”
“But you have only driven them once to my knowledge.” Harry exclaimed.
“I know that,” the Duke replied, “but you know what Antonia is like when she clutches out her greedy claws. She never rests until she has her own way!”
Harry pressed his lips together to prevent himself from saying what he thought of Lady Antonia.
She might very easily be the most beautiful woman in the Beau Monde, but she was also undoubtedly one of the greediest.
He heartily disliked his friend being so involved with her,
He had, however, long ago learnt that the Duke never listened to criticism of someone he was enamoured with.
Harry therefore decided that the only thing he could do was to wait for the attraction to wear off.
This, where Theo Eaglefield was concerned, invariably happened very much sooner than later. At the same time he well knew that Lady Antonia was, in his own words, bleeding Theo white.
He disliked her, although it would not be a wise thing to express openly in Society.
Aloud he now said,
“I often think that Ladies of Quality are more demanding than the pretty Cyprians. What has happened to Cleone?”
There was a pause before the Duke replied,
“She is sulking because, after I gave her a diamond necklace three weeks ago, I have not yet added the bracelet to match it!”
“Oh, my God!” Harry exclaimed. “Are women never content with what they receive?”
“But not where I am concerned,” the Duke answered. “I was thinking just now that all women are interested in is what I can give them.”
Harry nodded.
“I would suppose that this is the truth.”
The Duke turned to look at him in some surprise.
“You think so too?”
“Of course I do,” Harry answered. “You have to admit, Theo, it is part of the penalty for being who you are.”
“I don’t know what you are saying,” the Duke replied.
“Well, I have thought for a long time,” Harry said, “that the penalty you pay for being a rich Duke is that the people you meet see only the trappings and not the man beneath them.”
The Duke frowned.
“Can that really be true?”
“Of course it is,” Harry insisted. “What it amounts to, Theo, is that you see life not as it is but through a glass window.”
The Duke made an impatient gesture with his hands, but he did not interrupt.
“How people see you,” Harry went on as if he was searching for the right words, “is in a different way from how they see me or any other ordinary man.”
“I don’t believe that,” the Duke countered. “Explain yourself.”
“It is quite easy,” Harry continued. “They see you through the glass window by which you are protected as someone who is enormously important, who owns everything they want for themselves, position, money, houses and estates, there is a whole long list of them.”
“Is that really a fact?” the Duke pondered.
“I am afraid so,” Harry said. “It is impossible for them to realise that beneath all that there is an ordinary person with feelings like everybody else. And as far as I am concerned, one of the nicest and kindest men in the world.”
The Duke’s lips twisted into a wry smile.
“Thank you, Harry,” he said, “but what you are saying to me is cold comfort.”
“Of course it is,” Harry admitted. “Unfortunately, Theo, instead of you accepting it all, you are clever enough to realise that you are missing something really important.”
“What is that?” the Duke asked.
“Knowing the people you meet on equal terms for one thing.”
The Duke stared at him and he then went on,
“I have noticed that people talk to you in a different voice from the way they talk to me. How often do you meet anybody who is brave enough to contradict you or tell you that what you are doing is wrong?”
“Why should I be doing anything wrong?” the Duke asked aggressively.
“No one can be right in everything they think and everything they do,” Harry answered. “But where you are concerned they agree with you to your face and then grumble about you behind your back.”
“I just don’t believe it,” the Duke replied.
“Think it out for yourself,” Harry went on. “Is there anybody else you know who would dare to speak to you as I am doing now?”
There was silence until the Duke said,
“Supposing I admit that you are right and, incidentally I am not convinced that you are, what do you suggest I do about it?”
“That again is something that I have thought about,” Harry replied, “but I would not have raised the subject unless you had told me how bored you were with women who treat you like a bottomless cornucopia and men who envy you for what you possess.”
The Duke threw up his hands.
“All right,” he said, “you need not say anymore. I accept that what you are saying has some foundation in fact. But we still get back to the same question of what can I do about it?”
“I have been thinking,” Harry said, “that you are bored because you are actually always with the same people. If we don’t meet them here with His Majesty, then we can find them at almost every house at which we are guests in London or when you entertain them in yours.”
“That is true,” the Duke conceded somewhat doubtfully.
“On the Racecourse you are with the same members of the Jockey Club. If we go to a mill at Wimbledon, we know exactly who will be there and the same thing applies to your shooting in the autumn.”
The Duke did not reply.
He knew as Harry spoke that he invariably invited the same guns to shoot at Eagle Hall and, if anyone was left out, he would be either hurt or affronted or both.
“What is more we hunt with the same pack of hounds,” Harry was saying, “and it is well known that if we go to one of those maisons de plaisir around St. James’s, the prettiest and most attractive Cyprians are reserved for you.”
“Dammit all!” the Duke swore suddenly. “You are now making it sound as if my life is not worth living!”
“Of course it is worth living,” Harry argued, “but what you are lacking in your daily curriculum is variety.”
“Very well,” the Duke said sharply, “you provide it. I don’t know how to begin.”
“As I have been talking to you,” Harry said, “I feel as if I was being guided into how I should help you.”
“By whom?” the Duke asked cynically.
“I have no idea,” Harry said, “but you know how we have often talked of the importance of using one’s instincts.”
Looking back the Duke remembered that it was one of the subjects on which as students they had argued about fiercely at Cambridge.
The Duke had, as it so happened, always prided himself on having an instinct where the servants were concerned.
If he engaged a man as his secretary or his Manager, he thought that he knew when he first talked to them what they were like. It was far more reliable than if he had studied their references however fulsome.
It was also said of him, when he was in the Army, that he had an instinct for what was right and what was wrong.
It was something that would surely help him if ever he had to face danger.
He had always thought it unfortunate that when he and Harry had joined the Household Brigade the War was over.
They heard the older men talking of the battles like Waterloo in which they had taken part.
He had felt in some strange way that he had been deprived and war, however unpleasant, was something that would have been important to him in his life.
Aloud he said,
“All right, Harry, I admit I have an instinct where people are concerned.”
“That is what is happening now,” Harry said, “and your instinct is telling you that Lady Antonia is just out for everything she can possibly lay her hands on, while Cleone is merely greedy because it is her profession to be so.”
“And do you really imagine,” the Duke asked sarcastically, “that any of the women we have met tonight in that ridiculous Chinese edifice would be any different?”
- Writer
