Love Has His Way

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1802-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1802The Marquis of Sarne groaned, moved slightly and then thought that the pain in his head could not be real because it was such an agony.

It seemed a long time later that he opened his eyes, saw an unfamiliar room around him and closed them again.

His head continued to throb. Now slowly and intermittently, snatches of memory came back to him while there were moments in between when he was oblivious of everything,

He was aware that his mouth was dry, his lips felt as if they were cracked and he needed a drink of water so desperately that he next forced himself to open his eyes and focus them on the wall opposite him.

There was a fireplace and above it a picture that he had never seen in his life before.

There was light coming from an uncurtained window, by which he could see furniture of a quality that he would never have had in one of his houses.

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them determinedly.

Where was he? And why the devil did he feel so ill?

He moved slowly and, as he did so, he saw that there was a piece of paper lying on his chest.

He tried to look down at it without moving his head unduly and saw that he was wearing his evening clothes.

What had happened and why should a piece of paper have been thrust on him?

It seemed incomprehensible until suddenly it flashed through his mind that he had been in evening dress when he had taken Nicole de Prêt out to supper.

Of course he could remember it now, calling for her at the stage door at Covent Garden in his carriage and thinking when he collected her from her dressing room that she looked so alluring that she would relish the applause of a crowd.

“Are you very sure that you would like to have supper at home?” he had asked her as he raised her small hand with its long thin fingers to his lips.

It was perhaps her hands that had attracted him at first, for she used them with so much more grace than the rest of the Corps de Ballet.

“Anywhere your Lordship weesh,” she replied in her fascinating broken English. “But it will be ready chez moi.”

It was fashionable for the bucks of St. James’s to pursue the French women who filled many parts on the stage and were on the whole better dancers than the English.

The Marquis had had under his protection a Spanish dancer who had greatly pleased him for over a year and he had thought that Nicole de Prêt could fill her place admirably, which suggestion he intended to discuss with her over supper this evening.

He placed her wrap consisting of a fur he did not recognise and did not consider a proper frame for her beauty over her shoulders and then they climbed slowly down the iron staircase that would lead them to the stage door.

The Marquis was sure that Nicole would admire his carriage for no one in London had one that was smarter or drawn by better bred horses.

The coachman wearing his distinctive Livery and the footmen who had opened the door, were receiving admiring glances from the crowd that waited at the stage door to see not only the principals of the show leaving but also to gaze at the gentlemen who escorted them and who had occupied the stage boxes during the performance.

Nicole de Prêt lay back against the comfortably cushioned inside of the carriage.

“You leeve in great style, my Lord,” she remarked.

“Which is something I hope you will share with me,” the Marquis replied.

By the light of the silver candle lantern in the carriage he saw her glancing at him in an intriguing way from under her long dark mascaraed eyelashes.

“Ees that an invitation?”

“I will explain it more formally after we have had supper,” the Marquis said.

She smiled at him and he was not certain whether she intended to accept his protection immediately or whether she would prevaricate a little and make herself ‘hard-to-get’.

Either way, the Marquis thought, the end was inevitable.

There was no woman in London who was not ready to throw herself into his arms if he so much as glanced in her direction.

Where the Beau Monde was concerned, the many Society beauties, who were toasted and acclaimed by his friends, made it very obvious that he was the man in whom they were really interested.

He had only to enter a room to know that every woman’s eyes looked at him invitingly and every pair of red lips was waiting for him to kiss them.

Where the theatrical world was concerned it was easier.

The Marquis had only, as one wag had once said, ‘to pick the choicest fruit from off the barrow.’

Nicole de Prêt did not speak and he liked the way she made no effort to entice him, but merely sat waiting for him to talk to her.

He had the feeling that she was a better class than most of the Corps de Ballet, although it was always difficult to estimate the breeding of a foreigner.

“Have you been in England long?” he asked her.

“Ever since I was a child.”

The Marquis raised his eyebrows and she said,

“My parents came over at the time of ze Revolution. They lose everytheeng they possess. Eet ees why I ’ave to earn my own living.”

This was such a familiar story among the French women in London that the Marquis did not believe it for a moment.

But because she would obviously expect it, he made a sympathetic sound before he said,

“I can see that the fur of your wrap is not worthy of your beauty. You must allow me to replace it with sable or perhaps would you prefer ermine?”

“Eet ees something I must consider, my Lord,” she said, “but you are veree generous.”

“Which is what I wish to be to you,” the Marquis replied.

The horses drew up outside a house in Chelsea and he looked at the place speculatively as he followed Nicole de Prêt from the carriage.

To his surprise when she had accepted his invitation earlier in the day, he had received a note from her making the suggestion that they should dine at her house rather than in one of the fashionable restaurants where the Marquis usually engaged a private room.

He had, however, accepted her hospitality and at the same time suggesting that he should provide the wine that they would drink.

He knew from past experience that women of Nicole’s class were no judge of wine and he had no intention of ruining his digestion with anything that was inferior or cheap.

He therefore sent a carriage during the afternoon to Nicole’s house with a case of claret, another of champagne and several bottles of his best brandy as well.

“What about food, my Lord?” his secretary, Mr. Barnham, had asked.

He was used to dealing with these things and knew that, if the food and wine were not up to the Marquis’s high standards, he would not enjoy the subsequent attractions that he would be offered during the evening.

“You had better send a pâté and a round of cold beef in case everything she produces is inedible,” the Marquis said.

“If she is French, my Lord, she should surely know something about food,”

“I am hoping so, at the same time I should like to be prepared,” the Marquis answered.

Mr. Barnham knew that this meant that he must send far more food than the Marquis had suggested and he hurried away to the chef with a long list of requirements.

The Marquis, however, was pleasantly surprised as he walked into Nicole’s house and found it far more attractive than its outside appearance suggested.

Chelsea, where the houses were cheap, was patronised by a number of bucks when they took a lady under their protection as it had been since the time of King Charles II.

The houses varied considerably and the one the Marquis had in mind in which to install Nicole de Prêt was large and luxurious and, as he had taken the trouble to ascertain, boasted an excellent kitchen.

This was much smaller, but tastefully furnished and the Marquis was not surprised when Nicole de Prêt said,

“I theenk, my Lord, we should dine upstairs in my sitting room. Eet ees far cosier than the dining room.”

“That would be delightful,” the Marquis agreed.

The evening was already moving so inevitably according to plan that he might have been watching a play that he had seen dozens of times before.

She went on ahead of him up the narrow but well-carpeted staircase and he admired the lines of her figure and the graceful way that she moved.

‘She is perfection!’ he told himself.

He thought with satisfaction that he was going to enjoy his evening and doubtless a great many subsequent evenings like it.

The sitting room, which had two windows, was well furnished in surprisingly good taste.

There was none of the garishness of brightly coloured satin cushions or vulgar souvenirs of the theatre that cluttered most chorus girls’ apartments.

Instead it might have been a room owned by a Lady of Quality and the Marquis decided once again that Nicole was better bred than the other girls who she danced with.

There was a table set in front of one of the windows and on it were four candles, which a maid in a frilly apron and a lace-trimmed cap came in to light.

“You sent much food weeth ze wine, my Lord,” Nicole said, “which I do theenk is an insult.”

“I do not |wish you to take it as one,” the Marquis replied. “I merely wished to save you trouble and expense.”

“I ’ave incorporated some of my extra special dishes with yours,” she replied, “and when supper is over, you can tell me which you prefer.”

She gave him one of her alluring little glances as she added,

“I shall be veree disappointed if I am ze loser.”

“That is something you could never be, not where I am concerned.”

She crossed the room to where a bottle of the Marquis’s champagne was already open and set in an ice cooler.

She poured out two glasses and brought one over to him to where he stood in front of the mantlepiece watching her and appraising every moment.

Then he took the glass from her and raised it.

“Shall I drink to your beautiful eyes,” he asked, “or to our future happiness together?”

“You are very certain that we shall be together.”

“That is, of course, all your deceesion, my Lord.”

He knew really that there was no question that she would not accept him as any woman in the theatrical world would be only too eager to do.

He had the reputation of being exceedingly generous as he could well afford to be.

The only difficulty, as Nicole had been told already, was that his interest in any woman, whatever her status in life, never lasted very long.

“We might as well face it,” he had heard a woman he had dallied with for a short while say to another, ‘he is here today and gone tomorrow so make the most of it while you have the chance’.”

The Marquis had been amused.

He had known that this was undoubtedly the truth. It was the pursuit of the woman that he enjoyed and the hope that, as she was new, she would be perhaps a little different from the many women he had known previously.

Yet it was too much to hope for any great originality and, as one cynic in White’s Club had said,

“All cats are the same in the dark!”

Equally the Marquis liked women simply because they were a relaxation from his other activities.

He was a sportsman who was acclaimed on every Racecourse, at every mill and was the acknowledged champion swordsman of England.

The Prince of Wales asked his advice when he bought horses and the pugilists he had backed had been so successful that he found it hard with his latest protégé to find him a fight.

Besides all his sporting interests, the Marquis was continually in demand in the House of Lords.

He was an excellent speaker and, when he could be persuaded to take up a cause, he then championed it in a manner which made him a favourite with the Prime Minister and hated by the Opposition.