The Dangerous Dandy

Chapter One ~ 1799-1

Chapter One ~ 1799“I think you will find that a somewhat precarious position,” a deep voice drawled.

The girl standing on the balustrade and holding onto an ornamental stone urn gave a little cry.

Below her on the garden path there was a gentleman. Even in the faint light of the stars she could see that he was very elegant.

His frilled shirt and high cravat were white against the darkness of the shrubs.

For a moment she stared down at him and, as her skirts moved in the breeze from the river, she seemed to sway towards the darkness of the water.

Then she looked away.

“I am – all right. Please leave me – alone.”

“I have an uncomfortable feeling,” the gentleman remarked, “that I may have to ruin this new coat that has just come from my tailors. There is a strong tide at this point of the Thames.”

“I know – that,” the girl murmured almost beneath her breath.

Then, as the gentleman waited, she said with a note of defiance in her voice,

“It’s – none of your – business.”

“It is regrettable,” the gentleman replied, “but I have an irrepressible Samaritarian instinct. I find it impossible to ‘pass by on the other side’.”

There was silence.

Then the girl, still swaying above him, said in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it,

“There is – nothing else I can – do.”

“Are you sure of that?” he asked.

“Quite sure.”

“Let us at least discuss it,” he suggested. “If you have a problem, I am confident I will be able to solve it.”

“Not – mine.”

“Are you prepared to bet on that?”

There was a hint of laughter in the slow drawling voice, which seemed to arouse her anger.

Once again she turned to look down at him.

“Go away!” she cried almost rudely. “You have no right – to interfere! Go back to the ball. There will be no reason – for you to get your coat wet.”

She tried to utter the last sentence scathingly, but somehow her voice was only breathless and rather frightened.

“I want to talk to you,” the gentleman said. “If you can convince me that what you are intending is right, then I promise I will leave you alone.”

He stretched up his hand as he spoke.

There was something authoritative about him that made the girl instinctively put her hand in his.

Her fingers were icy cold. As he pulled her gently from the balustrade, she released her hold on the stone urn to jump down onto the gravel path beside him.

She was not tall and her hair, which was frizzed and curled, made her tiny heart-shaped face seem almost too small for a very large pair of worried eyes.

She looked up.

“Let me – go,” she pleaded.

He knew that she was not speaking about the fact that he was still holding one of her hands.

“When you have told me what it is all about.”

The gentleman was tall with a slim athletic grace and there was something purposeful about him, which told the girl that it would be useless to run away.

Somehow, now that he had prevented her from doing what she had intended to do, she felt curiously weak as if her mind was no longer working properly.

The music in the distance suddenly seemed louder and she glanced nervously over her shoulder as she muttered

“They may – come and – look for – me.”

“Then I will take you to a place where they, whoever they might be, will not discover us,” the gentleman replied.

He turned as he spoke and, taking the girl by the arm, passed through some shrubs to where on the edge of the river, there was a small arbour.

It was surrounded by syringa and lilac trees in blossom, which hid it from the rest of the garden.

It had clearly been intended as a sitting-out place for the guests at the ball, because attached to a tree that overhung the hidden place was a Chinese lantern.

A lighted candle inside it threw a golden glow over the shrubs and was reflected fitfully in the swiftly moving darkness of the river that lay below the balustrade.

There were soft cushions arranged on the seat inside the arbour and the gentleman waited for the girl to seat herself before he too sat down.

As he did so, the light shone on his face and she cried almost involuntarily,

“Oh, you are the famous dandy!”

There was a faint smile on his lips as he replied,

“I am honoured that you should know me.”

“I apologise – I should not have said that,” she answered. “But I saw you in Hyde Park driving the most magnificent pair of chestnuts – and I asked who you were.”

She remembered, as she spoke, her mother’s scornful laugh.

“That is Lord Dorrington,” she had said in a voice that expressed all too clearly her dislike, “a lazy good-for-nothing dandy! And I can assure you that looking in his direction will do you no good! He is a vowed bachelor, a fop who thinks about nothing but his appearance and spends a fortune on his clothes.”

He could, however, as the girl saw, drive with an expertise that was unmistakable and she wondered what Lord Dorrington had done to incur her mother’s wrath.

“Suppose we start at the beginning,” she now heard him say. “What is your name?”

“Alyna,” she replied, “and my mother is Lady Maude Camberley.”

“I have met her,” Lord Dorrington remarked briefly.

He remembered a sharp-voiced over-painted female, who had challenged him across a gaming table and come off the worse in the encounter.

He looked at the girl sitting next to him and wondered what she had in common with a mother who was a notorious gambler.

The heart-shaped face under the fair hair in the light of the lantern was curiously appealing.

She was obviously very young and her lips, still trembling a little, were soft and sensitive.

She must have nerved herself to the point of desperation to attempt the act that he had prevented her from executing. And it had left her very pale.

On her cheeks he could see two small patches of rouge standing out vividly against the whiteness of her skin.

She was not looking at him, but staring out over the river and he saw the despair in her eyes.

She was twisting her cold fingers together in the lap of her frilly white gown. It was obviously an expensive garment and yet somehow it seemed tasteless and unbecoming.

She looked so defenceless that Lord Dorrington’s voice, usually slightly mocking and cynical, was unusually gentle as he asked,

“Suppose you tell me what is troubling you?”

“What is the point?” Alyna asked. “You cannot help me – nobody can!”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Because if I go back to the ballroom they are going to announce – my engagement.”

“And you don’t wish to marry this gentleman to whom you are to be betrothed?”

“I would rather die! Why did you stop me? I had made up my mind – to jump.”

“And yet you hesitated,” Lord Dorrington said quietly.

“It looked so – dark and – cold,” Alyna whispered with a little tremor in her voice. “But they say drowning is not an – unpleasant death and very – quick if you cannot swim.”

“It’s not a method I would advocate for someone of your age,” Lord Dorrington said.

“What does it matter what age I am – if I have to marry – him?” Alyna asked.

“Who is the gentleman in question?” Lord Dorrington enquired.

“Prince Ahmadi – of Kahriz.”

There was a note of repulsion in her voice as if she spoke about a reptile.

“Prince Ahmadi!” Lord Dorrington repeated. “I have heard of him.”

“He goes everywhere in London,” Alyna said. “People think he is – charming and he is – rich – very rich.”

Somewhere at the back of his mind Lord Dorrington remembered hearing that Lady Maude Camberley was always borrowing money.

“Is money so important to you?” he asked.

“It is to Mama,” Alyna answered. “She wishes me to marry someone wealthy. She told me so before I went back to the Seminary.”

“The Seminary!” Lord Dorrington ejaculated. “How old are you?”

“I am seventeen and a half,” Alyna answered. “But Mama and I visited Bath last holidays. I was taken to balls and assemblies – and then I think she found me a failure and a nuisance, so I was allowed to go back to the Young Ladies Seminary for another term.”

“Did you wish to do that?”

“Yes. I would much rather be at the Seminary – than have to go to parties. At least I can learn there.”

”Do you like learning?” Lord Dorrington asked in surprise.

Alyna sighed.

“It was so wonderful – when Papa was alive. He taught me himself. We read together, we studied subjects that were really interesting. At the Seminary I can continue to learn more – about the subjects we studied together.”

“But you cannot stay at a Seminary for ever,” Lord Dorrington pointed out.

“No, I know that,” she answered. “But when Mama sent for me so soon after the term had started, I felt that there was something wrong.”

“Wrong?” Lord Dorrington enquired.

“She wanted me to meet – the Prince.”

Again there was that note of fear and disgust in the young voice.

“I cannot marry him – do you not understand? I hate him! There is something – horrible and – beastly about him!” Alyna said passionately. “I think it’s the way he – looks at me, almost as if I was – naked. And I know that if he touched me – if he tried to – kiss me, I would scream.”

Her voice seemed to throb in the night air.

“Have you told your mother that you feel like this?” Lord Dorrington asked.

“I have told her a hundred times – I will not marry the Prince!” Alyna answered. “But she will not listen to me. She keeps on telling me how lucky I am. She says the Prince will be kind to me and – give me wonderful jewels. As though I want such things!”

“Most women are grateful for them,” Lord Dorrington remarked dryly.

“Besides,” Alyna went on as if he had not spoken, “I don’t believe, whatever Mama says, that I will be officially his wife. Or even in his own country considered to be married to him at all!”

“What makes you think that?” Lord Dorrington asked.

“Papa was very interested in the East,” Alyna answered. “We read about Kahriz at one time. Do you know where it is?”

“On the borders of Persia and Afghanistan,” Lord Dorrington replied.

He noticed that she looked at him with a faint air of surprise.

“Most people don’t know that,” she said. “It’s a small state, but very wealthy. The mineral resources are enormous.”

“And the Prince will inherit when his father dies,” Lord Dorrington said.

“He is not really of Royal descent,” Alyna said scornfully. “According to the Constitution, if the Ruler does not have a son in the direct line to inherit, he can nominate a child – of one of his concubines.”

“And does the Prince’s lack of Royal blood perturb you?” Lord Dorrington asked.

“I don’t care who he is,” Alyna declared. “But, according to the religion of Kahriz, a man can have four wives. He can also divorce them under Muslim law. That means he only has to say three times that they are divorced and they no longer have any claim on him.”

“But surely – ” Lord Dorrington began.

“Mama says all this is nonsense,” Alyna interrupted. “She says that the Prince will marry me according to our laws and he has told her that we will spend at least three quarters of the year in Europe. But I don’t believe him.”

Lord Dorrington did not speak and after a moment she went on,

“They have – many horrible customs in Kahriz. I thought I remembered some of the things Papa and I had read together, so I went to the British Museum. They did not have many books on the country, as it is so small, but there were enough to tell me that what I had remembered was accurate. They are a savage – uncivilised race.”

“Feeling as you do and knowing what you know,” Lord Dorrington said, “you must refuse to marry the Prince. No one can force you to the altar.”

“Mama is determined I shall marry him!” Alyna answered. “I think that he must have promised that he will help her in some way.”

Lord Dorrington thought this more than likely, but he merely said,

“It is you who will have to say the words ‘I will’ in front of a Clergyman.”

“I tried to talk to Mama this afternoon,” Alyna said, “when she told me the Prince wanted our engagement to be announced tonight. Lady Glossop, who is giving this party, is my Godmother and Mama felt she would be pleased – that the announcement should be made in her house.”

“And you told your mother quite firmly that you would not marry the Prince?”

“I told her that I would rather die than do so,” Alyna said. “But she merely replied that, now Papa is dead – she has the power and authority to arrange my marriage. I have no say – in the matter.”