The Marquis is Deceived

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1872-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1872The Marquis of Craigmere watched a French horse win the Ascot Gold Cup.

He put down his binoculars after it had passed the winning post.

“Bad luck!” several of his friends called out.

The Marquis merely shrugged his shoulders.

He had known before he had come to Ascot that the horse he had entered for the Gold Cup was likely to be beaten by the French entry.

He then realised that his horse had dead-heated for second place with Flageolet, which also came from France, and that this would go some way to console his trainer.

His mind, however, was not wholly concerned with horses, even though he had looked forward to Royal Ascot as most owners did.

The Marquis’s problem was much more personal.

He was wondering as he walked from the Jockey Club box what he could do about it.

He was, in fact, in the worst difficulty he had ever encountered over the years of being the most sought after young batchelor in Society.

Enormously rich, he owned one of the finest houses in England with its fifteen thousand acre estate.

It was thought to be almost unfair that the Marquis, besides being the greatest matrimonial catch in the Beau Monde, should also be the most handsome man in it.

Ambitious mothers stiffened whenever he entered a ballroom and the debutantes of the London Season prayed that he would ask them to dance.

The Marquis, however, had no intention of getting himself ‘married off’.

This had happened to many of his contemporaries only for them to find after a year or so that they were incredibly bored with their wives.

The Marquis steered clear of debutantes and so his affaires-de-coeur were always with exotic and beautiful married women, the majority of whom had complaisant husbands, who stayed in their Clubs or went to the country when they were not wanted.

The Marquis found himself drifting happily from affair to affair and none had lasted for very long.

He invariably found himself quickly bored and he had come to the conclusion some time ago that women, however beautiful, had very little to say when he was not making love to them or they were talking nineteen to the dozen about themselves.

The Marquis’s father had been very intelligent and well-read and his son had followed in his footsteps.

He had been Captain of his House at Eton and had proceeded to make his mark at Oxford University and he had come away with a First Class Honours degree that few of his contemporaries had bothered to acquire.

When he came into the title, he introduced a great number of modern ideas to his great estate and he was still working on more.

He also found time to travel as often as he could and, while doing so, he had enjoyed himself in Paris with alluring coquettes. They were beautiful, witty, exotic and were the talk of Europe.

Life had been for him what other people thought of as a bed of roses.

So it was with a sense of shock that he now found himself in a position from which, for the moment, he had discovered no way of extricating himself.

He had been staying with friends when he had first met Lady Lawson.

She was exceedingly attractive in a most unusual way. She had dark hair and large expressive eyes and her superb figure was an irresistible attraction to every man.

Her husband, Lord Lawson, who was much older than her, was an extremely busy Statesman and he spent more time in the House of Lords than he did at home.

This enabled his lovely wife to dispense her favours on quite a number of men before the Marquis.

At the house party where they had first met the guests were all either married or widowed and there was no question of any young girls being included.

The Marquis had realised soon after he arrived that the guests were paired off and they were all good friends.

He was, in fact, younger than most of the other men and he knew that he had been included because of his Social standing and because his horses were so successful on the turf.

The Marquis, when he went down to dinner the first night, was sure that he was going to enjoy himself.

He was well aware that the older men were hard drinkers and keen gamblers and he thought that he would be wise to keep a clear head.

At any rate he had no intention of indulging too deeply in the excellent wines his host would be offering.

The dinner was superb and the huge dining room lit with candles made every woman present shine.

Glancing round the table the Marquis thought that it would be difficult anywhere else to find so many beauties assembled in one place.

Two of them were old loves of his and they greeted him with a look in their eyes that told him that there was still a place for him in their hearts.

The Marquis was always sorry when an affair came to an end as he did not like hurting anyone, especially a woman or a horse, but he was too fastidious to continue with an affair that bored him and which had lost the sparkle and the excitement it had evoked at the beginning.

Petty and insignificant things would bring what had been a wild, passionate, flaming enjoyment to an end.

One of the beauties present had the habit of twisting her rings round and round on her fingers. It was a small thing, but the Marquis had found that it irritated him and it had been the main reason why he had finally left her.

Another beauty had a way of mispronouncing long words particularly those of another language and, because he himself was so well educated, he found it intolerable.

They were little imperfections, yet they could bring to an end an affair that had been most enjoyable while it lasted,

The guests drank a great deal of champagne in the drawing room before they went into dinner.

As the excellent meal proceeded course by course, the appropriate wine was produced for each dish and the Marquis found it difficult not to drink more than he should.

He was very particular not to overeat for the simple reason was that he rode his own horses and wanted to keep his weight down.

As he was enjoying the first course and the superb white wine that went with it, he was aware that seated on his right was someone he had not met before.

He had heard, when they had been introduced, that her name was Lady Lawson.

He vaguely recalled a rather pompous Statesman he had met at Windsor Castle and he had been pointed out to him at the time as a keen Member of the House of Lords.

Lady Lawson was indeed very much younger than her husband and, as the Marquis could easily see, she was very beautiful.

Her large dark eyes flashed at him as soon as he spoke to her and it was an obvious invitation that he was very familiar with.

Her rouged lips and her soft seductive voice gave him the same message and it was one he had received so many times before.

He flirted with her as he was expected to do and he did the same with the beauty on his other side, but she was, however, clearly the chosen favourite of their host.

His wife was not present at the party as, having been ill for some time, she had now left for Bath, where she was hoping that the waters would help her to recover.

The host had no intention of allowing the Marquis to say too much to the beauty he had chosen for himself and so he therefore obligingly concentrated his attention on Lady Lawson.

He discovered that her name was Peony, which he thought suited her.

From the gestures she made and the way her eyes spoke to him without needing words, he knew what would be expected of him later in the evening.

This, however, was against his rules.

The first rule was that he never made love to a woman, however attractive, until he knew her well and had spent time with her. He thought that to behave otherwise was an insult, not only to her but to himself.

Making love, he had always thought, was not just a physical act. The attention of the mind, if not the heart, should be aroused as well.

His heart he could not control.

He had found up to now that it was very seldom involved in his affaires-de-coeur.

His mind was a different matter.

He liked to appreciate a woman for the way she looked, the way she talked and the way she walked and he liked to hear her opinion on the things that mattered to him such as horses and pictures.

He had expanded the collection that his ancestors had built up at Craigmere Court.

Occasionally he found unexpectedly an outstanding painting that no one else had recognised. It was then that he felt the same excitement as a man who had discovered a perfect pearl or a precious stone of great value.

Lady Lawson played her cards very cleverly.

She flattered the Marquis in a way that he realised was very subtle and she listened to anything he had to say with a rapt attention that was too perfect to be playacting.

Nevertheless, when the Marquis went up to bed, he had no intention of visiting Lady Lawson.

He was well aware that, with the usual tact that was exercised in house parties of this nature, she was sleeping just across the corridor from his bedroom.

When the ladies had left the drawing room to go to bed, the gentlemen continued drinking for quite some time.

They had enjoyed a very excellent vintage port in the dining room and had then been offered liqueurs.

The Marquis had refused both and he thought that the crimson flush on the faces of those round the table was somewhat contemptible.

What they consumed would certainly take the edge off what happened later.

Where he was concerned, he intended to enjoy a good night’s sleep as he was going to ride one of his host’s excellent horses before breakfast.

He had already told his valet to call him early and he was looking forward, as he always did, to riding a horse that was new to him.

He thought a little cynically ‘first things first’ and horses were what mattered to him at the moment. Women, even someone as pretty as Lady Lawson, could come later.

His valet helped him to undress and, as he climbed into the large comfortable bed, he was looking forward to sleeping peacefully.

He had always been most particular at Craigmere Court in seeing that all the beds were comfortable.

He had found at many houses he visited that it was a comfort that was neglected by the host or hostess and a bed as hard as a billiard table to sleep on was something he most disliked.

He was considering what new comforts he could introduce to his own house and he wondered if, on this visit, he would find anything new and interesting.

He was determined to make his own house perfect and he was well aware that other people might have new and good ideas beside himself. If they had, he was quite prepared to beg, borrow or steal them.

His eyes were now closed.

And he was just falling asleep when he was aware of something warm and soft moving against him.

For a moment he could not think what it was.

Then a seductive voice whispered his name and he realised that it was Peony Lawson.

He was not only surprised, he was astounded.

It was an unwritten law, even when an affaire-de-coeur had taken place for some time that a lady should not go to a gentleman’s room, but he would come to hers.

There were naturally exceptions when the husband was involved, but otherwise in all his long experience the Marquis had always made the first move.

He had been, as he would have put it himself, ‘the hunter not the hunted’.

Yet, here at this moment, cuddling up against him was Peony Lawson and there was a distinct scent of exotic perfume.

Then before he could say a word or be fully aware of what was happening, her lips were on his.