The Love Pirate

Chapter One 1885-2

“Goodbye, Theydon,” he said and disappeared into the crowd.

Lord Saire was not in a hurry.

He folded The Financial Times, which he had been unable to read during the journey because he was talking to his friend, then rose and put on his fur-lined overcoat with its astrakhan collar.

As he picked up his top hat and put it at an angle on his dark head, his valet appeared at the door.

“I hope your Lordship had a good journey.”

“Quite comfortable, thank you,” Lord Saire replied. “Bring The Financial Times, Higson. I have not yet finished reading it.”

“Very good, my Lord. The brougham will be waiting for your Lordship. I’ll bring the luggage in the landau.”

“Thank you, Higson. I am going to the House of Lords. I shall be changing early because I am dining at Marlborough House.”

“So I understand, my Lord.”

Lord Saire stepped out onto the platform and started to walk through the milling crowd.

The train had been full including a number of schoolgirls who he noticed had boarded at Oxford. They were going home for Christmas he supposed and looked excited and happy.

They were saying goodbye to their friends whilst being herded into little groups by flustered Governesses.

A number of them were being met by their parents, their mothers draped elegantly in furs and holding sable or ermine muffs up to their faces to prevent themselves from breathing in the acid smoke being belched out by the engine.

Lord Saire had moved a little way from his railway carriage when he remembered something he should have told Higson and he retraced his steps.

His valet was still collecting his valises and despatch cases and a number of other pieces of hand luggage from the rack.

D’Arcy Charington‘s valet was also there, sorting out his Master‘s belongings.

“Higson!” Lord Saire called from the platform.

His valet came quickly to the door of the carriage.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“On your way stop at the florist and send a large bouquet of lilies to Lady Gertrude Lindley. Here is a card to go with it.”

“Very good, my Lord,” Higson said, taking the envelope that Lord Saire handed to him.

As he turned away again, Lord Saire decided that this was the last bunch of flowers Gertrude Lindley would receive from him.

As so often had happened in his love affairs, he had known this one had come to an abrupt end.

He could not explain to himself why suddenly he became bored and what had seemed attractive and desirable ceased to be so.

It was not that Gertrude had done anything unusual or had upset him in any way.

He had merely become aware that she no longer attracted him and he found that many of her mannerisms, which at one time had been alluring, were now distinctly irritating.

He knew only too well that his friend, d’Arcy, would take him to task for being so fastidious, or perhaps changeable was the right word where women were concerned, but he could not help his feelings.

It was always, he thought, as if he sought the unobtainable, believing he had captured it, only to be disillusioned.

It was impossible to imagine that a woman could be more beautiful than Gertrude and, although when she swept into the room, she looked like the Snow Queen, he found that in bed she was fiery and tempestuous and at times insatiable.

‘What is wrong with me?’ Lord Saire asked himself, as he walked down the platform. ‘Why do I tire so easily, why does no woman in my life ever satisfy me for long?’

He knew that he could if he wished have almost any woman who took his fancy, in fact, as d’Arcy had said, they fell into his arms too easily.

He seldom sought a love affair. It was just thrust upon him and it was the women who did the thrusting.

‘Thank God I am going away,’ he said to himself, knowing that to extricate himself from Gertrude’s arms would not be easy.

It would be quite impossible to explain to her why his feelings had changed and why she no longer interested him.

When he stepped out of the train, the platform had been extremely crowded, but now most of the passengers had departed and there were only the porters trundling their piled trucks from the guard’s van towards the exit.

There were quite a number of them and Lord Saire was walking behind a porter whose truck was piled so high that it was impossible to see over it when suddenly there was a cry.

The porter came to an abrupt standstill so that Lord Saire almost ran into him.

Since they had both heard the cry of a woman in distress, the two men moved round the side of the truck to see that there was a girl lying on the ground.

Lord Saire bent down to assist her to her feet and he realised that her hands had gone out to her ankle.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Just my – foot,” she answered. “It is – nothing much,”

He saw in fact that her instep, which protruded beneath the hem of her skirt, was bleeding and her stocking was torn.

“I’m real sorry, miss,” the porter said from the other side of her, “I didn’t see you and that’s the truth.”

“It was not your fault,” the girl answered in a soft gentle voice. “I was looking round to see if anyone had come to meet me.”

“Do you think if I assist you that you can stand up?” Lord Saire asked.

She smiled up at him and he had an impression of very large eyes in a pale face. He put his hands under her arms and lifted her gently.

She gave a tiny exclamation of pain, then, as she straightened herself, she said bravely,

“I will be – all right– I am sorry to be such a – trouble.”

“I don’t think any bones are broken,’ Lord Saire said, “but, of course, one never knows.”

“It will be all right,” the girl said determinedly, “and thank you very much for helping me.”

“Do you think you can walk as far as the entrance?” Lord Saire suggested. “Perhaps you have a carriage to meet you.”

“I thought Mama might have been on the platform,” the girl answered, “but I am sure that she has sent a carriage.”

“Suppose you take my arm?” Lord Saire offered. “It’s not very far. I think it would take rather a long time to find you a wheelchair.”

“No, of course, I can walk,” she answered.

He proffered his arm and, leaning on it, she managed to walk slowly, although obviously her foot was hurting her.

It was, as Lord Saire had said, not far to the entrance and outside the station there were a number of carriages including his own brougham.

The girl looked up and down and then she said with a little sigh,

“I cannot see anything for me. Perhaps a porter could find me a hackney carriage.”

“I will take you home,” Lord Saire proposed.

“Oh – please – I don’t wish to be a nuisance – and you have been so kind already.”

“It will be no trouble,” he answered.

He led her to the door of his brougham and the footman, very smart in a long brown livery coat and brown cockaded top hat, held open the door.

Lord Saire helped the girl inside and sat beside her whilst the footman placed a sable-lined rug over their knees.

“Where do you live?” Lord Saire asked.

“92 Park Lane.”

He gave the order to the footman, who closed the door and the horses started off.

“You are very kind,” his passenger said in a low voice. “It was so – foolish of me not to notice the truck before it – knocked me down.”

Lord Saire smiled kindly.

“I have a feeling you are new to London.”

“I have not been here for some years.”

“What about your luggage?”

“The school will arrange to have it delivered to my home. It always annoys Mama when she meets me and has to wait while I get my trunk out of the guard’s van.”

“Perhaps we had better introduce ourselves,” Lord Saire said. “As you have no luggage, I cannot peep at the label on it, as I might otherwise have done.”

The girl smiled as he intended her to do.

“My name is Bertilla Alvinston.”

“I know your mother!” Lord Saire exclaimed.

“Everybody seems to know Mama,” Bertilla answered. “She is very beautiful, is she not?”

“Very!” Lord Saire agreed.

Lady Alvinston was one of the beauties he had described to d’Arcy Charington as being like the Goddesses sitting on Mount Olympus.

She was dark, imperious and very much admired by the Prince of Wales and all those who copied his taste in beauties, but Lord Saire was surprised to find that she had a daughter.

Sir George Alvinston had, he knew, conveniently died several years ago, leaving his wife, one of the undisputed beauties of Society, with a vast host of admirers.

But no one had ever heard a whisper, so far as Lord Saire could remember, that there were any children of the marriage.

In fact no one had suspected that Lady Alvinston was old enough to have a daughter of Bertilla’s age.

Because he was curious, he asked,

“You are returning home from school?”

“I have left school.”

“Does that please you?”

“It has been embarrassing to stay there for so long. I was much older than all the other girls.”

“How much older?” he enquired.

She turned her face a little way from him, as if she was shy, before she answered,

“I am eighteen and a half.”

Lord Saire raised his eyebrows.

He was well aware that it was usual for girls in Society to make their debut soon after they were seventeen and certainly before they were a year older.

“I suppose your mother knows you are arriving?” he asked.

“I wrote and told her,” Bertilla answered, “but sometimes Mama is so busy that she does not open my letters.”

There was something pathetic and rather lost in her voice that told Lord Saire a great deal about the relationship between the beautiful Lady Alvinston and her daughter Bertilla.

“You tell me you don’t usually come to London for the holidays?”

“No, I have spent most of them with my aunt in Bath. But she died three months ago, so I cannot go there.”

“Well, I expect you will enjoy London, even though very many people will be going away for Christmas.”

“Perhaps we will go to the country,” Bertilla said, a sudden lilt in her voice. “It used to be such fun when Papa was alive. I could ride and in the winter he would take me hunting, but Mama has never liked the country, she prefers to live in London.”

“You will be able to ride in Hyde Park”

“Oh, I hope so,” Bertilla answered. “Although it would not be as wonderful as having fields to gallop over and feeling free.”

There was something in her voice that made Lord Saire look at her more closely.

He realised that, while her mother was an outstanding beauty, Bertilla had a quiet loveliness, which was very different.

She was small for one thing, while it was fashionable to be tall and voluptuous.

In fact her slim figure was immature and her face had something child-like about it.

Her eyes were grey and unusually large in a face, which Lord Saire as a connoisseur of women, described to himself as ‘heart-shaped’.

From what he could see of her hair under the unfashionable bonnet, it was very fair and curled round her forehead naturally.

Surprisingly, her eyelashes were dark and he thought that the expression in her eyes as she looked up at him was very young and trusting.

He could not help thinking that had he been with an older woman, she would, because they were alone in the brougham, by this time be flirting with him.

She would not only flirt with every word she said but with her eyes, her lips and every movement of her body.

But Bertilla was completely natural and was treating him as if it did not cross her mind for one moment that he was a man.

“You are not in school uniform,” he observed after a moment.

To his surprise, she blushed.

“I grew – out of it a year ago,” she said after a moment. “Mama said it was not worth spending any more money– so my aunt bought in Bath what I am wearing now.”

Her gown and jacket, in a sensible blue wool material with an almost indiscernible bustle, were just the sort of garments, Lord Saire thought, that an elderly aunt would choose.

While they did nothing to enhance Bertilla’s appearance, they made her seem somewhat pathetic or perhaps that impression, he decided, came from her wide eyes and her face, which was still pale after the shock of being knocked down.