Paula Marshall - Lord Hadleigh's Rebellion

‘I, m’lord?’ Mary could not help replying. ‘Would it not be more appropriate for you to ask Miss Markham to display the family treasures? After all, I gather that she is the real reason you are here.’

Good God! Had rumour already given Angelica Markham to him as a bride? Rumour also said that Mary Wardour had been invited for Perry Markham’s sake. Was that as false as the one relating to Angelica? If he had been dubious about making her Lady Hadleigh before he had met her, now that he had, any dubiety he had previously experienced had been reinforced: he had not the slightest intention of marrying the girl. He was only too happy that the moment the Hon. Tom Bertram had arrived in the drawing room Angelica had made a dead set at him. They were each well suited to the other.

‘Oh,’ he said, as carelessly as he could, ‘you should take no note of gossip of that nature. I am here—why am I here?’ he continued. ‘I am not quite sure, but looking for a bride is far from my mind at the moment,’ and he gave her his most dazzling smile again, a smile which poor Mary remembered only too well.

‘Nor am I looking for a husband,’ returned Mary shrewdly, for she knew full well why she had been invited and Perry Markham was certainly not to her taste.

Miss Truman, who had been listening to their odd conversation with some interest, now took a hand in it.

‘I think, my dear,’ she said to Mary, a light note in her voice, ‘that it would only be proper to introduce me to Lord Hadleigh, seeing that you have had such a long acquaintance with him.’

Now, what to say to that? was Mary’s somewhat frantic thought. She could scarcely tell her companion the unhappy truth of her first acquaintance with Russell, who had now risen to his feet, waiting for the introduction which would inevitably follow.

The rapport between him and Mary, once so strong, but now almost forgotten, was strongly revived. He grasped that she was somewhat overset by her companion’s innocently made remark and, however badly she might have treated him in the past, he had no desire to embarrass her in the present.

He bowed to both women. ‘My friendship with Mrs Wardour was long ago, when we were little more than children. We have, alas, seen nothing of one another for many years, until this very day.’

Mary and Miss Truman both rose on that, and Mary, thankful for Russell’s intervention, if for nothing else, did the pretty by making her companion known to him.

‘I believe, m’lord,’ Miss Truman said, ‘that I had the honour, some years ago, of being for a short time the companion of your brother Richard’s wife, then Miss Pandora Compton. Circumstances parted us and we lost touch. I trust that she is in health.’

‘Very much so. She is now the mother of a lively and handsome boy.’

‘Which does not surprise me,’ Miss Truman said, ‘since my dear Pandora is both lively and handsome herself.’

Russell gave a smile of such pleasure on hearing this that Mary was bitten by a sudden sharp and unwanted pang. What in the world would make her indulge in such folly as being jealous of the unknown Pandora Chancellor? she asked herself furiously. Lord Hadleigh could compliment the whole female sex and bed whom he chose. It was no business of hers if he admired his brother’s wife. But, alas, it seemed it still was, since she was being weak-minded enough to allow him to charm her all over again. It was as though thirteen years had never passed.

‘Indeed,’ he replied, serious now.

‘And I am sure that my dear Mary would be happy to show you the picture gallery. She is extremely knowledgeable about such matters. You could not have a better guide.’

It was quite plain to both her hearers that Miss Truman was busy matchmaking. She had already decided that Perry Markham was not a person whom she could recommend her employer to marry. Lord Hadleigh, now, was quite a different matter. Not only was he handsome, but she had already been informed that he had been decent enough to refuse to join the party which was attending the hanging on the morrow while, on the other hand, the wretched Perry was the ringleader in the unhappy affair.

As for Mary, after such a recommendation from Miss Truman, she had no choice but to agree to Russell Hadleigh’s wish to have her as his escort and the pair of them rose to carry out Miss Truman’s bidding.

The eyes of most of the room watched them leave it. Later, General Markham was to say fiercely to his son when he cornered him in his room, ‘You must know how essential it is that you offer for Mary Wardour. Most of our problems would be solved by such a marriage. But instead of fixing your sights on her, you fool about with a pack of young men whom you have brought here against my wishes. As a result of that, you have allowed Hadleigh to corner her when I wished to fix his interest on Angelica. Do you wish to live permanently in Queer Street?’

Perry hissed back at his father, ‘May I remind you, sir, that it was not I who lost the family’s money by gambling on Boney winning at Waterloo, but it is I who will have to pay for it by marrying a blue-stocking of a widow who is older than I am and has no interest in any of the things which amuse me.’

‘Delay much longer in offering for her,’ his father exclaimed, trying to goad his son into doing as he wished, ‘and the whole world will soon know that we are bankrupt. So far I have been successful in staving off ruin, but my creditors are growing weary of waiting for pay day.

‘As for her lack of interest in your idle life, what has that to do with not wishing to marry her? Get her with an heir or two and you and she may go your own separate ways. No need to wish to play Romeo and Juliet together. After all, I am the heir to my cousin, Viscount Bulcote, and since, unfortunately, he is as poor as a church mouse, too, we have no salvation there. On the other hand, Mrs Wardour might care to be called Lady Bulcote—if Russell Hadleigh hasn’t snapped her up first.’

Russell Hadleigh wasn’t snapping anyone up, least of all Mary Wardour. In fact, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was about. He had told himself to avoid her, that he had nothing more to say to her, nor could she have anything to say to him, and yet, when dinner was over, the mere sight of her had set him mooning after her as though he had been twenty again!

Once they were out of the room and in the vast Entrance Hall, one door of which led to the picture gallery, Mary turned to him and said in the frostiest tones she could summon up. ‘You can really have little wish to spend the next half-hour in my company inspecting paintings about which you must care little. May I suggest that we part—possibly to return to our suites and then, after a decent interval, to the drawing room.’

‘Indeed not,’ was his answer to that. ‘Not only do I have no wish to return to the drawing room, other than in your company, but I do wish to see the General’s paintings. I missed the Grand Tour because of the war, my Oxford education was ended prematurely for a reason of which you are well aware, and, as I grow older, I have become determined to fix my interest on other pursuits than gambling, drinking and attending race meetings and boxing mills. An idle life is beginning to tire me.’

Whatever could he mean by speaking of his education ending prematurely for a reason which she well knew? Had he not ended it himself when he had abandoned her so cruelly?

She was about to tell him that in no uncertain terms when something about him stopped her. The empathy for her which Russell had experienced a little while ago—that memory of their lost happy time together—now overcame her. Whatever else, she knew that he was not lying to her. After all these years he wanted her company. Not only that, his interest in the paintings was genuine, not a trick to enable him to begin deceiving her all over again.