Paradise Found Read online

  Author’s Note

  The Prince Regent liked young bucks and beaux around him, but as he grew older his extravagant parties at Carlton House began to bore him.

  The long drawn-out dinners with a great number of entrées from the Prince Regent’s French chefs did not compensate for the lack of stimulating conversation that had been so much a part of the years when Mrs. Fitzherbert was the hostess.

  The Marchioness of Hertford and later the Marchioness of Coyningham were inclined to monopolise the guests’ attention to their own advantage.

  However, Carlton House was a brilliant contrast compared to the gloom and darkness that surrounded Buckingham Palace and no matter how old and fat the Prince Regent became, he was still very witty and had an eye for a beautiful painting and a beautiful woman.

  Chapter 1 1814

  The Earl of Fleetwood tied his cravat before the mirror over the fireplace with a dexterity that always infuriated his valet.

  But he preferred to be self-sufficient and had often said that there was no work carried out in his various houses that he could not do better himself than those he paid to do it.

  Watching him from the bed Lady Oline Blunham thought that no man could be more attractive.

  Her eyes roved over the Earl’s square shoulders under his thin lawn shirt, his slender waist and narrow hips tapering down to long legs, which every bootmaker extolled as being the perfect shape for fashionable Hessians.

  The Earl’s love-making had been fiery, passionate and extremely satisfying.

  But strangely enough he was not thinking of the beauty of Lady Oline as she lay back against her lace-edged pillows, but of a small object that he had placed on the marble mantelpiece in front of him.

  He had actually stepped on it when he climbed out of bed and, as it had hurt the sole of his foot, he had picked it up, looked at it curiously and then set it down as he started to dress.

  Now, as his cravat was finished to his satisfaction and encircled his neck tightly keeping the points of his collar high above his chin in the fashion decreed by Beau Brummel, the Earl enquired,

  “Has your husband changed his shirtmakers lately?”

  Lady Oline gave a little giggle.

  “What a funny question! No, of course not! Edward has been to Jacksons in Jermyn Street ever since he left Eton and would no more think of patronising any other shirtmaker than of leaving Westons, who make his coats!”

  “I thought that was so,” the Earl commented, “and I too find Jacksons the best shirtmaker in London.”

  He touched the button at the bottom of his shirt for a moment as if to make certain that it did not resemble the one he was looking at.

  Then he picked up his close-fitting coat, shrugged himself into it and pulled the revers into shape.

  It would have been impossible as he turned round to think that any Gentleman of Fashion could be more elegant and at the same time more masculine.

  With a little cry Lady Oline held out her arms.

  “If you must go, Alaric,” she purred softly, “kiss me goodbye before you do so.”

  The Earl looked at her for a long moment.

  She was certainly very lovely with her dark hair falling over her white shoulders and her eyes, which had a touch of green in them, pleading with him, while her red lips were provocatively inviting.

  But there was actually a hard expression on his face and a tightness to the line of his lips before he replied,

  “Thank you, Oline, for the pleasure you have given me, but it appears that your last visitor left something behind, which he might miss.”

  As he spoke, the Earl walked to the bed, put the shirt button that he had taken from the mantelpiece into Lady Oline’s hand and closed her fingers over it.

  “What are you – saying? What are you – talking about?” she asked in an agitated manner.

  There was no answer because the Earl had already left and all she could hear were his footsteps going quietly down the stairs.

  She opened her hand, saw what lay on her soft pink palm and with a scream of fury threw it across the room.

  The Earl closed the door of Blunham House in Queen Street and, walking swiftly in the dim light of the dawn, reached his own house in Berkeley Square a few minutes later.

  A tired night footman managed to stifle his yawns as he let his Lordship in.

  Then, locking the door, he went back to the comfortable padded chair where he intended to sleep until awakened by the housemaids coming down soon after five o’clock to start cleaning and dusting.

  The Earl, however, was not yawning as he walked up the curving staircase and along the passage to his bedroom.

  He was, in fact, ruminating that if there was one thing that annoyed him it was a mistress being unfaithful to him.

  That they were unfaithful to their husbands was taken for granted by the fashionable Society in which he moved.

  But what he would not accept was a woman, who professed her love for him, keeping her bed warm with other lovers in his absence.

  It had not struck him during the three days he had been away in the country that Oline would, despite her protestations of undying love, take another lover.

  He thought now he might have guessed that she was insatiable and what it really came down to was that for her one man was very like another.

  He was, however, conceited enough to believe that he was very special to the women he bestowed his favours on and, while Edward Blunham might be prepared to turn a blind eye to his wife’s infidelity, it was something he had no intention of ever doing.

  The Earl was fastidious and adhered to certain rules thought up by himself to which he rigidly conformed.

  Although it was fashionable for anyone in his position to pursue the much-acclaimed beauties of the Beau Monde, it was also considered correct for any gentleman who could afford it, and it was indeed a most expensive pastime, to keep a pretty ‘Cyprian’ at the same time.

  This was against the Earl’s private code and he conducted no more than one love affair at a time with an ardour and expertise that had gained him the reputation of being irresistible.

  While he more or less dedicated himself to the woman he was currently interested in, he expected the same response from her.

  He knew, as he got into the large comfortable bed in which a number of his ancestors had been born and died, that he would not call on Oline Blunham again.

  He then erased her from his mind as if she had never existed.

  *

  Later in the morning the Earl, despite a somewhat strenuous night, had ridden in Hyde Park on a horse he had recently bought at Tattersalls and which had required all his considerable expertise to control, and he was now sitting in the dining room.

  He was enjoying a late breakfast when the door opened and his friend Lord Charles Egham came in.

  “Good morning, Charles,” the Earl said without looking up from The Morning Post, which he was reading while eating.

  “You are late!” Charles Egham replied. “I am not surprised, remembering that I saw you leaving the ball last night with Oline!”

  The Earl did not reply, which did not surprise his friend, who knew only too well that he never talked about his love affairs.

  Lord Charles therefore helped himself to a dish of sweetbreads cooked with fresh mushrooms brought from the country very early that morning.

  Then, sitting down at the table, he began to eat with relish.

  “What are you going to do today?” he asked when his immediate hunger was somewhat satisfied.

  “I am going to the country,” the Earl replied.

  His friend stared at him in astonishment.

  “You are going to the country? But you only returned yesterday!”

  “
Yes, I know, but there is nothing to keep me in London and I have two horses I want to break in. Come and help me!”

  Lord Charles was still staring at him.

  “I cannot understand you, Alaric,” he said. “When you came back yesterday, there were a dozen invitations waiting for you and I heard you tell your secretary to accept them all.”

  “I have changed my mind.”

  There was a little pause and then Lord Charles enquired knowingly,

  “Oline being difficult?”

  “I know nobody of that name!” the Earl replied abruptly.

  Lord Charles sat back in his chair with a twinkle in his eyes as he said,

  “I think I can guess the reason for this change of heart.”

  “You can keep your guessing to yourself!” the Earl retorted sharply. “I have no wish to discuss it. Are you, or are you not, coming with me to the country?”

  “Of course I am!” Lord Charles replied. “I have not had a decent meal since you went away and I always think that your chef at Fleet Hall is even better than your man here.”

  He rose as he spoke to help himself to another dish from the sideboard.

  There were over half-a-dozen of them and Lord Charles hesitated between two of them and then compromised by taking a little of both.

  The Earl did not attend to him. He knew only too well that, as the younger son of an impoverished Duke, Charles not only found it hard to get enough to eat but there was certainly no chance of his riding a decent horse, if he could not rely on him.

  He and Charles Egham had been at Eton together and they had also served for three years in the same Regiment, although the Earl on the death of his father had been obliged to buy himself out.

  He had, as it happened, been reading a report on the Duke of Wellington’s Army which, having fought its way through Spain, was now threatening Napoleon in the South of France.

  He laid down The Morning Post and said,

  “I have a damned good mind, Charles, to join up again, whatever ‘Prinny’ may say about it.”

  “You have suggested it before,” Lord Charles replied, “but His Royal Highness the Prince Regent made it quite clear that he has no wish for anybody as distinguished as yourself to be either killed or taken prisoner by the French.”

  “I know he said that,” the Earl responded crossly, “but this is a free country and, if I want to fight for it, I shall do so!”

  “I understand your feelings, at the same time you know as well as I do that there is a great deal to be done on your estates and, if you are not there, I doubt if the new land you have recently brought under cultivation to provide for the country’s needs will be so successful.”

  The Earl pushed his plate away from in front of him and put his arms on the table before he said,

  “I find it extremely frustrating to sit here in England going from ball to ball and from woman to woman when I should be helping to put an end to Napoleon’s tyranny over the rest of Europe.’’

  “If you feel so strongly about it, I should have another word with the Prince Regent!”

  The Earl pushed aside his cup of coffee.

  “I know exactly what he will say, “he replied, “and I have the uncomfortable feeling that Wellington will say the same thing. I cannot think why my father had to die before the War was over!”

  “By all accounts it will not be long now,” Lord Charles said cheerfully. “They say that Napoleon is getting desperate and there is no doubt that Wellington is moving into France more quickly than anybody had expected.”

  The Earl sighed and sat back in his chair petulantly.

  “I want to be with him!”

  “What has upset you?” Charles now asked sympathetically.

  “I don’t think it is any one particular thing,” the Earl replied. “It’s just the incredible boredom of knowing what will happen day after day, night after night.”

  He paused before he added fiercely,

  “I want action! I want excitement! I want what we had when we were together in Portugal.”

  “Discomfort and fleas!”

  Despite himself the Earl laughed.

  “That is certainly true. I shall never forget the filth of the houses where we had to sleep and the women who were always hanging about the camp.”

  “If you want the truth,” Lord Charles said, “I think we are both a bit too old for that now, and, if you don’t appreciate a soft bed with or without a companion in it, I do!”

  The Earl laughed again and then he said,

  “You always cheer me up, Charles. Let’s go to the country. I find my horses a good deal more interesting and certainly more unexpected than the women we spend our time with!”

  Lord Charles gave the Earl a quick glance out of the corner of his eye and thought that Lady Oline Blunham had certainly overplayed her hand last night.

  He was used to the Earl becoming quickly bored with any woman who took his fancy, but he had known when he saw him before dinner that he was looking forward to being with Lady Oline again.

  He had been quite certain that, unless something had changed her considerably, she was waiting for him with a palpitating heart.

  All women had palpitating hearts where the Earl was concerned and, while inevitably he was the one who tired first, it was not usual for there to be such a dramatic turnabout as seemed to be happening at the moment.

  He was, however, too tactful to say this out loud and instead, as he spread a piece of toast thickly with Jersey butter from the Earl’s home farm, he said,

  “I had better go and pack my things. I presume you will be driving your phaeton?”

  “Of course,” the Earl said. “But there is no need for you to trouble yourself. Send a footman to tell your man to pack everything you require and to bring it round immediately in a Hackney carriage.”

  He rang the gold bell that stood on the table beside him as he spoke and, as he did so, the door was opened immediately by the butler and Lord Charles gave his order.

  “You can tell Danvers that I shall be leaving in an hour,” the Earl added.

  “You’ll be going to Fleet Hall, my Lord?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good, my Lord. I’ll see that everything is ready.”

  The butler closed the door and Lord Charles laughed.

  “I always wonder,” he said, “if the day will come when Danvers looks astonished at one of your commands or actually queries it.”

  “Why should he?” the Earl asked.

  “Because you are unpredictable, my dear Alaric, and at times you even leave me gasping.”

  “You are talking nonsense!” the Earl said, rising as he spoke. “There is nothing unpredictable about preferring the country to London and the inane conversation that takes place at every party when inevitably one knows beforehand what everybody is going to say.”

  He walked out of the dining room and Lord Charles knew that he was going to the library.

  There his letters would have already been opened for him by his secretary and those that required a reply put in a neat pile awaiting his verdict.

  Lord Charles took a quick sip from his cup of coffee and, taking a large apple out of the Sèvres bowl in the centre of the table, started to peel it as he followed the Earl.

  When they reached the library, a pleasant room lined with books and overlooking the small courtyard at the back of the house, the Earl threw open the window as if he needed air.

  Lord Charles, having eaten half the apple, threw the rest of it into one of the flowerbeds.

  “If you were not in such a hurry to go to the country,” he said as the Earl did not speak, “I was going to suggest that you might meet an extremely attractive ‘bit of muslin’ who has during the last two days become the toast of St James’s.”

  “I am not interested!” the Earl stipulated firmly. “What I want, Charles, is adventure. Some sort of excitement that does not smell of an exotic scent and can talk of nothing but love!”

  “What els
e is there to talk about?”

  “If only I had something to throw at you!” the Earl replied, sitting down at the desk. “As it is, I know you are only trying to provoke me and, since you will go on nagging like any shrewish wife until I tell you what you want to know, I have finished with Oline!”

  “I guessed that,” Lord Charles said. “I suppose you have found out about Napier!”

  “So that is who it is!” the Earl exclaimed.

  “They have been very careful in case you got wind of it,” Lord Charles went on. “I only happened to see them by chance going into a private room at The White House.”

  The White House was the most fashionable ‘Palace of Pleasure’ in the West End of London.

  As the Earl well knew there were private rooms on the first floor, where two people who did not wish to be seen could dine very discreetly, and enter and leave by a side door.

  “What were you doing at The White House?” he asked. “You know as well as I do that you cannot afford their ridiculously exorbitant charges.”

  “That is something I have no intention of telling you,” Lord Charles replied.

  “In other words she paid!”

  Then he laughed.

  “I can see you are being led into trouble, Charlie, and the sooner you come to the country with me the better!”

  “Which means you are running away! But I am still interested as to how you learnt about Napier.”

  “He left his ‘visiting card’ behind in the shape of a shirt button!” the Earl told him briefly.

  Lord Charles threw himself back in his chair and went into peals of laughter.

  “A shirt button!” he cried. “Only you, Alaric, would notice anything so insignificant and unimportant.”

  “As a matter of fact, I stood on it barefooted!” the Earl remarked.

  Lord Charles laughed until the tears came into his eyes.

  Then he said,

  “You are quite right, all this is beneath your dignity and your importance. There must be something better for us to do.”

  “If there is, let’s go and find it,” the Earl replied.

  Lord Charles now brought the expression of good temper back to his handsome face and his lips were no longer set in a hard line.