The Irresistible Buck Read online

  CHAPTER ONE ~ 1802

  Lord Melburne yawned.

  As he did so, he realised that he was not tired but bored, bored with the picture of fat cupids discreetly veiled that faced him over the mantelshelf, bored as well with the pink satin curtains festooned with silk bows and tassels and bored too with the over-scented overheated room itself.

  His eyes lit on his coat of superfine blue cloth thrown over the chair and his white muslin cravat lying negligently amongst the bottles, lotions, salves and perfumes on the overcrowded dressing table.

  And the boredom of realising that he must rise and put them on made him yawn again.

  “Tu es fatigué, mon cher?” came a soft voice from beside him.

  He looked sideways to see two dark eyes raised to his, two red lips pouting provocatively and knew that they also bored him.

  It was indeed an unfortunate moment for his Lordship to discover that he was bored with his mistress. Lying beside him against the lace-frilled pillows, she was wearing only a ruby necklace, on which he had expended quite an exorbitant sum of money, and red satin slippers to match the stones.

  He recalled almost incredulously that he had pursued her ardently only a month ago. It had undoubtedly added some piquancy to his wooing that the lady in question, Mademoiselle Liane Defroy, was hesitating over whether to accept the protection of the Marquis of Crawley or that of Sir Henry Stainer.

  The Marquis might have a higher social position, but Sir Henry Stainer was undoubtedly the wealthier. Both were generous to an extreme, both were members of the much-vaunted set of Corinthians that circled round the Prince of Wales and were habitués of Carlton House, the Prince’s majestic home in London.

  That Lord Melburne had filched Liane from under their aristocratic noses had not only given him a quiet satisfaction but had also made the Prince laugh uproariously and declare that he was irresistible when it came to the fair sex.

  It was this irresistibility, Lord Melburne thought now with a frown between his eyes that made life so incredibly boring. The chase was all too short and then the conquest was all too monotonous.

  He found himself wishing that he was back with his Regiment and that there were battles still to be fought and won with an endless stream of Frenchmen to be chased and killed. The damned Armistice, he complained, had restored him to civilian life and all he could say was that it now seemed cursed dull.

  He made a movement to rise and Liane’s little hands fluttered towards him.

  “Non, non!” she exclaimed. “Do not move. It is still very early, and we have so much to say, tu comprends!”

  Her lips were very near to his. He was overwhelmingly aware of the heavy scent that she used, which he thought was far too sweet, too sickly and now only added to his feelings of distaste.

  He seemed almost to shake himself free from her clinging arms as he rose to his feet.

  “I must get to bed early,” he said, reaching for his cravat. “I am leaving for the country tomorrow.”

  “For ze country?” Liane repeated, her voice rising a little. “But then why? Why are you leaving me alone? C’est la folie! London is very gay, there is so much, how you say, pour t’amuser. Why should you wish to go where there is only ze mud?”

  His Lordship next fixed his cravat with the experienced hand of a man who can dress competently without the help of a valet.

  “I have to see an old friend of my father’s,” he replied. “I should have gone last week, but you persuaded me, Liane, against my better judgement to stay on in London. Now I must do my duty.

  “C’est impossible!” Liane protested, sitting up on the bed with the rubies round her neck flashing in the light of the candles. “Have you forgotten ze party tomorrow night, ze party to which we are all invited, tout le Corps de Ballet? It will be very gay and I think also very naughty. You will enjoy it.”

  “I have my doubts about that,” Lord Melburne responded, shrugging himself into his coat.

  He stood for a moment looking down at her with her long hair dark as a raven’s wing that fell below her waist, at the small piquant face with its tip-tilted nose and wide mouth, which had seemed so entrancing only a few weeks ago. She was actually a clever dancer and she exploited her few talents very skilfully.

  But he wondered now as he looked at her how he had ever endured the banality of her conversation, the artificial flutterings of her hands, the shrugging of her thin shoulders and the coquettish way that she would veil her eyes with her long mascaraed lashes and contrive to appear mysterious.

  There was in fact no mystery, Lord Melburne had discovered.

  She looked up at him now, noting almost automatically how handsome he was and how outstanding even in a room full of other good-looking and well bred men.

  It was not only his looks, she thought, as so many women had thought before her, that were so attractive, it was not only the squareness of his jaw or those strange grey eyes, which seemed so uncannily penetrating that a woman felt, when he looked at her, that he searched for something deeper than mere surface attraction.

  No, Liane perceived with a sudden understanding, it was the cynical lines running from nose to mouth, the twist of his lips that somehow seemed to sneer at life even in moments of enjoyment and the sudden twinkle in his eyes, which belied that very sneer when one least expected it.

  Yes, he was irresistible and with a smile she held out her arms towards him.

  “Don’t linger in ze country,” she said softly, “I wait for you, mon brave. C’est ce que tu desires, n’est-ce pas?”

  “I am not – certain,” Lord Melburne replied slowly and, even as he spoke the words, he realised that he had made a mistake –

  The scene that followed was noisy, unpleasant and yet inevitable. He left Liane sobbing hysterically on the pillows and wondered as he went down the narrow staircase why he could never end an affair as neatly as other men of his acquaintance did. When they parted from their mistresses it was easy, a mere question of money and perhaps a diamond or two, and there was no ill will.

  With him it always meant tears and recriminations, protestations and then the inevitable plaintive,

  “What have I done?

  “Why do I not attract you anymore?”

  “Is there someone else?”

  He knew the questions only too well and they were all too familiar.

  As he let himself out by the elegant yellow-painted front door and slammed it behind him so that the polished brass knocker went rat-rat, he told himself that this was the last time he would be such a fool as to set his mistress up in a house of her own.

  It was fashionable to have an opera dancer under one’s protection, to take her driving in the Park, to provide her with her own carriage and pair, to expect her to remain ostensibly faithful until the liaison came to an end.

  But where this termination proved amicable and uncomplicated where other men were concerned, Lord Melburne was invariably different.

  He found himself pursued by clouds of tears and broken-hearted letters, with pleas for an explanation and an almost obstinate refusal to believe that he was no longer interested in her.

  His carriage was waiting, the discreet closed carriage he used at night for such visits. The coachman had looked surprised at seeing his Lordship so early and lifted the reins with a jerk.

  The smart footman, having closed the carriage door after his Lordship, sprang back onto the box and said out of the corner of his mouth,

  “Bet you that’s ended!”

  “Can’t be,” the coachman answered. “’E ain’t been with ’er more than a month.”

  “It be ended though,” the footman said confidently. “I knows the look on his Nibs’s face when ’e says finish and finish it be.”


  “Never did care for those Frenchies,” the coachman remarked. “The one ’e ’ad before last, ’er be an English mort. Now she’s a real high-stepper.”

  “’E were tired of her within three months,” the footman said with relish. “I wonder what makes ’im tire so easy.”

  Inside the coach his Lordship was asking just the same thing. Why did he suddenly and usually unexpectedly find a woman no longer attractive?

  He had enjoyed parading Liane in front of his friends. He had taken her to the gaming halls, to the Albany Rooms, to Mott’s and Vauxhall Gardens. It had seemed to him that she outshone every other woman in such places. She was gay, she was amusing, she had a joie de vivre and a vitality that galvanised everyone who spoke with her.

  “You are a damned lucky fellow,” Sir Henry Stainer had said to Lord Melburne and the envy in his friend’s voice had been most gratifying.

  He wondered now if Sir Henry would stoop to pick up his leavings. But if it were not Stainer, there would be more than a dozen others only too willing to vie for the favours of the Frenchwoman who had captivated the fancy of quite a number of the most fastidious and spoilt young bloods of the Beau Ton.

  ‘And yet I no longer want her,’ Lord Melburne thought.

  He stretched out his legs so that they rested across to the seat opposite.

  “To hell with it!” he said aloud. “To hell with all women!”

  He knew it was absurd that he should be feeling slightly guilty over the scene that had just taken place. He knew too that it was Liane and not he who was breaking the rules.

  The arrangement between a gentleman and his mistress was supposed to be entirely a commercial agreement. They enjoyed each other’s company, it was a woman’s job to be as fascinating as possible and to extort by every means she could think of the maximum amount of payment for her favours.

  But there was never supposed to be any question of love, heartthrobs or hurt feelings.

  And yet where Buck Melburne was concerned the rules always went by the board. He had been called ‘Buck’ since he was only a little boy. Even his relations had difficulty in remembering what were his real names.

  It was a nickname he acquired after he appeared for the first time in a suit of satin knee breeches and he managed even at the age of six to wear them with an air that brought the exclamation from one of his father’s friends,

  “Gad, he looks like a Buck already!”

  The name had stuck and there was no doubt that it was most appropriate. The Prince of Wales followed the fashions he set with his plain well-cut coats and exquisitely tied cravats, his dislike of ostentatious jewellery or anything that pertained to the Dandy Set.

  And the name was appropriate for other reasons as there was no one in the whole country who could tool a coach or a phaeton so skilfully and he had a far better seat than any of his contemporaries when he rode to hounds. He could shoot more accurately and box with an almost professional skill.

  Buck Melburne was the most sought after, the most envied and the most irresistible man in London.

  It was, however, with the lines of cynicism engraved deep on his face and his mouth set in a hard line that his Lordship stepped out of his carriage in Berkeley Square and entered the hall of his London house.

  He handed his hat and cane to the butler.

  “I shall leave for Melburne at half after nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Smithson,” he said. “Order my high perch phaeton and tell Hawkins to go ahead of me in the luggage cart. The fast one, not that Noah’s Ark he tried to use the last time I went to the country.”

  “Very good, my Lord,” the butler replied, “There is a note here for your Lordship.”

  “A note?” Lord Melburne queried, taking the envelope from the silver salver that was held out to him.

  Even before he touched it, he knew who it was from. He was scowling as he walked down the hall towards the library where he habitually sat when he was alone.

  A footman hurried to open the door for him and he passed into the long book-lined salon which, with its lapis-lazuli pillars and carved gilt cornices, was one of the most beautiful rooms in London.

  “Wine, my Lord?” the footman asked.

  “I will help myself,” Lord Melburne replied.

  As the door closed behind the footman, he stood for a moment staring at the note in his hand before he opened it.

  He knew only too well who it was from, and he wondered whether this was, in fact, the answer and the solution to the problems that had beset him in the carriage.

  Should he get married? Would that state prove more pleasant and at least quieter than the continual lamentations of droxies?

  Slowly, it seemed, almost reluctantly, he opened the letter.

  Lady Romayne Ramsey’s elegant, somewhat affected handwriting was characteristic and yet anyone who had a knowledge of such things would have sensed at once that there was also determination in the fine strokes of her pen.

  The note was short.

  “My dear Unpredictable Cousin,

  I had anticipated that you would call on me this evening, but I was disappointed. I have many things concerning which I desire to speak with you. Come tomorrow at 5 o’clock when we can be alone.

  Yours Romayne.”

  There was nothing particular in the note to annoy his Lordship, yet suddenly he crumpled it in his hands into a tight ball and threw it into the flames of the fire.

  He knew in that moment exactly what Romayne Ramsey was after as he had known for a long time that she intended to marry him.

  A distant cousin of his, she had presumed on their slight relationship to include him in her intimate circle of friends long before he had made up his mind whether he wished it or not.

  And yet it would have been churlish not to be pleased. Lady Romayne was the toast of St. James’s, the most beautiful and the most acclaimed ‘Incomparable’ that the Carlton House Set had known for years.

  She had been married when she was but a child, married hastily because her parents had been afraid of her beauty. It was not their fault that Alexander Ramsey, a worthy country Squire, who was excessively wealthy, had broken his neck out hunting just before Romayne’s twenty-third birthday.

  Long before her mourning had conventionally ended, she had come to London, taken a house, found herself a complaisant chaperone and set St. James’s by the ears.

  She was lovely, she was vivacious, she was witty and she was rich. What more could any man want of a wife?

  And she had chosen Buck Melburne to be her husband.

  He was aware of this if no one else was. He was too experienced and too sophisticated in the ways of women not to realise how well planned were her little subterfuges of needing his advice, of asking his opinion, of relying on him as a relative to escort her to Royal functions and to sponsor her as she had no husband to do it for her.

  She wove her web about him like a diligent and crafty little spider, but, he told himself, he was not caught yet. It might indeed be the solution and it might be what he wanted, but he was not sure.

  Romayne would look magnificent in the Melburne jewels. She would grace his table and his house in the country with an elegance that was undeniable.

  He also realised that there was something dark and passionate in the depth of her eyes when they were alone, that when he kissed her hand goodnight, her breath came more quickly between her parted lips and the laces at her breasts were tumultuous.

  He had been so very near to surrendering to her enticement, to the unspoken invitation he saw in her eyes and the way that she would invariably ask him to see her into the darkness of her house when they had been at a party.

  There were candles lit in the open door of her bedroom and yet Buck Melburne, for all his reputation as an inveterate lady killer and for never refusing a beautiful woman’s favour, had not succumbed to Lady Romayne.

  The trap had been too obviously baited. He felt a repugnance against doing exactly what was expected of him, of partic
ipating in a campaign that had been planned down to the tiniest detail and of which he knew the inevitable end.

  ‘Damn it, I like to do my own hunting!’ he said to himself once as he had come from Lady Romayne’s house, well aware of the invitation offered and unexpectedly feeling a cad because he rejected it.

  Nothing was ever overtly said and yet they both knew that they faced each other just like duellists. She was taking the offensive, trying to gain an advantage to force him into a corner and he was fighting not for his life but for his freedom.

  The flames burned Lady Romayne’s letter to ashes and, as it crumpled into nothing, Lord Melburne said again aloud,

  “Be damned to all women! A man would be well rid of the lot of them!”

  *

  When he set off the next morning, tooling his high perch phaeton, the sunshine glittering on the silver bridles of his perfectly matched horseflesh, he was in a surprisingly good mood.

  It was a relief, he thought, to be getting out of London. Inevitably one stayed up too late, drank too much and talked a lot of nonsense. Even the duel of wits across the card tables at White’s Club or the glittering elegance of the Receptions at Carlton House, lost their interest if one had too much of them.

  It was pleasant to know that he was driving the most expensive and the best-bred horses that could be found in anyone’s stable, that his new high perch phaeton was lighter and better sprung than the one built for the Prince of Wales.

  And he was going to see Melburne again.

  There was something about his home that had always delighted him and, while he did not visit it as often as he might wish, it was always a satisfaction to him to know that it was there.

  The great house, which had been rebuilt almost entirely by his father to the design of the Adam brothers, stood on the site of older and less spectacular mansions, which had housed generations of Melburnes since the time of the Norman conquest.

  As a child, he had loved the gardens, the shrubberies, the lakes, the forest and the great broad acres stretching away over the countryside towards the blue of the Chiltern Hills.

  Melburne! Yes, this was the time of year to see Melburne, when the miracle of spring would transform the gardens into a Fairyland of blossom and fragrance.