Love Climbs In Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The descriptions in this novel of the tortures of the climbing boys is all historically factual.

  There was an actual case of a tiny boy of four years old who crashed down the chimney of a house in Yorkshire belonging to a family called Strickland. They found that he was obviously well-bred and he recognised a silver fork, saying, “Papa has forks like this.”

  The Stricklands learnt that the boy had been stolen by a gypsy who tempted him from the garden he was playing in to see a horse. He told them that his mother was dead and his father was travelling abroad, but he was staying with his Uncle George.

  He had been bought from the gypsy by a Master sweep for eight guineas.

  Advertisements brought no reply, but the boy was eventually adopted by a lady who brought him up and educated him.

  The Bill for the Abolition of Climbing Boys was accepted by the House of Commons in 1819, but thrown out by the House of Lords. It was not until 1875 that the country saw the last of the climbing boys. A chimney sweeper’s trade card can be seen in the British Museum.

  The horrors of St. Giles persisted until 1847 when a new road was cut through it to be called New Oxford Street. The hovels, tenements and stinking alleys were razed to the ground and the rats dispersed to a thousand different holes.

  CHAPTER ONE ~ 1817

  “Captain Weyborne, my Lord.”

  The servant’s voice rang out across the large library with its richly bound books stretching from floor to ceiling.

  It was a very elegant room designed by the famous Adam with superb furniture which would make any connoisseur’s eyes glint.

  At the far end of it the owner was lying back in a chair with one leg over the arm, a glass of champagne in his hand.

  “Here you are, Freddie,” he exclaimed as the newcomer entered, “and about time!”

  “I came as soon as I received your message,” Freddie Weyborne replied as he advanced over the Persian carpets towards his host. “What is the hurry?”

  “Only that I wanted to talk to you before the rest of my guests arrive here.”

  Captain Weyborne accepted a glass of champagne offered to him on a silver salver by a footman resplendent in the Troon livery and wearing a powdered wig.

  It was typical of the Marquis that he lived in the style which befitted his ancient title, even though his personal behaviour caused a number of his fellow Peers to raise their eyebrows.

  “I cannot imagine what you want to talk to me about,” Freddie Weyborne commented as the servants withdrew, “that you could not have said the day before yesterday when I dined with you in London.”

  “Since then I have made a monumental decision,” the Marquis replied.

  He was extremely handsome. In fact his looks had made him the most admired man in London since Lord Byron had left the country.

  But there was a hardness and a certain cynicism about his expression which belied the claims of those who claimed that he was the equal of a Greek God.

  He was also perilously near to being described as a rake and there was certainly a raffish, buccaneer expression in his eyes that women found irresistible, although his elders regarded it with some suspicion.

  His friend, Captain Weyborne, on the other hand was a typical type of English soldier, athletic and fresh-looking, with a ready smile and a good humour which ensured that he had more friends than he could count.

  The two men had been inseparable ever since they had been at Eton together and had continued their education at Oxford University. In that seat of learning they spent most of their time hunting, drinking and playing outrageous pranks on the other undergraduates.

  They had both served with distinction in the Duke of Wellington’s Army but, while Captain Weyborne had remained in the Life Guards, the Marquis on his father’s death had ‘bought himself out’.

  It had certainly given him more time to pursue not only the fashionable beauties of London Society, but also the ‘Fashionable Impures’.

  There was seldom a week when his escapades were not delighting the members of his Clubs, but causing a frown between the eyes of mothers with eligible daughters who thought that the position of Marchioness of Troon would become their offspring.

  “Well, what plot are you hatching now in that over-fertile brain of yours?” Freddie Weyborne asked with a smile.

  “That is just what I was about to tell you,” the Marquis replied, “but first things first. I have decided to get married!”

  “Married?”

  If he had intended to surprise his friend, he had certainly succeeded and for a moment Freddie Weyborne’s mouth dropped open from sheer astonishment.

  When he could catch his breath, he asked fervently,

  “Why, in God’s name? Why?”

  “Lionel has become an ardent Radical and has announced that as soon as he inherits he intends to burn down this house and make the estate into common land for anyone who wishes to use it.”

  “That cannot be true!” Freddie Weyborne gasped.

  “I have heard it from three different sources,” the Marquis replied, “and frankly it does not surprise me.”

  Freddie Weyborne was well aware that the Marquis’s younger brother Lionel, Lord Stevington, had been a bone of contention for many years.

  Every family in England with a second son knew how they resented the privileges that were accorded to the eldest, but few of them were as aggressive about it as Lionel.

  Freddie had often thought that it was impossible to imagine two brothers who were more dissimilar both in character and outlook.

  Lionel had a fanatical hatred of his brother and everything he stood for. He refused to use his own title and was an extreme Radical in his politics.

  But it was one thing to fight against the pricks of being merely the heir presumptive to his brother and another to threaten to destroy what was one of the most outstandingly magnificent houses in Great Britain and which contained endless treasures that were irreplaceable.

  The Troon pictures were not only the envy of every Art Gallery and Museum, but also of the Prince Regent, who had exclaimed pettishly on several occasions to the Marquis,

  “However hard I try to emulate your collection, Troon, I doubt if I shall ever equal it, even if I live to be a thousand!”

  “Lionel must be only bragging,” Freddie said. “He could not seriously mean to destroy anything as unique as this house.”

  “I would not put it past him to set fire to it and hope that I am burnt in the conflagration,” the Marquis remarked laconically.

  There was nothing bitter or even angry in his voice, he was simply stating a fact.

  “So you intend to beget yourself an heir,” Freddie commented dryly. “Let’s hope that Lionel does not kidnap him or do away with your wife before he is actually in existence.”

  “I intend to keep an eye on Lionel’s activities,” the Marquis said. “At the same time I suppose it is time I settled down. It is what my mother has been begging me to do ever since I came of age.”

  “I think the Dowager is right and it is time that you took life more seriously,” Freddie said with a twinkle in his eye. “After all no one could have sown a finer crop of wild oats than you have!”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “If I die by Lionel’s hand, it is perhaps the only epitaph that will be laid on my tomb.”

  “We can always add it to the medals you won for gallantry in France.”

  Freddie was joking, but for the moment the Marquis did not reply in the same vein.

  “You know, Freddie,” he said after a moment, “what I miss is the danger and excitement of war.”

  “It was often hellishly uncomfortable while it was taking place,” Freddie replied. “I cannot forget how hungry we were that time when the food wagons did not arrive and we marched for two days and nights on empty stomachs.”

  “All the same,” the Marquis added, “we were doing something worthwhile. We were fighting the enemy and trying to outwit him. We were using both our bodies and our brains to the very best of our ability.”

  A sudden thought came to Freddie’s mind.

  He was not as quick-witted as his friend, but, although he was slower, he eventually did reach the right conclusion.

  “Is it because you miss war and all its dangers,” he asked, “that you have set yourself out to behave so outrageously since it ended?”

  “I suppose so,” the Marquis replied. “All I know is that I find peace damned dull and unless I can galvanise people into doing something amusing, I find myself yawning my head off.”

  “I have never heard such nonsense,” Freddie exclaimed. “Here you are, rolling in money, with horses any man would envy and looks which make every Incomparable fall into your arms like an overripe peach and you find life dull? You are disgustingly ungrateful, that’s what you are!”

  “I am quite prepared to agree with you,” the Marquis responded, “but the fact remains that I am bored.”

  “Do you think that marriage will relieve your boredom?”

  “I think it might even make it worse,” the Marquis answered, “but it is the only thing I have not tried so far.”

  “And who is to be your partner in this desperate experiment?” Freddie asked sarcastically.

  “Dilys. Who else?”

  Again for a moment Freddie seemed to be struck dumb.

  “Dilys?” he managed to expostulate after some seconds had passed.

  “Why not?” the Marquis asked aggressively. “She is up to snuff and e
very bit of mischief I suggest to her. Besides which she makes me laugh.”

  There was a poignant silence and after a while the Marquis enquired,

  “Well? Have you nothing to say?”

  “Not that you would want to hear,” his friend answered.

  “Now look, Freddie, we have always been frank with each other, you and I, and we have been in some damned tough corners one way or another. If you have any objections to Dilys as my wife, you had better say so now.”

  Again Freddie did not reply and after a moment the Marquis went on.

  “If there is one thing that really makes me angry it is when you have that reserved shut-in look on your face as if you could not trust yourself to speak. All right then let me know the worst. You have never approved of Dilys. You have made that pretty obvious.”

  “That is not true,” he friend said. “I do not disapprove of her as your mistress, but a wife is a very different kettle of fish.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, come on, Serle, you know as well as I do what I am trying to say. Dilys has made herself the talk of St. James’s, but that is her business and not mine. But can you really see her taking your mother’s place here at Troon? Or standing at the top of the stairs at Stevington House?”

  Now it was the Marquis’s turn not to answer for Freddie had conjured up a picture in his mind which had often haunted him when they had been bivouacking on some barren mountainside in Portugal or riding in the pouring rain over some windswept plain.

  He must have been only six or seven when his Nanny had let him peep through the banisters on the second floor of Stevington House to see his father and mother receiving a long line of guests on the floor below.

  Standing at the top of the huge double staircase, the Marchioness, blazing with diamonds, which were almost like a crown on her fair head, had looked to her small son like a Princess who had stepped straight out of a Fairytale.

  His father, resplendent in the evening clothes of a Privy Councillor with the Blue Ribbon of the Order of the Garter across his chest and his coat covered in decorations, had been almost as impressive.

  His parents had stood for him at that moment for everything that was grand and at the same time stable in his life.

  It was many years later, when he had watched the same picture enacted over and over again, that he had thought to himself that one day he would stand in the same place and receive everyone in the land who was influential or distinguished enough to enjoy his hospitality.

  Yet when his father had died it had not seemed practical for him to hold huge Receptions at Stevington House and he had gradually been drawn into the raffish carefree set of young bucks and almost, without really meaning to, had become their ringleader.

  After following his train of thought for some minutes, he said aloud,

  “That sort of life is not for me.”

  “Why not? Is it not inevitable that you should sometime take up the same positions in the County and in the House of Lords that your father filled so admirably?”

  “Good God, what do I know about politics?” the Marquis enquired.

  “You cannot go on being the enfant terrible forever.”

  It was then the Marquis’s turn to look astonished.

  “Really, Freddie, this is a case of et tu, Brute? I never expected you to preach propriety. What has come over you?”

  “Old age!” Freddie replied, “And that is the truth, Serle, even if you don’t wish to believe it. I am getting too old to drink myself stupid every night and go on Parade feeling as if I had been hit on the head by a cannonball.”

  “I know the feeling,” the Marquis remarked with a twist of his lips. “Perhaps that is why I intend to be married.”

  “An admirable resolve,” Freddie muttered. “But not where Dilys is concerned.”

  “Ah! Now we are coming to the point,” the Marquis exclaimed. “Just tell me in words of not more than two syllables why Dilys will not make me the sort of wife I shall be able to tolerate.”

  “I have just driven here from London,” Freddie replied, “and quite frankly, Serle, I don’t feel like coming to fisticuffs with you. Besides you always beat me.”

  “I am not going to hit you, you fool,” the Marquis replied. “I would just like to hear the truth.”

  “All right then, if you want the truth,” Freddie declared, “I cannot imagine a worse fate than being married to a woman who is always looking over one’s shoulder to see if someone more to her liking has just entered the room.”

  He looked defiantly at his friend as he spoke and saw the faint smile on the Marquis’s lips.

  “All right I know exactly what you are thinking, that there would not be anyone more attractive than yourself. That may be true at the moment, but what about as you grow older? What if you are ill? Do you think Dilys would sit sewing, or whatever damned thing women do, by your bedside?”

  Freddie spoke with a sincerity that was unmistakable and now the Marquis walked a little restlessly up and down the carpet.

  “If it is not to be Dilys,” he then asked, “who else is there?”

  “A thousand women, all far more suitable for the position than she is!”

  The Marquis went on walking and both men were thinking of the woman who they were talking about.

  Lady Dilys Powick had startled London from the moment that she became a debutante.

  The daughter of the Duke of Bredon, she had the entrée to every stately home and an invitation to every ball and Reception that took place in the Beau Monde.

  Six months after leaving the schoolroom she ran away with a penniless young man in a Foot Regiment and married him secretly.

  She followed him to Portugal when his Regiment was sent there and behaved so outrageously amongst the camp followers that she was sent home in disgrace.

  A few months later her husband was killed in action, but she hardly bothered to give him a thought and certainly made no pretence at mourning.

  She was in point of fact far too busy setting London by the ears.

  Her behaviour caused her to be ostracised by all the leading hostesses, but because she was beautiful, outrageous and undoubtedly amusing, her house was invariably almost under siege from her numerous admirers.

  She picked and chose her lovers in a manner that made those she refused all the more determined to enjoy her favours.

  But the Marquis of Troon had been persona grata from the moment he appeared on Dilys’s horizon and for the last six months they had been inseparable.

  She had not only taken part in all his pranks, but had in many cases instigated them and what she had said and done had lost nothing in the telling either in the St. James’s Clubs or in the boudoirs of those who hated her.

  To the Marquis she had been a kindred spirit, which he told himself was everything he required.

  There was nothing too daring for Dilys to undertake, there was no challenge that she refused and her lovemaking was as satisfying and fiery as any man could ever desire.

  As the Marquis continued pacing the carpet, Freddie rose to help himself to another glass of champagne from the bottle that had been left in a large silver wine-cooler on a side table.

  “There is another thing you have forgotten, Serle,” he then said. “You may think I am old-fashioned, but I think it is essential to marriage.”

  “What is that?”

  “You are obviously not in love with Dilys.”

  “Not in love? Then what the hell do you think I feel for her?”

  “Quite a number of things that I need not enumerate,” Freddie replied, walking back to the fireplace with the full glass in his hand. “But none of them are love.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have seen you through too many love affairs for me to number, all of which amused, fascinated and even captivated you for a time, but they were none of them love, as I think of it.”

  “Then what is love ‘as you think of it’?” the Marquis repeated in a sarcastic voice.

  “It is what my father and mother felt for each other and what I would like to feel myself before I settle down.”

  “You will have to be a little more explicit than that,” the Marquis stated. “I knew your father and mother and they were always very kind to me, but I never thought that there was anything particular about their relationship with each other.”

  “It is not the sort of thing they talked about in public,” Freddie said in a slightly embarrassed voice. “But when my father died, my mother said to me, ‘Freddie, dear, I have nothing to live for now and all I want to do is to join your father.’ She followed him four days later.”