The Temptation of Torilla Read online

  “You love every moment of it, Mama!” Beryl retorted. “You know quite well that, if Torilla or I tried to interfere, we should soon be put outside the front door.”

  She laughed and added,

  “Arrange everything your own way and don’t forget you have to twist the Prince Regent around your little finger.”

  “I can do that when it comes to ceremonial occasions,” the Countess said smugly. “His Royal Highness always says he likes my quite professional powers of organisation – which is more than can be said for that fatuous Lady Hertford.”

  “He loves her, Mama.”

  “God knows why,” the Countess muttered.

  She flounced out of the room and Beryl laughed as she said to Torilla,

  “Poor Mama! She set her cap at the Prince Regent at one time, but she was a little too young for him and much too thin. He likes fat, maternal, elderly women, and Mama did not qualify!”

  When she saw the Prince Regent and met him the following night, Torilla could not imagine at first why anyone was interested in him as a man.

  But she found when he talked to her that he had an aura of irresistible charm that made one forget that he was enormously fat, almost gross-looking, or that his face was heavily powdered and his stays creaked when he sat down.

  “You are very pretty, my child,” he said to Torilla, “and like your cousin you will soon have the Beaux buzzing round you like bees round a honeypot.”

  “I am afraid I can never compete with Beryl, Sire,” Torilla smiled.

  “A very captivating young woman who has proved it by capturing the most captivating bachelor in captivity,” the Prince said.

  He liked the play on words and Torilla heard him repeating the sentence several times during the evening.

  Everyone was asking where the Marquis was, in fact his name seemed to be on everybody’s lips, and more than once Torilla heard in the crush at Carlton House remarks which made her apprehensive.

  “The ‘incomparable’ does not know what she is taking on where Gallen is concerned!” one Beau with his back to Torilla announced.

  “Gallen would need a regiment of ‘incomparables’ to keep him in order,” a woman replied.

  There was loud laughter before someone said,

  “Can you imagine Havingham shackled in Holy Matrimony? Though I imagine it will not be in the least holy!”

  “Not if he has anything to do with it,” someone else quipped.

  So Torilla moved out of hearing.

  It hurt her to hear such things and she told herself that she was concerned only for Beryl.

  She could not help remembering how the Marquis had saved her from the odious attentions of Sir Jocelyn or how kind he had been in looking after her until the last few minutes of their dinner together.

  Even then he had done nothing to hurt or shock her.

  She would not have been honest if she did not admit that she had been a willing accomplice to his sin, if that is what their kiss had been.

  She had the inescapable feeling that, had she struggled or shown that she wished to be free of him, he would have let her go.

  Instead she had surrendered herself completely and utterly to his lips and to the ecstasy that she knew, if he married a thousand times, she would still be unable to forget.

  When it was time to leave Carlton House, the Countess said,

  “There is no sign of Beryl.”

  “I will find her, Aunt Louise,” Torilla offered.

  “She knew we arranged to leave at two o’clock,” the Countess complained irritably. “It is just like Beryl to disappear when she is wanted. Look in the garden, Torilla – she is doubtless with some ardent swain and has forgotten the time.”

  With a little difficulty, because Carlton House was large and complex to anyone who had never been there before, Torilla found her way through an open window onto the terrace, which overlooked the garden.

  She stood against the stone balustrade searching in the shadows under the trees that were lit with Chinese lanterns for Beryl’s turquoise blue gown.

  It was impossible to distinguish her among the many women perambulating about on the arm of some splendidly decorated gentleman.

  ‘I shall have to go and look for her properly,’ Torilla thought.

  She walked along the terrace and found a flight of stone steps leading into the garden.

  She went down them, looking to right and left, but there was no sign of her cousin.

  Then, just as she was about to turn back, thinking that perhaps Beryl would be at her mother’s side by this time, she found what she sought.

  At the very furthest end of the garden on the other side of a twisting artificial stream arranged with fairy lights there was a patch of turquoise.

  Torilla could not see very clearly, but there was no doubt it was Beryl and she was clasped passionately in the arms of a tall man.

  Torilla stood indecisive, wondering what to do.

  It was quite impossible to think of interrupting them, but at the same time the Countess was waiting.

  She stood looking at Beryl and now that her eyes were more accustomed to the darkness, she could see that because the man who was kissing her was so tall her cousin was standing on tiptoe.

  Torilla had never before seen two people kissing each other passionately in an embrace that vaguely she realised had been symbolic of love between a man and a woman all down the ages.

  There was a strange, emotional beauty about it and the mere fact that they were so close and oblivious of everything except each other made her feel a little strange.

  It was what she had felt, she thought, when the Marquis had kissed her.

  She could not help wondering if Beryl was feeling as she had done, as if she was being lifted off the ground out of the world into a place that was part of the Divine.

  The man holding Beryl so closely raised his head and now Torilla heard him say hoarsely,

  “I love you! God in Heaven – how I love you! I cannot live without you!”

  “I am afraid you will have to,” Beryl answered him, “for I intend to marry Gallen.”

  “How can you be so cruel? How can you torture me in such a manner? I swear I will kill myself!”

  “And what good would that do?” Beryl enquired. “I shall not be able to join you in hell, if that is where suicides go, for at least another forty or fifty years!”

  “Oh, Beryl! Beryl!” the man cried.

  “Why do we not enjoy the world while we are both in it?” Beryl asked softly.

  She raised herself once again on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.

  “I will see you tomorrow at the Duchess of Richmond’s. I must go now or Mama will be furious!”

  “Stay. Don’t leave me. I cannot bear it!”

  He put out his arms to stop Beryl, but she was already moving away from him.

  “Until tomorrow night, Charles!”

  The man she had left groaned, but made no attempt to follow her and Beryl moved to the right to cross the stream by a small bridge, which Torilla had hitherto not noticed.

  It was only then that she moved forward saying,

  “Beryl, there you are! Aunt Louise told me to come and look for you. It is time to leave.”

  “I thought Mama would be fussing,” Beryl answered. “Have you enjoyed yourself?”

  “Tremendously!” Torilla replied. “I hope you did.”

  They walked nearer the lights of the house, and now Torilla looked at her cousin, wondering if she would show any of the emotions on her beautiful face through which they must have passed.

  Beryl looked exactly as usual except that there was a smile on her lips, which somehow looked as if they had been recently kissed.

  “Actually,” Beryl said, “there were only a few moments when I did not find the whole evening a dead bore!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The ball at Lady Melchester’s was even more fantastic and extravagant than the other parties at which Torilla had been presen
t since she arrived in London.

  The Countess had however protested against Beryl and Torilla attending it.

  “I cannot bear that Melchester woman!” she groaned disparagingly. “She is fast and her love affairs are a scandal. I cannot imagine why you should wish to accept her over-pressing invitations.”

  “She gives good parties, Mama, and all my friends will be there,” Beryl replied simply, shrugging her beautifully rounded shoulders.

  “She has nothing but money to recommend her,” the Countess snapped, “but of course, I know that most of your friends care for little else.”

  Beryl laughed good-humouredly.

  “That is because it is something that most of them lack.”

  She gave a little self-satisfied sigh.

  “One comforting thought is that no one can say that about Gallen.”

  “No, indeed,” the Countess agreed, her voice softening, “and I am sure, Beryl, if you play your cards right, he will prove a very generous husband.”

  “I will make sure of that!”

  Torilla put down the book she was reading and, rising from the sofa in the drawing room, she walked to the window.

  She found it not only embarrassing but also hurtful to listen to Beryl and her mother talking in such a manner about the Marquis.

  She had thought many hard things about him herself, but it was different in the case of Beryl, who had no grounds for criticising him, or the Countess, who was quite obviously jubilant at the idea of such an advantageous marriage.

  It suddenly struck her that the reason why he looked cynical was that the women he knew talked in such a hard and calculating manner and he was well aware of it.

  Where she was concerned he was more perceptive and more intuitive than she had imagined any man could be. If he knew what she was thinking, surely he must be well aware also of Beryl’s thoughts?

  More and more as she saw them together she found herself praying that if her cousin was to marry the Marquis as she intended she would grow to love him.

  ‘How can Beryl contemplate,’ Torilla asked herself, ‘the sort of marriage that exists between her father and mother?’

  The Countess never missed an opportunity of criticising the Earl and a day never passed without her saying something cutting and unkind, which revealed all too clearly her feelings towards him.

  Torilla wondered if Beryl would become the same sort of woman and she had a feeling she would.

  Marriage, however rich the bridegroom might be, however luxurious their surroundings, could be nothing but a farce if the two people concerned in it did not love each other.

  She could remember the tenderness in her mother’s voice when she spoke to her father and could recall the look of adoration in the Vicar’s eyes when her mother rose every time he returned home to kiss him.

  Torilla could not imagine Beryl worrying over the Marquis, seeking in every way to make him happy and sacrificing her own desires and interests for his.

  Because she loved Beryl very deeply and sincerely, Torilla found herself growing more and more unhappy as their first week in London passed.

  She was well aware that Beryl met Lord Newall at every party and they always disappeared into the garden or to some part of the house where they would be alone.

  Beryl had introduced him to her and Torilla found that Lord Newall was a good-looking man with dark passionate eyes that seldom left Beryl’s face.

  There was an intensity about him that she could understand Beryl finding attractive, and yet because she knew her cousin so well she was well aware that whilst Lord Newall amused Beryl she was not really in love with him.

  “Would you like to marry His Lordship?” Torilla had asked her one evening when they returned home after Beryl had disappeared for longer than usual in the garden of Bedford House.

  “I am sure Charles would be a very ardent lover,” Beryl replied, “but he has no money and there is an old adage that ‘when poverty comes in the door, love flies out of the window’.”

  “Does money matter so very much when one is in love?” Torilla asked in a low voice.

  “Of course it does!”

  Then after a moment’s pause Beryl said in a different tone,

  “Though I suppose if one was really, completely, overwhelmingly in love, one would forget everything else.”

  “That is what we used to say we both wanted,” Torilla said softly.

  “When we were young and knew nothing about men, we were absurdly romantic,” Beryl retorted.

  She sat down at her dressing table as she spoke, and as if she deliberately changed the subject she said,

  “I think I shall ask Gallen to give me sapphires as a wedding present. Sapphires are very becoming to fair haired women.”

  “We were talking about Lord Newall,” Torilla reminded gently.

  “I know,” Beryl answered, “but we have really exhausted everything there is to say about him. His kisses are entrancing, but he has little else to recommend him.”

  Torilla gave a little cry.

  “Don’t talk like that, Beryl,” she begged. “It is hard and horrid and so unlike you used to be.”

  “Sometimes I feel hard and horrid,” Beryl answered, “and I feel that life has paid me a shabby trick.”

  Torilla was surprised.

  “How – what do you mean?”

  “I’m talking nonsense,” Beryl replied quickly, “I am tired. Go to bed, Torilla. There is another party tomorrow night and the night after that, and I want you to look your best.”

  Torilla knew their conversation was over, but, when she went to her own room, she lay for a long time thinking about Beryl and praying for her.

  She certainly did not look, at the Melchester Ball, as if life had brought her anything but gaiety and beauty that made her outshine every other woman present.

  With her gown embroidered with diamante, with real diamonds round her neck and in her hair, Beryl glittered like a Fairy Queen. She was besieged by men wishing to dance with her, while Lord Newall, looking dark and Byronic, glowered ferociously.

  It seemed quite obvious that Beryl was enjoying herself and Torilla found that she too was having a success.

  In another of the beautiful gowns that Beryl had given her she did not feel insignificant among the elegant ladies glittering with jewels and eyeing each other with feline spitefulness.

  Just occasionally Torilla found herself thinking that just a few of the diamonds they wore round their long necks or which hung from their ears like small chandeliers would keep a dozen miners’ families in comfort for at least a year.

  Then she remembered Abby’s admonitions and forced herself to forget Barrowfield and to listen to the charming words that were being said to her by every man with whom she danced.

  It was very hot in the ballroom and Torilla allowed herself to be persuaded to seek the coolness of the air in the large garden that surrounded the whole house.

  If the Prince had made the gardens of Carlton House into a romantic bower, Lady Melchester had tried to out-do him. There were not only artificial streams with lights turning the water to different colours, there was a fountain which sprayed perfume instead of water and which was illuminated to look like a spray of liquid gold.

  There was artificial fruit hanging from some of the trees that when picked proved to be packets of bonbons or small amusing trinkets.

  “It is all very imaginative,” Torilla commented to her partner.

  “And all very expensive,” he laughed. “Let’s hope His Royal Highness being out-rivalled does not try to surpass such originality. He might decide to give all his guests expensive pictures or pieces of classical sculpture.”

  “It would be a lovely idea,” Torilla laughed.

  “Until the bills came in – which of course would never be paid.”

  They both laughed again, then, as they reached a seat that was unoccupied, the gentleman with whom she had been dancing, asked

  “Shall I get you a glass of champ
agne? I must admit to feeling very thirsty myself.”

  “A glass of lemonade would be delightful,” Torilla replied, “and I will wait here until you return.”

  “That is a promise. Don’t let anyone steal you away or I shall be obliged to threaten him with pistols at dawn!”

  Torilla laughed as he hurried away.

  He was rather an amusing man whom she had danced with at various parties, and although he paid her plenty of compliments he did not actually flirt with her, which she found a relief.

  She was surprised to find that quite a number of men professed themselves to be in love with her – and one or two she thought were actually sincere.

  For some reason, however, the moment their compliments became anything more than a polished and conventional exchange of words, she found herself shrinking inside and making every effort later to avoid them.

  She supposed it was shyness and yet at the same time she was aware that what she shrank from was love, although she knew that Beryl would laugh at her for being foolish.

  Several of the men who proposed marriage were, she imagined, extremely eligible, and she should in fact have been very grateful that they should even consider her as a wife.

  But she knew, almost as soon as a certain look appeared in their eyes, that she could never in any circumstances consider them as a husband.

  She did not know why she was so certain, but the conviction was there and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I thought Lord Arkley seemed very attentive to you tonight,” the Countess had said the previous evening as they were driving home.

  Torilla looked embarrassed, but the Countess had gone on,

  “He may be a little old for you, but it would be a good marriage. He was married when he was very young, but his wife died two years later and there were no children.”

  She considered for a moment, then she added,

  “Yes, I think Arkley would do you well. I shall ask him to dinner before the Dorchester’s Ball and try to find out if his intentions are serious.”

  “No – please, Aunt Louise, please – please do nothing of the sort,” Torilla begged. “Even if – Lord Arkley asked me to – marry him I would not – accept him.”