A Hazard of Hearts Read online

  “Yes – I will – I promise you I will,” she said quickly and she pulled her shawl a little tighter round her shoulders as if to protect herself from his scrutiny.

  There was a faint smile on his lips as he noted the disordered curls and windswept ribbons.

  “You have been for a walk with your dog?”

  “Yes, my Lord. Torqo always wants to be out.”

  “And you?”

  “You know that I love the country.”

  “You have not yet told me,” Lord Vulcan went on, “what you think of my home. I remember remarking that it was a very beautiful place and you did not believe me.”

  Serena looked at him quickly. It was surprising that he should remember their conversation at Staverley and still more surprising that he should have known her reactions when he had compared the beauties of Staverley with those of Mandrake.

  As if he noticed her surprise, Lord Vulcan said,

  “Come with me, I would like to show you something.”

  He walked down the passage, opened a door at the end and invited her to precede him into a room. Serena obeyed him wonderingly. The room itself was small and it had the air of seldom being used. The walls were panelled, and instead of pictures there were maps hanging on the walls. There was a long table down the centre of the room and on this, under glass cases, were several clay models.

  Lord Vulcan went up to one of them and pointed to it with his finger.

  “This,” he said, “is a reconstruction of Mandrake as it was originally, a Norman Castle built as a fortification, and this,” pointing to another, “is the Castle as it was four centuries later. I had them done some years ago. You will admit that they are interesting?”

  Serena gazed at the models with excitement. They were very cleverly executed and like exquisite toys. It was fascinating to see how the great house had grown from its first gaunt and stolid outline. Her bonnet cast a shadow on the case and she pulled it from her head, forgetting the unruliness of her hair.

  Then she bent over the largest model of them all, which showed Mandrake as it was today.

  “There are the gardens where I walked only a few minutes ago,” she exclaimed. “Look how cleverly they are fashioned and there is the little gate that opens onto the downs. Oh, now I can see the formation of the cliffs. I often wondered what they would look like from the sea.”

  “You admit it is beautiful?” Lord Vulcan asked, as if he wished to force her actually to say the words.

  “But, of course, it is. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life.”

  “I like to hear you say that.”

  “Naturally, I still love Staverley best,” Serena said almost defiantly, as though she felt that she had somehow been disloyal to her own home. “But one can hardly compare the two. It is like asking someone which they think the more beautiful – a primrose or an orchid. Surely each has its own beauty and one may admire them both, although one may prefer the primrose.”

  “As you would prefer to live at Staverley?” Lord Vulcan said.

  “But of course.”

  “You are unhappy here?” He asked the question sharply.

  “Unhappy?” Serena echoed the word. “Not – exactly. It is all very strange, of course, and I am very shy of your many guests.”

  “They are not my guests,” Lord Vulcan remarked.

  “But your mother invited them,” Serena corrected him, without thinking that she was contradicting him, “and, as it is your house, they are your guests, my Lord. I try to be polite to them. But often I think how nice it would be if the rooms were empty and one could enjoy quietly the beautiful things they contain, if one could hear the music without the tattling of hundreds of voices and if one could eat and drink without having to make polite conversation.”

  Serena spoke with an almost passionate sincerity and Lord Vulcan laughed.

  “At least you are frank,” he said. “Do you recognise that many young women would be thrilled to be here and to have the chance of meeting so many people or should I say men?”

  “You may not believe me, my Lord,” Serena said, suddenly irritated with him, “any more than your mother would, but I don’t want to meet men. I like few enough of them.”

  “The explanation lying, of course, in your affection for your cousin, the worthy Nicholas.”

  “Naturally – I am very fond of Nicholas,” Serena said, her eyes widening at the tone of Lord Vulcan’s voice.

  “So I understand and yet you told me that you did not contemplate marrying him.”

  “I spoke truly, my Lord,” Serena said quietly. “I do not desire to marry my cousin any more than he desires to marry me. You know full well that he is in love with the Lady Isabel.”

  “And if he was not?” Lord Vulcan probed.

  “I would still not wish to marry him. I cannot understand why you should imagine that my heart is enamoured with someone I have known all my life. To be truthful, and I promised you once before that I would always tell you the truth, I am in love with no one.”

  “Most certainly not with the man you are betrothed to,” Lord Vulcan said ironically.

  It took Serena a second or two to remember that he was speaking of himself and then, before she could find an answer, Lord Vulcan said,

  “Shall I make you fall in love with me, Serena?”

  It was the first time that he had addressed her by her Christian name and his words and a sudden depth in his voice brought the crimson tide of colour flooding into her cheeks.

  She looked up at him in astonishment and was suddenly aware that her knees felt very weak.

  “No!” she cried. “No! No!”

  “So vehement?” he asked and she fancied that there was a new expression behind the steely grey of his eyes. Was it cruelty or something else? “Are you afraid of love or merely of me?”

  “Of both,” Serena replied and then wildly, because she felt a sudden sense of insecurity and almost of panic sweep over her, she caught up her bonnet.

  “I must go, my Lord – thank you for showing me these models – they are very interesting – but I must go.”

  She almost ran towards the door. As she reached it she turned back to see him standing in the light of the window. He was at ease and his habitual expression of cynical indifference masked his face.

  ‘Why am I afraid?’ she wondered and then before she could answer her own question, she fled upstairs and kept to her room for the rest of the afternoon.

  *

  It was late before Isabel returned from Dover and then she came hurrying to Serena’s bedchamber and began chattering vivaciously of their adventures, saying over and over again that it was absurd of Serena not to have accompanied them.

  “The smuggler was a most fascinating brute,” Isabel exclaimed. “An enormous man, with a nose that had been broken in a fight. I vow that I would have swooned at the sight of him if I had not held on to Nicholas.”

  “Fiddle!” Serena exclaimed. “You would not have done that because you might have missed what was happening.”

  “That is true enough,” Lady Isabel laughed. “How well you know me!”

  “Did he mind you all staring at him and asking questions?”

  “No, I think he gloried in it,” Isabel replied. “He seemed proud of what he had done. The Colonel asked him to show us some scars he had taken in a fight twelve months ago and he bared his arm with three knife wounds in it. La, Serena, it was a thrill such as I have never had before.”

  “I fail to understand why you want to see such horrible things,” Serena shuddered.

  “I have been born centuries too late, that is the answer,” Isabel replied. “I want to be captured and conquered. Men of the present day with their foppish airs and limp white hands bore me.”

  “They cannot all be so very limp,” Serena answered. “Eudora was telling me last night that Lord Vulcan’s valet had related to her how his Lordship wagered five hundred guineas that he would beat Tom Jackson in a mill. And won it.
”

  “Tom Jackson, the bruiser!” Isabel exclaimed, her eyes shining. “And Justin beat him?”

  “The valet said that it was a fearsome fight,” Serena said. “It took place in the country, of course, about seven miles North of London. There were not many there to see it.”

  “Oh, what I would have given to be present!” Isabel cried. “But I am not surprised that Justin won. He is so strong, Serena. Methinks he could be brutal too if it pleased him.”

  Serena shivered.

  “Don’t talk about Lord Vulcan. Tell me more about your smuggler.”

  Isabel chatted on gaily and Serena gathered she had not been too bemused to note the attractions of the Adjutant of the Dragoons.

  “One of the most handsome creatures you ever saw. I put Nicholas into a fit of the sullens by talking about him all the way home.”

  “Poor Nicholas!”

  “Yes, poor Nicholas!” Isabel mocked. “I promise you one thing, that never, never will I marry a man of whom people prefix the word ‘poor’ before his name. It invariably means that they are sorry for him and one should never be sorry for any man. One should respect, adore, worship or even hate him, but never, never pity him.”

  “I shall never say ‘poor Nicholas’ again,” Serena promised.

  “But still I won’t love him,” Isabel retorted, “although I grant you he is preferable to that beast, Harry Wrotham. He was so sneering and condescending this afternoon that I vow that I dislike him almost as much as you do.”

  “I am sorry you did not push him off the cliffs of Dover,” Serena said.

  “What a pity I did not think of it,” Isabel laughed. “He is a dead bore and I am glad to say that he was exceedingly put out when he learned that you were not coming with us. ‘I thought the sweet Serena would accompany us,’ he said to me. ‘She asked me, my Lord,’ I replied, ‘who was to be included, and when she heard their names she decided to stay at home.’ He looked as black as thunder and knew full well that you had refused because of him.”

  “I wish he would go away,” Serena sighed.

  “He has no intention of it, I am afraid,” Isabel answered.

  The clock over the mantelpiece struck the hour.

  “I must go and dress for dinner,” she added. “I have a new gown to wear tonight. It arrived by Post chaise yesterday and I warn you it will eclipse every dress in the room, even yours, Serena.”

  “I am sure it will,” Serena replied. “You always outshine us all anyway.”

  “Flatterer,” Isabel said. “I only wish I had your fair hair and untroubled beauty. I heard an old gentleman ask last night, ‘who is the angel?’ and to my chagrin he meant you.”

  “Who is being flattering now?” Serena enquired. “And just to pay you out I shall wear a new dress tonight. It is of white velvet and I swear you will think it is the loveliest material you have ever seen.”

  “If Justin looks longer at you than at me, I shall scratch your eyes out, so I warn you.”

  Isabel laughed as she spoke and Serena heard her singing as she went down the passage. It was unlikely that the Marquis would look at either of them with any particular interest, Serena thought and then remembering his strange words of the afternoon she felt that same sense of insecurity and embarrassment sweep over her.

  Why did he say, ‘shall I make you love me?’

  The sunlight had been on his face as he spoke and perhaps that had accounted for some quickening interest she had seemed to read in his expression, for the look in his grey eyes and the sudden firmness of his lips.

  How good-looking he was!

  She had always planned that one day when she fell in love it would be with somebody handsome and somebody she could admire. Lord Vulcan was handsome enough, but she did not love him and would never love him.

  She thought of Staverley, empty and far away, but somehow tonight her heart did not throb angrily at the memory as she had so often made it do before.

  Why had he said those strange words to her? But what was the point of wondering? The Marquis’s behaviour was beyond her comprehension.

  Impatiently Serena rose to her feet and walking to the door called for Eudora, who came hurrying to the room.

  “You will be late, Miss Serena, if you don’t start to dress soon. I thought that her Ladyship would never stop her tattlin’.”

  “She wanted to tell me about the smuggler they had seen at Dover.”

  “No need to go to Dover to see smugglers from all I hear,” Eudora snapped.

  But, when Serena asked her what she meant, she would say no more.

  It was a large dinner party as usual, but Serena, with Lord Gillingham on one side of her and a young Naval Officer on the other, found that she was enjoying herself. She liked Gilly, as Isabel called him and when he complimented her on her gown she was pleased, knowing that the admiration in his eyes was genuine enough.

  He as well could talk of little but the smuggler they had seen that afternoon.

  “A ghastly fellow,” he expostulated. “I am not surprised that the Excisemen were afraid of him.”

  “It is a real feather in their cap having caught him,” the Naval Officer remarked from the other side of Serena. “But he is only one of many. The gangs along this coast are getting so numerous that it is becoming a hopeless task to try to round them all up.”

  “Surely the Dragoons are a help?” Lord Gillingham asked him.

  The sailor shrugged his shoulders.

  “They are only a handful in comparison with what is required and the real trouble is that the Excise ships have been taken to reinforce the Navy. Besides the authorities in London have no idea what they are up against. This rule that no large boats are to be built in England is just making trade for the French. I am told that their shipbuilders are at work day and night on boats with thirty-six oars that can travel from anything to seven or nine miles an hour. What chance have our fellows against such speed?”

  “None, of course,” Lord Gillingham said. “But something will have to be done. They report that over twelve thousand guineas are being carried by the smugglers to the Continent every week and most of it goes into Napoleon’s pocket. We all know that his Spanish troops will take nothing but gold in payment.”

  “But what is the solution?” Serena asked.

  “If only we knew of one,” the Naval Officer sighed. “I would like to have a crack at the smugglers myself, but I am off to the Mediterranean next week.”

  “Well, here’s to good hunting and may you sink a French ship with every salvo,” Lord Gillingham said, raising his glass, and the sailor bowed his acknowledgement.

  There was dancing in the Long Gallery that night and Serena, partnered by Lord Gillingham and the Naval Officer who had sat next to her at dinner, found that the hours passed surprisingly quickly.

  It was late when Isabel came up to her and asked for the loan of a handkerchief.

  “I have lost mine,” she said, “or someone is wearing it next his heart!”

  Serena gave her a wisp of lawn and lace and then decided that she would fetch another for herself. She went upstairs and was astonished to see that the clock pointed to after three o’clock.

  ‘I should go to bed,’ she thought, ‘but I have promised the next dance and the one after and I would not wish to disappoint my partners.’

  The fire was still bright and feeling that the room was slightly airless she pulled back the curtains and opened the window. The moon was hidden behind clouds, but the stars were out and the night was not dark.

  As she pushed wide the casement, she heard a sound out to sea. She thought that it was a voice. Curious, she leaned out. She could not see clearly, but for a moment she had the impression that directly below her on the sea there was the outline of a boat.

  Then, as she looked again, it was gone and she felt that she must have been mistaken.

  ‘I am beginning to imagine smugglers,’ she said to herself with a smile and, picking up her handkerchief, she turned tow
ards the door.

  She came down again to the Great Hall and, as she reached the foot of the stairs, she saw to her surprise that a number of men were coming in through the main door.

  Even for Mandrake it was late for guests to be arriving, but then Serena perceived that they were by no means the usual elegantly dressed company who frequented the Marchioness’s parties.

  She recognised the uniform of the Dragoon Guards, while the other men were more roughly garbed and she guessed that they were Coastguards and Excisemen.

  A footman went hurrying across the marble floor to the gaming rooms, as if in search of someone. Serena followed him leisurely. The band in the Long Gallery was still playing the same tune as when she went upstairs and she knew that the next dance had not yet started.

  She made her way through the crowd who were standing around chattering and watching those who were gambling.

  Then she saw the footman speak to the Marquis at the far end of the room.

  Lord Vulcan continued for a moment to talk with those around him. Then he turned and walked slowly across the room.

  He made his way through the tables and came face to face with Serena moving in the opposite direction.

  The Marquis stood on one side to let Serena pass him and then, as she smiled up at him a little shyly, he suddenly bent down with an incredibly quick movement and pulled at the lace handkerchief she held lightly between her fingers so that it fluttered to the floor.

  Swiftly he picked it up as if he had retrieved it for her and handed it back to her.

  “Your handkerchief, I think,” he said with a courtly politeness and, as she took it, he added in a low voice so that only she could hear him, “Warn my mother that the Coastguards are here. Go to her through the door in the panelling.”

  Chapter Eight

  Harriet Vulcan staked a pile of gold guineas and lost it. A second pile went the same way. She looked across the table and caught the gleam of triumph in Lord Wrotham’s eyes.

  “The Devil take you, Harry,” she exclaimed, “for undoubtedly his luck is with you.”

  Lord Wrotham looked complacently at the big pile of winnings on the table beside him. He tidied them with his left hand, stacking the guineas one on top of the other.