The Blue Eyed Witch Read online

  They all started the same way, confident that where others of their sex had failed they would be successful.

  The mere fact that he looked at them was enough encouragement to make them believe that this time it would be ‘different’, this time he would fall in love.

  But invariably and disconcertingly quickly, they found they were mistaken.

  The Marquis was generous when it came to presents. His compliments were more polished and certainly more intelligent than those of any of his contemporaries and he had an exceptional expertise in ‘making love’, as every lady on whom he bestowed his favours was ready to declare without contradiction.

  But that was all!

  No one could storm the inner citadel of the Marquis’s heart.

  No one could be sure after a night of love that they had possessed anything except his body or that even his mind had found them as alluring as his lips had averred.

  “You are inhuman!” one lovely lady had told him. “Do you think you are a God, condescending to those who dwell below you? Why else should you be so aloof, so out of reach?”

  The Marquis had kissed away her anger, but she had known despairingly that when he left her it was quite likely that she would never see him again.

  “You know, Oswin,” the Marquis’s closest friend, Captain George Summers, had said to him, “if you changed your horses as often as you change your women, the country would run out of thoroughbreds!”

  The Marquis had laughed.

  Captain Summers had served with him in the Army and, because they had shared the hardships of war, he allowed him a familiarity which he permitted no one else.

  “Women are dispensable,” he said. “Which is why, George, I shall never marry!”

  “But you will have to!” Captain Summers argued. “My dear Oswin, it is expected of Marquises. They have to produce heirs!”

  “I have some delightful and most respectable cousins,” the Marquis answered, “all of whom could take my place admirably. Any of them would uphold with ease the dignity of the title.”

  “It is nonsensical to make up your mind on such an important subject at your age,” Captain Summers said. “At the same time you should be thinking of settling down. You cannot spend the rest of your life mopping up the Royal tears and changing your bed night after night.”

  “You certainly have a point there,” the Marquis said. “I am sick of creeping up creaking stairs and tiptoeing down ill-lighted passages. I shall confine myself to visiting the very agreeable house I have purchased in Chelsea, which is most appropriately near Chelsea Hospital, founded by Nell Gwynn.”

  “Do you fancy yourself as another Charles II?” Captain Summers asked with a grin.

  Then he exclaimed,

  “You are not unlike him, as a matter of fact! Charles II, from all accounts, always monopolised the prettiest women at Court, and a new face without fail distracted his attention from a familiar one.”

  “He became deeply embroiled with Barbara Castlemaine!”

  Captain Summers looked at the Marquis knowingly.

  “Lady Brampton is talking big,” he said. “Are you aware that his Lordship is dying? It is doubtful if he will live another two months. Then, Oswin, she will walk you down the aisle.”

  “She will do nothing of the sort!” the Marquis retorted savagely. “I have told you, George, I have no intention of getting married and certainly not to Nadine Brampton!”

  “She would look spectacular in the Aldridge tiaras,” Captain Summers remarked.

  “She might do that,” the Marquis agreed.

  But as he spoke, he thought with a kind of horror of Lady Brampton’s possessive hands fastening themselves claw-like round his back.

  He had never imagined a woman could be so persistent about what he was determined should be unobtainable.

  “Curse it, George! I shall have to go away! I have a damned good mind to join my Regiment again and fight against Bonaparte.”

  “There would be no welcome for you there,” George Summers said.

  “Why the devil not?” the Marquis enquired. “I was a good soldier, as you well know.”

  “I am not denying that,” his friend replied, “but they don’t want Marquises in the field, and I cannot imagine you doing nothing but marching up and down Wellington Barracks.”

  The Marquis did not answer and Captain Summers went on,

  “If you should be taken prisoner, you would be too important a feather in Bonaparte’s cap for him not to make a victory out of it. I assure you, Oswin, if you rejoined you would not be sent overseas!”

  Sitting now in his armchair, the Marquis remembered the conversation and knew that his friend, George Summers, had not been talking idly.

  At the same time he had spoken the truth when he had said it was impossible for him to stay in London indefinitely, playing nanny to the Prince and scheming to avoid Lady Brampton.

  He was quite certain that tomorrow he would find himself listening all over again to the Prince’s lamentations and undoubtedly, like the rest of his Royal Highness’s friends, carrying hysterical messages to Ealing.

  When he was not doing that, there would be Lady Brampton waiting for him, finding out at what time he would be riding, discovering where he would be dining and, if she could not do that, knocking at his door in Berkeley Square.

  ‘I am going to the country,’ the Marquis decided. He rose to his feet, ready to tug at the bell-pull to summon the butler. Then he paused.

  If he went to Aldridge House in Hertfordshire, there was every likelihood that Nadine Brampton would follow him.

  She had done that before, arriving when he had chosen a small house party with care and making it almost impossible for him to turn her away without causing a scene that would reverberate throughout the Beau Monde.

  He had the feeling that at the moment she would welcome a scandal.

  She wanted people to talk about them and he was shrewd enough to realise that by that means she thought she would be able to force him, once she was a widow, to restore her damaged reputation by offering her the protection of his name.

  ‘Blast it! I am like a fox who cannot even run for cover!’ the Marquis said to himself.

  Then he had an idea.

  The day before, his secretary and general factotum, Mr. Graham, had brought him a letter from one of his agents in the country.

  Because the Marquis had so many properties, he had agents in charge of each one, who sent detailed reports of their activities every month to Mr. Graham at Berkeley Square.

  The Marquis’s secretary did not trouble him with these unless they required his personal instructions on a problem that was beyond his jurisdiction.

  A recent report from Ridge Castle had been a case in point and Mr. Graham had drawn his attention to a paragraph in the report which read,

  “There has been a lot of local unrest amongst the farm workers since Sir Harold Trydell died. Sir Caspar, who has inherited the Trydell Estates, is making many local difficulties, changing traditions in a manner which is deeply resented not only by the farmers, but also by the labourers themselves.

  I have the feeling, perhaps unfounded, that, if things go on as they are, we may have riots on our hands. I hope I am mistaken, but I would like his Lordship’s authority to do what I can to soothe the rising feelings of resentment perhaps by employing more of the local men ourselves and thus alleviating distress.”

  “Sir Harold is dead then!” the Marquis had exclaimed when he handed the report back to Mr. Graham.

  “He died three months ago, my Lord. I did tell you at the time, but perhaps you did not hear me.”

  “It certainly comes as a surprise to me now,” the Marquis said. “I never cared for Caspar Trydell. It’s a pity his elder brother was drowned.”

  “It was indeed, my Lord,” Mr. Graham said. “You knew Mr. John, I believe.”

  “We were friends when he was a boy and lived at The Castle,” the Marquis replied.

  “Yes, of c
ourse, my Lord.”

  “He could have managed the estates well, but he never had a chance. Sir Harold was a very bigoted old man and a tyrant where his sons were concerned,” the Marquis remarked.

  “It seems as if Sir Caspar has inherited some of his father’s peculiarities.”

  “I am sure of that,” the Marquis said reflectively. “I have seen Caspar Trydell sometimes in London, although he moves in a very different set of people from my circle. He has always seemed to be something of a rake – perhaps that is not the right word – débauché would be more appropriate.”

  He paused as if he was thinking. Then he said,

  “I remember John Trydell telling me that his brother was always in debt. But I should imagine Sir Harold was warm in the pocket when he died and his only surviving son will have inherited everything he possessed.”

  “That is true,” Mr. Graham agreed, “although it will be troublesome, my Lord, if he upsets the local people. They are different in Essex from other Counties. It is an isolated part of the country and to me the peasants seem still almost Mediaeval in their outlook.”

  The Marquis had thought that Mr. Graham was exaggerating, but now he remembered the conversation and it gave him an idea.

  He would visit Ridge Castle. He had not been there for several years – in fact he very seldom thought of his estate perched on the promontory that was bordered on one side by the Blackwater River and on the other by the sea.

  Wild and desolate, he had loved it as a boy and had spent most of his holidays there because his father found children tiresome.

  ‘I will go to The Castle,’ he decided. ‘I will tell Graham that no one, but no one in London, must know where I have gone. That will cover my tracks as far as Nadine Brampton is concerned and I will write a personal note of explanation to the Prince.’

  He was so pleased at the idea of escaping in this way that the boredom which had encompassed him all the evening lifted a little.

  He even thought he might visit the delectable actress he had recently installed in the house he had described to George Summers as being near Chelsea Hospital.

  There was something about Hester Delfine that reminded him vaguely of Nell Gwynn.

  She was better educated and certainly a better actress. She had a sharp wit which amused the Marquis and she was not unlike Charles’s ‘pretty Nelly’ in that she had red hair.

  He had never been particularly enamoured of redheaded women, preferring them to be blonde with blue eyes.

  “It is because you are dark, darling,” Lady Brampton had told him in a moment of intimacy, when he was measuring the length of her long golden hair as she lay beside him.

  “Must one always do the expected?” the Marquis had asked with a note of irritation in his voice.

  “Why not?” Nadine Brampton had enquired. “Dark men like fair women and if they are tall and big they like them small and petite, while short men invariably run after a Juno or an Amazon, just as small dogs run after big ones.”

  It was perhaps this more than anything else that had made the Marquis choose a new mistress with red hair.

  It was expected that gentlemen of fashion should set up a mistress with a house and a carriage and the fact that Hester Delfine was fervently admired by the bucks of St. James’s might also have had something to do with the Marquis’s choice.

  It had amused him to sweep her off from under their very nose and he decided now that, while he had told her it would be too late for him to come and see her that evening after Mrs. Hayes’s Festival, he would change his mind.

  He rang the bell and when the butler answered within a few seconds, he said,

  “Order a carriage and inform Mr. Graham that I am leaving first thing in the morning for the country.” “Yes, my Lord, and will you be staying long?”

  “I have no idea,” the Marquis replied. “I shall leave at nine o’clock.”

  This meant, the butler knew, that his Lordship’s valets, who had retired to bed, must be aroused immediately to start packing.

  It also meant that his Lordship would travel as usual with not only his phaeton but also a travelling chariot carrying his valets and his luggage, six outriders and his favourite horse with a special groom in charge.

  It was an expedition which naturally required a great deal of planning and that this would not have to be done at a moment’s notice meant that most of the household in Berkeley Square would be up all night.

  That he might have caused any inconvenience to his staff never crossed the Marquis’s mind.

  It was what they were paid for and he expected everything to be perfectly organised and his instructions carried out without a hitch, however short notice was given.

  It said a great deal for the organisation in his stables that a carriage was at the door in less than five minutes.

  When the Marquis gave the address in Chelsea to the butler, he passed it to the footman on the box of the carriage, who passed it to the coachman.

  There was no note or intonation in the voices of any of the flunkeys to indicate that they had any idea of where the Marquis was going and yet they all knew. There was a faint smile on the butler’s face as he walked back into the lighted hall of Aldridge House to give the orders to set in motion the elaborate machinery which must start rolling immediately if the Marquis was to leave at the appointed time tomorrow morning.

  ‘His Lordship’s a real chip off the old block!’ he told himself, and now there was no doubt of the smile on his lips.

  There was not a man in the whole household who was not secretly rather proud of the fact that their master was something of a rake. It was in the Aldridge tradition.

  The Marquis travelled to Chelsea with a speed that he expected from the horses on which he expended large sums of money.

  He drew up outside the house in Royal Avenue, a pleasant situation where there were shady trees and a degree of privacy which the Marquis found agreeable.

  The footman stepped down to ring the bell and it was some minutes before the door was opened by a surprised-looking maid, her cap crooked on her head, her apron hastily tied.

  “His Lordship!” the footman said.

  “We wasn’t expectin’ ’im tonight!”

  “Well, he’s ’ere now, ain’t he?” the footman remarked under his breath, so that the Marquis would not hear their exchange.

  He walked back to open the door of the carriage and the Marquis stepped out languidly.

  He had already begun to regret his impetuosity in deciding to call on Hester when he might have retired to bed.

  At the same time, as he was going away, it would be only fair to inform her that he would be absent. Otherwise, undoubtedly, like Lady Brampton, she would worry about him.

  He entered the small narrow hall of the house and noticed with distaste that there was a pungent smell of cooking.

  “Madam ’asn’t bin back from the theatre long, my Lord!” the maid said. “She’s in the dinin’ room.” This was a small room at the back of the house which the Marquis found somewhat uninviting and seldom entered.

  Whenever he gave Hester supper, it was invariably at one of the gay places in the West End that catered for the theatrical profession.

  Or else they attended one of the innumerable parties given by the ‘gay sparks’ who found it amusing to entertain the ladies who were endowed with the glamour of the footlights.

  Now the Marquis crossed the hall and the maid opened the door of the dining room.

  Hester was seated at the table and with her was a well-known actor whom the Marquis had met in her company on several occasions.

  Their heads were close together as he entered and he had the unavoidable impression that he was intruding.

  They looked up in astonishment and Hester gave a little cry.

  “My Lord! I had no idea you would be visiting me this evening!”

  “I had no idea myself!” the Marquis replied. “I came on an impulse, having found the party at The Cloisters incredibly du
ll!”

  “I warned you it would be!” Hester Delfine said.

  She had risen to her feet and the man beside her had risen too.

  The Marquis nodded to him coldly.

  “Good evening, Merridon!”

  “Hester was feeling lonely, my Lord, and she asked me to join her. I hope you have no objection?”

  “Why should I?” the Marquis replied.

  “You will have some wine, my Lord?” Hester asked.

  As she spoke, she drew another chair up to the small round table in the centre of the room.

  As the Marquis had supplied the wine they were both drinking, he felt slightly annoyed that they had chosen the most expensive champagne of which he had only a limited supply.

  It had perhaps been foolhardy of him to have sent two cases to the house in Chelsea.

  But he had thought that when he visited Hester there would be no better occasion to indulge in a wine that was getting more expensive and more difficult to procure from France as hostilities raged across the Channel.

  There was, however, only a little left in the bottle and Hester signalled to the footman, who had appeared in the dining room since the Marquis’s entrance, to open another bottle.

  With difficulty the Marquis prevented himself from suggesting an inferior wine.

  “Will you have something to eat?” Hester asked, smiling at him ingratiatingly.

  The Marquis shook his head.

  “I have already been regaled with a gigantic banquet prepared presumably with Tahiti in mind, but which was undoubtedly French and English with the predominance unfortunately on the British side!”

  The actor laughed.

  “And what was the performance like, my Lord?” “Somewhat amateurish,” he replied, “but what can you expect from virgins?”

  “If they were!” Hester said sarcastically. “I would not trust Charlotte Hayes an inch! She is obviously trying to vie with Mrs. Fawkland, who has opened Temples of Aurora, Flora, and Mystery.”

  “I have not sampled such exotic delights,” Mr. Merridon remarked, “but Mr. Sheridan told me that the Temple of Flora was quite amusing.”