Bewitched (Bantam Series No. 16) Read online

“This all started,” Lord Worcester explained to the Marquis, “because Prince Esterhazy has queried the antecedents of a very pretty little French pigeon who swears she is an aristocratic refugee. She has a family tree—which she shows to her admiring gentlemen friends—which would make the Emperor Charlemagne’s look like a piece of scrap-paper!”

  “The whole thing is a complete fake!” Prince Esterhazy exclaimed.

  “Of course it is!” Sir Algernon agreed. “And anyone with sensibility or taste is able at a glance to tell the dross from the gold— the fake from the real.”

  “What do you think, Ruckley?” Lord Alvanley enquired.

  “I agree with you,” the Marquis replied. “I am sure, if the lady in question was astute enough, she could easily convince the average man that she was who she pretended to be. Surely it is only a question of acting?”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” Sir Algernon said heatedly, “no woman or man would be able to deceive me. I can smell a parvenu a mile away!”

  “Would you care to bet on it?” Lord Alvanley enquired.

  “Of course,” Sir Algernon answered.

  “Why not?” Lord Worcester said. “We can all set ourselves to deceive Gibbon and make him eat his words. He is getting too pompous by half!”

  Everyone laughed and Sir Algernon took it good-humouredly.

  “All right,” he said, “I will accept your bets. In fact I will go further. I will make it worth your while. I will bet you one thousand guineas to a hundred that you will not find a man or woman who can convince me that they are blue-blooded when they are in fact exactly the opposite.”

  There was a roar of laughter from the gentlemen standing round him.

  “Good for you, Gibbon!” Lord Worcester exclaimed. “I like a man who is prepared to back up his assertions in hard cash. What is more, I can do with some blunt at the moment!”

  “Are foreigners barred?” Prince Esterhazy asked.

  “No-one is barred,” Sir Algernon declared. “But if you fail to deceive me, Gentlemen, then each failure will cost you fifty guineas! I promise you I shall be well in pocket before the year is out.”

  “I am not sure that he is not betting on a certainty,” Captain Collington said in a low voice to the Marquis.

  They were both aware that Sir Algernon was very astute, and he had made a fetish of good taste whether it concerned dress, deportment or the furniture which graced his houses.

  He was wealthy because his mother had been an heiress, and his family tree, which dated back to Tudor times, was an example of how the great families of England inter-married amongst themselves.

  Genealogy was Sir Algernon’s main interest in life and the College of Heralds found him a continual thorn in their flesh as he frequently pointed out to them their mistakes.

  Now Sir Algernon asked one of the stewards to bring him the Betting-Book.

  Bound in leather and dating from 1743, the first record book having been destroyed in a fire several years earlier, it was an amazing record of the Members’ personal interests.

  The bets were entered in a very irregular manner, the writing showing all too clearly that a great number of the wagers had been made after dinner and entered by a hand that found it difficult to write clearly.

  “Now how many of you are challenging me?” Sir Algernon enquired.

  He sat down on a chair as he spoke and, putting the Betting-Book on a table in front of him, inscribed their names one after the other.

  There were finally five—Prince Esterhazy, Lord Alvanley, Lord Worcester, Captain Collington and the Marquis.

  “You have a year in which to confront me,” Sir Algernon said. “If you have not been successful by that time in taking a thousand guineas from me, then I will give you all the best dinner that the Club can provide.”

  “Do not worry,” the Prince said. “Long before that I shall be carrying your gold away in my pocket!”

  “You are wrong,” Lord Alvanley said, “I shall be the first to win because I need the money and therefore cannot wait!”

  “Perhaps your luck will change tonight,” the Prince answered, “in which case there will not be so much urgency where you are concerned.”

  Lord Alvanley needed luck, as the Prince well knew. His extravagance had ruined him, and he owed a gaming debt of £50,000.

  Yet his courage, like his wit, never failed him, and he enjoyed all the year round a fresh apricot tart on his side-table at dinner.

  Lord Worcester, son and heir of the Duke of Beaufort had recently spent a fortune he did not possess on a team of greys which he drove with a panache that excited public admiration.

  His liaison with the famous Courtesan, Harriette Wilson, when he was still a minor had forced the Duke to offer her the sum of five hundred pounds a year for life.

  When the Duke tried to settle her claim with a huge sum Harriette wrote her Memoirs, a chronique scandaleuse which set fashionable London in a turmoil.

  Prince Esterhazy, on the other hand, was the Austrian Ambassador and a very wealthy man. On State occasions he was known to wear jewels worth eighty thousand pounds.

  The gentlemen were joking with each other while Sir Algernon, having carefully recorded the conditions and date of the wager, set the Betting-Book on one side.

  Charles Collington picked it up.

  “You know,” he said to the Marquis, “anyone reading this book in the future will think that most of the members of White’s were half-witted. Look at this, for instance.”

  He pointed to a page on which was inscribed:

  “Ld Lincoln bets Ld Winchelsea One Hundred Guineas to Fifty guineas that the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough does not survive the Duchess Dowager of Cleveland.”

  “I remember reading that entry,” the Marquis said. “It is not as absurd as Lord Eglington’s, who wagered he would find ‘a man who shall kill twenty snipe in three-and-twenty shots’.”

  “Where is that?” Charles Collington laughed.

  “You will find it on one of the pages,” the Marquis replied. “I once read the book through from cover to cover, and came to the conclusion that the majority of the bets were made either by drunks or lunatics.”

  “What about this one?” Charles Collington asked.

  Turning the pages, he read aloud:

  “Mr. Brummel bets Mr. Methuin two hundred guineas to twenty that Bonaparte will arrive in Paris on September 12th, 1812.”

  “At least Brummel collected on that occasion,” the Marquis remarked.

  “Poor Brummel, I wish he was here now,” Charles Collington said. “If anyone could give an outsider a setdown it was he.”

  “That is true,” the Marquis agreed. “Well, Charles, time is getting on. Shall we proceed to the Opera House?”

  To his surprise his friend did not answer. Then after a moment Captain Collington said in a strange voice:

  “Look at this, Fabius.”

  He passed the book to the Marquis and, following the direction of his finger, the Marquis read:

  “Mr. Jethro Ruck bets Sir James Copley that he will be in possession of a fortune and a title by the end of the year 1818.”

  The Marquis read it slowly then he turned to look at his friend. “That gives you exactly eight months,” Charles Collington said quietly.

  “Do you really think—you cannot believe—” the Marquis began.

  “Do not be a fool, Fabius. It is quite obvious. I told you Jethro has been praying for your death, and I am quite certain that tonight he was doing something a little more active than pray!”

  “I have a feeling you are right,” the Marquis agreed.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Charles Collington enquired.

  The Marquis shrugged his shoulders.

  “What can I do? I can hardly accuse Jethro of throwing masonry at me from the top of my house unless I have proof.”

  “But good Lord, Fabius, you cannot just sit and do nothing! He will get to you sooner or later.”

  “Th
at is rather a challenge, is it not?”

  “Now do not be turnip-headed about this,” Charles Collington admonished. “I have always detested your cousin, as you well know. I have always known that he is an unmitigated blackguard and it is no surprise to me that he plans to murder you. The only thing is—I could not bear him to be successful.”

  “I do not particularly care for the idea myself!” the Marquis said dryly.

  “Then do something about it,” Charles Collington said urgently.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “There must be something!”

  “There is,” the Marquis said slowly, but he did not, in spite of his friend’s curiosity, volunteer what that might be.

  The following afternoon Lady Walden, at her house near St. Albans in Hertfordshire, was surprised to receive a visitor.

  “Fabius!” she exclaimed in surprise when the Marquis was announced. “I thought you never came to the country once you had left it for the London Season.”

  “I wanted to see you,” the Marquis replied.

  “I am flattered,” Lady Walden smiled, “but as it happens I am leaving here tomorrow, for I do not intend to miss the Duchess of Devonshire’s Ball which takes place on Thursday.”

  “I was sure you would be there,” the Marquis said.

  “And yet you have come all this way to see me today. I am flattered, Fabius.”

  There was, however, surprise in her beautiful eyes as she looked at him.

  Eurydice Walden had been the toast of St. James ever since she emerged from the school-room six years earlier.

  She was lovely in the manner of the fashionable beauties of the time, with fair hair, blue eyes and an exquisitely curved body which left no-one in any doubt as to her femininity.

  She had been feted for her beauty when she had burst almost like a comet on the astonished Social World, but she was at the moment even more desirable because as her beauty had increased with the years so had her assets.

  She had married at seventeen the wild, attractive and immensely wealthy Sir Beaugrave Walden.

  He had, however, been killed in the last month of the war, leaving an immense fortune to his widow who, a year later on the death of her father, inherited together with other assets ten thousand acres of land which marched with the Marquis’s own Estate.

  Eurydice and the Marquis had known each other since they were children, and it had always been understood between their fathers that they should be married and their estates united.

  The Marquis, however, had been abroad with his Regiment in Portugal when Eurydice married, and although his father bewailed the fact, he himself had felt no particular loss.

  He sat down now on an elegant damask sofa in Eurydice’s Drawing-Room and regarded her with a scrutinising expression which she found somehow perplexing.

  “What is the matter, Fabius? You appear worried.”

  She was in fact puzzling her head as to why he should call on her so unexpectedly.

  She was glad that she was wearing one of her prettiest muslin gowns because, although she was not strongly interested personally in the man she had known ever since childhood, she was well aware that he was sought after by the majority of her female friends.

  To capture his interest would be a feather in her cap, for which she would undoubtedly be envied.

  “I want to talk to you, Eurydice.”

  “You said that before.”

  “I know, but I am not quite certain how to explain to you why I am here.”

  “It is unlike you to be so reticent,” Eurydice teased.

  “What I have come to say,” the Marquis went on in a serious tone, “is that I think we should do what was always expected of us by your father and by mine.”

  “What was that?” Eurydice enquired.

  There was a note of astonishment in her voice. She could hardly believe that the Marquis was in fact going to say, what she half suspected trembled on his lips.

  “I think we should get married!”

  “Are you serious?” Eurydice enquired.

  “Very serious,” he answered. “You know as well as I do that it was what our fathers planned since the moment you were born. They were close friends, and they both envisaged the day would come when our Estates would become one because you became my wife.”

  “But all that was years ago,” Eurydice objected, “and now they are both dead.”

  “But we are alive,” the Marquis said, “and I cannot help feeling it was an eminently sensible plan.”

  “Sensible perhaps, but not very romantic.”

  “I am sorry if I have expressed myself badly,” the Marquis said with a smile most women found irresistible. “I am very fond of you, Eurydice, as you should well know. I always have been.”

  “That is nonsense!” Eurydice retorted rudely. “You heartily disliked me when you were a small boy!”

  “I am sure I did nothing of the sort!”

  “You always said you had no use for girls. You used to pull my hair at parties and once when I threw your cricket ball away you actually hit me.”

  “Good God, Eurydice,” the Marquis exclaimed, “you can hardly hold that against me now!”

  “Why not? After all, you have not fallen over yourself to show your affection since we have grown up.”

  “Have I had a chance?” the Marquis asked. “You were married while I was away fighting in Portugal.”

  “You certainly did not seem very perturbed about it when we did meet!”

  “I only saw you perhaps once or twice after you were married,” the Marquis said. “Besides Beaugrave was a friend of mine. You could hardly expect me to make love to you under his nose.”

  “You did not want to make love to me,” Eurydice retorted. “You never have wanted to, so why should you now wish to marry me?”

  “For one thing, I think it is time I got married,” the Marquis said, “and for another, I am quite certain we should deal well together. I would look after you, Eurydice, and you cannot go on getting yourself gossiped about forever!”

  “Gossiped about? And who is slandering me I should like to know?”

  “Now really!” the Marquis exclaimed with a hint of amusement in his voice. “You know quite well that you have caused one scandal after another ever since you have been widowed. And as if you did not know, everyone in London is now talking about you and Severn.”

  There was a pause. Then casting down her eyes Eurydice said: “Perhaps with reason!”

  “Good God!” the Marquis exclaimed, “do you mean to say the Duke has come up to scratch?”

  “I am not answering that question,” Eurydice replied with dignity.

  “Then he has not!” the Marquis said shrewdly.

  “You have no right to come here and cross-question me.”

  The Marquis rose to his feet.

  “I see it all now,” he said. “You came down here in the middle of the Season, which I thought was strange, simply because you believed the Duke would follow you. Well, has he?”

  “I told you, Fabius, it is none of your business!” Eurydice cried. “Go away and leave me alone.”

  “I came here to ask you if you would marry me,” the Marquis said firmly. “You have not yet given me your answer.”

  “I need time to think about it.”

  He looked at her speculatively and the expression in his eyes was hard.

  “In other words,” he said slowly, “you are waiting to see if Severn makes you a better offer. If he does you will accept. If not, a Marquis is quite a good catch!”

  “There are dozens of people who want to marry me,” Eurydice asserted rudely, rather like a small girl who wishes to be aggressive.

  “I am well aware of that!” the Marquis replied, “but I doubt, apart from myself and Severn, if you would be prepared to accept any of those love-lorn swains who write odes to your lips and leave little billets-doux on your doorstep every morning. It is doubtful if the majority could afford to do anything else.”<
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  He spoke sarcastically and Eurydice, rising, stamped her foot. “How dare you speak to me like that, Fabius!” she said. “You always have been odious and I hate you! Do you understand? I hate you!”

  “Nevertheless you will marry me,” the Marquis remarked.

  “I shall do nothing of the sort,” she retorted. “I have no wish to marry anyone unless...”

  She paused.

  “... unless they can give you the position that you want in Society,” the Marquis finished. “You have enough money, Eurydice, we are both aware of that, but you want the standing. You want to be a great Hostess. It was always your ambition.”

  She did not reply and after a moment he went on:

  “That narrows the field, does it not? In fact, as I have already said, it leaves Severn in the lead and me a close second. There is no-one else in the race.”

  “I am not going to answer you,” Eurydice snapped.

  The Marquis was aware that she was almost shaking with rage. “Well I would like an answer soon, in fact within two or three days,” the Marquis said. “It is a matter of some urgency.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Eurydice asked curiously. “Why should you suddenly be in such a hurry?”

  Then she gave an exclamation.

  “I know why you want to get married! I am not a fool, Fabius. It is because of Jethro, is it not?”

  “It is now my turn not to answer questions,” the Marquis replied.

  “But I will answer them for you,” Eurydice said. “The whole world and his wife are well aware that Jethro is waiting to step into your shoes. He is banking on it. He was quite certain you would be killed like poor Beaugrave, and when you were not, he has boasted, when he is in his cups—which is most of the time—that he will get rid of you somehow!”

  She paused.

  “That is true, is it not?”

  “Perhaps,” the Marquis admitted.

  “So you want a wife and you want an heir,” Eurydice said almost beneath her breath.

  “Well?” the Marquis enquired.

  “I suppose if I say no you will find someone else to marry you. Any wife, whatever she is like, will be better than thinking of Jethro setting himself up at Ruckley and sporting a coronet in the House of Lords.”

  “You express yourself very eloquently,” the Marquis said. “I am waiting for an answer, Eurydice.”