A Hazard of Hearts Read online

“If the Trustees learn of it, they will give the money to charity as arranged by my grandfather’s will,” Serena said. “May I explain?”

  “I hope you will,” Lord Vulcan said. “Could we not sit down?”

  “Of course.”

  Serena returned to the seat she had taken when they first entered the room and the Marquis sat opposite her.

  “When I was sixteen,” Serena began quietly, “I went to London for the Season. My Godmother had arranged to give a ball for me. I had looked forward to it, yet at the same time I was already afraid of London because of what had happened here the previous year. I had a friend, my Lord, who was exceeding fair. She was older than me, but she also loved Staverley. She had lived here all her life. Her father was our Head Groom and her mother had at one time been my mother’s maid. She was a lovely girl, Charmaine was her name and I think everybody in the place was fond of her.

  “She was always happy, singing about her work, and, although she worked hard, she always had time to play with me and because I was lonely, being an only child, I grew to love her as if she was my sister. My father had various parties that winter for the hunting and amongst the guests there was a certain Lord Wrotham. I took little notice of him, being but a child and not even allowed down to dinner. But he was a fairly frequent visitor and I was continually finding him in those parts of the house where the other guests never ventured.”

  She paused for a moment before she continued,

  “Once I found him in my nursery, another time in the linen room. One day when Charmaine and I were out for a walk together we came upon him unexpectedly when he should have been with my father and the other guests. Being young and stupid, I was quite unsuspicious that he had any particular reasons for his behaviour until one evening we learned that Lord Wrotham had gone back to London and that Charmaine had gone with him.”

  She sighed and the went on,

  “It was my first experience of treachery. I was desperately hurt that Charmaine, whom I loved, had gone without telling me and I was disturbed by everyone else’s reaction to her disappearance. I was told that Lord Wrotham would not wed Charmaine, that she was bold and bad, and that I was never to speak or even think of her again. I did not believe what I was told. Charmaine was so lovely that in my innocence I was sure that she must find happiness. I only prayed that she might let me know where she was, but no word came from her.”

  The Marquis was listening intently as she carried on,

  “A year passed. Her father and mother, broken-hearted, never mentioned her name. The other servants spoke of her disgrace with bated breath, but I continued to love her. It was arranged for me to go to London to my Godmother and on the very morning of my departure I received news of Charmaine. It was a dirty illiterate letter, written not by her – for I doubt if she could write – but by the woman in whose house she was lodging. Charmaine owed her money, she said, she had obtained my address, would I kindly send her what was owing to her or Charmaine would be turned out into the street. I said nothing to anyone about the letter, but took it with me to London. For the first two or three days after my arrival it was impossible for me to do anything but go with my Godmother to buy clothes, drive with her in Hyde Park and make my début at two great balls. Then at last an opportunity presented itself and I set off to find Charmaine at St. Giles-in-the-Fields. ”

  “Good Lord,” the Marquis exclaimed, “you don’t mean you went to that place by yourself?”

  “No, I was sensible enough not to go alone,” Serena replied, “I took one of my godmother’s linkmen into my confidence. Luckily he had been a bruiser when he was younger. He warned me what sort of place we were going to and I borrowed clothes from an abigail. We set off. I will not worry you with a description of St Giles-in-the-Fields. If you have never been there, you have very likely heard tell of it, sufficient to say that the horror and misery of it still haunt me. I can still see the naked children scrambling among the filth in the gutters for scraps of food, the gaunt, starved drunken women and men whose appearance and behaviour offended the very name of manhood. I found Charmaine lying on straw in an attic so filthy that even the rats hardly bothered to scurry away at our approach.

  “She was so wasted that at first I hardly recognised her for the lovely happy girl who had been to me as a sister. She had given birth to a stillborn child a month earlier and had never recovered her strength. She had had no skilled attention since her confinement. She was horrified to see me and begged me to go away at once and leave her. But she was too weak to protest overmuch and we carried her away with us. I took her back to my Godmother’s house and when she, incensed by my behaviour, refused to take her in, I ordered a carriage and came home to Staverley. My Godmother cancelled the ball she was giving for me and has not spoken to me since, but I saved Charmaine’s life and that was what mattered to me.”

  Serena took a deep breath.

  “What happened then?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Charmaine grew better and stronger. She never spoke of what she had been through, but I guessed a little of the agony of mind that must have been hers when the man who had seduced her cast her away when she was about to bear his child. There was a young man in the village who had always been fond of her and, when she returned to us, he began to court her again.

  “At first she would have none of him, wanting only to hide herself here in the house where she had always worked. But at length I realised that she loved him even as he loved her and that the other infatuation had merely been that of an inexperienced country girl for an evil corrupt man of the world.

  “There was only one thing to be done – to get them away from Staverley where people knew what had happened and where their happiness would never have a chance among those who condemned Charmaine unmercifully despite all she had suffered. I went to London for the second time in my life and I visited a firm of moneylenders who I had often heard my father speak about – Messrs. Hinks and Israel.

  “I saw Mr. Israel. I told him the whole story. I told him that I wanted money for this young couple and that I could give him no security save my word of honour that on my marriage I would pay him one thousand pounds. I told him that I could give him nothing in writing because if such a paper was produced, it would prevent my inheriting my grandfather’s money. He must take my word and that alone.”

  Lord Vulcan stared at Serena incredulously.

  “You gave Israel nothing in writing?”

  “No,” Serena replied. “He gave me six hundred pounds and I promised him to repay one thousand pounds on the day of my marriage.”

  “I know Israel.” Lord Vulcan said slowly, “He is a hard-headed shrewd man. He is owed more money than anyone else in the United Kingdom and no one as yet has ever accused him of being anything else but a skinflint.”

  “He was exceeding kind to me,” Serena said. “The six hundred pounds that he lent me enabled Charmaine and her husband to set themselves up in a small inn in the North of Cornwall. They are very happy there. I can never be sufficiently grateful to Mr. Israel.”

  Lord Vulcan stared at Serena and for a moment his face expressed both astonishment and incredulity.

  “You understand the position, my Lord?”

  “I do,” the Marquis replied.

  “But I have also thought,” Serena went on and now she faltered and stammered a little “that – that, should you wish to be – rid of me, you have but to inform the Trustees of what I have just told you. The money will then be given to charity and you will be absolved from keeping your part of the bargain – you will be under no obligation to marry someone who – who is penniless.”

  Lord Vulcan considered her gravely.

  “You think I might be relieved by the – er loophole?”

  Serena met his eyes.

  “Why not? It cannot be pleasant to be expected to wed someone you know nothing about.”

  “Surely that also applies where you are concerned?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you
considered availing yourself of this – loophole – or of others?”

  Serena drew herself up proudly.

  “I am bound to you, my Lord, by a debt of honour. You were the winner of a game of chance – I the loser.”

  “I see.”

  Lord Vulcan appeared to be considering the matter. Before he spoke again he took a pinch of snuff from an exquisitely jewelled box. Serena waited, thinking that his calmness, his air of self-possession was singularly irritating.

  Every nerve in her body was quivering, but she forced herself to sit still and to hold her chin high.

  At last the Marquis spoke and his lips twisted a little on the words.

  “The thought of marriage with me, Miss Staverley, is, I gather, most distasteful to you?”

  Serena blushed despite her resolution not to do so.

  “I-I can hardly be expected to welcome the idea, my Lord, when I know that your only reason for it is – your desire for money.”

  For a moment she thought that she had aroused Lord Vulcan’s anger, that there was a glint of steel in his grey eyes, but the expression on his face of cynical indifference did not alter.

  “You are certainly frank, madam,” he remarked suavely. “May I make a suggestion?”

  “If it pleases you, my Lord.”

  Serena tried to make her voice as unconcerned as his.

  “Then let’s do nothing for the moment. You have most kindly offered me a loophole. In justice there should be one that you too could accept, perhaps honour. But until it presents itself, let’s remain. Miss Staverley, as we are, two strangers brought together by a game of chance.”

  “You mean, my Lord, that I could continue to live here – at Staverley?”

  Try as she would Serena could not keep the ringing lilt of eagerness from her voice. But Lord Vulcan shook his head.

  “That, I think, would be difficult, for you have, I understand, no chaperone?”

  “An elderly cousin who filled that post for two years died eight months ago.”

  “Then it is impossible for you to live here unchaperoned now that Staverley has become my property,” Lord Vulcan said.

  “You mean – people would think that you – that I – ”

  She broke off.

  “Exactly!”

  “Oh!”

  Again a crimson tide of colour rose in Serena’s cheeks.

  “May I suggest,” Lord Vulcan remarked, ignoring her embarrassment, “that, until other and more suitable arrangements can be made, you pay a visit to my mother at Mandrake? I can convey you there before nightfall.”

  “You mean that I should leave today?”

  “Today!”

  “Oh, but it’s impossible. I could not – I – ”

  Serena’s protestations died away, the full impact of how helpless she was, how dependent on this man who owned both Staverley and herself, stifled the words on her lips. What was the use of arguing, indeed what arguments were there in her favour?

  “If those are your wishes, my Lord,” she said formally.

  “It would be best for you,” Lord Vulcan replied.

  Serena rose to her feet. She felt that her control was very near to breaking point. To leave so quickly, to go without saying ‘goodbye’, it was unbearable!

  She turned aside so that the Marquis should not see the tears in her eyes.

  “There is only one request I would make, my Lord,” she said in a strangled voice.

  “Which is?”

  “May I take with me the only two friends I have in the world?”

  “Who are?”

  “Eudora – my personal maid – and Torqo.”

  Serena put her hand on the mastiff’s head as she spoke as if for support.

  “It shall be as you wish.”

  Serena tried to speak her thanks, but the words were soundless.

  With a pathetic effort at politeness she dropped the Marquis a curtsey and went from the room.

  He did not watch her go.

  Slowly and with an air of insouciance Lord Vulcan took a pinch of snuff.

  Chapter Four

  Sitting on the padded seat of claret satin in the coach, Serena had plenty of time for reflection. The hours of travelling had passed slowly and she had welcomed the two breaks when they changed horses and she was able to repair to an inn for a few moments to stretch her cramped limbs.

  She had anticipated that the journey would be far more uncomfortable and it seemed to her that the coach was either surprisingly well sprung or else the roads were by no means as rough as might be expected.

  She could not help but be impressed by the efficient manner in which everything was arranged on their journey. The Marquis’s own horses and grooms were waiting for them when they arrived at a Posting inn and there was the minimum amount of time in the changing of the teams.

  Everywhere they were received with the most deferential bowings and scrapings and it was obvious that the Marquis was well-known and respected on the route.

  Serena’s luggage with Eudora and Torqo had gone ahead. Serena had wished to have Eudora with her, especially when she learned that the Marquis was not to travel in the coach beside her, but would make the journey on horseback. But in response to the suggestion Lord Vulcan replied coldly that it would be better for Eudora to be at Mandrake when she arrived and Serena was not brave enough to press the matter further.

  Travelling alone, however, had its compensations, in that it gave her time to reflect and to sort out her chaotic thoughts and emotions.

  Events had moved so quickly in the last twenty-four hours that it was difficult to know what she did feel or think about anything.

  In the ten days which had elapsed between her father’s death and Lord Vulcan’s coming to Staverley Court she had been prepared for changes, but she had not anticipated anything so revolutionary as being transplanted at a moment’s notice from Staverley to his Lordship’s own home.

  She had not expected to have to say ‘goodbye’ to all she had loved and known within the space of time which it took Eudora to pack for her and for the Marquis to eat his luncheon.

  They had left Staverley at one o’clock in the afternoon and Lord Vulcan announced that they would reach Mandrake before seven o’clock that night.

  They were certainly travelling very fast and in the glimpses that Serena occasionally had of him through the window of the coach she saw him riding his horse as if he was increasingly impatient to arrive at their destination.

  Once when she had a glimpse of his face she shivered a little. He was so handsome, yet there was something strange, almost uncanny about him. Nicholas had been right, yes, right in many of the things he had said, Serena told herself.

  She had not wasted her opportunities, while she had been awaiting his Lordship’s arrival, of finding out more about him.

  After Nicholas’s first incoherent denunciation Serena had set herself resolutely to learn from her cousin all that he knew and all that he had heard about the man who might be her future husband.

  It was not easy to obtain a true picture from Nicholas, because it was obvious from the outset that he not only loathed the Marquis but was also afraid of him. Besides he had had very little personal contact with Lord Vulcan and based most of his assertions on hearsay and rumours, which Serena was certain in all justice should be discounted to a very large extent as being exaggerated.

  “Some people say he is a Satanist,” Nicholas said, “but it is unlikely that he would condescend to belong to any Society. What is more probable is that he has sold his soul to the Devil by some sinister means of his own.”

  “You cannot really believe such nonsense,” Serena laughed.

  “Why not?” Nicholas answered. “Anyway the fellow is cursed strange.”

  “In what way?” Serena persisted.

  “I wish I could explain to you what I mean,” Nicholas answered. “You will understand easily enough when you see him.”

  “What does he do?” Serena asked.

 
“It is not so much what he does, at least from all I have seen of him,” Nicholas added honestly, “it is the way he does it. When he is at the gaming table, he is uncanny. There is something inhuman about him. He plays high, fantastically high, yet he does not seem to care one way or another whether he wins or loses. He sits there with that bored cynical look on his face as if it did not signify in the least and he wins and wins. No one has ever heard him refuse a wager and yet he seldom loses one.”

  “Surely there is nothing really wrong or evil in that?” Serena asked in bewilderment.

  “Not when I tell you about it,” Nicholas said irritably, “but when you are there it is uncomfortably peculiar. Any man who is a man gets in a bit of a pucker when he is losing or winning a fortune, but not Vulcan. I give you my word, Serena, there is something devilish unnatural about the fellow and that is a fact.”

  “I wonder why he is so bored,” Serena said reflectively. “After all he has so much.”

  “That is true enough,” Nicholas said bitterly. “He has money, position and women, all the women he wants, including, although I should not mention this to you, that fabulously beautiful bit of muslin, La Flamme. But there have always been women at Vulcan’s heels. It’s rumoured that he treats them badly, but no one knows for sure as most of them are so blindly in love with him that they will not hear a word spoken against the cursed fellow.”

  Now, thinking of Lady Isabel as she had seen her on the night before, she was not surprised that Nicholas was in love. But it had also been obvious that he had not been mistaken in her feelings where Lord Vulcan was concerned.

  ‘She loves him and she hates me,’ Serena thought wistfully with a little sigh. ‘If she only knew how willingly I would change places with her!’

  Poor Nicholas. It was a pity that he should lose his heart to someone who would take so little interest in him. Part of the gay raffish set that moved around the Prince Regent, Isabel Calver, fêted and sought after, would have no time for an inexperienced young man from the country even if her own affections were not otherwise engaged. Nicholas had seen very few women in the quiet life he had lived at The Gables.