A Hazard of Hearts Read online

  She opened the door and Serena saw an almost circular room with small pointed windows.

  “How quaint!” she exclaimed and, walking across the room, looked out through one of the windows.

  It was dark and night had fallen, but there was a faint phosphorescent glow over the sea and the stars were shining in the sky. Below Serena could see the outline of walled gardens ending abruptly as the cliff jutted down to the sea.

  “It is lovely,” Serena whispered, but more as if she needed to convince herself than to express a conviction.

  “Come back to the fire,” Eudora said, “you will catch cold.”

  Serena closed the door of the turret behind her.

  “This part of the house must have been part of the old Castle,” she said. “It is very quiet here. I only hope there are not too many ghosts.”

  “It is not the ghosts in the house that I am afraid of,” Eudora replied.

  At that moment Torqo lifted his head and growled in his throat.

  “What is it, Torqo?” Serena asked and then felt the dog’s hackles rise beneath her hand.

  He growled again.

  “There is someone coming,” Eudora said.

  At that moment they heard steps approaching down the passage and a moment later there was a sharp knock. Eudora went to the door to open it, but before she could reach it the door was flung wide and the Marchioness stood in the doorway.

  In the small low-ceilinged room she seemed even taller than in the great drawing room, her flashing jewellery, her low-cut skin-tight dress making her appear a strange fantastic figure from another world.

  Serena rose quickly to her feet and dropped a curtsey. The Marchioness stood for a moment as if taking in every detail of the room and its occupants and then she pointed at Torqo with an ivory walking stick, its handle studded with jewels.

  “That dog cannot sleep in the house,” she said sharply.

  “He is used to sleeping in a kennel, ma’am,” Serena answered, “but he is always with me during the day.”

  “See that he behaves himself then,” the Marchioness replied, “or he must stay in a kennel. He is too big for a house.”

  Before Serena could answer she spoke to Eudora.

  “I wish to speak with your Mistress. Wait outside.”

  Eudora went from the room. She curtseyed to the Marchioness, her distorted body a strange contrast to the beautiful commanding figure towering above her.

  “Sit down,” the Marchioness said to Serena when they were alone, taking a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. “I have been speaking to my son. He has told me of the peculiar circumstances of how you have met. I understand from him that when you marry you inherit a fortune of eighty thousand pounds. Is that correct?”

  “That was the sum left in a Trust for me by my grandfather,” Serena answered.

  “It is a fortune, but not an unusually large one as fortunes go,” the Marchioness said grudgingly.

  Serena waited, wondering what she intended by such a statement.

  “My son wishes you to remain here,” the Marchioness went on after a moment’s pause, “at least for the present. You will understand that your arrival was somewhat of a surprise to me. Justin has always been an avowed bachelor. He has sworn that he would never marry.”

  “I understand,” Serena said and she was aware that this was somewhat in the way of an apology and guessed that Lord Vulcan had insisted on it.

  “My son desires for the present to make no arrangements about your marriage,” the Marchioness said. “Is that your wish or his?”

  “I can speak only for myself,” Serena said quietly. “I have no desire to be married to someone I met for the first time yesterday.”

  “Eighty thousand pounds,” the Marchioness repeated, as though she was speaking to herself. “It is not such a vast fortune and yet at the same time – ”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Anyway there is no reason for us to make decisions as yet. Also I shall not present you to my guests as my son’s betrothed. I hear that all London is gossiping about the wager, but we need not concern ourselves at Mandrake with their tattle. You will be an ordinary guest in my house. Is that understood?”

  “I have no desire for any other status,” Serena answered, resentful of the Marchioness’s tone.

  “That is all I have to say,” the Marchioness said and rose to her feet. She stood for a moment in front of the fire, leaning on her ivory stick, the flames glittering on the huge emerald and diamond rings she wore on her long fingers.

  “You are in mourning,” she said abruptly. “We must not forget that.”

  “I have not forgotten it,” Serena replied quietly.

  The Marchioness looked at her and said nothing, but Serena felt that there was something in her mind, some thought formulating that she was not yet ready to express. How beautiful she was and yet how formidable! When she was young, she must have been lovely beyond compare and even now her beauty was almost unparalleled save that she created an atmosphere not of loveliness but of something far more sinister.

  “This money of yours, child,” she said suddenly, “this eighty thousand pounds, you are quite certain that you cannot obtain any of it until you are married? You will need money for your trousseau and for other expenses.”

  “I am afraid, ma’am, that there is no possibility of my touching any of it until I am married,” Serena answered.

  It was strange, she thought, that the Marchioness, laden with thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels, should be so interested in her small dowry.

  The Marchioness made a gesture of impatience.

  “Then we must wait,” she said. “I was, of course, thinking only of your comfort. It is difficult to live without money as perhaps you have already found out.”

  “Yes, I have discovered that,” Serena said with a sudden smile.

  But she wondered if her financial difficulties in the past could ever be understood by the Marchioness living in this great house and having, it appeared, an unlimited income to expend on all the luxuries and comforts that went with such grandeur.

  “I will leave you to dress for dinner,” the Marchioness said after another uncomfortable pause. “We meet in the Silver Drawing Room. When you come down, there will be a footman at the head of the Grand Staircase to direct you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Serena curtseyed and the Marchioness went towards the door. For a moment she was framed there against the darkness of the panelling and her beautiful face crowned with its flaming hair made a picture that was almost breathtaking and yet there was something else – something that repelled one, something that had kept Torqo growling deep down in his throat ever since she had entered the room.

  She heard him now.

  “Be sure that dog sleeps in the kennels,” she said and was gone.

  Serena shivered and turned towards the fire. As Eudora entered she started as if she was half-afraid that the Marchioness had returned.

  “Oh, it’s you, Eudora,” she said in tones of relief.

  “Yes, it’s only me,” Eudora answered.

  Serena knew without questioning what Eudora was feeling and yet for once the deformed woman had nothing to say.

  Serena dressed in silence, putting on a plain white muslin dress that was all she had to wear. When she was ready and Eudora had arranged her hair, she looked at herself in the mirror and laughed.

  “A country cousin. But what does it matter? No one will look at me when they can behold the magnificence of the Marchioness.”

  “Be careful of her,” Eudora said quietly.

  “She cannot harm me,” Serena answered. “I am afraid of her, and so are you, Eudora, but she cannot actually harm us. She hates my being here, that is obvious, but why should we complain when we would so much rather be at home?”

  “She is dangerous,” Eudora whispered.

  “How can she be?” Serena asked, talking more to herself than to Eudora. “It is obvious th
at she would like to take my money and be rid of me. Perhaps his Lordship is thinking the same thing. Well, we know that is impossible, it cannot be done. Either they have to dispense with me and the money or else they have to accept us both together. Oh, Eudora, if only my grandfather had known when he left me an inheritance what a millstone it was to be about my neck!”

  “You are not married yet,” Eudora said.

  “No, nor am I likely to be if the Marchioness has anything to do or say about it,” Serena retorted. “Methinks she will feel well rid of me and my eighty thousand pounds.”

  “Trust no one in this house,” Eudora advised.

  “Except you,” Serena said with a smile, “and Torqo. Find somewhere comfortable for him to sleep and see that he is fed and has a bowl of fresh water. Bring him to me the first thing tomorrow morning. I admit I would feel happier if he could sleep with me.”

  “So would I, but I am in the next room. They wanted to put me up in the attics, but I said if I could not sleep near you I would sleep on the floor.”

  “Oh, Eudora, you are such a comfort to me.”

  Serena put her strong young arms round Eudora and lowered her lovely face to the older woman’s lined and withered one.

  “Dear, dear Eudora!”

  For a moment she clung to her and then to her horror she felt the wizened body quivering and shaking beneath her touch.

  “I am afraid, I am afraid,” Eudora moaned in a hoarse voice.

  “No, no, you are not. We are all right. I promise you we are all right,” Serena said reassuringly. “We are here together and no real harm can happen to us – not in these days.”

  Eudora said no more and Serena, kissing her goodnight, turned to go downstairs.

  At the door of the room she turned and looked back.

  Eudora was standing by the dressing table.

  She had her back to Serena, but her face was reflected in the mirror and Serena saw that it was twisted and distorted with a fear beyond expression.

  Chapter Five

  Harriet, Marchioness of Vulcan, pushed the gilt mirror away roughly.

  “Hell, but I look ugly this morning,” she fumed, “I don’t want to go on regarding myself, woman.”

  Her maid moved from the bed, taking the tray on which reposed the mirror and the gold and diamond-studded brush and comb that her Ladyship had been using.

  On the other side of the bed a small black boy, dressed in gorgeous silks and satins and with a turban bearing a peacock’s feather, held out a salver on which there was a cup of chocolate.

  “Chocolate makes me sick,” the Marchioness said petulantly. “Fetch me some brandy, boy.”

  “Your Ladyship said only yesterday that you would forswear brandy in the mornin’,” the maid remarked, turning from the dressing table.

  “What else can I take, woman, when I feel half-asleep and my head aches? La, but it was a tiring evening last night. Twice I won over a thousand guineas in one call and then lost it again.”

  There was a sudden glint in the Marchioness’s eyes and her voice, which was thick and weary, regained for a moment its usual clear lilt and then she slumped back against the pillows of her great bed.

  “But what is the use? My luck is against me. I must speak with Madame Roxana, but first inform his Lordship that I want him.”

  “Methinks his Lordship is out riding,” the maid answered.

  “So early? Well, find out for sure, you fool and if he is not back, tell them to send him to me the moment he returns.”

  “Very good, my Lady.”

  The maid curtseyed and went towards the door as the black boy re-entered the room. The silver salver now held a bottle of brandy and a crystal goblet.

  He offered it to the Marchioness who seized the bottle eagerly and half-filled the glass. She sipped it, coughed and took another sip of the fiery liquid.

  “That’s better!” she exclaimed. “For all your croakings, Martha, this is worth a hundred medicines and so-called elixirs of youth. Already I begin to feel young again.”

  “Yes, but for how long, your Ladyship?” the lady’s maid said tartly and passed from the room before the Marchioness could reply.

  “Crabby old hag,” her Ladyship said, taking another sip of the brandy. “She has been with me too long, that’s the truth.”

  She picked up a small hand mirror that lay on the lace counterpane of the bed and stared at her reflection. The black boy set down the salver beside her and went to the corner of the room where he crouched down awaiting further instructions should they be given.

  In the morning light coming pitilessly through the high windows the Marchioness turned her face this way and that. She touched the tiny fretwork of lines at the corners of her eyes and saw the tired droop of her mouth that no amount of crimson salve would hide. Only her hair, fiery and unfaded, was as lovely as it had been twenty years earlier when she was in the heyday of her beauty. Then it had seemed to her that she would never grow old.

  Married when she was sixteen, her son had been born soon after her seventeenth birthday and it was as the Marchioness of Vulcan that she had taken Society by storm. The great Court painters had fought to use her as their model, poems had been written of her, books had been dedicated to her, no party was a success without her presence and no hostess could afford to ignore her demands, however outrageous they might be.

  Harriet was beautiful and what was more she had a quick wit and an impetuous, sometimes outrageous way of speaking her mind that kept those who paid her homage amused and increasingly enslaved. Success followed success.

  The Court was enlivened by her presence, honours and positions of dignity were piled upon her and it was said that she could even make the dreariness of Palace functions tolerable by her gaiety and her wit.

  It was not surprising that so much success went to her head. Besides, as people remembered later, there was bad blood in her family. The Rapleys had always been dissolute, and her father, before he died in exile, had twice fled to the Continent after being mixed up in very unsavoury intrigues.

  By the time she was thirty the Marchioness of Vulcan’s love affairs were the talk of London. People no longer exclaimed at her loveliness, they whispered of her latest indiscretion and the way she flaunted each new conquest.

  Things grew worse as the years went by. Then, as her beauty began to fade and the very first touch of age began to show itself, there was a strange change. The Marchioness had long been a byword for all that was fantastic, exotic and unconventional and her love affairs, sensational for twenty years, had become legendary and almost traditional.

  At forty she found a new lover, one that utterly absorbed all her passions and desires as no man had ever done. She took to gaming. A game of chance absorbed her to the exclusion of all else. Inevitably she gambled wildly and without restraint, prudence or common sense, just as she had lived all her life.

  Her obsession was so marked that it astonished even those who had thought themselves past being astonished at anything that Harriet Vulcan did. Ignoring those who tried to keep her from disgracing her position at Court, the Marchioness had gambled day and night, winning and losing tremendous sums until the newspapers laughed at her, lampoons were written about her and sold in the streets and Their Majesties were forced to take notice of what was occurring.

  The game of faro had been forbidden. The Marchioness played it on every possible occasion. Her duties at Court began to be neglected. She would hurry impatiently from the Throne Room to the gaming table. She no longer listened when Diplomats paid her compliments or poets read to her their latest odes.

  Her fingers seemed to twist with impatience to get to the cards and she would brush Courtiers aside, her impatience causing more scandal and making her more enemies than ever her love affairs had done.

  The elder Peeresses who surrounded the Queen at last spoke to Her Majesty with the result that Queen Charlotte sent for the Marchioness and talked with her in private. The Queen was gutturally unintelligent,
but her meaning was very clear.

  Either Harriet must give up her gambling or the Court would give her up. It was an ultimatum that the Marchioness solved characteristically, for she found a third solution to the problem.

  She gave up the Court. She relinquished her positions, resigned from being Lady of the Bedchamber and retired to Mandrake. For a moment the fashionable world was too stunned to believe it possible. And then they understood.

  The Marchioness created at Mandrake the atmosphere and conditions she had enjoyed in London, but without restrictions or the tiresome interference of responsibilities.

  For years she had visited Mandrake and her husband, who preferred the country only at infrequent intervals, now that she was permanently in residence she began to spend vast sums on improving the place.

  A year later she became a widow, but, when her only son inherited, it seemed that like his father he too would deny his mother nothing. The greatest architects, the finest decorators hurried down from London to enrich the already historic mansion and, while people wondered at what was being planned, the Marchioness threw open the doors of Mandrake.

  There were banquets every night and afterwards the guests stayed on to gamble. The stakes were higher than those at the most fashionable Clubs or gaming rooms in London. A visitor to Mandrake could indulge in every possible type of game from the sober pool of quadrille or of commerce to the more exciting and certainly the more expensive ones of loo, faro, whist and macao.

  The State Rooms of the great house were comfortable and exotic enough to appeal to the most fastidious gambler. The food and wine tempted the palates of the most exacting epicure. All that was latest and strangest was to be found at Mandrake. It was the centre of everything that was brilliant, glittering and daring, while the light and spirit of the whole place was its hostess.

  Sparkling and shining both in her beauty and in her wit, the Marchioness became Queen of a Court such as historians must have sometimes dreamt of as they wrote wearily of the divine dullness of reigning Monarchs.

  Mandrake became a meeting place of the fashionable world, but it soon became evident that only the wealthiest could afford to go there. There began too to be nasty whispers that the Marchioness was becoming importunate. She gambled vehemently when she lost and hungered for more when she won, but either way no one could escape from her while they had the money to go on playing. She was insatiable, a woman devoured by her own desire.