The Sins of Lady Dacey Read online

  She rang the bell which was promptly answered by a footman. To Honoria's request to be taken to the duke, he looked horrified and replied that his master must not be disturbed.

  Cunningly, Honoria said in that case could he tell her where the duke's bedchamber was located, for she would make sure that she and her friend did not make any unnecessary noise when passing near it. The footman replied that the duke's rooms were at the end of the same corridor in which theirs was located. Honoria nodded to him in dismissal. When he had gone, she took out a book of sermons and marched out into the corridor and along to the end. In her mind's eye, she had a picture of a frail and elderly gentleman in the grip of a fever, too old and stubborn to ask for help.

  * * * *

  The Duke of Ware, as he lay restlessly awake against his pillows, was not the kind of man, despite his wicked reputation, to think he was suffering from any sort of divine retribution. He had caught a chill, that was all, and could only be glad his noisy guests and his mistress had departed before the snow fell. His illness, in his opinion, was nothing to do with his energetic pursuits in the hunting field or in the bedroom. He was unmarried and well aware of his reputation for romancing and hard living. He was thirty-three and thought that he might get married one day, but not yet. He was an exceptionally handsome man in a saturnine way with hair as dark as midnight, odd-colored tawny eyes, and the figure of an athlete. The fact that he had two female visitors did not interest him. His valet had reported the butler's words that a couple of provincial dowds, although no doubt ladies, had landed on his doorstep. The duke knew that the days when ladies manufactured accidents to get near him were over. His bad reputation and sarcastic tongue had seen to that. He knew himself to be a good and fair landlord. He had hardly ever been troubled by qualms of conscience and thought love was the invention of poets.

  He did, however, feel miserable, with a burning forehead and an aching body.

  The door opened and a figure entered and stood in the shadows of the room, surveying him.

  “Who's there?” he called from the vastness of the medieval four-poster bed.

  “Honoria Goodham, an it please Your Grace,” came a light, clear voice.

  “Who the deuce is Honoria Goodham?”

  “I am one of the ladies stranded by the storm.”

  “Oh, one of the dowds. Well, my pet, I am not in the mood. Take yourself off.”

  Honoria's face flamed, but she walked up to the side of the bed and looked at the duke. “I'faith, you are a schoolgirl,” he said, looking at those long pigtails. “What are you doing walking so boldly into a gentleman's bedchamber?”

  “I am come to read to you, but first I must see to your comfort.” Honoria had been taken aback to find he was not an elderly gentleman, but a sick man was a sick man and must be cared for. She went to the toilet table and filled a basin with warm water and cologne, found a cloth, returned to the bed, and bathed the duke's forehead. He was about to protest, but her touch was gentle, and the warm water and cologne soothing. Then she ordered him to sit up and plumped up his pillows and then settled him against them. Half-amused, half-exasperated, his eyes glinted feverishly in the candlelight as he watched her take out a book of sermons. In her pleasant voice, she began to read.

  She had the most beautiful eyes and ridiculously long lashes, he thought, casting an expert eye over her. He decided to humor her and listened to that soothing voice until he drifted off to sleep.

  At four in the morning, he tossed and turned himself awake and felt that gentle hand bathing his forehead again. A hand held a cup to his lips and urged him to drink. He drank the posset she had ordered to be prepared for him by the surprised servants. She had laced it with a little laudanum. She continued to bathe his forehead until he fell asleep again.

  During the following snowbound days, Honoria trotted cheerfully between the duke's bedroom and Pamela's, caring equally for each invalid. Concern for her patients had given her a new authority, and so the servants obeyed her commands and invalid food was presented to the duke, who was now too weak to protest. Honoria was one of those unusual people who do not need much sleep, but she managed a few hours each afternoon, lulled by the wealthy comfort of the house and the silence caused by the drifting, enveloping snow outside. Once more she was doing her duty, and her conscience was quiet. She did not see the duke as a man, only as a rather tetchy patient. That evening the snow changed to rain and the wind shifted to the southwest. She sent for the driver. He told her that it would take another couple of days at least for the roads would be impassible with floods and mud, so she tranquilly went off to wait on the duke's comfort.

  The duke was rapidly recovering and no longer found this “schoolgirl” charming. In fact, her sermons were beginning to make him restless. But courtesy bred out of a respect for her kindness stopped him from telling her so. When his servants told him the weather had turned fine and unseasonably warm and that the roads were clearing quickly, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  He was up and out of bed for the first time on the day that Honoria and Pamela, also completely recovered, were due to leave.

  Honoria, entering his bedchamber, was intimidated by his height, by the glory of his oriental dressing gown, by the new mocking light in his eyes, and by his brooding air of sensuality.

  “As you can see, Miss Goodham,” he said, “I no longer require your services. I gather you are taking your leave.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Mrs. Perryworth and I thank you for your hospitality.”

  “You are on your way to London?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. We are to stay with Lady Dacey.”

  “With whom?”

  “Lady Dacey. Do you know Lady Dacey?”

  His eyes glittered with a wicked light. The correct answer to that was, “What man in London does not?” But he said aloud, “I know her slightly. A long visit?”

  “No, I am going there until the end of the Season.”

  “You surely do not plan your come-out?”

  “But, yes. Lady Dacey has been kind enough to say she will present me.”

  He was sitting in a high-backed carved chair by the window. He made a steeple of his long white fingers and surveyed her over them. “How old are you, child?”

  “I am eighteen.”

  “So old? Do you plan to read sermons to Lady Dacey?”

  “If that pleases her, yes.”

  He stood up and approached her. “Good luck,” he said. “You will need it.”

  She swept him a curtsy, and he noticed that she moved with a natural grace. “Thank you for all your hospitality,” she said, suddenly shy. “Perhaps we shall meet again?”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” He bowed and turned away and stared out of the window as if she were already forgotten.

  Honoria felt quite small and grubby and depressed. She was very subdued as she climbed into the post chaise with Pamela. If London was going to be full of such grand and terrifying gentlemen, she had little hope of making a good marriage.

  “I am sorry I did not meet our host,” said Pamela. “And after all, Lady Dacey hopes you will marry a duke. But not that one! My dear, the little maid who dressed my hair told me he is considered very wicked indeed and, had we arrived a few days earlier, we would have found some rackety Corinthians and their mistresses in residence.”

  Honoria tugged miserably at her pleated hair and remembered the sermon reading. She had been so anxious to be good, to clear her own conscience, that she had not paused to think what type of man she was nursing.

  “I shall write to Mama this evening,” said Honoria, “and tell her of our visit. She will be delighted.”

  “Not if she knows the duke's reputation.”

  “She will be in alt, I assure you. Did not Mama look fondly on the prospects of such as Mr. Pomfret?”

  Pamela shifted uncomfortably. “I am here to reprove you for such remarks, but I find I cannot. It is very hard, I find, to tell right from wrong when one has been made to feel guilty about
everything.” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “Do you know, when the carriage overturned and I became ill, I thought God was punishing us.”

  Honoria looked startled. “Such a thought has been plaguing me. I wished to atone for my sins by nursing the duke. I thought our accident was divine retribution for having drunk wine.”

  “I think sometimes,” said Pamela cautiously, “that my beliefs are superstitious rather than spiritual.”

  “Have we a generous amount of money for expenses on this journey?” asked Honoria.

  “Yes, very generous.”

  “Then when we stop for the night, I would like champagne. I have never tasted champagne.”

  “Oh, Honoria!”

  “We will put it to the test. We shall command the best food and the best champagne and then see what happens.”

  “You are very brave.”

  “Only practical. If one thinks one's fears are silly, then it is better to put them to the test. And I am going to wear my hair up. We will have a private parlor. No one will see us.”

  Although they knew they were only going to see each other at dinner, both ladies worked at their appearances, Pamela curling Honoria's rippling hair and piling it on her head in one of the new classical fashions. They dressed in their finest gowns, Honoria in sprigged muslin, Pamela in gray silk, and draped shawls about their shoulders, each checking that the other had the folds of the material draped at just the right angle.

  That was when the innkeeper came in, bowing and scraping and offering apologies. The chimney in the private parlor had gone on fire and the resultant fall of soot had blackened the room. There were no other private parlors available. But the company in the public dining room was very genteel, very sober. He did not cater to coach parties. It was one of England's finest posting houses. There was nothing else they could do but agree to his offer.

  “This must be what it is like, going on stage,” said Honoria. “I feel quite self-conscious.”

  “You look beautiful,” said Pamela, and meant it.

  Honoria appeared transformed. Her shining waves and curls shone in the lamplight, piled up on her small head, exposing her delicate white neck. Her large, deep blue eyes lent her innocent face an air of mystery.

  They entered the dining room, heads held high, and were ushered to the best table in the bay of the window. Honoria relaxed once they were seated and looked cautiously around. A very ordinary sort of respectable family—father, mother, grown-up son and daughter—was at one of the tables, a grim spinster at another, what looked like a lawyer and his wife at a third, and a party of men at a fourth. Nothing to worry about.

  Pamela had thought the idea of drinking champagne was only to be indulged in private and so was alarmed to hear Honoria's clear voice firmly ordering a bottle.

  She glanced uneasily from behind the shelter of her fan at the men at the other table. There were four of them, all fashionably dressed, and all with that damn-your-eyes stare of the well-bred. They were looking at Honoria, with a sort of predatory expression—or rather, three of them were. The fourth was looking at Pamela. She colored and stared down at the table.

  Honoria saw that embarrassed flush and looked across at the men. She raised her thin eyebrows haughtily and the three who had been looking at her turned away and began to talk to one another. The fourth went on looking at Pamela. He was a roguishly handsome man, not in his first youth, but almost boyish with his slender figure like an acrobat's and his head of glossy black curls. He went on looking at Pamela in an unselfconscious way, his dark eyes alight with admiration.

  Honoria had another look at the vicar's wife. She had been so used to thinking of Pamela as middle-aged and colorless, despite their newfound friendship, that she saw to her surprise that Pamela was in fact looking very attractive. Her fair hair under a lace cap gleamed softly in the candlelight, and her wide brown eyes and soft mouth made her look vulnerable. Her face had lost that set, rigid look, and her mouth was no longer crimped in at the corners.

  “You have a beau,” commented Honoria, “and a very attractive one, too.”

  “I wish he would not stare so,” said Pamela to the table.

  “The other three stared at me,” said Honoria reflectively, “and although I glared at them to put them in their place, I confess I rather enjoyed the novelty of being stared at. Men never looked at me so before. There is a lot to be said for having one's hair up. Here is our champagne. Drink a glass, Pamela, and forget your admirer.”

  The food was excellent and the champagne tasted refreshingly innocuous. They talked about the duke's household and made up stories about his wickedness, forgetting the rest of the diners as they talked.

  They finally rose to leave, and the four men promptly got to their feet as well. Heads high and cheek's flushed, Honoria and Pamela walked past them.

  “We are becoming very sophisticated,” said Honoria happily when they had reached their bedchamber.

  Pamela let out an exclamation of dismay. “I have dropped my fan! I must have left it in the dining room. I really do not want to go back down there.”

  “A servant can do that.” Honoria opened the door and called, “Waiter!” A harrassed individual, ignoring the other peremptory cries of “Waiter” that sounded through every English inn at all times of the day and night, rushed to attend to those the other servants were already describing as “the pretty ladies.”

  “My friend dropped her fan in the dining room,” said Honoria. “Be so good as to retrieve it for her. It is a painted fan on ivory sticks.”

  “I do hope he finds it,” said Pamela anxiously. “It was a present from Mr. Perryworth. He will be so very angry if I lose it.”

  The waiter returned after some time to say there was no sign of it. The dining room and the stairs leading to their room had been thoroughly searched.

  “Oh, dear,” said Pamela. “Do you think ... ?”

  “If we start to think that we are being punished for drinking champagne by the loss of a mere fan, then we are run mad. Pamela! London is full of shops and shops are full of fans. I swear we can find one so like it that Mr. Perryworth won't know the difference.”

  “You don't know my husband,” said Pamela gloomily. “He will know it is not the right one, and he will punish me.”

  “Punish you? You are not a naughty child. How will he punish you?”

  “He will refuse to speak to me for quite a long time.” Something rebellious rose up in Honoria as she looked at Pamela's sad face.

  “And would that be such a bad thing, my dear? He only opens his mouth at the best of times to find fault.”

  “Honoria!”

  “It is true. I have said it. I don't care. I enjoyed the champagne and the stares of these men. So there. You are worrying already about what will happen to us when we return home. But it is months until the Season begins, and then it will be next summer before we need to think of heading north. I am weary of feeling bad and guilty.” She threw her arms wide. “I am going to enjoy myself!”

  * * * *

  Pamela was awakened early next morning by the bustle in the inn yard of arrivals and departures. She rose and washed and dressed and then looked out of the window. It was a clear, frosty morning.

  The gentlemen of the dining room were taking their leave. The three who had looked at Honoria got into one carriage, and the one who had looked at her, said good-bye to them, while looking toward the stables as if waiting for his own carriage. One of the men on the box said something, and to Pamela's horror, the man who had stared at her took her fan out of his pocket, kissed it, flirted it in the air, and put it in his pocket again.

  She swung her cloak about her shoulders and ran downstairs and out into the inn yard, just as the carriage bearing the three men bowled off and the thief of the fan was about to climb into his own, which had been brought round.

  “Stop!” cried Pamela.

  He swung round, his eyes beginning to dance when he saw her.

  “My fan. You stole my
fan.”

  He executed a low bow. “Mr. Sean Delaney at your service, ma'am.”

  “Thief! Give me my fan.”

  He drew it from his pocket but did not hand it to her.

  “What is your name, lady?”

  “Mrs. Perryworth.”

  “Widow?”

  “I am not a widow. I am a vicar's wife,” said Pamela.

  “Pity. I did not exactly steal your fan, ma'am. It was a fair exchange.”

  “For what, pray?”

  “For stealing my heart.”

  She looked up into his handsome face and merry eyes. She felt herself beginning to smile and just managed to turn it into a grimace. “My fan,” she repeated.

  He gave a shrug and passed it to her. There was a sudden break in the arrivals and departures, and they were alone in the inn yard, screened from the windows of the inn by his carriage.

  He suddenly took her face firmly between his hands and kissed her soundly on the mouth, a warm, passionate kiss that burned through the hitherto unawakened vicar's wife right down to her little kid boots.

  He then stood back and bowed while she stared at him in a dazed way, the fan hanging limply in one hand.

  “We shall meet again,” he said, springing into his carriage and picking up the reins. “Your driver tells me you are bound for Lady Dacey's in London. What are a vicar's wife and a young innocent doing going to stay with such as Lady Dacey?”

  And without waiting for a reply, he raised his whip in salute and drove off under the arch of the inn, his head silhouetted against the glare of the frosty morning sun.

  She went slowly back into the inn, wondering why she was not shocked, wondering at the gladness coursing through her.

  Honoria was awake when she returned to the room. She looked at Pamela's flushed face and bright eyes and said, “You look very well. Perhaps you should drink champagne every day.”

  “I have found my fan,” said Pamela. “One of the gentlemen, a Mr. Sean Delaney, had taken it for a joke.”

  “And is Mr. Sean Delaney the handsome gentleman who was so fascinated by you?”