Betsy, sprightly, bobbed in her dancing, hurrying walk. It was her free hour, the only time she was free in each long day. She was always up before six and not off duty until she retired to bed, which was never before ten each night. But she had one Sunday off a month, and the precious hour each day.
Outside Collins Coffee House, her generous and personable gentleman was waiting for her, looking a regular bang-up nob in his fine clothes.
‘Ah, there you are, pretty puss,’ he said.
‘Oh, I be in pleasure to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘I got your note last night. But I be shaking as well as pleased, in case I’m to do what makes me quake terrible.’
‘I ain’t inclined to make you do that, Betsy. Come along now.’
A minute later they were comfortably ensconced in the cosiness of a private room. There was coffee for Betsy, and confectionery, and she began to consume the latter blissfully.
‘Make me do what, sir? You didn’t say.’
‘Whatever it is that makes you quake terribly.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind kissing, sir. Kissing be fair after all them golden guineas. And fondling, though I be given to embarrassing blushing, sir.’
‘Come, come, business first, Betsy, embarrassment later.’
‘Oh, lord,’ said Betsy. ‘What business, sir?’
‘Be in cheerful heart, Betsy. The Lord Chancellor has faith in you, and so have I. We require only a small service of you. Which is to have you let me into the house on the day of the twenty-ninth of July.’
‘During the day, sir?’ Betsy gulped and swallowed half-chewed confectionery. ‘Oh, I can’t, sir, I daresn’t, not during the day.’
‘Alas, you must, rosy cheeks. The Lord Chancellor insists. Faith, it’ll be tricky for both of us, I’ll not deny, but we don’t want to end up losing our heads and having ’em spiked on the city gates.’
Betsy gulped again. Hot coffee swam untidily into her throat and she gasped, gurgled and choked. In kindly fashion, Captain Burnside patted her back.
Her shaking hand set down the large mug. ‘Don’t talk like that, sir,’ she begged, ‘it fair gives me the shivers.’
‘Upon my soul,’ said the captain. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, looking into luminous eyes. ‘Is this the brave Betsy who has shared perils with me as my confederate? Quakings and shiverings before we’ve scarcely begun to discuss our next endeavour?’
‘But, sir,’ said Betsy through trembling lips, ‘you be so flummoxing with your talk of embarrassments and heads on spikes, and saying I must let you in by day.’
‘Oh, I’m as much flummoxed as you are by all we’re required to do for the sake of the duke, but it ain’t for us to question it, pretty puss. There.’ He gave her a comforting kiss. Her trembling lips sprang into eager life. With so fascinating and exciting a gentleman, kissing was delicious. ‘Now, courage, Betsy,’ he said, and caressed her soft chin.
‘Oh, some kisses be almost better than guineas, sir,’ she said.
‘You shall have a guinea or two more, and a kiss or two more. Yes, why not, since you own such warm lips?’
‘Nor I won’t say no to being fondled, sir, only can’t I let you in at night and not day? By day, sir, the house be full of comings and goings.’
‘The side door is always locked, Betsy?’
‘Bolted, sir, and opened only for people coming with goods and eatables and suchlike.’
‘Well, Betsy, contrive to draw the bolts as near to noon on the twenty-ninth of July as you can. You need not wait. Merely slip the bolts, then make yourself scarce, though with such a sweet shape as you have your noticeability ain’t ever going to reduce you to invisibility. A small point, but a delicious one.’
‘Oh, maybe I could do that, sir. Maybe I could draw the bolts as quiet as a mouse. Just that, sir. I daresn’t linger, I always be so busy. It be different of an evening, when I’m not so busy and can say there’s a gentleman friend coming to see me.’
‘There, that’s capital. I’ll be delivering a cheese, Betsy.’
‘A cheese?’ Betsy looked visibly flummoxed.
‘Or a small cask of wine. So that if I’m seen I’ve an excuse, d’you see, and also an apology ready for being at the wrong address.’
‘Oh, you be a rare thinking gentleman, sir. And all for the good of His Highness, who be a stern and fearful duke and not afraid of the devil hisself. Sir, what will you be up to in the house?’
‘Looking out for the devil, puss. As our Lord Chancellor says, the devil appears in various guises. Have no fears, my quaking partridge, you have no more to do than draw the bolts. You shall meet with no unhappy fate on the gibbet or the block. Unless you blow the gaff. So, not a word, as before.’
‘Lord, no, sir, not a whisper. Oh, you be a kind and caring gentleman, looking after me not being hanged and pleasuring me with guineas. There be one or two coming to me now?’
‘For now, some silver shillings, puss.’ Captain Burnside slipped several into her receptive hand. She glowed, swivelled in her chair, drew up her servant’s gown and slipped the coins into a pocket of her white linen pantaloons. ‘H’m,’ said the captain, ‘I ain’t sure the Lord Chancellor would approve that. He ain’t a gentleman given to allowing sauciness in young ladies.’
‘Oh, I be in shameful forgetfulness of where I be,’ said Betsy, trying to blush. She regarded her pantaloons accusingly. She glanced to see if her gentleman was looking. Her gentleman gave her a kind and forgiving smile. ‘Well, ’tisn’t as if I be wearing them I keep for my Sundays off, sir. They be rare pretty things, not the kind to be forgetful about.’
‘Very well. We’ll excuse these. Now, finish your coffee, saucy kitten, and then you and I will go.’
‘But there’s been no kissing,’ protested Betsy, ‘and it aren’t right I shouldn’t let you, though it always puts me in a rare tizzy. Still, seeing you’re such a kind and giving gentleman, sir, kissing’s only fair, and I won’t scream the place down.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ said Captain Burnside, and gave her a kind kiss. Betsy closed her eyes and parted her lips. Her pink tongue flicked and foraged. She took his hands and placed them on her bodice. Kindly, in his professionalism, he caressed her. Betsy gave a sighing moan and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘Come, come, minx, you’ll not be feeling this is a fate worse than death, will you?’ he suggested.
‘Oh, I be feeling terrible shy and embarrassed, sir.’
‘Then I shan’t press my attentions, Betsy, for it won’t do to have you shy and embarrassed. That’s a poor reward for the brave service you’ve given me.’
‘Oh, I aren’t saying this kind of embarrassment aren’t bearable, sir, nor that I won’t let you unlace me …’
‘Unlace you? Heavens, puss, unlacing a loyal accomplice is most strictly forbidden.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t breathe a word, that I wouldn’t,’ said Betsy.
‘No, no, there are the rules, Betsy, as well as your blushes. Come, it’s time we left.’
Betsy sighed. On the way back to her duties, her gentleman escorting her part of the way, she suggested he might be wishful to set her up. At which he drew her hastily into the shelter of a columned portico.
‘Damn me,’ he whispered, ‘if that ain’t my dearly beloved wife.’ Betsy saw a lady daintily tripping along on the other side of the street. ‘There, d’you see how the quirks of fate can catch one out? If I hadn’t clapped my peepers on her first, she’d have spotted us. Dear as she is to me, one look at you and your prettiness, and I’d have been hard put to explain you away. Praise the Lord, she’s gone now, out of sight, but no more talk of setting you up, my tempting puss.’
‘Oh, I be downright disappointed,’ sighed Betsy, ‘for I’m gone on you something cruel. Yet it’s sweet knowing you’re wishful to be true to her. That be nice. Still,’ she added hopefully, ‘there’s always kissing, which aren’t as unfaithful as setting me up. Sir, if something happens and I be unable to draw them bolts that day, for I’m sometimes sent out on errands and suchlike, where can I send a message to you?’
He mused. Betsy had perception. She had seen ahead, in a thinking way.
‘Well, let’s pray something like that won’t happen, but if it does, you can send the message. You’ve a boy in the household you can trust?’
‘Yes, there be Isaac the bootboy, sir. I be a favourite with Isaac.’
‘Good.’ He gave her Lady Caroline’s address, without mentioning his hostess, and he merely gave his own name as Mr Burnside.
He took tea later that afternoon with Caroline and Annabelle. Caroline had paid him out a little during the morning. She had insisted he go shopping with her and Annabelle, and in the coolest and most audacious fashion had made him carry all the parcels. Annabelle had had fits of giggles, for of all joyous things Caroline had purchased silk stockings and garters under his waiting eyes, and then planted the daintily wrapped box in his arms, where rested other packages. The captain had gazed fixedly at the shop ceiling. And then Caroline had said, ‘Come, there are other things, Captain, so please don’t dawdle.’
How, Annabelle wondered, could her sister be so deliciously wicked to him?
Over tea, Caroline was a little more mellow. And the captain’s conversation was engaging. He had been out to call on a friend, he had said, and his outing seemed to have left him pleased with himself. Caroline, when asked if she would permit him to make his call, replied out of earshot of her sister that it was wholly gratifying to be asked, and that he could go providing the friend in question was not one of his more dubious acquaintances. He assured her his friend was a worthy citizen.
Watching him now, as he exchanged quips with her sister, Caroline thought the two of them extraordinarily compatible. Annabelle was entirely alive, her laughter quick to come, her blue eyes dancing. Was she falling in love with him? Or, wait, was her vivacious mood due to the fact that Cumberland would be present this evening? She had confessed it was indeed true that Captain Burnside had driven her to the duke’s residence, but that she went only to talk to him, to try to discover if his intentions were serious. She frankly confessed that she left in a distressed state because she felt it so unfair that he should be in love with her, yet give her only upsetting and unsatisfactory answers. In her distress she left her parasol behind. Caroline told her she was making a grievous mistake if she thought Cumberland was actually in love with her. He was in love with no one. He was capable of only loving himself. Annabelle said that was being very hard on him.
Either she was still infatuated with him and in animated anticipation of seeing him this evening, or she was falling in love with Captain Burnside, which was what had been planned and which the captain had said would be accomplished. Dear heaven, thought Caroline, how could I have considered this ploy acceptable? It was an outrageous thing from the beginning, a desperately amoral alternative to Annabelle’s dangerous relationship with Cumberland. In pushing her sister into the arms of a professional blackguard, she was no less reprehensible than he was.
Annabelle laughed and leaned, and Caroline saw her lay a light, playful hand on the captain’s knee.
‘Fie, Charles,’ she said, ‘I declare that remark out of all order.’
‘I remarked only, in so many words, that eventually the gentleman of your romantic choice would find a tease on his hands,’ smiled the captain.
‘To the eventual gentleman of my choice, I shall be as sweet as he could wish,’ said Annabelle. ‘That is, as long as he is sweet to me.’
‘Such a gentleman will be a fellow countryman, young lady?’
Annabelle fluttered her lashes and looked at him demurely. ‘But, Charles,’ she said, ‘like Caroline, I have become devoted to the gentlemen of England.’
‘I am alarmed,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘for I see in that the dire prospect of you and Caroline becoming a tease to all of us, and we will be wrecked.’
‘I am sure, Captain Burnside, that in knowing me for as long as you have, you are aware I do not indulge in teasing men,’ said Caroline.
‘Ah, but your warm beauty, that is teasing enough,’ said the captain with a smile, ‘and in your younger days, as a newly arrived magnolia bloom, your eyes held the most bewitching tease. Along with other gentlemen, I groaned in acute suffering when you chose Lord Percival for husband.’
Delightedly, Annabelle clapped her hands. ‘Caroline, there, Charles has declared he had a passion for you,’ she cried.
Caroline vibrated. What a specious serpent he was, with his devious tongue and his smiling familiarities, and the advantage he took of their contrived relationship.
‘I do not remember hearing his groans,’ she said, ‘I only remember his single passion was for cards. Let us see where that will lead him with Cumberland this evening.’
Both chandeliers shed light over the card room. Every candle burned with a tall, steady flame, and every flame was variously reflected by the facets of the crystal glass. Around the card table sat Cumberland, Mr Robert Humphreys, the duke’s most cordial and obliging friend, Captain Burnside and Mr Gerald Wingrove, currently closest, so it was said, to Caroline’s reserved affections.
Very obligingly, Robert had agreed to a suggestion made by Cumberland before they reached Lady Caroline’s residence. That to down the Burnside fellow he should stand on all hands when the drawing of another card would risk running him over the top. He should stand, therefore, on any score from twelve to twenty-one. The Burnside fellow was patently an egoistic show-off who, when holding the bank, would always elect for a risky draw. That was when to stand consistently, when Burnside had the bank.
The ploy was working. Robert was collecting steadily each time the captain held the bank. Cumberland’s play was of his usual impassive kind, but his stakes were heavier when he was confronted by the captain. He had much to make up if he were to reduce the burden of the IOU.
On the other side of the room, Caroline was playing backgammon with Annabelle and Cecilia Humphreys. Cecilia was in placid concentration, but neither Caroline nor Annabelle showed total interest. Annabelle was sensitive to the presence of Cumberland and his muscular magnificence. Caroline, with many a casual gesture – a touch to her curling ringlets, a fingertip caress of an eyebrow, a light change of posture or a hand at her throat – cast brief glances at Captain Burnside. It was of all things the most vexing to find her eye-wandering so compulsive. Naturally, there was the money factor to be concerned about. Her money. She had spoken to him about it before Cumberland arrived.
‘It is purely Cumberland’s pocket now that you have secured the letter,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s a ravaged pocket at the moment, Caroline, to the extent of nine hundred and eighty guineas.’
She passed over his use of her name, which she only permitted normally when Annabelle was present.
‘He’ll not pay such a sum,’ she said. ‘He won’t precisely disown the debt, for he can’t, not a card debt, as you know. He’ll declare, should you press him, that a remittance will be forthcoming. They are all forever in debt, the King’s sons, and it would never do to sue Cumberland, for if you do you’ll be arrested on a trumped-up charge and you’ll be convicted and transported. He’ll do his best tonight to win back the better part of the IOU, and he may, perhaps, put you in debt to him. I have agreed with you that I shall discharge such a debt. By the same reckoning, you shall hand to me such winnings that he does settle. He will settle, I think, if he can reduce the IOU to, say, two hundred guineas.’
‘Ah,’ said the captain wryly, ‘that’s a wounding blow, marm. I thought perhaps you’d allow me to line my threadbare pockets.’
‘Sir, you have earned yourself half your fee so far, and that should line them richly.’
‘I ain’t quite able to recall if I’ve had the remittance from you, marm.’
‘You will receive it, sir, when the whole venture is over. I am sure that if you were to receive it now, you would vanish.’
‘It don’t do, marm, to upset a patron, for if I did I’d earn a reputation for dishonesty, and no patron would recommend me to another.’
She could not help herself. The coolness she had shown him since last night slipped away and the compulsive laughter danced in her eyes. ‘Captain Burnside, you take my breath. A reputation for dishonesty? But the principles of dishonesty are what make you what you are, do they not? A professional scoundrel?’
‘Not between myself and a patron, marm. Between myself and a patron exists treasured integrity.’
‘Treasured integrity?’ She laughed aloud. ‘Oh, I shall never make head nor tail of such absurdity.’
‘A logical sentiment,’ observed the captain, ‘and can I take it that it implies you ain’t now set on making an honest country fellow of me?’
Caroline faced squarely up to him. ‘I vow, sir, that despite my annoyances I am determined to help you turn aside from a life of crime.’
‘Crime?’ Captain Burnside clapped a hand to his brow. ‘Crime?’
‘That is what I said, sir, for what else is it?’
‘I ain’t ever thought of it as anything else but a pleasing way of settling my tailor’s bills.’
‘Heaven help you,’ said Caroline. She became serious. ‘Captain Burnside, be careful this evening. I would even recommend that now it is only Cumberland’s pocket or yours – that is, mine – you contrive to let him win. Should you considerably increase his debt, and even though he won’t pay, he may contrive your downfall simply because he’ll be furious that you’ve twice bested him. So take care, I beg.’ She put an impulsive hand on his arm. ‘Cumberland is truly a dangerous man.’
‘Well, I ain’t disposed to provoke him,’ said the captain affably.
Caroline, however, was not so sure that in his airy self-assurance he would take her advice. At the table, he seemed in no concern about the run of the play, and his voice was as much of an indistinct murmur as the others. He sat at ease, his hands dexterous whenever he was dealing, his quill pen moving swiftly whenever he made a note of credits or debits. Cumberland sat in his own way, dark, lowering and inscrutable. Robert seemed his usual easy-going self, and her friend Mr Wingrove, quite impressed at being at a card table with the duke, was in murmurous, conversational fluency, it appeared. She stiffened as she heard Cumberland suddenly speak in a chilling way.
‘Sir, whoever ye are, for I ain’t taken a note of your name, if I had come for the purpose of listening to your opinions on potted plants and cabbages, I’d not be sitting here with cards in my hand. Ye take me, I hope?’
‘Your Highness,’ said Mr Wingrove in protest, ‘I made no mention of cabbages, I was merely pointing out that a fig tree can be grown in a tub.’
‘So can cabbages, I don’t doubt,’ said Cumberland, ‘so are ye for cards or cabbages, sir?’
‘Oh dear,’ murmured Annabelle.
Mr Wingrove gathered up the cards and shuffled them, frowningly. Captain Burnside regarded the ceiling. Robert cast an eye at Cumberland. The duke was down, mainly to Captain Burnside.
Cumberland acquired the bank. Captain Burnside began to plunge, heavily. Cumberland flipped cards at him, his dark eye measuring his man, reading him, analysing him. The captain lost two successive hands to the tune of seventy guineas and sixty guineas.
The duke, about to deal again, said, ‘I don’t think I know your regiment, sir.’
‘Ninth Dragoons, sir,’ said the captain.
‘The Ninth? Colonel Masterson, ye say?’
‘A commanding officer of distinction, sir,’ said the captain.
‘Ain’t the Ninth in the field?’ enquired Cumberland.
‘Not at the moment, sir.’
Caroline listened to this uneasily. Cumberland suspected something. But he surely could not suspect Captain Burnside was responsible for taking the letter, if he had discovered it was missing. Why should he? It must be something else. Perhaps to do with the unpalatable fact that the captain was an impostor. No, not an impostor: a disgraced officer who had been forced to resign his commission and now lived by his wits. But if Cumberland was aware of that, then nothing would have induced him to sit down again at the card table with the captain or even to acknowledge his existence. And he would have disowned the IOU on the grounds that he had been deceived into assuming he was gambling with a gentleman. So what did his sudden probing into the captain’s military credentials mean if he did not suspect the one thing or the other?
He was dealing the cards now, and accordingly was silent.
‘Caroline, Caroline, do attend,’ said Cecilia, dark hair lush with a softly rich shine, powdered bosom delicately white within the revealing frame of her bodice. ‘You are playing very sketchily, darling.’
‘And I am playing hopelessly,’ said Annabelle.
Caroline attended.
The four men murmured. Cards were given, stakes raised, losing hands thrown in, hopeful hands retained. The bank remained with Cumberland for a prolonged period. Robert revealed a queen and an ace at one stage, but Cumberland matched it and cleaned up. Lady Luck consistently favoured him, and even when he was eventually forced to yield the bank to Captain Burnside she still remained faithful, and he amassed further credits. Mr Wingrove, who had taken to playing with quiet dignity since being snubbed, staked modestly and kept modestly in credit. Robert, as usual, won some hands and lost others. He had never been known to rise from a card table excitingly enriched. Captain Burnside, having lost most hands while the bank had been with Cumberland, now found the duke’s hands still too good for him. Caroline, ears attuned to the men’s voices, heard him say quite clearly once, ‘Damn me, that’s a painful leveller, Your Highness.’ Was he taking her advice; was he taking care not to put himself on the wrong side of Cumberland? Cumberland’s debt to him of almost a thousand guineas was a vast enough sum as it was, but it had only been a piece of paper when viewed in the context of a negotiation for the letter. Without the need for any negotiation, it represented something that would cause excessive irritation and annoyance to the duke. To add to it tonight would be a dangerous mistake.
Captain Burnside was shuffling the cards when Cumberland clearly addressed him again. ‘Ye’re enjoying extended leave, Burnside?’
‘After extended duty in Ireland, Your Highness,’ said the captain pleasantly.
‘Ireland, b’God,’ said Cumberland, and his blind eye, the colour of curdled milk, was a blankness that made his sound eye doubly penetrating. ‘A land of papist rascals and Jesuit plots, ye’ll allow?’
‘A troublesome place, sir,’ murmured the captain. The cards having been cut, he began to deal, and the duke, accordingly, ceased his further little inquisition. But it had increased Caroline’s uneasiness.
The play terminated at midnight. Cumberland rose from the table the richer at the captain’s expense by seven hundred and ninety guineas, which reduced his debt to a mere one hundred and ninety. His smile was bleak. ‘I’ll let ye have a remittance, sir,’ he said.
‘Good of you, sir,’ said the captain.
There was a settlement of Mr Wingrove’s modest wins and losses, which left him slightly down. Robert owed Captain Burnside twenty-five guineas, when all was totted up, and he also owed Cumberland seventy guineas.
‘I’m short of the ready on my person,’ he said, ‘so I’ll settle with you in a day or two, Captain.’ To Cumberland he said with a cheerful smile, ‘If you’ll drop in on your way home, Your Highness, I’ll settle with you at my place.’
‘Ye can ride in my carriage, with Cecilia,’ said Cumberland.
He said goodnight to Caroline, thanking her for her hospitality. He kissed her hand. He said goodnight to Annabelle, and in insolent provocation of her sister kissed her on the cheek. Annabelle blushed. The devil lurked in his smile.
To Mr Wingrove, he said, ‘Goodnight, sir, ye may return to your potted figs and cabbages now.’
‘I’m gratified, sir, to have Your Highness’s permission,’ said Mr Wingrove, who may have been bloodied but was, in his acerbic rejoinder, certainly unbowed.
‘Oh, ye have it,’ said Cumberland with royal indifference, and left with Robert and Cecilia.
Mr Wingrove, his handsomeness marred by a frown, stayed a while to offer his opinions on Cumberland’s lack of decent graces. He expressed himself articulately and at length, finding a warm sympathizer in Caroline. Captain Burnside, seating himself again, leaned back and relaxed, expressing his own sympathy with the occasional nod. Annabelle, smothering a yawn, wondered how to get Mr Wingrove to go home. Caroline found the solution by taking advantage of an unexpected pause and telling him he had stood up very well to the duke, that he could depart with his honour intact and that she would see him out herself. Which she did, although he bade her a very lingering goodnight at the door, and kissed her hand fervently.
Returning to the card room, she found Captain Burnside with his legs stretched out and his eyes closed.
Annabelle, on her feet, smiled. ‘I fear, sister, he has fallen asleep.’
‘The wretch,’ said Caroline.
‘You are surprisingly hard on him sometimes,’ said Annabelle.
‘He has no right to fall asleep when you and I have not yet retired.’
‘But so likeable a man should be allowed some indulgence. He has endured hours of strain battling with the duke at the card table. The duke is always so formidable …’
‘You have said that so often that I beg you to say it no more.’
‘Then I shall at least say Charles sent the duke home in the sweetest temper, for Charles lost heavily to him. Heigh-ho, dearest, I must go up, I vow myself asleep on my feet. Oh, but poor Mr Wingrove, the duke set him down unmercifully.’
‘His dignity was above Cumberland’s rudeness,’ said Caroline.
‘Oh, yes, he is excessively dignified,’ said Annabelle, and yawned. ‘I won’t wake Charles, and shall leave you to kiss him goodnight for me.’
‘Ridiculous girl.’
With Annabelle gone, Caroline shook Captain Burnside awake.
‘Faith,’ he said, starting, ‘is the house on fire, marm?’
‘It is not.’ Caroline seated herself beside him. ‘I wish to say how wise you were to allow Cumberland to reduce his debt.’
‘Well, a little manipulation of a card here and a card there …’
‘I don’t wish to hear about your talent for trickery, Captain Burnside. I prefer to believe you took risks too impossible to come off. But I am uneasy about the questions he put to you. I feel he suspects your standing. He won’t lack to communicate with the commanding officer of the Ninth Dragoons.’
‘Damn me,’ murmured the captain, ‘he’s a very prying fellow considering he ain’t common like the rest of us. It ain’t decent, marm, for a royal personage to put his nose in advance of his dignity.’
‘Cumberland makes his own rules,’ said Caroline, green satin gown lustrous, auburn hair a crown of fiery magnificence. ‘Was your regiment the Ninth Dragoons?’
‘Faith, I hope so,’ said the captain.
‘You hope so?’ Caroline flashed him an angry and troubled glance. ‘I vow you a jackass to answer me so, and worse than a jackass if you’ve attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of a man like Cumberland. It’s worrying enough to know he might find you had to resign your commission; it’s worrying beyond anything to realize he may discover you’ve no connection with the Ninth Dragoons.’
‘Oh, Colonel Masterson’s an old friend of mine,’ said the captain airily, ‘and he don’t have much feeling for Cumberland or any of the Hanoverians. He’s a Jacobite, d’you see, an adherent of the Stuarts. He considers the Georges are usurpers of the throne. There, don’t look so troubled, marm. Whatever obtains, I ain’t going to have you put on the wrong side of Cumberland. You’re an exceptional patron, and my feelings for you are respectfully affectionate – even loving …’
‘Sir?’ she said, a faint flush appearing.
‘Respectfully loving, I assure you, and I beg you to take no offence,’ said the captain in haste. ‘And should Cumberland find out I don’t own a gentleman’s credentials, I’ll see no discredit attaches to you, dear lady. I’ll not have Cumberland hire some bully boy to spoil your warm beauty, which he’s capable of doing, despite his love for you.’
‘Oh, tush, Captain Burnside,’ said Caroline, ‘Cumberland’s avowed desire to bed me does not mean he loves me. He has no idea of what love is. And I have no idea myself of what respectful love is. Pray have the goodness to explain it.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the captain, and looked at the ceiling, as if the explanation lay there. ‘H’m,’ he said.
Caroline smiled. ‘You have fallen into a trap of your own making,’ she said. ‘You cannot explain respectful love – no, I declare you can’t, sir.’
‘We’re burning the candles, marm, but perhaps there’s time for me to say it means my respect for you has a noble and unchangeable quality.’
‘Noble?’ Caroline laughed. ‘What nonsense you do talk.’
‘Well, I ain’t always in my best form early in the morning, marm,’ he said. For once during a conversation she had not mentioned Annabelle, so he murmured, ‘I fancy your sister wasn’t quite so taken up with Cumberland tonight.’
She frowned, finding herself unprepared for the comment. ‘I fear,’ she said, ‘that Cumberland is still a dangerous excitement to her.’
‘Oh, she’s coming round,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘and I dare say it won’t be long before she has eyes only for me.’
‘Dear heaven,’ breathed Caroline, ‘was there ever a man in such vast conceit of himself?’
‘It’s professional self-confidence, marm. Shall we retire?’
She did not want to retire. She did not feel sleepy. She felt richly and newly alive. The years of Lord Clarence’s betrayal of every sacred concept of marriage and the years of humiliation had almost destroyed her belief in herself as a wife and a woman. She had felt a failure as a wife and inadequate as a woman. Her emotions had become guarded and reserved. Now there was the wonderful sensation of reawakening to life and all its sweet challenges. Now laughter had been reborn, and she felt young again, with every day a promise of excitement. What had caused such a change? Time was responsible. The two years of widowhood had healed every wound and smoothed away every scar. Her body itself was vibrant with life. Yes, time had been wonderfully healing, and sweetly so. She was even ready to consider marriage again. But the man must be unquestionably right; she must be in no doubt of him at all. Mr Wingrove, for instance: his principles were so sound, his integrity plain to see, his manliness entirely commendable. There was virtuous moral strength about him, and an eminent air of stability. And he was unfailingly agreeable.
‘Oh, how boring,’ she said.
‘The thought of going to bed bores you?’ said Captain Burnside.
‘Oh, did I say that?’ she asked in confusion.
‘You did, marm, but I still think we should retire.’
‘Yes,’ she said a little reluctantly. ‘It is very late. And we shall be late again tomorrow night, for it’s Lady Chesterfield’s ball.’ She looked up at the captain as he came to his feet. ‘You will see Cumberland again.’
‘So I believe. Well, I know my role, marm. I’m to pay the closest attention to Annabelle, and not to allow her to disappear with the duke. I shall wear my uniform, and in it will make further progress in my task of sweeping her off her feet.’
Caroline said coldly, ‘It will be self-satisfying to have her fall in love with you?’
‘The situation being what it is, it’ll be a certain way of—’
‘Wait.’ She rose in some agitation. ‘Your uniform. It is the uniform of what regiment?’
‘The Ninth Dragoons, marm.’
Caroline rushed into an upbraiding of him. ‘Oh, you creature, you wretch, only minutes ago you led me to believe, to infer, it was otherwise! What are you, sir, if not the most infuriating wretch?’
Captain Burnside bowed deferentially. ‘I am, marm, your respectfully loving servant.’
And Caroline wanted to beat him, pummel him – and to laugh.
Cumberland, on arrival at the Humphreys’ house, had alighted with them, and his coachman had taken the carriage back to the mews.
‘Ye’ll give me a bed for the night, Robert?’ he said, as they entered the house near the Strand.
‘Why, of course, Your Highness,’ said Robert.
‘A warm bed?’ murmured Cumberland, and Robert cleared his throat and Cecilia grew dusky, for they both knew what that meant.
‘As always, Your Highness, it’s a pleasure to accommodate you,’ said Robert. ‘The settlement, sir, I must find the amount.’
‘Seventy, I fancy, but ye may defer it until ye are more prosperously funded,’ said Cumberland, but his glimmering smile was for Cecilia, not Robert.
‘That’s damned generous of you, sir,’ said Robert.
‘I cannot but feel that in return I must go up to warm the bed for you at once, Your Highness,’ said Cecilia.
There was warmth indeed when Cumberland slipped into the bed later – the warmth of her fulsome body in her silk night shift. And he brought the warmth of his own body, masculine and rugged. His manipulative hands divested her of her shift, though in no rough way.
‘Cumberland, oh, gentle you may be,’ she breathed, ‘but so disconcerting.’
She turned on to her side and he drew her naked body into his arms. Cecilia smothered her moans in his shoulder.
‘By God, ye’ve a handsome shape,’ he murmured, ‘that ye have, and a beautiful belly.’
‘Will you have me swoon?’ she gasped faintly.
‘I’ll have ye attend on me for the moment, my beauty. Ye’ve known Caroline since she first met Clarence. Did ye also know that fellow Burnside?’
Cecilia, heated, breathed, ‘Cumberland, I am expected to gossip with you?’
‘For the moment.’
‘Then no, I never knew Captain Burnside.’
‘But ye’ve been a close relation and a close friend to Caroline, ain’t ye?’
‘She’s a sweet woman and deserved better than Clarence gave her.’
‘But ye never met Burnside until now?’
‘No, but then I cannot claim to know her every friend and acquaintance. Cumberland, I beg you, if this conversation is to continue, hold me not so close, for I’m without a stitch and cannot endure my own nakedness.’
‘It’s warmly endurable to me,’ murmured Cumberland, allowing her ardent breasts to cushion his chest. ‘Now, since I’ve a personal interest, oblige me, sweet woman, by finding out precisely how and when Caroline first met Burnside. She’ll confide in ye, though she’ll ride her high horse at questions from others.’
‘Cumberland – oh, heaven keep me from abandonment – are you jealous of the captain? You see him as a rival concerning the favours of Caroline? But she will not offer or yield favours; she has an American puritanism, and Clarence was an offence to her.’
‘I’m not here to have ye question me, but to have ye pleasure me and oblige me. Ye’ll pleasure me as ye always do, generously, and oblige me by finding out how and when Caroline first met Burnside, and why she’s hosting him in her house. Ye’ll enquire as a woman can, innocently and innocuously?’
‘How can I not when you are so good to Robert?’
‘Ah, my obliging friend Robert.’ Cumberland’s murmurous voice was ironic. ‘A position in the Quartermaster’s commissariat in a month or so? Entailing little more than approving and signing indents and contracts, though the commission to be won is entirely unofficial and to be discreetly and quietly negotiated with the contractors. But there, y’see, his gift of cheerful good-fellowship should ensure he’s consistently in profit.’
‘Cumberland, I vow myself overwhelmed,’ breathed Cecilia, ‘and cannot deny you rapturous pleasure. And for the sake of my own needs, that you quicken so shamelessly in me, take your pleasure now, I beg.’
His muscular body was wholly the master of her fulsomeness, her groans stifled by his lips. The sheets whispered and rustled, and entwined bodies plunged, her belly fast to his loins.