Deirdre and Desire (2 page)

As an angry burst of rain struck the windows the squire smiled contentedly and snuggled deeper in his armchair, sipped his brandy, and opened a book.

Then, as the wind slackened slightly, he heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves coming up his short drive.

The vicar.

He crouched a little further down in his chair, listening guiltily to the sounds of the vicar’s arrival, the hammering on the door, the soft murmur of his servant’s voice.

Then the closing of the door and no sound other than the howl of the rising wind.

The noise of the wind must have covered the sounds of the rejected vicar’s retreat.

Suddenly, Squire Radford got to his feet and walked to the library window nearest his chair and pulled aside the curtains.

He let out a frightened little scream and backed away from the window, his wrinkled old hands to his mouth.

A hideous, squat, fat, distorted face was pressed against the glass.

Then the face retreated a little and resolved itself into that of the Reverend Charles Armitage.

He was mouthing something but the squire could not hear him because of the noise of the storm. Still too shocked to gather his wits together, the squire made flapping movements with his hands to
indicate that the vicar should return to the front door.

Then he closed the curtains and sat down in the armchair by the fire, his heart still thudding.

In no time at all, the Reverend Charles Armitage came striding in.

He was a short, round man who normally wore a shovel hat and a pepper-and-salt coat and gaiters. The squire had often thought a Union Jack across his chest would have turned him into the perfect
John Bull.

But on this occasion, the vicar presented a very odd figure. His face was painted and rouged and he wore an elaborate cravat and evening clothes, his skin-tight trousers being shoved into
hessian boots. As he moved, he unmistakably creaked and snapped.

‘Corsets, Charles?’ queried the squire faintly.

‘Nonsense,’ said the vicar, turning even redder. ‘It’s my bones creakin’. Being locked out in this demned plaguey weather don’t do my old bones a mort
o’ good. Well, well, well. I’m here, and that’s the main thing.’

He sat down by the fire opposite the squire and helped himself to a glass of brandy before removing his dripping hat and putting it down on the hearth where it started to steam.

His light brown hair had been teased and curled and pomaded so that it stood up on his head like a crest, giving him an air of perpetual surprise.

He tossed his glass of brandy off, shuddered, looked at the fire and sighed lugubriously.

The squire said nothing, so the vicar sighed noisily and eyed his friend out of the corners of his twinkling shoe-button eyes.

The squire resigned himself.

‘What is the matter, Charles?’ he demanded in his high precise voice.

‘I have lost my faith,’ mourned the vicar. ‘Just like that. Just like the thingummy on the road to whatsit.’

‘He didn’t lose it. He found it,’ said the squire crossly.

‘Who?’

‘St Paul.’

‘Oh, him? O’ course, it was easy for
him
,’ said the vicar with something like a sneer. ‘But does He care if I’ve lost my faith? Does He send down lights or
one small miracle? No. Couldn’t even get me some decent hunting weather last year.’

‘I do not see, Charles, how you can claim to have lost what you never had,’ said the squire, becoming much flushed. ‘You are turned exceeding arrogant. Without humility there
is no faith.’

‘Don’t preach,’ said the vicar huffily. He poured himself more brandy and sighed again.

The squire looked at him in a mixture of exasperation and compassion.

‘You are a great child,’ he said gently. ‘Faith or lack of faith is not what troubles you. It is money, or the lack of
that.
’

‘Aye, that’s it,’ said the vicar. ‘You have it in a nutshell. Two rich sons-in-law and I can’t get my hands on them. Brabington’s in France and Comfrey has
already gone to join him.’

‘Indeed! I did not know Minerva and her husband had left the country? I did not expect it. She is soon to present you with a grandson.’

‘Another two months,’ said the vicar moodily. ‘And it’ll probably come into the world speaking French.’

‘But what took Lord Sylvester to France?’

‘I don’t know. Went along o’ everyone else, I s’pose. At least they’re in Paris, and haven’t gone to Waterloo to poke around the dead bodies with a
stick.’

‘My dear Charles!’

There came a silence. The door opened and the servant came in and put two large shovelfuls of coal on the fire.

The vicar watched morosely as grey smoke began to curl up in long trailing wisps. Then little yellow flames sprang through the bank of black coal and green and blue ones danced in the spurts of
coal gas.

The clock ticked sonorously in the corner. A great buffet of wind howled round the building.

‘There is a solution,’ said the vicar at last. ‘When I was in London, there was a lot o’ talk in the clubs about Lord Harry Desire.’

‘The Earl of Carchester’s son?’

‘Him.’

‘And?’

The vicar heaved a gusty sigh. ‘Desire’s got an uncle who’s a nabob, Jeremy Blewett. He says he’ll leave all his money to Desire if the man gets married. Blewett’s
said to be on his deathbed.’

‘Has Desire no money of his own?’

‘Not much. The Carchesters never knew how to keep it. He lives high, does young Desire. He spends more on his tailor than I spend on my pack.’

The squire did some rapid mental calculation.

‘Impossible,’ he said at last.

‘True. He’s a great dandy.’

‘I do not see how this young man can aid you. How old is he?’

‘Late in his twenties. Thirty, say.’

‘You have met him?’

‘Not I,’ shrugged the vicar. ‘Heard of him, though.’

‘You cannot possibly be thinking of a husband for Deirdre!’

‘Why not?’ demanded the vicar crossly. ‘Had enough trouble with Minerva and Annabelle. Arranged marriage will be just the thing.’

‘Deirdre is a highly intelligent lady with a mind of her own.’

The vicar ferreted around in his waistcoat pockets until he found a goose quill and then proceeded to pick his teeth, much to the fastidious squire’s irritation. ‘Hark ’ee,
Jimmy,’ he grinned. ‘Deirdre’s been
told
she’s the brainy one o’ the family for so long, she’s come to believe it herself. But she reads
novels.
So
there!’

‘I read novels myself,’ protested the squire.

‘Different for a man,’ muttered the vicar. ‘Lots o’ vices are.’

‘I think you are making a great mistake,’ said the squire severely. ‘I don’t know what has come over you this last two years, Charles. You have wasted your money, you
have taken to wearing
paint
, and, yes, you
are
wearing corsets.’

The vicar flushed and looked mutinous. ‘
I
haven’t changed,’ he said, whipping himself up into a fine anger. ‘It’s you who have changed. Demme, you’re
worse than the bishop. Always preaching and moralizing and argyfying. I’m off!’

‘If our friendship means so little to you that you cannot take a piece of well-meant criticism . . .’

‘Fah!’ said the vicar, rising, picking up his steaming hat and cramming it on his head.

‘Let us not part in anger,’ pleaded the squire. ‘Join me for supper, I beg you, and let us talk this thing over.’

The vicar marched to the door and then turned.

‘“Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Proverbs, Chapter fifteen, verse seventeen.’

‘Oh, Charles . . .’ began the squire, but the vicar had already made his exit.

A ride through the night did little to improve the Reverend Charles Armitage’s temper. The squire’s sorrowful, reproachful face kept rising in front of him as he spurred his horse in
the direction of the vicarage. He had felt a new man these past two years. An important man. One of the peerage. By virtue of his daughters’ successful marriages, he was invited to all the best houses.

He felt he had regained his youth. And if his corsets pinched and the paint on his face made his skin itch, these were mere pinpricks set against the heady exhilaration of feeling he was one of
the bucks and bloods.

He stomped into the tiny, dark hall of the vicarage and was pulled up short by the sight of his daughter, Daphne. She was standing in front of the hall looking-glass, staring at her reflection
with a rapt expression on her face.

‘Go to your room, miss,’ snapped the vicar, ‘and stop endlessly preening yourself. And send Deirdre to my study.’

Daphne leaned forward, closer to the glass, and patted one glossy black ringlet into place.

‘Yes, Papa,’ she said vaguely as she drifted towards the stairs.

‘Grumph!’ said the vicar. He shoved his head round the door of the vicarage parlour. His wife was lying on a sofa. She raised a brown mask of a face in his direction.

‘Gad’s ’Oonds!’ shrieked the vicar. ‘What . . . ?’

‘It’s mud,’ said his wife, moving her lips as little as possible. ‘’Tis said to be most beneficial.’

‘Pah!’ snorted the vicar, pulling shut the door and crossing the hall to his study. Mrs Armitage, when not suffering from some imaginary illness or other, was always trying out
beauty remedies. He rang the bell for Betty, the housemaid, and demanded a bottle of white brandy and a jug of hot water. The maid went to light the fire but he growled that he would do it himself.
As soon as the brandy had arrived, he poured a generous measure into a pewter tankard and added hot water. Then he threw another measure of brandy over the sticks in the grate and struck a lucifer. The fire went up with a satisfying
whoosh
, nearly singeing his eyebrows. He tossed on a log and settled himself behind his cluttered desk.

The door opened and Miss Deirdre Armitage walked in. The vicar looked at her, sighed, and looked quickly away again. Everyone called Deirdre a beauty but her father always thought,
uncomfortably, that his daughter reminded him of a fox.

She had thick, shining red hair and green eyes, not the emerald green of Lord Sylvester, but a peculiar jade green like sea-washed glass. They were slightly tilted at the corners. This, together
with her short straight nose, high cheekbones and pointed chin gave her an elfin appearance. She had a small, high, firm bosom, a tiny waist, and thin, fragile wrists and ankles. But there always
seemed to be some inner joke amusing Deirdre and that was what made the vicar think of a fox. He sometimes thought her sly.

‘Well, Papa,’ said Deirdre, sitting down opposite him, ‘and how was Squire Radford?’

‘How did you know I’d been to squire’s?’

‘Because your coat is in the hall, Papa, and it is wet, and you look guilty and in a bad temper which is the way you always look when you come from Squire Radford.’

‘See here, my pert miss, it’s time you guarded that tongue o’ yours. No man wants a carroty-pated clever shrew for a wife.’

Those green eyes of Deirdre’s that gave so little away studied him intently.

‘I am to have a Season next year, Papa,’ said Deirdre at last. ‘Minerva has promised to bring me out. I . . . am . . . looking . . . forward . . . to . . . it . . . very . . .
much,’ she added, slowly and clearly.

‘Oh, ah,’ said the vicar studying the bottom of his tankard.

‘And I shall not put myself through any of the miseries Minerva and Annabelle endured. I shall
know
when I am in love with a gentleman.’

‘Oh,
love.
You’ve been reading novels again. Love has little to do with a good, sensible marriage.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Deirdre firmly, ‘it is everything. As a man of God, Papa, you would naturally never dream of forcing one of your daughters into a loveless marriage contract.’

‘Minerva was prepared to,’ pointed out the vicar crossly.

‘She was fortunate she did not have to do it,’ said Deirdre. ‘What did you wish to speak to me about?’

The vicar thought rapidly. No need to cross swords with Deirdre until he had seen this Lord Harry Desire. Perhaps nothing would come of it. And he could always wait until one or both his sons-in-law returned from Paris. But he had asked them for money before, and he knew that this time Lord
Sylvester Comfrey might take over the management of the vicarage lands himself as he had threatened to do last time. And Lord Sylvester considered the vicar’s private hunt an
extravagance.

‘I just wanted to tell you I am off to Town in the morning,’ he said grumpily. ‘So be a good girl and look after your mother and sisters.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ said Deirdre, her strange eyes shining in the firelight, ‘take me with you.
Please.
It is so boring here. Daphne is no fun any longer. All she does now is
droop in front of the looking-glass.’

‘No. You’ve your duties. You’ve got to read to Lady Wentwater. Then you’d best take some cordial to Mrs Briggs what’s poorly.’

‘What about your sermon?’

‘Let Pettifor handle it.’ Mr Pettifor was the vicar’s overworked curate. ‘Time enough for you to be jauntering to London when Minerva gets home.’

When Deirdre reached the privacy of her room, she found her hands were shaking. She knew the vicarage finances were at low ebb. She knew her father probably planned to rescue them by marrying
her off to some rich man who would provide a large marriage settlement. Then she smiled to herself and began to relax.

Although she had met many young men when she had visited her two sisters’ homes, not one of them had shown more than a passing interest in her. She knew she was always damned as a
blue-stocking but that suited her very well. Deirdre was an intense romantic and believed in the marriage of true minds. She was content to wait. And Minerva would not allow Papa to force her into
any marriage she found distasteful.

‘If she complains to Minerva, then Minerva will put a stop to it,’ mused the vicar as he set out for London on the following morning. ‘Well, I’ll put a
spoke in
that
wheel. I’ll give a guinea to John-postboy to drop her letters to Paris down the nearest well until I give him leave to do otherwise.’ His conscience gave a sudden,
vicious stab. But he started to recite the names of his hounds like a litany to comfort himself. Not one would have to be sacrificed if his plans came out right. He had made a few mistakes in
breeding, but now he was sure he was on his way to owning the best pack in England. Women were always bleating about love and marriage anyway. It was an attitude. The poor dears were supposed to
think that way. Now he, Charles Armitage, had never loved his wife and if he could put up with her plaguey maunderings and moanings for all these years, then so could anyone else, he reasoned,
rather incoherently. And women were the lesser breed. Definitely.