The Scandal of the Season (12 page)

As he did so, something flashed in the corner of his eye. He swung about: a lantern had been put out, and he realized that somebody was opening a carriage door from the inside. Alexander stood stock-still. He knew that his breathing must be deafening; he was certain that he could be seen and heard in spite of the darkness. A long moment passed. Then two figures stepped out, masked but unmistakable: the sinister folds of the domino and the turban of the Turk's headdress. Alexander shuddered, and swayed slightly to keep his balance. He was sure that they would find him.

But the night was very dark. He sensed that the men were walking away from each other; he could hear them moving in separate directions, Lord Petre toward the assembly rooms and Douglass down a narrow street. Alexander swallowed, his legs weak underneath him. He waited a minute, and another one, his breath quick and shallow over the drumming of his chest. But the alleyway was silent. He edged forward to the courtyard again. Suddenly he saw the Turkish headdress directly in front of him. He stopped short, but a moment later he heard Lord Petre talking to his footman, giving directions for another stop in the carriage. Alexander slipped away out of sight behind the wheels of the coach, and up the stairs of the building.

 

Unaware that he had been seen, Lord Petre drove away from the masquerade. He was thinking of the meeting he had just had with Douglass. It had shaken him, and excited him, more than he had expected.

“I thank you, my lord,” Douglass had said as he took the proffered banknotes. “We are just in time—I meet our agent tonight.”

“There was some trouble in obtaining them,” Petre had replied.

Douglass hesitated. “Are they all here?” he asked.

“I believe so.”

“When the King is on the throne, you will know that you have played your part, my lord,” he said. “Few men will be able to claim as much.”

“Few men have the chance,” Petre answered. “Many have given their lives to this cause. I have given but a few hundred pounds.”

“If our rebellion is to succeed, there are grave times ahead,” said Douglass.

“Nothing to what my fellow Catholics have already endured,” Petre replied. “You rebel in the name of the Stuarts, Douglass; I in the name of the Catholic martyrs. We have suffered for two hundred years.” He paused, and then asked, “Was it an agent that you met at the Exchange the other day?”

For a moment Douglass looked puzzled. Then his face cleared, and he answered, “That man's name is Dupont, a friend. He deals in a commodity that is as precious as ebony, and of a good deal more use to most Englishmen.”

Lord Petre was confused. What could Douglass be talking about? But then he understood. “I suppose you mean that he is a slave trader,” he replied. “But what has he to do with our enterprise? What business do we have with human traffic, or with a man who deals in it?” he demanded.

“I am afraid that in one respect, my lord, our business resembles Dupont's very exactly,” Douglass said. “Like him, we are willing to pay a great price for the safe delivery of our human cargo.” They were both silent a moment.

“Are you afraid to continue?” Douglass asked.

“Certainly not,” Lord Petre answered.

“I am relieved,” replied Douglass, “for the part you play in this drama is destined to be greater, and considerably more heroic, than that of Dupont or any other party. You are to be our liaison in the court.”

Lord Petre laughed mirthlessly. “The court!” he said. “Well—you could not have chosen a man who knows that world better, or who admires it less.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“There is nothing you could ask of me touching that world of falsehood, hypocrisy, and betrayal that it would not be my pleasure to discharge.”

“Nothing at all, my lord?”

“Nothing at all,” he echoed.

“What if I were to tell you that there are men in our party who would like to see the Queen killed?” Douglass asked.

Lord Petre drew breath sharply. He ought to have guessed that something of this nature would be planned—if Queen Anne were still on the throne, how could James III be restored to it? But he went cold at Douglass's words. He had assumed that the Queen would be removed by diplomatic coercion.

“But the Queen is a Stuart, too,” he protested. “And childless; she has no heir.”

“She is in the hands of advisers who do not support the Stuart cause,” Douglass replied in a cold voice.

So that was the plan, thought Lord Petre. To kill the Queen before her successor had been decided. For a moment he felt panic rising. He could never be part of such an action. But no: this was the first real test of his resolve. Protestants had murdered his fellows in cold blood. They had forced the rightful king from the English throne. Future ages would remember the Jacobites not as assassins but as heroes—honorable men. The hero's course awaited him.

In a steady voice he said, “If I can be persuaded that such a course of action will achieve the outcome we seek, there is nothing that I would not do on behalf of James Stuart's—His Majesty's—cause.”

He then pushed the carriage door open—it was a fraction too soon. A careless slip; Douglass had still been checking the notes. Tonight no one had been about to observe them. Even if they had been seen, nobody would have guessed the cause for their meeting; people did exactly as they pleased at masked balls. But at this moment Lord Petre's train of thought was cut short. He had arrived at Lady Castlecomber's town house.

 

When Alexander had left the room in pursuit of Douglass and Petre, neither of the Blount sisters paid much attention to his departure. Teresa joined Jervas and Martha after Douglass's departure, and Jervas continued to talk, turning to one lady and then the other, flattering and charming them. But the girls had grown listless and silent, their happy energies dissipated.

As the supper room began to empty out, Teresa said to her sister, “Shall we ask Arabella for the carriage home?”

And Martha replied, “Perhaps Mr. Jervas will hand the three of us inside.” The girls went in search of Arabella, and as soon as they found her Jervas escorted the ladies downstairs.

When the girls' carriage had left Jervas turned back inside in search of Alexander, hoping that he, at least, would not be ready for bed.

Inside the coach, Arabella shook open the fur blanket to spread across their knees. But it was not quite large enough for three, so while Arabella's lap was amply covered, the other two sat stiffly, feeling slightly too cold.

Arabella broke the silence. “I have heard that Lady Mary Pierrepont's father plans for her to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, heir to the Viscount Massereene. Rumor has it Lady Mary told her father she would rather give her hand to the flames than to him.”

“I heard that she is secretly engaged to Edward Wortley,” said Teresa. “But if she marries him, the earl will cut her off with nothing. Wortley is said to be passionately in love with her, but you know that she is to inherit a fortune.”

The carriage hit a deep pothole, and they were all flung forward. Teresa quickly put up a foot to stop herself falling. She knew that she sat well in the coach—like a rider upon a well-managed horse—much better than Arabella, who was scrambling to regain her seat.

“Only Edward Wortley would presume to imagine himself worth such a sacrifice,” Teresa added. “Such a sulky, self-important sort of man.”

“Oh, he is the type of person whom women like Mary Pierrepont find fascinating,” said Arabella, confident again. “He has no charm to speak of, his dress is dull and his wig ill-kempt—and he talks loudly about how wicked the Tories are and how noble the Whigs, as though it were a universal truth to which everyone must assent. He has no small talk, no light conversation, and he never compliments anybody upon their dress or offers to bring them refreshment. In short, he is the sort of clever man who believes that his cleverness can redeem every other fault—and presumably Mary Pierrepont is vain enough of her own powers to believe him.”

“Lady Mary doubtless knows that it is harder to turn away from a life of wealth and luxury than she acknowledges to the world,” Martha interjected, tired of hearing Teresa and Arabella showing off their idle bits of gossip. “I imagine that she will not marry Wortley when it comes to the point.”

Teresa turned to her with a knowing air. “If
I
were betrothed to Clotworthy Skeffington, the second son of a footman would seem a glittering prize in comparison,” she pronounced.

“Wortley is not without attractions,” Martha replied firmly. “He is likely to be sent abroad as the English ambassador if the Whigs ever come back into government. To France or Germany perhaps, or to Turkey—a novelty even for Lady Mary. I am sure she thinks of that when she considers Wortley's suit.”

By the time the carriage arrived at the Blount girls' house, all three girls were shifting restlessly about, telling each other how tired they were; how eager for bed; how cold the night was. Arabella said good-bye to Teresa and Martha with scarcely a glance in their direction, and began to rearrange the rug around her chilly form.

When she got home at last, shivering and yawning, she handed her cape to the bleary-eyed servant who opened the door and hurried upstairs. She decided not to ring for her maid, wanting to avoid the impertinent questions that Betty always asked when woken late at night. Arabella pushed open the door of her chamber, where she was greeted by the sight of Shock dozing in his little basket beside her bed, and a fire in her grate that flickered low but companionably, like a friend who had stayed half awake to welcome her home. But rather than calming her, these sights restored the spirit of willful determination, which had been quenched by the sight of Lord Petre reaching out to stroke Lady Castlecomber's hand.

They had spoken so intimately, though only briefly. She had been shocked, and yet the shock was accompanied by the jolt of something unexpected. Mingled with the pangs of jealousy and wounded pride had been an illicit attraction. She longed to act as they had; she longed for their disdain for propriety; their careless sophistication; their casual liberties that gave away a long-standing familiarity. Charlotte Bromleigh was the eldest daughter of a wealthy Catholic family, but Charlotte's father, whose Roman sensibilities were of a worldly kind, had decided to remove his daughter from the small, closed circle of eligible popish gentlemen to which everybody believed that she belonged. He had arranged her union with the Protestant Lord Castlecomber, lately the inheritor of an Irish peerage, in need of money to restore his estate. Lord Castlecomber, who cared little for the niceties of religion, had been willing to wed the rich, handsome daughter of one of the oldest families in England, and Charlotte Bromleigh became the wife of a peer.

Arabella liked to believe herself impervious to jealousy, but now she acknowledged that she felt envious of Lady Castlecomber. In part she envied the security that marriage had given her; the knowledge that her wealth and position were assured. But truly she was jealous of Charlotte because Lord Petre had traced his finger across her wrist. The intimacy of their relationship was palpable. When she had seen him reach across to Charlotte tonight, Arabella had suddenly realized that she wanted him to do the same to her.

Lady Castlecomber was married, however; Arabella was not. A single woman without noble birth had no real liberty. Yet how could a match to a man like Robert Petre be achieved? Arabella had met his mother, and knew her to be a cold, determined woman. She had been charming enough to Arabella as a young girl, but she would be ruthless in protecting her family's position, and no sentimental consideration would persuade her that her son should marry a girl with less than ten thousand pounds.

Then again, Lord Petre was of age. Though he might disoblige his family, they could not actually prevent a match of his choosing. She checked herself again. She had seen that Lord Petre already had access to every pleasure and gratification. What would make him marry Arabella Fermor?

 

Lord Petre liked the way Charlotte Bromleigh bit his shoulder when she had an orgasm. She didn't make much noise, but when he put his hands on her thighs, which were tucked in tightly and gripping his torso, he could feel the tremor in her muscles. The sides of her waist were still hot from her laced stays. He pulled himself up, and spilled onto her stomach.

Charlotte laughed at him. “If my husband were in town, you could have spent inside me,” she said. “I'd far rather that a son of yours should inherit the title than one of his. But then he's a suspicious dog, so he'd probably find us out.”

“Oh, I like your belly just as well,” he answered. “If we were to change things about now I would miss the old ways.” He pressed the full weight of his body onto hers, and lay there for a moment. When she became short of breath he rolled off her with a smile.

“And do you like my mouth?” she asked, continuing their conversation.

Kissing it, he could feel her teeth upon his tongue.

“Yes, it is very fine,” he murmured, and kissed her again. Wriggling out from his embrace, she began to move down the bed. He felt a tingling of excitement as she put her hand, and then her lips, around his cock. Oh, but he liked this the best of all, he thought, as he saw her looking up at him.