The Odious Duke
Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
This edition © 2020
Copyright Cartland Promotions 1953
eBook conversion by M-Y Books
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Readers interested in history will like to know that highwaymen on the roads in the seventeenth or eighteenth Century constituted a very real threat to the Banks.
For instance, in 1820 a fifteen thousand pounds consignment of Bullion for the Bank at Chipping North was stolen by highwaymen with the result that the Bank had to close down.
In this story, which takes place in 1824, all references to the Duke of Wellington’s Armies in the Peninsula and at Waterloo are authentic.
To this day the Fourteenth Light Dragoons use King Joseph’s silver pot de chambre at Mess functions and drink toasts from it in champagne, after which the pot is placed ceremoniously upon the drinker’s head!
The Duke of Selchester tooled his fine team of four prime, perfectly matched chestnuts with consummate skill round the corner from Alford Street into Park Lane.
He then had only a very short distance to travel before he pulled into the gravel sweep in front of the imposing pillared entrance of Selchester House and then he drew his horses to a standstill with a style that was unmistakable.
As he did so, he took his watch out from his waistcoat pocket and exclaimed,
“We have beaten the record, Fowler, by five minutes and thirty-five seconds!”
“I were real sure Your Grace could do it,” his groom replied. “A remarkable piece of drivin’, if Your Grace will permit me to say so!”
“Thank you, Fowler.”
The Duke stepped gracefully down from his phaeton. His servants watching him were admiringly conscious that in his many-tiered driving coat, with his high hat at an angle on his dark hair, his fine Hessian boots shining from the application of champagne they received every day and he was very much a Corinthian.
“A Non-pareil” was the expression used to describe him by the younger members of White’s Club, who followed slavishly the way that he tied his cravats, the cut of the coats fashioned on him by Mr. Weston and the innumerable little individual quirks of fashion that he introduced from time to time.
None of his imitators, however, could quite emulate the Duke in the way he carried himself and the way in which he could firmly set down an impertinence or the shadow of a presumption by a mere look in his eyes and an infinitesimal lift of his eyebrows.
Well over six feet with a superb carriage, the Duke, as he passed through the door of Selchester House, seemed to tower above his array of liveried footmen despite the fact that none of them was employed unless they topped six feet.
He handed his hat to one, his gloves to another and then allowed the butler, an elderly man with a face just like an Archbishop, to remove his driving coat, thus revealing one of his famous whip-cord riding jackets, which fitted without a wrinkle across his broad shoulders and over which his tailor had spent sleepless nights before bringing it to the perfection demanded by its owner.
Only Mr. Weston, cutter and fitter to the Quality, was aware that, although the Duke seemed so thoroughly at ease in his clothes, he was in fact a difficult gentleman to dress.
It was certainly not the fault of his figure, which, with his great breadth of shoulder tapering to narrow hips, was a tailor’s dream. It was rather that the Duke had the rippling muscles of an athlete for His Grace was proficient at boxing and fencing besides his spending many hours in the saddle, which made it hard to achieve the effect of effortless languor that the fashion demanded.
The Duke now, although he had been driving at an inordinate speed for nearly three hours, was not in the least fatigued. Alert and with an air of satisfaction, he walked across the marble hall with its huge family portraits and inlaid French furniture bought by his grandfather for a song at the time of the French Revolution towards the Garden Salon.
Two footmen in the Selchester livery of blue and yellow flung open double mahogany doors and His Grace passed through them into a really delightful room running the whole breadth of the house.
It had no less than five windows opening onto the large garden that lay behind the enormous grey stone mansion that was enriched by turrets that had been built by the Duke’s grandfather.
The garden, bathed in spring sunshine, was ablaze with daffodils and crocuses. The formal walks, like the paved terrace, were edged with hyacinths and tulips which, all of identically the same height and growth, gave by their uniformity the impression of being like soldiers on parade.
It was the King when he was the Prince Regent who had teased the Duke a few years earlier by calling him ‘His Most Noble Perfection’ and the joke had become a fact rather than a jest.
Almost unconsciously he had begun to expect perfection around him so that everyone in his household strove not only to serve him to the very best of their ability but almost to perform miracles because he expected it of them.
He had been sure, His Grace thought now with complacency, that his horses could quite easily beat the record from Epsom to London set by Lord Fletcher, a notable whip, three years earlier.
He was much looking forward to telling the “Four Horse Club” of his achievement and he well knew that it would infuriate a number of his contemporaries who had themselves tried over and over again to achieve a new record and failed.
The Duke sat down at his desk to look at a large pile of invitation cards that had been set there by his secretary and several unopened letters with the handwriting or a faint fragrance proclaiming them as being of an intimate nature.
The Duke glanced at them without any particular interest. Then, as with an air of boredom, he picked up one of the letters and an emerald-studded letter-opener shaped like a dagger, his secretary, Mr. Graystone, came into the room and stood bowing respectfully.
A grey-haired man of middle age, it was on his shoulders that the smooth running of His Grace’s residences rested. And chief among them were Selchester Castle in Kent, Selchester House in London, a Hunting Lodge in Leicestershire and an enormous mansion in Northumberland.
The engagement of senior staff, the payment of wages, both those of the households and of the estates, were all under his jurisdiction.
He had, it was true, the services of Solicitors and accountants, Major Domos and junior secretaries to help him, but his was the hand that kept the whole complicated Ducal state in motion.
Yet never for a moment did Mr. Graystone approach his Master with anything but humble servility, a commendable attitude that the Duke accepted without question.
“Good evening, Graystone,” the Duke said. “Have you anything of import for me? And pray do not bore me with all the problems from the country for I am in no mood for them at the moment.”
“No indeed, Your Grace. There are no problems. I only came to inform Your Grace that the arrangements that you requested have been made for your departure tomorrow. The horses have been sent ahead and all three of your hosts have signified their delight at being honoured by Your Grace’s presence. I have, however, purposely left unspecified the actual time of your arrival at each house.”
“Quite right,” the Duke approved. “I dislike being constrained.”
“Is there anything else Your Grace will require?”
“No, thank you, Graystone. I am grateful for your attention.”
The kind words of condescension seemed to lighten up the worried expression in Mr. Graystone’s eyes.
“Your Grace is most gracious,” he said and, bowing went from the room.
The Duke sat for a moment, the letter opener in one hand, a letter that exuded the cloying fragrance of gardenias in the other.
Then on an impulse he threw both down on the desk and, rising to his feet, walked languidly upstairs to change for dinner.
There were two valets awaiting his appearance, an elderly man who had served his father and who had known him as a child and a younger man who had only been in the Ducal service for ten years.
They removed His Grace’s boots, helped him out of his clothes and when he had taken his hot bath in front of the fire in his bedchamber, enveloped him in a big lavender-scented Turkish towel.
The Duke accepted such ritual as too familiar for him to notice it. He was assisted into his close-fitting evening pantaloons, the elder valet shaved him with an expert hand that had never been known to falter, a shirt of the finest lawn, frilled and goffered by women from his estate in his own country laundry was buttoned across his muscular chest by the younger valet.
Then all three men considered the serious question as to what style of cravat the Duke should wear around his neck to hold high the points of his starched collar.
“His Majesty is very partial to the mathematical, Your Grace,” the elder valet suggested.
“And a sad mess he makes of it!” the Duke retorted. “The King’s neck is far too thick and his chin too heavy for anything but a simple neck cloth!”
“We can all be thankful that it will be many years before the same could be said of Your Grace,” the valet replied with an admiring smile.
“I have a feeling, Jenkins, that I shall never give my horseflesh a sore back!” the Duke remarked.
“No indeed, Your Grace, that is certain, for Your Grace’s physique is remarkable. I was sayin’ to Mr. Weston only last week, Your Grace, that there’s not an ounce of spare flesh on Your Grace’s body.”
“I think that tonight I will wear the Waterfall,” the Duke decided reflectively.
“I was just about to proffer that very suggestion for Your Grace’s consideration,” his valet said enthusiastically. “Only someone with a high neck like Your Grace’s and a gentleman of Your Grace’s presence could attempt the very intricate folds that are, I am told, the despair of Lord Fleetwood’s valet! In fact, Your Grace, after castin’ two dozen neck cloths away, ’tis said that both his Lordship and his man burst into tears.”
“It would not surprise me,” the Duke said laconically. “If ever there was a ham-fisted creature, either with the ribbons or with a cravat, it is Fleetwood!”
“Quite so, Your Grace, and I hears that Your Grace broke the record today. May I offer my most humble congratulations on a feat that would have given extreme satisfaction to Your Grace’s father.”
“A top-sayer himself, was he not, Jenkins?”
“Indeed, His late Grace was unrivalled in his day and yet I often think that Your Grace has the edge on him.”
“I wish I could believe that,” the Duke replied good-humouredly.
Having shrugged himself with some difficulty into his evening coat, which was cut so tight that he required the assistance of both his valets before it was finally adjusted to his full satisfaction, he then proceeded slowly down the carved gilt stairway.
A footman scurried to open the door and His Grace then entered the anteroom adjoining the long dining room, which, with its marble pillars and gold-leafed cornice, was considered one of the finest achievements of its architect.
In the anteroom two footmen offered His Grace a glass of wine.
The Duke accepted a glass of matured Madeira and was sipping it appreciatively when the butler announced,
“Captain Henry Sheraton, Your Grace.”
A gentleman with a pleasing countenance and as elegantly dressed as His Grace but without quite his distinction and his air of consequence, came into the room.
“Good evening, Harry,” the Duke greeted him. “You are late! I had begun to think you might have forgotten our arrangement this evening.”
“Not so bird-witted! Been looking forward for the last three days to seeing the new Cyprians that the Abbess has procured from France! My apologies if I kept you waiting.”
Harry Sheraton spoke in a fashionably clipped way that his friends had now become used to,
“I was but roasting you,” the Duke answered. “I have returned from Epsom only in the last hour. I broke the record!”
“You did. My congratulations!” Harry Sheraton exclaimed. “Was hoping you would do it. Bumptious fellow, Lumley, has been boasting all over White’s that he would achieve easily it with those roans he bought at Tattersalls last month. Ask me, they are not all they are puffed up to be! But nothing will convince Lumley they are not prime horseflesh.”
“I would never accept Lumley’s opinion if I was buying an army mule!” the Duke exclaimed.
“Nor I!” his friend replied. “God, Theron, do you remember those blasted cattle we had to cope with in Portugal? Never forget the way they and the horses stampeded in that colossal thunderstorm before the Battle of Salamanca!”
“The lightning reflected on the musket barrels almost blinded me,” the Duke replied. “It also made me decide that I could never look at a damned mule ever again! Do you recall how many of the Officers were smothered in the folds of their tents when the mules got caught in the ropes?
“God, yes!” Harry Sheraton laughed. “Remember Wellington’s fury when he had to send troops mule hunting? Thought it might delay the advance.”
“He would have been that much more furious if there had been no animals to move the guns.” the Duke remarked drily.
“Know what, Theron?” Harry Sheraton said more seriously. “Often wish to God that war was not ended. Sick to death of being a ‘Hyde Park Soldier’!”
“So you know that is what they call you in the Clubs?” the Duke said with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Blast their impertinence! I do wonder how those fops would enjoy turning out at moment’s notice to quell a riot in Hyde Park, disperse a mob hooting and throwing stones at the Houses of Parliament or catch some blasted fellow with the ingenuity of a rat in avoiding the gallows!”
“A soldier’s life is a hard one!” the Duke said mockingly.
“Damned hard when I have to do that sort of thing,” Harry Sheraton agreed. “Hear talk of special force for just such jobs. What that chap’s name always spouting about it in House of Commons?”
“Sir Robert Peel,” the Duke replied.
“That’s the fellow! Sooner he introduces a Police force or whatever they are called, better pleased I shall be. Another flap-doodle on today, it was why I was late.”
“What is it about this time?” the Duke asked.
Captain Sheraton did not answer at once, he was intent on taking a glass of Madeira from the silver salver and raising it to his lips.
“Damme, Theron, if you don’t offer your guests better Madeira than anyone else! Who is your wine merchant? Could do with a few bottles of this nectar.”
“You cannot buy it, dear boy,” the Duke answered. “I put it away in the cellars six years ago and it is only now that my Wine Steward has permitted me to drink it”
“Will have another glass. Hope you have several pipes of it”
“Enough to keep you drinking for a year or so at any rate,” the Duke smiled. “But you were telling me what made you late.”
“Colonel called sudden conference of Officers to inform us that the Prime Minister is taking a serious view of Bullion robberies”
“What are those?” the Duke asked.
“Do you never read the papers?” Headlines about them for weeks!”
“Oh, yes I do remember now. You mean the ambushing of coaches carrying Bullion from the Bank of England to County Banks?”
“That’s the cannonball!” Harry Sheraton added. “Think the whole operation damn well planned, if you ask me. Must be a brain behind the robberies. Not work of ordinary highwaymen.”
“I am afraid I did not pay much attention to the reports.”
“Powers-that-be getting a thick head over it. Two big robberies last week. Both cases guards shot dead, coachmen trussed up and left on the floor of the coach. Last couple, poor devils, there for five hours before anyone found them! When questioned, their information of little use.”
“They must have seen who had tied them up,” the Duke remarked languidly without showing much interest.
“Wore masks, coachmen hit over his head with bludgeon, rendered unconscious within seconds! In flurry of pulling in horses and hearing the shots too flustered to be reliable eye-witnesses.”
“Well, what are the intrepid Military going to do about it?” the Duke wanted to know.
“Commanders can think of nothing except to double guard on Bank of England. No clodhead would attempt to raid that stronghold.” Harry Sheraton said in disgust. “Would have thought from the way Colonel was spouting, a revolution had broken out!”
“If it does, I will put on my uniform and come and help you,” the Duke commented with a smile as the butler announced dinner.
The dining table had no cloth in the fashion introduced by the King and on its polished surface there were gold ornaments that had been in the family since the reign of King Charles II.
Trails of green orchids were arranged around them and encircled the base of the big gold candelabra, which each held six candles.
The two gentlemen settled down to a long and exceptional meal, the Duke’s chef being considered the best in the Beau Ton. The wine was superlative and, when the third remove left the table, Harry Sheraton lay back in his chair and then waved away a Sèvres dish of peaches soaked in brandy and sprinkled with roasted almonds
He then remarked,
“I regret, Theron, that I can no longer do justice to these culinary specialties. Heaven knows that if I ate in your house every day I should soon be stout as our most beloved Monarch.”
“I think chef is on his mettle tonight,” the Duke replied. “I sent a message to the kitchen two nights ago to say that I had not found the dinner to my satisfaction.”
“Good God!” Harry Sheraton ejaculated. “If you find fault with food like this, there must be no satisfying you.”
The servants had left the room and the Duke answered with a smile,
“I was keeping the man up to scratch, if one is too easily pleased, people get lazy!”
“Of course, forgot – ‘His Most Noble Perfection’.”
“Damn it all, don’t you talk that sort of fustian at me!” the Duke exclaimed, “or I swear I will not invite you here again!”
“Stuff!” his friend replied. “Know well as I do that I am the touch of spice in your epicurean life that brings you savour you get from no one else. Have known you too long, Theron, to be subservient! Not saying that you are not a remarkably impressive chap. But have seen you in two many undignified situations to be stupefied into state of admiring idiocy like the majority of your friends, staff and envious acquaintances!”
“Your compliments do overwhelm me!” the Duke drawled. “At the same time, Harry, you are right! I would hate to lose you.”
“Want another war,” Harry Sheraton sighed. “Do you good, Theron, rough it as you were doing ten years ago on the Peninsula. Ever forget the excitement of routing Frenchies after the Battle of Vittoria and then capturing King Joseph’s baggage train?”
“No indeed,” the Duke laughed. “Wyndham’s Dragoons acquired from it the King’s lordly silver pot de chamber.”
“Could never forget it! Christened ‘The Emperor’, we all then drank champagne out of it!”
“When I then got through the medley of horses, mules, bullocks and donkeys, pet monkeys and parrots,” the Duke said, “I found the Tenth Huzzars had split open the treasure chests and the ground was littered with doubloons, dollars, watches, jewels and trinkets.”
“So many females among the French camp followers that our troops then called it ‘a mobile brothel’,” Harry Sheraton said. “But Wellington’s booty was what counted, one hundred and fifty-one cannons, two million cartridges. Those were the days, my boy!”
He raised his glass to the memory before he exclaimed,
“God, but we are getting old! Next year 1825, will be ten years since the Battle of Waterloo!”
“Yes indeed and that means, Harry, that I shall be three and thirty next month, as my uncle Adolphus pointed out to me a few days ago in no uncertain terms.”
“I’ll wager that his Lordship came round with the Family Tree in his pocket,” Harry Sheraton said knowingly.
“He did indeed,” His Grace replied. “He went through the whole genealogy of the Royds from the one who served under Ethelred the Unready to the Royd who cuckolded Henry VIII with one of his wives, I forget which one, and the Royd who beat Casanova to the bed of some Princess or other!”
“Which led your Uncle Adolphus up to just the one demand,” Harry Sheraton mocked.
“Exactly!” the Duke agreed. “That I should get married at once! Otherwise Cousin Jasper will inherit.”
“Never been able to understand how Jasper comes into it,” Harry Sheraton remarked. “More yellow-livered outsider who I have ever met! Pardon, Theron, if plain speaking distresses you.”
“It does nothing of the sort,” the Duke said, “and I said far worse to Jasper himself only three months ago when he approached me for the one hundredth time, or was it the one thousandth, for a ‘small loan’.”
“The smallness being, of course, relative!”
“You are right. This time it was for just fifteen thousand pounds. He thought he must be improving as the time before it had been for twenty thousand!”
“What did you do?”
“I gave him ten and told him that, if he ever came whining for more, I would personally kick him into the street, even though it would damage my Hessian boots.”
“Heard he was gaming too high and only a question of time before he would be at you again!”
“This is really the last time!” the Duke said firmly. “But he is a cheesemonger of the worst description and Uncle Adolphus is convinced that he is now borrowing on the possibility of stepping into my shoes.”
“How happens he has any claim at all?” Harry Sheraton asked.
“It is quite easy,” the Duke replied. “My grandfather had five sons. The eldest had one child, Sylvester, who was killed at the Battle of the Nile, the second son, my father, produced me, the third, Uncle Cornelius, who died last year, had eight daughters!”
“Poor devil!” Harry Sheraton expostulated.
“Then came George Frederick,” the Duke continued, “an extremely unpleasant man who died some years ago and had one son, our friend Jasper, and lastly Uncle Adolphus who has never married.”
“So Jasper’s father as nauseating as he is?”
“According to Uncle Adolphus, George Frederick was smuggled in to the family in a bedpan! Personally, I don’t believe a word of it, but he was very unlike the rest of his brothers. He had no sense of propriety, he was a mad gambler and had a partiality for the lowest type of strumpet!
“Anyway, his wife, an innkeeper’s daughter, went to an early grave and Jasper was dragged up amongst women one would not trust with a dog let alone a child. At times I am almost sorry for him!”
“To stay in your attic!” Harry Sheraton exclaimed. “Done more for your importunate relative than anyone could credit! What has he given you in return – a word of honour that he has broken too many times to enumerate and blackguarding you behind your back that has nearly got him into a dozen duels with your friends?”
“There is no need for anyone to be in a miff over Jasper,” the Duke said, “but I think that Uncle Adolphus is right, Jasper must not under any circumstances inherit and therefore, Harry, I am to be married.”
“Congratulations!” his friend crowed. “Announcement sudden, but not unexpected. Who is the bride? Do I know her?”
“I have not decided on her as yet,” the Duke replied.
“Not decided!” Harry Sheraton began incredulously and then burst out laughing. “You are roasting me!”
“No indeed,” the Duke answered. “I have given full consideration to Uncle Adolphus’s impassioned pleas combined with those of my sister, Evelyn. She came with him and was even more insistent than my uncle that Jasper should cease his pretensions of being the Heir Presumptive. Apparently he insulted her at some Assembly or another! Anyway, she has compiled for me a list of eligibles for the position of my Duchess.”
“Good God, Theron, not serious? Not contemplating marrying some chit for whom you have no affection whatsoever?”
“That is of no consequence!” the Duke replied.
“Doing it a bit brown!” Harry Sheraton retorted. “Not saying need go in for heartthrobs with an orchestra wailing under full moon or should throw dramatics like that wearisome chap, Byron, whose poems bore me to distraction, but must be some female with whom you have a slight – ”
“There is no one,” the Duke interrupted. “As you well know, Harry, I have not paid much attention to unfledged girls.”
“Suppose that is true,” Harry Sheraton agreed, “but you have stood up with a few for a dance at Almack’s. Must have encountered one or two staying in the houses you visited.”
“If I did, I have no remembrance of them,” the Duke admitted, “and after all it is of little consequence. All I require is a well-bred wife who will provide me with an heir. She must have dignity, she must not cause any gossip. Otherwise, as long as we deal well in public, what happens in private is no one’s business.”
“Suggesting your wife can go her own way, as you will go yours?”
“Within reason,” the Duke replied. “And I am not likely to keep her incarcerated in the old Norman Tower at Selchester Castle or lock her into a chastity belt while I go roaming.
“What is this paragon to look like? Decide that?” Harry Sheraton asked mockingly.
“Yes indeed, she must be tall, fair, blue-eyed, with good features. Blondes look best in the family jewels. Duchesses must be tall and you know that those blue-eyed fair females are always somewhat insipid and not given to flights of emotion as much as the darker breed.”
“Imagine with required qualifications clearly set out you are able to purchase one or half a dozen if you wish at the Partheon Bazaar!”
“I am serious. I know exactly what I do require and I promise you, Harry, I shall find myself a wife who will play the part of my Duchess in exactly the manner I expect of her.”
“What you are really saying to me,” Harry Sheraton said, “is that you know damn well the wretched girl will fall in love with you, twist her round your little finger and will then conform in every way to your desires, grateful for an occasional pat on the head as if a pet pug you had added to your household.”
“That is not very funny, Harry,” the Duke rebuked him loftily.
“May not be humorous but the truth,” Harry Sheraton retorted. “God above, Theron, you cannot go into your marriage in such cold-blooded manner. Surely there is somewhere a female with whom you can fancy yourself a trifle enamoured, some wench who makes your heart beat a little quicker or at least delights your eye.”
The Duke did not speak and Harry Sheraton continued,
“Anything is much better than this calculated demand for a foolish unsuspecting creature who will doubtless in a few years be grateful if you so much as nod in her direction.”
“My dear Harry, I am, as I have already told you, nearly three and thirty and I have never been enamoured of any woman I could marry and I see no possibility of my ever becoming so. As you know well, I have had affairs de coeur, but they have always been with married women who were well up to snuff. I cannot imagine anything that will bore me more than the chattering of an unsophisticated chit only just out of the schoolroom!” |
The Duke sighed wearily at the thought before he continued,
“But for the sake of the family, because I have to produce an heir, then I shall marry someone who will fit in well with the pattern of what I require in the woman who bears my name.”
“What about Penelope?” Harry Sheraton asked him.
There was a moment’s silence before the Duke exclaimed,
“Fancy you remembering Penelope!”
“You were in love with her. Remember what you felt then?”
“Of course I do. I remember too how swiftly Penelope, so sweet and maidenly, jilted a poor youth without any handle to his name and whose expectations were remote, when Lord Hornblotton, already a Peer of the Realm, asked if he could pay his addresses to her!”
There was almost a sharp bitterness in the Duke’s voice and Harry Sheraton, looking at him sharply, said,
“Are you telling me, Theron, that after all these years you are still wearing the willow for that title-seeking woman you met your first year in the Regiment?”
The Duke shook his head.
“You are trying hard to make me a romantic, Harry, but it will not stick. No indeed, I have seen Penelope since she married. I met her, let me see now, two or three years ago, she had run to fat and it was difficult to recognise the thin ethereal girl who had once captured my fancy. I do believe Penelope has five children by now, maybe more!”
“You loved her!”
“I was infatuated as any raw youth is likely to be infatuated the first time he puts on Regimental tunic and knows that his appearance makes him appear a hero in the eyes of some green girl. But I am grateful to Penelope! She taught me a very important lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“That women, whoever they may be, will always go to the highest bidder!” the Duke replied. “For the ‘Fashionable Impure’ it is, of course, entirely a question of money and for the social chicks it is the highest title that matters. Penelope showed me that a Baronet will beat a Knight, a Viscount will beat a Baron and a Marquis an Earl. But at the very top of the hierarchy, Harry, there is a Duke! A Duke is ace-high and therefore unbeatable.”
“Suppose by that you are telling me none of those fair-haired, blue-eyed nitwits to whom you condescend will refuse you?”
“Of course not! That was the lesson Penelope taught me. It is not a question of whom a girl loves but what her suitor can offer.
“And that is where, Harry, I can now take the trick every time. I am a Duke and that rank makes me automatically the real favourite in the matrimonial stakes. I must pass the post ahead of all other competitors!”
“Curse it, you are too plausible!” Harry Sheraton remarked, “And too puffed up with your consequence. I only wish that just one of those social butterflies would turn you down flat. Do you world of good!”
“Your wish is very unlikely to be granted,” the Duke sneered.
“I know it,” his friend said with a groan. “Not only a Duke, Theron, you also have damned handsome phiz, a fine figure of a man. Excellent sportsman, grant you that, a Corinthian, a Non-pareil and so disgustingly wealthy. I don’t believe that you know yourself what you are worth. No, Theron, first past the Winning Post. Hope it brings you happiness!”
“It will,” the Duke answered, “for the simple reason that I am not expecting to find happiness of any sort in marriage. I shall be gratified, of course, if my wife has some slight affection for me, but my enjoyment will still rest, you may be sure, with those delightful creatures that one can purchase so easily and who each can bring us a fleeting, if brittle amusement, however jaded we think we are with their charms!”
“If we intend to inspect the new batch just arrived from France, let us set about it,” Harry Sheraton said. “Promise you, Theron, you have depressed me! I cannot bear to think about your plans for the future. Given me a disgust for the whole idea of matrimony!”
“Poor Harry,” the Duke commiserated. “You are romantic, that is what you are. I am practical, severely and sensibly practical. I know just what I want, I shall get it, and my life will proceed on my own carefully calculated lines, which you must admit yourself makes for comfort if for nothing else!”
“Still determined to go on with this crazed idea?” Harry Sheraton asked him in a serious tone.
He rose to his feet as he spoke and stood looking at the Duke at the end of the table. There was no one who could appear more elegant, more at ease than His Grace as he leant back against a high-backed armchair, a glass of port in his hand.
“As a matter of fact,” the Duke said with a twist of his lips, “it is quite an adventure!”
“Humbugging yourself!” Harry Sheraton snapped. “Know perfectly well that this is a travesty of what marriage was intended to be. Can only prophesy, Theron, that if you are not careful it will prove disastrous.”
“Romantic and now turned into prophet of doom,” the Duke jeered. “Despite your warnings and curse it you are as gloomy as a Good Friday sermon! I leave London tomorrow. I shall visit first the Upminsters in Bedfordshire. My sister assures me that they have a most commendable, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter who was greatly admired at Almack’s.”
“You have met her?” Harry Sheraton asked.
“I have a sort of vague remembrance at the back of my mind that I did,” the Duke answered. “But you know, Harry, that the moment I speak to one of these girls I can see only one expression on their face.”
“What is that?” Harry Sheraton asked as if he could not help it.
“An expression of greed and a glint in their eyes as they think how attractive they will look in their coronets and a Peeress’s robes. When they speak to me I can almost see them murmuring to themselves beneath their breath ‘the Selchester Diamonds’!”
“God, what a cynic!”
“And when I return them to their Mama’s side,” the Duke went on, “I see the smirk on her face! Oh, the Dowagers try to appear nonchalant and unmoved that their little chicken has been fluffing her feathers in front of my Ducal eyes, but they have a smile like a Cheshire cat who has been at the cream. I know the one thing they want is to lap me up!”
“You make me sick,” Harry Sheraton commented,
The Duke, laughing, exclaimed,
“Forgive me, Harry, but to tease you is irresistible. We are the same age, but I swear that you still believe in dragons and Knights in Armour setting out to rescue a frail virgin with whom he will fall immoderately in love. My dear fellow, that is not life!”
“If life is what you have been describing to me,” Harry Sheraton said firmly, “all I can tell you, I will thank God on my knees every night that I am a commoner!”
The Duke laughed again.