Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground Read online

  He was some years older but that, to her mind, was all to the good for it meant that, to him, she seemed positively girlish. He had no objection to her past, stating firmly that it was of no interest to him except insofar as it had helped to form the delightful woman she was now. Theirs had been a marriage of mature love; they had been extraordinarily happy – just the two of them. No children had appeared and neither felt the least regret for this.

  Her acquaintance with Cassie had begun while they had both been singing in the chorus. On becoming Mrs Farley, Prue had retired from the chorus but still kept up her friendship with Cassie. This was partly because she was genuinely attached to the younger woman, but also because Cassie, having once been a lady, knew how to behave in Society and Mrs Farley, whose hope it was to be accepted into, at first merely the fringes, but perhaps later what she called ‘Wider Society’, believed that Cassie could facilitate this move.

  “It is more difficult for you, dear girl,” she had said to Cassie at the time. “You see, I was never a lady so that marrying Mr Farley, who is not a gentleman by birth, although he has always behaved in a most exemplary fashion towards me, was perfectly natural for me. You, on the other hand, would not be comfortable with such a vulgar man. I daresay you would find his manners grating. But I shall look about me for someone suitable. It is all very well you remaining with the Duke – and I am sure you are very comfortable at present – but it cannot last. You do know that, don’t you, my dear?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I own I try not to think about the future.”

  “That, if you don’t mind my saying so, is rash. The future must be planned for. I hope you are putting away all the rings and necklaces and so forth that he gives you. I daresay you have so many that you cannot possibly wear them all but they will come in handy one day.”

  Cassie smiled rather sadly. “I have a few – and some that were given to me by previous gentlemen. He does not give me so many, you know. I don’t believe he feels he needs to bribe me.”

  “Well, that only goes to show how bird-brained you are. You must squeeze all you can out of him while it’s still possible.”

  Cassie, dressing for the evening out with her friend, fixed a simple pearl necklace – although they were very good pearls – around her throat, attached matching pearl drops to her ears and slid several rings on to her fingers. Wrapping a gauze shawl around her shoulders, she went downstairs to await her friend.

  Mrs Farley arrived in perfect time, deposited on the doorstep by her own coachman, who was instructed to return an hour or so after the performance was expected to conclude. His grace’s vehicle would deliver them to the Hanover Square Rooms and collect them again when the concert was finished.

  She had dressed in a more sober style than usual in view of the nature of the evening’s entertainment, but she still looked resplendent in a gown of crimson crape, trimmed with black lace. A silver and black gauze scarf was wound around shoulders which had, in the past, been much admired but were now perhaps a little on the over-plump side. Around her neck sparkled the ruby necklace which her husband had given her shortly after their nuptials, saying, as he fastened it around her neck, “These rich stones become you, my dear.”

  Cassie, entering the room while her friend was still rearranging her hair in front of the mirror, knew the story of the rubies and said warmly, “How well you look this evening. That colour is quite ravishing.”

  “Thank you. Do you think I look my age?”

  “Of course you do not,” Cassie stoutly assured her, although in point of fact she did not know Mrs Farley’s age. She herself was past forty and suspected that her companion was very likely the wrong side of fifty.

  “And neither do you; but then, you are a babe-in-arms compared to me.”

  “Hardly; and I am not a married woman.”

  “No, but I am determined that shall not remain the case for much longer. The older you are the more essential a husband is to one’s self-esteem as well as to one’s standing – although he does not have to be alive, my dear – he just has to have been there at one time. You know, the Hanover Square Rooms will be positively bursting with suitable gentlemen for I am certain you would be happier with a more cultured husband than Mr Farley was. He suited me, but, for you, I think a quieter man – and, if possible, a gentleman, is required. You look very lovely this evening but there is a suspicion – only the faintest, mind – of red around your eyes. Have you been crying?”

  “Yes, I own that I have. This, as you know, is not a good time of year for me: the arrival of a new batch of débutantes is always lowering.”

  “I do not see that it has to be. There is no reason to suppose that the Duke will send you away merely because he decides to marry some whey-faced girl to assure the succession. You must try not to be so down-in-the-mouth. I hope you did not weep all over him – gentlemen do not like that sort of behaviour in the least; and they certainly don’t expect it – and will not tolerate it – in ladies such as you and me. Putting up with a watering-pot is no doubt the price he will have to pay for ensuring the succession but he will not wish to be subjected to such tiresome conduct in you.”

  “No, I did not – or, at least, I did not give way to weeping until he had left. But, Prue, I am much afraid that he will give me up when he marries. He did before – when he became engaged. He only came back because she threw him over at the last.”

  “He would have come back eventually even if he had married her: six months, I should say, is usually quite enough for gentlemen to become bored with wives. Usually, she is expecting to present him with what he married her for by that time and has become, not only considerably less attractive, but also even more lachrymose. You will have only to be patient and all will be as it was.”

  “But I shall be even older by then! He will look for someone younger if he has not seen me for more than six months. I am certain that he will give me up as soon as his eye lights on a likely girl; it will be at least a year before he comes back.”

  “Stuff! She will be young and so you can be sure that he will have had quite enough of her tantrums and be looking for the sort of understanding that an older woman can give. In any event, it’s my belief that you should be looking for a more permanent arrangement now – and tonight will provide an excellent opportunity.”

  There was a knock upon the door followed by the butler announcing that his grace’s carriage was awaiting them.

  “Oh, good, thank you. We will be there directly.” Cassie wrapped her scarf more tightly about her shoulders and picked up her reticule. “Shall we go, Prue?”

  “Yes. Courage, my dear – there is no need for despair!”

  “I do not know what I should do without you,” Cassie confided. “You are the greatest possible comfort to me.”

  “I always aim to please!” Mrs Farley replied with a roguish smile.

  When they arrived at the Hanover Square Rooms it was to find a vast number of people swarming up the steps. By no means all were members of the ton; there were plenty of middle class persons and several from what might have been described as an ‘artistic’ background: musicians, poets, writers, philosophers – in short, the sort of people who took genuine pleasure from listening to good music well played.

  Cassie and Mrs Farley did not stand out amongst this crowd as belonging to the class of person to which they did belong: ladies of ill repute. Mrs Farley was, of course, now a respectable widow and no longer earned her living in an immoral manner, but poor Cassie, who had once been a member of the Upper Ten Thousand, now belonged to the class of female whom several members of this refined group would have been horrified to find in the same room.

  In this milieu neither aroused comment. Although Mrs Farley’s outfit was a trifle vulgar and the colour of her hair unnatural, she had been sparing with the rouge and kept her voice low. Cassie, whose natural good taste led her to a more modest and discreet style of dressing, and whose hair was still a remarkable shade of deep gold, could, if not lin
ked to Mrs Farley by the arm, have passed for a perfectly respectable matron.

  They milled about with everyone else, nodding and smiling at anyone they recognised – although the majority of their acquaintances were of the male sex – and took their seats in good order. Most of the men knew perfectly well whose ‘peculiar’ Cassie was and also knew Mrs Farley. Several of them had been better acquainted with Mrs Farley some years ago.

  None of them had known Cassie other than as the mistress of the Duke of Rother. Cassie’s early career as a light woman, immediately after her abandonment by her seducer, had been conducted in Paris and Rome. She had not returned to England for ten years and, when she had done so, had not attempted to rejoin either her family or Society, but had sought a position singing at the Theatre Royal. It was there that she had met Mrs Farley, then Prudence Black, as well as the Duke – who had not been a duke at the time. He had come to the stage door after the performance to give her a large bunch of flowers and invite her to join him for supper. At the time he had not yet reached his sixteenth birthday; she had been seven and twenty.

  It was during the interval, when the symphony had been played but before Miss Bisset had taken the pianoforte stool, that Cassie noticed a man who reminded her forcibly, and distressingly, of her seducer.

  It was more than twenty years since she had fallen victim to the man who had ruined her and, in all that time, she had never seen anyone who reminded her so strongly of him. To say that the sight of this unknown man gave her quite a turn would have been an understatement. She felt sick.

  “Do you know who that man is?” she asked Mrs Farley, nodding in the direction of the tall, saturnine figure, who was talking to another gentleman.

  “Lord Furzeby? Surely you have seen him before?” Mrs Farley was not looking at her friend as she spoke; she was looking at the two gentlemen, and thus did not see the whitened countenance of her companion.

  “Yes, of course I have. No, I mean the man to whom he is speaking.” Cassie’s voice sounded odd in her own ears: as though there were some impediment in her throat.

  “No, I do not know him; I have never seen him before. He appears not to be accompanied by a female. I wonder if he is single. He looks quite gentlemanly and, judging by the cut of his coat, with plump pockets. Shall we see if we can draw attention to ourselves – in a perfectly discreet manner, of course?”

  Cassie tried to laugh. “Are you suggesting we should knock his elbow or something?”

  “What an excellent idea! Leave it to me! I will do the knocking because I do not think we want him to judge you clumsy.” Only now did Mrs Farley remove her gaze from the gentleman and fix it, instead, glancingly, upon her friend. What she saw caused her to take Cassie’s arm. “Are you unwell, my dear? You have gone quite white.”

  “I think I am going to be very unwell,” Cassie answered, clapping her hand over her mouth and staring at Mrs Farley with agonised eyes.

  “No, you are not!” the older lady said sharply. “You will master yourself at once! But we will go outside for a moment to take a breath of air while you do so. Come!” She took Cassie’s arm in a firm grip and, by means of pushing the crowds of people aside and pulling her friend with her, forced a passage to the doors, through which she dragged the now groaning Cassie.

  “Oh!” Cassie cried as they stumbled together into the night. She broke away from Mrs Farley and, leaning over, was violently sick on the pavement.

  “My dear! Whatever is the matter?” Mrs Farley cried, removing her shawl and wrapping it around the other’s shaking shoulders.

  “It … he …” Whatever Cassie had been about to say was halted by another avalanche of sickness.

  “You will be quite well in a trice,” Mrs Farley said, adopting a different tone, one replete with sympathy and kindness. “You get it all out, my dear. Pray do not hold anything back; it will be so much better if you can dispose of everything that is making you so exceedingly unwell. My poor dear … If you can sit down for a moment – not too near whatever that horrid thing is that has made you so ill, I will ask the doorman to call a hackney.”

  “Oh,” Cassie groaned again and turned her white face towards her friend. “I am so glad you are here, dearest Prue. Pray do not leave me. I could not sit here by myself. I will be better directly and we can go back inside. I do not want to miss Bisset playing.”

  “No, of course you do not, but I really think it would be wiser to go home. I will come with you and make sure that you are tucked up safely in bed with a warm brick – and perhaps a drop of brandy. It is probably best not to eat anything just for the moment – until you feel a little better.”

  “It is not anything I have eaten. It was the sight of that man!”

  “Which man?”

  “The one whose elbow you were intending to jog.”

  “Lud! Whatever is there in his countenance to make you so unwell? He looked perfectly ordinary to me; not precisely handsome but really quite gentlemanly and, so far as one could tell from where we were standing, without obvious defects.”

  Cassie, shivering upon the ground with her friend’s scarf clasped tightly about her, attempted a laugh, which emerged somewhat croakily. “He is the image of the man who ruined me!”

  Chapter 5

  It did not take Sylvia long to discover that it was Mr Harbury who had wrought the greatest effect upon her charge; the girl coloured every time his name was mentioned and, since almost every word he had uttered was so fascinating that it must be retailed to her confidante without delay, her cheeks were frequently mantled in blushes.

  She had no need to speak to her ladyship to be certain that it was the Duke with whom she was most impressed and, recalling with a shudder her ladyship’s orders concerning suitors, she wished that Mr Harbury had not been one of the party which the Sullington ladies had met on their initial outing. First impressions, she knew, were often exceedingly difficult to eradicate.

  “Do you know aught else of Mr Harbury?” she asked when her former pupil paused for a moment but, as this request did not elicit the sort of information she sought - merely affording Melissa an opening to describe the wonderful blue of his eyes and the warmth of his smile once more - she was obliged to be a little more specific.

  “Yes, he sounds perfectly charming; but do you know anything of his family? How did the Duke introduce him?”

  “Oh, it was not he who introduced him. It was Lord Furzeby. I understand that he is his lordship’s nephew and has only recently come down from the university. Lord Furzeby said that his sister-in-law had most particularly asked that he be introduced to Society; I think she is hopeful that time spent in London might change his mind about joining a cavalry regiment. I got the impression that his mama, who is, I think, a widow, is most reluctant to have him go into battle – which is entirely understandable.”

  “Yes,” Sylvia agreed. She had no difficulty in understanding any woman’s reluctance for her son to put himself in so much danger. It was only a few years since one of her own brothers had been killed at Burgos and she knew that her mother had not by any means recovered from the loss. She had not herself. “Is Lord Furzeby himself a military man?”

  “Oh, I should not think so now. He is quite old, as I told you. I collect the Duke was at one time but he sold his commission when he was wounded; I do not think he was a Duke then. Do all gentlemen go and fight battles when they are young? I hope my brothers will not.” This was accompanied by an anxious look.

  “No, certainly not, and, since we are now at peace, there is no longer anything for anyone to be exercised about. You seem to have learned a good deal about all these gentlemen.”

  “It was Mama who told me that the Duke was injured – quite badly, I understand, although there was no sign of it in his bearing.”

  “I see. And are all these gentlemen unmarried?”

  “I believe Lord Furzeby is widowed.”

  “Oh,” Sylvia said, registering disappointment. “In that case, I suppose he has childre
n of his own?”

  “I daresay he may; he did not mention them.”

  “No – Mr Harbury is his nephew, you say, and the anxious mother is sister-in-law to Lord Furzeby; I suppose his lordship must have had a brother.”

  “I have not the least notion. Why are you so interested in Lord Furzeby’s family?”

  “Because you are clearly much taken with the nephew and I am wondering whether he is in line to inherit the title.”

  Melissa laughed at this. “You mean so that Mama will not look down upon him?”

  “Well, yes, I did mean that. I have the impression that your mama looked warmly upon the Duke, but I am persuaded that you prefer Mr Harbury.”

  “Well, of course I do. It stands to reason because he is young; and he was friendly, whereas the Duke was a little top-lofty. I did not think that he liked Mama.”

  “No. Well, no doubt there will be plenty more gentlemen to choose from within the next few weeks. I hope you will not think too much about Mr Harbury. To begin with, he is clearly very young and, at his age, most unlikely to wish to settle down.”

  “Whereas the Duke must be looking for a wife?”

  “If he is unmarried and quite old, I should think he must be, would not you? I am sure that is what your mama is hoping.”

  The next morning, when Sylvia came downstairs, she was in time to see the front door opened by a footman and a posy of flowers handed in by a very young man.

  “I’ll take those,” she said at once, holding out her hand.

  “They are addressed to Miss Sullington,” the footman said, holding on to them.

  “I don’t doubt it. I am certainly not expecting any flowers. I will take them up at once and hand them to the correct recipient.”

  The door of the saloon opened as she was speaking and her ladyship emerged.

  “For whom are those flowers?” she enquired in her high voice.