to subdue his unwanted memories.
‘I can’t promise success,’ Devenish said slowly, ‘but I’ll do my best.’
‘Excellent, I shall be able to reassure the Lord Lieutenant that I am taking him seriously—although I shall not tell him who my emissary is. The fewer people who know, the better. This business might be more dangerous than it appears.’
Sidmouth paused. ‘You’re a good fellow,’ he added warmly. ‘I felt sure that you would oblige me.’
‘Despite my reputation for never obliging anyone.’ Devenish began to laugh. ‘At least it will enliven a few dull weeks.’
Later he was to look back on that last remark and at the light-hearted fool who had made it, but at the time he walked back to the ballroom to congratulate Lord Orville on having won his beauty.
Chapter Two
‘Isn’t it time, Drusilla, my love, that you left off wearing your widow’s weeds? Jeremy has been gone for over two years now, and I don’t believe that he would approve of your hiding yourself away from the world, either.’
Miss Cordelia Faulkner looked anxiously at her nephew’s widow. She did not wish to distress her, but she thought that the time had come for something to be said.
‘Dear aunt,’ said Drusilla, looking up from her canvaswork, ‘I am scarcely wearing widow’s weeds. I have always chosen to dress modestly, and to live in like fashion, and I have certainly not hidden myself away from the world. I live a busy life locally, and only this week I have arranged with the parson of Tresham Magna that his annual fête to raise money for the poor children of the parish will be held in our gardens.’
‘I expressed myself badly. I should have said the polite world. You ought to marry again, my love, not spend your life pining for my poor, dead nephew, and where better would you find a husband than in London?’
How to answer that? Drusilla looked away and caught a glimpse of herself in the long Venetian glass which hung on the other side of the room.
She saw a composed young woman in her very early twenties, dressed in a high-waisted gown of pale mauve, the colour allowed to a widow during her second year of mourning—a year which was now over. Her glossy curls were dressed on top of her head, one ringlet falling round a swan-like neck. Her eyes were the soft grey of clear water and her complexion was creamy, with only the faintest blush of pink.
Jeremy had always called her lips kissable—and he had often kissed them during the two years of her marriage. No, that was not correct, Drusilla reminded herself sadly, for eighteen months only. He had barely touched them, or her, during their last six months together.
It was the memory of those last sad months which helped to keep her in thrall to him. What had gone wrong with their marriage that he had absented himself from her not only bodily, but mentally? What had changed him from a carefree laughing boy to a brooding man? Was it something which she had unwittingly said or done?
Drusilla returned to the present with a start. Miss Faulkner was staring at her. She put her work down. ‘I’m sorry, aunt, I was wool-gathering. But you already know that the polite world does not interest me, and I have no intention of marrying again.’
‘So you say now,’ remarked Miss Faulkner shrewdly. ‘Later, you will surely change your mind.’
She sat down opposite Drusilla and said, her voice a trifle sad, ‘I cannot recommend the single state, my dear. When I was young and foolish I turned down a man of solid worth because he was not romantic enough for me—my head was stuffed with cobwebs.
‘By the time I realised that I was neither pretty enough—nor rich enough—to catch the handsome young fellow I thought I loved, and would have settled for solid worth, he had found another bride. And I, I never found anyone else who wished to make me his wife, and I led a lonely life until Jeremy kindly asked me to be your attendant when you married him. Do not reserve my sad state for yourself. You are younger, prettier and richer than I ever was. Find a good man and marry him.’
Picking up her canvaswork again, Drusilla told Jeremy’s aunt what she had never thought to tell anyone. ‘This time I would wish to marry for love. Oh, don’t mistake me, my parents arranged our marriage and I was happy with Jeremy.’
Until the last six months, said her treacherous memory.
Repressing it, she continued, ‘I’m not hoping for a grand passion, just a homely love. The kind of love my parents shared. What Jeremy and I had was friendship. I may be foolish, and I may have to settle for less again, but not yet, please.’
‘Very well, my dear, so long as you don’t wait too long—or settle for a fortune hunter.’
‘Oh, I shall ask for your advice if one arrives. Would you forgive me if I settled for one who was young, handsome—and kind?’
Miss Faulkner smiled. ‘Ah, you mean like Miss Rebecca Rowallan’s Will Shafto, I suppose. There are not many of those on offer, I fear.’
Further conversation was stopped by an agitated rapping on the door, and the entry of Vobster, Drusilla’s chief groom.
‘Yes, what is it, Vobster?’
‘It’s Master Giles, ma’am. He’s trying to persuade me and Green to allow him to ride Brandy instead of Dapple. I fear that, unless you have a word with him, he won’t take no for an answer.’
Drusilla rose, shocked, her face paling. Behind her Miss Faulkner was making distressed noises. Giles was Drusilla’s eighteen-year-old brother, who had a badly crippled leg as the result of a strange childhood illness which had kept him bedridden for months.
Dapple was a mild and well-behaved nag whom the doctor had reluctantly given him permission to ride, but Brandy was quite a different matter. He was the most high-spirited horse in the Faulkners’ small stable.
‘I’ll come at once,’ she said quickly. ‘We can’t have him trying to ride Brandy.’
‘And so I said, but he wouldn’t be told.’
‘Well, he’ll listen to me, I hope. I don’t wish to ban him from riding at all, for I believe that it keeps him well and happy, but we can’t have him risking his neck on fliers like Brandy.’
She arrived in the stable yard to find that Giles had finally persuaded Green to allow him to mount Brandy, by promising that he would not ride him, but would allow Green to hold him steady in the stable yard.
‘I should so like to sit on a real horse for once,’ he had said pathetically, ‘instead of that rocking chair which is all Dru will allow me.’
‘And rightly so, Master Giles, for you have not the strength to control Brandy. It was all Mr Jeremy could do to hold him.’
Giles knew that Drusilla did not wish to sell Brandy, although she could not ride him, because it would mean that her happiest memories of her husband would have disappeared with him.
He looked proudly down at his sister. ‘See how well I sit on him, Dru,’ he said. ‘Pray allow me to ride him—if only for a few yards.’
Drusilla
