offered Angelica helpfully.
‘There!’ said the Hon. Tom. ‘Leave it. You’ll have forgotten everything by morning, I dare swear.’
‘He always has done before,’ was Angelica’s brutal finale to the whole unhappy encounter. Did they really want her to marry someone who spent his time admiring paintings?
Which, if Mary and Russell had heard her, would have had them agreeing that it was the most sensible thing anyone by the name of Markham had said, or thought, all night!
‘That was really exceedingly naughty of you,’ Mary told Russell reprovingly, once they were safely out of the picture gallery. ‘You must have gathered by now what a nodcock Perry Markham is, but there was no need to have made a fool of him quite so mercilessly.’
‘No?’ replied Russell, haughty eyebrows raised. ‘He began the whole wretched business by jeering at me and mocking me, most mercilessly, after dinner for not wishing to see that poor wretch hanged tomorrow. I was only giving him a taste of his own medicine—and before two others, not before the entire assembled men of the company. I consider that he got off lightly—but I promise not to do it again if it distressed you.’
‘And you really are not going to watch the hanging tomorrow?’
‘By no means. I take no pleasure in behaving like the ancient Romans in the Colosseum who cheerfully watched gladiators slaughter one another, even if I do admire their architecture and their writings. By the by, I hope that none of the ladies will be in the party, although I suspect that quite a number of women will be present.’
Mary shuddered. ‘It is bad enough speaking about it without being there. Will all the men be going?’
‘Most, I suspect. But let us speak of more pleasant things before we rejoin the others.’
‘Indeed. There is one question which I should dearly like to ask you, and that is, did you ever meet Lord Byron before he started out on his travels again?’
‘Several times. I heard him make his speech in the Lords on behalf of the hand-loom weavers who were losing their livelihood because of the new machines. I thought it very fine. I also think it is a great pity that he never bent his energies more towards politics than pleasure. After all, he is his own man, unlike others who have their choices made for them. I agree that he writes some immortal poetry, but his private life of unbridled pleasure does not bear inspection. I gather that now he is in Europe he still mixes writing divine poetry with living a sybaritic life.’
How easy, Mary mused later, while retiring for the night, it had been for them to fall back into the half-serious, half-jesting mode of conversation which they had enjoyed before their affair had come to its sorry end. There was no doubt that their minds worked in harmony. Earlier that evening Miss Truman had commented that Lord Hadleigh had the reputation of being a lightweight in life and love.
After talking with him again, Mary thought that she was wrong. She was, however, gaining the impression that something was awry in Russell Hadleigh’s life, and that he envied his younger twin, Ritchie, not only for his happy marriage but for having a settled aim and career. He must also have watched Ritchie achieve a certain amount of justly earned fame for his exploits as a soldier, leaving the Army with the rank of colonel and a reputation for courage and enterprise.
She shook her head. Why should she waste her time thinking about the problems of her one-time lover, however much, if truth were told, he still attracted her?
But the past was the past and must remain dead. A thought which she took to bed with her after reading a little of one of Mr ‘Monk’ Lewis’s lurid romances, a Tale of Terror called Feudal Tyrants. Mary had a passion for such novels, which had shocked her husband whose taste in literature was fixed on the arid and the philosophical. He considered it to be her one weakness.
Whether it was Mr Lewis’s vivid descriptions of past times which excited her brain, or whether it was meeting Russell Hadleigh again that did the damage Mary could not decide on the following morning. Whichever it was, during the night—was it in a dream?—she found herself walking in the gardens of her father’s home in Oxford. She was seventeen again and beside her was a handsome young man who had arrived that morning to be her father’s pupil.
Dr Beauregard was not one of Oxford’s official dons, but he was a mathematician with a European-wide reputation and it was a habit of some of the professors to send their brighter pupils to him for further training.
‘I am expecting a new young man this morning, Mary,’ her father had earlier told her, ‘so I am afraid that you must forgo your work with me today. Wilkinson thinks that he has a very good mind and would profit from spending some time in my company. What is surprising about him is that he is a young nobleman—it is not often that they display such rarefied talents, although one must not forget Henry Cavendish, of course.’
He was, Mary knew, referring to Henry Cavendish, the grandson of the second Duke of Devonshire, who had made some remarkable discoveries in chemistry.
‘No, Father,’ she replied, teasing him gently. ‘No, I promise not to forget Henry Cavendish.’
He fixed her with a stern eye. ‘See that you do not, my dear. Knowledge must always be treasured and never lost. The young man to whom I have referred is the heir of the Earl of Bretford. His name is Russell, Lord Hadleigh, so you must address him as m’lord. He has a courtesy Viscountcy, I understand. I think, that after I have assessed him today, it is likely that you may both profit from taking your lessons together with me. We shall see.’
Lord Hadleigh! What a delightful name. It was like those in the Tales of Terror which her father grudgingly allowed her to read. ‘All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl,’ he had said once.
Well, she wouldn’t be a dull girl with Lord Hadleigh as a fellow pupil—although whether she would enjoy taking her lessons with him was quite another thing! She had learned—to her distress—that if she ever told anyone, male or female, of any age, that her papa was teaching her advanced mathematics and that delightful piece of arcane mystery, calculus, they were sure to look at her as though she had sprouted two heads.
Aunt Charlotte Beauregard had once told her never, ever, to let any young man know how clever she was, for that was sure to end any chance of marriage for her. Years later, Mary learned that an extremely clever mathematician and geometer named Annabelle Milbanke had succeeded in marrying Lord Byron despite that; but since the marriage had proved to be an absolute disaster, perhaps Aunt Charlotte had been right.
At the time of Lord Hadleigh’s arrival, however, such warnings troubled Mary not at all. When their maid, Polly, arrived in her room to tell her that her papa wanted to see her in his study downstairs, Mary had run down eagerly, knocked on the study door and found her papa seated behind his desk. A tall young man was standing facing him.
He turned and bowed when Mary entered. She was immediately struck dumb at the sight of him. He was so extraordinarily handsome: a cross between the statues of the young Hercules and the God Apollo who stood in the entrance hall of the Beauregards’ home.
But Russell, Lord Hadleigh, possessed one great advantage over them: he was warm flesh and blood, not cold stone. He had fair waving hair—he had removed his mortar-board with its nobleman’s gold tassel when she had entered—and bright blue eyes above his classically handsome face.
Her father was saying something: introducing him, no doubt. Mary curtsied in a kind of daze. She thought that he was informing m’lord that he and she were to study together with him and, if so, how would she ever be able to say anything sensible before such masculine perfection?
It was almost as though he knew how overthrown she was, for he was saying in a voice as beautiful as he was, ‘I am delighted to meet your daughter, Dr Beauregard. It is rare to find such intellect as she must possess and such beauty combined in one person,’ and he bowed to her at the end of his speech.
‘No doubt,’ said her father drily, ‘but, if you are