Just Deserts (2 page)

‘
I know you claim to be purse-pinched, Christopher, but why
you must wallow in squalor is a matter passing my
comprehension.’

‘
I am not squandering my precious blunt on a town house,
Cordelia,’ Chiddingly said, his manner weary, ‘so don’t waste your
breath.’

‘
You will have to do so when you get married.’

‘
Are you at that again?’

The death in the war in America ten years ago of young
Captain Phineas Chiddingly had left the baron the last of his name.
Cordelia had been trying ever since to get him to the altar,
introducing him to a succession of debutantes year after year, upon
whom he turned an unresponsive back.

‘
When I can like a woman better than any of my
horses, my
dear
sister,’ he said now, ‘then I shall
be happy to oblige you.’

His sister gave him a sour smile. ‘I’ll warrant
you’ll
oblige
me sooner than
that.’

Mrs Harraton was a strapping matron, a year or two older
than her brother and very like him in looks, though she did not
share his taste for riding. She looked well in a cherry-red
greatcoat dress with triple capes, worn as an open robe over a
softer shaded petticoat in muslin with a flounced hem, topped by a
huge hat with a soft crown and ribbons falling in bows over the
wide brim. But the iron-grey wig, frizzed and curled in the
prevailing mode, did not agree with her sallow complexion. When she
smiled, as now, the contrast with her excellent white teeth had an
unfortunate effect.

‘
You look like a Cheshire cat, Cordelia,’ her brother
remarked, effectively slaying the smile.

‘
I declare,’ she said on a huffy note, ‘I have a good mind
to leave you without disclosing my news.’

‘
I wish you would.’

‘
Well, I will not.’ Mrs Harraton pulled out a chair and sat
down. ‘You may give me a cup of chocolate.’

Chiddingly sighed, but he reached out to the chocolate pot
and poured some of the thick dark liquid into his own unused cup
and gave it to her. Cordelia sipped at her chocolate and put the
cup down with an air of determination.

‘
Well, Christopher, I shall come to the point.’

‘
Not before time.’

She chose to ignore this. ‘I shall not again remind you
that you are the last of your name, for I have done so times out of
mind and it has been quite without effect.’

‘
You have taken notice of that, then? I am glad.’

‘
You need not quiz me. You know as well as I that it is your
duty to marry. However, since that does not weigh with you, I am
pleased to be able to offer you a reason which is more likely to
take the trick.’

‘
Don’t prose, Cordelia,’ he begged. ‘You are about to dangle
an heiress under my nose, I dare say, but if you can find one with
fortune enough to tempt me—’

‘
I have done so,’ she interrupted, smug satisfaction in her
features. ‘No, you do not know her. The girl is newly arrived in
England.’

‘
A foreigner?’ asked Chiddingly, betraying some slight
interest.

‘
No, indeed, though I gather she had as well be. Her father
is a nabob. They are but just returned from Bombay, it
seems.’

A phrase leapt into Chiddingly’s mind:
Indian manners
. What had that groom said?
No better than a foreigner
.

His suddenly intent gaze was riveted on his sister’s face.
‘Where had you this?’

‘
From Alice Chumleigh. You know she is my particular
friend.’

‘
Lady Alice? Is she not Rossendale’s sister?’

‘
Of course she is. And it appears that this Mrs Winsford is
his aunt. She is a younger sister of Lady Rossendale. The whole
family is staying in Grosvenor Square at this very
moment.’

Lord Chiddingly looked thoughtfully at the wound across his
knuckles. The swelling had subsided, but a bluish tinge was
creeping into the red slash.

‘
And this Miss Winsford,’ he said, an edge to his voice, ‘is
the sole heiress?’

‘
I believe there is another sister,’ Cordelia said,
shrugging. ‘But the nabob is so enormously wealthy that I am sure
it cannot signify in the least.’

Chiddingly frowned. ‘How can you know that? Often enough
these East India merchants returning with vaunted fortunes turn out
to be much less full of juice than anyone bargained
for.’

‘
Very true,’ his sister agreed, ‘but in this case you may be
easy. Alice tells me that her mama nearly swooned with shock when
her sister told her the sum of the daughter’s
expectations.’

‘
Well, what are they?’

Delighted to have at last succeeded in confounding her
abominable brother, Mrs Harraton produced her smug Cheshire cat
grin.

‘
Setting aside the fortune to be inherited on the father’s
death, you are looking at a cool one hundred thousand.’

***

If Baron Chiddingly was displeased to see his sister, his
emotions were as nothing to those exhibited by Viscount Fitzwarren
when he visited him later that morning.

‘
No, hang you, Chid,’ protested his friend, waving a
well-manicured hand in a gesture of dismissal as he saw the baron’s
reflection appear in the mirror before which he was engaged at his
morning toilet. ‘Go away! I won’t be fidgeted by your starts at
this disgustingly early hour.’

‘
Early hour? It is almost eleven of the clock,’ Chiddingly
told him, coming up behind him and grinning into the
mirror.

‘
Not yet eleven?’ groaned Fitzwarren, horrified. He wheeled
round on his stool and faced his friend. ‘Have you taken leave of
your senses?’ He turned to his valet who was standing by, ready
with the powdering jacket. ‘Who let him in, Weeke? Can’t that fool
of a butler recognise an undesirable?’

‘
Have done with these affectations, Fitz,’ scolded his
friend. ‘They are quite wasted on me.’

He was rewarded with a faint smile and a quizzing twinkle.
‘Shall we let this disreputable fellow stay, Weeke?’

The valet permitted himself a tiny smirk. ‘I venture to
think that his lordship may prove impossible to remove, my
lord.’

‘
How right you are,’ sighed the Viscount. ‘If he’s here,
he’s here, I suppose, eh?’

‘
As your lordship says.’

Chiddingly cast up his eyes. ‘Enough. And get a move on,
Fitz. I need your help. Why, I can dress in a tithe of the time it
takes you with your finicking ways.’

‘
And it shows, dear boy,’ plaintively muttered his friend,
running a pained glance over Chiddingly’s attire. ‘Believe me, it
shows.’

‘
Fop,’ retorted Chiddingly, grinning.

Digby Norton-Fitzwarren raised a teasing eyebrow, but he
said nothing more, merely turning back to the mirror and removing
his nightcap.

‘
My toupée, Weeke.’

His valet took a wig from the stand on a side table and
placed it carefully over his master’s head. Unlike the baron,
Fitzwarren was highly fashion-conscious. The wig, which the valet
was adjusting to the correct angle, was in the very latest mode,
with frizzed foretop and width at the sides. Once it was in place,
Fitzwarren donned the powdering jacket and held a mask to his face
while the valet puffed white powder over the already snowy
toupée.

During this operation, Chiddingly retired to the far end of
the dressing-room. ‘If you must be a dandy,’ he complained, ‘why
can you not install a powder closet?’

‘
Because I have no wish to choke to death in one,’ Fitz said
calmly, emerging from the mask and examining the results of his
valet’s ministrations in the mirror.

‘
No, you had rather your friends did so.’

Fitz was unsympathetic. ‘Well, you would come.’

Next he was assisted into a double-breasted waistcoat,
horizontally striped in green and white, and then—not without
difficulty—a darker green tightly fitting frock-coat with a
high-standing collar was tugged on. Once dressed to his
satisfaction, he dismissed his valet, saying he could manage the
rest, and gave his attention to his friend.

They were on the surface an ill-assorted pair,
the one brusque, careless of his appearance and wholly given over
to racing pursuits, the other urbane
, point-device
and an
acknowledged arbiter of beauty—both of objects and people. When
taxed with his odd friendship for Chiddingly, Fitz would smile in a
dreamy fashion.

‘
Oh, but there is great beauty in Chid, after all,
don’t you find? A beauty of
passion.’

In fact the odd friendship had been founded at Eton and had
weathered every difference of taste or opinion.

‘
And what is so vital, Chid,’ enquired Fitz, with another of
his quizzical looks, ‘that you must needs come seeking me out at
the crack of dawn?’

‘
My sister
Harraton
has been with
me this morning.’

‘
Another eligible?’

Chiddingly nodded. ‘But for once I believe it may
answer.’

Fitzwarren’s brows flew up, and he paused in the act of
affixing a fob to the chain at his waist. ‘You don’t say so. And
what particular virtue has this damsel to fire you up? Or need I
ask?’

Chiddingly grimaced. ‘Yes, she is an heiress. Or so my
sister says.’

This was no surprise to Fitzwarren. He was almost as
familiar with the state of his friend’s finances as he was with his
own, knowing that the cost of importing bloodstock, together with
the heart-breaking failures of hopeful and costly matings, resulted
always in a distressing lack of resources. While he had produced a
few good winners, Chiddingly had not yet achieved his burning
ambition, which was to breed a super-champion and found a
money-spinning equine dynasty. The search kept him forever on the
edge of financial ruin. A wife with sufficient capital to repair
his flagging fortunes would be a worthwhile investment.

‘
How much?’ demanded Fitz, coming straight to the
point.

‘
One hundred thousand.’

Fitz whistled.

‘
And God knows how much besides on the old man’s death,’
added Chiddingly.

‘
Small wonder you are straining at the leash,’ commented his
friend. ‘But how comes it about that I know nothing of this
supremely endowed female?’

‘
As I understand it, she is but just returned from
India.’

‘
A nabob, then. But that does not explain how your sister
Harraton has got her teeth into this tidbit while I—usually
beforehand with the news—am ignorant,’ Fitz complained.

‘
Oh, that is easily done. She is thick as thieves with
Rossendale’s sister, and this girl is some sort of a
cousin.’

‘
Rossendale?’ echoed Fitz, his brows flying again. ‘Then you
have not a moment to lose. You may be sure the dowager will not
allow him to let this little goldmine slip through his
fingers.’

Chiddingly nodded in gloom. ‘And what is worse, she is
actually staying in his house.’

Fitz flung up his hands. ‘Good God, then you have not a
cat’s chance in hell!’

‘
Oh, be damned to you, Fitz!’

Impatient, Chiddingly flung across the room and back,
thrusting his hands in his pockets so violently that the sudden
agony of his forgotten wound made him jerk them out again. He
cradled the injured knuckles, his breath hissing between his
teeth.

‘
What’s this?’ Fitz came across and took hold of his
reluctant hand, examining his hurts in silence. He let go the hand
and looked his friend in the eyes. ‘I thought there was more here
than your manner warranted. Out with it, man. What ails
you?’

Chiddingly met his look squarely. ‘The fiendish truth is,
Fitz, that I think I have met her.’

‘
T
he
heiress?’

‘
And if I am right, I can tell you this. Had
she
two
hundred thousand to call her own, I would sell
every nag in my stables before I took one step up the aisle to meet
her.’

***

Since Chiddingly would never keep his horses standing in
weather such as this while he paid a lengthy social call, and
flatly refused to permit his friend to order his own carriage for
the purpose, Viscount Fitzwarren was obliged to accompany him on
foot for the short distance from South Street in preference to
calling up a hackney, a suggestion he rejected with
loathing.

‘
Entrust my person to one of those malodorous rattletraps?
You must be mad. Nor, before you open your mouth, will I take a
chair. The last time I did so the wretched fellows nearly
overturned me.’

But as his affectations were largely assumed for the
purpose of teasing his friend, Chiddingly paid no heed to
him.