The Birth of Blue Satan Read Free Page B

Orange. Even with George of Hanover securely on the throne, the treacherous songs were still sung.
    Their harmless words could only rankle Gideon’s feelings now. Bitterness gnawed at his tongue when he thought of how his father’s political sentiments had driven them apart that morning. Their confrontation had confirmed his fears, that the politics practiced by Isabella’s father would count much more heavily against her than a lack of dowry or her mother’s morals. Gideon had known all this, and the state of his father’s mind was the reason he had not informed him of his wish to marry Isabella.
    Lord Hawkhurst lived at his country estate rather than play the hypocrite to Hanover George. Even if he had not chosen to absent himself from St. James’s, his Majesty had made it abundantly clear that Lord Hawkhurst and other High Church Tories would not be welcome at his court.
    Lord Hawkhurst was a Cavalier of the old school, who would rather draw his sword on a Whig than speak civilly to him. If he would seldom remain in a room that a Whig had entered, he was unlikely to permit his son to marry one. Gideon did not agree that his father’s politics should decide whom he could wed, especially when Isabella had no professed opinions of her own. She was young and had no interest in the country’s affairs. Even if she had, Gideon had grown so weary of the political strife tearing his country apart that he had made up his mind that party politics would not rule his life as it had his father’s.
    Now that his temper had had time to run its course, however, he regretted upsetting his father at a time when he had suffered so much disappointment. Lord Hawkhurst had been among the men who had gathered in Kensington at the time of Queen Anne’s death to wait for their Tory friends in government to proclaim James III as king. But the party leadership had failed them. The Whigs had moved faster, taking their places as regents to hold the throne for George’s arrival nearly two months later. Gideon did not know how his father had survived the blow of seeing the Pretender’s best chance wasted through hesitation. He could only be grateful that Lord Hawkhurst’s fiery opinions had never led him to take a rash part in one of the rebellions that had occurred in previous years.
    He hoped for a chance to repair the breach between them. And he consoled himself with the knowledge that Lord Hawkhurst’s tantrums never lasted long. If past experience was to be his guide, he would receive a new summons in a pair of days, bidding him come for a reconciliation. Still, he could not convince himself that Lord Hawkhurst’s opinion of Isabella would undergo as rapid a change.
    While Gideon would permit no faults to be ascribed to her, he had to admit that her mother, Mrs. Mayfield, might have merited his father’s opinion. A shrill voice and the occasional hint of hardness in her eyes had blighted a once-famous beauty. The Honourable Geffrye Mayfield, a man of impeccable lineage, was said to have eloped with her within a month of their first meeting, an unseemly haste which had given rise to speculation. But whatever the reason for it, Lord Stokely, Mr. Mayfield’s father, had cut his son off with barely a groat. If Mr. Mayfield had not secured a position at Court with the help of a maternal relative, his family would have suffered much.
    But Isabella was so far superior to her mother in every way that Gideon believed it grossly unfair to hold Mrs. Mayfield’s sins against her. He had no fears on the subject of Isabella’s fitness to be his wife. Last autumn, he had returned from three years’ study abroad to find her joy and innocence a welcome contrast to the cynicism and experience of the ladies at the European courts. But in spite of her artless youth—or perhaps because of it—she had raised a desire in him such as he had never known, not even in his earliest encounters with women. He knew he must not marry just to satisfy his carnal