The Savage Marquess Read Free Page A

bride. Does that suit you?”
    “Your liaison with Mrs. Deauville is well known, my lord. Mrs. Deauville is good
ton.
Society expects you to marry her sooner or later.”
    “Then society is quite mad. Maria Deauville amuses me, but she would not be faithful to me for a twelvemonth were she married to me.”
    Chumbley began to strop a razor. “Your lordship’s cousin, the Honorable Zeus Carter, is waiting below.”
    “Why did you not tell me sooner? Not that I am interested in seeing the weakling.”
    “I feared the intelligence would put your lordship in a passion had I divulged it first thing this morning,” said Chumley, advancing on his master with hot towels. “I can tell him you are not at home.”
    “No, I may as well see him. I wonder what brings him to London. His regiment is in Portugal.”
    The Honorable Zeus waited impatiently in the library downstairs. He had been a lusty baby, a fact that had prompted his doting parents to bless him with the name of Zeus. But he had grown up tall and weedy and effeminate. He was the marquess’s heir. He paced up and down the library, occasionally pausing to narrow his eyes and imagine what the room would look like redecorated to his own taste. The way Rockingham was going on, he could not live very long.
    He studied his rouged face in the glass over the fireplace. It was, he thought, twisting his head from side to side, an aristocratic and noble face, marked with faint lines of sensitivity. Such a face should not be exposed to the burning sun of the Peninsula, and such delicate shell-like ears should not be abused by the roar of cannon. He had sold out of his regiment. Now he was in need of funds. He had had to exit from his lodgings by the back door, as the duns were camped out at the front.
    Goodness, this room was like a pigsty! One of Rockingham’s notorious parties, no doubt. A red silk garter hung from the chandelier and a scanty lace shift was draped around a bust of Plato above the door. He wondered idly how it had got up there.
    He rang the bell impatiently, but no one answered. He peered around the door into the shadowy hall and called, “Wine, I say! Where’s the decanter?” But only silence answered his call. Rockingham’s servants must have given notice, apart from that stiff martinet of a valet, who stuck by his master through thick and thin.
    Mr. Carter slumped petulantly into a chair and closed his eyes. In no time at all, he was fast asleep.
    After half an hour, he came slowly awake, sensing someone was looming over him. He opened his eyes wide, under short stubby lashes darkened with lampblack, and stared up.
    The saturnine face of the Marquess of Rockingham looked down at him.
    “Greetings, coz,” said Mr. Carter, struggling upright. “How goes the world?”
    “Tolerably well,” said the marquess curtly. “What brings you here?”
    “To make sure you are in good health.”
    The marquess looked at his cousin cynically. He had odd green eyes, like the eyes of a cat. Apart from purplish bruises under those eyes, Mr. Carter noticed with a now-familiar twinge of disappointment that his cousin looked remarkably fit. His linen was impeccable, his tailoring excellent enough to make even Brummell envious, and his cravat was a miracle of starch and sculptured folds. His hair shone with all the healthy blue-black sheen of a male blackbird’s plumage. His long, strong legs, encased in skintight pantaloons, owed nothing to padding or false calves. Mr. Carter looked sadly down at his own legs and then muttered under his breath. One of his false wooden calves had slipped. He petulantly jerked the harness that held it up under his stocking back into place.
    “Well, as you can see, I am still alive, so take yourself off,” said the marquess, breaking the silence. “Why aren’t you with your regiment?”
    “I sold out.”
    “Indeed!”
    “I am not cut out for a soldier’s life. The men were disgracefully undisciplined. When I shouted, ‘Charge!’