'Oh, the poor wretch, how I should have loved to see him; but he deserved worse. Had I been there I would have rubbed his face in it.'
Her voyage home had been without incident. Before she had been an hour aboard the surly Captain had given up his cabin to her and was eating out of her hand. At Gibraltar, the Admiral commanding there had been an old friend and made no difficulty about securing her a passage in the first ship bound for England. In the Bay of Biscay it had been rough; but she was a good sailor, so had ridden out the three-day storm, and been landed safely at Portsmouth in mid-April.
When Roger asked her about her marriage, she said, ' 'Tis well enough. The news of your death and, following closely on it, that of my beloved Papa, reduced me to a state that I have never before experienced. I felt so low that I no longer cared what happened to me. By summer, soon after I returned to town, a dozen men were, as usual, after me. I could not stomach the thought of going to bed with any of them. But I'll confess that I was tempted by the thought of becoming a Duchess and wearing the famous Kew emeralds; so, in the autumn, I accepted the old goat.'
' "Goat" is a fitting description of him,' Roger remarked a shade acidly. 'I well remember how, to the amusement of passers by, he used to lean over his balcony in Piccadilly and beckon up the whores to rut upon. Since you say that you had no desire left to bed with even a handsome man, it amazes me that you could find it in you to give yourself to an ugly, elderly roué.'
Her eyes widened, and she cried, 'Do you then suppose that I let him make love to me? Lud, no! He's long past that; as impotent as a new born child. He now gets his pleasure by seeing me naked. But that means nothing to me. A cat may look at a king. So, when I feel well disposed toward him, I let him gaze his fill.'
The clock on the mantel chimed ten. As though at a signal, they smiled at each other and stood up. Georgina led the way to the bedroom, Roger followed her, carrying a bottle of champagne. Two minutes later, they were between the black silk sheets of her bed.
During the night, between bouts of love making, they dozed or talked and made plans for the future. Before consenting to marry her Duke, Georgina had wisely discussed with him their marital relations. Since, as she had supposed, age had rendered him impotent, she had told him that she would not marry him unless he left her free to satisfy the urges natural to a woman of her years. As his main reason for wanting to marry her was the right to show her off in public as his, to the envy of other men, he had agreed, provided she took care that her amours should not become generally known.
In consequence, however much the servants at Kew House might prattle, she did not have to account to her husband for her comings and goings. Overjoyed that they would be able to spend two or three nights a week together as long as she remained in London, Roger raised the question of Christmas.
Naturally, they wanted to spend it together, if possible; but either for her to have him to stay at Newmarket or for him to have her at Richmond they felt to be too blatant. It then occurred to her that the answer to the problem was for them all to spend Christmas at Stillwater’s. It had been the children's home for the greater part of their lives and, as Susan's father, Roger was accounted one of the family. It might even make a pleasant change for the old Duke and, provided they were discreet, he would give them no trouble.
The three months that followed turned out to be one of the happiest periods of Roger's whole life. Although his hope of settling down for good with Georgina had been dashed, the fact that she had a complaisant husband enabled them to see a great deal of each other both in private and public, since both the Duke and all society were aware of their lifelong friendship and that whenever Roger was for a while in London he had escorted her everywhere.
Susan's stay at Thatched House Lodge had at last enabled him to get to know his daughter well, and he experienced a hitherto unknown joy in the affection shown him by this gay, pretty young creature who called him Papa.
When she and Mrs. Marsham returned to Stillwater’s, he followed them a few days later. Georgina and her Duke were already installed, and Roger found the old man more congenial company than he had expected. His Grace was no fool, had a cynical wit and an excellent taste for claret, old Madeira and vintage port. From a few sly remarks he made, it soon became apparent that he had tumbled to it that Roger was his wife's lover; but, as their long friendship provided them with excellent cover, it suited him much better to be cuckolded by Roger than for her to start a new affaire which might have provoked a scandal.
As, from the beginning, Georgina had insisted that she and her husband should occupy separate rooms, having seen her to bed he always left her round about midnight; so Roger, to whom she had given his old room on the far side of her boudoir, was able to sleep with her for the greater part of the night.
Young Charles came down from Eton the day after Roger arrived, and the children enjoyed the happiest Christmas they had known for years, Roger and Georgina rode with them every morning and, anxious that the young Earl should become a good swordsman, Roger spent an hour or two every day teaching him to fence.
On Christmas Day there were dozens of presents for everybody, golden guineas in the Christmas pudding and, at the end of the meal, the candies having been put out, a blazing snapdragon was brought in, from which they snatched the raisins at the risk of burning their fingers. Then, in the evening, they sat in semi darkness round the Yule log, telling ghost stories.
On Boxing Day, they had the traditional servants' dinner and dance; then, for the 27th Georgina had invited a hundred of her neighbours to a ball and, for the first time, the children were allowed to take part in such a festivity. In the days that followed there were a special party for them to entertain their contemporaries, visits to neighbours and entertainments given by them. The church bells of Ripley rang in 1811 and the inmates of Stillwater’s celebrated the New Year with all the time honoured games and songs.
On January 3rd, for appearances' sake, Roger returned to Thatched House Lodge, but it had been agreed that, as soon as Charles went back to Eton, Mrs. Marsham and Susan should again join him there and that later in the year Roger should pay a visit to Georgina's new home at Newmarket. Meanwhile the little season* was about to open in London, so she would be living for a while in Piccadilly and they would be able to see each other as often as they wished.
A fortnight later, at a diplomatic reception, Roger ran into an old acquaintance. This was a tall, dark man with beetling eyebrows, named Alfonso de Queircoz, who had been First Secretary at the Portuguese Embassy at Isfahan when Roger had been there in the summer of 1807.
There had been no friendship between them there, because de Queircoz had been madly in love with the Ambassador's beautiful daughter, Lisala, and Roger had cut him out; but it was for another reason that the meeting was far from welcome. In Isfahan the Portuguese had known him as M. le Colonel de Breuc, a member of the French mission.
However, on previous occasions he had surmounted such awkward situations arising from his dual identity; so, having returned de Queircoz's bow, he waited with a half-smile on his lips to hear how the diplomat would address him.
As it turned out, he was not called on to resort to his well-established catalogue of plausible lies, for de Queircoz said, 'Sir, you must pardon me for accosting you, but you bear so strong a resemblance to M. le Colonel de Breuc that I feel sure you must be his English cousin.'