‘Of course it does! Look at him! The Prince here says he looks stern. I daresay that’s how it would strike anyone who didn’t know him. He looks to me as if he were enjoying a taste of hell.’
He had gauged the matter exactly. Colonel Audley, who had known that Peregrine Taverner’s only hope of overcoming his infatuation lay in removing immediately from Barbara’s neighbourhood, was tied to Brussels, and was obliged, day after day, to endure tantalising glimpses of Barbara, and night after night to see her waltzing with the Comte de Lavisse, looking up into his face with a smile on her lips and a provocative gleam in her eyes.
There were those who said that if Barbara had been quick to find consolation, so too had Audley. Neither was showing a bruised heart to the world. She had her handsome Belgian always at her side, and the Colonel seemed to have turned to little Miss Devenish. Well, said the interested, she would probably make him a good wife.
Judith, wishing to believe that Charles, freed from his siren, had become sensible of Lucy’s worth, still could not quite convince herself that it was so. ‘Do you think,’ she asked her husband hopefully, ‘that a man who had fancied himself in love with Lady Barbara might perhaps suffer from a revulsion of feeling, and so turn to her very opposite?’
‘I really have no idea,’ replied Worth.
‘It is quite true that he has been very much in her company since the engagement was broken off. He dances with her frequently, and seems to look at her with a great deal of kindness. Only—’
She broke off. Worth regarded her with a faint smile. ‘What profound observation are you about to make?’ he enquired.
‘I can’t believe that if he were falling in love with Lucy he would be so unhappy. For he is, Worth: you can’t deny it! There is an expression in his face when he thinks one is not looking at him—I would like to kill that wicked creature! She to jilt Charles!’
‘This is all very bewildering,’ complained Worth. ‘I thought your hopes had been centred on her eventually doing so?’
‘Yes, I did hope it, but I didn’t know it had gone so deep with him. How wretched everything is! Even my spirits are quite oppressed. Lucy, too! She has no appearance of happiness, which makes me fear that Charles only feels towards her as a brother might.’
He raised his brows. ‘Is she in love with him?’
‘I very much fear it.’
‘Now you have gone quite beyond me,’ he said. ‘I was under the impression that you had made up your mind that she should fall in love with him?’
‘So I had, but I never dreamed then that he would become entangled with the horridest woman in Brussels. If he could requite Lucy’s love it would be the most delightful thing imaginable, but I don’t believe he does.’
‘You will admit it to be early days yet for him to be bestowing his affections a second time.’
‘Lady Barbara does not seem to find it too early! But Lucy!’ She paused, frowning. ‘I was afraid that the child was losing her prettiness over Lord George, but nothing could be more resolute than her shunning of his society. It has seemed to me that since Charles has been free, she has been regaining some of her spirits. But I would not for the world encourage that attachment, if there is no hope of Charles’s affections becoming animated towards her.’
‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course: what is it?’
‘That you cease to worry your head over either of them,’ said Worth. ‘You will do no good by it, and if you begin to lose your prettiness you will find you have me to reckon with.’
She smiled, but shook her head. ‘I cannot help but worry over them. If only Lady Barbara had had enough good feeling to go away from here! It must be painful beyond words for Charles to find himself continually in her company. My only dependence is on his being at last disgusted by her conduct.’
‘We will hope for that agreeable end. Meanwhile, Charles can at least consider himself fortunate in being kept busy by the Duke.’
‘I suppose so. What does he think of it? Has he made any comment?’
‘None to me.’
‘I daresay he might not care. I do not consider him a man of much sensibility. He is very amiable and unaffected, but there is a coldness, a lack of feeling for others, which, I confess, repels me at times.’
‘He’s a hard man, no doubt, but it is just possible, my dear, that he has matters of more moment to occupy him than the love affairs of his staff,’ said Worth, somewhat ironically.
The Duke, however, did comment on the broken engagement, though not perhaps in a manner which would have raised Judith’s opinion of his character, had she been able to hear him. ‘By the by, Fitzroy,’ he said, looking up from the latest missive from General Decken on the vexed question of the Hanoverian subsidy, ‘what’s this I hear about Audley?’
‘The engagement is at an end, sir, that’s all I’ve been told.’
‘By God, I’m very glad to hear it!’ said his lordship, dipping his pen in the Standish. ‘She was doing him no good, and I’m damned if I’ll have my officers ruined for their duties by her tricks!’
That was all his lordship had to say about it, but, as Worth had correctly surmised, he was too busy to have any time to waste on the love affairs of his staff.
He had got his Army together, but spoke of it in the most disparaging terms, and was continually being chafed by the want of horses and equipment. General Decken’s demands were rapacious: he could do nothing with the fellow, and would be obliged to refer the whole question of the Hanoverian subsidy to the Government. King William had taken some nonsense into his head over the junction of the Nassau contingent, under General Kruse, with the Dutch-Belgian troops, and was in one of his huffs. It was very difficult to know what went on in that froggish head, but his lordship believed the trouble to have arisen largely out of the Duke of Nassau’s failure to write formally to His Majesty on the subject of these troops. Well, if the King would not have them his lordship would be obliged to make some other arrangement.