The Devil's Delilah Read online

  “His memoirs,” the publisher said miserably. “Mr. Desmond has written his memoirs and I have paid him—partially, I mean, as an incentive to complete them speedily. That is why I am here. I learned he was travelling to Rossingley to visit relatives, so I came up from Town to—to spare him the trouble of bringing them to me.”

  “Written his memoirs, has he?” Lord Streetham asked as he absently poured more wine into his still nearly full glass.

  “Yes, My Lord. I saw them—at least part of them—myself. He had written to ask whether I had any interest, and naturally, being familiar with his reputation—as who is not?—I made all haste to examine the work. I had to travel all the way to Scotland, but the journey was well worth my while, I assure you. All of Society will be clamouring to read Devil Desmond’s story. We’ll issue it in installments, you see, and—”

  “And have you got them?” his lordship asked.

  Mr. Atkins was forced to admit he had not, because Mr. Desmond had raised difficulties.

  “Of course he has,” said the earl. “If you know his reputation, you should know better than to give Devil Desmond money before you have the goods in your hands. You are a fool. These memoirs do not exist. He showed you a few scraps of paper he’d got up for the purpose, and you were cozened.”

  The publisher protested that the manuscript must exist, or Miss Desmond would not have been so eager to interrupt the meeting with her father. “He’s ready to publish,” Atkins explained, “but she won’t let him. She’s afraid of the scandal. The girl’s looking for a husband, you know. That’s why Mr. Desmond has returned to England.”

  The earl sneered. “Devil Desmond’s daughter? A husband? The wench must be addled in her wits. I suppose she means to find herself a lord—a duke, perhaps?” Lord Streetham chuckled. “Silly chit. What’s one more scandal to her? As it is—but no, ancient history bores me. Still, the public dotes on such sorry tales, and you are correct. These memoirs, if they truly exist, are certain to be popular. Unfortunately...” He paused and lightly drummed his fingers on the table.

  “My Lord?”

  “People change, Atkins,” said the earl, without looking up. “Some of those with whom Desmond consorted in his wicked youth have died of their excesses. Those who survived are today men of prominence, highly respected. They will not take kindly to such an exposure of their youthful follies. If you are not careful, you will be sued for libel.”

  “My Lord, I assure you—”

  Lord Streetham continued, unheeding, “Furthermore, libellous or not, there may be information that would destroy the peace of innocent families. We can’t have that.” His lordship sipped his wine with an air of piety.

  Mr. Atkins panicked. “Oh, My Lord. For fear of a few domestic squabbles you are prepared to deprive the world of these recollections? I promise you, they’ll be pounding at the doors every time a new installment is announced. I beg of you, My Lord, reconsider.” Tears formed in the publisher’s eyes.

  Lord Streetham reflected for several agonising minutes while Mr. Atkins mopped his brow and waited.

  “Very well,” said the earl at last. “It would be wrong to deprive the public. He has lived an extraordinary life. You may publish, if you can—but on one condition.”

  “Anything, My Lord.”

  “I must approve the material first. A bit of editing here and there will do no harm, and may spare some of my colleagues considerable pain.”

  Having agreed to accept any condition, Mr. Atkins could hardly quarrel with this modest request. Some time later, however, as he took himself to bed, he bewailed the cruel fate that had brought Lord Streetham to this accursed inn. By the time his lordship had done “approving” Devil Desmond’s memoirs, they’d look like a book of sermons, and Mr. Atkins would consider himself very fortunate if even the Methodists would buy them.

  Lord Streetham took to his own bed in bad humour. He might have known this would be a night of ill omen from the start, when his mistress had failed to appear. Then, when Desmond’s chit had entered his private parlour, he’d mistaken her for the tart, and nearly had his claret spilled. After that, he’d narrowly escaped certain death at Devil Desmond’s hands, had had to truckle to the monster—with Jack Langdon, the soul of rectitude, a witness to the whole tawdry scene. Worst of all were these curst memoirs, whose pages must surely reveal secrets of his own to the unsympathetic London mob.

  His lordship was not altogether easy in his mind about the publisher, either. The choice between certain success and certain ruin is not a difficult one, and a desperate man is not a patient one. Suppose Atkins betrayed him, and made off with the manuscript? Suppose, even if he didn’t, the book was so scurrilous that editing would not be enough? Perhaps it were safest to destroy the work altogether. With these and hosts of other, equally unsettling questions did Lord Streetham while away the long, dreary night.

  Chapter Two

  Hoping once again to avoid his fellow travellers, Jack stole out of his room shortly after dawn. As he was about to turn the corner towards the stairs, there came a noise from a room nearby. Jack glanced back at the precise instant that another gentleman came hurrying around the corner. The two collided, and Mr. Langdon was sent staggering against the wall.

  “Drat—so sorr—Jack!” exclaimed the gentleman. “Is that you, truly?”

  He reached out a hand to help, but Jack had swiftly recovered his balance, though he was still rather dazed. He glanced up into what most women would have described as the face of an angel. It was a face that might have been painted by Botticelli, so classically beautiful were its proportions, so finely chiseled every feature, so clear, blue, and innocent its eyes, so golden the halo of curls that crowned it.

  This, however, was not only the face of a mortal man, but of a most unseraphic member of that gender. Lord Streetham’s son, the Viscount Berne, was well on his way to becoming the most dangerous libertine the British peerage had ever produced. He was also Jack’s oldest friend.

  “Yes, it’s me—at least I think so,” said Jack with a grimace as he rubbed the back of his head.

  “What brings you here—up and about at this ungodly hour? And as usual, never looking where you went. Why, I nearly threw you down in my haste.”

  “That’s quite all right, Tony,” said Mr. Langdon. “I’m growing accustomed to falling on my face.”

  Lord Berne’s innocent countenance immediately became pitying. “Oh, yes, I heard about that. Too bad about Miss Pelliston.”

  Mr. Langdon winced. He had not been aware that his failure was common gossip.

  “Still, that’s the way of love,” the viscount consoled. “Plants you a facer every now and then. The secret is to pick yourself up and march on to the next battle. We civilians must take our lesson from Wellington.”

  He threw an arm about his friend’s shoulder and led him down the stairs. “First, you want sustenance. We shall breakfast together. Then, you must return with me to the ancestral pile for a long visit. I’m forced to ruralise because I am obliged to court Lady Jane Gathers. Of course she’ll make a paragon of a wife. My sire’s judgement is infallible, as he incessantly reminds me.”

  Since Lord Berne had a tendency to run on wherever his fancy took him, his monologues could continue for hours if not ruthlessly interrupted and hauled back to the point.

  Accordingly, Jack cut in. “You don’t usually ruralise at inns—at least not so close to home. What brings you here?”

  “A wench of course. What else? Perhaps you have not yet met the fair and saucy Sarah? No matter. I scarcely saw her either, for I’d no sooner stepped into the coffee room than I spied a high flyer sitting lonely and neglected amid the storm-tossed rabble.

  “What choice had I but to come to the dark-haired damsel’s aid?”

  “Lady Jane will hardly appreciate that sort of knight errantry,” said Jack as they stepped into the main passage.

  “Lady Jane is determined to know nothing about such matters, which is most becoming in h
er. I only wish her face were more becoming. But no matter. We’ll woo her together, you and I,” Tony offered.

  He deftly steered his preoccupied friend into the public dining room. “Perhaps you’ll steal her away. Actually, Jack, I wish you would. She’s all very well, but I’m not ready—Good God! Where did she come from? With my noble sire, no less. Where in blazes did he come from?”

  Mr. Langdon followed his companion’s gaze past the enormous communal table to a quiet corner near the fireplace. There Mr. Desmond and his daughter sat breakfasting with the Earl of Streetham.

  Though the last thing in this world Jack wanted was interaction with any of the three, he could hardly expect Tony to ignore his own father, particularly when that parent was in the company of a beautiful young woman. There was no escape, because Tony had a firm grip on his friend’s arm and was propelling him towards the table.

  Jack employed the next few minutes examining with apparent fascination a small landscape containing several evil-looking sheep which hung upon the wall some inches above Miss Desmond’s head. Dimly he heard introductions and a number of what he was certain were falsehoods as the earl and his son respectively accounted for their appearance at the Black Cat.

  Mr. Langdon nudged himself to proper attention when he heard the earl renew his pleas that the Desmonds be his guests at Streetham Close. Since his lordship addressed his requests primarily to the daughter, Jack gathered that she was the more reluctant of the pair. In the next moment, however, Tony added his persuasions, and, as might be expected, Miss Desmond capitulated.

  Having completed their meal, the trio soon left, one of them followed by a look of such languishing adoration from Lord Berne that the waiter knocked over two chairs in his haste to reach the table, so certain was he the young gentleman was about to perish of hunger.

  Mr. Langdon, being inured to his companion’s fits of romantic stupefaction, took no notice. Their breakfast was speedily served, and while they ate, Jack calmly explained why he could not visit Streetham Close. His uncle was expecting him, he said. He was not in a humour to be sociable. He had not read a book through in months. These and other lame excuses received short shrift from the Viscount Berne.

  “You only want to go off to hide and feel sorry for yourself, Jack, and that’s unhealthy. To wish to be elsewhere when this exotic flower will be under my roof is evidence of mental decay. We must make you well again. If those grey eyes of hers don’t restore you to manhood, I don’t know what will.”

  “They’re green,” said Jack.

  “Grey.”

  “Green. And I don’t need to be restored by anyone’s eyes. I want peace and quiet, Tony, and I must tell you there’s nothing peaceful about the pair of them.” Jack was on the brink of revealing the previous night’s adventure when his friend blithely cut in.

  “I don’t expect them to be peaceful,” said Lord Berne. “Don’t you know who that is? Devil Desmond, the most infamous rogue in Christendom. Adventurer, charlatan, and—at least until he wed— corrupter of feminine virtue the like of which has not been seen since Casanova. His conquests would populate—”

  “Thank you, Tony. The broad outlines will do.”

  “He’s a legend in his own time, I tell you. Never thought he’d return to England after that duel with Billings—but that’s aeons ago, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Langdon scowled at his coffee. “Then I wonder at your father’s taking him under the ancestral roof.”

  “His lordship grows pious in his dotage. Maybe he means to reform the Devil. Still, what do I care about the reasons? Delilah.” Lord Berne sighed. “Even her name throbs with sinful promise. She has not touched a hair of my head, yet I feel the strength ebbing from my very sinews.”

  His friend sighed inwardly. Tony fell in love on a daily—sometime hourly—basis, and the results, in the view of some, amounted to a national tragedy. The pitiful remains of the feminine hearts Lord Berne had shattered lay strewn in a broad path from London to Carlisle. One more scrap of wreckage would not change the course of history—though, unless Jack much missed his guess, Miss Desmond’s heart was made of sturdier material.

  For the philosopher, their interchange would provide an interesting study, but Mr. Langdon was not in a philosophic mood. He stubbornly insisted on going to his uncle’s.

  Lord Berne played his trump card. “You must come, Jack, to save me from myself.”

  “Rescue is not in my style,” was the irritated reply.

  “But who else can keep me from straying beyond light dalliance into dangerous depths? Very dangerous, I promise you. You will not want to see the Devil put a bullet through my too tender heart, will you?”

  “Then keep your hands to yourself.”

  “But Jack.” Lord Berne fixed his friend with a wide-eyed gaze. “You know I can’t.”

  Mr. Desmond and his daughter travelled in their own carriage, the earl preceding them on horseback. After they had driven some time in silence, Mr. Desmond remarked, “That young man interests me.”

  “Which young man, Papa?”

  ‘My dear, you can hardly think I find that fair-haired coxcomb interesting. I have met his type across the world, through several generations. I refer to the Guest in Question. The unhappy young man with the rumpled brown hair and poetic grey eyes.”

  “I did not find him poetic.”

  “You most certainly did. Also, you felt sorry for him. I nearly swooned with astonishment.”

  Miss Desmond gazed stonily ahead. “I did neither. Your eyesight is failing you, Papa, just like poor Lord Streetham’s.”

  “You are very cross today, Delilah. Is it because the poetic young man turns out to be heir presumptive to Viscount Rossing and you regret your decision?”

  Miss Desmond’s head snapped towards her father so abruptly that her gypsy bonnet tipped over her ear. As she straightened it she said angrily, “I am not going to force a man to marry me on some trumped up pretext of being compromised. It’s absurd.”

  “He would have done it, though.”

  “Because he’s an innocent babe. Oh, Papa, that’s not how I wish to begin—yet there’s no fresh beginning, is there? My feet scarcely touch English soil before I become embroiled in a dreadful scene. I wish I could act like a lady. I can act everything else, it seems,” she added ruefully.

  “Had you acted a helpless female—which I take is your definition of a lady—you would have been dishonoured by that sanctimonious old hypocrite.”

  “If I’d waited for my maid or kept to my room I should not have invited incivility.”

  Mr. Desmond smiled, a far gentler smile than the one Mr. Langdon had observed the previous evening. “You were concerned that Mr. Atkins’s pleas would soften my susceptible heart. A natural anxiety, my dear, though quite unnecessary. In fact, I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought. Perhaps I should destroy those paltry literary efforts of mine, so we might proceed in this enterprise with easy minds. I made a great mistake in contacting Atkins, I know. But I wanted to ascertain the value of the work. Suppose I died suddenly?”

  Delilah shuddered. “Don’t say such things, Papa.”

  “It might have easily happened but a year ago. You and your mama would be left destitute, with no prospects of aid from either of our callous families. Insurance, I thought. A nest egg in case of calamity. Naturally I had to make sure the egg was a golden one.”

  “Of course you did. And not another word about destroying your wonderful story, after all your months of work. As you say, calamities happen. I may never find a husband.”

  “Or you may fall in love with a penniless young man.” .

  Miss Desmond sniffed disdainfully. “I have no intention of falling in love with anybody. One cannot preserve a clear head and be in love at the same time. My marriage wants a clear head.”

  “You mean a cold, calculating one, I suppose.” The parent sighed. “I fear your mama and I went sadly astray in your upbringing. We have failed you.”

  “Oh,
Papa.” Miss Desmond hugged her father, setting her bonnet askew again. “You have never failed me. I only hope I might be clear-headed enough to find a man half as splendid as you.”

  “That, my love, wants a muddled head. What a silly girl you are. But at least you have recovered your temper. I shall endure the silliness.”

  Whatever objections Lady Streetham had about entertaining the notorious Devil Desmond were ruthlessly crushed by her lord and master.

  “I have reasons,” said he, “of a highly confidential anti political nature. You may treat him with civility or you may blight my Cabinet prospects. The choice is yours.”

  After subduing his wife, Lord Streetham called upon his most trusted servants and, again citing national security, ordered them to search the Desmonds’ belongings.

  While Lord Streetham and his minions laboured on behalf of the imperiled kingdom, Lord Berne took his guests on a riding circuit of the park. Mr. Langdon went as well, though he knew every stick, stone, and rabbit hole of every acre. He had his book with him, however, and whenever the group had occasion to pause, would take it out to stare blindly at the pages.

  Miss Desmond found this behaviour most curious. As they were returning to the house, she asked Lord Berne, “Does he always have a book with him?”

  “Always,” said her companion, glancing back at his friend, “even in Town, at the most magnificent balls, routs, musicales. There you’ll unfailingly find Jack Langdon with a book, which he unfailingly loses at some point, and must of course go poking about for. Drives the ladies wild. Not that I blame them. It must be most exasperating when you’re just commencing a bit of flirtation to see his eyes glaze over and then watch him wander off, talking to himself.” His own appreciative gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips. “Though I cannot understand his behaviour in the present case.”

  “I find it perfectly understandable,” Miss Desmond answered lightly. “What lady can compete with Plutarch?”

  The viscount opened his mouth to answer, but she added quickly, “Pray, My Lord, do not say it is myself, when the facts contradict you. Besides, that is too easy a compliment. You cannot think I was angling for it.”