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The revellers, most befuddled with drink, bade their goodnights and stumbled up the grand staircase to their rooms. The sickle moon still hung in a sky that was pale and grey and threatening rain, but no one in the house was concerned with the view from their windows. Exhaustion could no longer be resisted as the servants barely had time to strip off their masters’ and mistresses’ ball clothes before pleasure-sated bodies collapsed into bed.
By five o’clock in the morning all the bedroom doors were finally closed, the floorboards ceased creaking and the house settled at last into relative peace. Only one person was still awake. Mr Asprey was in his library reading his favourite poem of Goldsmith’s. The mellifluous heroic couplets of The Traveller and the poet’s humane view of society never failed to settle any tumult in his breast.
Since the death of his wife, grief and guilt had cauterised his heart. In Ivor Asprey’s life, work and a concern for the greater good took the place of romantic love, but he did hold his precious daughter close to his heart; for her he would give the world. Having abandoned his youth to the pursuit of risk and pleasure, the unexpected tragedy of Emma’s death had meant coquettes like the Countess of Hilperton and worthy women like Lady Linus barely altered his stoical expectations of love. He would follow his appetites when necessary, and do his duty by remarrying, but he would never make himself vulnerable again to such regret and despair. Self-control and equanimity had become the mainspring that kept him productive and sane.
Yet, since he had met Angelica Leigh his usually disciplined spirit had been shaken to the core. She was the focus of his nephew’s attention and he had no thought of her as anything other than an inconvenient diversion, of which the headstrong boy would eventually tire. But that was before he met her and was disturbed to find a character and beauty deeper and more seductive than the usual light-skirt he had expected. But still he resisted. Miss Leigh was socially beyond the pale. His mind repeated the words, She was not for him to covet.
Ivor kicked the last log smouldering in the grate, hoping to coax a bit more warmth from the fire, but could not wrench his mind from the memory of the young actress brought mortally ill to his door. From that point his icy control began to melt. Her suffering broke through his heart’s reserve and he was haunted by the thought of her clinging to life. Despite the impropriety, he could not help checking on this young woman every night while she slept, with Mary beside her on a truckle bed.
Miss Leigh’s pale beauty and fragility as she struggled for breath, for life, touched him to the core. Most nights she was unaware of his presence but occasionally her eyelids would flutter and her eyes would rest on his face, and she smiled and sometimes reached for his hand as if still in a dream. At moments like these he felt a timeless connection that in the light of day he still tried to deny; he could not allow his mind to recognise how deeply her presence in his house, under his protection, affected him.
She was not for him to covet. The leather-bound book lay open, his hand upon it but his heart was beating with a strange skip in its rhythm. This tantalising young woman’s own feelings were still a mystery to him. Was this what it was to go slowly mad he wondered, as his vaunted self-control slipped from his grasp? The devil take it! The wild appetites of his youth threatened to assert themselves again. Just hours ago, he had been overcome with the impulse to abandon himself to the passions of old, to take Angelica Leigh in his arms, not in the decorum of a waltz but with the force of urgent desire. Long forgotten, barely acknowledged, how it had throbbed insistent in his veins.
Ivor Asprey forced his thoughts back to the poem in his lap. He had to regain his equilibrium to be useful for anything. He was alarmed at the thought of returning to the anarchic emotions of old, but even the measured philosophical poetry of Mr Goldsmith had become full of different, more dangerous meaning. The barren solitariness of his life seemed now undeniable as he read words he had read so many times before without this jolt of recognition.
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,
And find no spot at all the world my own.
He stirred restlessly, the fire was almost out and he was dog-tired but unwilling to relinquish himself to bed and sleep. Goldsmith seemed to continue to mock his choice to live a cerebral life committed to public duty.
Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind:
Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
Sadness rose in him like a tide at the thought of love lost. But also the realisation of the love he had denied. He determined to see Miss Leigh on the morrow before she left for home. There was so much to ask, so much to say. He followed the poem to its end and there was the message he had chosen all these years to ignore:
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,
Our own felicity we make or find:
With secret cause, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
How he longed for that smooth current of domestic joy. How long he had deluded himself that he could live as an island without it. Ivor closed the book, blew out the candles and headed up the stairs to bed. Dawn was already spilling its cold grey light through the east window on the landing. He walked past the sleeping guests, aware his house was full of strangers, but when he came upon one room, its door still wide open, nobody occupying the great canopied bed, he paused. Across the foot of it lay a sparkling dress fit for a Fairy Queen.
His heart missed a beat. Where was Miss Leigh if not in her bed? A new horror gripped him; surely she would not have compromised her honour and gone to his nephew’s bed? The shock was almost physical then mixed with a seeping shame that he could ever have thought such of her. Even as he suppressed the idea, a darker emotion of rage and jealousy contracted his heart. This black energy had propelled him when young into deadly challenges and he could not allow himself to revisit such reckless and bloody times. But neither could he fully suppress this primal possessiveness that gripped him, this chilling fear of loss.
He walked silently to Lord Latimer’s room, across the main landing from his own. He listened at the door and could only hear the noisy breathing of someone who had overindulged in wine and brandy. Slowly he turned the door handle, half-dreading what he might find. Ivor Asprey stood at the threshold gazing at the great bed before him.
His handsome young nephew was sprawled across the cover still wearing his linen shirt and little else, his arm flung out, his face turned towards the window, his body in intoxicated sleep, and entirely alone. Relief flooded through his tired mind, soon followed by consternation. Where was Miss Leigh? He could not go to bed without knowing she was safe. He decided to visit the servants’ quarters where the young kitchen lad slept by the hearth to feed the fire through the night.
As Mr Asprey entered the warm room a boy of about fourteen sprang to his feet. ‘Don’t get up, Jake.’ He held up his hand. ‘I just need to know if you recall seeing one of my guests, the lady dressed as the Fairy Queen?’
The lad sat down again, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘No sir. So many prime articles and hurly-burly romps, couldn’t tell the difference. Heard the clop of a prancer’s hooves, though, just as light broke.’
‘Thank you, Jake.’ He strode out to the stables beyond the house. All seemed quiet. Horses sleeping, the grooms too in their cots above them. He walked to the small house where his head groom, Rocky, had his own quarters. Knocking quietly, he called his name.
The door opened to reveal the familiar weather-beaten face but with sleep-tousled hair. ‘Oh, sir! What’s the trouble?’ Rocky was hurriedly pulling on his breeches.
