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FERDY ALONE

London, 1818

It was the last ball of the Season and by the time the clock of St George’s had struck twelve, most of the guests were looking bleary-eyed and more than ready for bed. It was an unfashionably early hour to be leaving, but Ferdinand Shilton was disconsolate. This was a rare emotion for a man celebrated for his sunny nature and exquisite tailoring, whose clear blue horizon in his thirty years on earth had barely been shadowed by a puff of ill wind or cloud of disappointment. But Mr Shilton was feeling an unfamiliar melancholy. His dearest friends since school, Lord Purfoy and Alick Wolfe, had married and taken their wives to their country estates, and for the first time he was alone.

Mr Shilton strolled through Lady Barnsley’s ballroom on his way to the grand double staircase that marked his escape. He was greeted by everyone with affection but was fatigued by mere acquaintance and missed the ease of fraternising with those who really knew and loved him.

He was about to seek out Lady Barnsley to bid her farewell and commend her on the entertainment when he noticed a girl curled up asleep on a sofa under the farthest window. He stopped and watched her, concerned that there was no chaperone in sight, and she seemed so alone. She was plainly dressed for a ball as grand as this and her light brown hair was unravelling into wisps that looked untidy rather than beguiling. Her small pale face was resting on her slender hand and she reminded him of a dormouse. Suddenly, in a flurry of skirts and cross voices, he saw a pretty young woman, fashionably dressed in pale gold silk, run up to the sleeping figure and kick the foot that was trailing on the ground. ‘Wake up, Maddie! You can’t sleep here.’

An older lady, also fashionably dressed, whom Ferdy Shilton recognised as Lady Lockhart, one of the Gorgon mothers of the Season, bustled up and, finding the girl had started awake, pulled her up roughly into a sitting position on the sofa. ‘Madeleine! I can’t take you anywhere,’ she said in exasperation.

The girl stifled a yawn and tried to tidy her hair. But Mr Shilton noticed the pink mark on her cheek where it had been pressed against her hand as she slept, and he was struck by the pathos of the sight as she looked from one unsympathetic companion to the other.

The small orchestra was just striking up for the last dance, a country reel, and Ferdinand Shilton impulsively walked towards the oddly assorted group. On his approach, Lady Lockhart and the pretty younger woman composed their faces into welcoming smiles. He was known to all the matchmaking mamas as a very well-heeled gentleman indeed, and therefore long overdue a wife.

He nodded to them in greeting. Turning to Lady Lockhart, he bowed and asked in his pleasing light voice, ‘Lady Lockhart, we have been previously introduced. As you may recall, I am Ferdinand Shilton. Shall you do me the honour of introducing me to these young ladies?’

Lady Lockhart, still handsome but grown imperious, drew herself up to her formidable height and said, ‘With pleasure, Mr Shilton. This is my daughter, Miss Henrietta Lockhart, and her cousin, Miss Madeleine Rose.’

The pretty daughter was evidently expecting it to be her with whom this good-looking and notably rich man wished to dance but instead, he turned to address the crumpled girl beside her. ‘Miss Rose, would you honour me with this last dance?’

She cast a surprised look towards Lady Lockhart, then answered in an unaffectedly sweet voice, ‘Thank you, Mr Shilton, I shall be most obliged.’ As Madeleine took his proffered arm, Miss Lockhart caught her mother’s eye with a sullen frown.

The rumbustious reel did not lend itself to the pursuit of conversation with a stranger, so Ferdy restrained his curiosity; only the most trivial comments were exchanged as they came together fleetingly, their paths crossing in the patterns of the dance.

As the music died away, he drew her towards the refreshments room, where he collected glasses of lemonade for them both. For the first time, their eyes met and Ferdinand Shilton realised with a shock that the mousy, ill-used young lady, whom he had decided could benefit from the bestowal of a little of his charm, was more attractive than he had thought. She was pale and her hair was an unfortunate colour, but her striking grey-flecked eyes were compelling with their intelligence and humour. There was something intensely feminine and alive about her and Mr Shilton felt an unfamiliar curl of excitement. In her vibrant presence, he was suddenly six inches taller. He straightened his shoulders; no longer just a man about Town, the delight of debutantes and their mamas, but the hero.

Miss Rose glanced fleetingly around the room, then looked up at him and said, ‘I don’t want to keep Lady Lockhart and Hen waiting. They can be most disobliging.’ A quick mischievous smile somehow included him in a conspiracy. ‘I’m writing a novel and I’ve just got to the place where the heroine’s disagreeable cousins are blown off a cliff in a mighty storm.’

Ferdy Shilton’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Where does this storm arise, might I ask?’

‘Why, at Lyme Regis, where the cliffs are so steep nothing will save them from being dashed on the rocks!’ She opened her eyes wide with the thrilling thought.

‘But isn’t it rather foolhardy of the cousins to be abroad in such a place and in such inclement weather? I presume it was a dark and stormy night with only a moon to light the way?’ His candid blue eyes met hers with a sparkle of amusement.

‘You’re laughing at me, Mr Shilton,’ she said with a delightfully musical laugh, appreciating his entering her fantasy. ‘It is indeed a foolish notion, but an excellent way for me to relieve my feelings.’ She had been busy writing the passage that very morning and her mind was still full of the chilling images: how like crows they looked, their black cloaks flapping in the storm, their faces wax-pale in the moonlight, when a sudden gust of wind tossed them falling, falling, their hands clutching at air. Madeleine shivered.

Ferdy Shilton watched emotion flush her pale cheek and said in conciliatory tones, ‘I must commend you for writing your own novel and not merely consuming the works of others.’ Then he chuckled and heard her delicious fluting laugh again as he said, ‘But perhaps ration your reading of the estimable Mrs Radcliffe and her kind?’ He offered her an almond biscuit. ‘Tell me, how did you come to be in the care of your cousins?’

The laughter died on her lips.

Mr Shilton quickly realised he was in the company of someone of romantic and lively imagination as Madeleine began a heart-wrenching tale of orphanhood and uncertain inheritance that was cut short by Lady Lockhart and her daughter sweeping up to whisk her away.

‘Mr Shilton, forgive me, but the carriage has been called and Miss Rose needs to accompany us home. Perhaps we may see you again?’ The forbidding lady inclined her head, and Miss Lockhart scowled at her cousin who coloured, bobbed a quick curtsey to Mr Shilton and followed in their wake.

Ferdinand Shilton watched their departure and wondered about that tempest that so obligingly blew the author’s tormentors off Lyme cliff. He wondered also about the author of such misfortune. What an odd creature. So unprepossessing and small, a veritable dormouse indeed, but with an ardour and intelligence that compelled notice. And with the prettiest, most infectious laugh he had ever heard. He did not welcome, however, how she had unsettled his view of himself, his much-vaunted rationality in everything. He determined to return to the dispassionate mode of being that had served him well all his life.

But as he left for Brook Street in his smart town chaise, Mr Shilton was still disconsolate. He slumped back against the blue satin squabs and wondered, perhaps he did need a wife and family after all? Would that remedy his loneliness? The thought did not lift his spirits as the pretty, flirtatious face of Miss Hester Payton swam into his tired mind. He knew she was a managing kind of young woman, but there was something to be said for that; it was less fatiguing when someone else took your life into their capable hands. She would run Nonsuch House, his ancestral estate, with exemplary efficiency and had already suggested a few improvements to the everyday management of his mansion in Brook Street. His servants had not warmed to her, but then servants never did welcome change, and introducing a wife into a bachelor establishment was one of the most trying events in a man’s life. More importantly, Miss Payton did not ruffle his feathers, a factor that until tonight he considered very much in her favour.

As John opened the chaise door and Mr Shilton stepped out, he glanced up the road to where the houses of his friends sat dark and shuttered. A pang gripped his heart. How life had changed for them all; both Alick Wolfe and Raven Purfoy had contracted love matches and, to a man like Ferdinand Shilton who shunned operatic emotion, their affection for their wives seemed excessive, even embarrassing. His friends’ evident pleasure in married life made Ferdy feel even more at odds as they hurried early from the gaming tables and eschewed the midnight pleasures of convivial drinking and Hazard at White’s and Brooks’s to instead eagerly head home to bed.

Ferdy Shilton knew if he married Miss Payton he would not be inconvenienced by any tremors of grand passion, life would barely alter from the comforting, luxurious routines he liked so well. But would he be settling for less when he should be asking for more? The thought made him uneasy as he gazed out into the dark night. He rued the loss of those happy days when he and his friends were carefree young men about Town, kicking up larks into the dawn light in the pursuit of pleasure, with cards, dice, drinking and every kind of diversion available to young bucks of the ton. How dull his friends had been made by love, and how abandoned he felt, the sole survivor on the island of their youth.

Mr Shilton walked into his palatial hall with its chequered black and white marble floor and noticed with relief that there was a chandelier of candles still blazing, casting a soft haze of light over chairs, ancestral portraits, a great painted Venetian chest, and Gordon, his fresh-faced valet, waiting to greet him. He liked his residences to be bright, beautiful and full of cheer, not gloomy with penny-pinching austerity, and he liked his servants to be in harmony with this vision.

Gordon’s pacific nature and friendly manner never seemed to falter, despite the lateness of the hour or the exacting demands of his master. He led the way up the stairs with a lighted candelabrum in one hand and they entered the grand ducal bedroom which had been his master’s since the death of old Mr Shilton. The large room with its three full-length windows that overlooked the garden and the mews at the back had walls hung with aquamarine silk. In the centre of the room loomed the Jacobean four-poster bed, moored like a galleon, its blue silk curtains puffed out like sails.