A Companion in Joy Read online

  A COMPANION IN JOY

  Dorothy Mack

  To Marcia,

  the First Reader

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ALSO BY DOROTHY MACK

  CHAPTER ONE

  The young man slowly ascending the steps to the entrance door of an imposing stone mansion on Brook Street would have rated a second glance from almost any passer-by. To the masculine eye, his impressive height and breadth of shoulders, combined with a fluid economy of movement, would unerringly bespeak the natural athlete. An assured, not to say arrogant, carriage of the dark head, allied with an elusive refinement of facial planes and features, betokened good breeding, while a certain something in the challenging glance of those dark eyes would be sure to quicken the interest of the majority of females meeting that glance. To the discriminating observer, the superb cut and faultless set of the blue morning coat across the wide shoulders proclaimed that the wearer patronized no less noteworthy a tailor than the great Weston himself. A perfectly brushed beaver was set at a precise angle atop crisp waving hair and a snowy expanse of neatly tied cravat showed beneath moderately starched shirt points. Mirror-polished Hessians with gold tassels and a well-kept hand holding gloves and walking stick contributed their share to the point de vice appearance of the caller, who, on attaining the top step, put up his free hand to give an unnecessary regulatory tug to his neckcloth before taking a deep breath as he rapped smartly with the huge brass knocker. These small actions, accompanied by a lowering, black-browed stare bent on the inoffensive oak-panelled door, might be construed to reveal a certain reluctance to carry out whatever errand had brought him to this particular door at the moment in question. However, the spontaneous smile bestowed on the still powerful appearing but rather elderly butler who opened the door presently held nothing save affectionate raillery.

  “Hallo, Marsden. Are you ready to go ten rounds with me as we were used to?”

  The portly individual thus addressed returned the smile with interest while declining the invitation. “Not ten rounds, Mister Nicholas. I’m afraid I’m past that feat nowadays, being slightly touched in the wind, as they say.” He accepted hat, cane, and gloves, then brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the shoulders of the caller before adding formally, “I trust I find you well, Mister Nicholas?”

  “Of course, Marsden, and how do you go on these days?”

  “The same as usual, Mister Nicholas,” was the imperturbable reply. “His lordship is expecting you. He has been in his book room all morning.”

  At this intelligence, the younger man’s lips twisted in a somewhat wry expression, and he had difficulty in restraining an urge to square his shoulders like a condemned soldier on his way to face the firing squad.

  “Perhaps we’d best settle for five rounds after I’ve seen my father,” he suggested, half-jokingly.

  The butler’s brief smile acknowledging this pleasantry was immediately succeeded by an expression compounded of sympathy and complete understanding, and the young viscount grimaced anew at the sudden reflection that in all probability every old retainer in his parental home was cognizant of the fact that the earl had summoned his heir for the purpose of reading him one of his patented lectures on the irresponsibility of today’s youth with special emphasis on his son’s propensity for living beyond his means. He schooled his mobile features to polite blankness and followed the butler into the square apartment that had been his father’s sanctum for as long as he could remember.

  “The Viscount Torvil,” intoned Marsden sonorously. Nicholas barely repressed a grin at the affectionate pride underlying his former mentor’s formal tones, but he need not have been concerned about displaying untimely merriment, for the figure behind the enormous mahogany desk did not immediately pause in his perusal of a sheet of paper held in one thin, elegant hand. Nor, for a full ninety seconds, did he betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelid the slightest awareness of another presence than his own in the book-lined room. It did not require a gigantic intellect to predict that the ensuing interview would be more than ordinarily difficult, Nicholas mused, resisting anew a double compulsion to tug at his suddenly tight neckcloth and square his shoulders. With an effort of will, he remained standing motionless in an easy stance. There had been no invitation to be seated, and he wondered grimly if some of his more pressing creditors had dared approach his father for payment. They’d catch cold at that ploy, of course.

  After an uncomfortable interval, the earl lowered the paper that had been occupying his attention and raised a comprehensive grey glance to his heir’s rigid countenance. One hand gestured languidly toward a winged green chair.

  “Well, Torvil, I am honoured that you were able to fit me into your busy schedule, and so quickly too. I believe it to be no more than four days since I sent a message to your lodgings desiring you to wait upon me at your earliest convenience.”

  Only by a slight twitching of a muscle in his cheek did the viscount reveal his annoyance at his father’s heavy irony.

  “My apologies, sir, for keeping you waiting, but I did not return from Newmarket until last night.” Which was a superfluous piece of information, to be sure, for there existed no doubt in his mind that his father had been well posted on his heir’s whereabouts. No one had ever accused the earl of being a doting parent, but that he was an observant one was a fact that had been uncomfortably borne in upon his sons on several occasions in the past. The consequences of their occasional scrapes at Eton and, later, at Oxford had been rendered even more hideous by the inevitability of a subsequent dressing down from their parent in that indifferent, sarcastic style they had early come to dread. He schooled himself to remain still under his father’s thoughtful gaze, refusing to add to his explanation, though the silence became definitely uneasy before the earl spoke again in a pensive fashion.

  “I must confess myself at a loss whether to applaud the audacity or deplore the temerity of a man in your, shall we say, precarious financial position who undertakes to attend a race meeting.”

  “I didn’t lose any blunt at Newmarket; in fact, I won,” his son replied evenly.

  “How gratifying for you. Am I to understand that you are now in a position to cancel your other gaming debts and pay all your duns?”

  A dull red crept over the young man’s cheekbones at this polite inquiry, but he replied quietly, “I regret that I am unable to confirm your assumption at this moment.”

  “Ah! Well, you will forgive me for pointing out that the ability to judge horseflesh does not invariably march with good fortune at the tables.”

  His son inclined his head slightly but made no rejoinder.

  Suddenly, the earl abandoned his pointed suavity and decisively pushed his chair back from the desk.

  “I did not command your presence here today to discuss your debts, at least not directly.”

  Nicholas raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  “You will remember six months ago, during our last conversation on the subject of your failure to live within the very generous allowance I make you, I gave you notice that I had settled your debts for the last time. I also expressed the opinion that it was more than time that you settled down and found yourself a wife. A wife is a very stabilizing influence on a man. I further stated my strong desire to see you married before your twenty-ninth bi
rthday. Does your recollection of the conversation tally with mine?”

  Apart from a slight affirming nod Nicholas was very still in his chair, his eyes dark and intent on the older man and his jaw rigid while a nasty premonition scuttled up his spine.

  “Your birthday is in less than a fortnight. Not unnaturally, I have been existing in a state of eager anticipation of a happy announcement for some time now. You must excuse an old man’s impatience if I request the name of your intended bride before the betrothal notice appears in the papers.”

  “Naturally you shall be first to learn of any nuptial intentions on my part, but I must disappoint you that as of this date I have formed no such intention.”

  A tense silence followed this admission while two identical grey glances clashed in a wordless struggle for mastery. Father and son were very alike as to facial configuration and colouring, and even seated it could be seen that the earl was still a large, powerful man. His iron grey hair had the same crisp vitality as his son’s dark locks, and both stared from under winged brows whose rising angle gave a slightly Mephistophelian cast to the haughty features.

  The older man spoke with a sinister gentleness. “Does that remark signify that you have as yet selected no candidate for the position?”

  “You speak as though it were a case of interviewing applicants for a housekeeper’s job. One does not select a wife on the basis of needing a stabilizing influence,” Nicholas protested with pardonable impatience.

  “You have had ample time this past half dozen years or more to select one on some other basis. Lord knows you’ve had enough high flyers and game pullets living under your protection from time to time and caused enough clacking of tongues by your indiscretions with women who should know better to prove you’re not indifferent to the sex. Well, that is neither here nor there. No one expected you to be a monk.” His lordship paused and cleared his tones of irascibility. He resumed the purring irony so much disliked by his sons.

  “Since, despite your more than adequate experience of the fair sex, you seem disinclined or unable to make a selection, I have done the job for you.” The corners of the earl’s mouth pulled in while he studied the effect of this bald pronouncement on his heir.

  Nicholas sat up straighter and those black brows flew up, enhancing the devil image. He spoke each word slowly and distinctly. “Do you mean to tell me you have arranged a marriage for me?”

  “Allow me to commend you on your quickness of understanding.”

  “Without even consulting me?”

  “A time-honoured custom.” The earl nodded calmly and watched unmoved while the viscount launched himself out of his chair and strode over to the fireplace, where he kicked violently at a half-burned log. Not until the dozens of sparks thus born had faded away did Nicholas turn back to his father, his lamentable temper (also inherited from his sire) once again firmly on leash.

  “You cannot compel me to marry,” he said quietly.

  “Very true. I can, however, refuse to rescue you from this latest bit of financial idiocy. You’ll find it difficult to pursue your affaire with that flashy redhead from a cell in the Fleet.”

  His son’s face suffused with angry colour once again. “The lady in question,” he began, with emphasis on the noun, “is perfectly respectable and has the entrée everywhere.”

  “She’s every day of thirty, and entrée or not, it’s still a case of mutton dressed as lamb. She may have captured a senile peer old enough to be her grandfather and been clever enough to keep her affaires under cover until he died, but that doesn’t alter the fact that she’s no better than a whore. If you were thinking I’d stand still for that type being brought into the family, you’ll find you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “I thought I had expressed myself with admirable clarity when I stated that I had no intentions of marrying at present. My affaires are no one’s business but my own.”

  “They are when you conduct them full in the public eye,” returned his father icily. Then, abandoning the topic, he launched an attack from another direction.

  “You have two notes totalling just over seven thousand pounds coming due within the week,” he observed with that uncanny omniscience that was the bane of his sons’ lives. “How do you propose to meet them?”

  “That also is my business,” grated Nicholas, preparing to take his leave. “I shall come about.”

  “Accept my best wishes for your success. But, in the event you do not succeed, you now know my price for settling your debts. Are you not even interested in discovering the name of your prospective bride?”

  On the threshold, the viscount flung a disclaimer over his shoulder and strode out, carefully closing the door behind him. His aspect was so forbidding that Marsden silently handed him his belongings without venturing the least remark, and so absorbed was he in his furious inner ragings, that Nicholas failed to note this event which was quite unique in the long history of cordial relations existing between the two.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next few days had a nightmare quality about them as the young viscount threw himself into a frenzy of gaming activities designed to recoup his former losses and re-establish his credit. Flush from his recent victories at the races and enriched by a modest stake totalling something over six hundred pounds, he visited all his usual clubs in the daytime and broke new ground by seeking admission on several evenings to certain establishments whose respectability might be in question, but where the play was deep enough to be inviting to someone bent on amassing a fortune in the shortest possible time span. That some of these dens were frequented by a set of persons known as Greek banditti, whose custom it was to pluck unwary pigeons and separate them from their money by a variety of sharp practices, was not allowed to weigh against his urgent need for quick results. He was driven by an all-consuming desire to thwart his parent’s cold-blooded design to arrange his future for his own convenience. All consideration of caution and good sense faded before this primary motive.

  For the first three days, the issue hung in balance as the viscount won several hundred pounds in marathon whist sessions at White’s by day and enjoyed an unprecedented run of luck at the Faro tables by night. At one point, he had increased his stake five-fold, but never did Dame Fortune smile at him so consistently that he could add steadily to his winnings to bring the goal within reach. If his present success had occurred before he had managed to dig himself so far into dun territory, he would have considered himself one of fortune’s favoured few. Given the present situation, however, he had scant leisure for the enjoyment of his unusual luck. Always the necessity to continue playing was upon him. Those of his friends whom he encountered during this period were at first astonished and then alarmed at the change in one whose easy-going nature was a byword amongst his acquaintance. From the most accommodating of good fellows he turned overnight into a grimly dedicated gamester, cancelling all previous engagements and refusing all invitations to join congenial parties for an hour’s shooting practice at Manton’s or pugilistic exercise at Jackson’s. He must have eaten somewhere, but it was certainly not in the company of his friends. And not even to his most intimate crony, Mister Oliver Waksworth, did he feel able to confide the reasons behind his sudden obsession with gambling. If, God forbid, he should fail to come about and were forced to accept his father’s terms, it would never do to have the story bandied about in all the clubs of London. He might harbour an unreasoning resentment against the unknown bride selected by his father, but the poor girl had done nothing to warrant such a fate. Nor did he care to make himself a laughing stock, richly though he might have deserved it.

  At the outset of this hideous episode, he had pushed any considerations of failure to the back of his mind.

  He needed all his wits about him to counter the seething and simmering cauldron of anger directed at his father, which would have boiled over and swamped his concentration had he not firmly clamped the lid on such a dangerous brew. As the days and nights passed in a frenzy of gamin
g activities, his expression grew grimmer as the possibility of failure emerged and attained maturity almost without his conscious awareness. After the third day, there was a gradual but inexorable diminution of his winnings until on the fifth day his original stake was reduced by half. Though he still won considerable sums from time to time, these wins afforded him no pleasure. Moreover, he had made the somewhat startling discovery that he possessed neither the faith in his star nor the capacity to enjoy gambling for its own sake that characterized the true gamester, although his current behaviour might with some excuse be misread as that of a chronic gambler. Inevitably, he cast all caution to the winds and punted ever deeper in increasingly desperate attempts to recoup all his losses with one big strike that continued to elude him.

  Abrupt changes in his usual regime involving the curtailment of all healthy exercise and the substitution of long hours of tension-packed inactivity, allied with erratic eating habits and lack of sleep, combined to produce the image of a man thoroughly burned to the socket. It didn’t need Mister Waksworth’s disgusted characterization of his friend as “a death’s head on a mopstick” to enlighten him as to how he was being regarded by those of his friends who had the doubtful felicity of meeting him during this bleak interlude. But perhaps his friend’s outburst contributed to the long overdue stocktaking that took place on the sixth day of his grace period.

  Unblinkingly, he watched his rouleaux being swept away and with them his dying hopes of avoiding the future his father had planned for him. With his eyes fixed unseeingly on a crookedly hung landscape adorning the opposite wall, he performed rapid mental sums and, making allowances for a bit of error due to the unaccustomed great quantities of wine upon which he had been existing for several days, came up with a rough figure of five hundred pounds total assets, not counting the value of his blood stock, curricle, and phaeton. His debauched and profoundly uncomfortable week had resulted in a net loss of one hundred pounds. The strangers on either side of him started slightly at his ironic burst of laughter, each pretending a disinterest in the dark, saturnine face of the young man who rose from the table with unsteady dignity and slowly made his way to the entrance, uncaring that his place was immediately taken by another hopeful child of fortune.