Читать книгу Jack Compton's Luck - Paula Marshall - Страница 10

‘Old Mother Leominster’s dance was even more eventful than hers usually are,’ was Rupert Compton’s somewhat inelegant remark to Darcey Chancellor later. They had spent the evening and the hour after midnight in enjoying themselves with a variety of flappers. Neither of them had any real expectations of inheriting anything and, since Darcey was already pledged to his long-time, if also penniless, love, they were not regarded as either threats or possible husbands.

‘Something between a gigolo and a cavaliere servente,’ was Darcey’s rueful comment to Rupert, who wasn’t sure what he meant by the second half of the sentence but didn’t say so. He assumed, rightly, that it was something more respectable than a gigolo, but both words were damned un English so far as he was concerned.

They had lost sight of Jack, who had come across an old friend from his Army days who had stayed behind in Europe when Jack went to Palestine and had got involved with Allenby’s lot and ‘that bounder, T. E. Lawrence’: the friend’s description, not Jack’s. Jack’s attempt to explain the intricacies of Middle East politics was lost on him and he was thankful when he heard the strains of the Charleston begin to filter into the supper room.

‘Forgive me, lady waiting,’ he offered, and set off at the double. Wouldn’t do to offer Miss Lacey Chancellor the opportunity to stage a conniption fit in Lady Leominster’s august halls.

She was where he had left her, with the dragon aunt. She was looking about the ballroom, a trifle anxiously, he thought, but her face brightened up amazingly when she saw him.

‘I thought that you’d taken the coward’s way out,’ she told him, offering him her hand—which he took with the usual electric effect on both of them.

‘Never,’ said Jack, after taking it and leading her on to the floor, ‘and I promise not to throw a conniption fit if I make a cake of myself in the dance.’

Rupert, together with Darcey and a group of other spectators, watched Jack join the romping Charlestonites, with a look of total disbelief on his face.

Darcey exclaimed, ‘Told you the fur and feathers would fly if those two got together. Who else would tease old Jack into making an exhibition of himself!’

‘Only he isn’t,’ said Rupert gloomily. ‘Just watch him go. Do you believe he’s never danced the damn thing before? And how did she get him to do it with her?’

‘Clever girl that she is,’ said Darcey slowly, ‘she used what we told her about Jack accepting challenges. She challenged him, that’s what. All I have to say is that it’s a damned sight safer than some of the other things he got up to. No breaking his neck in this.’

‘Break his leg more likely,’ grumbled Rupert. ‘You know I suggested that he had a go for her and her fortune before he even saw her. Do you think that’s what it’s about?’

Darcey shook his head. ‘Not Jack, from all I’ve heard of him, he’s not a fortune hunter. Just a chap who can’t refuse a challenge.’

Lacey panted at Jack when she saw him rivalling her in agility, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had danced this before?’

‘Because I haven’t,’ Jack panted in reply once he had recovered enough breath to answer her. ‘But I watched you and Cousin Darcey enjoying yourselves and it didn’t strike me as particularly difficult. I can only wonder, though, what Queen Victoria would have made of it if it had arrived in England in her reign.’

‘Or most of the other things we do these days,’ gasped out Lacey, after several more hectic minutes, ‘such as women smoking and driving motor cars, to say nothing of short skirts and Eton crops.’

By now they had arrived at the musicians’ corner; when he saw Lacey and Jack’s spirited rendition of the dance, their leader stood up and played his saxophone pointedly in their direction.

She waved back at him, so Jack did too. Who was it who had once said, ‘It’s my night to howl?’ He couldn’t remember, which didn’t matter, because he was too busy enjoying himself after a fashion which he couldn’t have anticipated when he had reluctantly agreed to accompany Rupert to ‘old Mother Leominster’s’, to worry about such irrelevancies.

Inevitably the dance came to an uproarious climax during which those who could not keep up with the musicians’ increasingly rapid tempo stood back to admire Lacey and Jack’s performance which had become more and more inventive. Both of them were separately whirling and twirling before coming back to face one another again, slapping their knees and bending their legs in a rhythm which was almost professional.

The moment that the music ended the spectators gave them an ovation. They had been so involved with each other and the dance, that, as in the slow foxtrot, they had forgotten that the rest of the world existed. When the clapping broke out, they stopped, stared at one another, and Jack asked Lacey, ‘Good God! Never say that was for us?’

‘Afraid it was,’ she said, her campaign to unfreeze Jack having succeeded even beyond her wildest dreams. She was not sure how he was going to take it, and was tremendously relieved when he began to laugh.

‘Minx,’ he choked at her, taking her hand and piloting her off the floor.

He was amused to hear someone whose face he vaguely remembered call out to him as they made for the supper room and a much needed drink, ‘So Fighting Jack rides again, good for you, old chap.’

‘I told you that I should make a spectacle of myself and never live it down.’

‘Aren’t you pleased you did?’ Lacey responded pertly. ‘Now, be a good fellow and bring me a drink, a long cool one, no alcohol, I’m tight enough already without having the excuse of drinking very much to account for it.’

‘Excitement,’ said Jack soothingly. ‘Sure you don’t want a gin and it—or some champagne?’

‘Quite sure. Lemonade and lots of it.’

He reached the bar to find Rupert there on his own, Darcey having discovered another flapper to squire.

‘My word, you were going the pace, old fellow, weren’t you? Took what I suggested to you earlier seriously, did you?’

Jack, who had forgotten Rupert’s advice about Lacey’s fortune, ordered her lemonade and a glass of champagne for himself, before saying, ‘What was that, then?’

‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten that she’s an heiress? The one I recommended you to go for.’

‘Oh, damn that,’ said Jack cheerfully. In his present mood the cloud which had hung over him for so long seemed to have disappeared and it had been Lacey Chancellor who had dispersed it. ‘She’s a jolly good sort—and would be with, or without, a fortune. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for years.’

‘So I saw,’ returned Rupert glumly, his own evening not having been much of a success. ‘And while you’re feeling so happy, could I touch you for a couple of hundred? I’m a bit short at the minute and you can probably stand it.’

‘Not really,’ replied Jack, frowning. ‘Besides that, I don’t lend money to either friends or relatives, it’s the best way to lose them in my experience.’

‘But I really am most awfully strapped, old chap.’

Jack sighed. ‘Let me be honest with you. I’m just about keeping the whole boiling back home from falling into instant bankruptcy. Apart from my reservations about lending money at all, I simply don’t have that much ready cash to spare. I’m surprised to learn that you are having trouble given that you have a well-paid position at Coutts Bank.’

Rupert made a face. ‘It’s the gee-gees, I’m afraid. I made a few horrid bets lately. Lost a packet on the Grand National to make matters worse, and I’m no longer at Coutts.’

Jack refrained from advising Rupert not to gamble and particularly not to bet on the horses. He thought it would be a waste of time. Instead he said, as gently as he could, ‘I’m sorry, but I have Will to think of and young Robbie, Max’s boy, as well as the estate. We’re even more strapped for cash than you are, I’m afraid. I try to put a brave face on things and you ought to have asked yourself why I’m staying in a cheap lodging house. The flat in town went long ago.’

‘Oh, God, Jack!’ Rupert’s face crumpled as though he were about to cry. ‘Everything’s gone since the war, hasn’t it? Nothing is ever going to be the same.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Jack said, ‘but we have to keep a stiff upper lip and do what we can. Now, I must take Lacey her lemonade. I’m sorry to have to let you down, but there it is.’

If Lacey wondered why Jack had taken so long to fetch her drink, she didn’t say so. Instead she told him more about her half-brother’s decision to move to Sussex.

‘I’ve just found out that Richard’s new country home, Ashdown, is not far from yours,’ she said.

‘Why did he sell Liscombe?’ Jack asked. ‘It’s a handsome house, and its Arabian stud was famous.’

‘Richard isn’t interested in horses so he sold the house and the business to a trainer. He wanted somewhere nearer to London, and the London-to-Brighton train is so fast and frequent now that it makes it easier for him to leave town for the country. Liscombe was somewhat out of the way.’

‘Well, when you are finally ensconced at Ashdown you must be sure to visit us. Will, my brother, will want to meet you. You must both come to tea, lunch or dinner, whichever you fancy. I have to repay your niece for teaching me the Charleston, don’t I, Miss Hoyt? And you for allowing her to do so.’

‘I suppose,’ almost sniffed Aunt Sue, which had Lacey wondering all over again whatever could be the matter with her. It was not like her to be discourteous or short, particularly with someone like Fighting Jack, whose understated charm was beginning to overwhelm her. Something which she would not previously have thought possible.

After that, Jack had to follow the conventions which said that he must not monopolise one of the early season’s successes. He bowed his way away, to allow other young men to fill her dance programme, and hoped that Miss Lacey’s eager acceptance of his offer of entertainment at Compton Place was truly meant. Not only that, he had promised to look out for her at his cousin Lady Lynch’s reception and ball, which was taking place in the following week, and dance the Charleston with her again.

It would mean that he would have to stay in London longer than he had intended, but never mind that. He had had few opportunities to enjoy himself since he had left the army, and the pull of Miss Lacey Chancellor was so strong and profound that he could not ignore it.

No woman had ever attracted him so powerfully before.

‘Now, Aunt,’ said Lacey once they had reached home again, ‘why was it that you were so cool to Jack Compton? He seemed to me exactly the sort of young man of whom you would most approve.’

Her aunt shook her head and said grimly, ‘But you hadn’t overheard him talking with that flighty cousin of his, Rupert Compton. If you had you wouldn’t be defending him. They were, in the most cold-blooded fashion, talking about having a go at you because you are an heiress worth winning. Particularly since it seems that Jack Compton, as well as Rupert, is on his uppers. Jack actually described you as being “as hard as nails”. They were his exact words, I fear.’

The colour drained from Lacey’s face. ‘Are you sure, Aunt? Couldn’t you have been mistaken?’

‘Indeed I wasn’t. I was in the best possible position to hear every word they said. I can’t remember everything, of course, but it wasn’t very pleasant, mostly about you and your money. I warned you about this before you left the States.’

As hard as nails! So that was what he thought of her! All that charm had been poured over her simply so that he could get at her money. It just went to show that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover—one of Grandfather Hoyt’s favourite sayings.

Fighting Jack, that jolly good fellow as everyone called him, was no better than a fortune hunter. Well, he wouldn’t hunt her fortune any more, that was for sure. What hurt her the most was that she had begun to believe that she might have met that rare thing—an honest man—only to find that he was no better than the rest who hung around her. For once she had been unwary, but never again.

She would go to Lady Lynch’s do and there he would soon find out that she was no easy mark—another saying learned from her Grandfather—and that Lacey Chancellor, could, when it pleased her, be exactly as hard as he had described her.

Numbly she sat beside her aunt, for once fighting back tears—she who never cried, she whom Grandfather had nicknamed the infant stoic because even when she had fallen out of the tree which she had insisted on climbing, she had never shed a tear and had never complained.

Her biggest regret was that she had been so attracted to him that she had forgotten to put on the invisible armour which she always wore in public. One thing was certain, she wouldn’t make that mistake again in a hurry.

Jack was whistling cheerfully while dressing himself in the poky bedroom of his lodgings. Never mind that his evening dress was shabby, he had long ago become resigned to such small drawbacks. Besides, he needed to wear evening dress so rarely that buying a new, more up-to-date version of what was now considered fashionable seemed a waste of money.

What was more important was that he was going to see Lacey Chancellor again. He had spent the morning at Coutts where the Comptons’ bank balance was running along just above the fateful line which, if it were crossed, would land it in the red. One had to be grateful for small mercies. A junior banker had interviewed him, for someone so low down in the scale of things as Jack Compton was never interviewed by the top brass. A fact of life which the suave man behind the desk had taken as read.

Tomorrow he would go home. However often he left it, or for how long, Compton Place would always be his home now. If Will had not been so gravely wounded he would have remained in the Army. Time, the death of so many young officers, and his own talents, meant that he had retired with the rank of Colonel and the lost promise of a bright future. That opportunity, like the Comptons’ wealth, was long gone.

Tonight, however, he would forget all that. He would persuade Lacey that it would be to her advantage to visit Compton Place and examine its attics. He was sure that the Sir Jack, who had inherited in 1820, and who had restored the family fortunes, had almost certainly left behind records and documents which might throw light on the Pandora Compton who had married her ancestor, Ritchie Chancellor, and on other matters, too.

Jack laughed at himself a little for inventing opportunities for seeing Lacey again. After all, Ashdown was only a short distance away from Compton Place by motor, and there was every reason why they should meet often. Examining himself in the shadowy mirror in the elderly wardrobe he thought that he almost looked like Fighting Jack again. It was funny how that nickname followed him around, even though it was not now applicable.

Finally he was ready to leave. The taxi which would take him to the Lynchs’ home on Piccadilly would be arriving any minute and he could not afford to keep it waiting. He would return to his lodgings by the Underground since no one was likely to see him depart, whilst his arrival would almost certainly be noticed by the flunkies who guarded the entrance.

He was right about that. A canopy had been erected before the door and a solid phalanx of guests was walking into the house beneath it. There were the usual watchers gaping at the quality while they amused themselves. It was something of a relief that they would not be able to see how threadbare a gent he actually was. The footman’s knowing stare, however, when he handed him his top hat, cane and gloves told him that he knew only too well that Mr Jack Compton was hanging on to his place in society by his teeth.

Several people acknowledged him on the way to the stairs at the top of which his cousin was waiting to receive him. She seemed genuinely pleased, as did her husband.

‘Oh, Jack, I’m delighted that you decided to come. I rather feared that you might abandon town as quickly as you usually do. I know things are a little dire in Sussex, but surely you could manage rather more of the season than a few days in early May.’

How to explain that with Will unfit to run things and so much to run, he really ought not to have stayed on to visit them at all? Jack didn’t even try. ‘Oh, I’m a country boy at heart, you know, and the land is a harsh mistress,’ he replied. Well, at least the second part of the last sentence wasn’t a lie, was his inward gloss on that!

‘You weren’t a country boy when I first knew you,’ remarked Louis Lynch with a wink.

‘Perhaps not, but time changes us all.’

‘True,’ said his cousin, but fortunately, by then the next visitor was waiting to be received so Jack moved on. Well, he thought, looking around him, the War hadn’t destroyed Sir Louis’s wealth. The Sargent portraits of his parents still hung on the walls. It was perfectly furnished to the last degree of sophistication with new fashion mingling well with antique opulence.

Yes, the house was in splendid nick and the signs of great prosperity were everywhere. Jack wondered exactly where all the money came from to pay for such splendour. He only knew that Sir Louis was something in the City. He wondered how one got there and why it had always been supposed that the younger Compton sons always went into the Army, or the Church or became land agents on someone else’s land.

Not that everyone in the City was wealthy—just look at poor Rupert. On second thoughts, Jack decided that he had rather not. He had come here to find Lacey, to dance the Charleston with her again and to tease her as though the past ten years had never happened.

Dancing had already started. Lady Leominster had not yet arrived, but the Marchioness of Londonderry and her two pretty daughters were already seated in one corner of the ballroom, surrounded by a large crowd of hangers-on. Not that he could aspire to the hands of either girl since the Londonderrys were at the very top of the tree in society.

Lacey had arrived, however, and was sitting beside a potted palm with the old dragon on her right and a bevy of eager young men before her. Neither Rupert nor Darcey were among them and the rest were as anonymous to Jack as the nameless courtiers on stage there to make up the numbers in one of Shakespeare’s plays.

He decided to wait a moment before approaching Lacey. The crowd gradually thinned, which gave him a chance to speak to her. By the sound of it they had been proposing themselves for the dances neatly laid out in Lacey’s programme.

Jack bowed to Lacey and Aunt Sue. He could not help noticing that her aunt stared balefully at him, but, armoured in the knowledge of his previously made arrangement to dance the Charleston with her niece, he took little notice of that.

‘Here I am, ready for another lesson in modern dance,’ he said with a smile. ‘I hope that you’ve left room for me on your programme.’

Lacey’s smile, as well as her answer, was so cool that Jack was a little shocked. She displayed little of the happy rapport which they had shared at the Leominsters’ do. Instead, her answer was a regretful, hardly apologetic one.

‘Oh, yes. The Charleston. I did promise to dance it with you, didn’t I? Oh, dear, it’s very remiss of me, but I quite forgot and my programme is already filled. I’m sorry to have been so stupid. Another time, perhaps?’

This last sentence came out after such a fashion that it gave the impression that another time would be long in coming.

Jack’s smile froze on his face. He scarcely knew what to say. He had delayed leaving London only in order to attend the Lynchs’ dance. He had spent all his spare time dreaming about seeing Lacey again, but she was making it very obvious that the moment he had left her on that happy night at the Leominsters’ she had immediately forgotten about him. For her he was simply a chance-met nobody who had entertained her for a little time before she passed on to the next anonymous man who took her brief fancy.

He mentally shook himself, but not before the disappointment which he felt so keenly was plainly written on his face. He could not stop himself from saying quietly, ‘I thought that we had had an understanding…’

Lacey was surprised to find not only how much it had hurt her to let Jack down so brusquely, but also that she felt ashamed that she had done so—and had told a lie in the doing, albeit only a white one. Bad behaviour was bad behaviour, however many excuses one made to one’s self for indulging in it.

Perhaps, after all, her aunt had not been telling her the whole truth about the conversation she had overheard. Young men often talked extravagantly when on their own and one ought not to hang them for it. Besides, she also knew that Aunt Sue was very keen for her to marry a Duke which would mean that she would go one better than that other great heiress, Cornelia Vanderbilt, who was engaged to the heir to a Barony, that of the Amhersts.

Before Jack could walk away, she said in her best impulsive manner, ‘Please allow me to try to make up to you for being so careless about what was, after all, a promise. It won’t be like dancing the Charleston with you tonight, but Richard is making up a party to visit the Wembley Exhibition tomorrow afternoon. Why not squire me there? I’m told that it’s one of the sights of the century.’

Jack’s face brightened immediately. ‘If that is what you want, then I shall be happy to oblige you. By the by, I’m told that the Ashanti warriors do a war dance there, but I can’t promise to partner you in that.’

‘No, indeed, it might be too much. You may call for me tomorrow at Richard’s place in Park Lane at one thirty and join the party. My cousin George will also be going. Now let me introduce you to George’s sister, Pamela—she’s another splendid performer on the ballroom floor. I can’t have you left without a partner because of my carelessness.’

Jack was so delighted by the prospect of a whole afternoon with Lacey that he promptly agreed, although his first impulse on being let down had been to flee the Lynchs’ ball altogether. He allowed her to lead him through the crowd to where the other Chancellors were sitting and make the promised introduction.

Aunt Sue was very reproving when Lacey returned after seeing Jack settled with them and talking cheerfully to George and his family.

‘I thought that, having virtually cut Mr Jack Compton, you would have had more sense than to revive his hopes by asking him to be your escort to the Wembley Exhibition. I am sure that Lord Wellsbourne would have been happy to accompany you there. He is rich enough not to be marrying you for your money and he has been showing a great deal of interest in you lately.’

‘Dear Aunt,’ said Lacey gently. ‘You would not have me behave shamefully to Jack Compton. I promised to dance with him tonight and it was wrong of me to fill my programme before he came, even though you had told me of what you had overheard. Besides, squiring me to Wembley means that we shall be together, with many others, in a public place. I gather that he is returning to Sussex almost immediately so that our paths won’t be crossing much in future.’

Oh, dear, and now she was telling another whopper! Her aunt was not aware, but she was, that when they went to Ashdown they would be mingling with the county society of which Jack was a part. Not only that, but she was determined to discover more about the connection between the Comptons and the Chancellors.

Aunt Sue heaved a great sigh. ‘If you are not going to take any heed of my advice, then I wonder why you felt the need for my companionship, my dear. Reflect that I know more about the world in which we are now moving than you do. These people have a veneer of polish which we in the States do not possess. One has only to read Henry James and Edith Wharton to know how true this is—and always has been. Sophisticated charm may have its theoretical limits when set against the straightforwardness which is so much a part of American life, but it does flatter to deceive and cheat us when we come to Europe as many young men and women have found to their cost.’

Lacey was sorely tempted to point out that these two novelists had actually shown how often supposedly straightforward American heroes and heroines had taken on the sophisticates of Europe and had beaten them at their own game, but she thought that it would not be tactful to inform her of that!

Fortunately, the band began to play and her first partner arrived to whirl her into the quickstep. From then on Lacey was too busy enjoying herself with a sequence of young men whose names featured prominently in Burke’s Peerage, that large volume beloved of Aunt Sue, to worry about her strictures over Jack Compton.

She saw Jack at intervals. He seemed to be enjoying himself with the Chancellors’ set, and danced the Charleston with young Pamela without showing the same athletic vigour which he had done when dancing it with her at the Leominsters’.

No time for regrets, though, until young Henry Laxton, the Duke of Beddington’s heir, came to claim her for the Charleston when the evening was three parts over. He had been sober when he had booked the dance with her, but was far from being so when he reeled up to her chair.

‘Tally ho!’ he announced unoriginally. ‘Ready for the off, are we?’

Lacey rather thought not, and tried to cool him down by saying, ‘Do you feel up to it, Henry?’

‘Hank,’ he said blearily, winking at her. ‘That’s the nickname for Henry in Yankee-land, I’ve been told. Never felt better. Come on, babe,’ and he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her on to the floor just as the music began.

The whole thing was a disaster. He was constantly falling over her feet and proclaiming that it was all her fault. ‘You know,’ he hissed at her, after they had both nearly landed flat on the floor after one of his more unfortunate manoeuvres, ‘you’re the clumsiest bitch I’ve ever had the misfortune to dance with. Are you any better in bed? Do you—’ and he began to reel off an obscene list of suggestions to her.

What to do? Lacey was aware that people were beginning to look at them. She took the whirling giddiness of the Charleston as an opportunity to wheel him slowly away from the dance floor towards an anteroom. This, young Henry took to be an invitation for seduction.

‘What ho! And tally ho,’ he exclaimed again, or Lacey thought he did, since his speech was now so slurred that it was difficult to tell exactly what he was saying. He lunged at her in a clumsy attempt to begin the apparently promised seduction, but fortunately for Lacey drink, and the gyrations of the dance, had affected him so badly that it was easy for her to trip him up. He landed on the floor, winked at her, closed his eyes and immediately began to snore.

Now, what in the world was she to do? Leave him?

She was saved by, of all people, Jack.

He had been watching the erratic progress of an obviously tipsy Henry Laxton around the floor and had seen them dancing into the anteroom. The sixth sense which had served him well had him following them in to find Henry snoring on the floor and Lacey staring down at him.

‘Dead drunk, is he?’

Lacey let out a startled laugh. ‘I fear so. My first instinct is to ask you to help me—but after the way in which I have treated you, I hardly dare to.’

It was Jack’s turn to laugh.

‘You may ask me anything you like: anything.’

‘That is a kindness which I hardly deserve.’

Jack ignored this.

‘No time to waste,’ he told her severely. ‘Help me to get him on to the sofa.’

‘And after that?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

Together they lugged the snoring Henry up from the floor and arranged him artistically on the sofa. He muttered a couple of words which sounded like ‘Tally ho!’ and promptly went to sleep yet again.

‘What now?’ asked Lacey anxiously.

Jack considered the unconscious Henry with a judicial eye. ‘He looks safe enough there to me,’ he pronounced. ‘Let’s leave him and finish the dance together. You can regard it as a thank you to me for rescuing you from that half-wit. I sometimes think that he was the original of P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster.’

It was Lacey’s turn to laugh. ‘What a splendid notion. But whatever will people think if I Charleston into an anteroom with one partner and come out with another?’

‘That you are the most original American girl who ever set sail from the tall towers of Manhattan.’

He held out his arms to her and she sank into them as though she were coming home. Both of them, while they whirled and twirled away from the unconscious Henry, could not stop laughing. They were still laughing when they reached the ballroom and began to decorate the Charleston with some original steps of their own.

Jack had not enjoyed himself so much for years. Irresponsibility held him in its thrall as it had done when he had been young and silly before the world went mad. Then, he might have been like Henry, sleeping it off on the sofa. Now, he was the recipient of Henry’s folly, being given the chance to dance with a girl with whom, quite without meaning to, he was beginning to fall in love.

What she was feeling for him, he thought ruefully, might be quite a different matter. For the present, though, he would take what fortune, that fickle goddess, was sending him and What ho! and Tally ho! he would be taking her to Wembley.

Aunt Sue’s thoughts when she saw Lacey emerge from the anteroom with Jack, after entering it with Henry, are perhaps best not recorded.

Jack and Lacey were in a world of their own. The strong attraction between them, which had been sparked off at their very first meeting, was growing more powerful by the minute. The dance ended all too soon for them.

Breathless, they stepped back. Lacey gasped out, ‘What a pity that my programme is full. We go so well together, and at the very least you are still sober—which I am sure will not be the case with all my future partners.’

‘I promise to rescue you again if any of them are as far gone as young Laxton was,’ promised Jack gallantly. ‘You have only to run up the Stars and Stripes and I shall come at the double.’

‘And ruin my reputation completely.’ Lacey laughed. ‘Now you must escort me back to Aunt Sue. I think that it would be better if you didn’t take me into supper. I daren’t imagine what all the old gossips are saying about us.’

‘They say, let them say,’ quoth Jack. ‘From what I have seen of you so far, Miss Lacey Chancellor, what other people say about you doesn’t concern you overmuch.’

Before she could answer they had reached Aunt Sue, who now had another lady of uncertain years for a companion. Jack had seen her before. She was yet one more of his distant relatives, Mrs Anna Harley, who was noted for her plain speaking.

‘Tell me, do,’ she cried, snapping her over-large fan at the pair of them, ‘what you have done with Henry Laxton. I trust that he’s still in the land of the living. He was being very forward with you, Lacey, before you disappeared, I hope that young Jack hasn’t been too severe with him.’

‘On the contrary, Cousin Anna,’ replied Jack quickly before Lacey’s aunt could add a rider to her friend’s comment since he feared that it might be over-critical of the pair of them, ‘I helped him to have a nice lie-down on one of our cousin Lynch’s more comfortable sofas. If you will all excuse me, I shall make it my business to find a footman who will be sure to see that he’s looked after before he ventures home.’

His cousin snapped her fan at him again. ‘Off you go then, young Jack. You were always a resourceful villain, as I well remember. You must tell me where you have been hiding since that wretched war was over. I want to hear all the latest news about poor William, as well.’

Jack, amused, exited bowing, as the old playwrights had it.

Lacey was equally amused. Aunt Sue would not now begin to reproach her while Jack’s cousin remained with them. Surprised to learn that she was his cousin, and that their hostess was another, she said, ‘You are related to Mr Compton, then?’

‘Who? Oh, Jack! Why, yes, I’ve known him since he was a boy. Sterling fellow, Jack. A bit wild when he was young, but aren’t they all? Miss Lacey could do worse than set her sights at Jack,’ she continued, much to Lacey’s secret, and further, amusement. ‘He may be as poor as a church mouse but he’s worth a hundred Henry Laxtons for all that Henry’s a Duke’s heir.’

Aunt Sue, who had privately decided that Henry would be just the thing for Lacey, even if he were a few years younger than she, was somewhat put out by this curt dismissal of him and even more by Anna’s unwanted praise of Jack, but she could not say so.

‘Mind you,’ continued Anna, ‘it’s some time since a Duke, or his heir, married an American heiress. Are you acquainted with Miss Cornelia Vanderbilt? I understand that she is going to marry the heir to the Amherst barony shortly. I hear that a fortune is to be spent on the day of the wedding. Pity they’ve not got better things to do with their dollars—if you’ll forgive me for saying so.’

Aunt Sue didn’t want to forgive her but, knowing that Mrs Harley was a powerful member of high society despite having no title before her name except a mere Honourable, which was a nothing of a thing since it was never used in public, had to grin and bear her freely offered opinions in silence.

Fortunately for her peace of mind and her hopes of her niece making a grand marriage, Lacey’s next partner arrived early in order to claim her for the waltz. He had the good fortune to be none other than Peregrine, Viscount Harcourt, the heir to a Marquess who had managed to hold on to his money and estates despite the depredations of the recent war.

That Lacey, as she later told her aunt, found him a dull stick after Jack, was not to the point. Aunt Sue was determined to press her case and prove that in the marriage stakes Miss Lacey Chancellor, whose mother had been one of New York’s Hoyts, was an even better bet than Cornelia Vanderbilt!

That being so, it was a pity that Mrs Harley continued to support Jack’s claim to be Lacey’s suitor all the time that Peregrine and Lacey were dancing a sedate waltz. The only thing which gave her any relief from her worries was that Jack did not return to trouble them. He had, according to Peregrine—who was also distantly related to him—left early, saying that he had to make a final visit to the solicitors early the next morning and had asked Perry to present his regards to his aunt, Miss Hoyt and to Lacey, and his pleasure that he would be seeing them again so soon.

‘Off to Wembley tomorrow afternoon, I gather, with Richard Chancellor’s party,’ he finished. ‘I shall be taking the motor along, too, and will have the pleasure of meeting you all there.’

After that, Lacey’s evening was a dull one. She wondered a little why Jack had not come to say farewell to them in person, but decided that he probably had his reasons. She was not wrong. Jack could see quite plainly that he was something of a red rag to a bull where Aunt Sue was concerned and that it would be better not to inflict himself on her overmuch—particularly since, against all the odds, he was going to spend the whole of the next afternoon with her and Lacey.

Early the following morning Jack was speculating about what, from his limited wardrobe, he ought to wear for the expedition to Wembley when the lodging housemaid came to tell him that he was wanted on the telephone.

It was Will. After a few short enquiries as to what Jack was up to, Will said, ‘I was under the impression that you would be coming home yesterday. Have your plans altered?’

‘Well, that was my original intention, but something came up.’

The something, of course, was Lacey, but Jack felt that he could scarcely ramble on about that on the telephone and, besides, Will might not think it a sufficiently good explanation for his having postponed his return. ‘Is there any particular reason why you want me back?’ he added, because he thought Will sounded harassed.

‘Actually, yes. I could do with you here as soon as possible. I don’t wish to discuss the matter over the phone, but if you could manage to return tomorrow I should be exceedingly grateful.’

‘Oh, I can easily arrange that. I have a final visit to the lawyers this morning. This afternoon I am making up one of Richard Chancellor’s party on a visit to the Wembley Exhibition.’

‘Now, I do envy you that, and Robbie will, too. I feel a cur for asking you to cut your London visit short since you seem to be seeing life a little, but needs must. Give my best regards to Richard. I haven’t seen him since before the war. I hear that he’s done well for himself.’

There was something wistful in Will’s voice. Unlike George, all his hopes for the future had been dashed by the War.

‘I’ll try to find Robbie a souvenir. Give him my love.’

He put the phone back on the wall, wondering what it was that had made Will, who rarely used the telephone, ring him. Well, he would find out soon enough tomorrow. Today, though, was to be devoted to the law and to Wembley.

Fortunately for Jack, and the others, the weather was good that afternoon and the company was better—even Aunt Sue was being civil to him. She had, rather sensibly, decided that to oppose Jack’s interest in Lacey so decisively was merely encouraging her headstrong niece to go on seeing him. If she said nothing, this squib of an affair might burn itself out.

Richard, whose party it nominally was, apologised for not accompanying them—something important had come up, he said, and his cousin George would take over as host.

The British Empire Exhibition was the official name for the jamboree they were attending—George Chancellor’s description of it. ‘It’s the twentieth century’s version of the Great Exhibition of 1851,’ he explained cheerfully to his hearers.

There were, among other exciting things, an Ashanti village, a collection of animals from South Africa, native dancing and something else, not perhaps strictly part of the Empire, but allied to its glory: a replica of Tutankhamen’s tomb, which included a superb gold life-size figure of the boy Pharaoh himself.

Jack and Lacey stood before it in wonderment. Lacey said, ‘It makes me feel humble to think that all those years ago human beings could create something so beautiful. What have we to show which is equally fine?’

‘A motor car,’ suggested Jack, not quite seriously, ‘or an aeroplane? The Pharaohs weren’t up to them.’ But he knew what she meant, and they both appreciated the awe which Howard Carter must have felt when he rolled back the linen shroud which had covered the effigy and, after three thousand years, revealed to himself, and ultimately to the world, one of the glories of the long-dead past.

George Chancellor, and the others of the party, also stood, awed, before the golden and blue marvel. Finally, when they moved away, he murmured, ‘I know the emphasis of this exhibition is really on trade, and as a civil service flunkey I ought to appreciate that, but, to me, this beats everything.’

His hearers nodded. If, for Jack, the emphasis of their expedition was on Lacey, as well as the wonders of the Exhibition itself—for who knew when he might meet her again?—to see Tutankhamen’s effigy was an experience also never to be forgotten. After that the Palace of Industry and even the Burmese pagodas, beautiful though they were, took second place.

Somehow, in the crowds, Lacey and Jack managed to escape from the others, avoiding Aunt Sue’s vigilant eye, and seat themselves not far from where the Battle of Zeebrugge was being re-enacted.

‘I now know what the sentimental novelists mean when they have their hero and heroine say, “Alone at last”,’ remarked Lacey.

‘I second that with some enthusiasm,’ Jack replied, ‘if being lost among such a crowd could be called being alone.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Lacey told him a little severely. ‘I like George and the others, but I feel so confined when I am always one of a large party.’

‘Of course, and I feel the same.’

Jack was busily admiring Lacey’s perfect profile and wishing that he dare kiss her on the cheek. Supposing, however, Aunt Sue popped up from nowhere—whatever would she say? For the first time he envied the anonymous young people who fervently embraced one another while lying on the grass in London’s many parks. Here he was, imprisoned by convention, unable to offer his newly found beloved a chaste kiss while sitting upright!

He could, however, take her hand and stroke it gently. This had the strongest effect on both of them—of which, of course, they could take no advantage.

‘I have to go home tomorrow,’ Jack told her. ‘I can’t imagine when we shall next have a chance to meet.’

Lacey, who had just decided to stroke Jack’s hand for a change, murmured, ‘So soon. Do you realise how short a time we have known one another?’

‘Yes. Odd, isn’t it? I have known some pretty girls for years and have never had the slightest inclination to feel for them what I have begun to feel for you.’

There, it was out. He had said it—and damn the consequences. She, and certainly Aunt Sue, might dub him fortune hunter, but he—and he hoped Lacey—knew that was not true. Had he been a real hunter, roving the plains in the distant long ago, even before Tutankhamen, he would have thrown her over his shoulder and run off with her to some convenient cave!

Which was an impossible dream. They were trapped in the twentieth century in a society which, outwardly at least, imposed the strictest standards on the behaviour of young unmarried people.

‘We could write to one another,’ suggested Lacey, who was feeling a little desperate herself. During their walk around the Exhibition she had discovered that Jack had a fund of knowledge—not academic, unlike her own, but that of a man of intelligence who had read widely. He had spoken of his time in Palestine, and of the problems of the Jews and Arabs there, with sympathy and understanding.

Now she was to lose him to a succession of young men, many of whom were little more intelligent than Bertie Wooster!

‘Would you?’ exclaimed Jack. ‘Would you really?’ He was beginning to believe that Lacey was as entranced by him as he was by her. Of course, nothing could come of it. After all, it was highly unlikely that one of America’s richest heiresses would be allowed to marry poverty-stricken Jack Compton. Aunt Sue’s would not be the only voice raised against it. He was scarcely in the same league as the Amherst heir.

On the other hand, he might as well follow the old Roman motto, Carpe diem, or ‘seize the day’ in plain English, and make hay while the sun shines, as another old saying had it! Such an odd mishmash of ancient advice as he was giving himself made him laugh internally since it was proof positive of the excited state he had been in since he had first seen Lacey dancing the Charleston only one short week ago.

‘Of course. You must give me your address immediately. I can’t be asking you for it in Aunt Sue’s hearing.’ Lacey rummaged in her large handbag and produced a gold propelling pencil and a small notebook, which she opened at the first blank page she found.

‘It’s an easy one to remember,’ Jack told her, writing it down. ‘Compton Place, Sussex, would probably find us, but to be quite safe, I’ll put the long one down.’

He handed the little book back to her. ‘And now we’ve enjoyed the cultural and economic delights of Wembley, how about visiting the Amusement Park and having a go on the Scenic Ride on the roller coaster, or switch-back railway, before we try to find the others?’

‘What could be better?’ exclaimed Lacey enthusiastically. ‘I went on one at Coney Island when I was a little girl. I was frightened to death and screamed all the way down—and up! Promise to hold my hand if I’m frightened again.’

‘Oh, I promise to hold your hand even if you’re not frightened,’ Jack told her gravely.

So they wandered off to the Amusement Park to engage in an activity of which Aunt Sue would undoubtedly deplore! Lacey did scream, but with pleasure, not fear, this time and hung on to Jack after a fashion which made him feel both manly and protective—as well as hopelessly roused.

He took the opportunity to stroke her head gently when she buried it in his chest—which had the effect of rousing him further. He could not stop himself from kissing her neck when she let go of him on one of the less exciting parts of the run—and that did nothing for his composure either.

By the flush on Lacey’s face when she finally sat up and straightened herself, Jack could tell that she had been enjoying his petting of her nearly as much as he had. On the final run in, she murmured to him, ‘Oh, I did like that,’ though whether she was referring to the ride itself or his attentions to her during it he was still not quite sure.

Lacey, however, was quite sure. Oh, she had been stroked and kissed by a man before, but it had never had the powerful affect on her which Jack’s gentle loving had caused. She was experienced enough to know what the shivers of delight which had overcome her during the ride truly meant. They meant that she was ready, nay, needed, more than he had just offered her.

And what did that tell her of her true feelings for him?

She didn’t go quite so far as to say that she wanted to go round again, although had Jack invited her to she would immediately have agreed.

Instead, regretfully, she looked at her watch and exclaimed, ‘We really ought to try to find our party, we’ve almost reached the time when we agreed to return home.’

‘True,’ said Jack, ‘but not before I do this.’ He had already decided that there was safety in numbers and that since he and Lacey were suitably anonymous, lost in a crowd which neither knew nor cared what they did, it would be quite safe to give her a real kiss, not the soft ones he had offered her on their ride. So he saluted her not chastely on the cheek, but nearly chastely on the lips, almost in passing as it were, needing no passionate embrace.

Lacey made no attempt to stop him and it was he who broke away first. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I have spent the whole afternoon wanting to do that. If you didn’t like it, I promise not to do it again.’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ she riposted briskly. ‘I liked it very much. In fact, I wouldn’t object if you did it again—more slowly this time.’

‘In that case,’ said Jack, ‘I will try to oblige you.’

What was preventing him from being a little more urgent with her was that he was hanging on to his self-control by a thread. If Lacey had been surprised by the strength of her reactions to him, Jack was equally surprised by the depths of passion which he was plumbing while he was simply squiring Lacey round an Amusement Park!

This time the kiss was both long and slow. Lacey had her back to the wall of one of the booths, her arms around his neck, and was standing on tiptoe so that she could enjoy as much of him as possible.

The kiss went on and on and became more and more passionate. His wicked tongue parted her lips and danced with hers and when Jack, for very self-preservation, pulled away from her, her swollen face and lips told him that she was as roused as he was.

For a moment, they stared at one another, lost not only to the crowd, but to themselves, almost unable to speak since time and place had disappeared too. When speech returned to them, it was Lacey who spoke first.

‘Much though I am enjoying myself,’ she murmured breathlessly, ‘and would love to prolong it, we really ought to behave ourselves and join the others. Aunt Sue will be thinking that I’ve been kidnapped by White Slavers and that you have been left for dead somewhere.’

‘True,’ said Jack again, slowly returning to the realities of the everyday world, if being in an Amusement Park at the Exhibition could be called the real world! ‘George told us all that if we became lost we should return to the main entrance by five o’clock and I calculate that we have just about time to do that.’

They found most of the party there, waiting for them and several others who had been playing hookey, as Lacey called it when they were on the way back.

Aunt Sue hissed at her, ‘Wherever have you been? Peregrine wanted to escort you, but you were nowhere to be found. He was particularly interested in the Trade Pavilion.’

‘Well, I was particularly interested in the Amusement Park,’ returned Lacey naughtily, ‘so Jack took me there.’

‘He would,’ her aunt hissed again, meaningfully this time.

‘Well, he could scarcely make improper advances to me on the roller coaster when we were clinging on to our seats for dear life, so you needn’t have worried, Aunt. I was quite safe. I’m sorry to have disappointed Peregrine, but he should have made his wants known to me, not you.’

She did not add that off the roller coaster had been the place for advances from Jack, but since they could not be called improper, they were hardly relevant.

‘On the carpet, were you?’ whispered Jack to her when he had manoeuvred them both into the back seat of the Chancellors’ Rolls. He knew an angry Aunt Sue when he saw her.

It was Lacey’s turn to hiss. ‘Ssh, Jack. I didn’t believe all those stories of your wild youth when we first met, but now—’ and she rolled her eyes theatrically, ‘I am beginning to find out why you were nicknamed Fighting Jack.’

‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it, my girl.’ Jack was determined to enjoy himself in the short time he had left with her since she was equally determined to join him in having fun. Tomorrow it would be home and duty and the grinding task of trying to keep the Comptons solvent. To say nothing of finding out what was so obviously worrying his brother.

The day was not yet quite over, though. Richard, who had proved to be Lacey’s much older half-brother, met Cousin George’s party in the entrance hall of his Park Lane home where he had arranged for a late tea to be served to them. He was leaving to keep yet another appointment, he said, and apologised for not being able to entertain them in person.

‘Sorry I couldn’t go with you this afternoon,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Duty and all that. George, here, being a civil servant, can call his pleasure, duty, but a simple business chap like myself hasn’t that option—as you can now see.’

Simple, he called himself—simple, he certainly wasn’t, Jack thought. Lacey introduced him to Jack, although Jack thought that he had almost certainly met Richard years ago, before the war.

‘Fighting Jack, isn’t it?’ he remarked cordially. ‘We met at Ascot in ‘13, I think. Squiring young Miss, were you? Come to dinner tonight as a thank-you, you deserve it.’ This was all said with the greatest good humour.

Jack accepted the invitation to dinner, even though he had packed his evening wear before he had left for the lawyers that morning and would now have to unpack it. It would give him yet another chance to meet Lacey and take a last memory of her home to Sussex.

‘Though I don’t think that I really deserve a thank you,’ he ended, ‘it was a most enjoyable afternoon.’

Lacey murmured, her eyes twinkling mischief, ‘I think that Jack enjoyed himself on the roller coaster as much as I did.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ smiled Richard, looking knowing.

Later that evening, before the guests arrived for dinner, he remarked to Lacey, to Aunt Sue’s annoyance, ‘Young Compton’s better than your average escort. He had a good war and gave up a promising career in the Army in order to try to improve the family fortunes. His brother Will is a helpless cripple—war wounds, of course. The other brother was killed at Passchendaele.’

‘I know,’ Lacey said simply. ‘He’s not at all like his cousin Rupert or any of the other young men I have met over here. He takes life seriously.’

One thing she had already privately decided: that London season or no London season, she would be off to Sussex as soon as decently possible!