An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

Lord Byron was not in Brussels. Perhaps he was too taken up with that queer, serious bride of his; perhaps he knew that even a poet as beautiful and as sinister as himself would not make much of a mark in Brussels on the eve of war.

His marriage had been a great shock to Caro Lamb, said the gossipers. Poor thing, one was truly sorry for her, however ridiculous she might have made herself. It was quite her own fault that she now looked so haggard. She was unbecomingly thin too; every lady was agreed on that. Sprite? Ariel? Well, one had always thought such nicknames absurd; one really never had admired her. Only gentlemen were sometimes so silly!

There were quite a number of gentlemen round Lady Caroline, all being regrettably silly. A murmur from Miss Devenish reached Lady Worth’s ears: ‘Oh! she’s so lovely! I like just to look at her!’

Judith hoped that she was not uncharitable, but had no wish to exchange more than a smile and a bow with Lady Caroline. One was not a prude, but really that lilac gauze was perfectly transparent! And if it came to loveliness, Judith considered her protégée quite as well worth looking at as any lady in the room. If her eyelashes were not as long and curling as Lady Frances Webster’s the eyes themselves were decidedly more brilliant, and of such a dove-like softness! Her shape, though she might conceal it with discretion, was quite as good as Caro Lamb’s; and her glossy brown curls were certainly thicker than Caroline’s short feathery ringlets. Above all, her expression was charming, her smile so spontaneous, the look of grave reflection in her eye so particularly becoming! She dressed, moreover, with great propriety of taste, expensively but never extravagantly. Any man might congratulate himself on acquiring such a bride.

These reflections were interrupted by the necessity of exchanging civilities with the Marquise d’Assche. Judith turned from her presently to find Miss Devenish waiting to engage her attention.

‘Dear Lady Worth,’ said Miss Devenish, ‘you know everyone, I believe. Only tell me who is that beautiful creature come into the room with Lady Vidal. Is it very wrong?—I could not but gasp and think to myself: “Oh, if I had but that hair!” Everyone is cast into the shade!’

‘Good gracious, whom in the world can you have seen?’ said Judith, smiling with a little amusement. However, when her eyes followed the direction of Miss Devenish’s worshipful gaze, the smile quickly faded. ‘Good God!’ she said. ‘I had no idea that she was back in Brussels! Well, Lucy, if you are looking at the lady with the head of hair like my best copper coalscuttle, let me tell you that she is none other than Barbara Childe.’

‘Lady Barbara!’ breathed Miss Devenish. ‘I wondered—You must know that I never till now set eyes on her. Yes, one can see the likeness: she is a little like her brother, Lord Vidal, is she not?’

‘More like Lord George, I should say. You do not know him: a wild young man, I am afraid; very like his sister.’

Miss Devenish made no reply to this observation, her attention remaining fixed upon the two ladies who had come into the salon.

The elder, Lady Vidal, was a handsome brunette, whose air, dress, and deportment all proclaimed the lady of fashion. She was accompanied by her husband, the Marquis of Vidal, a fleshy man, with a shock of reddish hair, a permanent crease between thick, sandy brows, and a rather pouting mouth.

Beside Lady Vidal, and with her hand lightly resting on the arm of an officer in Dutch-Belgian uniform, stood the object of Miss Devenish’s eager scrutiny.

Lady Barbara Childe was no longer in the first flush of her youth. She was twenty-five years old, and had been three years a widow. Having married to oblige her family at the age of seventeen, she had had the good fortune to lose a husband three times as old as herself within five years of having married him. Her mourning had been of the most perfunctory: indeed, she was thought to have grieved more over the death of her father, an expensive nobleman of selfish habits, and an unsavoury reputation. But the truth was she did not grieve much over anyone. She was heartless.

It was the decision of all who knew her, and of many who did not. No one could deny her beauty, or her charm, but both were acknowledged to be deadly. Her conquests were innumerable; men fell so desperately in love with her that they became wan with desire, and very often did extremely foolish things when they discovered that she did not care the snap of her fingers for them. Young Mr Vane had actually

drunk himself to death; and poor Sir Henry Drew had bought himself a pair of colours and gone off to the Peninsula with the declared intention of being killed, which he very soon was; while, more shocking than all the rest, Bab had allowed her destructive green eyes to drift towards Philip Darcy, with the result that poor dear Marianne, who had been his faithful wife for ten years, now sat weeping at home, quite neglected.

It was a mystery to the ladies what the gentlemen found so alluring in those green eyes, with their deceptive look of candour. For green they were, let who would call them blue. Bab had only to put on a green dress for there to be no doubt at all about it. They were set under most delicately arched brows, and were fringed by lashes which had obviously been darkened. That outrageously burnished head of hair might be natural, but those black lashes undoubtedly were not. Nor, agreed the waspish, was that lovely complexion. In fact, the Lady Barbara Childe, beyond all other iniquities, painted her face.

It became apparent to those who were gazing at her that the Lady Barbara had not, on this night of April, stopped at that. One foot was thrust a little forward from under the frills of a yellow-spangled gown, and it was seen that the Lady Barbara, wearing Grecian sandals, had painted her toenails gold.

Miss Devenish was heard to give a gasp. Lady Sarah Lennox, on the arm of General Maitland, said: ‘Gracious, only look at Bab’s feet! She learned that trick in Paris, of course.’

‘Dashing, by Jove!’ said the General appreciatively.

‘Very, very fast!’ said Lady Sarah. ‘Shocking!’

It was not the least part of Barbara’s charm that having arrayed herself in a startling costume she contrived thereafter to seem wholly unconscious of the appearance she presented. She was never seen to pat her curls into place, or to cast an anxious glance towards the mirror. No less a personage than Mr Brummell had taught her this magnificent unconcern. ‘Once having assured yourself that your dress is perfect in every detail,’ had pronounced that oracle, ‘you must not give it another thought. No one, I fancy, has ever seen me finger my cravat, twitch at the lapels of my coat, or smooth creases from my sleeve.’

So the Lady Barbara, in a shimmering golden gown of spangles which clung to her tall shape as though it had been moulded to it, with her gold toenails, and her cluster of red curls threaded with a golden fillet, was apparently quite oblivious of being the most daringly dressed lady in the room. Fifty pairs of eyes were fixed upon her, some in patent disapproval, some in equally patent admiration, and she did not betray by as much as a flicker of an eyelid that she was aware of being a cynosure. That dreadfully disarming smile of hers swept across her face, and she moved towards Lady Worth, and held out her hand, saying in her oddly boyish voice: ‘How do you do? Is your little boy well?’

In spite of the fact that Judith had been by no means pleased, three months before, to see her infant son entranced by the Lady Barbara’s charms, this speech could not but gratify her. ‘Very well, thank you,’ she replied. ‘Have you been back in Brussels long?’

‘No, two days only.’

‘I did not know you have the intention of returning.’

‘Oh—! London was confoundedly flat,’ said Bab carelessly.

Miss Devenish, who had never before heard such a mannish expression on a lady’s lips, stared. Lady Barbara glanced down at her from her graceful height, and then looked at Judith, her brows asking a question. A little unwillingly—but, after all, it was not likely that Bab would waste more than two minutes of her time on little Lucy Devenish—Judith made the necessary introduction. The smile and the hand were bestowed; Barbara made a movement with her fan, including in the group the officer on whose arm she had entered the salon. ‘Lady Worth, do you known M. le Capitaine Comte de Lavisse?’

‘I believe we have met,’ acknowledged Judith, devoutly hoping that Brussels’ most notorious rake would not take one of his dangerous fancies to the damsel in her charge.

However, the Captain Count’s dark eyes betrayed no more than a fleeting interest in Miss Devenish, and before any introduction could be made a young gentleman with embryonic whiskers, and a sandy head at lamentable difference with his scarlet dress coat, joined them.

‘Hallo, Bab!’ said Lord Harry Alastair. ‘Servant, Lady Worth! Miss Devenish, do you know they are dancing in the other room? May I have the honour?’