Deirdre and Desire Read Online Free

barricaded behind a newspaper in the coffee room. He looked up as the colonel stood behind him and cleared his throat. Colonel Brian then introduced the vicar and took his leave.
    The vicar sat down opposite Lord Harry and studied him intently.
    Lord Harry stared back, his gaze empty, blue and limpid.
    He was not quite the fashionable rakish Exquisite the vicar had expected. The first thing that struck the vicar was the man’s incredible beauty. Lord Harry had thick, black, glossy hair
falling in artistic disarray over a broad white forehead. His blue eyes were clear and innocent like the eyes of a child. The lids were curved, giving him the lazy, sensual look of some classical
statues. His mouth was firm, but there was a certain air of languid effeminacy about him caused by the girlish purity of his skin and by the slimness of his tall figure.
    His clothes were beautifully tailored, reflected the vicar with a pang of envy. His bottle-green coat sat on his shoulders without a wrinkle and his buff-coloured pantaloons looked as if they
had been painted on to his legs. His hessian boots shone like black glass. His cravat rose from above his striped waistcoat in intricately sculptured folds.
    ‘You’re younger than I thought,’ said the vicar abruptly.
    ‘I am remarkably well-preserved for my thirty years,’ said Lord Harry earnestly.
    ‘Aye well, just so,’ said the vicar.
    There was a long silence. Outside, someone was murdering Mozart on a barrel organ.
    ‘Well, well,’ said the vicar, rubbing his chubby hands together. ‘Well, well, well,’
    Lord Harry continued to survey him with a pleasant smiling look.
    ‘You must wonder what it is I want to speak to you about,’ said the vicar desperately.
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Lord Harry gently. ‘I never wonder about anything. It is too fatiguing. And I am sure you will tell me in your own good time.’
    The vicar looked at him in irritation. Then he thought instead of the nabob uncle’s fortune and leaned forwards and patted Lord Harry’s knee in an avuncular manner.
    Lord Harry looked at the vicar, looked at the hand on his knee, and looked at the vicar again. His expression did not change, but the vicar’s face reddened and he hurriedly withdrew his
hand.
    ‘See, it’s like this here,’ said the Reverend Charles Armitage, beginning to perspire, ‘I heard you was in need of getting married so you could inherit your uncle’s
fortune.’
    Lord Harry surveyed him blandly. The vicar felt himself becoming angry. Why didn’t the young clod say something? This was worse than he had imagined it would be. Better get to the
point.
    ‘I have this daughter, see. Deirdre. Eighteen. Beautiful. I ain’t got the blunt, you need the wife, what say we strike a bargain?’
    A flicker of something glinted in his lordship’s blue eyes and then was gone.
    ‘Indeed!’ he said politely.
    ‘Well?’ said the vicar impatiently. ‘What about it?’
    ‘Does she have red hair?’ asked Lord Harry, looking vaguely in the direction of the chandelier. ‘I can’t abide red hair.’
    ‘Dye,’ decided the vicar to himself. He thought briefly of God the way one thinks of a nagging, bullying parent, slightly closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said,
‘No.’
    ‘And she is in Town?’
    ‘No,’ said the vicar. ‘But she will be. In four days’ time.’
    ‘I met your eldest daughter,’ mused Lord Harry. ‘Lady Sylvester Comfrey. Very beautiful and very wise. She told me how she despised men who put pride in dress before pride in leading a virtuous life.’
    ‘Oh, Minerva will have her little joke,’ said the vicar jovially, privately cursing his eldest for her priggish moralizing.
    ‘Is your daughter – Deirdre – vastly clever?’
    The vicar looked at Lord Harry from out of the corner of his little shoe-button eyes and wondered whether Lord Harry wanted a clever wife. Lord Harry looked back with an expression of absolute
vacancy on his beautiful face.
    ‘Oh,