A Regency Charade by Elizabeth Mansfield

only suited for brooding about the house like an old dotard.”
    “’Cause y’aint any ’appier now than ye wuz when ye wuz broodin’, if y’ asks me.”
    “I’m not asking you!”
    “Y’ see? Yer temper is more worser than it wuz before.”
    Alec grabbed his coat from his batman’s hand and made for the door. “Only because my man is a ‘more worser’ nuisance than a vexatious mother-in-law! Goodnight, you nodcock. Don’t wait up for me.”
    Kellam’s impudent views notwithstanding, Alec was quite convinced that he was having a fine time. For the most part, Ferdie’s program of dissipation suited him very well indeed. Of course there were moments when he felt bored or embarrassed or unhappy, but most of the time he enjoyed himself hugely. He was a good boxer, and his afternoons at Jackson’s boxing salon were very satisfying. He liked riding in the park with Ferdie, stopping and exchanging masculine banter at every turn with the new acquaintances he’d made. He enjoyed the card games at the clubs where, for a few hours, he could actually forget to think about his troubles. He even enjoyed the evenings’ social gatherings, where he noticed that several very pleasing young ladies—and several not so young—cast interested looks in his direction. Yes, he told himself, he was having a very good time.
    It was not to be expected that he would enjoy every moment. He did have bad times once in a while. Occasionally he would be appalled at the superficiality of his pursuits. Once in a while he would be struck with an unaccountable loneliness right in the middle of a crowd. The worst moments occurred when someone would approach him and ask about his “lovely wife.” Most of the ton had heard he was married, for Lady Braeburn was known to have been residing at Tyrrell House for years. Priss had evidently lived quietly, not going about a great deal, but she could scarcely have been expected to hide herself in the attic. She had some few acquaintances among the ton , and when Alec appeared in public without her, her absence was noted. He realized that several persons whispered about it behind his back. Nevertheless, it was a dashed nuisance when someone came up and asked bluntly, “Why is your lovely wife not with you? I haven’t laid eyes on her these three months.” Alec had to answer, of course. He took to murmuring something vague about her being “otherwise engaged,” and he became quite adept at turning the subject.
    This was another instance where his life was made more difficult by his wife’s stubbornness. If she’d agreed to the annulment six years ago, he would now be able to go about as a single man, and no one would even have known that he’d ever been married. By this time, of course, even when Mr. Newkirk managed to obtain the nullity decree, the news would be greeted with the same disapprobation, shock and gossip that a divorce would occasion. This realization exacerbated his discontent, and his irritation with his wife increased.
    Another realization broke into his consciousness as his participation in the social whirl increased— women didn’t seem to permit their knowledge of his marital state to interfere with their desire to flirt with him ! He didn’t admit to Ferdie that this perception shocked and repelled him. The poet John Donne had evidently been quite correct in his assessment of the female character—there wasn’t a pure and faithful creature in the lot. Unmarried females flirted with him as readily as they did with more eligible men, and married women made such blatant overtures that he was often left almost speechless. At one moment a lady would whisper the most suggestive invitation into his ear, and at the next, under the eye of her husband, she would become completely innocent and demure. The game they played so well filled him with revulsion. After only a few weeks on the town, he developed a number of amusingly cutting responses to make to these invitations, he began