by Mary Balogh
“I will take your word for it,” his friend said, sounding uncomfortable. “It’s none of my business anyway. But even if you did kiss her, I don’t know why there should be such a big fuss about it.”
“Is there a big fuss?” Harry’s stomach was doing funny things.
“Afraid so,” Tom said. “Or so Hannah says. I found her pacing when I got home from school. Jeremy ran home to his mother last night with his shocking report, and Mrs. Piper confronted Mrs. Tavernor at her house this morning. Mrs. Tavernor apparently told her she would entertain whatever man she wanted to entertain and however many she chose and that she would kiss whomever she wanted to kiss and Mrs. P could go to the devil with a flea in her ear. Though I cannot quite imagine the lady using those exact words or even saying some of the things she is reputed to have said. I daresay what she did say to Mrs. Piper had been reworded and exaggerated and embellished beyond all recognition by the time it got to Hannah’s ears and then mine. But whatever the truth of it is, Harry, the whole silly episode has blown up into what seems like a grand scandal that will enliven everyone’s dull lives for days or even weeks to come. Hannah was bursting with indignation when I got home and would not even let me sit down to enjoy a cup of tea before coming to warn you of what is in store for you. She fairly pushed me out the door.”
“Good God.” Harry gazed at him. “And devil take it and any other blasphemy you care to add.” He jumped to his feet. “God damn it all, Tom, I’ll throttle that boy. What the devil was he doing out on a night like last night anyway?”
“Spying upon Mrs. Tavernor, apparently,” Tom said.
“Drumming up mischief,” Harry said. “But what a storm in a teacup, Tom. What he saw was one innocent peck on the forehead, for the love of God. With the door open. In full sight of my coachman if he had cared to watch. A grand seduction scene indeed. Was ever anything more ridiculous?” He laughed, but his laughter somehow fell flat on its face.
Tom’s discomfort seemed to have grown. He rubbed a finger along the side of his nose. “That is not the whole of it, Harry,” he said. “Mrs. Piper has spent the day pulling a whole lot of other dirty laundry out of her bag and strewing it everywhere. That kiss last night was the mere culmination of other things she has been keeping to herself because she hates to gossip.”
“What the devil?” Harry glared at his friend as though he were the one with the upturned laundry bag.
“In Mrs. Piper’s mind,” Tom explained, “the Reverend Tavernor is a saint and a martyr and an angel and perhaps even a little bit of the deity himself all rolled into one. She believes that in order to do justice to his memory, Mrs. Tavernor ought to be the Virgin Mary and all the female saints combined. You walked her home from our house one evening and from Solway’s a week or so after that. You apparently spent a whole morning at her house chopping wood—you just admitted it to me—before going inside and shutting the door for what must have been considerably more than a glass of water since you remained there for a whole hour. You went back the same evening and stayed there for an indeterminate amount of time—I’ll wager Jeremy cannot count high enough, more shame to his teacher. The Lord only knows what you were up to while you were there, but I daresay there is no shortage of speculation, especially as the curtains must have been drawn so Jeremy could not see inside.”
“Damn their eyes,” Harry said. “The whole lot of them.”
“You danced with her last night when she had already told several other men that she would not dance at all,” Tom continued. “You got her laughing and sparkling. And you gave her and Mrs. Bailey a ride home but dropped Mrs. Bailey off at the vicarage first before taking Mrs. Tavernor home and kissing her most scandalously. She has no one living at the cottage with her, not even a maid. That in itself is a shocking thing to someone like Mrs. Piper. She can have chosen to live quite alone—Mrs. Tavernor, I mean—for only one possible reason, and a lot of people are quite certain they know very well what that reason is. This is not me talking, Harry. It is not Hannah talking either or any number of other people with some sense between their ears. But it is what large segments of the village are buzzing about. It does not take determined gossips very long to weave a growing and pretty damning narrative out of the most threadbare of facts.”
“It is all pure nonsense,” Harry protested. Except for one thing. But that was no one’s damned business except his and Lydia’s. “Good God, Tom.”
Tom looked up at him and shrugged. “You know it is all nonsense, Harry,” he said. “I know. Hannah is getting together with Denise Franks. She was merely waiting for me to come home from school first. The two of them are going to the vicarage to talk with Mrs. Bailey and the vicar to discuss what they can do. They all know it is nonsense. But wildfire is pretty difficult to put out once it has got a hold. So is scandal.”
“Scandal,” Harry said, pushing the fingers of one hand impatiently through his hair. “That is a bit extreme, surely. But I do know gossip. And one can be sure it will focus almost exclusively upon Lydia. Very little of it, I suppose, will land upon me. Devil take it, Tom, I could commit murder. But throttling young Piper would be a bit like slamming the stable door shut after the horse has bolted—or some such nonsense. I had better go and have a word with Mrs. Piper. If she is at home, that is, and not still gallivanting about from house to house, spreading her laundry and her poison.”
What he was also going to find himself doing, he thought, ridiculous as it seemed, was persuading Lydia Tavernor to marry him.
He jerked open the door of the summerhouse and strode out onto the path through the trees back to the house without waiting for Tom. Good God, he might have known something like this would happen. He had known, in fact. They had both known. It was why they had ended what was between them, even the possibility of a friendship that had shown some promise.
Harry had worked himself into a towering fury by the time he reached the terrace and approached the house. He was about to bark an order to his butler, who was conveniently standing just outside the open front doors, dressed indeed and rather bizarrely in what looked like his best uniform, to have his horse saddled and brought up to the door within the next ten minutes. But sound penetrated his consciousness and brought him to an abrupt halt as he swiveled about to look along the drive to see what it was.
Two carriages were approaching. Grand traveling carriages that did not belong to anyone local. The first one was already turning onto the terrace and rocking to a stop a few feet from Harry. He could see bonnets and feathers inside.
“Grandmama,” he muttered. The Dowager Countess of Riverdale was on the seat facing the horses with Great-aunt Edith Monteith, her sister, beside her. Opposite them sat a young man and woman Harry could not immediately identify.
He turned his head sharply to look, aghast, at the second carriage. A familiar ducal crest was emblazoned upon the door. Within it he could see his half sister, Anna, and Aunt Louise seated facing the horses, with Cousin Jessica squeezed between them. Opposite them sat Avery, Duke of Netherby, and Gabriel, Earl of Lyndale.
Brown, whose best butler’s uniform was now explained, was opening the door of the first carriage and setting down the steps when Harry turned his attention back to it.
What a damnable time to discover that the whole of the Westcott family was in the process of descending upon him. For Harry did not doubt they were all coming. Already a third carriage was rolling into sight.
And a fourth.
Of course they were coming to him.
He had refused to go to them, after all.
Fourteen
Lydia closed all the curtains in her house, washed up Snowball’s paw prints as well as Snowball herself, cleaned the house from top to bottom, and baked a batch of biscuits for which she had no appetite whatsoever.
She cast on stitches for her pink shawl, knitted two rows, and then lost all her stitches after they had stuck on the needle a
nd she jerked them toward the tip and they all came rushing off. She had been knitting too tightly. She picked up the stitches, knitted a row to make sure everything was as it ought to be, and stuffed the work into her bag. She got to her feet to poke the fire, saw there was no fire because she had not lit one, and sat down on the sofa with a book. She read a whole paragraph before slamming the book shut and tossing it aside. She let Snowball out into the back garden and stood just inside the doorway, glancing furtively around to check for heads popping up above the fence and listening for rustlings in the copse. She shut the door firmly after Snowball came trotting back inside.
Perhaps after all Mrs. Piper had taken her indignation home with her to nurse in private. Perhaps she was even feeling remorseful about her hasty rush to judgment. Perhaps . . . Well, perhaps pigs would fly one of these days.
Confirmation of her worst fears came when she answered a knock upon her front door late in the afternoon and found Mrs. Bailey, Denise Franks, and Hannah Corning standing ranged across her doorstep, all wearing identical smiles while Snowball bounced along in front of them yapping until Hannah bent and scooped her up.
“Oh,” Lydia said without returning the smile. “It is as bad as that, is it?” And she turned to walk back into the house, leaving the door open behind her. They could follow her in if they wished or go back home if they did not. It was up to them.
They followed her in.
“I do blame myself,” Mrs. Bailey cried, “for not insisting that Major Westcott bring you home first before taking me to the vicarage. I ought to have taken upon myself the role of chaperon. But it is all absolute nonsense anyway, and the vicar agreed with me when he came out of his study to find out what all the fuss was about when Mrs. Franks and Mrs. Corning came to see me. The major is being maligned for being the perfect gentleman and seeing both of us to our doors beneath his umbrella. The vicar is blaming himself for going off with our carriage and leaving you and me to someone else’s care. And Mrs. Wickend did not even die. One sometimes wonders if she ever will. But you, my dear Lydia, have taken the worst of it all.”
“Lydia.” Denise spread her arms, but Lydia did not step forward to be hugged. “If he did embrace you, even if it was a passionate, full-on-the-lips kiss, all I can say is good for him. And good for you for allowing it. I totally fail to see what is so scandalous about a man kissing a woman on her doorstep after he has escorted her home from an evening party. Mrs. Piper is a silly, hysterical, overly pious gossip. She seems to believe that you ought to have devoted the rest of your life to mourning your husband’s passing. Eternal widowhood and celibacy. The woman is mad.”
“It is like a tomb in here, Lydia.” Hannah set Snowball down and threw the curtains back from the living room window. “My next-door neighbor, though she does not condemn you, has given it as her opinion that it was indiscreet of you to entertain Harry inside your own house, when you do not have even a servant living here with you. But really, where else could you be private in order to get to know each other properly? It is not as though you are a green young girl, after all, or he a notorious womanizer. Unfortunately, however, gossip does not thrive upon sound reason or common sense. People have too little to talk about that is of any real interest to them, and so they will grab at any gossip, the more salacious the better. But you are not going to have to face all this rubbish alone. We have decided that.”
“We have indeed,” Mrs. Bailey said firmly. She sniffed. “Lemon tarts? Is that what I smell?”
“Sugar biscuits with some lemon added,” Lydia said.
“They smell delicious. I never could resist lemon in sweet things,” Mrs. Bailey said. “Perhaps we can invite ourselves to sit down in your kitchen and be cozy for a little while. May we? And you must tell us if there is indeed anything of a courtship between you and the major. I must say you looked very good together last evening when you were dancing. I remarked upon it to the vicar after I had finished dancing myself. Perhaps this bit of bother will prod the major into coming to the point. Men can be very slow about such things. It took the vicar eight months to work up the courage to propose to me after everyone knew he would get there in the end. I was near to screaming with frustration. I dropped hints as heavy as bricks. But perhaps the major has already asked you?”
Lydia was plumping up the already plump cushions on the back of the sofa while her three friends were standing in a line with their backs to the window.
“I will go and make a pot of tea,” she said. “I will be delighted to have you help me eat some of the biscuits. I made a double batch.”
But before she could move away, they all heard the noisy clopping of hooves and rumbling of wheels and jingling of traces coming from outside, and all of them turned to look through the window. A grand traveling carriage was turning onto the drive to Hinsford Manor. Another carriage, even grander, with a bright crest emblazoned upon the door and a coachman and footman in colorful, smart livery up on the box, turned after it.
“Major Westcott has visitors,” Mrs. Bailey said unnecessarily.
“I have seen that carriage before,” Hannah said, wagging a finger at the second one. “It belongs to the Duke of Netherby. That is the ducal crest. The duchess is Major Westcott’s sister. Half sister. The legitimate one.”
“I wonder,” Denise said, “if he is expecting them. Has he said anything to you, Lydia?”
Lydia did not answer.
“They must be coming for his birthday,” Hannah said. “He is going to turn thirty next week, though he has not said a word to anyone. Tom knows, though. He has been talking about arranging some sort of party, perhaps even at the assembly rooms. It looks as if that is going to be unnecessary, however. Oh dear . . .”
A third carriage had come into sight and turned after the others onto the drive. And then a fourth.
The Westcotts were coming in force, Lydia thought. To shield him from any adverse effects of this stupid . . . scandal that was brewing and threatening to swallow her up. But they could not possibly know about that yet, could they? She did not doubt they soon would, however, and when they did they would close ranks about him and turn up their collective aristocratic nose at the very idea that he could be dragged into such trivial and sordid gossip, all over a mere nobody of a vicar’s widow.
Her bitterness surprised her. She did not even know any of them. It was just that her emotions were a bit on the raw side today. Well, more than a bit, to be perfectly honest.
Her friends were unabashedly watching the show proceeding beyond her garden fence. Yet a fifth carriage was approaching. Snowball stood by the front door, barking.
Lydia went into the kitchen. Well, she thought, it was all her own fault that she was not able to enjoy the show with the others.
Are you ever lonely?
Never, surely, had an impulsively asked question brought such ghastly consequences in its wake.
* * *
* * *
This would all have been highly coordinated, of course, Harry realized within seconds of clapping eyes upon the first carriage, followed by a second. By the time the others hove into sight, one after another, like some grand parade, he was not even surprised. How very foolish of him to have assumed that his family had simply given up after he had assured a few of them that he was definitely not going to London this spring. This was the Westcott family, after all. They never gave up on something once they had set their minds upon it. They just became more stubborn—and more creative.
And really the answer to this particular problem had not needed a great leap of imagination. If dear Harry would not go to them, then they would come to dear Harry. As clear as day. Yet Harry himself had not thought of it. Even though they have done it before. When Avery and Alexander had brought him home from Paris, they had expected to take him to London, where his mother and the whole family awaited him. He had insisted upon being brought here instead. But . . . the family had arrived
within days.
They had all arrived now too. Every last one of them. Plus a few extras for good measure.
So Mrs. Sullivan and the cook had been too busy taking inventory earlier to serve him anything more elaborate than a cold luncheon, had they? For the first time in living memory, it might be added. And Brown had felt impelled for no apparent reason to change out of his everyday, perfectly respectable butler’s attire into the smart uniform reserved for special occasions, of which there had been very few if any during the past four years, had he? And Mrs. Sullivan had been so intent upon getting the spring cleaning done as soon as possible this year that she had felt it necessary to hire all sorts of extra help during the past few weeks? And extra help in the kitchen in order to feed all the extra help?
No doubt his whole house had been cleaned and polished to within an inch of its life and every bed in every spare room made up while he had been almost wholly oblivious. Mrs. Sullivan would have counted upon his maleness making him quite unobservant about matters pertaining to the house. Clearly she knew her man well. Had his head gardener counted upon the same thing with regard to the park? It occurred to Harry now that he was looking for it that the lawns about the house were more than usually immaculate. And he would wager that if he were to wander from one flower bed to another, he would search in vain for either a weed or a drooping bloom.
His family all arrived within three hours of one another. It was a remarkable feat but not, obviously, above the organizing skills of the aunts—and probably his mother. And Wren and Anna and Elizabeth and all the rest of the women. It was no wonder he had not suspected a thing. The men of the family seemed singularly lacking in such devious organizational abilities. Though they were not necessarily an abject lot. There was the famous occasion, for example—Harry had been in the Peninsula at the time—when Avery had whisked Anna off one afternoon to marry her by special license at the very time when the usual committee was deep in the throes of organizing a grand ton wedding for them. It was one of Harry’s favorite family stories. One thumb up for the men of the family.