A Highly Respectable Marriage

by Sheila Walsh

  A Highly Respectable Marriage

  Sheila Walsh

  Copyright © 2019 The Estate of Sheila Walsh

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1983

  www.wyndhambooks.com/sheila-walsh

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork images: © Period Images / Apostrophe, Kiev Victor (Shutterstock)

  Cover design: © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Preview: The Runaway Bride by Sheila Walsh

  For Margaret. And her mother, without whom all this would take much longer.

  Chapter One

  ‘Well, of course you shall have a letter of recommendation, my love, if you really feel that it will answer …’

  Lady Margerson’s gentle voice held its habitual note of vagueness.

  ‘Only I cannot help thinking that it is not precisely what your poor dear mama would have wished …’

  One plump hand clutched ineffectually at a shawl of fine Norwich silk whilst the other sought absently for the comfit dish which was always placed conveniently close to the sofa.

  Pandora Carlyon, leaning forward to steer the dish unobtrusively towards those indecisively hovering fingers, thought Lady Margerson the most indolent person she had ever known. Had she not been so certain that a kindly heart beat within that immense bosom, such slothfulness would have shocked her deeply.

  But no one could be offended by Lady Margerson ‒ there was something ineffably endearing about her vagueness. Pandora suspected it of being little more than a convenient pose adopted that she might not be obliged to make the least push to involve herself in anything of a disagreeable or energetic nature.

  Her task accomplished, Pandora sat back, pushing into place an escaping strand of the fair hair which so obstinately refused to take curl or even remain neatly braided for any length of time.

  ‘But Mama is no longer with us, dear ma’am, nor Papa either, for that matter,’ she argued with determined cheerfulness, her hands clasped about her knees in a manner as youthful as it was earnest. ‘Although Courtney is now head of the family, we are agreed that he must finish his term at Oxford, in spite of having his head filled with notions of buying a pair of colours and following in Papa’s footsteps at the first opportunity ‒’ here a tiny frown creased her brow ‘‒ though how that is to be managed I cannot at present think, for there is William to be considered too.’

  Lady Margerson was almost shaken from her indolence by an involuntary start of indignation. She had grown quite fond of Pandora in the short time they had been acquainted; she could even admire the indomitable spirit which had enabled the young girl to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and strive to hold her family together in circumstances which would have crushed the daughters of most of her friends.

  And in so far as her ladyship could bring herself to own to an obligation, she felt it incumbent upon herself to lend at least her moral support to this daughter of her late godchild. (Though what had possessed Arabella to marry a widowed colonel of artillery and go traipsing around battlefields in his wake with her children in train must for ever remain a mystery. It had come as no surprise to her ladyship when a fever had finally carried off poor Arabella.)

  But now here was Pandora with her disconcertingly candid grey eyes and little else to distinguish her narrow sensitive face except for the slight dusting of freckles over the bridge of a straight, no-nonsense sort of a nose (and they could hardly be accounted a bonus!). Not a dissembling bone in her body. Quite unlike her beautiful mother, but bent upon behaving every bit as foolishly, worrying over her brothers’ needs without a thought for herself. And as for the elder boy’s wishing to enter the Army … after all the scandal-broth that had surrounded Colonel Carlyon’s unfortunate demise not six months since, such a step seemed foolish beyond belief!

  ‘One would suppose your family to have had its fill of the Army,’ she said with unaccustomed crispness, and immediately wished the words unsaid as she saw the colour come and go in the expressive young face.

  But the answer came clear and steady. ‘Oh, as to that, ma’am, I believe that events have only made Courtney the more keen to prove himself.’

  ‘That is very well if he had only himself to consider.’ Lady Margerson, now unwittingly launched upon a line of reasoning, felt obliged to follow it through. ‘But your brother is, as you have said, the head of your little family now ‒ and if you are really minded to quit Mrs Hamilton’s protection, which I am bound to say I think decidedly foolish in you for, although she don’t move in first circles, she can still claim a fairly distinguished acquaintance, and she is, after all, your sister ‒’

  ‘My half-sister.’ Pandora was quick to make the correction. ‘But we had not met above twice ‒ and that many years ago ‒ until we came back to England after Papa’s death. It was Papa’s lawyer, Mr Lewis, who arranged that we should stay with the Hamiltons. I daresay it seemed the ideal answer to him, and besides, there was no other course immediately open to us ‒ Courtney was in rooms at Oxford and thus unable to help and Mr Lewis thought it quite improper that I should take rooms for William and myself.’

  ‘So I should hope, my love!’

  Pandora smiled at the horror evident in Lady Margerson’s voice.

  ‘Well, I can’t see why, except that of course the funds might not have run to it. However, Octavia it had to be. But we have nothing in common, you know. She is all of ten years my senior and is for ever prosing on about how we should “thank heaven fasting” that she and Frederick received us so generously into their home when the plain fact is that they would not house us for one moment longer than it suited them to do so. Only I believe Mr Lewis came to some arrangement with Frederick that our annuity is paid to him whilst we remain, and though
I cannot think it amounts to a great deal, Frederick is appallingly clutch-fisted! And Octavia makes shameless use of one and has the unerring knack of making one feel beholden to her for the merest necessities in a way that is fast becoming insupportable!’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ sighed her ladyship, shrinking a little from the light of battle in her young companion’s eye. ‘Well, if that is true ‒’

  ‘Besides which,’ Pandora concluded with the triumphant air of a magician producing his pièce de résistance, ‘she is constantly picking on poor William. He tries so very hard not to vex her, but it is not easy for a boy of ten to adjust to her notions of propriety when he has been used to a vastly different way of life.’

  Lady Margerson found herself recalling all too vividly the one and only occasion upon which Pandora had brought her younger brother on a morning call. He had tried very hard then not to fidget with her collection of Sèvres figurines until her nerves were set to jangling. She had little opinion of Octavia Hamilton ‒ a hard, encroaching female if she ever saw one, and as different from Pandora as could be imagined ‒ but just for an instant she owned to a pang of fellow feeling for Pandora’s half-sister.

  ‘I cannot see how leaving Mrs Hamilton’s roof will solve your difficulty in that respect,’ she objected faintly. ‘You can hardly hope to take William with you, should you succeed in securing a position, of whatever kind.’

  She had touched upon the one obvious flaw in Pandora’s reasoning. The young girl rose agitatedly and walked away a little, then came back to stand looking down anxiously at Lady Margerson.

  ‘Yes, well ‒ I’ll allow that I have not as yet quite worked out how that may be overcome,’ she acknowledged. And then, with renewed firmness, ‘But I mean to do so. The answer, of course, is for Will to go to school, and that in turn depends upon the amount of our annuity. I am not precisely certain at the moment how much we may count upon. Mr Lewis spoke to Courtney about it, but that was small use since Courtney hasn’t a grain of interest in money matters. He was quite irritatingly vague when I asked him to explain and until now I have hesitated to interfere. But I’m sure it only requires a little resolution, and if we are pinched I have several pieces of jewellery of Mama’s which I can sell, so you see we are not quite destitute.’

  Lady Margerson looked at her with something approaching exasperation. Could she think of nothing but her wretched brothers? Standing there in her simple high-waisted mourning dress which emphasized the thinness of her figure, she looked little more than a long beanpole of a child ‒ and an undernourished child at that ‒ but there was an obstinate set to Pandora’s chin which belied her apparent frailty and Lady Margerson found herself wondering, not for the first time, at the stamina which had enabled her to follow the drum all those years.

  ‘But your own prospects, my love?’ she wailed. ‘Only consider ‒ if you do as you suggest, it will quite ruin your own chances of making a respectable marriage!’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Pandora laughed. ‘My dear ma’am, I cannot allow that to be a consideration, for who would have me? With no portion to speak of, and no possible claims to beauty by way of compensation, I must be the least eligible of creatures!’

  This was so close to the truth that Lady Margerson could find no immediately convincing argument to refute it. Really, it was quite tiresome to be obliged to stir oneself, but there seemed no other way. It crossed her mind briefly that she might take Pandora for a companion herself; to be sure, she was a very capable girl and could well prove invaluable, but the spectre of William loomed ominously and she put the thought from her. Still, there might well be others less sensitive to the presence of a restless young boy.

  ‘Very well, child. I will furnish you with this letter, but do not, I beg of you, act precipitately. I have any number of friends and might yet come up with a more fitting solution to your little problem.’ She brightened momentarily. ‘There is Heron, of course, though that may be flying a trifle high …’

  ‘Heron?’ Pandora queried.

  ‘The Duke of Heron, my love. You must have heard of him! Oh, well, perhaps not … but I’ll warrant Mrs Hamilton has, for he is quite the most talked of man in London at the present.’ Just for a moment Lady Margerson’s gentle features took on a look of almost malicious amusement. ‘Such a hobble to find himself in … saddled with two young children ‒ and French children at that! You may imagine how that has set all the gabble-grinders by the ears!’

  Since Pandora could not imagine anything of the kind, she sighed and wished the old lady were not so prone to wandering from the point.

  ‘There can be no denying, of course, that he adored their mother, or that his relationship with her was not somewhat unusual. Mariette de Choille, you see, was the daughter of a widowed French émigrée who fled the Revolution with Heron’s maternal grandmother, the Comtesse de Valière … in fact, Heron went with his father to Paris to spirit them from under the noses of those dreadful sansculottes … he was but a boy at the time and I remember that we all thought it foolhardy but prodigiously romantic!’

  Pandora smiled and tried to look interested.

  ‘Madame de Choille was sickly after the birth of her daughter, and when she finally passed away, Mariette was brought up by the Comtesse. At seventeen she was a beauty ‒’ the old lady sighed ‘‒ and Heron so in love with her! But alas, she proved sadly wilful and flighty. She spurned his offer of marriage, and flirted shamelessly with every disreputable rake who looked her way ‒ and many did! Finally she quarrelled irrevocably with the Comtesse and Heron, and ran away. Her name was linked with several gentlemen thereafter until at last we learned that she was living with a French royal duke … and still later, that there were children! And now she is dead, poor wicked girl!’

  If only Lady Margerson could have been persuaded to write the letter earlier, Pandora fretted, it might be possible to make one’s excuses and leave. But the letter was essential to her plans, and if she didn’t hold her ladyship to it now …

  ‘No one is clear as to why Heron has accepted responsibility for Mariette’s children, but to infer that they are his side-slips, as some are now doing, is a great piece of nonsense! I was quizzing him about it at Sybil Gresham’s levée only last evening … well, I have known him from the cradle, you know, and may take liberties not accorded to everyone …’

  With her ladyship’s peroration now dwindling inevitably into vague chit-chat about her cronies, Pandora turned her attention to the various options open to her. She had formed the habit of removing Frederick Hamilton’s Morning Post from the breakfast room when she was sure he had finished with it, so that she might scan the columns of advertisements. Only this morning there had been one requiring the services of a genteel young woman for the post of companion, and two for governesses, but all were well out of London and all stipulated the need for references.

  ‘… and finally he said to me, “Well then, Lady M., you had best find me someone!” I daresay he was only funning, but the more I consider it, the more I see how splendidly it would answer, solving his difficulties as well as yours.’

  Pandora’s wandering thoughts came back to the present in time to hear the old lady conclude: ‘Yes, indeed … I believe I really must arrange for you to meet Heron!’ She wondered briefly if she had missed anything of importance but dare not ask for fear of setting Lady Margerson off again.

  On the way back to Brook Street with the letter safely tucked in her reticule, however, little threads of her ladyship’s meandering conversation strung themselves together in her mind, and hope began to stir. If she had remembered it aright there was a friend ‒ a duke, who had become guardian to two French children and might be in need of someone to care for them … Excitement quickened her step and the little abigail who accompanied her was several times obliged to run in order to keep up with her.

  Upon reaching Brook Street, Pandora stepped out to cross the road, still lost in thought and at the very same moment a horseman rounded the corner at a brisk canter.r />
  For one terrifying instant she stood transfixed by the gleaming muscles that rippled across the shoulders of the powerful black hunter as it bore down upon her, nostrils snorting with its wild unease.

  The abigail screamed, the rider uttered a furious expletive and just when it seemed that nothing could save Pandora, the horse, superbly controlled, swerved and was reined in a tight circle.

  Shoulder capes flapping, the rider loomed above her, contemptuous anger in the heavy-lidded eyes that raked her comprehensively from head to toe, killing the apology that hovered on her lips before it could find utterance. For a moment it seemed that he would demolish her with a tirade of abuse but as she glared back at him defiantly he appeared to think better of it. With an abrupt dismissive gesture he wheeled the restive horse full circle once more and left her staring after his retreating back as the hoofbeats gradually faded away into silence.

  ‘Well, really!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, miss!’ breathed the abigail on a stifled sob. ‘You might’ve been killed!’

  ‘Nonsense, Cassie!’ said Pandora bracingly, ignoring the traitorous trembling in her knees. ‘Some people,’ she declared with a sweeping disregard for her own culpability, ‘are not fit to be on the road!’

  It was in this same pugnacious mood that she entered the Hamiltons’ house and at once sensed an atmosphere that was becoming all too familiar. There was no sign of William, who was usually to be found lurking somewhere close at hand watching for her return. Schooling her feelings and her temper, she remarked upon his absence to Binns as she stripped off her gloves and prepared to mount the stair.

  ‘I regret to say, miss, that young Master William has been banished to his room ‒ following upon an unfortunate incident concerning the use of his catapult.’

  ‘Oh, Binns! He didn’t break another window?’

  ‘No, miss.’ The butler’s manner was the very model of correctness, but anyone looking closely might have detected a faint gleam behind the eyes which betrayed where his sympathies lay. ‘This time, I fear, the damage was of a more personal nature and involved Miss Eliza. An accident, I feel sure,’ he hastened to add. ‘It could not be otherwise. And Miss Eliza, I am relieved to say, sustained no lasting harm beyond a slight cut ‒ though it did bleed quite alarmingly at first, which naturally sent Madam into one of her acute spasms, so that what with one thing and another, Dr Marston had to be sent for.’