A Highly Respectable Marriage

by Sheila Walsh

  For the gentleman had turned slowly, book in hand ‒ and she had no difficulty whatever in recognizing the classical features and long inquisitorial nose of the gentleman who had so very nearly run her down in Brook Street on the previous day. He gave no indication whatever of remembering her as he subjected her once again to that comprehensive raking examination.

  ‘Miss Carlyon?’ The lazy voice held a faint query.

  Pandora, still desperately coming to terms with the situation, said blankly, ‘You are the Duke of Heron?’

  ‘I have that honour, ma’am.’ He inclined his distinguished head and fell unhelpfully silent once more.

  It was like struggling from the depths of some terrible nightmare only to find that it was not a dream at all, but dreadful reality. Thrown into fresh confusion, she blurted out: ‘I had expected a much older man …’

  ‘I am desolated to disappoint you.’ There was an undercurrent of sarcasm in the softly-spoken politeness. ‘Now ‒ if you would oblige me by coming to the point? I need hardly state that I am not in the habit of receiving unaccompanied females. In your case an exception was made as I am given to understand that you bear an important message from Lady Margerson?’

  Pandora sensed his disbelief and felt the blood surging into her face as she realized he had got quite the wrong impression.

  ‘Well … that is not precisely true,’ she stammered, made nervous by the derisive curl of his lip. She smoothed the palms of her hands surreptitiously against her skirts. ‘That is to say, Lady Margerson is not precisely aware that I am here … at this moment, you know … though it was her idea in the first place … following upon your talk with her the other evening …’ She saw his brow lift and hurried on. ‘About the position? Well, you did suggest, did you not, that she might find you someone? And I know it was her intention that we should meet first, only … my situation is such that I could not wait. In short, I decided to try my luck at first hand ‒ ’

  ‘Enough!’ He cut her short and stepped forward to pull the bell. ‘I have heard more than enough,’ he said with soft cutting sarcasm, ‘and I shall own myself very much astonished if Lady Margerson has ever laid eyes upon you!’

  The doors opened to reveal the impassive footman who had admitted her.

  ‘Miss Carlyon is leaving,’ said the Duke austerely and turned away with a curt dismissive nod to resume his perusal of the shelves.

  Pandora stood irresolute, staring at the arrogant back with mounting indignation. Perhaps she had made a sad botch of the interview, but she had expected to be accorded common politeness at the very least. To be thus accused and summarily dismissed seemed so grossly unfair that before she could bite on her tongue she had told him so in her clear light voice that trembled only the veriest bit from the force of her grievance.

  ‘I daresay it was wrong of me to come here as I did. I have been abroad until very recently and am not quite accustomed to London ways and the conventions governing such matters. If I am in error then you are fully justified in telling me so.’

  Pandora addressed her complaint to that particular area of those unyielding shoulders where his high-standing collar met a carefully contrived swirl of light brown hair. There was no immediately discernible reaction, but she rather thought that his neck would be stiff and red as fire if she could but see it. Aware that with every word she was damning her chances, she had by now come too far to turn back.

  ‘But though you are at perfect liberty to term me ignorant,’ she concluded indignantly, ‘what I am not is … is encroaching, or brass-faced … or any of those other things you are so obviously imagining, and if you had only been a little patient instead of flying up into the boughs, I could have shown you Lady Margerson’s letter …’ She began to fumble in her reticule.

  The Duke, his hand arrested in the act of withdrawing a book, appeared to sigh as he slid it back into place and came to tower over her, his tawny eyes blazing under the lazy lids with an intensity of emotion which she found impossible to fathom. Mastering a tendency to flinch, she looked back at him, her own gaze unblinking, and after what seemed an interminable interval he grunted, waved the waiting footman away with an impatient gesture and swung away to a desk set deep in the window recess. Here he flung himself into a chair and sprawled, legs outstretched, drumming the desk top with the fingers of one slim hand.

  He did not ask Pandora to sit; indeed, it occurred to her to wonder if he had forgotten her presence entirely. But she had grown up well used to the odd peremptory ways of men in positions of command, so the Duke’s manner did not trouble her unduly. What did unnerve her was his magnificence, for he was not quite like anyone she had ever encountered in her short but eventful life. And irrationally she blamed Lady Margerson for giving her quite the wrong impression, for he surely could not be much above his late thirties.

  The drumming ceased abruptly.

  ‘How old are you, Miss Carlyon?’

  The drawled question took her unawares. ‘Nineteen years,’ she said, ‘and a half.’ And then with scrupulous correctness, ‘Almost.’

  The sardonic lines about his mouth deepened fractionally. He sat forward, elbows resting on the desk top, his slender firm-set chin lightly propped on folded hands. He bent a particularly acute eye upon her.

  ‘And what makes you think you possess the … qualities I should demand in anyone chosen to fill this somewhat unusual position?’

  ‘I have travelled a lot ‒ and I speak fluent French,’ Pandora said promptly, mastering her surprise at his unexpected turnabout, and feeling that she was at last on firmer ground. ‘And Portuguese,’ she threw in for good measure.

  ‘Portuguese.’ He seemed to choke a little on the word. ‘French?’

  ‘Well, surely French must be a prime consideration … if the children are not to feel homesick?’

  ‘The children? Of course. How silly of me,’ he murmured faintly.

  ‘Oh, and I had almost forgot again ‒’ She thrust at him the letter she had been clutching. ‘If I had given you this when I first arrived, I daresay we should not have fallen to brangling,’ she concluded magnanimously.

  This time there was no mistaking that he sighed; it was a deep sound, betokening resignation.

  ‘You had better sit down, Miss Carlyon,’ he said, regarding her balefully. ‘This is obviously going to take longer than I thought.’

  Pandora glanced around and finding only a frivolously gilded spindle-legged chair close by, she drew it forward and perched nervously upon it, feeling totally out of sympathy with its mood in her sober dress. She had taken a great deal of trouble with her appearance. Neatness, she was sure (though her only experience of governesses was Miss Prossett, whom she had little wish to emulate), must be of considerable importance if one wished to make a good impression. Her hair had been the greatest problem; she had spent quite ten minutes with a damp brush quelling her straying locks into submission and braiding them neatly so that she might cram the black bonnet over them. She wiggled her face experimentally; she had an uncomfortable feeling that one or two strands had escaped and were even now lying against her cheek. Oh, well!

  The Duke did not linger over the contents of the letter. Having read it through, he opened his fingers and allowed it to flutter to the desk.

  ‘Very affecting,’ he drawled. ‘But it tells me little I wish to know, save that Lady Margerson obviously cherishes a tendresse for you, which I find intriguing. However ‒’ his voice hardened as he rocked back in his chair ‘‒ your reasons for coming here this morning intrigue me even more. What did you hope to achieve, I wonder? For unless you possess talents heretofore unrevealed, I confess your strategy confounds me utterly.’

  Pandora knew in that moment that any hopes she might have entertained were no more than wishful thinking ‒ and quite unexpectedly she was glad. She did not belong in this exquisite room in this exquisite house ‒ could not hope to match wits with this incomprehensible man, nor any longer did she wish to try.

  But be
fore she left, she would say her piece.

  She rose with great dignity ‒ a gesture somewhat marred by her misfortune in knocking over the little gilt chair as she did so. She set it straight with fingers that shook, not missing the weary irony in the Duke’s voice as he adjured her to let it be, and turned to face him.

  ‘My lord Duke,’ she began with scrupulous politeness. ‘My reasons for coming here this morning are now quite immaterial, because I no longer wish to be considered for any position you might have at your disposal. I was a fool to persevere ‒’ a touch of bitterness crept in here ‘‒ when you have made it abundantly clear from the first that you had not the least intention of taking my application seriously, which I must say I find odiously ungracious in you!’ Her glance held his with a desperate defiance. ‘I daresay you will not understand how humiliating it is to be obliged to endure such insufferably high-handed behaviour in the hope of securing employment. It is an experience which must be quite beyond the comprehension of someone who has no doubt been able to command every luxury from the cradle …’

  She had expected to be cut down before now, but the Duke’s face had assumed a curiously blank expression which was somehow more disturbing than open anger. It compelled her to rush to her conclusion before her courage failed her.

  ‘I have not of course had your advantages, but neither has it been my misfortune until recently to have to make my own way in the world and I am very conscious of having little to offer by way of experience, but ‒’ she drew a steadying breath ‘‒ an’ I had a hundred impeccable references to lay before you at this moment I would see myself at blue blazes rather than be employed by anyone as … as arrogantly unfeeling as you!’

  The silence which followed had the breath-holding quality of those final moments on the battlefield when both commanders attempt to stretch their opponent’s nerves to snapping point before ordering the bombardment to begin. Ample time for Pandora to reflect upon her probable fate. Could one, she wondered a little wildly, be locked up for insulting a peer of the realm in his own library?

  If only he would say something ‒ anything! She stole a glance at him and was not encouraged. An apology seemed somehow inadequate in the circumstances ‒ and anyway, she didn’t feel in the least sorry. Perhaps one should just leave …? She took a couple of tentative steps backwards, and his chair came down with a crash that made her flinch. She rushed nervously into speech.

  ‘With your leave, my lord Duke, I will go now. I do hope you will find a governess who meets with your requirements, though I pity her with all my heart ‒ as I pity those poor children placed in your care!’

  With this final thrust she dipped a hasty curtsy and turned on her heel, walking stiff-backed to the door. She had not taken more than a dozen paces when he began to laugh.

  It was such an unexpected ‒ such an unfeeling sound, that for an instant her step faltered. Then she went on. Let him ridicule her if it please him … she would not be drawn again, though angry tears blocked her throat.

  The doors opened silently at her coming. She passed through, head high, and as they closed behind her, the sound of his mocking laughter still echoed in her ears.

  The Duke of Heron continued to sit for several moments after the door closed behind his contentious visitor, a faint smile lingering around his mouth ‒ not the cynical contemptuous curling of the lip which Pandora had seen, but a smile of pure amusement which warmed his eyes and betrayed his appreciation of the ridiculous.

  Miss Pandora Carlyon ‒ aptly named, for a more disruptive young baggage he had seldom come across. He ought to have shown her the door at once, of course, but who could have guessed at the fire and eloquence so fiercely nurtured within that unprepossessing bosom. His lips quirked afresh at the memory. The set of her chin should have warned him, and her eyes ‒ disconcertingly direct eyes, he decided in retrospect.

  And then there was the curious matter of her connection with Lady Margerson, the nature of which could only be hazarded. What was clear, however, was that the old lady’s meanderings had implanted several wildly misconceived notions in the young girl’s mind.

  He supposed he might have disabused her, but it had been such an entertaining little episode, alleviating, if only for a short time, the boredom that so frequently plagued him.

  Chapter Three

  Out in the square a hack had just set down its fare. The driver was preparing to move off when he heard himself being hailed and turned in time to see a rake-thin slip of a girl break into a run, one hand clasped to her bonnet, an abigail close on her heels.

  ‘Please ‒ I wish to go to the Strand!’

  Eyes glittering with unshed tears challenged him with a fierceness that dared him to refuse. The abigail was biting her lip in a worried fashion and saying nothing. He shrugged good-naturedly and bade them ‘hop in’, and was rewarded with an unexpected lop-sided grin.

  The offices of Messrs Althrop, Pickering and Lewis, when found, exuded an air of shabby gentility. A cadaverous-looking clerk turned pale astonished eyes upon her and left his high stool in order to inform Mr Lewis of her arrival. By the time he returned moments later with instructions to usher her into that gentleman’s sanctum, Pandora, still smarting from the Duke’s cavalier treatment, was left in little doubt that she had once more incurred masculine disapproval. She told Cassie to wait and followed in his frosty wake.

  The elderly lawyer rose to greet her with a guarded politeness which persuaded her that he, too, shared his clerk’s opinion of young ladies who were so coming as to intrude themselves into so hallowed a domain. He shuffled the papers on his desk for an unconscionable time before placing his fingertips together in a prayerful way.

  ‘Believe me, my dear Miss Carlyon,’ he assured her, blinking over a pair of uncertainly perched spectacles as she explained the purpose of her visit, ‘you had much better leave the managing of your affairs to myself and Mr Hamilton until such time as your brother is able to take them in hand.’

  Pandora was in no mood to be so easily routed. ‘I have every confidence in your judgement, sir, but …’ She clasped her reticule resolutely. ‘Forgive my presumption, but are you well acquainted with Mr Hamilton?’

  The lawyer blinked more rapidly. ‘Not intimately, no. In fact, I believe I have met the gentleman but once …’

  Once, in Pandora’s opinion, was more than sufficient. ‘My father dubbed him a “whited sepulchre”,’ she said frankly. ‘And I cannot think that he would ever have countenanced his having the least say in the ordering of William’s education.’ She explained to him quickly what Frederick had in mind. ‘So that is why I have come to you, so that you may tell me exactly how Papa left things. Courtney is not the most communicative of people, nor is he at all businesslike,’ she added with sisterly candour, ‘and whenever I have attempted to clarify our situation with him, he has been incorrigibly vague. But you see ‒’ she leaned forward in her earnestness ‘‒ it is of the greatest importance that I know how matters stand before I actually take steps to leave the Hamiltons.’

  Pandora saw his shaggy eyebrows wobble alarmingly. ‘Oh, it was very good of you to have prevailed upon them to take us in when we first arrived in London with nowhere to stay, but it is not the best of arrangements, you know, and now that I have had time to adjust, I see that I must make a push to stand on my own feet. So you will help me, won’t you?’ She smiled at him.

  Mr Lewis was looking more than ever bemused. ‘Really, I don’t see … I am not at all sure …’ He began again. ‘Dear me, this is all most difficult ‒ ’

  ‘Because I am young and female?’ she returned as quick as light.

  ‘You are certainly a most forthright young lady,’ he acknowledged with a dry clearing of the throat. And, meeting her eyes, ‘Very like your late father, if I may say so.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Her smile became a grin. ‘I take that as a great compliment.’ She sat back with an expectant air and the lawyer shuffled his papers once more, took off his spectacles and
began to polish them with unusual vigour.

  ‘Well, now, as to your inheritance, Miss Carlyon ‒ all is simplicity itself. The amount is not great ‒ but I doubt that will come as any surprise to you?’ He replaced the spectacles with elaborate care, and peered at the sheet of paper under his hand. ‘It is in the form of an annuity, to be administered by me until your brother, Courtney, attains the age of twenty-five ‒ the said annuity to be apportioned as to seven-eighths divided in equal parts between your two brothers, and one-eighth part to your good self …’ His voice wavered between apology and embarrassment, but Pandora’s brow remained untroubled.

  ‘It is as I expected,’ she assured him. ‘The boys have their way to make in the world, after all ‒ and Papa knew that they would never see me wanting. And so long as there is enough to send William to a good school … I had hoped for Charterhouse?’

  Mr Lewis, in whose eyes there had now dawned considerable respect, grew pensive. ‘Ah-h … as to that …’

  Pandora’s spirits plummeted. ‘You think they would not take him?’ she asked bluntly, and saw that she had embarrassed him once more.

  ‘No, no, nothing of the kind, dear young lady! More simply, I fear that it may be beyond our means.’

  ‘Even with my eighth thrown in?’

  His shaggy brows shot up, but he only said: ‘Even then, ma’am,’ adding with a certain diffidence: ‘But perhaps … if you would leave the matter in my hands?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, it occurs to me that now is not the ideal time to place William in school. But it might be possible to find someone, a cleric, perhaps, or a retired schoolmaster, who would be prepared to take William into his home and tutor him until the autumn … and then we can see about school. What do you think?’

  Pandora chewed her lip in furious thought. It was not precisely what she had hoped for, but ‒ ‘Just so long as we can be sure that this tutor will be kind to William?’ she said.