by Balogh, Mary
The dinner was excellent, the conversation pleasant. He had agreeable table companions. Only at the end of the meal was the subject of Gil raised when Riverdale got to his feet, a glass of wine in his hand.
“We Westcotts are always ready for an excuse to gather together,” he said when everyone had fallen silent and turned his way. “We are happy this evening to have Viscount Dirkson and Mr. Sawyer with us too. Perhaps none of us needed to be present in the judge’s chambers for the custody hearing a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps young Katy would have been released into Gil and Abigail’s care even if we had all stayed away. But I am glad we went. Even if our presence did not weigh with the judge, at least we demonstrated to the newly married couple that we care, that we consider them family, that we will concern ourselves with their well-being and stand with them whenever it is threatened for any reason. It is what we Westcotts do for our own. It is what no doubt you do for your own, Viscount Dirkson. We are happy that your son came with you this evening. Shall we drink a toast to family—to all branches of it no matter how slight the connection?”
They drank, even Adrian, who looked steadily at his father as he did so.
The ladies withdrew to the drawing room after the toast, leaving the men to their port and their male conversation. In the drawing room later, the Marchioness of Dorchester, Gil’s mother-in-law, came to sit beside Charles. She spoke of the difficulties her daughter had faced after the discovery that her father had married her mother bigamously. She spoke too of her conviction that her daughter’s marriage to Gil would be a happy one for both of them.
“Ma’am,” Charles said, “you do not have to convince me, if that is indeed what you are attempting to do. I agree with you.” They smiled at each other, two parents linked by the marriage of their offspring.
He conversed with other members of the family too, even the Dowager Countess of Riverdale after she had beckoned to him, almost like a queen summoning her subject. He was not fond of that particular lady, though he had had no dealings whatsoever with her for many years and it would be foolish to hold a grudge for what she had done more than half a lifetime ago. But even this evening she had annoyed him. He had seen her as soon as he walked into the drawing room earlier, perhaps because Matilda had been standing behind her chair beside the fireplace, and Matilda was the Westcott he had least wanted to encounter this evening. But as he had approached with Riverdale to pay his respects, she had bent over the back of the chair to adjust her mother’s shawl about her shoulders. The old lady had batted away her hands and admonished her not to fuss, a thinly disguised impatience in her voice, though she must have been aware that she might be overheard.
Or perhaps she had not been aware. Perhaps she was so accustomed to treating Matilda that way that it did not strike her as inappropriate behavior before a stranger. But then she had compounded her disregard for her daughter. Charles had acknowledged the older lady and turned his attention to Matilda and asked her how she did. But it was the mother who answered, leaving her daughter with nothing to say and perhaps feeling foolish. He had felt irritation with both of them, with the dowager for behaving as though her daughter did not even exist and could not possibly be the object of his inquiry, and with Matilda for meekly accepting it.
Was this the life for which she had renounced him all those years ago? But why should he care? It was all ancient history. Good God, he had had a full life since then. Matilda was living the life she had chosen, as the spinster daughter who had remained at home, the prop and stay of her parent in old age.
But who would care for Matilda in her old age?
He would have rather enjoyed the evening if she had not been there. But every moment he was aware of her and hated the fact. He had been aware during dinner and had deliberately avoided looking her way and perhaps meeting her glance. He had relaxed briefly while the men were alone together after dinner. But then he had been aware of her again in the drawing room.
He had no real idea why. He had been involved in a brief, passionate romance with her when they were both very young, had been rejected by her father when he had asked to pay his addresses to her, had been rejected by her afterward to the extent that she had told him firmly to go away and refused ever to speak to him or so much as look his way ever again. And that had been the end of that. It had been surely the sort of disappointment that most men, and probably many women too, suffered during their volatile youth. He had not pined with unrequited love for long. Maybe a few days. Perhaps a few weeks. No longer than that. He had promptly got on with his life.
And it had happened all of thirty-six years ago, for the love of God. Why was it, then, that he was so aware of her now and so irritated by her—and for her? Society was full of aging, fussy spinsters who were used by their relatives and lacked the spirit to fight back. But none of the others irritated him or aroused ire in him on their behalf.
She was standing over at one end of the room, talking with a couple of the other ladies. After they had moved away she remained there, straightening a pile of sheet music on top of the pianoforte. Then she looked across the room toward her mother. Perhaps, Charles thought, this needed to be settled—whatever this was. He strode toward the pianoforte before she could hurry away to see if her mother’s shawl needed straightening again.
“How do you do, Matilda?” he asked, emphasizing the one word. She had not been given the chance to answer the question earlier.
“Oh.” She looked into his eyes and kept her gaze there. “My mother thought you were addressing her.”
“Even though I was looking at you?” he said. “Does she imagine you are invisible?”
She drew breath and closed her mouth. Then she drew breath again when it must have become obvious to her that he was waiting for her answer. “I do not suppose so. I do not know what you expect me to say.”
“I expect you to tell me how you are,” he said. “It would be the courteous thing to do, to answer a question politely asked, would it not?”
She tipped her head slightly to one side, and he was instantly assailed by memory. It had been a characteristic gesture of hers when she was twenty, and apparently it still was.
“I am well,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Why did you not say so when I asked earlier?” And why was he pressing the point? He had no idea except that he was still feeling the irritation she seemed to arouse in him.
“My mother answered,” she said.
“To inform me that she was well,” he said. “Does she always answer questions that are addressed directly to you?” He frowned at her.
“It would perhaps have embarrassed her if she had realized it was me you were asking,” she said. “Charles, what is this about?”
It was a good question. He did not have an answer. She looked her age, he thought. But she was not actually a faded creature, as one might expect her to be under the circumstances. She was tall, still as straight backed as she had been as a young woman, her posture elegant, even proud. She was no longer slender. But she was well proportioned and elegantly dressed. Her face was virtually unlined, her hair still not noticeably graying. She was what might be called a handsome woman. She had been pretty as a girl, with a spark of animation to make her beautiful in his eyes. She might have married any of a dozen eligible men during that first Season of hers. She had not married him. She had not married anyone else either. Or during all the Seasons after that.
“Are you happy?” he asked her, his tone sounding abrupt even to his own ears.
She frowned but said nothing.
“I expected every time I opened the morning papers for a year or more afterward,” he said without stopping to explain what he meant by afterward, “to see a notice of your betrothal to someone rich and eligible and respectable. It never happened, even after I stopped specifically looking. Are you happy?”
“I scarcely know what to say,” she told him. “I make myself useful. My mother needs me, and it is a comfort to my sisters to know that she has const
ant companionship.”
He gazed steadily at her. He had his back to everyone else in the room. But he did not suppose his conversation with her was being particularly remarked upon. Why should it be? He had conversed with most of the rest of the family by this stage of the evening. Why not with Lady Matilda Westcott too? No one in this room with the exception of her mother would remember their brief, intense courtship. And even if anyone did, it was a long time ago.
What would life have been like if they had married? It was impossible to know. So much would have been different. Everything would have been. Gil would not exist. Neither would Adrian nor Barbara nor Jane. Nor any of his grandchildren. But perhaps other children and grandchildren who had never been born would have had existence in their stead.
“Do you live to serve, then?” he asked her.
“There are worse ways to spend one’s life,” she told him.
“Are there?” It was not really a question he expected her to answer. “Why did you not marry?”
She recoiled slightly before recovering and looking beyond him to smile briefly at someone he could not see. “Perhaps,” she said, “no one asked.”
“That is nonsense,” he said. “And untrue. I asked.”
Her eyes focused fully upon him again. “Perhaps there was no one I wished to marry,” she said.
“Not even me?”
He watched her draw a slow breath. “Your son—Gil—was born a mere year or so later,” she said. “Whether I wished to marry you is not the point. The point is that I was wise not to do so.”
That was inarguable. He had been known as wild even before he met her. But it had been the wildness of a very young man testing his wings and sowing a few wild oats, if that was not a hopeless mingling of metaphors. His real notoriety as an unsavory character and a rake came afterward. Would it have happened if he had married Matilda? He could not know the answer. He had not married her.
“It was wise, then,” he said, “not to marry anyone else either?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“But perhaps not? Do you regret remaining unmarried?” He could not seem to leave the matter alone.
“Regrets are pointless,” she said.
“Yes.” She did regret it, then?
“The tea tray has been brought in,” she said, looking beyond him again, “and Wren is pouring. I must go and add the correct amount of milk and sugar to my mother’s cup and take it to her. She likes her tea just so.”
And no one else was capable of doing it quite right? No one else knew the exact number of grains of sugar or drops of milk? He did not ask aloud. He stood aside and let her pass. As she did so he got a whiff of her perfume, so subtle that it could not be detected unless one was close to her. He was rocked by the memory of that same perfume and a shared kiss behind a potted aspidistra on the balcony outside a ballroom where they had danced a minuet together. A brief, passionate kiss. Lady Matilda Westcott had always—almost always—been carefully chaperoned by her mother.
Why would he remember that kiss when he had surely forgotten hundreds of others and the women with whom he had shared them? She had pressed her lips to his and brought her bosom against his chest, her spine arching inward beneath his hands. And he had smelled her perfume and been lost in sensual bliss—and an intense sexual desire that had never been fully satisfied.
Why was he remembering? Just because of that whiff of perfume?
Three
Matilda took her mother a cup of tea, made just the way she liked it, as well as a piece of cake, and stayed close even though there was no need to. Both her sister Louise and cousin Althea, Alexander’s mother, were seated close to her and engaging her in conversation. The younger women were agreeing that this evening’s gathering had been a good idea of Alexander’s and that it was encouraging that Viscount Dirkson had come and had even brought Mr. Sawyer, his son, with him.
“Well, I do not like it,” Matilda’s mother said. “All I can say is that I hope it is not a case of like father, like son. Viscount Dirkson was a crony of Humphrey’s, which is not a great recommendation even though Humphrey was my son.”
“Mama, do not upset yourself.” But when Matilda would have handed her mother the smelling salts she always kept in her reticule, her hand was pushed aside.
Mr. Adrian Sawyer spoke up at that exact moment. He was addressing his father, but loudly enough to draw everyone’s attention.
“Bertrand is getting up a party to go out to Kew Gardens tomorrow, Papa,” he said. “He wants me to go with them. Will you mind terribly if I do not after all accompany you to Tattersalls, as I promised I would? May we make it next week instead?”
“And who is to be of this party, pray, Bertrand?” Louise asked, raising her voice.
“Well, my sister and Adrian for sure, Aunt,” Bertrand replied. “And Boris.”
“And me,” added Jessica—Lady Jessica Archer, Louise’s daughter. “I may go, may I not, Mama, instead of going visiting with you?”
“And my particular friend, Charlotte Rigg, to make numbers even,” Estelle, Bertrand’s twin sister, said. “I am sure her mama will let her come. I believe she has designs upon Bertrand.” She laughed as he grimaced. “Her mama, that is, not Charlotte herself.”
“Oh bother,” Louise said. “That will mean I ought to accompany the party in order to reassure Mrs. Rigg that it is properly chaperoned. There are some ladies I particularly wished to call upon tomorrow.”
“Oh, Mama,” Jessica protested, “we will all be cousins and siblings. There will be absolutely no need of a chaperon. Besides, I am twenty-three years old.”
“A veritable fossil,” Avery, Duke of Netherby, said on a sigh, looking with lazy eyes at his half sister through his jeweled quizzing glass.
“But Miss Rigg is neither anyone’s sister nor anyone’s cousin,” Louise pointed out. “Nor is she twenty-three. I doubt she is even nineteen. And her mother will not be able to accompany her. I heard just this afternoon that she has taken to her bed with a nasty chill.”
“Well, bother,” Jessica said.
“I daresay I could accompany the young people,” Charles said, causing all eyes to turn his way—including Matilda’s, though she had been trying to ignore him, having been considerably discomposed by that strange conversation of theirs. Heavens, did he seriously believe the Westcott family, not to mention Mrs. Rigg, would consider him a suitable chaperon for a group of six that included three young ladies, none of whom was related to him? But he was not finished.
“Provided there is a lady who is prepared to come as cochaperon, of course,” he said.
“But if I go, as it seems I must,” Louise said, “you may save yourself the trouble, Lord Dirkson. I—”
“I suppose I could—” Viola began at the same time.
Charles cut them both off.
“Perhaps Lady Matilda Westcott?” he suggested, turning his eyes fully upon her. “If the dowager countess can spare her for a few hours, that is.”
What? What?
“Me?” Matilda said foolishly, spreading a hand over her bosom while she felt all eyes turn her way. Though she was really aware only of his eyes and of the disturbing feeling that she might well swoon. Yet she gave no thought to the smelling salts in her reticule.
“Oh yes, do come, Aunt Matilda,” Jessica cried, turning eagerly toward her. “It is really rather dreary to be on an outing with one’s own mama as chaperon.” She laughed and looked fondly at Louise. “No offense intended, Mama. I am sure you felt exactly the same way when you were my age.”
“Oh yes, please do come, Aunt,” added Bertrand, who had informed her a few weeks ago that she was a great gun after she had ridden in his sporting curricle all the way to Charles’s house without clinging or squawking in alarm. It had actually been one of the most exhilarating experiences of her life. She only wished he could have sprung the horses. “You can keep a strict chaperonly eye upon Estelle.” He grinned at his twin.
“Chaperonly?” Hi
s father, the Marquess of Dorchester, raised his eyebrows.
“Will you please come, Aunt Matilda?” Boris asked. “I have a hankering to see the pagoda at Kew. I have never been there.”
“May I add my pleas, ma’am?” Mr. Sawyer added, smiling sweetly at Matilda. “And you will be comfortable with Papa, will you not, since you know him?”
It seemed to Matilda that the room grew suddenly silent and that all eyes turned accusingly upon her. Perhaps she was imagining it. But her cheeks felt as though they had caught fire.
“It is a very slight acquaintance,” she hastened to explain. “I met your father, Mr. Sawyer, when my brother was still alive and I had just made my debut into society.” She wondered if he would remember her calling his father Charles rather than Lord Dirkson when she had appeared at his house with Bertrand a few weeks ago. And heavens, she willed him not to mention that visit. Her mother and the rest of the family would be scandalized at the very least. “We danced together at a few balls that Season. It was many years ago, as you may imagine. I would be delighted to play chaperon for Jessica and Estelle and Miss Rigg tomorrow if I may be spared. It is ages since I was last at Kew. Mama?”
“Of course you can be spared, Matilda,” her sister Mildred said. “I will spend the afternoon with Mama.”
“I do not need anyone to cosset me,” their mother protested.
“I will spend the afternoon with you anyway,” Mildred said. “You may cosset me if you prefer. At least I will be able to relax, knowing for once where Boris is. He will be under the eagle eye of my sister.”
“Mama,” Boris protested, clearly mortified.
“Then it is settled,” Bertrand said, rubbing his hands together. “We merely have to make arrangements for Charlotte Rigg to come with us.”
“Oh, there will be no problem over that,” Estelle assured him. “Not when her mother is too sick to take her anywhere herself and Aunt Matilda will be accompanying the party. There is no one more respectable.”