by Fiona Hill
“You wrong him! Father will understand. He does not judge men by rumour—”
“No, he will never allow it, and he will be right. Yes, quite right. No matter who he thought I was, nor how well he might think of me, your reputation would inevitably suffer by the connection, and I—I could not bear to bruise such a delicate flower.”
“He would be a beast not to allow it!” asserted Isabella.
De Guere turned to her again, his eyes shining with fresh tears. He straightened himself and held out both hands to her. “So we must harden ourselves to it, my poor girl! This is as much happiness as we have been allowed. It was more than ever we knew before! We must be content.”
But she refused to take the hands offered in friendship. “No. I do not accept that. I will not resign myself to that. Dear sir—”
“Say ‘Jeffery,’ just once, please!”
“Jeffery,” she breathed, and he found himself of a sudden so deeply overcome that he simply had to gather her up again and kiss her with a frightful ardour. This time he opened her lips a little with the tip of his warm tongue. Isabella pulled back in surprise, then yielded when he did not let go. Delicious, delicious game! thought Jeffery, and he dropped her again from his embrace.
“Now it is over,” he said dully.
“Please, do not say so!” She put an anxious hand up to his hair and touched it shyly. “Promise me you will meet me again.”
He shrugged and smiled. “If we meet again, as we may do, in some drawing-room or other…well—”
“No no, I mean that you will come to see me. Meet me in public, if you do not care to come to my father’s home. Meet me—meet me in the topmost gallery at Lackington Allen’s,” she burst out on a second inspiration, for the image of that quiet, retired spot had come to her in a flash. “Say you will. Meet me tomorrow. No,” she corrected, realizing that the following day was Sunday, “come on Monday. Be there, at three o’clock. Oh, say you will not fail me. I must think this out and speak to you again. Jeffery!”
This plea is the one that resulted in the kiss that, in turn, resulted in Isabella’s appearing in the corridor with cheeks aflame and hair streaming. This time when his mouth met hers she had already opened her lips to him, and now he thrust his hands so deeply into her curls that a number of pins dropped out. Satisfied that she would see him again and painfully aware that she had been absent from the others much too long, Isabella ended the interview herself by dancing from his arms and rushing headlong out the door. If de Guere could have stopped her he would have, for she was much in need of tidying up, but she had gone too swiftly. He still stood in the shadowy room a moment later when Lord Marchmont strode in with an oath upon his lips. Lady Elizabeth had caught Isabella in her flight, and the girl had blushed so deeply that Lord Marchmont knew she must have left some gentleman in the library behind her. The truth occurred to him in an instant, and as he left the older sister to care for the younger he bitterly cursed his cousin.
“Damn you!” ran the spoken imprecation; the silent one was stronger. “What the devil have you done to that girl?”
“Girl?” echoed de Guere innocently.
Lord Marchmont snatched up the candle and employed it to light two lamps over the mantelshelf. Thinking of the footman in the hall a few feet away, he kept his voice low, but he nevertheless achieved a certain intensity. “The girl,” he hissed, “is Lady Isabella Stanbroke. You will stay away from her in the future, or I swear to you I will call you out. Do you understand me? I will act for her as if she were Emilia herself.”
“You have an interest in her?” Jeffery asked as if mildly intrigued.
“That is nothing to you.”
“Oh!” said the other, suddenly recalling the tableau of Marchmont and Elizabeth at the pianoforte as he had left the drawing-room. He had been careful to look out for Marchmont before quitting that place in Isabella’s company. “You have an interest in the family,” he divined.
“I tell you, it is nothing to you.”
“Nice family,” remarked de Guere lightly, but his casual manner hid the beginning of a very interesting train of thought.
“You are warned, and warned again,” answered Marchmont powerfully. “If I hear one word of this anywhere—or if it comes to my ears that you have so much as spoken to Lady Isabella again—I will meet you on Putney Heath at dawn the next morning.”
Sir Jeffery raised an eyebrow. “Always happy to meet you anywhere, old man,” he said, and smiled.
Lord Marchmont turned and left.
Lady Elizabeth meanwhile had taken Isabella firmly by the arm and was shepherding her to an upstairs bedroom. “My dear sister,” she had begun, then stopped as she realized servants were everywhere. When they had reached the quiet safety of Emilia’s sitting-room, she took up again where she had left off. “My dear sister,” she said, on a note in which severity sounded like a gong, “what on earth can have possessed you to wander off like that? Who led you from the drawing-room? With whom have you been—talking?” she demanded, snatching up one of Emilia’s brushes and beginning to straighten Bella’s coiffure. “Please tell me you did not leave the drawing-room in his company! I had much rather believe you merely wandered into his clutches.”
“My dear Elizabeth, I cannot think why you suppose I was with anyone else at all. I simply felt a little faint—ask Amy or Emilia if I did not,” she suggested, gaining momentum, “and slipped from the drawing-room for a little air.”
“You must have slipped, indeed,” said the other drily, “for by the look of your hair you have been rolling on the floor for some time. Come, my pet, and make a clean breast of it. Who was it?”
But Isabella had not studied how to be a heroine for so many years only to melt under so paltry an interrogation as this. “You seem to have men on the brain just lately, Lizzie,” she said. “You have certainly imagined this one.”
Lady Elizabeth set down the brush and stared at her. “Are you actually going to lie to me? Well, you little beast! What you want, in my opinion, is to be eviscerated, stuffed and placed on display. What a spectacle you make of yourself! You understand, of course, that if you do not confide in me I shall be obliged to tell Mother.”
Isabella was on the point of forbidding such a course when her heroinely instincts reawoke and substituted, “But Elizabeth, there is nothing to tell. I assure you, you refine upon it too much.”
“Refine upon it too much! I know the marks of clutches when I see them, and I am looking at them right now. If you won’t tell me whose clutches, and how you came to fall into them, I shall—I shall—” she faltered.
“Yes?”
“Well, at the least I shall tell Charlie.”
Isabella shrugged.
“Yes, I daresay you don’t care if I tell him or not. Charlie wouldn’t notice a gorilla in Kensington Gardens if it came up and asked him the way to Lancaster Gate. Very well then, I shall have to tell Papa.”
With rather more difficulty, Bella shrugged again.
Lizzie eyed her suspiciously. “Well, at least your cheeks are now near their normal colour,” she observed, “and I must say I have done quite well with your hair. Promise me if I permit you to return to the drawing-room you will not jump into anyone’s arms and beg him to tousle your golden curls. Do you think you can manage that?”
“Elizabeth, sometimes you are really insufferable,” Isabella replied with a sneer. “You talk as if you owned me. Allow me to remind you that I was not the one who sat sniveling up at Lord Marchmont while the rest of the company waited for more music.”
Elizabeth decided this would be a good time to quit the room.
“I thought that would strike a chord,” murmured Isabella as the two girls made for the doorway. “Is Marchmont really so fascinating? You looked as if you could see no one but him.”
“Bella, you are beginning to annoy me,” said Lizzie in a low tone. They descended the stairs together.
“Oh, my heart! You break it with your crushing words.�
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“Keep still, can’t you?”
“Goodness me, and just a few minutes ago you were so eager to talk!”
Elizabeth glared at her. “You had better pray I keep my mouth shut on the way home,” she said.
“As far as I am concerned the world would be a better place if you kept your mouth shut everywhere,” her fond sister returned, tacking a dazzling smile on to the end of this retort since they had now reached the drawing-room and were in full view of the others. The rest of the evening passed without incident (in fact it was all Isabella could do to stay awake, since Sir Jeffery had inexplicably left the party), but it is worth noting that for all her threats and acid grumblings Lady Elizabeth did not say anything at all in the carriage on the way home. There is a special honour among thieves, they say, and no matter how much these sisters might privately abuse each other, before the rest of the family they pretty much kept their peace.
The following Monday Lord Marchmont was again holding the reins in his well-sprung curricle. His companion this time was not Lord Warrington Weld but rather his sister Emilia. As if to make up for the gentleman’s absence, however, they were speaking of him as they went—at least, Lord Marchmont was speaking of him, while Lady Emilia for her part did a great deal of nodding. “He’s a capital fellow, don’t you think?” the earl had been saying over the noise of the traffic and the horses’ hooves. “Not an unkind bone in his body, and three times as honest as the ordinary man. Don’t you agree?”
Emilia, thus prodded, said “Yes.” At the same time she wondered what was up. She was pleased as could be that Jemmy had suggested this excursion to the Earl of Trevor’s house—for it was there they were going, and only two days after her own dinner-party—and she did not mind at all being solicited to accompany him, but this Warrington Weld line of questioning confused her. When Jemmy tried to be devious he was as transparent as glass: he simply hadn’t the knack. It was clear to Emilia that something was on his mind, but what it was she could not yet be sure. The suggestions continued:
“Do you know, when I first saw him—up in Hull, it was, when the regiment was assembling—I did not care for him at all. No, to be truthful, I thought him a rather shallow, foolish sort of fellow. It was only as I came to know him better, don’t you see, that I learned his real value. Of course, he saved my life in Belgium…a thing like that is bound to prejudice a man. But he is a fine fellow, don’t you think?”
He was looking at her, and Emilia (who feared for her life if Marchmont would not pay a little attention to the road) was again obliged to say “Yes.”
“His people are all dead, you know,” Jemmy went on, deigning at the last moment to yield the right of way to a large brick edifice, while Emilia gasped. “It’s a rotten shame. A man like that ought to have some family, don’t you think?”
This time Emmy said “Yes” before he began to stare at her for an answer. Really, this conversation was most mysterious!
“He comes of good stock, too. An old Yorkshire family, I believe. The barony was created in the seventeenth century, if I remember correctly. Their motto is Foy, just Foy. ‘Faith,’ don’t you know. I like that. Simple and succinct.”
“Splendid,” said her ladyship rather weakly; then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she broke forth, “Dearest Jemmy, will you not tell me why we are having this most enthralling conversation? I have said I like your friend—I should like anyone who had saved your life, come to that—but are we to talk of him all the way to Grosvenor Square?”
“I merely wished to point out,” said Marchmont not very convincingly, “that despite Warrington’s not having very much money, he would make a pretty good—er, he is a very good fellow.”
“James,” Emilia suddenly exclaimed, seeing light, “I am ashamed of you. Look at me,” she commanded, then instantly revised, “No, don’t look at me, I pray you. You are already doing that entirely too often. But James! You are trying to make a match, aren’t you? Oh, I don’t know when I’ve been so surprised.”
“I am not trying to—”
“Oh yes you are. Don’t deny it, you only make it worse. You are hoping I shall marry your Lord Weld so you won’t have to marry yourself, aren’t you? You are planning to give him lots of money so we can set up housekeeping together and you’ll let Jeffery take Six Stones, and—Jemmy, I am so ashamed of you I could jump right out of this carriage.”
“I never even thought—”
“You did, you did, you coward! Caitiff! I never dreamed you could stoop so low. Let Six Stones pass out of the family after four centuries, just so you won’t be obliged— And the title to lapse! James, I am embarrassed to know you.”
“My dear girl, you are well off target, believe me,” Lord Marchmont finally managed to say, while his driving grew ever more erratic. “One thing I am not is a coward, and if I must marry, then so be it, I marry. I have already promised you that.”
“You have not!” she interrupted.
“I have.”
“Have not. Promise now,” she cried, even in her emotion taking care to press this interesting advantage home.
“Very well, then, I promise now. I will marry.”
“When?”
“When? Soon!”
“But when, when? I want to know when. Jemmy, you’re thirty-eight years old. In two years you will be forty—”
“Brilliant! Tell me, how did you deduce that?”
“And forty is old,” she continued, ignoring him. “Old! Your children will never know you—”
“What, will you kill me off so soon? My God, women are violent!”
“And you will leave your wife to care for them all alone…When will you marry, Jemmy? Tell me you will do it within the year.”
“How can I promise such a thing?”
“Just do, and you will find a way.”
“I cannot.”
“Then before you are forty. That is reasonable! Say you will do so before you are forty, and I shall be content.”
Lord Marchmont looked surly. “How we get into these wrangles,” he remarked, “I have no idea. One moment we are making our way calmly through the town—”
“Calmly!”
“And the next you are practically wrestling me to the ground. Very well, if you insist, I promise to marry before I am forty if I can possibly, possibly do so. Are you satisfied?”
“Yes. Thank you, Jemmy,” said she, as charmingly and meekly as can be imagined.
“If you want to know why I was talking about Weld,” he muttered a minute later, “it was nothing to do with saving myself from marriage.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, it wasn’t. Quite the contrary, in fact, I was thinking of saving you from spinsterhood.”
“Were you?” She considered this. “But I like spinsterhood!”
The earl said “Faugh” in such a way as to make it very plain there were still a few things in this world about which you could not fool an Earl of Marchmont.
“But I do like it,” she said earnestly as they drew up to the door of Haddon House. “It suits me very well. You know that.”
The earl said “Hmmm” in much the same tone as he had said “Faugh.”
“You can Faugh and Hmmm me all you like,” Emmy said, as he helped her from the curricle, “but you won’t be able to fob me off on your poor innocent Weld. Who commissioned you to play Cupid anyhow? It certainly becomes you ill.”
“No one commissioned me,” he said, while they waited for the front doors to be opened. “Only I do not like to see the most excellent woman I know spend her entire life alone.”
“I am this most excellent woman, I suppose?” she inquired, still sharp but beginning to soften a little.
“You are.”
“Well, I thank you for your concern, my dear, but I assure you it is not appropriate. As for Weld I see no reason to go to the length of marrying him merely to secure the advantage of his company. I like him just as he is, and just where he is.”
Lord Marchmont was denied the opportunity to answer as they were just then ushered into the hall of Haddon House. “Lord and Lady Trevor,” said Emilia, in answer to the butler’s inquiring glance, but Lord Marchmont, handing the man his card, had said at the same moment, “Lady Elizabeth, if you please,” and the butler hesitated, confused.
“I am sure we would like to see all of them,” said Emilia after a moment, with a wide, amused glance at her suddenly ardent brother.
“Yes, of course,” said he to the servant. “Halcot, too, if he is here. And Lady Isabella.”
“And Miss Lewis,” added Emilia for good measure.
“Yes, indeed, why not make it a rout party while we are about it?” grumbled Marchmont to her privately, while the butler showed them into the Oriental Saloon and asked them to wait.
“I believe Lady Isabella and Miss Lewis have gone out,” said he, neither he nor the callers dreaming of why this was, “but I shall see about the others, your lordship. Your la’ship,” he added, bowing and disappearing.
“My dear, I feel suddenly de trop,” Emilia remarked gaily, when they were alone. “I shall make myself useful by distracting the others, if I can, while you sit tête-à-tête with Lizzie.”
She was spared the retort she deserved by the sudden entrance into the saloon of Lord Halcot. “Heydey, what’s this?” he cried pleasantly as he came in. “Just saw Bolton in the hall, and he said you’d called. I’m sure m’mother will be down in a moment. Sherry? Negus, Lady Emilia?”
Refreshments were arranged.
“Glad I caught you. I’ve just been out myself,” went on the genial Charles. “Visiting with someone I met at your house, in fact—your cousin, I think. Sir Jeffery de Guere. Clever chap, don’t you think?”
Lady Emilia, who felt as though someone had thrown something at her, attempted to control herself. “To be honest, we do not see much of Jeffery. He is a little…wild.”
“Halcot,” said Marchmont in a fatherly way his ten years seniority perhaps entitled him to, “I’m sure you’re aware that Sir Jeffery…well, he’s not…in short, he’s not a person you’d like your sisters to know too awfully well.” His concern had made him blunt, and he continued even more plainly. “The fact is, he was only present at Emilia’s party the other night because of—because of a coincidence.”