The Stanbroke Girls

by Fiona Hill

  “She gave you permission to speak to Lord Trevor? Well for heaven’s sake, what do you suppose she meant by that except—”

  “Emmy, it isn’t as simple as you think! I tell you she looked wretched the last time I—”

  “When was that?”

  Marchmont looked a trifle shamefaced. “In London.”

  “London! So you haven’t spoken to her since then? The poor girl must be frantic, wondering what happened—”

  “Well, she doesn’t seem very frantic to me!”

  Lady Emilia remembered the value of reasonableness and strove mightily to calm herself a bit. After a few deep breaths she turned to her brother, took his hands quietly in her own, and said, “Jemmy, you know you are the dearest thing in life to me, don’t you?”

  Lord Marchmont owned that he did.

  “And you know that I would never suggest to you any course of action I expected would bring you pain. Don’t you?”

  He admitted this was so.

  “And you know, most of all, that I have just spent ten days solid with Elizabeth, watching her and listening to her—and especially, watching her when she talked about you. Granted?”

  Marchmont granted it.

  “Well then, my dear,” Lady Emilia concluded, giving his hands a shake, “kindly take my advice and seek out this girl at once. Ask her for her hand in marriage and do it cleanly, quickly, and mercifully. The poor thing probably thinks you’ve changed your mind. It’s really too unkind of you.”

  “But she—”

  “No, there are no buts. Goodnight, my dear, and may I be the very first to congratulate you. You could not have chosen a more splendid woman.” She kissed him on the cheek, dropped his hands, and started to walk away.

  “But Emilia—”

  She sighed. “Yes?”

  “Mightn’t I wait till tomorrow morning? After all, she’s bound to be thinking about Halcot, and…”

  “Oh, for the love of heaven, all right. But first thing in the morning, you understand? If you don’t I won’t speak to you, ever again.”

  “First thing,” he repeated. “I promise.”

  Lord Marchmont thus cleverly afforded himself the opportunity of passing an entire night in wakeful agony, tossing and turning on his feather-bed, as he imagined every possible disastrous reply Lady Elizabeth could make to him. When he was not amusing himself in this wise, he reminded himself of Charlotte Beaudry and how she had hurt him. At about five o’clock, having decided for the twentieth time that Lizzie would doubtless laugh in his face, he finally dropped off to sleep, only to wake from a nightmare at seven. The nightmare presented to him an Elizabeth who was secretly suffering from some dreadful, lethal malady. He was so anxious, on waking, to be assured it was only a dream that he rose and dressed at once in order to be ready to speak to her the moment she came downstairs. All thoughts of Charlotte Beaudry (good and bad) finally forgotten, he accosted his beloved as she entered the breakfast-room about two hours later, and could not prevent himself from checking her delicate countenance for signs of a ravaging disease. There were none, he saw joyfully, pouring her a cup of coffee and praying he would think of some pretext with which to lure her out into the gardens after her breakfast. He cursed every mouthful she ate, as delaying the moment when he could at last unburden himself, and nearly refused when she innocently asked him to pour her a second cup of coffee. “Doesn’t it make you nervous?” he asked, to cover his response.

  She looked at him blankly. “Not particularly.”

  “Oh. It does me,” he replied with an edgy laugh.

  “So I see. How much have you drunk this morning, my lord?”

  “Oh, only a cup or two.”

  “Indeed? I should have guessed potfuls.”

  Lord Marchmont gave another nervous laugh. “Fine day, I think,” he observed, glancing through the long windows.

  “Yes, indeed. Finer than the last time you remarked upon it, do you think, or less fine?” she inquired, rather amused by his apparent discomfiture. She ate another mouthful of muffin and decided, finally, to take pity on him. “Lord Marchmont, is there anything troubling you?”

  He nearly jumped out of his chair. “Hardly! Scarcely! What should be? Fine day, I think, don’t you?”

  She continued mildly, “I have the distinct impression you are ill at ease somehow. If you are, I beg you will feel free to—” She hesitated, looking for words.

  Lord Marchmont burst out suddenly, “Lady Elizabeth, there is something—if you don’t mind, I—”

  But he had no sooner commenced this sentence than Lord Weld walked in—a piece of bad timing, in Marchmont’s private opinion, previously unparalleled in the history of the civilized world. He nodded at Weld irritably, then resumed his address to Lizzie with these words: “Dear ma’am, haven’t you finished your breakfast yet? In the name of mercy, pray let it be and walk out with me in the gardens, won’t you? It’s a frightful fine day—”

  Elizabeth laughed, though she hadn’t meant to, and looked with some embarrassment at Lord Weld. He nodded affably at her and she rose, dusting crumbs from her skirt, to move round the table to Marchmont. “You are right,” she said charitably. “It is a terrifyingly fine day. Suppose we take some air, shall we?”

  “Good idea,” exclaimed the earl. “You don’t mind, old chap,” he added, nodding at Weld. “Probably rather take your breakfast alone anyhow, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Weld murmured, adding in a private aside to his eggs, “Happy to see the back of you.” Lord Marchmont and Lizzie quitted the room.

  “Fine day,” Marchmont remarked a few minutes later, when they had reached a quiet path in the East Garden.

  “Oh, fabulously. A little tedious, but fine,” said Lizzie, beginning to feel nervous herself. It was clear she was about to be confronted with something—doubtless the very thing she had been careful to avoid in the past few days. Her father had told her days before that Marchmont had spoken to him and that he approved the suit provided Lizzie herself desired it. Again and again she had been obliged to confess to herself she did not know what was best to do. She had certainly been keeping him at arm’s length, mostly by talking like an idiot—an extremely garrulous idiot—whenever they were alone together: he had been right about that. She knew he had been trying to sound her out, and she had indeed been giving him mixed signals back. But this morning, it appeared, she had found the limit of his patience. Tense and uncomfortable as he was, he had obviously resolved to press his question home today. Elizabeth braced herself mentally.

  “Dear ma’am,” he commenced abruptly.

  “Sir?”

  “If you will permit me, I should like to address you on a subject I gave you some reason to believe was of interest to me—that is,” he recommenced, finding he had got himself hopelessly tangled in his own polite phrases, “I hope I may take up a topic about which I think you know I…er, it can’t be a surprise to you, after what I asked you in London, to know that— Oh dash, this is coming out absolutely all wrong.” He reached out to a hedge as they passed it and angrily tore off a sprig. As they walked on he fretted at the little spray, bending the small leaves and breaking them off one by one.

  “Sir?” Lizzie finally prompted, as he marched on in silence.

  “Devil take it, Elizabeth, you know perfectly well what I’m struggling with. Why don’t you help me? The fact is” (he had been increasing his pace gradually, and now he sped up even more, so that she fairly had to trot to keep up with him), “the fact is I love you very much, and I wish to marry you very much, and if you’ll have me that’s exactly what I’ll do, so for God’s sake, say you’ll take me and I’ll do what I can to make you a happy pleasant life. There! I’ve said it. That’s all. Now go ahead and laugh at me; I had a feeling you were going to. Elizabeth, are you all right?” he suddenly interrupted himself, stopping in his tracks and turning to face her, for she was so out of breath from struggling to keep up with him that her cheeks had gone red and she was a
udibly gasping for air.

  “Yes,” she said, panting. “Quite.”

  “You’re not ill, are you?” The horror of his nightmare returned to him suddenly, and he demanded, “You haven’t got an illness, have you? Oh please, say you haven’t!”

  “Lord, no,” came the reply, now almost in her normal voice. “You’ve just been walking so quickly, I’ve hardly been able to keep even with you.”

  “Have I?” said he, surprised. “I am so sorry! But—did you hear me? Will you…am I—?”

  “My dear Lord Marchmont,” she began, feeling that same ghastly dizziness she had felt in the library of Haddon House, when the earl had first asked her if he might approach her father. “My dear sir—” But the vertigo was so marked that she felt the need of sitting down. “May we—please, there is a bench a little further on. I should like to sit.”

  She took his arm this time and leaned on it until they reached the bench. Then, bidding herself breathe deeply, she resumed her answer. She did not know what she was going to say until she heard herself say it. In fact, she listened with as much interest as Marchmont himself.

  “Lord Marchmont there is no one on earth whom I should like to marry except yourself. You are brave, and honest, and handsome, and kind, and intelligent, and—oh, I don’t know what else, but in any case, everything that is admirable and pleasing to me. I am very fond of you indeed. I am—” she faltered suddenly. “But here is my great fear!”

  “Your fear?”

  “I think I may have—forgive me, but you know, ever since childhood I have known how to get what I want. And the first night, the very first night I ever saw you, I told my sister and Amy Lewis—ask them if I did not—I told them I meant to marry you.” Her cheeks flamed crimson as she made this admission, but she forced herself to go on. “I do not know why I did so. I think I meant it for a joke or some such—and yet I did mean it too…anyhow, it was so cold-blooded, and so calculating, that…My point is, I’m afraid I somehow—ah, snared you…” She put her head down into her hands and felt herself beginning to weep. “I don’t think I’m worthy of you,” she finally brought out, through quiet sobs. “I’m afraid I made—made you love me!”

  Lord Marchmont’s nervousness had vanished as soon as he saw Lady Elizabeth’s distress. The hands he now placed on her shaking back were warm and calm and reassuring. “My dear girl,” he said quietly, leaning over so that his mouth was very near her ear, “my dear girl, do you think I have gone through all I have gone through in life only to be hoodwinked by a naughty, scheming girl? My poor, dear love, is that what has been tormenting you? I beg you will give it up,” he went on gently, daring to place one hand on her shining blond hair and stroking a curl by her cheek. “I promise you, my regard for you has come to me quite on its own, without prompting from either you or me. It is perfectly genuine. It is yours, if you will take it. Now, will you take it?”

  Lady Elizabeth at last uncovered her face. She looked up at him through damp lashes, with pink eyes and a shiny nose. She could hear her own heart beating, it seemed to her it would burst. She sniffed deeply, brushing away a tear with the back of her hand, then, looking squarely into his grey eyes, she smiled at him and answered, “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  “But Lizzie you can’t be!” exclaimed Isabella, her hand flying to her open mouth in an involuntary gesture of disbelief. “It’s only six months since you gave birth to Jimmy.” She gave a nod to the infant as she referred to him, then continued, “How can you bear it? Aren’t you beside yourself?”

  Lady Elizabeth Marchmont laughed. “I bear it very well, my dear! Remember, I don’t get sick the way you did, poor thing. And not only can I be,” she pursued, while Isabella pulled various faces at her and the baby, “but I’ve had a letter this morning from Haddon Abbey, and Mother says—”

  “Oh! Amy is expecting,” Bella interrupted with a smile. “I’ve known about that for weeks, only she asked me not to say anything.”

  “Well, you little minx! I never knew you could keep a secret,” Elizabeth replied, quite astonished. “You certainly never keep mine.”

  “Oh fiddlesticks, you never have any worth keeping,” accused her sister, watching with interest as Jimmy spat a thin, milky dribble onto his mother. “I can’t think how you got to be so patient, Lizzie,” she observed, while Elizabeth calmly wiped the mess from the front of her pretty lawn gown. This interesting scene was taking place in a cosy sitting-room on the third story of Six Stones, the Earl and Countess of Marchmont’s enormous manor in Sussex. Outside a steady snow had been falling since dawn, nearly eight hours straight now—while inside a bright fire burned in the hearth, casting a warm glow through the wintry light in the room.

  The Countess of Marchmont shrugged. “Oh well,” she said, “I expect it’s something nature provides.”

  “It certainly hasn’t provided it for me,” remarked Isabella, who had had a most dismal confinement, and who had cheerfully handed over her firstborn, a daughter, to the wet nurse at the first possible moment. Elizabeth on the other hand had taken to motherhood with a facility and a zeal no one had ever expected. In fact, Isabella occasionally opined, it was developing into a positive mania. But that was nothing next to the quite outrageous delight her own husband took in fatherhood. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Isabella quite a nasty trick that the dashing, dangerous man she had run off with only two years before should now have become such a safe, solid, domestic gentleman. What had she done to deserve this? Sir Jeffery did not even belong to a club. It was really too vexing; but even she could not reflect on this without smiling a little at her own good fortune.

  Lady Emilia appeared in the doorway. “Oh, here you are,” she said, rubbing her arms for warmth as she moved towards the fire. “Lord, this house gets cold in the winter! Isabella, Lord Weld and I have decided to rescue you from all this domesticity. There’s a skating party being got up—Lord Weld and myself, to be precise—and you are invited. Will you come?”

  “Will I!” Isabella jumped up at once, then murmured apologetically, “You don’t mind, do you Lizzie? After all, I’ll be here for weeks.”

  Elizabeth smiled the serene smile that had come to her at about the same time Jimmy had been born. “Of course not, Bella. Have Nurse send little Amy in to me, if you like. She and Jimmy like to lie about and watch each other.”

  Lady Isabella stood up and gathered her shawl about her. “If I live to be a hundred,” she said, shaking her head, “I shall never understand what you and Jeffery see in infants. Children I can understand; at least they talk…but babies!”

  But Lizzie only laughed at her. “Send Marchmont up to me, too, if you don’t mind. Where is he, anyhow?”

  Emilia raised her eyebrows. “He and Jeffery had gone out to look at the kennels, if you please. They are probably shouting at each other this very moment about what the dogs should be fed and when, and how much, and by whom, and—heaven knows how they find things to quarrel over whenever Jeffery visits, but they certainly do.”

  “Oh well,” Isabella put in, “if you want my opinion, Jeffery enjoys it. Whenever we’re here he’s always complaining about how nobody listens to him at Six Stones—but then when we’ve been away a month he’s frantic to come visiting again.” She gave another shrug and asked humorously, “Who can understand the ways of men?”

  The other ladies laughed, but Lord Marchmont had heard her, and his voice could be heard coming from the corridor, “Sit down, young lady, and I shall explain them to you in five minutes.” He entered the sitting-room, which was rapidly becoming crowded, and kissed his wife on the top of her head. “They are much, much easier to comprehend, I assure you, than the ways of women.”

  But Isabella declined to hear this explanation and instead danced away in Emilia’s wake. “Tell Jeffery I’ve gone skating,” she tossed over her shoulder at Elizabeth. “Tell him he can come too if he likes.”

  But Lord Marchmont told her, “Oh no, I’m afraid not. Your husband and I are schedul
ed to have a long argument on the subject of horses this afternoon. I’m thinking of purchasing another Arab, and he is going to demonstrate to me why only an imbecile would think of such a thing. I expect we’ll be tied up till dinner.”

  But Isabella had vanished before he even ended this sentence, leaving his lordship alone with his wife and son. “And another one on the way,” he said contentedly, placing his hand on Elizabeth’s belly. He smiled.

  “You are turning me into a Mrs. Charles Stickney,” Elizabeth charged, but without much conviction. “Remember what motherhood did to her?”

  Marchmont remembered perfectly well that first quarrel they had had that long-ago evening, but the idea of comparing his rosy, glowing wife to poor Dorothea Stickney was so ludicrous as to make him laugh. He did laugh, and Elizabeth joined him. Then he kissed Jimmy on the top of his curly blond head; and then, with a surge of love equally divided now between affection and passion, the earl kissed his beautiful lady.

  More from Fiona Hill

  The Autumn Rose

  When Lady Beatrice, a marriage "consult" of wide renown, firsts sets eyes on her twenty-three-year-old protegee, Lady Caro, she is despondent. Too tall, too thin, too spunky, and almost "over the hill," Caro seems doomed to spinsterhood—until Beatrice conjures up an outrageous persona for the spirited Caro sure to set her off from the hordes of more conventional, and therefore more marriageable, debutantes. Lady Beatrice's ploy—and Caro's considerable natural charm—work all too well, and soon Caro finds herself pursued not only but her reserved kinsman Lord Seabury, but by the irresistible rogue Lord Mockabee as well.

  As London season reaches its glittering peak, Caro struggles to protect a friend's honor, preserve her own virtue, and win a love beyond Lady Beatrice's expectations. Sparkling with elegant wit and? extraordinary authenticity, The Autumn Rose is a delightful romp through the salons, ballrooms, gaming halls, and bedrooms of Regency London.