The Gentleman's Deception

by Tuft, Karen

  His eyes narrowed, and Lavinia’s heart raced. He was studying her too closely. Had he recognized her? Had he been one of the countless young bucks who’d stood on the floor of the Orpheus Theatre nightly, clapping and cheering for Ruby Chadwick as she’d performed in breeches onstage? Was he about to share her secret with Lucas’s entire family? She struggled to maintain her composure.

  “Have we met before?” he asked.

  “No, sir.” She should say something more, keep the conversation from stalling and giving him time to think, but in her panicked state, her mind was a complete blank.

  “You must be right, although I could swear . . .” He paused and Lavinia held her breath. “Well, brother dear, you must tell us how you managed to convince such an exquisite female to marry you. I’m sure James and I would both appreciate some pointers.”

  “I said virtually the same thing to him, Simon,” James said. “Except for the pointers part.”

  “It’s no great mystery,” Lavinia said, knowing she must be her most convincing self right now. She looked at Lucas. “He is the kindest and most noble man I have ever met, and sharing my life with him would be the greatest honor I could ever hope to have.”

  Lucas’s gaze burned intensely at her words.

  “You’re sure it’s our Lucas you’re talking about?” James asked.

  “Oh, I think that’s lovely,” Delia said from her spot on the sofa next to Artie. “Such words of devotion; pure declarations of the heart. Don’t you think so, Artie?”

  “‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,’” he replied.

  “Ah, yes, indeed,” Delia said. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she added in explanation, for the sake of the others in the room. “Shakespeare says it so well when the rest of us are lacking the words for ourselves.” She stared flatly at Artie.

  The corner of Simon’s mouth twitched upward.

  “I adore Shakespeare,” Isobel said, a statement that seemed to startle everyone. “Well, I do. I read it quite often when I was a girl, didn’t I, Lucas?”

  All eyes turned expectantly in Lucas’s direction.

  “You were always dragging a book with you wherever we went,” he said, shrugging. “I never paid much attention to what it was.”

  “I didn’t know you liked Shakespeare,” Thomas, who was standing close to the chair in which his wife was seated, said. “You’ve never said anything to me about it.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t now, would I? I found my Romeo and have no need for any another.”

  Thomas smiled warmly at Isobel and laid his hand on her shoulder. Lavinia prayed Isobel’s words meant that she, Lucas, and Thomas had made amends.

  “I prefer the Good Book, myself,” Isaac said. “‘Who can find a virtuous woman? / for her price is far above rubies.’” He smiled and patted Clara’s hand, making her blush.

  “Quoting Song of Solomon there, Isaac?” Simon asked with a smirk.

  “Simon,” Lord Thurlby warned. “There are ladies present.”

  “Many pardons, Papa.” Although the smirk was still present on his face.

  “Proverbs, actually,” Isaac said.

  “I would have you sit by me, Simon, so we may chat,” Lady Thurlby said, patting the cushion next to her on the settee. “I have missed you, you unruly child. I want a full accounting from you.”

  “She won’t be getting a full accounting if the state I saw him in this morning is any indication of what he’s been doing,” Lucas whispered to Lavinia as Simon took the spot indicated next to his mother.

  “What is London like, Simon?” Rebecca asked, sitting forward in her seat. “I suppose I could have asked you the same question, Lucas. But you spent most of your time with your friend at his residence. Simon has been to balls and routs and operas and the like, and I daresay he has met many important people.”

  Mentioning opera hit a little too close to home for Lavinia’s peace of mind, especially when Simon once again glanced at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Apparently the Earl of Halford and the Marquess and Marchioness of Ashworth are not important people by my baby sister’s standards,” Lucas said.

  “That’s not what I meant, silly, and you know it,” Rebecca replied archly.

  “I know precisely what you meant, Miss Jennings,” Artie, of all people, said. Lavinia closed her eyes and waited for the non sequitur that was surely to proceed from his mouth. He took a deep breath in preparation—

  “You haven’t the faintest idea what she’s talking about,” Delia blurted out, fanning herself with such vigor that her fine white hair looked like a dandelion puff about to take flight in the wind. “Such utter nonsense, Arthur. She speaks of romance—dashing young men and elegant ladies and flirting and stolen kisses.”

  “I know that,” Artie blustered. “I will have you know I am entirely well versed in—”

  “‘Cupid is a knavish lad, / thus to make poor females mad.’” Delia, not Artie, was the one quoting Shakespeare this time in a singsong voice, no less, effectively shutting Artie up with her words, along with the rest of the people in the room.

  Artie turned purple with indignation. “If you wish to speak of madness, madam, then I would have you recall a certain time in Bristol—”

  Hannah cleared her throat forcefully, and Artie shut his mouth, looking disgruntled. Delia lifted her chin defiantly and folded her hands in her lap.

  Bless Hannah for doing something to stop Delia and Artie before it got any worse. Their banter, while dramatic, was usually of an amiable nature, but Delia’s impetuously flung words in particular had held a sting. Lavinia glanced around the room, her anxiety nearly at a breaking point. Rebecca’s mouth was gaping open, as were Clara’s and Isobel’s. Susan was fighting laughter behind her hand; Lady Thurlby was not laughing at all—a single eyebrow arched sufficiently to declare her point of view. Lord Thurlby and Lucas’s brothers—except for Simon—looked utterly confounded by what they’d just witnessed.

  “You were speaking of important people, Rebecca,” Susan prompted.

  “Was I? I have forgotten,” Rebecca replied.

  Simon locked eyes with Lavinia—and then he winked.

  Her heart sank. He’d thought her familiar but hadn’t placed her; Delia and Artie’s verbal jousting with their generous quoting of the Bard had supplied the missing piece of the puzzle.

  She deliberately turned away from the others while they attempted to revive the stalled conversation and took hold of Lucas’s arm. “May we leave, please? I’m feeling unwell all of a sudden,” she whispered.

  “Of course.” He studied her face.

  “Please don’t let the others know,” she said. “I don’t wish to alarm anyone.”

  He nodded. “Mama,” he said, “now that we’ve officially welcomed Simon home, I beg you will excuse Lavinia and me,” he said. “We have wedding matters to discuss.”

  “Wedding matters, indeed,” James remarked. “Oh, that I had such delicious matters to attend to myself.”

  “James, really!” Lady Thurlby exclaimed, frowning at him. “Certainly you may, Lucas, but have a care that these matters are discussed in public so that propriety is maintained.”

  “Of course, Mama,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise.” He nodded his farewell to his parents and the others and escorted Lavinia from the room, his brothers still quietly chuckling behind them over James’s last remarks.

  Lavinia didn’t care.

  * * *

  “What is it, Lavinia? What’s troubling you?” Lucas asked when they arrived at her bedroom door. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into them and leaned against him. She was so wary of men, and for her to express this level of trust toward him now spoke volumes. He wrapped his arms about her and rested his chin on her head, waiting for her to answer.

  “I was wrong when I told you we should wait to tell your parents there is no betrothal,” she said softly. “Delia and Artie simply cannot
behave as anything other than what they are. You would think actors would be the most capable people of carrying out a fiction. But they must spout Shakespeare and behave as caricatures using the broadest gestures—what other man do you know who would play the dragon to Edmund’s St. George?”

  Lucas thought about it. “I might—if it were my own son asking.” A son with curly red hair and clear gray eyes. Or a daughter. Or both. His and Lavinia’s children.

  She heaved a sigh, and Lucas savored the warmth of her breath against his cheek. “Oh, Lucas, you wonderful, terrible man. Just when I resolve to take my friends and myself away from here at the soonest possible moment, you say something like that and I am undone. But the truth will come out. It’s inevitable. I’ve never seen Delia in such a state as she was just now. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately, but she isn’t her usual self. I hope she isn’t ill, but at her age, who can know for certain? Regardless, she or Artie are bound to let something slip, and then we will have to face your family and tell them they have been harboring actors—”

  Lucas shuddered theatrically. “Actors, good heavens. I am shocked and dismayed.”

  She leaned back in his arms enough to look him in the eye. He wanted to kiss her and had a devil of a time keeping his eyes from wandering to her lips.

  “Lucas, be serious,” she said. “We actors think we are fine enough folk, but you know that to others, especially an aristocratic family like your own, we are entirely beyond the pale. I will not be able to bear the looks on your family’s faces when they discover the truth—especially your parents. Your mother has taken me under her wing and led me upstairs and downstairs, teaching me”—she choked on her words—“teaching me what I need to know to run my own house. She has been kind and accepting of me when I know how reluctant she was at first. Oh, Lucas!” She collapsed against him, and Lucas held her, feeling the weight of his guilt. He had thrust this encumbrance upon her. Her little ruse at the White Horse had been nothing compared to the demands he’d made on her and her friends in order to spare his pride.

  He was ashamed of himself.

  He continued to hold her quietly outside the door to her room. “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “We’ll sort it out. All will be well, I promise you. Trust me.” He couldn’t bear to let go of her, so he simply held her until he felt the tension in her body begin to subside.

  “I don’t think either Delia or Artie said anything that was beyond what my family has come to expect from those two,” he said. It dawned on him, in retrospect, that Lavinia’s upset was rather extreme for what had occurred in the drawing room. “Is there something else troubling you of which I’m unaware? You can tell me, you know.”

  She turned sad eyes on him and shook her head, giving him a weak smile. “Nothing, really, beyond the realization that my past will inevitably find me no matter where I go. We need to tell your family the truth before they learn of it some other way. We must do it soon, Lucas.”

  “And we will. You’re right: they must know. But today they will be celebrating Simon’s return, and we will let them have that celebration. And tomorrow my father has business in Peterborough that will keep him from home most of the day. I will arrange for us to meet privately with my parents two days hence, then, and we will tell them the truth together.” He placed a soft kiss on her mouth. “Now, rest and cease worrying. Promise me?”

  “Yes. But, Lucas—”

  “What, my love?”

  “You think all will be well when we tell them, but it has been my lifelong experience that they will not take kindly to having played host under false pretenses. Actors are a motley group, from the most talented and respected thespians in the country to the vagabonds hiring on for bit parts, and everything in between, and most are not accepted in genteel society. You already know this. So I am warning you—your family will not accept our confession well.”

  “I hear what you are saying, Lavinia, but I also know my family. I know their ability to forgive and accept.”

  “As you were able to with Isobel and Thomas?”

  She’d landed a worthy blow with her question, and it deserved a truthful answer. “My family is better at forgiveness than I am, but I am learning. I allowed my pride to blind me to the truth. We have made peace with each other.”

  “Truly, Lucas?” she asked, her eyes wide and searching.

  “Truly. So for now, I ask that you trust me—or, at the very least, trust that my family’s goodness is greater than mine.”

  She nodded. “Very well. I will try.”

  “That is all I ask.”

  Hannah was lumbering down the corridor toward them, so their time together was at an end, for now. “Hannah,” Lucas called out to her, “I have given Lavinia orders to rest, as she claimed to be feeling poorly, and now I may be assured that you will see my orders are carried out.”

  “I was more than glad to see you two leave. It gave me all the reason I needed to get out of there and find some peace and quiet—wait, you’re feeling poorly, luv?” she said, a look of concern on her face. “You do look peaked, after all. Are you ill?”

  “No, Hannah, I’m not ill, but I do think perhaps a lie-down will do me good.”

  “I will look forward to seeing you both at dinner, then,” Lucas said, relinquishing her into the care of Hannah—and there was no one he trusted more to take care of his beloved Lavinia than Hannah Broome. “Rest well, my love.”

  * * *

  “He called you his love,” Hannah said to Lavinia the minute the door closed behind them.

  “I heard what he called me,” Lavinia replied. “Help me unlace this corset, if you would, please.”

  Hannah unfastened the back of Lavinia’s dress and began loosening the corset. “Men don’t use that word lightly, Livvy.”

  Lavinia had nearly cried when Lucas had used the endearment on her. “Men say whatever suits them, Hannah,” she replied. “Lord Cosgrove said it several times, and he’s not the first, as you well know.” She slipped her arms out of the sleeves of her dress, letting the garment slide to the floor. The corset soon followed. “Ah, what a relief. Now I can breathe.”

  “Lucas isn’t like them others,” Hannah said. “Step out of that dress so I can get it off the floor before the wrinkles set in; there’s a good girl.”

  Lavinia did as she was told.

  “He’s a fine man, I’ve come to see,” Hannah continued. “Oh, he’s not above a lie or two—that’s clear enough—but that’s the worst sin I’ve seen in him so far. He lied to help my Livvy girl, now didn’t he? It were wrong him lying and calling you his betrothed when you aren’t, but just perhaps it was wishful thinking on his part.”

  “It wasn’t wishful thinking, Hannah. It was pride. He loved Isobel, and she married Thomas instead.”

  “Well, he don’t love her now; that’s plain enough for anyone to see. Up on the bed with you.”

  Lavinia dutifully crawled onto the bed and plumped the pillow under her head until it felt comfortable.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Hannah continued as she fussed about the room, “he’s twenty times the man Lord Cosgrove is, earl or no earl. You could do a lot worse than Lucas Jennings, Livvy.”

  “That’s high praise, coming from you. And I will go one further: I will confess that Lucas is the best man I have ever known.”

  Hannah stopped fussing and turned to face Lavinia. “I should have taken you away from that ne’er-do-well of a father of yours—and let him do his worst to me to try getting you back. But I didn’t, and that’s the sad truth of it, and I will never forgive myself.”

  “Hannah.” Lavinia stretched out her hand to her dear friend. “I will not hear you berating yourself in such a way. You are as dear to me as though you were my real mother, for you are the mother who raised me and took care of me and protected me from harm. If it weren’t for you, I would be—well, I can’t bear to think what would have happened to me. I love you dearly, Hannah.”

  “Oh, Livvy,” Hanna
h said, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking Lavinia’s hair back from her forehead. “And I love you, my sweet girl. It would do my heart good to see you settled with a decent man at your side. Primrose Farm is a blessing we never expected to have, but it will be a lot of work. It would be that much more of a blessing if you had someone who matched your strength by your side, helping you.”

  “You match my strength.”

  “It’s not the same, luv.”

  Lavinia sighed. “I know. But he is not mine to have, Hannah. Day after tomorrow, Lucas and I will be meeting with his parents and explaining everything to them. And then you and I and Artie and Delia will prepare to leave Alderwood.” Hannah’s fingers were working their magic, and Lavinia found herself becoming drowsy.

  “That makes me sad, for you and for him,” Hannah said. “Now, sleep, dearest. Perhaps in your dreams, you’ll find the way.”

  “The way where?” Lavinia mumbled, nearly asleep.

  “The way to love,” Hannah said.

  Chapter 19

  After Lucas left Lavinia with Hannah, he went to his room and pulled out the notes he’d gotten from Finch regarding the repairs to Primrose Farm and the costs that would be involved as a result. It made a certain amount of sense, Finch had explained, to bring only a few acres into production at a time. It would minimize the outlay of expense; the income made could then be used to help cover the costs of rebuilding the farmhouse and bringing more acres into production the following year, and so on and so forth until all the acreage of Primrose Farm was once again producing.

  The alternative was to get the entire farm into production during the upcoming year. They could plant a few acres of fast-growing crops now in order to recoup some expense with its harvest. In the meantime, the rest of the land could be drained and prepared for next spring’s planting. This was the best way to proceed, as far as Finch was concerned, and Thomas and Isaac had agreed.

  It made the most sense to Lucas too—except for the cost involved. He didn’t doubt that Lavinia had funds. She’d given him a banknote written for a generous amount just the other day. How much more money she had beyond that, he couldn’t say. It wasn’t his place to ask her for her personal financial details. If their betrothal were real, he’d be entitled to such information; it would have been addressed in the discussions of their marriage contract.