How to Cross a Marquess

by Jane Ashford

  Her grandmother’s home was the same, with ranks of windows throwing warm light into the growing dusk. Fenella trusted her own judgment, and she didn’t regret her actions. But her grandmother had a lifetime’s more experience and a wealth of wisdom. She would be glad to hear her grandmother’s opinion. And of course to gain her approval and help. Fenella hadn’t realized until this moment how very much she wanted the former.

  They were ushered into the lady’s presence without delay. As usual, she looked polished and elegant, making Fenella wish she’d been given a bit more time to prepare. A gown of lilac satin perfectly set off Grandmamma’s white hair and emphasized the wretched state of Fenella’s riding habit, crushed and stained by the night on the dusty floor. The lines in the old lady’s face seemed designed to emphasize its timeless bone structure.

  Fenella saw Roger looking back and forth between them. “The resemblance has been remarked upon,” she said. Many observers had told her that her grandmother showed what she would look like at seventy. She hoped they were right.

  “Well, what have you to say for yourself, young man?” said Grandmamma.

  “I think I’m a very lucky fellow,” Roger replied with a bow that acknowledged them both.

  “Ha.”

  Fenella hid a smile. Her grandmother didn’t mind a little flattery, if it was judicious.

  “I received your letter.” The old lady’s tone was dry. “And your servants, who arrived this morning.” She looked them up and down. “Fortunately,” she added.

  Fenella was relieved to hear that her clothes had come. Grandmamma didn’t care for an untidy appearance, which she certainly presented just now. She didn’t have to voice a criticism for Fenella to be aware of it. “As I had no way of predicting the time of your arrival, you have missed dinner,” she finished.

  “We’ll behave much better tomorrow, Grandmamma.” That won her a smile, so Fenella followed it with “I didn’t know the little inn south of here had closed. We spent last night on a hard floor, so I’m rather tired.”

  The sympathy Fenella had hoped for showed in her grandmother’s blue eyes. A short time later, they were settled in a comfortable set of rooms, supplied with hot water for bathing and a savory meal. As a favorite with the staff here, Fenella was showered with greetings and small attentions. She reveled in the luxury, well aware that a searching conversation with her grandmother had only been postponed, not avoided.

  And indeed Fenella was summoned to her grandmother’s private parlor as soon as she was up and dressed the following morning. She waved aside Roger’s concern when it was made clear that she was to come alone. If Grandmamma wanted to scold her, she would, and Fenella preferred to face that on her own. She was just glad she had a proper gown to wear and freshly washed hair.

  When she stepped into the comfortable room, she remembered how she’d admired this chamber when she first saw it. Her grandmother had created a very personal retreat with books, flowers, keepsakes, and soft furnishings. Her parlor was a bower of color and ease. Fenella had envied it fiercely five years ago. A thrill went through her as she realized that she would be able to create a place like this for herself at Chatton Castle. She had her own home now, and the power to arrange whatever retreat she wanted.

  Her grandmother sat in an armchair by the window. “Are you more rested?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So now we can talk.” The old lady gestured at the chair opposite.

  Fenella sat down. “Of course. Oh, first of all I must send back Mr. Larraby’s horse.”

  “Larraby?”

  “A tenant of ours.” Fenella grimaced. “Of the new owner of Clough House, I should say. Which is no longer any concern of mine. That has been made very clear.”

  “Do I hear bitterness?” asked her grandmother, eyes searching her face.

  “A bit,” Fenella admitted. She told the story of Lightfoot’s sale, which made her grandmother frown, as the horse had been her gift.

  “Upstarts,” said the old woman. “But I hope you didn’t think to pay back your family by eloping. Because that would not be a good reason for such a rash action.”

  “No, not pay them back,” she answered. “Escape their control in one fell swoop, yes.” She set her jaw. “I’m going to buy Lightfoot back, too.”

  “Fell swoop? Are we in the midst of a melodrama?”

  “A bit,” Fenella said again, with a smile this time.

  Her grandmother didn’t smile back, but her expression eased. She summoned a servant and gave orders about Mr. Larraby’s horse. When this was done, she turned back to Fenella. “I intend to take a hard look at this young man you’ve married, and if he is not worthy of you, I can end this hasty match. I have influential friends, and I could manage that for you.”

  “I don’t want to do that, Grandmamma.”

  The old lady’s eyes narrowed. “You came running to me five years ago because you wouldn’t marry this very man. Now you come running because you have married him, in the most scrambling way. You do see the irony in that? Does it sound like sense?”

  Fenella was rather tired of having their history thrown into her face. “That isn’t exactly how it was then. And I’m not running.”

  “What are you doing?” Her grandmother sounded genuinely curious.

  “Staging a strategic pause,” said Fenella. “Negotiating an important…alliance.”

  Finally her grandmother smiled. “With me?”

  “My sisters’ husbands wouldn’t dare oppose you. Any more than Greta and Nora would.”

  “But I don’t understand why the issue would arise.”

  Fenella explained the terms of her father’s will, and the attitude of her brothers-in-law. “Roger has promised me that my inheritance will be under my control.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Yes.” Fenella had no doubts in that regard.

  Her grandmother accepted her opinion. “But this is the man you described as rude and insufferable and—what was it?—vile. Yes, I believe that was the word.”

  Fenella laughed. “And so he was, five years ago. He has changed.”

  “People don’t often do that.”

  “I did.”

  The old lady acknowledged this with a nod. She considered briefly. “There are those who will say you married for rank and fortune.”

  “Gossips must always be saying something.”

  “I can see you are determined on this marriage.” She sat back in her chair, looking dissatisfied. “It all seems very convoluted. It wasn’t like that when I met your grandfather.”

  “You fell in love all at once. I remember you told me.” Fenella shrugged. “Not everyone has it so easy.”

  “Easy? I don’t believe I’ve ever said it was easy.”

  “You were madly in love.”

  “Oh yes.” Her grandmother looked wistful.

  “And so was my grandfather.” Fenella remembered him as a fierce Scot who had no patience for fools. Even her sister Nora had been frightened of him.

  “Do you think that makes marital bliss automatic? Not at all. I think it may heighten the disappointments that inevitably come, from time to time.”

  “I thought you were happy together,” said Fenella. Disillusionment stirred in her. She’d set up her grandparents’ marriage as an ideal in her mind.

  “We were. Because we worked at it. Love makes you want to agree. It doesn’t mean you will, or solve every problem that comes along. Like some sort of magic wand.” She snorted at the idea.

  As Fenella took in this nugget of wisdom and stored it away for future reference, she felt the beginning of a broad relief.

  “Well, let’s get this husband of yours in here and see what he’s made of,” said her grandmother.

  It was a thrill to hear Roger called that, even as she worried about the
coming encounter. “I hope you won’t bully him, Grandmamma.”

  “Would he let me?”

  “Well, no, but—” She didn’t want them to wrangle.

  “Then we have no problem.”

  Roger was summoned. He stood before them with his hands behind his back, a bit like a schoolboy brought before the headmaster, Fenella thought.

  “Tell me about yourself,” said her grandmother to him. “How do you describe yourself to a new acquaintance? A gentleman acquaintance, that is. None of the namby-pamby stuff you’d tell a female.”

  “Wouldn’t,” said Roger. “I’d be a dead bore describing myself. We’d talk about whatever we were doing. Who introduced us. That sort of thing.”

  The old lady showed no particular reaction. “What are your favorite pursuits?”

  “Riding, shooting. Dancing. I’m fond of a hand of cards with skilled players.”

  “What do you despise?”

  “Cruelty,” Roger replied promptly.

  “What would your mother say if I asked her about your character?”

  “Well, good things, I expect. She is my mother. Macklin might be a better reference if I require one. He’s a very honest fellow.”

  “Macklin?”

  “The Earl of Macklin. He is—yes, I think I can call him a friend of mine, though I just met him this year.”

  “An older man?” asked Fenella’s grandmother.

  “About fifty, I believe.”

  “Ah, it must have been his father then.”

  “What must have been, Grandmamma?” asked Fenella. The conversation was going better than she’d expected, if not predictably.

  “The previous earl. He was a suitor of mine, long ago.”

  “Really?” said Roger. “The current Lord Macklin courted my mother. In London, years ago.”

  “Indeed.”

  “She thought he might be again, when he came to stay with us. But now they say they’re friends. Do you suppose that’s all right?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Didn’t mean to say that,” said Roger. “That’s something else about me, you may as well know. If I’m describing myself. Sometimes words just…won’t do what I wish them to. They pop out, or stay in, at the least opportune moments.”

  Fenella’s grandmother looked amused for the first time. “Do they?”

  He nodded glumly. “Bane of my existence.”

  The old lady hid a smile. “Bane?”

  “Phrase I spotted in a newspaper once. It seemed apt.”

  “I see. So what was it you wanted to ask me?”

  “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, I’m interested to know.”

  Roger hesitated as if determined to get this right. “I just want to be certain my mother is all right. They claim to be friends, and all seems well. Macklin said that as people grow older, they understand the importance of friendship.”

  “And since I am older, I must know the truth of this?” asked Fenella’s grandmother.

  Roger blanched. “I didn’t mean—”

  “As it happens, I agree,” she added. “This Macklin sounds like a sensible man. Is your mother a sensible woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t imagine you have anything to worry about.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You may go now.”

  Roger hesitated, then bowed out of the room.

  “All right,” said Fenella’s grandmother when he was gone. “I’m inclined to stand with you on this marriage.”

  “You like him?” She hadn’t acknowledged how very much she valued her grandmother’s opinion until this moment, Fenella realized.

  “I think I do. I want Rob’s opinion.”

  “What can my cousin tell you? He isn’t acquainted with Roger.”

  “He has the male perspective. And he might have heard things. Men gossip like washerwomen among themselves, you know. They put a bluff face on it, but they indulge just the same.”

  “There is nothing disreputable to hear.”

  “Splendid. We will simply have a pleasant family dinner together.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Go along with you, impudent girl.”

  Fenella gave her a hug, then hurried after her husband. She found him in the corridor outside. “That felt like an interrogation,” he said.

  Fenella wondered if she should apologize. It wouldn’t be honest. She wasn’t sorry. His answers had been fascinating. “Grandmamma is extremely forthright.”

  He smiled at her. “An understatement. But answering her was interesting. I hadn’t thought about some of that before. And I’m determined to prove myself to her.”

  “For my sake.”

  Roger nodded. “And for my own. Clearly, her respect is a thing worth having.”

  Fenella nodded.

  “Nearly as much as yours.”

  “My respect?”

  “I hope I may earn it eventually.”

  Fenella looked into his eyes. During the talk with her grandmother, a new idea had suggested itself to her. Perhaps there was madly in love and then there was…gradually overtaken by love? Could that be a hope? “You do have it,” she said.

  “That means a great deal.” He took her hand and held it. The tenderness in his eyes made Fenella tremble. It was marvelous to know that she hadn’t made a mistake.

  The current laird of Roslyn joined them later that day. Stocky and dark-haired, he didn’t resemble his grandmother, or Fenella. As Roger acknowledged the introduction and met the other man’s shrewd brown eyes sizing him up, he wondered how much of the current situation had been conveyed to him. He didn’t have to wait for an answer. “Eloping with my cousin, man?” said the laird. He looked grim.

  “Rob,” said Fenella.

  Roger didn’t blame him for wanting to protect his cousin. But that role was his now, and he didn’t intend to be supplanted. “It wasn’t what we planned. I’d asked her to marry me before Mr. Fairclough’s death threw all into confusion,” he said.

  “Took all my choices away from me,” said Fenella. “Even my horse.”

  The laird glanced at their hostess. Some silent communication passed between the two. “Let us go in to dinner,” said Fenella’s grandmother.

  They settled at table. Food was served, wine poured.

  “I met Fenella when she was running up here to Scotland as a lass,” said the laird then. “Found her lost and cowering under a holly tree like a little mouse.”

  “I was sheltering from the rain,” Fenella protested. “I might have been a bit lost, but I was not cowering.”

  “‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,’” he replied mysteriously.

  “Do not begin with your Robert Burns,” said Fenella’s grandmother. “A most improper person,” she told Roger.

  “But a right proper poet was Robbie,” said the laird.

  “If you are partial to low comedy.”

  “Aye, and so I am,” he answered, a teasing gleam in his dark eyes. They went cool again as he turned to Roger. “She was running from you then, if I recall correctly.”

  “Well, you don’t,” said Roger. He’d had enough of the fellow’s mistrust. And he wasn’t accustomed to feeling so left out where Fenella was concerned. “Our fathers were pressing her. Not I.” He met Fenella’s warm gaze. “Because I was… I didn’t.” He ran out of words, maddeningly.

  Her lips moved. Did they silently form the phrase sodding sheep? Surely not. “We will leave history out of this,” she said. “Circumstances are quite different now, and there is no need to rehash all that again. Anyway, what I choose to do is not your affair, Rob.”

  “Not even if you bring scandal down on our family? Of which I am the head, I might remind you.”

  “Not of the F
aircloughs,” she replied. “That would be…who? My father’s cousin Gerard? Oh, what does it matter. I’m not a Fairclough any longer. I’m—”

  “Marchioness of Chatton,” interrupted Roger, thinking it was time to remind them of that point. He wasn’t some skirter or half-pay officer.

  Fenella smiled. “So I am. Watch your step, Rob, or I’ll overawe you with my consequence.”

  The laird examined her face. He turned to survey Roger. He exchanged another long look with his grandmother. Then, for the first time since he’d arrived, he laughed. “The first week Fenella was in Scotland, she challenged me to a bout of marksmanship,” he told Roger. “Shot the pips out of a playing card and beat me all hollow.”

  “And how you hated that,” Fenella said. “You would not believe I’d actually managed it until I’d shredded half a deck.”

  “Well, a crack shot wasn’t exactly usual among the girls I knew.”

  “I was nothing like them. I’m still not.”

  “True enough. Best mind your manners, Chatton, or she’ll lob a bullet past your ear.” He seemed only half-joking.

  Roger had never seen Fenella sparkle so with a stranger. He’d known her only in their small neighborhood with gentlemen they’d been acquainted with all their lives. He was captivated anew, and just a bit jealous. He kept wanting to mention that he was her husband. But for once he managed not to blurt out an inappropriate remark.

  “He has nothing to fear,” said Fenella. “You, however, could use a setdown.”

  “Shall we go out and try a few rounds? You must have some pistols about, Grandmamma.”

  “I’m out of practice,” said Fenella.

  “So you admit that I’d best you now.”

  Fenella hesitated, and for a moment Roger thought she was going to jump up and accept the challenge. He looked forward to watching her trounce her cousin. But then she nodded. “I expect you would, Rob.”

  “Really? You concede?”

  Their grandmother made a small sound.

  Fenella and her cousin turned to her like plants stirred by the wind. “We need to talk about averting a scandal,” the old woman said.

  “Just tell everyone that you’re behind the match,” replied the laird. “Who’d dispute it? Or dare to argue?”