She watched him leave as a servant hurried in with the hartshorn. Marguerite was stirring now, one bejewelled hand going to her temples as she groaned and her eyelids fluttered.
Matilda helped her to sit up, handed her water and hartshorn and prepared her a cup of tea once she had revived sufficiently to take the cup between trembling hands. The old woman said not a word during this, not that Matilda had expected her to. Not yet. She would say her piece once she was composed enough to do so, and then Matilda would return the favour. With a bit of luck, she might give the wicked creature a heart attack.
“He’ll never make you his marchioness. No matter what he wants for himself. Your father was a bankrupt, your brother runs a gambling club, and you have a damaged reputation. You’d be lucky to marry a man like that jumped up mushroom Mr Burton, and you ought to have snapped his hand off instead of causing all this trouble, leading my idiot nephew about by the nose. How you have the temerity to consider you could be the next Marchioness of Montagu is beyond me. For all his failings, he’d never disgrace the family like that. You’d make him a laughingstock. So you can put the idea out of your pretty head. He’ll not marry you.”
Matilda sipped at her own tea with every outward sign of serenity, having anticipated the attack. Inwardly she was vibrating with indignation and fury, but she’d rather stick pins in her own eyes than allow the dreadful woman to see that.
“I never expected him to,” she said, accompanying the calm reply with a placid smile.
“And yet you deny you are his mistress,” the old woman sneered.
Matilda considered this.
“No,” she said. “At least, I am not his mistress now, but I will be for a brief time. Until he marries. I love him too much to share him.”
“You don’t love him enough to share him, you mean,” Marguerite sneered.
“Do you believe that?” Matilda asked her, frowning as she considered whether that could be true. “I suppose I can see why you would think it, but I’m afraid I am not the kind of female who can turn a blind eye to the truth. Unlike some. I would make him miserable, for he could never show affection towards his wife without making me wild with jealousy. It would make us all wretched. I love him too much to force him to endure that. He would never have a moment’s peace, forever torn between the two of us. That is most unfair to him, and to whomever he marries.” Matilda took a sip of her tea, exerting a supreme effort to keep her hand from trembling, her voice steady. “He should at least try to find happiness, find someone he can be comfortable with, if not love. I am selfish enough to hope he cannot love her as he does me, but they must find contentment of a sort. Otherwise his children will be unhappy too, and that I could not endure, no more than I could stand to see another woman bear them. I believe I would go mad.”
“You’re honest for a trollop, I’ll give you that.”
“Unlike you,” Matilda replied sweetly. “I doubt you’ve ever spoken an honest word to him in your life.”
The old woman was silent for a long moment. “I cannot believe it,” she said, and her voice was cracked with emotion, her face screwed up with pain. “Not Theodore, he… he wouldn’t. He could not….”
“Yes, he could,” Matilda said, infusing her voice with all the icy contempt she felt for such an outrageous statement.
She was aware of the old woman’s anguish, but felt no empathy, not now, not knowing how many years Lucian had suffered as a child when no one believed in him. Perhaps Marguerite had not been complicit, but she’d been wilfully blind to the truth and had not troubled herself to investigate further. Matilda could feel no sympathy for her now, knowing how methodically Thomas had been destroyed in order to hurt Lucian as deeply as it was possible to be hurt.
“He could and he did, and he is still doing it. For once in your life, I suggest you choose whose side you are on, because I tell you now, if you mean Lucian harm, you have made an enemy of me, and I shall not rest until I know he is safe from all of you.”
Marguerite studied her, eyes narrowed. “It’s a pity you’re so tainted. You’d have made a fine marchioness.”
“What are you going to do about Theodore Barrington?” Matilda demanded, ignoring that observation.
“Do?” Marguerite echoed. “What do you imagine I can do?”
Matilda held onto her temper by a thread. “Lucian says you wield a great deal of influence. If you tell your cronies it is he who has run mad, that all that comes out of his mouth is a lie, you might go some way to restoring Lucian’s reputation.”
“More scandal.” Marguerite’s face screwed up in disgust.
“You cannot escape that now,” Matilda snapped, wanting to ring the horrid woman’s scrawny neck for her lack of compassion.
This woman didn’t give a damn for Lucian’s happiness. All she cared about was the bloody title and its pristine reputation. Had the entire family felt this way?
“Your only choice is who the scandal falls upon. Do you wish to sacrifice Lucian or Theodore? Choose. But know this: if you choose to save Theodore Barrington you are condemning Lucian. If Theodore succeeds, you can kiss goodbye to the continuation of the Montagu line. He’s an old man, too old to sire healthy sons. You just think on that.”
She was thinking on it, Matilda could tell, and she knew too that it was the only argument that could hold any real power over a woman like this. She had met such creatures before, ones whose pride in their own bloodline and superiority over other people was their only source of contentment. How foolish. Matilda wondered how much comfort that knowledge would give the old woman when she died alone, with no one to mourn her. Matilda would rather have her children and grandchildren about her, knowing that they would grieve her passing and keep her memory alive in their hearts, than any grand title. With a sharp stab of fear, she realised she was about to turn her back on that possibility herself, but she could not think of that now.
“I will make arrangements for a ball,” Marguerite said at length, and Matilda supposed that was all the answer she would get. “Lucian must announce his betrothal as soon as is possible. I shall arrange it for the nineteenth of the month. Two weeks is little enough time to arrange such a lavish affair as it must be, but once everyone knows the object of the event, there will be no refusals.”
The old woman looked smug and vindictive, and Matilda steeled her heart against the realisation that two weeks was all she had. She did not doubt that this woman would make the announcement for him if Lucian failed to do so, and damn the consequences.
“I think you should go now,” Matilda said, holding onto her composure by a thread. “You’ll find the accommodation at The White Hart quite adequate.”
Marguerite turned glinting grey eyes upon her. “You dare to throw me out of the house, you arrogant chit?”
“I do.” Matilda levelled her gaze at the woman.
She was remarkably unmoved by her and her spiteful comments. She hated her so deeply for all the harm she’d done to Lucian and his brother that it was impossible to fear her, or care for the insults she tossed out with such ease. Besides, Matilda had heard it all before.
“You’d be surprised what I’d dare,” she said, a hard smile upon her lips. “For example, I dare to tell you that I shall do all in my power to destroy you if you don’t do everything you can to protect Lucian. You’ve failed him his entire life. Fail him again, and I will make sure you suffer for it. There are benefits to having lost your reputation—there is nothing left to fear, you see—and I have powerful friends. You ought to remember that.”
Matilda stood and strode to the door, pausing to give Lady Astley one last look of contempt.
“I’ll have Denton see you out,” she said, as coolly as if she were Lucian’s marchioness, knowing how deeply it would stick in Mouldy Marguerite’s throat. “Do not hurry back. You are no longer welcome at Dern.”
With that, she swept out, feeling a deep surge of satisfaction at her last look upon Marguerite’s grim-faced fury, which she had the
pleasure of closing the door on.
Chapter 14
We are going on an adventure! I feel like we are on our way to slay a dragon and I know that we will prevail. We must. And like all the best stories, there must be a happy ending. Except that is the bit that worries me most. How do I make that happen? I know if I leave them to their own devices, my uncle and Matilda will do as the stupid rules tell them they ought to, even though it will make everyone miserable. Somehow, I must make them brave enough to break all the rules.
Every last one.
I would if I were them.
―Excerpt of an entry by Miss Phoebe Barrington to her diary.
6th May 1815. Dern, Sevenoaks, Kent.
By the time Matilda had calmed down, and the urge to smash things had dissipated, she discovered that Lucian had retired for the night. The coward. She knew damn well why he’d done it, and frustration gnawed at her. They had so little time together, and she wanted him so very badly. At the least, she had wanted to sleep in his arms, but he’d gone and got all honourable and conscientious on her at the moment she least required it of him.
She remembered a lavish dinner she’d attended last summer, cursing her bad luck to discover she was seated next to him. He’d tormented her with little more than a fingertip touching her hand, leaving her giddy and muddled, desire singing in her blood. He’d warned her not to be foolish enough to suppose he had a heart lurking beneath his icy facade, and that she was foolish indeed if she believed what was between them could end up anywhere but in his bed. Well, he’d been wrong. He had a heart, one that no one had ever taken the trouble to protect, one that he had hidden beneath that layer of ice rather than allow anyone else to hurt him. He’d been right, too. She would go to his bed, if he would let her.
She let out an incredulous breath of laughter. After all those months of refusing his advances and dancing around the flames of their attraction, and now… now, when she was ready to fling herself into his arms with abandon and no regrets, the devil was playing hard to get.
Honestly.
Life was so unfair. The urge to throw things returned with a vengeance.
So it was that the next morning Matilda readied herself for their journey with a headache and gritty eyes, having spent a restless night. By two in the morning, she’d been so close to going to his room and demanding he make love to her that she’d ended up weeping with frustration. No, she’d decided. It was not in her nature to beg. He wanted her badly. He’d made no secret of it and, as they were travelling under the guise of a married couple with their daughter—to Phoebe’s incandescent delight—they would share a room. No doubt he’d try to make other arrangements, but Matilda would thwart them. She might have to give him up for the future of his illustrious family, but she would not do so until he announced his betrothal. Until then, he was hers, and she was his, and that was all there was to it.
As they were to leave before dawn, in case Theodore had anyone watching the road out of Dern, Matilda had simply taken a cup of chocolate and some toast in her room while she was getting ready. Now, she turned this way and that in front of the full-length mirror as she inspected her disguise by candlelight. It was a plain but well-made green pelisse with a chip bonnet. The dress beneath was of the same colour as the pelisse, and Matilda wouldn’t have been seen dead in it in other circumstances, as it was last year’s style and nothing like as elegantly made as she was used to. As it was, it did the job very nicely. Sarah had dressed her hair plainly, too, in the hope she would not draw attention. Her maid was most put out that she was not coming with them, but mollified a little at the idea of staying at Dern and having some free time to explore the place.
They were travelling under the name of Mr and Mrs Bennet—Matilda’s suggestion—and would, at a glance, appear to be of the gentry. The one thing that was brightening Matilda’s morning—especially as she was vexed with him—was the prospect of seeing Lucian Barrington, Marquess of Montagu forced to play the part of a mere mister. She suspected he’d need to be kept out of sight as much as possible, for no one in their right mind would ever take him for anything other than a nobleman.
This supposition was confirmed the moment she stepped outside, where the plain, old-fashioned travelling carriages awaited, instead of Lucian’s usual luxurious equipage emblazoned with his crest.
“What on earth are you doing?” Lucian was demanding of Denton, Mrs Frant, and Pippin, who seemed to be loading their own luggage into a second carriage.
Matilda stared at him and felt her lips twitch, even though his inability to blend in was likely to cause them trouble. You couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and it appeared you could dress Lucian in a sack and still have no doubt whatsoever of who and what he was. The first glimmer of dawn was not yet lighting the horizon, but the carriage lamps turned Lucian’s pale hair the colour of old gold, and highlighted his high cheekbones and that aristocratic profile. His clothes might be of inferior quality, but nothing else about him was.
Denton drew himself up and moved towards his master. He looked anxious but determined.
“We are coming with you, my lord.”
“The devil you are,” Lucian replied.
“You need us,” Pippin said, folding her arms and moving to stand beside Denton with the air of a woman settling in for a fight. “You’ve no maid for Miss Hunt, and no governess for Miss Barrington neither, as that feeble-minded Miss Peagoose is too afraid of her own shadow to come with you. Even old Nanny Johnson had more backbone than that silly creature. Besides which, Denton’s been your valet before and he’s content to do so again, seeing as you will need the help, as you’ve but one arm and have never dressed yourself a day in your life.”
Lucian glowered. “I’m supposed to be a very ordinary Mr Bennet, travelling with my wife and daughter. I can’t be trailing valets and maids and… what the devil is Mrs Frant supposed to be?” he demanded, clearly impatient to be on his way.
“You aren’t. I am your darling mother, my boy,” Pippin retorted with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “And this is Mr and Mrs West, your in-laws.”
“Mama!” Matilda said with a wicked grin as she held her arms out to Mrs Frant, for the pure delight of seeing Lucian’s outraged expression. “How delightful to have you travelling with us, dearest.”
“Matilda!” he said, the exasperation in his voice clear, but before he could launch into his many objections, Denton spoke again.
“My lord,” he said, his voice grave. “We’ve failed to keep that man from causing you harm these many years, though I swear we’ve tried our best. Let us come with you and do what we may to keep you safe, for I wouldn’t stay at Dern another minute if anything befell your lordship, and I know I speak for Pippin and Mrs Frant too. Let us help you. There is safety in numbers and at least, if the truth was ever discovered, we might do what we can to mitigate the damage to Miss Hunt’s reputation.”
Lucian stared at Denton. His expression was hard to read but his eyes glittered in the lamplight. He gave a taut nod and turned away.
Denton let out a breath.
Matilda smiled and reached out, squeezing the butler’s hand. “Thank you.”
“It’s an honour to serve him,” he said, standing a little straighter. “And you, Lizzie,” he added, giving her a wink.
“Why thank you, Papa,” Matilda returned as he handed her into the carriage.
Matilda had just settled herself down when Phoebe came tearing down the steps. She scrambled up into the carriage and threw herself down on the seat opposite, fizzing with excitement.
“Well, someone is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning,” Matilda said with a smile.
“I am, and you look splendid, Mama, and you too, Papa!” Phoebe said as Lucian appeared in the open doorway, and then she crowed with laughter.
Lucian caught Matilda’s eye and shook his head.
“All that effort my uncle took to have me sent to Bedlam, and I’m fairly certain I’ll be certifiable bef
ore the end of the day,” he muttered before climbing in beside her.
“Don’t be cross, Mr Bennet,” Matilda said, winking at Phoebe, who grinned with delight. “Or I shall make you travel with Mama and Papa.”
Lucian groaned, tipped his hat over his eyes, and pretended to go to sleep.
Though Phoebe’s disappointment was eloquent, they had no need to use their disguises during the course of their first day. Pippin—or Grandmama, as Phoebe insisted on addressing her—had provided a sumptuous picnic, which they ate in the carriage. Lucian was silent, his complexion ashen, and Matilda was in little doubt that the jolting over bad roads was giving him a deal of discomfort. She also knew that the stubborn man would endure the fires of Hades before he’d admit as much. So, she did the best she could to keep Phoebe entertained and quiet, so as not to aggravate his nerves on top of whatever he was suffering.
By the time they reached The White Hart in Saint Albans, everyone was tired and fractious. Lucian’s irritation climbed perceptibly the moment it dawned on him that he could not order the entire staff of The Black Horse to jump, and wait for them to ask how high, my lord? He was Mr Bennet, and Mr Bennet had to wait his turn, and would not get the best room nor the best treatment and, if he got impatient, he could damn well lump it.
Surprisingly, Denton seemed to be taking the blow to his pride in even worse heart than Lucian. His indignation was palpable on his employer’s behalf and Matilda thought the entire affair doomed to failure when, finally, the private parlour was made ready for them and dinner appeared promptly thereafter.
Dinner was a tense affair. Denton and Mrs Frant appeared to be sat upon thorns to be dining with the marquess. Lucian picked at his food, eating next to nothing despite Matilda’s encouragement that he must keep his strength up. Pippin, whilst quite at her ease, lamented the lack of seasoning in the rabbit stew—not to mention the lack of rabbit—and the fact the vegetables had been boiled to a grey-green paste, and expressed vigorous disappointment with the suet pudding, which in her opinion was fit merely for use as a doorstop. Only Phoebe seemed undaunted, inhaling her dinner with no complaints, and chatting merrily to her companions without batting an eyelid at the strange circumstances in which they found themselves.
To Hunt the Hunter (Girls Who Dare Book 11) Page 15