Courting Scandal

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “I have always wondered why the fellow did not declare himself to London society,” Arabella mused. “He would have been the toast of the town; I hear he’s a bachelor, and that alone would have guaranteed him instant success. He would certainly have been the most popular man in London. I daresay he would not have had to dine alone for months.”

  “There’s your answer,” Drake said, his voice dry, as he shook his paper out and folded it. “He knew the minute he said who he was he would be pursued by money-hungry harpies wanting to marry him.”

  Arabella did not respond, though she must have known the barb was aimed at her. True darted a quelling glance at her husband. “It says here he is the heir to several estate houses, hunting boxes, and the main family seat, Lakelands, up in Cumbria.”

  Arabella appeared to have lost interest again, and True said, a little desperately, “Did you ever meet a gentleman by the name of Westhaven?”

  Arabella looked up again. “W-Westhaven? Marcus Westhaven?”

  True glanced down at the paper again and found the piece. “Yes, that is the name here.”

  “Why? Where? Is he m-married or engaged or—”

  “No, silly, he’s the heir, the one I was just speaking of. Were you not paying attention?” True looked at her cousin’s stunned face wondering why Arabella’s voice had taken on a choked sound. “Marcus Westhaven is the fifth Earl of Oakmont.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  August was in its full-blown glory. Marcus galloped along a country road, for the moment at peace with himself and his surroundings. It would not last, he knew, but while he felt it he would revel in it. He was on his way to Hampshire and free, for once, of his newfound consequence. It did not sit well on his shoulders and he hoped he was riding away from it.

  The house near Reading—his uncle’s favored home and where the old man had died just a month before—while comfortable, was too formal for Marcus’s tastes. Gorgeous Turkish carpets woven with the Oakmont seal in the border, Waterford crystal, heavy Georgian furnishings from the middle of the last century, landscaping by Capability Brown—the best and most ornate of everything. Marcus found it suffocating and stultifying. He almost could not breathe in the heavy atmosphere of the mansion.

  And worse, there was nothing to do!

  For the last fifteen years of his life the fourth Earl of Oakmont had not been healthy physically, though his mind had functioned as well as it ever had. As a result, the estate had been managed from his bed much of the time. By now the steward knew his work far better than Marcus ever would if he studied it from now until he crept into his grave. It was all so well taken care of and ran so smoothly that there was not a thing for a man of energy and youth to do but ride every day and receive the torrent of visitors that insisted on descending upon the new Earl of Oakmont. This, for a man used to the wilds of Canada and new sights every day, was irksome in the extreme. He longed for new vistas and a little nature.

  Even more irritating than the lack of anything to do, though, was the difficulty Marcus was having getting used to his new status. He was surrounded by dozens of servants, bowing every time they saw him and calling him “my lord” and “Lord Oakmont.” And even worse, every person of consequence, and many more of no consequence, who had flooded back into the country from the London Season deigned to visit him and subtly congratulate him on his coup. As the fifth Earl of Oakmont he had many more “friends” than would have even spoken to him in London when he was merely Marcus Westhaven. What had happened to Marcus Westhaven, for heaven’s sake? Where was the poor fellow? Buried in fine linens and harried by impeccably mannered servants, that was where he was. He had pensioned off the servants he could, but there were still far too many for his liking.

  Brooding one fine, sunny day, he had suddenly realized that there was not a thing keeping him there. He was confined, by his period of mourning for his uncle—though he did not follow many of society’s dictates, his respect for the old man commanded him in this—to no public entertainments and a black armband on his sober-colored coat, but no one could tell him where to go. Among his new acquisitions—and that was another thing that troubled him; how would he ever get back to Canada with all of these new responsibilities and literally hundreds of employees depending on his active management of the several and various estates now in his possession?—there was a hunting box down in Hampshire. It was a little too early for hunting, if he remembered right, but he would go anyway. A hunting box would not retain the staff of his main seat, nor would anyone there be expecting him. They would be less likely, surely, to make a fuss and bother over him.

  And didn’t an old crony of his say to look up a friend from the army down in Hampshire? Was there not a Major-General Prescott who lived down that way? He found the note from his friend and stored it in the one bag he was taking with him to Hampshire. He felt so cut off from society now; everywhere he went people treated him differently because of his new title. But this Prescott fellow was said to be down to earth. He hoped his friend was right about that. He missed rational male conversation.

  And he missed Arabella. He had sent letters that were returned unopened, had gone to Leathorne House only to be turned away every day until the knocker was down, signifying they had left London. She would be married by now. It had likely not been put in the paper because of the scandal associated with her name that still resounded throughout London, the scandal about that weasel, Lord Conroy. Within seconds of meeting the fellow, after Arabella had left town as the betrothed of Lord Pelimore, Marcus had written the fellow off as a hopeless mama’s boy and weakling. He had heard the whole story repeated endlessly, and the more he thought on it, the less he believed Arabella had any part in it. It was all a mistake, or more likely Lady Swinley had managed the whole affair without her daughter’s assistance. A woman like Arabella did not need to trick a man to have him marry her.

  He missed her terribly, and that puzzled him. Why could he not put her out of his mind? It was not that she constantly came back to haunt him, she just never left his thoughts. He kept seeing her as she last looked, the very last time he had ever, or was ever likely, to set eyes on her. When she turned and walked away in that tiny park across from her London residence, sorrow had draped her like a dark veil. He had called after her, but she had fled like a swarm of demons pursued her. He couldn’t have her and he couldn’t forget her, and it was driving him wild.

  And so on this fine August morning, with a mist rising from the hedgerow and birds flying up from the copse nearby, he rode; away from sorrow and responsibility and formality, and toward . . . well, toward something different. Anything! He had the letter in his pocket from his military friend, with an introduction to Major-General Prescott, and the admonition to treat Westhaven well, so he would not think so ill of his homeland as he had been wont to do in the colonies.

  He arrived late in the evening. The hunting box, a smallish manse set in a clearing, was everything he had hoped; it was cared for by a slatternly couple named Brown, who ran a very casual household. They were clearly terrified when the new earl showed up on the doorstep unannounced and unexpected—after all, the old earl had not been there in almost twenty years, and it had only been loaned out to friends occasionally in all that time—but Marcus was cheerfully pleased to find himself forced to make do with eggs and ham for dinner, instead of a six-course meal with a footman standing behind his chair. Mrs. Brown soon understood him. She left him alone, tidying his chamber as best she could for the evening, and leaving him to stoke his own fire and pour his own washing-up water.

  If privately the Browns were derogatory in their remarks about the new earl—they would have respected him more if he had been frosty and had threatened to sack them for their lack of industry—they were smart enough to be quietly respectful in his presence, without bowing and scraping overmuch.

  The next morning dawned glorious and golden, and it was a happier Marcus who set off for Thorne House in response to the written invitation from Major-Gene
ral Prescott to join him for some hunting. It was a little early in the year even for partridge, but he promised some hare hunting and perhaps a little grouse hunting, as the Season was just getting started.

  Major-General Prescott, he discovered, was Viscount Drake, heir to the Earl of Leathorne, but for all that as unpretentious a fellow as he could ever hope to meet. Strange to think that he was the man at his side’s social superior, he thought, glancing at him as they tramped through the meadows and fields toward a beech forest. Prescott, or rather Drake, as he must remember to call him, was a golden man, effortlessly regal, while he, himself, was rather lupine than leonine, he thought, more wolf than lion. Between them there seemed no barriers of rank though, and Marcus appreciated that so very much.

  They didn’t talk much throughout the day—Drake seemed to understand Marcus immediately, and other than conversation about the hunt, the area, and some generalizations about each man’s part in the wars just over, they spoke little—but Marcus felt a kinship to the man he walked with. For almost the first time since landing on English soil, he felt at home.

  Toward the end of the day, as they headed back to Marcus’s temporary abode, he noticed his new friend limping slightly. “Blast, but I forgot! My friend said you were injured at Waterloo, and here I’ve kept you out all day!”

  “Think nothing of it,” Drake said cheerfully. “I welcome the exercise. M’wife will be the one you will have to face. She is a little termagant about my health. She’s the reason I’m even alive, so I suppose she has the right.”

  “Alive? What do you mean?” Marcus gazed over at him curiously as they entered the dark, ancient hall of Andover, as the hunting box was known.

  “I had a bad spell with the fever—this was before I married her; she had come to visit with a cousin—and she nursed me through it.” Drake sagged wearily onto a bench in the hall, handing his gun to his groom. “I was already half in love with her. I had wanted to ask her to marry me, but I thought her already betrothed. Even if I hadn’t been in love, that experience would have made me so. She was so very tender, my little angel of mercy.”

  The depth of emotion in the viscount’s voice choked Marcus. Lucky fellow, to love so deeply and have that love returned! “She must be a very special woman,” he said quietly.

  “She is,” Drake said, casting an odd, assessing glance at Marcus. He rubbed his thigh, stretching his leg out in front of him, and said, “You can meet her if you will come for dinner.”

  Frowning, Marcus said, “Will that not put you out? You have a new baby, you said, and—”

  “It is not as if m’wife has to cook the dinner herself while holding the baby on her hip,” Drake said, laughing. He stood and flexed his wounded leg, then nodded as he put his weight on it, as if to say, That’ll do. “Mind you, she could! She is a trooper, is my girl. Trust me, Marcus, we have adequate servants and our dinner will stretch to serve one more. Anyway, I told her I might bring you along if I liked the look of you.”

  Marcus chuckled. “So glad to have passed muster. Well, if you’re sure it will not put you out, I will gladly come.”

  “We dine at six. Country hours, you know.”

  It was only later after Drake had left that Marcus realized the fellow had never told him his wife’s name. Oh, well, he thought, he would learn that soon enough.

  • • •

  “I hope we’re doing the right thing, my love,” Drake said later, in his dressing room, as he changed for dinner. He looked down at the old scar in his thigh from his near-death experience at Waterloo. Pain shot through it when exercised for too long, as it had been that day, but he was lucky to be alive, and never mentioned when it hurt.

  “It was too great a coincidence to ignore, Wy. Much too great, like fate handed him to us on a platter! I could not believe when you got the note of introduction from the gentleman last night; it would seem that heaven smiles down on our endeavors.” True, gazing at herself in the mirror on the dressing table, poked at a recalcitrant curl that would not behave and sighed, giving up on it. Her hair was as soft as spun glass, but for all that it would not be bullied into any particular style. Since she did not like to have a maid fussing around her, preferring the little rituals attending getting dressed with her husband’s help, she let it go where it wanted. She stood and turned, and Wy did up the back of her dress, after laying a kiss on her neck.

  “But what good will it do?” he said, continuing their conversation. “Arabella is engaged.”

  “But not yet wed,” True said, with that stubborn cast to her bow lips. She had already sent away Drake’s new valet—his former one had been his batman in the war, but was now managing the school Drake had set up to train retired soldiers for employment in peacetime England—because the poor fellow drove Drake to distraction. He was appalled at his new master’s casual attitude toward clothing and harried him constantly in an effort to make him more elegant. Drake, tired from his long day, had been near the end of his patience and True, recognizing the signs after nearly a year of marriage, had sent the fellow down to assist the butler in the drawing room.

  “But about to be wed in a week!” Wy pulled on his breeches and then struggled into a fine lawn shirt. “Will this not just cause more heartache if your surmises are correct?”

  “I don’t see how there can be any more heartache in my poor cousin. I know she cries herself to sleep, though she always stifles her tears when I come in. Arabella needs to see him once more, the cad!”

  “He seems like a thoroughly nice fellow, True,” Drake objected, knotting his cravat around his neck and reaching for his coat.

  “He cannot be such a nice fellow if he broke Arabella’s heart.”

  “You don’t know that,” Drake said. “You know nothing beyond her reaction when she heard the news that he had become the fifth Earl of Oakmont. It’s just as likely that it is her frustrated money-grubbing that has upset her.” He tugged on his coat while his wife worked her magic with his stiffly starched cravat. “Oakmont is a much bigger fish than Pelimore, and he is a very attractive sort of fellow in a wild way, the sort I imagine the ladies would like. Arabella is just piqued because she let a prime plum get away.”

  True sighed and poked his cravat into the final respectable fold. “You are ever ready to disparage Arabella, but you’re not being fair. You didn’t see her that night she left Lea Park, when I was nursing you. She seemed almost desperate! Her mother has been putting such pressure on her to marry well, and the poor girl had gotten to think it was all she could do, that it was her duty to her mother. But she has a heart, I know she does, and I very much fear she has learned it too late.”

  It was the closest they came to arguing, and Drake put his arms around his small wife and held her to his heart. Lord, how he longed to be with her again, as man and wife. But she was still so frail and delicate. He would rather forgo that very private delight forever than see her ill again, as she was after the baby was born. “Very well, my love,” he said, laying a kiss on the top of her head. “Arabella is a princess in disguise and Oakmont is her secret prince. Miracles do happen, and they will discover that the ugly troll, also known as Lord Pelimore, will be magically transformed into his true guise, whereupon Oakmont will defeat him and release the princess from her spell, after which they will marry and live happily ever after.” He dragged in a deep breath after that long speech.

  True pulled away. “Wy, don’t mock me. I don’t like it.”

  Drake pulled her back to him. “My love, I am sorry. I thought I was being a tease; I never meant to be cruel.”

  She pushed him away again, but there was a tremulous smile on her lips. “You could never be cruel. Finish dressing, and come down to dinner. We shall see what happens tonight.”

  “Have you told her there is to be a guest at dinner?”

  “Yes, but not who it is,” True said, grinning impishly as she exited Drake’s dressing room. “I want this to be a surprise to both of them. I have a feeling about this!”
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br />   Drake groaned and shook his head in exasperation.

  • • •

  Arabella descended, realizing as she did so that she was a little late. She could hear voices coming into the hall from the drawing room, as though her cousin and cousin-in-law were just gathering to go in to dinner. True had said some hunting friend of Drake’s was to be there for dinner and asked her to join them to keep the numbers even, or Arabella would have just had some toast in her room. As the wedding day drew closer and closer, she found herself descending into a pit of despair that threatened to close over her head like the quicksand she had once read about.

  And yet she did not know what she could have done any differently. This was the life of her own making, and she would not whine nor quibble about its downfalls now. If she had learned anything in the past months, it was to make the best of her life as it unfolded. She would concentrate on her good fortune, and let go of the rest. Her husband-to-be was an honest man, if not appealing to her in any way. All she could do with her life now was try to be a good wife, and eventually a good mother.

  For True’s sake, she wore her newest gown, the emerald green, and had her hair dressed up in a flattering Grecian style. She had taken to more casual country styles at Thorne House, especially since she seemed to spend all of her time out in the garden or up in the nursery, but tonight True had asked her to dress for company. She descended the stairs as the company was coming out of the withdrawing room, just as she had expected. Smiling at True, she turned to meet Drake’s new friend, and froze.

  “M-Marcus . . . I . . . what—” If she had first suspected that this was all his doing, that thought was eradicated by the look of absolute shock and dismay on his face.