by Mary Balogh
Lord Crensford gaped. "Is that what Teddy had that I didn't?" he said unwisely. All eyes turned his way.
"Fancied her yourself, did you, Ernie?" Sir Joshua said with a chuckle.
''She wouldn't have had you,'' Lester said, squinting along his cue in preparation for attempting an impossible shot. "You need less nose to be beautiful enough for Diana, Ernie."
"Oh, I say," his cousin said indignantly. "Teddy was no more handsome than I."
"But he did have that sweet smile," his uncle reminded him.
"And he had a brain," Lord Wendell added with a chuckle. "Diana is bright enough to admire brains."
"Oh, I say." Poor Lord Crensford was rendered speechless.
Lord Kenwood clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Come and take a stroll outside with me, Ernie," he said. "I still haven't seen this river you have spoken of."
"I wish I could learn when to keep my mouth shut," Lord Crensford said when they were safely outside the billiard room. "I was in love with Diana once, I'll admit. Everyone was. But I never held out any hope. It was only after she accepted Teddy that I thought perhaps if I had been the bold one ... I don't love her anymore. I can only think of her as Teddy's. And as my sister."
Lord Kenwood led the way outside and breamed in lungfuls of warm air, fragrant with the scents of the numerous flowers in the formal garden. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "They were just teasing. So Peabody fancies Diana, does he?"
"She won't have him," Lord Crensford said. "He is more than twenty years-older than she. His son must be her age.''
"But then it seems that everyone thought she would not have Teddy," the marquess said.
Ernest threw him a sharp glance. "Diana never was easily manipulated," he said. "You have been hanging about her altogether too much, Jack."
The marquess raised one eyebrow. "How else am I to win my wager?" he asked. "And win it I will, Ernie, my boy, you may rest assured."
"Diana's name should never appear in any betting book," the other said. "Not in any capacity at all. But this! It is too sordid by half."
"But she is there," the marquess pointed out reasonably.
"Rittsman must win," Lord Crensford said. "You have to let him win, Jack. I'll pay him the five hundred guineas."
"You, Ernie?" The marquess looked at him in amused astonishment. "You are often in dun territory, are you not?"
"I'll find five hundred guineas," his cousin said, "for Diana."
"You are still in love with her!" Lord Kenwood stopped in his tracks.
"No, I am not." Lord Crensford flushed with indignation. "But she is my sister-in-law, Jack. And Teddy is no longer alive to protect her. It doesn't seem right somehow seeing her here without him. I daresay it's my job to protect her now, Clarence being too busy with Claudia and the children. And I intend to do it. Hands off, eh? Forget the wager."
Although their intention when they left the house had been to walk around to the back and down to the river, which flowed through the wood, they had in fact progressed ho farther than the corner of the house.
The Marquess of Kenwood clasped his hands behind his back. "Ernie," he said, "do I detect a threat?"
His cousin paused to consider. "I suppose so," he said at last. "I am telling you not to force yourself on Diana. And I suppose that means that if you do, I will do something to you."
"What?" The marquess rocked back on his heels.
"Oh, Lord," the other said, beads of sweat coating his upper lip, "can't you just agree like a gentleman, Jack? Does this have to get ridiculous? I'd draw your cork, I suppose. Punch your lights out. Have you name your seconds. Sneak off with Papa's dueling pistols. I don't know what I would do." He frowned. "But I would do something. Leave her alone."
"Have you ever heard of me forcing myself on any woman?" The marquess's tone was amused.
"No, I haven't," Lord Crenshaw said, clearly rattled, "but I have heard of females crying their brains out after you have had them and threatening suicide and worse when they knew you had been merely dallying with them, Jack. It's all very well for you to claim, you know, that you give them pleasure andall that, and I don't doubt that it's true, though I don't know how you do it. But pleasure isn't enough for some people. Especially females. Their hearts get involved. It's all right for you, Jack. You don't have a heart."
The marquess was still rocking on his heels. "Bravo," he said. "I didn't know you were capable of such a lengthy and impassioned speech, my boy. Look, Ernie, a wager is a wager. And at White's! I couldn't dream of forfeiting it. I would never live down the ignominy. I'm sorry that it has to be Diana, since you obviously feel very protective of her. But I'm not going to hurt her or break her heart, you know. One bedding, that's all. Surely a sensible woman like Diana won't get all silly and sentimental after one bedding."
"Diana would," Lord Crensford said stubbornly. "Diana wouldn't do such a thing lightly."
"Look!" Lord Kenwood was beginning to feel exasperated and to wonder why he was standing and arguing the point yet again. "Chances are, Ernie, that she will have none of me. We have been here three days already and you must have seen how she sticks her nose in the air and turns to marble whenever I am within eight feet."
"Which happens to be quite often," Lord Crensford pointed out.
The marquess grinned. "I think you have your mama to thank for that," he said. "She has clearly decided to play matchmaker and match up Diana and me."
"It would serve you right too," his cousin said, "if you were to end up married to her. I would wish for it with all my heart, Jack, as suitable punishment for you if I didn't know that Diana would live a life of misery with you afterward."
"Well, goodness me," the marquess said, his voice drawling in a way that always set his relative's teeth on edge, "you have decided to take the gloves off, haven't you, Ernie? Fortunately, your precious Diana is in no danger. Even ten of your mamas working on me all together could not bring me to the altar. And it looks as if we are going to be saved from coming to blows for this morning anyway. The carriage that
is approaching is not any of the ones the ladies took into the village, is it?"
Lord Crensford turned to watch the ponderous old coach that was drawing to a halt before the front doors of the house. Those doors opened at the same moment, and the earl and countess came out and down the marble steps.
Lord Crensford sighed. "It's Wickenham's carriage,", he said. "Claudia's father. Claudia's mother and sister; at a guess. I was beginning to hope . . . But no matter. That means all the guests are here, since Allan and Michael and Nancy arrived yesterday."
The two men strolled over to greet the new arrivals, who were being hugged and kissed by the earl and countess.
Lord Kenwood looked appreciatively at the tall, slim and handsome figure of the older lady, and assessingly at her daughter. She could not be a day over eighteen. Beneath a pert little straw hat, she was all bouncing auburn ringlets and merry brown eyes and upturned nose and generous mouth and—yes, definitely—sprinkled freckles. Beautiful? No, not at all, he thought. Attractive? Decidedly so, for those whose tastes ran to innocent and mischievous schoolroom misses.
He bowed to the ladies, to whom he was being presented, and glanced at Lord Crensford. And found himself considerably amused and intrigued to find that his relative was regarding the little beauty with a look of almost open disgust.
"I was fourteen," Miss Angela Wickenham was saying with a smile at Ernest that wrinkled her nose in a most charming way. She was clearly speaking in reply to something the countess had said. "It was at Claudia's wedding. And you did not know I was alive, my lord."
"Oh, yes, I certainly did know that," Lord Crensford said, taking her hand and not seeming to know if he should shake it or carry it to his lips.
"I was fourteen," she said. "A mere child."
Lord Crensford shook her hand and released it.
"All the ladies have gone into the village this morning," the countess said, taking Mrs. Wickenham's arm an
d leading her in the direction of the house, "except Claudia, who is playing with the children and awaiting your arrival with great impatience. She must not have heard your carriage, the nursery being at the back of the house, you see. Most of the gentlemen are playing billiards. Come, I will take you to your rooms. You will want to refresh yourselves before going to the nursery to see our grandchildren. How wonderful it is to have our family around us again. Though not as many as we could have wished, the Season still being on in London. Only eighteen guests all told, alas."
The earl took Miss Wickenham's arm and patted it in a fatherly way.
"I can't imagine why they would want to come," Lord Crensford said ungraciously to the marquess. "They are not really family. Except for Claudia, of course."
Lord Kenwood fingered his quizzing glass but did not raise it to his eye. "You do not find the little beauty rather exquisite, Ernie?"
"Exquisite!" Lord Crensford's brows snapped together in a frown. "A more pestilential female you would not hope to find. She clung to me just like a leech when she was here for Clarence's wedding. And Mama expected me to do the pretty and entertain her since Teddy was already married at the time. Entertain! She knew how to get into a dozen scrapes a day. I was mortally tired of those freckles by the time she took herself off."
The marquess laughed outright. "That was four years ago," he said. "She just said so. She was fourteen. She was doubtless flat all over and about as interesting as a blade of grass, was she? I would say she has come a long way since then. Didn't you take a good look?"
"I'll doubtless take plenty of good looks in the next few weeks,'' Lord Crensford said wrathfully. ''I can tell you what is going to happen, Jack, as surely as we are standing here. Mama is going to conceive the cork-brained notion that the chit and I should team up for a while—like for the duration of both our lives. And I won't stand a chance. Some pleasant stay at home this is going to turn out to be."
The marquess clapped him on the shoulder. "You and I will team up instead, Ernie," he said. "A pair of confirmed and determined bachelors against a formidable foe—your mother. She cannot possibly win against the two of us, my boy."
Lord Crensford wore a face of the utmost gloom. "You don't know Mama," he said. "We might as well plan a double wedding here and now, Jack, and save ourselves time and energy."
* * *
The Countess of Rotherham had enough tact to realize that two grandmothers, an aunt, and a mother were just too many adults for a nursery that contained only two young children. As soon as the first noisy greetings were over, she left Mrs. Wickenham and Angela in Claudia's care and retreated to her sitting room, where the earl was reading a book.
"How wonderful it is to be surrounded by the members of one's own family," she said. "Is there anything to match the feeling of utter coziness, dearest?"
"Nothing," he agreed placidly. "Mrs. Wickenham is in good looks. And Angela has grown into a pretty little thing, has she not?"
"Oh, remarkably so," she said. "But I always knew she would. Such a sweet and lively young girl."
The earl chuckled. "She will lead the gentlemen a merry dance if Wickenham takes her to London for the Season next year," he said.
The countess seated herself beside him and looked thoughtful. "Dearest," she said, "do you not think she would be quite perfect for Ernest?"
He chuckled again. "I doubt if she would have him, dear heart," he said. "She is a remarkably pretty little thing."
She raised her eyebrows. "Too pretty for Ernest?" she said.
The earl rubbed his chin. ''Well,'' he said, "we love him dearly, of course, because he is our son. But I don't think he can be described as markedly handsome."
"But not ugly either," she said. "It is true that his nose is rather large. And then of course there is his hair. But he is not ugly, dearest. And he is very good-natured. And very loving. It can still bring tears to my eyes to recall how bitterly disappointed he was when he knew that dear Diana was going to marry Teddy, though he said nothing, of course. But he has been the dearest and the kindest of brothers to her ever since. Angela will be fortunate to have him."
"Will be?" he asked teasingly. "It is all settled in your mind, then, dear heart?"
She thought for a moment. "Yes," she said decisively at last. "It would be quite perfect. Ernest will be a steadying influence on her. And she will liven up his life. She is very lively—or at least she used to be, and she still has a face full of mischief. Who could not love the girl at a glance? I am quite sure Ernest is a fair way to loving her already. All the two of them need is a little nudge in the right direction."
"By your hand, I take it, dear heart," he said.
She smiled. "Of course," she said. "But don't worry. I shall be as subtle as I always am. They will never know."
He took her hand in his, smiled fondly at her, and raised the hand to his lips.
"Diana is being a very clever girl," the countess said.
The earl raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
"She is not showing any interest whatsoever in Jack," she said, "even though I have quite cleverly thrown them together on several occasions. That is quite the most perfect way to bring Jack around. He would lose interest in her in no time at all if she were always hanging on his sleeve. Poor Paula. It would be a kindness to tell that girl that he will never afford her so much as a second glance if she continues to blush and sigh whenever he is in the same room as she. I am proud of Diana."
The earl scratched his head. "But how do you know that Diana is not really indifferent to Jack?" he asked. "I must confess, dear heart, that I have been thinking that perhaps this would be one of your rare failures. Not that you could be blamed. Diana has shown before that she is a young lady of independent mind."
The countess clucked her tongue and gazed fondly at her husband. ''You know nothing, dearest,'' she said. ''You are a typical man. Of course Diana is taken with Jack. Why else would she ignore him?"
The earl was effectively silenced.
* * *
Diana had indeed been forced into company with the Marquess of Kenwood several times in the days since their arrival, and she did not like the situation at all. It seemed to have become quite an accepted thing that he lead her into the dining room for dinner and seat her beside him. He had been sent—by the countess, of course—to help her cut roses in the rose garden and to turn the pages of her music
as she sat quietly playing the pianoforte in the drawing room one evening.
She was heartily sick of the whole business, and had had several comfortable cozes with Bridget, her maid complaining about the valet, she about the master.
Perhaps she would not have disliked him had she met him under any other circumstances. Or if her mother-in-law had not so obviously—and disastrously—chosen him as her second husband. But as it was, she could not see him—or even think about him—without squirming with embarrassment and distaste.
If he had only been suitably humiliated at sight of her, perhaps she could have forgiven him. Perhaps they might have exchanged apologies and smiles and been, if not comfortable with each other, at least cordial.
But he was not at all humiliated. Or remotely sorry for the terrible embarrassment he had caused her. Not at all. His eyes laughed at her every time she looked into them, which happened far more frequently than she would have liked. And he had a way of raising one eyebrow that could deepen the color in her cheeks several shades, try as she would to look cold and indifferent. And mere was something else about his eyes too. They had a way of looking at her as if she had no clothes on. It was disconcerting, to say the very least.
She knew without a doubt that every time he looked at her, every time he spoke to her, every time he touched her, he was remembering. As she was, of course—how could she not? But at least she had the decency to remember with some horror. He clearly delighted in the memories.
The wretch. Perhaps it was unfair to hate him. After all, the mistake he had made had really been Bridget's.
But she hated him anyway. He was quite ruining any chance she might have had to relax at Rotherham Hall.
And it was with him that the countess was trying to match her. Oh, no. Over her dead body!
And so it was with a feeling of some triumph that on the afternoon when the countess had organized a game of cricket on the lower lawn the day after the arrival of Mrs. Wicken-ham and Angela, she scooped Patricia, her infant niece, up into her arms and set herself very firmly between Claudia and Angela, who tripped along at her side, chattering brightly, as she usually did, about any topic that suggested itself to her mind.
The walk past the formal gardens and the orchard would be one at least that she would not have to take on the arm of the Marquess of Kenwood.
The gentlemen were to play cricket. They had really had no choice in the matter, since the countess's idea of entertaining was to provide exercise—preferably outdoors— for her guests during almost every moment of the day. Cricket was not, of course, a ladies' game. The ladies, it seemed, were to get their exercise from sitting at the edge of the lawn looking decorative and cheering on the team of their choice.