Simply Perfect s-4

by Mary Balogh

  It was a blustery day. White clouds scudded across a blue sky, bathing the ground in sunshine one moment, darkening it with shade the next. Trees waved their branches and flowers tossed their heads. But it was warm. And it was potentially the loveliest day of his life, Joseph thought as he arrived at Lindsey Hall late in the morning. Potentially. It had not been an easy day so far. His father had quivered with fury even just with the news that Portia had run off with McLeith. He had not excused her actions for a moment—far from it. But neither had he excused Joseph for driving her to take such drastic measures. “Her disgrace will be on your conscience for the rest of your life,” he had told his son. “If you have a conscience, that is.” And then Joseph had broached the topic of Claudia Martin. At first his father had been simply incredulous. “That spinster schoolteacher?” he had asked. Then, when he had understood fully that it was indeed she, he had exploded in a storm of wrath that had had both Joseph and his mother seriously worried for his health. Joseph had held firm. And he had shamelessly played his trump card. “Mr. Martin, her father,” he had explained, “was guardian to the Duke of McLeith. The duke grew up in their home from the age of five. He thinks of Claudia almost as a sister.” McLeith was not much in his father’s favor this morning, of course, but nevertheless the man was of a rank to match his own, even if it was only a Scottish title. Joseph’s mother had asked the only question that really mattered to her. “Do you love Miss Martin, Joseph?” she had asked. “I do, Mama,” he had told her. “With all my heart.” “I never did really like Miss Hunt,” she had admitted. “There is something cold about her. One can only hope she loves the Duke of McLeith.” “Sadie!” “No, Webster,” she had said. “I will not be quiet when the happiness of my own children is at stake. I am surprised, I must confess. Miss Martin seems too old and plain and stern for Joseph, but if he loves her and if she loves him, then I am content. And she will welcome dear Lizzie into your family, I daresay, Joseph. I would invite them both to tea if I were in my own home.” “Sadie—” “But I am not,” she had said. “Are you going to Lindsey Hall this morning, Joseph? Tell Miss Martin if you will that I will call on her this afternoon. I daresay Clara will go with me or Gwen or Lauren if your father will not.” “Thank you, Mama.” He had raised her hand to his lips. There had still been Wilma to face, of course, before he left for Lindsey Hall. She was not to be avoided. She had been waiting for him outside the library and had forced him into the small visitors’ salon next to it. Surprisingly—perhaps—she had had nothing but recriminations to call down upon the head of the unfortunate Portia. But she had been deeply shocked by the rumors she had heard last night—rumors none of her cousins would either confirm or deny. Not that rumors had been necessary. “You waltzed with that teacher, Joseph,” she had said, “as if no one else existed in the world but her.” “No one did,” he had told her. “It was quite indecorous,” she had said. “You made an utter cake of yourself.” He had smiled. “And then you disappeared with her,” she had said. “Everyone must have noticed. It was quite scandalous. You had better be very careful or you are going to find yourself trapped into marrying her. You do not know what women like her are capable of, Joseph. She—” “It is I,” he had told her, “who am trying to trap her into marriage, Wilma. Or to persuade her to marry me, anyway. It is not going to be easy. She does not like dukes or even dukes in waiting, and she has no desire whatsoever to be a duchess—even if such a fate is comfortably far in the future provided we can keep Papa healthy. But she does like her pupils—especially, I suspect, her charity girls. She feels an obligation to them and to the school she began and has run successfully for almost fifteen years.” She had stared at him, almost speechless for once. “You are going to marry her?” she had asked him. “If she will have me,” he had said. “Of course she will have you,” she had told him. “Lord, Wil,” he had said, “I hope you are right.” “Wil.” She had looked arrested. “You have not called me that for years.” He had caught her by the shoulders suddenly and pulled her into an impulsive hug. “Wish me luck,” he had said. “Does she really mean that much to you?” she had asked him. “I cannot see the attraction, Joseph.” “You do not have to,” he had said. “Wish me luck.” “I doubt you will need it,” she had said. But she had tightened her arms about him. “Go and get her then if you must. I daresay I will tolerate her if she makes you happy.” “Thank you, Wil.” He had grinned at her as he released her. Neville had clapped a hand on his shoulder when they met on the stairs after he escaped from the salon. “Still on your feet, are you, Joe?” he had said. “Do you need a sympathetic ear? A companion with whom to ride neck or nothing across the roughest terrain we can find? Someone with whom to get thoroughly foxed even this early in the day? I am your man if you need me.” “I am on my way to Lindsey Hall,” Joseph had said with a grin. “Once my relatives have stopped delaying me, that is.” “Quite so.” Neville had removed his hand. “I left Lily and Lauren and Gwen all huddled together in our room, all close to tears because Uncle Webster’s voice was carrying from the library and it did not sound pleased with life. And all agreeing that finally, despite Uncle Webster, dearest Joseph was going to be happy. I think they must have been referring to the possibility of your marrying Miss Martin.” He had grinned back at Joseph before slapping a hand on his shoulder again and then continuing on his way downstairs. And so now at last Joseph was arriving at Lindsey Hall, buoyed by hope despite the fact that he knew nothing was yet decided. Claudia herself was the remaining hurdle—and the greatest. She had loved him last night with passionate abandon, especially the second time when she had been on top and had taken the initiative in a manner that could make his temperature soar even in memory. She also loved him. He felt no real doubt about that. But making love to him, even loving him, was not the same thing as marrying him. Marriage would be a huge step for her—far more so than for almost any other woman. For most women marriage was a step up to greater freedom and independence, to a more active and interesting life, to greater personal fulfillment. Claudia already had all those things. He asked for her when he arrived at the house, and she sent down Lizzie. She came alone, with the dog leading her, and stepped inside the salon when a footman opened the door for her, her face lit up with smiles. “Papa?” she said. He strode toward her, wrapped his arms about her, and twirled her about. “How is my best girl this morning?” he asked her. “I am well,” she said. “Is it true, Papa? Edna and Flora heard it from one of the maids, who heard it from another maid, who heard it from one of the ladies—it might have been the duchess, though I am not sure. But they all say it is true. Has Miss Hunt gone away?” Ah. “It is true,” he said. “Never to return?” “Never,” he told her. “Oh, Papa.” She clasped her hands to her bosom and turned her face up to his. “I am so glad.” “So am I,” he said. “And is it true,” she asked him, “that you are going to marry Miss Martin instead?” Good Lord! “Is that what Flora and Edna and all the maids say too?” he asked her. “Yes,” she said. “And what does Miss Martin have to say about it?” he asked her. “Nothing,” she said. “She was cross when I asked her. She told me I ought not to listen to the gossip of servants. And when the other girls asked her too, she got very cross and told them she would make them all do mathematics problems for the rest of the morning if they did not stop even if this is a holiday. Then Miss Thompson took them all outside except for Julia Jones, who was playing the spinet.” “And except for you,” he said. “Yes,” she agreed. “I knew you would come, Papa. I waited for you. I wanted Miss Martin to come down with me, but she would not. She said she had things to do.” “She did not say better things, by any chance, did she?” he asked. “Yes, she did,” Lizzie told him. It sounded as if Claudia Martin was as prickly as a hedgehog this morning. She had had a night—well, a few hours anyway—to sleep upon her memories of last evening. “I am thinking of selling the house in London,” he told Lizzie. “I am planning to take you to Willowgreen to live. It is a large house in the country with a park all abo
ut it. There will be space there for you and fresh air and flowers and birds and musical instruments and—” “And you, Papa?” she asked him. “And me,” he said. “We will be able to live in the same house together all the time, Lizzie. You will no longer have to wait for my visits—and I will no longer have to wait until there are no other obligations and I can visit you at last. We will be together every day. I will be home, and it will be your home too.” “And Miss Martin’s?” she asked. “Would you like that?” he asked her. “I would like it of all things, Papa,” she said. “She teaches me things, and it is fun. And I like her voice. I feel safe with her. I think she likes me. No, I think she loves me.” “Even when she is cross?” he asked. “I think she was cross this morning,” she said, “because she wants to marry you, Papa.” Which, he supposed, was perfect feminine logic. “You would not mind, then,” he asked her, “if I married her?” “Silly,” she said , clucking her tongue. “If you marry her, she will be my sort-of mama, will she not? I loved Mother, Papa. I really did. I miss her dreadfully. But I would like to have a new mama—if she is Miss Martin.” “Not sort-of mama,” he said. “She would be your stepmother.” “My sort-of stepmother,” she said. “I am a bas—I am your love child. I am not your proper daughter. Mother taught me that.” He clucked his tongue, took her firmly by the hand, opened the door, and marched her in the direction of the stairs. The dog trotted after them. Claudia was still in the schoolroom. Julia Jones was not. She had finished playing the spinet and had gone about some other business. “I need your opinion on something,” Joseph said, shutting the door firmly behind them as Claudia rose to her feet and clasped her hands at her waist, her spine ramrod straight, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Lizzie informs me that if you were to marry me, you would be her sort-of stepmother. Not her full stepmother because she is not my full daughter. She is only my love child, which she understands to be a kindly euphemism for bastard offspring. Is she right? Or is she wrong?” Lizzie, who had removed her hand from his grasp, looked from one to the other of them almost as if she could actually see them. “Oh, Lizzie,” Claudia said, sighing and relaxing and transforming herself all in one second from stern, starchy schoolteacher to warm woman, “I would not be your sort-of stepmother or even your stepmother except in strictly legal terms. I would not even be your sort-of mother. I would be your mama. I would love you as dearly as any mother ever loved her child. You are a love child in all the best meanings of the term.” “And what if,” Lizzie asked while Joseph gazed unblinkingly at Claudia and she gazed unblinkingly anywhere but at him. No, that was unfair—she was looking steadily at his daughter. “What if you and Papa were to have children? Legitimate children.” “Then I would love them too,” Claudia said, her cheeks an interesting shade of pink. “Just as dearly. Not more so, not less. Love does not have to be portioned out, Lizzie. It is the one thing that never diminishes when one gives it away. Indeed, it only grows. In the eyes of the world, it is true, you would always be different from any children your father and…and I might have if we were married. But in my eyes there would be no difference whatsoever.” “Or in mine,” Joseph said firmly. “We are going to live at Willowgreen, the three of us,” Lizzie said, walking toward Claudia with her hands outstretched until Claudia took them in hers. “And Horace. It is Papa’s home in the country. And you will teach me things, and Papa too, and I will have all my stories written down and make a book of them, and perhaps some of my friends can come and visit us sometimes, and when there is a baby I will hold it and rock it every day and…” The pink in Claudia’s cheeks had turned to flame. “Lizzie,” she said, squeezing the girl’s hands, “I have a school to run in Bath. I have girls waiting for me there and teachers. I have a life waiting for me there.” Lizzie’s face was upturned. Her eyelids were fluttering, her lips moving even before she spoke. “Are those girls more important than me, then?” she asked. “Are those teachers more important than Papa? Is that school nicer than Willowgreen?” Joseph spoke at last. “Lizzie,” he said, “that is unfair. Miss Martin has her own life to live. We cannot expect her to marry me and come to Willowgreen with us just because we want her to—because we love her and do not know quite how we will live without her.” He was looking at Claudia, who was obviously in deep distress—until his final words. Then she looked indignant. He risked a grin. Lizzie drew her hands free. “Do you not love Papa?” she asked. Claudia sighed. “Oh, I do,” she said. “But life is not that simple, Lizzie.” “Why not?” Lizzie asked. “People always say that. Why is life not simple? If you love me and you love Papa and we love you, what could be simpler?” “I think,” Joseph said, “we had better go out for a walk. This triangular discussion is definitely not fair to Miss Martin, Lizzie. It is two against one. I will raise the matter with her again when we are alone together. Here, take the dog’s leash and show us how you can find your way out of the house and around to the lake without any other help.” “Oh, I can,” she said, taking the leash. “Watch me.” “I intend to,” he assured her. But as the three of them stepped outside a couple of minutes later, Lizzie stopped and cocked her head. Even above the sound of the water gushing from the great fountain she could hear something else, it seemed. Miss Thompson and the other girls were approaching. She held up a hand in greeting and called to them. “Molly?” she cried. “Doris? Agnes?” The whole group approached and bobbed curtsies. “I am going to come with you,” Lizzie announced. “My papa wants to be alone with Miss Martin. He says it is unfair to her for there to be two against one.” Miss Thompson regarded her employer with pursed lips and eyes that danced with merriment. “You will not be leaving today after all, then, Claudia?” she said. “I shall let Wulfric know. Go and enjoy your walk.” And she shepherded the girls—Lizzie included—back into the house. “Right,” Joseph said, offering his arm. “It is one on one, fair odds, a fair fight. If you wish to fight, that is. I would far prefer to plan a wedding.” She clasped her hands firmly at her waist and turned in the direction of the lake. The brim of her straw hat—the same one as usual—waved in the wind.

  Eleanor had been waiting up for her last night—or rather early this morning. Claudia had poured out much of the evening’s proceedings, and Eleanor had quite possibly guessed the rest. She had repeated her offer to take over the running of the school, even to purchase it. She had urged Claudia to think carefully, not to choose impulsively, and not to think in terms of what she ought to do rather than what she wished to do. “I suppose,” she had said, “it is a cliché and an oversimplification to advise you to follow your heart, Claudia, and I am not at all qualified to offer such advice, am I? But…Well, this is really not my business, and it certainly is long past my bedtime. Good night.” But she had poked her head back about the door seconds after leaving the room. “I am going to say it anyway,” she had said. “Follow your heart, for goodness’ sake, Claudia, you silly thing.” By this morning it seemed that everyone knew. It was all excruciatingly embarrassing, to say the least. “I feel,” she said as she strode in the direction of the lake, Joseph beside her, “as if I were on the stage of a theater with a vast audience gathered all about me.” “Waiting with bated breath for your final lines?” he said. “I cannot decide if I am part of the audience, Claudia, or a fellow actor. But if I am the latter, I cannot have rehearsed with you or I would know what those final lines are.” They walked in silence until they came to the bank of the lake. “It is impossible,” she said, noticing that the wind was creating white-topped waves on the water. “No,” he said, “not that. Not even improbable. I would call it probable, but by no means certain. It is that small amount of uncertainty that has my heart knocking against my ribs and my knees feeling inadequate to the task of holding me upright and my stomach attempting to turn somersaults inside me.” “Your family would never accept me,” she said. “My mother and my sister already have,” he told her, “and my father has not disinherited me.” “Could he?” she asked. “No.” He smiled. “But he could make my life dashed uncomfortable. He wil
l not do so. He is far fonder of his children than he will ever admit. And he is far more firmly under my mother’s thumb than he knows.” “I cannot give you children,” she said. “Do you know that for certain?” he asked her. “No,” she admitted. “Any girl fresh from the schoolroom might not be able to if I married her,” he said. “Many women cannot, you know. And perhaps you can. I hope you can, I must confess. There is all that dreary business of securing the succession, of course, but more important than that, I would like to have children with you, Claudia. But all I really want is to spend the rest of my life with you. And we would not be childless. We would have Lizzie.” “I cannot be a marchioness,” she said, “or a duchess. I know nothing about what would be expected of me, and I am far too old to learn. I am not sure I would want to learn anyway. I like myself as I am. That is a conceited thing to say, perhaps, and suggests an unwillingness ever to change and grow. I am willing to do both, but I would rather choose ways in which to grow.” “Choose to change sufficiently to allow me into your life, then,” he said. “Please, Claudia. It is all I ask. If you are not willing to have Lizzie and me live in Bath with you, then come to live at Willowgreen with us. Make it your home. Make it your life. Make it anything you want. But come. Please come.” She felt all the unreality of the situation suddenly. It was as if she took a step back from herself and saw him as a stranger again—as he had first appeared to her in the visitors’ parlor at school. She saw how very handsome and elegant and aristocratic and self-assured he was. Could he possibly now be begging her to marry him? Could he possibly love her? But she knew he did. And she knew she could hold this image of him in her mind for no longer than a few seconds. Looking at him again, she saw only her beloved Joseph. “I think we should make Willowgreen like my school,” she said. “Only different. The challenge of educating Lizzie, when I thought she might be a pupil, has excited me, for of course I have seen that it is altogether possible to fill her with the joy of learning. I do not know why I have never thought of including children with handicaps among my pu pils. There could be some at Willowgreen. We could take some in, even adopt some—other blind children, children with other handicaps, both physical and mental. Anne was once governess to the Marquess of Hallmere’s cousin, who was thought of as simpleminded. She is the sweetest young woman imaginable. She married a fisherman and bore him sturdy sons and runs his home and is as happy as it is possible to be.” “We will adopt a dozen such children,” he said quietly, “and Willowgreen will be their school and their home. We will love them, Claudia.” She looked at him and sighed. “It would not work,” she said. “It is altogether too ambitious a dream.” “But that is what life is all about,” he said. “It is about dreaming and making those dreams come true with effort and determination—and love.” She stared mutely at him. That was when they were interrupted. The Marquess and Marchioness of Hallmere with their two elder children and the Earl and Countess of Rosthorn with their boys appeared from among the trees, returning, it seemed, from a walk. They all waved cheerfully from some distance away and would soon have been out of sight if the marchioness had not stopped suddenly to stare intently at them. Then she detached herself from the group and came striding toward them. The marquess came after her more slowly while the others continued on their way to the house. Claudia had made the grudging admission to herself during the past week that the former Lady Freyja Bedwyn really was not the monster she had been as a girl. Even so, she deeply resented this intrusion upon what was obviously a private tete-r-tete. “Miss Martin,” she said after favoring Joseph with a mere nod, “I hear you are thinking of giving up your school to Eleanor.” Claudia raised her eyebrows. “I am glad you presume to know what I am thinking,” she said. She half noticed the two men exchange a poker-faced glance. “It seems an odd sort of thing to do just at the time when you have achieved full independence,” Lady Hallmere said. “But I must say I approve. I always admired you—after you had the courage to walk out on me—but I never liked you until this past week. You deserve your chance at happiness.” “Freyja,” the marquess said, taking her by the elbow, “I think we are interrupting something here. And your words are only going to cause embarrassment.” But Claudia scarcely heard him. She was looking intently at Lady Hallmere. “How do you know,” she asked, “that I have just achieved independence? How do you know about my benefactor?” Lady Hallmere opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, and then closed it again and shrugged. “Is it not common knowledge?” she asked carelessly. Perhaps Eleanor had said something. Or Susanna. Or Anne. Or even Joseph. But Claudia felt somehow as if someone had just taken a large mallet and hit her over the head with it. Except that such violence might have clouded her thoughts, whereas she felt now as if her mind had never been more crystal clear. She was able to think of several things all at once. She thought of Anne by some very strange coincidence applying to Mr. Hatchard for a teaching position at her school when she lived a mere stone’s throw from the Marquess of Hallmere’s home in Cornwall. She thought of Susanna being sent to the school as a charity girl at the age of twelve just shortly after the coincidence of having applied for a position as Lady Freyja’s maid. She thought about Lady Freyja Bedwyn paying a call at the school one morning several years ago. But how had she known about the school or where to find it? She thought about Edna’s telling her just a few weeks ago that Lady Freyja knew about the murder of her parents in their shop years ago—just before Edna was sent to the school in Bath. She thought about Anne and Susanna trying to tell her down the years that perhaps Lady Freyja, Marchioness of Hallmere, was not quite as bad as Claudia remembered her. She thought about the fact that when Lady Hallmere and her sister-in-law had needed new governesses for their children, they had looked for them in her school. She thought… If the truth were a large mallet, she thought, it surely would have flattened her head to her shoulders years ago. “It was you,” she said. The words came out as little more than a whisper. “It was you!” Lady Hallmere raised haughty eyebrows. “It was you,” Claudia said again. “You were the school’s benefactor.” “Oh, the devil!” Joseph said. “Now you have done it,” the Marquess of Hallmere said, sounding amused. “The proverbial cat is out of the proverbial bag, Free.” “It was you.” Claudia stared at her former pupil, horrified. Lady Hallmere shrugged. “I am very wealthy,” she said. “You were a girl when I opened the school.” “Wulf was a Gothic guardian in many ways,” Lady Hallmere said. “But he was remarkably enlightened when it came to money. We all had access to our fortunes when we were very young.” “Why?” Lady Hallmere tapped her hand against her side, and Claudia sensed that she would have been more comfortable if she had been holding a riding crop. She shrugged again. “Nobody but you ever stood up to me,” she said, “until I met Joshua. Wulfric did, of course, but that was different. He was my brother. I resented the fact that my father and mother had died and left us, I suppose. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted someone other than Wulfric to force me to behave myself. You did it by walking out on me. But you were not dead, Miss Martin. I could wreak revenge on you as I could not with my mother. You cannot know what satisfaction it has given me over the years to know that you depended upon me even while you despised me.” “I did not—” “Oh, yes, you did.” “Yes, I did.” Joseph cleared his throat and the Marquess of Hallmere scratched his head. “It was magnificent revenge,” Claudia said. “I have always thought so,” Lady Hallmere admitted. They stared at each other, Claudia tight-lipped, Lady Hallmere feigning a haughty nonchalance that did not look quite convincing. “What can I say?” Claudia asked at last. She was horribly embarrassed. She owed a great deal to this woman. So did many of her charity girls, both past and present. Susanna might have been lost without this woman. Anne might have continued to live a miserable existence with David in Cornwall. The school would not have succeeded at all. Oh, goodness, she could not possibly owe everything to Lady Hallmere of all people! But she did. “I believe, Miss Martin,” Lady Hallmere told her, “you said it all in the letter you
left with Mr. Hatchard a few weeks ago. I appreciate your thanks though I do not need them. I am sorry I spoke rashly a few minutes ago. I would have far preferred it if you had never known. You must certainly not feel beholden to me. That would be absurd. Come along, Joshua. Our presence is de trop here, I believe.” “Which I tried to tell you a few minutes ago, sweetheart,” he said. Claudia held out her right hand. Lady Hallmere looked at it, her expression at its haughtiest again, and then placed her own in it. They shook hands. “Well,” Joseph said as the other two walked away, “this stage play is full of unexpected twists and turns. But I believe the closing lines are about to be spoken, love, and they are yours. What are they?” She turned to look fully at him. “How foolish a notion independence is,” she said. “There is no such thing, is there? None of us is ever independent of others. We all need one another.” She stared at him, exasperated. “Do you need me?” “Yes,” he said. “And I need you,” she told him. “Oh, Joseph, how I need you! Changing my life into a wholly new course is going to be just as terrifying this time as it was when I was seventeen, I am sure, but if I could do it then when I had lost a love, I can certainly do it now when I have found one. I am going to do it. I am going to marry you.” He smiled slowly at her. “And so we come to the epilogue,” he said. And he went down on one knee and arranged himself in picturesque and deliberately theatrical fashion on the grass, the lake behind him. He possessed himself of one of her hands. “Claudia, my dearest love,” he said, “will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?” She laughed—though actually it came out sounding remarkably like a watery gurgle. “You look quite absurd,” she said, “and really rather romantic. And impossibly handsome. Oh, of course I will. I have just said so, have I not? Do get up, Joseph. You are going to have grass stains on the knee of your pantaloons.” “It might as well be both knees, then,” he said. “They will match.” And he drew her down until they were kneeling face-to-face, their arms about each other. “Ah, Claudia,” he said, his mouth against hers, “do we dare believe in such happiness?” “Oh, yes,” she assured him, “we certainly do. I am not giving up a whole career for anything less.” “No, ma’am,” he agreed, and kissed her. 25