Not Quite a Lady

by Loretta Chase

  Once there, though, Darius’s opportunity came, more quickly and easily than he’d expected.

  “Let us have some music, Charlotte, please,” said Lady Lithby. “I’m sure the gentlemen have had quite enough of decorations and flower arrangements and whose feelings will be hurt by what.”

  “Gladly, Stepmama,” said Lady Charlotte. “Mr. Carsington, perhaps you would help me choose something to soothe the gentlemen’s delicate nerves.”

  “I should be delighted.” He joined her at the pianoforte.

  “You stayed in the dining room for a long time,” she whispered as she began leafing through music. “Please do not tell me Mr. Badgely fell asleep over his port and you took the opportunity to speak about us to Papa.”

  “You are overwrought, or you’d never imagine such a thing,” Darius said. “I’ve thought over what you told me. Your concerns are more than reasonable, and I’ve decided it would be best to let the mating party proceed as planned.”

  Her blue eyes widened. “You have? It would?”

  “For two reasons,” he said. “Firstly, by the end of the party, you will know for certain whether or not you are…” He glanced about, but the others seemed engrossed in their own conversations. “Breeding. Secondly—in the event you are not—and I have failed by then to persuade you that I shall suit you best, then I must accept defeat.”

  She looked at him as though she was not at all sure what to make of him. “How neatly you’ve sorted it out.”

  “We cannot both be emotional,” he said. “One of us must be calm and objective.”

  “But where is our music?” Mrs. Badgely called. “How difficult is it to choose?”

  “I agree, Mr. Carsington,” Lady Charlotte said more audibly. “Beethoven is too…ferocious for a small after-dinner gathering. My talents are not up to him, at any rate. By the way, we shall have some fine musicians playing for the house party. From London.”

  “I should keep a close watch on them if I were you, Lord Lithby,” said Mrs. Badgely. “With so many impressionable young ladies in the house.”

  “I have tried to consider your father’s feelings as well,” Darius said under cover of Mrs. Badgely’s lecture about professional performers and their penchant for leading innocent young ladies astray. “It will please him to believe his scheme worked. Too, in this way, if we become engaged, it won’t seem suspiciously hasty. Furthermore, the house party will give me an opportunity to court you properly.”

  “Does that not strike you as farcical?” she said.

  “On the contrary, it strikes me as crucial,” he said. “I have gone about this backward—seducing first instead of wooing first. But I didn’t know, you see—”

  “You can never go wrong with Handel,” Mrs. Badgely called out.

  “I hate Handel,” Lady Charlotte said under her breath.

  “I hate Handel,” Darius muttered at the same time.

  They looked at each other, their lips tight to keep back the laughter.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Badgely,” Lady Charlotte said. “An excellent suggestion.”

  “She likes anything that sounds like church music,” she whispered. “She dozes the way she does in church. As soon as it’s over, she starts talking.”

  Lady Charlotte played the Handel, and Mrs. Badgely behaved as predicted.

  When it was over, the rector’s wife was once again loudly monopolizing the conversation.

  “You are right,” Lady Charlotte murmured while she pretended to look for more music. “One of us must be sensible, and I cannot be. I am too…emotional. Thank you. It is most kind.”

  He had not been nearly kind enough. There was so much he had to say. But he could not say it now, in between interruptions, in sight of everybody. He’d have to make another opportunity.

  Sunday 7 July

  “I cannot believe you are doing this,” Charlotte said.

  “Nor can I,” Mr. Carsington said. “I cannot remember when I last darkened the door of a church. I have never understood the logic of religion.”

  “Yet you came,” she said.

  “We must talk privately,” he said. “This was the first opportunity.”

  She and Lizzie had not gone to Beechwood yesterday because Saturday was the day Lizzie reserved for reviewing accounts with the housekeeper, approving menus for the coming week, and attending to her correspondence.

  Charlotte had not expected to see Mr. Carsington until Monday. She’d spent two restless nights, debating whether she’d done the right thing in not simply saying yes.

  But now, as he walked beside her, so calm and completely confident, she was sure she’d been right.

  She’d cried herself to sleep on Friday night, thinking of his kindness, of the comfort and relief she’d felt after she’d confessed, and he simply held her in his arms.

  She couldn’t repay that kindness at the expense of his pride and reputation.

  If they married in haste, people would talk. He mightn’t mind, but she would, on his account. She couldn’t bear for anyone to think him a fortune hunter. She couldn’t bear for his father to suppose he’d taken the easy way out.

  Now, though, it seemed he was determined to set tongues wagging.

  Since the church was a short distance from Lithby Hall, Lord and Lady Lithby preferred to walk there, weather permitting. At present they walked home, far enough ahead of Charlotte and Mr. Carsington to be in sight while out of earshot.

  “I hope you realize you’ve put ideas in Papa’s head,” she said. “I hope you realize the whole village will be talking of this. It is as good as a declaration to walk with a lady after church.”

  “I know,” he said. “Though I haven’t spent a great deal of time among the fashionable set, I’m well aware of courtship practices. I’ve heard endlessly how they did it in my grandmother’s day, and how my parents courted, and this relative and that. I hear all the gossip.”

  “Then why did you not wait for a less public opportunity?” she said.

  “Because I am courting you,” he said. “I see no logical reason to make a secret of it. That was not my main reason for coming here today, however. You said yesterday that you would never forgive yourself. You said many harsh words about your behavior. It is a cruel burden to bear. I cannot feel what you do. I am not a woman. I’ve never borne a child. But because I am not, I have, I hope, something to offer that a woman cannot. Another viewpoint, perhaps. I do not know exactly what needs to be done, but I mean to try, in every way that I can, to help you find peace.” He looked away from her, to the couple ahead of them. Lizzie glanced back, smiling. “I mean to court you, yes,” he went on. “But in these coming days I am determined as well to find a way to ease your heart.”

  It took her a moment to answer, because the heart he spoke of was so full. “You’re a shockingly good man,” she said at last. She mustered a smile. “Perhaps I’d better say yes and have done with it. I’ve never had any trouble resisting men’s lures—at least not since that first time—but so much kindness is beyond me.”

  “No, I want a hearty yes,” he said. “No questions, no doubts. I am determined to make you believe your life will be a desert—utterly unlivable without me.”

  She laughed then, how could she help it?

  She didn’t see her father look back then, and look to her stepmother, and exchange knowing smiles with her.

  She didn’t see the villagers exchange knowing glances, either, and she didn’t hear the talk. She’d known tongues would wag, and she had an idea what they’d say.

  She had no inkling of the danger.

  She saw only the tall, powerful man beside her, and all she understood was the lightness of her heart as she walked beside him.

  Sunday night

  “He what?” Colonel Morrell said, his hand tightening on the whiskey glass.

  “Walked with Lady Charlotte after church today,” said Kenning.

  Colonel Morrell threw the glass into the grate. It shattered.

  Kenni
ng didn’t blink.

  “Get me another,” his master said quietly.

  The manservant did as ordered. “I couldn’t hardly believe it myself, sir, when I heard it,” he said. “Everyone was talking about it. There was wagers on it. People saying they’ll be calling the banns next Sunday, and the house party’ll end in a wedding, if it don’t start with one.”

  All this time—nearly a year—of watching her, studying her, planning, so carefully planning how to win her trust. All this time, enduring his uncle’s sarcasm and criticism and nagging: What’s taking so long? Keep dawdling and a bolder and cleverer fellow will snatch her out from under your nose. You’d better find a gal easier to please; you ain’t up to this one.

  Now she’d as good as declared she’d marry Lord Hargate’s worthless Don Juan of a son.

  She was not to be blamed. This sort of thing happened, unfortunately, all the time.

  She’d taken leave of her senses, that was all.

  Not for the first time.

  But it was not her fault. She was a woman. Even she, remarkable as she was, had a woman’s weaknesses.

  He was not angry with her.

  She was in danger, grave danger.

  Colonel Morrell would have to save her from herself.

  Chapter 12

  Monday 8 July

  Darius stared at the paper in his hand. It was neatly ruled, the handwriting clear and square, the figures all too easy to read.

  It was the list of expenses he’d told Tyler to provide.

  “It would have been cheaper to send the boy to Eton,” Darius said.

  Tyler twisted his cap in his hands. “The missus keeps the tally, sir,” he said. “Tells me the lad grows out of his clothes as fast as she can make them. The girls pass on their things from one to the next, so it don’t cost much more to dress six of ’em as one. But he been growing at a great rate, and he can’t wear the girls’ things now, can he? Not that he could wear any of their shoes anyway, what with his feet bigger even than my oldest gal’s. I wish you could see how he eats. Going to be a big one, my missus says.”

  His missus had a good head for figures, apparently. She certainly had no trouble with large numbers.

  The sum, Darius supposed, was not exorbitant. The trouble was, he didn’t know where he’d find ready money at present, as “the missus” demanded.

  “What of the money Pip earns catching rats?” Darius said. “Purchase tells me the boy’s earned as much as ten pence in a day.”

  “Yes, sir, but while he’s catching rats for you, I’m losing his help. Then I’ll have to train up a new boy, won’t I? And no telling how long it’ll take to find one. I been looking, but as you know, sir, the most of ’em’s worthless. Not to mention the missus must say aye or nay—on account the girls, you know. Don’t want no thieves and ruffians and such living in the house with my girls.”

  Healthy and willing orphans were not thick on the ground, Darius knew. Still, he was sure the Tylers were making matters more expensive and complicated simply because they saw an opportunity to do so. Or the “missus,” did, at any rate.

  “I shall speak to my man of business,” Darius said. While he was in Altrincham, he’d pay a visit to Mrs. Tyler as well.

  Darius returned to Beechwood late in the day, nursing a headache. His visit had upset Mrs. Tyler, and when she was upset, her voice rose to a screech. Since he was a gentleman as well as her husband’s employer, she couldn’t shriek at him, so she shrieked at her daughters instead.

  “Stop that coughing, Sally! Watch what you’re doing with them greens, Annie! Mind that pail, Joan! You’re splashing water everywhere!” And so on.

  The girls shrieked back, defending themselves. She screeched at them not to talk back to their elders.

  It was amazing that Tyler still had his hearing.

  Screeching notwithstanding, it was not, all in all, a bad place for an orphan boy. Pip ate with the family instead of waiting for their table scraps, as was the case for many in a similar position. He slept in the kitchen, not a cupboard or a dank cellar. They did not dress him in rags. Whatever Mrs. Tyler’s faults, she took great pride in her housewifery. Everyone under her roof—including the lowly apprentice—was “fed and clothed proper and knew what soap was,” she told Darius.

  Still, it represented a steep descent from Mr. Welton’s household. Life with the Tylers meant no more schooling and that, Darius had discovered during last week’s ride to Salford, distressed the boy, though he made a brave show of not minding.

  I shall have to send him to school, Darius thought, as he rode home. It was that or take on Mr. Welton’s role and tutor the boy himself.

  School was better. A boy ought to be with other boys. The trouble was, one must pay for it. As it was, Darius still needed to find the ready money to reimburse the Tylers for Pip’s upkeep. Mrs. Tyler might deem the boy bad luck, but she wasn’t about to let the articles of indenture be broken until she was compensated—in hard coin—for every last scrap they’d provided him and every minute they’d spent on him.

  Darius was analyzing his finances for the hundredth time as he neared his stables. A series of shouts and shrieks brought him out of the mathematical reverie.

  He hurried toward the noise. A short distance from the stables, he found two boys rolling in the dirt, pummeling each other.

  “You queer-eyed little bastard!”

  “You’ll look queer when I break your nose!”

  “Your ma’s a whore!”

  “Your father buggers sheep!”

  “Your pa’s prick fell off from pox!”

  “Your grandmother poxed the Royal Navy!”

  Darius swiftly dismounted, strode to the combatants, grabbed them, and pulled them apart.

  They continued to swing ineffectually at each other while breathlessly trading insults.

  Darius lifted them off the ground and gave them both a shake. “Enough!” he said.

  He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to raise his voice.

  The boys fell silent.

  He let them down but didn’t let them go.

  He looked at Pip, who sported a bloody nose and would soon boast a black eye as well. “He never heard of William the Conqueror,” Pip said. “He’s an ignorant bloody buggering sod of an arsehole.”

  “That’s enough,” Darius said. He looked at the other boy, whose nose was bleeding as well. “Who are you?”

  “Rob Jowett. Sir.”

  Rob looked to have suffered the worst of the battle. Not only was his eye promising to turn colorful, but his jaw was starting to swell. Darius released him. “Go home, Rob,” he said.

  “He said the House of Lords is all bastards like him, sir,” Rob said indignantly. “That’s treason, ain’t it?”

  “It isn’t, and I didn’t say all of them,” Pip said scornfully. “I said some of them were. Past tense. I suppose you can’t hear any better than you can hit.”

  “That’s enough,” Darius said. “Rob, go home. Pip, I want to speak to you.”

  Rob went off, making hideous faces at Pip over his shoulder until he was out of sight.

  When he was out of sight, and Pip had no one to make hideous faces back at, Darius said, “What was that all about?”

  “He’s as big as I am, sir,” Pip said. “It’s not wrong to hit someone as big as you are.”

  “What was it about?”

  “He’s so ignorant,” Pip said, looking in the direction Rob had gone. “He said Daisy was ugly.” He wiped his bloody nose on his coat sleeve.

  Oh, Mrs. Tyler was going to love that.

  “Where is Daisy?” Darius said.

  “I brought her back. They like to have her home at Lithby Hall when Lady Lithby gets back from here, and these days the ladies go home near noon.”

  “Then Rob didn’t try to hurt the dog,” Darius said. “He merely found fault with her looks. And you hit him for that?”

  Pip shook his head. “Oh, no, sir. First I tried to reason with him. Firs
t I said that she’s a bulldog and that’s how they’re supposed to look. Besides, how could you say whether an animal was ugly or not, unless it was deformed? And he said I was deformed, and I said I wasn’t—like you said. I said my eyes were distinctive. And he said I gave myself airs because I was a pet with the Lithby Hall ladies, exactly like the dog. And I said the ladies were only polite to me because that’s how ladies are—polite, not that I expected him to know anything about what was polite any more than what was present and what was past tense. And he said my eyes were queer and it was because my mother was a poxy whore. And then I hit him.” He looked toward where Rob had gone and smiled an unmistakably self-satisfied smile.

  That smile.

  Darius knew that smile.

  But no.

  It vanished as the boy’s gaze came back, all earnestness now, to Darius. “I had to defend her honor, didn’t I, sir?” he said.

  His mother’s honor.

  The mother he’d never seen because she’d given him up when he was an infant.

  A newborn infant?

  Perhaps, but not the same newborn.

  A coincidence, that was all.

  “Sir?” said Pip. “Am I in trouble?”

  “You’ll be in a great deal of trouble if you return to Mrs. Tyler looking like that,” Darius said. “You’d better put your head under the pump. And your coat sleeve as well. Where’s your cap?”

  The boy looked about, found it, and snatched it up.

  The cap.

  Darius remembered the way Lady Charlotte had held that same cap in her hand, the dazed look on her beautiful face.

  He remembered her odd behavior when she’d tripped over the bucket. He remembered Pip standing in front of her, wide-eyed…

  …wearing an expression much like the one she wore.

  Had she wondered what Darius wondered now?

  Staring at the boy’s hair—filthy and tangled at present—Darius saw in his mind’s eye Lady Charlotte on the day they’d tussled on the gravel: the Botticelli Venus bedraggled and dirty.