A Country Flirtation

by Valerie King

  ***

  Chapter Fifteen

  The air was cool on the terrace steps. Constance had listened to Ramsdell’s declaration as one trapped in a nightmare. All her fears rose upon each loving word he spoke, fears that had taken shape within her eleven years earlier, the moment she had learned of her father’s debts following his untimely demise.

  She might have recovered her equanimity eventually had not her mother suffered a fit of the apoplexy four years later and left her with the sole management of Lady Brook as well as the care of her sisters. Something about the pairing of the two events had left her changed—forever.

  Lady Brook had become her sole concern in recent years, the force that gave her stability and security. Yet Lady Brook was far better than flesh and blood—she could manage the property without the smallest skirmish, she could tear down parts of it at will and build up other parts when it suited her, and she could rest in the sure knowledge that Lady Brook would always be hers.

  “Why do you hesitate, Constance? Don’t you love me?” he asked.

  She did not hesitate. “I cannot accept of your hand, Ramsdell. I’m sorry. I can see now that I have used you ill.”

  He was holding her left hand with his right. “I don’t understand. I was so certain . . . Constance, you must tell me, do you not return my sentiments?”

  She wanted to lie again. Why was he making this so hard for her? “What I feel for you is not at all pertinent,” she responded.

  He chuckled uncertainly. “Whatever do you mean? Your feelings toward me, for me, are all that matter.”

  “I won’t leave my home,” she stated flatly. “I won’t. I have my sisters to care for, and my mother. I refuse to abandon them.”

  She stared up at him. She dared him to respond.

  His lips parted and he drew in a breath. “I hadn’t considered these things,” he said slowly. “And I do know how very much your family depends on you. But surely there is some way we could sort out what must be done. I certainly did not offer for you with the intention of demanding you concern yourself with only my wishes, only my desires.”

  “Ramsdell, it’s not as simple as that. I can’t marry you. I can’t marry anyone. I want, I prefer, to remain at Lady Brook—forever. I belong there.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “It was your father, then—”

  “He has nothing to do with this.”

  He took a step toward her and slid his hand down her arm, taking a strong hold of her elbow. “He has everything to do with this, and well you know it. My God, Constance, you were left to shoulder the entire burden of your family. But your sisters are all of an age now, and your mother is regaining her facility with words and movement. You don’t have to hold so tightly to Lady Brook, and . . . you’re not alone anymore. I’m here.”

  She shook her head, disbelieving that her life could be any different. “I’m too frightened. I know you can’t understand, but my answer must be no. No, I say.”

  “Just tell me this, do you love me?”

  Tears began filling her eyes. “Of course I love you. I have from the first, I think, from that stupid moment when you rose up in your curricle like . . . like a god or something! Oh, why did you have to come to Lady Brook?”

  He drew her gently into the circle of his right arm. “I was sent to you, but not just for your sake, for mine as well. I didn’t know I was so alone until I met you, my darling Constance. I need you by my side, as my dearest companion and, one day, the mother of our children. I want you more than anything in the world to be my wife.”

  She held him tightly, struggling to keep so many forceful emotions from overwhelming her. She felt certain there was only one answer she could ever give him, yet her heart was near to breaking.

  After a long while, when several tears trickled unbidden down her cheeks, she realized that they were no longer alone.

  Katherine stood in the shadows near the doorway.

  “My sister is here,” she whispered.

  He released her, but only sufficiently to be able to take her arm firmly in his in order to support her better. She found she needed to lean on him, for she was trembling mightily.

  She swiped at her tears as Katherine solemnly approached. “I don’t know how to tell you this, especially when I can see you are already overset, but I went in search of Augusta, and when I could find her nowhere, I—I went to the stables.”

  “Oh, no,” Constance murmured, her heart sinking.

  “Our traveling coach is gone and the head groom told me that Mr. Kidmarsh had commandeered the vehicle, saying that the lady was ill and had to be taken home at once. He said he might have been suspicious, except that the lady did indeed look poorly and nearly swooned when he assisted her into the carriage.”

  “Good God,” Ramsdell said. “Are you telling us that Charles has eloped with Augusta?”

  Katherine nodded. “So it would seem. The worst of it is, they left four hours ago by the head groom’s best calculation, since he recalled clearly that night had not yet fallen when the coach pulled from the stable yard.”

  “Four hours ago,” Constance said.

  “Then it is too late,” Ramsdell said. “Even if I saddled a horse now and rode after them swiftly—and had every good fortune of following their precise path—I wouldn’t be able to catch up with them until the morrow. And though I don’t like to admit it, Charles is quite skilled at eluding me.”

  Constance shook her head hopelessly. “Then there is nothing to be done except to tell the others.” She thought of Mrs. Kidmarsh and felt quite ill suddenly. Charles’s mother would not take the news stoically.

  “But is this such a bad thing?” Katherine asked earnestly. “When they are so deeply in love—and the obstacles so overwhelming?”

  Ramsdell queried, “Do you believe they are in love?”

  Katherine began to smile, though her expression still seemed a little sad. “Whenever they were alone or with me or Celeste or Marianne, it was as though the world ceased to exist for them. And Alby is so gentle with her, so tender, something Augusta must have in a husband if she is to know any happiness—a brutish man would be the death of her. As for an elopement, I don’t wonder that she appeared nigh to swooning—Augusta will not like stealing away in such an offhand manner, not by half.”

  “This is my fault,” Ramsdell stated solemnly. “I should have intervened with my aunt long before this and gotten rid of at least half my servants, who have so doted on Charles, one would think he had been born the infant Christ instead of my cousin.”

  Constance looked up at him, her sensibilities returning slowly to order. “Indeed?” she queried, a smile touching her lips. “The infant Christ?”

  He looked down at her and, seeing the amusement in her eye, chuckled softly. “There,” he murmured, taking her chin in hand. “That is much better. I don’t like to see you so sad, you know.”

  Constance felt her heart soften, and fresh tears sprouted. “Will you at least count me as a friend even if I can’t wed you?”

  “I absolutely refuse to answer that question at present. Right now I know I must face my aunt, and I am trembling at the mere thought of it.”

  Constance gave a watery laugh. “Indeed,” she said facetiously. “I can see that you are.”

  He chuckled again.

  Katherine interjected. “I saw Mrs. Kidmarsh not five minutes past, just before I came to you, in the card room on the ground floor.”

  “Then let’s go to her,” he said. “She ought to be informed at once.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Constance was sorry for Mrs. Kidmarsh, who heard the terrible news while in the presence of the four remaining Pamberley sisters as well as her nephew and her sister. She seemed torn, however, by Katherine’s recital of the history of Alby’s disappearance with Augusta. Her face would grow alternately flushed with displeasure then pale with a need to swoon. She seemed caught between two powerful emotions that vied for supremacy.

  In the end anger w
on the day. “My poor Charles,” she said at last when her tongue found speech. “I have done everything I could to protect him. But, oh, what agony to have seen him taken in by a conniving fortune hunter, when I strove so very hard to prevent it!”

  Constance barely suppressed her own shocked disapproval of Mrs. Kidmarsh’s angry condemnation of Augusta and at the same time heard her sisters’ sudden gasps, mutterings, and murmurings against Alby’s mother. She knew what would happen next if her sisters were left unchecked—Augusta, with her sweet temperament and superior mind, would be defended to the death. Marianne in particular seemed ready to take up the gauntlet with a vengeance.

  She was just about to intervene, taking a hasty step forward, when Lady Ramsdell said, “Eleanor Kidmarsh, of all the bacon-brained things I have heard you say in your five and forty years, this must be one of the worst yet. I have been in Miss Augusta’s company for less than twelve hours but not without comprehending full well that a less grasping female you will never find. There is nothing of the fortune hunter about that fine young lady who seems to have won your son’s heart.

  “But beyond your stupid pronouncement I would only pose this question, where the deuce are your manners? Miss Pamberley is our hostess, and you have offered her so great an

  offense that were I in her shoes, I should turn you out of my house in the twinkling of an eye. Fortune hunter, indeed! Now, make your apologies, or I shan’t share my coach with you and you may walk the distance back to Lady Brook for all I care.”

  A fulsome silence followed this speech. Constance gazed upon Lady Ramsdell in amazement. How greatly she admired her at this moment.

  “But you don’t understand—” Eleanor began on a wail.

  “But indeed I do,” the dowager continued. “We have all been at fault to permit you to carry on as you do, as though your son were . . . were—” She searched for exactly the right word.

  Katherine suggested, “The infant Christ?”

  Lady Ramsdell seemed stunned by her choice of symbol, but her eyes lit up. “That’s it, by Jove! Eleanor, I doubt that the infant Christ received as much coddling as your son. Were it not for Ramsdell, you silly woman, Charles would have long since been wed to the Duke of Moulsford’s mistress, who was, as you very well know, a frequent dancer on the Drury Lane stage.”

  Mrs. Kidmarsh stared up at her tall sister and turned an ominous shade of white. “What—what do you mean?”

  Lady Ramsdell narrowed her no longer long-suffering eyes at her sister. “I am as much to blame as anyone. I protected you, but from what? I shan’t anymore. If you must know, Ramsdell interrupted four previous elopements of Charles’s, and each with creatures so vile as to make one’s head spin. I have seen great improvement in your son since his sojourn at Lady Brook, but I have little doubt that it was your very presence that prompted this ridiculous elopement. However, I refuse to say another word. Instead”—and here she turned to the Pamberley ladies and to her son—“I suggest we retire to Lady Brook and begin making arrangements to receive the bridal couple once they return from Gretna or wherever it is they’ve gone.”

  Mrs. Kidmarsh, who was pouting severely, muttered, “And I won’t even be able to plan a suitable wedding breakfast, for they shall already be married.”

  Constance bit her lip and dared not glance at her sisters, who were just barely managing to withhold their amusement. She had never known such a ninnyhammer as Eleanor Kidmarsh and hoped she never would again.

  When Charles had arrived at Lady Brook, she had thought him a child. Looking down at Mrs. Kidmarsh, she understood why—he had been raised by a child even younger than himself.

  However, Charles was no longer an infant. In fact, he was well on his way to taking up a manly place in the world because of time well spent at Lady Brook. The elopement with Augusta she felt to be a setback, but nothing so severe that time and continued effort on his part might not put right.

  As for Augusta, she trusted that her superior manners and mind would give a proper shape to what would in the early years of her marriage be a most tiresome relationship with her beloved’s mother.

  So it was that the entire party crammed themselves into the two larger coaches and began the ten-mile journey back to Lady Brook.

  Both coaches disgorged the despondent revelers at the front door of Lady Brook just before midnight. Morris opened the door and Constance could see at once that something was amiss. She was greatly fatigued from the day’s strange events, which began with the arrival of Lady Ramsdell and Mrs. Kidmarsh earlier that morning, continued with Lord Ramsdell’s heartfelt offer of marriage at Lady Bramshill’s ball, and ended with Alby’s elopement with

  Augusta. The drive back to Lady Brook seemed to rob her of any remaining strength, and so it was that after taking a look at Morris, she whispered, “Whatever has happened, Morris, I shall tend to it in the morning. I am fagged to death and cannot possibly—”

  He interrupted her with a pinched brow. “I’m ‘fraid that will be impossible.”

  The entire party was now grouped in the entrance hall. She stared at him wonderingly. “And why is that?” she asked. “Have the stables caught on fire or the well run dry or all the servants left to join the navy?”

  “Well, no,” he responded uneasily. “However, Mr. Kidmarsh—”

  “Mr. Kidmarsh will not be joining us this evening, nor will Miss Augusta. They’ve—”

  “Taken sore advantage of a kind hostess and most excellent sister.”

  Alby’s voice drew Constance’s gaze flashing toward him in stunned disbelief. “Charles,” she said, as did nearly every other person in the entry

  Mrs. Kidmarsh screamed, then rushed toward him. “My poor son! Then you have not eloped. Oh, happy day! Happy, happy, happy day!”

  “There, there, Mother. No need for your tears or your ecstasies.”

  “M-mother?” she queried tremulously, lifting her face to him. “Oh, Charles, does this mean you know me at last?”

  “Yes, Mama. I’m ‘fraid I have a confession to make. I—I’ve been shamming it the whole time. I’ve always known precisely who I was, where I lived, and to whom I’ve been related. However, until I met Augusta, I didn’t know how I was to go on at Aston Hall anymore. But now I do.”

  “Of course you do, my pet. Miss Augusta undoubtedly had an attack of conscience, just as she ought, and has sent you back to me. We’ll return home on the morrow, and in a few days everything shall be as right as rain. After all, no harm has been done, and I’m certain in a year or two I shall forget entirely about this nasty episode of yours. Until then, however, you shan’t hear a single word of reproach from me—not one.” She took a single long breath and began her condemnations. “Oh, Charles, how could you have done this to me, wicked, wicked boy?”

  Constance was spellbound by the sight before her, as, it would seem, was everyone else. Had Lady Ramsdell’s words meant nothing to Mrs. Kidmarsh? Did she not see how much she was the cause of her son’s unhappiness and erratic conduct?

  Apparently not.

  “Mother,” Charles began strongly with a shake of his head. “You might wish to avail yourself of your vinaigrette, for I am convinced you will not like what I have next to say to you. But first, will you not, all of you, come into the drawing room, for I want everyone to be witness to what I have to say tonight.”

  The party moved as a flock of sheep might move under the firm direction of an experienced shepherd. So solemn was the moment, as well, that not a single murmuring could be heard from anyone, except, of course, Mrs. Kidmarsh, who was begging to know which of the ladies had a vinaigrette she could borrow.

  Once within the drawing room, Augusta was found to be standing by the mantel, her eyes red and puffy, her expression indeed conscience-stricken.

  Alby forced his mother with a gentle push of each hand on her shoulders, to sit on the sofa adjacent to the fireplace. Afterward he joined Augusta, sliding an arm about her waist, supporting her tenderly in what was obvious to
everyone was her supreme misery at having distressed her family.

  “We are to marry,” he stated, his gaze fixed on his mother.

  Mrs. Kidmarsh blinked several times and said, “My son is lost forever.” She then stuffed the vinaigrette up a nostril. The powerful vapors, however, sent her into a sneezing fit that had the happy effect of taking the solemn air entirely from the occasion.

  Katherine burst into laughter first, followed quickly by Marianne and Celeste. Sir Henry was not long in following suit, then Lady Ramsdell and Constance. Afterward, Ramsdell, smiling broadly, moved forward to clap his cousin on the shoulder. “May I offer you my congratulations, Charles. You will be very happy. And to you, Augusta, my very best wishes.”

  Augusta’s eyes began to lose their unhappiness as she murmured her thanks in response.

  Mrs. Kidmarsh, however, continued to sneeze, weep, and wail for the next quarter hour, which afforded the rest of the party to offer their congratulations as well.

  When Mrs. Kidmarsh’s voice was again the only sound to be heard in the drawing room, Lady Ramsdell finally told her in no uncertain terms to stubble it, a curt command that brought her sister to a place of silence, followed by several hiccoughs.

  Lady Ramsdell then addressed the question everyone wanted to ask. “But, Charles, what made you abort the elopement, for we were convinced you meant to take Augusta to Gretna?”

  He nodded. “I had meant to. But we had not gotten very far past Lady Brook on the northern road, when I could no longer bear Augusta’s unhappiness.” He hugged his bride-to-be and kissed her cheek. “She never complained once from the moment I had persuaded her ‘twas the only way to overcome a number of familial obstacles, but the look in her eyes broke my heart. In the end, I decided to take Miss Pamberley’s sage advice and to confront the dragons that have beset me since I was a babe.”

  “You . . . you would refer to me as a dragon?” Mrs. Kidmarsh wailed.

  “Only your good intentions for me, Mama. I know your heart is given fully to me, I’ve no doubt of that. But it is time that all your wishes, hopes, and dreams for my life be slain. I am a man now, and heretofore I fully intend to set my own course and raise my own sails. Augusta and I will be married, here, in a small private ceremony in a week. We shall honeymoon in Ramsdell’s hunting box in Leicestershire—if that is agreeable with my cousin—” Ramsdell nodded his acquiescence. “And afterward we shall remove to Kingsholt and begin our married life together.”