A Gentleman Always Remembers

by Candace Camp

  “Well, I am sure you must all have been agog when Gordy told you that we were engaged.”

  “No doubt we would have been,” Neville replied, “had the lad told us.”

  “What?” Her hands flew to her cheeks in an expression of astonishment. “That bad thing! Not to have breathed a word of it! Oh, I shall have to scold him about this. Where is that wicked boy?” She glanced around as if she might find Gordon hiding behind some chair.

  “He was around only a moment ago.” Neville’s eyes gleamed with amusement.

  “I shall take him to task as soon as I see him. Just you wait.”

  “Oh, I shall,” Neville assured her.

  “Have you and Cousin Gordon been engaged long?” Lily asked.

  “My, no. It has been a whirlwind courtship. I blush to think of what his mother will say.”

  “Aunt Euphronia doesn’t know?” Lily’s eyebrows sailed upward.

  “I think you must be the first to know,” Miss Saunders answered.

  “But we didn’t know,” Lily responded.

  “Until now.”

  “Yes, well.” Eve stood up. “Indeed it is too bad that Mr. Harrington is not here to meet you. One scarcely knows what to do.” She turned toward Lily. “My dear, perhaps we should go look for your cousin.”

  “Me? Us? But why? Surely Paul could look for Cousin Gordon.”

  “Much better, I think, if we do it.” Eve sent her charge a firm look. She had little idea what to do with the bold Miss Saunders. But she had no doubt that Lily should not be chatting with the woman.

  Lily’s face was beginning to set mulishly, and Eve feared she might argue, but at that moment there was the sound of footsteps, and Fitz appeared in the doorway, followed by the butler. His eyes flickered around the room, taking in the situation.

  “I see we have a visitor,” Fitz said in a mild tone.

  “I am Miss Saunders,” their guest said, rising and advancing toward Fitz. “I am Gordon Harrington’s fiancée.”

  “Are you?” Fitz returned her gaze blandly. “I am sure that will come as a surprise to his mother and father.”

  She giggled, covering her mouth coyly. “Indeed I fear it will. It was bad of us not to tell anyone, but it happened so fast. My Gordy is most impetuous.”

  “Indeed. ‘Your Gordy’ is also a minor, requiring his parents’ permission to marry. And if you knew Gordon’s mother, you would have little expectation of receiving it.”

  Miss Saunders’s eyes flashed. “I think she’ll not like having it known that her son gave an innocent maid a slip on the shoulder, then refused to honor his obligations.”

  “If you think anyone, including my aunt, will swallow that Banbury story, you are more naïve than you look,” Fitz replied.

  “He owes me!” The most sincere emotion Eve had seen yet bloomed on their visitor’s face. “He promised to set me up—a house and carriage and everything. A carte blanche. Then he ups and starts chasing after that dreadful bluestocking. All of a sudden he’s spouting poetry all the time and ignoring me. And where is my house? All I’ve gotten from him is this paltry bracelet.” She raised her arm and shook it to show the circlet of pearls. “I told him I wouldn’t let him get away with it!”

  “That is quite enough.” Fitz’s clipped voice was deadly cold, his eyes equally frigid. Eve noticed that even Miss Saunders went a little pale and closed her mouth on whatever she had been about to say. “Now . . . whatever Mr. Harrington promised or didn’t promise you, the issue does not belong here. It will not be discussed in front of Mrs. Hawthorne and my cousin. Bostwick will show you to my study. I have sent a servant for Mr. Harrington, and as soon as he arrives we will sit down and discuss the matter. In private.”

  He made a gesture toward the doorway, and the butler came over to stand beside Miss Saunders. She set her jaw, and for a moment Eve thought she might refuse, but then she swept out of the room, moving so quickly that Bostwick had to hurry to keep up with her.

  Eve and Lily turned to Fitz.

  “Cousin Fitz, who was that awful woman?” Lily asked. “She isn’t really engaged to Cousin Gordon, is she?”

  “I sincerely doubt that even Gordon is so foolish. And you, my dear girl, should forget that you ever saw her.”

  “I can’t do that,” Lily protested. “What did she mean, he gave her a carte blanche? And why did he promise to give her a house?”

  Fitz, looking somewhat harassed, turned toward Eve. “Mrs. Hawthorne . . .”

  Eve swallowed her amusement. “Yes. Come, Lily, I think it’s time we finished our tea.” She gestured toward their cups, cooling on the table.

  “But . . .” Lily protested, looking toward Fitz. “I want to talk to Cousin Fitz.”

  “Yes, well, I think that is precisely what your Cousin Fitz does not want.” Eve glanced at him with a smile.

  “You are, as always, most astute. Ladies, I bid you adieu. Carr?” He turned toward Neville.

  “Coming.” His friend rose with alacrity, and the two men left the room.

  “Well, if that isn’t the outside of enough!” Lily exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips and staring out the door after them. “No doubt they’re going off to discuss everything.”

  “Most annoying.”

  “It is. That is exactly what I wanted to do.” She paused, considering. “What I’d really like is to hear what Fitz tells Gordon. Wouldn’t you?”

  Eve had to grin. “Yes, rather. But I suppose we must respect Mr. Harrington’s privacy.”

  “I suppose. But I bet Cousin Fitz will tell Neville what he plans to say.”

  “Mr. Carr probably has a good idea already.”

  Lily chose a tea cake and bit into it, chewing thoughtfully. “Miss Saunders is a lightskirt, isn’t she?”

  “Lily! Wherever do you learn such things? Did Mr. Carr tell you—”

  “Goodness no. Neville can be positively stodgy about such matters. Which is really quite odd, since Cousin Gordon assured me that Neville has a reputation as a rake. Well, he says Cousin Fitz does too, but Gordon says that Neville is loose in the haft, which I gather is worse.”

  “At least he isn’t bird-witted enough to say such things to a young girl, as Gordon did.”

  “Look, there is Gordon now.” Lily was looking out the window through which her cousin had so precipitously left, and she hopped up now to go closer. “He doesn’t seem happy.”

  Eve came over to stand beside her. Gordon marched across the lawn toward the front door, followed by the grim-faced Paul. “Gordon has good reason not to be happy. I suspect your cousin is going to ring a peal over his head.”

  “If they are not engaged, why did Miss Saunders pretend to be? Did she think Cousin Gordon would fall in with her plans?”

  “I imagine she was trying to embarrass him. She claimed he had made certain promises to her.”

  “To set her up in a house,” Lily supplied.

  “Yes, but please remember never to talk about such things in front of others.”

  “I shan’t, but what a lot I’m going to have to tell Cam when she feels better!” Lily chuckled. “She will be furious she missed all the excitement.”

  “I am sure she will be.”

  “But go on. When Gordon didn’t live up to what he promised, she thought to make him do so by pretending they were engaged?”

  Eve shrugged. “That would be my guess. She probably told him she would go to his parents. Perhaps he dismissed her or said she wouldn’t dare. So she decided to confront him.”

  “Why travel all the way to Willowmere to do it?”

  “If she has any inkling of what Lady Euphronia is like, she would not have wanted to take her on.”

  “No.” Lily gave a little shudder.

  “Besides, she would have lost her bargaining power. Miss Saunders had nothing but the threat of embarrassment to use against Gordon. Once she embarrassed him in front of his parents, that would be the end of the threat.”

  “But she said she was goin
g to tell everyone, make a great scandal.”

  “Who would she tell? She scarcely runs in the Harringtons’ circle. And who is going to pay any attention to a woman such as she, claiming to be Gordon’s fiancée? No, I think her best threat with Gordon was to get him in trouble with his mother. So she came to others in his family, hoping to show Gordon what she would do at his mother’s house. I am sure she hoped it would frighten him enough to give her some sort of settlement.”

  “Instead it frightened him enough to run like a rabbit.” Lily giggled.

  Eve had to smile at the memory of the young man bolting out the window.

  They resumed their seats and returned to their tea, but a few minutes later they were drawn to the window again by the sight of Miss Saunders walking out to her carriage.

  “Do you think Fitz gave her any money?” Lily asked.

  “He may have. She looks . . . not pleased but not furious, either. From what Fitz said, he has rescued Gordon from other scrapes.”

  “He didn’t sound happy to rescue him today.” Lily gave an expressive shudder. “I vow he quite scared me when he told her to go with Bostwick. I never would have guessed Cousin Fitz could look so hard.”

  “Mm. I would not wish to be Cousin Gordon right now,” Eve agreed.

  Chapter 16

  Eve was not the only one who did not wish to be Gordon Harrington. The young man himself was slumped in a chair in the earl’s study, chewing at his thumbnail, regarding his cousin with a sullen blend of resentment and trepidation.

  “I don’t know why you’re going on at me so,” Gordon whined. “How was I to know the silly girl would take it into her head to chase after me up here?”

  “Silly? Shrewd is more like it. You are the one who has displayed silliness to an excessive extent.” Fitz leaned against the edge of the desk, his ankles crossed, but there was no relaxation in his manner. His blue eyes were glacial as they bored into his cousin’s.

  “I don’t know why you’ve turned into such a stickler. It’s not like you and Royce never traded in the muslin company.”

  “I never made promises I had no intention of keeping. Could not keep, in fact. You could no more have bought that bird of paradise a house than you could shoot a pip off a card at twenty paces. I don’t care if you keep a mistress. I don’t care if you keep a dozen. But I do care—” Fitz straightened suddenly and took a step forward, looming over the young man. “I do care when your frivolous, thoughtless actions bring a doxy into this house. Into the same room as Miss Bascombe and Mrs. Hawthorne!”

  Gordon swallowed convulsively and began to stutter.

  “Don’t bother to come up with an excuse.” Fitz swung away from him. “It is clear to me that I have done you a disservice the past few years, helping you out of scrapes, clearing up your messes. Royce and I felt sorry for you. We didn’t want you to have to face Aunt Euphronia with your mishaps. But it is obvious that as a result you have learned absolutely nothing.”

  “You’re not going to tell my mother, are you?” Gordon turned ashen, his eyes bulging.

  “No. At least not yet. But I can assure you that if you do not follow what I say exactly, I shall lay it all in her lap.”

  Gordon stared at him, his mouth opening and closing convulsively. “But . . . but . . .”

  “Here is what you have to do. You will repay me every cent that I gave Miss Saunders.”

  “What?” Gordon found his voice, though it rose at least an octave. “But how?”

  “Out of your allowance from your father, I imagine. He gives you money to live on.”

  “Yes, but I spend it all.”

  “Well, now you will spend some of it paying back the money I just gave Miss Saunders.”

  “I don’t see why you had to give her so much.”

  “Because you made promises to her. A gentleman keeps his promises, whether he’s made them to a king or a dustman . . . or a lightskirt. If you don’t mean to carry them out do not make them. If you continue to go on in this manner you will become known as a man whose word cannot be trusted.”

  “But you’ll never miss it; you’ve got piles of blunt.”

  “Which I have no intention of giving to you the rest of your days. I realize that your parents do not shower you with money, but they give you enough, and I don’t expect repayment all at once. However, you will have to give up your gambling and drinking for a while so that you can repay me a little every month. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.” Gordon crossed his arms, his chin sinking onto his chest.

  “This evening you will apologize to both our cousin Lily and Mrs. Hawthorne for bringing that woman into their presence.”

  Gordon’s eyes bugged out again, but after one look from Fitz he muttered, “All right. I will apologize.” He lifted his chin, saying in the tones of a martyr, “After that I will remove myself from this house, since it is clear that I’m not wanted here.”

  “No, you will not. You have been exposed to the measles, and I won’t have you responsible for spreading them everywhere you go. But while you are here you will help out.”

  “Help? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we have several sick servants and two patients upstairs. Monsieur Leveque needs to be lifted in and out of bed.” When Gordon started to protest, Fitz lifted one eyebrow and said, “Neville doesn’t seem to find it beneath his dignity to help the fellow.”

  “All right, all right, I will help.”

  “You might even go in to chat with him now and then or play a game of cards. And when the illness is over I expect you to return to college and apply yourself to your studies. Or at least do not get yourself expelled again. Stay away from gambling halls and Haymarket ware until you have repaid every cent.”

  “Well! I never thought I’d see the day.” Gordon rose huffily. “You’ve turned into Stewkesbury.”

  “There are far worse people to be, I assure you.”

  “You used to be a bang-up cove,” Gordon told him bitterly. “I don’t know what happened to you.”

  Fitz looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe I grew up.”

  Eve was in the small sitting room the next day, studying the reduced menu plans from the cook, when Bostwick announced that Colonel Willingham had come to call. She looked up, startled, and felt a moment of guilt that in all the turmoil of the last few days she had completely forgotten that the colonel was in the area.

  “Please show him in,” she told the butler. “That is, he does know about the illness in the house?”

  The butler nodded. “Yes, ma’am. He was inquiring after the health of our household.”

  A moment later the colonel strode in. Eve went forward, holding out her hand. “Colonel. What a delightful surprise.”

  He bowed over her hand with military precision, his face grave. “I hope I find you well.”

  “Yes, thank you, though poor Camellia has been struck down with the measles and several of the servants as well. I take it they are spread all over the village.”

  “Yes, to the best of my understanding.”

  “How do you fare at the hall?”

  “As you do here. A few have been stricken. Lady Vivian and Lord Humphrey and I are fine, but poor Lady Sabrina, I fear, has been severely stricken with them.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “Yes. There has been much ado. Her ladyship fainted the other night, just after we returned from our dinner here, and I had to carry her up to her room. I confess I assumed that she had simply become . . . overexcited.”

  Eve suspected that his words were a graceful euphemism for his assumption that Sabrina had been making another effort to capture his attention. A graceful faint into his arms sounded like just the sort of ploy she would use.

  “But by the next afternoon she had a fever, and now, as I understand, she has come all over with spots.”

  “Oh dear.” Eve firmly quelled the little devil of amusement that came to life at this pronouncement. She could not laugh; it would be too wicked
. Measles could be extremely painful, even dangerous, to adults. But she could not help but imagine Sabrina’s outrage at the appearance of red dots all over her lovely countenance.

  “Yes. I understand Lady Vivian had been ready to take her leave of us, but when Lady Sabrina was stricken she had to lay aside her plans and stay to care for her.”

  “Oh my.” Eve firmly pressed her lips together. This was almost too much, to think of Vivian playing nursemaid to Sabrina.

  “Yes.” The colonel’s grave expression was belied by a twinkle in his gray eyes. “It, um, fairly boggles the mind. This morning there were a number of crashes coming from the lady’s bedchamber.”

  A gurgle of laughter escaped Eve, and she clapped her hand to her mouth, but Colonel Willingham joined in. He quickly sobered, however, and leaned toward her.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, I cannot help but notice that you look rather pale and tired. I hope you are not overtaxing yourself. You must not work too hard. I hate to see you in this position, run ragged by the demands of others.”

  “You are most kind, sir, but indeed I assure you that I am not ‘run ragged.’ Nor do I mind helping out a bit beyond my duties. Lord Stewkesbury is a fair, generous employer, and during this emergency I am more than happy to do my part.”

  “Of course you would be.” He smiled. “But come, could I not persuade you to take a turn about the garden with me? It is a bit crisp but still a fair day. It would help to put some color in your cheeks.”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  Eve got her bonnet and a light pelisse, and they went out into the garden. It was, as he had said, a fair day, with the sun shining to counteract the nip of autumn in the air.

  “Thank you for suggesting this,” Eve said, smiling. “It is exactly what I needed.”

  “I hate to see you troubled.” Willingham gazed down at her gravely. “There is something else that bothers you, is there not? It is not simply the work you have been doing.”