Endearing Young Charms Series

by M. C. Beaton

  He studied her for a few moments, thinking hard. She had only really met Bohun at that breakfast. He had been very attentive to her and danced with her twice, but that did not amount to a proposal of marriage. Look at the courage and good sense she had shown in getting herself out of debt at Dolly’s! Such courage and good sense would help her to assess Bohun’s true character. By forbidding her to see Bohun, he would only give the horrible man all the added attraction of forbidden fruit.

  “Very well, Fanny,” he said. “I will not stand in your way, provided you do not get into any more scrapes.”

  She ran to him and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “Oh, Charles, I knew you would see sense.”

  Sense, his mind echoed as he walked back downstairs to report to Tommy and Miss Grimes. Sense! Was he not himself as crazy as Fanny? Would such a prize as Miss Woodward not shrink from him when she learned that he was not only poor but married as well? Folly! And yet Miss Woodward—Amanda—had looked at him with such glowing eyes. He shook his head as if to clear it. Better not to think. Fanny was safe for the moment. Provided she told them in future where she was going and what she was doing, she could not possibly come to any harm.

  “You owe me five hundred pounds,” Dolly was saying to Lord Bohun. Her guests had gone; she had sent them all packing as soon as Fanny had left and had then sent a footman to White’s to summon Lord Bohun.

  He eyed her coldly. She looked flushed and blowsy—and smelled abominably of stale brandy and perfume.

  “Why should I?” he retorted. “I did not tell you to cheat at cards. At least if you cheat at cards you should make sure you are not found out. It is better I distance myself from you from now on.”

  Her eyes glittered with a hectic light. “I would like to remind you again of that five hundred,” she said. “You would not want me to tell your little heiress that it was you who put me up to inviting her, that it was you who circulated those tales of Deveney being jealous of you.”

  He sat down at one of the gaming tables and swept aside the clutter of cards and dice and glasses with one savage movement. Dolly smiled and brought over inkwell, quill, and sand shaker. He wrote out a draft and handed it to her. Then he walked around the table and put his hands around her neck and squeezed hard, then shook her so that she gasped and choked.

  “You say one word,” he whispered, “and what you have just received will prove to be a foretaste of the real thing. You blackmail me and I will blackmail you. That husband of yours would not be so complacent were he to learn of our liaison. Ah, that has got you, has it not? The only thing that keeps you from whoring on the streets is Marsden, who lends you a certain spurious respectability. He goes along with your little schemes, for you make money for him. But hear this. Not only will I ruin your reputation … but I will damage you so badly that no man will want to look on you again.”

  He released her; Dolly shrank back in her chair, her face white. He laughed. “Hang me, Dolly, if you don’t look as if you have just had a fright.” And still laughing, he thrust his bank papers in his pocket and strolled out.

  Had Lord Bohun been a woman, he would most certainly have been excluded from Lady Denham’s ball. Lady Denham was a high stickler, and, like the Countess Lieven, was fond of saying, “It is not fashionable where I am not.” Any lady who had committed a whisper of an indiscretion was not allowed in her stately town house. But men were ever men, and everyone loved a rake. So Lord Bohun’s dark past and dark reputation only lent him a certain added interest. Besides, he was rich and came from an old family. So he was invited, whereas a certain Miss Frampton, who was a model of good nature and courtesy, had been found to have had roots in trade and so was struck off the list and a chilly note sent to her—in which her ladyship frostily hoped that Miss Frampton would not have the temerity to attend.

  Martha Grimes detested Lady Denham. They had been debutantes together in their youth. But Lady Denham always had the cream of society at her functions, and Miss Grimes was anxious to swallow her own pride in doing her very best for Fanny.

  Lady Denham, having married a man considerably older than herself, was now a widow. She lived in a mansion during the Season in Grosvenor Square. She was a flat-figured woman, flat front and back, with an oddly squashed sort of face, like a face pressed against a window. Tommy whispered to Miss Grimes that Lady Denham looked like someone who had just been put through the mangle; Miss Grimes laughed, her clear, youthful laugh—one of her charms that was daily endearing her more to the army captain. Tommy would have been amazed and distressed to know that he was often the subject of the spinster’s sad thoughts, thoughts in which she felt hopeless. He was only a few years younger than she, but she knew that although only in her forties, that was considered a great age—and that men in their forties were always attracted to younger women, never to respectable spinsters.

  The ball was a very grand one. Fanny, looking radiant in a lilac silk gown cut low at the bosom and displaying the borrowed jewelry, was dancing with Lord Bohun, too naive to school her expression of absolute joy, thought Miss Grimes.

  Lord Bohun had not had much opportunity to talk to Fanny because the dance was an intricate country one involving a lot of changing partners, but when they were promenading round the ballroom at the end of the dance, as was the custom, he said seriously, “I am afraid I unwittingly introduced you to very bad company.”

  Fanny’s large eyes flew up to meet his. “Mrs. Marsden,” he went on. “I believe she lured you to that gambling hell of hers by pretending to be a friend of mine.”

  Fanny looked startled. “But I thought …”

  He shook his head. “I have a certain affection for Marsden, but his wife is a sad rattle. Do not, I pray you, have anything to do with her again.”

  “Oh, I won’t!” said Fanny fervently. “Charles was very angry with me.”

  “Poor Miss Page. Ah … he has a vile temper.”

  “Well, it was not like that, you know. Not at all. In fact, now I come to consider the matter, he could have been much angrier with me. I must be a sore trial to him.”

  “He sometimes goes on more like a husband than a cousin,” said Lord Bohun, looking across the ballroom to where Sir Charles stood against a pillar, watching them steadily—and so missed the guilty blush that had risen to Fanny’s cheeks.

  “He knows I do not have any town bronze,” said Fanny quickly. “But I am learning. Here is my next partner.”

  “Are we never to be alone?” he asked, with such sudden intensity that Fanny felt her heart beat harder. “We have another dance later. The waltz. We will talk then.”

  Lord Bohun retired to a corner of the room and thought hard. To deflower Fanny would supply him with the perfect revenge on Sir Charles Deveney. She was an enchanting creature and an heiress. His pulses quickened as he looked across at her. He must plot and plan to get her on her own.

  He began to get the glimmerings of an idea and went over to where the chaperons were seated and found a chair next to Miss Grimes. Tommy was absent, having gone to the card room. She went very stiff and haughty.

  “I come to beg your permission to take Miss Page driving tomorrow afternoon,” said Lord Bohun.

  Miss Grimes fanned herself vigorously. “I think you should ask Sir Charles.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Her cousin? Surely, ma’am, as her chaperon, you should say whom she sees or does not see.”

  Miss Grimes bit her lip and wished Tommy were with her. Charles had said any obstacle to Bohun’s courtship would only make Fanny want him the more. And where was Charles? Dancing with Miss Woodward—and certainly looking at that moment as if no other woman in the world mattered to him.

  Fanny could not come to any harm driving with Lord Bohun in the Park. “At the fashionable hour?” she asked cautiously.

  “Of course.”

  “Then I can see no harm in it,” said Miss Grimes, giving in with bad grace. That was men for you! Never around when you needed one, she thought, cursing the dancin
g Sir Charles and the absent Tommy Hawkes.

  For his part, Sir Charles had just asked Miss Woodward to go driving with him the following day; she had accepted with such pretty grace that he forgot about Fanny, about being married to her. Miss Woodward was as tender and good as she was beautiful. She would be shocked when he told her about his marriage and lack of funds, but then those eyes would grow kind again and she would accept him. Like a number of army men, Sir Charles was singularly naive about women, and unlike most of his fellows, he had not taken prostitutes, having a healthy fear of syphilis.

  Everything around appeared to disappear in a golden haze; Fanny, Lord Bohun, Miss Grimes, and Tommy—and even the hard, squashed face of his hostess. He had Miss Woodward floating round in his arms to the steps of the waltz and nothing else existed for him.

  Even when Miss Grimes later told him that she had felt obliged to give Lord Bohun permission to take Fanny driving, Sir Charles only shrugged and said there was little that could happen to her in an open carriage and in the middle of a crowd of fashionables, and furthermore, he was going to be there himself with Miss Woodward.

  “They are both quite mad,” Miss Grimes said, sighing, to Tommy, and then forgot her worries when he asked her to dance. He was a dreadful dancer, but Miss Grimes did not notice. She thought that she should forget any responsibility to Fanny and Sir Charles and concentrate on enjoying as much of Tommy’s company as she could, while it lasted. She did not think much of herself, never had, and so the idea that he might propose, that they might have a future together, never entered her head.

  Having all had a delightful evening, they were all in charity with one another on the road home, and, instead of going straight to bed on arrival, sat up over the tea tray, laughing and joking.

  But underneath all their jollity was a darker strain of worry. Sir Charles hoped that Fanny would soon find out what sort of man Lord Bohun really was; Fanny was sure Miss Woodward was only interested in Sir Charles because she thought him rich; Tommy dreaded the day when he would have to return to his regiment and say good-bye to Martha Grimes; and Miss Grimes tried not to think of the bleak future without him and found it hard to do so.

  Lord Bohun had been busy laying plans for the seduction of Fanny, but nothing but pleasure in her company showed on his saturnine face when he set off with her in a smart phaeton in the direction of Hyde Park the following afternoon. The fickle weather had turned cold and blustery after a sunny morning and Fanny, shivering in the thinnest of muslin gowns covered with an equally thin muslin pelisse, hung on to her bonnet and reflected that it was very hard to think love kept you warm when all the while you were worrying about watering eyes and a pink nose.

  Fanny had not been schooled to flirt, but when they passed Sir Charles driving Miss Woodward—and so intent on the beauty that he did not even see his wife—a devil entered Fanny’s soul. When they went round the ring again and she saw Sir Charles approaching once more, she began to flirt outrageously, casting languishing looks up at Lord Bohun, but having the satisfaction of seeing out of the corner of her eye that Charles had noticed her this time and was scowling quite dreadfully.

  “I have to drive down to Richmond tomorrow,” said Lord Bohun, “to see my old nurse. I would so like you to meet her. She is the only ‘family’ I have left. She is very dear to me. She must be nearly eighty, a great age. Sarah Dunn is her name. Scotch. I say, would you like to meet her, too? There can be no harm in it if the day is fine and we take my phaeton. There is nothing in the unwritten rules of society that says a young lady cannot travel alone with a gentleman in an open carriage.”

  Fanny’s heart beat hard and she forgot about the irritatingly lovelorn Sir Charles. This was tantamount to a proposal of marriage!

  “I would like that above all things,” she said. “But there is the Bidfords’ breakfast tomorrow and …”

  “Sadie Bidford is a good friend of Dolly’s,” he remarked.

  “Oh!” Fanny’s face cleared. “In that case, I have every excuse not to go. I do hope Miss Grimes will not be difficult.”

  “Let us return and ask her now,” he said gaily, privately thinking it would be easier to handle the spinster without Sir Charles around.

  Tommy had gone out to meet some army friends and Miss Grimes, missing him quite dreadfully, although he had only been gone all of ten minutes, was in a vulnerable state and too obsessed with the missing captain to put up more than a token protest. Fanny, after all, was Charles’s responsibility, and she had not known until Lord Bohun told her so that Sadie Bidford was a friend of the Marsdens. She weakly gave her permission.

  Sir Charles had been invited back to the Woodwards to take tea—and by the time he returned, Captain Tommy had told the delighted Miss Grimes that an army friend had invited both of them to his box at the playhouse that night and rapture drove any thoughts of Fanny’s future out of Miss Grimes’s head.

  Fanny thought it undiplomatic to tell her husband her plans. Charles was nearly always cross with her these days. Let Miss Grimes tell him.

  And so it was when Lord Bohun called to take Fanny out the following day that Sir Charles was in his room getting ready for the Bidfords’ breakfast.

  Tommy stepped forward. “Bohun,” he said, “just whereabouts in Richmond does this old nurse of yours live?”

  “Peartree Cottage,” said Lord Bohun easily. “It is just a little way along from the Star and Garter on the left. Old Miss Dunn will be enchanted to meet Miss Page. We will only stay for half an hour.”

  “I don’t like this much,” said Tommy after they had left. “I am surprised Charles did not have more to say about it.”

  Miss Grimes colored guiltily. “I—I did not tell him. Oh, I meant to, I really meant to, but—but the visit to the playhouse drove it out of my head.”

  “So Charles still thinks we are all going to the Bidfords?”

  “As to that, Bohun said that Sadie Bidford was a friend of Dolly Marsden’s and so it does to seem wise—”

  “All ready?” asked Sir Charles, strolling into the room. “Another fine day. We are having lucky weather. Where’s Fanny?”

  “She has gone to Richmond with Lord Bohun, to meet his old nurse?”

  “What? Unchaperoned?”

  “Well, Charles, he has an open carriage and—and it is in the middle of the day,” protested Miss Grimes, who had never heard of love in the afternoon.

  “But we are expected at the Bidfords.”

  “As to that, Lord Bohun did say that Sadie Bidford was a friend of Dolly Marsden and—”

  “Fiddle! The Bidfords are friends of the Woodwards and all that is respectable. Where in Richmond?”

  “He said Peartree Cottage, near the Star and Garter.”

  Sir Charles’s face grew bleak. “You both must go to the Bidfords and make my humble apologies to Miss Woodward.”

  “But Charles! Surely nothing can happen to Fanny!”

  “But it is my duty to make sure it does not. Why on earth did no one tell me of this?”

  Miss Grimes looked at him in dumb and guilty silence, for the correct reason was that they had all been so happy the night before she had not wanted to break the spell.

  “Do you want the traveling carriage?” she asked after the silence seemed to have dragged on to an eternity.

  “No, I will take my horse. Faster that way. Damn Fanny!”

  With that, he strode out, leaving Miss Grimes and Tommy feeling like schoolchildren caught out in some misdemeanor.

  Chapter 6

  FANNY, UNAWARE OF THE TURMOIL she had left behind her, was enjoying herself immensely. This was one of her dreams come true, bowling out of London in a smart phaeton with a handsome man. As they left the cobbles at Hyde Park Corner and moved onto the gravel surface of the Great West Road at a smart pace, her heart sang. He had said this nurse was his only “family.” That meant his intentions were serious and honorable.

  Then a little cloud passed over the sun of her day. It was going to be te
rribly hard to tell him about that marriage. But perhaps she need not! How did one get an annulment? Did it take very long? It could perhaps be done quietly, with no one knowing about it. She was sure he loved her as much as she loved him. There was a new intensity in his gaze when he glanced down at her—and so in the brief burning looks that were mentally stripping her naked, Fanny read only the light of love.

  Bohun could feel the weight of the cottage key in his pocket. He had collected it from his agent that morning. He owned many properties, his agent buying up places for him when they fell empty and renting them at a good price. Peartree Cottage at Richmond was a recent acquisition and not yet let to anyone. He had been to see it himself and knew it was perfect for his plans, those plans being the seduction of Fanny. He would pretend to be bewildered that the place was locked up, that there was no sign of his old nurse. Perhaps inside, dear Miss Page, there might be some evidence of what has happened to her. She may be ill. How fortunate that she gave me a spare key. And so his busy mind ran gleefully on. He was comfortably aware that Fanny was besotted with him. Seduction should not be too difficult.

  When they reached the cottage, Fanny exclaimed in pleasure. It was low and thatched, with a riot of roses round the door and a neat, well-kept, pocket-sized garden at the front. Through the trees beside the house, she could see the lazy roll of the river, ruffled by a light breeze and sparkling in the sun. A few birds chirped lazily, a dog barked from the fields nearby, and there was the faint sound of music from somewhere, someone practicing on the pianoforte, repeating the same phrase over and over again. And then as they approached the low door, everything went absolutely still, not a sound. Fanny felt a qualm of unease but did not know why.

  Lord Bohun hammered at the door with his fist; there was no knocker. Fanny waited expectantly for the shuffling of old feet on the other side of the door, but there was nothing but that eerie silence.