Lady Roma's Romance

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “I like to remember him as he was during those last few weeks,” Lady Brownlow said, leaning her head on her hand. “He had never looked so happy or so handsome. I knew that Roma truly loved him, so, even though I was saddened at losing him, I didn’t mind so much losing him to her. The other girls he knew weren’t nearly so sweet. Very mercenary, some of them.”

  “I doubt it would have been such a break,” Bret said, taking his aunt’s hand and giving it a comforting squeeze. “Elliot wouldn’t have forgotten about you.”

  “‘A daughter is a daughter all her life; a son is a son until he takes a wife.’ That’s how it has always been, and that’s how it should be,” Lady Brownlow said. “I didn’t mind if Elliot showed a little that we weren’t in the same sphere as the earl. There’d be grandchildren sooner or later, and they could have come to visit. There might have even been a boy. Delby would have been so happy if the name could have been carried on even if his title couldn’t pass.”

  She withdrew her hand. “I have never told anyone this, but Delby had begun to try to arrange it so that he would be—what shall I say? Promoted?”

  “As good a word as any,” Bret said. “Did he try to gain a baronetcy so that Elliot, would be Sir Elliot some day?”

  She nodded. “It probably would have happened, too, if Elliot had married an earl’s daughter. That sort of thing matters, you know, more than if he’d married someone else.”

  “I’m frequently glad that my father was undistinguished.”

  “Oh, how can you say so! He was very well liked, the friendliest, kindliest...”

  “But not distinguished for those things that lead to titles or wealth or eternal fame.” His father had a laugh and a quip for everyone, but his best memories of his father were in the long quiet walks they used to take, or later, when his illness grew, the chess matches that were less about the game than about life.

  “Of course, when Elliot died, Delby no longer cared about his posterity. Then he died as well and that... was that. Now I have only my memories.”

  “I know, Aunt. I know. They don’t satisfy, memories, do they?”

  A little silence fell as Lady Brownlow rearranged her shawls and draperies. “Nevertheless,” she began as if resuming a discussion, “you can begin to understand why I think you should court her.”

  “Court who?” Bret asked, coming back from a long way away.

  “Lady Roma. Naturally. Who else were we speaking of?”

  * * * *

  Mrs. Derwent arose and went to peer out into the hall. Making sure the door was closed tightly, she fluttered back into the room and sat down on the arm of Roma’s chair. “Tell me everything,” she said, just this side of a whisper.

  Roma laughed. “If you are hoping for some scandal, Dina, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

  “If there’s no scandal, then why tile secrecy?”

  Roma gazed up at her cousin. “It’s nothing. Elliot thought that it would look better if we seemed to meet in some unexceptional manner, and what could be more expected and proper than meeting in the great Marriage Mart?”

  “But how did you meet?”

  Roma feared Dina would be dreadfully disappointed after making such a mystery in her own mind over the matter. “It was in Worcester when Father spent the summer there, looking for evidence that the cathedral was built on the site of a Roman temple. He didn’t find it, but he found rather a lot of debris left over from the battle.”

  “What battle?”

  “Worcester fight.” Dina still looked blank. “In 1651 when Cromwell defeated Charles the Second?”

  “Oh, history,” Dina said dismissively. “I knew Mr. Derwent would have mentioned it if the French had invaded.”

  “Dina, do you mean to say that you wouldn’t have noticed a French invasion if your husband didn’t mention it?”

  Dina seemed to find nothing unusual in such an attitude. “It isn’t as if I could do anything to stop them,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, that is why we have an army, isn’t it? Go on about you and Elliot.”

  “We met there, that’s all.”

  “That can’t be all. Not even Elliot could have found cause for scandal in that.”

  Roma sighed. Dina wouldn’t give up, and if she did not tell her cousin something, Dina was quite capable of making scandal out of her own imagination. It was not maids alone who used their invention when gossiping.

  “It’s simply that when we met, I was alone. My maid had a cold, and I wasn’t about to drag her out of her bed simply to walk about the town with me. I quite literally ran into Elliot as we came around a corner in the cathedral at the same time. And what do you mean . . . not even Elliot?”

  Dina, her cheeks a little more pink, whisked off the arm of the chair and went to sit beside the shrine of her beauty. She seemed to take comfort from the nearness of the bottles and jars. Absently, she stroked on a little perfume—a bottle that had paid no duty at any port, she’d confided. “Well, I know he’s dead and whatnot, but he was something of an old lady when it came to things like one’s good name. Just because you were a little above him...”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Of course you were,” Dina said, taking up a chamois and buffing her nails. “Everyone knew it. I would hate to see you make the same mistake again.”

  “It’s not very likely, is it? There’ll never be anyone like Elliot in my life ever again,” Roma said.

  “No, I suppose not,” she sighed in sympathy. Then she brightened. “What about this Donovan man?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dina! I had only just met him; I told you.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t meet him in Worcester or somewhere? You seemed terribly friendly for just-met strangers.”

  “He’s a very pleasant spoken young man and Lady Brownlow’s nephew. I couldn’t very well treat him as coldly as one would a man who accosted one on the street.”

  Dina stretched out her fingers to look at the shine on each rosy pink nail. “He’s the sort of man who could talk a girl around his little finger. I’ve seen his kind before. Mind you,” she added, dimpling. “I wouldn’t mind adding him to my string. It’s so dreary in Bath when all my admirers are in London or dawdling in the country.”

  “What, not one devotee to worship at your feet? How awful for you.”

  “Perhaps I’ll invite Mr. Donovan to the party I’m having here in two days’ time. He looks as though he might be a most amusing flirt. I do so like a man who acts like a man! So many of the men in town are more interested in their looks than in mine.”

  “Be careful, Dina. I don’t think Mr. Donovan would like being regarded as just another string to your bow. He might not like it at all.”

  Dina gave a little shiver of anticipation. “Do you think he might fall in love with me in earnest? How thrilling! No one has been in love with me in earnest since poor Wilmerding. You remember ... he married that dreadful Smithers girl. Rich as Dives but what a bore. I saw him last month, pretending to dote on her when anyone could see that he was dying with ennui.”

  There was absolutely no point in losing one’s temper with Dina. She saw the world in such simple terms with herself forever at the forefront. She was entirely unable to comprehend why anyone should ever be angry with her.

  Roma wasn’t even sure that Dina was aware that other people had feelings, and if she did realize that, she was sure Dina had no notion that other people’s feelings could be stronger than those she felt herself. She was fond of her husband, as she’d be the first to declare, but no one had ever seen her tortured by passion, either the heights or the depths. She had married the wealthiest of her suitors and never allowed marriage to interfere with her pleasures. Roma doubted that any of her cousin’s admirers had been allowed to do more than kiss her hand. Dina had far too high an opinion of Dina to risk all her comforts for a passing pleasure.

  Yet she asked herself why she should have felt that quick flare of anger when Dina had so casually assumed she could ann
ex Mr. Donovan with a lift of her finger. Mr. Donovan did not belong to her. She never wanted to be responsible for another person as long as she lived. She’d been responsible for Elliot, and look what had befallen him.

  Chapter Five

  “Isn’t it strange?” Roma mused as she looked at the crowd gathered in the Lower Rooms. The musicians had started tuning their instruments, an exciting sound. People were putting down their cups and pairing off for the dancing. The gentle candlelight softened colors and contours, but the laughter and talk was bright and gay.

  “What is, Lady Roma?” Bret asked, standing beside her, his hand behind his back.

  “I was just thinking that one no sooner meets a person than one sees him everywhere one goes.”

  “Is that to my address? Am I haunting you?”

  She glanced up at him. Evening dress became him very well, making the most of his broad shoulders and tapering waist. With his hair brushed en brosse, he looked the pinnacle of Byronic splendor, even to his sardonic expression. Roma knew enough about men not to tell him so. He probably would have been disgusted by the comparison. For some reason, men did not like Byron, either the man or the poet.

  “Well, yes,” she admitted. “You are, rather. One day you were in the bookstore, the next in the confectioner’s. We no sooner say farewell at the apothecary shop than we meet at Augusta Green’s house. Yesterday, I stepped but one foot on the Gardens’ ground and I found you around every second corner. And tonight...”

  “Here I am again. But I am at a loss,” he said, the twinkle warming his eyes, tempering his cynical expression. “I thought you were haunting me.”

  Roma laughed a little. “Do you suppose ghosts feel that way? That they are not the haunting but the haunted?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Lady Roma?”

  “No, certainly not,” she said emphatically, but then stopped, catching her lip with her teeth. “Of course, I have seen a few things I couldn’t quite explain ...”

  “At the sites your father uncovers?”

  “And at Yarborough, though Father says he’s never seen anything, and you must allow that he would know. He has lived there his entire life.”

  “Relations of yours?”

  “There’s supposed to be a weeping maiden who walks the upper hall in times of trouble, and a murdered gardener’s assistant who haunts the folly in the woods on dark nights. But even when I was a girl and wanted to see ghosts, I never met any.”

  “Disappointing.”

  “Very. What about you, Mr. Donovan? Have you second sight?”

  “That’s the Scots, Lady Roma, not the Irish. But my Uncle Samuel’s second wife was said to have met the spirit of her great-grandmother on the eve of her wedding. The ghost warned her not to marry Uncle Samuel for her life would be cut short.”

  “And was it?” Roma could not resist asking, sure though she was that he merely indulged his sense of humor.

  “It’s hard to say. She did live to be over ninety, but perhaps she would have made it to the century mark if she’d stayed single.”

  A young lady standing near them, an acquaintance of Roma’s, turned when they laughed and said, “Oh, are you telling ghost stories? I simply adore ghost stories, the horrider, the better.”

  Roma didn’t resent the interruption. Indeed, she drew the girl and her friends that stood nearby into the conversation. She felt a slight but definite forewarning that she’d spent just about enough time in Mr. Donovan’s sole company. She did not want their names to be linked in any but the most trivial way. Bath’s gossip mills were famously efficient, creating reality out of a glance or a breath.

  In addition, Roma had begun to feel that it would be wiser to keep a proper distance between herself and Mr. Donovan. She’d noticed from the first that he had the power to draw her out, perhaps no more than the power of a truly excellent listener. Each time they met, she would vow to keep to unexceptional subjects. The weather, for instance, was always a profitable source of nothing-saying, especially in Bath.

  Yet each time they met, she would find herself taking off on a flight of fancy or plumbing the depths of her feelings. A discussion of their favorite sweets had somehow become a discussion of religion. An innocent comment about a book he held in his hand had evolved into a talk about politics, which escaped being an argument only through the necessity of keeping their voices down. Or now, when they’d somehow begun to discuss ghosts and she’d never so much as said the word aloud before.

  Roma vowed that from this moment on, she’d speak nothing but commonplaces. She wasn’t the sort of woman to be swayed into indiscretion by a handsome face. Though it wasn’t his face so much as his expression, she decided thoughtfully. Mr. Donovan always seemed so interested in what she had to say, looking at her as if she were the most fascinating woman in the world. What woman wouldn’t blossom under such scrutiny? But no more. It was much too heady, this sort of admiration. After all, she wasn’t fascinating, particularly. No doubt Mr. Donovan looked at every woman that way.

  After she’d accepted an invitation to dance from a scholarly sort, Roma took a moment to stand and look about her. It would be indecorous to hesitate too long. She might appear to be one of those girls who angled for partners, instead of waiting demurely for an invitation or an introduction.

  Her father had disappeared, as was his wont, into a side chamber or a cloakroom, there to sit and nod sleepily until it pleased her to find him for his escort home. Roma admitted that she was indeed looking for Bret. Would she espy that expression in his eyes as he spoke to another woman? And what matter if he did?

  She saw an empty gilt chair beside one of her acquaintances from London and started toward it. Before she’d gone a dozen steps, however, Bret materialized beside her. Before she could speak, he handed her a cup of punch. “You look thirsty.”

  “Yes, I am. Thank you.” As she took the crystal cup, she reminded herself to keep to neutral topics. “How is Lady Brownlow’s cold progressing?”

  “She finds herself much better today,” Bret said gravely. “Her symptoms are passing off.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. When do you think she’ll permit me to call?”

  “A few days. I notice she has suffered no qualms over exposing me to danger, but she had near palpitations when I conveyed your request.”

  “I wrote again today, reminding her that I am never ill. Do you still think it hopeless?”

  “Perhaps she’ll relent tomorrow. The ginger tea you sent seems to be helping.”

  “It’s not the tea,” Roma said with a smile. “It’s the white pepper.”

  “White pepper?”

  “My nurse’s old recipe for a head cold. White ginger, white pepper, hot water, and a drop of honey. It’s also good if you feel a cold coming on, so bear that in mind.” In obedience to her vow, Roma did not continue. She’d already said more than she had intended.

  “I will, but I, too, am very rarely ill.”

  Roma finished her punch, also a potent mixture, and gave Mr. Donovan the cup. “Thank you.”

  He passed their cups to a footman and remained beside her. “Do you attend many of these evenings?”

  “Why, yes. It’s my care to see that Father always puts our name in the subscription book as soon as we arrive.”

  “And do you enjoy them?” His eyebrows lifted. “Be honest.”

  “I’m always honest,” she said, stung. “Of course, I enjoy meeting my friends and . . . and the dancing.”

  Bret cast a critical eye over the company. “Excellent form, most of them. Say, I do like the little fellow in the dark coat. Look at him spin! Like a top who has shaken off all restraint.”

  Roma choked and looked severe when he offered to fetch her a glass of water. “No, thank you. That’s Mr. Billings or Wilkins or something of that sort. He’s a very nice young man. A clerk in an attorney’s firm.”

  “Who’s the beauty he’s dancing with?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Roma said. �
��I’m so sorry I can’t introduce you.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll introduce myself. I do like that very light blond hair, don’t you? Especially with all that red silk.”

  “Yes, she’s very pretty.” While they stood there together, Roma began to fume quietly. Why didn’t he escort her to an empty seat instead of standing beside her, ogling outrageously flighty girls in too-bright dresses. Or ask her to dance? She could not walk away and leave him standing all alone, for that would give rise to the very sort of gossip she was anxious to avoid. At least she was holding her tongue, keeping to her vow.

  “Of course,” Bret said, turning his intent eyes upon her. “There’s quite a lot to be said for auburn hair and pale yellow silk.”

  “Not when put to the blush,” Roma countered, as the heat rose into her cheeks. She had hoped for some control over her blushes upon gaining years, yet she was still as easily betrayed at twenty-four as at seventeen.

  “I didn’t mean to put you out of countenance,” he said, with a slight, apologetic bow. “You are quite beautiful, you know.”

  “I cannot very well admit to any such thing. The most I will allow is that I am very well to pass.”

  “You are . . . well, I don’t want to increase your blushes.”

  “I prefer that you do not,” Roma said, though it was a lie. She wouldn’t have minded his developing his ideas on that subject. Had any man except her father paid her compliments since Elliot’s death? Elliot himself had not been overly generous with praise. He seemed to think that their engagement was proof enough of his feelings, and she, so flattered by the bare fact of his attention, asked for no more.

  Roma looked out toward the dancing, her foot tapping beneath the hem of her gown. The orchestra had found a piece they could all play in the same rhythm. Several gentlemanly acquaintances, the brothers and cousins of friends, were gazing about in search of partners.