Lady Roma's Romance

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “Ah-ha,” Lady Brownlow said, pouncing on this admission. “You must think well of him.”

  “It would be difficult to think other than well of him. He is one of the pleasantest men I have ever met.”

  “Pish-tosh.” Lady Brownlow’s round face took on a resemblance to a fretful baby. “Pleasant. What’s that? I’d rather hear you think he’s frightfully rude, or harsh, or that you don’t think of him at all.”

  “Why on earth ... ?” Roma asked, staring at her.

  “A girl halfway to being in love never thinks the man is ‘pleasant.’ Did you think Elliot was?”

  “Elliot was always a most thoughtful and attentive fiancé.”

  “But that’s how he treated me,” his mother said impatiently. “Didn’t he thrill you? Appall you? Anything of that sort?” Seeing Roma’s blank expression, she shook her head. “Perhaps times have changed. When I first met Delby, I thought he was dreadfully uncivilized and didn’t wish to have anything further to do with him. He was unrefined, I suppose. Why, he told me he would marry me one day that very first meeting. But he had such energy, such an unusual point of view, that I couldn’t help being drawn to him despite myself. You feel nothing like that for Bret either?”

  Roma opened her mouth to speak, but the words dried on her lips. The odd connection she felt to Bret seemed to have nothing in common with other women’s notions of love. “We are rather wandering from the point, aren’t we? I am not in search of a lover but of a husband.”

  “A bed is cold if a husband isn’t a lover, too.”

  Now she knew she was blushing. “No doubt love will come after marriage begins.”

  “That’s what parents used to say when I was a girl. I’m not sure they were ever right. So many of my friends married for good and sensible reasons. But whether you love Bret or not, you could do very much worse, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. To be truthful, I would rather marry for good and sensible reasons than tumble head over ears into love. Besides, I doubt I was made for such romance. I am too proud.”

  “Bret’s proud, too. Proud as the Duke of Somerset, as my father used to say.”

  “What are his prospects, Mother Brownlow?” Roma asked boldly.

  “Who? Oh, Bret’s. Not good. Not at all good. He won’t accept help from his friends or his relations. I don’t know what his plans are. He only makes a light answer when I ask. He sat right where you are and told me he had only three talents.”

  “What are they?” Roma wondered if he had some hidden gifts that might help him to a suitable career. She wondered if he’d be interested in taking a seat in the House of Commons like his friend Mr. Morningstreet. Her mind turned to Dina, and she lost the thread of her conversation as she worried that her cousin might create an irrevocable scandal.

  “Oh, he was joking again, of course. I wish they’d made him a lawyer. Is it too late for him to do whatever it is one does to become a lawyer? I suppose one has to start very young.”

  “I beg your pardon; I’m afraid I was thinking of something else. Do you think Bret would be interested in standing for Parliament? Though we are not ourselves a political family, my father has so many acquaintances among the antiquity-minded nobility that I’m sure we could find someone to back him. Also, I believe my mother’s second cousin was something in politics. I think he’s acquainted with Charles James Fox.”

  “Oh, yes, and you’d be such a clever hostess that someone important would be bound to notice him. I wonder if he’s ever considered it.”

  “You are taking too much for granted,” Roma said, climbing down from this flight of fancy. “Unless you know your nephew’s politics, we cannot say what would be of use to him and what would not. Furthermore, I never said I would be his hostess.”

  “You cannot blame me for giving my fancy free rein. If I cannot see you married to my son, why not to my nephew? It would keep you in the family which I should like above all things.”

  “So should I,” Roma said, rising to bestow a kiss upon Lady Brownlow’s peach-soft cheek. “But of course, it’s utterly impossible. He’d never consider even asking me.”

  “What’s impossible?” Bret said, appearing in the doorway. “And who wouldn’t ask who what?”

  Roma gave the slightest shake of her head when Lady Brownlow opened her mouth to speak. The older lady rolled her eyes in a very juvenile fashion but kept her tongue between her teeth. “Nothing of importance,” Roma said, turning about.

  He looked atrociously well rested and healthy as he stepped into the room, coming forward to salute his aunt. Whoever had lain awake half the night hadn’t been him. The merriment in his eyes was contagious. Roma felt better just for having seen him, and that, surely, was a dangerous sign.

  “Good news, darling,” he said, drawling a bit so that his faint Irish intonation came through more clearly. “They say that you may yet make a recovery of your stolen property. Your felonious friend, Mr. Household, was stopped at a little fishing port in Cornwall, of all places. Where the devil he thought he was going, I couldn’t begin to guess.”

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Brownlow said, distressed. “What will they do to the poor boy?”

  “Aunt, you are a reminder to me not to be so vindictive. I didn’t care what they did with him so long as they recover your money. Once you confront him, he’ll be bound over for trial. With luck, he’ll be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land as a convict. It’s a healthy life, and he’ll do honest work there.”

  “Transported? Oh, the poor boy. If I don’t make a complaint, he won’t be charged, will he?”

  “He’s defrauded too many other people, Aunt. Let him go out there and find a new start. I’m half tempted to commit a crime myself. A nice sea voyage and a new life at the end of it sounds like a tonic at the moment.”

  Roma looked more closely at him and saw that his bright eyes were slightly sunken and his voice held a slight roughness. “Are you quite well?” she asked.

  Lady Brownlow leapt on this. “What? Are you sick? What is it? The grippe? The ague? Mr. Bennet has the ague so bad his wife says he can hardly bear her walking across the floor. Come here and let me feel your forehead.”

  As Bret bent to submit, he cast a doleful yet laughing look at Roma. She felt sorry that she’d said anything to set Lady Brownlow off but at the same time was pleased that someone was attending to his health.

  “I’m perfectly well,” he protested, when Lady Brownlow proclaimed that he felt too warm and should have a dose.

  “I’d better go,” Roma said, looking for her reticule and disposing her silk-wool wrap over her elbows.

  “Wait. I’ll go with you. Where are you going?”

  “I promised to make a call on my cousin, Mrs. Derwent.”

  Roma realized that she’d begun to understand what Bret thought merely by looking at him. She’d never had that experience with anyone else. Now she knew he was thinking of last evening, their previous walk to Dina’s house, and, as well, the faintest memory of that moment ... those moments in the chapel... in short, that kiss.

  Lady Brownlow’s brow wrinkled as she looked up into Roma’s face. “Now you are all flushed as well. I hope you don’t have a fever.”

  “No, I’m only a trifle warm now with all this on. We will talk again, Mother Brownlow, and on the same subject.”

  “If there’s time, my dear one. If there’s time.”

  When Roma stepped out onto the landing, she took a deep breath of the crisp air. It felt so wonderful that she took another. Lady Brownlow’s reliance on anodynes and herbal remedies gave her favorite chamber a heavy medicinal smell. Going down the steps, she turned and waited for Bret. She laughed when she saw the tightly rolled umbrella in his hand.

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said, coming toward her. He moved so well, his feet so light, that he almost seemed to be dancing. Roma couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes for fear that he would see as clearly as she how her feelings had changed. It wasn’t the fresh air or the sunsh
ine that made her feel as though she could dance to his rhythm. Being with him again was enough to lighten her heart.

  She recognized this feeling as dangerous but hardly cared. And that, she knew, was a greater danger sign yet.

  “It doesn’t look as if it will rain today,” she said. “You are quite safe.”

  “I brought it for you. I would rather experience the expert valeting of your cousin’s butler. My jacket had never been so well pressed before. Or since.”

  “You look fairly well turned-out, just the same.” She noticed by sunlight, however, a thread on his sleeve. “May I?” she asked, abating her steps and lifting her hand to it.

  Bret bowed his head in assent. Roma flicked the wisp away and found her hand caught in his. “I can find nothing whatever amiss with you. You are perfection.”

  She raised her eyes to his then, recalling the touch of his lips on hers, couldn’t resist letting her gaze fall to his firm and well-shaped mouth. Perhaps he noticed, for his grasp suddenly tightened. “Roma ...” He turned his head to one side, reaching out to touch her throat, to draw her closer. The kiss was already in his eyes.

  Roma hesitated, but she was no parlor maid to be kissed on the street for all eyes to see. She slipped out of his light hold, shaking her head, unable to look anywhere but at the walkway beneath her feet. Two working men passed by, muttering an apology as they passed between Bret and herself.

  “We should walk on,” she said. “We mustn’t block the path.”

  “Yes. Besides, my aunt need only glance out her window to see ... everything.”

  She quickened her pace, walking on alone for a few feet until he caught up to her. Very deliberately, he took her hand and passed it through the crook of his elbow. “We needn’t run today,” he said in an intimate tone, smoothing the glove over her skin. “We can take all the time in the world.”

  Oh, but she knew how far this infatuation had gone when so idle a touch could send thrills chasing through her. When she’d been hardly sixteen, she and her father had gone to spend the summer in Chichester. One glance from the local vicar’s son, dark of eye and hair, all of twenty-one, and home from Cambridge, could send her giddy for days. Perhaps she was suffering from some sort of second spring now. But could one have spring fever so late in the year?

  “I wanted to tell you what Jasper said to me. I was up half the night talking with him,” Bret said in a more conversational voice.

  “What is it?” she said, hoping to hear some promise of renunciation.

  “He’s holding a grand ball at his home in a few days’ time. He wondered if you’d care to go. Some small recompense, he says, for last night.”

  “Is that all?” Roma asked.

  “What else? Oh, you mean the pretty scene he and your cousin enacted for us last night. I don’t mind confessing I was fairly disgusted. I had thought better of Jasper. He’s a very honorable fellow as a rule. I would have trusted him with my last ration of pork out in Spain, let alone my life.”

  “It was only a kiss,” she said, knowing what arguments Dina was likely to advance. “After all, you kissed me,” she added, softly enough to hope he hadn’t heard her clearly.

  “But you aren’t married, Roma.”

  “No, I’m not.” Once again, she felt it was wiser to observe some graffito on the wall across the street, to admire a bolt of pale gray velvet at a draper’s, to smile at strangers, rather than meet his brilliant eyes.

  “Jasper needs to find himself a bride who is young, sweet, and unencumbered by scandal. If he is to achieve his ambitions, he must be careful.”

  “My cousin is very presentable,” Roma said.

  “Would she continue to be so with a divorce in her past? You know society better than I, Roma. Do you think they’d accept Mrs. Derwent’s new husband? Five years younger than she is at the least, and she formerly married to an extremely punctilious and well-liked man. And I cannot believe she is the sort of woman not to make a bad situation worse if the opportunity presents itself.”

  The last thing Roma wanted to discuss with Bret was Dina’s absurd romance. If she were to be coldly honest, she’d admit that all she really wanted was to hear him go on talking to her with that intimate intonation, telling her that he found her perfection, telling her that this was no mere infatuation on his part. Such talk gave her both courage and hope. Nevertheless, she could not let his comments on Dina, whom he hardly knew, to pass unchallenged.

  “You are speaking of my cousin, Mr. Donovan. She has her faults—who does not?—-but she is a good friend to me. She may well be turned from her infatuation with this young man. Indeed, I am as fully aware as you are of the disaster awaiting them if they continue. Even more so, as you have said. Though I have never taken a great interest in the ton, having little patience for such frippery, I believe they would be accepted nowhere except at the lowest sort of entertainment. And I don’t for a moment believe that Dina would be either happy or pleasant to live with if she couldn’t enjoy London society. Love wouldn’t last long under those conditions.”

  “Wouldn’t it?”

  “How could it? She’d always want things he couldn’t provide, not because they cost money but because they are not his to give. Even the wealthiest families in town have to sue for certain favors from certain personages. If Dina were divorced, especially if she were spectacularly divorced, those doors would close, and not all Mr. M’s ingenuity, fortune, or love would serve to open them again.”

  “But if she truly loved him,” Bret said, keeping her from proceeding with his hand on her arm. “If you truly loved someone, would society and the jeers of former friends matter so much?”

  “They must matter. To someone like Dina, they are what my father calls ‘heaven, earth, and Ultima Thule.’ “

  “To someone like Dina Derwent, yes. What about someone like you?”

  “We were not speaking of me,” Roma said. She looked around as if waking from a dream to find that she’d reached her destination. She moved away from Bret and gave him her hand to shake. “Thank you for escorting me. I hope we will meet again soon.”

  “If you attend Jasper’s party, I shall certainly see you.”

  “Not before?” Roma asked shamelessly.

  “I promised I’d spend the next several days with him and his mother at their home.”

  “I see. May I wish you a pleasant journey? Good day.”

  “Good day.” She’d climbed a few stairs when he called after her. “Wait.”

  He stood below her, looking up like an acolyte in a church. She didn’t like it. He did not tower over her like so many men. She’d become used to being able to look straight into his eyes, when she could bring herself to do so. Roma came down step by step until she was only a single one above him. His eyes were laughing again. “Will you save me a few dances?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And will you walk with me? There’s a stone terrace that goes three-quarters of the way around the house.”

  She found the balustrade to be of absorbing interest. “Yes, I will.”

  “That’s a promise,” he said, lifting her hand as if to kiss it. Roma’s breath caught, but he only looked up at her with a smile so wicked that she couldn’t keep back a gurgle of laughter. She stood outside her cousin’s house and watched him walk away.

  Bret looked back twice, walking backward for several yards the last time until he bumped into an old gentleman. Roma looked on in alarm until, after a very brief conversation, Bret’s charm induced the man to forgive him and even send him on his way with a laugh. Bret lifted his hand to her, and she returned his wave with a flourish.

  * * * *

  Dina Derwent, it seemed, was lying down to recruit her strength for a card party this evening. “Pray remind Mrs. Derwent that she very much wished to see me today.”

  The grave butler bowed and carried the message up. After a brief space, he arrived to escort her to her cousin’s room. Dina was up, sitting before a mirror while her French maid dres
sed her hair. The face in the mirror appeared sallow and disgruntled, the hair swept up from her forehead in a stiff pompadour aging her badly.

  “You wanted to see me, Dina?”

  “Thank you for coming. I suppose you know what it’s all about. What a fool you must think me!”

  Roma cast a glance at the maid, placidly continuing with her duties.

  “Never mind her. She pretends not to understand English, but I know for a fact she listens at doors. But she’s a wizard with hair and maquillage.”

  “Not today, she isn’t. She’s making you look a perfect fright,” Roma said, slipping the brush from the maid’s fingers. “I will see to my cousin’s toilette.” The maid mimed a curtsy, giving a tiny sniff of disdain.

  “I can’t think why you keep such a pert servant.”

  “I should hardly be known for my clothes if it were not for her. What she doesn’t know about fashion hasn’t been invented yet. But that’s not why I wanted to see you.” She stirred idly among the bottles and pots on her table. “Have you tried this perfume? I don’t think it suits me,” she said, pulling the faceted stopper from a crystal flagon and dabbing it on her collarbones.

  “In fact,” Roma asked, “Why did you want to see me?”

  “You know perfectly well why. You’d better see if that wretched girl is listening.” As Roma verified that she was not, Dina pulled the pins from her hair. When Roma returned, Dina demanded, “Are you going to tell Derwent what you saw or thought you saw last night?”

  In the light that came through the window, Roma could see the slightest signs of decline at the corners of Dina’s eyes. Not wrinkles, yet, merely the tiniest loss of freshness marked the places where one day lines would be carved by time. Her jawline, too, had softened, though not yet slipped while the bracelets in her throat were only just noticeable but already permanent.

  “Saw or thought I saw? Dina, you and your paramour admitted that you were in love.”

  “Yes, well, let us not quibble over such matters. Are you going to tell Derwent?”