“Mr. Morningstreet seems to say a lot of things to you that he hasn’t said to me. I would have thought he’d rather strangle me than dance with me. Doesn’t he blame me for diverting Dina’s attention?” While pursuing this, she began walking toward the tall glass doors at the end of the room.
“Not at all. Not in the least. I believe he’ll soon come to his senses. You know, I shouldn’t be surprised if some clever girl snaps up him and the Morningstreet fortune while he’s in the midst of recovering from his lovesickness. He’ll probably wake up one morning and realize his incredible luck in being caught by the perfect woman.” His voice expressed no glee, only dismal resignation.
“Has he a fortune?”
“Certainly. His grandfather amassed a huge fortune during the French and Indian War in America. He supplied both sides and the colonials.”
“Sounds questionable at best.”
“One cannot argue with a fortune. Nor the lack of it. A man may be no less a man for his poverty, but he feels less of one.” She could almost see the effort he made to shake off this gloom. “Here we are. The famous terrace.”
Of gray Portland stone, shining under the moon, it made a frame for the golden stone of the house. Beyond its vase-shaped balusters, the garden whispered in dry autumnal voices wafted on the breeze. Trees were mere black masses against the silver-lit sky, each adding its own rustle to the night. A few clouds, rippled like feather beds, flew overhead, interposing themselves between mortals and moonlight.
“It’s rather eerie,” Bret said. “Let’s go back.”
“Oh, no. It’s delightfully gothic. One might imagine all sorts of dark deeds. A murder and a bloodstain that returns no matter how many times one washes it away.”
“I would have thought you far too sensible a woman to be attracted by the gothic and grotesque. Do you read ghost stories and hide shivering beneath your bedclothes?”
“No. But I believe I am tolerably sensitive to atmosphere,” she said, feeling nothing but impatience and an eagerness to be gone emanating from him. The moon was not serving her usual office of friend to lovers and would-be lovers. She’d hoped for a romantic interlude to ease her path. What had happened to the man who had kissed her in Laura Chapel? To him, she could have offered up her proposal. Not to this sudden stranger who seemed to want only to introduce her to other men and have nothing to do with her himself.
They walked on in silence. Then Roma felt his hand steal into hers. Bret did not glance at her; she could not be sure he even knew what he had done. For herself, she could only declare that she was as happy as she’d ever been in her life.
“Roma, I’m leaving Bath tomorrow quite early in the morning.”
“Leaving?” Her happiness shattered like a Wedgwood vase thrown from a height. “Lady Brownlow said nothing of this.”
“She doesn’t know yet.”
Roma tugged on his hand to stop him walking on. That was a mistake; made aware that he held it, he released her. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Why are you leaving? Where will you go?”
“London, perhaps. I’ve heard there may be a posting I can fill as ... as a quartermaster. If I arrive there tomorrow night, I can apply early on Friday morning. I’ve no experience, of course, and there’s bound to be a dozen better men ahead of me. But there’s a chance I may land it.”
“But there’s the Household matter. You can’t go to London and leave that unsatisfied.”
“It’s all over. They caught Household already. He’s clapped up in gaol, and that’s where he’ll stay. If there’s any more business, Jasper can help Aunt Brownlow. She likes him.”
“You’ll come back and see her, of course.”
“Certainly. In the spring.” He leaned against the balustrade as if at ease. But Roma could see his hand tremble when he touched his cravat, adjusting it slightly as if he found it too tight. If he came back in the spring, she would no longer be resident in Bath.
Roma came to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder, but facing the balustrade and rail, looking out at the restless, wind-moved garden beyond. “I should like a house like this some day,” she said. “Small and exquisite, what they call in my part of the country, ‘tidy-neat.’“
“Small? They’ve got twelve bedrooms.”
“I’ve eleven cousins. I could set up an almshouse for pathetic spinsters. I would be the chief Vestal, keeping the fires of virginity well banked.”
Before, talk of her single state and her resignation thereof had evoked poetry and a kiss that she would remember long after the pretty compliments faded. Now Bret said nothing, but she could sense the struggle within him. Or perhaps that was also wishful thinking.
“What will you do,” she asked, “if you don’t receive that posting?”
“Go into the brewery, no doubt.”
“The brewery?”
“Didn’t my aunt ever tell you that we have a relation who owns a brewery in Ireland? Brewed from the soft waters of the Liffey, it gives strength to the weak and spirit to the strong. He wants me to come and learn the business while he’s still alive.”
“But how wonderful!” Roma declared. “I had no notion of this. Will you do it?”
“You are the strangest woman I ever met,” he said. “All my friends and most of my family tell me that to take such a step would mean the utter loss of station. They are right. No gentleman could ever consider descending to the level of a tradesman.”
“What utter twaddle. Half the so-called gentlemen I know would knock their uncles on the head to take up such an excellent offer. And don’t think matchmaking mamas will care a snap of their fingers for your ‘level,’ so long as there are chinks enough in your pocket.”
“You are too sanguine, Roma. Most mothers would skim their daughters out of my reach. But I don’t know why I’m talking like this. I don’t have marriage in view.”
“You should have. Lady Brownlow worries about you. If you were married to a good-hearted, sensible woman, she wouldn’t.”
“I know a few good-hearted and sensible women.” He turned toward her with the first natural smile she’d seen on his lips all evening. “But I have never been able to induce any of them to take such a risk with me.”
Roma took a deep breath. That was her cue. But before she could speak a word, he laid his hand on hers. “We’d better return to the ballroom. Your father will be looking for you.”
“Not he. He has eyes only for Sabina.” She turned her hand beneath his to hold it. “Bret...”
“We should go in.”
“Bret, please. Hear what I have to say.”
His face was shadowed; neither the light from the room behind them nor the moonlight illuminated it. He bowed his head in assent but said nothing. Roma was intimately aware of his every breath, his slightest motion.
“I cannot go on living with my father once he is married. I have too managing a disposition to return to the status of a girl, no matter that I like Sabina very much. I cannot take a subordinate role to any woman and give up what has always been my place.”
“I can see that would be difficult for one so high hearted.”
“‘Pigheaded’ is more the word for it. I wish I could step back and let Sabina take on all my duties and responsibilities, but I know it would never work. Therefore, I’ve decided that I must marry.”
“Yes.” He went on holding her hand.
“Despite the kindness of my friends in presenting eligible gentlemen to me . . . Did you speak?” She’d caught the merest whisper of a laugh. “Despite that, I say, I don’t wish to marry just any presentable gentleman. I want someone with whom I can laugh. Someone to whom I can speak my every thought without restraint or apology. Someone, in short, like you. In fact, to state the case without roundaboutation ... you.”
Someone farther along the terrace opened a door. The light flashing off the glass sent a beam directly into his face. She saw disbelief in his eyes, and yet happiness was written there as well. Then the door closed, and s
he couldn’t see any more.
Bret slid his arm about her waist as he turned to face the same direction. His head rested on her shoulder as he mastered his feelings. She felt him shake with some emotion between laughter and tears. “Bret?”
“You are the dearest girl in the world,” he said. Raising his head, he looked into her eyes. “The dearest and the best.” He kissed her cheek.
“Is that an acceptance?”
Bret did not answer.
“Oh, I see,” Roma said, suddenly devoured by embarrassment. Trying to retain a light tone, she added, “Let this be a lesson to me not to listen to my flatters. I have been told no man can resist me. I should have known better.” She began to move away from him, but his arm tightened.
“Roma, listen ...”
“You needn’t say anything. I was foolish and presumptuous. My, isn’t it getting cold? I think Father was right; it may yet come on to snow.”
“Roma...”
“You needn’t keep your arm about me any longer, Mr. Donovan. I’m not going to make a fool of myself and cry.”
“Roma, hush.” He gathered her close, both arms about her now. She struggled to be free, head down, pushing him away, but he held her closer still. “Don’t go imagining any foolishness. It isn’t because I don’t love you that I mustn’t marry you.”
“Does that mean ... ?” She stopped, her eyes searching his.
“Yes. I love you. I couldn’t tell you when I fell, but fallen I most certainly have.”
Roma struggled now to bring her arms up. Laying them about his neck, she whispered, “I didn’t think you did. I only know how much I love you.”
She wanted him to kiss her and did not admire his self-control and restraint. He leaned his forehead against hers, his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs moving gently on the base of her throat. “Roma, there’s no future for us. You need to marry someone who is of your rank and dignity. Not an ex-soldier who can’t even ride a horse for more than an hour at a time. Not someone without prospects or connections.”
“But I don’t care about those things. They don’t matter.”
“Of course they do.”
“No, listen, Bret. I have enough for both of us. I have what one might call a handsome fortune. We wouldn’t be penniless. We could have a wonderful life.”
“On your money? What sort of queer nabs do you think I am?”
“Very queer, indeed, if you mean to let your pride stand between us.”
“It’s not just pride. What would I do with myself? Go to clubs, play cards, drink? Come home in time to take you to some ball or play? That’s not life, Roma. Better to be a brewer than live like that.”
“Other men seem to manage.”
“They were born to it, and frankly, most are suited for nothing better. I’m not the man to suffer that kind of boredom without going quite mad.”
“Then enter politics or collect old pots. Do whatever pleases you, so long as we are together.”
His gaze traveled over her face as though he were memorizing every feature, a strange smile quirking his lips, as if he looked not at a living woman but at a mirage. Sadly, he shook his head. “We have both too much a managing disposition for such a life. I won’t be second in my house any more than you could be in your father’s.”
“I see. You are afraid that if it is my fortune that supports us, I will become a shrew. Any man would shrink from such a fate.” She forced a smile. “You’re right, of course. I probably would become something of a tyrant. Nor should I like a lapdog or a courtier.” She laid her forehead against his shoulder. “Isn’t there some way you could make a fortune quickly? Couldn’t you rob the Bank of England? Become a highwayman? Or an attorney? “
“I could sail to the Indies and dig a fortune out of the hills, but I think I had better go to Ireland instead.” Again he kissed her cheek. “I’ll never forget that you honored me like this. I shall remember you until I die.”
Roma clung to him for one last breathless moment. He kissed her, and she gave him all her love in one embrace. “It’s wrong,” she said at last. “It’s all wrong for you to leave me. If I could only say the right words to make you stay, but if ‘I love you’ won’t work, I can’t think what will.”
“It’s snowing,” he said softly.
She felt the cold touch of a snowflake falling on her cheek like the frozen tear of an angel. It instantly melted, wetting her face. “We had better go in, then. Will I... We had better say good-bye now.”
Bret crossed the stone floor and opened the door for her. “Go on, my love. Farewell.”
“Good-bye.”
Roma did not seek the shelter of the cloakroom this time. She made her way to her father’s side. The music sounded dull and brassy, the dancers revolving like puppets in a music box. “It’s starting to snow, Father, just as you said.”
“Did I?”
Sabina slipped her hand into Roma’s. “Well?”
“Not well. Not at all well.”
Turning to her fiancé, Sabina mimed a shiver. “We’d better go home. I should hate to be overturned on the way.”
“The snow won’t amount to anything,” Lord Yarborough said firmly. “It’s too early in the year. But if you wish to go, my dear, you need only say so.”
“Ride back with us?” Sabina asked Roma. “I can’t wait to tell you all the funny things people have said to me.”
“I should like that,” Roma said, noticing with gentle amusement her father’s disappointment at not having Sabina all to himself again. She was surprised to find that she could still smile. Nevertheless, she felt a certain reluctance to take a deep breath or move quickly, afraid that somewhere inside something vital had cracked and that too much exertion would shatter it completely.
She shook hands gingerly with her host and hostess, taking a moment to thank each of them for a lovely evening. “I met so many pleasant people, Mr. Morningstreet. I think you have the nicest friends in the world.”
His handsome countenance, always a little rigid when in her company, relaxed into a smile that showed his excellent teeth. “Thank you, Lady Roma. I always say that nothing and no one beats the army.”
“So true. Good evening. Good evening, Mrs. Morningstreet.”
As she left on her father’s other arm, she heard Mrs. Morningstreet whisper, ‘Why can’t you fall in love with a nice girl like her?”
In the coach, Roma leaned back against the velvet squabs. She could almost share Mrs. Morningstreet’s wish. If one could choose whom to love, weighing individual merits, who could say but that she might have chosen Jasper Morningstreet had she met him first. Though she did not rate herself as a Venus, she could have won him from Dina, just as she had, all unknowingly, won Elliot. He had fortune, family, ambition, charm, and a certain appeal. No one would have raised an eyebrow over the suitability of a nobleman’s daughter and a nabob’s grandson making a match. But an avowedly penniless former soldier, however honorably wounded ... the world would say she had run mad.
“Perhaps I have,” she murmured, watching the fat white flakes sifting down from a sky turned as dull and gray as her future.
“Roma,” Sabina whispered.
She looked across at the dimly lit couple. Her father seemed to be gazing back at her, but as she watched, his head nodded, bounced, and jerked up again. When the wheels rocked over an uneven place, his head bent forward again and stayed there.
“Roma, what happened? Are you engaged or... ?”
“Or. Regrettably.”
“But that’s impossible. He loves you, I’m sure of it. The way he never takes his eyes off you when you are in the room together, the way he speaks your name, everything tells me that he loves you.”
The repetition of what Sabina had told her in the cloakroom was no less sweet to her ears now that she knew it was fact, not just one woman’s opinion. The thought that Bret loved her both made her heart ache and lessened the sting of his rejection.
“He loves me. He said so. But
he feels there is too great a disparity in our circumstances to wed.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he feels that my position is a bar between us. Or his lack of position. It’s the same thing in the end. He has too much pride to live on the money I have inherited, and I—I have too much pride, I find, to let him.”
Tears prickled in her eyes, and she pulled up the collar of her cape to hide even more completely than with darkness for a screen. Dear as Sabina had become to her in so short a time, she was not prepared to weep in front of her.
“What will you do?” Sabina asked after a little in a shocked tone.
“That remains the question. I made a mistake. If only I hadn’t fallen in love with him, I could have found someone else. But now, I’m back where I was. Neither flesh nor fowl, neither married nor heart-whole and free.”
“I know you are reluctant to consider it, but you need fear nothing if you continue to live with your father after our marriage. I don’t think I could find it in me to play the wicked stepmother. And I could never make a drudge of any woman, after my own experience with it.”
Roma leaned forward against the momentum of the coach to lay her hand reassuringly on Sabina’s knee. “I’m not afraid of that. How could I be? I merely think it wisest that I should find a home of my own. I hoped that I had.”
“He may yet change his mind.”
“Who can say? I may lose every penny on the ‘Change. Then he could have the fun of playing generous king to my beggar-maid.”
“It is not an enjoyable role, that of beggar-maid.”
“Oh, Sabina,” Roma said, conscience-struck at being so tactless. “There was no personal meaning in what I said. I was merely talking idly.”
“I know it,” Sabina said kindly. “Though ‘tis true I bring nothing to this marriage save only the wish to do well by him and make him happy.”
“I’m sure you shall. He already looks happier than I have ever seen him.”
Both women turned to look fondly on Lord Yarborough, only to surprise him with his eyes open. He snapped them shut, but their outcries caused him to open them again and look sheepishly about. “I never can sleep in a carriage,” he said.
Lady Roma's Romance Page 17