by Mary Balogh
And Clarence, after a nervous glance back at the vehicles behind him, gave his own coachman the signal to move on.
“Oh, Jasper,” Charlotte said when they were out of earshot, “you will not allow Aunt Prunella to take me away, will you? She would not stop sermonizing from dawn to bedtime. It would be like going to prison. I really do not think I could bear it.”
“There, there, Miss Wrayburn,” Merton was saying, patting her hand.
“I am so sorry,” the elder Miss Huxtable said, sounding deeply distressed, “if my invitation to Miss Wrayburn to come walking with Kate and me this afternoon has caused a problem. Is it because she is not yet out? But even children and young people need air and exercise at some time of the day, surely.”
“I daresay,” Merton said, “it is because I invited myself to come too. I suppose the very highest sticklers might argue that Miss Wrayburn ought not to be seen in company with me until after her come-out. I do beg your pardon, Miss Wrayburn, and yours too, Monty. I did not think.”
“I cannot imagine,” Jasper said, “that even the queen herself could take exception to a young girl strolling in a public park with her brother and guardian and three of his friends, two of whom are ladies older than herself. I will certainly not have any of you chastising yourselves for a nonexistent fault. I shall set Lady Forester right on the matter tomorrow morning. And no, Char, you will not be thrown into the lions’ den with Aunt Prunella and Clarence. Not under any circumstances.”
“But Clarence is one of my guardians,” she reminded him. “He always was pompous and horrible. I hated him when he was a boy and I am sure I still hate him. He has turned downright ugly too. He is fat.”
Which blunt words spelled doom for any courtship Clarence might hope to mount with his cousin.
“We will not bore Lord Merton and his sisters with our private business any longer, Char,” he said firmly. “And we had better stroll onward before we invite a wider audience.”
Which they proceeded to do-in a rather deafening silence punctuated by small bursts of bright, stilted conversation.
“This,” Miss Katherine Huxtable said when they arrived back at the gates, loosening her hold on his arm and including the others close behind them in her remarks, “has been a lovely afternoon, has it not? Thank you very much indeed, Miss Wrayburn and Lord Montford, for accompanying us.”
She and her brother and sister were going one way and he and Charlotte were going the other, so they all took their leave of one another with a flurry of cheerful farewells, just as if that damnably melodramatic interruption had not occurred.
And how many people had witnessed the scene? Not that he cared the snap of his fingers what the gossips might say about him. But there was Charlotte to think about. Good Lord, what the devil had her aunt been thinking of, exposing her thus to the public gaze and censure? She could not possibly have waited until tomorrow morning to read him a scold in the privacy of her own drawing room?
“Jasper,” Charlotte said, her small hand tucked beneath his arm, “what will Aunt Prunella say tomorrow? What will she do?”
“Let me worry about that,” he said, patting her hand. “Or not.”
“But you know what Papa said in his will,” she said, her voice thin and high-pitched with misery.
Her father had stated that she must be brought up and housed until her marriage by his sister, her aunt, if her mother should die and there were ever any question of neglect or impropriety in the way Baron Montford handled her upbringing.
“Your papa also appointed three guardians,” he said, “and fortunately Clarence is only one of them.”
“But if Great-Uncle Seth were to take his side,” she said, “then Aunt Prunella would take me away and there would be nothing you could do about it. Oh, I wish now I had stayed at Cedarhurst.”
“Great-Uncle Seth is too lazy to move out of his own shadow,” he told her. “He has never made any secret of the fact that he resented being named guardian by his own nephew-especially when that nephew had the effrontery to predecease him. I am sorry, Char. I ought not to talk about your papa in that careless way. But you need not worry about Great-Uncle Seth.”
“But I do,” she said. “He has only to say the word-” She did not complete the thought.
“It won’t happen,” he said, guiding her across the road and skirting about a pile of manure that the crossing sweep had not yet cleared. “I promise. I’ll go and call upon your great-uncle in person if I must, though he won’t like it above half.”
“Will you?” she said. “Do you think-”
“Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” he suggested, patting her hand. “Do you like the Huxtables?”
“Oh, exceedingly.” She brightened immediately, and then she turned a laughing face his way. “You like Miss Katherine Huxtable.”
He looked at her sharply.
“I like them both,” he said. “They are Merton’s sisters, and they are genteel and charming, not to mention beautiful.”
“But I think you like Miss Katherine Huxtable,” she said with an impish smile from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “You scarcely took your eyes off her while we were walking back through the park.”
“We were conversing,” he said. “It is polite to look at the person with whom you are having a conversation. Did Miss Daniels never teach you that?”
But she only laughed.
“And I think,” she said, “she likes you, Jasper.”
“Never tell me,” he said, recoiling in feigned horror, “that she was looking at me too while we talked. How very brazen of her.”
“It was the way she was looking,” she told him. “But I daresay all ladies like you. Are you going to marry one of these days?”
“One of these very future days, perhaps,” he said. “Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But not in the foreseeable future.”
“Not even,” she asked him, “if you were to fall in love?”
“I would marry immediately if not sooner were that to happen,” he said. “I would be so startled I would not know what else to do. As startled as I would be if I were to hear that hell had frozen over.”
“I wish,” she said with a sigh, “you were not such a dreadful cynic, Jasper.”
“And what do you think of Merton?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“He is exceedingly handsome and amiable,” she said. “He looks like a god. I daresay everyone is in love with him.”
“Including you, Char?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I would not be so foolish. It would be like pining for the sun. I shall look for someone altogether more… possible with whom to fall in love. But not yet. I want to be at least twenty before I marry.”
“Elderly, in fact.” He grinned fondly at her. He had not realized how practical she was, how unsure of herself, how underestimating of her own charms. There was no reason in the world why the daughter of a wealthy baronet, sister of a baron, could not aspire to the hand of an earl.
But definitely not yet.
“Perhaps,” he said, “love will take you by surprise one of these days.”
“I hope so,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “When I am old enough to be quite sure that love is what it is. And I hope it happens to you too, Jasper. Falling in love, I mean.”
“Thank you,” he said, patting her hand again. “But let me see, is it a blessing or a curse you are bestowing?”
She laughed.
“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, gazing up eagerly into his face. “A wonderful idea. Miss Daniels says we should try to add a few more names to the guest list for my house party. I think we ought to invite Miss Katherine Huxtable, Jasper. Oh, and Miss Huxtable too. After all, you will need some congenial company as well as I will.”
“And since I am an elder and those two ladies are elders too,” he said, “we can congenially entertain one another? About a crackling fire to keep our aged bones warm in July, perhaps?”
“Miss Katherin
e Huxtable was twenty when her brother succeeded to the title,” she said. “She mentioned it when we were walking to the Serpentine. And that was three years ago. She is not so very old, Jasper, though it is surprising that she is not already married. Especially when she is so beautiful. Perhaps she has been waiting for someone special. I admire her for that.”
“Char,” he said, looking sidelong at her, “you are not matchmaking by any chance, are you? I warn you it is an impossibility.”
“Is it?” She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look.
He had, in fact, just got exactly what he wanted without having to try very hard at all. Katherine Huxtable still had to accept the invitation, of course.
“Then I will have to play this game too,” he said with a sigh. “If the Misses Huxtable are to be invited, Char, then it would be quite ill-mannered not to invite Merton too.”
She turned her head sharply to face front again until the poke of her bonnet hid her flushed cheeks.
“Oh, would it?” she said. “But I daresay he has far more interesting things to do.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
And to the devil with the fact that perhaps she really ought not even to be acquainted with Merton yet. What strange gothic notions some people had. Good Lord, Aunt Prunella and her ilk would probably have young girls locked in a high tower with their spinning wheels if they had their way.
9
JASPER’S visit to Lady Forester and Clarence the following morning proceeded much as he had expected. He was very careful to time his arrival so that he was knocking on their door at precisely four minutes after nine, and they kept him waiting in the visitors’ parlor for fifteen minutes.
Touche.
He was not invited to sit down when they did arrive.
There followed a tirade-delivered by the lady-in which Jasper was accused of every excess and vice known to man and a few unknown ones too and a demand that he relinquish control of Charlotte to her aunt before she was corrupted beyond hope of reform.
“If she is not already,” Clarence was unwise enough to add.
Jasper had deliberately armed himself with a quizzing glass for the occasion, an affectation with which he did not usually encumber himself since his eyesight was excellent. He raised it to his eye at that moment and directed it at Clarence, particularly his ostentatiously tied neckcloth. Good God, even a dandy would shudder.
“Perhaps it might be wise, Clarrie,” he said, “to allow your mama to do the talking for you. You would not particularly enjoy having me rearrange that knot at your neck, old chap, although it is in dire need of rearrangement, I must say.”
He lowered the glass before looking politely back at Lady Forester.
And she proceeded to tear apart the good name of Merton and his sisters, who might appear blameless in the eyes of the ton but who did not deceive her, the vulgar upstarts. They certainly did not know how to behave if they had all seen fit to be seen in public with him and-far worse!-in company with a young schoolgirl who had no business being seen in public at all until after she had made her curtsy to the queen.
“And for either one of the sisters to allow Charlotte to walk on the arm of the Earl of Merton was the outside of enough and merely confirms me in my conviction that they are brazen hussies,” she added. “I took quite a nasty turn at the realization that that very young girl in the park was my niece, my dear dead brother’s daughter. Did I not, Clarence? My maid was forced to burn feathers to revive me after we arrived home.”
“It is to be hoped that none of them were your best evening plumes, ma’am,” Jasper said, all concern.
“They are vulgar and quite long in the tooth,” Lady Forester said. “I suppose no real gentleman will have them. And the earl is doing himself no favor behaving as he does. And he is your friend, I understand.”
Jasper bowed and smiled.
“I really must be on my way,” he said. “This has been a delightful half hour, but I have other matters to attend to and so will not, alas, be able to sit down and take refreshments with you. No, no-you must not bother to offer them. Charlotte, by the way, will be remaining at my home and under my protection and her companion’s guidance. Good day to you both.”
He reached for his hat from the table where he had set it down since the servant who had opened the door and ushered him into the parlor had not offered to take it.
“She will not be there for long, Jasper,” Clarence said with spiteful relish. “I called upon Great-Uncle Seth yesterday afternoon after escorting Mama home.”
Jasper paused, his hand on his hat.
“Ah,” he said. “That must have been a pleasant experience for you both, Clarrie. Did he offer to kill the fatted calf in your honor?”
“I was able to apprise him of the truth concerning Charlotte,” Clarence said. “He agreed with me that something really must be done.”
“Clarence,” his mother said sharply, “there was no need to say a word about that visit to Jasper. It is none of his business. He has never shown any interest in Charlotte’s family, including Uncle Seth.”
“He ought to know, Mama,” Clarence said, “that his carelessness regarding my cousin will not be tolerated any longer, that soon she will be living here with us, where she will be properly prepared for her debut into society and for a respectable marriage.”
“You would be well advised, Clarrie,” Jasper said as he fixed his hat on his head and crossed the room to let himself out, “to listen to your mama and allow her to speak for you. Always. For she always knows best.”
A minute later he was striding down the street.
Another visit, it seemed, was in order, and he had Clarence of all people to thank for alerting him to the necessity of making it without further delay.
Poor Seth Wrayburn! Having two visitors descend upon him in as many days was going to be a severe trial to him.
But some things could not be helped.
When Miss Wrayburn and Miss Daniels called at Merton House later the same morning in the hope of finding the Misses Huxtable at home, they were admitted immediately and shown up to the drawing room, where they discovered not only those ladies but also the Duchess of Moreland, their sister, and her two young children. The duke was downstairs in the library with the Earl of Merton, whom he still considered his ward and his responsibility though he had loosened the leading strings considerably during the past year.
Margaret and Katherine had been telling Vanessa about Miss Wrayburn and how they liked her-and how upset they had been at the encounter with Lady Forester, her aunt.
“It had just not occurred to either of us, or Stephen, that perhaps there was something improper about inviting her to walk in the park with us, had it, Kate?” Margaret had said.
“That is because there was nothing improper about it, you silly goose,” Vanessa had assured her. “Good heavens, who is this Lady Forester? I have never heard of her, but she sounds remarkably silly. I must ask Elliott. He knows everyone.”
They had talked too-inevitably-about Baron Montford. Meg had given it as her opinion that he had a partiality for Kate, and Katherine had protested that he was a notorious libertine and had a partiality for any lady who was willing to spend a few minutes tete-a-tete with him.
“Now, Lord Montford I do know,” Vanessa had said, her eyes twinkling. “We sat together at supper during someone’s ball earlier this year and talked for all of ten minutes exclusively with each other. He did not show the smallest sign of partiality for me and so I must contradict you on that, Kate. I found him charming and amusing-and quite gloriously handsome.”
“And I walked all the way to the Serpentine with him yesterday,” Margaret had added, “while Kate was with Stephen and his sister. He was amiable and interesting and showed not the tiniest sign of partiality for me.”
Katherine was quite glad of the interruption.
Miss Daniels made her curtsy to them when Miss Wrayburn presented her and found a chair near
the door when invited to be seated. Margaret introduced Vanessa, and Katherine watched Miss Wrayburn’s awed expression disappear within moments when Vanessa behaved in a very unduchesslike way and smiled and talked to her and explained that she must stand and rock like a boat in a stiff breeze in the hope that young Sam would soon lose his battle with sleep.
“He is very stubborn,” she said. “His papa insists that it is a trait he has inherited from me. I know that the opposite is true, of course.”
Miss Wrayburn tiptoed forward to peep into the baby’s face, and then she smiled at two-year-old Isabelle and sat beside her.
Margaret poured the tea, and they all conversed comfortably for several minutes until the gentlemen joined them and more introductions had to be made.
Sam was still fussing.
“I suppose it did not occur to you, Vanessa,” Elliott said, scooping the baby up out of her arms, “to summon his nurse from the housekeeper’s sitting room and instruct her to take him away somewhere else.”
“No, it did not,” she admitted, her eyes laughing into his as he crossed the room to stand close to the window, the baby’s head held to his shoulder with one hand.
Isabelle had jumped to her feet at the arrival of the men and was standing in front of Stephen, holding up her arms. He laughed and lifted her high onto his shoulder. She sat there chuckling and clinging to a fistful of his curls.
“I am delighted to meet you, Miss Daniels,” he said. “And I am delighted that you have come again, Miss Wrayburn.”
“I came for a very particular reason,” Miss Wrayburn said, flushing and moving forward to the edge of her seat. “I am going to be eighteen in August. Jasper has said I may have a house party for the occasion at Cedarhurst Park-it is in Dorsetshire. He has told me I may invite as many guests as I wish-for two whole weeks. Miss Daniels and I have made all sorts of plans for everyone’s entertainment-picnics and excursions and wilderness walks and croquet and dances and boat rides and riding and… and charades and cards and… Oh, and all sorts of things. It is going to be the most wonderful time I have ever had in my life.”