He was unhappy about his feelings, which cheered Addy. “So we will become lovers?”
He dropped his hand. “I would like that, if I might be permitted an understatement, but you must know that I bring nothing of value to such an arrangement, and nothing can come from it.”
Addy waved a hand. “I don’t want gifts and jewels or evenings at the theater causing talk and speculation. I want—”
His gaze was so solemn, caution stopped her from elaborating.
“My lady, while I respect you greatly and desire you madly, I must inform you that my affections are claimed by another, and in all fairness…”
He ran his hand through his hair again and looked about, as if not sure how he’d come to be in the middle of the woods, alone with a woman.
His words rang in the quiet, and Addy reeled with their impact. My affections are claimed by another? By another?
“You kiss me like some… some… oversized lordly houri, when you esteem another woman? Did you misplace that esteem in the undergrowth, Casriel? Leave it back in the men’s retiring room? You esteem another?”
She drew back her hand to deliver a stinging slap, not only on her own behalf, but on behalf of the woman who’d been betrayed by that passionate kiss. The other woman who’d been betrayed by that kiss.
Casriel caught her by the wrist, his grip firm without hurting. “Beatitude, let me explain.”
“I will have no explaining, my lord. If you are secretly married, have a mad wife living in the attics at Dorning Hall, or you became engaged as a boy, that is no concern of mine. I was under the impression you were considering marriage as one possible future option. You gave me that impression, and I concluded that you are as yet free to enjoy my company. I was wrong.”
He still held her wrist, though Addy knew she could free herself with a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t refer to that sort of affection. I am unmarried, I have not proposed to anybody, and I an not engaged, but I have a daughter. She holds my heart in her dainty palm, and if my brothers and tenants weren’t reason enough for me to go courting a fortune, hat in hand, then Tabitha alone would inspire my efforts.”
Two thoughts whirled through Addy’s mind, neither of them happy. Of course he had a daughter. The sense of purpose, the focus, the patience, the maturity… He was a parent. Addy had been attracted to those qualities without considering the whole constellation of characteristics.
The second thought was unworthy of a lady, but honest. I might have competed with a fortune for Casriel’s affections, with a woman who held a higher status, a prettier woman, a younger woman.
I cannot compete with a daughter.
“Will you please allow me to explain, my lady?”
The please, the polite, gentlemanly, earnest please, penetrated Addy’s hurt. “You may explain, and then we must return to the gathering.”
She retrieved her hand from his grasp and fixed her gaze on the smooth, blue expanse of the lake in the distance.
“He’s here,” Drusilla murmured. “A man that tall stands out, and I know I saw him on the far side of the lake.”
“With Lady Antonia,” Anastasia replied. “A woman that tall stands out too. Is that your second piece of cake, Dru?”
Her third—the pieces were small. “Mind your own portions, sister. I’m not worried about Lady Antonia. If she sets her cap for Lord Casriel, she’ll go about it carefully and discreetly. It’s La Quinlan who concerns me. She’ll pounce like a wolf, and we’ll never see her spring.”
Anastasia pushed her strawberries around with a silver fork. “We could try to compromise him. I’d be willing to kiss him.”
Anastasia had been willing to kiss more than one gentleman last Season. She’d kept her willingness under wraps so far this year, much to Drusilla’s relief.
“We’re too petite.” Not short. Never short. “For you to kiss Lord Casriel in a compromising fashion, he’d either have to be willing, or you’d have to stand on a chair and grab him by the ears. One can’t compromise a man while appearing ridiculous.” Drusilla doubted Anastasia had much insight into how to make a man willing to be kissed.
“We could tell him about our settlements.”
Mama had made sure both of her daughters knew what they were worth, and they were worth a good deal. “That’s not good ton, to discuss money. We’re barely twenty. We aren’t desperate.”
Anastasia set aside her plate. “I am desperately bored, Dru. Looking pretty, batting my eyelashes, waltzing with whoever presumes to ask… This is not how we discussed being out. Not how we discussed it at all.”
Drusilla picked up the discarded plate and dumped the strawberries onto her own. “Our ballrooms were awash in crown princes. We wore only gorgeous dresses, danced to only full orchestras, and rode in only magical coaches that we shared with the noblest, handsomest, best-dressed, and best-natured of the princes, but we are not princesses, Ana.”
Ana plucked at her spencer. She’d chosen the blue today, which went nicely with her eyes. Drusilla had taken the green, though it washed out her complexion. Tomorrow was Drusilla’s turn to have first pick of outfits, though that whole business struck her as childish.
If Papa was so wealthy, why couldn’t each daughter have a separate wardrobe?
“Lord Casriel isn’t a prince either, Dru. I’m willing to see him married to you, but I cannot abide the notion that Miss Quinlan gets him.”
“He’s not a pretty bonnet in a shop window. Maybe none of us will get him.” None of them had earned Mr. Tresham’s notice, which still made Drusilla uneasy. Perhaps mental instability ran in the Tresham family, for the current Mrs. Tresham was neither beautiful, nor wealthy, nor young. She did not have a gorgeous voice. Her family was not high up in government. She’d been a complete nobody making up the numbers and had stolen a march on all of polite society.
Anastasia rose and opened her parasol. “Casriel must marry somebody. Mama said, and she is never wrong. Let us enjoy the fresh air, and we’re bound to cross paths with his lordship not far from the house. The lake is only so large, and even Lady Antonia can walk only so slowly.”
Drusilla downed a handful of strawberries all at once, grabbed her parasol, and linked arms with her twin. She nearly choked on the strawberries, but no ripe fruit should be allowed to go to waste. Mama said that too.
Chapter Six
How could Grey explain what he’d never had to put into words before?
“Her name is Tabitha,” Lady Canmore said, no trace of emotion in her voice, which was in itself telling. Her ladyship took the sun-dappled bench that faced the woods, the best choice for privacy. Grey came down about six inches from her, a distance between presuming and polite.
How fitting that he and Lady Canmore have this honest, intimate discussion in a setting that offered relief from London’s unrelenting stench and stupidity.
“Her name is Tabitha Ann Dorning,” he said, “though we call her Tabby. She is fourteen years of age, the product of a youthful departure from all good sense and moral decorum. Tabby went off to a private school in the midlands last autumn, the better to form the sorts of acquaintances that will help her overcome the stigma of her birth.”
He hated even saying those words. The stigma of her birth. Why didn’t Society refer to a child bearing the stigma of a father’s selfish stupidity? Her mother’s rash impulse?
“You did not want her to leave your household.”
“Rather like Wellington did not want to be defeated by the French, but Tabby was lonely at Dorning Hall, her harp her only consolation. No cousins, no siblings, and she’s too well born to make friends with the tenants’ children. The gentry households welcome her, but only as a favor to me, not because they’d allow their daughters to genuinely befriend her.”
Lady Canmore’s profile was a perfect study of female repose, save for knit brows. “What brings you great joy—to rusticate with your herds and siblings—brings your daughter sorrow. That must be painful.”
/> Grey’s brother Willow might have noticed that heartache, but he would never have spoken of it.
“Tabby’s governess tried to tell me that I could not protect my daughter forever, and the sooner Tabby found a place in the world, the better off she’d be. I did not listen. Then I came upon Tabby practicing the hairstyles she’d seen in some ladies’ magazine. She was thirteen, and I thought of her very much as my little girl. With her hair up in curls and ringlets, I saw that I was wrong. My little girl—who likely is as tall by now as you are—had already departed from Dorning Hall. Her ghost was wafting about, waiting for me to grieve my loss.”
“How did you ever let her go?”
“I made a complete hash of it, of course.” The recollection still hurt like hell. “I escorted her to her school, saw that her trunks were carried up to her room, lectured the headmistress at length about the standard of care I expected for my daughter, kissed Tabby on the forehead, and told her to be good and to write to me.”
“And then?”
“I returned to my coach, very much on my dignity, and tried not to look back.”
“But you did look back?”
“Waved my damned handkerchief out the window like a shipwreck survivor trying to flag down a rescue vessel.” Grey felt compassion for that poor papa with the ache in his throat, wanting to protect, needing to let go. The memory was touching without quite being humorous.
“I realize,” he went on, “that five years from now, I might be walking my darling child up the church aisle, handing her happiness into the keeping of some spotty boy. The notion is insupportable. I was a spotty boy and not worth a place on the bottom of most women’s slippers.”
Lady Canmore patted Grey’s thigh. “Tabitha has six uncles, my lord, and her father is an earl. Not just any spotty boy will take on those odds.”
Her touch was brisk, meant to comfort—and it did. “I hadn’t thought of that, that my brothers would for once serve a greater purpose than to vex me and burden the exchequer.”
“Is Tabitha’s school expensive?”
“Dreadfully.” Which admission came close to whining. “The headmistress educates the girls as if they were the legitimate offspring of their titled parents, and the students include the children of many wealthy gentry and cits. No appointment is spared: dancing masters, language tutors, drawing masters, a stable of good horseflesh so the young ladies will learn to ride and drive if they don’t already have those skills. Tabitha is encouraged to continue her devotion to the harp, though she must acquire other graces as well. I inspected the premises thoroughly. No child is housed in a musty garret, though the girls do sleep six to a room.”
“You chose well.”
Nobody had said that to him, not ever. “I chose carefully. I visited twice without notice, and both times, Tabby was pleased to see me and also—I fear—relieved to see me go.”
“Someday, my lord, you might feel the same about Tabitha, or about your grandchildren when they visit with their mother. I gather Tabitha’s situation is part of the reason why you are determined to marry lucratively.”
Lady Canmore offered no judgment with that conclusion, though Grey judged himself. “Tabby will need a substantial dowry. She is an earl’s daughter who cannot claim the title lady. On that one word, her fortunes can fall.”
“I see.” Carefully neutral, suggesting Lady Canmore did not see at all.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Grey said. “I’ve had nearly fifteen years to set aside funds for my daughter. Even a modest amount in the cent-per-cents would grow over that length of time. I set aside what I could. When Tabby was three, the steward ran off with the entire contents of our safe. When she was five, I had to settle my late father’s debts, which were substantial. When she was ten, a dam broke on a neighbor’s property, and half my water meadows became swamps. I had to buy fodder or watch my herds starve over a particularly hard winter, then we had failed harvests. In every case, the only reserves I’d managed to save were those funds set aside for Tabby.”
The air was soft, the sun gentle, and Grey did not want to return to the gathering. His disclosures to Lady Canmore had been painful, but not for the reasons he might have anticipated. She did not castigate him for his folly, did not ask for the stupid details of his youthful error. She listened, and she took his situation to heart.
Would the woman he eventually proposed to do as much?
“Perhaps Tabitha’s lack of fortune is for the best,” her ladyship said. “You want Tabitha to be happy, and marriage to a man who looks only at her settlements won’t guarantee that.”
A nightingale sang out, a rare sound in daylight, except for those few weeks when the unmated male sought to woo a lady. The song was poignant and clear, a beautiful solo against the backdrop of the forest breezes.
“I do want Tabby to be happy,” Grey said. “I all but insist upon it, though my arrogance on the matter doubtless tempts the Almighty to dash my hopes. Any number of men could make her happy, but without a substantial dowry, her choices will be unnecessarily limited, for many of those men come from families who won’t consider her separate from her settlements. Then too, a dowry’s purpose is to secure a woman’s well-being for the entirety of her life and even to add to the fortunes of her offspring. For that reason too, I want Tabby to be well dowered.”
“Your intentions are good,” Lady Canmore said. “We can’t say the same about mine.”
She was smiling, a little sheepishly, which made Grey want to either kiss her or thump his head against the granite wall.
“Are you plotting to overthrow the Crown, my lady?”
Her smile dimmed. “I invited you to have an affair with me.”
“Is the invitation still open?” Grey wanted it to be. Wanted to have some happiness and comfort—some damned intimacy and pleasure—before going meekly to his fate.
And he wanted Beatitude to rescind her offer, because as surely as Tabby’s funds kept disappearing into the bottomless pit of Dorning Hall’s expenses, an affair with the countess would be painful to conclude.
Though conclude it Grey would, and before he so much as offered for another.
“The invitation is still open,” her ladyship said, as the nightingale fell silent. “Until such time as you are obligated elsewhere, I would like our friendship to become discreetly personal.”
Her neck turned pink, then her cheeks, while Grey found pleasure in the moment. The countess listened to him. She knew the truth of his situation and didn’t see him as some princeling on a snorting charger.
Even so, she sought his intimate company.
“I don’t think you need to worry that I might present you with another dependent,” she went on. “I was married for five years to a very vigorous man and never conceived. Roger’s mother said that was God’s judgment upon me for getting above myself.”
“Roger’s mother was a damned idiot.”
Lady Canmore brushed a shy glance over him. “I thought so too, but I was raised in a vicarage. My ability to blaspheme wants work.”
Grey rose and offered his arm. “I do not blaspheme when I say spite is the province of small-minded fools. For all your mother-in-law knew, her precious son was the party upon whom the Almighty was casting judgment, if judgment was cast on anybody. How do we go about having an affair?”
He ought to have been blushing as well to speak so bluntly, but the question wanted asking. It very much wanted asking.
“I am not sure.”
He drew her ladyship down the steps, but she stopped two higher than he, so she was eye to eye with him.
“This is your first affair?” he asked.
She nodded, gazing off toward the lake. “I haven’t been a very merry widow. Haven’t been tempted.”
“This will be my first affair as well. Tabby’s mama was a maid at the local tavern to whom I, in a fit of seventeen-year-old dementia, proposed marriage. She was several years my senior and had no intention of giving up her freedom when she c
ould instead line her purse as my paramour. She ran off with a tinker when Tabby was eleven months old, and her family presented me with the child. My papa didn’t so much as blink. He took the baby, pronounced her a Dorning, and passed her to me. I’ve had encounters since then, never an affair.”
“I am your first?” Lady Canmore asked.
“And I am yours.”
Not a first love, not a first spouse even, but they were something new and special to each other. Grey took comfort from that, while Beatitude grabbed him by the hair and helped herself to a kiss.
“Come, Mama. It’s time we take the air.” Sarah Quinlan grasped her mother’s elbow quite firmly and headed north on the lakeshore path.
“My dear, we have been taking the air for half the afternoon.”
Mama was short and thus had to be encouraged to walk more quickly.
“Of course we have been taking the air. The rumors are apparently true regarding Casriel. He prefers outdoor activities, which is perfectly acceptable to me, when a husband and wife living in each other’s pockets is most unfashionable. His lordship went this way, Lady Antonia on his arm. Lady Antonia just went into the house with Mrs. Tresham, meaning his lordship is either unaccompanied, or he’s taken up with that plain, chubby widow Lady Canmore.”
To make matters worse, the Arbuckle twins, joined at their matching reticules as usual, had disappeared onto the lake path not fifteen minutes past. Sarah would have gone in search of the earl herself, except a young lady didn’t dare traverse a woodland trail without a companion.
“The advantages afforded to widows are really most unfair,” Sarah said. “Mama, please stop dragging your feet. I have an earl to catch.”
Mama came to a halt. “Daughter, mind your tongue.”
Oh bother. Mama still occasionally tried to assert parental authority, as did Papa. A countess need not listen to anybody, which was half the reason Sarah had fixed her sights on Casriel. That, and he promised to be manageable. Everybody said he was a truly perfect gentleman, which was what they had to say when he was a truly rolled-up gentleman with a title.
A Truly Perfect Gentleman Page 9