Dr Standish, who suffered from rheumatism in his old age, was not so quick on his feet.
“I am going to bed,” Lord Devize informed his butler. “Remember, I have been in bed dying for the past three days. Give me ten minutes to get into my nightshirt, then let Madam come in to me alone. And get someone to help Standish up the stairs. He should be taking my pulse and shaking his head very sadly when Madam comes in.”
With that, the baron sprinted up the nearest staircase like a man half his age. He scarcely needed ten minutes to run to his chamber, strip off his clothes, put on his nightshirt, and jump into his big, lonely, four-poster bed.
“Splash a little water on my face to make me look feverish,” he instructed his valet as Dr Standish, still seated in his chair, was carried into the room by two big footmen.
The baron and his physician might have continued their chess game, so long did Madam keep them waiting. By the time the baroness put in an appearance, Dr Standish was sound asleep, and so could not be caught in the act of taking the patient’s pulse. The baron wheezed piteously as his immaculate wife approached the bed. Unfortunately, his lordship looked excessively brown and healthy against the whiteness of his pillowcase, and her ladyship had already scared the truth out of the butler. “George, you old fraud,” she greeted him. “I know you’re awake.”
Dr Standish was now awake, too, thanks to the cold penetration of her ladyship’s voice. He hobbled over to the bed and began to take the baron’s pulse.
The baron lifted his leonine head from the pillow an inch, then let it fall again, as if it were too heavy for him. “Madam?” he said weakly.
“Don’t you madam me,” snapped his wife. “You’re not dying, more’s the pity. You’re not even sick. How dare you take me away from London at the height of the social Season? How could you be so selfish? I was this close to gaining an invitation to Berkshire House! Now I shall have to begin all over again. If one is gone even a day, one is forgotten!”
Lord Devize retaliated with the agonized moan he had been practicing.
“I’ll give you something to cry about, you selfish old man. I wish you would die,” the baroness added, gritting her teeth. “As your widow, I might get on in Society. As it is, people don’t invite me for fear you might come along.”
“Alexa!” Startled by her venom, the baron stopped pretending. “You don’t mean it.”
The baroness opted to glare at her husband rather than confirm or deny. “My name is Alexandra,” she informed him coldly. “‘Madam’ to you.”
Abruptly, the baron slapped away Dr Standish’s hands. Punching his pillow into shape, he sat up. “I wonder you bothered to come at all,” he grumbled.
“I was obliged to come, and you know it!” she snarled. “How would it look if I didn’t? People would say I was cold and unfeeling.”
With a look from her glittering blue eyes, she sent Dr Standish limping from the room. “Well, George?” she demanded. “What do you want this time?”
The baron looked shifty and furtive. “Perdita’s not with you?” he inquired.
“Yes. Pregnant again,” the baroness sniffed. “Now she’ll never get her waist back.”
The baron grunted. “And my son?”
“Alexander is here, too, of course,” she said. “Shall I bring them in? They are so delighted that you’ve recovered from your recent brush with death, I don’t doubt they wish to share their delight with you before they leave.”
The baron scratched one ear for a moment. Then he scratched the other. He moved around in the bed uncomfortably. Finally, he said what was on his mind. “Julian?”
The baroness sniffed. “I’m afraid he couldn’t be bothered to come. He’s very busy, you know. Why, he could scarcely give his own mother five minutes.”
The baron’s eyes were the eyes of a hurt child. “He’s not here? Did you tell him I was dying?” he demanded plaintively.
“Of course I did. He did not seem to care. I’m sorry, George,” she said evenly. “I know you had hopes for the boy, but he’s a selfish, disobedient wretch. He went into the army against your wishes, and he didn’t even have the decency to distinguish himself during the war.”
“He was mentioned in the dispatches,” the baron protested weakly.
Her eyes blazed. “But was he knighted, George? No, he was not! After the war, he still would not apologize to you. He would not take holy orders as you wished, and—”
“I wanted him to have the living here at Devizes,” the baron erupted in anguish, “and be close to me always. Why would he not come home to me? Miss Grant would have made him an amiable wife. As Vicar of Devizes, he would have had three thousand a year. All he had to do was come home and beg my forgiveness. It was his for the asking. I would have killed the fatted calf for that boy.”
The baroness smiled thinly. “Instead, he sold out of the army and began speculating on the Exchange like a common I-know-not-what. Your son is no longer a gentleman, George. He is dead to us. You must try to forget him.”
“Some gentlemen do speculate,” the baron protested.
“For themselves,” she retorted. “It’s no good trying to defend what is indefensible. He takes a percentage of the profits as payment, for heaven’s sake! It is Trade, George. Trade.”
The baron shuddered helplessly at the thought of his own flesh and blood sinking to such depths. “Julian, my boy,” he moaned with genuine grief.
Lady Devize fired up. “He has broken all our hearts, destroyed our place in Society. He lives in the City, you know. His neighbors are Jews, tradesmen, pawnbrokers! He eats his breakfast in the street like a gypsy. And if you had but seen his hat!” With difficulty, she reined in her fury. “And I have it on good authority that, just the other day, he visited a brothel!”
“What!” the baron cried, starting up in alarm. “Julian shouldn’t go to brothels! He’ll catch the French disease. He should keep a mistress.”
“I shouldn’t think he could afford to keep a mistress,” his wife replied. “He can’t even afford a decent hat. The point is,” she went on quickly. “Julian is lost to us forever. You must concentrate on your eldest son, your heir, and forget your foolish partiality for a young man who wouldn’t even come to you on your deathbed! Alexander is well-liked and respected everywhere he goes. He is considered one of the best young men in London.”
“His debts are excessive.”
The baroness shrugged. “All gentlemen gamble.”
“I wish he were better at it,” the baron grumbled. “He never seems to win! He should marry and settle down. I want to see the line secured before I die. The barony has passed from father to eldest son in an unbroken line for a thousand years. Why won’t he marry?”
“How can he afford a wife,” she countered, “when you cut his allowance to the bone? You have made him a laughingstock before his friends. People think we are poor!”
“I thought you said he was well-liked and respected,” her husband snorted. “Rest assured, Madam, when my son marries, I’ll give him a very handsome allowance—provided he marries to please me, of course.”
“Would you like to see him now? He’s waiting outside.”
The baron looked mutinous.
“Julian isn’t coming,” she said firmly. “Alexander and Perdita, on the other hand, have proved their love for you. They are here. Let them come in.”
He nodded grudgingly.
Perdita rushed to the bed and kissed her father. “What a mean trick!” she reproached him. “If you wanted to see us, you had only to ask. There was no need to resort to deception.”
The baron squeezed his daughter’s hand. “Not in your case, my beauty, but, as for some others I could name…! I knew I could rely on you, Perdy. Your sex was a disappointment to your mother because it meant she had to return to the marriage bed, which she hated, but I never minded that you were a girl.”
“Be quiet, George,” Lady Devize said angrily.
“Madam tells me you’re breeding ag
ain,” said the baron, wagging his finger at Perdita. “Tell Cheviot I said to leave you alone. Tell him to get a mistress. You’re getting too old for such exercise. You must think of your health.”
“I’m not breeding, Papa,” Perdita exclaimed in surprise.
“Are you not?” asked the baroness. “You have grown so plump of late that I naturally assumed—”
“I’m not pregnant, Mama!” Perdita snapped, her cheeks flaming.
“I’m glad to hear it. It’s embarrassing enough that you have seven children. And five of them male!” Lady Devize shook her head in disgust. “You might reasonably have stopped after William was born. Why, if Alexander had not contracted the pox when he was eight, I should never have returned to the marriage bed at all, and there would be no troublesome Julian. But, at the time, we thought we might need a spare boy.”
The baron turned to his heir. “Nothing to say to me, Alex?” he demanded.
“Only that you look remarkably well, sir,” Alex replied, bowing to his parent.
The bland response enraged the baron. “I trust I did not take you away from the card table, sir!” he roared.
“No, indeed, Father. I was nowhere near a card table.”
“Hmmmph! Something I wish to say to you, now you are here.”
“Very well, my lord,” said Alex. “I attend your words with the greatest pleasure.”
“It’s high time you married, boy. Your mother and I were just discussing it. You will marry Miss Peacock. She’s a sweet girl, and her father has no heir. It’s perfect. When old Peacock dies, the neighboring estate will come to us through Molly. In the meantime, if you marry her, I will double your allowance. What do you say? Her father’s very eager.”
“I say no, sir,” said Alex.
“No!” the baron repeated in amazement. “That’s an extra five hundred pounds a year. Are you in love with someone else? You want more money, is that it?”
“Not everything is about money, my lord.”
The baron scowled. “This is what I have come to expect from my sons,” he said bitterly. “Brazen, foolhardy disobedience! The least you can do is marry where I tell you.”
Alex shook his head. “You’re living in the past, my lord. No one arranges marriages anymore. I will choose my own wife.”
“You refuse to marry Miss Peacock?”
“I do, sir.”
“Very well, then! I know how to proceed. The title is entailed upon you, of course, as well as the castle and lands and the incomes. But my fortune, boy, is my own.” The baron rubbed his hands together. “You shall have no allowance, none at all, until you come to your senses and marry Miss Peacock. I’ll put notices in all the papers to whit that I, Lord Devize, am no more responsible for your debts. Perdita, my dear…”
“Yes, Papa?”
“You shall have twenty thousand pounds. I’ll give it to you outright. I had meant to divide it equally among my three children, but now I see my sons are both equally unworthy.”
“Papa, how thoughtful!” Perdita exclaimed in delight, but, after an awkward moment, she smiled ruefully at Alex. “I’m sorry, Alex, but with seven children…And all the boys, except Henry, at school! I’m afraid I cannot be too proud to take it.”
“I’m happy for you.” Alex shrugged.
Perdita kissed her father’s brow. “Thank you, sir.”
“I wish you had been a boy, Perdy,” the baron said fondly. “You are the only one of my children conceived in love. At least there was love on my part, eh, Madam? Her heart was ever cold to me. What a fool I was to think otherwise. She only wanted my title.”
“Much good it did me,” the baroness snapped. “I should have held out for an earl.”
“Ha! You were lucky to get a baron, Miss Alexandra Lyndon, and you know it!”
“Really, George. You will burst a vein.” The baroness turned to her eldest son. “You will return with me to London. I will find you a suitable wife with a handsome fortune.”
“Madam!” cried the baron. “I want him to marry Miss Peacock!”
She smiled thinly. “Who is Molly Peacock? Her father is merely a country booby squire…. And her mother! A farmer’s daughter! Who are her uncles and aunts? Alexander is the heir to a barony. When word gets out that he is looking for a wife, he will be showered with invitations from all the best people. How popular I shall be for the rest of the Season! We’ll leave at once. Come, Alexander. Come, Perdita.”
She started for the door.
Perdita cleared her throat delicately. “Actually, Mama…I don’t think I shall be going back to London with you. I’ve left Tony in Hampshire with the children too long as it is. Thank you so much for the money, Papa, but I must go home.”
“You’re leaving me, too?” the baron protested.
“Of course if you were dying, I would stay, Papa,” said Perdita, kissing him good-bye. “But my children do need me, after all.”
“The children need me, too,” Alex said quickly. “I think I’ll just biff off to Hants with Perdita and give them a bit of the old uncle treatment.”
“Nonsense,” said the baroness. “Perdita may do what she likes, but you are coming to London with me. You won’t find a wife in Hampshire.”
“Not with the London Season in full swing,” Perdita agreed.
The baron threw off his coverlet and stood up in his nightshirt. “He’s going to stay right here and marry Molly Peacock!” he roared, jutting out his jaw.
“London!” said the baroness. “Debutante!”
“Peacock! Land!”
Alex and Perdita crept out of the room as the argument blazed on.
“You’re not really thinking of rusticating with us in Hants?” Perdita asked her brother.
“Why not?” he answered. “You’re rich now. The least you can do is put me up.”
“You’ll be bored to screams,” she warned as they made their way back downstairs. “The only society in Hampshire this time of year are those who can’t afford to go to London.”
“Some very nice people can’t afford to go to London,” he pointed out. “I certainly can’t.”
“Oh, Mama will give you an allowance, if—”
Alex cut her off. “It’s the if that kills.”
Downstairs, the servants were still carrying in the luggage.
“Shall we hire a carriage, do you think?” Perdita asked her brother.
Alex shook his head. “No. We’ll abscond with Mama’s carriage and fresh horses from the governor. That’s fair, I think, after all they’ve put me through. Put Lady Cheviot’s trunk back in the boot,” he instructed the servants. “We wish to leave immediately. Time, as they say, is of the essence.”
“I must write to Julian,” Perdita protested. “He thinks Papa is ill.”
“At the absolute first inn where we stop, we’ll dash him off a few lines,” Alex promised. “I don’t intend to be here when our mother comes out of our father’s room.”
“Quite!” she hastily agreed.
“Who do you think will win the argument?” she asked him some time later, as the carriage sped away into the night. “Mama or Papa? Peacock or debutante?”
Alex snorted. “Neither! I’m not marrying Miss Peacock so the governor can grab some land, and I’m not marrying some inbred heiress so that Mama can secure her place in Society.”
Perdita sighed. “I wish we had some pretty girls for you in Hampshire, but, of course, all the good ones are in London for the season. Only the vicar’s daughters are left, all five of them.”
“You’d better give a ball,” he said, yawning. “Or else I shall have to meet them one at a time. I’d much rather dispose of them all at once. Come now, Perdita. You mustn’t begrudge your neighbors a little amusement, now that you are twenty thousand pounds the richer.”
“Very well,” she said, laughing. “I’ll give a ball, but you must promise to be charming and dance every dance.”
“What? All five of the vicar’s daughters?”
&nbs
p; “Worse than that, I’m afraid,” said Perdita, her blue eyes dancing. “There’s the Chisholm girl. And Colonel Markham’s horse-faced niece, Miss Eccles—whom I strongly suggest is no better than she should be. And Miss Rampling, of course.” She sighed heavily. “I hate giving balls! There are never enough gentlemen to go around.”
Alex scowled. “Who the devil is Miss Rampling?” he demanded almost violently.
Perdita gave a scream of laughter. “Don’t say you’ve forgotten her! She is a poor mousy little thing, to be sure, and I daresay, it has been years since you met. However, it is very bad manners of you to forget her so completely. I am sure you cannot have forgotten her mother, Lady Caroline Rampling? Dreadful woman—always foxed.”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, they have become our neighbors in Hampshire. About five months ago, the neighborhood was atwitter because Gambol Hall was let at last, but it was only Lady Caroline and her spinster daughter. We are obliged to see something of them. If I could be sure Lady Caroline would decline, I would invite them.”
“Did Lady Caroline have two daughters?” Alex asked, looking white around the mouth.
“No, just poor Lucy, whom you have forgotten,” laughed Perdita.
“I did not forget her,” Alex replied. “I didn’t know she was alive.”
Perdita howled. “Alex! That is too cruel,” she reproved him amidst her hilarity. “She is lacking in personality, to be sure, but I cannot allow that she is lifeless. Henry and Eliza adore her. Why, in the last five months, she has become like a second governess to them. Indeed, they like her better than Miss Shipley. She plays badminton and croquet with them, which Miss Shipley won’t do. She even takes tea with them in the tree house.”
Color had begun to creep back into Alex’s face. “I thought Miss Rampling had married her cousin, Lord Southwood, some five years ago,” he said, puzzled.
“Oh, no,” Perdita assured him. “Southwood is far too sensible a man to marry a girl with no money.”
“No money? Miss Rampling had a fortune of thirty thousand pounds.”
“Her father gambled it all away,” Perdita explained. “That is why he committed suicide. Lord Southwood married Lord Wembley’s daughter. She died in childbirth, poor thing.”
The Heiress In His Bed Page 9