by Megan Daniel
ladies appreciated—nay required—such courtly touches to their wooing, and he wished not to be found backward in any little gesture which might please and convince his chosen bride. His words, though fluidly, rollingly spoken, were somewhat less romantic than his stance.
“I consider it as incumbent on myself to set the proper example of felicitous matrimony for my flock, who naturally look to me for guidance in such matters. I deem it the first responsibility of a clergyman to show, through his own actions, the benefits to be gained by the wise choice of one’s life’s mate, and the good management of his household such a mate can provide.”
At this point Saskia did finally make an attempt to speak, if for no better reason than to get the poor man up from his extremely unbecoming posture. “Dear sir, I beg you . . . she began, but her effort was doomed. The rector's fatuous smile broadened and he held up a hand.
“Ah, no, no, you must not thank me yet, Miss van Houten, as I flatter myself you are about to do. Hear me out, first, I pray you. I would have you know the bad as well as the good, so as to make your decision an informed one.”
Saskia was effectively silenced by this. She could not imagine Mr. Kneighley owning up to a fault, and was bursting to know which one he would choose to acknowledge.
“I fear I may be just a bit too fond of gaiety for a man in my position, as my sainted mama has, on occasion, hinted to me. For you must know that I dearly love to spend an evening at whist with companionable friends and have been known to lose as much as six shillings of an evening. In my own defense, I must plead the loneliness of the single life”—which single life Saskia knew very well included an overbearing mother and a stiffly pious spinster sister residing at the Rectory—“and give my solemn pledge to set aside such frivolities, except in those cases where to refuse to join a card table would be considered a social solecism, when I have the more appealing alternative of my own wife beside my own fire.”
“Oh, get up, do, Mr. Kneighley,” Saskia burst out before he could go on. “I am convinced you cannot be comfortable in that absurd position.” She was longing to put a period to his rhetoric, though she was not at all certain what she would say when she did. But she could not bear him longer on his knees.
He rose painfully and gratefully. “Ah, you are a sensible woman, Miss van Houten. A man in my position stands greatly in need of a sensible wife. I am sure it will flatter your good sense to hear that it is my chief reason for choosing to honor you in this manner. And of course, you always make a very creditable appearance. I hope you know that I am not a worldly man, but in my position it is of the first importance that my wife should be able to mix well at every level of society. I should not like it bruited about, mind, but...”
It was evident from his expanding smile, his thin blue lips stretched almost to the breaking point over his mouthful of teeth, that Mr. Kneighley was about to play his trump card. "... I have no compunction in telling you, my dear Miss van Houten, that I harbor rather high and, I may humbly say, not unfounded hopes that I shall not long remain a rector in a small country parish. What would you say to the idea of moving to, say, Oxford, as wife of the chaplain?”
He puffed up his tiny chest till he looked very like a turkey-cock. Saskia half expected him to gobble.
“The position,” he went on, “as I am sure you are aware, stands in direct line to a bishopric. So you can see the importance of my having a wife of whom I need never feel the least shame. I am entirely confident that, married to such as you, and once you have a bit of experience behind you, I need never blush for the behavior of the lady I have honored with the title of wife.” Saskia might well have been insulted had she not been so amused at Mr. Kneighley’s absurd posturings. In
her attempts to hide her smiles, she could not be offended at the back-handed compliment.
“And so it remains,” he said, finally winding to a conclusion, “for me to assure you of the violence of my affection and admiration for your own esteemed person”—anything less violent than the regard thus exhibited would be hard to imagine, she thought—“and to ask you to name the date on which I may expect to be made the happiest of men.” And myself the most depressed of females, continued her unruly mind.
The possibility of a refusal of his flattering offer was obviously the furthest thing from Mr. Kneighley's narrow mind. But in defiance of the several stem talkings-to she had given herself, Saskia was unable to give him the acceptance he so patently expected. Every finer feeling revolted at such an action.
But she had been equally unable to refuse him outright. With a large and needy family depending on her, she didn’t feel she had the right to do so. How could she sacrifice Neil and Trix, the twins and even Mama, to her own selfish dreams?
And so she had prevaricated. To gain time for ordering her thoughts, or for accustoming herself to her bleak future, she had mouthed all the expected inanities about being truly sensible of the honor done her, et cetera, but her final answer had been that she would consider his proposal during her short stay in Bath and give him her answer on her return.
Mr. Kneighley was obviously more than a bit surprised that there should be the slightest question in her mind, but he agreed to the short put-off with alacrity. He complimented her on her good sense in wishing to fully consider such a profound step as marriage and was totally confident of her final acquiescence on her return from her holiday.
Finally he went away, leaving behind him far more food for thought than was contained within the covers of Mr. Fordyce’s Sermons.
Now riding along in the carriage, it didn’t seem to
Saskia that she should even be pondering the question of such a marriage amid the bursting fullness of an English spring, all new and bright and full of promise. Surely a marriage to such as Mr. Kneighley should only be considered in late autumn, among the dead and dying leaves, when everything was turning grey and all living things were steeling themselves for the ordeal of the harsh season ahead.
Now she thought of it, Mr. Kneighley bore an uncanny resemblance to a scrawny tree, stark and forlorn, shorn of its summer’s growth. And his mama was very like the hawk that was drifting slowly over her head, riding the currents and looking out for a nice soft victim for its razor-sharp talons.
An involuntary shudder escaped her and she pulled one of the soft carriage rugs more firmly about her. With strong resolution, she pushed the image of the rector away and picked up the copy of Pride and Prejudice, which she had brought along, quite by mistake, instead of the Sermons. She snuggled down to beguile the remaining hours, blithely unaware that she was hurrying—albeit at a sedate and proper pace—toward her fate.
Chapter Three
Saskia van Houten’s comfortable chaise-and-four was not the only equipage of interest moving steadily toward Bath on that lovely spring day. In another quite similar carriage an auburn-haired, serious-looking young gentleman who might have been called handsome with more than a grain of truth, particularly when he smiled which was unfortunately rare, was bowling along the Bath Road at a fair clip. He had left his London lodgings that morning still in some confusion about the purpose of this rather tedious trip. Now, with the same primroses and robins passing unheeded outside his window as greeted Miss van Houten, he pulled out the very odd letter from this totally unexpected great-aunt of his and read it through yet again.
Until three days ago Derek Rowbridge didn’t even know he had a great-aunt by the name of Eccles, and he had at first been much inclined to suspect that the eccentric letter had been directed to him by mistake or as some sort of prank. But a close check of Dehrett’s Peerage, 1815 edition, convinced him that Hester, Lady Eccles, nde Rowbridge, was indeed his very own relation. Further inquiries had elicited the information that not only was she a Rowbridge born, sister of his scandalous grandfather and even more eccentric than he was reputed to have been, she was also enormously wealthy.
He learned that she had left England more than forty years before and had spent the ensuing p
eriod jaunter- ing about the deserts of the Holy Land, the jungles of Africa, the sandy hills of India, and assorted other heathen and uncharted wildernesses. She’d gone through three husbands, each wealthier than his predecessor, and cut a swath through the sheikdoms, sultanates, and pashalics of the Exotic East that would not soon be for- got by those lucky enough to have encountered the Divine Hester.”
Now she had returned to England disgustingly rich, and, what Mr. Rowbridge considered very much more to the point, without any living relations other than himself, at least so far as he could determine.
In fact, before the arrival of her letter, Derek had believed himself to be totally without relations in the world, if one discounted, as he continually tried to do, some quite distant and thoroughly obnoxious cousins on his mother’s side.
There had been days, of course, when he had thought longingly of how useful it could be to have an aged and wealthy godfather. But it had always been an idle daydream, certainly not one he expected to assume any aspect of reality. Now, he thought happily and with his rare and truly enchanting smile fleeting across his well- defined mouth and brightening his hazel eyes, a wealthy aunt might do just as well.
It must be said in Mr. Rowbridge’s defense that he was not a money-grubbing sort of gentleman. His greatest pleasures were quite simple ones, really. He enjoyed good food and good company, liked to look at a pretty girl now and then, and could be quite as happy on a fine horse amid a beautiful countryside as he had been on the deck of a fine ship amid the waves over which his nation ruled.
Unlike many young men of his birth, he had never tried to divorce himself from the idea of hard work. He had been a reliable and occasionally innovative young officer in His Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy for several years, helping to bottle up the French in their attempts to take over the seas, and rising rapidly from midshipman to the rank of first lieutenant. He would have made a conscientious landlord of the estate on which he had been raised had he been given the chance.
He had never felt the need to cut a dash, nor to be a Corinthian, and certainly not a Tulip, a race of gentlemen he held in contempt. He did occasionally and wistfully wish that he could replace his coats more often, keep a carriage of his own, and generally live the sort of existence he had been born to and would have enjoyed had idlings turned out differently.
But as it was, Derek Rowbridge was what might euphemistically be called purse-pinched and could more realistically be called poor. Despite this sad state, it was not greed or an extravagant nature that made a little beam of hope glow in his eyes at thought of the wealth of this unexpected aunt. The deprivations he had suffered in the last year were, to his mind, minor ones. He hadn’t learned to like them, but he had discovered how to live with them, allowing them to dampen his good humor only a little now and then.
He did, however, have one character trait which was very strong and, through no fault of his own, very expensive. He was an honorable man.
Now honor, under normal circumstances, needn’t cost all that much. But in Derek’s case there was an extenuating circumstance. His father, like his grandfather, had been an inveterate gamester. A popular man with a ready wit and a bright laugh, he had been heard to chuckle merrily as he won and lost fortunes at the tables. Unhappily, he lost one or two more of them than he won, and at his death, just over a year ago, he had been deeply in debt.
Derek, dunng his Navy years, had been so seldom at home that he was not fully aware of the extent of his fathers losses. But when Napoleon had finally been de-
feated once and for all and sent off to St. Helena, and Lieutenant Rowbridge had come home, a half-pay officer, to deal with the estate of his recently deceased father, he had been appalled to learn the true state of things. The old man had been badly under the hatches. Instead of inheriting the snug estate that should have been his, Derek was left with nothing but gaming debts mounting into the thousands of pounds. The young officer, full of ideas and prize money, was quickly reduced to a near-pauper status.
Derek Rowbridge, an honorable man, and proud of the ancient though slightly tarnished name he bore, had unhesitatingly refused all offers from his fathers creditors to forgive the outstanding debts. He was determined to pay back every penny.
How this was to be accomplished on the six shillings a day allotted to a naval lieutenant on half pay did present something of a problem.
He was not afraid of work, and in a port as busy as London there was always work in plenty for a strong and willing pair of hands. He had occasionally, when things were really desperate, turned his hand to loading cargo, hauling canvas, and transporting warehouse stores on the London docks, his powerful frame stripped to the waist and trickles of perspiration glistening on hisi bronzed chest. But the miserably few pennies these activities returned went no distance at all toward reaching his goal.
He’d then considered the idea of marrying an heiress, and had even gone so far as to appear at a few ton parties with that object in mind. But though he liked to dance with a pretty girl as much as any ripe young gentleman did, he had never been much in the petticoat line. His years at sea had given him little experience in the art of dalliance and his lack of sisters had left him with a paucity of understanding of the feminine character. He’d encountered several girls who fit what he supposed to be the ideal of womanhood: all softness and smiles and clinging helplessness. But fifteen minutes in
their company soon sent him running. The inanity of their conversation bored him; their missish simperings drove him to distraction; and he soon found himself running for the safety of his male cronies.
Perhaps he might have steeled himself to the idea of a life spent with such a creature, for many of his friends: had just such marriages. Livelier female company could always be found outside one’s home, after all. But his lack of fortune meant that the only likely candidates for the position of Mrs. Derek Rowbridge were the daughters of wealthy Cits and merchants desirous of marrying into an old and noble family. Since nothing like love had touched his heart with any of the hopeful young ladies, it was a simple matter to decide he could not marry so far beneath himself. He was, after all, a Rowbridge and very, nay insufferably, proud of it.
And so he had lighted on the only reasonable alternative left him. Gaming, though it bored him unutterably, was, after all, in the blood. Why should he not use it to his advantage? So he settled into a tedious routine. Each month, on drawing his half pay, he would count out the miserably few shillings he allowed himself for his own needs. With the rest he would stroll off toward one of his clubs, generally Arthur’s or the Naval (White’s and Boodle’s, while certainly not above his touch socially, were well above his pocket), and seek out a “friendly” game of piquet with one of his willing and well-heeled superior officers. The pleasure he might have felt in participating in a game he knew himself to play remarkably well was offset by the determination, the absolute necessity, of winning.
And win he did, with just enough exceptions to keep from scaring off his partners. And nearly every penny of those winnings was immediately funneled into paying off his father’s debts. He was making progress. It might be as little as thirty years till he was free and clear and able to get on with his own life. He would only be, let’s see, fifty-six, he thought wryly.
He pushed the utterly depressing thought firmly from his mind. Here he was riding along in a well-sprung chaise-and-four, leaning back on the most luxurious of velvet squabs, and looking out on a countryside bursting with the optimism that only comes at the end of a long hard winter. Surely he could allow himself some small share of that optimism.
The carriage rolled through Savemake Forest, cool and dark, then began the long climb up Forest Hill. The mesmeric bobbing of the postillions’ capped heads as they gently nudged their steeds up the steep grade sent Derek to dreaming of a rosier future for himself than the one he now imagined was his almost certain due. In this mellow mood he closed his eyes and soon drifted off.
Chapter Four
/> It was nearing dusk when Derek Rowbridge’s carriage reached Marlborough. Although he had told the postillions he would put up there for the night, he was taken by surprise when he found himself being swept around the circular drive before the elegantly porticoed grey brick facade of the famous Castle Inn, renowned as one of the finest hostelries on the Bath Road. Here was none of the bustle and clamor found at a more plebeian stopping place. No ostlers shouted profanities to each other; no squawking chickens pecked about the yard; no disreputable piles of luggage awaited the carrier’s cart. At the Castle Inn all was dignified stateliness, understated elegance, and seemly behavior.
Such opulence of accommodation was far beyond Mr. Rowbridge’s pocket, and he reluctantly leaned forward to motion the postillions to drive on to some humbler and cheaper hostelry. But before he could do so, he found the door of his chaise eased gently open by a very superior footman who proceeded to let the steps silently down, then favored the passenger with a grave bow.
“Mr. Rowbridge, is it not?" he said, to that gentleman’s great surprise. “Your rooms are ready, sir. This way, if you please. The boy will attend to your bags.” Mr. Rowbridge, speechless, could only follow.
In moments he was in the graceful entrance hall and the landlord himself was bowing a welcome. “Ah, Mr. Rowbridge. I do hope you will be comfortable with us. The rooms bespoke by Her Ladyship for you are quite ready.”