An Unsuitable Bride

by Jane Feather

  Alexandra had given some thought to the lawyer’s suggestion that she take up employment as a governess or teacher. Helene had accompanied her to London but had remained at the hotel during Alexandra’s meeting with Lawyer Forsett. When she’d heard the full story on Alex’s return, she had instantly offered her protégée a position at St. Catherine’s. She’d stressed how it was an ideal solution. Alex would be able to stay in the home she’d grown accustomed to, in the company of her best friend, and within a mile of her sister.

  But resignation did not come easily to Alexandra Douglas, and she had considered the possibility and dismissed it in the next breath. It was not right, it was not just. She and Sylvia had been deprived of their due through a trick of the law, and she would get it back for them. Stephen could well afford to honor Sir Arthur’s intentions, and sheer avarice kept him from doing so. Well, his avarice would turn the tables on him, and he’d never know.

  She smiled a little and felt sleep creep over her at the familiar resolution.

  Peregrine slept the deep, untroubled sleep of a man who has spent the last few days on horseback. He was woken at dawn by John, bringing hot shaving water and coffee.

  “Master Crofton will meet you in the breakfast parlor in half an hour, sir,” the valet informed him, setting down his burdens and drawing back the curtains.

  Perry struggled up against his pillows, blinking in the gray dawn. “At this god-awful hour? The sun’s not even up,” he muttered. “Oh . . . fishing, I remember now.” Reluctantly, he swung his legs from the bed and stood up, stretching, glancing longingly at the warm sheets behind him. “Riding breeches, then, John, and the green worsted coat.” He soaked a cloth in hot water and held it to his face, feeling the blood begin to flow again.

  He dressed swiftly, pulling on leather boots sturdy enough to withstand the damp and mud of a riverbank, and went downstairs. Marcus was already attacking a plate of sirloin in the breakfast parlor. He greeted Perry with a wave, his mouth full, and gestured to the sideboard, where covered dishes steamed gently.

  Perry helped himself to kidneys and bacon, poured himself a tankard of ale, and sat down. “I hope you have a rod for me, Marcus. I didn’t come supplied.”

  His host swallowed his mouthful. “Oh, no difficulties, dear boy. I have rods aplenty. The trout should be biting this morning.”

  “Where do we meet Sir Stephen?” Perry buttered a thick slice of wheaten bred.

  “Up at the Abbey. There’ll be quite a party of us. Very fond of country pursuits is Sir Stephen. Anyone would think he’d been a country man all his life.”

  “He hasn’t?” Perry was curious.

  Marcus shook his head. “Not a bit of it, and believe me, it shows where it matters.”

  “Oh?” Perry raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  Marcus took a swallow of ale. “Shouldn’t really talk out of turn, but the man hasn’t the first idea about estate management and husbandry. Sir Arthur knew every blade of grass on this estate, decided which crops to plant where and when, took care of his tenants and laborers . . . even down to whose roof needed repairing. He always said to me, if a man doesn’t look after his own people, he’ll come to ruin.”

  “And Stephen doesn’t believe that?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t think he gives it a moment’s thought. Believes that basically the estate runs itself, and all he has to do is take what he wants from it. If it weren’t for the agent, good man that he is, who knows how matters would stand.”

  “So where did Sir Stephen come from, then?” Peregrine speared a kidney.

  “Bristol, I think. He’s a townie, that’s for sure. I think his branch of the family had something to do with shipping, but they were definitely the poor relations. Social pretensions aplenty, Lady Maude in particular, and they do enjoy lording it over the County gentry around here.”

  Marcus spoke with all the casual derision of one who had no need for pretension. Perry knew that his friend’s late father, the Dowager Lady Douglas’s husband before Sir Arthur, had been a baronet of considerable lineage and estate. Marcus, as the younger son, had inherited an enviable competence.

  “There are children, presumably?”

  “Oh, mewling brats . . . I don’t know how many, but Lady Maude is always sending for the physician or demanding that Sir Stephen sack the nursemaid because she’s neglecting one or other of them.” Marcus chuckled. “Hate to say it, but I wouldn’t be in Stephen’s shoes for all the tea in China.”

  Peregrine absorbed this as he cut a rasher of bacon. “The librarian, Mistress Hathaway, how does she fit into the household?” He kept his tone casual, hoping to conceal the depths of his curiosity about the woman, whose rather lovely gray eyes held a deep spark of liveliness that belied her appearance.

  “Not quite sure,” Marcus confessed. “I think she’s more than a librarian these days. I gather she handles Stephen’s business affairs. He’s a gambler through and through and loves to play on ’Change. Our librarian is apparently quite an expert at such matters, odd though it may seem.”

  “Mmm.” Perry chewed reflectively. It did seem odd. “So where does she come from?”

  “No idea.” Marcus tossed aside his napkin. “If you’re done here, Perry, we should head up to the Abbey. Stephen will be champing at the bit.”

  Perry finished his mouthful, wiped his mouth with his napkin, took a final draught of ale, and pushed back his chair. “At your service, sir.”

  They walked up the driveway to the Abbey. The morning air had a chill to it, and a sea fret blanketing the gray waters of the Solent rolled in over the cliff top. On the circular drive in front of the Abbey, a group of men waited, buttoned into their coats, servants behind them carrying rods, hooks, flies, and all of the usual fishing paraphernalia.

  Sir Stephen greeted the new arrivals with a pointed look at his fob watch. “Good, you’re here at last. If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the first rise. They bite best before sunup.”

  “Forgive us, Sir Stephen,” Perry said with a conciliatory smile. “Your hospitality was too good last even. I found it hard to leave my bed this morning.”

  Stephen looked somewhat mollified. “Well, let’s be going.” He waved an encompassing arm at the other men. “I daresay you’ll make your own introductions, but Marcus knows most of the company.” He strode towards the rear of the house, and the rest fell in behind them.

  Alexandra watched them pass the house from the corner window of her chamber. Her gaze went unerringly to the tall figure of the Honorable Peregrine. He walked with a long, loose stride, his fair head bare, the golden locks gleaming in the early-morning gloom. He carried his gloves in his hand and was in animated discussion with Marcus Crofton, walking beside him.

  He wanted to see the volume of the Decameron, she remembered suddenly. Was he a collector? Certainly, such a desire indicated a literary turn of mind, a bibliophile, even. A little thrill of excitement ran through her as she moved to her dresser to begin the long process of assuming her disguise. Combe Abbey these days was a den of Philistines, in her admittedly jaundiced opinion. The conversation was exclusively limited to the affairs of local society, the complaints of Lady Maude, and, in the private conversations that Alexandra had with her employer, the handling of accounts, the value of books, and the acquisition and manipulation of stocks and bonds on the Exchange.

  She so desperately missed talking to anyone who shared her own passions that she’d be happy to spend time in the library discussing its contents with anyone, even a snuff-covered ancient with rheumy eyes, a stained waistcoat, and a beard to his knees, but Mr. Sullivan came with his own undeniable attractions. Those wonderful blue eyes, the color of a summer sky, she thought fancifully. And that golden head of hair coming off a broad forehead with a deep widow’s peak. Dear God, what was she thinking of? She sounded like some half-daft romantic without a sensible thought in her head.

  Fixedly, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror, deftly shading the skin under her eyes wit
h a stick of moistened charcoal, smudging it with her finger until it was barely there but there nevertheless. She was going to have to be very careful in the Honorable Peregrine’s company.

  She must keep her mind fixed upon the plan. A few hours wrestling with Sir Stephen’s investments would chase all unwelcome distractions from her mind. It was an activity she loved; it stretched her mental abilities, satisfied her love of figures and calculations, and gave her the glorious satisfaction of funneling profits here and there into her own private fund. When she reached the exact sum their father had intended to leave them, Mistress Alexandra Hathaway would disappear from Combe Abbey, never to be seen again. Sir Stephen and Lady Maude would be none the wiser, and certainly not injured in any way. She now had a very firm grasp of her father’s estate and the fortune he had left and knew to the last penny what every necessary expenditure cost the estate.

  She leaned closer into the mirror. The birthmark was a little more difficult to achieve than the shadows beneath her eyes, but a thin paste of rouge applied with the tip of a quill pen created the desired effect. She was always careful to keep out of the direct light, and her downcast eyes and hunched posture helped to draw attention away from her face.

  She and Sylvia had so enjoyed charades as children. They had developed the most elaborate scenarios. On one of her infrequent visits to Combe Abbey, their mother, in a moment of benign distraction, had been persuaded to donate to her daughters whatever items of her wardrobe no longer pleased her. Swathes of velvets, silk ball gowns, ostrich plumes, heeled kid slippers, even discarded powder and paint from her own paint box, had provided all the props they had needed. Alex had always been the instigator, the creator of the scenarios, and her main pleasure was seeing how her sister came out of herself and seemed to take on a flush of health in her enthusiasm for the play. Sylvia was always exhausted afterwards, but even Matty had refrained from more than minor grumbles at the toll such games took on the girl’s strength.

  So where is our mother now? Alexandra began to braid her hair into tight plaits. The Contessa Luisa della Minardi, once Lady Douglas, was presumably somewhere on the Continent with her second husband, unless she’d moved on to a third. Alex and Sylvia remembered vividly the times when Combe Abbey would fall ominously silent, and their father would never be in evidence, shut up in his business office or the library. Alex had known whenever their mother had made one of her not infrequent disappearances to keep away from the library unless she was certain her father wasn’t there. She and her sister hadn’t known what took their mother away, but servants’ gossip was impossible to miss.

  The first Lady Douglas had had a roving eye and was susceptible to beautiful young men. And, a beautiful woman herself, she had attracted the adoration of many an Adonis.

  At first, Sylvia and Alex had thought their mother’s escapades excitingly adventurous. But that delusion had not lasted long, their father had made sure of that. And Luisa’s final flight, with the Conte della Minardi, had been the last straw for Sir Arthur.

  Alexandra tied the tapes of the pad between her shoulder blades and stepped into a gown of faded gray muslin, almost colorless now. She took a last careful look in the pier glass, making sure everything was in place, and stepped out into the corridor. Once the door closed behind her, she became Mistress Hathaway, a person of no importance, no status in the household. Automatically, her head drooped a little, her eyes were downcast, her shoulders hunched up against the ugly humpback.

  The most irksome duty of the day lay ahead, breakfast in the morning room. If she was lucky, Maude would be occupied with some minor disaster in the nursery, but if she was unlucky, then she would be ensconced at the table, with weak tea and toast, ready to launch into a catalogue of complaints that a patient-seeming Alexandra would have to comment on with appropriate understanding and sympathetic murmurs, always careful not to overstep the boundaries defining the relationship between an employer and her servant. Maude had a certain malicious cunning, and she was all too quick to sense a slight where there was none and all too willing to invent insolences and incompetence when it suited her.

  If she suspected for a moment that there was more to the dowdy librarian than met the eye, she would nose it out, poking, probing, questioning, until she came up with something that suited her. Sir Stephen lived in trembling fear of his wife’s ill temper, and if Maude came up with a reason to get rid of her husband’s librarian, he would find it hard to resist her. And that would be the best-case scenario. Alex didn’t want to consider the worst—an accusation of fraud, of fictitious references, anything that could put her on the wrong side of the law. Just a few questions could untangle the entire web of deception that maintained the charade. And the consequences for both herself and Sylvia were unthinkable.

  Chapter Three

  Peregrine watched the silver flash arc gracefully through the air as he reeled in his fourth catch of the morning. The trout were plentiful in this river-fed stream. All three Blackwater brothers were practiced fishermen and had spent many a silent but companionable dawn or dusk fly-fishing on the family estate in Northumberland. Perry was relieved to find that his present companions were not talkative, either, and in the gentle rhythm of casting and reeling, he slipped into a meditative trance.

  His mind went, as it so often did these days, to his uncle, Viscount Bradley, and the vexed issue of his will, or, rather, of the one stipulation in the will that would make his three nephews equal heirs to his massive fortune. Peregrine felt the familiar surge of anger whenever he thought of the old man, who, while insisting that he was dying, still contrived to make the lives of everyone around him miserable with his malicious manipulations.

  Three brothers, three wives. It sounded reasonable on the surface. One could believe that Viscount Bradley was looking out for the future of the Blackwater family, except, of course, that he was doing the opposite. Perry’s line twitched, and he began to reel it in slowly. Bradley had decreed that the three wives had to be fallen women in some respect—An incautious movement made his rod jerk abruptly, and he cursed as he watched the fish on the end of his line wriggle, twist, and vanish back into the green-brown water below.

  Damn Bradley. He pulled in his line and rebaited the hook. Just the thought of the viscount’s twisted malice broke his concentration. Somehow, his brothers seemed to find it easier to accept than he did. Jasper was probably right that Bradley had his own good reasons for wanting to rub the noses of the Blackwater family prudes and sticklers for convention in the ordure of a city kennel. But it was still a pact with the devil. Maybe he did want revenge on the family, maybe he was even entitled to it, but Bradley didn’t give a damn what his nephews thought about being compelled to marry women of less than stainless reputation, women they wouldn’t ordinarily find themselves in the same room with, unless, of course, it was a brothel. And his nephews had never done him any harm.

  Perry walked a little way along the riverbank and cast his line again, watching the hook sink below the surface, smooth as silk. Jasper, of course, had no reason to complain, he thought with a wry smile, trying not to indulge in the familiar little niggle of resentment at the ease with which the fifth Earl of Blackwater, Peregrine’s eldest brother, had managed to beat the old gentleman at his own game. The wife he had chosen, Clarissa Astley, had been practicing her own deception in London when Jasper had met her. On the surface, she was a whore, a denizen of one of the most renowned Covent Garden nunneries, and thus perfectly suited to satisfy Viscount Bradley’s condition. However, Clarissa was not at all what she seemed.

  The titian-haired beauty had fooled Bradley, or at least forced him to accept her for what she appeared to be, and she was now ensconced as Countess Blackwater, and the love of her husband’s life.

  Which left Jasper’s younger twin brothers to fulfill their own obligations if the heavily mortgaged family estates were to be towed out of the River Tick. And Jasper had made it very clear that he expected his brothers to do what was required, one way
or another. Once in a while, Perry thought, with a flash of exasperation that made him jerk his rod again, his eldest brother could acknowledge the difficulties in the task. Just because it had been so easy for him . . .

  But then Sebastian had managed it, too. Perry raised his rod and recast. His twin hadn’t had to look very far, either, to find a woman whose peculiar circumstances made her fit the viscount’s criteria of a fallen woman. Like Jasper’s bride, she, too, was not all that she seemed, but the circumstances of her life made her a perfect bride for Sebastian to fulfill the conditions of the will. And since he’d been in love with Lady Serena Carmichael from the moment he’d first stepped into London Society as a callow youth, it was a perfect match in every respect.

  Which left Peregrine.

  He’d tried, God knows he’d tried. He’d experimented with an orange seller at Drury Lane and for a while had thought he might be able to make it work, at least for long enough to satisfy his uncle, but he’d been fooling himself. He’d explored the better class of brothel in the hopes that he might come across another Clarissa but to no avail. And every time his eldest brother asked him how his search was going, he’d prevaricated, implied that he might be making progress, anything to stave off Jasper’s steely anger that Peregrine would put his own wishes above the honor of the Blackwater family, standing by while the family estates were sold off piecemeal.

  It might be easier if he’d ever been in love, Peregrine thought gloomily. And then at least he’d know what he was looking for. He’d had his dalliances, certainly, but he knew in his soul that he needed a woman who could be his intellectual match. It might be arrogant of him, but it was the truth. He could not possibly contemplate sharing his life with a wife who could not give him intellectual companionship. He had little interest in the conventional pursuits of Society, found small talk a complete bore, unlike Sebastian, who could charm the birds out of the trees when he chose. His friends all shared one or more of his passions, be it science, literature, philosophy. And he knew that his distant manner put off the young debutantes who might otherwise have set their caps at him. And how in the world was he to find an intellectual match in the stews of London?