Belle of the ball

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Belle of the ball Page 21

by Donna Lea Simpson


  However, he hated seeing his wife as upset as she was over her cousin's predicament. But he did not see what he could do about it. She was betrothed to Lord Pelimore, and a betrothal, though not legally binding for the lady, was a promise. If she broke it off there would be another enormous scandal attached to the Swinley name, and it might never recover. Right now, with her marrying respectably, it could be hoped that her reputation would recover.

  As little as he cared about society and reputation, it seemed to him that Arabella had always cared very much about such things. Could she live ostracized from all that she held dear? And breaking away from Pelimore would not gain her Oakmont, or financial security of any kind. Drake would do anything for his wife, even allow Arabella to stay with them forever, but he could not support her and her mother's expensive habits, nor pay off Swinley Manor, if all that had been implied in Lady Swinley's unguarded moments were true.

  He pulled True back down and nestled her against him. "Sleep, my dear. You are far from strong yet and I brought you out to this shady spot to get you to rest. There is nothing you can do to help Arabella right now. It is her own life, after all, and she must do what she thinks right."

  The next morning, two mornings after Lady Swinley arrived, she finally deigned to descend for a meal. Arabella, after her initial alienation, had spent much of the last twenty-four hours in her mother's room and had apparently brought her some sense of peace, for she looked relatively cheerful, or as close as Lady Swinley ever got to that halcyon state.

  All of them were gathered, Drake staying to breakfast when he normally did not, because he suspected his wife was not eating enough to regain her strength after almost dying in childbirth. He was fanatical about her health, filling her plate himself at most meals and assiduously making sure that she ate every morsel. He had consulted an old beldame in the village and was following her instructions, even down to buying a nanny goat and urging True to drink a cup of goat's milk every morning. He was starting to relax a little now that the roses bloomed once again in True's cheeks, but any little fluctuation in her eating, and he would become as guarded as before. The upsets of the la«t few days had brought him back to his role as her nursemaid.

  True gazed at her plate in dismay, at the pile of eggs and cheese and kippers that she knew she would have to get through before her husband would rest his vigil. Manfully, she started, while Arabella picked at a piece of toast and Drake tucked into ham and kedgeree and a side dish of chutney. Lady Swinley took a cup of coffee and three buttered scones to her place and picked up one of the neatly folded London papers that lay on the sideboard.

  There was silence for a while but for the rustle of the paper, and True's occasional sigh as a pleading glance at her husband was met with a shake of his head. She knew that he was only doing it for her own good, and if she really said no he would certainly never force her to eat; it was not his intention to make her uncomfortable. But it relieved his mind to see her eat, and she would do anything to spare him worry. She remembered too well a time when he was out of his mind with fever, and how she had felt. She knew he had suffered similar agony when she was ill before and after Sarah's birth. He would relax soon. And in the meantime she could not deny that she was feeling better for the diet he had prescribed.

  A gasp from Lady Swinley, and a high shriek rent the peaceful morning, drowning out the birdsong from the open window.

  Arabella leaped to her mother's side. **What is it? Mama, are you ill?"

  The baroness could only gasp and point to a piece in the gossip column of the same paper that had caused her to come down to Thorne House in the first place.

  Arabella snatched it from her mother's hand and read it out loud.

  "Lord P.—why don't they just say his name, for heaven's sake— 'Lord P. has gone to novel lengths to settle the breach of promise suit laid on him by the importunate Lady J. It can now be told that Lord P. and Lady J. have slipped off to the Continent to be married, as it appears that Lady J. is in an interesting condition, thus fulfilling Lord P's requirement of a bride!' Do they mean she is going to have a baby? What bosh! Poor Miss S., to whom he was betrothed . . . will she now bring a suit for breach of promise against the gallivanting Lord P.?' Not likely," Arabella finished, throwing down the paper.

  She felt a curious lightness, as though a weight had been lifted from her. If this paper was to be believed, and she did not see any reason to doubt it, she did not have to marry Pelimore! She would not be tied for life to that snuffling, wheezing old man, a man she could not even respect, much less like. She was free, free!

  But it only took a few seconds for her to realize that nothing at all was solved. If she was free of Pelimore, it was only to find her and her mother in the same tiresome predicament as before, and possibly even worse off. She looked over at her mother, who was weeping silently, tears streaming down her face. Nothing was solved.

  Twenty

  "I have a what?"

  "You got a visitor, sir ... I mean, my lord." Mrs. Brown fidgeted at the door of the decrepit library, twisting her work-roughened hands in her stained apron.

  What on earth had made the woman start "my lording" him all of a sudden? Normally, in a twisted understanding of his new position, she called him Mr. Oakmont, or Lord Westhaven. He had begun to think it was deliberate on her part, an insolence he should abhor but instead found amusing. Marcus tossed the book he had been pretending to read down on the moth-eaten sofa and stood, stretching his long legs out.

  "A visitor. No one knows me around here. Tell him— or her—to go away. I am in no mood for company."

  "Beggin' yer pardon, m'lord, I would ask that you do it yerself. He's a right proper swell, an' I wouldn't know how to—I wouldna know what to say."

  Curious. Mrs. Brown always knew what to say. Once broken through, her outer taciturn shell proved to hide an inner magpie.

  Feeling she had not expressed herself, she glanced once over her shoulder in a shifty manner and crept into the room, whispering, "He's like a god, sir, like one o' them Greek god fellers in one o' the books Lord Oakmont has in here. All golden and noble. He's the prettiest fella I ever seen, an' that is God's own truth."

  Marcus thought for a moment, then put his head back and roared with laughter. It took a couple of minutes, but he got himself under control and said, "I do believe you have just met Lord Drake, known also as Major-General Prescott. Well, so that is the affect he has on the female half of creation. I am not surprised, and he is indeed the prettiest fellow I ever saw, too. Show him in, Mrs. B."

  It had felt good to laugh for that minute. Since last seeing Arabella, he had had precious little reason to laugh or smile. Why was it that one often knew what one needed most in the world only when all possibility of attaining it was gone? It was like with Moira. If she had not become pregnant, he would not have asked her to marry him, but after she had died he missed her fiercely. His guilt over her condition, the reason for her death, was brutal and torturous and had haunted him for years, even though Moira's own father had not blamed him, but his grief was inconsolable beyond the guilt. Together he and Moira would have had a good life in the wilderness. She was a tough woman on the outside, but it concealed a streak of sweetness and goodness that many did not see.

  Arabella, while on the outside being far removed from Moira's cheerful, bawdy good humor, was surprisingly like her inside. He thought that she was a far better person than even she realized. And he had lost her forever. She would be married in mere days, if it was not already done.

  On that sobering thought, Drake entered the room.

  Marcus managed a smile, and said, "Welcome to my humble home."

  Drake's eyes widened at the ceiling-high shelves of books. "Lord Oakmont must have been quite a collector to have this array of books at his hunting box."

  "More books than I have ever seen in a lifetime,"

  Marcus said, glancing ruefully around at the thousands of tomes. "And this is merely the overflow from his other libr
aries; there are ten times this many at the Reading home. I'm not much of a reader, I'm afraid. More of a doer."

  "I would give a lot to have an afternoon in this room," Drake said, his eyes scanning the titles and widening from time to time. "My God, is that a first edition of Hume's The History of Great Britain ? I believe it is, and a complete collection of—oh, sorry Oakmont, I get carried away."

  "Call me Marcus, remember? And you are welcome here any time to peruse the shelves, even if I am not here. I will tell Mrs. Brown to make you free of the place. I believe she stands in considerable awe of you, Drake. You transformed her into a proper servant in minutes. I can only hope she will go back to being the slattern I have become accustomed to after you are gone."

  Drake tore his gaze away from the shelves of books and forced himself to remember the reason for his visit He gazed steadily at the man before him. "You know," he said abruptly, strolling into the center of the room, "I was supposed to marry Arabella Swinley."

  "What?" Marcus stared at him.

  "Her mother and my mother are bosom bows from their days at school. They wanted to make a match of it between us. That is why Lady Swinley, Arabella, and True, who is her cousin, came to Lea Park to visit last summer, while I was still convalescing from a wound I received at Waterloo."

  "I didn't know that. And you, you sly dog, never mentioned your wife's name before inviting me to dinner. I might have made the connection if you had, for Arabella—er, Miss Swinley, talked often of her cousin True, and it is not a common name." He paused and indicated a chair, but the viscount shook his head, and Marcus remained standing with his guest "And so, to shorten your story, you didn't marry Arabella. You married Lady Drake and are now as merry as grigs."

  Drake examined the man before him. Marcus Westhaven, now Lord Oakmont, was as tall as he was, but with a look of untamed wildness about him. His dark hair was straight and hung below his collar, and his eyes were a peculiar shade of gray, smoky, like the Atlantic after a nasty storm. And it appeared, if True was to be believed, that Arabella Swinley, who he had damned as heartless, had lost her heart to this fellow, the antithesis of every London beau Arabella had ever fancied in her previous Seasons. But how did he feel about her? True seemed to think there was something between them, but damn it, one did not interfere in a fellow's love affairs. He had never been the kind who could talk about that sort of thing, and still had trouble with anyone but True.

  What could he say? How could he raise this subject^

  "Get the newspapers here?" he queried abruptly.

  "No. Who wants to look at the kind of rubbish the London papers carry? I cannot seem to care for the politics of this insufferably insular island, and the gossip pages are even worse. As if anyone cares who marries whom! London is a poisonous city, and I am venting my spleen for no better reason than that I am in a bilious and foul mood. My apologies, old man.

  "The truth is, I came down here to Hampshire to get away from all of that Now look here, Drake, what did you come for? You started to tell me that you were supposed to marry Arabella, and then you said nothing more." Marcus's eyes turned even darker. "Look, are you here to tell me—to tell me that she is married? Has it happened?"

  Drake frowned as he watched the man before him ball his fists, as though he were clenching his whole body against an expected blow. It seemed that True was right. Oakmont was in a fair taking as if—as if he cared! Damn if it didn't appear as if this fellow dreaded to hear that Arabella was wed, and if that was so, it could only mean one thing. He remembered when he heard—it was not true, but he did not know it at the time—that True was affianced; it was as if someone had driven a knife into his gut and twisted it. It was what had brought on the fever, indirectly, through his own lack of care of himself after he heard that terrible news.

  And so he sympathized. And yet—

  He glanced around him and sniffed the air. "This place is musty. Damp. Not good for books you know. Should have the place properly aired and a conservator look over the library."

  There was silence, and Drake went back to the subject at hand, eyeing the other man curiously. "Why do you think I would come to tell you that news?"

  "I thought—well, I thought that Arabella might have sent you, that she would want me to know—" He turned away.

  "Actually, m'wife sent me."

  Marcus's shoulders slumped and he sat abruptly, putting his face in his hands. "So it is true?" he said, his voice muffled. "I had lost track of the days. I did not want to know when she married that leprous old fiend, Pelimore. I should have ripped his heart out when I had the chance."

  "So bitter!" Drake strolled around the room and stared up at the bookshelves. So many classics, shelved here where no one in the world could care for them, in this damp and dank hunting lodge. It was a crime! Perhaps in the future he and Marcus would be related and he would have free access—but he was getting ahead of himself. The way was not clear, not by a long shot "Tell me, Marcus—you know, I am not one to pry normally, but, well, you seem to be in some pain. Errr you . . . can you possibly—damn it, man," he said, swinging around and staring at his new friend. "Do you love Arabella Swinley?"

  Marcus gazed down at his hands and twisted the ring he wore on his right hand, the ring left to him by his uncle as a symbol of his new position. He would give up everything, all his new wealth, his position, his houses, all of it, just to be with Arabella. He nodded slowly. "I do. I love her."

  "Then go to her, man." He leaned over and grinned, staring at Marcus. "Lord Pelimore has called off the wedding and eloped with his mistress. Arabella Swinley is a free woman."

  The first elation, the first delirious knowledge that she was free, was over. Arabella walked in the gardens she had helped to create, near the blooming roses that she had torn the weeds away from, past the thicket of sweet raspberries they had discovered when she pulled out a bramble bush that was choking it. In the same way when she tore all the debris away from her heart, all the conceit she had ever been victim to, all the care of position, and the love of money and clothes and jewels, she was left with the bittersweet knowledge that she could have had Marcus Westhaven.

  If she had followed her heart and let him see how she felt, if she had not talked so constantly about how necessary it was to marry a wealthy man, he might have felt free to court her, marry her, love her. Eveleen O'Clannahan had seen it; she had even advised her to ask him herself. What would he have said to such an outré proposal?

  But it was too late. Marcus Westhaven was now an immensely wealthy man and the Earl of Oakmont And he could never trust anything she might say to him now of love. Why should he? She had made it quite plain over the months that her prime requirement in a man was a fat purse. A hundred thousand pounds. She had even set her price. She had been for sale, just as surely as any Haymarket doxy.

  She heard a rustle of fabric behind her and turned to find True approaching her. Poor True, she worried so about her. Once True had told her that she was a better person than she even knew; maybe there had been that potential there, but she had let things get in the way. Everything had seemed more important than who she was, and who the man she would marry was. And now when she finally understood herself, it was too late.

  Hesitantly, True approached. "Bella, I need to talk to you."

  Smiling, Arabella said, "Why don't we sit down? Drake will hang me up by my toes if I keep you standing in this hot sun too long."

  They found a stone bench in a shaded alcove of the garden. True took Arabella's hand and they sat in silence for a few minutes, watching a small brown rabbit hop incautiously onto the pathway. It examined the greenery along the edge and then hopped away. "Bella, perhaps this is not the time to say it, but I want you to not worry about your future. You have a home here for as long as you need it, your whole life. I love having you here, you know that, and it is not as if we do not have the room."

  Arabella squeezed her cousin's hand. "A poor relation; that is what I have become. I never wanted you
to know about our financial problems, you know."

  "You knew last fall, didn't you? You knew when you left Lea Park with Lord Conroy."

  Arabella shuddered. "Yes. Mother told me; that is why I played that dirty trick on you about Drake, telling you I loved him and wanted to marry him. I knew your self-sacrificing nature would make you leave, even though you already loved him. It was a mean trick. A horrid deceit."

  "But you told me the truth before you left," True said, squeezing her hand. "And it all turned out well in the end. Stay here, Bella. Be my friend, help me raise Sarah."

  "Drake must still be head over ears in love with you to allow you to offer me a home. However did you talk him into it?"

  True dimpled and shrugged. "He—we made a bargain."

  Chuckling, Arabella said, "I hope the terms are not too onerous, cousin. Why do I have the feeling it was the kind of bargain you will both enjoy?" Unexpectedly tears came into her eyes, and she had to force down a wave of self-pity. What True had was because she was the sweetest, truest, most loving and giving person Arabella had ever met. One could not begrudge her her good fortune.

  "I . . . True, I don't know. I have to think about Mother. I do not imagine Drake's offer extends to her."

  Looking troubled. True said, "Well, Wy said that—"

  At that moment a footman, resplendent in rust and gold livery, came along the path and bowed. "My lady, there is a visitor for Miss Swinley."

  For some reason Arabella's first thought was of Eveleen O'Clannahan. She had not heard from her at all since her flight out of London to the Isle of Wight, and she was still worried about her, even though events in her own personal life had crowded everything out on occasion.

 

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