by Darcy, Norma
Miss Blakelow pointedly turned away, the circumstances of their last meeting still fresh in her mind. She had not used his money to purchase herself new spectacles; in fact the crisp notes still sat upon the mantelpiece in her bedchamber as she was undecided as to what to do with them. She was looking around for Mrs. Mount, who had promised to give her Aunt Blakelow a ride home in her carriage, when she was startled to find that she was being addressed.
“Good morning Miss Blakelow…Miss Georgiana Blakelow,” Lord Marcham said amiably. “How do you do? What a fine morning it is for a drive to church. I really must make the effort to do it more often.”
“Indeed you should, my lord,” returned Aunt Blakelow. “And a pleasure to see you at church, if I may say so? It has been far too long since we have had your company, my lord, too long indeed. But I am sure you are far too busy to attend our church and probably prefer to attend the dear little church at Holme Park instead.”
“If he can get out of bed,” Miss Blakelow muttered to herself, glancing away over her shoulder at a late flowering rose bush festooned with red blooms.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” asked his lordship, his eyes twinkling.
She was obliged to turn back to face him and their eyes met. “Nothing, my lord,” she replied, although she suspected that he had heard her perfectly well.
“I am glad that I have found time to come to church this morning. I am usually…otherwise occupied on a Sunday,” he murmured, looking at Miss Blakelow with a wicked glint in his eye.
She took his meaning; women, drinking, carousing or nursing the after effects of all of the above. “Indeed?” she replied, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. “Philanthropy, my lord?”
His lips twitched. “Just so, ma’am.”
“They have returned to town then? Your…er… friends?”
“Friends?” he asked, looking the very picture of innocence but for the laughter in his eyes. “Plural?”
She blushed faintly as she answered, “Oh. But I see now that it was not plural. One lady in particular…a favourite of yours, perhaps? And is she known to Lady Emily Holt, my lord?”
His lordship regarded her with weary amusement. “Lady Emily Holt, as I know you are perfectly well aware, is not my fiancée. She is a respectable lady and is not in the slightest bit interested in my…er…philanthropic tendencies.”
“Oh, she is; I guarantee it. If she is betrothed to you, I should rather think that she would be interested in them. She would be unlike any other female I have ever known if she did not.”
“Including you?” he asked softly.
“Undoubtedly. I would not wish to be made a fool of.”
“And if I told you that rumours of my…philanthropy…had been greatly exaggerated, what would you say then?”
“Merely that you are at church, and it is not seemly to lie before God.”
He smiled briefly. “Very true. But perhaps I am not lying.”
Aunt Blakelow, who had been following this exchange with some degree of confusion, looked at her niece with such an expression of bewilderment that it was all the latter could do not to laugh. “And do you stay long at Holme Park, my lord?” she asked in a valiant attempt to bring the conversation back to normality.
“I am undecided,” he replied, flicking a glance at Miss Georgiana Blakelow, who had suddenly become fascinated with the contents of her reticule. “I may return to town within the month.”
“Well that would be a great shame. It would be of all things the most agreeable to have the family back at Holme. I remember when you were young, my lord, and your father was alive and all the family was at Holme Park. There were balls and lavish parties and picnics and skating on the lake at Christmas. It seems such a long time ago now. And Holme seems so empty and forlorn these days, but for the servants, of course. Such a shame to see such a beautiful house unloved. Do you plan to return soon, my lord? Oh, but you said that you were undecided, did you not? Silly me! Well perhaps my niece and I can add our voices to those who wish to see you happily established here?” suggested Aunt Blakelow.
“Thank you ma’am. We will see,” he murmured noncommittally.
“Ah… there is Mrs. Mount and my carriage ride home. Such a delightful creature but talks ten to the dozen. I can never get one word in from the moment I set foot in her barouche to the moment I step out again. Well, I will take my leave of you. Would you be good enough to escort my niece back to Thorncote, my lord?”
“Oh, there is no need,” replied Miss Blakelow hastily, colouring up as she spoke.
Lord Marcham bowed as Aunt Blakelow gave him her hand. “Of course, ma’am, I would be honoured.”
“Of course there is a need, my dear,” said her aunt. “You cannot walk home alone as I have told you on any number of occasions. It is not at all seemly for a young woman to be abroad entirely by herself. You must be escorted by a gentleman or at the very least, your maid. Now you go with Lord Marcham and he will see you safely home.”
A gentleman rake, thought Miss Blakelow, rolling her eyes. She would surely be safer on her own. “Dear, ma’am, I have been walking these lanes alone since I was eighteen!” she cried, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice. “And I have never been accosted once yet.”
“There is a first time for everything, my love. Now, do as you are told. These young girls, my lord, always gadding about with nary a thought for their reputations…well, I do hope we will see you at Thorncote again very soon. You know you will always be welcome at our home. And perhaps we shall have a dinner party or something of that nature…and perhaps I may venture to hint that Lady Emily Holt might exert her influence and persuade you to stay in the expectation that she may join you one day in this very church as your wife?”
There was a frigid moment of silence.
“There seems to be a general misunderstanding, ma’am,” replied the Earl rather coldly. “I am not, nor ever have been, engaged to Lady Emily Holt.”
“Oh, you are playing your cards close to your chest, are you not, my lord?” chided Aunt Blakelow coyly, smiling and placing a hand familiarly on his arm. “You young lovers are forever trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
“Young lover?” he repeated, somewhat taken aback. “Me?”
“Oh, yes! We have observed the way that you look at each other, have we not, my dear?” answered she, addressing her niece.
Miss Blakelow was mortified to be dragged into the conversation, gave rather a wan smile and wished that the ground might swallow her whole.
“It is obvious to anyone that you must be in love with her,” continued her aunt.
His lordship raised a brow in extreme distaste. “Indeed, ma’am? Then you must be exceptionally clever for you have divined something which no-one, not even I, has any knowledge of.”
“Oh, my lord,” Aunt Blakelow cooed. “You are a cagey one, as dear William would say, a cagey one indeed. Well I will tease you no longer on a subject that I can see is putting you to the blush, but you may count on my discretion; I will not breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“Thank you,” murmured his lordship dryly.
Miss Blakelow didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She saw the look of exasperation in his lordship’s eyes and found herself applauding her aunt for putting him so out of countenance. But the mortification of her aunt’s forthright language, the vulgar manner in which she expressed herself to one so far above their station as if he were the merest greenhorn, put her to the blush and she braced herself for the crushing set down that was sure to follow.
She managed to shepherd her aunt towards the waiting carriage, promised faithfully that she would let his lordship drive her home and was only able to let out her breath once the steps had been put up and her relative was resolutely borne away.
“What a very singular county this is,” observed the earl, watching the plume on Mrs. Mount’s bonnet wave in the breeze as the carriage rapidly disappeared.
“Singular, my lord?”
“The people of Worcestershire have me in love and betrothed to a woman I hardly know, merely because I have spoken to her publically on a couple of occasions.”
“I rather think it was more than that. It is your behaviour which has set tongues wagging, sir. Your attentions have been quite marked, you know.”
“Hardly,” he replied caustically. “By the same token, they might say that I was in love with you, for I have known you a comparable length of time.”
“Ah,” smiled Miss Blakelow, “but that will not fly, my lord, for I am not nearly beautiful enough to attract a man like you.”
He looked down at her, a smile lurking in his own eyes. “And how pray, am I to answer that? If I tell you that you are beautiful, you will accuse me of toadying, and if I agree with you, I shall be in your black books.”
She laughed. “Exactly right. You cannot win, you know. You had best give it up.”
“Bested by a woman?” he cried in mock horror. “No, no, that will never do.”
“Then let me assist you out of your dilemma,” she said kindly. “I will admit to being less beautiful than Lady Emily Holt and therefore we can dispense with your theory that the good people of Worcestershire would suspect any attachment between us.”
“My dear ma’am, are you suggesting that I am a man who is uninterested in any but the most beautiful of women?” he asked.
“Your past rather proves the point, my lord,” she murmured. “I doubt you would make yourself agreeable to a woman with an opinion…after all, it is not a woman’s conversation that interests you.”
He was momentarily lost for words. “I see,” he managed at length.
“You must own, my lord, that a woman as beautiful as Lady Emily Holt is more likely to have sway with you than anyone else. If she had a wart and a crooked nose, she would not be half so appealing, no matter how eligible she be.”
“You are wrong, Miss Blakelow. You are wrong indeed.”
“Then I might look to the ladies of your past as evidence―”
“No let us not,” he interrupted.
“Miss Charlotte Hall was a case in point.”
He groaned.
She raised an amused brow at him. “Was she not beautiful, my lord?”
“She was indeed,” he replied uncomfortably.
“Well then. Lady Norwood-something or other.”
“Mrs. Norwood-Welch,” he corrected. “You seem to know a good deal about my former lovers, Miss Blakelow.”
“I listen to the gossip, just the same as anyone else. Then there was Mrs. Maria Stockbridge, and you cannot deny that she was beautiful. They called her the diamond of―”
“Miss Blakelow, can we please desist from raking up my past?”
“But I am proving my point, my lord. You love the company of beautiful women. And why should you not? You are personable and rich. I am sure any number of women would find you an attractive prospect.”
“But not you?”
“Oh, no, not I,” she said before she could stop herself. “I mean I…er…you are not the sort of man that would attract me.”
“Thank you,” he murmured with heavy sarcasm.
She bit her lip, aware that she might have just insulted him. “Oh, that sounded worse, didn’t it? Dear sir, I did not mean to insult you, I meant only that―”
“Yes, it’s alright. I know very well what you meant.”
She threw him a grateful look. “But you will have to own that it is much easier to acquire precisely what one wishes from the men in this world if one is blessed with the looks of an angel. I have often observed it. Men are predictably gullible, are they not, when it comes to women? And Lady Emily Holt is destined for great things, I feel sure of it.”
His lordship turned his grey eyes upon her and once more she found herself being scrutinised. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the look of cool regard as if he were mentally weighing her up and deciding whether to let fly the stinging retort that she felt sure was on the tip of his tongue. She stiffened under his scrutiny and raised her eyes defiantly to his face.
“You have a very poor opinion of men, Miss Blakelow,” his lordship replied at last.
She regarded him warily, not altogether sure of his mood. There was a glint in his eye that told her he had been angered by her words and her insinuation that he was as great a fool for a pretty face as any other man.
“Some men, indeed,” she agreed.
“You mean me.”
She coloured faintly. “I merely point out that you only seem able to fall in love with the most stunningly beautiful women.”
“Love?” he repeated incredulously. “Who said anything about love?”
There was a moment’s silence while she digested this.
“You did not love them?” asked Miss Blakelow, eyes wide with surprise.
He laughed, but it was a harsh mocking sound. “No, ma’am, I did not love them.”
“Oh.”
“You will allow me to tell you, Miss Innocence, that women who give up their virtue at the drop of a hat are not the sort of women that men fall in love with.”
“Oh,” she said again, dropping her reticule, a rather sizeable, homemade receptacle that made a solid thud as it hit the ground.
“And I will also add,” said he, stooping to pick up her bag, “that it is not at all seemly for a young woman to know of a gentleman’s…peccadilloes.”
“No, my lord,” she replied meekly.
“Good God, what have you got in there? A dead body?” he asked, feeling the weight of her reticule.
“It is a book, sir.”
“Well, yes, I had realised that. What sort of book?”
“A…er…um…Fordyce’s Sermons, my lord.”
“I see,” he murmured, handing it back to her. “Very worthy.”
Miss Blakelow winced. She found her temper rising at the glazed look of boredom that swept his countenance at that moment. She had borrowed the book from a friend in the village and if he were to open the reticule he would have found Glenarvon, the anonymously written novel which was widely known to have been penned by Lady Caroline Lamb. It was a revenge on that lady’s former lover, Lord Byron, and although it was entertaining to spot caricatures of the rich and famous within its pages, it hardly fit her bookish image. She would have given anything at that moment to declare that she had read the poetry of Byron and loved nothing better than to curl up in bed with a gothic novel so that he would not think her the dull creature that he evidently did. But she would not do it. “If you will excuse me, my lord?” she said, bobbing the briefest of curtseys.
He relented. “May I offer you a lift home, ma’am? As a peace offering?”
“No thank you. I had rather walk,” she replied, pulling on her gloves.
“Oh lord, you are giving me that martyr look that all females employ when they are put out. I apologise then, if you must look at me that way.”
She struggled with the urge to smile and conquered it. “You are mistaken. I am not at all put out, I assure you.”
“Indeed? And is that why you are looking at me as if you wish to push me into that open grave over there and fill in the soil around me?” he demanded.
This time she did smile. “You have not angered me.”
“Good. And now you must apologise to me for insinuating that I am shallow, Miss Blakelow,” he murmured.
Her lip quivered. “I did not say that you were shallow, my lord.”
“You did. You said that I was incapable of seeing the worth of any woman who was not blessed with superior beauty.”
“You are no different to any other man, my lord,” she offered.
“And is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I say only that you cannot help it. It’s nature after all.”
“It gets better and better,” he cried flinging up his hands in mock horror. “She now says that I have no control over my lustful feelings and that my brain is disengaged when in the company of a beautifu
l woman.”
Miss Blakelow met his gaze and merely smiled sweetly but made no answer.
He laughed shortly. “Very well, ma’am, that’s how it’s to be, is it? You will allow me to tell you that you are extremely impertinent.”
She dimpled. “And you will allow me to tell you that you goad me into incivility and then look outraged when you make me do it.”
He stared at her for a moment and then surprised her by laughing. “And you goad me into losing my temper, Miss Blakelow, and I promise you that I did not wish to do it on such a fine day. Come,” said he, extending his arm, “let us be friends. I will drive you home and you may tell me all about the sermon, which I must confess I heard hardly ten words of.”
He smiled that smile of his and Miss Blakelow felt her heart skip a beat and she wished him at Jericho or a million miles away from her, at any rate. When he looked at her like that, with the impish smile dancing in his eyes, she felt a connection between them; a connection that was as disturbing as it was dangerous. She had once again to remind herself of who he was, of what he was. She had to remind herself of all that had befallen her, of everything she had done to achieve her current state of contentment. She would not give it all up for the smile of a handsome man, a smile that she knew had been well practised upon the weaker sex and perfected for ultimate effect.
“Now tell me honestly, Miss Blakelow,” murmured his lordship, “how long was it through Mr. Norman’s sermon before you fell asleep?”
“I did not fall asleep, my lord,” she answered with a faint smile. “I heard every word.”
“I thought I detected a distinct nodding of your head during one key passage concerning the fate of the Israelites.”
“And why were you watching me when you should have been paying attention to Mr. Norman?”
“Because you are far prettier and not nearly so dull.”