Julie Tetel Andresen

by The Temporary Bride

  “About our adventure together? No.”

  “Or anyone? Other than Lord Honeycutt, that is?”

  “I doubt it, Miss Denville,” he reassured her. “A pretty pond, don’t you think?”

  Helen gave it a perfunctory glance and said without enthusiasm, “Oh, yes, very pretty. And it gives onto a most lovely view.”

  Wraxall led her to a stone bench several feet from the water’s edge and invited her to sit down.

  “Tell me,” he said, when she had arranged her skirts, “how have you been occupying yourself these past several days?”

  At that polite, sufficiently absurd gambit, Helen’s face broke into a smile, and she was able to look her companion straight in the eye for the first time. “Oh, I see!” she said, her awkwardness dropping away. “I am most flattered, really I am, but I think that you have grossly overestimated my intelligence, after all!”

  This non sequitur amused, rather than confused His Grace. “Or your curiosity,” he observed.

  This unhandsome sally made Helen feel very much as if she were with her Mr. Darcy all over again. “Apparently both!” she retorted. “No, ultimately I agree with you! It would be most unsporting of you to simply tell me what you have been doing these past several days! It is so much more diverting to guess!”

  He generously invited her to develop this theme.

  “I have worked out the broad outlines, of course,” she said, “but several of the details continue to elude me. Most important, however, I confess that the events of yesterday and today have given me ample cause to discard my first hypothesis concerning the mysterious past of our friend Mr. Darcy.”

  “Your first hypothesis, ma’am?”

  “Why, yes! I originally believed you to be a criminal wrongly accused, who had escaped from Newgate. It was obvious to me that you had had to flee the country incognito, and thus you began your career on the Continent.”

  This most distinguished member of the nobility managed to sound appropriately taken aback, but his lips twitched. “An escaped criminal? You unman me, Miss Denville!”

  “Oh, but I said wrongly accused, you see,” she pointed out, “and believed you to be innocent of any crime.”

  “Your faith in my character is most reassuring,” he said with grave civility, “but I do not think that we have yet arrived at the stage where we can clap a peer in prison.”

  “I did not know who you were, you remember,” she explained, “although I was aware that you were not precisely a nobody. It did occur to me more than once that perhaps you travelled on the fringes of Society. Your manners always impressed me as being very nice, and if you were not a peer, you had to have acquired them somewhere. I imagined that you frequented the gentlemen’s establishments in the capacity of a professional Greek, I think they are called, or a … a basket-scrambler, or something of that sort!”

  “Better and better, Miss Denville! You are too good!”

  “Well, I did say I believed in your integrity, and if you were engaged in some rather shady dealings, I was sure you had good reason to be.”

  “Generous!”

  “And if my version is a little far-fetched,” she added righteously, “it is probably no more fantastic than what really did happen.” She turned to him and summed up her evaluation of the situation in one word. “Talby?”

  “Yes. Talby.”

  “I am not the least bit surprised,” Helen said frankly. “After five minutes in his company, I knew he had something to do with your disappearance, but I could not be certain that he did not know anything about your reappearance. I can see that it all worked out for the best, but he must be an unusually sly fox to have devised a scheme to cheat you out of your position.”

  “I suppose that I was as much to blame as anyone for letting him succeed.”

  “Were you?” she asked, surprised. “How so?”

  Thinking that explanations could wait, Wraxall said, “Yes, I lost my title and fortune to him in a friendly game of cards almost seven years ago. He and I decided then that it would be better for me to leave the country and to die, so to speak, with honour.”

  Without weighing her words, she said directly, “I do not believe you.”

  “It is as you wish, ma’am,” he replied with a smile.

  Helen knew that look and how to interpret it. “What you are saying, I suppose, is that you do not mean to tell me the truth.”

  “Not now, at any rate.”

  Helen was suddenly aware that she had been addressing a gentleman of the highest rank in a style wholly unsuited to the difference in their stations. Her colour was heightened when she said, with difficulty, “I beg your pardon, Your Grace!”

  Wraxall instantly realized that he had misstepped. For so many years as Mr. Darcy, he had played his cards close to his chest. He was not used to intimacy with anyone. He knew that it would be difficult to change his ways, and he needed to begin with the one woman he could trust and love.

  “Not at all!” he said promptly. “I did not think you would be interested, for it is ancient history, after all. However, I shall endeavour to satisfy your curiosity by telling you, first, that Vincenzo and Talby are at present leaving the country. In opposite directions, to be sure!” He paused. “As for my encounter with Talby six years ago, I shall say that—”

  Wraxall’s opportunity to take Helen into his confidence was lost, for just then the second footman, who had been sent out to fetch Helen, appeared in the clearing by the tranquil little pond. He had come to inform Miss Denville that Lady Happendale had received visitors, Lady Saltash and her niece, Miss Saltash. Since the servant had also been sent out to find His Grace, who was last seen entering the gardens, the footman also informed Wraxall that Lady Happendale had invited him to stay for a light lunch with her guests.

  His Grace found the prospect of taking nuncheon with his sister, his sister’s companion, and the two guests entirely agreeable and offered an arm to Helen to escort her back to the house. From the very polite responses she gave to all his conversational openings, he had determined that his Nell no longer regarded him as the Mr. Darcy to whom she spoke so frankly. He hoped to use the lunch to retrieve his position.

  First, however, he had to endure the happy exclamations of Lady Saltash, her assurances that she wished to be the first among his wide acquaintance to wish him the happiest of returns, and the introduction of her beautiful niece, Miss Deborah Saltash. He bore up under all this with every evidence of pleasure and delight.

  Helen, who wanted nothing more than to hide away in her room, saw no way of avoiding this lunch. Unlike Wraxall, she was viewing the prospect of the next hour with a sinking heart. Her mood was not improved when the little party was led into the dining-room. The duke had naturally taken his sister’s arm to lead her in, and Deborah Saltash, who had witnessed Helen’s return from the gardens in his company, fell into step with her.

  “So, Miss Denville!” Miss Saltash said in an undertone. “You have made the acquaintance of the new Duke of Clare—although I suppose one should not refer to him as the new duke, but rather as the rightful duke! It was in the gardens that you met him, was it not?”

  Helen replied that, yes, it was in the gardens that she had just met the Duke of Clare. She regarded Miss Saltash directly. Helen would not have thought previously that the girl’s lovely wide eyes were so capable of shrewdness.

  “I had no notion that he would be so very handsome!” Miss Saltash continued. “He is ever so much younger than Talby, and far more attractive, don’t you find?” When Helen could only nod to this, the lovely Deborah added, “And as Lady Happendale’s companion, you will have a great deal of opportunity to put yourself in his way!”

  After this exchange, Helen thought she would be incapable of swallowing even one bite of the cold collation of meats and fruits. It was fortunate that no one was likely to pay particular attention to Lady Happendale’s companion, except, quite casually, Wraxall himself.

  When they had been seated comforta
bly at Lady Happendale’s attractive table, had been served and had run through the opening pleasantries, Lady Saltash said, “Your sister was explaining to me just now, Your Grace, that in the past years you have been travelling throughout the Continent with your valet. You must tell us, Your Grace, about some of your extraordinary adventures abroad, for we simply adore hearing about foreign adventures, don’t we, Deborah?”

  Deborah assented eagerly.

  Wraxall put down his glass and smiled at Lady Saltash in a way that she would later describe to her niece as “devastating.” “I cannot lay claim to adventures, precisely,” he said pleasantly. “I was content rather to repeat and explore more thoroughly some of the experiences of the Grand Tour I had as a young man—”

  “As a young man!” the matron exclaimed, taking up a familiar theme. “How you do go on!”

  “Quite! But I have always had an amateur’s love of art, particularly sculpture, and so the most natural place to make my headquarters was Florence. I spent several years there, in fact, and took a fancy to the Florentine school of the cinquecento. The fancy soon became an obsession, I am afraid, and I shall be having the collection I acquired sent to the Hall from the villa I maintained at Fiesole.” He then proceeded to enumerate the contents of a collection that would have impressed the most learned art historian, and he described several of his pieces in technical terms that might best have been appreciated by an expert. Helen recalled vividly that Mr. Darcy had once described his art purchases, insignificantly, as “gambles.”

  It was Lady Happendale who picked up the slack. “I have never cared for the style of Bartaglio, dearest, but I am most anxious to see your Donatellos. Though I think perhaps you erred in concentrating on sculpture. However, that is entirely a matter of taste!”

  “Yes, and I am sorry to disappoint you with my preferences, my dear, but I have some rather fine Titians, if your taste runs to the Venetians.”

  “It does!” Lady Happendale exclaimed happily. “It is the school I most admire! Their lines, their colours, and the beauty of their figures are quite out of the ordinary!”

  His Grace glanced at Helen. “Yes, rather in Miss Denville’s style, I think,” he remarked.

  “Very true!” his sister said, looking at her companion with new eyes. “Miss Denville certainly has Titian hair. But, Richard,” she reproached him, “I think you would call Titian’s female figures quite… corpulent, which Miss Denville is not!”

  It was fortunate that Helen had no food in her mouth, for she would surely have choked on it. She glanced up to see Lady Happendale regarding her fondly, the ladies Saltash looking daggers at her, and His Grace smiling in a way that recalled Mr. Darcy and pointedly not replying to his sister’s remark.

  Lady Happendale did not allow an awkward pause to fall but said promptly, “You continue to amaze me, Richard! To have acquired the collection that you describe must have taken much time and energy!”

  “What, Amelia?” he said. “Did you think I passed all my time with the donne di piacere?”

  Lady Happendale was obliged at the moment to blot her mouth with her napkin to hide her smile. Lady Saltash’s knowledge of Italian was not the equal of Lady Happendale’s, but Wraxall’s implication was clear enough to her. She coughed slightly but could not quite bring herself to be indignant at anything a duke might say, particularly one as eligible as her hostess’s brother. All the same, she was put in mind of one important thing that Deborah might need to know about the relations of gentlemen of the first consequence with women one did not usually discuss at the lunch table. For the moment, it was enough that her charge did not seem to understand Wraxall’s meaning.

  Helen knew perfectly well what Wraxall was talking about and, feeling the need to repay the outrageous duke for his remarks, she decided to enter the conversation. “Well, I have no idea what the donne di piacere might be,” she lied, looking convincingly innocent, “but I understand that, if we are speaking of diversions from collecting great art, the Medici family—” Here she paused and said to Miss Saltash on a point of information, “They are famous patrons of the fine arts, you know. Well, I have just learned,” she went on, “that the Medici family has a weakness for gambling.” She smiled sweetly at Richard. “Florence is almost as famous for its gambling hells as it is for its art, is it not, Your Grace? What can you tell us about them?”

  She did not expect him to squirm, but she knew from his expression that she had succeeded in disconcerting him. His Grace nodded gravely and said that Miss Denville was wholly correct. He told some amusing stories about the mishaps of the Medicis at the gaming tables and deftly avoided any mention of his activities at those same tables. He then proceeded to entertain the ladies with more general accounts of life in Italy.

  Lady Saltash silently reminded herself to have Deborah learn all she could about Florence.

  Lady Happendale, listening to all of this, had discovered that her brother was fully capable of fending for himself and re-establishing himself socially. It seemed to her that Wraxall was enjoying himself at the meal, but his enjoyment did not appear to have its source in the lovely Miss Deborah Saltash. Lady Happendale could not account for it, but she was tempted to describe her brother’s mood as one approaching amused relief. Whatever it was that had transpired to put him in his present humour she could not guess, but she was entirely satisfied that he was impervious to Deborah’s blushing smiles and coy play of lashes. He seemed, if anything, more attentive to Miss Denville, who, Lady Happendale observed, did not seem to have much appetite.

  Eventually, the talk moved on to what awaited His Grace in the resumption of his duties as Duke of Clare. The name Talby loomed large in the conversation, if only by its complete absence. Although nothing would have pleased Lady Saltash more than to have discovered what had transpired all those years ago between Wraxall and Talby, even she realized that to bring up Talby’s name would be a fatal faux pas.

  Since the subject of Talby was barred, Lady Saltash chose the next best thing. Her manner was arch. “But, Your Grace, what is this we hear about your having travelled about in England with some woman?”

  “Are you asking after her name?” the duke replied, all amiability. “I am afraid I cannot divulge it, you understand.”

  “Dear me, no, Your Grace! I wasn’t asking after her name. Not at all! It’s just that … in truth, I thought that you might lay my fears to rest and disavow that part of the rumour! I am quite surprised to hear you admit to her existence, for I had persuaded myself that it could not be true!”

  “It is true,” Wraxall said without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “However, I admit to her existence with a feeling for my own iniquity. You see, I, er, kidnapped her, to use her own phrase.”

  Lady Saltash was amazed but not speechless. “Kidnapped her, Your Grace? Surely you are jesting!”

  “Not at all, to my deep chagrin! Of course, I did not bodily carry her off, but I think that I employed some rather shameless tactics to make her accompany me.”

  “You mean that she did not want to accompany you, Your Grace?” This from Deborah, moved at last to speak without the prompting of her aunt

  “Not particularly, as I recall,” he replied, “but I persuaded her by telling her that I required her help and that it was a matter of the gravest nature. I believe I convinced her that she, and she alone, was in a position to bring my mission to a successful conclusion.”

  “And did she?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Well, I think it sounds most improper,” Deborah said, blushing beautifully.

  “Do I take it, Miss Saltash, that you would not have helped me,” His Grace asked smoothly, “no matter how important the situation, if the scheme had been a trifle, shall we say, irregular?”

  Lady Saltash sensed a trap. “I am certain Deborah would have done just as she ought!” she said hastily. “But the person in question, where is she now?”

  His Grace smiled politely. “I am not precisely sure, for
she left me before I could properly thank her. Of course, a mere word of thanks is insufficient, given the situation. She has earned, rather, my eternal gratitude and is bound forever in my affection.”

  “You sound almost taken by her,” Lady Saltash said, responding insensibly to the warm note in His Grace’s voice when he spoke of the mysterious lady.

  “I am!” he admitted readily. Then, shifting his glance to Helen, who had suddenly coloured, he asked, “And Miss Denville? I wonder, what would have been your position on helping me, though the scheme was improper?”

  Helen composed herself and met his regard directly. “I should certainly have helped you, Your Grace, no matter how improper the scheme,” she said firmly. “But I should think that a simple thank-you would be sufficient. You see, no lady would wish to be bound in a man’s affection by eternal gratitude.”

  “That is an excellent point, Miss Denville,” His Grace said gravely, then smiled when the footman entered the room carrying a heavy tray. “Ah, dessert! Miss Denville, perhaps you have not eaten your lunch so as not to spoil your appetite for the sweets?”

  Helen did not know whether to laugh with delight or to burst into tears at the sight of the tray laden with cakes and pies and tarts and creams. One clear impulse thrust itself through the confusion of her feelings, and that was the desire to fling the tray in Richard Wraxall’s smiling face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FEELING ENTIRELY OVERSET by her encounter with the Duke of Clare in the gardens and the disastrous lunch, Helen renewed her resolve to flee Lady Happendale’s home. She had already flown once from Mr. Darcy’s side. She was repeating herself most unoriginally to do so again, but she could think of no other course of action. As little as Mr. Darcy would have wanted her on his hands, she imagined that the Duke of Clare would want her a thousand times less. And it was very much too bad that once again she had no time to plan a proper departure.

  Thus, when the ladies Saltash had left and the duke bore his sister off for a private discussion, Helen went to her chamber. She wrote a letter of explanation to Lady Happendale, left it on the dresser, threw a few belongings into the unlucky portmanteau, and slipped down the side stairs to the back driveway, where one of Lady Happendale’s servants was about to pull away in a gig. Helen hailed this man, and upon discovering that his immediate destination was Billingshurst, she explained glibly—thinking how subterfuge had become a way of life to her—that she needed to send the portmanteau by way of the next stage to a friend. The retainer nodded, and Helen climbed in.