“What, no mummies in the morning room?” She smiled at last. “It would serve you right if I did.”
Her smile entranced him. “Quite. Um, I am sure I have more to offer a woman than a crumbling pile to furnish. There is my title, of course, the country property, and a hunting box. Our first son will be an honorable, and he’ll have lots of horses to ride.”
None of his assets seemed to impress her, so he stood by her chair and reached for her hand. “I am sorry I cannot be your Prince Charming after all, but think on it, my dear. You have no better way to protect yourself and your grandfather than by marriage, and I have no other way of satisfying my honor. Then there is duty, a daughter’s to her family, a viscount’s to his heritage, a son’s to his father’s memory. My father did give his word on the betrothal, and I am bound not to betray him.”
“I understand,” Penny said. “But I need time to think about all this. I wish to speak to Grandpapa and reflect on my choices, limited though they are. This decision is for a lifetime, after all. I should have more than a few minutes to decide.”
The decision was made when she was thirteen, but West held his tongue. Let the poor girl think she was in control of her destiny. He raised her hand to his lips, then said, “Very well, I shall return later this afternoon for your answer.”
That was not late enough for Penny. “Why do you not come to dinner? With my father, I suppose. We can speak afterward, and perhaps if Cook’s food is good and Grandpapa’s wine is flowing, Father will listen to reason.”
Maybe they could get him so drunk he could be put on a ship for the antipodes, West thought on a moment’s optimism. But, no, Goldwaite would only come back. And no wine that West knew of turned solid marble into something malleable.
“Later, my dear.”
“Grandpapa, I need to speak to you,” Penny said after Westfield left. Her grandfather and Marcel were just finishing the day’s work in the studio, so she helped clean up, as usual. She did not reveal her father’s threats or the truth about the painting sales, but she did not need to explain about his insistence on the wedding.
“I heard all about it, poppet. But Grasping Gaspar told me to stay out of it. He is set on getting that title for you. And in a way he is right. Fathers have always made matches for their children, being older and wiser and with a larger view of life. Why, I never met your grandmother until a month before our wedding, and I came to love her with all my soul. Your mother caught young Gaspar’s eye, but it was his father who approached me about an alliance. Daughters especially were expected to wed where their fathers decreed. Only recently have love matches become fashionable.”
“Then you think it is my duty to obey Father’s wishes?”
“I do not know what is in your heart, or in the viscount’s, so I cannot advise you, even if I wished to go against your father’s whims. You are always welcome here, but Gaspar is right. I will not live forever, and then you will have given up your chances of a life of your own.”
“But I could be miserable in that life!” she said with a wail. “Doesn’t that matter?”
“Of course, but you might also be happy. I have never heard ill spoken of him, and he has made good on his father’s debts, which shows he is a man of honor.”
“And he is très beau,” Marcel put in. “Those shoulders, those muscles, such a distinguished air. Not an ounce of fat, I’d wager, and, oh, the legs of a horseman. Marry him, chérie, before someone else does.”
“Yes, yes, he is good-looking, Marcel, but it is his character that matters.”
Mr. Littleton stepped back from the work in progress and squinted his eyes as if that might bring the colors and shapes into focus. “Well, I could not comment on the gentleman’s appearance, but he seemed pleasant to me.”
“Is that enough? He has a mistress. A string of them, I suppose.”
The old man shook his head, whether at the painting or her question Penny could not tell.
“Forget the past and look ahead, poppet. I always wished you to find a forever romance, but here? Tending your old granfer? You will make a good mother, and I would not have you miss that chance. And who knows? Perhaps you will find that your viscount is not the reprobate you have pictured. I have known so much love in my days: my sainted mother, my darling wife, your blessed mother, and Marcel, even my dog. Then I was fortunate to have you for these last years. All the loves of my life were different, yet all are to be cherished, in memory and in what time I have left.”
“Do not talk like that, Grandpapa.”
“What I am trying to say is that there is no easy answer, no one definition of love. Yet however and wherever you find it, in whatever shape or form, your life will be richer for it. If you cannot find a grand passion, at least you can make a comfortable marriage. The union will be what you make of it, my dear.”
“But I have no time to get to know him, to see if even friendship is possible.”
Littleton shrugged. “If you are going to do it, best do it quickly, like having a rotten tooth pulled. Sooner it’s done, sooner you will feel better.”
Penny had to laugh. “I doubt his lordship’s pride will appreciate being compared to a rotten tooth.”
“Better that than a boil on your behind.”
Chapter Six
After their arranged marriage, Lord DH had his clubs; his wife had her committees; they had three children. All expectations were met. They were content.
—By Arrangement, a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber
Cook was furious she had to plan a dinner with so little time. She was even angrier that she might have to plan a wedding breakfast for the very next morning.
“What do you mean, ‘might’? Either you are getting married or you aren’t. Cooking a roast is like being with child. It’s either yes or no. You don’t cook it, you don’t eat it.”
Penny did not feel like discussing beef, babies, or Cook’s problems. She had enough of her own. “We can have the neighbors over either way, so yes, plan on a meal after church tomorrow.”
Then Cook was outraged that she was not getting to make the wedding cake. If there was a wedding, of course. By the time Penny had calmed the woman, planned the menus, picked flowers for the centerpiece, and helped Marcel polish the silver, she was more frazzled than before, with no answers.
Then the vicar called. The Reverend Mr. Smithers was a gentleman in his midyears who wore the weight of his position around his waist. He was not pleased with the tidings of the day, either.
“I came as soon as I could after reading Sir Gaspar’s note,” he told Penny, after settling his bulk into a damask chair in the parlor, a cup of tea balanced on his meaty thigh. “His request to hold a marriage ceremony tomorrow during church came as a great surprise.”
“Not as much as it was to me. That is, I had not planned on it quite yet.”
He frowned, possibly because the few offerings on the nearby platter were so sparse, Cook being far too busy to make more tarts and tea cakes. “I did not so much as have a hint that you and this Lord Westfield had a longstanding agreement.”
Penny thought he looked affronted not to know every detail of his parishioners’ lives.
“It never seemed important. I never supposed an actual wedding would come to pass.”
“I must say, I am disappointed.”
So was Penny. She had thought, for an instant, of asking Mr. Smithers’s advice, of telling him her doubts and fears, her broken dreams and impossible hopes, looking for his wiser counsel. Now he seemed too disgruntled over the supposed insult to his authority. She did not speak of her own disappointment.
“Yes,” he was going on, scowling at the last biscuit, “very disappointed. I had hopes. . . .”
“Hopes?”
“You are an excellent addition to our little congregation, Miss Goldwaite, modest and helpful. Just what is wanted in a vicar’s wife.”
“Wife?”
“Why not, with my own wife gone to her reward these
six years? I am not too ancient to wish a companion to share my days, and my nights, heh-heh.” He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, hiding his impious pleasure in the thought. Then he frowned, remembering both his position and Miss Goldwaite’s imminent marriage. He waved the napkin in the air. “Ah, that way Little Falls could have the benefit of your kindness forever, and I would have a helpmate again.”
The day was certainly full of surprises. Penny would not be shocked to find an elephant in Grandpapa’s garden at this rate. Two suitors in one day, when they had been as rare as pachyderms in pantaloons. “You . . . you never spoke of it, sir. That is, I had no idea.”
“Of course not. That would have been improper, giving rise to expectations before I had made up my mind. I felt that in time—”
“Time? I am six and twenty, Mr. Smithers. Time is fleeting.” Her mind was fleeting, too, hither and yon. If she had married the vicar when she reached her majority, she would have been safe from the viscount and her father’s finagling. Of age, she would not have needed anyone’s permission.
She must have spoken the last words aloud, for Mr. Smithers tut-tutted. “Oh, I would never have taken a bride without her father’s blessings. There is the matter of a dowry, you know. And the dignity of my calling. Why, the bishop would have been appalled to think I had wed another man’s betrothed. That might have been grounds for an annulment, although I am no legal scholar. There would have been a scandal, certainly, which would have put an end to my hopes for advancement in the church.”
Penny did not know the vicar had any hopes. Unless he had hoped to use her money to further his career.
He was not finished. “And of course there is the duty owed a daughter to her father. Why, I could never encourage a female to disobey the authority God gave to her guardian, who, after all, must have his own daughter’s best interests at heart. Sir Gaspar was quite correct in making an advantageous match for his dear child, despite my own sorrow at his choice. A viscount, after all. Quite a feather in your cap, my dear, although one never knows about Londoners and their wicked ways.”
Penny knew all too much for her own comfort.
The vicar had finished the last biscuit, but not his musings on his loss of a warm woman and a warm-pocketed father-in-law. “Then again, I am not certain the bishop would have approved of your connections.”
“My connections? My father is a knight, a wealthy, respectable man of business who advises the Crown on occasion.”
“Ah, but your grandfather is a . . . an artist. Not even a portraitist, which might be more acceptable, but a dauber of colors. Not at all the thing, my dear.”
“Grandpapa’s paintings sell,” she said in clipped tones, disregarding the fact that they all sold to one unwilling buyer. “And there is nothing disgraceful about his profession in general or his artwork in particular.” She stood, signaling an end to the conversation.
Good manners forced the vicar to stand also. “Ah well, one man’s loss is another man’s gain, as they say. I should have spoken sooner.”
Then she might have been already wed . . . and dead of the tedium. Penny had punched one man today. What was another, even if he was a man of the cloth? Instead, she decided to deflate the pompous windbag another way. “I thank you for the kind offer you might have made. But you must not lament your own dillydallying. I would have refused your honorable proposal, Mr. Smithers.”
“What? What’s that? Oh, the previous engagement. Of course.”
“No, sir, Lord Westfield was not on my mind, as I was not on his. I would have refused you because we would not suit. But do come for dinner tonight. You and my father have much in common.”
Marcel kept pouring, the vicar kept preaching, and Penny’s father, the devil take him, kept proposing toasts to his daughter, the peeress. Mr. and Mrs. Carne, Penny’s friends who ran the local school, kept raising their glasses with him, until the schoolmaster almost fell off his chair and his wife started giggling. Grandpapa sat morosely at the head of the table, feeding scraps of Cook’s finest meal to his fat pug under the table.
Penny could not eat a bite. She had not been able to speak to her father over sherry before the dinner, and he would not listen to her pleas now, not while he was celebrating.
“Just think, my grandson will be a viscount,” he repeated every time Marcel filled his cup. Instead of being more amenable to reason, Penny’s father appeared to be growing as hard of hearing as her grandfather was blind. Could drink do that to a man? Maybe it would make Penny forget that tomorrow was her wedding day unless she found a miracle. She drank down another glass of wine. And got a blinding headache.
Surely this was the worst meal of her life. Of course the wedding breakfast was bound to be worse, with her having to act the happy bride for her pride’s sake, knowing she had been bartered away to an unwilling groom. Everyone knew Westfield would never have chosen Sir Gaspar’s daughter, Mr. Littleton’s grandchild, an on-the-shelf spinster with little else to recommend her besides her father’s money and her books.
Why, look at him now, she thought, although she’d hardly looked elsewhere than at where he sat across the wooden table from her. The man was as handsome as sin, and committing it already, right in front of her! His smile flashed as brightly as the garnet on his finger. The dastard was actually flirting with Mrs. Carne, Penny’s own friend, setting her to blushes and eyelash flutter ings. And Mrs. Carne was forty if she was a day.
The last thing Penny wanted was a husband with a roving eye. Her father had always kept mistresses. Her mother knew, and now his second wife, Constance, must. The servants always did, and they always gossiped. Penny could not bear the shame, the insult, the disloyalty. She could not bear a man who prided himself on his honor, then lied and cheated to the one he owed the most fealty. Then again, she disliked her husband-to-be. Perhaps his straying would be a blessing. Let him take his smiles and seductions to his Green widow, she thought over another glass of wine. See if she cared.
Finally the last course was served and Penny led Mrs. Carne out of the dining room so the men could smoke and drink and gossip. With any luck, and a bottle of Grandpapa’s best port, her father would be more open to Westfield’s last efforts to change his mind.
The viscount shook his head when the gentlemen joined the ladies. The schoolmaster was staggering and the vicar was humming a hymn—no, that was a ditty from the tavern. Grandpapa fell asleep as soon as he sat in a chair, and the pug was so full it could barely waddle to the fireside. Her father was red-faced and grinning, happier with the coming nuptials than ever. Why not? He had the innkeeper’s wife’s company instead of his sour wife’s for one more day. He was getting rid of his stepdaughters, and his grandsons would be lordlings.
Lord Westfield was as sober as a judge, one who was about to condemn the prisoner, Penny, to a lifetime sentence.
He stayed behind when the others left. He had ridden again, rather than sharing the coach with Sir Gaspar. The banker raised an eyebrow, but with only one night to go before the wedding, he winked and went on his way. He’d have a grandson that much sooner, and still legal.
“I tried,” West told her. “I swear I tried, but your father is determined. He would see us both ruined, and your grandfather, too, if he does not get his way in this. All the while he smiles and says it is for our own good.”
“Then there is no hope?”
“Barring earthquakes, floods, or a sudden plague of frogs, it seems not.” He poured himself a glass of brandy and brought another one to Penny.
And then he did an amazing thing, or Penny’s brain was more addled than she thought. He set his glass down, dropped to one knee, took her hand, and asked her to marry him!
She blinked to clear her aching head. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Will you marry me, Miss Goldwaite?’ I promise to be the best husband I know how, which is not much, but I am a quick learner, and I am certain you will teach me what else I need to know.”
“With my fists?�
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“With your smile, which is far more potent. I swear I will try to make you happy. I have already promised your grandfather.”
“Penny.”
“What?”
“You should not propose to someone as formal as Miss Goldwaite. I am Penny to nearly everyone.”
“Very well, and you may call me Westfield, or Kendall, although my friends call me West.”
“West,” she said, in two syllables.
He set her wineglass farther away. “Penny, will you make me the happiest of men?”
“Will I?” she asked, that line between her eyebrows sharp. “Will I make you happy, that is?”
“I hope so, and believe that with respect and trust and affection, we may both be content. If you feel that is impossible, I shall try to smooth things over with your father. I will not let anyone force you.”
She shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I do not understand why you are so resigned to this marriage. You are not inebriated, are you?”
He stood, facing her. “I told you I seldom drink to excess.”
“I thought you would be raging and raving against my father and yours, and fate. And me.”
“First, none of this was your doing. Secondly, I always knew I would have to marry someday, especially since coming into the title. That is the job of the second son, to step into his brother’s shoes and bring forth future viscounts who are trained for the job as my brother was. I am still learning.”
“But you could have wed a London belle, a toast. A political hostess, a duke’s daughter.” A wealthy widow, she thought, but did not say it. “Anyone better suited to the way you live.”
“I could have wed a Spanish senorita or an Austrian princess, too. But you were the one chosen for me. And I am happy enough with my bargain. What of you?”
She had to look up at him, at his intense dark-eyed stare. That was too disconcerting, so she stared at his feet. His large feet, to her dismay, as Penny recalled Mrs. Carne’s naughty comment. “I have been thinking, when I had the chance.”
The Bargain Bride Page 5