Donald’s funeral had been a state affair. Much of the ton had returned from their country houses for it. It had been attended by Wellington and the Prince Regent himself.
Daphne and her mother had been beside themselves with grief, of course, but at least they had been comforted by the fact that Captain Cavendish had lived. Apparently, the poor young man was distraught for not having saved Swifdon, too. Cass had done everything she could to comfort the three remaining members of the family, but in the end she knew there was little she could do. They needed time to grieve.
The women, who were all seated on the sofa, glanced up to see Garrett and Julian exchange wary glances. They were both pacing around the carpet like caged beasts.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you two, don’t you think it’s time you made up?” Cass asked.
“The silent treatment, Upton? My, my, my, what I wouldn’t give to have you not speaking to me,” Jane remarked.
Garrett gave Jane a withering look before he turned toward Julian.
“Thank you for coming to the funeral,” Julian said in a gruff voice to Upton.
“I’m damned sorry about Donald, Swift. He was a good man,” Upton replied.
Julian nodded. Then the two clapped each other on the back.
Cass sighed. “Oh, thank heavens. All made up.”
“Yes, as long as Upton here sees fit to help me get my new bill passed in Parliament. Derek’s already agreed to it. It shall be my first order of business as Swifdon.”
“Already writing a new bill?” Garrett replied.
“Yes, to provide for the injured war veterans. I assume you’ll have no objections.”
Garrett nodded. His voice took on a serious tone. “Just tell me what you need from me and it’s yours.”
“Perfect,” Cass said. “Thank you, Garrett.”
Julian growled under his breath, clearly indicating that he didn’t much care for the fact that his intended was calling another man by his Christian name.
Derek interrupted their standoff by turning his attention to his wife. He strode over to the sofa and pulled her up into his arms. He glanced at Julian. “I should have known I needed to get back to London as soon as possible when you wrote to me about a Lady Worthing and her friend Patience. As soon as you mentioned that Lady Worthing was pretty and high-spirited with different-colored eyes, I knew my wife was up to something. It could not have been a coincidence. Not when Lucy was involved.”
Lucy pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes, giving her husband a completely innocent look. “At least he said I was pretty. It might have been quite awkward between the two of you had he referred to your new wife as a troll.”
They all laughed.
“I told Mother she is going to get her wish, after all,” Julian said to Cass, lifting her up from the sofa, too, and pulling her against him, his arms around her waist.
“What wish is that?” Cass asked, smiling.
“To see me married in a spring wedding,” he replied with a smile.
“And none of these simple morning ceremonies attended by a few close friends. It’s to be a grand affair, apparently.”
“We can wait,” Cass said.
“No we can’t,” Julian responded. “We’ll be married as soon as the six-month mourning period has passed. Life is precious and fleeting. It’s a lesson I’ve learned well this year.”
“I’ll marry you whenever you’d like,” Cass replied with a laugh.
“I must say, it’ll be a chore to keep my hands off you until then, my love,” Julian whispered in her ear.
She leaned up and whispered back. “Yes, well. I only hope the next little earl doesn’t come any earlier than nine months after the wedding.”
He grinned at her.
“How is your mother?” Cass asked. The countess had retired to her bedchamber, as had Daphne.
“As well as can be expected,” Julian replied. “I know planning the wedding will make her much happier. Daphne, too.”
“Poor Daphne’s been inconsolable,” Cass replied.
“She loved Donald. She insisted on being taken to see Rafe. He’s doing better but it will be quite a while before he’s fully recovered.”
“I look forward to meeting him,” Cass replied.
Lucy came over and hugged Cass. “I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me, dear.”
“Did I have any choice?” Cass said with a laugh, hugging her friend back. “Besides, you did redeem yourself after all.”
“Yes, by delivering that letter.”
“What letter?” Jane asked from her seat on the sofa.
“The letter I wrote when I thought Julian was dying,” Cass replied. “The letter that told him how much I loved him.”
“I made her write it, you know,” Lucy said. “I’m exceedingly proud of myself.”
“You should be proud of yourself,” Julian added. “And I am exceedingly grateful. It did make a difference.”
“I’m just so glad everything worked out for you and Captain Swift, I mean, Lord Swifdon,” Jane said to Cass.
“Are you crying, Jane?” Cass asked.
“I don’t cry.” She raised her book to hide her face.
“Your eyes are suspiciously moist.”
“Shut up,” said Jane from behind the book.
Lucy smiled and turned her attention back to Cass. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Cass nodded. “I know, and I shouldn’t have put all the blame on you. It was my fault, too.”
“No. It was my fault,” Lucy insisted. “I’m the one who came up with that preposterous scheme.”
“But it did sort of work,” Jane pointed out.
Cass wiped at her eyes. “It did. Eventually.”
“Yes, eventually,” Jane allowed. “But that could be said of all Lucy’s schemes.”
“Oh, Cass. I promise, promise, promise, never to do anything like that to you again,” Lucy said.
“Do you promise the same for me?” Jane asked with an expectant tone in her voice, pulling the book away from her face.
“Absolutely not,” Lucy replied. “Who knows what I may have to do to see you happily settled, Janie?”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Just don’t make it too ludicrous, please.”
“Duly noted,” came Lucy’s reply.
Derek put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I hope you are done with your schemes, Lucy. I don’t think any of us can take any more.”
Lucy gave Jane a sidewise smile. “Of course. Only we must see Jane settled first and then—”
Garrett nearly spat out his drink. “Miss Lowndes is getting married?”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Of course not, you dolt. Lucy’s promised to help me to stop my mother from constantly trying to trot me out and get me married.”
Garrett sighed. “I suppose I should be thankful that the worst you called me was a dolt. It is nice to see you back to your normal waspishness, Miss Lowndes.” He gave her a tight smile.
Jane lifted her chin and returned the tight smile. “My pleasure, Upton.”
Lucy clapped her hands together. “Now that the funeral is behind us, we must next help Cass plan the wedding, of course. Then we’ll see to Jane.”
“And will that involve a scheme?” Derek asked his wife.
“Not necessarily.” Lucy blinked at him innocently.
Derek groaned.
“Just leave me out of it,” Garrett said. “Owen nearly beat me to a pulp last time.”
“I cannot guarantee anything.” Lucy laughed. “Some plans require a bit of help from your friends. In fact, they go best that way, I find.”
“Not if the help involves a scandal,” Garrett replied.
“That’s not true at all,” Lucy said, lifting her nose in the air. “The more scandalous, the better. That is why it is so very important to be scandalous from time to time.”
“Yes, well, I’d volunteer to join the Sisters of Perpetual Hope, but I highly doubt they’d approve of my reading material.”
Jane shook her head and shuddered. “And the Bible is so dreadfully dull.”
They all laughed. Then Jane asked, “Have you heard anything from Penelope lately, Cass?”
“The last I heard, she eloped to Gretna Green with Mr. Sedgewick.”
“Who is Mr. Sedgewick?” Lucy asked.
“I have no idea,” Cass replied. “I suppose we will meet him when they return.”
“Are her parents beside themselves?” Lucy asked.
“They are indeed.” Cass leaned her head back against Julian’s chest and took a deep breath. “I suppose we should just be thankful that my parents finally came around to the idea of our marriage, darling.”
“They didn’t have much of a choice,” Julian replied.
“Are you jesting? They came around because you’re an earl now, Julian,” Jane said, just before clapping her hand over her mouth. She cleared her throat. “With apologies for being so blunt.”
“There is that.” Julian grinned.
“It’s quite nauseating really,” Cass said. “Them getting their way under such awful circumstances.” She shook her head.
Lucy tapped her finger against her cheek. “No matter, dear. You’re soon to be a countess, whether accidental or not.”
Julian pulled Cass’s hand up to his lips and kissed it. “I like that. I like it very much. You are my one true love, my accidental countess.”
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CHAPTER ONE
London, April 1816
“Sir, the coach awaits you.” Garrett Upton glanced up at the butler who stood in the doorway to his study. The two roan spaniels lying on either side of his chair lifted their heads and wagged their tails at the butler.
“I’ll be there in a moment, Cartwright.” Garrett finished sanding the letter. Then he sealed it and stamped it with the heated wax in front of him. He didn’t have much time. The coach was waiting to take him to friends’ wedding house party in Surrey. The Earl of Swifdon was finally marrying his bride, Lady Cassandra Monroe, after six months of grieving for the earl’s older brother, Donald, had passed.
Garrett turned over the letter and stared at it. He let out a long breath. It contained what it always did, a bank draft, an inadequate message. No mention of Harold.
Garrett pushed out his chair, and the dogs scrambled from their resting spots. He stood and tossed the letter on the stack of outgoing mail. He’d worked the last fortnight to catch up with his business matters to ensure that he could enjoy the time in the countryside.
His cousin Lucy would be there. Cassandra and Swifdon. Miss Lowndes. He growled slightly under his breath. Miss Lowndes always made his blood boil, but he could stand her for a sennight, he supposed. Why Lucy insisted on remaining such close friends with that bluestocking little harridan, he’d never know.
Cartwright remained standing at attention at the door.
“Ensure this letter goes out today,” Garrett said pointedly to the servant. Garrett might be the heir to the Earl of Upbridge, but the town house in Mayfair and all of its servants and contents were currently paid for due to money his mother had brought to her marriage to the second son of an earl, and an inheritance from his maternal grandfather. Garrett was a wealthy man in his own right.
“As you wish,” the butler replied.
Garrett pulled on his coat that had been resting on the back of his chair. The dogs watched him intently. As he shrugged into the garment, he stared down at the letter where it rested on the top of the stack.
Mrs. Harold Langton
12 Charles Street
London
Every two weeks he sent a similar letter. He’d sent it like clockwork for the last nearly ten years, ever since he’d been a young man of twenty-one. And yes, it always contained the same contents. The bank draft, the inadequate note, and one item that was completely unseen, un-see-able.
A hefty dose of guilt.
Garrett absently rubbed one fingertip across the top of the letter and then turned and strode out the door. The dogs followed close on his heels. He made his way down the corridor and into the foyer. Cartwright scurried to open the front door for him. Placing his hat on his head, he strode out into the street where he climbed up into the awaiting carriage. He settled into the velvet seat and glanced out the window, taking one last look at his London residence.
And with that, Mr. Garrett Upton, heir presumptive to the Earl of Upbridge, was off to spend a week at a country house party in Surrey.
* * *
“Young lady, I refuse to allow you to leave this house until you answer my questions to my satisfaction.” Mrs. Hortense Lowndes’s dark hair shivered with the force of her foot stamping against the parquet floor.
Her daughter, Miss Jane Lowndes, fought the eternal urge to roll her eyes. She pushed her spectacles up her nose and stared at her mother calmly. If only she had six pence for every time Mother said this or some similarly dramatic statement. Her mother was treating her like a child and Jane was through with it. She had been for quite some time, actually. In fact, Jane’s desire to be treated more like the twenty-six-year-old bluestocking spinster that she was and less like a girl fresh out of the schoolroom and in search of a husband was exactly why she’d invented this preposterous scheme in the first place.
Gracious. It was so difficult to be someone who didn’t like crowds or people or parties when one’s mother was a great lover of crowds, people, and any party. Jane’s mother was pretty, kind, and meant very well. It wasn’t Jane’s fault that Hortense wasn’t her daughter’s intellectual equal. Her mother spent her days reading La Belle Assemblee instead of Socrates, shopping for fabric and fripperies instead of reading the political columns of the newspapers, and gossiping with her friends instead of attending the theater. It didn’t make her mother a bad person, not any more than not wanting to do any of those dreadfully boring ladylike things made Jane a bad one. They were simply different. How many times had Jane wished that she’d been born someone who was petite and beautiful with good eyesight who loved nothing better than to attend parties? But it just wasn’t her. And it wasn’t going to be. The sooner her mother would accept that fact and let go of her dream of Jane marrying a gentleman of the ton in a splendid match, the better the two women would get on.
To date, however, Jane’s mother had shown very few signs of giving in. Hence, Jane was just about to employ her secret weapon: one Lady Lucy Hunt, the new Duchess of Claringdon, also known as Jane’s closest friend. Lucy had promised Jane that she would use her considerable talents with words to convince Mrs. Lowndes that Jane should be left in peace to live out her days quietly reading and studying and hosting the occasional intellectual salon and no longer be forced to attend an endless round of social events that left Jane feeling anything but social.
And to that end, Jane had employed the second-best weapon in her arsenal, her new pretend chaperone, Mrs. Bunbury. The idea had been inspired entirely by her other friend Cassandra Monroe’s unfortunate incident last autumn when Cass had been obliged to pretend she was a nonexistent young lady named Patience Bunbury. It had been unfortunate only because in so doing, Cass had been forced to deceive the man she had desperately loved for the last seven years and … well, the entire charade had been a bit que
stionable there after Captain Swift had discovered Cass’s duplicity. But it had all ended well enough, hence Jane’s journey to their wedding festivities today and her subsequent need for a nonexistent chaperone to escort her. Jane was going to Surrey for a week to attend Cass and Julian’s wedding house party and a nonexistent chaperone was the perfect companion. Jane need only settle the thing with her mother first.
“But Mother, didn’t Lucy write to you and tell you all about Mrs. Bunbury?” Jane pulled on her second glove and stepped closer to the door.
Her mother nodded vigorously. “Yes, but I find it highly suspect that I’ve yet to meet this woman and I—”
“And didn’t Lucy vouch for Mrs. Bunbury’s high moral character and excellent references?” Jane continued, completely nonplussed by her mother’s fretting.
The frown lines on her mother’s forehead deepened. “Yes, but I cannot allow my only child to—”
“And didn’t I tell you that I’m going directly to Lucy’s house from here where I shall meet with Mrs. Bunbury and travel with both her and Lucy to the house party where I shall be properly chaperoned the entire time?”
Her mother opened her mouth and shut it again, reminding Jane of a confused fish before saying, “You did, but I refuse to—”
“And won’t Eloise be with me the entire ride to Lucy’s house?” Jane nodded toward her maid, who stood a few paces away. Eloise bobbed a quick curtsy to Jane’s mother.
Her mother closed and opened her mouth a few more times. She’d apparently come to the end of her list of rebuttals. Jane knew this about her. She’d expected it. If one lobbed enough reasons at Hortense Lowndes without stopping to take a breath, one might overwhelm her with the sheer volume of logic and then … success was merely a matter of time. Jane could almost count the moments to her victory. One … two … three.
“I simply— I don’t think—” Her mother wrung her hands and glanced about as if she’d find the answers she needed lying about the marble floor in the foyer.
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