The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  “For mercy’s sake, Everstone, do as he says and cease this endless caviling over every penny,” Trueblood added, wincing at the pathetic little nosegay of violets he held and sending a hand to scratch beneath his vest. “It’s most undignified.”

  They stood in the entry hall of Paxton House the next morning, waiting for old Hoskins to fetch Antonia. The two husbands were justifiably nervous as they recalled their last encounter with the Dragon in this same hall. At the sound of their voices, a number of Antonia’s ladies appeared on the stairs and the gallery above them. Remington called greetings to them and asked after Cleo. They returned his greetings and assured him the old lady was improving, but cast suspicious looks at his companions.

  Antonia hurried from the dining room to greet him, but stopped the minute she set eyes on Everstone and Trueblood.

  “Antonia, you look beautiful this morning,” Remington said, striding forward to meet her while covertly motioning the others to remain behind. And she did look magnificent, her hair swept up into a fall of burnished curls, wearing a dusky-blue satin dress that exactly matched the color of her eyes. No black-banded purple, no midnight-blue, no gloomy gray. It boded well for his enterprise.

  “What are they doing in my house?” she demanded, staring at the men who had taunted her as she sat in Remington’s bed, then had dared invade her house to reclaim what they deemed their marital property.

  “I’ve brought them to see their wives, Antonia. They have no right to ask favors of you, I know. And so I appeal on their behalf to your good graces … asking only that you grant them the same fairness and mercy you showed to me. A man is capable of a change of heart, after all. And I believe their wives will find them genuinely changed men.”

  “You presume a great deal on my regard for you, your lordship,” she declared, transferring her glare to him.

  “I know I am taking a risk,” he said, lowering his voice and seizing her unoffered hand, holding it between his own. “But I would hazard your anger and a great deal more for a chance to help these gentlemen win back the wives they so desperately miss. People can change for better in a marriage, too … not just for worse.” His smile contained a caress she found irresistible even when she looked into his eyes and saw his thoughts working behind them.

  He had something else in mind; she could feel it. And it didn’t take a genius to deduce that it had something to do with convincing her that marriage wasn’t a hopeless bargain. Forewarned was forearmed, she pacified her better sense.

  Sending Hoskins for Margaret and Alice, she led the others into the drawing room and, by her own refusal to sit, kept them all standing and shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  It wasn’t until the women arrived that Antonia deigned to look at the errant husbands. Everstone was dressed to the nines and clutching a prettily ribboned box and a massive bouquet of spring flowers. But her eyes widened as she examined Trueblood. He looked like a ravaged man: hollow-eyed, rumpled, and with several days’ growth of beard on his face. The way he gripped the pitiful sprig of violets he had brought clutched unexpectedly at Antonia’s heart.

  Margaret and Alice stood just inside the door, arm in arm, lending each other support for whatever lay ahead. Antonia joined them, inserting herself between them, and ushered them forward.

  Silence descended as Everstone and Trueblood nodded to their wives with uncertainty and a bit of embarrassment. “I should like a private word with you, Margaret,” Everstone said, scowling.

  “Anything you have to say to me, Albert Everstone, must be said here and now. I’ll not be a private shame to you any longer.”

  “And the same goes for me, Basil Trueblood,” Alice said to her husband, though her eyes were wide with distress as they searched his disheveled form.

  “But surely it wouldn’t hurt to draw aside for a few minutes.” Remington saw his scheme unraveling before his eyes and tried to intervene. “Surely these matters of the heart are … rather delicate.”

  “Matters of the heart?” Margaret said, looking accusingly at Everstone.

  “Of course,” the bluff MP said, reddening under his collar. “Why else would I have spent good brass on such stuff as this?”

  He shoved the flowers toward her, but she hesitated searching his eyes. The desperation she saw in them led her to accept that offering. With a softening expression she buried her nose in the flowers and headed for one of the settees in the center of the large room. Everstone followed and settled stiffly on the edge of the seat beside her, gripping the gift box he held with one hand, and his knee with the other.

  “Are those for me?” Alice said quietly, staring at the bedraggled nosegay Trueblood was gripping as if it contained the keys to the kingdom.

  “What?” He started and came back to the present, coloring hotly. “Oh, well … yes. They’re not the freshest … they’re a bit wilted and the color is already fading. I pulled out the worst ones … and I know it looks a bit spare …” He caught a glimpse of the emphatic look Remington was giving him from across the room and realized he was rambling. Taking a deep breath, he held out the flowers. “But I know you love violets more than any other flower … and I specifically wanted to bring you violets … and these were all I could find. I scoured the city, I swear … money was no object …”

  She accepted them and looked down at the fragile blossoms. They were a little faded and more than a little wilted and still warm from the heat of his hand. But the fact that they were her favorite flower had eclipsed their imperfection, and to Alice that made them the most perfect offering that perfectionist Basil Trueblood could have made her. She tucked her chin and headed for the sofa near the settee.

  Remington heaved a quiet sigh and braced; those opening moves had shown him just how far they had yet to go. And the distance seemed to lengthen as he watched Antonia standing between the two couples, scrutinizing the entire process with a scowl. Neither couple spoke for a time, and Remington rolled his eyes and finally settled himself on the settee beside Everstone, who looked like a bullfrog ready to jump. He nudged Everstone’s arm once, then a second time before Sir Albert glanced at him with a resentful glare. After an exchange of vehement looks, Everstone recalled the package in his hand and offered it to Margaret.

  “Oh—and I brought you this, too,” he said in gruff tones. “I know you wanted it last Christmastide.” He looked down at his thick, brawny hands and muttered. “Heard about it often enough.” He cleared his throat. “Go on … open it up.”

  With a wary look Margaret removed the multicolored satin ribbons from the box and opened it. Her countenance glowed with tender pleasure as she pulled out a mahogany music box, inlaid with ivory. “It’s exactly what I wanted … the very thing.” She ran her hands over it lovingly, then raised eyes to him, which, six months after Christmas, still bore traces of hurt. “You gave me a hot-water bottle, instead, Albert. With the price still attached. Nine shill—”

  “I know how much it cost,” Everstone said gruffly, avoiding the others’ judgmental eyes. “Won’t do that again. If you’ll just come home, Margaret. With the cook gone, the maid’s quit, I’ve had to eat at the club every night and it’s dashed expensive.” Remington gave him a vicious nudge. “Not that I mind a little expense, mind you,” he said, shifting irritably. “Gettin’ to be a regular spendthrift, I am. Flowers an’ music boxes is only the start. I’ll loosen up more if you’ll come home, Margaret. I been thinking it over, and I could give you an allowance, like you said … to run the house and buy what you need. It’d be like your own money.”

  “Like my own money,” she said, her spine straightening and her mouth drawing into a tight line. “But it wouldn’t be mine, would it?”

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. But, Albert, I can’t live like that—having nothing of my own, a slave to your pinchpenny ways, feeling like a servant in what should be my own house.” She hugged the music box to her breast and her chin trembled.

  “Aw, Margaret,”
Everstone said with a huff of exasperation, “come home. I want you home.”

  “Why, Albert?” she said, raising her eyes to him, searching him.

  “I … miss you.” If he hadn’t looked quite so pained by the admission, it might have had a greater effect. She was about to decline when he reached out to touch her hand and she felt the powerful persuasion of his warmth. “Say yes, Margaret. Come home with me today, now. I’ll change. I swear it.”

  She glanced at Antonia, who had withdrawn to the fireplace and stood with her arms crossed, reminding her with a determined look that she needn’t go, now or ever. Wavering, Margaret took a breath and then set both her mind and her chin.

  “Not today, Albert. I must have some time to think on it.”

  Antonia had watched Remington prodding Everstone and realized that he had something to do with the tight-fisted MP’s visit, and probably more than something to do with the gifts. Now she watched as he rose and shifted his attention to Alice and Basil Trueblood, while appearing simply to stroll the room with his hands shoved into his pockets.

  “What’s happened to you, Basil?” Alice finally had the nerve to say. “You look so … tired.” And so unkempt, and so dispirited, that she was genuinely alarmed.

  “I can’t seem to sleep in our house of late and have been spending nights at the club,” Trueblood said dolefully. “It’s hideously noisy till all hours, and there is never any hot water for shaving, and the linen is frightfully coarse and common—one should really expect better—”

  Remington settled on the end of the sofa, at Trueblood’s back, and covertly gave him an elbow in the ribs. Trueblood started and reddened.

  “But that hardly compares with the discomfort of not seeing your dear face across the breakfast table,” he asserted, looking genuinely distressed, then began to slide again. “Or with the fact that I haven’t had a decent meal at home since you left. Cook burns everything just to spite me. And that snippy upstairs maid can’t or won’t recall where you sent my shirts out to be laundered … and she forgets to press my trousers and refuses to empty or clean my shaving basin. The thing’s so filthy I can’t bear to—”

  Remington gave him a sharp nudge that made him snap upright. “I-I mean … I miss you, Alice. I suppose I never realized how much you do to make my life better. You seem to have a mind just made for working with menials, and for dealing with all the flotsam and jetsam of life—” Another, even more emphatic jab from Remington forced a gasp of surprise from him.

  “Your lordship.” Alice leaned around Basil to address Remington directly. “You needn’t continue. I know what Basil is like.” Then she sat back and turned her haunting blue eyes on Trueblood. “Nothing is ever good enough for you, Basil … or clean enough, or quiet enough, or starched enough, or proper enough.”

  “That’s not true. You’re proper enough, and quiet enough and clean enough. I miss you, Alice. I miss your little misspelled notes by my breakfast plate. I miss your off-key humming as you write letters or do your lady stitching. I miss the way you lay out the flatware wrong on the table and the way your eyes get puffy when you cry over a sad song …”

  Remington sighed with resignation and propped his chin on his hand, against the arm of the sofa. Antonia watched his eyes close and saw his pained expression as Basil Trueblood rattled on with his list of hopelessly unflattering compliments. She couldn’t help smiling just a little. He had obviously expected more from this visit. It seemed to really matter to him that Everstone and Trueblood reclaim their wives.

  He must have felt her gaze on him, for he looked up just then and caught her staring at him. His slow, wistful smile was irresistible. She let the warmth she was feeling rise into her face, while memories of his loving began to stir powerfully in her. It was a minute before she realized he was standing and speaking, responding to something Hoskins was saying to her. Then he turned to her and the sense of it righted in her head: the butler had announced more callers.

  “Who?” She scowled at Hoskins. “Who, did you say?”

  “Lord Woolworth, ma’am.” The old butler looked down at the cards he held, squinted, and shoved them out to full arm’s length. “Also a Lord Richard Searle … and that Mr. Howard fellow … him of the excessively sharp revers.”

  She turned on Remington, who took his time meeting her eyes. “The rest of them, too? What would you have done if I had tossed the lot of you out on your coattails?”

  “I had faith that your fairness and good judgment would rule,” he said, producing a smile that was both mischievous and endearing. And she knew he lied. He wasn’t counting on her head, he was counting on her hopelessly soft heart to win his battle for him. And it looked as if his faith in it hadn’t been misplaced.

  No sooner had Everstone and Trueblood bade their wives good-bye and departed, than she found her drawing room being invaded by three more men she had sworn never to allow through her door again. The sight of them stirred a confusing mix of feelings in her. Each carried flowers, each wore his most dashing clothes, and each greeted her with a blend of trepidation and grim deference.

  Again she let them stand and shift uneasily while she sent Hoskins for their wives. Elizabeth, Daphne, and Camille arrived forthwith, their faces flushed becomingly and their eyes bright. When they glimpsed Antonia’s erect, crossed-arms posture, they halted in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. They were sensible and clever and capable, Antonia thought with some pride. But they were also warm-hearted and forgiving. She glanced at the handsome faces and brimming bouquets of flowers they faced, and she sighed, preparing herself for the worst.

  With considerable dignity they accepted the flowers and refrained from eyeing the boxes under their husbands’ arms. Richard Searle held out his hand to little blond Daphne expecting to escort her to a seat, but she surprised him by withholding it.

  “Come with me, Daphne,” he said emphatically. “I have a few things to say to you … in private.”

  Daphne’s pale perfection grew a bit paler, but she lifted her chin and made herself say: “You have already said a great deal to me in private, Richard. For now, anything you have to say to me must be said in public … or at least before my dearest friends.”

  “Now, Daphne,” he ground out with an edge of warning, his face and shoulders swelling with bruised pride and irritation.

  “No!” she shouted fiercely, startling him back a step. “I said no and I meant it!” she continued forcefully. “I’ll not suffer your wretched outbursts of temper in silence anymore, Richard!”

  Everyone in the room stood as if bolted to the floor, their ears ringing. When the sound died away, he stood in complete shock, fumbling for a response. She reddened slightly, seeming a little unsettled by her own blast, then took herself in hand. Crossing her arms over her chest, in imitation of Antonia’s adamant pose, she lowered her voice.

  “I am sorry, Richard, but I thought you should learn the way it feels to be yelled at before others—the servants, your family, even waiters in restaurants. It is not a very pleasant experience.”

  “I … well … I …” Searle’s face set like granite and his tongue seemed to have turned to stone as well.

  “I’m quite sure you don’t raise your voice to your gentlemen friends, Richard. And I believe I deserve at least the respect you would show to them.” She steeled herself. “Are you willing to talk with me as if I am a reasonable being?”

  All of his carefully prepared speeches had been blasted out of his head. He nodded and, in a desperate move, handed Daphne the flat box he carried. When she accepted it, he seemed to find his tongue. “I thought you might like to have some music to sing by.” He gestured to the box. “I got you some. I … miss your singing.”

  Daphne met his darkened eyes, gave him a wary but warming smile, and put out her hand. Together they moved to a settee near the window.

  Antonia watched them go, feeling oddly reassured. Of all the brides that had returned to her, she would have judged Daphne the most tender and vuln
erable. Daphne’s firm stance with her overpowering husband left Antonia feeling there might actually be some hope for them all to better their lot.

  Lord Carter Woolworth stepped forward and handed Elizabeth a small package, asking her to open it. She did so with trembling hands and found a printed note card inside. “Read it,” he said quietly.

  “Lady Penelope Woolworth, Countess Dunroven, is receiving guests at Dunroven Hall, Kewes, Sussex,” she read aloud. For a moment she stared at it, frowning, uncertain what it meant.

  “Not that she will have many guests,” Woolworth said, edging closer. “But if she entertains, it will be there, or nowhere. She no longer lives in my house, Elizabeth.”

  Antonia watched Elizabeth’s tenuous smile as she settled on the settee by the pianoforte with him. Then she turned back in time to see Bertrand Howard removing a pair of thick spectacles from his pocket and donning them. Camille watched him in astonishment.

  “I think you should know … you are looking at a new man, Camille,” he said in a dry voice. “I have taken to wearing spectacles. I have probably needed them for some years. Vanity kept me from wearing them … the same way vanity kept me from seeing you.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Bertrand, are you saying your eyesight is bad?”

  He swallowed hard and plunged ahead. “I don’t always scowl because I’m displeased, Camille. Sometimes I am simply squinting in order to see better. I didn’t mean to look through you. Sometimes I just couldn’t see that you were there at all. And that is the most inexcusable of wrongs … not seeing you.”

  Camille blinked, disarmed by his admission, and by the thickness of the glass that magnified his eyes and made him look owlish and a bit comical. She pressed her lips together to prevent a laugh, and it was a minute before she could speak.

  “Do you expect me to believe you ignored me—wouldn’t speak to me or take me anywhere, or introduce me, or simply talk with me—because you couldn’t see me?”