The Sensible Courtship

by Megan Daniel

  “Utterly lost! We must certainly disqualify Mr. Hollys,” she said with a laugh, entering into the spirit of the thing despite herself. “Now, I feel certain I could tolerate Colonel Tranch. I had always a fondness for a man in scarlet regimentals. And he does seem to be that strange combination: an officer with no air of command. How do you suppose he gets his troops to follow him?”

  “He doesn’t. Thank God we are at peace. So, shall it be Colonel Tranch?”

  “I’m afraid not. He returns to his regiment in the morning, he tells me, and I feel even I must needs have more than one evening to bring my gentleman up to scratch.”

  “You underrate yourself, I’m sure,” he teased.

  “Oh, no. I told you I am a realist.”

  “Well, then, scratch Tranch from the running,” he concluded with an appropriate gesture.

  They munched awhile in companionable silence, each very much aware of the other’s nearness. Without realizing she did so, Francesca let out a sigh. Devlin turned to look at her; she looked back at him. They just stared at each other a moment, virtually without expression, but their eyes were locked. Then they smiled, a very small, almost sad smile, a smile with more than a trace of resignation, of regret.

  Devlin looked away first. “Well,” he said with forced good cheer, “I’m sure there must be someone in all this crowd who ...” He let his eyes scan the eating, chattering group. They came to rest on a couple a few yards away. “Of course,” he exclaimed. “The obvious choice!”

  “Who?” said Francesca.

  “Maltby. He is the perfect mate for you. A clever fellow, Maltby, in a vague sort of way. Never give you a moment’s worry. Probably won’t even recall that he is married most of the time, and won’t much mind it when he does. You must certainly marry Caspar Maltby.”

  “Caspar Maltby! Oh, no, I couldn’t. I mean . . . Good God! I’d forgotten he was here.” She let her eyes find him, no mean task, as Mr. Maltby was prone to blend into the walls.

  “Precisely my point,” said Devlin. “I feel sure you may just as easily forget him after you are married. He won’t mind, you know. Just let him have his gardens and his hothouses, and he will go on like winking. You may bully him all you like; he won’t even notice.”

  “I am not a bully!”

  “No? Well, then just don’t bother about him at all. If you only compliment him on his hybrid roses now and then, he will think himself very well married.”

  “Well, even you must admit that he does grow very nice roses.”

  “I wouldn’t know. You forget, I have been away.”

  “I don’t forget,” she answered shortly.

  He ignored the remark, though it did pique his curiosity. “Perhaps he will even make a name for himself as a famous botanist or something and you may bask in his glory.”

  “How nonsensical you are! I am sure Mr. Maltby is very well respected, but really! Me basking in Caspar Maltby’s glory!” She sniffed with more than a touch of wounded vanity.

  “I will admit it is an unlikely possibility. Amusing, though.”

  “You would find it so.”

  “And of course you needn’t worry that he would ride roughshod over you or squander your fortune. It would never occur to him to spend your money, I’m sure. I imagine his valet has to remind him when to buy a coat. If he has a valet,”

  “I understand Mr. Maltby’s fortune is respectable, and besides, he is next in line to the Viscount Coltraine.”

  “There you are, then. You need have no fear he is a fortune hunter.” He gave her a speculative look. His manner remained elaborately casual. “Of course, there would be the problem of attaching him. That could prove a neat trick.”

  He had pricked her feminine pride, as he had meant to do. Her eyes flashed magnificently, her smile frozen in place. That she, who had turned down dozens of offers, could fail to bring a man of Caspar Maltby’s stamp around her thumb! Unthinkable. “You assume I could not manage it5” she asked in a honey-smooth voice.

  “I’ve really no idea,” he replied. “You forget,” he added in a voice as smooth as her own and with an embarrassing touch of intimacy, “it has been many years since I have seen you in action.”

  “Oh, I am better even than I was,” she said in that same deceptively sweet voice. “You may recall that back then I was not quite irresistible enough to keep you in England.”

  His facade broke for the briefest moment to reveal a look of pure astonishment. Not only had she not tried to keep him in England, he thought, but she had gone out of her way to show him that she had no desire for him to stay. But he covered his thoughts so quickly with his usual urbane manner that she, though she did notice it, immediately began to think she had imagined it. His next words convinced her of it “You forget though, that I was a particularly hardened case. Caspar is like to present a different sort of problem entirely.”

  “I’ll lay you a wager I can bring him up to scratch before you can get Priscilla to accept you!” she challenged rashly. Her pride often led her to make foolish statements.

  His crooked grin flashed. “And may I name the stakes of this wager?” There was a pronounced twinkle in his eye. It brought that strange tingle to her neck again.

  “V-very well.”

  He raked her with his glance in a very discomfiting yet strangely satisfying way. “On second thought, I believe I shall name the forfeit at a later time. But I promise it shan’t be more than you can afford. Done?”

  She hesitated, trusting neither his expression nor her own galloping emotions. But a wager was a wager, and she had brought this one on herself. “Done,” she answered, and reached out her hand to seal the bargain.

  He took the hand, but rather than shaking it as she expected, he lifted it to his lips. To compound his crime, he did not lightly and chastely kiss it as he might. He turned it gently over and kissed first her palm, then her wrist, then raised his eyes to hers with a wicked grin.

  She looked quickly away to see if anyone in the room had observed his outrageous behavior. But she did not pull her hand away. It seemed no longer to be connected to her brain. For though her mind told her to pull it sharply away at once, the hand itself felt an almost overwhelming urge to caress his cheek. Luckily he lowered the hand again before it could do anything so absurd.

  “Old Caspar may be getting more than he can handle,” he said in a silky voice. Then, even more softly, he added, “Certainly more than he deserves.”

  8

  The four principals in the impending romantic quadrille enjoyed varying degrees of rest that night. Mr. Maltby perhaps fared best. Being sublimely unaware of what was in store for him, and only vaguely curious as to how it had come about that he had waltzed twice that evening with the dashing Lady Francesca Waringham, his sleep was not disturbed by visions of her. He did, however, lie awake some little while pondering the question of marriage, and his own at that.

  Left to himself, he would not even have been at this house party, even though he was a cousin to the Duke and was routinely invited. His finest mums were just coming into bloom at home, and he could scarce bear the thought of missing their show.

  But he had not been left to himself. His Mama had made a decision: at nine-and-twenty it was past time that her Caspar settle his wife into his home and begin populating the countryside with the elder Mrs. M jtby’s grandchildren.

  Now, Mr. Maltby felt no particular need for a wife as yet—there was Mama, after all—but he was quite unaccustomed to disobeying his mother. He realized that he was occasionally too abstracted for his own good, and his Mama had so much more sense of the world than did he. If she said it was time he married, she was most probably correct.

  And so he had come to Hockleigh with rather strict orders to look over the young ladies present. It was already the end of October, and he had agreed to make his choice before the end of the year.

  No one at present at Hockleigh had particularly struck him as right for the post of Mrs. Maltby, but then, he had as ye
t hardly looked. While the others had been hunting a fox this morning, he had been out hunting specimens of Onopordon acanthium near the Home Wood. And the afternoon had been whiled away in touring the Duchess’s hothouses. At the ball this evening he had attempted to pay more attention to his duty, and he really was rather proud of himself. He had danced with at least half of the ladies present, had forgotten only one of their names, and had not trodden on a single toe.

  He fell asleep at last, basically satisfied with himself, and determined to attend to further matrimonial hunting on the morrow.

  Miss Pennington was the next of the quartet to block out the real world with the solace of dreams, but she was not at all satisfied. Before she had been allowed to bury herself under the eiderdown quilt, snuff her candle, and sink into the comforting blackness, she had been treated to one of her Mama’s monologues. She had been hearing them all her life, of course, but she was quite sure she would never grow completely used to them.

  This particular speech had concerned Lord Devlin, his good looks and address, his estates, his income, his importance, and Priscilla’s amazing and undeserved good fortune in attracting his notice. Mrs. Pennington had every good intention of capitalizing on the fact that Devlin had distinguished Pris with three dances this night. She told her daughter what to expect.

  She must be perfectly turned out on every occasion; much thought must be put into her wardrobe. Every opportunity would be found to bring her to his lordship’s

  notice and keep her there. They must do whatever they could to hold his company on every occasion.

  Priscilla could not help but cringe at what she knew the next few days would hold, and she knew she must fail miserably, even had she wanted to succeed. She was convinced that only so much charm, poise, and beauty had been allotted to the Pennington girls, and her sister, Liza, had got it all.

  The first step in Mrs. Pennington’s campaign to snare the most interesting baron in the country for her least interesting daughter was to inform Pris that she would ride with the hunt on the morrow. With wide eyes, Priscilla so far forgot herself as to begin to protest. She was an indifferent rider at best. Horses made her nervous. “But, Mama,” she murmured, “I—”.

  “You can wear that blue habit, the one we had made in London for the Season. I will add a new plume to your hat myself. I’ve a lovely cerise one that will do nicely. And those particularly fine yellow gloves of mine..

  With a look of misery, Priscilla turned away her wide, blue, remarkably pretty eyes. “Yes, Mama,” she wis- pered, like the dutiful daughter she was, when her mother finally wound down her monologue.

  When the older woman left the room and Priscilla had tied her lacy nightcap under her chin, she climbed miserably into the high curtained bed. She had long ago given up crying for her own unhappiness; it never changed anything. So she escaped into sleep, where she could dream of peace and rest, of no Mama, of oblivion.

  Farther down the hall were two more bedchambers, not too near each other, but each housing a very restive young person. Francesca pounded her pillow in annoyance, determined to make her mind go blank and allow sleep to overtake it. But no sooner did the words of resolve form in her mind than her thoughts spun off in other directions entirely. What a scrape she had gotten herself into now! She had allowed Devlin to goad her into running after Caspar Maltby, of all unlikely people. She had even recognized what the odious man was doing to her, and had still allowed herself to be drawn in. Why? she wondered.

  She must think it through logically, she told herself firmly, or she would never sleep. Was it really such a scrape after all? In the dark room, with only the dying embers giving a faint light to the bed tester over her head, she forced her chattering mind to slow down and look at things rationally. Lord Devlin’s taunts had really been like a pitcher of water thrown in the face of a sleeping person—definitely unpleasant, but it did awaken one.

  Well, she was awake now, in more ways than one. And she had to admit that Devlin was in the right of it, even if for the wrong reasons, just as she had been when she proposed Priscilla Pennington as a suitable wife for him. It was time that she married. Seeing Gussie’s children again had made her ache with the realization of her own loneliness. She wanted children of her own, to love and to teach and to be loved by in return. And she could have it.

  But she would do it only on her own terms, as she had always done everything. Really, Caspar Maltby was an admirable choice. She had known him vaguely for years. He was not a bad-looking man, and he was possessed of a considerable intelligence beneath his air of abstraction. And although he showed little interest in the doings of the ton, as heir to a viscountcy, he was accepted everywhere. He had his own interests and would not be likely to tamper with hers, and he could do very well at providing her with the children she so badly wanted. Really, she considered, she could hardly do better, and she could certainly do a great deal worse.

  Very well, then, she told herself, unconsciously nodding her resolve in the dark. She would marry Caspar Maltby and make Richard Devlin laugh out of the other side of his face.

  As her mind began to relax at last, she did vaguely wonder why Devlin had pushed her so hard to go after Caspar. What possible reason could he have for wanting to see her married? Unless it was simply for the fun of watching the courtship. He believed she couldn’t do it, anyway. She new very well that she could.

  When she drifted off into a restless sleep at last, it was to dream of a white lace gown and wedding chimes. She turned to the groom at her side. She could not see his face. But didn’t Mr. Maltby have brown hair? A shaft of sunlight through the high arched Gothic windows of the church glinted on this man’s hair, and it shone like gold.

  In the last bedchamber in the house to show a glimmer of light that night, Richard Devlin was making no pretense of sleeping. He sat wrapped in a simple and comfortable dressing gown, staring gloomily into the fire and mulling over the events of the evening. Damn that chit! he said to himself, and he did not mean Miss Pennington. She had gotten him into something that he was not at all certain he was ready for.

  But try as he might, he could come up with no good reasons to prove Francesca had been wrong in her judgment of him. Why not marry, after all? Was it not one reason he had come home? Everyone had to settle down sometime. And this Pennington girl, so conveniently at hand, did seem the perfect choice. She didn’t sparkle and shine, she had no conversation or wit, but then, that was exactly what he had decided he required in a wife. If he could only get through the courtship and engagement! Priscilla would make a comfortable wife. Of course, there would be little excitement in such a marriage, but such kind of excitement could always be found elsewhere. Who could tell? Perhaps Lady Francesca herself would soon be a married lady with a boring husband. The situation offered endless possibilities. He smiled for the first time since coming upstairs. She was still the most exciting woman he had ever known, ever held, ever kissed. And she was not now indifferent to him, whatever she might pretend. He had seen it in her eyes, had felt it when she trembled in his arms as they waltzed. His smile grew for a moment as he thought of the extra freedom granted to married ladies.

  But the smile disappeared when the image of Caspar Maltby entered the picture beside her, holding her hand, putting his wedding ring on her finger, kissing her. Lord Devlin was scowling into the fire again when his candle guttered and went out.

  The group of hunters next morning was inevitably a bit smaller than on the opening day. Farmers and ostlers, who could afford the luxury of only one day off from their labors, went reluctantly back to their fields and their stables. The diminishment of the carnival atmosphere that always prevailed at the Lawn Meet kept many of the onlookers at home as well.

  Mr. Maltby, on a neat bay who, though past his hunting prime, was not yet ready for the glue factory, trotted along comfortably enough. He was no neck-or- nothing rider, but he didn’t dislike to hunt for a day or so now and then. And he was determined to follow his Mama’s strictur
es not to bury himself in the garden or the woods for the whole of his visit with his cousin. And so off he trotted.

  Miss Pennington, to her definite dismay, also joined the field. The Duchess had provided her with a very docile and pretty little mare, and Priscilla was trying hard not to be too nervous. She had much rather be sketching the fox than chasing him—her animal and flower drawings were her major accomplishment and her chief joy—but she had never been able to stand up to her Mama like Liza had always done. Of course, it was easy for Liza; she was beautiful, vivacious, witty, everything Pris was certain she was not. And Mama liked Liza and was proud of her. She liked being able to say, “My daughter, the Countess.” Pris knew she was a trial to her mother; she tried hard to make up for it by being dutiful.

  And so she had joined the hunt, holding on to the pommel of her sidesaddle so hard her knuckles were white under her jonquil-yellow riding gloves and praying that the docile little mare would not run away with her.

  To make matters worse, if that were possible, she saw Lord Devlin trot up beside her as they headed out to the covert. Why on earth he was showing her such a marked degree of attention was beyond her thinking. He was much more the sort of gentleman likely to buzz around Liza than around her. He made Priscilla nervous. He was too handsome, too wealthy, and there was so very much of him.

  “Good morning, Miss Pennington,” he said in a hearty voice. “I trust you slept well after the evening’s exertions.”

  “Y-yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord,” she stammered, her eyes glued to her horse’s mane.