A Commercial Enterprise

by Sandra Heath

  A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE

  Sandra Heath

  Chapter 1

  It was a lonely part of Dartmoor where the winding track from Selford Village passed over the stream by way of a narrow stone bridge. Floodwater from the melting snow on the high tors foamed in a torrent down through the rocky, tree-lined combe, the sound echoing around the naked branches. Cold, windswept, and desolate, it was a favorite place for highwaymen. All travelers, even the swiftest of horsemen, had to go slowly in order to negotiate the bridge, and highwaymen could wait with ease in the shelter of the concealing trees.

  An old post chaise approached the bridge on its way down from Selford to join the main Exeter highway in the valley far below, but the roar of the swollen stream drowned the sound of the little hired carriage. It was a poor vehicle now, although once it had been the proud possession of a marquis. Its panels were a scratched and faded blue, and the heraldic emblems which once graced the doors had been completely obliterated.

  Perched on the more robust of the two horses, the yellow-jacketed postboy looked anything but cheerful as he glanced nervously around the combe for any stealthy movement which might give warning of someone lying in wait. Called a boy, Charlie Hargreaves was in fact forty-five years old, and he loathed having to turn out in such inclement weather simply to convey a young woman, whom he regarded as stubborn and willful, to the White Boar Inn on the first stage of an unnecessary journey to London.

  It was ten miles to the inn, miles which were hazardous and which offered too many hiding places for the so-called gentlemen of the road, and he could only view with apprehension the prospect of the next hour or so. On bitterly cold February days like this, only fools and the idle rich ventured forth into such risks; glancing nervously through the tangle of trees again, he urged the team across the bridge, pondering how his passenger, Miss Caroline Lexham of Selford Manor, apparently did not fall into either category.

  A solitary horseman waited in the lee of a holly tree, his face hidden by the brim of his tall hat, his damp cloak billowing in the icy wind. He was not a man of fashion, his riding boots were well made rather than modish, and his leather gloves were substantial but hardly elegant. His attention was on the chaise, and in particular upon the mud-spattered window, where he could see the paleness of a woman’s face. As the carriage reached the holly tree, he urged his horse directly into its path.

  Charlie’s face became instantly ashen as he brought the chaise to an abrupt halt. “Let us pass!” he cried fearfully. “We’ve nothing of value for you!”

  The horseman dismounted, his face at last revealed as he looked up at the terrified postboy. “You’ve never had reason to fear me, Charlie Hargreaves, and you’ve no reason to do so now. I merely wish to speak with Miss Lexham.” The wind almost snatched his voice away and his cloak flapped wildly as he made fast his horse’s reins.

  “Squire Marchand?” Charlie was taken aback, looking down in amazement at the young master of Selford Manor. “Will you be long, sir? Only Miss Lexham said I was to be as quick as possible as she had to meet the Exeter mail and—”

  “I will take as long as is necessary to persuade her to abandon this foolish journey.”

  Charlie fell silent, watching as Richard Marchand turned toward the door of the chaise, hesitating a moment in obvious doubt. At twenty-eight, he was tall and well built, with tousled blond hair and clear blue eyes, and by any measure he was considered to be a catch in these parts. As master of Selford he could have had his pick of the daughters of nearby landowners, but everyone knew his heart was set upon his cousin Caroline, who at twenty was eight years his junior.

  Since the death of her mother she had lived alone in a house in the village, with a cook-housekeeper to look after her, and her handsome cousin had long been determined to put an end to that lonely existence. Everyone in Selford knew that he wanted to marry her, and an announcement had been expected for some time; the fact that there had so far been no such announcement was regarded by many as a blessing, for although Miss Lexham was very well liked and respected, she was nevertheless thought to be unattractively overeducated for a female.

  This fault in her upbringing had led to her being possessed of a singularly independent nature, and no sensible fellow would wish to endure such willful spirit in his wife. It was at the feet of Miss Caroline’s late mother that most of the blame lay for this lamentable state of affairs, for she had sought to instill in her daughter all the qualities of a lady of rank, and being unable to afford a proper governess, she had engaged the services of Parson Young.

  The parson had by some dreadful coincidence also believed that a female should be as well educated as a male, and he had done his best to fill his pretty pupil’s head with all manner of facts and figures, from a knowledge of astronomy to a thorough grounding in algebra and geometry.

  Of what possible use were such things to a woman destined to be mistress of a manor high on Dartmoor? It was not a female’s place to be learned and knowledgeable, it was her function in life to find herself a husband, make him happy, and be a mother to his children.

  Of one thing Squire Marchand could be thankful, however, and that was that the good parson’s command of the French language had been appalling and he had therefore not been in a position to instruct his charge in this fashionable tongue. Richard Marchand would therefore be spared constant lessons in history, geography, and arithmetic, which could then be repeated in the language of England’s hereditary enemy!

  Charlie huddled himself against the elements, thinking to himself that never had Miss Caroline Lexham’s mulish, overeducated, unfeminine traits been more in evidence than at present, for here she was, setting off on an unnecessary journey all the way to London on her own. And for what reason? She intended to be present at the reading of her uncle’s will—an uncle she had never even met and who certainly had not entertained fond thoughts of his niece.

  Richard still hesitated at the door of the chaise. He knew that what he was about to say would not be well received, for he and Caroline had had many heated arguments ever since her ridiculous and stubborn decision to go to London. Her insistence had angered him, and he took refuge in blaming her upbringing, but in his heart he knew that his anger was born mostly of the recent unease which had sprung up between them.

  She had begun more and more to want the freedom to conduct her life as she saw fit, not as someone else dictated, and he took this as an implied criticism, an unwarranted criticism of his manhood which he resented deeply. He had said hurtful things to her, he had tried to impose his will upon her, but she had stoutly held her ground. Now, at this eleventh hour, he had to try one last time to make her change her mind. Taking a deep breath, he flung open the door and looked inside.

  The interior was gloomy. The drab upholstery was worn and there was straw upon the floor. Caroline sat in the corner, toying nervously with the strings of her velvet reticule. She was very beautiful, although she had never seemed conscious of the fact; perhaps that was part of her charm. Her eyes were large and gray, and the curls peeping from beneath her high-crowned brown bonnet were the color of warm honey. She looked almost lost in her voluminous traveling mantle, the ribbons of which were tied only loosely so that he could just make out the heavy chased silver of her grandmother’s necklace, the only item of any value she possessed.

  Like Richard himself, she could not have been called fashionable, but where he was unmistakably a country squire, Caroline Lexham had the fragile, delicate features associated with ladies of quality. There was something very arresting about her, from the gracefulness of her slender figure and the tilt of her head to the candid expression of her wide eyes. Those eyes met his now, and they were a little reproachful. “Richard?
”

  “I think you know why I’ve stopped you, Caroline.”

  “It will serve no purpose; my mind is made up.”

  “I must persuade you to turn back to Selford, for apart from anything else, journeying two hundred miles in these conditions is madness!”

  “I am going to London, Richard,” she said quietly. “And I do not see why you try so hard to prevent me. I’m only going for a short while.”

  “Are you?” The words slipped out before he could stop them. He searched her pale face. He was afraid to let her go, afraid that he would lose her forever once the sophisticated gentlemen of the beau monde saw her beauty. He was afraid too that after the excitement of the capital she had long yearned to see, the dullness of remote Selford would bore her.

  “Please stay, Caroline,” he begged, his voice barely audible above the roar of the water thundering over the rocks nearby.

  She found it hard to withstand this entreaty, but she knew that she must, for both their sakes. “I will not be gone for long,” she repeated.

  “Damn you!” he cried, his helplessness making him harsh again. “I demand that you stay here!”

  Her eyes flashed in angry response. “You are my cousin, Richard, not my keeper!”

  “I want to be more, I want to be your husband!”

  She couldn’t reply, and she lowered her eyes to the reticule lying on her lap.

  He struggled to be gentle again, reaching over to put his gloved hand over hers. “Caroline, we grew up together, we’ve always been together, and since your mother died it’s been assumed that in time we would—

  “Perhaps that’s the trouble, Richard,” she interposed quickly. “We’ve been together too much and now when I look at you I see my brother, not the man I wish to have as my husband.”

  “I don’t believe you mean that, for I know that when I see you I see the woman with whom I wish to spend the rest of my life. My feelings for you are anything but brotherly, I promise you that.”

  She could only look at him. Why wouldn’t he listen? Why did he refuse to hear when she tried to tell him the truth?

  His fingers tightened a little over hers. “Please stay here, Caroline, forget this foolishness about London.”

  “I cannot.” Her voice was quiet but firm. She loved him, but not in the right way, and in recent months the pressure to marry him had become almost unendurable. She had to escape from Selford for just a little while.

  He snatched his hand away, his quick anger sweeping to the fore again. “You think that because you carry the exalted Lexham name that once you reach London your aristocratic relatives will welcome you with open arms! Well, you will be disappointed, for as far as they are concerned you are nothing but a lowly Marchand! They’ve ignored you all your life and they are not about to change now. Your father was the late earl’s only brother, but he scandalized and infuriated them all when he took my aunt as his wife. Catherine Marchand may have been very sweet and beautiful, but by Lexham standards she was virtually a pauper!”

  “It was a love match,” she said defensively.

  “For Philip Lexham it was a grave misalliance. Only if he had married a servant, a divorced woman, or a Cyprian could he have sinned more in their eyes. They never forgave him and he died disinherited, spurned by his own flesh and blood. They will never forgive you for being a living reminder of an episode they would prefer to sweep under the ancestral carpet. Don’t go to the reading of that will, Caroline, for it will avail you of nothing and may even prove painful to you. Please listen to me.”

  She toyed once more with the strings of her reticule. He was right about her relatives, and she knew it, but how could she tell him that she was determined to go to London as much to be free of Selford and free of him for a while as to hear the last will and testament of a man she had never known?

  She needed time to herself, time to put things into perspective. More and more of late she had come to realize that she chafed at the close-knit rural existence which was all she had ever known. Now she yearned to see something more of the world. She was tired of conversation which turned solely on farming and prices, on cattle and sheep, on the vagaries of Dartmoor weather, on hunting and foxhounds and all the other interminable sporting activities followed with such obsession by country squires like Richard.

  It was a world for men and there was no place for women of Caroline’s spirit. Such an existence forever more would stifle and frustrate her as the years passed and would make any marriage between her and Richard Marchand a very serious mistake. She didn’t want to hurt him; she just wanted him to understand and accept the truth, but he didn’t want to know what she felt or why she felt it.

  He was supremely confident that if she married him, then she would be content to forget her stubborn restlessness, which he regarded as mystifying female nonsense anyway. In his blind, unthinking way he was as arrogant as he accused the Lexhams of being, but he would have been appalled had he known she thought such things of him. He simply did not understand her, and she doubted very much if he ever would. She, on the other hand, understood him only too well, and knew that the barrier was insurmountable. As cousins they could be close and loving; as lovers they were as unlike as chalk and cheese, too opposite for there to be any hope of a successful and happy marriage.

  Her long silence disturbed him. “Caroline?”

  “I intend to go to London, Richard, and nothing you say will make any difference.”

  He was almost savage then, wanting to cause her pain for all the hurt she was dealing him. “They’ll laugh in your face! They’ll scorn your country ways and your country clothes!”

  “Please, don’t.”

  He looked helplessly into the soft gray eyes and saw defeat at last. Why couldn’t she see that he would only love and cherish her? Why couldn’t she see that it was marriage that she needed, not foolish escapades like this? Other women were content enough with their lot, happy to contemplate futures with loving husbands and with children, why couldn’t she be as they were? Why did she always seem to be seeking something, he knew not what? Was it because she was half Lexham? Was that why?

  He wanted to say so much to her, but the words would not come. She was and would always be a mystery to him, and his own nature was such that he would never reach through the puzzle to find the answer. Slowly he stepped back, closing the door and nodding at Charlie, who immediately roused himself and urged the team on down the track.

  Richard watched the old vehicle lumber away. Instinct told him that she would never return to Selford to live, not because that was already her secret avowed intention, but because events would overtake her. For a down-to-earth country squire, Richard Marchand had a surprising belief in the power of dreams, and recently he had dreamed that she would stay in London.

  Now, as the chaise disappeared from sight, that belief was stronger than ever. Somewhere in the capital there was a gentleman who was going to see past her country clothes and inexperience of society ways, who was going to fall in love with her charm and beauty, her vivaciousness, her sense of humor, and her compassion; that gentleman, like Richard Marchand before him, was going to want to keep her forever, but where the squire of Selford had failed, the London gentleman was going to succeed.

  Sadly Richard remounted. The wind gusted icily through the combe, bending the trees and momentarily making the sound of the water even louder as it foamed and splashed over the rocks. There was a promise of more snow in the air as Richard turned his horse back up the track to ride home. This new year of 1818 was to have been the year he made Caroline Lexham his bride; instead it was to be the year of losing her.

  Chapter 2

  As the carriage drew away, Caroline resisted the temptation to look back, for to have done that might have made her falter in her resolve. She did not know what she would do on her return to Selford, merely that somehow she would have to make him understand that she would never marry him. She felt that after escaping to London and having separated herself from t
he influence of Dartmoor and Selford, she would find it easier to face him with the incontrovertible facts. Maybe then he would at last accept that she would never be his wife.

  She looked out of the ill-fitting window, watching the gray winter scene slip slowly by. Dartmoor in the spring and summer was very beautiful, but in the middle of winter it was desolate, brooding, and unkind.

  The chaise jolted at last from the moorland track onto the main highway between Plymouth in the west and Exeter toward the east, but although she expected to see many more vehicles, it seemed that most travelers had decided to shun the raw cold and the risk of flooding. After half an hour, the only others she saw were a carrier and his wagon, drawn by eight oxen, and a smart yellow curricle driven at breakneck speed by a dashing young blood with golden Apollo curls and a tight-waisted crimson coat. She heard his mocking laughter as he shaved dangerously close to the chaise, earning a blasphemous response from the furious Charlie.

  Looking out of the opposite window, away to the south across the valley, she could see. a great white house set in a magnificent park. This was Petwell, the estate belonging to the young widow of old Admiral Lord Chaddington. Caroline had never met her, but she had heard a great deal about her. Lady Chaddington was rumored to have married the old man in order to inherit his considerable fortune. Now she was an important and influential society hostess in London, and invitations to Petwell and her house in Berkeley Square were much sought after by the haut monde. Said to be a very beautiful woman, she was nevertheless not liked in this part of Devon, for she was harsh and unfeeling with her tenants. On balance, Caroline was glad that she had not moved in the same circles as Lady Chaddington, and she hoped that she would not encounter anyone like her in London.

  Thinking about London inevitably made her wonder about her Lexham relatives. She knew little of them, beyond the fact that they were very wealthy, that she had numerous uncles, aunts, and cousins, that the country seat of the senior branch of the family was Watermoor Chase in County Durham, and their London address was the famous Lexham House in Mayfair Street.