Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  Julia dissolved into peals of laughter. “That would put Ambrose on a roar,” she said. “Can you imagine him, Arthur? You would be able to hear him clear across town. No, Daisy, I will just have to content myself with sitting here for another few weeks and looking forward to Arthur’s daily visits to rub my back and Giles’ to chide me on poor Ambrose’s neglect.”

  “I will call on you too, if I may,” Daisy said. "I do a tolerable imitation of a milkmaid, you know, if you want company on that walk.”

  Julia laughed again. “I cannot remember when I had such a merry time, Daisy,” she said. “You are going to be so good for Giles. He is a perfect dear, you know, and I love him. But he is very careful of his dignity. The worst fate he can contemplate is to be made to look foolish. You are going to tease him into a better humor, I can see. I am going to love having you as a sister.”

  “And so am I,” Arthur said with a smile. “May I carry you out to the carriage, Miss Morrison? I may not look particularly strong because I am so tall, and I am told that I stoop and have shockingly poor posture. But I assure you that I will not drop you.”

  “Indeed not!” Daisy said, leaping to her feet and provoking a shriek from Rose. “Your arm is all I will avail myself of, sir. Though, on second thoughts, perhaps someone should summon Gerry. He loves nothing better than a chance to display his superior strength. He was a coal miner, you know, whom I saw coughing so hard when I visited the mine with Papa that I really thought he would not survive the bout. I persuaded Papa to give him alternative employment, but I do not believe he thinks driving a carriage a particularly manly occupation.”

  “And Gerry will grumble at you for a month if he finds out that you hopped down the stairs, Daisy,” Rose said.

  “Then I will summon this dragon of a coal miner by all means,” Arthur said, crossing to the bell pull.

  ***

  Although Daisy was feeling a little bored later in the afternoon to be sitting alone with her foot up, a book spread open on her knee, she was nevertheless feeling pleased with the way the day was developing, and with their stay in London generally. When she kept her mind off her own affairs, that was.

  Rose had made a splendid entrance into society. She had attended her first ball only two evenings before, and already she had attracted the attention of a very eligible gentleman indeed. Sir Phillip Corbett, Daisy had discovered from Lady Hetty, was not only a handsome young man of fashionable appearance and pleasing address, he was also a man of means and heir after his father to an earldom and to a substantial property in Northumberland.

  And he must be captivated by Rose. He had taken her driving the afternoon before and to a garden party given by his mother that afternoon. It all seemed just too good to be true. Daisy had expected to have to chaperon Rose at a number of entertainments before there was any chance of her fixing her choice. But who knew what would develop from this? Perhaps the two of them would fall in love and be married before the summer was out. Stranger things had happened.

  Lady Hetty had gone visiting. She had offered to stay at home with Daisy, but that young lady had insisted that she needed no nursemaid and would enjoy an afternoon alone with a book. And indeed it was a treat to read, Daisy thought, glancing down cheerfully at the first page of the book that had been open before her for all of half an hour. Life at home was usually so busy. There was always something to organize, someone to help. Perhaps she would be back there sooner than she had expected.

  And that thought brought Daisy’s mind back where it did not particularly want to go. Why on earth had she agreed to this stupid betrothal? As much as anything it was embarrassing. Daisy had no wish to make a spectacle of herself, but she was afraid she had certainly done that. How everyone would laugh to know that poor Lord Kincade had been forced into engaging himself to an aging spinster like herself, and one who had come to London only to bring out and chaperon a younger sister. She felt thoroughly mortified.

  Lord Kincade was so very handsome, so very fashionable. It must seem ludicrous that she was his betrothed. She wished desperately that she could whisper in a few ears the fact that they were not really engaged. And there would surely be no harm in doing so to Rose and to his brother and sisters. They really should know the truth.

  She had felt dreadful that morning in Lady Julia’s sitting room, surrounded by his family and her own, all of whom thought her betrothal real. And the trouble was that she liked them dreadfully. The Reverend Fairhaven was a thorough dear. She would give an arm and a leg for such a brother. Visiting his sister every day in order to rub her back, indeed! And telling her just yesterday that since he loved his sisters so dearly, he could think of no greater joy than to increase their number. She could positively shed tears over such kind words if she were the type to shed tears.

  And she liked Lady Julia, who must be three or four years younger than herself. The lady had a sense of humor, something Daisy always appreciated. And Lady Judith too was someone she could grow to love as a sister. Indeed, she would enjoy taking that young lady under her wing. She suspected that as the youngest in a close and affectionate family, Judith had been spoiled and, as a consequence, was very young even for her nineteen years. She was very much less mature than Rose. But for all that, there was a charm and a love for life about the girl that Daisy thought could be developed with careful handling.

  And she had had to pretend to all three that morning that she was preparing to become their sister, the bride of their beloved Giles. When really she was to be no such thing. And had no wish to be. She was too old now and set in her ways even to think of marriage. She would never be able to live with the restraints. Not to mention the absurdity of this particular betrothal.

  Daisy’s pleasant afternoon of reading—she was still on page one—was interrupted by the arrival of Lord Kincade, who let himself into the salon after a token knock at the door.

  “All alone, Daisy?” he asked. “Did they abandon you, or did you drive them out?”

  Daisy looked at him suspiciously. “My foot is quite recovered, you know,” she said, “though I have promised to keep it from the floor for the rest of today. I do not need to be carried to my room again today, if that is why you have come. And I certainly do not need any more laudanum. Once in a lifetime is quite enough for that. I woke up late yesterday evening with a headache and a mouth feeling as if it were full of moss. If you have plans for subjecting me to another dose of that, you will have to hold me down and ram it down my throat.”

  “I am delighted you are so pleased to see me,” Lord Kincade said with a bow. “But you need not be so effusive in your greetings, you know. I came to take you for a drive.”

  “Did you?” she said, brightening. “I must say that I have not been enjoying Robinson Crusoe excessively. I had heard that it was an exciting book.”

  “It probably becomes more interesting on page two,” he said, glancing down at the book in her lap. “At least I seem to remember that that was where my interest picked up.”

  “You need not take me if you do not wish to,” Daisy said. “I know it must be irksome to you to be seen with me and to have to pretend to a fondness for me. I am sorry now that I agreed to this betrothal. It is all nonsense.”

  “I have brought my phaeton,” he said. “I thought that if I perched you high enough off the ground, you would be far enough away from spectators that they would not notice your wrinkles and gray hairs.”

  “Oh!” Daisy burst into laughter. “How silly. You know perfectly well what I meant.”

  “My only misgiving,” Lord Kincade said, “is that you will spot a little dog or a suspicious-looking character or an insect about to be trodden on, and bellow out at me to stop when we are in the middle of Rotten Row.”

  “How absurd," Daisy said, smiling up at him. “That would embarrass you, and I would not want to draw attention to you. Or to myself, for that matter.”

  “Do you think I might have that in writing?” Lord Kincade asked. “Now, Daisy, if I ring for y
our maid, will she know what bonnet and shoes to fetch? That dress is very pretty, by the way. I don't think you will need a shawl or pelisse.”

  The matter of her dress was settled with the minimum of fuss. The matter of conveying her outside to the phaeton was not. Daisy declared, her look thoroughly mulish, that she would go for this drive only if she could walk or hop outside herself. Lord Kincade announced, looking somewhat bored, that they would proceed only if she traveled from her chair to the phaeton in his arms.

  It was a protracted argument in which Daisy did all the talking. At the end of ten minutes, during which Lord Kincade had sat down and polished his quizzing glass with minute care, he carried Daisy down the stairs and out through the front door, and lifted her into the high seat of the phaeton.

  “Oh,” she said, forgetting immediately that she had given in only under the severest of protests and was going to take the drive in silent dignity. “What a splendid conveyance. I feel as if I am a mile above the ground. And what lovely animals. Might I take the ribbons, do you think? I am an excellent whip, you know.”

  “I have no doubt that you are,” Lord Kincade said coolly, climbing into the seat beside her and taking the ribbons into his own hands. “You probably bowl along the roads at home at thirty miles an hour when you are not in a hurry. This is London, Daisy, these are spirited animals, and the answer is no.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, resumed her silent dignity, and felt a thrill of exhilaration as the horses moved off.

  “Oh, but it would be splendid to move along at thirty miles an hour in this conveyance, would it not?” she said, turning a beaming face to him.

  “Ladies who are five-and-twenty and well past their prime must be contented with the sedate pace of three miles an hour,” Lord Kincade said.

  Daisy laughed.

  Chapter 11

  Lord Kincade had cause to be not displeased with his life less than a week later. It was true that he was living in a manner that was not quite of his own choosing, but he had learned in his twenty-eight years that life tended to be like that. It was a naive idea of the very young or of those whose minds never developed to full maturity that one could make of life whatever one wished.

  In some ways the association with the Morrison ladies was not a bad thing. Hetty was as happy as a lark and no longer fretted over the very private lives of her three sons. She had two young ladies to fuss over, to conduct to a wide variety of entertainments, and to boast about to her friends. She was proud that Daisy was betrothed to her cousin, and that Rose was so pretty and sweet-natured that she was attracting her fair share of notice.

  And both Julia and Judith had certainly benefited. Poor Julia was still waiting for her confinement to end, though she had confided to him in some triumph that morning that the baby had fallen to such an extent that it could no longer be said that it was wishful thinking on her part. And Daisy visited her every day, amusing Julia with her constant chatter. Indeed, Lord Kincade thought with some unease, his sister was going to be very disappointed when she discovered that the betrothal was not real. She loved Daisy quite as much as if they were blood relatives, she had declared that morning.

  And Judith seemed a great deal happier and somewhat more steady since she had befriended Rose Morrison. The two of them had to meet every day and spent their time talking exclusively to each other, and giggling a great deal. The sullenness seemed to have gone from his sister and the obsession with Powers. As far as he knew, Judith had seen Powers only once in the past week. She had gone driving with him in Kensington Gardens one afternoon. But since Rose and Arthur had been with them, Lord Kincade had not worried unduly. There would be more to worry about, perhaps, if it appeared that there was no communication at all between the pair who had been planning an elopement a mere couple of weeks before.

  As for himself, Lord Kincade thought, matters could be a great deal worse. He had expected them to be. He had been betrothed to Daisy for almost a week and there had been no major mishap or scandal of any sort. Perhaps it had been unfortunate coincidence, he was beginning to think, that she had involved him in such hopelessly embarrassing and compromising scenes all within a week. Perhaps for the remainder of the Season, the remainder of their betrothal, life would proceed with some tranquillity.

  No, not tranquillity. The word could not be associated in any way with Daisy Morrison. There was nothing tranquil about a young lady who pestered one so throughout a drive in the park that one felt compelled to silence her by taking her out onto the Dover road the following afternoon, putting the ribbons in her hands, uttering a fervent but silent prayer, and allowing her to tool his phaeton along the road, while she exclaimed with delight and used all the superlatives he was aware of and more besides to describe his horses and his conveyance.

  And there had been nothing tranquil about finding during the three days following his engagement that every time he insisted on carrying her from place to place, she first felt obliged to deliver a ten-minute monologue of protest. One would have thought that after the first time— or the second if she was a slow learner—she would have realized that he could be ten times as stubborn as she when it was necessary for him to have his own way.

  And there was certainly nothing tranquil about her conversation. It was all very well for her to describe to him in all its sordid detail a visit to and down a coal mine that she had made with her father several years before, when she had not realized until her eyes became fully accustomed to the gloom that the poor dirty animals who lived underground and were harnessed to carts of coal far too heavy for their strength were actually children. And all very well to describe her grief and frustration to find at her father’s death that he had sold all his interests in coal so that she could not make of his mines something more humane, if less prosperous. But Lord Kincade lived in some terror that she might introduce the topic to some polite drawingroom conversation and send all the ladies into a mass fit of the vapors.

  Nor could he feel quite comfortable to find her one morning tête-à-tête with Julia, describing in the most graphic detail one of her three experiences as assistant to the local midwife. And she an unmarried young lady of gentle birth! Had she stopped the moment the door opened to admit him, he might have felt some confidence that she would not dream of talking of such things in polite society. But after flashing him a smile and uttering what sounded to him like a distinctly absentminded greeting, she had continued the completely unexpurgated account. He had almost had a fit of the vapors himself!

  No, he definitely could not expect the coming few weeks to be tranquil, Lord Kincade decided. “Uneventful” was perhaps a better word. He might hope that what remained of his betrothal would proceed uneventfully.

  And so he conveyed his betrothed and her sister, Hetty, Arthur, Judith, Sir Phillip Corbett, and Colonel Appleby to the theater six days after his betrothal in a more cheerful frame of mind than he would have expected the week before, and settled them in his private box. They were to watch Edmund Kean in The Merchant of Venice.

  Daisy too was feeling pleased with life. With far less time and trouble than she had expected, she seemed to have settled Rose’s future. Although Rose had met other gentlemen during the week, half a dozen of whom would be calling and generally dancing attendance on her with the smallest encouragement, a doting Daisy thought, Sir Phillip Corbett seemed to have established his claim without delay. He had spent some time with Rose, even if only for a five-minute conversation on Bond Street, every day since the first ball they had attended. He seemed perfect in every way for Rose. Apart from having rank and wealth, he was handsome, charming, and well connected.

  “I should not be surprised if Sir Phillip will be declaring himself before many more weeks have passed,” she had said to Rose just that afternoon.

  Rose—dear Rose—had looked startled. She was far too modest to realize what effect she had on gentlemen. ‘‘But we met just a week ago,” she had said. ‘‘We scarce know each other, Daisy.”

 
“But what a splendid match it would be,” Daisy had said. “All would seem worthwhile, Rose, if only you could make such an advantageous connection. All the work of the last few years, all the opposition I had to fight in order to bring you here, all the problems of leaving Mama alone to cope with running Primrose Park, the setback we had when we arrived here to find Aunt Pickering gone, that ridiculous situation that forced me to become betrothed to his lordship—it will all seem so worthwhile, Rose, if I can only see you benefit from it. I love you so very much. 1 want more than anything to see you well-married.”

  Rose had stared at her mutely, and Daisy had hugged her and smiled at her and almost shed tears over her, she had felt so happy.

  And now here they were at the theater and Rose looked a perfect picture dressed in green, and Sir Phillip was obviously drinking in the sight of her. And how very fortunate they were, Daisy thought, to have met Lord Kincade so opportunely on the road to London and to have been able to secure an introduction to his family. She liked them so very well. Lady Hetty was a dear, and had made no fuss and shown no regret at having taken them in even the morning after the disaster of that first ball.

  She also liked Lady Julia very well indeed. It was true that she visited daily because she knew that that lady was dreadfully bored as well as physically uncomfortable, though she still held to the ridiculous notion that it was not at all the thing to go outside to get some fresh air and exercise. But she went from inclination too. She could talk to Lady Julia, and listen too. Daisy had had no close female friend since Prissy Hanover had married five years before and moved away from home. She suspected that she and Lady Julia could become fast friends.