by Mary Balogh
26
The wedding of Miss Frances Allard and Viscount Sinclair was solemnized at Bath Abbey one month after the very public marriage proposal and acceptance.
The viscountess—soon to become the dowager viscountess—had wanted the nuptials to take place in London at St. George’s on Hanover Square. Mrs. Melford had wanted them to be held in the village church at Mickledean in Somersetshire.
But much as her great-aunts were Frances’s family, her friends at the school were at least as dear to her. And though Anne was planning to spend part of the summer in Cornwall, neither Susanna nor Claudia could leave Bath, as there were nine charity girls to care for at the school.
It was inconceivable to Frances that all three of her closest friends should not attend her wedding.
And Lucius put up no argument.
“Provided you are there, my love,” he said, “I would be quite happy to marry in a barn on the farthest Hebridean island.”
And so Frances was able to dress for her wedding in her own familiar room at the school—the very last day it would be hers—and say her own private farewells to her fellow teachers before they left for the church and she descended to the visitors’ sitting room where Baron Clifton, her cousin of some remove, was waiting to escort her to the church and give her away.
“Frances,” Susanna said, looking at her smart new pale blue dress and flower-trimmed bonnet, “you look so very beautiful. And you are going to be a viscountess today. All I can say is that it is a good thing Lord Sinclair is not a duke. I would fight you for him.”
She laughed merrily at her own joke, but there were tears in her eyes too.
“I will leave your duke for you,” Frances said, hugging her. “He will come along one of these days, Susanna, and sweep you off your feet.”
“But how will he ever find me,” the girl asked, “when I live and teach within the walls of a school?”
The question was lightly asked, but Frances could guess that Susanna, young and lovely though she was, probably despaired of ever making a marriage of her own or even of having a beau.
“He will find you,” Frances assured her. “Lucius found me, did he not?”
“And kept finding you and finding you.” Susanna laughed again and made way for Anne.
“Ah, you do look lovely, Frances,” she said. “The dress and bonnet are handsome, but it is your glow of happiness that makes you beautiful. Be happy! But I know you will. It is a love match, and you are marrying an extraordinary man, who is going to allow you a career in singing—who is encouraging you to pursue it, in fact.”
“You will be happy too, Anne,” Frances said as they hugged. “I know you will.”
“Oh,” Anne said, “I am happy. I have David and I have this life. It is far preferable to what I had before, Frances. Here I belong.”
She was smiling and very obviously delighted for her friend. But Frances always sensed a touch of sadness behind Anne’s warm smiles.
But Claudia had appeared in the doorway of her room.
“Oh, Frances,” she said, “how we are going to miss you, my dear. But it is not a day for self-pity. I am truly, truly happy for you.”
Claudia Martin was not the type to do a great deal of hugging. Neither was she the type to weep for any reason. She did both now—or if she did not actually weep, two tears definitely trickled down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” Frances said while Claudia’s arms were still about her. “Thank you for taking a chance on me when I was desperate. Thank you for making me feel like a professional teacher and a friend—and even a sister. Claudia, I want you to be this happy one day too. I do want it.”
But then it was time for them to leave.
And soon after that it was time for Frances to go to her own wedding at the Abbey.
The congregation was not very large. Even so, a surprising number of people had come down from London for the occasion, including Baron Heath and his wife and stepchildren.
Most important, Lucius saw as he waited at the front of the Abbey for his bride to appear, all her family and friends, including the charity girls from the school, wearing their Sunday best, and all his family were in attendance.
Just a year ago he would have cringed at the thought of wanting all his family about him.
Just a year ago he would have cringed at the thought of marrying.
He certainly would not have believed that today—or any day—he would be marrying for love.
Ah, but love was not nearly a powerful enough word.
He adored Frances. He liked her and admired her in addition to all the romantic and lustful feelings he had for her.
And then there she was, stepping into the nave and approaching on Clifton’s arm, slender and elegant and darkly beautiful.
He remembered his first sight of her—a fleeting glimpse as his carriage passed hers in the middle of a snowstorm. And he remembered his second sight of her as he hauled her out of her submerged carriage—a bedraggled virago, breathing fire and brimstone.
He remembered her making beef pie and bread.
He remembered her carving a smiling mouth on her snowman and stepping back to regard it with pleased satisfaction, her head tipped slightly to one side.
He remembered her waltzing with him and humming the tune.
He remembered stepping into the doorway of the Reynolds drawing room and discovering that the singer who had so captivated his soul was Frances Allard.
He remembered . . .
But today he did not have to rely upon memory from which to draw pleasure. Today they were here before their family and friends to pledge themselves to a lifetime together.
She was here at his side, her very dark eyes luminous with the wonder of the moment.
It was a moment he would live to the full now while it was happening—and a moment he would hold in memory for the rest of his life.
He smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Dearly beloved . . .” the clergyman began.
The morning had been cloudy with the threat of possible rain. But when Viscount Sinclair stepped out into the Abbey Yard with his new viscountess on his arm, the sun was shining down from a sky of pure blue.
“We have gone through some extremes of weather together, my love,” he said, looking down on her. “But now we have sunshine. Do you suppose it is a good omen?”
“It is nothing,” she said, “but a lovely day. We do not need omens, Lucius, only our own will to grasp our destiny and live it.”
He took her hand and they dashed across the yard, past the small crowd of interested spectators who had stepped out of the Pump Room, and beneath the arches to the carriage that awaited them with Peters up on the box. It would take them back to the school, where a wedding breakfast awaited them and their guests.
“The hall has been forbidden to me for the past two days,” Frances explained. “But Claudia and Anne and Susanna have been in there for long hours at a time with the girls. I think they have been decorating the room.”
Lucius laced his fingers with hers.
“It will doubtless be a work of art,” he said. “We will admire it, Frances, and greet our guests and be happy with them. Today I have kept a promise, and my grandfather has lived to see it. And today we have made two elderly sisters, your great-aunts, very happy. But now, this moment, is ours alone. I do not intend to waste it. Ah, this is convenient.”
The carriage was making a sharp turn onto the Pulteney Bridge and had thrown them together.
“Very.” Frances looked across at him with bright, laughing eyes.
He wrapped one arm about her shoulders, lowered his head, and kissed her long and thoroughly.
Neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned that there were no curtains to cover the windows.
The world was welcome to share their happiness if it so chose.
Read on for an excerpt from
The Secret Mistress
by Mary Balogh
Available from Delac
orte Press
Chapter 1
LADY ANGELINE DUDLEY was standing at the window of the taproom in the Rose and Crown Inn east of Reading. Quite scandalously, she was alone there, but what was she to do? The window of her own room looked out only upon a rural landscape. It was picturesque enough, but it was not the view she wanted. Only the taproom window offered that, looking out as it did upon the inn yard into which any new arrival was bound to ride.
Angeline was waiting, with barely curbed impatience, for the arrival of her brother and guardian, Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham. He was to have been here before her, but she had arrived an hour and a half ago and there had been no sign of him. It was very provoking. A string of governesses over the years, culminating in Miss Pratt, had instilled in her the idea that a lady never showed an excess of emotion, but how was one not to do so when one was on one’s way to London for the Season—one’s first—and one was eager to be there so that one’s adult life could begin in earnest at last, yet one’s brother had apparently forgotten all about one’s very existence and was about to leave one languishing forever at a public inn a day’s journey away from the rest of one’s life?
Of course, she had arrived here ridiculously early. Tresham had arranged for her to travel this far under the care of the Reverend Isaiah Coombes and his wife and two children before they went off in a different direction to celebrate some special anniversary with Mrs. Coombes’s relatives, and Angeline was transferred to the care of her brother, who was to come from London. The Coombeses arose each morning at the crack of dawn or even earlier, despite yawning protests from the junior Coombeses, with the result that their day’s journey was completed almost before those of more normal persons even began.
The Reverend and Mrs. Coombes had been quite prepared to settle in and wait like long-suffering martyrs at the inn until their precious charge could be handed over to the care of His Grace, but Angeline had persuaded them to be on their way. What could possibly happen to her at the Rose and Crown Inn, after all? It was a perfectly respectable establishment—Tresham had chosen it himself, had he not? And it was not as if she was quite alone. There was Betty, her maid; two burly grooms from the stables at Acton Park, Tresham’s estate in Hampshire; and two stout footmen from the house. And Tresham himself was sure to arrive any minute.
The Reverend Coombes had been swayed, against his better judgment, by the soundness of her reasoning—and by the anxiety of his wife lest their journey not be completed before nightfall, and by the whining complaints of Miss Chastity Coombes and Master Esau Coombes, aged eleven and nine respectively, that they would never get to play with their cousins if they had to wait here forever.
Angeline’s patience had been severely tried by those two while she had been forced to share a carriage with them.
She had retired to her room to change out of her travel clothes and to have Betty brush and restyle her hair. She had then instructed her drooping maid to rest awhile, which the girl had done to immediate effect on the truckle bed at the foot of Angeline’s own. Meanwhile Angeline had noticed that her window would give no advance notice whatsoever of the arrival of her brother, so she had left the room to find a more satisfactory window—only to discover the four hefty male servants from Acton arrayed in all their menacing largeness outside her door as though to protect her from foreign invasion. She had banished them to the servants’ quarters for rest and refreshments, explaining by way of persuasion that she had not noticed any highwaymen or footpads or brigands or other assorted villains hovering about the inn. Had they?
And then, alone at last, she had discovered the window she was searching for—in the public taproom. It was not quite proper for her to be there unescorted, but the room was deserted, so where was the harm? Who was to know of her slight indiscretion? If any persons came before Tresham rode into the inn yard, she would simply withdraw to her room until they left. When Tresham arrived, she would dash up to her room so that when he entered the inn, she could be descending the stairs, all modest respectability, Betty behind her, as though she were just coming down to ask about him.
Oh, it was very hard not to bounce around with impatience and excitement. She was nineteen years old, and this was almost the first time she had been more than ten miles from Acton Park. She had lived a very sheltered existence, thanks to a stern, overprotective father and an absentee overprotective brother after him, and thanks to a mother who had never taken her to London or Bath or Brighton or any of the other places she herself had frequented.
Angeline had entertained hopes of making her come-out at the age of seventeen, but before she could muster all her arguments and begin persuading and wheedling the persons who held her fate in their hands, her mother had died unexpectedly in London and there had been a whole year of mourning to be lived through at Acton. And then last year, when all had been set for her come-out at the indisputably correct age of eighteen, she had broken her leg, and Tresham, provoking man, had flatly refused to allow her to clump into the queen’s presence on crutches in order to make her curtsy and her debut into the adult world of the ton and the marriage mart.
By now she was ancient, a veritable fossil, but nevertheless a hopeful, excited, impatient one.
Horses!
Angeline leaned her forearms along the windowsill and rested her bosom on them as she cocked her ear closer to the window.
And carriage wheels!
Oh, she could not possibly be mistaken.
She was not. A team of horses, followed by a carriage, turned in at the gate and clopped and rumbled over the cobbles to the far side of the yard.
It was immediately apparent to Angeline, however, that this was not Tresham. The carriage was far too battered and ancient. And the gentleman who jumped down from inside it even before the coachman could set down the steps bore no resemblance to her brother. Before she could see him clearly enough to decide if he was worth looking at anyway, though, her attention was distracted by the deafening sound of a horn blast, and almost simultaneously another team and another coach hove into sight and drew to a halt close to the taproom door.
Again, it was not Tresham’s carriage. That had been apparent from the first moment. It was a stagecoach.
Angeline did not feel as great a disappointment as might have been expected, though. This bustle of human activity was all new and exciting to her. She watched as the coachman opened the door and set down the steps and passengers spilled out onto the cobbles from inside and clambered down a rickety ladder from the roof. Too late she realized that, of course, all these people were about to swarm inside for refreshments and that she ought not to be here when they did. The inn door was opening even as she thought it, and the buzz of at least a dozen voices all talking at once preceded their owners inside, but only by a second or two.
If she withdrew now, Angeline thought, she would be far more conspicuous than if she stayed where she was. Besides, she was enjoying the scene. And besides again, if she went upstairs and waited for the coach to be on its way, she might miss the arrival of her brother, and it seemed somehow important to her to see him the moment he appeared. She had not seen him in the two years since their mother’s funeral at Acton Park.
She stayed and assuaged her conscience by continuing to look out the window, her back to the room, while people called with varying degrees of politeness and patience for ale and pasties and one or two instructed someone to look sharp about it, and the someone addressed replied tartly that she had only one pair of hands and was it her fault the coach was running an hour late and the passengers had been given only a ten-minute stop instead of half an hour?
Indeed, ten minutes after the coach’s arrival, the passengers were called to board again if they did not want to get left behind, and they hurried or straggled out, some complaining vociferously that they had to abandon at least half their ale.
The taproom was soon as empty and silent as it had been before. No one had had time to notice Angeline, a fact for which she was profoundly gratef
ul. Miss Pratt even now, a full year after moving on to other employment, would have had a fit of the vapors if she could have seen the full taproom with her former pupil standing alone at the window. Tresham would have had a fit of something far more volcanic.
No matter. No one would ever know.
Would he never come?
Angeline heaved a deep sigh as the coachman blew his yard of tin again to warn any persons or dogs or chickens out on the street that they were in imminent danger of being mown down if they did not immediately scurry for safety. The coach rattled out through the gates, turning as it went, and disappeared from sight.
The gentleman’s carriage was still at the far side of the yard, but now it had fresh horses attached. He was still here, then. He must be taking refreshments in a private parlor.
Angeline adjusted her bosom on her arms, wiggled herself into a more comfortable position, and proceeded to dream about all the splendors of the Season awaiting her in London.
Oh, she could not wait.
It did seem, however, that she had no choice but to do just that.
Had Tresham even left London yet?
THE GENTLEMAN WHOSE carriage awaited him at the far side of the inn yard was not taking refreshments in a private parlor. He was doing so in the public taproom, his elbow resting on the high counter. The reason Angeline did not realize he was there was that he did not slurp his ale and did not talk aloud to himself.
Edward Ailsbury, Earl of Heyward, was feeling more than slightly uncomfortable. And he was feeling annoyed that he had been made to feel so. Was it his fault that a young woman who was clearly a lady was in the taproom with him, quite alone? Where were her parents or her husband or whoever it was that was supposed to be chaperoning her? There was no one in sight except the two of them.