by Candace Camp
Devin turned toward his sister, who had held her silence through most of the conversation. “Is this what you want for me, Rachel? To marry some chit I’ve never laid eyes on? To have the same sort of happy marriage you do?”
His sister stiffened, tears springing into her eyes. “That is cruel and unfair! All I want is your happiness. But how happy are you going to be when you have to give up this house and live in some one-room flat? You know how much money you spend, Devin. I dare swear it’s far more than what Strong sends you from the estate, and that is only going to get smaller and smaller. You have to put some of that money back in to your lands if you want to keep them profitable, and neither you nor Father ever did that. I know that when Papa cut you off you scraped by on your card-playing skills and the money Michael and Richard gave you. But you won’t want to do that the rest of your life.”
He looked away from her, his silence an assent. Finally he said, “I am sorry, Rachel. I shouldn’t have said that.” He glanced at her, and a faint smile warmed his face. “I have a damnable headache, and it goads me into sarcasm. I know you sacrificed your happiness for the sake of the family.”
“What nonsense,” Lady Ravenscar put in exasperatedly. “Rachel is one of the most envied women in London. She has an exquisite house, a lovely wardrobe and a most generous allowance. A large number of women would be quite happy to have made that sort of ‘sacrifice.’”
Devin and Rachel glanced at each other, and amusement glinted in their eyes. Happiness for Lady Ravenscar would indeed consist of just such things.
“As for you, Devin, I am not asking you to offer for the girl. I merely ask that you consider the proposition. I am having a dinner tonight at my home, and I have invited her to come. The least you can do is come to dinner and meet her.”
Devin let out a low groan. A dinner at his mother’s house ranked almost as low on his list of preferred things as meeting an American heiress.
“I will be there, too,” Rachel put in encouragingly. “Do say you’ll come, Dev.”
“Oh, all right,” he said grudgingly. “I will come tonight and meet the girl.”
The “girl”—much to Lord Ravenscar’s astonishment, if he had known it—was at that very moment engaged in a war of words with her family along the same lines.
“Papa,” Miranda Upshaw said firmly, “I am not marrying a man I’ve never even seen, no matter how eager you are to get your hands on a British estate. It’s positively medieval.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at her father implacably. Miranda was a pretty woman, with large, expressive gray eyes and a thick mane of chestnut hair. Her figure was small and compact, nicely curved beneath the high-waisted blue cambric gown she wore, but her force of personality was such that people often came away with the impression that Miranda was a tall woman.
Joseph Upshaw gazed back at his daughter, his arms and face set in a mirror image of hers. He was a barrel-chested man not much taller than his daughter, whose lithe build had obviously come to her from her mother. He was as used to having his way as his daughter was, and they had gone head-to-head with each other on more than one occasion.
“I’m not asking you to marry him tomorrow,” he said now in a reasonable tone. “All you have to do is go to his mother’s house tonight and meet the man. After that, you can take all the time you want getting to know him.”
“I doubt I shall want to get to know him. He probably has spindly calves and squinty eyes and…and thinning hair. Why else is his family so eager to marry him off? Even without money, an earl should be a good catch. Surely there are wealthy Englishmen who would be willing to sell their daughters for a title.”
“Are you saying I’m selling you?” her father retorted indignantly. “That’s a fine thing to say about a man who’s trying to give you one of the oldest and best names in this country. If there’s any selling going on, I’m the one buying him for you.”
“But I don’t want him.” Miranda knew as well as her father did that in reality he was wanting to buy a son-in-law for himself more than a husband for Miranda. Ever since Miranda could remember, Joseph had been an Anglophile, reading everything he could get his hands on about the English aristocracy—their rankings, their histories, their estates. He was fascinated with English castles and mansions, and wanted desperately to get his hands on one.
“How can you turn him down when you haven’t even seen the man?” he asked her now. “He’s an earl. You would be a countess! Just think how pleased Elizabeth would be. As soon as she’s feeling not so under the weather, I’m going to tell her all about it. She will be thrilled.”
“I am sure she will,” Miranda replied dryly. Her stepmother, Elizabeth, herself English, was even more enamored of the idea of Miranda marrying British nobility than Joseph was. She had come from a ‘good family’ herself, she was fond of telling whoever would listen; and the improvident, impetuous husband who had brought her to New York, then committed the final folly of catching a chill and dying, leaving her stranded in the New World with a baby daughter, had come from a family even higher up the social scale. Her dream was for her daughter Veronica, now fourteen, to live in the world of British aristocracy—to have her coming out, to hobnob with the members of the Ton, to marry a suitably noble husband. The easiest method of accomplishing this dream, she had decided, was for Miranda to marry into the aforesaid aristocracy and then bring Veronica out in a few years.
“You know how fond I am of Elizabeth,” Miranda went on. “She is the only mother I’ve ever known, and she has always been quite kind to me.” Possessed of a kind, easygoing, and rather lazy nature, Elizabeth had never mistreated her stepdaughter or tried to take away control of the household from her. Indeed, Elizabeth much preferred letting someone else handle all the troublesome details of keeping a large house with numerous servants running, for it allowed her to concentrate on her various “illnesses.” “And I love Veronica, too.”
“I know you do.” Her father beamed at her. “You’ve always been like a little mother to that child.” “But that doesn’t mean,” Miranda went on firmly, “that I am going to marry someone just because Elizabeth wants Veronica to make her debut in London society.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Joseph protested. “There’s a grand estate in Derbyshire. And a house—not a castle, grant you, but almost big enough to be one. Darkwater. Now there’s a name for you. Doesn’t it conjure up history? Romance? The Earl of Ravenscar. My God, girl, is your heart dead?”
“No, Papa, it is not. And I will be the first to admit that it’s a very romantic name—although, I might point out, a wee bit spooky.”
“All the better. There are probably ghosts.” Her father looked delighted at the thought.
“Happy thought.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Joseph Upshaw was immune to irony at the moment. His eyes sparkled and his face positively glowed as he began to talk about the house he had spent the evening before discussing with Lady Ravenscar. “The house was built by one of Henry VIII’s closest friends and supporters. He built the main hall during Henry’s reign. Then, when his son inherited and grew even more prosperous during Elizabeth’s rule, he added two wings onto it to form the classic E-shaped Elizabethan mansion. It’s grand, but it’s falling into complete ruin. Rot in the wood…tapestries in shreds…stone crumbling.” He related the problems of the house with zest, ending, “And we can restore it! Can you imagine the opportunity? The house, the grounds, the estate. We could rebuild it all.”
“It does sound delightful,” Miranda agreed truthfully.
Real estate was one of her primary interests. During her father’s years of dealing with John Jacob Astor, she had had many conversations with that shrewd gentleman, and she had wisely followed his advice and had invested much of her father’s profits in real estate in Manhattan. The risks had already paid off handsomely, and Miranda was sure they would provide even more income in the future. The speculation of buying land to sell at a futu
re date for high profits was fun, but what she truly enjoyed was developing projects—buying land and building something on it that she could then rent to someone, or investing in another’s plan to build or expand or create.
So the thought of restoring a grand old house to its former glory did appeal to her, and she had lived with her father for too long not to have absorbed a great deal of interest in British history and architecture. But she did not want to renovate an estate so much that she was willing to marry to acquire it.
With the look of one delivering the coup de grace, her father went on proudly, “It even has a curse.”
Miranda raised her eyebrows. “A curse? That would be splendid, I’m sure.”
“Oh, it is indeed. ‘Tis a wonderful curse. There was a powerful abbey in Derbyshire, you see—Branton Abbey—and during the Dissolution, when Henry VIII seized all the monastic lands and goods, he took this abbey and gave it to his good friend Edward Aincourt. Well, the abbot at Branton was a tough old coot, and he didn’t go easily. As they dragged him out of the church, he cursed the king and he cursed Aincourt. He cursed the very stones of the abbey, saying that nothing would ever prosper there and ‘no one who lives within these stones shall ever know happiness.’”
He looked at her triumphantly.
“Well. That is an impressive curse,” Miranda admitted. She knew her father’s love of drama and romance too well to be surprised to think that he would find a ruined, cursed house the perfect spot for his beloved daughter to live. To Joseph Upshaw, such a place would be a treasure.
“Isn’t it? They say that Capability Brown did the original gardens. Miranda…how can you pass up an opportunity like this? It isn’t only the house and grounds that need restoring, you know. Apparently the whole estate is also a financial wreck. You could rebuild that, as well. It could be one of your projects.”
Miranda chuckled. “That all sounds very delightful, I’m sure, but there is still the fact that in order to get my hands on the house and the estate and all that, I would have to marry a complete stranger.”
“He wouldn’t have to be a stranger by the time you married him,” Joseph pointed out. “You could have a long engagement, if you wish. We could start to work on the house in the meantime.”
Miranda smiled at her father and shook her head. “I am not marrying, Papa, just because you are bored. Talk about wanting a project…”
“But this would be the project of a lifetime! And it’s not just because I’m bored since I sold out to Mr. Astor. You know I’ve wanted to get my hands on a grand old house like that for years.” He paused, considering her, then went on in a wheedling tone. “Anyway, Miranda, my love, I’m not asking that you marry the fellow tonight. All I want is for you to meet him. See what he’s like. Consider the possibilities.”
“Yes, but then you’ll be asking me about how I feel and ‘couldn’t you just give the man another chance’ and wanting me to go to this Darkwater place to see it, and…”
Her father put on a shocked face. “Miranda! You do say the most terrible things about me. As if I would badger you…”
Miranda quirked an eyebrow at him, and Joseph had the grace to smile. “Well, all right, I do badger you sometimes. I admit it. But not this time—I promise. Just meet the man. It will be nothing but going to an elegant dinner party and making polite conversation and taking a little look-see at him. Couldn’t you do that much for Elizabeth and me?”
Miranda sighed. “Oh, all right. I guess I can meet the man. But I’m not promising anything. You understand?”
“Of course, of course!” Joseph agreed happily, coming over to his daughter and enveloping her in a bear hug.
“Oh, my,” said a soft voice from the doorway. “What joyous thing has occurred?”
The two of them turned at the sound of Mrs. Upshaw’s voice. Miranda smiled at her stepmother, and Joseph beamed. Elizabeth Upshaw was a short blond woman who fluttered whenever she walked—hands, hair, ribbons, laces, the ends of her shawl. When Joseph had met her, she had been a pretty young woman, but over the years, time and inactivity had taken their toll on her, blurring the lines of her face and figure with fat. With a matronly cap on her head and wrapped in shawls as she always was, she looked several years older than her actual age. Though only ten years separated them, there were many who assumed upon meeting them that Elizabeth was Miranda’s mother.
“Elizabeth!” Joseph exclaimed, going to take his wife’s elbow and escort her to the sofa as if she were too weak to walk. Elizabeth had long suffered from a variety of real and imaginary illnesses, and her husband entered happily into her presentation of herself as a fragile woman. Miranda could not quite understand why Elizabeth enjoyed spending her life reclining on couches and beds, bearing her ills with a gentle smile, but if that was the way Elizabeth chose to live, it didn’t bother her. She was quite fond of her stepmother, whose kind heart more than made up for her litany of gentle complaints.
“The grandest thing has happened,” Joseph went on, settling his wife on the couch and making sure her shawl, an afghan and several pillows were settled around her. “I didn’t want to wake you this morning to tell you, not as poorly as you’ve been feeling from crossing the Channel.”
“I know. I’ve always been sadly affected by mal de mer,” Elizabeth Upshaw agreed in a die-away voice. “I dread returning to New York because of it.”
“Perhaps you won’t have to,” Joseph said happily. “Or at least, not for some time.”
“Why? Whatever do you mean?”
“Miranda just may marry an earl.”
“An earl!” Elizabeth exclaimed, sitting up so straight in her interest that her shawl slid down from her shoulders unnoticed.
“Papa!” Miranda said in exasperation, putting her hands on her hips. “There you go. I told you I would meet the man. I have no intention of marrying him.”
“But an earl!” her stepmother breathed, one hand going to her chest as though the news were too much for her heart. She looked wide-eyed at Miranda. “You would be a countess. Oh, Miranda, that is more than I ever hoped for.”
Miranda sighed inwardly, wishing that she had not let her father wheedle her into agreeing to meet this nobleman. Joseph would not have to badger her; after this news, her stepmother would take care of that for him.
Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled, and her face was lit with an animation unusual for her. “Just think—the parties, the wedding—” A thought struck her, and she turned toward her husband. “Do they have a house in Town?”
“No, the Countess told me last night that her husband had to sell it. I believe her son, the Earl, keeps a small bachelor house, but she has to lease a home during the Season. It sounded to be a sore trial to her.”
Elizabeth nodded sagely. “It would be. Having to give up one’s no doubt magnificent home and make do with a rented house every summer. Knowing that everyone knows it…It’s too bad not to be able to have the wedding party in a grand house.” She brightened. “But you can buy one, dear. I mean, we will have to have a house in London if we are to stay here any length of time, and—”
“Elizabeth, please,” Miranda put in gently. “I’m not planning to marry the Earl of Ravenscar. I just said—”
“What?” Her stepmother stared at Miranda, her face suddenly pale and her eyes wide. “What did you say? Who?”
“The Earl of Ravenscar,” Joseph put in. “That’s the fellow we’re talking about Miranda’s marrying—er, that is, meeting. Devin Aincourt’s his name.”
“Oh, my God.” Elizabeth rose to her feet, her hands clenching together. “You cannot marry him. The man is a devil!”
2
This pronouncement had the effect of rendering her audience speechless, as Miranda and her father stared at Elizabeth. Under their gaze, Elizabeth colored a little self-consciously and sat back down.
“That is, well, I mean, I don’t think that it would be a good idea for Miranda to marry him. He is, well, he has a…an unsavory reputation.”
“Do you know him, dear?” her husband asked.
“Oh, no. He was far above my touch, of course. But…I had heard of him. Everyone had heard of him. He had a scandalous reputation. That was before he was the earl, of course. His father was Ravenscar then.”
“What was wrong with him?” Miranda asked curiously. “What did he do?”
“Oh, the usual things that young noblemen do, I imagine,” Elizabeth replied vaguely. “Not the sort of thing suitable for your ears.”
Miranda grimaced. “Oh, Elizabeth, don’t be stuffy. I am twenty-five years old and not a bit fainthearted. I am not going to collapse in shock.”
“Yes, what did he do, Elizabeth?” Joseph prodded.
“Well, he gambled and…consorted with unsuitable types.”
The other two waited expectantly, and when she said nothing more, Miranda asked disappointedly, “Is that all?”
Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably. “He was, they say—” her voice dropped “—a womanizer. He seduced young women, led them astray.”
She colored at speaking so plainly and began to ply her fan.
“Ha!” Joseph let out a short bark of laughter. “I’d like to see him try anything with my Miranda. Besides, if he’s marrying her, you can scarcely worry about him ruining her reputation.”
“I suspect she is worried more about his faithlessness, Papa,” Miranda pointed out wryly.
“Faithless? To you?” Joseph’s brows rushed together, and he said again, “I’d like to see him try! Trust me, my dear, I’ll make sure he knows what’s expected of him.”
“Nothing is expected of him,” Miranda stuck in pointedly. “I’m not marrying him.”
“Of course, dear, not unless you want to,” Joseph replied easily. He turned to Elizabeth. “Besides, Lizzie, that was years ago. He was just a boy then. Lots of men are wild in their salad years, but they straighten out as they get older.”