His friend looked at him incredulously and then laughed in open amusement mingled with derision.
“I know a certain widow who would go into deep mourning and an irreversible decline if you were to do that,” he said. “Not to mention every unmarried lady of the ton below the age of forty. And their mamas. And did you not inform me as recently as yesterday on the journey down here that your main order of business during the coming Season is going to have to be the choosing of a bride?”
Elliott grimaced. “Yes, well,” he said, his fingers pausing for a moment and then drumming faster. “The monastery may call with wistful invitation, George, but you are quite right—duty positively shouts it down, in the unmistakable voice of my grandfather. I promised him at Christmas ... And of course he was quite right. It is time I married, and the deed will be done this year to coincide more or less with my thirtieth birthday. Nasty things, thirtieth birthdays.”
He scowled in anticipation of the happy event, and his fingers beat a positive tattoo against his thigh.
“Perish the thought,” he added.
Especially since his grandfather had made a specific point of informing him that Mrs. Anna Bromley-Hayes, Elliott’s mistress of two years, simply would not do as his bride. Not that he had needed his grandfather to tell him that. Anna was beautiful and voluptuous and marvelously skilled in the bedroom arts, but she had also had a string of lovers before him, some of them while Bromley-Hayes was still alive. And she never made a secret of her amours. She was proud of them. Doubtless she intended to continue them with more lovers than just him at some time in the future.
“This is good,” George said. “If you went into the monastery, Elliott, you would doubtless not need a secretary and I would be out of lucrative employment. I should hate that.”
“Hmm.” Elliott returned his foot to the floor and then crossed it over the other leg to rest his booted ankle above the knee.
He wished he had not thought of Anna. He had not seen her—or, more important, bedded her—since before Christmas. It was a damnably long time. Man was not made to be celibate, he had concluded long ago—another reason for avoiding the lure of the monastery.
“The three sisters will very probably be at the assembly tonight,” George said. “Did not Sir Humphrey say that everyone and his dog will be attending—or words to that effect? Perhaps the cub will be there too.”
“He is far too young,” Elliott said.
“But we are deep in the country,” his friend reminded him, “and far from the influence of all things tonnish. I’ll wager on his being here.”
“If you think that possibility will persuade me to attend,” Elliott said, “you are much mistaken, George. I am not talking business with him tonight beneath the interested gaze of a villageful of gossips, for the love of God.”
“But you can scout him out,” George said. “We both can. And his sisters too. Besides, old chap, would it be quite the thing to absent yourself when Sir Humphrey Dew made such a point of waiting on you as soon as word reached him that you were here? And when he came in person specifically to invite us to the assembly and to offer to escort us upstairs and present us to everyone worthy of the honor? My guess is that that will be everyone without exception. He will not be able to resist.”
“Do I pay you to be my conscience, George?” Elliott asked.
But George Bowen, far from looking cowed, only chuckled.
“How the devil did he discover that we were here, anyway?” Elliott asked, having worked himself into a thorough bad temper. “We arrived in this village and at this inn less than two hours ago, and no one knew we were coming.”
George rubbed his hands together close to the heat of the fire and then turned resolutely away in the direction of his room.
“We are in the country, Elliott,” he said again, “where news travels on the wind and on every blade of grass and every dust mote and every human tongue. Doubtless the lowliest scullery maid knows by now that you are in Throckbridge and is trying desperately—and in vain—to find another mortal who does not know. And everyone will have heard that you have been invited to the assembly as Sir Humphrey Dew’s particular guest. Are you going to disappoint them all by keeping to your room?”
“Wrong pronoun again,” Elliott said, pointing a finger. “I am not the only one everyone will have heard of. There is you too. You go and entertain them if you feel you must.”
George clucked his tongue before opening the door to his room.
“I am a mere mister,” he said. “Of mild interest as a stranger, perhaps, especially if I had arrived alone. But you are a viscount, Elliott, several rungs higher on the social ladder even than Dew. It will seem as if God himself had condescended to step into their midst.” He paused a moment and then chuckled. “The Welsh word for God is Duw—my grandmother was always saying it—D-U-W, but pronounced the same way as our dear baronet’s name. And yet you outrank him, Elliott. That is heady stuff, old boy, for a sleepy village. They have probably never set eyes upon a viscount before or ever expected to. Would it be sporting of you to deny them a glimpse of you? I am off to don my evening togs.”
He was still chuckling merrily as he closed his door behind him.
Elliott scowled at its blank surface.
They had traveled here, the two of them, on business. Elliott deeply resented the whole thing. After a long, frustrating year during which his life had been turned upside down and inside out, he had expected soon to be free of the most irksome of the obligations his father’s sudden death had landed on his shoulders. But that obligation, George’s search and discovery had recently revealed, was actually far from over. It was not a discovery that had done anything to improve Elliott’s almost perpetually sour mood.
He had not expected his father to die so young. His father’s father, after all, was still alive and in vigorous good health, and the male line had been renowned for longevity for generations past. Elliott had expected many more years in which to be free to kick his heels and enjoy the carefree life of a young buck about town without any of the burdens of sober responsibility.
But suddenly he had had them, ready or not—just like the childhood game of hide-and-seek.
Coming, ready or not.
His father had died ignominiously in the bed of his mistress—a fact that had become one of the more enduring jokes among the ton. It had been less funny to Elliott’s mother—not funny at all, in fact, even though she had long known, as everyone had, of her husband’s infidelity.
Everyone but Elliott.
As well as longevity, the males of their line were also renowned for the long-term mistresses and their children that they kept in addition to their wives and legitimate offspring. His grandfather’s liaison had come to an end only with the death of his mistress ten years or so ago. There had been eight children of that relationship. His father had left five behind, all comfortably provided for.
No one could accuse the Wallace men of not doing their part to populate the country.
Anna had no children—his or anyone else’s. Elliott suspected that she knew a way of preventing conception, and he was glad of it. He had no children of other mistresses either.
He might have sent George down here alone, he reflected, bringing his mind back to the present situation. Bowen was perfectly capable of carrying out the business himself. Elliott had not needed to come in person. But duty once embarked upon, he had found, imposed its own dreary code of honor, and so here he was in a part of the country that must be the very middle of nowhere even if it was picturesque—or would be once spring decided to show its face if George was to be believed.
They had put up at the only inn in Throckbridge, though it was but a country establishment with no pretension to elegance—it was not even a posting inn. They had intended to proceed to business before the afternoon was out. Elliott had hoped to begin the return journey tomorrow though George had predicted that another day, perhaps even two, was a distinct probability—and even that migh
t be an overoptimistic estimate.
But the inn had proved to boast one fatal feature, as so many village inns did, dash it all. It had assembly rooms on the upper floor. And those rooms were to be put to use this very evening. He and George had had the singular misfortune of arriving on the day of a village dance. It really had not occurred to either of them that the inhabitants of a remote English village might take it into their heads to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. It had not even struck Elliott that this was St. Valentine’s Day, for God’s sake.
The assembly rooms were directly above his head as he continued to recline in his chair beside the fire despite the fact that it was not a vastly comfortable piece of furniture and the fire needed more coal and the bell rope was just out of his reach. The assembly rooms were also directly above his bedchamber. They were directly above everything. There would be no escaping the sounds and vibrations of prancing feet thumping over his bed for half the night. His ears would be assailed by merry music—doubtless inferior and inexpertly played—and loud voices and louder laughter.
He would be fortunate indeed if he were able to snatch one wink of sleep. Yet what else was there to do in this godforsaken place but try? He had not even brought a book with him—a massive oversight.
Sir Humphrey Dew, whom Elliott had never met before this afternoon, was the sort of gentleman who asked a thousand questions and answered nine hundred and ninety of them himself. He had asked them if they would do the village the honor of attending the ball and assured them that he was much obliged to them for their kind condescension in so honoring his humble self and neighborhood. He had asked them if he might call for them at eight and assured them that they were doing him far more honor than he would be doing them a favor. He asked if he might then present them to a select number of his neighbors and assured them that they would not be sorry to make the acquaintance of such agreeable and distinguished persons—though none as agreeable and distinguished as themselves, of course. Lady Dew would be ecstatic at their kind condescension. So would his daughters and daughter-in-law. He would live in pleasurable anticipation of the advent of eight o’clock.
Elliott might have said a firm no. He did not usually suffer fools gladly. But he had intended merely not to attend the assembly but to remain closeted in his room when the baronet arrived and to send his excuses via George. What were secretaries for, after all?
Sometimes they were for prodding their employers’ conscience—damn their eyes.
For of course George was quite right. Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, was—dash it all!—a gentleman. He had given tacit acceptance to the invitation by not uttering a firm refusal. It would be ungentlemanly now to barricade himself inside the dubious privacy of his inn room. And if he did not attend the revelries, he would be disturbed by them all night long anyway and be in just as bad a mood at the end of it all. Worse—he would feel guilty.
Damn everyone’s eyes!
And the boy might indeed be at the assembly, if George was in the right of it. His sisters almost certainly would be. It might be as well to look them over this evening now that the opportunity had presented itself, to get some impression of them all before calling upon them tomorrow.
But God bless us, would he be expected to dance?
To romp with the village matrons and maidens?
On Valentine’s Day?
Surely not. He could scarcely imagine a less agreeable fate.
He set the heel of his hand to his brow and tried to convince himself that he had a headache or some other irrefutable excuse for taking to his bed. It could not be done, though. He never had headaches.
He sighed aloud.
Despite what he had told George, he was going to have to put in an appearance at this infernal village hop after all, then, was he not? It would be just too ill-mannered to stay away, and he was never openly ill-mannered. No true gentleman was.
Sometimes—and more and more often these days—it was a tedious business being a gentleman.
There must now be considerably less than an hour in which to make himself presentable for the evening entertainment. It often took his man half an hour just to tie his neckcloth in a knot that satisfied his exacting valet’s standards.
Elliott heaved both another sigh and his body to its feet.
In the future he was not going to venture anywhere beyond his own doors on February 14—or beyond Anna’s doors anyway.
St. Valentine’s, for God’s sake!
Whatever next?
But the answer was all too painfully obvious.
A village assembly was next, that was what!
2
THE Huxtable family lived in a thatched, whitewashed cottage at one end of the main village street. Viscount Lyngate and his secretary would have driven past it on their way to the inn. It is doubtful they would have noticed it, though. Picturesque as it was, it was modest in size.
Small, in other words.
Three members of the family lived there. They had inhabited the grander, more spacious vicarage until eight years ago, until the Reverend Huxtable had gone to his heavenly reward—or so the new vicar had assured his congregation at the funeral. His children had moved out the day after the funeral to make way for the Reverend Aylesford and his sister.
Margaret Huxtable was now twenty-five years old. As the eldest of the family—their mother had died six years before their father—she was the one who, at the age of seventeen, had taken charge of the home and her siblings. She was still unmarried as a consequence and was likely to remain so for at least a few more years since Stephen, the youngest, was still only seventeen. No one had thought, perhaps, to point out to her that he was the same age now as she had been when she had shouldered such a huge responsibility. To her he was still just a boy. And heaven knew he needed someone to look after him.
Margaret was a rare beauty. Tall and generously proportioned, she had shining hair of a chestnut brown, large blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, and a classically lovely face. She was reserved and dignified in manner, though there was a time when she had been known more for the warmth and generosity of her character. There was also a thread of steel in her that was all too ready to show itself if anyone threatened the happiness or well-being of any of her siblings.
Because they had only one servant—Mrs. Thrush had remained with them after their move even though they could not really afford her, because she refused to leave or to accept more than her room and board in payment for her services—Margaret did a great deal of the housework herself and all the gardening. Her garden in summer was her pride and joy, one of the few outlets for the more sensual, spontaneous side of her nature. It was also the envy and delight of the village. She helped anyone who needed her and was often called out to assist the village physician in changing bandages or setting broken limbs or delivering babies or feeding gruel to the elderly and infirm.
Margaret had had a number of would-be suitors over the years, even a few who were willing to take her and her siblings, but she had quietly and firmly discouraged them all. Even the man she had loved all her life and would probably love until she went to her grave.
Katherine Huxtable was twenty. She too was beautiful in the tall, slender, willowy way of youth. She had a figure, though, that would mature well. Her hair was lighter than her sister’s—a dark blond highlighted with golden threads that glinted in the sunlight. She had an eager, mobile, lovely face, her best feature being dark blue eyes that often seemed fathomless. For though she was good-natured and almost always cheerful in company, she loved also to be alone, to take solitary walks, to lose herself within her own imagination. She wrote poetry and stories whenever she had the time.
She taught the infants—the children aged four to five—at the village school three days a week and often helped the schoolmaster with older pupils on the other days.
Katherine too was unmarried though she was beginning to feel a little uneasy about her single state. She wanted to marry—of course she did. What else was t
here for a woman except to be a burden upon her relatives for the rest of her life? But though she had admirers galore and liked most of them, she could never decide which one she liked best. And that, she realized, probably meant she did not like any one of them sufficiently to marry him.
She had decided that it was sometimes a distinct disadvantage to be a dreamer. It would be far more comfortable to be a practical person without any imagination. Then she could simply choose the best candidate and settle into a worthy life with him. But she could not simply wave a magic wand and make herself into what she was not.
And so she could not make a choice. Not even a sensible one. Not yet, anyway, though the day would come, she supposed, when she would have to decide—or remain forever a spinster—and there would be an end of the matter.
First Came Marriage Page 2