The Bluestocking and the Rake

by Norma Darcy

  “The younger brother has it.”

  “Oh.”

  “They were worried that Marianne might have it too so they stayed away this evening.”

  “I see. And Miss Georgiana Blakelow? Is she here?”

  “Thoroughly Moralizing Miss? Lord, no. She doesn’t ever come to occasions like this. Far too beneath her.”

  “You don’t like Miss Blakelow?” asked his lordship.

  “She makes me want to drop to the floor and say a thousand Hail Marys, and I am not even Catholic. She terrifies me.”

  His lordship smiled. Truth be told, she terrified him too. That is, the disapproving glint in her eye when she looked at him, as if she had just trodden in something unsavory, the feeling that he would never be good enough to meet her exacting standards, and the suspicion that she had very deliberately set him apart as if she were handling an extremely explosive substance and needed to establish a safe distance.

  He admitted to himself that he’d only come to the wretched ball in the vague hope that she would be there too. His eyes skittered around the room, over milk-and-water misses and mother-hen chaperones, and he wished that she were there. Someone to share a joke with, that delicious moment when their eyes would meet after he’d said something outrageous merely to shock her or to force her eyes to his. Something about her intrigued him, and he wasn’t entirely sure that the feeling wasn’t mutual. He looked amongst the dowagers and the chaperones and saw again what he already knew: that she was not present.

  Acknowledging within himself a mild disappointment, he decided that he needed to drown his sorrows in drink to get through the evening.

  He was distracted from his thoughts by the sight of Lady Emily Holt standing momentarily on her own with her back to him. In a trice he had left his friend and reappeared at her side, grasped her arm none too gently, and frog-marched her out onto the terrace.

  “I did not mean to do it,” whispered Lady Emily, staring at the floor, her great blue eyes swimming with tears. “Indeed, I am very sorry, my lord, but when Mama asked me if you had made me an offer . . . I couldn’t tell her that you had not, after all the expense . . . bonnets and gowns and slippers. Father would have been so disappointed in me . . .”

  The rest of this speech was lost as her tears choked off her ability to make coherent speech. Lord Marcham took out his handkerchief and impatiently thrust it at his supposed fiancée.

  “You don’t wish to marry me, do you?” he demanded.

  She shook her head, dabbing her eyes.

  “No . . . nor I you. I don’t wish to offend you, my lady, but I don’t think we’d suit.”

  “No,” she whispered, forlornly staring out at Mr. and Mrs. Silverwood’s garden, which was shrouded in darkness but for the lanterns that were strung prettily across the paths.

  “Was it your parents who spread this abroad?”

  She nodded.

  “But why me?” he asked. “There are any number of eligible men in this county who would make you a much more suitable husband than me. I wouldn’t let any daughter of mine marry a man like me, earldom or no.”

  “You are of noble birth and good family. You are also rich. Father’s estate is mortgaged to the hilt. We are not as well-off as we appear.”

  “I see,” replied Lord Marcham. “A woman who wants my money to save the family estate. Now where have I heard that before?”

  She blinked at him. “My lord?”

  “Never mind. You will begin this evening. You will tell everyone that our engagement is at an end,” replied Lord Marcham, pacing back and forth across the terrace. “You may tell them that I played fast and loose with your affections if you wish it. Make me the cause—I care not. All I want is that this engagement between us is at an end.”

  “I cannot, my lord. Please don’t ask it of me,” she cried, grasping his arm.

  “You can and you will.”

  “But you don’t know Mama. She has set her heart on seeing us wed,” said Lady Emily. “She will be terribly displeased.”

  “Bullies you, does she? I thought as much,” said his lordship grimly.

  The lady sniffed into the handkerchief. “She will be so very angry with me.”

  Lord Marcham bit back the retort that sprang to his lips that went something along the lines of recommending that she develop a backbone. But he didn’t say it and controlled his temper with an effort. In another man, her tears might have provoked sympathy or the desire to comfort the fragile young woman in his arms. But his lordship was unmoved, irritated even, and he wondered how he had ever believed that this woman would make him a suitable wife.

  “What are we to do?” she asked mournfully.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I am not going to marry you, my lady.”

  “Oh . . . I know that, my lord. And I don’t want to marry you either.”

  “Do you have any other relatives?” he asked. “An aunt perhaps? Someone who will stand up to your mother?”

  “My aunt is just as frightened of Mama as I am. But my grandmother is every bit as forthright as Mama. She’s her mother, you know, and lives in Harrogate.”

  “Capital,” replied his lordship. “Write to your grandmother and ask her if you may stay with her.”

  Lady Emily swallowed hard. “I haven’t seen her since I was fifteen.”

  “Even better. Write and tell her how you miss her or some such thing, and wangle an invitation to visit.”

  “But Mama will never agree to it.”

  “Your Mama will never know about it,” said the earl. “I will escort you there myself.”

  “Oh, would you?” she breathed. “Dear Lord Marcham, you have been so excessively kind to me.”

  “No, I haven’t,” he replied bluntly. “I am being kind to myself, as always.”

  “Sir?” she asked, a blank expression in her face.

  “Never mind. What you need, my girl, is a husband.”

  “But I thought you just said—?”

  “Not me,” he said impatiently, rolling his eyes. “You need to escape from the controlling influence of your mother.”

  “Oh, yes,” cried Lady Emily, clapping her hands together.

  “You need to be mistress of your own establishment, and to do that you need a husband.”

  A silence greeted this remark. “But, sir . . . who?”

  “I don’t know . . . Is there no one for whom you have a preference?”

  Lady Emily blushed tellingly but she shook her head.

  “Are you sure? I thought perhaps you still cherished an affection for Mr. Edridge?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Well, write to your grandmother. Leave the rest to me.”

  “Thank you. Dear, dear Lord Marcham.” She grabbed his gloved hand and kissed it, just as the curtains moved and Lord Holt appeared on the terrace, his face red with drink.

  CHAPTER 7

  MISS BLAKELOW DID NOT see Lord Marcham again for a month. She had been absent when he had called to take her and her aunt out driving to see the estate—in fact she had taken great pains that he would not find her at home. Aunt Blakelow was well equipped to show him Thorncote anyway. She knew the place better than anyone else, having been born and raised there. She returned from the drive with a sparkle in her eye, and Georgiana could not help but wonder if the earl had deployed his famous charm in cartloads when dealing with the old lady.

  Miss Blakelow had been in the village visiting some of her brother’s sick tenants, and when she returned, her aunt was seated by the fire, positively glowing. She removed her bonnet, watching Aunt Blakelow in faint amusement.

  “I venture to think that he was very well pleased with Thorncote, my love,” said her aunt. “Very well pleased. And who would not be? It is a fine estate—I won’t say that it’s as fine as Holme Park or as large, but the land is good and the potential is huge. I won’t say either that his lordship is ready to make amends, but I fancy we have put a kernel of an idea inside that dissipated head. He may c
ome around.”

  “Indeed, ma’am?” inquired Miss Blakelow, gratefully taking off her spectacles.

  “Oh, yes. He may be a sinful man entirely given over to pleasures of the flesh, but he is not unintelligent and we had a fair conversation. He knows a little about architecture.”

  “Architecture?” repeated Miss Blakelow in amazement. The only architecture she could imagine his lordship taking an interest in was the structure of ladies’ undergarments.

  “He was interested in the central tower and whether it was indeed twelfth century. I could not remember—I do not have a head for such things—and I recommended that he ask you. He seemed disappointed that you did not come with us.”

  To tease me and flirt with me and then pull the rug from under my feet and make me feel ridiculous, Miss Blakelow thought gloomily. Mock the bluestocking and punish her for writing her pamphlet. She gave a wan smile. “Did he? That seems unlikely. I hardly know the man.”

  “Well . . . he asked me all sorts of questions.”

  “To be sure he did,” returned Miss Blakelow, folding up her shawl. “If he wishes to invest in the estate, I imagine he will want to have every detail.”

  “Not about the estate,” said Aunt Blakelow. “About you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. He asked me why you had never married.”

  Miss Blakelow froze, her hands resting upon the table for support. “And what did you tell him?”

  “Never fear, my dear. I told him that you had suffered a disappointment as a young woman.”

  Miss Blakelow’s face fell. “Dear ma’am, what did you tell him that for?”

  Aunt Blakelow blinked at her. “Did I do wrong? I did not give him any details. I spoke only in the most general of terms, I assure you.”

  “But we had agreed not to divulge anything to anyone. Surely you must realize that to reveal any information, to him of all people, is disastrous? If he were to remember . . .”

  “Calm yourself, my dear. He does not remember a thing. How should he indeed? You were a mere slip of a girl then.”

  Miss Blakelow began to feel sick. She put a hand to her head. “Oh, Aunt, I wish that you had not said as much to him. I had already told him that it was you who had suffered the disappointment, so now he knows that one of us is lying. I would not have had you say such a thing for all the world.”

  Her aunt stiffened visibly. “Well, I do not see why you should fly up into the boughs about it. How you expect a man to remember some chit of a girl from ten years ago when he has had countless women since is a mystery to me.”

  Miss Blakelow relented. “I am sorry, Aunt. I am sure there has been no harm done. But we will need to tread carefully from now on. He might be a dissipated rake, but he is no fool.”

  The door opened, and Miss Blakelow’s five younger stepbrothers and sisters burst into the room. The three girls lined up primly on the sofa while the two boys sprawled in their chairs, trying to emulate their eldest brother, a very fashionable young man who lived in London.

  “Well, Aunt?” asked Jack, examining the scuffed cricket ball in his hand. Fifteen years old and sports mad, he was darker in looks than his golden-haired, blue-eyed, almost angelic-looking brothers and sisters, more closely resembling Miss Blakelow’s coloring. “Is his nibs going to cough up the blunt?”

  “Jack!” admonished Aunt Blakelow. “I wish you would not talk in that horridly vulgar way.”

  “Is he?” demanded the lad, unrepentant.

  “It is too early to say.”

  “He doesn’t look like an earl,” said Lizzy, the tomboy of the family, wrinkling her freckled brow. Slender as a beanpole, she was something of a late bloomer at seventeen, her hair as wild and untamable as a briar. “The only earl I ever saw before was so old and fat that his buttons popped on his waistcoat.”

  A collective giggle greeted this utterance, and Miss Blakelow turned away to hide a smile.

  “Elizabeth, mind your manners,” chided their aunt. “To be sure he is a most gentlemanlike man—in public at least—and a handsome one.”

  “Do you think him handsome?” Catherine asked, and Miss Blakelow was surprised to find that the question had been directed at her. Catherine had a knack for asking the very question that everyone in the room wished to know the answer to but was too afraid or too polite to ask—or for putting her foot in her mouth, depending how one chose to regard it.

  Miss Blakelow blushed faintly under the eyes of every other person in the room. “Yes, Kitty, I believe one would call him handsome.”

  “Are you in love with him?” asked Jack, without preamble. He was slouched across one of the chairs with one foot dangling, as he had seen his eldest brother William do on many an occasion. He fancied it gave him an air of cool nonchalance.

  “Ridiculous boy,” replied Miss Blakelow, laughing. “Of course I’m not in love with him. I hardly know him.”

  “Well, you women fall in love at the drop of a hat,” he continued, as if he had great knowledge about such things.

  “Not this one,” muttered Miss Blakelow, picking up a periodical and leafing through the pages.

  “Probably just as well . . . He’s marrying that Holt female.”

  Miss Blakelow’s hand stilled. She looked up and fixed her eyes upon her youngest brother’s face. “Lady Emily?”

  “Didn’t you know?” he asked, turning his green eyes on her.

  “No, well, I heard the rumors of course . . . but he said there was no truth in them,” she answered.

  “The man’s got himself into a great deal of hot water.”

  Miss Blakelow put a hand to her head. She was confused, dazed. And why did she care? “Who . . . what—I mean, why is he marrying her?”

  “It’s all over Loughton,” put in Catherine with eyes gleaming.

  “We had it from Hetty Bradshaw who had it from Lady Emily Holt herself,” added Lizzy.

  “What is?” asked Miss Blakelow, fidgeting with impatience.

  “He got caught with his tongue down her throat.”

  “Jack!” cried Marianne, throwing a cushion at him, looking beautiful even when outraged. She did everything beautifully. She even cried beautifully. The eldest of the children at three and twenty, she was expected by her sisters to make a brilliant match to save Thorncote. The only fly in that particular ointment was her penchant for falling in love with penniless men. “Don’t be repulsive.”

  “Well, he did,” said her brother. “It was at the Silverwood ball. They were out on the terrace alone, and he tried on more than he should, and her father caught him and there we are. He’s about to be leg-shackled.”

  Miss Blakelow sensed her aunt’s eyes upon her and studiously kept her own gaze lowered. Her face seemed strangely tingly as if all the blood had drained from under her skin. “I’m surprised is all I will say,” she said meditatively. “A man of his experience is not one to be trapped like that unless he wished to be.”

  “You think he was tricked into marrying her?” asked Aunt Blakelow.

  “I have no idea. He has to marry someone, I suppose.”

  “But why her?” said Marianne.

  “Because she’s beautiful and rich,” replied Miss Blakelow quietly.

  “Well, if he were to see you without those hideous spectacles, he would know that you are not so weaselly faced as he supposes,” said Jack.

  “Thank you,” replied Miss Blakelow meekly at this backhanded compliment.

  “She is not weaselly faced!” cried Marianne, firing up in defense of their eldest sister. “How can you say such a thing?”

  “If you would but listen, you would know that I said she wasn’t weaselly faced,” retorted Jack, vigorously swinging his leg.

  “I know those glasses make her look a hundred years old, but never weaselly faced!” continued Marianne, her blue eyes sparkling with tears.

  “Oh, Lord, you’ve set her off again. Jack, how can you be such a clod?” demanded Ned, in a voice that showed he was growing into a
fiercely intense young man. Ned, almost eighteen, was very soon to go to Oxford, paid for by his uncle Charles, a gentleman who saw it as his duty to educate his young nephews. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was the living image of his father.

  “What?” asked Jack, spreading his hands. “All I said was—” He broke off, colored deeply, and stole a swift glance at the averted profile of his eldest sister. “I’m sorry.”

  Miss Blakelow summoned a smile from somewhere. “No matter. But please, can we drop the weasel reference? I’m not sure my pride can take it,” she said with an unsteady laugh.

  “Of course,” he replied stiffly. “All I meant to say is that you scrub up well when you don’t wear those glasses. I think any man would be proud to take you on.”

  Jack was saved from his embarrassment by the arrival of John, their unlikely butler, who would look more at home aboard a ship than answering the door and greeting visitors. He announced that two gentlemen had arrived to see Miss Blakelow.

  John moved forward and presented Aunt Blakelow with a flamboyantly printed calling card. She stared at it blankly and handed it to Georgiana, who regarded the swirling type, set with the name Sir Jeremiah Allen, Baronet, with distaste. Clearly Sir Jeremiah thought himself something rather special.

  “Are we expecting them, Aunt?” Georgiana asked.

  “Not that I know of. I have never seen this gentleman’s name before. Where are they, John?” asked Aunt Blakelow.

  “They are in the hallway, ma’am. They didn’t seem interested in being shown into the parlor.”

  Both ladies stood up and followed the butler into the hallway. Two men stood with their backs to them, staring at one of the few remaining sculptures in the house, the thinner man examining it through a magnifying glass. He was dressed all in black, and his hands were long and bony, with veins standing out like bluish rivers under his skin. He dropped the glass where it hung on a ribbon around his neck.

  “Fake,” he said. “A cheap copy, nothing more.”

  “Are you sure?” asked his companion in a hushed voice. He was a middle-aged man with artfully shaped silver whiskers. He was trim and neatly dressed and carried a pencil and some sort of journal.