The Lord Next Door

by Gayle Callen

  Her strangled gasp satisfied him in a very primitive way. She was not so immune to him as she tried to pretend. He released her, and though she dropped her hand, she bravely stood her ground.

  “My lord, we don’t know each other well.” Before he could speak, she quickly added, “As adults. I ask for your patience to allow us to become reacquainted.”

  “My patience?” he echoed in a low voice, beginning to understand where this might lead.

  “Yes. We would have a real marriage, of course, but could we not…”

  Her face flamed red and her gaze centered squarely on his chest. She pulled her glove back on.

  She bit her lip. “That is, could we take our…relationship…slowly?”

  She was asking for a reprieve on their wedding night. He understood that she was a virgin, and some delicacy on his part was required. But the longer she withheld her affections, the greater the risk that their marriage would fail. He could not allow that. He would have to think of a solution that would satisfy them both.

  “I understand and accept your terms, Miss Shelby. You will marry me?” He posed it as a question, instead of the statement of fact they both knew it to be.

  Her gaze never left his, and her words, though softly spoken, were firm with intent. “Yes, my lord. And I thank you.”

  He wanted to tell her not to thank him yet, not until she’d met his father and seen his disorganized household, but the reality of that could wait for another day.

  “I’ll have the banns read,” he said. “The wedding will take place a month from today. You will have time to have a gown made. Does this meet with your approval?”

  “My lord, I am not quite out of mourning yet, so my gown will be—”

  “I request that you not wear black, Miss Shelby. I’m sure that your father would understand, and wish you to celebrate our marriage.”

  “But my lord—”

  “Humor me in this, I beg you. Mourning attire is not something I would wish for my wedding day.”

  She studied him. “Do men have dreams of their wedding day?”

  He was startled. Dreams of a wedding night might be more accurate, but he could hardly say that, not after her recent request.

  “Perhaps I didn’t have dreams, Miss Shelby, but I know a wedding day only comes once to a couple, and it should mean something.”

  There was a wry twist to her lips, but he did not remark on it. Theirs would not be a normal marriage, he knew.

  “Go to your mother now, Miss Shelby. Please send Mrs. Wayneflete to discuss the wedding details with my steward.”

  He bowed over her hand again, but this time did not kiss it. He hoped she regretted the omission.

  Victoria stared at the receding back of Lord Thurlow, running her fingers absently over her hand, the one he’d kissed just a little while before. It still felt…burned, not as if he’d hurt her, but as if he had marked her in some way as his.

  His. She would be that now, under the care of a man she truly didn’t know. Did he have a music room? Would he care about her dreams beyond their wedding day?

  Or their wedding night. She shivered and tried to make sense of what she’d felt as he’d pressed his lips against her skin so intimately. When he’d opened his mouth and touched her—she squeezed her eyes shut, feeling uncomfortable and hot and confused. He wanted a baby. And she had some sense of how one achieved that. Yet he had agreed to take his time.

  Victoria walked into the hall. “Mrs. Wayneflete!” She came up short as she found the housekeeper leading her mother back toward the drawing room.

  The housekeeper threw up her hands. “I am so sorry, Miss Victoria! Mrs. Shelby was helping me prepare tea, and then she was gone—”

  “Your worry is all for naught, Mrs. Wayneflete,” Victoria said. “Lord Thurlow did not mind Mama’s interruption.”

  Her mother peeked into the drawing room. “Did he leave? I’m sorry I didn’t get much of a chance to speak with him.”

  That sounded more like the mother she knew. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to get to know him, Mama. The viscount has asked me to marry him.”

  Victoria had not expected great rejoicing, but Mrs. Wayneflete’s obvious trepidation was a little frightening. Even her mother frowned. Didn’t she understand what Victoria was doing to save the family?

  She regretted her selfish thoughts. She turned to her mother. “You never allowed me to hear of the scandal surrounding the Earl of Banstead. Perhaps I should hear it now, even though it’s too late.”

  Mrs. Wayneflete and her mother exchanged a glance, but it was the housekeeper who spoke.

  “I don’t know the details, Miss Victoria. Though servants gossip, even the Banstead maids seemed embarrassed by their master’s behavior. There were parties at Banstead House, miss, the kind no one of good society would go to. And they started within a month of the countess’s death.”

  Victoria sighed. “That’s all you know? I always thought you were withholding something due to my young age.”

  “No, miss. But the servants’ silence made me realize something scandalous had to be going on there. Are you sure marrying the viscount is the correct decision?”

  “How could I say no, Mrs. Wayneflete? We’ll have a place to live, food to eat. And I’m marrying the viscount, not the earl himself. We can’t blame a man for his father’s actions.”

  “But we don’t know what those actions were.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Wayneflete. This is the best I could do. Will it bother you if I try to find a position for you in the Banstead household? But of course if you’d rather not work there—”

  “Oh no, miss, it would be a great relief for me to be able to look after you and Mrs. Shelby,” she said, dabbing her tears with her apron. “I am relieved that you’ve found a man who wants to marry you.”

  “He has taken pity on me,” Victoria correctly her dryly. “And I sense that we will be helping him as well.” She couldn’t put her suspicions into words.

  “We have so much to do,” Mrs. Wayneflete said, leading Victoria and her mother into the library. “Let’s make our lists. When will the wedding take place?”

  “In one month.”

  “Heavens, Miss Victoria, that will barely be enough time!”

  “The first wedding in the family.” Mama suddenly smiled.

  When a tear slid down her mother’s cheek, Victoria wanted to melt.

  “It is what your father and I always wanted for you,” her mother said softly.

  But it wasn’t what Victoria had wanted for herself.

  When David arrived back at Banstead House, he had already decided to face the most difficult task first: telling his father about the upcoming marriage.

  He walked down the hall on the ground floor to his father’s bedroom. He knocked briskly on the door, and his father called for him to enter.

  Alfred Thurlow, the Earl of Banstead, was sitting in his wheelchair in his usual place, staring out the window at the garden. There was a book beside him on a table, but David knew he seldom read—he seldom did anything but brood on his illness and ever progressing infirmity.

  And take out his misery on the entire household. The maids were often crying from his verbal abuse when they were only trying to clean his room. David had finally given strict orders that no one was to even attempt to clean unless his father was somewhere else. But that was less and less often. The man’s greatest joy seemed to be making housekeepers quit.

  The earl looked up at David with flashing blue eyes, obviously ready to yell at the intrusion. But he caught his breath when he saw who it was and only grumbled something before looking back out the window. His white hair was longer than it should be, but the earl didn’t care about such things anymore. It was hard enough to get him to bathe regularly. His face was lined more with anger and bitterness than age, and those once broad, imposing shoulders were bony and bent. But the earl had made sure by his intolerable behavior that no one offered him pity anymore.

 
“Good afternoon, Father.”

  “Not so good here” was all the earl said.

  David clenched one fist behind his back. “I won’t disturb you for long. I wanted to tell you that I’m to be married in a month’s time.”

  That brought the old man’s head around. “You negotiated such a thing without consulting me?”

  “I’m twenty-six years old, Father. I am quite capable of procuring a bride.”

  “You hadn’t been able to prove that before.”

  And whose fault is that? David barely stopped himself in time. Too often, he sank to his father’s level, but not today. Today he would wallow in the satisfaction of his accomplishments.

  After a length of silence David refused to break, the earl glanced at him—showing no remorse or guilt, naturally.

  His father said, “It’s about time you provided the earldom with an heir besides that useless cousin of yours.”

  David stiffened. His father’s endless quest for children had been what killed his mother. She’d endured pregnancy after pregnancy, all ending early or with a stillborn child. The town house had always been draped in black crepe, and David had worn mourning clothes for much of each year.

  But still the old man had spent David’s adulthood hounding him about an heir. Was Father oblivious to what he’d done?

  And again, David found himself experiencing a passing feeling of worry about Victoria, but he pushed it ruthlessly away. The earldom needed an heir.

  “Did you negotiate the terms with her father?” the earl demanded.

  “He died ten months ago. I negotiated with the bride herself.”

  “Unheard of!”

  “But necessary. I’ll speak to my lawyer about the papers tomorrow.”

  “Who is this girl?”

  “Miss Victoria Shelby.”

  “I know that name,” the earl said, his brows lowered in rising anger.

  “You should. The family has been our next door neighbors my entire life.” The people you insisted we ignore socially, because you said they weren’t good enough.

  “One of the Shelby girls?” his father cried.

  “Victoria.”

  “But their father was in trade!”

  “He was a wealthy banker, Father. You yourself did business with him.”

  “But he was not a gentleman!”

  “Perhaps not by your definition. But his daughter has been raised well. I’ve already asked her to marry me.”

  “She will bring nothing to this family in politics or land. If you would have consulted me, I could have told you—”

  “It’s interesting how you follow the dictates of society only when it pleases you. Regardless, there is nothing you could have said to change my mind.”

  “Tell me you’re not in love with this girl!”

  David was about to make a disparaging comment—their arguments followed such a predictable pattern—but something in his father’s face stopped him. It wasn’t anger there now but despair, as if he’d thought love was a tragedy not to be experienced because of the pain.

  David’s mother knew all about that.

  But he couldn’t say the words that would hurt the old man, not when he already looked so devastated. Did the earl stare out over his garden and remember all his mistakes, the way he’d treated his wife?

  David didn’t want to feel sympathy for him.

  “Father, in one month, Miss Shelby will be living here, as the new lady of the house. You will conduct yourself properly.”

  “I am the earl!” his father thundered. “She will have to—”

  But David had already walked out of the room.

  Night after night, Victoria lay sleepless in bed and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering if Tom was still there somewhere inside Lord Thurlow. Or was she being naive? Her underlying sorrow wouldn’t go away. Except for her sisters, Tom had been her closest companion, her staunch ally, a sounding board when times were difficult. But to remember those times now only made his betrayal sharper, sadder. She finally resolved the Tom debate in her mind by putting it aside for now, pretending that she was just like every other woman about to marry a stranger.

  Two weeks before their wedding, her future husband surprised her by coming to call on her unannounced. Mrs. Wayneflete came to find Victoria, who was sorting through her belongings for the move. Victoria followed the housekeeper down through the house, asking twice if her hair looked presentable.

  “Surely I have cobwebs or something in it!” Victoria said with exasperation.

  Mrs. Wayneflete patted her trembling hands. “You look fine, miss.”

  And then they were in the drawing room, and he was standing there, so tall and very foreign in such a feminine room. His gaze swept over her, making her wonder what he thought about her appearance. She should not care, because their bargain had already been made. But…he smelled of fresh air and cologne, a masculine mixture, and it made her shiver, though she was not cold. The engagement—the very thought of marriage—still seemed so unreal.

  He had his hat and gloves in his hands, and Victoria wondered why Mrs. Wayneflete had not taken them from him.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Shelby,” he said in that deep voice.

  “Good afternoon, my lord.”

  “Would you care to take a carriage ride with me?”

  Was he actually…courting her, when it no longer mattered? She felt ridiculously warm at the thought of such flattery. “I—of course. Just give me a few minutes to prepare myself.”

  Then she and Mrs. Wayneflete went looking for a bonnet and shawl and gloves. Soon she was sedately walking down the front steps to the pavement, her hand just resting on Lord Thurlow’s bent arm. At the edge of the street waited an elegant phaeton, with its top down, led by a matching pair of white horses. If he was trying to impress her, he was doing a decent job of it. Behind the main bench, a maid perched on a small seat.

  Victoria smiled at her, and the girl shyly smiled back. She was surprised by the chaperone, being that she and Lord Thurlow were an engaged couple—but she was certain he did not want even a whiff of scandal. She tried to put aside her unease.

  He held her hand as she stepped up into the carriage, then he climbed in beside her and lifted the reins. He took up much of the bench, and his shoulder brushing hers made her feel rather strange inside.

  She was not surprised to find that he was an excellent driver. He’d always been the kind of person who achieved whatever he put his mind to.

  Or had he changed? She didn’t know what to make of him, how to bridge the ten-year gap in her knowledge of him. People could change so much when the responsibilities of adulthood settled in. A conversation would help, but he seemed to be concentrating on his driving and his occasional nod to people who called out his name with a wave.

  No matter what his father had done, Lord Thurlow still had a place in society; he still had friends, if only in politics. All people whom she’d have to meet. She’d never imagined herself in such company.

  But if Lord Thurlow was not going to talk, she herself could not sit here silently, each minute growing ever more awkward. As he guided the carriage into Hyde Park and down the Row, she wet her lips and tried to think of a topic of conversation.

  “My lord, I hope you won’t think this a prying question,” she began.

  He glanced at her. “We are to be married. Ask whatever you wish.”

  “Most boys of your class went off to school at a young age. Why didn’t you?”

  He concentrated on a sudden slow down of carriages. She almost thought he’d forgotten, until he said, “My mother was often ill. She did not wish to be separated from me, her only child. My father hired tutors.”

  “I see.” That left him plenty of free time to tease a lonely little girl next door. She kept reminding herself that he’d been very young when he’d lied to her, but that could not erase the feelings of betrayal deep in her soul. She thought they’d been sharing…everything.

  Had he enjo
yed writing to her? She glanced at his profile, so stern, yet handsome to her in an unusual way. She kept expecting a mischievous smile, for that was how she’d always pictured him. But his face was like a mask that hid all the truth behind it. Why couldn’t she know what he was thinking, as she once knew Tom’s every thought?

  She sighed. “At least now I know why you never spoke of yourself.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your real self. I knew the earl had a son, but since you—since Tom never mentioned him, I always thought he—you were away at school.”

  “You make it sound more complicated than it was. Except for the change in my name, it was always me writing to you.”

  “Then why did you stop?” Oh, that was far too personal a question. But she couldn’t take it back. She wanted him to tell her everything, but he no longer seemed the kind of boy—the kind of man who would reveal intimacies about himself.

  He kept looking straight ahead, guiding his magnificent horses, a man at ease in at least this part of his world.

  “We were both almost grown,” he finally said. “I was sent off to school.”

  “So there was no time for a brief explanation?”

  He glanced at her, his eyes narrowed, and though she wanted to back down, she couldn’t. She stared at him, silently demanding the truth.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “I was a stupid boy who got caught up in the excitement of finally being allowed to escape that house.”

  “What did you have to escape? It seems like a perfectly acceptable house.” But it wasn’t the house—she knew that.

  “I chafed at not being allowed to be with other boys my age. I was simply glad to feel like I was growing up.”

  She knew that that was only part of the truth. His writing would have revealed a need to be gone, and there had been none. But she could hardly accuse her future husband of lying once again. After all, how could she trust her own judgment where he was concerned?

  In silence they drove out of the park, then turned away from the street leading back to their homes. Victoria frowned and looked up at him, but felt foolish asking where they were going. After all, he’d only offered her a ride.