A Gamble on Love

by Blair Bancroft

  He was staring at her, one eyebrow raised, undoubtedly wondering to what far realm her wits had wandered. And why.

  “Very well,” she murmured, and reached for one of the invitations Miss Aldershot and Olivia had so laboriously penned that day.

  As Relia wrote, she felt a hand come to rest on her shoulder. Her pen wobbled, ink splattered. The searing warmth of her husband’s fingers promptly disappeared. “My apologies,” Thomas muttered and strode from the room.

  It was some time before Relia reached for a fresh invitation to inscribe to the Earl and Countess of Gravenham and their family. And, to her astonishment, the Fortescue family accepted. All of them, including the earl and the countess and that veteran of the Peninsular War, Captain Alan. News of such illustrious guests sent the household into even more of a twitter than it already was. Mr. and Mrs. Lanning almost immediately discovered one more bone of contention.

  “We may not hunt or have a Yule Log in town,” Thomas informed his wife, as they continued an argument, begun at dinner, in the privacy of their sitting room, “but celebrating Twelfth Night is a tradition with which we are quite familiar.”

  “This is a party for young people,” Relia asserted. “We are not going to have a bottomless Wassail bowl!”

  “But not all of us are children,” Thomas reminded her. “Surely the chaperons are to have something stronger than cider. Somehow,” he mused, “I cannot picture Gravenham and his son or Squire Stanton—”

  “There will be wine with supper—”

  “And something stronger in the card room,” Thomas declared. “You may stand a footman at the door to make sure none of the youngsters wander in.”

  “Thomas!” Relia caught her wail, stifling it into a gulp. “You do not understand. If we have a party for the adults, we are entertaining.”

  “Well, of course, we’re entertaining.” Puzzled, Thomas frowned down at his wife, who was once again seated at her small desk, working on a list of tasks still to be accomplished before Twelfth Night.

  Relia plunged her head into her hands, the feathers of the quill she had been using sticking out between her fallen tresses.

  “Oh . . . deuced dense again, am I?” Thomas muttered. “Once again, I have trod on your sensibilities. Yet . . . I think we cannot call it off.”

  “No, of course not.” Though muffled, Relia’s response was clear. She raised her head, pushed back her wayward strands of glossy black hair. “Gussie has begun to remind me, almost daily, that I cling too much to my grief. It is only right that you should have an opportunity to meet so many of the families in the county. Quite everyone has accepted. Indeed, I am surprised . . .” Relia broke off, hiding her face as she once again bent over her desk.

  “You are surprised they all agreed to come,” her husband supplied. “Surprised they would honor the home of a Cit. Curiosity, my dear, simple curiosity. A trait found in high and low alike. Nor do they wish to offend a long-standing friend, of course.” His wife, eyes averted, failed to see his conciliatory smile.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “Why is it you accommodate yourself to everyone but me?”

  Thomas did not pretend to misunderstand her. Placing his hands behind his back, he thought before he spoke. For once, he displayed not a single hint of amusement at her question. Truthfully, his wife was beginning to drive him mad. Lying in wait for him, expecting him to carry on a perfectly normal conversation in the intimacy of their private rooms. Flaunting his promise by wearing . . . well, practically nothing.

  Deliberately, Thomas allowed his slowly simmering temper to blot out the images threatening to overcome his good sense. It was time his dear wife heard some home truths. “I am accustomed to having the upper hand, Aurelia. Making plans, making decisions, giving orders. So are you. I am a difficult man. Arrogant, accustomed to having my own way. Ask anyone in the City and they will tell you so. Again, traits not unfamiliar to you. But, yes, I have learned to accommodate myself to those who can be of use to me. It is good business. But to those of my own family . . . I am not so adept. You must have taken note of my feeble efforts with Livvy and Nicholas.”

  “Yet with me, you make no effort at all!”

  “Not so!” Thomas’s sternly disciplined calm, which had been dissolving as slowly but surely as the burning Yule Log, totally deserted him. “Who has brought life back to this household?” he roared. “Renewed old traditions? Do you think I did this for myself? Solely for Livvy and Nicholas? You are an ice maiden, Aurelia. Frozen in time. A child who never wants her world to change. Grow up, girl. I am a man, not a puppet. And I want a wife, not a puling infant.”

  Appalled by his loss of control, Thomas plunged his head into his hands as his wife swept from the room, slamming the door of her bedchamber behind her. Hell and damnation, how could he have been such a fool?

  In the few remaining days before Twelfth Night the strained relations between the master and mistress of Pevensey Park, never noticeably cordial, went unremarked in a household frantically preparing for its first party in more than five years. Only husband and wife were aware that when Thomas Lanning entered their private sitting room at night, he no longer found his wife bent over her desk or toasting her toes before the fire. Lit by a single wall sconce and the embers of a dying fire, that quiet haven, which had seemed on the verge of creating an aura of intimacy between them, was empty and chill. A silent reminder that the gap they were attempting to bridge was, perhaps, too wide. An insurmountable barrier erected by centuries of tradition, and all the more invincible for its invisibility.

  Each night Thomas extinguished the candles in the sconce, poked at the embers in the grate, then stood for a moment, eyeing his wife’s bedchamber door. Each night, he turned away, walking through the door to his own bedchamber, his grim face illumined by the single candle in his hand.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That young scamp—beg pardon, Madam!” Mrs. Marshcombe, the housekeeper, took a heaving breath that sent a ripple through the black bombazine covering her more than ample bosom. “Master Nicholas,” she amended, “wishes to add Snapdragon to the games. I know ‘tis none of my business, Madam, but that boy’s got poor Miss Aldershot wrapped round his thumb, he has. The games they have planned!” The housekeeper threw up her hands. “Needing something new every minute they are. And Snapdragon! ‘Tis the devil’s own brew, miss—madam! Raisins and brandy it is, and lit all on fire. And many a singed finger we’ll have, and belonging to little Lord This and Lady That, I promise you. Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is what we’ll have, and all the governesses and nursery maids down upon us and the parents soon after—”

  “Mrs. Marshcombe!” Relia cried, effectively stopping the spate of words and leaving her irate housekeeper with her jaw hanging open. “Surely I recall playing Snapdragon on many occasions in the past. Snatching the raisins from the flaming brandy was rather . . . well, rather exciting.”

  “And, as I recall,” the housekeeper responded firmly, “year after year Master Twyford and his friends seized the raisins while the young ladies watched, offering noisy and inelegant encouragement to their favorites.”

  It was true, of course. Relia did not bother to repress her smile of nostalgia. For all Twyford was a spoiled bully, there had been some good times at the Christmas holidays. “I imagine it will be much the same this time, Mrs. Marshcombe,” she said. “Nicholas may have his Snapdragon. The boys will be daring, and the girls will cheer them on. Just be sure there is a footman standing by with a bucket of water.”

  “But, Madam, they will eat the raisins!”

  “Have you turned Methodist, Mrs. Marshcombe?”

  “Indeed not, Madam!” Another broad ripple of black bombazine. “But the brandy—”

  “The brandy burns, Mrs. Marshcombe. It is consumed by fire, not by young stomachs.”

  The housekeeper sniffed. “Very well, Madam.” After a pause long enough to express her contin
uing disapproval, Mrs. Marshcombe curtsied and headed for the staircase to the kitchens below.

  Relia sighed. They had been standing in the entry hall before the remains of the Yule Log, now reduced to no more than three broken lengths of charcoaled wood. But the great log had made it through the twelve days of Christmas, whether on its own, or by whatever encouragement—or possibly discouragement—Mills the footman had managed when no one was looking. Her husband had a way of making events occur as he wished—was that not why she had married him? Which was all the more reason his harsh words had hurt so ferociously. Thomas Lanning was a man who made things happen. If he wished to return to the rapport she had thought was developing between them, then surely he would have found a way to—

  A scream. A shout. A drawn-out wail.

  Relia picked up her skirts and dashed toward the commotion, flying past a bevy of maids poised with dust clothes in their hands as she hurried through two great salons before finding the source of the problem. A maid, wailing loudly, was sitting on the carpet, her apron thrown up over her face. Beside her two footmen scrambled about on all fours, apparently searching for something. Suspended only a few feet off the floor was the Venetian Murano glass chandelier, which evidently the maid had been cleaning in preparation for this evening’s party. Even without its candles lit, the crystals, both clear and colored, sparkled in the sunshine from a southern wall of floor to ceiling windows.

  One footman caught sight of his mistress, poked the other. The maid peeked out from under her apron, then renewed her wailing on a higher pitch. “What has happened?” Relia demanded. Both footmen spoke at once, to the accompaniment of the girl’s sobs. “Mills, you first,” she snapped.

  “I was holding the rope so’s Maggie here could clean the crystals, ma’am. And . . . and one of them fell,” Mills choked out. “Jemmy and me was just trying to find it, but—”

  “Mills, Jeremiah, you will lift Maggie up, please, and all of you step to the side. There . . . that is better,” Relia declared, staring intently at the intricately patterned high pile Isfahan carpet onto which the clear crystal had disappeared as if by magic. Eyes left, eyes right. Slowly, Relia and the two footmen circled the area, willing the crystal to catch the light.

  “There, ma’am!” Mills called, pointing. “You was right. Maggie was a-sitting on it.”

  Dropping to her knees, Relia picked up the two-inch crystal that had dangled from the lowest tier of the chandelier. She held it up to the sunlight, slowly turning it around as the three servants and those hovering in the doorways held their breaths. “It is perfectly fine,” she declared, followed by whooshes of relief from all sides.

  “My dear Mrs. Lanning, are you hurt?” cried a voice from the doorway. “Allow me to help you!” Charles Saunders rushed forward, arms outstretched. It was, Relia noted, the first time she had ever seen the solicitor lose his equanimity.

  “Mr. Saunders! What an unexpected pleasure,” Relia beamed, allowing Mr. Saunders to help her to her feet. “I am perfectly fine, I assure you. I fear you have caught us in the midst of a small domestic crisis, which is now resolved. Maggie, you will cease your caterwauling this instant. It was an accident, the crystal is unbroken.” Relia handed the errant object to Mills with the adjuration to see it reattached to the chandelier immediately. “And now, Mr. Saunders, allow me to tell you I am delighted you have arrived just in time for Twelfth Night.”

  “And allow me to apologize for charging in, as curious as everyone else, to discover what the fuss was all about,” said Mr. Saunders, white teeth gleaming beneath his patrician nose and clear blue eyes. “There seems to be a dash of knight errant in every man, I confess, although I am pleased to discover you have the situation well in hand.” He favored Relia with the boyish smile that never failed to charm, even though she knew quite well that it covered an intelligence and a will almost as formidable as that of her husband.

  “And is it not just like Thomas,” Mr. Saunders added, “not to apprize you of my coming, particularly when I made such an effort to break away from my dear mama so I could be here before the others arrived. And, speaking of my mama, she would be quite horrified to have such an unexpected intrusion into a party of hers. If I have I overset your table arrangements, I will dine in my room.”

  Relia, slightly overwhelmed by this torrent of words, assured Mr. Saunders his arrival was a delight, not an intrusion. “In fact,” she told him, “you will balance the table, for Lady Gravenham has just sent a note requesting permission to bring an unexpected guest. My cousin Twyford.”

  “Good Gad, I thought we had vanquished him!” Mr. Saunders expostulated.

  “Twyford tends to be irrepressible,” Relia noted wryly. “He keeps popping up, like the proverbial bad penny. He quite delights in twitting me; he always did. Though how he has pulled the wool over Lady Gravenham’s eyes I cannot imagine, for she has known him since he was in short coats. Ah, Biddeford,” Relia added as she caught sight of the butler, who had been dealing with the hysterical maid Maggie and supervising the repair of the chandelier, “Mr. Saunders’ room has been kept ready for him, has it not? And please inform Mr. Lanning of his arrival.”

  With a look that quite rivaled her husband’s for bland suavity, Relia turned back to her guest. “Now tell me, Mr. Saunders, precisely what you meant when you said you wished to arrive before the others.”

  “I—I . . .” The London solicitor fingered his watch fob, twisted his neck as if his cravat were strangling him.

  “We are expecting some colleagues down from London, are we not, Saunders?” said Thomas Lanning from the doorway. “If I am to spend time in the country, then the City must come to me. I did not speak of it, my dear, because they are not expected for several days yet. Time enough to prepare after we are done with tonight’s party. Come, Charles, into the bookroom where we can talk without cluttering up Mrs. Lanning’s preparations.”

  As the two men escaped—there was no other word for it—Relia watched with narrowed eyes. If the men coming down from London were candidates for the position of steward, she would be glad enough of it, for she was more than ready to turn over that particular burden. But somehow she suspected this was not the case. She sensed a mystery, a subtle undercurrent that prickled the air around her. If she were speaking to her husband in anything other than necessary monosyllables, she might have pursued the matter, but their current relations were strained, to say the least.

  And tonight was the party. Yes, devil fly away with the man! Tonight they were entertaining everyone who was anyone in a goodly portion of Kent. For it seemed those without children must also be included lest they consider themselves excluded from the Pevensey Park visiting list. Therefore, Mrs. Thomas Lanning now found herself entertaining in a manner far beyond anything she had envisioned when she had made her rash offer of a Twelfth Night party for the children.

  Papa, forgive me. I’ve tried so hard, but I’ve made a rare mull of it.

  The look on Thomas Lanning’s face when he gazed down the length of the dining table that evening and saw Mr. Twyford Trevor happily conversing with Miss Olivia Lanning, while sneaking glances down her thankfully modest décolletage, Relia considered well worth the annoyance of enduring her cousin’s presence. She supposed that placing the two together was unworthy of the gracious hostess she hoped to be, but the temptation for revenge had been too great. Relia looked up to find her husband’s lethal gaze fixed on her. With a gracious smile, seemingly perfectly oblivious to the lightning bolts cast in her direction, she turned her attention to Baron Trent on her left.

  Later, said her husband’s steely eyes. Just wait ‘til later!

  When Relia gave the signal for the ladies to leave the gentlemen to their port, Olivia and Chloe Stanton hastened off to join Miss Aldershot and the younger Twelfth Night celebrants, both girls having been easily convinced that their help with the children would be much appreciated. Truth to tell, they were not beyond the enjoyment of games, and airy promises from both Harry Stant
on and Twyford Trevor to look in on the children’s festivities gave added incentive to their excitement. The girls’ departure, alas, left Relia to entertain a bevy of older ladies, with the Trent’s widowed daughter, Jane Edmundson, the only person close to her own age. And Mrs. Edmundson, Relia thought, would be of little use, for she seemed a quiet slip of a girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And help was surely needed when, after forty minutes of music dutifully performed by Mrs. Lanning and several of the guests, Lady Gravenham turned to her hostess and declared, “Well, girl, what made you do it? Come, come, I am certain we all wish to know.”

  “My lady?” Relia lifted her head high and stared with limpid eyes at Captain Alan Fortescue’s mother.

  Lady Gravenham, a handsome woman just barely on the shady side of fifty, looked down her considerable length of nose and sniffed her disdain. “Do not dissemble with me, child. You could have had your pick of the ton, including your cousin or even the squire’s eldest, yet you chose a Cit. Tell us without roundaboutation, I pray you, what made you do such a daft thing. Your poor parents would never have countenanced such a maladroit misalliance.” All around the drawing room heads were nodding.

  So this is why they came, Relia sighed. Just when she thought the shock of her marriage had dissipated—that the ripples on the smooth pond of life in Kent were going to be allowed to slide away unremarked. This must be where she was supposed to drag out the story she had hoped never to use except with Lord Hubert and his family. Somehow, here and now, it was much harder to tell, perhaps because the gap between herself and her husband had become a chasm.

  They were all looking at her. Expectantly. Accusingly.

  “Really, my dear,” said Margaret Stanton, “I believe you owe us some explanation. All of us must live with Mr. Lanning in our midst.”