"I don't,” he murmured.
"Let's see. I shan't call it a marriage of convenience; that has overtones of money and position, and marrying for personal advantage. I could call it a marriage of practicality, but that sounds far too mundane. Not quite the sort of thing such an angelic young woman would ordinarily do, if you see what I mean. But of course! I shall call it a Marriage of Mercy. Perfect, my dear Greywell, absolutely perfect. They'll all understand; see if they don't. You won't stay with her here, of course, and she will need to have the parish folk on her side, willing to lend her a hand. What could be more fitting for our purpose than to call it a Marriage of Mercy?"
"What indeed?"
She blinked uncertainly at his ironic tone. Her brandy was gone and he didn't offer to refill her glass, so she set it aside with a gesture of supreme indifference. “Your grief has disordered your mind, Greywell. Nothing could be more injurious to our plan than for you to marry and stay at Ashfield with her."
"I hadn't intended to."
"Ah, well, good. She'll do very well on her own, better than you could. I haven't the slightest doubt she'll wheedle the little lad back into health in no time."
"Haven't you?” he demanded. “What could this Angel of Mercy do that I haven't done, or the wet nurse, or the nursery maid? We're at our wits’ ends trying to find a way to strengthen him. The doctor is of no use, how could Miss Parkstone be?"
Abigail looked surprised at his anger, and slightly offended.
"But I know she will restore him to health. That's what I'm telling you, Greywell. That's why I came."
Exasperation, mixed with a great deal of nervous energy and a tiny drop of superstitious belief, propelled him to his feet. In times of severe stress such as Lord Greywell was suffering during his grief and his waning hope for his son, one is likely to grasp at the merest straw in the wind. Greywell knew this and refused to be taken in by her mysterious air of precognition. She was nothing but a crazy old woman—a longtime and dear friend, of course, but still...
"Abigail,” he said sternly, “you can't know anything of the sort. You came for a visit and for ... a little refreshment."
"Would I go out on a day like this, without a proper wrap, just for a neighborly visit? You haven't been the most congenial companion these last months, Greywell, as you must know very well. It was this matter of Elizabeth that brought me."
"Elspeth."
"Have it your own way,” she snapped, rising unsteadily to her feet. “No one ever wants to listen to older, wiser heads. The young always think they know what's best. And your parents were both very proper,” she added with a sniff as she turned toward the door.
"I'll send you home in the carriage, Abigail."
"There's no need,” she said, but she stopped where she was while he gave a sharp tug to the pull. Selsey entered almost immediately with word that the carriage, anticipated, would be at the door in five minutes.
"Please sit down while you wait,” Greywell urged. “You must understand, dear ma'am, that it would be most irregular for me to even consider marriage so soon after Caroline's death.” He ran a hand through his brown hair, shaking his head dispiritedly. “It would be disrespectful, even if it served a purpose, which I cannot believe it would. I simply haven't the heart for it."
"It's not for your own sake that you would be doing it, but for poor Caroline and her child. Sometimes sacrifices are required of us, Greywell.” She dropped back onto the cozy chair, regarding him intently. “You would be doing the young woman a service, too, you know, getting her away from all her father's bastards. A very uncomfortable position for a young woman to be in."
"If she wished to be out of it, she's apparently had the opportunity."
Abigail cocked her head at him. “By marrying one of the young men in the neighborhood? What good would that do? She would still be there, and possibly an embarrassment to her husband. No, she's very wisely avoided making a connection there. What she needs is to be a great distance away from all that. At Ashfield she'd have enough responsibility to keep her occupied while you were away in Venice."
"Vienna."
"I prefer Venice myself, but these government people never have any taste. Would you be away long?"
"Probably a few months. Negotiations always take longer than you expect."
She bobbed her head up and down. “Excellent. The longer you're away the better."
"I can't like to be away from Andrew that long. If he were to..."
"Don't worry about that. Eliz ... Elspeth will have him robust by the time you return.” Abigail shifted slightly in her chair so she could better face him. “What alternative do you have, my dear fellow? If you stay here, there's not a thing you can do about the babe. You will just mope about the house, casting gloom over everything. But if you bring the young woman here, with her sunny disposition she'll straighten things out in short order. Thank your lucky stars this excellent scheme has been put forward by your uncle. I never credited him with such sense."
Greywell regarded her ruefully. “You make the absurd sound reasonable, ma'am. I wish I had your confidence in the plan's utility and propriety. Frankly, I don't wish to consider it at all. It would be wrong for me to marry again so soon, and I cannot think why Miss Parkstone would wish to marry me, even if she's not perfectly comfortable in her neighborhood."
"Wrong?” Abigail snorted. “It's what's in your heart that determines what's right and what's wrong, Greywell, not the appearance that small-minded folk may take to gossiping about. It's between you and your conscience. And if you know you've done nothing of which to be ashamed, you can look anyone in the eye. As to the young lady ... well, perhaps she wouldn't be interested. But you can't know unless you ask her, can you?"
Selsey entered to announce that the carriage was at the door before Greywell could answer her. With profound relief, he dropped the subject, walking with her to the carriage and handing her in himself. “Thank you for coming, Abigail. I hope you won't take a chill."
"I never take a chill,” she asserted as she settled back against the squabs. “And the sooner you take care of this business, the sooner you will be able to get on with your life. That's the responsibility the living have to the dead, Greywell, getting on with life."
His murmur was neither consent nor disagreement. He closed the carriage door firmly and nodded to the coachman to start. Inside the carriage Abigail had her eyes closed again, and he watched the vehicle draw away with a troubled frown before he hunched his shoulders against the cold and took the stairs two at a time back into the house. Selsey inquired if he was ready for his dinner, which had been waiting these twenty minutes past.
"Very well. I'll just have a look in at the nursery first."
His habit of checking on his son just before each meal was not conducive to leaving him in good appetite, but then that wasn't why he went. If he went after his meals, he felt guilty looking down at the pale, undernourished child who seemed unable to gain weight despite the wet nurse's assurance that he suckled reasonably well.
What was the matter with Andrew? The question was never far from his mind, though the doctor told him some children were simply born with weak constitutions and there was nothing he or anyone else could do to make the child healthy.
Greywell watched the small bundle that was his son, tightly wrapped and sleeping in the beautiful, lacy cradle Caroline had prepared for him. The baby's tiny lips were in motion even as he slept, making sucking noises accompanied by an occasional whimper. Andrew slept a great deal, and when he was awake he seldom cried. Instead he lay quietly, his dark eyes looking enormous in his pallid face, gazing about the small area his vision covered. The room was kept in semi-darkness, as though a perpetual sickroom, and a disagreeable odor of burned pastilles frequently greeted Greywell's nostrils as he entered.
He touched the soft skin of his son's cheek now, almost wishing he would wake. If the child's eyes were open Greywell felt some special kinship with him when their gazes met. And w
hen Andrew was awake, he would talk to him, awkwardly urging him to grow strong. Sometimes he would tell the uncomprehending babe about his mother and how much she had wanted to have him. Sometimes he would speak of the pleasures that awaited Andrew when he was older—the angling and horseback riding and cricket and dozens of other activities he himself had enjoyed when he was a boy. The child watched him when he spoke, the large eyes almost unblinking.
When he visited the nursery, Greywell always sent the wet nurse and the nursery maid from the room. Things were difficult enough without their curious, pitying stares. He wished one or the other of them would take more interest in his son, would feel the kind of devotion a mother might have given the lad. But they did their jobs, and assumed the child would die because they had seen it happen before. It was the strong who survived, not the puny, sickly ones like Andrew.
Even the housekeeper, Mrs. Green, who had been at Ashfield for twenty years, showed less interest in the babe than he would have expected. They were all convinced the child would die, and they weren't going to invest any special emotion in a lost cause. Their unspoken but clearly entrenched fatalism disturbed him so much he was tempted to send them all packing, despite Mrs. Green's years of devoted service to his family.
The sleeping baby turned his head restlessly as Greywell gazed down at him. The very helplessness of the infant overwhelmed him, and his own impotence made him feel nervously restless. Was there truly something he could be doing for the child that he wasn't? Abigail was undoubtedly a little loose in the haft, but she had seemed so sure about the Parkstone girl. Would someone with a sympathetic heart make a difference in his household? Nonsense. There was no saying the woman would be any more sympathetic to his son than all the others. If she entered the nursery, wouldn't she be as infected by despair as all the others?
Did he owe it to his son to at least meet Elspeth Parkstone?
Chapter Three
A hard frost had set in at Lyndhurst. The trees were almost bare of leaves and dark branches stood stark against the wintry sky. It was early yet for snow, but Elspeth wouldn't have been surprised to see the odd flurry of flakes descend as she hurried toward the house thumping her gloved hands against her sides to keep them warm. The ground was hard under her booted feet, and her toes felt numb from her ride. Her mare had needed exercising, but it had been too cold to stay out long, the icy wind whipping through her hair and turning her nose red. The fact that her appearance was totally disheveled didn't bother her in the least. Her only intention now was to head for the Gold Saloon, where a fire would be blazing.
If Elspeth had taken the mare into the stable, she would have noticed the extra horses and the extra men, but her groom had met her in the stableyard and led Minstrel straight in to be rubbed down. The lad was more interested in caring for her horse than in gossiping about the visitor who had arrived, which ordinarily would have pleased Elspeth. Grooms, she had noticed, were frequently less interested in people than they were in horses, and consequently it was not usually in the stable that rumor and gossip abounded. On this particular occasion she would have appreciated a warning, but Tommy had no way of knowing that, and had merely said, “Cold as an icehouse this afternoon, ain't it?"
Which had led her to think about icehouses and the possibility of serving ices at the summer fete as a special treat. They'd never tried it before and it would certainly provide an interesting novelty which the fetes under Mr. Blockley's direction frequently lacked. As a footman opened the door to her she was wondering where she should jot down the idea so she would be sure to remember it when next summer came.
"Is my father in?” she asked.
"In the Gold Saloon, Miss Parkstone. He asked that you join him there.” The footman did not add that Sir Edward had a visitor, since Sir Edward had strictly instructed him not to.
Elspeth thanked him and stripped her gloves from her cold hands. The footman relieved her of them, and her rumpled bonnet, and preceded her to the parlor, where he elaborately swung open the door. Elspeth didn't notice this uncharacteristic gesture of elegance, since she was in the process of tucking her hair back under the pins which had come loose. She stopped abruptly on the threshold, her fingers twined in her windblown tresses, when she realized her father was not alone in the room.
Beside him, rising now from one of the Queen Anne chairs, was an unfamiliar gentleman whose height alone reminded her of Mr. Blockley. Nothing else about him bore the slightest resemblance. He had dark hair, brushed forward in the fashionable mode à la Brutus, and on him it looked natural. Elspeth had seen a half-dozen of the younger blades in Aylesbury on whom it looked perfectly ridiculous.
This fellow, too, wore a starched cravat with delicate, intricate folds, and a well-cut black coat of superfine, but rather than projecting an air of high fashion, he somehow struck her as terribly sad. It was probably his face that gave the impression, she thought.
Though he was no more than a half-dozen years older than she, Elspeth guessed, his countenance had a careworn quality, with lines etched about his eyes and his mouth. Only the prominent, strong chin and the finely chiseled nose retrieved his appearance from being grim. He studied her now with melancholy eyes whose color she could not determine across the room, and his mouth never curved into a smile when he acknowledged her introduction. His voice, rather solemn in its deep timbre, nonetheless affected her with its gentleness.
But any favorable impression she might have received was shattered when her father announced, “Elspeth, this is Lord Greywell. Hampden's nephew, you know."
Certainly she should have known. Not that he bore any resemblance to the rather florid Winterbourne, but simply because he was here. She made no further effort to straighten her hair, instead dropping her hands listlessly to her sides and nodding a greeting to him. Despite her annoyance with her father and Hampden Winterbourne, she could not entirely bring herself to be unkind to this obviously grief-stricken gentleman.
"Mr. Winterbourne told me of your sad loss,” she said as she crossed the room to join them. “You have my deepest sympathy."
"Thank you. It was good of Hampden to stay at Ashfield with me for so long."
Greywell waited for her to seat herself before disposing himself in the chair he'd risen from. Sir Edward was regarding his daughter's disheveled appearance with chagrin tempered by the necessity to say nothing in front of their guest.
And she was rather unkempt, Greywell thought, with her tousled hair, her red nose, and her dusty boors. Apparently no one had told her there was a visitor and she'd come straight from a ride—she wore an attractive navy-blue riding habit—straight to the parlor to warm herself. It was bitterly cold outdoors. Greywell could hear the wind beating against the windows of the room. Not exactly the sort of day a young woman usually chose to ride out for pleasure. Perhaps she'd gone on some mission of mercy to one of the families in the neighborhood. The thought encouraged him somehow.
There was a moment's silence before Elspeth turned to her father to ask. “Have you rung for refreshment for Lord Greywell?"
Sir Edward, who had entirely forgotten, said, “We were waiting for you, my dear."
"Would you prefer tear, or something stronger?” Elspeth asked their visitor as she rang for the footman. His eyes were gray, she decided as their gazes met. A rather interesting color, and unusual in their intensity.
"Tea will be fine, thank you."
Her father usually had Madeira at any time past three in the afternoon, but he said smoothly now, “That will be fine for me, too, dear."
Elspeth lifted her brows briefly in surprise, but did no more than relay her instructions to the footman. Tea, in Sir Edward's oft-expressed opinion, was the worst-tasting beverage ever invented by man. He didn't consider it redeemable, either, by adding a dollop of spirits. When visitors of whatever description came, it was his invariable rule to have his Madeira brought in with the tea, and Elspeth hadn't considered it even necessary to ask him. The footman gave no sign that there was an
ything unusual in her order as he withdrew his bland countenance from the room.
Again there was a silence, with Lord Greywell and Sir Edward both watching her expectantly, as though she were responsible for the conversation which would ensue. Elspeth felt her irritation grow. There was nothing the matter with either of their tongues, and she didn't want them staring at her disordered hair and crumpled riding habit that way. If someone had bothered to inform her they had a guest, she would have made herself presentable and not felt quite so much like an object of curiosity. She didn't choose to think about why Lord Greywell had come.
"Hampden said your son was not very stout, Lord Greywell,” Elspeth finally stated. “I hope he's stronger now."
"I'm afraid not. He continues rather sickly despite our best efforts to strengthen him."
Greywell's eyes were hooded for a moment, and one hand tightened against the chair arm where it rested. “The doctor in our neighborhood, Dr. Wellow, says there are some infants who simply have a difficult time. He doesn't know what the problem is."
"Have you considered changing his wet nurse? Her milk may not agree with the child.” Elspeth ignored her father's frown.
"Wellow doesn't seem to think that's the problem. He's content to let matters rest as they are."
Elspeth grimaced. “But then, the child isn't his, Lord Greywell. Even the best of our doctors are not as knowledgeable as one might wish. If the child isn't thriving after this length of time, surely some change should be made in its routine to seek a better solution. One cannot blindly continue to follow a path which is leading nowhere."
Sir Edward interrupted sharply. “I'm sure Lord Greywell doesn't follow any path blindly, Elspeth. He's acting on the recommendation of his physician."
His daughter said nothing as the tea tray was brought in. Mrs. Hinton had seen that Cook included Scotch shortbread and queen cakes and seed biscuits as well as bread and butter in honor of their titled visitor. As usual, Elspeth poured, inquiring of the viscount whether he took cream and sugar and passing the plate of cakes to him first. She prepared her father's tea exactly as his lordship's, since she assumed Sir Edward wouldn't bother drinking it anyhow. And then, smiling blandly at the two of them, she rose, excused herself, and left the room.
Lord Greywell's Dilemma Page 4