by Nikki Poppen
Marianne adjusted her seat for a better view. “Oh,” she gasped. Even the little bit she could glimpse was astounding. By the time the whole house came into view, she was mesmerized.
The Georgian facade of the house stretched into two long wings flanking the marble-columned entrance and the curved stairs leading from the drive to the enormous front door. The driveway ended in a loop so that carriages could drop off passengers and head toward the stables without needing to back up. The center of that loop was graced with a mini-version of a meticulously kept Alpine garden complete with mountain rocks strategically placed among the profusion of white and violet wildflowers and spindly pine.
“The house is spectacular,” Marianne whispered in awe. Alasdair had once referred to his home as the “old pile.” From his reference, she’d envisioned something of a more ramshackle nature. “I can see why the prince wanted to come here. I’d never leave this place”
Audrey laughed and leaned forward to impart a confidence. “I agree, but the English will tell you that life in the countryside is too dull for them”
Their carriage pulled to a halt behind the one carrying Lionel and Stella. Camberly jumped down and helped Marianne and Audrey out. The third carriage, carrying her parents, pulled up behind them. By the time they’d reached the top of the stairs, Alasdair was there to meet them. Marianne hung back, letting Lionel and Camberly greet their friend.
She had not seen Alasdair in over a week, and now, watching him with his friends in his own personal venue, she felt like she was seeing him for the first time. Certainly he was still the same handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed man with the broad shoulders she loved to hold while dancing; physically, he looked the same as always. But there was an undeniable change. In London, Marianne had often forgotten he was the Viscount Pennington. There, it had been easy to think of him as merely a gentleman. Now, she could see it more clearly. Here, in the countryside, at his family seat, the mantle of being the viscount sat squarely and almost tangibly upon those broad shoulders of his.
Marianne was struck at once by the reservation in his manner, the stiff formality he exuded even when greeting his friends. She’d thought that, once in the country, away from the standards of the ton, he’d be even more relaxed than he usually appeared. She could see immediately that she was wrong about that.
The little group parted and Alasdair strode toward her. “Miss Addison, welcome to Highborough, family seat to four generations of Penningtons.” He bowed over her hand and greeted her parents with the same polite enthusiasm. This was not the sort of reunion she’d imagined. A frightening thought swept her: Had Alasdair changed his mind? Had he come home and imagined her in this elegant, traditional setting and failed to see her fitting in? Worse, had he come home and seen Sarah Stewart? Perhaps, in that case, absence had made the heart grow fonder.
These thoughts plagued her to distraction as she oversaw the unpacking of her trunk. By the time the dinner hour neared, Marianne’s apprehensions were mounting. No matter how often she told herself that it was ridiculous to let her speculations unnerve her, the butterflies in her stomach continued to flutter. She was thankful that they’d all been able to arrive in advance of the other guests. The rest of the party guests wouldn’t arrive for another four days, giving Stella and Audrey time to help Alasdair with last-minute preparations.
There was a knock on her door and Marianne was glad to see her mother there, instead of one of the many maids who’d been parading in and out of her chambers, whisking dresses off to be pressed. There seemed to be an enormous amount of maids assigned singly to see to her needs.
“You seem relieved to see me” Her mother offered a gentle smile, sitting down on the corner of Marianne’s bed. She was already dressed for dinner in a tasteful gown of dark blue silk trimmed in cream lace. She looked elegant and confident. Marianne wished she could feel at least half that collected.
“I am,” Marianne confessed. She pulled the small white chair from the dressing table near the bed. “There are so many people to help me with everything imaginable. It’s quite overwhelming. I am perfectly capable of brushing my own hair and picking out my own dresses”
Elizabeth Addison laughed softly. “England is a different world, isn’t it? Is it all you’d hoped?”
“It’s more than I’d hoped,” Marianne replied, realizing the truth of it for the first time. “I never anticipated lifestyles on this grand scale or the opportunity to meet the prince. I had no idea the size of estates was so large.” She’d planned carefully before their departure from San Francisco. There had been the appointments with Worth, the tutoring from a reputable Englishwoman living in Paris about the mind-boggling assortment of appropriate forms of address, and a crash course in English life and culture. But none of it met up with the realities of seeing the English peerage in action up close. Marianne had planned her campaign with immense attention to detail and still it hadn’t been enough.
Her mother reached for her hand to squeeze in reassurance. “I think you’re doing very well. We all are. Your father has made some good business contacts through Camberly and Lionel. He’s looking forward to the racing at Cowes immensely. And I’ve enjoyed seeing a different part of the world, despite how overwhelming it can be at times.”
“Doing well?” Marianne countered. “I’m unsure of that. I’ve teetered on the brink of scandal since my arrival.”
“I’m not convinced it is so much the brink of scandal as it is a natural consequence of popularity, Marianne. You didn’t ask to be the center of attention, but it happened anyway” Marianne had confided all of Alasdair’s details to her mother. Elizabeth was well aware of Brantley’s shenanigans. But to her credit, she’d brushed it aside.
“Besides, Marianne, we know you’ve done nothing wrong. The English have a decidedly different outlook on what constitutes a scandal than we do. In fact, they have quite a different outlook on many things. I think they like to see our fortunes and conveniently forget how they were acquired, even if it was through honest hard work.”
She paused and then added, “Your father and I laugh over the improbability of our situation. It’s a fabulous dream to think that a baker’s son and his wife, the daughter of a New England college professor, are dining among the aristocracy, soon to meet the future king of England.”
Marianne smiled at that. Theirs was indeed quite an American tale, made of the stuff of dreams. Then her smile faded. Would Alasdair laugh at such fantasy? He’d been raised to dine with dukes and monarchs his entire life. What could he possibly want with a baker’s granddaughter?
“You’re thinking about the viscount,” her mother divined. “Do you like him?”
Marianne gave a nervous laugh. “I’ve enjoyed his company very much in London. But here, he appears different. Today on the steps, I felt that I was meeting him for the first time and I realized exactly how dissimilar our backgrounds are”
“It must be a grave undertaking to host the prince, my dear. The viscount is no doubt under a large strain.”
“What if he’s decided that he likes Sarah Stewart better than me?” Marianne blurted out.
“Then you’ll both be infinitely happier in the long run, my dear.” Elizabeth smiled. “You could never be happy with a man who thought he loved another. You deserve better than that” She paused, assessing Marianne with a gaze that made her daughter fidget. Marianne loved her mother, but sometimes she saw too much. “I know you came here motivated in large part by what happened in New York,” said her mother. “I think it was the right decision to come to London. If you fall off a horse, you have to get right back up. Maybe, you even thought to grab yourself a title. However, I don’t think you thought about everything attendant with accomplishing that goal, such as the husband that would go with the title.”
Marianne gave a wry smile of admission. It sounded a bit on the petty side when her mother explained it like that, but at least her mother understood her initial motivations and understood that something stronge
r than pettiness had motivated her actions. She’d wanted more than girlish revenge when she’d set out on this path. She’d wanted redemption, and perhaps even a type of justice for the cruel prank that had been pulled on her with such severe repercussions.
“Have you and Alasdair reached any kind of understanding I should know about?” Elizabeth inquired politely, rising from the bed to search through Marianne’s wardrobe.
Although Marianne had shared Brantley’s schemes with her mother, she had not shared all the details of her association with Alasdair. For all that her mother had seen from the outside looking in was a man who’d escorted Marianne to several social functions as part of a group. He’d always acted with decorum. His behavior, while befitting a suitor, was also the impeccable behavior of a polite family friend wishing only to include Marianne and her family in his circle of acquaintances. Truly, if the newspapers hadn’t lent a torrid edge to their association, no one would have thought Alasdair’s interest was motivated by anything other than politeness. Marianne herself might have believed it too if it hadn’t been for those two kisses.
Marianne blushed. “He said in London that he wished to court me. He said we deserved a chance to see if we suited one another.”
Her mother nodded approvingly. “He’s a smart man, then, who knows the value of a good marriage and that the value isn’t necessarily calculated in financial wealth.”
“Perhaps. Maybe he wants to see if I fit, if I can be a countess,” Marianne remarked ruefully.
Her mother turned from her perusal of the wardrobe, a warning in her tone. “You do not have to remake yourself for any man, Marianne. You can be a countess, perhaps just a different type of countess than what they’re used to seeing over here. Audrey St. ClairMaddox has done an admirable job from what I can tell. Of course, I don’t know her all that well, but she seems well adjusted. More importantly, she seems happy, as does Camberly-although I doubt she’s the countess he thought he’d have. She runs a music school for girls and continues her own career as a pianist.”
Marianne nodded. She understood what her mother was saying and it made sense to keep herself intact. A man who wanted the outer shell of who she was, but who didn’t want the inner layers that went with it-all her opinions and beliefs-was not a man to be desired. But it wasn’t that simple in reality. She was falling in love with Alasdair Braden and she desperately wanted him to love her in return.
“How about the ivory gown?” Her mother held up a dress exquisitely embroidered around the hem with seed pearls. It was one of Marianne’s favorites for its simple yet graceful design. But tonight she wanted to stand out, to remind Alasdair that she was in the room no matter who else was there. Marianne shook her head. “I had thought to wear the royal blue silk.”
Her mother nodded sagely. “Save it for the house party. The ivory gown will accomplish what you wish.”
In the end, Marianne knew her mother was right. She surveyed the effect of the gown in the long looking glass in her room. Worth’s gifted tailoring fit the gown perfectly to the trim line of her waist and emphasized her long legs with the sweep of the skirt that swished softly as she walked. The bodice showed off the feminine slope of her shoulders. The wrap Worth had created from antique lace, to go especially with the gown, completed the ensemble perfectly. Marianne was glad now to have bowed to his finer judgment in that regard. She’d secretly thought the lace wrap no more than a scrap of material to be toted around. Now, as she saw the final image, she was happy to have kept that thought to herself.
The woman who wore this gown was more than a debutante in a standard pale-colored dress. This woman was loveliness itself, existing in that precarious balance between naive innocence and worldliness. In any case, neither of those attributes suited Marianne. No one growing up in San Francisco as she’d done could ever compete with the total ingenuousness of the English schoolroom miss who’d seen nothing of life; neither could she claim, although well educated, to be a scholar of the world and its many vices. Which was as it should be.
Marianne’s confidence was restored as she followed her parents down to the drawing room to meet the others for dinner. Audrey greeted them warmly, drawing them into the conversation with effortless skill, while Camberly inquired about the latest update on her father’s yacht.
From the corner of her eye, Marianne spotted Alasdair by the long window talking with an older gentleman. He said something to the man and began making his way toward her, the smile she had enjoyed so much in London on his lips. Perhaps it had been the strain of the party, after all, that had caused him to look so stern earlier. He seemed perfectly fine now. Marianne couldn’t help but smile back, so great was her relief.
“You look beautiful,” he said, bowing over her gloved hand. “I’ve come to steal her away, Lady Camberly,” he said to Audrey, catching Marianne by surprise. Whenever Alasdair had been en famille with his close friends, he’d always called Lady Camberly “Audrey.” Marianne had to think for a moment about who he was referring to, so foreign was the reference.
“Come, there are people I want you to meet,” Alasdair said, taking Marianne by the elbow. He guided her to where the man still stood at the window, looking out over the vast parkland of the estate.
“Mr. Stewart, I would like for you to meet Miss Marianne Addison of San Francisco,” Alasdair began formally. He turned slightly and Marianne noticed for the first time that someone else was sitting in the chair by the long curtains that framed the window. The woman in the chair was youngish, in her midtwenties, and might have been passably attractive if she hadn’t worn a gown that blended so ideally with the deep forest green of the draperies. The gown contained almost nothing in the way of trimmings that might have set it apart from the curtains. Her brown hair was styled in a simple chignon that was held in a net, and her very demeanor was quiet and withdrawn, making it easy to overlook her presence. Marianne knew who this woman was before Alasdair told her, but it still came as a shock to hear the words come his lips. “Miss Addison, I’d also like to introduce his daughter, Miss Sarah Stewart.”
Marianne greeted Sarah Stewart in as polite and as friendly a manner as she could. All the while, her thoughts ran riot. This was the woman his mother wanted him to marry? Marianne couldn’t imagine a more unlikely pairing. Did the woman not know her son at all? Alasdair was a vibrant man, full of life and energy. The woman in the chair was an expert at making herself invisible.
Miss Stewart smiled and said warmly, “So this is the girl you’ve talked about so much, Pennington.” She turned back to Marianne. “I am so pleased to meet you, Miss Addison. He’s talked of nothing but you since he arrived last week and now I can see why. You’re here at last, and we can be friends.” She rose from her chair and looped her arm through Marianne’s. “I want to hear all about San Francisco. I would love to travel, myself, but my responsibilities don’t permit me to go very far for very long”
“She’s a good girl, my Sarah is,” Mr. Stewart said with gruff affection. “She knows her father can’t get on without her. She runs my house with an efficiency I can’t match”
“Come stroll with me. We have at least fifteen minutes before the dinner bell sounds. You can tell me about the hills and how the trolley cars manage on them.”
Marianne had not expected to like Sarah Stewart, but as they talked she found it nearly impossible not to like the young woman whose interest seemed sincere and entirely unlike the superficial friendliness offered by Roberta Farnwick. Their conversation was progressing well when Alasdair joined them, an older woman on his arm.
“Miss Addison, I am sorry to interrupt, but there’s another introduction I’d like to make. Miss Addison, I’d like for you to meet my mother, the dowager countess Pennington.”
Marianne could tell immediately that this was not going to turn out to be a pleasant surprise as meeting Miss Stewart had been. Alasdair’s mother glared at her with a narrow gaze, effectively communicating precisely what the woman thought of her: that she was
an American nobody far beneath her notice and certainly too far beneath her son to warrant the attentions he paid her.
Marianne greeted her with all the respect due the woman’s station, a bit shocked at the woman’s openly intense dislike. She’d been prepared to meet a woman who tried to meddle in her grown son’s life, but she hadn’t been prepared for the extreme loathing the woman displayed. Marianne tried to ignore Lady Pennington’s behavior. “Your son has been the most dedicated of escorts in London. He’s gone out of his way to see to our comfort”
“Quite so” The woman returned with a supercilious coldness. Sarah, standing next to her, blushed and Alasdair’s jaw tightened, as though both were mortified by the countess’ poor manners.
In her peripheral vision, Marianne caught a glimpse of her father talking with his usual enthusiasm to a group gathered about him as all nodded their heads. Seeing him reminded her of something he’d once said. She understood perfectly now. Alasdair’s mother didn’t detest her as much as the woman feared her. Her father had once told her that people often hated whatever threatened them. Hatred followed closely on the heels of fear. For whatever reason, Alasdair’s mother feared her.
The notion of this formidable dowager fearing a young woman from San Francisco struck Marianne as oddly hilarious, not to mention ridiculous. Marianne couldn’t imagine any reason for the woman to feel threatened by her. Nonetheless, she did.
The group was saved from any further need to converse by the announcement for dinner, which brought Camberly over to the group, bowing suavely to Alasdair’s mother, ready to take her into dinner.
“Ladies, please excuse me,” Alasdair made a quick nod and departed. It took Marianne a moment to realize why he’d left them. She’d initially thought it odd when there were two ladies waiting to go into dinner standing right there with him. Then she remembered the importance the English put on the seating precedence. Of course, Alasdair was off to escort Audrey into dinner as the next-highest-ranking woman in the room, followed by Stella giving her arm to Sarah’s father, and Lionel coming over to escort Sarah.