Someone to Cherish

by Balogh, Mary

  Perhaps after all Mrs. Piper had taken her indignation home with her to nurse in private. Perhaps she was even feeling remorseful about her hasty rush to judgment. Perhaps … Well, perhaps pigs would fly one of these days.

  Confirmation of her worst fears came when she answered a knock upon her front door late in the afternoon and found Mrs. Bailey, Denise Franks, and Hannah Corning standing ranged across her doorstep, all wearing identical smiles while Snowball bounced along in front of them yapping until Hannah bent and scooped her up.

  “Oh,” Lydia said without returning the smile. “It is as bad as that, is it?” And she turned to walk back into the house, leaving the door open behind her. They could follow her in if they wished or go back home if they did not. It was up to them.

  They followed her in.

  “I do blame myself,” Mrs. Bailey cried, “for not insisting that Major Westcott bring you home first before taking me to the vicarage. I ought to have taken upon myself the role of chaperon. But it is all absolute nonsense anyway, and the vicar agreed with me when he came out of his study to find out what all the fuss was about when Mrs. Franks and Mrs. Corning came to see me. The major is being maligned for being the perfect gentleman and seeing both of us to our doors beneath his umbrella. The vicar is blaming himself for going off with our carriage and leaving you and me to someone else’s care. And Mrs. Wickend did not even die. One sometimes wonders if she ever will. But you, my dear Lydia, have taken the worst of it all.”

  “Lydia.” Denise spread her arms, but Lydia did not step forward to be hugged. “If he did embrace you, even if it was a passionate, full-on-the-lips kiss, all I can say is good for him. And good for you for allowing it. I totally fail to see what is so scandalous about a man kissing a woman on her doorstep after he has escorted her home from an evening party. Mrs. Piper is a silly, hysterical, overly pious gossip. She seems to believe that you ought to have devoted the rest of your life to mourning your husband’s passing. Eternal widowhood and celibacy. The woman is mad.”

  “It is like a tomb in here, Lydia.” Hannah set Snowball down and threw the curtains back from the living room window. “My next-door neighbor, though she does not condemn you, has given it as her opinion that it was indiscreet of you to entertain Harry inside your own house, when you do not have even a servant living here with you. But really, where else could you be private in order to get to know each other properly? It is not as though you are a green young girl, after all, or he a notorious womanizer. Unfortunately, however, gossip does not thrive upon sound reason or common sense. People have too little to talk about that is of any real interest to them, and so they will grab at any gossip, the more salacious the better. But you are not going to have to face all this rubbish alone. We have decided that.”

  “We have indeed,” Mrs. Bailey said firmly. She sniffed. “Lemon tarts? Is that what I smell?”

  “Sugar biscuits with some lemon added,” Lydia said.

  “They smell delicious. I never could resist lemon in sweet things,” Mrs. Bailey said. “Perhaps we can invite ourselves to sit down in your kitchen and be cozy for a little while. May we? And you must tell us if there is indeed anything of a courtship between you and the major. I must say you looked very good together last evening when you were dancing. I remarked upon it to the vicar after I had finished dancing myself. Perhaps this bit of bother will prod the major into coming to the point. Men can be very slow about such things. It took the vicar eight months to work up the courage to propose to me after everyone knew he would get there in the end. I was near to screaming with frustration. I dropped hints as heavy as bricks. But perhaps the major has already asked you?”

  Lydia was plumping up the already plump cushions on the back of the sofa while her three friends were standing in a line with their backs to the window.

  “I will go and make a pot of tea,” she said. “I will be delighted to have you help me eat some of the biscuits. I made a double batch.”

  But before she could move away, they all heard the noisy clopping of hooves and rumbling of wheels and jingling of traces coming from outside, and all of them turned to look through the window. A grand traveling carriage was turning onto the drive to Hinsford Manor. Another carriage, even grander, with a bright crest emblazoned upon the door and a coachman and footman in colorful, smart livery up on the box, turned after it.

  “Major Westcott has visitors,” Mrs. Bailey said unnecessarily.

  “I have seen that carriage before,” Hannah said, wagging a finger at the second one. “It belongs to the Duke of Netherby. That is the ducal crest. The duchess is Major Westcott’s sister. Half sister. The legitimate one.”

  “I wonder,” Denise said, “if he is expecting them. Has he said anything to you, Lydia?”

  Lydia did not answer.

  “They must be coming for his birthday,” Hannah said. “He is going to turn thirty next week, though he has not said a word to anyone. Tom knows, though. He has been talking about arranging some sort of party, perhaps even at the assembly rooms. It looks as if that is going to be unnecessary, however. Oh dear …”

  A third carriage had come into sight and turned after the others onto the drive. And then a fourth.

  The Westcotts were coming in force, Lydia thought. To shield him from any adverse effects of this stupid … scandal that was brewing and threatening to swallow her up. But they could not possibly know about that yet, could they? She did not doubt they soon would, however, and when they did they would close ranks about him and turn up their collective aristocratic nose at the very idea that he could be dragged into such trivial and sordid gossip, all over a mere nobody of a vicar’s widow.

  Her bitterness surprised her. She did not even know any of them. It was just that her emotions were a bit on the raw side today. Well, more than a bit, to be perfectly honest.

  Her friends were unabashedly watching the show proceeding beyond her garden fence. Yet a fifth carriage was approaching. Snowball stood by the front door, barking.

  Lydia went into the kitchen. Well, she thought, it was all her own fault that she was not able to enjoy the show with the others.

  Are you ever lonely?

  Never, surely, had an impulsively asked question brought such ghastly consequences in its wake.

  This would all have been highly coordinated, of course, Harry realized within seconds of clapping eyes upon the first carriage, followed by a second. By the time the others hove into sight, one after another, like some grand parade, he was not even surprised. How very foolish of him to have assumed that his family had simply given up after he had assured a few of them that he was definitely not going to London this spring. This was the Westcott family, after all. They never gave up on something once they had set their minds upon it. They just became more stubborn—and more creative.

  And really the answer to this particular problem had not needed a great leap of imagination. If dear Harry would not go to them, then they would come to dear Harry. As clear as day. Yet Harry himself had not thought of it. Even though they have done it before. When Avery and Alexander had brought him home from Paris, they had expected to take him to London, where his mother and the whole family awaited him. He had insisted upon being brought here instead. But … the family had arrived within days.

  They had all arrived now too. Every last one of them. Plus a few extras for good measure.

  So Mrs. Sullivan and the cook had been too busy taking inventory earlier to serve him anything more elaborate than a cold luncheon, had they? For the first time in living memory, it might be added. And Brown had felt impelled for no apparent reason to change out of his everyday, perfectly respectable butler’s attire into the smart uniform reserved for special occasions, of which there had been very few if any during the past four years, had he? And Mrs. Sullivan had been so intent upon getting the spring cleaning done as soon as possible this year that she had felt it necessary to hire all sorts of extra help during the past few weeks? And extra help in the kitchen in order
to feed all the extra help?

  No doubt his whole house had been cleaned and polished to within an inch of its life and every bed in every spare room made up while he had been almost wholly oblivious. Mrs. Sullivan would have counted upon his maleness making him quite unobservant about matters pertaining to the house. Clearly she knew her man well. Had his head gardener counted upon the same thing with regard to the park? It occurred to Harry now that he was looking for it that the lawns about the house were more than usually immaculate. And he would wager that if he were to wander from one flower bed to another, he would search in vain for either a weed or a drooping bloom.

  His family all arrived within three hours of one another. It was a remarkable feat but not, obviously, above the organizing skills of the aunts—and probably his mother. And Wren and Anna and Elizabeth and all the rest of the women. It was no wonder he had not suspected a thing. The men of the family seemed singularly lacking in such devious organizational abilities. Though they were not necessarily an abject lot. There was the famous occasion, for example—Harry had been in the Peninsula at the time— when Avery had whisked Anna off one afternoon to marry her by special license at the very time when the usual committee was deep in the throes of organizing a grand ton wedding for them. It was one of Harry’s favorite family stories. One thumb up for the men of the family.

  The Dowager Countess of Riverdale, his paternal grandmother, came despite her advanced age, as did Great-aunt Edith, her sister. The aunts came, his father’s sisters— Matilda, Louise, and Mildred, the eldest and youngest of them with their husbands. Then there were Avery and Anna; Alexander and Wren; Elizabeth and Colin; and Cousin Althea, Alex and Elizabeth’s mother. They all brought their children, a few of whom were adults, most of whom were decidedly not. Viscount Dirkson and Aunt Matilda brought his son from his first marriage, Adrian Sawyer.

  Aunts and cousins and assorted others shook Harry’s hand, slapped his back, clasped his shoulder, hugged him, kissed him, laughed and squealed over him, scolded him, and generally greeted him with hearty enthusiasm and unabashed affection. Children, released from long hours of being cooped up inside stuffy carriages, roared and shrieked over the terrace and the lawn and darted into the house, where those who remembered being there before led the way up to the nursery floor while parents largely ignored the mayhem and nurses clucked and fussed and shooed and tried to bring order out of chaos.

  Then there was Harry’s immediate family. First to arrive of that group was his mother, with Marcel and Marcel’s two adult children from another marriage, the twins, Bertrand and Estelle Lamarr. Harry’s stepsiblings.

  “I suppose,” his mother said after hugging him tightly, “you were expecting us.”

  Harry felt like the village idiot because the answer was no. He refrained from answering.

  Truly remarkably, Camille and Joel had done what they had avoided doing at Christmastime. They had left their home in Bath and come all the way to Hinsford with their whole brood.

  “Because I could not possibly allow you to turn thirty without being here to hold your hand, Harry,” Camille remarked as she kissed his cheek.

  Andrew, the deaf one of her children, plucked at Harry’s sleeve and then held up all ten fingers, closed his fists, held up all ten again, and did it once more. Thirty.

  Harry ruffled his nephew’s hair. “Your uncle Harry is getting to be an old man, alas,” he said, making sure the boy could read his lips, though he was not an expert at it.

  Joel was carrying a sleeping twin on each arm and was thus unable to shake his brother-in-law’s hand. He winked at him instead.

  They had brought with them Mrs. Kingsley, Harry’s maternal grandmother. His aunt and uncle, his mother’s brother, had come from Dorsetshire, though somehow they arrived with everyone else.

  Abigail and Gil were the last to arrive, with their three children.

  “We have a bit of a soft spot for Hinsford, Harry,” Gil said, wringing his friend’s hand almost hard enough to break bones after Abigail had hugged him. “It was here that we met and married.”

  “The only reason you came, I suppose,” Harry said, rescuing his hand.

  “There should be another reason?” Gil grinned at him.

  It said a great deal for Mrs. Sullivan’s competence, Harry thought during those hours as he fought bewilderment over the invasion of his quiet, peaceful home and park, that she had a bed for everyone without exception in the house, though it was surely almost bursting at the seams. And presumably she had enough food and space for everyone in the dining room. Harry decided that he simply would not worry about any of it. The women’s committee and Mrs. Sullivan between them would have thought of everything, down to the finest detail and beyond. He would only cause confusion if he tried issuing orders. But he felt a bit as he had when he was brought home from Paris— totally helpless, that was, and rather as if his presence in his own home was redundant despite the fact that he was the reason for everyone’s being here, as he had been then.

  Oh, and upon the theme of the house bursting at the seams—there were a few other guests, all strangers to Harry. They included Miss Leeson, who a month or so ago had become betrothed to Boris Wayne, Harry’s cousin, eldest son of Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas. Miss Leeson’s mother had come too, with another daughter, Miss Fanny Leeson. Great-aunt Edith had brought her great-nephew and great-niece, Gordon and Miranda Monteith, who had come to London from the north of England with their parents for a month or two and had been persuaded to spend a week or so of that time here. And there was Miss Sally Underwood, a cousin of Adrian Sawyer’s on his mother’s side.

  It did not take Harry long to detect a theme.

  If they could not matchmake for him in London at the great marriage mart, his fond female relatives would do the best they could here. Each of the three unattached young ladies was pretty in her own way and refined in manner and doubtless of impeccable lineage and accomplished in all the arts in which young ladies were expected to be accomplished.

  If someone would just be kind enough to shoot him now, Harry thought when he was finally alone and dressing for the evening with more than usual care, that someone would be doing him a great favor. He grinned rather grimly at his image in the glass.

  “A rather elaborate creation, Mark, do you not think?” he asked his valet as he saw what had been done with his neckcloth.

  “Any London valet would weep at the simplicity of it,” Mark said.

  The insubordination of valets! Harry viewed it with a jaundiced eye and turned away from the mirror.

  Amid all the bewildering bustle of the past few hours, he had not for one moment forgotten about Lydia and what had happened to her today. There just had not been a single moment in which to do anything about it, however.

  “We decided to surprise you for your birthday, Harry,” Grandmama Westcott informed him unnecessarily when he weaved his way across his crowded drawing room to make his bow to her. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying predinner drinks without his having to do anything about offering them. “I hope you are happy.” Her manner warned him that she expected an affirmative answer.

  “Ecstatic. And certainly surprised, Grandmama,” he said. “You could have knocked me down with one of the feathers from your bonnet.”

  He smiled at her when she looked at him suspiciously.

  He had not asked yet what was planned for the actual day of his birthday, and no one had volunteered the information. Perhaps that was to be a surprise too. On the whole, he thought it best that it remain that way. It was going to be unavoidable anyway, whatever it was. Just as with a looming battle, all he could do was carry on with his life and face the ordeal with as much courage and fortitude as he could muster when the time came.

  What the devil had happened to Tom Corning this afternoon? He had probably made his escape even before the first carriage rocked to a halt outside the doors of the house, and slunk home to his quiet tea with Hannah. Lucky devil.

  And what was happe
ning with Lydia? Perhaps nothing. Maybe by now the whole stupid storm had blown over for lack of fuel. Was there a mixing of metaphors there? Perhaps the procession of so many grand carriages through the village earlier had provided enough food for chatter and speculation to crowd out all else.

  And just perhaps he was being very naïve.

  Mrs. Piper had decided to whip up trouble—with some success, if Hannah had thought it necessary to send Tom here after school to warn him. Jeremy Piper was a notorious mischief maker, and it sounded very much as if he had been spying upon Lydia, no doubt in the hope of digging up some dirt to feed his mother’s love of a good salacious story to carry to her neighbors. Most of the Reverend Tavernor’s fervent women followers had been half in love with him, Harry had always thought. They were probably jealous of Lydia since she now had all the glory of being his widow.

  Most people must realize what nonsense it all was, of course. What was so very scandalous, after all, about a single man kissing a single woman on her doorstep when he escorted her home in the rain—with his coachman as a witness? Or about his chopping wood for her? Or accepting refreshments from her afterward? But … Going to call upon her during an evening and staying a good long while when it was common knowledge that she lived alone? Dash it all, he had known there might be a problem if that ever became known. So had she. It was why she had ended the affair almost—though not quite—before it began.

  Even if only a few people chose to be shocked and outraged by Mrs. Piper’s story, though—and actually there might be more than just a few who would be disapproving, even if not fully outraged—Lydia’s life would be less than comfortable for a while. That realization gnawed at Harry all evening while he was besieged with news and chatter from his uninvited guests.