by Regina Darcy
It would be cold at Henton as well, of course. But there would be warmth inside; not only the heat from the abundant fireplaces in each room but through the conviviality of the guests and the engagements of the season.
How on earth would she endure the prospect of such delight?
TWO
It was common for people meeting the Marquess of Marquenson for the first time to remark upon the colour of his eyes. Even after they had become accustomed to his company, they often still commented upon his eyes as if they were something to be evaluated. Ladies declared that they were the colour of amber, evocative of exquisite jewellery. Men said it looked as if he had drunk so much whiskey in his youth that his eyes had taken on the hue of the contents of the last bottle that he had drained in his days as London’s bon vivant.
Those eyes were surveying the assembly of guests with an expression which was unique to the Marquess. They were not foreboding; on the contrary, their visage was entirely friendly, as if His Lordship delighted in the presence of his fellow man. But they were also wise and knowing, showing a familiarity with the hidden thoughts that perhaps his neighbours would prefer to conceal. They were not flirtatious, although no woman, feeling his gaze upon her, could refrain from wondering if her hair was properly dressed and if she had worn just the right dress to show her figure off to advantage. The context of his eyes showed neither disdain nor cruelty, and yet, there was within them a reminder that he could, with a look, emulate the slicing blade of a rapier in the grip of a master of fencing, which in fact, he was.
What was so particularly remarkable, Clara Pettigrew said to her sister, was that one never could tell what he was thinking. Sarah Pettigrew was of the opinion that it was his trim, dark beard which gave him his distinct appearance. He needed only a robe and a wand, she said, to evoke the identity of a sorcerer. But a benign sorcerer, she had said immediately, for the Marquess was not evil in demeanour. While neither sister was entirely sure whether or not His Lordship was entirely harmless, they both affirmed that he was an excellent dancing partner, a witty conversationalist and quite pleasant in comportment at the dining table. What neither one said, because there was no need to do so, was that he had declined, with the utmost courtesy, to respond to their overtures. So courteous had he been that each young woman was convinced that he had offered at some time in the past and she had refused.
Aware that he was the subject of speculation amongst his country neighbours and philosophical as to the fact that a bachelor who had just passed the age of forty years must expect to be a topic of conversation, David Overton stood at the punch bowl, the contents of which, he was grateful, had been generously laced with spirits by Arthur’s obedient servants, and watched and listened. He found that balls were an optimum occasion for a study of the foibles of his fellow man. And of course, woman. Human beings revealed so much when they were celebrating and they could not blame all of the frivolity upon the punch.
Behind him, still standing at the punch bowl, he could hear the young bucks discussing their strategy for luring a nubile miss into intimacy. He did not recognize their voices, which meant that they were guests of one of the families in the county. He had heard that Colonel Colchester and his wife were entertaining guests, but the Colonel was not the sort of man who would tolerate rakish behaviour under his roof. Someone else, then, he thought, amusing himself by wondering which of his neighbours was most likely to be hosting young men who were prowling for female companionship.
“I think,” said one of the young men, whose slurred words revealed that he had misjudged the potency of the punch by drinking more than he could handle, “that I might have a go at one of the older women.”
“Not old, surely,” disputed his comrade, equally under the influence of the punch. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Not old, no, simply older. Not one of the dewy misses whose reputation is guarded by a ferocious Papa, not at all. A woman with a few years upon her, one who would welcome the attentions of a young man but would not expect him to marry her.”
“Oh, of course. Experienced, too, no doubt,” his friend agreed, comprehending the logic of this.
“And grateful.”
At this, David Overton snorted in derisive amusement. These green boys, it was clear, knew nothing of the intricate passageways which travelled between a woman’s heart and mind. Any acquaintance they had of the female sex had likely been a paid transaction, where a woman gave herself in exchange for money. Men learned nothing of women that way.
The young men having heard his snort turned towards him.
“Sir,” objected the least imbibed of the young men, “do you find our conversation amusing?”
“I do, sir,” David returned ,not wasting his time to turn around to address them face to face.
“And why is that? You are not here with a wife?”
“No wife, no.”
“And why is that? I might choose to laugh at the fact that you claim to be a bachelor when you are far past the age of plausible matrimony.”
If the intent was to insult the Marquess, it failed.
David merely turned his interested amber gaze and his curious smile upon them.
“Years well spent, lads,” he said, “albeit, I confess, not as a husband. Based upon the accrual of my years, I feel obliged to inform you that you will find it a challenge to locate a woman who is likely to be duped by your tactics. Women are surprisingly wise to our ways, although we think of them as the sheltered sex, removed from the manners and appetites of men. They are, in fact, far wiser than we men, although it is to their supreme credit that they have managed to persuade us to believe that they are devoid of sagacity and knowledge.”
One of the young men frowned at the effort required to follow the Marquess’ reasoning.
“Sir, do you seek to insult me?” he challenged, putting his hand to his hip as if he expected to draw a sword.
The Marquess bestowed a pitying glance upon the youths.
“Not at all, my good man,” he said urbanely. “I am simply giving you the benefit of my years of experience in the hopes that you will not plant seed in fallow soil. Good day to you both,” he bowed to them with the punctilious courtesy which was as subtle an insult as a gentleman could administer, and walked away. It was a dismissal, not quite a cut, but so expertly done that neither man could fashion a response.
If they had any remote notion of challenging the Marquess, it was dashed when they spied their host, the Viscount of Randstand, approaching.
“David,” greeted Arthur Clemens. “It’s a pleasure, as always, to see you. You are not dancing?”
“I am enjoying the repose of watching and listening,” the Marquess answered. “I am much diverted by conversation. Lady Randstand, you look lovely as you always do.”
Tabitha Clemens, the wife of the Viscount, blushed at his compliment. She knew he was a gentleman and that he would have found something to praise in her appearance, no matter what. She also knew that he was a connoisseur of women and if she said that she looked lovely, then she was. It did a woman no harm to be praised by a man other than her husband, Tabitha thought, as long as she did nothing to earn more intimate compliments. Luckily, David Overton’s oats had been sowed a decade ago and he was no longer the lure of women and the dread of husbands.
As he stood up from his bow, he saw, over Lady Randstand’s shoulder, a woman, neither debutante or spinster, returning from the dance floor. Lady Randstand followed his gaze.
“Theodosia,” she called to the rather pretty brunette, “will you join us? I should like to introduce you to one of our neighbours.”
The woman came over. She was taller than Lady Randstand, but there was a certain likeness between them. The young woman had thick dark brown hair simply arranged in a chignon at the base of her neck. Her eyes were a soothing shade of green; rather like jade, he thought and was amused to realise that both of them had eyes resembling gems.
“David, may I introduce my cousin, Lady Theo
dosia Patten. Theodosia, this is our good friend and neighbour, The Marquess of Marquenson.”
“Pleased,” David murmured, bowing over her hand.
She nodded her greeting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she said.
She had a lovely, lilting voice, one which sounded as if it ought to be set to music, not for singing, but as an accompaniment to a sacred melody.
“I expect that we shall see one another again, throughout the season of Christmas,” he said.
“I shall look forward to it,” she answered. The words were mere form; she was not signalling him to any further acquaintance beyond the propriety of neighbourly community. If the eager young men thought that a woman such as this, one no longer in the first blush of her debut, would fall prey to their blandishments, David sensed, they would be very disappointed.
“David, we shall see you later at supper,” Tabitha said to him. “For now, we are going to introduce Theodosia to all of our guests. I have trumpeted the charms of the neighbourhood to her and I must follow through with the greetings so that she can decide for herself whether I have exaggerated.”
“Your cousin may have exaggerated our charms,” David said to Theodosia, “but she does so out of her unbounded hospitality and we must all appear to advantage in her description.”
“Theodosia shall see for herself over Christmas,” Tabitha insisted. “She is going to be spending the holidays with us and you shall come to know her very well.”
“I look forward to it,” he said with a smile, repeating her words.
That drew an answering smile from the young woman before she was ushered off to meet other guests. David watched with interest, following her progress through the room. When the musicians began to play another tune, she was invited to dance by one of the young fops who had been speaking by the punch bowl. She politely refused the offer. Perhaps she had a sense for the gauche, David thought; but then, she refused a second offer to dance.
His curiosity piqued, David strolled over to where she stood.
“You do not dance,” he noticed.
“Nor do you,” she pointed out.
Quick. He liked that. “I spoke first,” he said. “Therefore, you owe me an answer before I must respond to your comment.”
She did not treat this as the sort of flirtatious badinage that it could so easily have become, although David was not flirting with her.
“I do not wish to dance,” she said. “I danced one dance, to be polite because Cousin Tabitha asked me to dance with Colonel Colchester, but that is all for the night. Now, my lord, why are you not dancing?”
He decided to be candid.
“When an unmarried gentleman dances with an unmarried lady, there is an assumption—frequently on the part of the lady—that he intends something rather more serious and romantic than a dance. It delivers a false impression of his intentions. As I have no such intentions, I do not dance.”
She considered this. “You mean that if you dance with one of the young ladies here, you would be regarded as a suitor?”
Did she really not know that this was the manner in which social entanglements were knitted together, with speculation and coquetry? She did not appear to be dissembling; in fact, he thought that her features were composed in an expression of what seemed to be genuine rumination.
He bowed by way of agreement. “Even though I am well past the age of a swain, I would be regarded as a potential beau. Then there would be the expectation that I should go to the young lady’s father upon the morrow and ask to court her. Can you conceive of the absurdity of asking a gentleman of my own age or thereabouts whether I might court his daughter?”
“I suppose there is no limit to the age at which a gentleman may court a lady,” she answered as if the remark was entirely serious.
He could see that there was no coyness in her consideration of his remark. She was, he thought, somewhat naïve. But not foolish. It was a most intriguing trait, for a woman past the blush of her first youth to be having a conversation with a gentleman on the subject of courtship and to be making no covert play for romantic attention.
“Perhaps not, but there is an age at which a man must avoid making a cake of himself.”
“I am not sure that such an age is dependent upon years, my lord.”
Ah, so there was something else at work in her philosophy.
“You sound as if you speak from the bitter draft of experience.”
A polished young woman would turn the remark into a jest. He waited to hear how she would respond.
“I was engaged once,” she said openly. “My fiancé disappeared before the engagement prospered into marriage.”
“Were you one of the runaway brides, by chance, with which London has been enraptured these past months?”
“I believe it is more accurate to speak of a runaway groom, my lord. It was my fiancé who ran away.”
“How very odd,” he said. “I assume that his proposal was freely offered?”
“From my perspective, yes.”
“And he ran away. . . what did you do then?”
“I left London for Bath,” she said. “I decided to spend the Christmas season away from the city.”
“Was Bath adequate consolation for absenting yourself from the festivities?”
“I returned to London convinced that men must be selfish beasts.”
“All men?”
“As to that, I cannot say.”
“I see. You were, perhaps, a runaway bride by going to Bath. But you must be excused since your intended ran away first. And you have had no word of him since?”
“None. Nor has anyone, I believe. He has not been seen.”
“Not been seen? There are those who would assert that the best sort of spouse is one who is not seen. However, I suppose that first, the bridegroom must become a spouse. Tricky business, that, if he’s nowhere to be found.” David tilted his head to one side as if he were assessing her. “I say, you haven’t done him in, have you? The female of the species is deadlier than the male, and all that . . . stabbed him through his perfidious heart with a hatpin, or sent him to the pearly gates with a poison of your own concocting?”
To her surprise, Theodosia found herself beginning to smile. “If I had,” she said, “I would hardly confess, now would I?”
“Oh, but who better to confess to than a jaded gentleman who is so entirely lacking in moral fibre that he couldn’t possibly judge?”
“I’m sorry to confess that I didn’t bring him to his well-deserved end. I’ve no idea where he is and, to the best of my knowledge, neither has anyone else.”
“He must not be much missed, then, if no one is searching for him. And what of you? Pining of a broken heart?”
“A moment ago I was a murderess, and now I am lovesick?”
“I daresay it’s possible to be both although I will confess that my experience with either is quite limited.”
“You are not married.”
She stated this matter-of-factly and he realised that her cousin had likely provided her with succinct biographies of the guests she would meet at the ball tonight. Or perhaps, he gathered, not so succinct, at least in his case. The Viscountess was not a woman likely to indulge in salacious gossip; in fact, she was a kind-hearted soul. Still, David was aware that even the most saintly of females was more than likely to offer an account of her neighbours’ pasts, even if she sanitized the rendition.
“I am not,” he told her, although it was a confirmation and not an answer. She had framed the remark as a statement, not a query. “I am, I admit, routinely castigated for not having entered into the marital state.”
“Why?” she inquired.
“Why? Oh, because a gentleman is expected to marry. As is a lady.”
“Yes, but my fiancé vanished. Did yours?”
“I have no fiancée. Nor have I ever had.”
“Then you have been spared the ignominy of being regarded as so lacklustre a prospective spouse that your intended
disappears rather than follow through with their vows.”
“You might think that an advantage, but only consider how an unmarried man is viewed. There is speculation that perhaps I have a mad wife locked in an attic in the country. Or that I am a despoiler of young maidens. Or that I am so unaccommodating in habits and manners that any woman would naturally reject the prospect of marriage to me, even with the allure, however dubious, of becoming the Marchioness of Marquenson.”
“I suspect it is the abundance of syllables, rather than the title itself, which may be cause for dismay,” Theodosia offered after considering the matter.
Really, she was delightful.
Pondering his quip as seriously as if she were a schoolgirl and then offering her own logical riposte, for riposte it was, as if they were fencing.
“Hmm, I had not considered that. I say, I don’t suppose that you would give it some consideration?”
“Give what some consideration?” she asked absently; she was counting the syllables in the title.
“Marriage,” he replied with a droll smile. “Would you consider marrying me?”
THREE
Whatever the Lady Theodosia was about to say seem to be forgotten as she almost dropped her reticule in surprise. She stared at David, her pink lips round in a circle of incredulity. He could almost hear what she was thinking.
She was likely afraid that she had not heard him accurately and that his proposal was a jest,
His next statement did not clear her confusion.
“I promise not to vanish without a word,” he said helpfully.
“Are you mocking me, my lord?” she inquired.
She looked very dignified, in fact, she had only her dignity for a defence and it became her. She was quite pretty, he realised, despite her out-of-date ball gown and her simple coiffure. With no artifice, or flowers in her hair or jewels glittering at her neck and wrists, her natural beauty was much more apparent. A kissable pink mouth, a delicate but determined chin warning that Lady Theodosia was no plaything, beautiful jade-green eyes, an attractive figure . . . she was much more enticing to the eye than any fresh-faced debutante. In fact, David thought, she was all the more enticing because she made no effort at all to grasp onto the vestiges of girlhood. Here was a woman who would never see eighteen again and did not appear to lament the fact.