by Dorothy Mack
“Remember that you will be gaining an enviable place in Society too, Kate. It won’t be all sacrifice. And I think you are not of a romantical disposition in any case. You would not be so foolish as to allow a handsome face to persuade you that marriage to him would ensure a lifetime of bliss.”
Kate averted her eyes from the bleakness in Lady Langston’s face, but she could not screen out the bitterness in her voice. She sighed a little for the departure of vague, girlish dreams and rose to her feet.
“I am persuaded you are quite correct, Mama. Am I to expect a visit from Lord Torvil, or will the earl deputize for his lordship again?”
“The viscount will wait upon you this afternoon. Don’t look like that, dearest,” begged Lady Langston with tears in her eyes. “I understand that Lord Torvil is a very personable young man, and his father assures me he is not wanting in sense or spirit either.” She essayed a smile. “A poor-spirited looby would not do for you who have so much quickness of understanding. You will probably deal wonderfully together.”
Kate’s attempt at a smile was no more successful than her mother’s.
“Yes, Mama,” she said, and quietly left the room.
Just as she was closing the door behind her, Lady Langston hastily called, “And do not neglect to change that gown, Kate.”
CHAPTER FIVE
If Kate shed a few tears in private over the cards she had been dealt by a malicious fate, there were no witnesses to affirm her weakness. Of a certainty no mingling of tears took place during the afflicting scene later enacted with her sister. Tender-hearted Deborah, easily aroused to sympathy for a fellow creature’s misfortunes, wept a few inevitable tears over her sister’s plight, but since she was torn between sorrow that Kate was being forced into a loveless marriage and pride that she was to marry into one of the leading families of the nation, and would eventually become a countess, there was no danger that she would present the appearance of a female who had allowed herself to succumb to an emotional frenzy when the viscount arrived for his first meeting with his intended bride.
All three ladies had been sitting in the pink parlour for a good hour exhibiting varying degrees of sham enthusiasm for their individual pieces of handwork resurrected for the occasion. Kate, who was rather pale, doggedly worked at a piece of embroidery, though her mental state was so abstracted every stitch would eventually have to be removed. Deborah’s pretence of industry was less accomplished. She jumped up at each new sound in the street below and ran to the window, hoping for the first glimpse of the unknown viscount. Lady Langston displayed a becoming serenity that differed from her usual languid air, but from time to time she darted assessing looks at her elder daughter. Kate’s absorption with her thoughts was so complete that she remained totally unaware that she was being studied somewhat anxiously.
The gown she had chosen for the occasion met with her mother’s unqualified approval. It was a bronze green affair in a soft cotton, styled simply to flow from a high waistline. The tiny puffed sleeves left Kate’s smooth-skinned arms bare. Her only jewellery consisted of a narrow gold bracelet on one shapely wrist and a gold locket on a chain. She looked young and sweetly serious, an expression her mother judged to be wholly appropriate to the occasion. Of course, it was a pity Kate had not inherited the black hair and dark eyes that so distinguished her sister, but really her healthy brown hair was rather pretty, especially under a strong light, and it curled naturally in a style that was quite becoming, which must be counted a great asset. However, the girl was too pale. She seemed to have lost what little colour she had had upon entering the room.
“Kate,” she ordered abruptly, “you are appallingly pallid. Go and rub a little rouge into your cheeks. Mind you, do it lightly, though.”
“Yes, Mama.” Obediently the girl rose and left the room.
Deborah was once again peering eagerly out of the window.
“Do stop that continual jumping up and down, Deborah, my nerves won’t stand much more. I think I am beginning to develop a headache. Where is my fan?”
“Right here, Mama. Shall I fan you for a bit to cool your cheeks? It will refresh you.”
“Yes, thank you, my dear. Hark, do I hear a carriage stopping?”
This time it was not a false alarm. When Kate returned to the front saloon five minutes later, she could distinguish a low masculine rumble running along with Deb’s infectious giggle, and she knew a moment of sheer panic.
“Don’t let him be too awful,” she breathed in heartfelt prayer and put a trembling hand on the knob.
For a split second following her quiet entrance she was unobserved, and the tableau in front of her was indelibly etched in her mind. Her still lovely mother and sparkling sister were bending their dark heads forward to attend to another dark head, another profile that looked distressingly familiar.
“Oh, no!”
Kate was unaware that she had given utterance to the instinctive protest that surged up in her breast at the instant of recognition, but three people turned as one and stared at her in astonishment. Initially, she was unaware of this also as her eyes were locked to the man’s for a charged interval.
“Kate, what is it?”
She wrenched her glance away from his startled regard and faced her mother with a queer blind look in her eyes. Then she made a visible effort to regain command of herself. Her hands were gripping each so tightly the knuckles showed white.
“Kate, what is the matter with you?” The hint of impatience in Lady Langston’s repeated question got through to her.
“Nothing! I … may I speak to you privately, Mama?”
Lady Langston ignored the urgency in her daughter’s voice. She gestured to Lord Torvil, who had risen to his feet and was still standing, politely attentive but now carefully expressionless.
“Kate, my dear child, you are forgetting your manners. We have a guest.” She laughed archly. “Lord Torvil is most anxious to be presented to you.”
“Mama, please!” begged Kate, but her mother shot her a quelling look that did not escape the man’s alert dark eyes, and commenced an introduction that was destined never to be completed, for a pale, determined Kate interrupted passionately:
“Mama, I cannot marry Lord Torvil. I beg your pardon, sir. Pray, forgive me, but I … I…” Her voice trailed off; she flashed her rejected suitor one beseeching look, made a small, hopeless gesture with one hand, and dashed out of the room as though pursued by furies.
Her mother was the first of the speechless trio to recover the use of her faculties. She sprang to her feet before the door had closed behind her daughter.
“Kate, come back here this instant! Oh, that wretched girl will be the death of me!” Catching the viscount’s speculative eye on her, Lady Langston’s angry voice sank precipitously to a faint, plaintive cry. “Oh, I feel one of my spasms coming on. Deborah! My vinaigrette!”
She accepted the aid of the viscount’s arm in staggering to the sofa where she collapsed in a graceful heap with her face in her hand. Her younger daughter, who had been a stunned spectator to all that had taken place, came to life and took over her accustomed role as attendant to her mother after one quick, apologetic look at the viscount.
He, realizing he was indeed de trop in this scene of domestic discomfort, murmured a graceful apology and bowed himself out of the room before his stricken hostess could recover sufficient self-command to summon him back.
In the corridor he came upon the butler, whose perturbed expression rather betrayed his calling.
“Lady Langston was about to desire you to show me out,” the unusual guest said smoothly. “If it is not too much trouble,” he added gently, when the butler cast an undecided glance toward the saloon before moving to obey this request.
“Certainly, sir,” assented that individual woodenly.
The viscount accepted hat, gloves, and walking stick with a faint smile of thanks upon his lips and blandly wished the butler good day.
Once out on the flagway, however
, his careful blankness disappeared as he replayed that fantastic scene in his mind in an attempt to make some sense of it. One fact was glaringly clear, of course. Miss Harmon, for some reason as yet obscure, had refused him before he had even made her an offer. One part of his brain was rather interested in discovering the earl’s reaction to this unexpected turn of events. He hesitated momentarily, debating whether to head for his parental home, then walked on toward his lodgings, having resolved on the wisdom of postponing yet another confrontation with his father. For one thing, he had no answers for the questions the earl would inevitably fire at him. One had to assume the girl had agreed to the match originally, or her mother would have denied him the interview today. But she had entered the room in great agitation and flatly refused to marry him, or indeed even to allow her mother to perform the introduction. Perhaps she was given to distempered freaks. What did he actually know of her character — nothing at all.
His steps did not falter, but here his mental process slowed to a halt and reversed itself. Actually, there were a few things he had learned about Miss Harmon from his own observation. He knew, for instance, that she had a sense of humour as evidenced by the mischievous smile that had caught his eye originally. She was an accomplished dancer with enough kindness to overlook the inadequacies of a bad partner. Though not an obvious beauty, he considered she had a great deal of countenance, and her behaviour at Almack’s had indicated a natural, easy manner and considerable poise. The attitude of stunned disbelief evidenced by her relatives would tend to support his hunch that the display of temperament he had just witnessed was totally uncharacteristic of Miss Harmon, the inescapable conclusion being that she, uncharacteristically, had taken him in instant dislike.
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. Well, he should now have a bit of a respite before his future was sealed. It would take his father some time to select another suitable candidate, which was a great relief, of course. This taut, irritated sensation must be due to bruised vanity at such a decided rejection and, in the circumstances, was utter nonsense. Still, no female had looked at him with such an expression of loathing, almost of horror, since he had chased his cousin Sally with a garden snake at the age of eleven. Even a saint might find himself slightly put out at such a reception. When he thought about it dispassionately, it was actually quite amusing and he would enjoy seeing his father’s reaction when he described the incident to him. This last reflection brought him to the door of his lodgings, which he closed with a decided snap behind him.
A meeting of those dark brows belied any amusement as he entered, but a sudden thought did bring a smile, albeit a sour one, to his face. He would have found the scene that was doubtless taking place between mother and daughter at this very moment vastly diverting. Ten years on, the social scene had well equipped him to judge the vagaries of the female of the species, and he was not unacquainted with the type who used ill health or delicate nerves as a shield behind which they exercised a real tyranny over their hapless families. He had not been long in Lady Langston’s company, but he had seen enough to place her with fair confidence in this sisterhood, and he surmised that she would be entirely capable of making her recalcitrant daughter regret the tantrum she had enacted.
It would have soothed the viscount’s wounded vanity to know that his surmise was amply confirmed. Lady Langston did indeed put her daughter through a very difficult half hour, and Kate did regret having behaved in such an unrestrained manner. She was perfectly willing to pen the most abject of apologies for any embarrassment she might have caused Lord Torvil to suffer. What she did not regret and what she was not willing to do was reconsider her decision not to marry him. It would be understating the matter to say that relations between mother and daughter were consequently somewhat strained.
They persisted thusly until the following afternoon, when a wildly weeping Deborah sought her sister in the privacy of the latter’s bedchamber. It took Kate a full twenty minutes to soothe Deborah sufficiently to make sense out of the jumble of pleas, self-recriminations, and heart burnings that tumbled from her lips, but at length it emerged that Mama had received a visit that morning from one of Deb’s well-connected suitors requesting permission to pay his addresses. Which permission Mama had given. She had summoned her younger daughter to inform her of the happy fate in store for her and had met with (she said) rank ingratitude and flagrant disobedience for the second time in as many days. Kate was unsure just how much of Deb’s misery was due to losing Captain Marlowe and how much to having fatally wounded her mother. Evidently when she had persisted in her refusal to give Mama’s choice a favourable answer, Mama had made it abundantly clear that she would never receive permission to wed her captain. For the first time in her life, she had abandoned her prostrated parent wholly to Morrell’s care and had gone looking for her sister. As Deborah grew calmer and her statements became more coherent, the anxious look on Kate’s face was replaced by one of quiet hopelessness. She dealt firmly with Deb’s half-hearted threats of elopement, adjured her to bathe her face and lie down upon her bed for an hour, and made ready to reopen negotiations with her mother.
She found Lady Langston still lying on the chaise longue in her sitting room, which reeked of camphorated spirits of ammonia edged a bit by lavender water. Morrell was still with her, bathing her temples with the lavender water, but she rose quickly to her feet, more in relief than deference, Kate guessed, at her entrance. At first, Lady Langston was not at all inclined to dismiss her dresser, whose presence was more agreeable to her at that moment than that of either of her daughters, but Kate said pleasantly to Morrell that she wished to be private with her mother.
“Oh, very well, leave us,” Lady Langston said, dismissing her dresser with a resigned wave of one white hand. The other was still clutching her vinaigrette, which she now raised to her nose, presumably as a precaution against whatever new disaster her daughter’s appearance might herald. She eyed her offspring with faint hostility but remained silent, leaving it up to Kate to open the interview.
“Mama,” she began without preamble, “I have come to tell you that I have changed my mind about marrying Lord Torvil. I will accept his offer if you will allow Deb to marry Captain Marlowe.” She paused, unable to interpret the quick gleam that appeared in her mother’s eyes before long black lashes swept down to conceal all expression. Surprise? No, Lady Langston had not been pleased precisely to see Kate, but there had been an air of expectancy about her. Triumph then? Perhaps, but what did it signify in any event? The deed was done.
“Very pretty talking,” said Lady Langston waspishly, “but what gives you to suppose Lord Torvil will still be of the same mind after the way you treated him? No man would wish to wed a female who shows herself so averse to his appearance that she cannot bear even to acknowledge an introduction.”
“Most probably not, but he will do what his father tells him, just the same.”
“You seem very certain of this.” Lady Langston studied her daughter’s wan, cold face intently.
“I am,” Kate answered shortly, making no attempt to satisfy her parent’s curiosity. She put a question of her own. “Was the earl very set on having me for his son, Mama?”
“Quite decided. It seems he knew your grandfather — old Lord Langston — in his youth, and corresponded with him before he died. The two of them hatched this little plot together.”
“I … see.” This simple statement left much that Kate was thinking unsaid. She was genuinely astonished that her grandfather had been busy matchmaking for her while she was companioning him, and without her knowledge too. She had also noted the hint of acid in Lady Langston’s tone, and wondered idly if her mother had offered the earl Deborah in her stead or if she merely resented having the two men present her with a fait accompli.
“Well, I shall leave it up to you how you go about letting Lord Torvil know of your change of heart.” Lady Langston was washing her hands of the situation, but Kate was not to be drawn on that subject.
“Shall I tell Deb you have withdrawn your objections to Captain Marlowe?”
“Kate,” and now her mother’s faintly petulant air had given way to a seriousness that reached her daughter, “Deborah is very young and, I think, impressionable. I know you mean your sacrifice for her sake, but there is every chance, you know, that she will have forgotten this soldier of hers within the month. Brompton is an excellent catch, and she would have a position of some consequence in society.”
Kate drew in her lip and returned her mother’s regard honestly. “I have thought of that, too, but she does not care for Lord Brompton, Mama. His suit must be rejected, but I suppose we need not rush her into a marriage with Captain Marlowe. Perhaps if you were to tell her merely that if she feels the same way about the captain six months from now, you will withdraw your objections.”
“Very well.” Lady Langston bowed her head in acquiescence, and Kate prepared to leave the room after thanking her mother. As her daughter’s face once more acquired that desolate look, the older woman added quickly, “Kate, Deborah and I both received a most favourable impression of Torvil in the short time we were engaged in conversation, and there is no denying he is most attractive. You may find he will make an unexceptionable husband who will deal famously with you.”
“He will be a vile husband, and for my part, I shall make him an abominable wife,” Kate declared viciously, and went out, leaving her mother gasping at the intensity of her daughter’s dislike.
None of this was permitted to show the following day, however, when the viscount was ushered into a small study where he was received privately by Miss Harmon. His ruminations on the abortive proposal had led him to postpone informing the earl of his failure to secure a favourable answer. He had done some checking on the financial status of the Harmon family, and the results of his investigations, combined with his guesses concerning Lady Langston’s control over her daughter, decided him on this course. He had accepted his post each day with more interest than was customary, and his patience was rewarded on the second day after his visit to Lord Langston’s townhouse when a letter directed in an unfamiliar feminine hand came to his attention. Nicholas surveyed it thoughtfully, then consigning the rest of the pile to a convenient table, he strolled toward his bedchamber with this one item. He read the text of the politely worded request that the Viscount Torvil might call on Miss Katherine Harmon at his earliest convenience, then reread it carefully, but there was nothing to be guessed at from the formal wording. Still, he did hazard a guess or two and he even permitted himself a tiny, smug smile.