“The titles Stephen inherited were old and prestigious, but the land and income that went with them were insignificant. However—and here is where everything began to go ‘wrong,’ as it were—Stephen was already doubling and redoubling his own wealth. He loves architecture and studied it at university, so he bought fifty thousand of the most beautiful rolling acres imaginable and began working on a design for a house that would serve as his primary seat. While that house was under construction, he bought three lovely old estates in different parts of England, and began restoration on them as well. So there you have the whole picture—a man who was already wealthy, handsome, and from one of the most important families in England, and who, quite suddenly, acquired three titles, amassed a very large fortune, and bought four splendid estates. Can’t you guess what happened next?”
“I presume he moved into one of his new homes.”
Whitney gaped at her in laughing delight, pleased at her straightforward outlook and lack of guile. “He did do that,” she said after a moment, “but that’s not to the point.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What happened was that a thousand families who would settle for nothing less than a titled husband for their daughters—and daughters who expected nothing less than that for themselves—suddenly added Stephen Westmoreland to their lists of desirable husbands. To the very top of their lists, in fact. Stephen’s desirability and popularity exploded so quickly and so—so noticeably—that it was rather appalling to see. Because he was nearly thirty at the time, it was believed he would have to wed very soon, and that added a degree of desperation and urgency to the chase. Entire families descended on him if he walked into a room, daughters were thrust in his way—subtly of course—no matter where he went.
“Most men with titles and fortunes are born to them, as my husband was, and they learn to accept and ignore all that, though my husband admitted to me there were many times he felt like a hunted hare. In Stephen’s case, it all seemed to happen overnight. If it had been otherwise, if the change hadn’t been so sudden and drastic, Stephen might have adjusted to it with more patience, or at least more tolerance. And I think he still would have done so if he hadn’t also gotten involved with Emily Kendall.”
Sherry felt her stomach clench at the mention of a woman he’d been “involved” with, and at the same time she was helpless to control her curiosity. “What happened?” she asked when Whitney hesitated.
“Before I tell you, you will have to give me your pledge never to breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Sheridan nodded.
Whitney got up and restlessly wandered over to the windows, then she turned and leaned back against the pane, her hands behind her back, her face somber. “Stephen met Emily two years before he inherited his titles. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and one of the wittiest and most amusing . . . and haughty. I thought her haughty. In any case, half the bachelors in England were mad about her, and Stephen was one of them, though he was clever enough not to let her see it. She had the most amazing way of bringing men to their knees, but Stephen wouldn’t bend to her, and I suppose that was part of his appeal—the challenge. In what I can only think of as a moment of madness, Stephen asked her to marry him. She was stunned.”
“Because he loved her?” Sherry asked.
“Because he was so dreadful as to ask her.”
“What?”
“According to my husband, who had the story directly from Stephen, Emily’s primary reaction was shock and then anguish that he’d put her in such an untenable position. She was—is—the daughter of a duke, and it seemed that her family would not countenance a marriage to a mere mister. She was to be married in a fortnight to William Lathrop, the Marquess of Glengarmon, an old man whose father’s estate marched beside Emily’s father’s. No one knew about the betrothal as yet because it had just been finalized. Emily burst into tears and told Stephen that, before he’d asked her to marry him, she had at least been able to resign herself to marrying Lord Lathrop, but that now, her life was going to be unbearable. Stephen was furious that she was to be ‘wasted’ on a pathetic old man, but she convinced him there was no point in trying to reason with her father—which he actually wanted to do, even though he knew perfectly well that it is a daughter’s duty to marry wherever her family wills.”
She paused and gave Sherry an abashed smile and added, “I did not necessarily agree with that when my father claimed the right to choose a husband for me.” Returning to the story, she continued, “In any case, when Stephen still insisted on talking to her father, Emily told him he would beat her if he knew she’d complained to Stephen about her fate or her feelings about Lord Lathrop.”
“And so they parted?” Sherry ventured when Whitney seemed to hesitate.
“I only wish they had! Instead, Emily convinced him that the only way she could endure her fate, now that she knew he loved her, was if they continued their . . . friendship . . . after she was married.” Sherry frowned because it was difficult to hear about how much he had loved another. Whitney mistook her frown for disapproval and hastened to defend the indefensible, partly out of loyalty to Stephen and partly so that Sherry wouldn’t condemn him out of hand. Unfortunately, within moments she found herself on shaky ground as she tried to impart information while obscuring its full meaning. “It’s not that unusual or even scandalous. Amongst the ton, there are many females who desire the . . . attention . . . and the . . . companionship of an attractive man whom they know . . . ah . . . think . . . would be very . . . entertaining in . . . er . . . a-variety-of-ways,” Whitney finished breathlessly. “It’s all very discreet, of course.”
“You mean they must be sly about their friendship?”
“I suppose you could say that,” Whitney said, as it dawned on her that Sherry was blissfully unaware that Stephen had been much more than Emily’s “friend” during her marriage, and that they were not discussing friendships at all. In retrospect, Whitney realized she should have expected that. Well-bred English girls often had no clear idea of what couples did in the bedchamber, but they usually had overheard the gossip of older sisters and other married females. By the time they were Sherry’s age, they at least suspected that something more than friendly handshakes occurred.
“What happens if the truth is discovered?”
Having gotten by this far by telling truth with impunity, Whitney stuck to the same practice with the rest of her questions. “Then the husband is usually displeased, particularly if there has been cause for gossip.”
“And if he is displeased, does he insist that his wife restrict herself to female companions?”
“Yes, but he occasionally has a discussion with the gentleman as well.”
“What sort of discussion?”
“The sort that takes place at dawn at twenty paces.”
“A duel?” Sherry exclaimed, thinking that seemed like a severe overreaction to what had merely been, at worst, too close a friendship between opposite sexes to be seemly.
“A duel,” Whitney confirmed.
“And did Lord Westmoreland agree to continue being Emily Kendall’s—” She paused, discarding the word “suitor” because it sounded ridiculous if the lady was already married, “—her close friend,” she improvised, since that was correct, “even after she was married?”
“Yes, for over a year, until her husband found out about it.”
Sherry drew in a long breath, half afraid to ask. “Was there a duel?”
“Yes.”
Since Lord Westmoreland was still very much alive, Sherry assumed Lord Lathrop was very much dead. “He killed him,” she said flatly.
“No, he didn’t, though it might well have come to that. I think Stephen may have intended that it should. He was desperately in love with Emily, and loyal to her to the point of blindness. He despised Lord Lathrop. He hated him for ever offering for Emily in the first place, for being a disgusting old roué who’d stolen her youth and life, and for being
too old to give her children. The morning of the duel, Stephen mentioned some of those opinions to him, though I’m certain he expressed himself more eloquently.”
“And then what happened?”
“The old marquess nearly died, but of shock, not from a pistol shot. It seems that Emily and her father, not he, had sought the marriage. Our Emily wanted to be a duchess, which she would have become when Lathrop’s ancient father died and Lathrop inherited his father’s title. On the morning of the duel, Stephen believed Lord Lathrop. He said no man alive could have feigned such a stunned reaction to Stephen’s accusations. Besides, Lathrop had no reason to lie.”
“Did they still duel?”
“Yes and no. Stephen deloped, which amounts to an apology. In doing that he gave the elderly man the satisfaction he was entitled to have from him. Emily’s father sent her to Spain within the week, and she stayed there for over a year, until after Lord Lathrop died. She came home a ‘new woman’—more beautiful than before, but also more serene and less haughty.” Whitney had intended to end the story there and explain the point she’d been trying to make with it, but Sherry’s question obliged her to finish. “Did they ever see each other again?”
“Yes, and by that time Stephen had inherited his title. Oddly enough—or perhaps not oddly at all, considering the timing—it was Emily’s father who went to see Stephen first. He told Stephen that Emily was in love with him, and always had been, which, in her own selfish way, I believe she was. He asked Stephen to at least talk to her.
“Stephen agreed, and I’m quite sure her father left in happy expectation that everything would be all right and that his daughter was going to be the Countess of Langford. Emily came to see Stephen the following week, and she confessed to everything, from her selfishness to her deceit. She begged his forgiveness and pleaded with him to give her a chance to prove that she truly loved him, to show him that she’d changed.
“Stephen told her he would think about it. The very next day, her father paid a ‘casual social call’ on Stephen and brought up the subject of a betrothal contract. Stephen volunteered to have something drawn up, and her father left believing Stephen was the most forgiving and generous of men.”
“He was going to marry her after what she’d done?” Sherry burst out in disbelief. “I cannot believe he would! He must have been quite out of his head.” The words were out before Sherry realized that the emotion she felt was as much jealousy as righteous indignation. “Then what happened?” she asked more calmly.
“Emily and her father came to see him, as they’d arranged to do, but the paper that Stephen handed them was not a betrothal contract.”
“What was it?”
“It was a list of suggested second husbands for her. Every man on it had a title, and every man was between the ages of sixty and ninety-two. It was not merely an intentional insult to both of them; it was doubly cutting because he’d deliberately let Emily believe she was going to be given a betrothal contract.”
Sherry digested all that for a moment. “He isn’t very forgiving, is he? Particularly when you said earlier that it is not at all unusual for married ladies to do what she did.”
“Stephen could not forgive her for wanting to marry Lathrop in the first place, not when she did it for his title. He could not forgive her for lying to him. But most of all, he could not forgive her for letting him nearly kill her husband in a duel.
“If you consider all I’ve told you, I think you will begin to understand why he mistrusts his own judgment of women and why he mistrusts their motives. Perhaps you’ll even find that his desire to have you meet other gentlemen, before you decide permanently on him, isn’t so very wrong or even cruel. I am not saying he was right,” Whitney added when her conscience issued another irate protest. “I don’t know that he is, and what I think doesn’t matter in any case. I am only asking—suggesting—that you listen to your heart and decide for yourself, based on the new information about him I’ve given you. And there is one more thing I can tell you that may help you to decide.”
“What is it?”
“Neither my husband nor I have every seen Stephen look at any woman quite the way he looks at you, not with the same degree of gentleness and warmth and humor.” Having done and said everything she could think of to help matters, Whitney walked over to the sofa to collect her things, and Sherry stood up.
“You’ve been very kind, Your Grace,” Sherry said with soft sincerity.
“Please call me Whitney,” the duchess said as she picked up her reticule, and with a sidewise smile, she added, “and do not call me ‘kind,’ for then I will have to confess the truth, which is that I also have a selfish reason for wanting you in the family.”
“What selfish reason is that?”
Turning fully toward her, the duchess said with soft candor, “I think you are my best chance of ever having a sister, and probably my only chance of having one with whom I could be completely delighted.”
In a world where everything and everyone seemed unfamiliar and suspicious, the words she’d said and the soft smile that accompanied them had a profound effect on Sherry. As they smiled at each other, Sherry reached out to shake the duchess’s hand and the duchess reached forward to meet it, and somehow the polite handshake became a tight squeeze of encouragement that lasted an extra moment longer than it needed to. And then it became a hug. Sherry had no idea who made the first move, but she did not think it was she, and it didn’t matter. They both stepped back from it, smiling a little sheepishly at such an unseemly display between two virtual strangers who should have been calling each other “Miss Lancaster” and “your grace” for at least another year of acquaintance. None of that mattered because it was too late to go back. The bond had already been felt and acknowledged and accepted. The duchess stood quietly for a moment, a tiny, amused smile at the corner of her lips, and she shook her head as if pleased and puzzled. “I like you so much,” she said simply, and then she was gone in a swirl of fashionable cherry skirts.
A moment after the door closed, it opened again and she put her head inside, still smiling. “By the by,” she whispered, “Stephen’s mother likes you too. And we’ll see you at supper.”
“Oh, that’s lovely.”
Whitney nodded and said with another irrepressible smile, “I’m on my way downstairs to convince Stephen it’s his idea.”
And then she was gone.
Sherry wandered over to the windows that overlooked Upper Brook Street. Crossing her arms, she gazed absently at the fashionably dressed men and women alighting from carriages and strolling down the street, enjoying the balmy afternoon.
She thought about everything she’d heard, turned it over and over in her mind, and the earl took on new dimensions. She could imagine how it would feel to be wanted for what he had and not for what he was. The fact that he didn’t appreciate that sort of attention, that sort of fawning and pretense, proved that he was not a boastful or prideful man.
The fact that he had not abandoned his friendship with the woman he’d loved, even after she was lost to him, was irrefutable proof that he was steadfast and loyal. And the fact that he’d been prepared to risk his life in a duel . . . that was downright noble.
In return Emily Lathrop had deceived and used and betrayed him. In view of that it was little wonder he wanted to be very, very certain he did not make a second mistake when he chose a wife.
Idly rubbing her hands over her elbows, Sherry watched a carriage with a high perch tear down the street, scattering pedestrians, while she contemplated the vengeance he had exacted on the woman he had once obviously loved.
He was not boastful or prideful . . .
He was not forgiving either.
She turned away from the window and wandered over to her desk, idly turning the pages of the morning newspaper, trying to distract herself from another truth: she had not learned one thing today, or any other day, that would indicate he had any feelings for her at all.
He liked to ki
ss her, but somewhere in her darkened memory, Sherry had the feeling that that did not necessarily signify love. He liked her company, sometimes. And he liked to laugh with her, always. She could sense that.
She so much wished her memory would return, because all the answers she needed would be there.
Restlessly, she bent down and picked a scrap of paper from the carpet, trying to decide how to behave to him from this point on. Pride demanded that she seem unaffected by his crushing announcement downstairs. Her instincts demanded that she not give him a second opportunity to hurt her again.
She would act as naturally as she could, she decided, but she would be just reserved enough to warn him to keep his distance.
And she would find some way to stop remembering how his hands slid up and down her spine and across her shoulders when he kissed her . . . or how his fingers sank into her hair, holding her mouth pressed so tightly to his that it was as if he couldn’t get enough of it. She would not think about the insistent hunger of those kisses, or the way his arms felt around her. And under no circumstances would she let herself dwell again on the way he smiled . . . that lazy, dazzling smile that swept slowly across his tanned face and made her heart stop . . . or the way his dark blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled . . .
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