Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount

by Elizabeth Beacon

  She nearly laughed at him for thinking any sane female would have to endure him in her bed. Her inner houri would leap at the chance to have him in hers if there was even a whisper of honour in it for either of them. ‘I still cannot understand a mother loving one son and rejecting the next.’

  ‘I was not her next child or the one after that.’

  ‘She had other children besides you and your brother, then?’

  ‘Apparently she miscarried several times and brought a couple nearly to term before they were born dead. In the seven years between George’s birth and mine a baby girl survived long enough to be christened before she died as well. Then two years before me she had a boy who lived for a month before he followed his big sister to the family mausoleum. Then nothing until she was enceinte again at last and my father was wary enough by then to leave her be until I was safely born.’

  ‘You would think she must have been so delighted when you were delivered safely she would love you all the more. I doubt you were weak or puny since you have grown into such a tall and powerful man.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Mrs Turner. I am flattered you have noted my rude health and sterling character.’

  ‘You mean you are too stubborn to give in over anything without a fight, I suppose? I would have to be a fool not to have noticed that.’

  ‘Apparently my father was as well.’

  ‘Oh, dear, he reneged on their agreement?’ she said with a sad shake of her head for the stupidity and selfishness of both his parents.

  ‘Yes, he refused to believe I would survive after so many of his hopes were dashed before I was born. I felt sorry for the Dowager for the first time in my life when she told me that by the time I was born she hated being with child so much she just wanted me out of her body and for the pain and intrusion and indignity to cease. Imagine how she must have felt when she was expected to go through all that again and again and he never stopped wanting more children from her. I never felt more guilty about a woman’s lot in life and less eager for a viscountess of my own than I was when she told me how delighted she was when my father died on the hunting field and she was free at last.’

  ‘None of it was your fault.’

  ‘Maybe not, but the ridiculous laws of entail and primogeniture made it the fault of Viscount Stratford with all those inherited acres and estates and more houses than one man could ever live in to pass on only to a son.’

  ‘You sound like a Jacobin.’

  ‘I could not support bloody revolution after the Terror in France, but hearing the true reason for the Dowager’s hatred of me and through me of Juno as well made me think I must be very sure the lady I marry is happy to be a mother and I have the sense never to be obsessed with the Defford inheritance.’

  The idea of him wed to a woman who would tolerate him for the sake of a family made her want to cry for some odd reason, but she fought it back and hatred for the Dowager Lady Stratford was a good antidote for tears. She would like to tell the woman exactly what she thought of her for neglecting the fine boy this fine man grew out of.

  ‘Being the victim of her husband’s obsession with male heirs did not give her any right to treat you or your niece so badly. She was the adult and you were an innocent when she decided to hate you. The wonder is that both you and Juno are good people despite her worst efforts.’

  ‘I am flattered you think so, but I owe whatever I am to my brother. George was a good man who refused to be spoilt by her devotion to him alone. He did his best to be my stand-in father when ours died soon after I was breeched. I owe him far more than he ever got back from me as his daughter’s uncle and guardian.’

  ‘I cannot understand such limits on a mother’s affections, so why do you keep on trying to, Alaric?’ she said, so disgusted with the woman she forgot to call him something formal.

  ‘Well, I hope we are done with one another for good this time. I paid her debts on the understanding I will publicly disclaim any more and she intends to live abroad now Emperor Napoleon has been ousted from his throne. Apparently she is sick of me and England and I suppose you think me harsh and bad-tempered now and will refuse my offer of employment on principle.’

  ‘No, I have no sympathy for your mother since she obviously has far too much for herself. She meant to sell her grandchild to an old man, so why would anyone blame you for making her live on her settlements in future? At least you can make a fresh start at Stratford Park now.’

  ‘And I hope Juno is young enough to throw off the past and grow into a woman of character.’

  ‘I might have known everything would lead us back to that topic and I am sure you could do better than me as her companion and watchdog.’

  ‘And I know I could not.’

  ‘Then give me the space I asked for and I promise I will go and have the bath I have been looking forward to all afternoon and to stop harrying your poor put-upon staff, my lord. I am too weary to argue with you just at the moment.’

  ‘I doubt you are ever weary enough for that, Marianne,’ he told her grumpily and turned round and strode off into the dusky shadows of the great hall, leaving her in possession of the field.

  She was not sure she wanted it at the cost of all he had forced himself to tell her in the hope she would agree to his plan. And of course she was right not to tell him she feared her own weakness as far as he was concerned. It would be one way to get him to stop persuading her with his deepest darkest secrets how much Juno needed her. But she was not sure she could endure the humiliation of him knowing how much she longed for him in her bed of a night now he was staying under Darius’s roof as an honoured guest instead of a patient forced on them by circumstance.

  If she accepted Alaric’s offer of employment, how could she resist the urge to throw herself at him when she was living under his roof instead and might well decide her self-respect and the family honour could go to blazes as long as she could be his mistress?

  And he was such an honourable idiot he would probably ask her to marry him if they gave in to this ridiculous attraction that had sprung up between them more or less at first sight. She had not been with child even once during her five years of marriage to Daniel, so she could not let Alaric wed her if they did weaken and become lovers. However he felt about the Defford succession, she could not live with herself as year after year went by without an heir to his wealth and possessions and noble name. He was too fine a man to make her his mistress and she was too much of a lady to let him marry her, so she would do better to say no and go back to Bath.

  However, the thought of never seeing him again—except in the distance, perhaps, when he escorted Juno on a trip to see Fliss and she happened to be there as well—stung her so hard she was not sure she could bear it. So was she in love with the man? Perilously close to it, she decided, but not quite there yet. Best if she did not give herself time or chance to fall the rest of the way, then. But, oh, how she would miss him when he went away thinking she was so hard-hearted that even that wrenching tale about his mother’s inhuman conduct towards him as a child could not move her to make up the similar gaps in poor little Juno’s life until now.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I can see what you have been doing with yourself all morning, Marianne,’ Darius informed her from his place just inside the door of the last untouched bedchamber on the main level a week on from her last tête-à-tête with Alaric.

  ‘Indeed, most of this dust seems to be on me instead of the furniture,’ she said ruefully and turned around slowly so it would not shake back on to the clean bits. ‘And what are you doing upstairs in all your dirt at this time of day?’

  ‘The same as you, I should imagine—wishing I was clean.’

  ‘I must get this room clean and cleared then put back together as neatly as I can before I can take a bath. Mama will carp endlessly about being given a lesser bedroom than Viola’s or Miss Donne’s if I do not get this roo
m done in time and neither of us want her feeling put upon and prickly on your wedding day.’

  ‘You do not have to do it all on your own. Fliss sent me up here, dirt or no, to tell you so because she is worried about you and so am I.’

  ‘There is no need,’ she forced herself to say calmly and stared at a spider that was daring to crawl into the light now she had stopped pulling down bed curtains and the dust-laden webs of its distant ancestors.

  ‘You are avoiding us all and I will not let you, Marianne. I thought you liked living here, but maybe I am wrong and you intend to go back to Bath with Mama and Papa after the wedding.’

  ‘No, I am not a martyr.’

  ‘Then if you cannot endure our company why not accept Stratford’s offer of employment he tells me he has made you and stop worrying about what to do next? I hate seeing you like this, Nan. I understand that my happiness with Fliss may be reminding you of what you and Daniel had and maybe living without him feels worse than before we fell in love, but we will not make you feel like an unwanted third if you stay.’

  ‘No, please do not think that, Darius, never think like that. I am so very happy to see that you are as loved now as you have always deserved to be. I knew you could find joy and laughter with the right woman to laugh with you and remind you what a good man you are now and again when you forget it and brood about all the things you saw and did in the war. Darius the cynic was only cover for the soft heart you protected to survive that hard life, Big Brother, and Fliss is ideal for you.’

  ‘You saw most of it as well, Little Sister.’

  ‘Not the killing and the conflict,’ she said, knowing what it must have cost him and Daniel to set out to wound and kill their fellow men. Love for this strong and loyal and, yes, soft-hearted, brother of hers was prodding her to accept Lord Stratford’s offer of employment even if she was not sure it was the right thing to do. Could Alaric become a run-of-the-mill sort of lord to her rather than the special one he was now? Or would she fall even deeper under his spell than she had already?

  She sighed and realised only by doing what he wanted and living as Juno’s companion was she ever going to find out. It was a risk—either hurting herself or hurting Darius and Fliss by refusing to stay here and be the widow in the way. Her brother knew how much she had hated living in Bath. He would be even more hurt if she chose to go back there instead and suspicious of her true reason why. She certainly did not want anyone else knowing about these feral longings for a man she could not have.

  ‘Why is it always one step forward, two back with you, then, Nan?’ Darius asked as if he thought that sigh was for him instead of lordly Lord Stratford.

  ‘No,’ she insisted with a shake of the head to tell him she really meant it. ‘I have come a long way since you inherited Owlet Manor. But today I need to be left in peace so I can get this one last room clean and usable. It will help me weather Mama’s fussing and dramatising if I make her feel that she and Papa are important here. I robbed her of the wedding she longed for when I ran off to find Daniel and her new friends shunned me when I lived in Bath. I am such an unsatisfactory daughter to her and I know she did not defend me as fiercely as she might have done because in her heart she agrees with them, but at least we still love one another. All three of us always knew we were loved by our parents, however little we understand one another. Mama cannot see why I married Daniel when there are perfectly good curates and one or two gentlemen of leisure I could have fallen in love with if I had only tried a little harder.’

  Marianne thought of Alaric’s description of his cold-hearted mother and shivered. His calm acceptance of a total lack of love between them still stung her on his behalf. He could so easily have grown up hating his brother for being the favourite. Marianne sighed because it felt as if an unseen tie bound her to the viscount and it was tugging at her heart more strongly with every day that passed. Could she ignore it and do as he wanted? Of course, that decision was the real reason she was keeping the rest of the world out with the dust of ages, but Darius did not need to know and worry about her even more.

  ‘If it makes you feel better to do this, then of course you must, Nan,’ he said. ‘But promise me you will stop when you get this room as perfect as you can in such a short time. The rest can wait and I do not care if Fliss and I wed in a church porch and feast in a cow byre as long as we are married. Mama can boast about my splendid wedding to Lord Netherton’s niece to all her friends without them knowing the east wing is in the same sorry state Great-Uncle Hubert left it in and we have borrowed half the furniture and fittings from Miss Donne’s friend Mrs Corham.’

  ‘I want your wedding day to be wonderful so you can look back on it with a smile for the rest of your lives. If Mama is carping at me and glaring at Miss Donne all day because she feels less important than Fliss’s stand-in mother, I will be miserable and on edge and Fliss will be mortified. Mama is going to be a difficult enough mother-in-law without them starting off on the wrong foot.’

  ‘Maybe so, but the maids could do this if you let them.’

  ‘They can help now I know exactly what needs to be done in here,’ she conceded with a sigh.

  ‘Good, perhaps it will distract them from decking out my bedchamber with every bit of finery they can find,’ he said and Marianne almost laughed. The dreamy look he had been wearing so often since Miss Felicity Grantham stepped into his life one hot and sunny June day took over from brotherly concern and good riddance to it. He was thinking about his wedding night now and that was a much better idea than worrying about his sister.

  ‘I expect Fliss will like it better with a few improvements,’ she said to encourage him to see those changes with new eyes.

  ‘I was a soldier for over a decade, sister dear. I recognise diversionary tactics when I meet them,’ Darius argued nevertheless.

  ‘Then you must know how unlikely it is I shall sit tatting while I wait for your neighbours to call,’ she countered.

  ‘I can dream,’ he said lightly, but there was sadness and frustration in his eyes all the same.

  He had dreamed of making a home for both his sisters, but they were too independent minded to be Squire Yelverton’s dependent sisters even if he could afford to keep them. Fliss had inherited a fortune from her godmother, but Owlet Manor and its farms had been neglected for a very long time. Even thirty thousand pounds would not last forever if Darius’s sisters were here to be a drain on it. Lord Stratford’s offer was a godsend she would be foolish to turn down; so that was that, she would just have to polish up her willpower and try to see as little of the man as possible in future.

  ‘Go away and dream of your bride-to-be. I am busy,’ she said brusquely.

  ‘You promised to stop trying to make this old place perfect.’

  ‘I did not actually promise,’ she said sneakily.

  ‘Then I shall stay here until you do,’ he said, leaning against the door jamb and ignoring her hard stare at his work shirt, covered in several sorts of dirt and maybe even worse from the smell.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she conceded wearily because she knew he would stand there however long it took her to do as he wanted. ‘After this room I will stop. There are things I must do before the wedding and I suppose I had best get on with them.’

  ‘Promise?’ he said implacably.

  ‘Promise. Except if a crisis blows up you cannot expect me to sit on my hands and pretend it has naught to do with me.’

  ‘If Fliss or Miss Donne cannot deal with it first,’ he qualified and he was right, drat him. This was going to be Fliss’s home and she had every right to take over the running of it.

  ‘I agree,’ she told Darius with a bland, blank smile to stop him finding out how desolate that felt.

  ‘Very well, I will wash and change and, if I was a stern and managing sort of brother, I might suggest you do the same before you take your luncheon with Fliss and Miss Donne and m
e in the parlour.’

  ‘Luckily you are only managing, then,’ she muttered.

  He grinned and left her to her spider and the empty old room. To her it was a pleasure to see a place like this coming alive again and now she had to give it up. In a way this was what she used to do on the march with Daniel—wrench comfort and cleanliness out of chaos. Whatever shelter she managed to commandeer after a long and weary march or a bloody and terrible battle was soon as clean and comfortable as she could make it. Then and now it felt like the least she could do for those she loved. And this time there was the added benefit of avoiding a man she did not want to love, but dreaded she might have to if she saw too much of him. It was high time she cut impulsive, romantic Marianne out of her life for good and became careful and realistic Mrs Turner, lady’s companion.

  * * *

  ‘Was there anything worth saving?’ Darius asked as he came back hastily washed and wearing clean clothes. He caught her standing exactly where he left her, staring at the pile of torn-down draperies and ancient bedding as if they fascinated her. That was where dreaming got you—absolutely nowhere.

  ‘Were you hoping there was a suite of modern furniture under the piled-up wreckage of ages?’

  ‘I doubt the word modern is one Great-Uncle Hubert would have recognised if it was painted across the house in letters ten feet high. What I am hoping for is hot tea and currant buns with my luncheon and you will have neither if you do not hurry up,’ he said with a frown, as if he was getting ready to worry about her all over again.

  ‘I will, then, since I know what a glutton for currant buns you are,’ she replied and went to clean up and put on a better gown until he was safely busy again. Since Miss Donne’s Bet had a light hand with a currant bun, it would be a pity to miss out on them altogether.

  * * *

  ‘Felicity looks so beautiful,’ Miss Donne whispered tearfully as Reverend Yelverton said the last majestic words of the marriage service over the happy couple and they faced the world as Mr and Mrs Yelverton.