Love and Lady Lovelace (The Changing Fortunes Series, Vol. 8) Page 10

  “I don’t want to marry you,” burst out Belinda, amazing the company by uttering a whole sentence.

  “You are overwrought,” exclaimed her mother. “You do not know what you are saying.”

  But it seemed as if the shy Belinda, having once found her voice, was reluctant to stop talking. “I don’t want to marry a lord and live in the country. I hate the country. It’s so countrified. And it rains a lot. I’m frightened of all these servants. I’m sorry, mama, I thought I was in love with Philip, but I hain’t. I’d rather marry him.” And she pointed her fork at the startled Mr. Bagshot.

  “Oh, really,” said Priscilla, all heaving bosom. “Your manners may be all right in the City, but they will not do for a gentleman’s home. In Society, we don’t behave so.”

  “We don’t chase after men who don’t want us, in the City,” snapped Belinda. “Poor Mr. Bagshot.”

  “You’re all tewwibly vulgar, if you ask me,” said Agatha.

  “Nobody asked you, you trollop!” screamed Priscilla and ran from the room.

  “Hrmph! Think they’ll hunt today?” said Colonel Freddie firmly and clearly.

  “Shouldn’t think so,” said Mr. Bagshot gratefully. “Terrible gale blowing. Ground’s like soup.”

  Glad of the diversion, Amaryllis said, “I don’t think the Malden and Daxtead Hunt have ever really caught a fox. Do you know, it is said they have bought so many bag foxes from Leadenhall Street and set them loose that the countryside is quite overrun.”

  “Where is Mr. Worthy to be found?” asked Lord Philip.

  “In the estates office—that’s what was my husband’s study at the end of the west wing.”

  “If you will excuse me, I will go there now,” said Lord Philip. “Ah, here is Foster with the post. Anything for me?”

  “Just one, my lord,” said the butler, handing him a letter, which, from its battered appearance, bore witness to its travels around the countryside as it was forwarded from place to place.

  “Thank you.” Lord Philip took the letter, made his bow to Amaryllis, and left the room.

  Amaryllis wished to escape herself. She wanted to be private, to turn over that phrase of his in her mind, “whether we will divorce or no.” Could it mean that he might not want to divorce her? Then her heart sank. Perhaps he now wanted the marriage to stand so that he could get his hands on Beaton Malden. What did she know of him, after all? Look how blatantly he had flirted with Agatha.

  And did the Fangs not realize how mad the whole business was? One simply did not buy husbands? Oh, yes, one most certainly does, whispered her conscience.

  Amaryllis forced herself to discuss plans with the guests as to how they should best spend their day, although she longed to be shot of the lot of them. No one seemed very interested in anything until Foster stepped forward. “If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, my lady? I should be only too happy to take the ladies and gentlemen on a tour of the house and grounds.”

  “Oh, splendid idea, Foster. They would be delighted,” said Amaryllis, firmly ignoring the tepid reception of this suggestion. “I’m sure everyone would love to start directly after breakfast. And now, if you will all excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”

  Miss Wilkins rose with her and both made their exit. Foster followed them from the room. “Mr. Worthy begged me to tell you, my lady, that Mrs. Smith over at Baggets End is poorly with the fever.”

  “Thank you, Foster,” said Amaryllis. “I shall fetch some medicine from the stillroom and ride over. Find me a bottle of the best port and some calf’s-foot jelly and some sugarplums for her children. By the way, I noticed the other day that the furniture in the Long Gallery had been moved around. I do not remember giving any instructions.”

  Foster’s face was a mask. “I shall attend to it, my lady.”

  “Lady Lovelace?”

  Her heart missed a beat at the sound of that now familiar voice.

  “Lord Philip?”

  “I would like a word in private with you, Lady Lovelace. If Miss Wilkins will excuse us.”

  “Certainly, my lord. Tabby, you are looking peaked. Why don’t you lie down, and when I return from the Smiths, we can discuss our toilettes for the evening. Lord Philip, if you will follow me to the morning room….”

  The morning room was a comfortable retreat, decorated in panels of pale gold silk. All the favorite paintings and porcelain seemed to have found their way there. The wind sent great sheets of rain hurtling against the windows.

  “I could not help overhearing that you plan to ride out today,” said Lord Philip. “I would suggest you leave it until the weather clears.”

  “Oh, no,” said Amaryllis simply. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I am very strong, my lord. I shall not melt. What was it you wanted to discuss with me?”

  “Pray be seated,” he said, waiting until she had settled herself in a small armchair on one side of the fire.

  He sat down opposite and Amaryllis studied his handsome face, the strange slanting black eyebrows, the firm mouth, and felt a dull ache at her heart and wondered why.

  He crackled open the letter he had just received. “Well, here’s irony,” he said. “I have… or rather had… this uncle that I have never seen. He was the youngest son of his family and so he joined the East India Company. He made his fortune in India, a fact of which I was completely unaware… until now. He has died shortly after his return to England and has left his entire fortune to me. It is considerable, I assure you. Enough to buy me the land I crave. Mr. Worthy has agreed, with your permission, of course, to help me in my search.”

  Amaryllis said the first thing that came into her head, which was, “Then you don’t need to stay married to me?”

  He looked at her in some surprise. “That was never the case, surely, since we both discovered that the one had tricked the other?”

  Amaryllis flushed miserably. “I thought you wanted Beaton Malden.”

  “And would stay married to you in order to get it? I thought I had made it plain I had no interest in your property except to supply some help and advice. And I could have sworn you believed me.”

  “Oh, I did. I d-do,” stammered Amaryllis miserably.

  “Then why the deuce…?”

  But Amaryllis shook her head and bit her lip and looked remarkably like a guilty schoolgirl. How could she tell him that she had just realized she had hoped that somehow he would come to love Beaton Malden as much as she and would decide to stay, and then they would be friends and she need not be alone anymore?

  Friends? sneered an inner voice, but she refused to listen.

  “I suppose you will want to stay married to me now that I am a rich man,” he countered.

  “How dare you!” gasped Amaryllis. “Go and marry whom you please. Mrs. Jordan would suit you very well, I think.”

  “Yes, she is vastly pretty, is she not?” he asked lightly and Amaryllis had a sudden beautiful and fleeting daydream in which the Malden and Daxtead Hunt killed Mrs. Jordan in mistake for the fox.

  He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs in their shining Hessian boots out to the blaze, propping his heels on the fender. His eyes were mocking again.

  “You know what I think about the pair of us, Lady Lovelace? I think we are not mercenary at all. Mercenary people do not sacrifice themselves for others. I am talking about you. Where are those wretched sisters of yours, by the way? Do they never come to call?”

  “They have their own families now.”

  “And since you have fulfilled your part of marrying for a comfortable amount of money to supply them with a home and then having to marry a fortune to supply them with a Season, they no longer need you?”

  “That is not true,” said Amaryllis hotly, but at the same time, she realized it was. Her sisters had never really had any affection for her. They forced me into that second marriage, thought Amaryllis, suddenly weary, with as much feeling as a farmer has when he sends his bull out to stud.

  And yet, she
mused, I do love them. I still do, and I got a great deal of pleasure out of trying to make them happy.

  But the more you gave them, the more discontented they became, said her ever-niggling conscience.

  Lord Philip studied the expressions flitting across her face and found himself prey to unmanly feelings of tenderness.

  She looked so small and defenseless. She was what? Twenty-seven? And yet the years did not yet seem to have touched her. Her skin and hair glowed with health and she carried about with her an aura of untouched innocence. But look how ruthlessly she pretended to love me, he thought, and hardened his heart. He had expected to enjoy telling her that he had come into a fortune. He did not expect to find himself wanting to comfort her and protect her.

  He found himself saying, “Look… Amaryllis… it looks as if neither of us needs to marry for money. Thanks to Mr. Worthy’s efforts and the loyalty of your tenants and servants, it seems as if you should find yourself solvent in not too long a time hence. I am prepared to finance your losses.”

  “I don’t want your charity,” cried Amaryllis. “That is not what I want of you.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Nothing!” said Amaryllis wildly.

  “Are you in love with anyone?”

  Amaryllis raised her large eyes and stared full at him in dawning horror. Yes, I am, she thought with a sudden, awful realization. I am in love with you and have been since that first moment I set eyes on you.

  She dropped her eyes and bit her lip and looked the picture of misery. “No,” she mumbled.

  “In that case,” he said, “I see no reason why the marriage should not stand. I shall now be in a position of wondering if every woman wants me for my fortune alone, which is ironical considering that I myself was recently in the other camp. You, I feel, have surely been married enough for the moment. I shall not interfere in your life and I have no doubt that you will respond by not interfering in mine. We shall each have our freedom.”

  Freedom to flirt with Mrs. Jordan, thought Amaryllis.

  “We have not had any time to get to know each other,” went on Lord Philip. “Now is our opportunity. We can be friends.” He gave her a beautiful smile of singular sweetness. “Now I shall go and bury myself in the estate books.”

  She did not reply. He got to his feet and stood looking down at her, wondering what she was thinking and why she looked so sad.

  “Perhaps you feel tied to this unwelcome marriage?” he said gently. “Would you like me to consult my lawyers and put a divorce in motion?”

  “I don’t know,” said Amaryllis fretfully.

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “Then if you don’t know, I shall behave like a husband and make the decision for you. Let the marriage stand for the moment.”

  Amaryllis studied the beaded toes of her slippers as if she had never seen anything so fascinating before. She did not look up until the door gently closed behind him.

  The wind was still howling outside but the rain had ceased for the moment. All at once, she felt she needed action. She was tired of thinking and worrying. Tired of this awful realization that she loved him.

  Soon she was mounted on her favorite mare, Bessie, sitting easily in the sidesaddle, and warmly wrapped up against the biting wind. The saddlebags were laden with comforts for the invalid. Amaryllis often rode without the escort of a groom since she very rarely rode further than the boundaries of her estates.

  The wind howled through the skeletal branches of the trees and sent miniature waves scurrying over the gray surface of the lake. Black, ragged clouds tore across a dull sky and the air carried the sharp, metallic smell of approaching snow. Down came the rain again, rapidly changing to sleet as the wind shifted from east to northeast.

  By the time Amaryllis reached Mrs. Smith’s cottage, it was snowing heavily, and all at once she found herself wishing it would snow and snow and snow, great white drifts, which would make the journey that night to the hunt ball impossible so that she might not have to watch him dance with Mrs. Jordan and flirt and hold her hand.

  That she might not have to suffer.

  Alas for Amaryllis’s dreams of being snowed in. She had only been at Mrs. Smith’s for half an hour when the wind dropped.

  By evening, when they all assembled in the hall to await the carriages being brought round, only a few tiny flakes of snow were drifting down outside.

  It was unfortunate that Belinda Fang was a merchant’s daughter. Amaryllis had felt she looked very well in her green crêpe gown edged with blond lace and her paste ruby-and-diamond necklace blazing at her neck. But no sooner did Belinda set eyes on that necklace than she said, “Oh, Lady Lovelace! Why do you wear paste? I thought everyone in the ton wore real jewels.”

  “Well, I most certainly do,” giggled Agatha Jordan. “My diamonds are weal!”

  Amaryllis affected deafness, although she was uncomfortably aware of the startled look in Lord Philip’s green eyes.

  Agatha had moved forward to stand close to Lord Philip. “Remembwer, you wanted to dance all the dances with me,” she said.

  “Did I say that?” said Lord Philip lightly. “You are quite right about me, you know. I am a terrible flirt and am apt to forget that I am a married man. Now I shall dance as many dances as possible with my wife, and that should restore me to your good graces, Mrs. Jordan.”

  Agatha pouted, and Amaryllis suddenly felt a lifting of her heart and decided to ignore Belinda’s remark about the paste jewels and wear them after all. She had been just about to retreat to her bedroom and remove them.

  “Hope you’ll favor me with a dance, Miss Belinda,” said Freddie Jackson.

  “Of course,” said Belinda. Mrs. Jordan’s eyes remained fastened on Lord Philip.

  “She’s really becoming quite obsessed with him,” muttered Miss Wilkins.

  Amaryllis did not even have to ask who Miss Wilkins was talking about. Agatha Jordan’s beautiful blue eyes took on an almost greedy look when they fastened on Lord Philip.

  Amaryllis and Miss Wilkins had the mixed joy of sharing a carriage with Lord Philip and Mrs. Jordan—although how that particular arrangement came about, Amaryllis was never quite sure.

  Her emotions felt too jumbled and her nerves too overset to even think of competing with Mrs. Jordan and so she contented herself with looking out of the window at the passing country-side.

  An inch of snow had fallen, transforming the black countryside into a sparkling fairy tale, frosting the evergreens, and muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.

  Sir Peregrine’s manor was only a few miles from Beaton Malden and it seemed a very short time before they were rolling up a smooth drive and swinging around in front of the house and stopping at the entrance.

  Amaryllis found herself impatient with the whole idea of the ball ahead. She wanted to be alone with her husband—yes, her husband. She did not want to compete for his attention, to live for the fleeting press of a hand during the waltzes and reels, the gallops and quadrilles. Hunt balls were hardly romantic affairs since the guests always seemed to become affected with the boisterous manners of the hunting field and whooped and danced and drank too much.

  The dance was to be held in a long room on the ground floor with a fire burning brightly at each end. It was alight with the blaze of hundreds of candles.

  Sir Peregrine Russell, attired in the dress uniform of the hunt—bottle-green coat with gold facings and canary-yellow breeches—had taken upon himself the role of Master of Ceremonies, and no sooner were his guests all assembled in the ballroom than he ran from one group to the other, clapping his hands like a country boy trying to scare the crows and urging them all to take their places for the first country dance.

  Amaryllis was partnered by Harry Bagshot, Lord Philip with Agatha Jordan, Priscilla with Freddie Jackson, Belinda with a Mr. Dennis O’Brien, an Irish guest of the Russells, and Mr. and Mrs. Fang with each other.

  Fiddles, horn, and bassoon struck up and off they all went, with S
ir Peregrine calling out, “Hands across, down the middle—or do I mean up the middle—oh, dash it all—I mean, down the middle and up again!”

  And Amaryllis tried to shut Lord Philip from her mind and smiled so dazzingly on Harry Bag-shot that he became quite nervous and kept stumbling and wondered whether he had some fatal fascination for women.

  Dance followed dance. Amaryllis tripped each measure gracefully, chattering brightly to each partner, was not asked to dance by Lord Philip, and wished she were dead.

  The supper dance loomed nearer and nearer as the hour approached one in the morning. You had to be really serious about a lady to partner her in the supper dance, perhaps because you took that lady in to supper afterward and it was assumed you had to be really serious about her to want to watch her eat.

  “If he asks me, I shall refuse,” vowed Amaryllis.

  But somehow when the supper dance was announced and the fiddles struck up the opening strains of a lilting waltz theme and suddenly Lord Philip was bowing low in front of her, Amaryllis found she could not refuse to dance with him, although she persuaded herself it was because she did not wish to make a scene.

  Pouting Agatha was borne off by Harry Bagshot, Belinda Fang by Freddie Jackson, and Miss Wilkins by the vicar.

  Well, it being a hunt ball, there was none of that stiff formality or order of precedence one finds at a formal dance. The guests filed sedately enough into the supper room and then fell on the tables, jostling and pushing and treading on each other.

  Crossed tables were laid out with turkeys, chickens, hams, tongues, lobster salads, spun-sugar pyramids, jellies, tarts, creams, custards, pineapples, grapes, peaches, nectarines, ices, plovers’ eggs, prawns, and fifty sponge-cake foxes with gold and green and canary-yellow rosettes for tags to their brushes. Solid groups of green wine bottles were placed at strategic points down the tables, and in the middle of the crossroads formed by the two tables was a huge washtub of ice filled with champagne bottles.

  Some gentlemen were so carried away by the sight of all this food that they forgot they were not on the hunting field and fought to fill their plates, urging their fair partners on with cries of “Hoic holloa! Hoic holloa!” and an occasional scream of “Tallyho!”