A Chance Encounter (2 page)

Elizabeth Rossiter was six and twenty years old. She looked the part of a governess as she dressed for dinner without the help of a maid. The gray cotton dress, with its high, unadorned neckline and long, fitting sleeves, was changed for an evening dress that was almost identical except that the fabric was silk. She loosened her long chestnut hair, which was tied in a severe knot at the back of her neck, brushed it until it shone and crackled against the hard bristles of the brush, and arranged it in the same style. The face that looked back at her from the mirror was calm. There was no self-pity in the look.

Elizabeth had been considered an exceptionally beautiful girl when she made her come-out in London at the age of twenty. Not pretty, but beautiful. The fact that she had spent five years running her father's home after the death of her mother had given her a maturity that many other debutantes lacked. She had acquired a dignity in face of the difficulties of her situation. Her father had been frequently in his cups; he held gambling parties in his country home and was often beset by creditors. Through it all, Elizabeth had tried to run the house as if it were a home for the sake of John, her younger brother. But when John, under the sponsorship of his godfather, had gone to Oxford, Elizabeth had finally given in to the frequent pleadings of Lady Crawford, her maternal aunt, and had gone to London to be introduced to the
ton.

Things might have gone well for her there. She had made friends, she had had admirers, her engagement calendar had constantly been filled. Aunt Matilda had been hopeful of her making a good match despite her lack of fortune. Elizabeth often wondered what might have happened had she not met Robert, but, of course, such thoughts were useless conjecture. She
had
met Robert and fallen in love with him and. . . . But she had trained herself over the long years not to think of that episode in her life.

The fact was that even before the end of the Season she had been back in the country with her father and that within a year he had been dead. No one had been more surprised than she to discover that her father had left no debts. Even so, the estate was impoverished, and bringing it back to prosperity would be a long and tedious business for her brother, who was still only eighteen years old. A good bailiff had been hired to reverse the neglect of years, while John finished his studies at university. Elizabeth had reached the decision to seek employment and had found a position with the Rowes in the West Country. John had been upset and, in fact, had constantly tried to persuade her to resign her position and to move back home. But Elizabeth had been adamant. She would never marry— her experience in London had assured that. And she would not burden her brother with her presence. She had been glad of her decision when John married at the age of two and twenty and a child arrived the following year. She was delighted, too, to know that the estate, though still not prosperous, was beginning to pay its way.

Elizabeth descended to the dining room when the bell sounded, and spent the next hour listening, in some amusement, to Mrs. Rowe rhapsodizing about the expected pleasures of the coming weeks.

“So you think our new neighbor will soon be riveted to Cecily, do you, my love?” Mr. Rowe asked, chuckling at the blush that immediately brightened his daughter's cheeks.

“Papa!” Cecily cried. “I do not even know if I shall like him. I do not even know that he is handsome, though Ferdie says he is.”

“What does that signify if he has the handsome fortune that I have heard he has?” her father replied with a twinkle.

“Well,” Cecily said doubtfully, “but I should hate it, Papa, if he were positively ugly.”

“Depend upon it, my love, if he is wealthy, he is probably handsome too,” Mrs. Rowe comforted.

Mr. Rowe chuckled. “Is it not a blessing, Miss Rossiter,” he commented, “that our country is not ruled by a woman's logic?”

She smiled. “Ah, but it is a woman's romantic view of life that keeps it from becoming dull,” she replied.

“Then we must look for a duke, at least, to be part of the Ferndale party,” Mr. Rowe said, directing his attention back to his plate again, “for you, of course, Miss Rossiter. Who could be more romantic than a Cinderella figure?”

“That would be very fine,” she agreed gravely, “but we should have to prevail upon Mrs. Rowe and Cecily to conspire to keep me busy in my rags so that I could not attend the ball.”

“But it is your idea not to have anything to do with elegant company, my dear,” Mrs. Rowe interjected. “I would like nothing better than for you to meet a duke. The idea of my trying to prevent such a match!
Is
there to be a duke as a member of the party, Mr. Rowe?”

Her husband smiled fleetingly at his plate, but directed at his wife a secretive look that raised her curiosity and anticipation of the proposed arrivals to near-fever pitch.

The topic of Mr. Mainwaring and his anticipated arrival had hardly begun to flag one week later when it was given a reviving boost. The ostler of the Granby inn told the butcher, who as usual told all comers for the rest of the day, that two grand traveling carriages had stopped at the inn to ask directions to Ferndale. The first carriage had apparently been carrying passengers, though they had not been obliging enough to step down and be counted. The second was loaded down with trunks and bandboxes. Two gentlemen riders had accompanied the carriages, both dressed in the height of fashion. Indeed, it was one of these gentlemen who had asked directions of the innkeeper.

Mrs. Rowe had to live with her impatience for two whole days before her husband made the promised call on the new arrivals. Her only consolation was that the other gentlemen of the neighborhood would be feeling similar scruples about descending too early on the new owner of Femdale. Mrs. Claridge would surely have found an excuse to call if she had had any information, and Lady Worthing would have found a more subtle way of informing her supposed inferiors if she knew anything of the identities of the visitors.

No soldier marching into battle has been more lovingly sent on his way by his womenfolk than was Mr. Rowe when he departed for Mr. Mainwaring's house. He was sent back upstairs once to change his coat because the first one was too loose for current fashion. He complied with his wife's demands with an amused indulgence and pinched his daughter's chin as he made his escape to his waiting horse.

Mrs. Rowe and Cecily jumped to their feet in unrestrained excitement when he strolled into the drawing room a little less than two hours later, and Elizabeth smiled up at him from her embroidery.

“Well, Cecily,” he began, “it seems that your mama is right again. Mr. Mainwaring is, in fact, both young and handsome.”

“Oh, Papa,” Cecily squealed.

“I am so gratified that you went today to pay your respects,” his wife added ecstatically. “I vow that you must have stolen a march on Squire Worthing, which is only as it should be, my second cousin Harriet being sister-in-law to an earl.”

“No one in his right mind would argue that that connection gives us a position of undisputed superiority in the county, my love,” her husband replied indulgently, “but Worthing was there before me, with Ferdie in tow.”

“How provoking!” said Mrs. Rowe. “But do tell all, my dear Mr. Rowe. What manner of man is Mr. Mainwaring, and who are his guests? Will they feel it a condescension to associate with us? Or are they prepared to join in the social activities of the neighborhood? Oh, depend upon it, Lady Worthing will have them all to dine before we can make plans. She will be pushing that pasty little Lucy at him, mark my words, though the chit is only seventeen and much too young to be setting her cap at a gentleman from town. But then, Lady Worthing always did lack something of breeding. Father a cit, you know, Miss Rossiter.”

“Am I to answer your questions now, my love?” Mr. Rowe asked meekly. “The gentleman of the house is tall, dark, and handsome, Cecily—definitely the answer to a maiden's dreams, I believe. He might be difficult to bring to the point, though, love,” he added as Cecily clasped her hands to her bosom and gazed adoringly at him. “His manners are quite correct, but there is a certain stiffness about the man. He is not perfectly amiable, I would guess.”

Cecily seemed quite unperturbed. If a man were tall, dark, handsome, wealthy,
and
single, what more could a girl ask for?

“It seems that there are two more gentlemen and two ladies at the house,” her father continued, “though I met only a Mr. and Mrs. Prosser, a youngish and perfectly amiable couple. Mrs. Prosser's sister is also of the party, we were told, and another mysterious gentleman, whom I heard referred to only as ‘his lordship.' There, my dear, have I not made you happy today? Your family has been put upon visiting terms with our new neighbor, I have discovered the answers to many of your questions, and I have left you with an intriguing mystery.”

“‘His lordship,'” Mrs. Rowe repeated. “We have a member of the aristocracy in our midst. Now I wonder if he is a handsome man.”

“He is probably a hunchback with a squint and not a groat to his name,” her husband suggested with a straight face.

Mrs. Rowe chose to ignore this witticism. “When may one decently invite them to dine?” she asked of no one in particular. “Next week for an informal dinner of, say, twenty people? Could we have dancing too? Or would cards only be more appropriate for a first visit?”

“I think none of those plans would be suitable, Dorothy,” her husband said quite firmly, “until Mr. Mainwaring returns my call and shows that he wishes for our acquaintance.”

“Oh, but, Papa,” Cecily wailed, “we might wait forever.”

“Precisely, my love,” her father replied unsympathetically. “But, Miss Rossiter, I see a very promising future for you. ‘His lordship' cannot be a prince or a duke, but it is very possible that he is an earl. He surely could not be so unromantic as to neglect to fall in love with a gentlewoman turned governess and raise her to the exalted rank of countess—now, could he?”

“He would not be so rag-mannered,” Elizabeth agreed. “I shall lose all my faith in romance, sir, if I do not have him groveling at my feet within a sennight. Provided he is also handsome and wealthy, of course.”

“Depend upon it, my dear,” Mrs. Rowe said soothingly. “If he is a member of the aristocracy, he will be handsome.”

Mr. Rowe smiled with amused affection at his mate.

I
t was Elizabeth Rossiter who saw the visitors arriving the following afternoon, all on horseback. One was a lady, she could see. Elizabeth had returned just half an hour before from a visit to the rectory. She had taken flowers from the garden to decorate the church while Cecily paid a call on Anne to divulge all the information she had learned at the dinner table the evening before. Now Elizabeth was sitting in the window seat of the drawing room, her embroidery in her lap. Mrs. Rowe and Cecily were looking through patterns, though the directions for the new dresses had been given to Miss Phillips days before.

“I should warn you, ma'am, that I believe we are about to have visitors,” Elizabeth said calmly. She did not look through the window again for fear that the riders would look up and laugh at her curiosity.

Mrs. Rowe shrieked. “Mr. Mainwaring?” she asked. “And I would put on this old lace cap after luncheon when something told me that I should wear the new.”

“Beth,” Cecily cried, “is my gown creased? Have my ringlets lost their curl? That new bonnet will flatten my hair so.”

“You look your usual pretty self,” Elizabeth assured her. “And I am sorry now that I alarmed you both. The visitors must call upon Mr. Rowe first. It is just possible that they will not call upon you ladies at all today.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Rowe agreed, “and it would be just like him to keep them all to himself in the library and never think of bringing them to the drawing room.”

But five minutes later Mr. Rowe had ushered the three gentlemen and a lady into the drawing room and was performing the introductions. Mrs. Rowe and Cecily were on their feet. Everyone seemed to be moving and talking at once, as Mr. Mainwaring, Mr. and Mrs. Prosser, and the Marquess of Hetherington were introduced to the ladies of the house.

Only Elizabeth was still seated, frozen into the shadows of the window seat where she had shrunk when the visitors first entered the room. Her eyes were fixed on the marquess; for the moment no one else existed in the room. My God, but he had not changed! She saw a man only a little above average height, but graceful and athletic in build. His fair hair was as shiny and as thick as it had been then, his face just as open and full of vitality. It was not exactly a handsome face, but the dancing blue eyes and the perfect white teeth made the beholder unaware of the fact.

He was bowing now over Cecily's hand, gazing into her face with frank admiration. Robert. Elizabeth had frequently wondered what it would be like to see him again. Well, now she knew, some dispassionate part of her brain told her. Numb. Totally and completely numb. But not for long.

Mrs. Rowe turned with a magnanimous gesture to the employee that she insisted on treating like a lady. “I wish you to meet Cecily's lady companion, Miss Elizabeth Rossiter,” she said, directing all eyes to the window seat.