A Marriage of Inconvenience (2 page)

He remembered the day after Anna was born quite distinctly, with the strange clarity that attended his scattered early recollections. He had been sitting terrified in the nursery, sobbing in his nursemaid’s arms. They had kept telling him that his mama was gone, never to return, and he had not understood and had been so very frightened.

Then his father had walked in, a little squirming bundle cradled in the crook of his arm. James had looked at him and realized that Father was sad, frightened and alone too.

Father had sat on a low chair and beckoned to him. “Wee Jamie, I have something to show you.”

Mama had called him Wee Jamie in her lovely Scottish accent, so James had wept fresh tears. But he’d obediently slid off Nurse’s lap and approached his father.

“This is your little sister,” Father had said.

James hadn’t wanted a sister. He’d wanted his mother back. “She’s very red and ugly.”

At that Father had smiled a little. “No more than you were, son, when you were only one day old. She’ll turn prettier in time.”

“She’d better.”

“She will. Now, Jamie, your sister, here—her name is Anna—she needs you to be a very good big brother. She’ll never have a mother, only us, so you have a very important job. You must always guard and love and protect your sister, so she won’t be alone.”

Almost twenty years later, James understood how skillfully his father had managed him. It would have been easy for a little child to resent the new baby, even to blame her for his mother’s death. Father had known him well enough to know that telling him Anna was his responsibility would prevent such a reaction. James still felt a duty to watch out for his sister, even though their aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Dunmalcolm, had proven affectionate and devoted guardians to her since their father’s death.

“Will our aunt and uncle ride with us this morning?” he asked as they proceeded through an echoing marble hall toward the rear entrance of his house, closest to the stables.

“I shouldn’t think so,” Anna replied. “We arrived so late last evening that I’m sure they won’t make an early morning of it. And Aunt Lilias was never much of a horsewoman. She hasn’t ridden in years.”

“Good. We can have a proper gallop, then.”

She fairly skipped down the steps leading toward the stable yard. “I can hardly wait. I’m sick of riding sedately through the park at the fashionable hour. London really is a bore. Not the place itself, of course, but the Season. I hate to think of going through it again next year. Maybe I’ll spare myself the trouble and simply marry one of the neighbors, or else write to Alec and Andrew to see if they can commend any of their brother officers to my affections.”

James laughed. “So long as you marry wisely, but with affection, too. You’re not the sort who’d be content in some cold match of convenience.”

“Is
anyone?
”

“I haven’t heard that our neighbor at the castle is making a love match. I’d imagine Lord Almont will be content so long as this Portia Arrington gives him an heir at last.”

Anna shook her head. “That’s not how it is at all, brother, as you would know if you hadn’t been so determined to avoid all society these past few months.”

“I had my reasons.” By shunning balls, parties and rides in the park at the fashionable hour, he had managed to avoid seeing Eleanor.

“You don’t mean to tell me what they were, do you?”

“Of course not. So you may as well tell me what’s so terrible about Lord Almont’s match.”

She sighed. “Only that it’s quite clearly a love match on his side, but not on hers, which seems to me a sure recipe for conjugal misery. I can imagine a marriage both parties enter for convenience being happy, so long as each fulfills their end of the bargain, but love on one side, calculation on the other? Surely that must become unbearable for both.”

“So he loves his young bride? I assumed he was marrying again only to secure the succession.”

“I’m sure that’s why he first sought a wife. But Miss Arrington is very beautiful, and Lord Almont was besotted from the moment he set eyes upon her.”

“Why couldn’t such a beauty find a husband more to her liking, or at least nearer her age?” James had known many happy marriages where the husband was older than the wife. Father had been fourteen years older than Mother. James himself thought it perfectly acceptable for a wife to be older than her husband.
He
had not cared that Eleanor was a dozen years older than he was. But Lord Almont was over thirty years older than Miss Arrington, and James thought that gap a trifle excessive.

Anna shrugged. “We moved in different circles, so I couldn’t say. Perhaps her family insisted upon the match for the sake of his wealth and rank. I pity her, if so.”

They reached the stables where grooms waited with a pair of Arab mares, one a silvery dappled gray, the other a dark bay. James mounted his gray, Ghost, and waited while a groom boosted Anna into Shade’s saddle.

Together they rode out of the stable yard at a sedate trot. When they reached a long, open field, empty except for a handful of placidly grazing sheep, James grinned at his sister. “Shall we have a gallop?”

“Absolutely.”

And they were off, racing together across the green fields under a clear blue sky.

On her first morning at Almont Castle, Lucy awoke early and decided to go for a walk before anyone else from the families—her own or Lord Almont’s—was about. Her peaceful, well-ordered life had been thrown into utter disarray over the past fortnight, and she craved solitude to reflect upon the changes and how she was expected to behave in light of them.

She still found it difficult to believe she was truly engaged to Sebastian, the more so because his mother, her Aunt Arrington, had ordered them to keep the betrothal secret for the time being, until Sebastian’s sister Portia’s wedding was over. She had made it a condition of her consent to the match, and Sebastian had grudgingly acquiesced.

Lucy hadn’t asked for an explanation because she knew what her aunt must be thinking—that Portia might grow unmanageable if anyone stole attention she thought her due. Or perhaps Aunt Arrington herself didn’t want Portia’s grand new family to know just yet that a lowborn girl like Lucy would soon be not just Portia’s cousin, but her sister-in-law.

Lucy could not like being obliged to keep her own prospects a secret for Portia’s sake, but she obeyed her aunt’s wishes. At least Aunt Arrington had welcomed her cordially enough, bought her several new dresses for this sojourn in Gloucestershire to see Portia wed and said she looked forward to Lucy’s continuance as her companion. For such was to be Lucy’s married life, at least at first. Sebastian had laughed when she had asked if she might follow the drum at his side, saying that she was far too delicate and gently reared for so harsh a life.

Sebastian too was impatient with the secrecy and delay. He had already told her to be prepared, for he had obtained a special license and meant to marry her the very morning after Portia’s wedding.

Yet even that bewildered her. Why was Sebastian in such a hurry? He was kind, he was affectionate, he talked of his plans for their future, but he was not ardent. He had never tried to kiss her again since the morning he had made his offer. When Lucy tried to press him on his reasons for marrying her, he spoke of her modest ways and good sense, qualities he claimed must appeal to any man of sound judgment, but he never spoke of love.

She mused on such matters as the young housemaid who had been assigned to see to her comfort during her stay at Almont Castle helped her into a simple muslin dress. It was one of her old things, as she was saving her new dresses for grander, more public occasions. Since the early June morning held a chill, she draped her favorite scarlet cloak about her shoulders before taking up her sketchbook and pencils, and asked the maid the best way out of the castle if she wanted to walk to the south.

After only one wrong turning, she found the correct door and made her escape into the bright, fresh air. The chance to explore the countryside surrounding Almont Castle was the sole saving grace of what she expected to be a thoroughly trying visit. She planned to climb the hill she had seen from her bedchamber window and sketch the castle from that vantage point. It was a splendid edifice, its oldest section five hundred years old, set alongside a river in a broad valley, and she yearned to capture it on paper.

She crossed the stone bridge spanning the moat—how amazing to live surrounded by an actual moat, even if it was now merely a convenient stew-pond for carp and the like—then hurried through the gardens and began picking her way up the lightly wooded hillside. By the time she reached the summit, she felt pleasantly winded, and she clutched her side against an incipient stitch. The morning was breezy, and she laughed as the wind tossed her cloak and loosened a few locks of her hair from its neat coil.

She had meant to immediately find a good place to sit and sketch, but she was so caught by the sight of the valley on the other side of the hill that she forgot her intent.

It was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. It was narrower than the Almont Castle valley, and more densely populated, with a tidy village at its western end—a collection of snug cottages, some of the local golden-brown stone, others whitewashed with thatched roofs. A Norman church with a tall stone tower commanded the village square. Scattered throughout were farm cottages and a few larger homes that must belong to the local minor gentry. Woolly sheep and glossy-coated horses grazed in verdant pastures, and young wheat and barley grew abundantly in the lower, more level fields alongside the broad stream that flowed down the valley. It was a fertile, wholesome place, and yet the tall hills on either side kept it from appearing quite
tame.

But the crowning glory of the valley stood at its eastern end—a castle, but a new-built castle, as playful and whimsical as Almont was dignified and weighted with history. No moat encircled this one, and its windows were many and wide. Towers and crenellations decorated it with asymmetrical abandon, and at one end stood a grand, glassed-in conservatory.

Lucy changed her mind about sketching Almont Castle. She would draw this perfect little valley instead. First she needed a seat. The damp, dewy ground wouldn’t do, even with her cloak to protect her dress. She picked her way along the ridge until she came to a place where the ground on either side was much less steep and a stone wall in some disrepair divided the land.

She found a spot beneath a spreading oak tree where the wall was topped by a broad, flat stone, sat down, got out her sketchbook and pencils and went to work, tracing the outlines of the landscape before her.

After a few minutes she heard galloping hoofbeats, and the valley took on added life in the form of two riders, a gentleman and a lady, racing down a broad field. Lucy watched them wistfully for a moment. She had always longed to ride, but she had never been given the opportunity to learn.

But at least she could draw. She frowned thoughtfully at the page, then added the horses and riders.

Absorbed in her work, she was startled when the hoofbeats, along with a horse’s snorting breath, suddenly drew near. She looked up to see the gentleman rider on his splendid dappled gray charging almost directly toward her, setting up to leap the wall just to her left.

At that unlucky moment, the gusty breeze caught her scarlet cloak and billowed it out. Poised to jump, the horse instead drew up short, tossing its master to the ground, before galloping away, back down into the valley.

Her heart in her throat, Lucy cast her sketchbook aside and ran to the fallen rider.

James knew quite well that he had merely had the wind knocked out of him, and that the young woman leaning over him was therefore no celestial being. Also, angels were generally represented as fair creatures, golden of hair and garbed in heavenly blue. Nothing angelic about deep brown eyes that fairly crackled with intelligence behind their momentary anxiety, nor about those dark curls peeping from beneath a scarlet cloak.

Yet for all that, the girl was an angel. He smiled lazily at her.

Her brows drew together slightly, which only served to further highlight her deep-set, expressive eyes.

“Sir, are you injured?”

Her voice was clear and melodious. Angelic, even.

“Nothing worse than bruises, I trust, miss,” he assured her.

“Do you think you can rise?”

The angel could not possibly realize she had committed a double entendre. Sweet-faced and innocent, she was no older than Anna and likely a little younger. She spoke in the soft, cultured tones of a gentlewoman.

But he allowed himself an inward smile nonetheless. “I trust I can,” he said, pushing himself up to a sitting position with a slight wince. He had landed on his left shoulder, and it pained him when he moved.

She rocked back on her heels to maintain a correct distance between them, and the hood of her cloak fell back to reveal all her thick brown hair, which James knew must have begun the morning neatly coiled but was now wind-tossed.

“But you
are
injured, sir! I’m so very sorry.”

He blinked at her. “Whatever for?”

“I startled your horse.”

“Not deliberately, I trust, unless you have the power to summon the wind.”

Her lips twitched as though she wanted to smile but was uncertain of the propriety of such a course. “No, sir.”

“Well, then. You’ve no need to apologize. I’ve but a trifling pain in my shoulder, nothing more.” He glanced over the offending shoulder and spotted Ghost galloping down the valley, with Anna on Shade in close pursuit. “Ghost is uninjured as well, and giving my sister a chance to exhibit what a master equestrienne she is.”

“It must be a fine thing, to ride so well.”

The angel’s voice was wistful, and James turned to look at her again. “Are you a horsewoman, miss?”

“I never had the opportunity to learn.”

He studied her more closely. Her simple dress and cloak were well made, but without the fashionable line and elegance that marked the work of an expensive London modiste. She must come of family genteel enough to see its daughters educated, but not wealthy enough to keep a stable. She couldn’t be Lord Almont’s intended, as he had first suspected, and he rejoiced that this pretty innocent wasn’t to be the bride of a foolish lord almost old enough to be her grandfather.

“Perhaps you’ll have a chance someday,” he said gently. “Though unless you start very young, it’s difficult to be quite as neck-or-nothing as Anna is.” He twisted around to look again, just in time to see Anna catch Ghost’s bridle and slow both horses to a canter. “I daresay Anna
should
join the cavalry. She can probably outride most of them.”

Now the angel allowed herself to smile. “I have a cousin in the Sixteenth, and he is a very fine rider,” she said proudly.

“Truly? I do as well—Major Alistair Gordon.”

“My cousin—Lieutenant Arrington—has often mentioned him as a fine officer.”

“Arrington? Surely you’re not Lord Almont’s intended.” It was rude, but he was so appalled at the thought of his angel in the old goat’s bed that he spoke before he thought.

“No, no. Miss Arrington is my cousin, too. Lieutenant Arrington’s sister.”

“Good,” he said fervently. “You’re far too young.”

“But Miss Arrington is only a year older than I am.”

There seemed nothing to say to that, so he changed the subject. “Could you give me your hand to help me stand, miss?” He didn’t precisely need her aid, but he wanted it. “My sister is looking for me, and I need to make myself more visible.”

“Of course, sir.” She scrambled to her feet and extended a slender, elegant hand. He took it and stood, accepting just enough of her help that she might believe he’d actually needed it.

Releasing her hand with a gentle squeeze, he waved his arms to catch Anna’s attention and nodded with satisfaction when she spotted them and began to ride toward them at a leisurely walk.

“Surely with cousins in the same regiment, we’ve enough of a connection to introduce ourselves without any impropriety,” he said.

Her eyes sparkled. “I suppose it is absurd that we know their names, but not each other’s.”

He smiled back. “I’m Lord Selsley.”

“I’m Miss Jones.”

He bowed. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

She curtsied. “Likewise.”

“I suppose you are in Gloucestershire for your cousin’s wedding.”

“Yes. We only arrived yesterday evening, just before dark.”

“How do you like it so far?”

“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” she said, her face aglow with enthusiasm. Then she blushed, a cloud over her bright features. “But I’ve traveled very little.”

“It is lovely here,” he agreed. “We can’t touch the Lakes or the Highlands for sheer grandeur, but to my mind the Cotswolds have a more livable beauty.” He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. “Of course, I do live here.”

“These are the first hills I’ve ever seen. To me, this
is
grandeur.”

“Where are you from?” he asked. Few districts of England lacked hills altogether.

“Essex,” she said, “and before that, London. Flat places.”

“My mother’s people are Highlanders. So between there and here, I’ve always lived in hills or mountains.”

“I envy you. The paintings and engravings I’ve seen of Scotland make it seem such a splendid place.”

He almost said that she must travel there someday and see it for herself, but from her simple garb and ignorance of horsemanship, he suspected she must be a humble poor relation of the Arrington family. Someone, especially a female someone, in so dependent a role might never have the money or freedom to make the journeys that James and his family did every year and took for granted.

Casting about for a tactful topic, he looked around and noticed a sketchbook lying abandoned at the base of the stone wall where Miss Jones had been sitting. “You draw, Miss Jones?”

“A little.”

He indicated the sketchbook. “Do you mind if I look?”

She glanced at him sidelong from beneath downcast eyelashes, modesty and pride warring for control of her expression. “If you’d like.”

He bent to pick it up, then sat on the wall. He opened the sketchbook to the last page she had drawn upon, smoothing the paper where it had been rumpled slightly.

He had expected the usual schoolgirl work, correct yet stilted and lifeless. Instead, he beheld a sketch of his valley—and it
was
his, for almost all of it belonged to the Selsley estate—unfinished and rough, but with the indefinable vibrancy and spark of a true artist.

“Miss Jones, you do not draw ‘a little.’ You are an artist. This is extraordinary.”

“Surely not extraordinary,” Miss Jones protested, but James could tell she was pleased.

“You must know what a great gift you have,” he insisted.

“My governess
did
always praise my drawings and watercolors, I suppose.”

“You never had a drawing master, but only your governess?”

“Oh, there was never any question of—that is, yes, Miss Bentley was my only instructor.”

That she had learned all this with no special training! He began to page through the book. She had chosen a wide range of subjects, from careful, close studies of flowers, to drawings of servants going about their duties, to a whimsical sketch of a cat curled beside a hearth. But he liked her landscapes best. They had a yearning focus on distant points—birds soaring above the fens, church spires on the horizon. He got the impression Miss Jones couldn’t help wanting more than life had offered her, and he admired her for it even while rather pitying her. Too often a restless spirit was a burden for a woman, and if his guesses about this girl’s background and position were correct, she was destined for a narrow, hemmed-in existence.

Anna rode up, leading Ghost, just as James turned the page away from a scene of cattle grazing in a field to a portrait of what must be the cavalry cousin. James frowned. Miss Jones had drawn with love, or at least adulation, a splendid officer with fair curly hair, the long mustaches cavalry men tended to affect and features with the same elegant symmetry as her own but infinitely more arrogant. The fellow stood tall and broad-shouldered before an ornate hearth, clad in an immaculate uniform. The Sixteenth had recently sailed for Portugal, and James supposed this was a leave-taking portrait.

“James, you must introduce your new acquaintance,” Anna said.

He looked up to see Anna smiling down at both of them from Shade’s back.

“Anna, this is Miss Jones. She is a cousin of Miss Arrington’s and is staying at the castle. Miss Jones, my sister, Miss Wright-Gordon.”

Miss Jones curtsied, and Anna inclined her head in the horseback equivalent of the gesture.

“We’re to dine at Almont Castle tonight,” Anna said.

Miss Jones smiled. “Yes, Lord Almont mentioned a dinner.”

“I’ll look forward to meeting you and the rest of your family under more formal circumstances,” James said, “though I suppose your cousin there is in Portugal.” He held the sketchbook up so Anna could see. “Miss Jones’s other cousin, Lieutenant Arrington of the Sixteenth. Doesn’t she draw well?”

“Very well,” Anna said abstractedly. “He looks like everything an officer should be.”

“He is,” Miss Jones assured her, her eyes aglow. “Actually, Seb—Lieutenant Arrington is here. He couldn’t sail with the regiment because of a broken leg, but he hopes to join them in another month or two.”

Anna’s eyes developed a sparkle of their own. “In that case I look forward to meeting him, don’t you, James?”

James was surprised either of the young ladies still remembered his presence as anything more than an easel for displaying sketches of handsome blond dragoon officers. “I’m afraid I cannot quite share your interest in a handsome gentleman, sister dear,” he drawled.

“James!” Anna favored Miss Jones with her most engaging smile. “My brother will leave you with a bad impression of me, when I only look forward to meeting someone who serves in the same regiment as our cousin.”

James didn’t believe that for a moment, and from the slight strain in Miss Jones’s answering smile, he doubted she did, either. Why did otherwise clever women lose all their reason when presented with a handsome man in uniform?

“I’m sure my cousin will be glad to give you tidings of Major Gordon,” Miss Jones said.

James decided he’d had enough of Lieutenant Arrington, and he hadn’t even met the man yet. “We’d best be on our way, Anna, and get these horses back to their stable.”

“They’ve certainly had a good run,” Anna said. “I’m very glad to meet you, Miss Jones, and I look forward to seeing you again this evening.”

Miss Jones unbent with a shy but genuine smile. “Thank you.”

James returned her sketchbook with a bow. “Until this evening. Your servant, Miss Jones.”

She curtsied and started back along the hilltop toward Almont Castle, glancing over her shoulder at them once before disappearing into the trees.

“She seems a sweet girl,” Anna commented as James swung back into Ghost’s saddle, wincing as he was obliged to put weight on his bruised shoulder.

“Indeed,” he agreed. “Rather shy, however.”

“No great wonder, at her age,” said Anna, who had never known a day’s shyness from the cradle up.

“Says the worldly woman of not quite twenty.”

“Well, I daresay I
do
have a great deal more experience of the world than Miss Jones does. I suppose she’s around fifteen.”

James shook his head as he pivoted Ghost about to head downhill toward Orchard Park. “Nearer eighteen or nineteen, I’d say.”

“Really?” Anna considered it. “Yes, I think you’re right, though she has the dress and manner of a schoolroom miss.”

“She has the dress and manner of a poor relation. From certain things she said, or just managed
not
to say, I gather she’s been kept very close and given few advantages. This is the first time she’s traveled, and would you believe she learned to draw so well with only a governess, never a drawing master?”

“You seem quite taken with her.”

He had thought Miss Jones a pretty young angel, but “taken with her” was going too far. “Hardly that. She’s merely a sweet girl, as you say. I pity her, a little, if her lot in life is what I think it is.”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll see much of her in the next fortnight or so. With a new bride for Lord Almont just arrived, I doubt we’ll have a day without everyone in the neighborhood gathered at some kind of entertainment in her honor.”

“Undoubtedly. It’ll be as busy as the Season. I already have Cook planning our dinner for Tuesday. So much for quiet country rustication.”

“You don’t need it. You managed to rusticate well enough in the city.”

Lucy could hardly believe she had talked so comfortably and familiarly with a
lord.
If she had known his rank when they began to converse, she doubted she could have been so much at her ease.

She couldn’t quite say he was free from any arrogance or pride, but those qualities had simply been part of his being, not directed at her. No, he had been all that was friendly, and she liked him very well. He was rather handsome, too—nothing in comparison with Sebastian, of course, but Lord Selsley’s dark blue eyes were remarkable, and he had a fine, ready smile, full of mischief.

On her first morning in Gloucestershire, she had found a friend. Two friends, for Miss Wright-Gordon had been kind, as well. Perhaps this visit would pass pleasantly after all. She wished Miss Wright-Gordon hadn’t so obviously admired the sketch of Sebastian, but he
was
uncommonly handsome. She could hardly expect other ladies to close their eyes to that fact, especially not while she was forced to keep their betrothal a secret.