A Marriage of Inconvenience (6 page)

Gladdened by his kindness, she had clung to him in a way she now realized must have been both a sad bore and a dreadful embarrassment for a boy of fifteen, but he had borne it with good grace and given her much advice on how to go on at Swallowfield and what her aunt and uncle expected of her.

A year later he had joined his regiment, so she had seen little of him from that point forward. But he’d written her regularly and continued to send her gifts—mostly books, improving books, but occasionally pieces of music or an intriguing trinket spotted in a shop in whatever town his regiment was then quartered.

When he’d come home on leave, she’d been almost too shy to speak to her handsome golden cousin in his splendid uniform. She had instead worshipped him from afar and considered him the ideal gentleman, just the sort of man she would most like, if she were ever so fortunate as to have the opportunity to marry. So when he had offered for her, it had seemed a dream come true. But what if that dream transformed into a nightmare?

Yet as dreadful as it had been to watch Sebastian with Miss Wright-Gordon, she had not passed the evening in complete misery, and for that she had Lord Selsley to thank. She had never in her life met anyone so kind and understanding, and simply thinking of him filled her with a warm glow. Whatever else came of her sojourn in Gloucestershire, she would always remember him fondly. He had been so tactful in his advice at dinner, and it still amazed her that he had heard her dreadful history and not turned away from her in disgust.

She blew out her candle and climbed into bed—literally climbed, for the ancient canopied bed was so high that it had a little set of steps attached to it. As she arranged the pillow and covers comfortably about her, her hands brushed against her braided hair—and she was arrested by the memory of Lord Selsley touching it. She could still feel the light pressure of his hand, the warmth radiating from him, and she tossed and turned against the heat her recollections generated.

It had been an impulsive gesture, a simple act of comfort and kindness, nothing more. Yet she couldn’t quite drive it from her mind. When she fell asleep, her last waking thought was not of Sebastian, but of Lord Selsley and his dark blue eyes and mischievous grin.

“That was a pleasant evening,” Uncle Robert said as the carriage began to roll away from Almont Castle.

“
Very
pleasant,” Anna agreed with a smile that was at once smug and dreamy.

“In love, are we, sister dear?” James asked.

She put out her tongue at him. “
You
spent a great deal of time with his cousin.”

“She’s bashful and unused to society. I thought she would benefit from the attention.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Very charitable of you, I’m sure.”

“In any case, I didn’t make a cake of myself over anyone. I hope it gives you satisfaction to know that everyone in every carriage must be talking of you and Lieutenant Arrington.”

“Children,” Aunt Lilias said mildly. “I thought Lieutenant Arrington charming, and certainly bonny to look upon, but the younger son of a baronet, and an Englishman? Anna, I needn’t tell you how much higher you might raise your eyes. As for you, James, I had it from Lady Marpool that the little cousin, Miss Jones, is utterly dependent upon the Arringtons and doesn’t have so much as a penny for her dowry.”

“I have no plans to marry her or anyone else.” Trust his aunt to move straight to thoughts of matrimony from the slightest hint of admiration.

“Now, Lilias,” Uncle Robert said, “surely Anna and James have as little cause to be concerned about the fortune of a prospective partner as anyone alive.”

“But to think of the alliances they could make, with their fortunes!”

James and Anna exchanged amused glances. This was a well-trodden road. Their aunt loved them and only wished for their happiness, but if that happiness could involve marriage into wealthy ducal houses, preferably
Scottish
ducal houses, so much the better.

“Their father thought it worthwhile to make an alliance with a good family of small fortune, and we have eternal cause to be grateful he did so,” Uncle Robert said.

“To be sure,” Aunt Lilias said, though reluctantly.

“Margaret and Selsley were happy together. I’ll be satisfied if their children find the same happiness with their partners in life, though of course I hope that happiness is of far greater duration.”

“Hmph. Sometimes I think you’d let Anna marry a
stable boy
if you thought it would make her happy.”

James, Anna and Uncle Robert dissolved into laughter. “Anna,” Uncle Robert said when he could speak, “don’t marry a stable boy.”

“Must I not?” she said in mock anguish. “But James’s Sam is so very handsome.”

“Anna!” Aunt Lilias’s eyes rounded with shock.

“Don’t worry, Aunt. You know Sam is walking out with my Sally, and I make it my rule never to steal another lady’s beau.”

James thought of all the wistful, worried looks Miss Jones had cast in Anna and Arrington’s direction and shook his head. He thought of warning Anna she was in danger of breaking her rule—but, no. If no one else had noticed Miss Jones’s admiration of her cousin, he was doing her no kindness by talking of it. Just because Miss Jones fancied herself in love with him did not make him her beau. James had no reason to believe the attachment was mutual.

Aunt Lilias shook her head. “The three of you are incorrigible,” she said, though her eyes twinkled with reluctant amusement. “All I ask is that you children never forget that you are—”

“—descended from kings!” James and Anna chorused.

When they arrived at Orchard Park, Anna and their aunt and uncle all went yawning to their beds, but James lingered in the library, penning a letter to his cousin Alec, who was serving with his regiment somewhere in Portugal. Even as his pen flowed swiftly over the page, he knew it was almost certainly futile. The letter would take weeks to reach the army, and he would have to wait at least as long for a reply. By that time James reckoned Anna would have either forgotten Sebastian Arrington or married him. But still he mentioned meeting the lieutenant, described his interest in Anna and asked what Alec thought of Arrington as a man and an officer.

After he sealed the letter and placed it with the rest of his correspondence for the butler to post in the morning, he leaned back in his chair and listened to the silence of the slumbering house. It was times like this he most missed Eleanor. Though they had maintained separate households, during his first three years in the Lords they had spent more nights together than apart. Their nights had always been as much for conversation as for bedsport. She had been his chief mentor, guiding him on whom to cultivate and whom to avoid as he found his footing in Parliament. After the first year he hadn’t needed her guidance quite so urgently, but he’d still trusted her advice above anyone else’s.

He wondered what she would think of the Arringtons and how she would go about separating Anna from so unsuitable a suitor. She could have managed it so cleverly that the pair would never have noticed her maneuvering. He could almost hear her laughing at him and saying, “
Subtlety,
my dear James, will you never learn subtlety?”

Yet there had been nothing subtle about their parting. When he had offered marriage, she had grown severe and told him she loved him too much to spoil his promising career in the Lords by allowing him to become a laughingstock as a young man with an aging wife. None of his pleas had persuaded her to reconsider.

He still missed her. But when at last he lay alone awaiting sleep, he did not imagine himself laughing with Eleanor. Instead he thought of Lucy Jones, of her quiet courage, her beautiful hair—what
would
it look like down? He shook off the fancy. She wasn’t at all the type of woman who would suit him, and she’d doubtless be shocked to her innocent soul if she knew he was imagining her in his bed.

The next morning Lucy followed through on her previous day’s intent of sketching Almont Castle. She grew so absorbed in her work that she did not hear the approaching footsteps.

“Good morning, Miss Jones.”

“Lord Selsley!” She turned to smile at him. He looked quite the country gentleman this morning, in buckskin breeches and simple brown coat. “You aren’t riding today? I hope your mare didn’t prove lame from yesterday’s exertions after all.”

“No, she is quite well. I simply decided to walk this morning.” He indicated a spot beside her on the stone wall. “Do you mind if I sit and watch you sketch? I promise I won’t hover.”

“Please sit,” she said. Really, she was inordinately pleased to see him. She supposed she was simply relieved that he still treated her as a friend after hearing the worst of her past.

He sat, close enough to see her work but not so near that he crowded her arm. Before he joined her, she’d been busy drawing the oldest part of the castle, the tall keep on the southwest corner, and she resumed her work.

“Did you know that all the Almont balls are held in the keep?” he asked after a moment.

“Yes, Lady Marpool mentioned it. It seems a most unusual ballroom, not that I’ve seen so very many.” Portia’s betrothal ball next week would be Lucy’s very first ball, though she hesitated to admit it to a sophisticated man like Lord Selsley.

“I’ve never seen another one like it.”

“Will you be at the betrothal ball?”

“Of course. I have two ladies staying with me, after all. Anna and Aunt Lilias would have my head if I begged to be excused from a dance.”

Lucy laughed.

“Are you looking forward to the ball?” he asked.

She considered the question. Was she? If she had felt secure in Sebastian’s affections, a ball would be delightful, but now…She summoned a smile. “Certainly,” she said. “I love to dance.” That much, at least, was true. She had been allowed to share Portia’s dancing-master, though her cousin had made a point of asking why a girl who would surely be a governess for all her life needed such lessons. By then—Lucy had been fourteen and Portia fifteen when the dancing-master first came—Lucy had grown accustomed, and to a degree numb, to such comments. She had ignored Portia and enjoyed the lessons. She only hoped she would remember the steps, since she had not danced in years.

“I would be honored if you would save two dances for me,” Lord Selsley said. “Any two you choose.”

She looked up from her drawing and was struck again by what beautiful eyes the viscount had. So dark a blue without a hint of gray, they should have seemed cool, fathomless, but instead they were warm and expressive. She felt a faint blush overspread her cheeks.

With the power to name her dances, she could secure the first dance and the supper dance with her new friend. It would be pleasant to open a ball with Lord Selsley, both for his own sake and to see the look on Portia’s face. But no, she must save the two most important dances for Sebastian. His leg might not yet be healed enough to allow him to stand up in the set, but surely he would ask her to sit with him. She simply smiled and said, “I’d be delighted,” without specifying which dances.

“Good.”

They sat in silence as Lucy added to her drawing, sketching in the stables and a groom leading out a pair of carriage horses. After a moment she spoke without looking up. “I wanted to thank you again, Lord Selsley, for your kindness last night.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “It was my pleasure, I assure you.”

There was an intensity in his voice at odds with his commonplace words, and it made her remember how he had touched her hair. She looked at him and found that he was staring at her, too.

After a moment he cleared his throat and stood. “I must be going. I promised one of my tenants that I would visit him this morning.” He made a slight bow. “I bid you a good morning, Miss Jones, and I look forward to seeing you this evening at the Cathcarts’.”

Tonight’s entertainment was to be a card party at the squire’s home. “Likewise.”

Lucy tried to resume her drawing but found herself too restless to continue. Before Lord Selsley was quite out of sight, she closed her sketchbook and walked back, taking a circuitous route. She was in no great hurry to rejoin the somewhat oppressive company at the castle, and what she truly wished for was simply movement.

But she could not delay forever, and eventually she entered the castle, put her sketchbook and bonnet away and sought her breakfast. The breakfast room door stood slightly ajar, and as she was about to enter, Lucy was arrested by Lady Marpool’s clear, carrying voice.

“For my part, Lady Arrington, I’ve never thought Miss Wright-Gordon a beauty.”

Her aunt murmured something Lucy couldn’t quite hear.

“Why, I do not deny that she is a pretty girl in her way, especially if one likes a lush figure, but she falls short of the classical ideal. Your daughter is a true beauty, ma’am, as you must know, and for my part I think your little niece is just as pretty as Miss Wright-Gordon—no, prettier.”

“Lucy?”

Though Lucy would never have dreamed of comparing herself with Miss Wright-Gordon, the sheer incredulity in her aunt’s voice stung.

“Yes, Miss Jones. She’s not so flashy, but she’s very pretty, and many gentlemen prefer a modest, quiet girl. Did you not mark how the young men hovered about her last night?”

“I suppose…”

“Now, Lord Selsley is above the touch of an orphan with no portion, even with an Almont connection, but she would be quite an eligible match for Ned Cathcart. Only a squire’s heir but you shall see tonight what a very pretty property they have.”

“I suppose I’m unaccustomed to thinking of Lucy in such terms,” Aunt Arrington said slowly. “She has blossomed out wonderfully over the past year or two—if you could have seen the plain brown mouse she was as a child. But I hadn’t thought of her as a good match for a man of property.”

“You should do so,” Lady Marpool said briskly. “Particularly here, where her connection with my brother will make her so eligible. And believe me, she is a very well-looking girl. The only advantage Miss Wright-Gordon has over her is fortune, though I do not deny that is a great advantage indeed.”