A Season for Love (6 page)

Her mother had been nattering on for
some time, Jenny suddenly realized. About what she had no idea.
Probably elucidating every reason why she should not let Longville
off the hook.
There!
She’d
come right out and said it, if only to herself. He was the great
fish—the whale in the
ton
’s
pond—and she had caught him. If merely because her lack of
fragility—even her lack of virginity—seemed to be what the Duke of
Longville desired.

Or had thought he desired.

“
Lord Frayne,” the butler intoned, as
Anthony Norville strode in upon his heels.

The viscount, taking in his sister’s anguish
and his mother, whose whole body seemed to be quivering with
outrage, immediately seized the parchment Lady Worley was holding
out to him.

“
He might have been a bit more
specific,” Tony pronounced as he finished reading the duke’s brief
missive.

“
I suppose he’s gone off with
her
.” Jenny sighed.

“
Well, yes,” Tony admitted. “I was
there this morning just after they decided to leave.”

Two inquiring pairs of eyes suddenly
fixed on the viscount, pinning him to the carpet. “No, no indeed,”
he cried, throwing up his hands. “I know nothing, truly I don’t.
Not a word about where they were going or why. I was rather hoping
he’d told
you
, Jen. That’s why
I’m here. As curious as a cat, I’m willing to admit it.”

“
She must have told him,” Jenny
murmured, her countenance as wan as Tony had ever seen it. “How can
he marry a woman who has just accused his only child of being his
mistress?”

“
It wasn’t that bad.”

“
Yes, it was.”

“
He said he’d be back.”

“
How easy to discover that his family
emergency is taking longer than planned,” his sister retorted. “And
how infinitely easy to disappear into the countryside since no one
in London seems to know where he has gone.”

“
Three hundred at St. George’s,” Lady
Worley trumpeted. “A hundred for the wedding breakfast. Gunters has
been ordering supplies for weeks. It is too, too terrible to
contemplate. Anthony, tell me Longville would never leave your
sister at the altar. Promise me, I implore you!”

“
Yesterday morning—even at dinner last
night—I would have said no. This morning . . . I am not quite so
certain.”

For nearly the first time in her life,
Malvinia Norville wished she carried a vinaigrette, as did most of
the
ton
’s less enduring
ladies. Her life—and that of her daughter—were spiraling out of
control. It might not be right to speak ill of the dead, but most
of this could be laid at the door of that wispy wide-eyed beauty
Amy Kenrick, who had been the bane of Malvinia’s life when Lady Amy
first made her come-out. Although she had already presented Worley
with two pledges of her affection, she had frequently caught him
flirting with the tiny blond beauty, whose face and figure were so
patently superior to her own. In truth, Amy Kenrick had flirted
with every last male in the
ton
, from eighteen to eighty. Even after she had
been snapped up by Longville. Certainly, that peagoose, Amy Kenrick
Carlington, was the last person to object to the duke’s own roving
eye.

And now she had to contend with the result of
that union. Another blond, fragile, diminutive beauty, no doubt.
“What is she like?” Lady Worley demanded. “Longville’s
daughter?”

Tony quickly confirmed her worst fears. “Very
like her mother. Her hair is a darker gold, with perhaps a hint of
red; her eyes, however, are Longville’s. Her personality as well, I
should think. She is far stronger than the Lady Longville I
remember. Not that I knew her well,” the viscount qualified. “I was
barely on the town at the time, but hers was a beauty one does not
easily forget.”

“
No,” mother and daughter murmured,
almost in unison. “One does not.”

Sublimely unaware of the chaos left behind in
London, the Duke of Longville and his daughter were attempting to
reach some median ground on which they might stand upright, rather
than feel their relationship was being tossed about on exceedingly
stormy seas. Their argument about a Season for Caroline had been
going on from the moment they left London, and Lady Caroline had
finally settled back in her seat, content to let the green
countryside roll by without her constant surveillance.

They were alone, as the duke had relegated
poor Nell Brindley—whom he had not hesitated to describe as the
“illiterate daughter of a tavern keeper”—to a second carriage with
the duke’s valet, Benton. Caroline could not help but admire her
father’s forethought. As astounded and agitated as he was by her
revelation, he had recognized the need for two carriages on the
return journey.

If, that is, the Duke of Longville accepted
Laurence as his son.

Caroline’s thoughts were interrupted by the
duke once again pressing his point about a proper come-out for her.
But this time he took a different tack.

“
Obviously, your mother has poisoned
your mind about the
ton
,” her
father declared. “Surely, Caroline, you must know that your mama
was not quite . . . ah . . . She was a bit volatile,” he ended
lamely.

“
No one knows that better than I,” Lady
Caroline replied a trifle tartly. “But she was not so until she
lost a second babe. I may have been only seven, but she was
perfectly fine until then, I am certain of it.”

The coach rumbled on for nearly a mile before
the duke replied. His tone was as neutral, his words as cautious,
as he could make them. “Your mama was always volatile, Caroline,
but you are right—after she carried two babes for such a short
period of time, she fell into a melancholy from which she never
recovered.” There was so much more he should tell his daughter, but
too many years of ducal reserve stilled his tongue.

“
Papa?”

“
M-m-m?”

“
Mama and I were alone for so long,
with no one but each other—except for dear Sarah Tompkins. “There
were certain . . .ah—well, mama sometimes talked of things most
daughters don’t hear, some not even when they are about to be
married.”

The Duke of Longville regarded his eldest
child with considerable trepidation. For a moment he almost
considered pulling the check rein and announcing he would ride his
stallion Beelzebub for a while.

“
She—ah—denied you your husbandly
rights, did she not?” Marcus reached blindly for the hangstrap.
Caroline was fortunate the stout leather was not her neck. “That’s
why,” she continued doggedly, “well, I’ve always wondered how . . .
I mean, how did she have Laurence?”

The Duke leaned forward, slid open the panel
behind the coachman’s seat. “Stop at the next inn, John. I’ve
developed a sudden thirst.” He sat back against the squabs, but
continued to look straight ahead. “You are correct, Caroline,” he
decreed. “Your mother told you things best left unsaid. We will not
speak of this again.”

Caroline scowled at the broad backs of a herd
of cows grazing in a field. She had made him angry. Just as her
mother had. That was the problem with dukes. She understood that,
truly she did. They tended to sail through life heedless of
anyone’s comfort but their own, indifferent to anything so fragile
as another person’s feelings. The Duke of Longville was confident
that each and every person would move heaven and earth to produce
whatever he might desire at precisely the moment he desired it.

Except for his wife, of course.

And now his daughter, the daughter her mother
had shaken her head over, constantly complaining she was far too
much like her father.

Would they now travel all the way to the Lake
District in stilted silence? Caroline wondered. Should she
recollect all the terrible things her mother had told her about
Marcus, Duke of Longville? Or, as the moment she had seen him
striding across the entry hall of Longville House, should she
recall he was the father who had been capable of showing interest
in a perfectly wretched piece of embroidery? Or taking her for a
drive in the park? The papa who bought her a pony for her use when
they were in the country. Who had not been above reading a story or
giving her a warm hug.

They were good memories. No wonder she had
reverted to childhood, abandoning all her fine principles as she
rushed straight into his arms.

Then again, perhaps she had merely been
shrewd. For Laurence’s sake, her papa was to be courted.

A sorry excuse for following her own
inclinations. And yet . . .

So she would hold her tongue and attempt to
remember all the social niceties Miss Tompkins had taught her.
Perhaps, by the time they reached Cumberland, she might have
learned a good deal more about this near-stranger, her father.

And, in truth, she did. Superficial
things, perhaps, but, taken together, they created a portrait of a
man who treated even chance acquaintances fairly. Oh, the Duke of
Longville might not actually
see
the many people who rushed to his service, Caroline realized,
but he did not shout or demand, complain or criticize. She might be
close enough to him to hear a faint long-suffering sigh over a
servitor’s incompetence, but he seemed to recognize that certain
people were incapable of anything better.

And he had occasionally shocked her
with a surprisingly wicked sense of humor, passing the long hours
with devastating tales of members of the
ton
, although there were moments when he broke
off—obviously biting his tongue over
on
dits
he recognized as unsuitable for a young lady of
eighteen. He grew stern, however, immediately following his
skewering of the patronesses of Almack’s. Although the duke
enumerated the rules governing this most exclusive of assembly
rooms with undisguised derision, these self-same rules were, he
told her, absolute. She would obey them without
question.

And then came Longville’s sketch of the
Prince of Wales. Stories of His Highness’s difficulties with his
wife, his mistresses, his mad father, his poor sad mother, his
overwhelmingly many brothers and sisters. Of Prinny’s interest in
the arts, his spendthrift ways, his breathtaking ability to
convince himself that he was actually participating in the war in
the Peninsula. Lady Caroline’s naive young eyes widened more than
once, appalled not only by the sometimes scurrilous tales, but
because she strongly suspected even a duke could be arrested for
treason. But, then, perhaps he could not help his scorn, for his
own lineage was considerably longer and more noble than that of the
royal House of Hanover.

And don’t forget the dowagers, the duke had
warned. Those formidable ladies whose tongues could make or break a
young lady, whether in her first Season or her fourth. Caroline’s
grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, her papa reminded her, was one of
these powerful women.

And what would the Dowager Duchess of
Longville, say, Caroline wondered, when she discovered she had a
grandson?. What if she refused to acknowledge him?

Lady Caroline sighed and pressed her
nose to the glass. Yes, they were almost there. Dusk was closing
in, mist rising from Lake Windermere. It was almost as if they were
entering a fairy kingdom, their lives poised on the edge of magic.
With a wave of his hand, the Duke of Longville was going to
transport his son, his daughter, and their faithful governess into
the glittering world of the
ton
. For better or worse, these were the last
moments of the life she had led for the past eight years. Suddenly,
Caroline was terrified.

She had told Laurence nothing, only that she
must go to London on business. For it was entirely possible the
duke would reject his son. Certainly, he could have found ample
reason to do so. So now . . .

Now this meeting was going to be very awkward
indeed.

The coach stopped. The Duke descended, held
out his hand. A shiver passed through her. Lady Caroline Daphne
Kenrick Carlington, accepting her father’s aid, stepped down, then
led him up the pebbled path, lined in a colorful frame of daffodils
and tulips, to the front door of the large thatched cottage in
Little Stoughton, Cumberland. The home of the late, and somewhat
eccentric, Widow Tennet and her two children.

~ * ~

Mr. Peyton Trimby-Ashford, anxious to avoid
the critical gaze of Beau Brummel and his needle-tongued cohorts,
glided past the gentlemen seated in the bow-window at White’s. A
late night of misadventures with faro, too much brandy, and too
little sleep had left Mr. Trimby-Ashford with unsteady hands and a
short temper that had prevented his valet from rectifying his
master’s ineptitude with his morning toilette. Yet here he was,
Peyton thought with a certain self-satisfaction, on the town by one
in the afternoon, attempting to fulfill his role as a faithful
friend. In this case, alas, the news he had to impart was none too
good.

Peyton Trimby-Ashford was a gentleman
poised on the edge of the dandy set, wanting to belong, but without
that certain something necessary to accomplish the deed. Perhaps it
was his average height or that extra inch or two about his waist.
Or his straight blond hair, when dark and curly was all the rage.
Or was it the eagerness which lingered in his eyes, never quite
destroyed by his many years on the
ton
? Gentleman in London society, it seems, were
expected to be afflicted by boredom, not constantly regarding the
world as if, surely, the next morning would bring something
exciting and wonderful into their lives.