An Escapade and an Engagement (23 page)

He shook his head. He might have decided he was going to tell
her how he felt today, but with everything that had happened since he’d made
that decision he had a very strong suspicion that it might be
counterproductive.

‘I admire you very much,’ he finished.

That was a start. She might not believe him if he blurted out
some clumsy words that would, knowing him, be open to misinterpretation anyway.
But if he demonstrated by the way he treated her, by the care he took of her,
that she meant the world to him… After all, actions spoke louder than words.
This building in which they stood was testimony to that. His grandfather had
shown the wife his parents had chosen for him that he loved her by building this
place just to keep the rain off her while she watched the progress of the canal
being dug through the valley.

Since they were going to be married he had a lifetime to
convince her of his utter sincerity by the way he pampered and cosseted her. His
spirits lifted.

‘Now, you say you had not thought about what you wanted from
marriage. But—forgive me if you find this an insensitive question—you
would
have married Lieutenant Kendell if you had been
able to. So what was it about him that made you willing to flout all the
rules?’

She blushed and lowered her head. When she looked back on her
behaviour with regard to Harry it made her cringe. She had not loved him at all!
Nor wanted to marry him—not once he had kissed her. But it would be too
humiliating to admit that.

Though she did want to be able to tell Richard the whole truth
one day. Perhaps after they’d been married a few months, and she’d had a chance
to prove she wasn’t the silly girl she’d shown herself to be in all their
dealings thus far.

‘You have to understand what my life has been like.’ For today,
it would have to be enough to explain some of the steps that had led her into
the tangle with Harry. ‘When I was a little girl, you see, nobody much cared
what I did as long as I stayed out of the way. So I ended up left in the care of
a groom, mostly, haring about all over the estates. But then my parents died,
and Grandpapa took me to Darvill Park. He was so shocked by my uncouth ways that
he spent the next few years beating them all out of me.’

‘He beat you?’

‘No. Not physically. But I felt…trampled on. I was watched
every moment of the day. And drilled relentlessly. And I was never allowed to
mix with anyone he had not first approved. Eventually, after years and years of
imprisonment on the estate, he thought he had succeeded in making me behave like
a
proper
young lady, and allowed me to go to a few
local assemblies. Well, he could hardly not! Not when other girls my age, from
good families in the area, were going to them. It would have looked like
failure. And Grandpapa never fails!

‘Anyway, Harry came and asked me to dance without first getting
approval from my chaperone. He asked
me
if I wanted
to. He looked so dashing in his uniform. I felt so daring when I said yes
without checking first. And when Grandpapa forbade me to see him again, I…dug my
heels in. You see, no matter how hard I tried, I never managed to please him. So
I decided to stop trying.’

Richard flinched. God, he knew exactly what that felt like! The
letters he’d written home when he’d first gone away to school that nobody had
ever replied to. The creeping realisation that nobody cared where he was so long
as he wasn’t underfoot.

‘I just could not stand it any more. The confinement. The rules
and restrictions. I just had to make a stand over Harry. Do you see?’

‘Only too well.’

‘And then when Harry followed me to London I was completely
overwhelmed by what I thought was his devotion. Nobody had cared so much for me
before. Not my parents. Not my grandfather, who disapproved of everything about
me. And I had never had any friends that I had chosen myself. But there was
Harry, telling me he would risk everything to be with me, and I…I lost my
head.’

Her shoulders slumped. ‘Of course, it turned out not to be me
he wanted at all, but only my money. I do not know why I did not see that from
the start.’

Richard hugged her. No wonder she had fallen prey so easily to
a glib, personable fortune-hunter. Nobody else had ever shown her a scrap of
affection. She had no means of telling the genuine from the counterfeit. He had
almost made the same kind of mistake with Milly—although, having been an
officer, he had a sight more experience of spotting a lie when it was told
him.

‘My poor darling,’ he said.

He was glad now that he had not spoken words to her that had
been used to deceive her in the past. It would be better to
show
her what real love was all about. Day by day, month by month,
year by year, he would love her so wholeheartedly that it would wipe away all
the years of hurt and neglect she had endured thus far. Seeing to her welfare,
ensuring her happiness, would be his prime objective.

To his last dying breath.

Chapter Fifteen

W
hen she got back to the house, Lady Jayne
found a very tense-looking Lady Penrose waiting for her in her rooms. With some
very surprising news.

‘My dear, your grandfather has arrived.’

‘How did he know that—?’

‘Oh, he did not know anything about last night—how could he?
No, he came because he was angry to find, when he returned to Darvill Park, that
you were not in London, waiting for him as instructed. He was quite furious when
he got here…’

Her heart sank. ‘And now, of course, he must be even more
angry…’

‘No! Far from it.’ Lady Penrose’s lips twitched with wry
amusement. ‘The news that you are betrothed went a long way to appeasing
him.’

‘Oh. Of course.’ For as long as he’d had control of her life he
had been training her to become a fitting wife for a man of high station. Lord
Ledbury was exactly the kind of man of whom he would approve. Catching him would
atone for any number of other transgressions. ‘Does he know…everything?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. That buffoon Lord Lavenham gave him the
scurrilous version of events.’

‘And how did he take it?’

Lady Penrose sobered. ‘You will find out for yourself when you
see him. He is waiting for you in Lord Lavenham’s study.’

Knowing that his temper would only increase the longer she kept
him waiting, she hastily changed from her mud-spattered riding habit into a gown
more becoming for a meeting with her formidable guardian.

Her heart was hammering as she made her way down the stairs,
even though Lady Penrose was at her back, providing much welcome support.

She hesitated outside the door, making sure her emotional
armour was in place before facing him. But when she went in the first person she
saw was Richard. She did not know how he had managed to get there before her,
but she was incredibly grateful that, for the first time in her life, she was
not going to have to face her grandfather’s wrath alone.

Part of her wanted to run straight to his side. But she
detested revealing any form of weakness to her grandfather. So she stiffened her
spine and turned towards the chair upon which Lord Caxton was sitting. She
dipped a curtsy and then, when he motioned her to approach, bent to bestow a
dutiful kiss, as though she had nothing whatsoever to fear.

At the last moment he raised his hand to his face, as if he was
suddenly recalling something. And that was when she noticed he had three
nasty-looking gashes on his face. It looked like something, perhaps a cat, had
raked its claws across his skin.

He turned his other cheek for her to kiss, and then, when she
would have straightened up, grasped her hand in his. ‘Do you
want
to marry this young man? Will he be able to make
you happy?’ he asked.

When she could not hide her astonishment that his first words
were not a reproof, his expression turned wry.

‘What? Has it never occurred to you that your happiness is of
great importance to me? It is all I have ever wanted for you.’ He grimaced. ‘All
I ever wanted for all my girls. I dare say you think I have treated you harshly
in the past. But you were such a wild little creature when you came to me. I
thought my primary duty was to tame you. For there is a streak of rebelliousness
in you to which, alas, the Vickery women seem particularly prone.’

Tears sprang to his eyes as he said in a quavering voice, ‘I
was afraid that if I did not subdue it you would end up just like your aunt. And
I could not have borne to lose you to some adventurer, as I lost her.’

She had never seen him looking so emotional. She had always
thought him such a rigid disciplinarian. Yet all the time he had been concealing
a deep abiding fear that she would turn out like her Aunt Aurora.

Her aunt’s elopement and subsequent estrangement had clearly
cut him much deeper than he had ever let anyone suspect. She had always thought
he refused to let her name be spoken because he was angry with her. But that was
not the case at all. It was because it hurt too much.

Suddenly she understood him as she had never done before.
Because he was acting in exactly the way
she
would
have behaved. People accused her of being cold, because she could fix her
expression into a mask that concealed what she was feeling. The more she hurt,
the colder she looked. They had said she got that trait from her father. But now
she saw how absurd it was for them to say that. He had
never
bothered to conceal his feelings. Particularly not the
contempt he’d felt for her, nor the hatred he had borne for her mother. His
pride had been of the kind that made him impervious to what anyone thought of
him.

Her
pride was the pride of the
Vickerys, which made it an absolute necessity never to let anyone suspect they
might have wounded her. She was a Vickery through and through, she realized on a
wave of relief. Not a Chilcott after all.

For the very first time she felt a real connection with this
proud old aristocrat sitting before her. And the minute she understood that she
was far more like her grandfather than she’d ever suspected, she saw what her
refusal to welcome his long-lost granddaughter back into the family must have
done to him.

‘I am so sorry I did not obey your summons to meet my cousin,
Lady Bowdon. I hope she was not offended.’

Or perhaps hurt. Oh, how ashamed she was of flouncing off in
completely the opposite direction from where he’d ordered her, without
considering what effect it would have on her poor cousin. She caught her lower
lip between her teeth. She might at least have written to Lady Bowdon. But she’d
been so angry it just hadn’t occurred to her.

To her surprise, instead of following up her apology with a
stinging rebuke, as was his wont, Lord Caxton smiled, a soft faraway look in his
eyes.

‘We can make all right with an invitation to your wedding now.
I cannot begin to express my relief that you have found a man of substance to
marry. A man who will be able to care for you when I am gone.’

She caught a quick, searching look in his eyes which prompted
her to say, ‘Yes, indeed he will.’ For had not Richard promised as much? He
would do his best, he had told her, to make sure they never became
enemies—which, considering the way this betrothal had come about, was much more
than she deserved.

Her eyes flew to Richard’s. He was staring into a glass of what
looked suspiciously like brandy with a wooden countenance.

‘You will be married from Darvill Park, of course,’ said Lord
Caxton. ‘Lady Bowdon and her husband will come to stay beforehand, which will
give us all time to get to know one another before the ceremony.’

From that moment on he and Lady Penrose practically ignored her
while they discussed arrangements.

At first Jayne was inclined to bridle at the way he had walked
in and simply taken over. But she very soon realized that she had no real
objections to any of the plans they were making on her behalf. She
would
be only too glad to get to know her cousin and
her husband, and any friends of theirs, before her own wedding. It would just be
less annoying if they at least pretended to consider her wishes.

Besides, she could see that Lord Caxton was really looking
forward to hosting the wedding of the Season. He seemed to grow younger and more
animated by the second. And letting him enjoy himself like this felt like a good
way to atone for having so badly misjudged him all these years. She had been so
used to unkindness from her parents that she hadn’t understood he’d been trying
to eradicate the effects of all those years of neglect and abuse.

It was Richard’s grandfather who injected the only jarring note
into the proceedings, by rather caustically pointing out that it might be better
to get a special licence.

‘You don’t want to delay the ceremony for too long. Since they
have already anticipated their vows.’

Her own grandfather looked at him down the length of his long,
aristocratic nose, his nostrils pinched.

‘I will not have my granddaughter married in some secretive,
hasty fashion which will give others leave to suspect she has done something of
which I disapprove,’ he said in a withering tone. ‘I intend to tell anyone who
is vulgar enough to enquire—should they hear any of the gossip that is running
rife through
your
household—that they are so much in
love with each other they simply could not wait. And that I have decided to
forgive their youthful impetuosity. If
you
are
foolish enough to imply that this is anything other than a love match, all you
will achieve is to drag the names of both our families through the mud.’

Lady Jayne could hardly believe it. For the first time in her
life, her grandfather had spoken in her defence.

Lord Lavenham got to his feet and glared at Lord Caxton, his
face suffused with purple. Lord Caxton lounged back in his chair, a slight sneer
curling his lip. For a second or two the others all held their breath. It was
rather like watching two stags preparing to lock horns.

The battle that might have ensued would no doubt have been of
epic proportions had not Lady Penrose defused the situation by bringing them all
back to practicalities.

‘So we are agreed. Lady Jayne will leave here tomorrow and go
to Darvill Park, so that the banns can be read at the parish church this Sunday.
Three weeks should give us enough time to organize everything.’

Lord Ledbury’s heart sank into his boots. He felt just as he
had when his own cavalry had ridden over him at Orthez. Only this time he was
not in physical pain. But in mental agony.

They were taking Lady Jayne away to Kent, to prepare for their
wedding, just when he most needed to keep her at his side and convince her that
marrying him was not such a terrible fate. He had begun to hope, that morning,
that he had made some progress with her. She had agreed that they were already
friends, at least. Nor had she objected to letting him hold her, for a few
moments, in a comforting sort of way. But then for some reason she’d pulled away
and dashed outside. He hadn’t been too worried then. He’d thought he would have
plenty of time to find out what had spooked her and soothe away whatever
insecurities still plagued her.

But now he felt hope slipping through his fingers, leaving him
grasping at air. Why couldn’t anyone else see how suspicious it was that from
the moment Lord Caxton had set foot in Courtlands she had turned back into that
expressionless little porcelain doll, meekly agreeing with everything they
decided?
Look at her!
he wanted to shout. Couldn’t
they see that the way she was sitting, with her hands folded neatly in her lap,
that expression of polite acquiescence on her face, was a pose to hide what she
was really thinking?

It was a trick he’d learned himself, when hauled up before a
commanding officer to answer for some misdemeanour.
All
soldiers perfected the knack of keeping a wooden countenance
whilst internally cursing the pompous ass who was dressing them down.

God, what was she
really
thinking?
What did she
feel
about the arrangements they were
making on her behalf?

And, more importantly, what was she planning to do about
it?

He should never have let it come to this. When she had come to
him last night he should have escorted her straight back to her own room and let
Milly go to the devil her own way. Except that Lady Jayne had been so upset at
the thought of her friend’s ruin. And he couldn’t bear to think of her living
with that distress for the rest of her life.

And what had happened to all those fine decisions he’d made on
his way back? About how he was going to tell her everything, lay his heart bare
before her, and then lay siege to her heart until she surrendered?

He’d seen Lady Jayne naked, that was what had happened, and it
had all gone to hell in a handcart.

It was all he could do not to groan out loud. Nobody else was
asking her what she wanted, but
he
had to know. He
had to straighten things out between them or he was going to spend the next
three weeks worrying that when he got to the altar his resourceful bride would
be miles and miles away.

No doubt in the mistaken belief that it was for his own
good.

* * *

Lady Jayne blew out her candle and flopped back onto her
pillows. If she had been the kind of girl who got headaches she was sure she
would have one now, even though her grandfather’s timely arrival seemed to have
nipped the threat of scandal in the bud.

She had been amazed, at dinner that night, how much the
atmosphere had changed since breakfast. Even Lady Susan had remarked, albeit
rather waspishly, that she had seen from the start that she and Richard had only
ever had eyes for each other. Not that she believed that tale for a minute. The
chaperones had probably counselled all the disappointed contenders for Richard’s
hand that it would be far wiser to stay on good terms with the scions of two
such influential families than say anything to precipitate a complete
breach.

She was sick of all the pretence. In some ways she would be
glad to leave Courtlands in the morning. If only it did not mean that she would
not be seeing Richard again for more than three weeks. He had tried so hard to
make everyone believe he was perfectly content to be marrying her. But she
hadn’t been able to help noticing that he was looking more and more strained as
the day wore on. After three more weeks of contemplating the marriage to which
her thoughtless actions had condemned him he might well have built up quite a
store of resentment.

If only she could—

What was that? It sounded as though something large and heavy
had just landed on the roof of the
porte-cochère.