Carola Dunn (27 page)

They stayed awhile until Fanny was quite sure that Anita was happy. Then Fanny went to see her brother, Connie to order the room by the gallery made up as a bedchamber, and Felix to his interview with his father. His reluctance had vanished. He was determined to be Fanny’s knight in shining armour, and if the ogres happened to be his parents, so be it.

Both Lord and Lady Westwood awaited him in the study with its superb plasterwork ceiling and shabby furniture. The earl broke off what he was saying and invited his son to sit down. Felix declined, choosing rather to lean casually against the carved marble fireplace.

“Who are the Ingrams?” asked his mother, with more mistrust than curiosity.

“My friends.”

“You mean nobodies, I collect,” said the earl. “An obscure artillery captain and his sister! I do not pretend to regulate your friendships when you are abroad on your ‘business’, but I had expected you to have more sense of propriety than to bring home common acquaintances.”

“It is the outside of enough, Felix, to introduce such people to your sisters.”

He kept his temper on a tight rein. “Such people as Captain Ingram saved you from Bonaparte, ma’am. Nor is there anything common about Miss Ingram. She is uncommonly kind-hearted, uncommonly courageous, uncommonly...”

“Enough!” said his father impatiently. “I am prepared to accept that the young woman is possessed of many virtues. Nevertheless, she does not belong at Westwood, especially when you are trying to fix your interest with Daventry’s daughter.”

“But I am not, sir.” With a sardonic smile at their consternation, he continued, “I have decided that Lady Sophia and I shall not suit.”

“Not suit?” snapped Lady Westwood. “You cannot hope to find a more suitable bride.”

“And not a fortnight since you informed us of your admiration for the girl, your intention to pay your addresses,” the earl reminded him. “Such fickleness is inexcusable.”

“I know what it is, that female has entrapped you with her wiles!”

He stared at his mother. “Fanny?” he said, incredulous. “On the contrary, she didn’t want to come here, and I’m not at all certain that she will have me.”

“You admit that she has bewitched you,” the countess declared with a triumphant air.

“Oh yes, I cannot deny it.” Now his smile was tender.

“My dear boy,” said his father, abandoning tact in his irritation, “one may be enamoured but one does not marry females of her condition. No family, no fortune, not even great beauty, and she already has a child of questionable provenance. Marriage is not only unnecessary, it is unthinkable.”

Felix rounded on him in a cold fury. “Sir, if you dare to speak in that fashion of the woman I love and hope to wed, you will never see my face again. Miss Ingram is above reproach. If she will be my wife, I shall be the happiest man alive, and I shall marry her with or without your approval.”

Not waiting for a response, he stalked from the room.

He found Connie supervising the rearrangement of the room for Frank. Drawing her aside, he recounted all that had passed.

She listened wide-eyed to the tale of his defiance, but when he finished she clapped her hands. “So you did not propose to Lady Sophia? I am glad. When you described her and Miss Ingram to me, I thought at once that Miss Ingram sounded much more amiable.”

“Amiable, adorable, but not eligible. I don’t give a tinker’s curse for eligibility! It’s not as if she were a butcher’s daughter, let alone an opera dancer.”

“If they cannot change your mind, Mama and Papa will try to convince Miss Ingram that an artillery officer’s daughter is as unfit as a butcher’s daughter to join the family,” she said, worried.

“They may well succeed,” he said grimly, “though they may not need to. I have no assurance that Fanny wants to marry me. I thought, when I told her I wasn’t going to marry Lady Sophia, that she’d be pleased if only because she has a low opinion of her. I even hoped her delight at being rid of a rival might tell me she cared for me. But she seemed indifferent. What am I to do next, Con?”

“I don’t know. You will think of something, but keep her away from Mama and Papa until you do. Why not take her riding? Luckily it has stopped raining. I shall keep Captain Ingram company while you are out.”

With Connie’s promise to try not to let Frank overtax his strength, Fanny willingly agreed to go riding. The sight of her in her brown habit on the small, sluggish mare his sisters shared reminded Felix of the review in the Allée Verte when her mount had been a huge troop horse. He recalled his wrath at her imagined danger, and his irritable reaction to her warm friendship with Frank’s fellow officers. He had been jealous! He had loved Fanny far longer than he knew.

If only he had not wasted so much time pursuing Lady Sophia, he might already be married to Fanny instead of just beginning to woo her.

Followed by a groom, they rode up the hill behind the house. The brisk breeze that was clearing away the clouds brought roses to Fanny’s cheeks and her eyes sparkled like the sunlit raindrops on the meadow flowers. Yet new, dark clouds gathered in the west, and her brightness dimmed as they returned to the stables an hour or two later. Lifting her down from the mare’s back, Felix ached to hold her close and knew he didn’t dare risk his parents cowing her into submission to their will.

Miriam had advised him to wait, but for once he was not going to follow Miriam’s advice.

As they went into the house, Fanny still felt his hands at her waist. If she were truly ill-bred, she’d have given in to her burning desire to throw her arms about his neck in defiance of all propriety and decorum. She was betwixt and between, neither refined enough to be his wife, nor so lost to decency as to become his mistress. She should not have come.

In the great hall, they met Lord Westwood. He stared with contempt at the posy of scabious and ox-eye daisies Felix had picked and stuck in Fanny’s hat band. “A word with you, if you please, Miss Ingram,” he said coldly.

For Felix’s sake as much as her own, she refused to be intimidated. On his behalf, she resented the earl’s disdain for his son’s guest. She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eyes, blue as Felix’s but icy where Felix’s were warm. “Certainly, my lord,” she said graciously, “as soon as I have changed out of my riding dress.”

As the earl turned away, Felix grasped her arm, put his finger to his lips, and pulled her in the opposite direction. “A word with you, if you please, Miss Ingram,” he said. “Come into the library, it should be unoccupied.” He closed the door behind them.

“Lord Westwood looks at me as if I were a snail!” Her voice shook with anger.

Felix was disconcerted, as if he’d expected to have to comfort her. Instead, as with Lady Sophia in the Brussels park, he had to make excuses. “My father’s haughty air is not deliberate, Fanny. It’s part of him. I was like that until Miriam taught me modesty.”

Amusement edged out anger. “You, modest!”

“Am I arrogant?” he asked, mortified.

“No, not arrogant, Felix--or only rarely!” Despite the teasing qualification, she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She laid her hand on his arm and looked up at him, earnest now. “You have a sort of self-assurance that I daresay stems from an inbred belief in your own worth.”

“Pompous?” he groaned.

“Oh no, that’s not what I mean at all.” Afraid he might read her feelings in her face, she busied herself taking off her gloves. “It is...it is a very attractive quality.”

The gloves dropped to the floor unnoticed as he seized her hands. “Fanny, will you marry me?”

Startled, afraid--no, certain--she must have misheard, she stammered, “But...but your parents...and what about Anita?”

“We’ll adopt her, and I don’t care two figs for my parents’ notion of consequence.”

The dear, dear man, from the chivalry of his heart, was offering her and Anita a home. She had every reason to refuse: a pride that shrank from accepting charity; a fear that he would come to hate her for disrupting his relationship with his parents, for being an inadequate viscountess.... She had every reason to accept: Anita’s future; love, love, love....

Her head in a whirl, she cried, “Oh, Felix, I cannot....”

A discreet tapping at the door interrupted her. She tore her hands from his and moved hastily to pretend to scan the bookshelves as the butler came in.

“My lord, a person demanding to speak to your lordship.”

“A person?” asked Felix irritably.

“A Cockney person, my lord, in a catskin waistcoat and a hat that appears to have been sat upon,” said the butler, his voice resonant with disapproval. “He enquired whether Captain and Miss Ingram were in residence. I did not feel it my place to enlighten him but I put him in the small anteroom.”

“The man from Brussels! Fan...Miss Ingram, it must be the man who asked those impertinent questions about you and Frank. How the deuce did he track us down?” He turned back to the butler. “Have him thrown out on his ear.”

“No!” Fanny protested. Sooner or later the man must be dealt with, and besides, she needed time to think, to decide between the promptings of heart and self-respect. “If he has found us at Westwood, he will find us wherever we go. Lord Roworth, please, will you try to find out what he wants, without admitting to him that we are here?”

“Never fear, I shall not let him cut up your peace.” Felix strode out.

And as he left, Fanny knew that when he returned she would want to fling herself into his arms, and that she must not. He must be given a chance to withdraw his impulsive offer, even if it broke her heart.

Chapter 19

Cannot what? Felix thought. Cannot marry an arrogant man she doesn’t love, even to give Anita a home?

Furious at the interruption, he stormed into the anteroom. “What the devil do you want?” he snapped at the seedy little man.

“Well, now, m’lord, that’s no way to talk to summun as ‘as come to do your friends a favour. And a devil of a time I’ve ‘ad of it a-follerin’ yer backards and forrards cross the Channel. I ain’t stirrin’ till I’ve ‘ad me say.”

“A favour?” The word penetrated Felix’s distraction. “What sort of favour? And why did you not say so when first I talked to you?”

“Acos I din’t know for sure if they was the right Ingrams, did I?” he said indignantly. “Tell ‘em there’s summat in it for ‘em and you’ll get pretenders popping out o’ the woodwork. Jist makes it ‘arder for a cove as all ‘e wants is to make a honest living. It’s no good tellin’ them lawyers ‘this cully ‘ere says ‘e’s the right ‘un.’ Gotta ‘ave proof, don’t I, or near as makes no odds.”

“You work for a lawyer? And you have proof that my friends are the Ingrams you are looking for?” If Fanny refused to marry him, a bit of a legacy would make a world of difference to her.

“I don’t s’pose, m’lord, as you ‘appen to know their ma’s maiden name?”

A sudden suspicion dawned on him. Had the mysterious, disregarded, titled grandfather decided to put in an appearance in their lives? He racked his brains for the requested information. “I don’t believe I know it. Not her surname. I know her Christian name was Frances.”

“That’ll ‘ave to do.”

“And Frank was accidentally given her middle name, which is a deadly secret,” he added with a grin.

“Lady Frances Cynthia Kerridge,” said the little man stolidly, “daughter of the Duke of Oxshott.” He stared, affronted, as Felix collapsed onto a chair in a fit of laughter.

“Oxshott!” he gasped. “That pompous sapskull! But wait a minute, Oxshott’s not old enough to be Miss Ingram’s grandfather.”

“The late duke, I oughter ‘ve said. It ain’t no joke, m’lord. I’m a discreet sorta cove or no lawyer’d hire me, but seeing I knows you’re their friend I’ll tell yer. It’s a matter o’ two estates and a plum apiece, or thereabouts.”

“A hundred thousand apiece!” Felix sat up and began to take serious notice.

A few minutes later, he returned to the library, to tell Fanny the news and to judge by her reaction whether to renew his proposal at once. He wanted her too much to stand aside, proudly noble, because she was suddenly wealthy. If she accepted him now, he’d be sure it was not just for the sake of a home for herself and Anita.

All the same, he was glad he had already offered, before she knew of her changed fortunes. Now she’d not think he had been too high-and-mighty to pay his addresses to a simple soldier’s daughter, nor that he cared a pin for her money.

Fanny was standing at the window with her back to him, bare-headed, a sunbeam gleaming on her brown curls. Hearing his step she turned, the train of her habit looped over her arm. Her face was in shadow, but he saw she was holding the nosegay he had fixed on her hat.

“What did he want?” she asked anxiously, coming to meet him.

“What was your mother’s maiden name?” he countered.

“He is still asking about that? I don’t know. She did not like to talk about her past.”

“Then you are going to have to tell me Frank’s middle name.”

“Oh, Felix, need I? I swore I would never reveal it.”

“I’m afraid to ask him,” he confessed, “and though I suspect I already know, I must be certain. Can you not trust me?”

She managed not to smile but her dimples gave her away. “He was christened Francis Cynthia,” she choked out. “He will kill me if you ever breathe a word of this. What is all this about?”

He took her hand, led her to a chair, and made her sit down. Fanny was not given to fainting, but the news was enough to make anyone swoon. “Your maternal grandfather died eleven months ago,” he began.

“Well, I cannot be sorry,” she said candidly, “for he treated Mama disgracefully. Who was he?”

“The Duke of Oxshott.”

“A duke!” Fanny looked puzzled. “The name seems familiar, but I cannot think where I have heard it. Certainly not from Mama. I know, it was from you, and just this morning. Are you saying I am related to the horrid man you saw at Mr Rothschild’s? So that is why you made me sit down! How dreadful, he must be Mama’s brother, my uncle.”

“I’m afraid so. It seems your grandfather, too, had a low opinion of his son and heir. Taggle, the fellow who tracked you down, caught a glimpse of the will and claims he was described in that legal document as a nincompoop. However, the late duke was an equally irascible gentleman--a cantankerous old curmudgeon, according to Taggle--who quarrelled constantly with all his relatives. The only exception was your mother, because, having banished her, he had not seen her in nearly thirty years.”