Evelyn Richardson (25 page)

“No, I am not.” Catherine smiled reflectively. “But I think you will agree that what differentiates ‘Ugolino’s’ false piety from your father’s true Christian charity is his utter lack of sympathy and compassion for his fellow man. He lacks the softening sense of humor that makes us accept and even love one another’s weaknesses. He is a man who derives no joy from even the simplest of life’s pleasures, and therefore he cannot bear to have anyone else enjoy them either. We do a great disservice to our girls if we educate all that capacity for joy right out of them.”

Margaret stared at her companion. “And do you know of anyone—anyone who is not a useless sybarite or a deluded fool, that is—who does enjoy life? I think it highly unlikely.”

“Highly unlikely, but not impossible. But then, he is a highly unlikely individual—passionate, but principled; idealistic, but alive to all the ugly realities of the world and determined to change them.”

“And I suppose that this paragon exists somewhere outside of your vivid imagination?” Margaret sniffed.

“Oh, he is not a paragon, not by any means. But he does exist outside of my imagination, and I have no doubt that he is managing to enjoy himself thoroughly at this very moment.”

* * * *

But accurate as Catherine’s observations usually were, this one was definitely not. Lucian was sitting in his chambers at Lincoln’s Inn frowning heavily at the document in front of him. It was a case brought to him by a Mr. Salt, a solicitor who could usually be counted on to bring him only the most interesting and complex of cases. But despite the complexities of the case and the vexed issue of whether it was murder or suicide that was responsible for the death of a young wife whose husband had run through the fortune she had brought to the marriage, he could not focus his attention on it, for his thoughts kept drifting back to another young woman who had brought a fortune to her marriage and lost it as well.

But the thought of Catherine, while it brought a smile to his face, also brought sadness to his heart. The smile was for her indomitable spirit and the courage with which she insisted on standing up for herself and making her way in the world. And sadness was also for the way she insisted on standing up for herself and making her own way in the world, for it meant that she would not share her world with him for fear that somehow he would take all that independence away from her.

The worst of it was that he understood her position completely and sympathized with it wholeheartedly. He could understand her fear that he would interfere in her affairs. And he might very well interfere, as he had done in Oxfordshire, in order to help her, especially in matters where he knew himself to be an expert. What she did not know was that he was perfectly willing to consult her in her areas of expertise and defer to her judgment when it was a matter of her knowledge and experience being superior to his.

He wanted her to continue doing her part to nurture and educate women to become as strong and independent as she was, but he also wanted her to enjoy it more. Why could she not understand, as he was coming to understand, that life, even with its problems and worries, could be so much richer, fuller, and more rewarding if there was someone to share it with, someone to discuss it with and hold close at the end of the day?

When his brother William had been killed, Lucian had felt much of the purpose and meaning slip from his life. William, an even crazier idealist than Lucian, had been the one person whose opinion he had valued. William had given him a standard to measure himself by, something to live up to. Catherine did the same thing for him. And William had laughed. He had seen the irony in life, the humor of it all. Since boyhood, even in the most dire situations—as they accidentally set fire to a potting shed or sank their rowboat—Lucian had been able to glance over at William, see the answering gleam of humor in his eyes, and burst out laughing. No one else had ever shared that with him, except Catherine. Having lost both William—and Catherine, once already—Lucian knew how very precious and rare such camaraderie was, and he did not want to lose it again or be forced to live without it.

But how was he to win Catherine’s trust? Shaking his head wearily, Lucian again tried to focus on the document in front of him. Then, suddenly, he knew what he must do. He had to ask her for her help in solving one of his problems. He had to share the problems of the case he was studying with her and ask her advice. How simple, and yet how miraculous that the thought of asking for her help could brighten his world to such a degree. Suddenly his life, which had seemed so gray and monotonous after his return from Bath, was filled with possibility. He had something to look forward to, something to anticipate.

What was he waiting for? Filled with a heady exuberance, Lucian gathered up the papers in front of him and headed back to Mount Street to tell his staff to prepare for another journey to Bath. But when he arrived at his own doorstep, his butler handed him a letter. Lucian glanced at the address. Bath had come to him!

He tore open the letter, scanning it quickly. A slow ironic grin spread across his face. After all the years that the matchmaking mamas of the
ton
had done their level best to see Lucian Verney leg-shackled, who would have guessed that it would be Hugo Granville who would reunite him with the love of his life. “Gilmore, see to it that my things are packed. I am going to Bath.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did the butler betray his satisfaction at this news. Nor did he betray his conviction that it was not his lordship’s niece that was the reason for this sudden journey or the lifting of his master’s somber mood, but the niece’s headmistress.

Gilmore was the soul of discretion, but he was a shrewd observer and a keen student of human nature. Naturally a man in his exalted position did not indulge in idle gossip or listen to vulgar hearsay, but he had seen enough over the last three months to know that his master had at last discovered a woman worthy of him. The brittle cynicism had slowly softened into ironic humor, and the bleakness that had lurked in the back of the gray eyes had finally disappeared as the man who had thoroughly enjoyed life reappeared, a man Gilmore had not seen since his master had left for the continent ten years ago.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hugo Granville’s name might have been silently blessed in London, but it was most definitely being cursed in Bath. “That pompous, punctilious, interfering .., ogre!”

“Whatever is amiss now?” Margaret asked as she came in with the account books that Catherine had sent a maid scurrying to request from her.

“'Ugolino!'” Catherine stormed, taking the account books from Margaret’s hand, slamming them down on the desk, and then proceeding to clear a space for them by sweeping papers into ever increasing piles on the floor around her desk.

“Well, it is really Farmer Griggs,”—Catherine paused to catch her breath—“but it is ‘Ugolino’ at the bottom of it. Farmer Griggs called at the dower house this morning and, finding I had already left, came here. It seems that Lord Granville has discovered that Farmer Griggs has offered shelter and support to Betty and her illegitimate baby, and he”—Catherine ground her teeth in frustration—“considers it his moral duty to order them out of the community so as not to be a bad influence on other young women who might see that Betty has been accepted without punishment for her licentious behavior and therefore, seeing no penalty connected with this behavior, might embark on a similarly dissolute path.”

“Naturally, Farmer Griggs protested that it was his right to shelter whomever he pleased in his own house, in addition to its being a simple act of Christian charity to offer aid and comfort to a homeless woman and her child. And then ‘Ugolino’ had the audacity to point out that some of Farmer Griggs’s fields are actually land leased from the Granville estate and therefore Farmer Griggs does not have quite so much right as he thought he did to behave as he pleases. ‘Ugolino’ actually threatened to take the land back immediately if Farmer Griggs did not instantly comply with his wishes. Can you credit the monstrous ill nature of that man? Will he never leave me alone?”

“Actually, he is leaving you alone,” Margaret pointed out logically, as she watched her friend furiously clearing a working space around the account books on her desk. “And you cannot really call a man ‘punctilious’ and an ‘ogre’ at the same time.”

But she received no thanks for this reasonable observation. “I know.” Catherine snapped. “Literally speaking, he is not interfering in my life; he is interfering in Betty’s and the Griggses’, but you know he would not if they had no connection to me.”

“True,” Margaret was forced to concede. “But there is really very little you can do about a contract drawn up between Farmer Griggs and Lord Granville.”

“How can you say that? I am responsible for introducing Betty and her baby into the Griggses’ household, and if ‘Ugolino’ wants to improve the moral tone of the neighborhood by threatening Farmer Griggs with taking back the Granville land he rents if he does not get rid of Betty and the baby, then I am responsible for any loss of income he might suffer. I had hoped that by going over the academy’s books I might discover some way to make up for Farmer Griggs’s loss of income, but I cannot. We do not make enough ourselves to compensate him to that extent. I gave them to you in the hopes that perhaps you might see something I had overlooked since you are so much cleverer with figures, but…”—she looked pleadingly at the mathematics instructress—“you could find nothing?”

“Nothing.” Margaret responded firmly. “At least not the sort of sum you asked me to look for. To find a sum that large you would be forced to resort to highway robbery.”

“Maybe I shall.”

“Catherine! You cannot do anything more to help Farmer Griggs, believe me.”

“Oh, no?” Catherine took up her pelisse which had been casually tossed over a chair, pulled it on, and stuffed her bonnet on her head, securing it with a hopelessly lopsided bow. “Watch me! I am not giving in to that man even if it means resorting to the law.”

“You do not seriously think that Mr. Barham would be so rash as to stand up to Lord Granville?”

“Barham?” Catherine snorted derisively. “I am not so naive. Not Barham. The Marquess of Charlmont.”

‘The Marquess of Charlmont! What would you want with…”

“He read for the bar. I need legal counsel from someone who will not be intimidated by ‘Ugolino’. It makes a good deal of sense to me. Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to reassure the Griggses.” And she stormed out, leaving her friend staring after her openmouthed.

But by the time her carriage had turned into Farmer Griggs’s immaculately kept farmyard, Catherine’s self-assurance, fueled mostly by righteous anger, had slowly seeped away. How could she ask a man to risk so much of his livelihood? But what would become of Betty and the baby if she did not? Perhaps, if she looked carefully at the academy’s books one more time, she could find a way to support Betty and the baby, but deep down inside Catherine knew that Betty would never accept such obvious charity.

More man once, Betty had told her “I like working, my lady,” both at the dower house when she was looking after Catherine’s chickens, and later after she had become a valued member of Farmer Griggs’s household. “It makes me feel like I am someone to know that I can do something.”

How well Catherine had understood that feeling, and how much she sympathized with the young woman’s wish to
look after herself and her baby.
I
will not let that young woman down, Catherine resolved as the carriage slowed to a halt. But how am I to keep this from her? If she discovers the trouble she has brought to these good people, she will feel it is her duty to leave them.

Fortunately, however, Farmer Griggs was in the yard examining the shoe of one of his draft horses when Catherine arrived. “Good day, my lady.” His honest, weather-beaten face, usually the picture of good health, looked gray and careworn. “You know I would do everything I could to keep them here if it were in my power.” He came straight to the point. “The Missus is powerful fond of that baby, and Betty is as good and honest a worker as I could hope to find in many a day, but the fact is, I cannot afford to lose the income from that field. As you well know, the Griggses have had this agreement with the Granvilles long as I can remember, before my grandfather’s time. Maybe we should not have counted on it as much as we have, but we have done well by the Granvilles, and what with buying my new team this year and those sheep the year before last, I have nothing left to spare. I need every bit that field produces.”

“I know. I know, and I will not ask it of you, if it comes to that.” Catherine summoned up an encouraging smile that was totally at odds with the anxiety gnawing at her stomach. “But I hope it will not come to that. If you can but stand firm for a few more days, I think I know someone who can help us.”

“Who? There is no one in these parts strong enough to stand up to his lordship.”

“A friend.” Catherine could not help but smile at the thought. She nodded. “A good friend who understands such things.”

“Ah.” There seemed nothing else to say. Farmer Griggs could only hope that Lady Catherine’s trust in her friend was well placed.

But later on that evening, as he recounted the story to his wife and Betty over supper he began to consider the conversation more thoroughly. “A “friend,” she said it was who might help us, ‘a good friend who understands such things,’ and she smiled kind of funny-like. I wonder. It must be a gentleman, for who else could possibly make Lord Granville listen to reason?”

The anxious little group at the farm was not kept in suspense very long, for not a week after her conversation with Farmer Griggs, Lady Catherine appeared in his farmyard again.

This time, however, she was not in her carriage, but in a beautifully sprung black curricle with bright yellow wheels pulled by “as sweet a pair of goers as it has ever been my pleasure to see,” the farmer later told his cronies in the taproom of the Green Man.