Fated Folly (4 page)

‘
But if they love each other,' protested his lordship, blinking myopically.

‘
I dare say they do,' Rupert agreed, struggling against a surge of emotion. ‘Such passions may be strong—indeed I know they are—but they are apt to lead young persons into disaster.' Pulling himself together, he moderated his tone. ‘All too easy to make a mistake. Quite aside from more worldly considerations.'

‘
Hrumph.' Lord Carradale replaced his spectacles, staring through them at Rupert as if he thought him mad. ‘Worldly considerations, yes. Well, the boy's not a pauper, for all he's a younger son. My—um—sister-in-law, you know, was his godmother. Left him her personal fortune.'

‘
Yes, so the boy told me.' Rupert summoned a smile. ‘As I have said, I have no objection to your son in particular, except for his youth. If it comforts you, I would return the same answer to any suitor—of whatever age—at this point.'

‘
Hrumph.' Lord Carradale fiddled with his spectacles, pushing them up, and then down again. ‘I see what it is. Too precipitate, eh?'

‘
You begin to understand me,' said Rupert drily.

‘
Bless me, sir, I seriously doubt that!'

He reddened as Rupert, unable to help himself, laughed out. Carradale cleared his throat again.

‘
So you're saying time, I take it? In time.'

‘
I make no promises. Time may lessen as well as increase passions, you know.'

‘
Well, of course I know that,' returned his guest in an affronted tone. ‘Well, then—um—we'll say no more on the matter, eh?'

‘
We may say no more, Carradale,' said Rupert on a cynical note, ‘but whether the young people in question will be similarly reticent, I very much doubt.'

***

 

‘
He offered for me?' demanded Clare faintly, one hand pressing at the sudden hollow thumping in her chest.

‘
He did not mean it, you goose,' snapped Justin, pacing back and forth across the little space of the school-room. But his anger was not apparently directed at Clare. ‘He said it only to belittle my pretensions. He may say he has no objection to me, but I know better.'

Clare hardly heard him. She sat down abruptly on a chair by the fire. Her knees were trembling uncontrollably. The hollowness in her chest increased, squeezing up to tighten at her throat.

‘
How do you know he did not mean it?' she enquired in a hushed tone.

‘
He told my father so. He was mocking me. Papa told him it was preposterous and he agreed.'

‘
Why is it preposterous?'

This took Justin's full attention. ‘Why? Good God, Clare, he must be nearly twice your age!'

Clare's lips hovered on a smile. ‘He does not look it.'

‘
What has that to say to anything? You say the silliest things.' Then his blue-grey eyes, whose colour mirrored her own, narrowed suspiciously. ‘You have not formed a
tendre
for him, have you?'

A choke of rather wild laughter escaped Clare. ‘Heavens, no! You are the one with a
tendre
.'

‘
I am in love,' stated her brother loftily. Then his face collapsed. ‘Much good may it do me.'

‘
Yes it will, Justin,' she said kindly. ‘I am sure if you wait and prove that your mutual attachment is lasting—'

‘
Wait!' groaned her brother. ‘If you had ever been in love you would not talk of waiting. That monster has never loved anyone, you may be sure.'

It was on the tip of Clare's tongue to rush to Sir Rupert's defence, but she bit back the hot words. For all she knew, Justin could be right. What did she know of the man, after all? But he had asked Papa to give her to him! Elation burgeoned in her breast. He could not have suggested such a thing if he had not thought—deep down—that he might like to marry her. Could he? Why should such an idea cross his mind otherwise? Surely, this must mean that he did not think of her as a child?

It did not take much persuasion for her willing mind to go off into pleasurable daydreams, in which Sir Rupert Wolverley figured largely. Since she did not meet the man himself, Clare was able to indulge herself in this manner quite successfully until a few evenings later, when she accompanied her brother to a party of pleasure at the house of Lady St Merryn, who had sponsored Miss Philippa Wolverley into the ton.

Although Sir Rupert had not specifically forbidden any normal social intercourse between the young couple, which would in any event have been impossible to enforce, Miss Flimwell had been so crushed by the scold that came her way, that she scarcely permitted her charge to exchange a word with the gentleman in public. There was nothing she could do, however, to prevent Lord Ashendon, the son and heir of the St Merryn household in Berkeley Square, from taking his cousin Pippa from her duenna's side, and strolling with her to fetch up in company with a set of young persons chattering in one of the saloons. That this group included both young Carradales was unfortunate, but at least the lovers were not alone.

Clare was dismayed to discover that her escapade appeared to have become common knowledge. At least, Ashendon certainly knew of it.

‘
I am all admiration, Miss Carradale,' said that young gentlemen in silken tones. ‘There are few hearts stout enough to brave my cousin's wrath.'

‘
Why?' Clare demanded, turning to look at him.

Ashendon smiled, but Clare thought his amusement feigned, for the smile did not reach those cat-like green eyes, which were watchful. She was aware that her fellow debutantes found him attractive. He was certainly fashionable, she conceded, in a suit of dark green that set off his eyes and complemented the light brown hair, which, somewhat to Clare's amusement, was carefully combed into the popular style of deliberate disorder. He was slight, but Pippa said the Wolverley men all had powerful frames and she was in no doubt that Ashendon's figure would develop in time.

‘
Have you not heard from Pippa of the uncertainty of her uncle's temper?' he asked, flicking open a gold snuffbox and raising a pinch to one nostril.

‘
Well, she told me he was angry with her for contracting an engagement to my brother,' Clare admitted, ‘but that was understandable.'

‘
How can you, Clare?' broke in Pippa. ‘It was horrid of him.'

‘
But he had every right to be angry,' Clare pursued. ‘Justin should have asked his permission before applying to you.'

‘
Oh, sad stuff,' said her brother.

‘
Catch Justin adhering to such old-fashioned nonsense,' laughed Nateby, one of his old school cronies.

‘
Quite right,' said another of them, Lord Chelmsley-Wood. ‘Dash it, we are almost at the end of the century. Must have done with ancient customs, eh, Justin?'

‘
You may have done with them,' Clare said, twinkling. ‘Try if you can persuade your sires.'

She regarded her brother's friends in much the same light as Justin himself. Their boyishness both amused and exasperated her. Indeed she could not understand how her friends could see them in a romantic light. How different, how much more interesting, was a real man like Sir Rupert Wolverley.

‘
In any event, it was not that which made Sir Rupert kick up a dust,' Justin put in, reverting to the original argument.

‘
You had better have been in my shoes, Carradale,' Ashendon told him, slipping the snuffbox back into his pocket.

‘
Don't be silly, Ash,' exclaimed Pippa. ‘As if I would marry you, regardless of what my uncle might wish.'

It struck Clare for the first time that there was a family resemblance between Pippa and her uncle. She had the same dark glossy hair, caught up in a knot at the back, and her height was above average. Clare could not but envy her friend's fuller figure, which set off the décolletage of her pale lilac gown, thankfully partially concealed by a half-robe of silver net.

Clare found herself wondering about Sir Rupert Wolverley's taste in women, and a horrid fear beset her that it might run to something far other than herself. She listened with only half an ear to the cousinly quarrel that had broken out, as Lord Ashendon asserted with a fervour equal to Pippa's his utter unwillingness to oblige Sir Rupert by marrying her.

‘
Besides, I will do him the justice to own that he has never so much as hinted anything of the kind to me,' finished Ashendon.

‘
Well, of course he would not do so. He would speak to your father. They are as thick as inkleweavers, after all.'

Ashendon's lips curled in a disdainful sneer. ‘Cousin Rupert would like us to think so.'

A new voice interrupted them, its tone dry. ‘I can hardly suppose our family affairs can be of interest to your friends, Ashendon.'

The whole group turned as one. Clare's heart leapt at the voice and then thrummed unevenly as her glance found the face. She noted the consternation flooding both Justin and Pippa with colour, while Ashendon visibly blanched and the other two exchanged glances of embarrassment. Clare was herself conscious of warmth in her cheeks, but delight was uppermost and she could not have prevented herself from speech if her life had depended upon it.

‘
Sir Rupert!'

He looked round and found her face. The stern cast of his countenance at once relaxed and his lips answered her hovering smile. ‘Good evening, Miss Carradale.'

‘
I—I was j-just going to find Cousin Berinthia, Uncle Rupert,' stammered Pippa, edging away from the group, and glancing off to where her duenna was hovering by the door.

Her uncle's eyes went back to her. ‘Don't abandon your chosen company on my account, my dear,' he said, and Clare noted the irony in his tone.

‘
As a matter of fact, sir, it was I who took Pippa away from Miss Flimwell,' Ashendon cut in, a challenge in his voice.

‘
Very natural, I am sure,' commented Sir Rupert mildly.

Clare, her eyes never leaving his face, saw a muscle twitch in his cheek and noted the cold steel in his gaze as it met the young man's own. It belied the blandness of his response. There was some antagonism between these two. Her glance flicked to Ashendon, and found ill-concealed anger in his eyes. It was as if an unspoken dialogue went on between them, at variance with the words they spoke.

Pippa, poised almost on one leg in an agony of indecision, threw an imploring look at Justin, who grimaced back, plucked one friend by the sleeve, jerked his head at the other and melted silently away with them.

Pippa gasped out, ‘Give me your arm, Ash.'

‘
With pleasure, cousin,' he responded, with what Clare decided was exaggerated courtesy, but he contrived at the same time to throw a gleaming look of triumph at Pippa's guardian.

Sir Rupert watched the exodus, a faint smile twisting his lips. Clare thought it contemptuous and her tongue loosened.

‘
He doesn't seem to like you very much, does he?'

He turned. ‘Ashendon? There is something less than cousinly affection between us, certainly,' he conceded, adding on a note of severity, ‘Although it would have been more becoming in you to have failed to notice it.'

Mischief danced in Clare's bosom. ‘I dare say you intend that for a snub.'

‘
Evidently not a very successful one,' he said, amusement softening his features.

She giggled. ‘Well, I am curious. But I see that you will not tell me anything, so I won't press you.'

‘
I am relieved.'

‘
I would if I thought I might succeed, though,' she warned. ‘On some matters.'

Dry again, Sir Rupert said, ‘I shall be on the watch for them, never fear.' He glanced about, and a rueful look came into his face. ‘The place is deserted. I am sorry. I appear to have broken up your little gathering.'

Clare smiled sunnily. ‘Oh, don't mind it. I had much rather talk to you.'

That full smile of his dawned and Clare drew a breath as his face lit up. The sober dark suit seemed only to enhance the brightness there. His eyes, she noted, were a sort of greeny hazel.

‘
Is this a preliminary to that programme of cajolery you spoke of?'

Clare bubbled over. ‘No, indeed. I have abandoned all hope of you in that line.'

His brows rose. ‘I don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed.'

A sense of daring seized her. ‘That must depend on just what it was that made you make that outrageous suggestion to Papa the other day.'

For an instant he looked blank. ‘Suggestion?' Then his face registered horror. ‘My God! You know of that? Don't say your father mentioned it to you.'

‘
Oh no, it was Justin who told me,' Clare said with complete unconcern. She adopted a quizzing tone. ‘You are at a disadvantage this time, Sir Rupert.'

‘
I am indeed,' he agreed, and smiled. ‘That must make us quits, then.'

‘
It most certainly does not. I gave you all my reasons for being caught outside your library. And though your quarrel with Ashendon—'