Heir to Rowanlea (2 page)

“So you do love me!” he said triumphantly, seizing her hands in his.

Elizabeth laughed and tried to pull her hands away. “I have not said so! You go too fast, Harry!”

“You do not?” His dismay was ludicrous.

“I have never said so!”

“But—all this winter—you have implied—I have thought— Dash it, Elizabeth, you would not have treated me as you have these past months without loving me!”

“Love is not a consideration where marriage is concerned. At least, so mama assures me,” she said, casting down her eyes and smiling. “I must not love any man until I am wed to him, so how could I tell you such a thing? But I have not said that I could not love you!” She sighed, and peeped up at him. “Mayhap, when you have certain news from France— “

“When!” he interrupted angrily, releasing her hands and turning away to stride about the room. “In the meantime, here you are in London aiming to sell yourself to the highest bidder!”

“No, no,” she responded soothingly. “Harry, come here, I cannot talk with you if you pace about like a wild beast in a cage! I am to be brought out this season, and I want to enjoy it. I want to go to parties and balls. That is natural, surely, especially as it had to be put off last year because of poor grandfather’s death.”

He returned to her side, but stood glowering down at her, ignoring the hand she held out to him.

“And you’ll meet many men, richer or titled men, and forget me. You are heartless, Elizabeth!”

“No, merely practical. Whatever my wishes, and I am not going to give you the satisfaction of hearing what they are, I cannot disoblige my parents by ignoring their plans for me.”

“So you do intend to marry a man merely for money and position?”

“I would not marry anyone whom I could not love,” she replied slowly. “Once we are married, that is. It is unfortunate that love alone is insufficient.”

He was about to reply when Mrs Maine’s voice was heard approaching the saloon, and with an exasperating smile Elizabeth rose and moved gently towards the door as it opened to admit her mother.

“How is dear Lady Weare?” Elizabeth asked.

“Not at all herself, but I’ve recommended an infusion of peppermint and valerian, with a cold lavender compress. They always take away my headaches. Good morning, Harry. I did not expect to see you here, alone with dear Elizabeth. Where is Charlotte?”

“I do not know, but Harry has been entertaining me.”

“Servant, Mrs Maine,” Harry said curtly, and Mrs Maine’s eyes narrowed as she looked swiftly from him to her daughter.

“I expect Elizabeth has been telling you what we have been doing this week. Dear girl, she is so excited, enjoying her first season.”

“Indeed yes. Will you take some refreshment?” he offered.

“Thank you, but no. I mean to call on Lord Fenton and his mother, they arrived in London a couple of days ago, so we must be on our way. Such a pleasant young man, and it’s a very old title. Do you stay long, or will you be going back to supervise your little farm? Dear me, it must cost your father an inordinate amount, buying all that machinery. Little better than toys, Mr Maine says, but there, it keeps you out of mischief! I wish all young men had such harmless interests instead of gambling and prize fighting.”

Charlotte, an unwilling witness to these conversations, clenched her fists in fury. She could not find words sufficiently strong to describe her opinion of Mrs Maine. And how could Elizabeth, when such a handsome and adoring man as Harry wanted her, be so perverse? She had encouraged him to pay her attentions for years, long before she began attending local assemblies and parties in Sussex. Pondering the capriciousness of some of the girls she knew, she returned slowly to retrieve her discarded book.

* * * *

It was as much as Harry could do to conduct the ladies to the door with any semblance of civility, for in this comprehensive speech Mrs Maine had delivered several body blows. Lord Fenton, some years older than himself, and a bachelor with considerable estates next door to the Maine lands, had been dangling after Elizabeth for several months, and Harry was well aware Mrs Maine looked on his suit with complaisance. As Harry stigmatized him as a pompous, self-opinionated bore, and seethed inwardly whenever he saw Elizabeth bestowing smiles on him, the thought of this visit made him grind his teeth in jealous fury.

Mrs Maine’s strictures on gambling and prize fighting were, he knew, directed at him, for though he patronized Gentleman Jackson’s saloon, and attended any prize fights he heard about, and could be wild on occasion, ready to accept any mad wager his cronies suggested, he was not addicted to cards or dice. He enjoyed all forms of sport, was accounted an excellent shot, an expert swordsman, and one of the best amateur men in the ring, as well as an accomplished horseman who could master the wickedest horse, and drive a team to perfection.

But it was her slighting reference to his farm and machinery that hurt most. He had a mechanical bent, and had soon seen how many of the new ideas being introduced could alter farming in a manner previously undreamed of. Conscious of his responsibilities to his nephew, should that young man still be alive, Mr Norville refused to permit Harry to experiment on the broad acres of Rowanlea, but handed over one of his own farms, where Harry had installed a tenant who had the same enthusiasm as he did himself for new ideas.

Together they had introduced new methods of cultivation, followed Robert Bakewell’s methods in stock breeding, and generally attended the sheep-shearing festivals on Coke of Holkham’s estates, where they met farmers from all over England, and even from across the Atlantic, and discussed new ideas. Harry’s constant refrain was that the success he achieved could be multiplied many times over if he could only extend these methods to more land, but his father, while proud of his efforts, remained sceptical of their wider application and bade Harry be content with one farm, for after he inherited his father’s lands he might do as he wished.

Reflecting bitterly on the vain ambitions of her mother, for he was encouraged to hope that without them Elizabeth would be only too willing to accept his offer, and the lack of understanding displayed by her reference to his experimental machines as mere toys, he strode back into the saloon, grasped his greatcoat and whip, and set off for the stables, to resume his intended engagement to join some friends and drive his curricle for several miles along the Oxford road. They were a group of young men determined to emulate the far more exclusive Four Horse Club, but in his present mood Harry found he could not endure the thought of their sedate progress. He was an excellent whipster and wanted to drive at what, for most other drivers, would have been a foolhardy speed.

* * * *

Harry’s fury was such that before he reached the stables he changed his mind and went instead to Bond Street. His mood demanded more vigorous action than a sedate drive, and even if he abandoned his friends and took his own road, he knew that the traffic on any road out of London would be such to prevent him from achieving the speed he craved. A session with John Jackson, if the master allowed it, would be more to his taste.

The champion, however, on seeing Harry’s set expression, shook his head sorrowfully.

“Never fight when you’re angry,” he advised. “You’ll run risks and more likely than not leave yourself open to hits. Take it out on the punching bag, and when you’re calm I’ll take you on for a round.”

Harry ruefully accepted this advice, and after half an hour of imagining the punching bag was Lord Fenton and several other of Elizabeth’s admirers, was permitted to face Jackson himself.

He half expected the champion to treat him gently. Jackson occasionally allowed a favored pupil to score a hit, and when it became clear that was not to be, Harry grew somewhat despondent, inattentive and lacking any defense. When he left his guard wide open and Jackson, with an almost perfunctory tap on the chin, floored him, he lay there for a moment and wondered whether he would be better advised to return to Sussex, forget Elizabeth, and become a hermit.

“Come, Mr Norville, that was not like you. Now I will give you more advice.”

For half an hour Harry, rather bemused and wondering why he was being singled out, had the benefit of Jackson’s attention as he demonstrated a variety of moves and counter moves. By the time he left he knew his technique had improved, and the glow of achievement did something to banish his gloom. Elizabeth might change her mind. There was no certainty Fenton or the others would offer for her. His father might discover he was the rightful owner of Rowanlea. All he had to do was be persistent.

* * * *

Charlotte went slowly back to the sofa where she had resumed her seat, but instead of reading her book she sat there thoughtfully biting her lip. She was aware Harry had been hanging after Elizabeth these past six months, but assumed he was adopting the same attitude towards her as most of the other young men in the neighborhood, and it was merely another form of rivalry amongst them. She certainly had not realized it was so serious, and he had actually made her an offer. Part of her was annoyed he should be attracted to such an insipid female, but far greater contempt was reserved for a girl who could reject the offer of so magnificent a being as Harry, and for such a paltry reason as the uncertainty of his inheriting a title. Mrs Maine’s acid comments she dismissed as irrelevant, for she was well aware many of her mother’s friends considered Harry wild to a fault, indulging in all kinds of crazy pranks and dangerous sporting pursuits, but to her he was perfect, the epitome of all the fictional heroes she had ever sighed over—dashing, debonair, handsome and fun-loving, always ready to encourage her own starts, and to rescue her from the unforeseen results of many of them.

This hero worship of her cousin did not preclude Charlotte’s quarrelling with him frequently and heatedly, for they had been brought up together for the past eight years. When her own father had died, Lady Weare had come to live with her widowed brother and care for his children along with her own. But however violent their quarrels, they were always prompt to come to the defense of one another, and Charlotte fumed at the thought that Elizabeth was not only physically out of reach of retaliation, but also safe from it because she could never divulge to anyone else what she had overheard.

The problem of what to do occupied her for some time, and it was only after concentrated but fruitless cogitation that Charlotte picked up the romance she had been so avidly perusing when she had been interrupted. The miraculous rescue of the beleaguered heroine and her rapturous delight at the discovery that the hero had not, as she had supposed, been enamored of the enchanting young duchess, failed somehow to hold Charlotte’s attention, and when she reached the final page she cast down the volume with an exclamation of disgust.

“What a fudge!” she declared aloud to the empty room. “As if real people ever behaved so! Or real wolves could be distracted by so nonsensical a trick!”

Then she fell into a reverie, wondering how it might be contrived to imprison Elizabeth in the old ruined church tower in Rowanlea woods, and make it impossible for Harry to rescue her. The reflection that finding a pack of wolves in southern England might be an insuperable problem caused her to utter a gurgle of laughter as she perceived the absurdity of it all, but she was soon serious again in renewed contemplation of Harry’s misfortune.

Elizabeth was not good enough for him, but how could he be made to accept such a point of view? It seemed he had been asking her to marry him for some time now, and would not easily desist. Certainly no representations from Charlotte would influence him.

Reluctantly, since she had always tended to regard Harry’s desires as of paramount importance, she conceded that if he truly wished to marry Elizabeth she must endeavor to bring about such a conclusion, but for the moment the means of achieving it escaped her, and she went upstairs to change for dinner still in a thoughtful mood. They were going to the theater that evening and she was looking forward to it. Harry was to escort them, and perhaps Elizabeth would be there. She might have some opportunity of doing something to help Harry.

Chapter 2

Charlotte had never been to a theater in London before, and when they entered their box at the Theater Royal she looked round in awe. There were tiers of boxes all around, and many were already occupied by fashionable members of the ton.

“The theater is less than ten years old,” Lady Weare told her. “I remember the old one, which was smaller, but it was pulled down to build a bigger one.”

“Which is the Royal Box?” Charlotte asked.

Harry, who was sitting moodily beside her, pointed.

“There, child. Are you thinking of the man who tried to shoot the King? It was almost two years ago, and two shots were fired from the stage pit. Neither hit him, of course, and he insisted the performance must continue.”

Charlotte shivered. “How terrible.”

Harry bestirred himself to point out some of the most fashionable people, but suddenly he stopped. Charlotte looked at him, puzzled, then she saw Elizabeth and her parents had entered a box almost opposite theirs, and they were accompanied by Lord Fenton and another young man she did not know. She cast a worried glance at Harry, who was looking daggers at the young men, and struggled to think of something to distract him. Nothing served, however, he merely grunted at all her remarks, and in the end she gave up and chatted to her mother and uncle until the play began.

She was absorbed, but rather irritated by the lack of silence from the audience, making it difficult to hear the actors.

“Oh, why cannot they all stop talking!” she exclaimed.

Harry laughed, rather sourly.

“The ton don’t come here to watch the play,” he said. “They come to see and be seen.”

“Then they are very rude.”

At the first interval Harry quickly left the box, and a few minutes later she saw him enter Elizabeth’s. He spoke briefly to her parents, then turned to her. Charlotte could see even at this distance that Elizabeth smiled at him while shaking her head, and a moment later she had taken Lord Fenton’s arm and departed. Harry gazed after her, then his attention was recalled to Mrs Maine as she tapped him on the arm with her fan. She appeared to be chiding him, and with a quick shake of the head he swung round and followed Elizabeth.