Lady Caro (4 page)

“A woman has no rights once she is married. They are as helpless as Sanley thought poor Meg would be against his word. Everything a wife has becomes her husband’s to control, even her children. It is excessively unjust.”

The curricle emerged from the damp shade of the woods into the bright sunshine where a quarter of a mile ahead of them Bellhaven sparkled in the light.

Caro turned her eyes, hot with outrage, toward Ashley. “I shall not place myself at the mercy of a husband who may turn out to be a drunkard like Mr. Burk, who is always in his cups. Or a wastrel like Sir John Wesley, who lost his estate and his wife’s fortune at the gaming table. Or a brute like Mr. Potter, who beats his poor Clara even though she is the sweetest little thing. Then there is Amelia Coleberd, who brought a great dowry to her clutch-fisted husband and is required to dress herself and her children in hand-me-downs that she begs from her relatives.”

Ashley, rather horrified by this unhappy catalogue of wifely suffering, said, “I collect these must be neighbors.”

Caro nodded.

“Not all men are monsters. Nor are they always to blame for the troubles in a marriage,” he said, feeling compelled to defend his sex.

Her little chin tilted defiantly. “The only marriage that I would consider is one like Lady Fraser’s, whose husband leaves her here in peace while he resides in London with his mistress.”

“Surely you are jesting,” Ashley protested.

“I am not,” she replied emphatically. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Her blunt question so took him by surprise that he was betrayed into retorting, “I have known no lady as complaisant as you.”

The big gray eyes were innocently uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”

He had no intention of telling her and said hastily, “Only that you are a most unusual chi—young lady.”

“I rather think that I must be,” she said thoughtfully. “My cousins, Grace and Jane, talk of nothing but clothes and catching a husband with an impressive title and fortune. They fawn over Lord Sanley even though Mercer Corte is far handsomer and nicer, too.”

“And does not pinch maids either.”

“No, he does not! He is in love with Emily Picton, and she with him. I cannot imagine how anyone could be in love with Lord Sanley. He is so languid and puffed-up and humorless. He expects others to entertain him while making no effort of his own.”

Yes, Ashley thought, this naive innocent had read Sanley’s character to a nicety. “Have your cousins set their cap for Sanley?” he asked hopefully. If that were the case, they might leave him alone.

“Oh, no, he is only their second choice, but one of them will have to settle for him because they both want to rivet the same man. To hear them tell it, he is the most dashing, divinely handsome man in all England.” Caro’s gray eyes sparkled mischievously, and Ashley was again struck by what a taking creature she could be at such moments. “I think it shall be excessively diverting to see which of them wins him. My wager is on Grace, for she is the beauty of the family. I own that I have a lively curiosity to see a man who so impresses my cousins, for they are excessively critical of everyone else. However, Mary Milbank disapproves of him because she says that he is well known to have rakish tendencies.”

“How shocking,” Ashley exclaimed with a commendably straight face. “Surely that must concern your cousins.”

“Not at all. They say they prefer a man who makes love charmingly. For myself, I cannot imagine anything so repulsive as being kissed by him or any man. Can you?”

“I confess that I should not like it at all,” Ashley replied with a smile, “but I think my aversion is more understandable than yours.”

They were almost to Bellhaven’s great portico now, and Ashley slowed his chestnuts to the most sedate of walks in an attempt to prolong his diverting conversation with Caro. “Who is this repulsive gentleman that you could not imagine kissing?”

“Viscount Vinson.”

The viscount burst out laughing as he thought of the rather numerous ladies who had welcomed his repulsive kisses.

“Why are you laughing? Do you know him?”

“Very well. I fear I am he.”

Caro was rendered speechless for what Ashley suspected might have been the first time in her life.

Finally she protested, “But you said that your name was Ashley Neel.”

“And so it is, just as your papa is George Kelsie as well as the marquess of Levisham.”

“But you told me that you were my father’s solicitor!”

“No, you assumed that I was, as I assumed that you were a servant. So now we are even, Lady Caro,” he retorted with his most winning smile.

“What a nice smile you have,” she said approvingly. “My cousins will be excessively happy to see you. They have been in a fit of the sullens since Mercer Corte told them that he did not think you would come on account of your hating matchmaking parties.” She examined him with frank curiosity in her eyes. “Is it true that you are more faithful to your mistress than most men are to their wives?”

“What?” Ashley demanded incredulously.

“That is what Emily Picton told Mary Milbank when she said that you had rakish tendencies. Are you?”

Ashley, dismayed that his private affairs were apparently a matter of public discussion, said sharply, “That is not a question a young lady of—”

“Yes, I know,” Caro interrupted impatiently, “but I am not a lady.”

“I, however, am a gentleman, and I do not discuss such subjects with innocents,” he said firmly. Had any other woman asked him such a question he would have given her a crushing setdown, but Caro’s naive candor and innocence defused his anger.

She regarded him thoughtfully. “Well, I daresay that if you cannot be faithful to your wife, it is laudable to be so to your mistress.”

Chapter 4

Mrs. Olive Kelsie, tall and stout with a habitually discontented face, looked into Bellhaven’s morning room. The four young ladies gathered there were all dressed in the first stare of fashion, but Mrs. Kelsie noted with satisfaction that her nineteen-year-old daughter Grace obscured the others with her loveliness.

Grace was statuesque, with flirtatious eyes of cornflower blue and skin as pale and smooth as the finest ivory. Charming ringlets of guinea-gold hair framed her heart shaped face. She was, as always, perfectly groomed in a new lavender muslin gown with not a single hair out of place.

Jane Kelsie, younger than Grace by a year, was a rather pallid copy of her elder sister, lacking her perfection of face and form but still lovely and as impeccably turned out.

Olive Kelsie was well pleased with her daughters. Grace was an Incomparable, and Jane as lovely as Emily Picton, who was such a hit in London. Mrs. Kelsie, who wanted no young lady about whose charms could compete with her daughters, had tried to prevent Emily’s being invited, but Caroline had insisted. Mrs. Kelsie had ached to strangle her niece, a longing that she felt frequently.

Thankfully, the lovely Emily had a
tendre
for Mercer Corte, Lord Corte’s second son. As soon as Mrs. Kelsie learned Emily would be coming, she had seen to it that young Corte was invited, too, knowing that Emily would notice no one else. Certainly she was welcome to Corte. Although he was of a fine family, his lack of title and his modest expectations rendered him unacceptable as a possible candidate for the hand of Grace or Jane.

At the top of Olive Kelsie’s list of marital prospects—and
both
her daughters’ as well—was Lord Vinson, and she was determined that one of her girls should capture him. What a feather it would be in her cap to have her daughter—she did not much care which one—snag such a prime catch. Second on her list was Lord Sanley, the duke of Upton’s heir. Mrs. Kelsie smiled to herself. She would be the talk of London if she managed to marry her daughters to a future duke and a future earl, especially when they were the biggest fish to be had in the marriage pond.

Continuing down the hall past the morning room, she was well pleased at how, on the pretext that it would help his daughter, she had managed to convince her odiously disobliging brother-in-law to invite the cream of eligible males to Bellhaven. Mrs. Kelsie blamed Levisham for her daughters’ disappointing first season in London. Had her darlings had the proper address and clothes, they would have taken London by as great a storm as the famous Gunning sisters had done three score years earlier. But their uncle had not opened his elegant London residence for their use. Instead, they had had to let a house with an inferior address. And he had given them only a paltry few hundred pounds for clothes instead of the several thousand that their beauty deserved. (Although Mrs. Kelsie had a quite comfortable income of her own, she did not see why she should be expected to spend it on her daughters’ gowns when she considered that expense the responsibility of the head of the family.)

Small wonder, given these handicaps, that Grace had received only two offers, neither of which met with her or her mama’s approval, and Jane had had none. What a brilliant season they would have had if only they, not that wretched Caroline, were a marquess’s rich daughters.

Mrs. Kelsie had never forgiven her late husband for dying before his brother and thereby preventing her from becoming the marchioness of Levisham. Her only consolation lay in knowing that now her son, Tilford, would become marquess. Poor Tilford’s prospects in life had been dim until the death of Brandon, Levisham’s only son, had made Tilford his uncle’s heir.

Providence, which had given the ambitious Mrs. Kelsie much to work with in her daughters, had been less generous in her son. No taller than his sisters, he was a plump, dour man of four and twenty, much addicted to the bottle. His lack of stature and good looks was not offset by intellectual acuity or charm, for he had neither. He was the sort of son only a mother could love, and the widow Kelsie, oblivious to his faults, doted on him.

A door behind Mrs. Kelsie opened, and she turned to see her brother-in-law dressed in riding coat and breeches. Once Levisham had been a robust man with a strong, squarish face and lively, penetrating gray eyes that bespoke keen intelligence. Now, however, his face was thin, gray, and sunken, the eyes dull and listless. His clothes hung loosely, betraying the weight he had recently lost. Where once he had moved and acted quickly, with decisive energy, now he did so slowly, as though the effort were almost too much for him.

His decline had begun last spring when he had been stricken with a fever that had very nearly killed him. Although he had survived, it could not be said that he had truly recovered. His body remained frail and tired, regaining neither the weight nor the energy that the fever had sucked from him.

“Come with me to the estate room,” he told his sister-in-law. “I wish to discuss Tilford with you.”

Mrs. Kelsie bit her lip angrily. For some inexplicable reason, the marquess held her darling Tilford in particular repugnance. This antipathy was a daunting—and exceedingly vexing—impediment to her most cherished scheme: to marry her son to Caroline.

Not that Mrs. Kelsie approved of having that ramshackle girl for a daughter-in-law. It was shocking the way Levisham had let her run wild: riding bareback, climbing trees, and even, if one particularly horrifying report was to be credited, swimming half naked in her shift. But although Caroline was unattractive to her aunt, the great fortune that the chit had inherited from her mother was irresistible. Only the Bellhaven estate, which would be frightfully expensive to keep up, and the house in London were entailed. The rest of Levisham’s fortune was his to do with as he wished, and he would leave it to Caroline, who did not need a sixpence of it, instead of to her poor Tilford.

If her son—and she with him—were to live in the style his title required, he would have to marry a fortune. Much as she doted on him, even she had to admit that he did not acquit himself well in society. With so many odiously handsome fortune hunters stalking even ugly heiresses of sizable fortunes, his chances of claiming one as his wife were not high. Olive, who had been in charge of Levisham’s guest list, had invited Mary Milbank, an heiress to a considerable fortune, but the bran-faced creature had been so rude as to make clear her contempt for Tilford last night. Caroline remained Tilford’s best hope of marrying an heiress. Besides, he had developed a quite unaccountable
tendre
for his skinny little cousin.

The marquess led his sister-in-law into a small room dominated by a massive carved mahogany desk that had been designed for his great-grandfather by William Kent. Along one wall, a mahogany bookcase held an impressive number of account books, all neatly labeled. On the wall facing his desk hung a large painting of the late marchioness, a delicate beauty with a halo of golden curls. At first glance, she looked like an ethereal angel until one noticed the mischievous expression in her big sea-blue eyes.

As Levisham closed the door, Mrs. Kelsie noted how weary and frail he looked. It would not be long before her darling Tilford would be the marquess and Caroline his ward. Then Olive would impose on her niece the strict discipline that she needed. A few whippings would do her a world of good. And no one could stop Tilford from marrying her. Once she was his ward, then his wife, life would be very different indeed for the annoying brat.

The marquess gestured with a thin hand for Mrs. Kelsie to sit in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair. No doubt he was going to cut up stiff over poor Tilford’s having gotten a trifle bosky at dinner last night, and she tried to divert him by asking, “Do you approve of the guests that I invited?”

“But of course. I knew that you could be depended upon to select the best male catches on the marriage mart without a fortune hunter among them.”

Discomfited by the mockery in his voice that she did not understand, she said stiffly, “I felt it my duty to see that dearest Caroline was introduced to the most eligible of possible suitors.”

“Did you, indeed?” The marquess lifted an eyebrow. “
Dearest
Caroline will not thank you. You know that she is passionately opposed to marrying.”

For which Mrs. Kelsie was most grateful. Levisham would never force Caroline to do anything, so she would remain single until after her father’s death, when Tilford could claim her. Her aunt, concealing her delight at this situation, exclaimed, “Surely you cannot want dearest Caroline to be an ape leader.”

“Of course not,” Levisham admitted.

“Nor I. That is why I have taken such care to invite the most eligible young bachelors. Perhaps one of them will fall in love with her and make her forget her objections,” Olive lied. None of the male guests, who could have the pick of the marriage mart, would be attracted by such a thin slip of a girl with a brown complexion, unruly hair, and a wretched tongue that had already given both Sanley and Sir Percival a disgust of her. Nevertheless, Olive had taken the further precaution of isolating Caro between her and her son at meals. If Olive had thought that one of the male guests might take a fancy to Caroline, she would never have suggested the party. Great as her ambitions were for her daughters, her darling Tilford took precedence.

Levisham said thoughtfully, “Despite their outrageous cost, I do not think the clothes you convinced me Caro must have suit her well.”

Olive felt something akin to fear prickle at her. Surely he could not suspect that she had worked out a special arrangement with her dressmaker. The amount of fabric ordered for each of her niece’s gowns had been enough for Grace or Jane to have one, too, and the cost of making it up had been concealed in the price charged for Caroline’s. The marquess unknowingly had paid for two dresses for each one that his daughter had gotten. Furthermore, Olive had seen to it that Caroline’s gowns enhanced her numerous bad features.

“It is not the clothes,” Olive said, hiding her unease in vehemence, “but the careless way dearest Caroline wears them. She runs about like a scullery maid with her hems crooked, her ruffles tom, and her hair falling down.”

At that moment, the young lady herself scampered by the estate room window in a faded blue calico frock, and her aunt was able to say, “Only look at her now. All the beautiful gowns I had made for her, and what is she wearing but a wretched dress that is years old.”

Levisham frowned. “When we are finished here, tell Caro that I wish to see her.”

“I’ll do so immediately,” Olive said, rising from her chair in the hope of escaping before her brother-in-law recalled the reason he wished to speak with her.

“No, not until we discuss Tilford’s disgusting behavior last night, treating us to that tasteless, drunken harangue and then passing out in a stupor in the drawing room. To ensure that there is no repeat of this, I have ordered that the servants pour him no wine tonight. He is to drink nothing for the remainder of his stay here. I will not have him disgrace us again.”

Olive was outraged that he could talk of her darling Tilford so after the way his own rag-mannered daughter had mortified them with her incorrigible tongue and behavior. Neither Lord Sanley nor Sir Percival would ever forgive her. Worse, Jane had seen her sneaking out early this morning to ride bareback even though her aunt had prohibited her from doing so while guests were at Bellhaven. “Tilford was only slightly in the altitudes, and it was nothing compared to what dearest Car—”

The marquess cut Olive off. “Tilford was drunk as a wheelbarrow. If he does not abide by my orders, he will leave Bellhaven on the morrow.”

Olive recognized from the implacability of Levisham’s tone that it would do no good to argue with him. How infuriating that she had never been able to bring him under her thumb as she had both his brother and her son, who would never have dared to oppose her in anything. She cried petulantly, “I do not know how you can be so hard on poor Tilford when Caroline flagrantly disobeys me.”

“What has she done?”

“Sneaked out to ride bareback this morning. What will our guests think of such shameless conduct?”

“I doubt that any of them will be up early enough to witness it,” Levisham replied calmly.

This indulgent answer further fueled Mrs. Kelsie’s rage. If Levisham would not require Caroline to obey her, she would find another way to enforce her edicts. She was not a woman to be defied. By heaven above, she would do whatever was necessary to impose her will upon that disgraceful hoyden.