Regency: Rakes & Reputations (Mills & Boon M&B) (40 page)

‘W
hat are you saying, man?’

‘I have been advised to inform your lordship that Miss Flint is no longer resident at this address,’ repeated Hawkins somewhat warily, the image of Helstone’s violent and precipitate exit of the previous evening still vividly imprinted in his memory.

Marcus stared down at the manservant in stunned disbelief.
No longer resident? Impossible! Less than twelve hours had elapsed since he had quit the Crayford premises the evening before.
He frowned. Clearly the butler had been instructed to deny him access—a decision which, insofar as the mistress of the house was concerned, might be considered a rather daring and somewhat foolish move on her part. Although hardly surprising, perhaps, in the light of his abysmal display of temper on his last visit.

‘I see,’ he said, as he struggled to maintain a grip on his rage. ‘Then perhaps you would be good enough to ask your mistress if she could spare me a few moments of her time?’

‘I’m afraid Mrs Crayford is not at home, sir,’ the butler intoned, his expression wooden. ‘Perhaps your lordship would care to leave a card?’

Not at home to me, you mean,
thought Marcus sourly as, with a brisk shake of his head, he turned to leave. Having had it made clear to him that he was
persona non grata
insofar as the Crayford household was concerned, the exasperated Viscount was obliged to accept that any further advances from himself were certain to be similarly rebuffed. And, as if that humiliation were not more than enough with which to cope, he was obliged to face up to the fact that Giles—the only person he might have called upon to act as his emissary—had just chosen to embark on some sort of wild goose chase up into the wilds of North Yorkshire, thereby requiring Marcus to shelve all his hastily garnered plans of matrimony until such time as his brother should choose to return.

Not that there’s any real point in Giles trying to ferret out any of Sophie’s long-lost relatives,
he told himself, as he steered his curricle around the mass of vehicles battling to enter Hyde Park for the morning promenade.
I just hope he doesn’t spend too long at it, that’s all, since he’s the only one who can be relied upon to gain admittance into the Crayfords’ house and persuade Sophie to agree to meet up with me.

His dark eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he conjured up her look of delight when he finally announced his altered intentions towards her—a vision that caused him to spend the remainder of the drive back to his Grosvenor Square mansion in blithe contemplation of the various ways in which Sophie might choose to reward him for providing her with so magnanimous a compromise to her earlier opposition.

Having noted her daughter’s uncharacteristically withdrawn demeanour, Mrs Pendleton-Flint could only suppose that Sophie’s time with the Crayfords had been rather more of an ordeal than her daughter had been prepared to divulge and she endeavoured to do what little she could to try to take the girl’s mind off the experience. By sending Sophie down to the village shops daily on some pretext or other, and keeping her actively involved in as many domestic activities as was possible in such a small household, she sought to encourage her daughter to concentrate her thoughts more firmly on the here and now, rather than dwelling on the past.

Three days had now elapsed since Sophie’s enforced flight from the Crayford residence and, although she did her utmost to disguise her unhappiness, the memory of the bitter words she had flung at Helstone on the evening of the ill-fated soiree still continued to haunt her, threatening to reduce her to tears at the most inconvenient times and bombarding her senses with the same unanswerable questions.
How might it have been had she accepted Marcus’s proposition? For how long might such a fragile relationship have stood the test of time? Was it possible that he might, eventually, have come to love her in the way she loved him? On the other hand, and, most testing of all, could she really face a future knowing that she would never set eyes on him again?

As if on cue, the tears would start to well up again and she would be obliged to make some hurried excuse to take herself out into the small back garden, where she would try to busy herself with the tying back of lavender, or some other mundane occupation, in an effort to prevent her mother from witnessing her anguish. And
so the interminable days, coupled with the never-ending nights, drifted drearily by.

Returning to the house on the third afternoon of her enforced visit, bearing the small packet of baking powder of which her mother had insisted she was in dire need, Sophie was surprised to see a rather sumptuous-looking travelling chariot drawn up in the street outside the front doorstep. For one foolish moment her heart soared with joy as the thought that Marcus had sought out her whereabouts, having found himself unable to stay away from her, leapt into her mind. One careful look at the painted crest on the carriage’s door panel, however, soon disabused her of this idea, for she had seen enough examples of the Helstone family crest on the tableware at Laurel Cottage to have committed the device of an upright lance to enduring memory.

With a disappointed sigh, she made her way into the living room, where she perceived her mother in conversation with a sweet-faced, rather plump lady of middle years, her elegant silk travelling outfit proclaiming a certain affluence. At her entrance the stranger rose immediately to her feet and hurried towards her, hands outstretched and the widest of smiles on her face.

‘Oh, my dear Miss Pendleton-Flint! How pleased I am to have finally found you! Elizabeth has spoken of you with such affection—you cannot know how glad I am to be able to thank you at last!’

‘Elizabeth? I’m afraid I don’t …’ began Sophie, only to find herself enveloped in the visitor’s arms, her face pressed into the lady’s very ample bosom.

‘To think that without your aid my poor little Lizzie might well have died,’ exclaimed the now quite tearful stranger when she finally set Sophie at arm’s length, only to continue to gaze at her in the most disconcertingly
soulful manner. ‘And that dear little baby—oh, it really doesn’t bear thinking about!’

At last Sophie began to understand. It was now obvious that the surprise visitor was none other than the recently delivered Mrs Lucan’s mother—the lady to whom the Lucans had been on their way to visit when the snow blizzard had waylaid their coach on that fateful afternoon now some weeks distant.

‘Do please sit down and finish your tea, Mrs—?’

Guiding the still weeping matron back to her seat, Sophie shot a questioning glance at her mother.

‘Mrs Egremont,’ interposed Mrs Pendleton-Flint hastily. ‘It seems that the family has been searching for you ever since Mrs Lucan told her mother what a help you had been to her in her hour of need.’ Since Sophie had favoured her mother with only the briefest of outlines in respect to that particular occurrence, the unexpected visitor’s disclosure had come as something of a revelation to Mrs Pendleton-Flint.

‘And it was not until the dear child happened to remember that you had mentioned the name of your brother’s school in Dulwich that we were able to make any sort of headway,’ sniffed Mrs Egremont woefully, as she dabbed at her tear-drenched cheeks with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘His lordship—Jack’s father, as you are no doubt aware—even went to the trouble of engaging two Bow Street runners to seek you out, but to no avail. Although, it is true that they were told to search for a Miss Flint, of course. In the event it was not until your brother’s headmaster informed me that Roger’s full name was, in fact,
Pendleton
-Flint that we were finally able to ascertain your whereabouts.’

‘But I still don’t understand why you felt it necessary to go to such lengths to track me down,’ exclaimed
Sophie, considerably puzzled. ‘What I did was no more than anyone would have done under similar circumstances.’ She paused as a sudden awful thought occurred to her, before adding, in a somewhat hesitant voice, ‘I trust that your daughter has made a full recovery from the unfortunate experience?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed, my dear,’ purred Mrs Egremont, leaning forward to clasp Sophie’s hand in hers. ‘Both she and the babe are thoroughly blooming, thanks to your sterling efforts.’

‘Perhaps it would help if I were to acquaint Sophie with a few more of the details …?’ ventured Mrs Pendleton-Flint, having registered the still totally bewildered expression on her daughter’s face.

‘Oh, yes, please do,’ replied their visitor, heaving a deep sigh of relief. ‘I’m afraid I do seem to become somewhat beside myself whenever I am forced to dwell on what might well have been the outcome of that dreadful occasion, had it not been for the timely intervention of your brave girl.’

And so quite calmly, and in as straightforward a manner as was possible, given the somewhat emotional convolutions of Mrs Egremont’s original outpourings, Mrs Pendleton-Flint set about furnishing her daughter with the bones of the Lucan couple’s history, from which it soon became apparent that Sophie’s chance involvement during that snowbound episode had achieved more than simply helping to bring about the safe delivery of the pair’s firstborn child. It had, it seemed—rather more importantly from certain points of view, as it transpired—secured the ongoing line of the Lucan family, along with the not inconsiderable earldom of Whitcombe and all its attached estates.

Having been denied Mr and Mrs Egremont’s
permission to marry their seventeen-year-old daughter, the current earl’s younger son, the Honourable John Lucan—Jack to his friends—had, it seemed, persuaded his childhood sweetheart into a secret elopement, whereupon, following their overnight dash to the Scottish border to exchange their vows, he had taken her across the Irish Sea and set up residence in a rural retreat in Waterford, from where the pair had cut themselves off from both of their families.

Some eighteen months later, however, finding herself about to give birth to her first child, the young Elizabeth had insisted upon returning to England in order that she might avail herself of her mother’s support during her coming confinement. Safely back within the family folds, following their unfortunate incarceration at the inn, however, the pair had been confronted with the tragic news that, shortly following their elopement and self-appointed exile, Jack’s elder brother Charles—heir presumptive to the Whitcombe title—had met his death in a riding accident. The ancient title had thereby passed to Jack and, of course, his wife—Mrs Egremont’s daughter Elizabeth—who, it seemed, now rejoiced in the lofty title of Her Ladyship the Viscountess Bingham.

‘So it would seem that Master John Henry Lucan has inherited a rather more significant role in his family’s history than one might have imagined at the time,’ exclaimed Sophie, shaking her head in wonder at the amazing tale.

‘Both families’ histories,’ averred Mrs Egremont firmly. ‘Lizzie, being Mr Egremont’s and my only child, stands to inherit all of her father’s lands, which just happen to march in tandem with the Whitcombe estate, making her little boy heir to what will, in all probability,
end up as being amongst the largest estates in the entire county!’

Reaching out her hand, she again gripped hold of Sophie’s and as the tears began to tumble once more from her eyes went on, ‘Had you not been there in that tavern, my poor, sweet Lizzie might well have perished along with her son, meaning that every last inch of Mr Egremont’s property would have gone to some unknown cousin of his in the Antipodes. So you will now, perhaps, begin to appreciate the depth of our gratitude to you!’

Pausing momentarily to wipe her eyes, she then turned to Mrs Pendleton-Flint, adding, ‘We—both of the families, that is—would very much like to do something to express our truly heartfelt appreciation to your daughter. Can you think of anything that might serve to show our gratitude?’

‘Oh, no, really,’ put in Sophie with a horrified gasp. ‘That is quite unnecessary, I assure you!’

‘Absolutely imperative, as far as our families are concerned, my dear child,’ returned Mrs Egremont, a look of determination in her eyes. ‘His lordship has instructed me to brook no refusal—apart from which, my Lizzie would never forgive me if I were to allow you to go unrewarded for your efforts on her little son’s behalf. Surely there must be some way in which we can all show how grateful we all are?’

Sophie was in something of a quandary. From a purely acquisitive point of view she could not help thinking that a nice fat purse full of gold sovereigns would come in very handy, given her family’s present financial situation, but, mindful of her mother’s teachings, she was also perfectly well aware that any suggestion of a monetary reward would be considered decidedly vulgar.

Her thoughts a complete blank, she sat absent-mindedly chewing at her bottom lip until, in a sudden flash, it came to her.

‘Well, then, what I really would like, more than anything,’ she said, her eyes shining with anticipation, ‘is the chance to reacquaint myself with young John Henry and his mother.’

‘Oh, my dear!’

As the ready tears sprang once again into Mrs Egremont’s eyes, Sophie was safe in the knowledge that nothing she might have chosen could have had the effect of pleasing their visitor more than this simple request, and, after casting a quick glance at her mother’s face, she knew that she had done the right thing.

‘What a splendid idea!’

Their visitor was quite beside herself with excitement.

‘You shall travel home with me this very afternoon—with your mama’s permission, of course?’

A questioning look in Mrs Pendleton-Flint’s direction assured the now highly exuberant matron that this suggestion met with Sophie’s mother’s instant approval and, despite Sophie’s tentative reservations regarding the woeful inadequacy of her wardrobe, her protests were immediately thrust aside and pooh-poohed as being of less than no importance.

And so it was that, scarcely half an hour later, having carefully repacked her basket with the most suitable of her belongings, Sophie found herself comfortably ensconced upon the pale blue velvet squabs of the Earl of Whitcombe’s luxuriously appointed travelling chariot, about to begin the journey to the Egremont residence at Littlewick Green.