Sherri Cobb South (6 page)

“Sir Ethan
has never given me any reason to question his fidelity,” retorted Lady Helen, with the slightest emphasis on her husband’s newly acquired title. “I wonder if your countess will say the same after four years of marriage to you?”

“I daresay I can be at least as discreet as your weaver,” replied the earl, then turned back to address his host. “A flattering likeness, Mr. Brundy, but what, pray, is the significance of the mongrel dog? Is he a family pet, or is his presence meant as a symbolic statement of your ancestry?”

She recounted this conversation to her husband some time later, as they traversed the corridor to their adjoining bedchambers.

“Four years abroad have not changed Waverly in the least!” she informed Sir Ethan, her green eyes flashing angrily. “The man is as odious as ever. Do you know, he suggested that you have been keeping a mistress?” The angry light faded, and she asked uncertainly, “You haven’t have you?”

For an answer, he put his arms around her and drew her close, “ ‘e’s trying to provoke you, love—and succeeding beautifully, I’d say.”

Lady Helen sighed and rested her head against his shoulder. “I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”

“Aye, so will I. I don’t like the way he sniffs ‘round you, ‘elen. I never ‘ave, and I never will.”

She smiled provocatively up at him. “You might try sniffing ‘round me yourself.”

“It’s tempting, love, but if I’m to prepare for a trip to London, I’d best seek me bed.” Suiting the action to the word, he kissed her lightly on the lips and disappeared behind his own door.

A discontented sigh escaped Lady Helen’s lips as she entered the adjacent room and closed the door. It had been this way ever since the birth of their youngest child. In every other way her husband was all devotion, but in the six months since little Catherine’s arrival, he had not once come to her bed, nor invited her to his,

Lady Helen allowed her abigail to undress her, then dismissed the woman and stood examining her shift-clad form in the cheval glass. To be sure, childbirth wrought changes, but Lady Helen was fortunate in that these had been subtle, and easily remedied with moderate lacing. Even the most critical inspection revealed nothing that might have given him a disgust of her person.

The logical conclusion, then, was that he no longer loved her. But this, too, she rejected. She could still remember—though dimly, through a haze of the laudanum she had been given to ease a grueling childbirth—lying limp and exhausted on the bed while her husband knelt beside her, sobbing as if his heart were breaking. Yes, he still loved her, or at least he had done so as recently as six months ago. What, then, had happened to them?

How very like Waverly to turn up again after all these years, reminding her anew of how happy she had once been!  The memories only served to make her all the more dissatisfied with the present state of her marriage. How Waverly would laugh to know how matters now stood between them! Yes,
he
was responsible for putting into her head the ridiculous notion that her husband no longer loved her, that he might even be keeping a mistress.

It was not until much later, just before sleep claimed her, that she remembered he had never denied it.

Chapter 5

The woman’s a whore,

and there’s an end on’t.

SAMUEL JOHNSON,

from James Boswell,
Life of Johnson

Upon the morrow, Lord Waverly went in search of his betrothed and found her upstairs in the nursery, sitting on the rug and stacking wooden blocks with the brothers Brundy.

“Bonjour,
milord,” she said cheerfully upon seeing him enter. “I am watching
les enfants
while Nurse prepares for them
le petit déjeuner.”

Master William seized the opportunity afforded by the distraction to knock the blocks down, a violation of the rules of fair play so flagrant as to make Master Charles howl in protest.

“ ‘e’s crying,” Willie self-righteously informed the newcomer, pointing at his wailing brother.

“Willie, you naughty boy!” scolded Lisette, scrambling to collect the scattered wooden cubes. “Now you have made Charlie cry. Pick him up, milord,
s‘il vous plaît.”

Lord Waverly eyed the miniature Sir Ethan with distaste, but dutifully grasped the sobbing child by the armpits and lifted him, all the while holding him at arm’s length. “Good heavens, what a repellent child! What do I do with it?”

“Mais non!”
cried Lisette, laughing as she clambered to her feet to relieve the earl of his burden. “He is not a sack of meal!”

Waverly surrendered the child with no small sense of relief, and Master Charles was soon settled in Lisette’s arms.

“Ah, milord, are they not the dearest things?” said Lisette, laying her cheek against Charles’s soft black curls.

“Undoubtedly,” agreed the earl, suppressing a shudder.

“Moi,
I wish
I
had a—” she broke off, blushing, and when Nurse entered the room to announce that breakfast was ready, Lisette, in her embarrassment, all but fell on the good woman’s neck.
“Ah, c’est prêt!
I have promised the children that I will eat with them. Will you join us, milord?”

“I fear I must decline. I should like to have a word with you in private, Lisette.”

Recognizing her cue, Nurse set the tray on the table and bustled away, muttering something about having forgotten the butter for the twins’ bread. Waverly waited until the door closed behind her, then turned to address his betrothed.

“First of all,” he said, choosing his words with care, “it appears my offer of marriage was rather ambiguous. I should have made it plain that the sort of marriage I propose is one in name only—what the French call a
mariage blanc.”

“But—but what if I do not wish to have a
mariage blanc?"

“My dear child, you must trust me to know what is best for you,” said Waverly with some asperity. “You are far too young to be tied to a man twice your age—particularly a man who has led the sort of life I have lived.”

“But you will want an heir,
non?"
Lisette persisted, absently running her fingers through Charles’s curls.

“I have a younger brother in the army and another attached to the British embassy in Russia. Surely between the pair of them, they can contrive to save the family from extinction.”

“Voyons!”
cried Lisette, all sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks. “You wish to marry me, but still I will live like a nun. For this I might have stayed at Sainte-Marie!”

“Nonsense!   You will have the title of Countess and all the privileges that your rank and my name can offer. You shall wear fine clothes and attend parties every night, if that is what you wish.”

Lisette shrugged her slender shoulders.
“Très bien,
I shall be a very gay and well-dressed nun.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lord Waverly, who had never been overly burdened by scruples where such matters were concerned, found it unaccountably embarrassing to discuss them with the young lady who was soon to be his wife. “We will speak more of these things when you are rather older. But consider for a moment that by the time you are twenty, I will be almost forty, and you will no doubt prefer a man nearer your own age. For now, suffice it to say that, when the time comes, you will not find me unreasonable, so long as you are discreet. And I, for my part, will conduct my own
amours
so as to spare you any embarrassment.”

Lisette might have argued the point, but seeing that Lord Waverly’s mind was made up, lapsed into somewhat sulky silence.

“Now that
that
is settled,” the earl said briskly, “I came up to tell you I must make a brief journey to London.”

“You are going away? But you will take me with you,
oui?"
asked Lisette, her dark eyes wide with alarm.

Waverly shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Is it because you are angry with me, milord? If so—”

“Angry with you, Lisette?” he echoed, smiling slightly. “I do not think I could be—at least, not for long.”

“Is it because you have compromised me? But I can be once again your Cousin Luc, and no one will ever know!”

The earl shook his head. “I am sorry, child, but Cousin Luc has died an unlamented death. You may join me in London within a fortnight. In the meantime, I will procure a special license, and we may be wed immediately upon your arrival.”

“You would leave me here all alone?”

Waverly had to smile at this description. “Not at all. There are the children to play with, you know, and I believe Lady Helen intends to take you to her dressmaker. I daresay you will enjoy yourself hugely.”

Lisette, fighting tears, could only shake her bowed head.

“Come,
ma petite,”
he added, taking her chin in his hand and tilting her head back. “It will not be for long, I promise. You will join me very soon, and if you wish, I will take you to Astley’s Amphitheatre to see the equestrian performer. Now, if you will excuse me, I must see to the packing of my bags.”

“Equestrian performers,” Lisette repeated to her young playmate after the earl had gone. “Bah! He thinks I am no older than—than you or Willie. But I will show him! I will give him an heir,
oui,
and a little girl, too. And when you are quite grown up, you shall marry her.”

Master Charles Brundy, displeased with this vision of his future, began to howl anew.

* * * *

Lord Waverly and Sir Ethan departed for London the next day, and within a fortnight had managed to rectify the worst of the earl’s embarrassments. A successful evening at a Jermyn Street gaming house had won for Waverly the wherewithal to make his town house habitable for himself and his bride, and it remained only for him to procure a special license. With this end in view, he betook himself to Doctors’ Commons and the London office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he paid the requisite fee of £5 to the aging cleric who assisted the archbishop in this capacity.

“Names?” requested this worthy, dipping his quill into the inkstand.

“Nigel Haversham, sixth earl of Waverly.”

“Ah, Lord Waverly! I was at Oxford with your father many years ago, although he was still Viscount Melling at the time. And the lady’s name?”

“Lisette Colling, spinster, of Amiens.”

The clergyman looked up, revealing pale blue eyes behind small round spectacles. “French?”

Waverly nodded.

“And the lady is of legal age?”

Waverly hesitated over the question, which he had failed to anticipate. None but a fool could look at Lisette and believe her to be twenty-one years of age. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth.

“No, she is not quite eighteen.”

“And you have some proof of parental consent?”

“Alas, her parents, one of whom was English, are dead,” the earl confessed.

“But she must have had a guardian in France,” persisted the cleric.

Mentally cursing himself for failing to anticipate the legal complications inherent in marrying a young lady half one’s age, Waverly assumed a soulful expression. “As to that, it is a most romantic story,” he said with a melancholy sigh. “I rescued her from a Parisian convent with the intention of bringing her to her English grandfather, only to discover that the gentleman had died a scant ten days earlier. Of course, by that time we had formed so violent a fondness for each other that we could not bear to be torn apart.”

“And her French guardian?” prompted the cleric, unmoved by Waverly’s burst of eloquence.

“Perhaps you did not understand: her French guardians placed her in a nunnery against her will,” said Waverly, certain that this circumstance must touch the bishop’s Protestant soul.

“It is a great pity,” clucked the older man, shaking his head sympathetically. “Nevertheless, she cannot wed without their consent. Unless—”

“Yes?” prompted the earl.

“If she is indeed half English, you might apply to the Lord Chancellor for an English guardian to be named.”

“Impossible! We cannot wait that long!”

The clergyman blinked at him, and Waverly, startled by his own vehemence, resumed his soulful tone once more. “Surely some allowance must be made for the natural impatience of a man in love.”

“Unfortunately, my lord—or perhaps fortunately—our laws were not written by men in love,” the cleric pointed out. “Without the consent of her guardian, there can be no marriage, at least not until Miss Colling turns twenty-one.”

“You expect us to wait
four years’!”

“It is not so very long,” said the clergyman soothingly. “The Good Book tells us Jacob waited fourteen years for Rachel.”

Lord Waverly might have retorted that Jacob had not been obliged to play nursemaid to Rachel in the interim, but he swallowed this fruitless rejoinder and cast about in his mind for a solution. He had nothing with which to bribe the man, even if he could have been sure the cleric was open to that particular form of persuasion. And then, quite unexpectedly, inspiration struck.

“I daresay you are right,” Waverly admitted with a sigh of resignation. “Little though I like it, I must thank you for your wise counsel, Mr.—?”

“Fairchild. Robert Fairchild, happy to be of service, my lord.”

Waverly’s eyes opened wide. “Ah,
Robert
Fairchild, is it? But of course! My father mentioned you on occasion. As I recall, he once observed that nothing in your early career would have indicated a promising future as a respected churchman.” He gave the clergyman a knowing smile. “Indeed, there were one or two incidents which might have suggested quite the opposite, were there not?”

Mr. Fairchild turned alarmingly pale, and Lord Waverly knew that he had drawn a bow at a venture and somehow managed to find a mark.

“How my father would laugh, could he see what a paragon of virtue you have become,” continued the earl, pressing his advantage. “It is almost too good a story to keep to oneself, is it not? I wonder what the Archbishop would make of it!”

On this faintly sinister note, he once again thanked Mr. Fairchild for his trouble, bade him good day, and started toward the door, still chuckling to himself. He had just laid his hand on the knob when Mr. Fairchild called out.