The Bargain (31 page)

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The Marchington Scandal

The Headstrong Ward

“But, my dear, you must come to my ball,” said Lady Eliza Burnham emphatically. “All London will be there. And you cannot stay shut up brooding here forever, after all.”

Katharine Daltry smiled. “Eliza! You know I never brood.”

“Well, whatever you are doing, then. It can't go on.”

“Can it not?”

“No,” said the older woman, exasperated. “You must go out. Why, you are nothing but a girl still. And Robert has been dead these four years.” Seeing a shadow pass over her friend's face, she added, “I don't mean to sound heartless, Katharine, but it is the truth. I know you loved him dearly; indeed, you made that only too plain when you went off to India in that amazing way, in spite of everyone's warnings. I have never understood why your father agreed to take you along.”

Miss Daltry's lips curved upward again. “I told him I was in love. And his and Robert's regiment was posted to India for three years. We should never have been married if I stayed behind.”

“Well, you weren't married in any case,” replied her ladyship practically. “And why the general did not send you home directly Robert was so unfortunately killed, I don't know. But he always indulged you shockingly.”

This time, the sadness in Katharine's face was sharper. “I suppose he did. I told him I couldn't bear to be away from him just then, and he understood. And then, time simply…passed. It did not seem at all like four years. And now Father is gone, too.”

“And I am the greatest beast in nature to have mentioned him in that callous way. How can you bear me, Katharine? I'm sure I didn't mean to remind you of your bereavement.”

The younger woman smiled again. Eliza Burnham did indeed chatter heedlessly at times, leading strangers to conclude that she was as empty-headed as she was fashionable. But she had been a close friend of the mother Katharine had lost when she was barely nine years old, and she had to some extent taken Mrs. Daltry's place during Katharine's adolescence, when General Daltry had been much occupied with the war in Spain. Thus, Katharine knew rather more about her, including her extensive charitable works, and had long since judged her kindhearted and well-meaning. “It is all right, Eliza. I'm not still mourning Father. I got over that on the voyage home. And it has been eight months. I shall always miss him terribly, of course, but I am…well, reconciled to it, I suppose.”

“Poor darling. But if that is true, there is no reason at all why you should not begin to go out. Of course, you may not wish to dance or anything of that sort for a while, but…”

Miss Daltry shrugged. “My scruples are not so delicate, Eliza. If I wished to go to parties, I should. But I don't wish it. Father left me well provided for, and for the first time in my life I need consider no one but myself. It may be monstrously selfish of me, but that is precisely what I mean to do.” She dimpled. “Think of me as a disagreeable old cat, disappointed in love and left on the shelf.”

Lady Eliza looked at her despairingly. No one, she thought to herself, could possibly look less like an old cat than Katharine. She barely looked her twenty-seven years, and in any case, she was one of those women who merely become more beautiful with maturity. Her once-too-slender figure had filled out to perfection during her stay in India, and her piquant triangular face had softened. Her dark brown hair was as silken as ever, her skin had warmed to honey brown, and her sparkling amber eyes now held compassionate wisdom as well as spirit. Meeting those curious, almost golden eyes now, Lady Eliza saw a very characteristic glint of mischief. “Oh, I have no patience with you,” she exclaimed. “I give it up.”

“Good,” laughed the other. “Then we may leave this tedious subject and have a comfortable coze. Tell me all your news. How does Andrew like Cambridge?”

“But, Katharine,” wailed her friend, “what will you do? How will you live? You can't stay hemmed up here all alone.”

“Alone? Have you forgotten Cousin Mary?”

“That poor little woman is completely under your thumb.”

Katharine laughed aloud. “She isn't, you know.”

“Nonsense. Of course she is. She is so sweet and quiet that she could never stand against you. I know you!”

Katharine let this pass. “Well, if you do, you should know that I am perfectly content. I have my house. I see my good friends whenever I like. I can go to the theater or the library if I require amusement. I ask for no more, certainly not the ridiculous ‘gaieties' of the season.”

“But what about a husband, a family of your own?”

The corners of Miss Daltry's mouth turned down. “Those are not to be thought of. Now, I insist you tell me about Andrew.”

With a sigh, Lady Eliza gave in and began to talk of her eldest son, just gone up to Cambridge. And in retailing his doings, she soon forgot her firm resolve of the morning, to
make
Katharine promise to attend the ball she was giving in three weeks' time. Indeed, she left the house without raising this issue again, and it was not until she was removing her hat in her own bedchamber that she remembered it, and gave vent to a most unladylike expression.

At the same moment, Katharine Daltry was also expressing annoyance, though the cause was quite different. She had just finished reading a letter that had arrived with the afternoon post. “How unfortunate,” she said aloud.

“What is unfortunate, my dear?” asked her companion, a small thin woman with pale hair and clear gray eyes.

“Cousin Elinor,” replied the other curtly.

“Has something happened to her? She was perfectly all right when I last heard from her mother. Indeed, she was about to be married.”

“Nothing has happened to her. Or, that is, she was married, in January. And now she means to come to town for the season.”

“Oh.” Mary Daltry, for this was indeed Katharine's cousin and chaperone, looked doubtfully at her charge. “Is that unfortunate?”

“Well, I think it is. I haven't any wish to be saddled with a green girl.”

“But isn't her husband coming, too? What is his name again? Marchington, that's it. Thomas Marchington. He's Sir Lionel Marchington's son.”

“Yes, he's coming. But I understand that Tom Marchington is barely twenty years old, and Elinor isn't even that. They can no more look after themselves than… than babies.”

“Oh, no. I'm sure you're wrong. Gentlemen are taught all about that sort of thing.”

Katharine looked at her middle-aged cousin with amused exasperation. She did not know what she meant by “that sort of thing,” and she was tolerably certain that Mary didn't either. She was fond of her cousin, but she often found her own opinions at odds with those of a forty-year-old woman who had been reared very strictly by a clergyman father. “Well, we can only hope so,” she answered, refolding the letter. “But I think it is much more likely that they will expect me to squire them about and rescue them from all sorts of scrapes. I shall have to make it very clear from the beginning that I never go out.”

“Of course, dear,” murmured Mary soothingly.

“
And
that I do so by my own choice, not because I am not invited. Otherwise, I daresay they would be trying to help
me
.”

Mary Daltry chuckled at this idea. “Surely not.”

“No? I have not seen Cousin Elinor since she was a grubby schoolgirl, but I have a very vivid memory of her. Don't you remember how she positively persecuted that poor curate? Mr. Ambley, I think his name was. He was not being invited in the neighborhood, and she insisted he was being horridly snubbed. It turned out he was trying desperately to find time to work on his book.”

Her companion appeared to be suppressing a laugh. “Well, but, my dear, her motive was very noble.”

“God save me from noble motives. Elinor suffers from an excess of sensibility. Or did, at any rate.”

Mary shook her head and looked down.

“Come, you must admit that Elinor's feelings are rather overenthusiastic. What about the spaniel she dosed with ‘tonic' until it actually bit her?”

The older woman made a stifled noise. “Katharine.”

“Well, she did. I could not invent such a story.”

“Yes, but…”

Katharine burst out laughing. “You needn't try to humbug me, Mary. You think she is absurd, too.”

Allowing her smile to emerge, the other agreed. “But I insist that she acts from the best of motives.”

Katharine shrugged contemptuously.

“Yes, dear. And you know, I can't help thinking that you might perhaps enjoy getting out a bit with Elinor. I know you say you saw enough of the
haut
ton
during your own come-out to last you all your life, but Elinor is very young and would give you a new perspective on things you have seen before. And she would no doubt welcome a little guidance. I do think—”

“Cousin Mary, are you feeling quite well?” interrupted Miss Daltry. “I had a notion that lobster might disagree with you. I said so last night, you recall. But I did not expect it would addle your wits.”

“You may mock, Katharine, but I still think I am right. You should go out and meet some lively young people. From what you tell me, you spent far too much of the last four years alone, and you need some company other than mine.”

Several emotions seemed to struggle with one another in her cousin's face. “I have all the company I require. And if I did not, I should certainly not choose Elinor to remedy the situation. I thought we had finished with this subject once and for all, Mary. I intend to do exactly as I please, and that means not going out.”

Charles Vincent Debenham, fifth Viscount Wrenley, stood before his library fire with a glass of Madeira in his hand and looked from one to the other of his two younger brothers. His expression was not particularly pleasant. “If that is all you have to contribute, Edward,” he told the youngest, “you may as well keep your tongue between your teeth.”

“I like that,” retorted Captain Edward Debenham, an officer in the exclusive Horse Guards regiment. “Why ask for our opinions if you don't want to hear 'em?”

The viscount eyed him with distaste. “I begin to wonder why.”

“Here, now, don't start to quarrel,” put in Reverend Laurence Debenham, at twenty-seven the middle brother and accustomed to mediating disputes between the twenty-four-year-old Edward and the head of the family. “We shan't get anywhere if you do that.”

“But Charles enjoys it so,” responded Edward, an irrepressible spark of mischief in his eye. “I hate to disappoint him. He
expects
it of me.” When Lord Wrenley looked sharply at him, he grinned.

The viscount surveyed his brothers. An impartial observer might have pronounced all three men uncommonly handsome. The Debenhams were tall and well-made, with very pale blond hair and eyes of clear gray. Each possessed the arched, aquiline Debenham nose, which could be seen repeated in the portrait gallery on the first floor of Wrenley, their country seat. But here the resemblance ended. Charles added to these outlines a raised eyebrow and a faint sneer, which lent his rather thin face a haughty distance. At thirty-one, he dressed with the austere elegance of a Corinthian, and had the shoulders and leg to carry it off. Laurence, as befitted his clerical profession, was more quietly attired; his pleasant face was rounder than his brothers', and his gray eyes showed more kindness. He had particularly attractive hands, elegant and well-shaped, inherited from their gentle mother. Edward set off his dashing costume with a rakish air and careless manner that often irritated his eldest brother. He was the tallest of the three by an inch and had a spare, loose-knit frame. His crooked grin and wicked twinkle had been the downfall of many young ladies in all walks of society.

“You called us here to Wrenley,” continued Laurence hurriedly, before Charles could make the caustic remark so evident in his expression, “to help you decide what is to be done about Anne.”

“There is no need to repeat my own words back to me. And frankly, I begin to think I made a mistake. It is obvious that neither of you is going to be the least use.”

Laurence frowned, but Edward merely laughed. “You might have known that, Charles. We none of us know the first thing about schoolgirls.”

“No?” The viscount eyed him coldly. “From what I hear of your career in town, you, at least, know a deal too much.”

Edward's eyes danced. “Not schoolgirls, Charles!”

The other turned away in disgust, taking a vermeil snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket and flipping it open with a practiced thumb.

“When does Anne arrive here?” asked Laurence. “I haven't seen her since Mother died. It must be… why, three years.”

“She is to return from school next week.”

“Funny to think of little Anne grown up,” said Edward. “She must be… by Jove, she's nineteen this year, ain't she? What has she been doing in school all this time?” He looked apprehensive. “I say, Charles, she's not a bluestocking, is she?”

“On the contrary, her school reports suggest that she is hardly literate. I left her there an additional year in the hope she might improve.” The viscount's chiseled lips turned down. “She did not.”

“Did you truly hope so,” responded Edward, “or did you wish to put off being saddled with a chit of a ‘ward'?” He grinned as Charles glared at him.

“Is she… is she at all, ah, changed?” put in Laurence.

For one rare moment, the Debenham brothers were in complete sympathy as they heaved a collective sigh. Lady Anne Tremayne had been introduced into their household when she was barely a year old, after the tragic death of both her parents at sea. Their mother, Lady Wrenley, was the child's godmother, and when no blood relation stepped forward to claim Anne, she had informally adopted her, eventually providing for her in her will. But almost from the moment of the girl's arrival, she had been the despair of her new family. Suddenly blessed with three much older “brothers,” Anne had asked for nothing better than to follow their example in everything. For boys of six, nine, and thirteen, this had been a continuing trial, and moreover, it had made Anne an unusual, intractable girl. She had ridden and shot and hunted from the earliest possible age with a concentrated abandon that no scolding could eradicate. Lady Wrenley gradually took refuge in an invalid's couch and a murmured stream of complaint, particularly after her husband's premature death when his eldest son was barely sixteen. Charles, overwhelmed by his new responsibilities, had had increasingly acrimonious quarrels with Anne, until, at last, he insisted that she be sent to school to learn manners. This had accordingly been done when the girl was barely fourteen. And her ladyship's death two years later had simply confirmed the arrangement.

The brothers sighed again as they thought of her. In a remarkably handsome family, Anne had been an anomaly since her little-girl prettiness gave way to a gawky, awkward adolescence. They all remembered her, vividly, as a tall unattractive girl, all knees and elbows and unkempt red-blond hair, distressingly likely to indulge in fits of temper at the slightest provocation.

“I haven't the faintest notion,” drawled Lord Wrenley.

“What do you mean?” Laurence stared at him. “How was she when you last visited the school?”

“I have not visited it.”

Even Edward looked surprised.

“Not this year, you mean?” added Laurence.

“Not at all.”

They gazed at him incredulously. “B-but… during her holidays?”

“She has always asked leave to spend them with one of her school friends since Mama died. I saw no reason to deny her.”

“My dear Charles, you cannot mean that you have not seen Anne since our mother died?”

“Can I not?”

“But that is more than three years! Has no one been to visit her in three years?”

Lord Wrenley shrugged, looking slightly self-conscious. “She would not have welcomed a visit from me. We did not part on good terms, you know. And in any case, we hardly knew one another even before that.”

“Hardly…? You are her guardian! And she was a child when she left. I daresay she has changed a great deal. It was your duty—”

“Don't prate to
me
of duty,” interrupted the viscount in a dangerous tone, and Laurence subsided. He knew that his brother harbored a lamentable bitterness over his premature family responsibilities. At sixteen, Charles had stolidly taken over for his dead father, but he had rid himself of each task as soon as practicable, and he had never shown any signs of enjoying his new position. On the contrary, it had changed him all out of recognition, in Laurence's opinion. In the place of an indulgently superior older brother, there had appeared a rigid, distant disciplinarian who had seemed only too eager to dispense with the encumbrance of their presence. Flashes of the old Charles occasionally appeared, but with decreasing regularity.

“I would have been happy to visit Anne,” Laurence dared to add, before being silenced by the viscount's hard look.

“Well, I don't see that it matters now,” said Edward unheedingly. “Anne's coming home. What's to be done with her?”

Lord Wrenley turned away from his brothers and looked down at the fire, mastering his anger with a visible effort. The prospect of being saddled with a schoolgirl, just now when he had succeeded in ordering his life to his own satisfaction, filled him with rage. “That, Edward, is what I asked you both down to Wrenley to discuss,” he drawled finally.

“Yes, well…” The military branch of the Debenham family seemed at a loss.

“She must be brought out, of course,” said Laurence. “That is the customary procedure.”

“That's it,” agreed Edward. “Find her a husband. Mama left her a tidy fortune, so it shouldn't be difficult to get someone.” Laurence frowned, but his younger brother didn't notice. “Do you remember the day Anne came upon that party from the Grange down by the trout stream? One of the ladies frightened her horse; I forget how. They say the squire still hasn't recovered from the language she used. It positively set his hair on end. And she had a great purple bruise over her eye where she had fallen from the apple tree.” He chuckled reminiscently; Laurence groaned.

“She always swore she'd be a jockey,” continued Captain Debenham, “and I have to admit, she
could
ride. But, you know, Anne in a drawing room…” His voice trailed away, and he shook his head. “Her clothes were always thrown on by guess, and if she ever put a comb to her hair,
I
couldn't tell it. She hated dancing lessons, too.”

“We must suppose that five years in a young ladies' seminary have changed that, at least,” replied the viscount.

“Yes, but you know, Charles,” continued the other, “she ain't at all pretty.”