The Marriage Mart (14 page)

Another shadow fell across her, and Lord Stephens as well. It was John standing there, and John saying quietly, “You, sir, are no gentleman.”

He reached out a hand, his thumb and forefinger closing in a tight pinch upon Lord Stephens’ nose.

“Ouch!” cried the man, but as his hands would have come up to bat away Rothayne’s offending touch, one was caught in John’s own large hand. It was a moment’s work to step to one side of Stephens and bring his arm up behind his back, causing the man to give another bellow of pain, his nose still held aloft by that firm grip.

“Pray offer your apologies to the lady,” John said calmly.

“My abologies,” Lord Stephens tried to say. “Ow! Wothayne, you are hurding me!”

“Yes, quite. Now, explain to the lady that you will never offend her with your presence again.”

Lord Stephens gave John a wild-eyed look, but an extra tug at his nose caused him to cry out hurriedly, “I was twying to be logical, dat’s all. An old maid, an old man--Ouch! You bwute! Let go of me, I say--Ow! Aw wight, aw wight! Lady Mawwy, I will not bovver you again. Ever. I know when I’m not wanted.”

“At last,” John said. “Now we will go and make your excuses to our host, shall we?”

Mary’s gaze followed them from the alcove, her hands covering her mouth to hold back hiccups of surprise, and she watched as Lord Stephens was escorted by his nose past Lord Faver, allowed to pause just long enough to give another holler by way of a farewell, and then he was ushered out the door. Titters from the many observant eyes then broke out, which rolled on as John returned to the room. He carefully dusted his hands together, like a man who has just carried old ashes out to the dustbin, and was heard to murmur, “It’s the only way to handle some bull-headed fellows,” which was followed by even more laughter.

Mary moved across the room, feeling strangely dreamlike, for it was difficult to recover one’s poise after having been so roundly insulted and then rescued. And rescued by no less than her sun-kissed John. She whispered his name, and he stretched out his hands and took up both of hers within his.

“Well met, Mary. But, please, erase the dread from your eyes. Stephens will find his future invitations sadly lacking.”

“You are returned,” she said, and noted even in her bemused state how differently she reacted to the return of this man over the return of Lord Stephens.

“You see a free man before you. My steward at last can manage the business himself. My sister is recovered. And I am escaped.”

“John, thank you. Thank you so much for what you just did. You do not know what a pest Lord Stephens has made of himself--”

“He’ll pester you no more. But, of his words, Mary, will
they
pester you?” he asked seriously, dropping her hands as he realized others were gawking at them, at the length of time they had done nothing but stand and speak directly to one another with clasped hands between them. He crossed his arms over his chest, the angle of his head suggesting others might not care to cross him at the moment.

“Well, as to that, I’ll admit they stung. I have to wonder, how many others see through my attendance here? How many others guess it is a husband, not gaiety, that I seek?”

“Everyone,” he answered at once, but to take the sting out of the words he added, “That is what these gatherings are for, after all. And you have expectations, and a fine dowry, and a lovely way about you. No one thinks the less of you that you follow the natural course of things.”

“Maybe I should forget matrimony. My siblings would let me help nanny their children. I could serve well enough teaching nursery lessons,” she said on a sigh.

“And well you would do, for you are clever, but it would not bring you children of her own,” he reminded her.

“Ah,” she agreed with another sigh, only to push the glum-filled mood away by way of a smile up at him. “Tonight serves me no such purpose then, either. My suitors are well busied or in nonattendance, unable to court me. And now I see Mrs. Pennett coming my way. I think I will persuade her that we ought to return home.”

“Then I will come with you.”

“No,” she said, her voice low, for she was increasingly aware of the notice they had drawn.

He shook his head, as if she had struck him there, but then he was shrugging, and saying, “You’re right. We can’t have it getting around that I’ve gone off with you yet again. Might scare off the suitors.”

“That, added to the fact you saved me from Lord Stephens,” she said with a heavy heart, for she hated to refuse herself his company. She had never denied him much, not anything of import, for the offerings of naughtily romantic moments he had claimed he wanted to indulge in with her, those had been only for play. How much more disturbed would he appear if she ever said ‘yes’ to any of those humorous offerings? she wondered.

“Good evening,” she said, quickly laying a hand atop his folded arms, taking the hand away just as quickly as she turned to greet her companion. “Gladys, I find I am weary and wish to go home.”

“Of course. Come along, we’ll fetch our shawls,” Mrs. Pennett agreed at once, but as she did so she looked over the top of her charge’s head and gave Rothayne another one of those indecipherable looks.

He actually startled, and almost spoke, to demand that the companion explain herself, but then the ladies had turned, leaving him with his lips slightly parted in mute inquiry as they walked away, the younger of the two oblivious to his consternation with the elder.

“Tell me what brought your banishment to an end,” Mary said a week later.

John glanced down at her, then back to his pair of grays, for the road was crowded this afternoon, and his attention could only be divided. He’d put his ostler to ride on the back of the carriage, and he and Mary had chosen to share the driving seat due to an afternoon lacking rain. “You know it wasn’t an official banishment, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose it was nerve. Sheer nerve. I was far away and forgotten, and had no reason to think Prinny should be glad to see me, yet still I dared to show my face once again in England, in London.”

Mary lifted a hand and nodded toward an acquaintance, but then she turned her face, not wanting to stop and chat with the lady. She had John all to herself today, Mrs. Pennett notwithstanding. She didn’t care even if it meant suitors backed away for a few hours.

He sighed, checked his horses a little to the right to avoid a heavily loaded wagon, and then answered, “England is home, of course. A man eventually longs for home. I even missed my sisters.” He grinned.

She grinned back. “Then you were
truly
homesick.”

“Or insane. I have not decided which.”

“I for one am glad you made the decision to come home.”

“Me, too,” he said, but she could not exactly glow in the warmth of the admission, for it was clear his thoughts stretched on beyond her. He spoke slowly, a hint of amazement in his voice, showing again a side of the man too few knew existed, this man who could be astounded by what life had shown him. “The world is full of many strange things--some are wondrous, some are terrible. And if I learned nothing else from my travels, I did at least learn that one simple fact is true no matter where you go. Eventually you long for a place of permanence. So why
not
home? Why not take a risk, and find out the strength and length of royal censure? And Prinny, speak as you will of him, is incapable of holding a grudge over what was truly a simple nothingness. I wrote him, telling him I wished to return to the land of my birth. Not only did he allow the thing, but he even went so far as to give me a public reception of sorts, to show I was no longer completely outside his favor. Not only am I returned to England, but I need not rusticate in Kent as ‘the shunned marquess.’ I am grateful to him for giving me back what I had lost.”

Mary gazed at his serious expression, at the honest appreciation she saw there. “Then I am grateful to him also. For it was at that reception I first met you.”

John smiled softly down at her, and for a moment she thought the sun had come to live in his eyes. She was so taken by that handsome visage, that caring smile he cast upon her, she found her heart was thudding so decidedly in her breast that she was surprised he did not comment on it. “And you will never say another mis-thought word in his presence,” she managed to tease breathlessly.

“Oh, I couldn’t swear to that.”

They laughed together, for it was true enough. John held his tongue for no man, it seemed, not even their country’s regent.

When they were at their destination, he worked the horses to a place at the side of the lane, and tossing the reins to his ostler, he helped both ladies down from the carriage.

“First the lace. Everything depends on the lace,” Mrs. Pennett declared. They had come to view the new fabrics just arrived from Brussels, with the hope of finding something suitable for the trim of a new dress or two for Mary. Mrs. Pennett stepped forward, leading the way toward the shop fronts, instead of following as was the usual lot of companions. John and Mary fell in behind her, Mary’s hand comfortably settled on John’s sleeve.

“So tell me of Miss Yardley,” she asked, when they stood within the first shop, fingering any number of ells of cloth as they wandered from item to item.

John tilted his head back a little, a posture of recollection. “Miss Yardley,” he said slowly, then went on, “Miss Yardley is possibly the most available female I’ve ever known.”

“No, she isn’t.
I
am,” Mary denied, though she felt a strong desire to stifle a giggle, only to be mildly ashamed of her own pleasure to find John did not gush over the beautiful girl.

“Miss Yardley is to receive a dowry of some twenty thousand pounds.”

Mary’s eyes grew wide. It was an enormous sum, greater than her own dowry allotment. “And a yearly income of two thousand pounds.”

She gasped. “Forever?”

“As long as her papa lives, yes.”

“Goodness!”

“And unusual, a yearly stipend like that.”

“But…but did they think you were negotiating for the girl’s hand? Or did they just merely
tell
you these things? Oh, surely not.”

“But yes, they did. Quite directly, in fact. But, it was my fault, for you see, I asked.”

“You asked her father?” Mary said somewhat incredulously. Gracious, but the Yardleys must be quite sure of John to be so upfront and direct.

“No, I asked the whole family. Not for her hand, of course. But we were sitting about taking tea, and it occurred to me to ask about her dowry’s worth, and--even more incredibly--it occurred to them to answer. In front of dear Miss Yardley herself.”

“Oh, John, no! You are jesting.” Now Mary did giggle.

“I am not,” he said, pretending to be slightly affronted. “And then they asked me how much my estate would bring to a union…if I just happened to fall into a union with someone, you see.”

“No!”

“Yes. So I told them. I decided one confidence deserved another. I believe I pleased them, if their happy faces were a reflection of their joy in the knowledge I would not be a penniless suitor…for
someone,
of course.”

Mary laughed aloud, undone by the sad efforts of Mrs. Pennett to refrain from giving away the fact she was blatantly eavesdropping and therefore trying to repress noises of shock and laughter.

“And then I was asked if I cared to walk in the garden.”

“But not alone, I think?” Mary asked, deliberately wide-eyed. She caught Mrs. Pennett’s eye for a moment, and had to bite her lower lip to choke back another laugh.

“Oh no. Never a bit of it. We all went out of doors, but then Lady Yardley remembered she had not verified if the silver had been polished, and Sir Edmund suddenly recalled he had meant to see about his hunter’s foreleg, and--goodness!--I found myself alone in the gardens with their daughter, without so much as Miss Yardley’s companion in attendance.” John’s heavenly face was shaped into the contours of one who was utterly perplexed by events, a look so remarkably inapt for the Blade that even Mrs. Pennett gave up the fight and giggled.

“Wh--what did you do?” Mary gasped out.

“Why, I suggested we return and look for the good lady.”

“Oh, John. Oh no, you didn’t. How vexed Miss Yardley must have been.”

“Not at all. Miss Yardley merely shook her head, smiling sweetly, and said, ‘Miss Russell does not care for fresh air.’”

Other customers looked over to see two ladies leaning into each other, tears of mirth rolling down their faces, and a very handsome gentleman, his deep laughter rumbling through the establishment. Eventually, a variety of disapproving, scandalized, and even some mildly amused glances persuaded the trio to quit the shop, tumbling out into the street amidst another volley of laughter.

“See what you’ve done!” Mrs. Pennett tried to scold. “We’ll never be able to show our faces in there again.” But she grinned even as she said it.

“I
am
sorry I spoiled your search for a new fabric.”

“What’s this? The Blade, apologizing?” a voice called. They turned to see it was Lord Bretwyn who approached them.

John and Lord Bretwyn bowed to one another, and the ladies curtsied.

***

It was when Bretwyn turned to Mary that John saw an unusual thing occur: Mary blushed delicately, and of a sudden forgot her hilarity and seemed not quite able to hold her gaze up. John turned to look at Charles again, and felt his own eyebrows lift as he saw the look of admiration there.

“How are you today, Lady Mary?” he heard Charles asking.

“Quite well. And you, my lord?” Mary asked quietly in return, glancing up with a decidedly shy smile.

“Very well. I was out and about, in search of my special blend of tobacco, when I heard the delightful and unmistakable laughter of yourself.”

Mary blushed again, and murmured something no one understood.

John looked to Mrs. Pennett, and saw the lady could have easily been the cat who’d been at the cream.

“What was it that made you so amused? No, I know it already. ’Twas Rothayne, of course.” Charles moved forward, slipping past John to stand at Mary’s side. In a twinkling her hand was on the gentleman’s arm, and they were lost to conversation as they moved away from the silent and abandoned duo left behind.

John looked again to Mrs. Pennett, but she had eyes only for her darling, and those eyes were one moment full of approval, and the next filled with something questioning. John had no idea what to make of the alternating expressions. When she looked back at him, she said, in a somewhat flustered manner that nonetheless spoke of her pleasure for her charge, “They look well together, don’t they?”

John did not answer the question, his hands for a moment unsure until we used them to smooth the lay of his waistcoat. “Shall we?” he said, perhaps a little gruffly, indicating with his head that he meant to follow the couple talking together, their heads bent one toward the other.

They watched as Bretwyn coaxed another smile from Mary. They observed as she reached across him to point out something in a shop window. They saw as Bretwyn took both her hands, gazed into her face, and said something earnest to her, something that made her lower her eyes again. She took one quick, darting look in John’s direction, but then she once again devoted herself to Bretwyn’s conversation.

At length, the course of shops had been reviewed, and the nattering pair turned at a corner, to wait upon John and Mrs. Pennett. Bretwyn made his good-byes then, and Mary saw him off with a smile.

Returned to his vehicle, John surrendered the driving to his ostler, choosing to sit inside with the two ladies. He put himself forward on the way home, regaling them with tales from his travels. He did not bring them once again to the point of exhaustive laughter, however, aware a faint uncomfortableness had pervaded the day. Finally, near the end of their drive, he half-turned to Mary, his eyes cast down as though examining his boots, and casually said, “It seems Lord Bretwyn is quite the interested
parti.”

He looked up from under his lashes to see Mary’s cheeks go pink. “Yes,” she said, honest as she ever was. She never played coy with him.
But you played coy with Bretwyn just now…

“Did he say anything significant? As we walked? Just now?”

“No, no. It was mere chatter. He spoke of Letitia--

“Letitia? Lady Hammand? You are calling her ‘Letitia’ these days?” He knew it came out boorishly, but she had surprised him. How amicable had Bretwyn and Mary become while he’d been caught in Kent? It seemed she ought to have explained to him how well things were advancing in that quarter.

“Yes. I’m sure I wrote to you that they bid me call them by their Christian names.”

“Them? Bretwyn, too?”

At Mary’s wide-eyed nod, he cleared his throat and said a little too loudly, “Did you? Yes, I fancy you did.”

“Anyway, Letitia has decided she wishes to be a patron of the arts. So, she is looking about for a suitable artist whom she can sponsor. Charles does not quite approve, I’m afraid, unsure one can expect a consistent product from any one artist. And he spoke of his dogs. You see, the lead female had to be put down. Distemper. He was quite upset, but what is one to do?”

“Yes, yes, but--” John cut himself off. He had been about to ask her why Bretwyn--
Charles
--had held her hands and spoken so earnestly to her, but that could have been the result of a loss of a favorite dog. And, besides, it had been their conversation, and he had no right to intrude upon it. “But,” he finished somewhat lamely, “will you ride with me again tomorrow?”

“I cannot. I am promised to tea with Mrs. Rumshaw.”

“The next day, then?”

“Oh, John, I am sorry, but I promised Charles and Letitia that I would be a fourth for cards. I hope you don’t feel I’m trying to avoid you. I never would--”

“Of course not, love. But I’ve been home two weeks and I’ve only had the pleasure of your company but three times.”

“Greedy,” Mrs. Pennett threw in.

John gave the companion a steady look, but she was not the slightest bit cowed. If anything she gave him back a look that made him glance away, wondering for a second why the thought crossed his mind that she might as well have added the words “and stupid”. It was particularly startling because one did not expect such a look from a companion, and because it was much like the other strange looks she had been casting his way of late. To shake off the impression Mrs. Pennett was trying to get something through to a particularly thick child, he turned back to Mary, and said, “Don’t promise away
all
your time, or I’ll begin to believe I’m back in Kent, with no dear Mary in sight.”