The Suitor (2 page)

Her mother also would not understand that
she
had loved
him
all that time without
wavering—even during the past two weeks when she had been surrounded by handsome and charming and eligible young gentlemen who might easily have turned her head.

She could not tell her mother any of these things.

Whatever was she to do? Whatever was she to say?

There was nothing, of course. Absolutely nothing.

“When must we leave?” she asked.

Perhaps it was an invitation for the summer.

Her mother beamed at her again.

“Within the week,” she said. “Oh, my love, I am
so
happy for you. And Middlebury Park is not even so very far from Bath. We will be able to come and visit you there after your marriage. I do not think Mrs. Pearl would have described the viscount as handsome and personable unless he were really so, for we will know for ourselves as soon as we get there, will we not? I daresay he will love you, for you are very sweet and he is very much confined to his own home. And you will grow fond of him. I know you will. It is easy to love people who are dependent upon us, you know. We love our children for that very reason, as you will no doubt discover for yourself within the next year or two.”

She leaned down and hugged her daughter, who hugged her back—and was filled from the top of her head to the tips of her toes with misery and utter despair.

This was suddenly the very
worst
day of her life.

The Honorable Julian Crabbe broke his journey from Cornwall in Bath, where he planned to spend a few days with his uncle and aunt. There he intercepted a letter whose sender had feared he would not receive at all. She had sent it enclosed in a short note to his cousin Barbara in the faint hope that it would reach him in Cornwall before he set out on his journey. The letter was not a long one, but its brief contents were devastating to the hopes that had buoyed him for so long.

Philippa was being taken, within a week of writing, to Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, where she was to be presented as a prospective bride to the blind Viscount Darleigh. She would be there by now.

His caution had been his undoing
—their
undoing. He was too late. He had spent two years turning his life about, living down the deserved notoriety the sowing of his youthful wild oats had earned him before he removed from London to rusticate in Bath. He had spent two years making himself into someone the Deans would consider worthy of their daughter when she was old enough to be married. It had not been an easy thing to do, for they would not be meeting him as a stranger when he presented himself to them, but as the wild jackanapes whom Mr. Dean had caught in Sydney Gardens in the nick of time before Julian debauched his young daughter. Or so the man had thought, anyway, and who could blame him? Philippa had been sixteen, and he had been six years older than she and the owner of a tarnished reputation.

Julian had been
holding her hand
. He had had no intention even of kissing her. He was well aware that she was still just a schoolgirl. But … Well, there had been his reputation, and he had been fully responsible for earning that.

He had been a wild and reckless young cub who had dabbled in every imaginable vice—except that he had never been a womanizer. He had expected a dull time in Bath, especially when his cousin Barbara showed a tendency to hang about him as if his arrival was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. But he had liked her despite himself, and he had liked her friend even more. Philippa Dean had been sweet and modest and bright and cheerful and remarkably pretty. He had enjoyed her company for a number of weeks until it had suddenly occurred to him that he was falling in love with her.

It had been an alarming as well as an astonishing realization. She was far too young for courtship, and so was he. And even if they had not been, he was in no position to court her. He had scarcely a penny to his name.

But love, he had found, did not follow the laws of logic.

And so, when sober good sense replaced astonishment, he had decided to leave Bath and return home to Cornwall. He had taken her aside after the concert at that grand and crowded gala in Sydney Gardens in order to say good-bye to her—only to discover that her feelings were engaged as deeply as his. But it would not do, he had decided. He had taken her gloved hand in his to say his farewells.

And, irony of ironies, that had been the very moment when her father had found them and drawn his very understandable conclusions.

That might have been the end of it. But he had felt horribly guilty at getting her into
trouble, as he did not doubt he had done, and wrote a letter of apology, which he smuggled to her through Barbara.

She had written back.

And so had started their secret correspondence.

He had never stopped loving her. Would he have without the letters? He supposed it was possible, even probable. But there had been the letters, and so there was their love, two years old now and in no way dimmed. Quite the contrary.

He had tried to make allowances for her youth, though, to allow her to meet other eligible gentlemen before she saw him again. Hence his decision not to arrive too soon in London when she was finally eighteen and about to make her come-out. She must be allowed some little time, he had decided, to discover if her heart was indeed as set upon him as she believed it to be.

There was no longer any question of his eligibility, thank God. The circumstances of his life had changed and helped
him
to change. His father had died six months after the Bath incident, and Julian had been able to set to work on the difficult task of bringing the Cornwall property and estate back to something resembling the splendor and prosperity they had enjoyed before the Duke of Stanbrook, Julian’s grandfather, had willed them to his younger son. Lord Charles Crabbe, Julian’s father, had lived a life of expense and dissipation and had neglected his inheritance, except to draw every penny from the rents he squeezed out of tenants whose genuine complaints had gone unheeded for years.

Julian had worked hard to reverse the long neglect, and this year he expected to make a decent profit from his farms and holdings, even if not a fortune. Next year would bring higher returns, and the year after more again. He would see to that.

He was not without fortune even now, however. His maternal grandmother, who had died just one month after his father, had left half her considerable fortune to his mother and half to him.

He had something solid, then, with which to convince Mr. Dean that he was a worthy suitor—accomplishments that came from both steady hard work and inherited wealth. And, of course, there were his expectations, for his uncle, the present Duke of Stanbrook, had shown no inclination to remarry since the death of Aunt Miriam, and no inclination therefore to secure the succession in his direct line. Julian had the probability, then, of a future dukedom to dangle before Mr. Dean.

But now everything had changed. He had waited too long, and she was to be affianced to Viscount Darleigh.

“You have turned quite white,” Barbara said from her place beside him at the breakfast table. She set a hand over his. “It is bad news. I know. She told me in her note.”

They were alone there, his aunt and uncle having withdrawn from the room to go about their own business.

“She will say no,” Barbara assured him. “She will refuse to marry him, and then she will return to London, where you will be waiting for her.”

“No.” He refolded the pink note into its eight folds. “I have heard of Middlebury Park, Barbara. It is one of the great showpieces of England. Its owner is a viscount and I have no doubt he is vastly wealthy. And he is actively in search of a bride. Philippa has been invited there with her family specifically for his inspection. He is not going to reject her under the circumstances, is he? He has committed himself, and the Deans have committed themselves by going there.”

“But he is
blind
,” Barbara said.

Julian picked up and unfolded the note again.

“I cannot say no if he offers,” Philippa had written. “I
cannot
, Julian. Mama has impressed upon me that it is my duty to do this for Papa’s sake. And the duty is one of
love
. I might resist if he were a tyrant, or if Mama were. But they are not. And my sisters are excited at the prospect of my marrying a viscount and being able to sponsor dazzling come-outs for them when it is their turn. Oh, Julian! My only hope is that he will
not
offer for me, and I shall do all in my power to see to it that he does not. I do not know how that is to be accomplished, though, or even if it
can
be accomplished. I can only try.”

Julian refolded the letter with deliberate care and got to his feet.

“What are you going to
do
?” Barbara asked. “Will you go back home?”

Something was niggling at the back of Julian’s mind. He held up a staying hand and frowned in thought. Darleigh. A blind man.
Was it possible?

“My uncle,” he said, “the Duke of Stanbrook, that is, opened his home during the wars to officers while they recuperated from the wounds they had sustained in battle. He had lost my cousin in the wars, you know, and then Aunt Miriam. I suppose it was his way of keeping busy and … healing himself.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember your telling us, Julian.”

“Some of them stayed for several years,” he said. “One of them was blind and very young. I wish I could recall his name. Was it Darleigh? By God, it was. I remember at one time my father making a joke about Darling Darleigh. It
was
him, Barbara. He did not have the title when he went to Penderris Hall. He acquired it later. That was when my father made that joke.”

“And now he is going to marry Philippa,” she said. “Oh, Julian, I am
so
sorry.”

He looked at her, the frown still on his face.

“Middlebury Park,” he said. “It is not even so very far from here. And I met him once, you know, when I went to Penderris with my father.”

“What are you thinking, Julian?” she asked after a lengthy silence.

“I am thinking,” he said, “that I have an acquaintance not far from Middlebury Park, whom I have been meaning forever to visit. I am thinking that it would be common civility to call at Middlebury while I am in the vicinity to pay my respects to Lord Darleigh, my uncle’s friend.”

“You have an acquaintance nearby?” she asked, her eyes widening—and then narrowing again. “Oh, of course you do not. But what can you hope to accomplish by going there, Julian?”

To plant Darleigh a facer? A blind man? Great credit
that
would gain him. To plant
Dean
a facer? Better still. That would clear his reputation for all eternity. To throw Philippa over his horse before him and gallop off for the border and Gretna Green? A marvelously mature plan.

But go he must. He could not remain passively here or go back home to Cornwall while all his hopes and dreams—his very being—were being shattered where he had no control whatsoever over them.

“I have no idea,” he told his cousin quite truthfully.

2

Middlebury Park was indeed an imposing mansion, its gray stone central block flanked by long wings with tall round towers at each corner. There were formal gardens in front of it, a lake and island off to one side below undulating lawns dotted with ancient trees.

It was all enough to strike terror into the most intrepid of hearts.

“Oh, Philippa,” her mother said, her voice hushed with awe as the carriage made its way up the straight driveway toward the house. “You are to be
mistress
of this place.”

“The offer has not been formally made yet,” her father said more cautiously. He turned his head to smile fondly at his eldest daughter and reached across the seat to squeeze her cold hand. “But there can surely be little doubt that it will.”

Philippa’s two sisters and their governess were coming behind in a second carriage. Philippa felt an overwhelming longing to be with them again, back in the schoolroom, where life was dull but safe. She wondered fleetingly how she would be feeling at this moment if she had never met Julian. Would she be filled with excited anticipation, even if Viscount Darleigh
was
blind? But it was a question impossible to answer, for she
had
met Julian, and so her heart was in her shoes and heavy with dread.

The front doors had opened and spilled out ladies by the time the carriages drew to a halt on the terrace. Philippa recognized Mrs. Pearl in their midst, Grandmama’s friend, the viscount’s grandmother. Soon they were engulfed in greetings and introductions, while the girls and their governess were whisked off indoors.

Mrs. Pearl introduced them to Mrs. Hunt, her daughter and the viscount’s mother, and to his three sisters, whose names Philippa forgot the instant she heard them. Philippa had a bright smile on her face, and they all looked back at her with identical smiles and frank curiosity. Mrs. Pearl called upon her daughter to agree that she had not exaggerated Miss Dean’s prettiness, and Mrs. Hunt declared that indeed she had not.

And then they were taken up to the drawing room, a magnificent apartment overlooking the parterre gardens, where they were introduced to the sisters’ husbands, and there were more smiles and handshakes and curtsies and bows.

And then everyone stood back, for there was another gentleman standing farther into the room, close to the windows. Viscount Darleigh. Philippa was painfully conscious of everyone’s attention focusing upon their first meeting.

She curtsied and murmured his name.

He bowed and murmured hers.

He was of slightly above average height, slender and elegant. He had fair, wavy hair and a handsome, good-humored face. His eyes, large and very blue, were—sad irony—his best feature.

Philippa felt her heart sink lower than it already was—if that were possible. She had hoped for an ugly, boorish, ill-bred, unkempt, bad-tempered man, even though Mrs. Pearl had described him quite otherwise. She would have felt pity for such a man, she supposed, for she could not imagine an affliction much worse than blindness. But at least then her mama and papa would have recognized his unsuitability as a husband for her and would have found a way of rescuing her. They loved her, after all. They wanted a happy marriage for her as well as an eligible one.