To Wed an Heiress (8 page)

“
I
am sorry things are so dull today,” Lady Anglesford said to Mr. Hastings. The mill owner had taken up residence in a high-backed chair by the side of the great hearth, one that watched the door of the large morning room so that he could oversee the comings and goings of the rest while he perused his newspaper. “We have a few families nearby with whom we visit—Sir Robert Blount and his wife always dine with us at least once while we’re in the country, and their son Stephen is a friend of Haro’s—but with my husband’s death so recent, we will not have visitors calling.”

Mr. Hastings dismissed her apology with a wave of the hand. “No matter, no matter. I’m sure we’ll have visitors enough once the nuptials are celebrated. The whole countryside will be coming around to gawk at the new Lady Anglesford. Won’t they, my dear?” He smiled benevolently at his daughter and rubbed a gleeful thumb over the fob of his too-large pocket watch.

“Which reminds me, my boy,”—he turned to Haro—“we need to set a date for the happy day!”

The scratching of pencils ceased entirely at the table over by the window. Both Eda and Philippe Bayeux had been working busily on their drawings for the last hour, and now, it seemed, they had come to a stopping place. Arabella sat up a little straighter on the sofa and brushed the back of her hand against Haro’s. Torin, who had wandered in to find his Vitruvius, stared openmouthed.

“Oh, but it would be most improper to set a wedding date while we are still in blacks,” said Lady Anglesford, her mouth quivering.

“Dashed right it would!” chimed in Torin, too annoyed to mind his language in mixed company.

Mother and son looked earnestly at the heir of the house, expecting him to lend them support.

Haro looked at Arabella’s soft brown hair and couched his words with care. “It’s not
unheard
of for a wedding to be held while a house is in mourning.”

“Yes, I’m sure such things happen all the time…in
Australia
,” said Eda, “but things are a little different when one does not reside in a penal colony.”

Haro glared toward the window and found Eda returning his glare measure for measure while Bayeux leaned forward in his chair at the other side of the drawing table.

“I happen to know,” said Haro, “that the Marquis Vitalis was wed while his family was still in blacks, and I can’t be positive, but I seem to remember that Sir Henry Huntingdon was as well. And in any case”—Haro rose from the sofa and drew himself up to his full height—“I believe the date is for me and my intended’s family to settle.” He threw a conciliatory bone to his mother. “Though I would, of course, like to consider your wishes, Mama.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Lady Anglesford. “But perhaps it is best if you settle it with Arabella and her father and leave me out of it. I am feeling a little faint, and I think I will retire to my room.”

The room quieted as they watched the small woman get to her feet and walk toward the French doors, placing a steadying hand on the patterned wallpaper as she made her way out.

“What say you then?” asked Mr. Hastings, clapping his hands together. “Next month?”

Arabella looked up at the earl with shining eyes and reached out her other hand for his. He felt her fingers, long and slender, cradled in his palm, and inclined his head a little to place them against his lips. The room, already warm from the blazing fire, grew warmer all of a sudden, and Haro had to resist the urge to loosen his cravat. “Next month? Why not next week?”

“Ha!” laughed the mill owner. “I admire your enthusiasm for my daughter, my lord. But the wedding of the century cannot materialize in an instant. We must have a little time to order the finest fabrics, send for exotic foods, commission the best entertainment. A cathedral wedding, I think. In London.”

“What? London?” Torin folded his arms akimbo. “All of the earls of Anglesford have been married at Woldwick. It is tradition.”

Hastings snorted. “No, no. It is too small, too dark, too dreary. We must have the wedding somewhere much larger, and much closer in—somewhere the rest of the ton can easily come to see my daughter wed an earl. What say you, Monsieur Bayeux? Is there a building in London grand enough to house the sight?”

The hawk-nosed Frenchman frowned. “I would not know, sir.”

“You are an architect. You
must
know your buildings. Where?”

“I could not say.” Bayeux slipped his paper and drawing materials into his satchel. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have an appointment in the village.”

“An appointment?” Mr. Hastings’ eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You just arrived in this county. Who could you possibly know hereabouts?”

The architect rose to his feet. “When I went into the village earlier this morning to procure my drawing materials, I inquired after stone masons and found a man of good repute. I must confer with him about the materials available locally for use in this renovation.”

“Ah, well.” Mr. Hastings relaxed. “Very good, very good.”

“Will you be returning in time to dine with us?” asked Eda, playing the gracious hostess now that Lady Anglesford had retired from the room.

“No.” Bayeux sent a glance to the sofa where Arabella and Haro were seated cozily. “I think not.”

***

By the time dinner came—unfashionably early as usual since Woldwick’s cook was accustomed to keep country hours—the wedding date had been fixed for three weeks from the following Saturday.

“That is such short notice,” said Torin, seizing fork and knife in either hand, “that I may not be able to attend. I shall consult my calendar, but….” He shrugged and took a bite of jellied eel.

“What social engagement could you possibly have?” said Haro. He would have added the phrase, “you young twit!” if his betrothed had not been present. “You said it yourself—we’re in mourning. I doubt you’ve accepted any invitations to join a shooting party or dance a reel that weekend.”

Torin swallowed and laid his fork down with a clatter. “My old tutor Mr. Swaine has invited me to stay with him in Dorchester.”

“I’m sure you can easily send him a note and change your visit to another date.” Arabella raised her perfect eyebrows and gave Torin a chilly stare.

“I’m sure you can just as easily change your wedding to another date!”

“Torin!” Lady Anglesford, who had recovered her spirits enough to descend for dinner, looked in need of her hartshorn once more.

“Mind your words,” said Haro, with a hint of menace in his voice. With his easygoing nature, it was easy to forget that he was half a head taller than everyone in the room, weighed fourteen stone or more, and could knock a man down—especially one as slight as Torin—without much exertion.

“No need to take offense on my account, darling.” Arabella placed a hand gently on Haro’s wrist, her supposedly conciliatory words causing the divide between the two brothers to grow even deeper. “If Torin cannot change his visit, then he cannot. I’m sure we will all be sad to have him absent, but then, his presence is hardly essential to the ceremony, is it?”

A piece of jellied eel fell from Torin’s fork onto his plate.

“Hardly essential?” Eda’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “I’m sure Haro would wish Torin to stand up with him.”

“There are certainly plenty of acceptable gentlemen who would be willing to fulfill that task.” Arabella turned to Haro. “Isn’t Guy Pontipale a particular friend of yours?”

Haro’s nose wrinkled involuntarily. “A friend, perhaps. Though not exactly a
particular
one.”

“That fellow who introduced you two?” Hastings nodded. “He’ll do.”

And so the question of Haro’s best man was decided.

Arabella, however, was not finished with the conversation. “And, of course, if you wish to go straight to Oxford from this Mr. Swaine’s house, you’ll be nearly there. Such a fortuitous proximity.”

Torin was taken aback. “Must you keep harping on about that? What difference does it make to you whether I go to Oxford or not?”

“It would make things a little less crowded, don’t you think? They say that newlyweds need a little space of their own, and there are”—she glanced around the table—“so many of you.”

“Yes,” snorted Eda. “It’s a pity that Lady Anglesford decided to have as many brats as a fishwife from Billingsgate. Haro, Torin….” She counted on her fingers. “Why, I do believe that’s all of them.”

“Oh, but you must not forget to count yourself, dear Eda.” Arabella smoothed a hand over her pale pink dress. “I daresay you take up as much room in the family as any daughter. Perhaps more.”

“A pity you can’t pack me off to Oxford along with Torin!”

“Pack
you
off to Oxford?” Arabella trilled in laughter. “Certainly not. I don’t think it would suit you, nor you it. There are other places far more appropriate to house unmarried ladies with no prospects.”

Haro’s eyes darted quickly to Eda, on tenterhooks to see what response she would have to that jibe. To his surprise, however, no words issued from her mouth. Her face looked as motionless as an alabaster statue and her dark blue eyes as hard as glass.

E
da had barely shut her bedroom door behind her before the tears came—thick, fast, angry, and heartbroken. Dinner tonight had been intolerable. To hold a wedding while the family was still in mourning for Uncle Edward? It was more than insensitive—it was inhuman. And for Haro to agree to it? Eda snatched up a pillow from the bed and began to beat it with her fists.

She had expected Arabella to turn on her when she stood up for Torin at the table, but she had not been prepared for the concentrated power of the venom that dripped from Arabella’s fangs. If Arabella would turn Torin out of doors, she certainly would not stop from ousting Eda. It was a thought she could not even bear to dwell on.

After dinner, the ladies had retreated to the drawing room while the men quaffed their port. Lady Anglesford had talked incessantly. Eda suspected her aunt was terrified of what her headstrong niece or her future daughter-in-law might say to each other and wanted to allow no opportunity for them to exchange words.

Arabella, however, seemed to prefer to save her cutting wit for Haro’s presence. She spotted an old book on the table that Torin had left out and sat on the sofa intensely engrossed in its pages.

Eda casually glanced over to see the name on the cover of the volume—
De Architectura
, by Vitruvius. Just the title made her loathe Arabella even more. Previously, she had enjoyed imagining her as too vapid for anything more than a Mrs. Radcliffe novel, but now it seemed she had intelligence as well as money…as well as Haro.

There had been another scene when the gentlemen had rejoined them. Torin spotted his book immediately and saw that Arabella had dog-eared two or three of the pages. It was an action amounting to sacrilege in his code of ethics, and he had laid into her like a broadside from one of Admiral Nelson’s frigates.

“Oh, fustian!” Haro had said, taking Arabella’s part. “You obviously don’t care enough about the book to put it away properly, so why should you care about a few bent corners?”

Torin had retired in a rage, and Eda had slipped away soon afterwards, taking out her spleen on the embroidered pillow instead of on Miss Hastings…or her cousin.

Her aunt’s lady’s maid knocked on the door to help her dress for bed, and she tried to compose herself enough to keep from embarrassing a servant.

“I beg your pardon, Stamford,” she said, wiping away a stream of tears that refused to stop running.

“Oh, don’t be afraid of a few tears,” clucked the plump, blond dresser. She unfastened Eda’s black dress and took it over to the wardrobe. “Her ladyship did warn me that you might not be yourself.”

At the beginning of the season, her aunt had asked if she would like her own lady’s maid—a French one, perhaps, as was the fashion. But Eda, who preferred simplicity in her toilette, had declined, continuing to borrow the offices of Alice Stamford, her aunt’s maid, as she had when she was not yet out of the schoolroom. Eda frequently dressed her own hair, but it was essential to have someone help her lace and unlace her dresses in the back. Although if Arabella had her way, she would be in a horrible hobble without a maid altogether.

Stamford did not linger, and Eda, now dressed in her nightgown, took down her hair herself, shaking out the black curls. Thankful that the scullery maid had built up a large fire in the grate, she slipped beneath the thick bedclothes and tried to sleep.

The events of the day kept arising in her mind, however—images of Haro’s arm wrapped around Arabella’s body, the sound of Arabella’s tittering laugh as she said the word “Oxford.”

She rolled over onto her back. What was it that people said? “He who marries in haste repents at leisure.” Haro was making a mistake he’d soon be regretting. Someone needed to tell him, before it was too late….

***

Haro was interrupted once again after retiring to his bedchamber that night. It was beginning to become a pattern, and an annoying one at that. At the sound of the gentle tap, he swung his legs crossly over the side of the bed and—without even bothering to put on his dressing gown—threw open the door. “Now, see here, Uncle Harold! It’s dashed late—”

The visitor in the hallway was most definitely
not
Uncle Harold, and before Haro could protest, his room had been invaded. He stared openmouthed. It was Eda, although a version of Eda that he had never seen before. Her long black tresses tumbled wildly about her shoulders, and she was not only missing her black dress but also her petticoat and her stays. The thin, white fabric of her nightdress was the only thing that kept her from being unclad entirely.

“Good Lord! It’s cold in here!” she uttered matter-of-factly, setting her candle down on a small table near the door. “Why did you not have the servants light a fire when you retired?”

“If you had troubled to put on some more clothes before visiting me, you might not have found things so chilly.” He averted his eyes.

She looked down, as if she had all of a sudden realized that she was not in fact dressed. “If you were a gentleman, you would give me your dressing gown.”

“If you were a lady, you would already be wearing one.” He snatched up the article in question and tossed it to her—then watched a little bit disappointedly as she drew it on to cover her lace-edged nightdress and tightly belted it around her small waist. “What do you want, Eda? You oughtn’t be here, you know.”

“Oughtn’t I?” she asked, a devilish little smile playing over her red lips. She sat down defiantly in the armchair that Uncle Harold had occupied on the previous night. “I thought it would be as good a time as any other to have a little tête-à-tête.” She took a deep breath. “I see you’ve been becoming better acquainted with your betrothed.”

“Yes,” said Haro, seating himself cautiously on the Roman couch across from her. “I hope that you will as well, and indeed, the whole family since she is to be one of us.”

“All in good time. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you disport yourself with her all day. And I suspect you were possibly even friendlier than becomes a gentleman with your darling Arabella on your drive this morning.”

Haro, afflicted with the misfortune of very fair skin, flushed red to the roots of his hair. “Who told you that?” Nothing
too
improper had happened among the trees….

“Never you mind!” She leaned forward with a flash of intensity, and Haro’s dressing gown, which was far too big for her, gaped open in the front revealing a flash of fair skin below her neck. “And you’ve set a wedding date.”

“So it seems.” Haro was determined to tread cautiously…and to keep his eyes from wandering below her face.

“Perhaps it’s time then to start exerting yourself a little—let the new Lady Anglesford know who is lord and master here.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“What do I mean? If you weren’t blind and besotted, you would know that she’s vexing us all to no end. I’ll say nothing about myself. But your mother’s made herself ill worrying about the changes that chit will make to the house, and you saw what happened with Torin tonight. He’s likely to do something rash if she doesn’t stop ordering him about like a trained poodle.”

“What are you suggesting that I do?”

“You must say something! You must make her
mind
you!”

Haro recalled how his resolve to do just that today had fizzled out like a torch in the rain. “I don’t know how necessary that is—”

“Well, if you don’t know, then you’re a fool. You’re handing your title to Hastings on a mother-of-pearl platter, and you’re handing your manhood to his daughter with permission for her to trample it.”

“Oh, come now!” She had set up his back now, and he refused to admit that she was right. “I will conduct myself with Arabella as I see fit.”

“Very well then. Do as you like. Although you should know that a woman
likes
a man who has a little backbone underneath his coat from Weston’s.” Her eyes flicked disdainfully over the open front of his nightshirt. Haro suddenly felt self-conscious, realizing that he was as dishabille as she was.

“If matters continue in this way, then I warn you—I will no longer be able to continue using my best behavior towards her.”

“Best behavior? Is
that
what you’ve been using up until now?”

“Yes.” Her chin jutted out defiantly. She stood up, and he followed suit. The sitting area in Haro’s room was small, and they were very nearly face to face in the dim room. “My father was an Irishman and a soldier, Haro. I’m not afraid of a brawl.” She picked up her candle, casting a warm glow over her face and fine collarbones.

Haro could not help admiring the flash in her eyes, while at the same time deploring the sentiments she had expressed. “Stop talking twaddle.” She opened the door to the corridor, and he dropped his voice to a whisper to avoid waking the rest of the household. “I’ll have no brawling at Woldwick.”

“And of course
your
word is law, Lord Anglesford,” she responded, stepping out into the hallway. Haro had the distinct impression that she was mocking him. “Good night,” she said, peeking back over her shoulder, “and pleasant dreams.”

He stood at the door and watched her go until her candle-lit silhouette disappeared at the end of the corridor.