Two Corinthians (3 page)

“They are betrothed, then.”

“If they are, they have me to thank for bringing them together.” He laughed hollowly. “They had quarrelled, and she told him she was to marry me. Then she refused me, and I could not bear to see her unhappy, so I went and told him. Or at least his brother, George Winterborne.”

Lady Caroline clasped her hands and gazed at him with glowing eyes. “How utterly chivalrous you are, my dear!” she crowed. “It is just like something out of a novel. Of course I am sorry that you are unhappy, but perhaps if you have both changed so much you will recover. After all, you were only two and twenty when you first asked for Miss Hartwell’s hand, and you were engaged for two whole years without ever setting a date for the wedding. And I daresay if you had exerted yourself these past six years you might have found her sooner. You have not been abroad all the time!”

“Are you trying to persuade me that I never really loved her, Caroline? You’ll catch cold at that.”

“Of course not.” Her ladyship had the grace to look a little conscious. “Only that you were a mere boy when you fell in love, and now you are thirty and much better able to choose what will suit you. And you must choose soon, Bertram,” she added anxiously. “I had a letter from Mama only yesterday saying that Papa is fretting. He is far from well, you know, and it would relieve his mind greatly to know that his heir is settled with a wife.”

“You need not tell me that he is in queer stirrups. I suppose I shall have to spend the Season doing the pretty to all the eligible young ladies. The thought makes me shudder. Half will be outrageous flirts and the other half milk-and-water misses without a word to say for themselves. I believe that is why I first loved Amaryllis—she was neither coy nor forward but totally self-possessed.”

“Perhaps I can find you a bride beforehand so that you can enjoy the Season in peace,” said his sister thoughtfully. She was about to go on when the door opened and her husband entered. “James! See, Bertram is come, is that not delightful? He brings word that our dear Louise is well.”

“Servant, Pomeroy,” Viscount Carfax nodded to his brother-in-law. A quiet, stern-faced gentleman of middle height, he was dressed with propriety but with none of Bertram’s fashionable flair. Their relationship was cordial but distant, and upon his arrival the conversation turned to indifferent matters.

Braithwaite appeared bearing a silver tray with a pair of

decanters. Lord Pomeroy accepted a glass of Madeira and forgot his sorrows and his prospective search for a bride in a discussion of the bloodlines of foxhounds and the price of corn.

Later, when they went up to change for dinner, Lady Caroline assured her brother that he need not put on his London finery.

“We dine
en famille
tonight,” she explained. “Indeed, as I said, we have not entertained this age, but I have in mind to plan a dinner party while you are with us. There is someone—there are some neighbours I should like you to meet.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “I am expected at Tatenhill,” he said. “I cannot stay beyond tomorrow.”

“Then you must give us some of your time on your way to London next month. Perhaps I shall be able to rescue you from the horrid fate of spending the Season hunting for a wife.”

“Who is it?” he asked with a resigned sigh.

She glanced down the hallway. Lord Carfax was closing the door of his dressing-room behind him. “A Miss Sutton. She is eight and twenty, or thereabouts, so she has quite put missishness behind her.”

“A trifle long in the tooth to remain unmarried! An antidote, is she? Squint? Crookback? Laugh like a hyena?”

“Certainly not!” said his sister indignantly. “I will not claim that she is a beauty, and I believe she did not
take
in Town, but she is very well-looking, I assure you.”

“What’s wrong with her then? Come on, Caroline, out with it.”

“Well, she is a trifle unconventional. Nothing too dreadful, I promise. She behaves with perfect propriety, but perhaps a little
oddly.”

“So you would wed me to an eccentric!”

“Say an original, rather. There are not a great number of unmarried young ladies available, Bertram, who are neither flirts nor insipid! You will not expect, I suppose, to fall in love again? I am persuaded that Miss Sutton would make you a perfectly unexceptionable wife.”

“I assume her birth is acceptable, or you would not suggest her. Sutton...Not Sir James Sutton of the Sutton Stables? They are near Banbury as I recall.”

“His elder daughter. They are an old and respected county family with aristocratic connexions.”

“Penniless, I daresay?”

“No, she has a handsome fortune from her godmother. Two thousand a year, I have heard, which is not to be sneezed at! Not that you will have the least need of it when you inherit Tatenhill. I do not consider that an inducement, particularly as you were willing to take Miss Hartwell with nothing. But if you do not care to meet her, I shall invite her next week instead of waiting on your return.”

Bertram grinned at her pout. “No need to get on your high ropes. It can do no harm to meet her, so long as you promise me you will not so much as hint to her of your intentions!”

“I promise.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “And now I must run and change my dress, for Carfax likes to sit down to dinner on time. You will not mention this to him?”

“You cannot expect me to encourage you to keep secrets from your husband,” he said severely.

“Bertram, you would not tell! Oh, you are roasting me. I never knew such a tease!” she complained, and pattered off in high good humour.

The weather held clear and cold two days later when Lord Pomeroy set out for his ancestral home at Tatenhill in Staffordshire. Abel was relieved to find that his master once more handled the ribbons like the top-o’-the-trees Corinthian he was. He drove to an inch, to be sure, but with cool competence rather than reckless abandon.

It was dark by the time they reached their destination; the windows of the great mansion glowed with a welcome promise of warmth and comfort. It was impossible not to feel a certain pride in being heir to such magnificence, but Bertram did not think of this place as home. Between Eton, Cambridge, and the diplomatic service, he had spent little enough time at his family’s country seat since his early youth. He was not yet ready to settle down and take from his ailing father the burden of running the great estate.

If only he had been able to bring a bride home to share his new responsibilities—but Amaryllis was lost to him forever.

The Earl and Countess of Tatenhill were quite as distressed as he had expected to hear his news. Also as expected, they accepted it without discussion or recrimination. With a new sensitivity, Bertram realised that he had never heard his parents air their differences, and though devoted to each other in an undemonstrative way, they must surely disagree on occasion.

He had never argued with Amaryllis. She had quarrelled bitterly with Lord Daniel, and yet in the end she had chosen him.

He had been mistaken in her; she was not the cool, collected creature he had fallen in love with so long ago. The last thing he wanted was a life of emotional turmoil, and for the first time he began to look upon her rejection of his suit as a narrow escape.

Lord Tatenhill, with the gout which had plagued him for years now creeping painfully from joint to joint, wanted nothing so much as to see his son settle down with a wife. He had managed to attend Queen Caroline’s trial last year, but the effort had exhausted him and he was now a semi-invalid. Bertram accepted with quiet acquiescence his orders to get himself betrothed by the end of the Season.

He would do so for his mother’s sake, if not his father’s. He had been shocked to see how tired and worn she had become recently, and it would be unconscionable to add to her burden by not doing his utmost to bring home a bride.

Surely it would not be difficult for the wealthy heir to an earldom to find a quiet, well-bred female willing to accept his hand, if not his heart!

Not a week later, a suitable young lady was presented to his attention, nay, forced upon it. He had spent the interim mostly on estate business with his father’s land agent. Riding home that evening after visiting a tenant farmer, he found a large and antiquated travelling carriage preceding him into the stable yard.

The faded baronial crest upon the door instantly warned him that his Aunt Dorothy had arrived.

When he entered the house, the butler informed him in a sepulchral whisper that Lady Harrison was accompanied on her visit by the eldest Miss Harrison and by Mr Harrison.

“I have taken the liberty, my lord,” he went on, “of ordering a footman to wait upon Mr Harrison. I trust your lordship will agree that it would be unwise to expose a chambermaid unnecessarily to the young gentleman’s—ah—attentions.”

Lord Pomeroy, all too aware of his cousin Horace’s reputation as a loose fish, heartily concurred.

He went upstairs to change out of his riding clothes. Pinkerton had laid out his most soberly elegant evening dress:

black swallowtail coat, snuff-brown waistcoat trimmed with black satin, and matching brown pantaloons. His lordship grinned, instantly recognising this as a response to his cousin’s tendency to over-adornment. To complement this attire, he tied his neck-cloth in a simple knot of his own invention and accepted from his hovering valet a plain diamond stickpin.

When he entered the drawing room where the family was gathered before dinner, he did not at once notice Horace Harrison. Lady Harrison had chosen to wear a particularly virulent shade of royal blue. Though short, she was stout, and the quantities of bows, rosettes, and rouleaux that embellished her gown turned her into a sphere. It was some moments before Lord Pomeroy had eyes for anyone else.

“Horace never gives me a moment’s worry,” announced his aunt’s piercing voice, covering the sound of his arrival.

Correctly assuming this to be an indirect attack upon him, he was unsurprised to hear his mother defending him.

“I’m sure no one could have a better son than Bertram,” said Lady Tatenhill firmly.

“Mama, this tribute unmans me!” A smile in his blue eyes, he bowed gracefully over her hand, then turned to his relatives.

“How do you do, Aunt? Your servant, Cousin Horace.”

“Servant, Cousin.”

The Honourable Horace Harrison did not subscribe to the discredited George Brummell’s creed that a gentleman should dress with unobtrusive elegance. His hair was frizzed up to add inches to his height; the shoulders of his peacock blue coat were grotesquely padded and the waist nipped in, in an unsuccessful attempt to remedy an unimpressive figure. His waistcoat was silver, embroidered with purple butterflies, and seven gold fobs dangled from his watch-chain. His weak chin was entirely concealed by a huge, elaborate cravat adorned with a large amethyst surrounded by diamonds.

Paste, thought Lord Pomeroy. Horace’s pockets were notoriously to let.

“And this,” announced Lady Harrison in stentorian tones, with a wave of her pudgy hand, “is your cousin, Amelia.”

His lordship became aware that the third member of the family was also present. Dressed in a pale pink muslin round gown which left her goose-fleshed arms bare, Amelia Harrison curtsied nervously to her imposing cousin.

“You have not seen Amelia since she was seven, Pomeroy,” his aunt informed him complacently. “She is grown into a charming young lady, is she not? She makes her come-out this Season, and we have every expectation of a brilliant match.”

Bertram bowed again, politely but a trifle impatiently. Amelia appeared to be precisely the type of insipid female he had successfully avoided for the past eight years, with the aid of his long-standing engagement to Amaryllis Hartwell. Now that protection was at an end, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that Lady Harrison would make every attempt to foist off her mousy schoolroom miss upon him.

And Caroline was expecting him to do the pretty to the eccentric Miss Sutton!

Nonetheless, it was with the greatest relief that he departed a week later to return to the Carfaxes. At least Miss Sutton might prove amusing, and anything must be better than another day with his overbearing aunt, her silent daughter, and her coxcomb of a son.

Chapter III—George

Impatient with the pace of his luxurious travelling carriage, George Winterborne decided to ride, leaving the carriage to follow him up the Great North Road. Besides, the long ride was the perfect way to try the stamina of the black gelding, Orpheus, which he was thinking of buying from the Sutton Stables, and he would reach Northumberland days earlier. He was not such a dandy that he could not live out of a saddlebag, and without the aid of his valet, for a while.

He had had to spend a couple of days in London on business after he left his brother’s house, and then the detour via Banbury had added another delay. Of course, a letter would have told his father the news long since, but he wanted to bear it himself. The opportunity to deliver such joyful tidings, to see the shadow lift at last from the marquis’s face, was not something to be surrendered in the interests of mere speed.

After a night in Newcastle, he turned inland. This border country of rugged hills and moors, north of Hadrian’s Wall, was very different from the lush, gentle landscape of his own estate in Dorset. His blood sang to its grandeur. Here his ancestors had driven back the Scots’ raids time and time again over long centuries of feuding. It was his home, and in spite of the deeply drifting snow he set out confidently along lanes which were little more than cart tracks.

Orpheus seemed scarce to notice his rider’s considerable weight as the miles vanished beneath his long stride. It had been worth going to Banbury on his way; he would certainly purchase the horse when he returned to the south. It would be amusing to see Sutton’s pretty, pert daughter again, and he must remember to enquire after her odd, quiet sister’s recovery.

They stopped to rest at noon in a tiny, greystone hamlet where my lord was recognised at once in the taproom of the whitewashed inn, recognised and welcomed and fed, and sent on his way warmed by good wishes as much as by the fire. The Marquis of Bellingham owned much of the land hereabouts. He was a fair master, and his genial heir was a prime favourite with one and all.