Almost - Almost A Bride Part 8

He glanced at her as she strode purposefully at his side, throwing sticks for the dogs when they raced onto the lane in front of them. Once, as if aware of his glance, she looked sideways, and then returned her gaze to the lane ahead.

She was trying to persuade herself that if she didn't think about that kiss, and never referred to it, then maybe it would be as if it had never happened. Unfortunately she was never very accomplished at fooling herself.

They approached Lacey Court through a stand of trees beside the main driveway. Arabella stopped as the house came in sight. She sighed. "I suppose I expected as much."

Jack saw the carriage drawn up at the front steps. A woman in a gown stiff with stays and exaggerated side panniers was descending on the arm of a florid, bewigged gentleman decked out in burgundy velvet. "I would hazard a guess that Lady Alsop and her husband have come to call," he said.

"Precisely." Arabella whistled the dogs to her side. "If we stay in the trees, they'll go away again," she suggested hopefully.

"I thought you were relishing this encounter," Jack said. "You promised me some considerable amus.e.m.e.nt."

"That was yesterday," she said. "The prospect seemed appealing but the reality I'm afraid is not."

"Well, I for one am looking forward to meeting my fellow magistrate and his lady," Jack stated. He ran his eyes over her, then shook his head slightly. "Can you get into the house without being seen?"

"Yes," she said, startled. "But why would I?"

"My dear, you seem to have acquired pieces of straw, or perhaps it's hay, clinging to the back of your gown. And you have dog hair on the front. And your shoes are hardly suitable for receiving morning callers. And perhaps you might wish to do something with your hair." He ran a flat palm over the top of her head as he recited the catalog of shortcomings.

Arabella recollected her time in the stable among the puppies. She brushed at the red hair on her skirt. "Puppies shed.""Yes, they do." Jack agreed. "While you change, I'll greet Lady Alsop and her spouse."Arabella considered. "How are you going to explain matters?""I'm not sure I need explain anything," he returned. Her eyes gleamed. "If you are going to snub Lavinia Alsop, Jack, then I insist upon being there."

He smiled a slow smile. "Now, that's better."She realized what she'd called him, but dismissed it with a mental shrug. "I insist you wait for me before you meet Lavinia. Instruct Franklin to take refreshments into the drawing room and explain that we'll join them shortly."

He bowed. "I can give you twenty minutes."

"I'll meet you in the library in fifteen." Without a backward glance, she gathered up her skirts and ran through the trees parallel to the drive, towards the rear of the house. Jack paused long enough to adjust the set of his sword, dust off the skirts of his coat, and straighten the ruffles at neck and wrist, then walked casually up the driveway and around to the side door with the air of a man who owned everything he looked upon.

Chapter 7.

Jack entered the house through the side door and was immediately accosted by a hara.s.sed-looking Franklin.

"There are visitors, your grace. Lord and Lady Alsop. I tried to explain that you were not at home, but her ladyship . . ." He spread his hands wide.

"Is rather difficult to put off," Jack finished for him. "Yes, so I understand from Lady Arabella." He offered the steward an easy smile. "Lady Arabella has gone upstairs to change. When she comes down we'll greet them together. In the meantime, would you take them refreshment and explain that we've just returned to the house and will join them in a few minutes?"

"Certainly, your grace." Franklin lost his air of hara.s.sment and went off on his errand with more cert.i.tude in his step.

Jack went into the library, where he poured himself a gla.s.s of madeira from the decanter on the sideboard and waited for Arabella. True to her word, she slipped into the room in less than twenty minutes.

He looked her over. She was wearing the apple-green silk morning gown again and her hair was confined beneath a pretty lace cap.

"Tidy enough for you, your grace?" she inquired with an ironic curtsy.

"You'll do," he said. "But I'd dearly like to have the dressing of you. You're a wasted opportunity stuck in this backwater."

"Now, just what does that mean?" she demanded, unsure whether she'd been insulted or complimented in some roundabout fashion.

"It means, my dear, that with the right clothes and a good hairdresser, you could turn heads," he said, setting down his gla.s.s. "Oddly enough, I would like to see that happen. Come, let us beard the dragon lady."

He opened the door, inviting her to precede him.

And just what did that mean? Arabella wondered, going ahead of him into the hall. Franklin was hovering by the closed double doors to the drawing room and as soon as he saw them, flung them wide.

"Thank you, Franklin," Arabella said with a smile as she entered the room and dropped a curtsy. "Lady Alsop, my lord, what a pleasant surprise. How kind of you to call."

Lady Alsop rose from a damask upholstered side chair, one hand pressed to her bosom. Her double chins wobbled with indignation and she teetered slightly on her high heels. A stuffed dove nesting in her elaborately piled and powdered coiffure quivered on its perch.

"So it's true," she said in palpitating accents. "I could hardly credit it, Lady Arabella. You have a man under your roof in your brother's absence."

"News travels fast," Arabella said with a twisted smile. "However, you're perhaps unaware, ma'am, that my brother . . . Lord Dunston . . . is deceased." She gestured towards Jack, who stood quietly behind her. "May I present his grace of St. Jules. My brother's heir."

If the lady heard the introduction, she failed to respond to it. "Dead," she exclaimed. "The earl, deceased. How could this be?" She turned on her husband. "Alsop, how could this be? How could you not have heard?"

Behind Arabella, Jack took a delicate pinch of snuff, his gaze resting calmly on the visitors. The viscount was struggling to frame an answer to his wife's clearly unanswerable question.

"Who is this man?" Lavinia waved her fan at the duke. "What is he doing here, Lady Arabella?"

"Forgive me, I thought I'd already made the introduction," Arabella said without expression. "Allow me to present my brother's heir, the new owner of Lacey Court." Her eyes gleamed for an instant as she saw shock and speculation chase each other across Lavinia's startled gaze. Arabella repeated carefully, "His grace, the duke of St. Jules."

There was an instant of stunned silence into which Jack, having returned his snuffbox to his pocket, bowed. "His grace . . ." muttered the lady. Dukes did not come often into her ken. "The duke of St. Jules . . ." She reached up an unconscious hand and patted the dove as if to rea.s.sure herself that it was still on its perch. An ingratiating smile trembled on her lips.

"The very same, ma'am." Jack bowed again.

"Well . . . to be sure . . . delighted, your grace. An honor. Alsop, make your bow to his grace." She waved a hand at the hapless husband as she curtsied.

Alsop obediently bowed deeply, his hat clasped to his breast. "Your grace."

Jack's bow was more of a nod and his gray eyes were cool in an expressionless countenance.

Her ladyship fluttered her fan. "I hadn't understood that his grace was related to the earl of Dunston. Of course, in the circ.u.mstances it's perfectly proper for Lady Arabella to reside under the roof of a relative. Isn't it, Alsop?" She nodded imperatively in her husband's direction.

"Well, yes, in such circ.u.mstances," the viscount muttered, adding unwisely, "I was unaware that there was any relationship between the two families."

His lady looked sharply at Arabella. "His grace is a relation, I trust, Lady Arabella."

"Not in the slightest," Jack said equably.

Lavinia showed signs of regaining her moral outrage. "Then . . . then how could you possibly be his heir?"

"Is that any of your business, ma'am?" Jack inquired with a faint but chilly smile.

Lady Alsop flushed, the color mounting from her neck in a flood across her heavily rouged and powdered cheeks, moral outrage now at high tide. "It is most certainly my business when the reputation of our little community is put at risk, one of our neighbors dishonored, disgraced, her reputation in ruins. Duke or not," she added.

"Good G.o.d, ma'am, have I managed to achieve such wholesale destruction in a mere twenty-four hours?" Jack asked in astonishment. "Lady Arabella, is this indeed the case?"

Arabella's lip quivered but she controlled herself, albeit with difficulty. She spoke in conciliatory tones. "Lady Alsop, my brother made the duke his heir, and in so doing placed me under his grace's protection. His grace of St. Jules stands in the place of my brother."

"I fail to see what difference that makes," declared the lady roundly. "Unless he has a wife hidden here somewhere. Do you, sir?" She shook a finger at Jack.

Arabella felt a pang of pity for the woman. She had no idea whom she was tangling with. She said swiftly, "Ma'am . . . Lady Alsop . . . please . . . there's no need for this. His grace's personal affairs are indeed his own business . . . as are mine."

"You have no idea, my lady, the damage this will do to your reputation," Lavinia stated, her voice taking on a shrill note. "I cannot possibly allow you to remain here. Alsop, summon our carriage. Lady Arabella will be returning with us."

The viscount looked at Arabella, who merely shook her head. He adjusted his wig, coughed into his fist, and struggled for words. Jack turned away to pour himself a gla.s.s of madeira from the decanter on a console table. He raised the decanter, offering it wordlessly to his lordship, who with a mumbled affirmative thrust forth his gla.s.s for a refill.

"Alsop," his lady exclaimed. "You cannot drink with this man. I don't care if he is a duke. Now you tell Lady Arabella to fetch her cloak, she's coming with us."

Jack raised his gla.s.s to his lips. The viscount muttered, "My dear, can't do that. None of our business . . . Lady Arabella's no kin of ours. Really, can't do it."

"Your husband is quite correct, Lady Alsop," Jack said. "And while I'm sure your concern for Lady Arabella's reputation and morals is commendable, I do believe she can take care of both herself. And I a.s.sure you that any such concern for mine is most definitely unwelcome and would be extremely unwise."

Lavinia blinked rapidly. Slowly she became aware of the danger in the glinting gray gaze fixed upon her. She was not the first person to be rendered speechless by it. She swung towards Arabella, her panniers setting a delicate vase on a gilt pedestal table rocking precariously as she struggled for words. "You will regret this, Lady Arabella," was all she could manage.

"Come, Alsop. I came here in good faith and all I get in return are insults." With another sweep of panniers and a toss of the powdered column that set the dove nodding frantically, she stalked from the drawing room. Her husband looked helplessly at Arabella and the duke, then drained his gla.s.s and with a jerky bow and an incoherent farewell lumbered after his wife.

Arabella collapsed on the sofa with a shout of laughter. "Oh, Meg will be mad as fire that she missed that little encounter."

He merely smiled and sipped his wine. "Will it still the gossips?"

"Oh, no," she said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. "I shall certainly regret it. Lavinia's malice knows no bounds. She doesn't make idle threats. She'll have it all over the county that I'm a loose woman living in sin with the devil himself. I daresay I'll be ostracized completely."

"Barratt will put that straight," he said.

"I doubt even Sir Mark's protestations will do much good," she said. "But my friends won't desert me. I don't give a fig for the others."

"Who are your friends?" He looked at her closely.

"Apart from Meg and the Barratts . . . David Kyle and his wife. He's the vicar. Youngest son of the earl of Dunleavy. He's a dear, and he wouldn't believe ill of Lucifer. And Mary is a wonderful person. They're both so good," she said with emphasis, "that they make me feel like a worm half the time."

She stood up, thinking that her next awkward caller would probably be David. Lavinia wouldn't waste much time before she poured her outrage into his clerical ear. "I'm going to work in the hothouse," she said over her shoulder as she went to the door.

"I'll expect you to join me in the dining room at five o'clock. That was the agreement, I believe."

"As you please," she said, closing the door behind her.

Arabella worked in the dirt and the heat all afternoon. As always, nurturing her orchids brought clarity, as her mind was free to follow its own course while her hands potted, patted, clipped, staked. In mid-afternoon she went out into the garden to deadhead the roses and weed the rockery, and there on her hands and knees with the rich smell of the earth in her nose and the loam beneath her nails, she faced the question that had been lurking all day. Would marriage to Jack Fortescu actually be worse than its alternative?

She and Meg had often discussed their view of marriage as an inst.i.tution that was designed for the subjugation of women. It had always been so and was unlikely to change. At least not while men made the laws. But some women managed to arrange matters to suit themselves. They took lovers, they presided over literary and political salons, they patronized the arts, and they influenced kings. The Prince of Wales was a friend of Jack's. Inevitably Jack's d.u.c.h.ess would meet the prince, be his hostess at dinner parties. Why shouldn't he become her friend also? Why shouldn't he listen to her advice? Subtly couched, of course.

She was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin, officially on the shelf. That in itself was not an awful destiny . . . but a spinster with no independence, that would be insupportable.

She sat back on her heels, the trowel falling unheeded into her lap. Cornwall, a tied cottage, a vegetable garden, condescending relatives . . . what had she been thinking? She couldn't face such a future with any degree of equanimity. She wouldn't really have any independence. She'd be a poor relation dependent on the kindness and charity of people she'd never even met. Better surely to embrace a destiny that maybe she could shape.

Jack Fortescu knew d.a.m.n well she had little choice but to accept his proposal. It galled her, but not as much as the knowledge that she didn't know why he wanted this connection. He'd ruined one Lacey, why did he want to offer some kind of salvation to the other? She didn't believe for one minute that it had anything to do with reparation. He had his reasons, and for as long as she didn't know them she would be at a disadvantage.

But there would be compensations. Boris dug his nose into her lap and she pulled gently at his ears. This life that was hers, had always been hers . . . she wouldn't have to lose that. Her dogs, this garden, the house, all the little comforts and possessions that she had never questioned before.

And then there was the opportunity to expand her horizons into regions that she knew instinctively would excite her. Marriage to Jack Fortescu was the price to be paid. How heavy a price could it be?

She picked up the trowel again and vigorously dug out a weed that had escaped her vigilance. There was a greater satisfaction than usual in ripping out the plantain by its roots and throwing it into the pile of discards behind her.

A symbolic tossing away of a past that was over? Arabella shook her head, impatient with her own fancy. She had by no means made up her mind. She lifted her face to the heat of the sun, felt its warmth strike her eyelids, slide over her cheeks and lips.

Pa.s.sion. He had offered her that too.

Oh, no. She thrust her hands palm-out in front of her, physically pushing the thought away. Not now . . . definitely not now. But she couldn't forget what Meg had said about the dreariness of a life lived in a state of chaste spinsterhood. Was the prospect of avoiding that fate worth considering Jack Fortescu's proposal?

She let her tense shoulders droop on a long exhalation. The dogs had flopped down beside her and their panting breath was adding unmercifully to the swampy heat of the late afternoon. Frederick had lost his life, his fortune, and probably his soul to Jack Fortescu. Why? St. Jules was not after her life, obviously. As obviously, her fortune didn't exist.

Her soul, on the other hand, was a rather different matter.

With a little exclamation she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from the thistle she was attacking. It was never wise to be inattentive around thorns. Again she sat back on her heels, staring down at a bead of blood on her finger. Her soul, of course, was where the risk lay. She had the feeling that if she was not very careful, Jack Fortescu could swallow her whole.

She sucked the blood from her finger then tucked the trowel into the pocket of her ap.r.o.n as she straightened from the rosebush. Her hair was sticking to her forehead and she brushed it to one side. She'd asked Becky to have a bath prepared and it must now be close to four o'clock. Dinner at five gave her little time.

She snapped her fingers at the dogs and headed towards the house. She felt a little lighter, as if some resolution was at least in the offing. And then the memory of the full misery of her London Season rushed back. Did she really imagine she could become part of that shallow, despicable world, where to see and be seen were the only important activities?

But what actually could be worse than living the rest of her life on the charity of her Cornish relatives?

What price resolution now? She ran her hands through the limp tangles of her hair and thought her head would burst.

Becky was waiting in her bedchamber with a tub of steaming lavender-scented water and a cup of lemon juice. "I thought maybe the pink damask gown, m'lady?" she said, gesturing to the gown that lay freshly pressed on the bed. "His grace always looks so handsome."

"Yes, he does," Arabella agreed somewhat dryly as she surveyed her tumbled appearance in the cheval gla.s.s.

"Stays tonight, ma'am. And perhaps panniers?" Becky suggested hopefully.

The stays were necessary to achieve the right set of the gown. But that was the only concession Arabella was prepared to make. There was no need for hoops or panniers. She remembered the duke's comment about wanting to have the dressing of her. It was a rather patronizing comment, she decided. Her present wardrobe was probably outdated and countrified, but it suited her way of life perfectly well. And why on earth had he qualified his statement with that oddly enough? It seemed vaguely insulting.

"Just the stays," Arabella said firmly.

Becky looked disappointed and Arabella explained with an attempt at conciliation, "It really is too hot even for stays, Becky. But I will wear those and you may do my hair however you wish."

Becky's eyes sparkled. "Powder, m'lady? I'll just get the box."

"No," Arabella said more forcefully than she'd intended. "No, Becky, anything but powder." She shuddered slightly, thinking of Lavinia Alsop's monstrous creation. "We can do well enough with lemon juice, and you're so skilled I know you can achieve the best effect."

Becky smiled with pleasure as she helped Arabella out of her work-soiled clothes. "Oh, yes, m'lady. And you have such pretty hair. It's a pleasure to work with."