Fortune's Folly - The Confessions Of A Duchess Part 13

"I could ask the same of you," Dexter returned. "I hardly expected to see you here tonight. Have you lost your sense to do something so dangerous?"

"Attending a musical recital is scarcely a perilous occupation, Mr. Anstruther," Laura said haughtily.

"Now you are willfully misunderstanding me!" Dexter could feel his temper slipping out of control and his voice rising. "You are barely up from your sickbed and already venturing out without so much as a servant to protect you! Must you indulge your appet.i.te for destruction in such a reckless way? Did I not expressly forbid you to do anything that might put you in harm's way?"

A spot of pink color burned along Laura's cheekbones. Her hazel eyes snapped. "Forbid me?" she said scathingly. "Just who do you think you are, Mr. Anstruther?"

"I am the man you spent the night with not two days ago," Dexter said. "Or had you forgotten? The coolness of your acknowledgment of me might lead me to suspect it."

Laura's luscious mouth tightened to a thin line. "I thought it in both our interests to forget that," she said sweetly. "And as you recall, I am suffering severe amnesia over the whole affair."

Dexter's anger tightened to the point where he forgot everything else. "Your apparent amnesia is much exaggerated, I believe," he said, "but I shall be happy to remind you of what happened between us at any time and place you choose-"

"I have come to tell you that the concert is about to start." Miles's smooth voice cut across them. "Also that Fortune's Folly already has a town crier and so does not need you to make any further announcements, Dexter. It is scarce discreet to indulge in an argument behind nothing more substantial than a potted plant."

Laura gave an exasperated sigh, turned her back and walked away and Dexter, suddenly conscious of his surroundings, made his way back to his seat. Lydia avoided looking at him. Faye Cole gave him a look of fury barely masked by a cold smile. The orchestra struck up the first chord and the soloist burst into song.

The concert was almost as poorly attended as Sir Montague's dinner had been. Most of the ladies of Fortune's Folly were absent with the rather odd result that three-quarters of the audience were gentlemen. Half of these left during the interval when they realized that they were baulked of their prey and went to the Morris Clown to drown their sorrows. By the end there was only Dexter, Miles, Lydia Cole and her mother, Laura, Alice, Lady Elizabeth and half a dozen other people left in the room. The German soprano engaged for the evening sang with increasing stridency as her audience diminished and finished by stalking off the stage to a ripple of lame applause.

"A word of advice, old chap," Miles said laconically as he and Dexter prepared to leave. "Try to keep your eye on the main target." Then, as Dexter looked blank, "Miss Cole, Dexter. You have been staring at Laura all evening, rather than at her cousin."

Dexter ran a hand over his forehead. "I need to speak to her grace again," he muttered.

"I really would not advise it, old chap," Miles said, not unsympathetically. "I realize that there is something between yourself and Laura but it can come to nothing. She has no money at all, and I would have thought she was scarcely the type of woman to meet your exacting requirements. She is far too independent."

He nodded toward Lydia, who had managed to escape her mother for a second whilst Faye visited the ladies' withdrawing room and was staring rather fixedly at a group of gentlemen who were chatting by the door. "You could do worse, you know," Miles said. "The mother may be appalling but Miss Cole is a quiet, biddable girl-just what you want-and her fortune is more than respectable."

"I know," Dexter said. Lydia Cole fulfilled every criterion on his list. She was pretty enough, well bred and submissive, and the thought of marrying her turned his blood cold. He could not understand it. A few short weeks ago he would have been glad to marry a woman for whom he felt no more than lukewarm liking. It fitted his notions of how a convenient marriage should operate, with no wild feelings on either side to disturb the surface calm. It was what he had thought he wanted and he could not understand why his feelings had changed so radically. All he knew was that to make an offer for Lydia when he burned for Laura seemed impossible.

"I am not sure whether I can make Miss Cole an offer," he said slowly.

"This is business, Dexter," Miles said, his voice hardening. "Try. You cannot afford to hesitate." He gave Dexter a consoling clap on the shoulder. "Court your heiress with a bit of pa.s.sion, old chap. At the moment it's painful to watch. Act the part of the ardent suitor and make it convincing. Sometimes we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good."

A cold breath of wind swept through the room as someone opened the main door and stepped out into the night. The candles flickered and a servant moved swiftly to cut off the draught. And in that moment the coldness of memory trickled down Dexter's spine, setting him shivering. He looked across the room at Laura. She was responding to some comment of Alice Lister's as they walked toward the door together. There was a smile curving her lips. The candlelight shimmered on the hazel of her eyes, making them look warm and deep and mysterious. Dexter suddenly felt very odd, as though a puzzle he had not even been aware that he had been trying to solve had finally slipped into focus.

"What did you say?" he said.

Miles had taken a few steps away but now he turned back, a perplexed look on his face. "I said that we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good." When Dexter did not reply immediately he added with a touch of asperity, "For the sake of your family, old chap-"

"Before that," Dexter said. "You said act the part and make it convincing."

Miles shrugged, clearly puzzled. "Makes the wooing sweeter, even if your heart is not in it. I know it sounds cynical but it's for the best, at least until the knot is tied and it is too late."

After a moment, when Dexter did not respond, he frowned. "Are you quite well, old fellow?"

"Perfectly, thank you," Dexter said, although he felt as though he had been hit over the head with a club. "Don't wait for me. I shall be along directly."

Miles nodded and went out, still looking puzzled. Dexter saw him pause in the hall to speak to Laura and Alice. He saw Laura tilt her head up for Miles's kiss and the light gleamed on the curve of her cheek and shimmered on the golden chestnut of her hair. Then she, too, was gone. The sound of voices died away and Dexter stood in the empty hall whilst the musicians collected their stands and sheet music and the servants started to douse the candles.

"Act the part...make it convincing until it is too late," Miles had said and his words had hit Dexter like a ton of bricks and taken him back to Laura's broken whisper the night before when he had carried her up to bed after resetting her arm.

"I had to make you leave..."

It had not been feverish and drunken nonsense. He remembered that moment in the wine cellar and Laura so soft and sweet in his arms, confiding a little drunkenly that she had wanted him that night at Cole, but that what she had done had been wrong in so many ways.

He felt cold in his bones.

He thought of the Laura Cole who held the respect of all who knew her, who embraced a cause to help others, who was always trying to save people like Carrington. He thought back four years to the Laura who had made such tender, pa.s.sionate love to him and whispered endearments to him in the heat of the night. That was not the same woman who had turned him away the next day with hard, cold words. He had been so angry that for four long years he had been blind to the truth. But now he knew.

Act the part...Make it convincing...Until it is too late...

They had been swept away by emotion that night, but in the morning Laura had thought that she had done a terrible thing and the only way she could think of to put matters right had been to send him away. She had not wanted him to ruin his life, his career and his family's future. She had pretended that she had not cared, that it had been no more than a game to her. His stomach dropped as though he had stepped off a tall building into thin air.

He knew he was right. He knew it with every instinct he possessed. That was the same Laura Cole who paid incompetent servants in order to save them from poverty, who tried to help the ladies of Fortune's Folly escape the Dames' Tax, whose cousin spoke with admiration of the causes she had embraced and the people she had tried to help.

She had wanted to save him. It was what she did. It was the person she was. Laura tried to help people. She had broken his heart and sent him away because it was the right thing to do and perhaps-just perhaps-she had broken her own heart at the same time.

"I had to make you leave..."

"Excuse me, sir. The a.s.sembly rooms are closing now." The servant hovered at his elbow. Dexter realized that the room was almost dark.

"Thank you," he said.

He walked out into the autumn night. The wind was roaring in the trees and the leaves raced across the cobblestones. The lights of the Morris Clown Inn glowed through the dark. He stood in the market square whilst the wind whipped about him and the last of the home-goers cast him curious glances as they hurried through the night.

He tried to tell himself that nothing had changed. The past was gone and he should leave it buried. He did not need to seek Laura out and confront her with the truth because what good would it do? He should merely be grateful that she had seen what he had been too young and too inexperienced to realize at the time-that to run off with her would have been the ruin of them both. He would have thrown away his career and his future and his family's hopes all for love and that was not the ordered way in which he ran his life. He should be thankful that she had saved him from the biggest mistake of his life and leave matters there.

Except that knowing that Laura had ended matters because she cared for him rather than because she was a heartless wanton seemed to change everything.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"THERE IS A gentleman caller to see you, your grace," Carrington said, for all the world, Laura thought, as though she were a courtesan entertaining men in her boudoir. "I put him in the library." His voice quavered. "I am very sorry to say, your grace, that it is the Duke of Cole."

For one dreadful moment Laura thought that he was referring to Charles and had lost his faculties completely. Then she saw that the door of the library was open and Henry was standing before the fire, hands behind his back, his chest pushed out importantly, like a fluffed-up pigeon. No wonder Carrington was on edge. He had had no idea that the new duke and d.u.c.h.ess were in Fortune's Folly. To see his former employer again would be to bring back all the horror of Faye Cole's incessant demands and his own breakdown.

"Thank you, Carrington," she said.

"I hope, madam," Carrington said formally, "that Mrs. Carrington and I have always served you to the utmost of our ability."

"Of course you have," Laura said, with absolute truth.

"And that there is no possibility whatsoever of our returning to Cole Court."

"There certainly is not, Carrington," Laura said firmly.

"Thank you, madam," Carrington said, his face trembling with relief. "We know you cannot really afford us-"

"Carrington," Laura said, interrupting him kindly, "why don't you and Mrs. Carrington enjoy a nice cup of tea and some of that delicious simnel cake in the kitchen. There is nothing for you to worry about."

Shaking her head, she watched him totter off down the servants' stair and walked slowly across the hall to see what on earth the new Duke of Cole could possibly want with her.

"Henry," Laura said, going into the library and closing the door behind her. "What an unexpected pleasure. Do Faye and Lydia not accompany you?"

She sincerely hoped they had not. She had seen neither Faye nor Lydia nor indeed Dexter Anstruther since the night of the concert three days ago. They were all on the list of people she was avoiding, if for different reasons.

Henry looked slightly shifty. "No indeed. They are at the pump room. Faye seems to have developed quite a taste for Fortune's Water."

Or for the company of all those fortune-hunting gentlemen, Laura thought uncharitably. Looking at Henry's slightly uncomfortable demeanor, she realized suddenly that his wife had no idea that he was visiting her. Her curiosity was piqued.

"You have a fine aspect here," Henry said, going to the window and looking out across the gardens to the water meadows and the curve of the river. "I am pleased to see The Old Palace is the sort of environment appropriate for the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Cole. It would not fit the family dignity for you to live in a hole-in-the-corner manner."

"It suits me very well," Laura said. She had not forgotten Faye and Henry's sn.o.bbery in the past and she wondered now whether Henry had come to The Old Palace purely to make sure that she was not letting the family name down by living in squalor.

"Good, good..." Henry took a turn about the room. "I suppose it is a little shabby here, but nothing that some new fixtures and fittings would not address."

Laura raised her brows. She was certain that Henry had not come to see her solely to discuss home improvements.

"I have been thinking for some time," Henry said abruptly, "that it is a great scandal for Charles to have left you so ill provided for. I am very sorry to say, cousin Laura, that people in the village are talking, you know."

"People are talking about me?" Laura asked. Her heart contracted. She felt cold. For one terrifying moment she was afraid that what she had been dreading had come true- someone knew about her encounter with Dexter in the cellars and was spreading gossip about them. Then Henry spoke again and she realized with a pang of relief that she had misunderstood.

"Indeed," Henry said. "They are saying that you are too poor to be considered marriageable under the Dames' Tax, cousin Laura. The fortune hunters consider you negligible."

"Thank goodness," Laura said, with feeling.

Henry's face reddened with disapproval. "But you do not understand, cousin. A Cole cannot be considered negligible, not even one who is only a Cole by marriage. It is most inappropriate!"

Laura frowned. "Forgive my slowness, cousin Henry," she said, "but are you saying that you feel it would be more appropriate for me to be a rich widow prey to unscrupulous adventurers?"

"Exactly!" Henry beamed. "With your social distinction you should be the greatest matrimonial prize in Fortune's Folly, not some poor widow sc.r.a.ping to feed her child! I always thought Charles a ramshackle fellow and this confirms it."

"Yes, well..." Laura rubbed her brow. She supposed that with Henry and Faye's particular brand of sn.o.bbery there was an odd logic in what Henry was saying. He would feel that it reflected poorly on the family and the dukedom for people to speak disparagingly of her poverty. She herself could not care less as long as she could feed herself, Hattie and the people who depended on her, but it evidently mattered to Henry.

"Please do not let it distress either yourself or Faye," she said. "I can sc.r.a.pe by on the annuity my grandmother left me. My brother, Burlington, has offered me a home with him but you know my sadly independent character, cousin Henry. I prefer to live here."

"Burlington is only an earl," Henry said. "You are a dependent of the Dukedom of Cole, cousin Laura, and as such I have come to the conclusion-reluctantly, mind-that it is my responsibility to make good Charles's lack. You are to have your widow's jointure."

"I am sure it must have been a decision you came to very reluctantly," Laura said dryly. The agreement originally drawn up between her father and Charles Cole had been for her to have an income of ten thousand pounds a year for life. She simply could not believe that Henry, whom some called parsimonious and others plain mean, would reinstate it.

"Dear Henry," she said, "you are all generosity, but I do beg you to reconsider. I know the Cole estates will take years to recover from Charles's profligacy and I would not dream of taking money that could be better used to restore Cole Court."

Henry nodded solemnly. "You are correct, of course. Charles drained the Cole income shamelessly but the estate is recovering now and I am happy to say that my own lands have always been in better shape. I have spoken to your brother and we have agreed-"

"You've spoken to Burlington?" Laura interrupted sharply.

"Of course." Henry looked taken aback. "This is men's business, cousin Laura. I only tell you now what we have decided out of courtesy. I have spoken to Burlington and we have agreed that he will provide five thousand pounds of the jointure and I will provide the other five. Honor will then be satisfied."

Laura could easily picture her pompous brother and equally pompous cousin by marriage sitting down together and planning her whole future. Basil had already vented his displeasure on her that she would not accept his invitation to return home to live at Burlington. He would see a collaboration with Henry as the perfect way to control his wayward sister because once they held the purse strings they would be able to tell her what to do. Neither of them would think it necessary to consult her. And here was Henry presenting her with what he fondly imagined to be the solution to all her difficulties and looking as though he expected her to fall on his neck in abject grat.i.tude.

Laura struggled with her feelings. On the one hand, to have ten thousand pounds a year would be perfectly marvelous for both herself and Hattie. They could employ a gardener who could help Bart keep the grounds of The Old Palace in check and help her to grow the fruit and vegetables on which the household depended. She could have the drafty windows and the leaking roof mended before winter and she could buy Hattie some new clothes and not be dependent on the charity of the Falconers and Miles and other friends. But on the other side of the coin was the intolerable thought of Henry and Basil forever interfering in her affairs and telling her not only what to spend the money on but also how to live her life...

"I am overwhelmed, cousin," she said truthfully.

"Of course you are! It is only natural that you would be overcome by our munificence," Henry agreed, nodding.

"I a.s.sume," Laura continued, "that the terms of the agreement would be the same as before-that is, if I were to remarry, the income would cease?"

Once again, Henry looked remarkably shifty and Laura wondered what, exactly, he was up to. "Burlington and I have agreed," he said, "that were you to remarry the sum of twenty thousand pounds would be settled on you in lieu of the income from the jointure."

Laura almost choked. "But...that is most irregular! There is no provision in the original agreement-"

"Pray do not concern yourself, cousin Laura," Henry said with a patronizing smile. "I know that financial matters are not the province of the female mind so do leave such matters to your brother and myself. We are agreed that it would be too shabby to cut you off without a penny. Therefore we will provide a dowry."

"But the Dames' Tax!" Laura said. "Through your generosity you will make me a target for all the fortune hunters swarming around the village-" She stopped as the full extent of the plan became clear to her at last and literally took her breath away. She had been mistaken in thinking that Henry and Basil wished to tell her how to live her life. What they really wanted was to be shot of her.

"You want me to marry!" she said. "You and Basil wish me to make another match!"

Henry put his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels. He did not seem in the least put out to have had his scheme uncovered.

"A female, unprotected and alone in the world, must always be a burden to her family," he said. "Given that you are unable to accept your brother's hospitality, we felt it would be better for you to be under a husband's guidance and control-"

"Provided that you approve the husband," Laura snapped, her temper rising fast.

"Naturally," Henry said, looking surprised. "I am sure you are aware, dear Laura- and so I do not scruple to mention it-that at your age and with your looks, your prospects of remarriage would normally be severely curtailed."

"But with the money as a bribe and a host of penniless adventurers hanging around," Laura finished, "I might manage to catch someone halfway acceptable!"

"Precisely!" Henry beamed. "Some of the gentlemen in Fortune's Folly are rackety good-for-nothings, it is true, but a few are respectable enough. You might consider Lord Chesterton or Sir Laurence Digby, for example."

"I might consider refusing them," Laura said frostily. "Sir Laurence has buried four wives already and I have no desire to be the fifth, and there is a reason why Lord Chesterton is unmarried-he has a host of unpleasant habits."

"One must learn to overlook such things in wedlock," Henry said virtuously. "Having been married to Charles, surely you are aware of that?"

"Having been married to Charles," Laura snapped, "I have no wish to put up with another husband's unpleasant habits at all." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Tell me, does cousin Faye know anything of these plans you have for me?"

She had touched a nerve. Henry cleared his throat several times. "This is nothing to do with my wife," he said after a moment. "She concerns herself solely with the disposal of Lydia."

"In marriage, I a.s.sume," Laura said, thinking that Faye and Henry seemed frightfully keen to dispose of Lydia in any way they could. She spread her hands appealingly. "Then surely, cousin, you need to keep your fortune intact for Lydia's dowry? You cannot be funding me, as well, generous as you are."

But Henry could not be persuaded. "It seems to me," he said, "that when both you and Lydia are off our hands, cousin Laura, then we shall be able to congratulate ourselves on a job well done."