The Mammoth Book Of Regency Romance Part 52

"I think you should wait and see if you can find one closer to Bath, Aunt," said Clarinda, knowing who would be pushing her aunt around in the wheeled chair.

"Humph!"

"Perhaps Mr Collingwood could help you find one," Lucy added, with a bland look on her face and a naughty twinkle in her eye. "Do you know where he is staying, Aunt?"

"He has a disease of the lower limbs that makes them swell up enormously," Lady March said with relish. "He has invited me to tea, to examine them."

"Poor man." Lucy could not help but feel sorry for him.

"I wonder how he contracted it?" Lady March gazed into the fire.

Clarinda and Lucy exchanged a speaking glance, and Lucy gave a shudder. "I'm sorry I was cross," Lucy whispered. "I did not mean to snap at you."

"I know you did not."

"You only want what is best for me," Lucy went on in a dull voice.

Clarinda looked at her sister in surprise. "But you must want to marry and have a fine house and fine clothes and . . . and . . . Surely every young woman wants to live grandly?"

"I suppose so," Lucy agreed, but she didn't sound very certain. "But I want to fall in love first, Clarinda. I would hate to marry a man simply because he was wealthy or had a t.i.tle. I do not crave to wear pretty dresses or ride in a fine carriage as much as that."

"You are very young," Clarinda began, as if this was an excuse.

"You speak as though your own life were over," Lucy retorted.

"We owe Aunt March a great deal," Clarinda said, as if this were an answer, glancing at the older woman now dozing in her chair.

"You have spent ten years caring for her," Lucy said, suddenly seeming far older than Clarinda knew her to be, "and it is time I took my turn."

Clarinda opened her mouth, closed it again. Suddenly everything seemed to be turning topsy-turvy. Slyly, the image of herself and James Quentin crept into her head. How could she dare to believe such a thing was possible? That she should be granted the chance of such happiness?

If she were to allow herself to begin to believe only to have her dreams s.n.a.t.c.hed away from her, it would be too cruel. Clarinda knew she would rather lock them away now, before they could gain purchase, than be shattered by the dashing of her hopes.

"We shall see," she said firmly.

Lucy sighed. "That means you intend to have your own way," she murmured. "But this time, Clarinda, you will see. I intend to have mine."

"The Pump Room went well, My Lord?"

Dunn's curious gaze took in his master, as if trying to decide what there was about him that was different.

"Well enough, and please do not call me by that t.i.tle." Dunn took his coat. "I am sorry, sir, but you are Lord Hollingbury."

"I know I am, Dunn, I just . . . Oh dash it, I suppose you're right. I'll have to get used to it one day."

"Did you learn anything to your advantage, My Lord?"

"To my . . . ?" James repeated, momentarily dazed. "Oh, you mean . . . No, Dunn, I didn't."

James poured himself a brandy. He felt the need of it. The water in the Pump Room had been as nasty as he feared, and he told himself the brandy was to wash the taste out of his mouth. In truth it was to settle his nerves, which were rattled far more than he liked to admit.

Mrs Russo had clutched hold of him again after Clarinda left, and she had been most forthcoming. She had informed him, with false sympathy, that Lady March's two nieces were only with her because she had kindly offered them a home after they were dest.i.tute. "Poor as church mice," she added, with a sly look. "Good looking, I grant you. The younger one may make a good marriage. Miss Clarinda is obliged to remain with her aunt, but she has expressed a wish that her sister may have an independent life. So unselfish of her, don't you think? What did you think of the youngest Miss Howitt, sir? She is generally thought to be quite a beauty."

James frowned. Now he recalled the moment when Clarinda introduced her sister and there had been something watchful in her gaze as she beamed at him. He almost groaned aloud. Clarinda thought he would fall for Lucy and she was happy with that. She did not want him for herself. Acknowledging it made him d.a.m.ned angry.

Now James shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts of Clarinda. He had come to Bath with one object in mind and here he was being diverted. It would not do at all.

"How can I find her?" he muttered. "Does she even want to be found?"

Dunn looked concerned. "If she is in Bath, then we must discover her, sir, whether she likes it or not. It is not such a large town and there is a great deal of gossip."

"But she has hidden herself away. Will she understand how much I want to find her and restore her to her proper station in life?" His face darkened. "My brother had a great deal to answer for, Dunn."

"It was unfortunate you were away in the army when it happened, My Lord."

"But now I have a chance to amend matters."

If only Clarinda would stop distracting him.

No, he told himself, he would put her from his mind.

But he found he couldn't. She came to him in his dreams. Clarinda Howitt was perfection, well perhaps not entirely, she did want him to marry her sister after all. But he knew he wanted her by his side when he began his new life as Lord Hollingbury.

Which was why he found himself in front of her house two mornings later, waiting for his card to be taken upstairs, and permission given for him to meet Clarinda face to face.

Clarinda felt her hands shaking as she smoothed her skirts and pinched her cheeks. She looked wan, with great dark shadows under her eyes. Her aunt had taken a turn in the night, claiming her limbs were swelling like the hot air balloon they had seen flying overhead in the summer. Clarinda knew it was all nonsense, that she had taken the idea from Mr Collingwood, whom she'd visited during the day. But when Lady March decided she was ill there was nothing to be done but ride the wave to its conclusion.

Dr Moorcroft had come and was upstairs with Lady March, listening patiently to her symptoms. At first, when there was a tap on her door, Clarinda had thought it was the doctor wishing to speak to her, but instead it was the maid with a card from James Quentin.

Her James Quentin.

No, no, that was not right. He was not hers. He could never, ever be hers. Her life, her future, was fixed. Lucy could never handle Lady March, no matter what she said. No matter how much she wished it could be so. Whatever he wanted she must send him away and as soon as possible. To let him linger was only to cause herself more pain and suffering.

With a new iron resolve, Clarinda descended to the vestibule.

He was gazing at a gloomy hunting painting that belonged to Lord March, but turned at the sound of her steps on the stairs. His smile faded a little at the chill tone of her voice.

"Mr Quentin, how do you do?"

"Miss Howitt. I am interrupting. I am sorry to intrude upon you without an invitation. I felt the need to see you."

He made it sound as if seeing her was somehow imperative, but she dared not imagine that was true.

Without answering, she showed him into the parlour and they were seated. "I cannot stay long," she said. "My aunt is ill and the doctor is with her."

"I'm sorry to hear it. Although your aunt did not seem to be an invalid when I met her at the Pump Room, and the first time we met you mentioned her penchant for imagining herself ill." His look was quizzical.

"That is neither here nor there," Clarinda said quietly. "I owe my aunt a debt. Without her Lucy and I would have been . . . well, I don't know what would have happened to us." Suddenly she looked at him, her eyes widening. "Oh." A thought had occurred to her. He'd come to offer for Lucy! After one meeting he was hopelessly in love with her sister and wished to ask for her hand. Her emotions sank even lower but she tried to smile. "Lucy is out shopping with her friends. I am sure she will be sorry she missed you."

His smile was gone. He was frowning almost furiously. "I didn't come here to see Lucy, I came here to see you. I thought I made that perfectly clear, Clarinda?"

Puzzled, not daring to believe, she gazed into his eyes.

"Clarinda, let me make myself very clear. I have no interest in your sister whatsoever. It is you I am interested in."

"I don't understand," she began, hoping for and yet dreading his answer.

"Mrs Russo informed me of your circ.u.mstances," he said dryly. "An unpaid servant to your aunt. I have come to offer you a way out, Clarinda."

"A way out?" she croaked, praying she was wrong, and yet hoping . . .

Lady March's voice drifted down from upstairs. "Clarinda!"

Clarinda stood up, shaking.

Footsteps on the stairs and a white-faced maid poked her head around the door of the parlour. "Miss Clarinda, the doctor says can you come?"

Clarinda hesitated, torn between hearing what James Quentin had come to say and her duty to her aunt. "I must go."

"Clarinda, please, I know I have put my question very badly. I should have said how much I admire you, how I dream of you, how ever since we met in the rain I have longed for your company."

Her heart was thudding so hard she could barely hear herself think. "I must go," she croaked, and with a gasp she fled the parlour.

In her brief absence Lady March's bedchamber had turned into a bedlam. Servants were running back and forth with smelling salts and lavender-soaked cloths. Lady March was wailing on her bed, clutching her head and saying her brain was boiling.

The doctor was standing, watching her, a frown on his face. Clarinda, approaching the bed, caught sight of her aunt's reading matter on the bedside table Strange and Unusual Diseases.

Her aunt opened one eye and, seeing that Clarinda was distracted, redoubled her wailing.

"Aunt, please, you are frightening us."

Dr Moorcroft appeared at her shoulder. "She was perfectly all right until she heard you had a visitor downstairs," he said. "A Mr Quentin?" His eyes searched her flushed face. "Your aunt seems to have taken it into her head that he is here to take you away from her."

"Well, she is wrong," Clarinda replied bleakly. "I know where my duty lies."

His glance stayed on hers a moment more and then he squared his shoulders. "Right," he said grimly. "How odd. I have just come from Mr Collingwood, who also possesses this book. Can there be a connection, do you think?"

"My aunt has recently made the acquaintance of Mr Collingwood," Clarinda said cautiously.

Her aunt opened one eye, then closed it again quickly when she realized she was being observed. "Is Mr Collingwood as unwell as I?" she demanded in a surprisingly strong voice for one so ill. "I'm certain he cannot be."

Dr Moorcroft considered her. "It may be necessary to quarantine you and Mr Collingwood, Lady March. To ensure this . . . this disease does not spread throughout Bath."

Lady March looked quite thrilled at the prospect. By the time arrangements were made, and the doctor was leaving, she was sitting up drinking tea.

"She is lonely and bored," Clarinda explained, knowing it was no excuse.

"All the more reason to find her a friend of similar mind," the doctor said, with a twinkle in his eye. He paused at the head of the stairs, waiting until the servants had pa.s.sed by and they were alone. "Has she reason to fear Mr Quentin, Clarinda?"

Clarinda looked away. "No. I cannot put my own happiness before that of my aunt, or Lucy."

The doctor sighed, but said nothing.

It was not until he reached home that he allowed his anger to show. "It really is ridiculous," he said, as he and Etta sat together in their handkerchief of a garden. "Clarinda obviously loves this fellow but is refusing to allow herself to accept him because of her wretched aunt."

Etta, who wasn't her usual smiling self, said softly, "And what is this fellow's name, my love?"

"Quentin," he told her, proud he'd remembered.

A moment later Etta was in tears.

"My darling, whatever is the matter? Etta, please tell me?"

Slowly, painfully, Etta allowed him to draw out the truth. Afterwards she was drained and he put her to bed and sat with her as she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke, he was still holding her hand. He bent over her, smiling, and kissed her lips.

"I love you," he said. "I don't care about the past. We have the future to look forward to, and I am forever grateful for it."

Etta gazed at him with shining eyes.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, worriedly. "Whatever it is, you know I will stand by your decision."

Etta sighed, and, after a moment, she told him.

The a.s.sembly Rooms were lit by lamp and candlelight, the musicians busy playing their instruments as the dancers moved gracefully or gossiped in little groups by the walls. Clarinda, feeling like a sh.e.l.l of her former self, was only here because Lucy had insisted, and her aunt was visiting Mr Collingwood and his sister. They seemed to have so much in common that there was little else her aunt would speak of. Clarinda was bewildered by the change in her.

"You should be pleased," Lucy said with a grin. "I am. Let her marry old Collingwood. They could be wheeled up the aisle in their chairs together, can you imagine it?"

"Lucy," Clarinda murmured reprovingly.

Her thoughts were melancholy tonight. Mr James Quentin had asked her to marry him, or at least that was what he'd intended to do, and she had cut him rudely short and rushed away. How could he forgive her for that? He must think he had embarra.s.sed her, or she didn't return his feelings. How could he understand the conflicting demands that had been tearing her in two?

Of course he would never approach her again. She wouldn't be the least surprised if he had left Bath altogether.

"Here is Etta," Lucy whispered. "I will leave you. I see Isabella over by the potted palm."

Her sister hurried away, eager to join her friends. Clarinda smiled as Etta approached. "I did not know if you would come," she said.

Etta looked as pale as she had at the Pump Rooms, and there was something anxious about her, a sense of expectation.

"I have heard from my husband about your aunt's new hobby," she said, with a ghost of her old twinkle.

"Yes, my aunt and Mr Collingwood are very close."

Etta glanced beyond her and stiffened. She bit her lip. "Oh dear," she said in a wobbly voice.

The next moment she had hurried past Clarinda and grasped the hands of James Quentin who had been approaching, resplendent in formal evening wear. "James," Etta said, as if the name meant everything to her.

Shocked, speechless, Clarinda stared. She tried to understand what this meant but nothing occurred. There was a sick sense of despair in the pit of her stomach, and something else a feeling of furious jealousy.