“As long as we would not be in the way,” Andromeda said, her tone nettled.
“No, not at all . . . I mean . . .” For the first time, Rachel realized how she sounded. It must have seemed as if the invitation was extended only because there was no one better to invite. Putting out one hand and placing it on Andromeda’s wrist, she said, “I would deem it a favor and an honor if you all would join us.”
Her gaunt face relaxing, her expression warming, Andromeda still hesitated. “Would Belinda be allowed to come? I have promised her a trip to the theater, as I said, and—”
“Of course she will be welcome,” Rachel said. “Both as your friend and as family to me, in a sense. After all, she is my brother-in-law’s niece, and so, by extension, mine, too. We are going to the Libris Theater. It is a comedy, very light, very suitable.” She met the girl’s eyes and said, “Would you come, Miss de Launcey? I would be so pleased.”
Overwhelmed by this notice from someone who had ignored her existence until now, Belinda eagerly nodded. “I would like that.”
“Good, then it is settled.” Rachel paused and listened to the other ladies for a moment. The conversation seemed to be flowing rather better, due entirely to Lady Beaufort’s efforts, and she relaxed. She turned to her guests. “I am so happy you’re finding London to your liking. It is vastly different than home, isn’t it?”
Andromeda said grimly, “Yes, though some things are the same.” She clamped her lips shut and reddened.
“Is anything wrong?”
Belinda, bursting with a desire to impart something of interest, leaned forward, her eyes shining. “Miss Varens is so very upset! You see, Sir Colin has been beaten to within an inch of his life.”
Chapter Four
“What? I beg your pardon?” Rachel felt a strange, sick jolt under her rib cage. “How did this happen?” Her hands trembled and she clamped them together on her lap. “Was he waylaid by robbers? Is he all right? Miss Varens, surely you would have said something immediately if his condition was grave!”
Andromeda gave her a penetrating look, and even her grandmother’s basilisk gaze swiveled in Rachel’s direction at the panic in her voice. She deliberately tamped down her alarm, forcing herself to sit calmly, hands folded together in her lap. She toyed with the blue silk ribbons that adorned her aqua day gown, finding she could not, after all, be perfectly still.
“Belinda is overstating the case,” Andromeda said, with a warning glance at her young charge. “Colin is perfectly fine, Miss Neville. He is bruised and limping, but I do not think any real damage is done.”
“But what . . . ?”
The older woman looked around, and, finally satisfied that the others were intent on their own conversation, she leaned forward as if she had a shameful secret to impart. “My brother has been boxing again,” she said. She sat back up and clamped her lips shut into a prim line. Her violet-hued turban hat slipped just a little and she put one hand up to steady it, then affixed it better on her pomaded curls.
“Again? What do you mean? Boxing? Colin?” Rachel frowned, trying to understand this strange new view of her old friend and many-times rejected suitor, Colin. He had always been gentle, tender, even meek with her, and though she did not want to marry him, and had told him so in no uncertain terms—sometimes quite rudely, she was ashamed to admit—he had retained his manners. As countrified as he was—and he appeared even more so set against the backdrop of London beaux and dandies—he still was mild to a fault, considerate and careful.
And she was to believe that man, her meek would-be suitor, was a boxer?
His sister shrugged helplessly. “Men! At home he is considered the best fighter in the neighboring villages. He has been beaten only rarely. I have looked the other way for a long time now, though I have known about his . . . sport for many years. I knew he had his . . . his frustrations, and needed an outlet for his manly vigor.”
Frustrations. Andromeda was delicately speaking of his futile pursuit of her. Rachel stiffened, ready to defend her determined rejection of Colin with an explicit explanation, if necessary.
“Not that you . . . or anyone,” Andromeda continued, hastening back into speech, her gaunt cheeks blazing with color, “should have done anything differently. Hearts will go where they will go, and I well know there is no forcing . . . in short, one cannot make oneself feel what one does not.”
It was an awkward little speech, but it was meant, Rachel knew, to excuse her of any purposeful cruelty to Colin. And since Andromeda loved her brother fiercely, it was nobly and kindly done. Andromeda was excusing her from wrongdoing; Colin was a boxer of some repute: everything, even the room around her seemed strange, unfamiliar. She had been so convinced she knew the people in her small home circle, and yet they could still surprise her. What else did she not know? Must she question everything that had seemed firm and fixed?
London was proving to hold surprises that had nothing to do with the city itself, nor those who lived there.
“In short, I have winked at his brutal sport until now,” Andromeda continued. “He is reputed to be the best in Yorkshire,” she said, with something that seemed almost like pride, if one did not know how she abhorred the sometimes barbarous sport. “But London . . .” She shook her head, her expression dark and doubtful. “I’m so worried. He has only been in one bout and he was beaten this badly on the first punch. So now he says he is going to some fellow for training, probably some low brute from the docks.”
Rachel shuddered. “Boxing!” She knew little about it but what she had heard whispered among some of the younger fellows in the ballrooms. “That is so rough, coarse even, like bear-baiting. I can’t believe that Colin would take part in something so . . . so squalid.”
“But I have seen a bout,” Belinda said, moving forward to the edge of her seat, “and it is really quite thrilling!”
Both women looked at her with wide eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Andromeda demanded. “You have seen a bout? How is that possible?”
Belinda’s cheeks were pink, but she nodded, her eyes shining. She wriggled in her seat like a puppy and said, “I . . . well, I ran away from school last autumn—Uncle Strongwycke was not best pleased, I can tell you, but I was upset about things—and I made my way back almost all the way to Shadow Manor. But I stopped and begged for employment at a tavern as a . . . I, uh, helped in the kitchen.” She frowned and shook her head. “I thought it would be romantic to work as some other girls do, but it was horrid, never enough to eat, tired all the time . . . I was only there a few days, but it was hideous. Anyway, one night in the back room the tavern owner made me take ale to the men.” She shuddered. “You would not believe the smell of that place! Anyway, they were boxing, and I watched. You have never seen anything like it; it truly is thrilling in a savage kind of way.”
“What could possibly be thrilling in watching two men beat each other senseless?” Andromeda asked, dismissing Belinda’s observations.
Rachel saw the quick hurt in the girl’s eyes, and remembered being thirteen and having her opinions dismissed as if she did not have a brain. Every female suffered the same thing for most of their life, but as a child it was harder to bear because one began to believe that one had nothing of value to add to a conversation. As a woman, one came to understand it was just the way of the world, or the way of men, anyway, and of little relation to one’s true intelligence. “What do you think made it so very thrilling?” she asked the girl.
Belinda turned gratefully to Rachel. “Well, it was not just two men beating each other, as you would think. One could see them, first, circling each other, sizing the other up. And then one would feint and the other would parry, just like fencing, only with their bare fists! And all the while the tension is building. And then there comes a moment when everything pauses—time itself seems to stop—and then the fight begins in earnest.”
“I still say it is barbaric, brutish and cruel, no sport at all, but just mindless pumm
eling.” Andromeda humphed and flounced, her girlish skirts and ruffles bouncing with the movement.
Rachel could not but say, “I have to agree with Andromeda. It sounds appallingly bestial, and I cannot imagine what, in such brutality, Colin finds appealing.”
At that moment Lady Beaufort and Lady Yarnell rose and said good-bye to Lady Haven and the dowager. Lady Yarnell, still with the same frosty and forbidding manner, said, “So, it is set. You will visit Friday, and we will make some arrangements for the wedding.” She put out her hand and Lady Haven took it.
Rachel was watching and saw the dislike in her mother’s eyes. Oh, dear, this was going to be awkward, this wedding business. Then Lady Yarnell motioned to Rachel. “Miss Neville, would you walk us out please?”
Rachel looked longingly back to Andromeda and Belinda. She had been interested in their conversation and wanted to hear more about Colin and his barbarous “sport.” But she knew her duty and followed her future mother-in-law.
“Miss Neville,” Lady Yarnell said as they walked through the dank hall to the front door, trailed by Lady Beaufort. “Who was that . . . lady and child who came in, and with whom you were carrying on such an . . . an animated conversation.”
Rachel, irritated by Lady Yarnell’s implied disapproval—she did it all with the hesitations in her speech and faint emphasis on words—said, “That is Miss Andromeda Varens, sister to the baronet Sir Colin Varens and a close neighbor of ours at home. With her was Miss Belinda de Launcey, my brother-in-law’s orphaned niece. Miss Varens has stayed in London at Lord Strongwycke’s home to take care of the child while my sister and her husband travel north on their nuptial trip.”
“And why is the gel not at school, or with a governess?”
“I’m quite sure that is none of my affair, my lady,” Rachel said, and was distracted by a stifled snort from Lady Beaufort, who sounded like she had just swallowed an insect. A quick glance sufficed to assure Rachel that the lady was fine, though she was stifling some expression. It almost looked like amusement.
Lady Yarnell’s countenance closed like a shutter, her eyes hooded, her mouth prim. “I do hope those . . . parvenus—this baronet and his sister—are not some of the people you would like to come to our wedding.”
Our wedding? Rachel felt a rising tide of anger, but suppressed it, stuffing it back down like a recalcitrant gown into a trunk.
“Sister,” Lady Beaufort said, “a baronet, his sister and the niece of an earl can hardly be considered parvenus!”
“They can by a marquess.” Lady Yarnell whirled, started down the front steps, then turned at the door of her carriage, an ancient but respectable landau. “Regardless, one can tell just by looking at Miss Varnish, or whatever her name is—that foolish, girlish mode of dress, that odd turban she wore—that she is never going to be bon ton. I would be just as happy never to see her again. Good day, Miss Neville. I look forward to the theater tomorrow night. We shall speak of this further at that time.”
Lady Beaufort threw back an apologetic look but followed her sister without comment to the waiting carriage.
Oh, dear. Lady Yarnell did not know that she had invited Andromeda and Belinda to the theater. She felt a queasy sickness in her stomach. She knew from listening to some of her acquaintance that one’s husband’s mother could make a new wife’s life a misery or a joy. Men had their own world and their own life, but a woman, especially once she began having babies, was confined to the home a great deal of the time. If Lady Yarnell took her in dislike it could be a long, long while before she was able to feel comfortable in her marriage.
She turned back and slowly walked toward the drawing room. She would have to retract her invitation to Andromeda and Belinda. How could she do that? She would just have to. She took a deep breath and entered, rejoining her two guests. Her mother and grandmother were deep in conversation together, oddly. That happened rarely, since the two did not generally get along.
As she sat down on the sofa, Andromeda put out one hand and touched Rachel’s. “My dear, you do not look quite well; are you all right?”
“I am fine, I thank you for your concern.” She swallowed. “I find . . . I find I must r-retract my invitation to the theater tomorrow night. I have just been informed by her ladyship that . . . that Lady Yarnell has company, and that her theater box will be quite full.”
Andromeda’s expression told of her disappointment. “That is unfortunate. Well, you cannot help that, Miss Neville. Some other time.”
Miserably aware that there would never be a next time, not with Lady Yarnell’s feelings so clearly expressed, Rachel nodded.
“But we must leave,” Andromeda said. “We have a full afternoon ahead. We are going to Hatchards, and then there is to be a balloon elevation in the park and I have promised Belinda we shall watch.” She stood and put out her hand. “I must say, we have had a pleasant visit.”
Rachel took her gloved hand. Their afternoon sounded like so much fun! She had to stay in, since they were expecting a visit from a superior seamstress who was going to interview them to see if she wanted to concoct Rachel’s wedding gown. “I’m sure you will have a splendid day. You will tell me if Colin is all right?”
“I’m sure he is,” Andromeda replied, examining Rachel’s face with her piercing gaze.
Rachel, flustered, then offered her hand to Belinda de Launcey. “It has been a pleasure, Miss de Launcey.”
Belinda dropped a curtsey and thanked her. They left and Rachel slumped down on the sofa.
“Rachel,” her grandmother said, her strident voice echoing in the high-ceilinged drawing room. “Why does that fat-headed, overbearing witch, whose name I shall never say in my remaining lifetime, short as that may be, but who is to become your mother-in-law, not like me and why is she trying to dissuade me from coming to your wedding?”
Rachel felt the tears come. Blink them back as she might, they would not stop. For once she had reason to be glad the room was so gloomy, even on a brilliant spring day. She sniffed them back, but they would keep coming. When had her wedding gotten so out of her own control? And how could she wrest back any vestige of authority?
And why did everything seem like such a dreary chore, when she had achieved her life’s goal?
What was she going to do?
Chapter Five
He would never suffer another humiliation like the one the night before, Colin decided. His mistake had been one of ignorance; he had never considered that Yorkshire and London were very different venues when it came to his favorite sport. Colin was determined to learn all there was to learn about boxing in London. He was at the door of the Apollonian Club and took a deep breath, looking up at the façade, an expanse of gold brick. The doors were enormous oak slabs with brass hinges and gilt lettering, with the club name and a radiant sun in highly polished brass. Inside was the gentleman he had been told could change his luck—or rather refine his skill—in the boxing ring. He must find a way to convince him, though, to take on a new protégé, for the fellow was notoriously particular about those with whom he associated.
Colin climbed the scrubbed steps, entered and spoke to the club manager; the man assessed him, looking over his country clothing, and then considered his manner and speech as they talked. There was nothing quite like being judged by a London club manager and found wanting.
“I’m sorry, sir, but the gentleman you wish to speak to . . .”
Colin had one name to give, and that was a school friend of his with whom he had kept in contact, and who had told him to look him up at the Apollonian if he ever got to London. He gave that name and said, “He said to feel free to visit the Apollonian if I should get down to London.”
That name was the magic key that unlocked the door, surmounting even objections over his countrified appearance, and Colin was allowed past the manager’s desk and into the sanctity of the club as a guest. He happened to know his friend was abroad at that moment, but that did not matter. He clearly had the right connections.<
br />
Thank the Lord for old school friends, Colin thought as he glanced around at the plush interior, done in muted shades of gold and red. Many doors opened off a central gallery, and from his friend’s description there would be, among others, a reading room, a gambling room, and rooms upstairs kept for the members’ convenience while in town.
The man for whom he searched would not be in the gambling rooms, so he ignored the high shouts of laughter and low murmur of conversation that came with club gaming and headed for what appeared to be the reading room, a quiet cool den furnished with chairs, tables, and all the London papers, as well as a few select journals from those foreign countries in which a gentleman could be expected to be interested.
Colin had an excellent description, so when he saw the fellow, he immediately knew it was him. Lucky on his first foray! That had to be a good omen.
Sauntering over to the deep club chair, Colin surreptitiously examined the man sitting and reading the Times. He was of middle years, lean and dark of visage, his skin the color of fine leather. It attested to the man’s time in the tropics, and to his occupation, as a planter in the Caribbean. He had a high, beaky nose and light blue eyes, so pale they almost looked clear. If the man was aware of his intent scrutiny, he was deliberately ignoring him.
Colin took a deep breath, rubbed his palms against his thighs and said, “Sir Parnell Waterford?”
The man turned pale eyes on him and raised his graying brows. “Yes? What can I do for you, young fellow?”
He hadn’t intended to blurt it out, but he did anyway. “You can teach me to box.”
“And why would I do that?”
Colin indicated the other chair and raised his eyebrows, but the fellow just watched him, with no indication of invitation. Nettled, Colin dropped into the chair anyway. “I hear, sir, that you are, next to Gentleman Jackson, the man to see in London about boxing.”
A Lady's Choice Page 4
