The Earl Returns

by Marek, Lillian

  “Then we did not get here quickly enough!” Miranda was too impatient for any exchange of courtesies. She tugged on Merton’s sleeve. “Do come along. I must see my parents and assure them that all is well.”

  Merton followed, having no objection to be pulled in her wake.

  She burst into the Rokebys’ suite without bothering to knock. Her mother had been pacing up and down while her father glowered at nothing in particular while he gnawed at his fist. At the sound of the door opening, both looked up nervously and then with unbelieving joy. Seconds later, they were entangled in a three-way embrace, while sobs of joy mingled with cries of relief.

  “Are you all right?” demanded Rokeby gruffly.

  “Are you sure you are all right?” asked Mrs. Rokeby in a higher but still husky voice.

  “I’m so sorry you were worried. We were hoping to get here before any message reached you,” said Miranda, her voice higher still, but still husky.

  Rokeby was a big man, big enough to have his arms around both his wife and his daughter. He was smiling, but tears were running down his face. Mrs. Rokeby looked very like her daughter, with a smile of joy that lit up the room. They seem to have wrapped themselves in a cocoon of love.

  Merton stood by, watching, happy for her, for all of them, but feeling a slight ache. It was envy, he supposed. Had anyone ever cared this much about him? He could remember—would always remember—the looks of horror on the faces of his family when he returned. His grandmother had been pleased, but she had never quite understood what had happened. Ashleigh had been overjoyed to see him, but a friend, no matter how close, was not the same as a family. He ought to leave, he supposed. He felt like an intruder, but he couldn’t make himself walk away.

  Finally, Miranda pulled away from her parents and came over to him. He wanted to pick her up and carry her off, but he knew he could not. She was no longer only his. She was part of this family. That realization was terrifying.

  He smiled at her, hoping she could not see his worry. He took her hand and pressed it. “I will leave now. You need to be with your family.”

  “First, I must introduce you.” She drew him over to her parents. “Papa, Mama, this is Tom—Lord Merton, with whom I shared this adventure.” She smiled nervously as he bowed politely and her parents eyed him, not quite hostile but definitely doubtful. Before any of them could speak, she continued. “I will tell you all about it, and if you don’t mind, I will ask Lord Merton to join us for dinner.”

  Mrs. Rokeby managed a polite smile, held out her hand, and said, “Of course, we will be delighted to have you join us.” Mr. Rokeby frowned, but said nothing.

  Merton took the proffered hand, bowed formally over it, and said, “Thank you. I look forward to it.”

  Miranda gave her parents a quick look and tugged Tom’s arm to lead him to the door. He opened the door to leave, but she caught his hand and said, “Tom.” When he paused, she whispered, “I love you.” He leaned over and gave her a quick, hard kiss. Then he was gone.

  She looked after him for a moment, then squared her shoulders and turned back to face her parents, who were looking at her in a combination of amazement and concern.

  “Miranda, I think some explanations are in order,” growled her father.

  Miranda tried for a bright smile and said, “Well, I have a good deal to tell you.”

  “Fanny said you had run off with Merton, and we certainly didn’t believe that,” said Mrs. Rokeby. “We know you too well to believe you would elope.”

  “Especially with an earl, of all things,” said Mr. Rokeby gruffly. “We know you’ve too much sense for that.”

  “Well,” Miranda began tentatively.

  “As for capsizing a boat,” he went on, “which this Lady Merton seemed to think might have happened, I couldn’t see you being fool enough to get in a boat with someone who couldn’t handle it, or letting him continue once you saw he couldn’t.”

  “It didn’t exactly capsize,” said Miranda.

  They looked at her, and both began talking. Mrs. Rokeby was criticizing her sister-in-law who seemed to be obsessed with elopements and Mr. Rokeby was castigating English shipbuilders who couldn’t make a boat that would float.

  At this rate, she would never be able to explain before Tom returned. “I am going to marry him!” she shouted.

  That produced silence. Her parents stared at Miranda in shock. She took a deep breath and began her story.

  It was difficult to know which piece of information distressed them most—that she wanted to marry an earl, whom she had known for only a few weeks, that someone was trying to kill said earl, or that she had nearly been killed herself. She managed to gloss over the part about spending a night in the barn, fearing that it would only complicate matters. Fortunately, the Rokebys all truly loved each other and Miranda’s parents were overjoyed to have her back after the terror they had felt when the messages arrived telling them that she had vanished. Even so, Mr. Rokeby’s fulminations on feckless aristocratic ne’er-do-wells who endanger the lives of decent young women made it difficult to calm him down, while Mrs. Rokeby kept biting her lip and shaking her head.

  After she had said “Please wait until you have a chance to talk with him” for the fourteenth time, Miranda finally made an escape by pleading exhaustion and an overwhelming desire for a bath and a nap. This turned Mrs. Rokeby into the quintessential mother hen, sending for hot water and towels, clucking about her daughter’s attire, and dismissing her husband to go about arranging for the evening’s dinner.

  Nothing had been settled, of course, even though Miranda had a few hours of respite first in a blissfully hot bath and then, wrapped in her own dressing gown, in a silent, darkened room where she was kept awake only by her own thoughts. Those, however, served quite effectively to keep sleep at bay.

  When it was time to dress for dinner, Mrs. Rokeby joined her daughter and tried her best to concentrate on hairstyles, ribbons, jewels and all the other accouterments needed to prepare for a dinner that seemed likely to be of utmost importance to her daughter. When, for the third time, she offered Miranda a scarlet ribbon to pair with her green-and-white-striped taffeta only to be met by her daughter’s look of mock horror, she gave up.

  “An earl. Really, my dear,” said Mrs. Rokeby, “are you sure you know what you are about? He is certainly a well-favored gentleman, I could see that, a very well set-up young man, but that cannot be… and I am sure it is not his title, but… I simply do not know what to say.”

  “Truly, Mama, he is much more than that. Do give him a chance. You must not take against him just because he has a title.”

  “That would not be fair, would it?” Mrs. Rokeby shook her head and frowned. “Even so, this is not at all what I would have chosen for you. I thought when we came here, you would see how narrow the world of the ton is, how limited and how limiting. Oh, Miranda dear, have you thought about it? Really thought about it? Your life will be so circumscribed. The women have nothing to do but pay visits and listen to gossip. And very ugly, vicious gossip it can be. Do anything the slightest bit outré, express any thought that is in any way original, display any sign of intelligence, and they will tear you to shreds! I know.”

  She paused, taking a breath before she continued. “I don’t mean myself, you know. It didn’t happen to me because I could always protect myself. But it is indescribably painful to see them destroying someone who does not know how to defend herself. And the men are no better. If they are not gossiping themselves, they think about nothing but hunting and gambling. You can’t imagine how tiresome it all was, and you can have no idea how happy I was to escape all of that when I married your father.”

  “No, Mama, Tom is not like that at all. He is nothing like those silly fribbles we met in London. He has nothing to do with that world, and he does not want that kind of life for himself or for me. Do give him a chance.”

  Mrs. Rokeby did not look convinced. “No matter what he says now, it will change. He will disco
ver that he needs that world, or thinks he does. Then he will expect you to behave exactly like all the other women. You will be allowed no opinions, no thoughts of your own. You won’t even be able to raise your own children. You will have to hand them over to nursemaids and governesses. And if they are boys, they will be sent off to school when they are just babies. Oh, my dear, please stop and think.”

  “Truly, Mama, Tom is not like that.”

  “Miranda, you have no idea the pressure that will be on you, that will be on him as well.”

  Miranda held her mother’s hand and let her speak. Yes, she knew there would be pressure, and not only from his aunt and grandmother, but she and Tom would be able to withstand that pressure. Her parents would see. She would have to wait, to give them an opportunity to meet Tom, to know him.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Merton could recognize that he was a bit nervous as his carriage approached Mivart’s. He told himself that any man would be nervous when he was about to face the family of the woman he loved, when he was about to ask a man for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

  He was not simply nervous. He was panicked.

  What if she had changed her mind? She was back with her family now. There was no more danger. She had no need of him to protect her. Did she need him at all? When she opened her arms to him in the barn, had it been nothing but the reaction to danger? That could happen. Had it happened to her? Was that all it was?

  But there had been something between them before that. He was sure of it. From the first time they met, there had been a bond. They had understood each other. Hadn’t they? They had talked, and even when they were not talking, he could see her across the room, they would look at each other, and he would know what she was thinking.

  Unless that was all just imagination on his part. What if she had simply been bored? After all, there she was, trapped in that silly house party with a crowd of mindless twits. What if she had spent time with him only because there was no one else? She was accustomed to dining with people like Castlereagh, who was frighteningly brilliant, even if he was also frighteningly moody. How could anyone expect her to go from that to dining with Edgar and Pamela, who were stupid and spiteful.

  He was verging on despair when he knocked on the door of the Rokebys’ suite. He had half a mind to run away, to go hide.

  A servant opened the door and from the small vestibule, he looked into the sitting room. He had not really taken it in earlier. There had been so much emotion swirling around, his as well as the Rokebys’, that he had not actually noticed the room.

  It was all polished elegance, with panels of green brocade on the walls and velvet draperies of a deeper green lavishly trimmed with gold cords at the windows. There were paintings on the walls—he would swear the one to the left was a Constable—and a wildly baroque gilded mirror. It may have been a hotel room, but it was nothing like any hotel room he had ever stayed in. A king would have felt at home here. Her family was obviously wealthy, quite possibly wealthier than his own. What did he have to offer her? A title she didn’t even want?

  He took a final step into the room and could see Miranda, sitting next to her mother on a settee with her father beside them. They all turned to look at him when the door opened, her parents considering, a bit mistrustful. Miranda looked up at him and smiled, that glorious, total smile that had all the sunshine in the world in it. She gave a little bounce as if she wanted to jump up and run to him, but Mrs. Rokeby’s hand grasped her arm so she sank back but kept smiling at him.

  Merton stood there and grinned at her. The world righted itself on its axis. She was still his sunshine girl. He just stood there staring at her while she stared back.

  Joseph Rokeby cleared his throat. Then he did so again. Finally, he did so loudly enough to break into Merton’s awareness. Merton tore his eyes away from Miranda and turned to her father.

  There were not many men who could match Joseph Rokeby in size, but Merton could. They looked at each other, eye to eye, and could easily have stood shoulder to shoulder. The older man was a bit thicker around the waist, and his brown hair was flecked with gray, though it had yet to thin. He had Miranda’s brown eyes, but surrounded by the wrinkles that come from peering into the distance at sea. He and Merton looked at each other. They were not mirror images but men made in the same mold.

  Rokeby nodded and stuck out a hand. “I understand you saved my daughter’s life,” he said gruffly. “My wife and I owe you a great deal.”

  Merton took the hand and smiled at the pressure Rokeby exerted. He returned it in equal measure and kept his eyes steady. “Miss Rokeby saved both of us,” he said. “She is as cool and courageous as she is beautiful.”

  Rokeby nodded again.

  Mrs. Rokeby then stood up and held out her hand. Merton, feeling safe from a contest of strength, bent over it with a bow. “My lord, you have our eternal gratitude,” she said.

  Merton shook his head. “You do me far too much honor.”

  “You rescued Dick Hodgson, too,” said Rokeby. “That’s more than I could do. So I thank you for that as well.”

  “Hodgson and I were in much the same plight. I could hardly get myself out and leave him behind.”

  “Some would. I can’t say I like the way it played out. I’ll not deny that it rankles, the way the claims of rank succeed where the claims of justice do not. But still, I am in your debt.”

  “I assure you. Mr. Rokeby, there is no question of debt here.”

  Miranda pushed her way into the middle of the group. “Enough,” she said. “Mama, Papa, let us take it as a given that Lord Merton is a verray parfit gentil knight. My lord, let us take it as a given that my parents are happy to see me safe and sound. Now, perhaps we could sit down and you could become better acquainted.”

  She smiled at him, and Merton lost himself in the sight of her again. He took hold of her hands and wanted so to pull her into his arms. He knew he should not do so—he was sure there was some reason why he should not—but he wanted to hold her, to kiss her. He could not stop looking into her face, into her smile, into her eyes. “Mr. Rokeby, Mrs. Rokeby, I want to marry your daughter.”

  Mrs. Rokeby tried not very successfully to cover a laugh with a cough. “Well, young man, you are nothing if not direct.”

  Miranda was still standing there smiling and staring into his eyes as if she hadn’t heard him speak.

  Rokeby scowled. “Merton, I think we should speak in private.”

  “Now, Joseph,” said Mrs. Rokeby in a warning tone.

  Miranda came to awareness and looked at her father. “Papa,” she began.

  “No,” said Rokeby. “I am sure Merton realizes we have matters to discuss and that we need to discuss them in private.” He took Merton by the arm. “We can go into my study.”

  Miranda looked as if she wanted to object, but her mother pulled her in the opposite direction.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I won’t say it can’t be done, but how many ships would be needed?” Rokeby wore a serious look, and had his hand on Merton’s shoulder as they returned to the sitting room.

  “At least four ships would be needed. That way we could have a sailing on, say, the first of every month from New York or Boston and the fifteenth of every month from London. The ships we’re building will be fast. I think that on average we can expect a trip of about twenty-two or twenty-three days eastbound, and five weeks westbound. We have to allow time for loading and refitting, of course, and there will always be storms. But I think a promise that there will be a sailing on a specific day every month, will attract not just mail and passengers but also trade.” Merton waved his arm enthusiastically. “Think of it. Cotton mills in Lancashire will know almost to the day when they will be receiving a shipment of cotton. Shops in New York will know when to expect a delivery of tea.”

  Rokeby scowled at his wife and daughter. “And a girl who decides to stay in England would know when she needs to have a letter ready for her parents back in Bo
ston.”

  Miranda ignored the scowl and flung her arms around her father’s neck. “I knew you would like him, Papa.”

  Rokeby patted his daughter on the back and looked over her shoulder at his wife, who was still looking doubtful. “He’ll do,” he said gruffly. “He may not be the man we would have chosen, but he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. He’ll do. Don’t fret, Elizabeth.”

  Mrs. Rokeby sighed. She indicated the chair near her. “Come sit with me, Lord Merton. I think perhaps it is time for us to have a chat.” When her husband seemed about to interfere, she said, “No, Joseph. You can go pour us all a glass of sherry while I talk with Miranda’s admirer here.”

  She favored Merton with a smile. It did not make him feel welcomed, but he was not about to surrender. He settled himself beside her and said, “I know this must all seem terribly sudden, and you must have many questions. Ask what you will, Mrs. Rokeby. I will answer honestly.”

  “Will you?” She leaned back and looked him full in the face. “Then tell me, if we allow our daughter to marry you, will you be faithful to her?” When his jaw dropped at that, she waved a hand dismissively. “No histrionics, if you please, no flowery pledges of devotion. It is some years since I was part of English society, but if I understand my correspondents correctly, little has changed in that regard. Noblemen still expect their wives to bear them children while they entertain themselves elsewhere, and the wives are allowed somewhat similar liberties once the succession is assured. Is that your view?”

  “Most certainly not.” Merton spit out the words. He did not think he had ever been so insulted. “There may be circles in which such behavior is accepted, but never by me.”