How to Cross a Marquess

by Jane Ashford

  “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” said Macklin.

  “Not at all. We’ll be glad of the company.” Roger turned to the footman. “Have Lord Macklin’s carriage taken to the stables,” he said. “And tell my mother and Mrs. Burke that we have a visitor.” He handed over the earl’s card to be delivered with this news. Only then did he remember his mother’s youthful romance with their guest.

  Macklin had stepped over to the east windows and was gazing out at the cliffside and the expanse of the North Sea beyond. “This coast has an austere beauty,” he said. “I haven’t been here before.”

  Roger went to stand next to him. “Yes,” he agreed. He knew some found the landscape bleak, but it was his home country and he loved it. “And some unique vulnerabilities. Denmark is there.” He pointed directly east. “A matter of five hundred miles for the invading Danes to sail. And Norway is about the same distance there.” He pointed northeast. “Once full of marauding Norsemen. That’s why Chatton is a fortification rather than an estate house. But we do have an up-to-date wing. We’ll make you comfortable, I promise.”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  “Arthur Shelton!” declared a melodious female voice.

  They turned to find Roger’s mother framed by the arched stone doorway that led to the more modern part of the castle. One hand was pressed against the bodice of her rose-colored gown. The other held Macklin’s visiting card. Her blue eyes were sparkling.

  “Of course you will remember my mother,” said Roger.

  “The dowager marchioness,” she said with a throwaway gesture, as if to show how ridiculous she found this designation. “Helena Ravelstoke that was.”

  Macklin blinked, and Roger was suddenly worried that his mother would be humiliated. He’d always accepted her tales of social success. But what if they’d been inflated in her memory?

  “Helena Ravelstoke,” repeated the earl. He moved forward, holding out his hand. When he grasped Roger’s mother’s fingers, he bowed over them in the style of an earlier age. “Mademoiselle Matchless, the toast of the ton.” Without letting go of her hand, he turned back to Roger. “She had every young sprig in London pining at her feet.”

  She retrieved her hand, but her answering smile was brilliant.

  “There were Falconhurst and Gregg.” Macklin began counting off on his fingers. “Summerford and Dawes and Wingate, and others too numerous to mention. The Prince called you delectable.” He glanced over his shoulder at Roger. “Now the Regent,” he explained.

  “My mother didn’t leave me alone with him,” replied Roger’s mother. “Papa was livid when he mentioned me in that way, but Mama was quite up to the mark. She was pretty well acquainted with the queen, you know.”

  “Didn’t Lensford compare you to Botticelli’s Venus?” Macklin said. “Or shouldn’t I mention that?”

  She laughed. “Such a shocking thing to say.” She didn’t seem at all bothered by this fact, however.

  Was that the painting with the lady on the half shell clothed only in her long hair? Roger rather thought it was. Not a proper image to describe a young lady, especially one’s mother. He banished it from his mind.

  “Many hopes were dashed when your mother accepted your father’s proposal,” Macklin said. “Lensford threatened to shoot himself.”

  “Of course he didn’t mean it,” she replied. “He was such a dramatic young man. I wonder what’s become of him.”

  “Gone to fat,” answered the earl promptly. “Lives in Somerset. Breeds prize sheep.”

  “Oh no!”

  Macklin nodded. “Married Wrenly’s daughter.”

  “I did know that. But sheep! Couldn’t it have been hunting dogs, at least? What about his poetry?”

  The earl shrugged. “He may still write it. But he never published another volume after the one that critic called ‘unmitigated bilge.’”

  “He was crushed,” said Roger’s mother sympathetically.

  “More of a sulk, I thought.” The earl smiled at her in a way that recalled a far younger man.

  She gestured. Roger could almost see a fan in her hand, extended to rap the older man’s knuckles.

  “I was among those spurned,” Macklin said to Roger. He didn’t seem particularly regretful, however. More amused and nostalgic.

  “Hardly that,” Roger’s mother replied. “And it seems to me you were courting Celia Garthington well before I married.”

  He acknowledged it with a nod as the Chatton Castle housekeeper bustled in.

  “Is Lord Macklin’s room ready, Mrs. Burke?”

  “Yes, my lady.” The housekeeper turned to Macklin. “Your valet is already above, my lord. Would you care to go up?”

  He accepted with a nod and a punctilious farewell.

  When Roger and his mother were left alone, she said, “How extraordinary that he came all this way to visit me.”

  “I don’t think… He said he was on the way to Scotland for some fishing.”

  “Well, he needed an excuse,” she replied. “But why else stop at Chatton?”

  “To see me, he said. I had dinner with him the last time I was in London.”

  “You did?”

  “I was surprised at the invitation,” Roger admitted.

  His mother looked thoughtful. “Would he go so far as to make friends with you so that he could visit here? Now that I’m a widow.”

  “Papa has been dead for more a year.”

  “Indeed. A proper period of mourning, which shows great sensitivity on Arthur’s part.”

  Roger thought she was wrong. He was pretty sure Macklin had been startled to find her here. This could grow awkward. He began to worry that he’d made a mistake in extending the invitation to stay.

  * * *

  Only a few miles away, Fenella Fairclough was also welcoming a visitor, though this one was officially expected, if not quite invited. Fenella’s eldest sister had decreed that her son would spend the summer school holiday at his grandfather’s home. Her letter had simply assumed the boy was welcome, and Fenella knew there was no arguing with Greta, not without a monumental fuss.

  The ten-year difference in their ages meant that she barely knew her sister. Greta had married at seventeen, in her first season, and produced a son and heir for her husband the following year. Two daughters had followed, and now Greta was expecting again. She’d declared that she couldn’t deal with her son under these circumstances, leaving Fenella to wonder what that meant precisely. But her father had approved the plan, and she had no reason to refuse. And so ten-year-old Sherrington Symmes had been packed into a post chaise, from which he was now descending, and sent along like a parcel into the North.

  Her nephew was thin, with a narrow face, his dark hair a bit long, falling over his forehead. His long fingers moved nervously, and something in his eyes touched Fenella. Apprehension? It was true they weren’t really acquainted. Their interactions on family visits had been fleeting. She smiled. “Hello, Sherrington. I’m your aunt Fenella.”

  “People call me John. It’s my middle name.” His voice was defiant, as if he expected objections and was ready to fight them off.

  Fenella saw no reason to make any. He’d been named after his father, who might have known better, Fenella thought. She’d found Sherrington a ponderous name when it was announced. “John,” she repeated. “Welcome to Northumberland.”

  He looked around without visible enthusiasm.

  The servant supervising the unloading of his trunks seemed old for a boy, Fenella noticed. But perhaps he was more of a tutor.

  “How far away is Scotland?” the boy asked.

  “We’re about ten miles from the border here,” Fenella replied.

  “It’s so cold in Scotland that the snakes don’t lay eggs,” he said. “They’re born alive, like mammals.”

  “Really.”


  He flushed as if he wished he could take back these words, then raised his chin as if Fenella had reprimanded him. “There aren’t any proper snakes here. Nothing like a cobra or a python. Pythons can be feet and feet long. They can crush a goat.”

  “How?”

  “They wrap their coils around them and squeeze.” John closed his hands into fists, demonstrating.

  He meant her to shudder, Fenella thought. She disappointed him. “And where do they do this crushing?”

  “What?”

  “Where do pythons live?”

  “In Asia and Africa. When I’m older, I’m going to visit my uncle in India and see the snake charmers.”

  John spoke like a boy who was often contradicted. Fenella decided then and there that she wouldn’t. “Well, we may be short on snakes, but we do have cats and dogs and horses. Do you like to ride?”

  The servant had left the carriage and was hovering behind the boy. “This is Wrayle,” John said. “He’s my minder.”

  “Now, Master Sherrington.” The man glanced at Fenella as if to enlist her in a furtive cause. “I’m afraid Master Sherrington’s health is delicate. He will require a south-facing bedchamber, with tight shutters, and a restricted diet, with hot milk at bedtime.”

  The boy seemed to deflate, like a creature resigned to oppression. He also looked as if he was made of whipcord and steel, and not the least bit delicate.

  “I’ll introduce you to our housekeeper,” said Fenella to Wrayle. “She’ll see that you have what you need.” But perhaps not everything you want, she added silently.

  He smiled like a man who had established his dominance. Fenella decided she didn’t like him. She vowed to have a talk with the housekeeper before Wrayle reached her with his list of demands.

  * * *

  Wrayle was part of the reason that Fenella took her nephew along that evening to a gathering at the house of a local baronet. Sir Cyril and Lady Prouse loved to entertain, and they didn’t let the fact that their children were all married and settled elsewhere stop them from inviting young people to gather for a bit of music and dancing. Lady Prouse said that nothing cheered her like watching youngsters enjoy themselves. In a somewhat isolated neighborhood without local assemblies, the Prouse home was a lively social hub.

  Fenella hadn’t accepted one of their invitations for a while. Caring for her father and his estate took much of her time, but the truth was she hadn’t been as active in neighborhood society since Arabella’s death. That event, and its aftermath, had cast a pall. But that was clearing, and anyhow she had John to think of now.

  The Prouses lived nearby. Their evening wouldn’t run too late, and beyond thwarting Wrayle, Fenella thought John would enjoy the jovial atmosphere. There would certainly be plenty of young people present. Not as young as he, admittedly. But she wasn’t going to mind that.

  At this point in her thought processes, Fenella realized that she wanted to go for her own sake. Gaiety had been missing from her life recently. She was ready for a dose of Lady Prouse’s shrewd good humor. And so she put on one of her favorite gowns, bundled John into the carriage, and set out for the baronet’s.

  They were among the first arrivals, but this was not an occasion for the fashionably late. Others entered soon enough, all of them friends or acquaintances. Fenella found John a comfortable perch and a plate of cakes and went to talk to her neighbors. Those who evinced an opinion seemed glad to see her. More were concentrated on their own enjoyment. A reminder, Fenella thought, not to exaggerate one’s own importance.

  A wry smile still lingered on her lips when Roger entered the spacious drawing room. She was surprised to see him. He had been mingling in society even less over this past year. But the conventional mourning period, for his wife and his father, was over. He certainly had as much right as she to attend. Fenella turned away to speak to Mrs. Cheeve, the vicar’s wife, who had also just arrived with her husband.

  The musicians in the corner struck up. Permanent employees of the Prouses, they included, as always, a piper, even though the bagpipe didn’t really fit with many of the usual dances. As well as the fact that the baronet and his wife weren’t the least bit Scottish. Fenella had asked them about this once. Sir Cyril’s gaze had gone distant as he declared, “It’s just such a magnificent sound, is it not?”

  Now, accompanied by its eerie strains, Lady Prouse bore down on Fenella, took her arm, and turned her around. “There, you two dance,” she said, pushing her toward Roger.

  Before either of them could react, she’d moved on, putting other couples together based entirely on proximity, as far as Fenella could judge. She meant nothing in particular by these pairings, except to set the dance moving.

  Facing Roger, Fenella wondered what she ought to do. They hadn’t danced together since she came back from Scotland. Their past, and then a pile of complicating circumstances, had made it unwise.

  The bagpipe shrilled, signaling a Highland reel. Fenella’s foot tapped. She wasn’t the awkward girl who’d been thrown at him five years ago. And she felt like dancing. She extended her hands.

  Roger took them. They laced their fingers together, standing very close, and then they joined the others in moving forward and back, hopping and turning in the steps of the dance.

  His hands were sure and powerful. He swung her around with practiced skill. She’d forgotten that he was a fine, athletic dancer, Fenella thought. Or, she’d just avoided thinking about it.

  They hadn’t touched in ages, certainly not since she’d returned from Scotland, and that had been best. She had no doubt about it. But before that, there had been occasions. She suddenly realized that the first of them had been here in this very room. It must be, yes, eight years ago.

  Lady Prouse had organized a dancing class to help prepare her daughter Prudence for a London season, and she’d invited all the local young people, even those like Fenella who were not remotely out. Lady Prouse had wanted enough couples to make up sets, and there weren’t a great many to choose from in the neighborhood. And so, although she was only fifteen, Fenella had wangled permission to go. She’d argued that the occasion was very informal and strictly chaperoned. Her mother had been ill at the time and had given in to her arguments. And so she’d come here, to this very spot, a pathetically gawky girl with unrealistic expectations. The draperies and furnishings looked just the same.

  And then when Lady Prouse had to leave the room to attend to some household crisis, her daughter had cajoled the musicians into playing a waltz. Many of the boys, coerced into attending by their mothers, had been longing for a way to rebel, and they added their voices to hers. The musicians were persuaded, couples quickly came together, and Roger had been somehow left out, with only Fenella unpartnered.

  He hadn’t been pleased, Fenella remembered. And he’d made no effort to hide his reluctance. But the others twitted him as a coward, or a bumpkin ignorant of the steps of the waltz. And so he had grabbed her, his arm tight around her waist, and spun her dizzily down the room. Fenella had found the dance intoxicating. She’d yielded to his masterful lead, senses swimming, until Lady Prouse returned and put a stop to their scandalous performance. “I wonder how Prudence is,” said Fenella.

  Roger looked startled, as well he might. She’d been silent through much of the reel, and now she’d come out with this. He laughed. “No one ever had a more inapt name. She’s the least prudent creature I can imagine.”

  Before he could think of that long-ago waltz, Fenella rushed on. “She married a man from Hertfordshire. The Prouses usually go to visit her down there.”

  Roger nodded. “Do you remember those tableaus she organized one Christmas? Weren’t you in one?”

  Fenella fought the blush, but it won out. Prudence had given her the part of winged Victory, to her utter delight. Even though she knew it was because she was the slightest girl and willing to perch on a tall plinth. Bu
t the diaphanous toga sort of thing she’d been draped in had turned out to be quite transparent when the banks of candles were lit for the tableaus. She’d been virtually naked, four feet above people’s heads. Her father had roared with fury.

  “Oh yes,” said Roger. A spark lit his blue eyes.

  He’d remembered. Of course he had. How could he not? “That incident gave me an enduring hatred of sarsenet,” Fenella said dryly. “I’ve never worn it since.”

  He burst out laughing, which had been her aim. The music ended. Fenella stepped away, more breathless than a bit of dancing could explain. Roger left her with a smiling bow, shifting to another partner for the next dance.

  “You and Chatton move well together,” said Lady Prouse at Fenella’s shoulder.

  Fenella turned to find a speculative gleam in her hostess’s eye. She resisted pressing her hands to her flushed cheeks. Or saying anything that might encourage matchmaking. “Have you seen my nephew?”

  “He asked about our library,” replied Lady Prouse, looking mildly disappointed at this response.

  Fenella found John among the books. He was reading one about India, and he looked tired. She gathered him up to take him home to bed—and probably face the wrath of Wrayle, but she cared very little about that.

  * * *

  The local church service on Sunday held a good deal of interest for the Chatton Castle neighborhood, which seldom received strangers. Additions to society were always welcome in this isolated corner of the country.

  The castle party itself included a distinguished older gentleman. Whispers soon identified him as an earl, and he was seen to be quite friendly with Lady Chatton, rousing a buzz of curiosity. There was also an unknown youngster at the far end of the castle pew, homely but amiable-looking. His status couldn’t be agreed upon within the limited opportunities for gossip inside the church. He did not appear the least cowed by noble company.