“How can you speak so?” gasped his mother. Harry saw that her mind was occupied once more with thoughts of her departed husband.
“Now, mother. Don’t distress yourself. I intended no slight on any of our dear departed family. Yet it seems to me an awful inconvenience – to you much more than myself – to go through this business of dressing up in black for a man such as Charles, whom we met only once a year at most, and of whom neither of us was particularly fond.”
“Hush at once!” cried his mother, waving her hand to caution him. “You must not say such things in front of our dear Amanda.”
Harry heard the footsteps to which his mother had been alerting him. A heavy foot which struck the tiled floor with such force one would have expected a man of fine proportions to come striding through, were one not acquainted already with the Dowager Duchess of Westbourne and the strength with which she hammered home every step.
“Amanda,” Elsie greeted her tenderly. “Harry is just going out to visit Lady Hendrington. Is there anyone he ought to inquire after for you? Any news you wish him to seek?”
The Duchess threw herself onto a chair with all the dramatic weight of her position as son-less mother and widow. “Oh! Elsie! It is too dreadful! I cannot stand to hear talk of Lady Hendrington. How she can continue with garden parties when my world lies in ruins I do not know.”
“Now, now,” said Elsie soothingly. “The world is a cruel place and it keeps turning without regard to us bereaved ones and our lonely plight.”
The Duchess peeked out at Harry from underneath the hand she had flung to her forehead. “Perhaps it might revive me to hear whether Lady Hendrington’s daughter has received an offer from Lord Stanley.”
“Of course, Aunt,” said Harry, reaching for his hat. “I’ll do my best to enquire –”
“And I could perhaps stand to hear about the awful snubbing that took place at Mrs Green’s dinner last week.” The Duchess flung herself sideways onto the sofa, as if her body could no longer support its own weight. “Though naturally such frivolities can do nothing to assuage my grief!”
“Naturally, Aunt. I am so sorry –”
“Alice Eves, the younger Eves daughter, made quite a stir at the Hendringtons’ last ball. But I have not been able for the life of me to divine the details from any of my acquaintance. You must find out for me exactly what happened, nephew.” The Duchess dabbed at her eyes with a delicate handkerchief. “Though Lord knows I have no appetite for gossip since my dear son was taken from me. Indeed, I’ve no appetite for anything at all. I barely eat.”
“Oh, my poor Amanda!” cooed Harry’s mother. “I am so sorry that I did not notice your lack of appetite sooner. Let me send at once for some sweetmeats to tempt you. I am sure Cook will find something.”
“Ah!” wailed the Duchess, in a booming tone that rattled the china on the shelf. “Oh! You will send for refreshment! Why, I am nothing more than a guest in the home that once was mine! Oh, Westbourne Hall!” She reached out to stroke her hand along the panelled wall. “Oh! Say you will not cast me aside, Harry – say you meant it when you told me I was welcome to remain here till the end of my lonely days!”
“Of course you are, Aunt,” said Harry impatiently. He’d had a great deal of sympathy for the first of his aunt’s outbursts. Indeed, his concern had lasted throughout the fourth, fifth and sixth tempests of despair. But it had now become a thrice-daily occurrence for his aunt to implore his mercy, and he was beginning to regret that he had ever offered to let her stay at Westbourne at all.
The Duchess smiled through teary eyes and dabbed her cheek again with the handkerchief. “Then – I believe I might persuade myself to take a little to eat. Did you say sweetmeats, Elsie?”
“Anything you desire,” Harry’s mother promised her sincerely.
“I could perhaps manage a little cake. A few of Cook’s delicate little biscuits. Oh, Harry!” She caught him preparing to take his leave and fixed him with a stern eye. “You will not forget to ask after Mr Garret’s father. He was taken very ill and I have not been able to discover how. The entire circumstance had the whiff of a scandal, and I must know what’s behind it!”
Harry bowed silently. He had promised his mother, after all – in their hour of good fortune they would do anything to assist his aunt in her time of need.
Even dredging up every wretched piece of gossip that Westbourne and its surroundings had to offer.
CHAPTER THREE
Was there anything in the world so delightful, reflected Catherine Sharp as she skipped across the stepping stones in the river, as being out of doors in the springtime? To breathe fresh warm air that carried the scent of budding flowers – to witness the first tremulous steps of the lambs as they discovered their surroundings – to see the sun finally brightening the rolling fields after the long grey of winter – ah! Truly there was no more pleasant place the world over than England in the spring.
She was but part-mindful of the position of the sun as she tripped her merry way down the hill towards the little cottage belonging to her sister, Agnes, and her husband Mr Blakely. The fact that it was gone noon, and that the family had a pressing engagement at Lady Hendrington’s garden party that they could ill afford to ignore, made very little impact on Catherine’s cheerful spirits and independent stride. She arrived in the house to find her two sisters waiting for her impatiently, already dressed for fine company.
“Have you been outside all this time without even a bonnet?” demanded Agnes, quite distressed to see the lively colour in her sister’s cheeks.
“Look at her dress,” said Alice, the youngest of the Sharp sisters. “It is quite covered over in mud. She can never be introduced to Lady Hendrington wearing such clothes, I’m sure.”
“I don’t intend to be,” answered Catherine gaily. Even her sisters’ disapproval was not enough to overcome the delightful sensations afforded by her morning’s walk.
“Then run upstairs and change quickly,” Agnes urged her. “I will not have us arrive late! Lady Hendrington may take offence.”
“It is not Lady Hendrington who ought to raise Catherine’s concern,” Alice pointed out, with a sly smile. Catherine felt her good cheer begin to wilt.
“And who, pray, ought I to be concerned about pleasing today – if not myself, whom I aim to please first on every occasion?”
“Cathy! How can you talk so foolishly? You know that Mr Hinton will most certainly be there today. You are wasting valuable time now by standing here and dripping mud all over my floor. Get yourself upstairs and dress sensibly, Catherine, with a mind that Mr Hinton has a taste for the colour blue.” As she spoke, Agnes flapped her hands at Catherine as if she were a chicken which had escaped into the yard, shooing her away up the stairs.
“Poo! Mr Hinton! What care I if he likes blue, yellow, or any other colour?”
“You shall certainly care once he has made you an offer,” answered Agnes sternly. “I should think, Catherine, that in your position I would have more of a mind to –’
“You would have a mind to his seven thousand a year,” said Catherine tartly. “Indeed that seems all you have a mind for of late – you and Alice both. I wish you had any mind to spare for me, and my thoughts on the matter!”
“Seven thousand a year is not to be sniffed at,” said Agnes, following her up the stairs and speaking close to her ear that Alice might not overhear them. “Mr Hinton may be old, he may be dull, but in our position, Catherine… Only think of what it might mean for Alice, if you were to make such a match! Consider her before yourself. Consider me, and the tender concern I have for your future. When you are married to Mr Hinton I shall be able to rest easy, knowing that my dear sister is taken care of.”
“I notice you had no such concern for either Alice or myself when you married Mr Blakely,” said Catherine. Under less provocation she would not have dreamed of mentioning her sister’s impecunious situation, but Agnes had married for love and Catherine felt the injustice keenly.
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“Listen to me well,” said Agnes in a low tone. “Not a day goes by that I do not regret that I was unable to render my sisters a better connection by way of my marriage. Believe me, Cathy. If our positions were reversed, and if I were the one with hopes of a Mr Hinton – well, you should soon see how my old convictions about love and happiness would be cast aside!”
Catherine gripped her sister’s hand, concerned. “But you and Mr Blakely are quite happy together – are you not, Agnes? Say that you are.”
“The greatest happiness one can achieve is that of security,” Agnes insisted, glancing first behind her to see that her husband had not come near. “Mr Blakely and I have each other – and that is all that we shall ever have. For the rest, we must struggle. I will not have my sister fall into the same difficult position while she has the opportunity of a Mr Hinton and his seven thousand a year!”
Feeling chastened, Catherine went into her little room to change out of her mud-stained skirts.
Mr Hinton, indeed, was no great villain. In fact, he was not much of anything – neither particularly handsome, nor interesting, nor skilled beyond the usual way at conversation or riding or even playing at cards. He was tall enough, had good enough teeth, all his own hair of a sandy blond colour long since run through with grey – and that was all that could be said for him. Beyond, of course, the subject of his fortune, which was ample.
Catherine did not know whether to curse the day he had formed an interest in her, or to bless her good fortune.
A woman of three-and-twenty, she reminded herself as she fastened her bonnet, had too many failed Seasons behind her to behave snobbishly when a man such as Hinton made her an offer. She must take her chances as they came, and be grateful for them.
Still, the thought of Mrs Catherine Hinton was a heavy one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lady Hendrington’s home was a very fine property with a stern and forbidding aspect overlooking grounds of most exceptional beauty. As they came up the drive in the landau, Catherine was charmed into silence by the view of the woodlands breaking into spring leaf, the hills with sides meant for running down in summer, and the little silvery lake.
She was less enchanted by the stuffy formality of Lady Hendrington’s garden, where the ladies sat and clutched their pelisses tightly, more than one of them wishing she had brought a shawl. Lady Hendrington herself was a very fine woman who saw that her guests were well-supplied with tea and sundries and had no more care for them than that. She did not herself appear to feel the cold. Indeed, there was something of the icicle in her steel-grey hair and the sharp blue eyes which peered coolly over the assorted company.
Lady Hendrington’s daughter, Christine, was thankfully the complete opposite of her icy mother. Warm, round-figured, and delighted with everyone she set eyes on, Miss Hendrington immediately took the two younger Sharp sisters into her confidence regarding every piece of gossip she could think of to tell them.
“You won’t have heard,” she whispered, leaning towards Catherine with a conspiratorial eye, “but we are expecting some great entertainment by way of company today. The new Duke of Westbourne is to join us! By all accounts he is the most fearful rake – but I think he’s rather handsome! It’s always a pleasant party when the Duke stops by.”
“The Duke of Westbourne?” Catherine remembered a vague connection on the part of her father’s old friend, Michael Marsden. She had not heard anything of a new Duke. The Sharps and the Marsdens had been very dear friends in the past, but since old Mr Marsden’s decline into drunkenness her father had made certain that his daughters were regularly engaged elsewhere whenever he went to visit his friend.
“I simply cannot wait for you to see him,” sighed Miss Hendrington, her brown ringlets bobbing merrily. “In my eyes – nay, in the eyes of all the ladies here – there is simply no handsomer man in England.”
“And a rake, you say?” asked Alice pointedly.
“Oh, notoriously so, since the death of his wife. He has behaved extremely ill.” A certain sparkle in Miss Hendrington’s eyes indicated to her new friends that she was not at all alarmed by whatever reports she’d heard of the Duke’s behaviour. “He will flirt with you, ladies. You must be on your guard!”
“Catherine has no need to guard herself,” said Alice with a wink. “She has eyes for only one –”
Catherine rose up abruptly. “May I fetch you any more cake, ladies? I am going to the table.”
Chastised, Alice fell silent. Miss Hendrington’s nose for gossip would go unsatisfied this once.
Thus it was that Catherine was standing alone near the refreshments, an attractive blush of embarrassment not yet faded from her cheeks, when the Duke of Westbourne appeared in the garden.
In the years since Catherine had set eyes on Harry he had become a very fine figure of a man. His shoulders, always pleasingly broad, were now filled with a manly power that spoke of his energetic lifestyle. His face had taken on a self-conscious sternness, in keeping with his new position and with the tragedies which had lately beset his family, and it only served to highlight the sculptural cut of his sharp cheekbones and his strong jaw. His hair was thick and unruly, as dark as midnight, and seemed to invite the caress of a loving hand.
But it was his eyes which fixed Catherine most potently. A ravenous gaze which took in her entire figure at once and yet which seemed to pin her at the heart – a spark of hunger rising from the depths of that thrilling blue.
She had never seen such eyes before – and she had known Harry, known him intimately since their earliest childhood. From where did such a gaze spring into being? How had she never seen it before?
Catherine was quite frozen in shock at the sight of an old friend she had not seen these past six years. Still more confusion was added to her state of bewilderment when she heard him introduced as none other than the Duke of Westbourne!
Harry was not as she remembered him. He was every piece a Duke. He bowed to the company with a roguish smile and immediately made his way towards her.
“Can it really be my old friend Miss Sharp?” he asked. The upward curl of his lip left her all disconcerted: she knew not whether he laughed at her or invited her to join in with some unknowable jest.
“Your Grace,” she answered politely. Such a strange title for her friend to bear! She almost believed she was the butt of a cruel trick perpetrated for unknown reasons by Lady Hendrington and her guests.
By his expression, the sound of his title was equally unpleasing to Harry’s ears. “Miss Sharp, are we grown so distant from one another? I’ve no desire to hear Your Grace on your lips. You must call me Westbourne.”
Catherine was so startled that she very nearly embarrassed herself by spilling tea over the lovely white dress she had put on at her sisters’ behest. “Your Grace, I fear –”
“Ah. Forgive me, Miss Sharp.” Yet the roguish light in his eyes asked no forgiveness. “We are not as we were. You are quite right.”
He helped himself to tea and to a vast quantity of cakes and biscuits. Catherine noticed the eyes of all the ladies – particularly those of Miss Hendrington – followed his movements about from place to place.
Harry had an easy manner which charmed those who did not know him and enchanted those who did. Within a few moments he had several ladies giggling behind their hands with a witty tale of his adventures on the hunt the previous week. Catherine was very glad that he had moved away from her. She did not quite know how to take this new, elevated version of her childhood companion.
To hide her confusion, she walked a little distance from the party on the pretext of examining one of Lady Hendrington’s rosebushes. Her scheme bore ill fruit, however, when the red-cheeked face of none other than Mr Hinton appeared at her shoulder, keen to take advantage of their moment aside from the company.
“Good day, Miss Sharp,” he rasped, with his scratchy voice caught partway between a wheeze and a cough. Mr Hinton was overfond of cheroots, and the scent overpowered anyon
e unfortunate enough to come within speaking distance of him.
“Good day, Mr Hinton,” answered Catherine politely. Her heart immediately began to hammer in her chest. She had not yet decided what to do about Mr Hinton. Her father, she knew, had sent her to stay with Agnes precisely for the purpose of catching a fine husband. The memory of her conversation with her sister rang loud in her ears. It was as if a prophetic bird were spiralling through the air around her head, continuously chirping Seven thousand a year! Seven thousand a year!
Mr Hinton was the best prospect Catherine had met with in her many seasons, if only in terms of money. His balding head and scarlet-tipped nose, his portly figure, and his continual wheeze did nothing to render him attractive by any other count. Each time he spoke to her, with his intentions obvious in the solicitous nature of his attentions, Catherine felt herself trembling at the edge of a steep precipice down which she had no choice but to eventually fall.
How she wished he would forget her! Then the decision would be entirely out of her hands.
“I can’t abide these blasted plants springing up everywhere,” complained Mr Hinton, blissfully unaware of the complex beauty Catherine had lately been pondering in the petals of the rose. “Springtime gives me a permanent head-cold. Much nicer to be indoors on a day like this, eh?”
“Indeed,” said Catherine, though she could not agree with him. She knew not what else to say to a man whose opinions ran so firmly contrary to her own. She could not disagree with him, of course; she was honour-bound for Alice’s sake to please him.
“Lady Hendrington has a very fine collection of sculptures,” Mr Hinton continued, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and using it to dab his rheumy eyes. “Perhaps you might be interested in asking her for a tour of the house, Miss Sharp? We might take in a little art together. Your sister Mrs Blakely, of course, can accompany us if her Ladyship is unwilling.”
The Duke Suggests a Scandal Page 2
