A Marriage Arranged

by Mira Stables

Her rather sombre expression lightened. “Now that I have actually come to enjoy. I daresay you are aware that most females like dressing up. And while I do not wholly enter into Papa’s infatuation with the things of yester year, I am very fond of history and interested in the people who made it. My life here has been very restricted. I enjoy my play-acting—entirely in my own mind, you understand—imagining myself as one or other of the characters whose dresses I wear.”

  He nodded, thoughtfully. “But since the possibility of marriage arose, you have realised that it might introduce you into a real world that is full of interest and opportunity.”

  “Precisely so, milord.” For the first time she seemed to falter a little. Then put up her chin and said, with a hint of defiance, “But only upon certain conditions.”

  Julian was aware of annoyance. Nothing in the lady’s remarks had indicated any appreciation of the honour that he did her in offering marriage to a female of dubious parentage. He had accepted without resentment the implication that he in no way measured up to the paragon of her girlish dreams. But that she should set conditions upon her capitulation was a little too much. He said silkily, “And they are?”

  Miss Morley was not insensitive. She said quietly, “I have been clumsy and have made you cross. But if there is to be any thought of marriage between us, surely it must be founded on honesty? Perhaps I should not have spoken of ‘conditions’. The word seems to carry an unpleasant taint of blackmail. Let us rather say that if you still deign to honour me with an offer of marriage, I shall beg your understanding and your forbearance.”

  “And the ‘conditions’ will still be the same,” returned his lordship drily.

  There was a soft chuckle for that. “There is small point in dissembling,” admitted the lady, “but if you will hear me out I doubt if you will think them too onerous.”

  He bowed rather stiffly and invited her to proceed.

  She said bluntly, “As I apprehend the matter, your main reason for even considering Papa’s suggestion was the fact that by marrying me you would eventually regain possession of your family estates. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that you will be wanting an heir to succeed to those same estates. I see no objection to this and am perfectly willing to play my part in achieving it. In fact, having been an only child myself, I have always thought it would be very pleasant to have quite a large family. But first I would like a few months—a year, perhaps—of freedom.”

  She seemed to hesitate for a moment, and it was with some constraint that she went on, “I daresay that seems to you an odd kind of notion. You already know that I spent a season in Town with Aunt Sarah when I was eighteen. It was perfectly dreadful. I was gauche and clumsy—and even fatter than I am now. Only just out of the schoolroom where Papa had directed my studies, I had no more sense than to enthuse about the sort of things that interested him, which must have made me a shocking bore to most of the gentlemen that I met. Not that I cared a pin for any of them but it is dreadfully lowering to realise that one is a complete failure when all the other girls seem to be pretty and amusing and able to attach any number of beaux without the least effort. Moreover, though this I could not explain to Papa, Aunt Sarah moved only on the fringes of society. She could take me to the Opera and point out the various notables but she did not mix with them, while as for obtaining vouchers for Almack’s I might as well have expected her to frank me through the pearly gates. I have never forgotten it, nor the bitter tears I shed as Aunt Sarah’s disappointment became more and more obvious. You may laugh at me if you choose, but ever since then I have cherished a burning ambition to go back and—and show them,” she finished, on a note of childish fury.

  Julian, who had listened to this woeful recital with mild sympathy, said pleasantly, “I shall certainly not laugh at you. In fact I salute your courage in wishing to return to the scene of so much humiliation in order to resume battle. But I cannot see why your very understandable ambition should affect your views on marriage.”

  “I don’t really wish to be married at all,” she explained. And then added hastily, “Though I am sure you would be a very creditable sort of husband. The thing is that I don’t want to be bothered with any sort of husband and certainly not with a baby until I have—have—oh! spread my wings, I suppose. But I can see that it is the only way in which I can hope to escape from Papa’s loving tyranny without hurting him.”

  Julian digested this portion of humble pie with the best grace he could muster. At least, he thought, with a flash of humour, marriage to this young woman would not be quite the dull, bread and butter affair that he had imagined.

  “You had better explain to me more precisely what you mean by ‘freedom’,” he said. The remark was not without malice. She had certainly not spared his feelings. He would see how she dealt with that home thrust.

  She dealt very capably. No doubt she had thought it out beforehand he decided, between resentment and admiration. She said, “I mean that for a few months we should share a roof but not a bed.” There she paused for a moment, and when she went on her manner was far less assured. “In such circumstances I suppose I ought to add that I would not take exception to your—your—er—amusements. I would certainly have no right to do so. Only I cannot help hoping that they would not be so blatant as to make me a laughing stock.”

  She was so serious about it that he was hard put to it not to laugh. It was an intriguing mixture of good sense, naïvety and fair dealing that he was proposing to take to wife! He said solemnly, “I will endeavour to keep my baser instincts within bounds.”

  Her expression brightened. “Then there is just one more thing,” she told him.

  He groaned aloud, but the suppressed laughter in his face apparently reassured her. She said slowly, “I know that you love Wellasford dearly. And nothing would please my father better than to have us make our home here with him. But when—if—we marry, you will take me away, won’t you? At least for a time. You must see that it would be impossible to maintain the pretence of being properly married under his watchful eye. Besides, I know exactly what I want to do as soon as I am free, and that would be even more impossible.”

  “And what do you intend to do?” he enquired quizzically.

  She twinkled back at him but shook her head. “That I shall not tell you, milord. I do not think that you will disapprove, but you might unwittingly betray me to my father. And after all, I have not yet promised to obey.”

  He looked dubious. “I could not support you in anything that would earn your father’s serious disapproval,” he said soberly.

  She was swift to understand. “Of course you could not. Just trivial things like not drinking milk and eating up my pudding,” she placated.

  Julian felt a twinge of pity. Poor child! Such petty regulations should have been left behind in nursery days. “Very well,” he conceded. “And if you mean to make a stir in fashionable circles you will want to do a deal of shopping. We had best hire a house in Town for the time being. Later on, perhaps, we might buy one.”

  “An excellent idea. Though if you have no objection I would prefer to spend the first few weeks with my old governess. She is now retired, but she was always used to enter into my feelings about the amount of food that I was obliged to eat. You will readily appreciate that I would prefer to make my second début in a slightly less imposing shape.”

  “Provided you take no foolish risks with your health—yes.”

  She chuckled. “That I can safely promise. I have a very healthy appetite. You will not find me subscribing to such ridiculous reducing diets as those that recommend drinking vinegar and eating only dry biscuits. But I do believe that strict moderation—and little of the detested milk—will have a beneficial effect.”

  He was rather doubtful about the practicability of this part of her scheme, pointing out that her father was often in Town on business and would think it very odd if she was away from home every time that he called, but she shrugged off this very reasonable objection. Surel
y he was capable of inventing a credible excuse if it became necessary? But it wouldn’t. Papa could be trusted not to intrude upon people so newly wed unless actually invited to do so. When he still demurred at what seemed to him an unnecessary complication in a business that was already awkward enough, she said simply, “I shall be beginning a new life. I do not want anyone to see me as I am now. Not the servants in the fine house that you are going to hire, not your friends, not even you.”

  He laughed till he choked and had to be patted on the back before he could explain that it was his own lowly place in this hierarchy that was so funny, and that he would not permit her to lower his crest still further by explaining what she had really meant. “For you have a wonderful knack of administering a handsome set-down in the guise of kindly explanation,” he told her.

  Somehow, although the question had neither been asked nor answered, it seemed to be mutually understood that the marriage was acceptable to both the contracting parties.

  Chapter Five

  Except for the need to find a suitable Town house there was no particular reason for delay. In fact the three people most concerned were agreed that the sooner the business was settled, the better. It would be a quiet ceremony, both bride and groom being singularly devoid of close relations. Julian rather thought he had some distant cousins in the north of England. At least he could remember Mama saying that they lived in Alnwick because his fancy had been caught by her descriptions of the ancient castle. But since that was twenty years ago and he had never actually met the cousins he did not feel it incumbent upon him to invite them to his wedding. The bride’s uncle and aunt must naturally be invited and their fourteen-year-old daughter would be overjoyed to act as bride’s maiden, but Julian found himself in something of a difficulty over finding a groomsman. Newly returned to England he had not yet had time to pick up the threads of old friendships.

  This was a problem that was still unsolved when he set out for London on his house hunting expedition, armed with a good deal of advice from his prospective father-in-law as to the choice of a suitable locality. Julian had pokered up a trifle when Mr. Morley had started to express his views on this head, but he soon discovered that the speaker did not care a pin for fashion and was concerned only with the health-giving aspects of certain neighbourhoods as opposed to the insidious dangers of others. He listened patiently to a long dissertation on the fever-breeding miasmas that were inevitably associated with low-lying land, and was aware of a growing sympathy with his bride’s rebellion against her father’s preoccupation with matters of health and nutrition, however sensible and well-intentioned his advice.

  He reached London just as dusk was falling and repaired to Fenton’s Hotel, where he dined early and settled down in the coffee room with a pile of newspapers to study the descriptions of the several commodious and elegantly furnished houses whose owners were prepared to hire them to carefully selected tenants at exorbitant prices. None of them was precisely what he wanted, and he had a strong suspicion that in some cases the descriptions were deliberately misleading. He was just deciding that it might be best to employ an agent in the task when he heard his name spoken and looked up to see a sturdy, pleasant-faced young man regarding him with the half doubtful smile of one who is not wholly sure of his recognition.

  “You don’t remember me. John Merridew. But surely I am not mistaken. It is Julian Wellasford?”

  Julian sprang up with an exclamation of pleasure. “It is indeed. Why, Johnnie! Small wonder that I did not recognise you. You were no more than a scrubby schoolboy when last we met. What is it? Ten years? Twelve? But come. We must crack a bottle on this, and you must tell me all the family news. I most sincerely trust that you have no pressing engagement for tonight.”

  Mr. Merridew had no engagement. His diffidence vanishing in face of Julian’s patent delight in the chance meeting, he confided that he had only come up to Town to give Caro a hand. “You’ll remember m’sister, Caroline? ’Bout your age, ain’t she? Married out of the schoolroom as they say, and her husband died a year ago, soon after Papa. Just has the one boy. Thing is she’s decided to let her Town house and move into a smaller place. Says she wants to hold household for the boy’s sake, though I must say I can’t see why—But so it is,” he broke off awkwardly.

  As a matter of fact he understood his sister’s motives pretty well. If she stayed in the Portman Square house she could scarcely shuffle off all the responsibility for twin sisters and for the small brother whose belated arrival into the Merridew family had robbed them of their mother. Roy could be sent to school, but Phyllida and Chloe, approaching seventeen and quite deliriously pretty would be very much in the way. When they had paid her a brief visit during the summer, Caro had realised at once that their youth and freshness made her own frail, wistful beauty appear strained and faded. Stupid people might even enquire if they were her daughters—and at thirty-two it was just barely possible, though naturally she never admitted to her actual age. Yet she could not openly deny them the shelter of her roof. It would sort ill with a carefully cultivated reputation for sweetness and self sacrifice. Much better to let the Portman Square house, though she would sadly miss its spacious comfort. The tiny house in North Audley Street could only just accommodate a pathetically brave widow who was striving to do her best for her child. People would simply suppose that Sir Marmaduke’s debts had been heavier than expected, and no one would ask her to house two growing girls and a young brother in that doll’s house.

  Yes. An astute creature, his sister Caro, decided Johnnie tolerantly. No harm done, really. The twins and Roy could very well spend another year in Devonshire with Aunt Maria, who adored them all. The girls would be disappointed but they were really far too young to be introduced into the sophisticated circles that Caro favoured. He could not help admiring his sister’s tactics, however selfish, and the effortless ease with which she manipulated circumstances so that she actually appeared to be their victim. But naturally family loyalty forbade him to share these opinions with Julian. He said only that his sister had decided that a smaller house would be perfectly adequate to her simple needs—never dreaming how carefully that choice phrase had been instilled into his memory by that sister’s careful and painstaking repetition—and what with Portman Square all swept and garnished for inspection by would-be tenants, North Audley Street too small for comfort, and his sister, in any case, gone to a theatre party with friends, he had decided to seek refuge at Fenton’s.

  They then indulged in the nostalgic pleasures of ‘Do you remember?’ interspersed with brief reports on the present employment and marital status of the Merridew family and such of the Rectory children as came within Johnnie’s orbit. It was a delicate business because Julian knew that the Merridews had been as poverty-pinched as the Wellasfords. Johnnie’s parents had been a pair of charming scatterbrains, and the production of eight children, all of whom had survived infancy, must have put a severe strain on the family resources. However, it emerged that all five of the older children were comfortably established. Johnnie himself had a good post as bailiff for a wealthy city merchant who had retired from business and purchased a vast but sadly run-down country estate.

  “A decent sort of fellow,” was Johnnie’s view. “As ignorant of good farming practice as a day-old pup, but has the sense to know it. What he wanted was a man he could rely on to do the job for him. No expense spared where the land is concerned, pays me a generous salary and is very reasonable over my taking time off on such occasions as the present. Suits me nicely. I was never bookish so there was no hope of my going into the Church, like Paul, or the Law, like Sammy.” He grinned suddenly. “What old Satterthwaite—my employer—really wanted was a chap who was just stupid enough to be honest. We get on splendidly.”

  Johnnie might not be bookish but he seemed to be a shrewd judge of men, thought Julian appreciatively. And presently it transpired that he owed his present position to the good offices of Mr. Morley.

  “He bought Combe Hou
se, y’know, after Mama died, and paid a very fair price for it. My father had lost all interest—completely broken up. Only too anxious to get away from the place. He took the twins and Roy and went off to Devonshire to Aunt Maria. Well—what else could he do, and Roy just a babe, and puny at that? But it put the rest of us in a bit of a fix. Sammy and me, any way. And it was Mr. Morley that helped us both out. Which he had no call to do. I daresay you’re at outs with him, snapping up Wellasford when your Papa played wily beguiled—but no matter. You’ll have to forgive me—I never could run mute. What I’m trying to say is that Nathaniel Morley’s a good sort. I owe him a lot—and I’ll not forget it.”

  He fell silent for a moment, contemplating the virtues of the absent Mr. Morley, then remembered that Julian had small cause to love the gentleman who had taken over his beloved Wellasford and went on to speak of other members of his family. Mr. Morley was discreetly banished.

  Julian was quite surprised at his own sense of satisfaction, evoked by Johnnie’s praise of his future father-in-law. It was pleasant to have his own growing liking for the older man so amply supported by someone who knew nothing of the terms on which they stood, but for some odd reason it made it rather awkward to speak openly of his present plans. When Johnnie, having exhausted his own news budget, enquired what Julian was doing now and how long he was fixed in Town, he hedged slightly, saying that his present object was to find a place to live.

  Johnnie promptly embarked on a list of bachelor apartments, snug little pieds-à-terre, possibly the Albany, if the dibs were in tune, though there one might have to wait for a vacancy.

  Julian was obliged to break across this helpful discourse, explaining that he had something rather more commodious in mind, which caused his friend to regard him with a suddenly speculative eye.

  “H’m. Something larger. How much larger? What I mean is, know you’re not married nor even promised. Can’t think how I know, but I do. Daresay someone was talking about you being back in England.” A sudden notion struck him. He said cheerfully, “If you’re thinking of setting up some charming little barque of frailty in a discreet establishment, then Hans Town is your place, or perhaps Bloomsbury or Pimlico. Was you thinking of buying or renting? If you buy I’d advise you to keep your own hands on the deeds. Some of these little ladies, you know, have surprisingly acquisitive instincts.”