“Well, thank God for that!” he said lightly. “Now if you will excuse me, I have a ship to catch.”
“You’re still going to Belgium?” Diana asked. “What about Hawksley? You’ve an estate to run. And now you have your books back from Sir Robert, they will have to be inventoried and everything. Shouldn’t you oversee all that?”
“Dear Di, it’s the most annoying thing, I know. Duty is so tiresome. But I’m a soldier as well as an earl, my dear, and I have a commitment I must fulfill. Your mother has all the papers that you and Walter need, signed by me at some ungodly hour this morning, for you to wed and live happily ever after. I trust I may come back and celebrate with you. But before I can take up the reins at Hawksley, I’m promised to the Duke of Wellington for a spell. And though I’ve let this absurd business detain me for too long, I’m going now. Good day, Lady Acton.”
He stood and strode to the door. Each of them came forward to bid him farewell. Eleanor was compelled to do likewise. He caught her hand and raised it to his lips. Her heart thundered as he gently kissed her fingers.
Then he leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Marry for love, brown hen.”
And he was gone.
“Well, I’m damned,” Lady Acton said. “If your father hears you have turned down yet another eligible offer, Eleanor, you’ll be on bread and water for the rest of the summer. First Lord Ranking and now the Earl of Hawksley.”
Eleanor turned to her mother and laughed, a little unsteadily.
“Oh, fiddlesticks, Mama! Don’t you think I should wait for a suitor of the blood royal? And if that won’t do, perhaps I can hold out for a man who loves me?”
* * *
Eleanor refused to go into a decline. Her father soon relented and allowed her to attend all the social functions of the Season once again, although she would just as soon have sat at home.
Yet she dressed in her finest and waltzed and laughed as if nothing at all were wrong.
Lady Acton tactfully explained to Lord Ranking that perhaps her daughter was a little young yet, and he should allow her more time to make her decision.
“I do comprehend, my lady,” he said with a noble sniff. “Lady Eleanor is of such a delicate constitution, she must be wooed with discretion and patience. I pride myself that I am a man of the most amiable temper and tender sensibility. She shall not be distressed by my attentions, I assure you.”
Thus Eleanor had to suffer Lord Ranking’s idea of a discreet courtship, which mostly consisted of his creeping up to her at odd moments and giving her a damp but meaningful look.
* * *
If the gossips of May had been thrilled with the scandal of the trial, the news in June that the notorious Leander Campbell had been discovered to be the rightful Earl of Hawksley caused a sensation. Augusta, Dowager Countess of Hawksley, had all the papers to prove it, and Lady Acton leant her considerable influence to the cause.
A deputation was sent to Scotland to confirm the records of Mr. Campbell’s mother’s marriage to the late earl, along with the true circumstances of her death. One of the witnesses, the maid Fiona Mackay, was found still alive and she happily added her testimony to the case.
So as the summer heat took London in its dusty grip and the members of the ton began to think wistfully about leaving for their country estates, the word passed from mouth to mouth that it was true: Leander Campbell was indeed a peer of the realm. It was then generally agreed that no one had ever heard a more touching tale, and the dowagers vied with one another in declaring that they had always suspected it. Each one had secretly felt all along that Leander Campbell had all the qualities of a true aristocrat.
“Everyone else may have looked at him askance,” Lady Vane said one day in Eleanor’s hearing. “But I always knew that he was one of us. Such a noble and distinguishing bearing! And his mother was the descendant of an ancient Scottish royal lineage, so I hear.”
“Indeed. And when he returns from his duties fighting the Corsican Monster, we may be sure he’ll be looking about himself for a wife.”
At which, Eleanor started to walk away as the dowagers began to toss the names of various society beauties into the ring, only to hear one of them add: “And what about the Acton girl? Very plain, of course, but perfectly eligible to become Countess of Hawksley. Her dowry would do much to put Hawksley Park to rights. I understand the estate is much in need of repair.”
The news that Major Sir Robert St. John Crabtree had decided to sell up and move to the Colonies caused a tiny flurry of comment, but it was not so strange as to raise further question. No one in London except the Actons and the Harts knew that the major had prospered for twenty years by blackmail.
Then every other interest was supplanted. Bonaparte was on the move. The French Channel ports were closed. Almost every family had a brother or son in Brussels with Wellington. Napoleon was known to be the greatest general of the day. Would France overrun Belgium again? How many British soldiers could survive against the Emperor’s invincible Imperial Guard?
Eleanor knew nothing but agony. Major Lord Hawksley would be in the thick of it. He could be killed or maimed. She prayed fervently for his survival. Yet if he came home to England, she didn’t expect to see him privately ever again.
As Earl of Hawksley he would no doubt wed one of those ladies that the dowagers were busy gossiping over. If she wished to visit Diana and Walter at Deerfield, she would see him with a new wife. Obviously, the safest thing was to marry before he returned. Yet who was there, except Lord Ranking? No one else had shown any interest, and the Season was almost over.
Of course, if the news arrived that he would never return, it would be simple. She would never marry.
* * *
It was the hottest June in years. Thunderstorms built and broke in torrents most afternoons. London society seemed caught up in the intensity of the weather. Mrs. Boehm’s ball at Number Sixteen St. James’s Square was to be one of the finest affairs of the Season.
Eleanor wore her best ivory silk. She was determined to smile with just the right amount of kindness on Lord Ranking. Thanks to the presence of the Prince Regent, the room was packed with the most decorative members of the beau monde and no expense had been spared. Mrs. Boehm smiled with gratified triumph, certain she could declare her event a sad crush.
The first quadrille was just forming when a ripple ran through the dancers and they began to break apart to run for the windows. A crowd had poured into the square outside and the noise of shouting rose to the ballroom.
A lady turned from the window. “A carriage comes! Oh, dear God! They have some of those horrid French eagles. It is news from Belgium.”
Eleanor fought back waves of panic as a stranger in a dusty uniform burst into the room carrying two flags. He thrust his way through the crowd and knelt to lay the flags at the Prince Regent’s feet.
“Victory, sir! Victory!”
Prinny was instantly overcome. He began to weep hysterically, until one of the guests heroically dashed a glass of water into his face. With dripping chin, the future king was escorted into another room where he could read the dispatches away from the crowd.
Eleanor watched her father follow him in. She glanced around. More than one guest had broken down in tears, and everyone seemed to be leaving. Mrs. Boehm wrung her hands in despair at the ruin of her party.
“Come, dear child,” Lady Acton said calmly at her elbow. “Our illustrious Prince Regent will now drown his feelings in claret, but Lord Acton has just sent me a message from the inner sanctum. Wellington achieved a great victory south of Brussels on Sunday. Napoleon is crushed and flees back to Paris, our troops in hot pursuit. No doubt our facile friend is with them. But let us face it and find out. Casualty lists have been posted at the Horse Guards.”
Eleanor followed her mother as they joined the flock of ladies and gentlemen who jostled down the stairs and ran out into the street. No one had thought to put on a wrap or worry that the cobbles might shred their delicate eve
ning slippers.
The carriage still stood in the center of a mob of frenzied people, the horses nervously tossing their heads.
“Boney’s beat! Victory!” several voices cried. “Waterloo! Waterloo!”
Lady Acton and Eleanor were swept along in the crowd. Within minutes they reached the throng around the List of Killed and Wounded. Here and there, a sob of anguish surfaced as someone discovered the name they dreaded to find on the list, and a wife or mother or daughter had to be helped away to hide her grief.
Tears ran openly down Eleanor’s cheeks. It was Thursday, the twenty-second day of June. Lee might already have been dead for four days. Her mother grasped her hand and held it firmly as they were jostled and pushed.
At last Lady Acton was able to reach the list.
Blind with distress, Eleanor clung to her mother’s fingers.
“It’s all right,” Lady Acton said at last. “His name is not there. Our difficult new earl has survived Waterloo.”
* * *
The next day the news was more complete. For several days afterward, extra details arrived in London.
“I have never fought such a battle,” Wellington was reputed to have said. “And I trust I shall never fight such another.”
And then at last there was news of Major Lord Hawksley, who had once been plain Leander Campbell. He was mentioned in dispatches. He was now, with the rest of the army, on his way to Paris.
Eleanor was caught in the wildest turmoil of emotion. He had survived. What happened to her now was irrelevant. He was alive. He was alive.
But how could she bear it when he came home and married someone else?
Lady Acton looked up from her writing desk as her daughter came white-faced into the room several mornings later.
“I have made a decision, Mama,” Eleanor said quietly. “I shall accept Lord Ranking.”
“Shall you?” Lady Acton replied with an idle wave of her pen. “Well, your father will be pleased.”
“I think I shan’t do better,” Eleanor stammered, as her mother’s shrewd black eyes smiled into hers.
“No doubt! A duke’s son. Well, well! There seems to have been a fashion for honorable self-immolation around Town this summer, but I wouldn’t stand in the way of such a splendid match. But don’t tell Ranking or your father quite yet, will you?”
“Why not?” Eleanor asked dully.
“Because I have a letter from Richard. Helena’s confinement is expected within a few weeks, and she is finding the wait very tiresome. They would like you to visit at Acton Mead. Go down to the country for a fortnight. If you are still enamored of Lord Ranking when you come back to Town, why then, we’ll have a splendid wedding. What do you say?”
“That I would love to go, of course,” Eleanor said.
She adored Acton Mead, her brother’s home by the Thames. It had been their grandmother’s, and she had spent many happy hours there as a child. She also dearly loved Richard and Helena.
Any delay to her nuptials with Lord Ranking would be welcome, of course.
And finally, it would remove her from London when Leander Campbell came home.
Chapter 18
Helena, Lady Lenwood, was enormous. She came out to greet Eleanor with a huge smile.
“I am all belly!” she said gaily. “I did see an elephant last year, but that was before I found myself in such an interesting condition. Do you think that the impression could have lingered so long that I am about to give birth to one?”
Her happiness was so contagious that Eleanor found herself able to bury at least part of her own misery.
Acton Mead was beautiful. A riot of white roses grew over a little bower outside of Helena’s own blue drawing room, and the ladies determined to spend the July days sitting in the shade of the flowers sewing dainty little clothes for the expected heir. A cool breeze funneled around the house from the river and brought the scents of all the flower borders.
Richard was with them often, but he had an estate to run and constant business with his tenants. He was also overseeing innumerable improvement schemes, some involving his land and some in various political organizations dedicated to saving children from intolerable working conditions.
“I should think my brother would drop all this work to be with you,” Eleanor said idly one day. “Every time he goes out, it’s as if he tears out part of himself and leaves it behind.”
“Then I hope whatever he leaves in my care is returned complete and whole when he returns,” Helena said seriously. “Being apart doesn’t threaten us, you know, and marriage doesn’t diminish the fact that you’re still two separate people. Yet I suppose we carry each other’s souls in the palms of our hands, so love must allow absolute trust.”
“Which you have always shared.”
Helena gave her sister-in-law a look of genuine surprise. Then she laughed.
“Not at all, I assure you! Richard trusted me so little when we were first wed that he thought I conspired to bring about his death. No, falling in love is all very well, but real love and trust must be earned every day. I have never thought that anyone could maintain love very long in the face of unkindness or neglect, whatever passion may be shared.”
Eleanor looked down. Helena wasn’t so much older than she was, yet she seemed so calm and sure of herself.
Then she gathered her own brand of courage. “Oh, well,” she replied lightly. “With Lord Ranking, all it will take will be a mustard plaster and elderberry elixir, and he’ll be faithful for life.”
“Helena?” Richard appeared at the door to the blue room and smiled at them. “I have need of your ear for a private word. You will excuse us, sister mine?”
Eleanor offered her help as Lady Lenwood rose heavily to her feet.
As Helena entered the house, Richard put his arm around his wife’s waist and they disappeared.
Bees were buzzing in the roses above her head. Eleanor lay back and watched them. It was very ignoble to be jealous of your own brother’s wife, wasn’t it?
“Good God!” an amused voice said in her ear. “My flowers would seem to be redundant. I had no idea that you would be sitting in a veritable bower of blossom.”
Eleanor jerked upright.
He was standing under the arbor, his arms full of roses of every conceivable shade. He was unscathed, whole, and smiling, his dark hair mottled with broken sunlight, his blue eyes brilliant against his tanned skin.
The new Earl of Hawksley seemed unchanged by Waterloo, that worst of battles. How long had he been back in England? It was less than a month since Napoleon’s defeat. The Allies had only reached Paris the previous Friday. Richard had received the news that very morning, only five days later.
Had Lee come straight from France to Acton Mead?
Eleanor knew a sudden rush of hope. She could not allow herself to feel it.
He bowed and dropped the flowers over her lap and around her feet, until their fragrant beauty surrounded her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, calling on sarcasm for protection. “Is this the equivalent of Jove visiting Danaë in a shower of gold?”
Then she blushed scarlet as she realized the implication of what she had said.
He grinned. “An odd choice of comparison, brown hen. Perseus was the happy result of Jove’s visit, of course. And Danaë was willing only because it broke the monotony of her imprisonment in the brazen tower. Surely you aren’t an imprisoned princess here at Acton Mead?”
“No, a veritable gooseberry. Merely an unnecessary witness to my brother and his wife’s enchantment with each other. I thought you were in Paris, welcoming the return of King Louis. Do you visit Richard? What are the flowers for?”
He took up a dark red rose and held it to his nostrils, inhaling the heady perfume.
“I thought I was visiting you.”
“Me? Why?”
“To begin a proper courtship, of course.”
Her heart raced. “With roses?”
“Why not? The
Sultan of Persia slept on a mattress stuffed with their petals. In Kashmir, roses were scattered on the water to welcome the return of the Moghul emperor. Heliogabalus rained them onto his guests from the ceiling. Fashioned out of the body of a nymph by Chloris with the aid of Aphrodite and the three Graces, aren’t they the traditional messengers of contrition, apology, and depth of emotion? I bring red roses for true love, while you sit here beneath white ones for purity.”
“I might do better with columbines,” Eleanor said shakily.
“For folly? Whose, I wonder? Yours or mine? No, red roses will do just fine, perhaps with a sprinkling of bluebells.”
“Bluebells for constancy? Rather a red carnation.”
“Sweet gillyflowers? ‘Alas for my poor heart.’ That is their meaning, isn’t it? ‘The fairest flowers o’ the season / Are our Carnation and streak’d Gillyvors / Which some call nature’s bastards.’ Don’t make it difficult for me, brown hen. I am humbly trying to start afresh.”
“Lee, don’t, I pray!”
“Don’t what?”
He brushed petals from the seat and sat down next to her, then leaned back and closed his eyes. A sharp awareness of all that masculine strength and grace flooded Eleanor’s senses.
“I spent only two hours in London,” he continued. “But I have your father’s permission to pay you my addresses, and your mother was so bold as to wish me Godspeed. Everything is in order for a gentle and respectful courtship. However, I shan’t blame you if you spurn me without a backward thought. I have behaved with total recklessness, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Eleanor said. “I have felt positively trampled, and I’m not sure that either wine or perfume has resulted. If this is a wooing, it might take more than armloads of roses.”
He sighed. “I feared as much. Very well then, what will it take?”
Dappled light played over his face. His lashes cast broken shadows onto his cheekbones. A hint of darkness lingered on his jaw where his beard had been less closely shaved than usual. Her gaze moved to the clean line of his lips. She had the most immodest desire to press her mouth onto his.
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