A Desirable Husband

by Mary Nichols

  ‘Bear it in mind if you meet other men who smile at you.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure I shall not be tempted by other men.’

  He looked sideways at her and decided not to comment. ‘What else did you do yesterday?’

  ‘Shopped for clothes. I think Rowan must be very rich because Rosemary did not once query the price of anything. It is all very extravagant and I feel dreadful.’

  ‘Because of the extravagance?’

  ‘Not only that, but because Lucy gave me all those lovely clothes and I shall not wear them.’ She brightened suddenly. ‘I will wear the riding habit though, if you will take me riding. You did mean it, didn’t you?’ There was a new forest-green habit, among the clothes being made for her, but that had not yet arrived.

  ‘Yes, but it will have to be this morning. I have an appointment this afternoon and tomorrow I must go home and leave you.’

  Rosemary entered the room and bade them both good morning before helping herself to some breakfast and sitting at the table opposite Esme.

  ‘Myles is going to hire hacks and take me riding this morning,’ Esme told her. ‘Shall you come? We are going as soon as I have changed and Myles has arranged for the horses.’

  Rosemary, who had been denied the use of the carriage that day, agreed that a ride would be just the thing to blow away the cobwebs and asked Myles to instruct a groom at the mews to saddle her horse, then both ladies finished their breakfast and went to change.

  Esme came downstairs half an hour later in Lucy’s riding habit, a dark blue taffeta with military style frogging across the jacket. The matching skirt was plain and the hat was a blue tricorne, with the brim held up one side by a curling peacock feather. Rosemary joined her five minutes later and by that time Myles had returned, riding a huge mount and leading two others, one Rosemary’s own horse and another for Esme.

  They mounted and set off, entering Hyde Park by a gate close to Knightsbridge barracks, and were soon riding down Rotten Row.

  ‘I suppose we shall be denied this pleasure when they start building the Exhibition hall,’ Rosemary said.

  ‘Possibly,’ Myles agreed. ‘The details have yet to be worked out.’

  ‘Well, I think it is too bad. It is so handy for me if I want to ride or come out in the carriage and it will all be spoiled. I am disappointed in you, Myles, really, I am.’

  ‘It is not my project, ma’am.’

  ‘You support it. I should have thought you would have had more family feeling.’

  ‘My feelings for the family have not changed. I support the idea of an exhibition because I think it will be good for the country and good for the working man.’

  ‘You will give him ideas above his station. There will be unrest and violence, fuelled by all the foreigners roaming about with nothing to do but cause trouble. Indeed, Rowan thinks…’

  ‘Oh, please, do not argue over it,’ Esme put in. ‘It is too nice a day to be at odds with each other.’ She looked about for a way of diverting them. ‘Oh, look, there’s that gentleman we saw yesterday.’

  ‘What gentleman?’ her sister asked.

  ‘That one.’ She lifted her crop to point him out. The young man, dressed in a single-breasted brown wool jacket and matching trousers, was busy as he had been the day before, sketching and making notes.

  ‘Oh, no. I do believe he does it on purpose.’

  Felix looked up and, catching sight of them with Myles, stood watching them approach.

  ‘Do you know him?’ Myles asked.

  ‘No, we do not,’ Rosemary said sharply. ‘But he is insufferably impudent. He seems to think he can smile and doff his hat and that is as good as an introduction.’

  ‘Oh, in that case, let me do the honours.’ Myles drew rein beside Felix and the two ladies had perforce to stop beside him. ‘My lady, may I present Lord Felix Pendlebury? Pendlebury, Viscountess Trent. And this…’ He turned to Esme with a twinkle in his eye, which told her he had connected her question earlier that morning with Rosemary’s comment about smiling and doffing hats. ‘This is Lady Trent’s sister, Lady Esme Vernley.’

  ‘Ladies, your obedient.’ Felix bowed to each in turn.

  Rosemary’s slight inclination of the head was the smallest she could manage without snubbing him, which she could not do, since he had now been properly introduced.

  ‘Oh, it is so nice to have a name for you, my lord,’ Esme said. ‘What are you drawing?’ She indicated his sketching pad.

  ‘It is an imaginary scene, my lady.’ He proffered her the pad, which she took.

  ‘And you have put us in it. Look, Rosemary, there’s you and there’s me.’ She held it out for her sister to see, but Rosemary hardly glanced at it.

  ‘If it is meant to be us, then I think it is an impertinence.’

  ‘None was meant, my lady,’ he said. ‘I was simply drawing what I thought the scene might look like when the Exhibition building is completed.’

  ‘I like it,’ Esme said, handing it back to him. Their hands touched as he took it from her and she found herself tingling all over from the shock of the contact. But it was far from an unpleasant feeling and she wondered if he felt it, too. He was looking up at her in such a strange way, his eyes moving over her face, as if he were studying her features, trying to memorise them. She found that that was what she was doing to him, storing up a picture of his lean face, high cheek bones, the well-defined brows, green eyes with their little flecks of brown, his smiling mouth, his proud chin held above a purple silk cravat. Was he teasing her? Did she mind? She did not.

  ‘I did not know you knew Myles,’ she said.

  ‘We met last night at the banquet and found we had much in common.’

  ‘He tells me it was a great success. Did you find it so?’ She ignored Rosie’s fidgeting beside her.

  ‘Indeed, I believe it was.’

  ‘Did you come to town especially for it?’

  ‘No, I have other business and visits I must make on behalf of my mother.’

  ‘Then perhaps we shall come across each other again. I am here to visit my sister for the summer—’

  ‘Esme!’ Rosemary’s tone was furious. ‘I am sure Lord Pendlebury does not wish to know that.’

  ‘On the contrary, my lady, I am delighted to hear it,’ he said. ‘Since my father’s death brought me back from the Continent two years ago, I have been kept busy at home in Birmingham and have sadly lost touch with the beau monde; I shall be glad to see someone I know.’

  ‘The horses are becoming restive,’ Rosemary said. ‘Come, Esme, it is time we resumed our ride.’

  ‘Then I bid you au revoir, ladies.’ As they moved off, he turned to Myles, who had watched the exchange with some amusement. ‘Until this afternoon, Moorcroft. Two o’clock we said, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes, two o’clock,’ Myles answered and hurried to catch up with his sisters-in-law.

  ‘Esme, your behaviour has put me to the blush,’ Rosemary was saying. ‘You were openly flirting with the man and we have no idea who he is or anything about him. I am ashamed of you.’

  ‘Why, what did I do wrong?’

  ‘Telling him you were here for the summer and hoped to meet him again. I never heard anything so brazen. You would have been asking him to call on us if I had not stopped you.’

  ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,’ Esme said blithely. ‘It is your home, not mine; besides, if he came to the house he would only quarrel with Rowan, considering they are on opposing sides over the Exhibition.’

  Myles was chuckling. Rosemary turned to him in exasperation. ‘It is all very well for you to laugh, Myles, you do not have the responsibility for this wretched sister of mine. I shan’t be able to let her out of my sight for an instant all summer long. She will talk to anyone. I cannot remember Lucy or I being allowed such licence.’

  ‘Times are changing,’ he said evenly. ‘Young ladies are allowed a little more freedom to say what they think nowadays.’

  ‘That is what worries me. Ju
st who and what is Lord Pendlebury? I have never heard of him. He says he has returned from abroad. Where abroad?’

  ‘France, I believe. Or it might have been Venice. He was working abroad when his father died and he returned to take over the family estate near Birmingham.’

  ‘Working! Oh, now I see what you have in common, you both like to get your hands dirty.’

  ‘He doesn’t have dirty hands,’ Esme protested. ‘They are very clean and long-fingered, an artist’s hands. Is he an artist, Myles?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But judging by that sketch he was doing he has a talent in that direction. I believe his business is in the manufacture of glass.’

  ‘Well, I think he is an artist,’ Esme said.

  ‘What you think of him is of no account,’ Rosemary said. ‘He is a manufacturer, a tradesman, and you will not think of him at all, do you hear?’

  ‘I hear.’ Esme told her, but she didn’t see how she could obey. Her thoughts could not be commanded like that. They wandered about in her head, jumping from one subject to another, and she could not say when a thought of the handsome Lord Pendlebury might pop into her mind, let alone tell it not to. She was thinking of him now, especially of his eyes. She had thought at first they were laughing; indeed, they had been full of amusement when Rosemary had been so haughty towards him, as if he understood and did not care, but when he spoke of being abroad, a shadow had passed across them, like a cloud on a summer’s day suddenly excluding the sun. There had been unhappiness in his life. She wondered what it was that made him suddenly sad and wished she could banish it and bring back the sunshine. Which was nonsense, of course.

  Felix watched them go and then break into a canter. The ladies were both accomplished horsewomen and he could admire that, even in the stiff-backed Lady Trent. As for her sister…Esme, a pretty name for a pretty young lady. He flipped over the page of his sketching pad and began drawing her face, every line of which seemed to be etched into his memory.

  He was being a fool, he knew that. He knew nothing about her. Was she, for instance, capable of breaking hearts? He rather fancied she was. He was beginning to envy the young men who might aspire to court her, but he did not envy them their broken hearts when she tired of them. He looked at what he had drawn and knew he had failed utterly to reproduce the joie de vivre that showed in her eyes, in her smiling mouth, in her trim figure, which seemed to buzz with barely controlled energy. Her whole demeanour seemed to say, ‘Here I am, ready for anything, put me to the test.’ He did not suppose that she, watched over and cosseted, had had a moment’s unhappiness in her whole life. She did not know what it felt like to be betrayed, to discover that what you had fondly believed was honest and wholesome was nothing of the sort. He hoped she never would.

  He saw the trio returning back at a neat trot and hastily flipped back to his plan, pretending to concentrate on the lines of his proposed building. He looked up as the horses approached him and tipped his hat to the ladies. Rosemary dipped her head in brief acknowledgement, but Lady Esme, riding slightly behind her sister, lifted her crop and gave him a broad smile. It was almost conspiratorial. It was the memory of that smile he carried back to Bruton Street with him.

  He was still thinking of it when he met Myles at Brooks’s later that day. The club was quiet at that time and the two men found a corner to enjoy a bottle of wine and talk, and though he would have liked to talk about Lady Esme Vernley, that was not the reason for the meeting and they settled down to discuss the Exhibition and how they could promote it. Knowing that it was meant to celebrate the work men and women did and the things they achieved, most of those who were referred to as the ‘operative classes’ were as enthusiastic as he was and were already giving their pennies and sixpences to the fund.

  ‘It won’t be enough,’ Felix said. ‘It’s the business owners we must aim at, people such as we are with money to spare. If we set a good example…’

  ‘I have done so already,’ Myles told him. ‘I do not doubt we shall manage it if we keep the momentum going. We have to. Already there are inquiries from abroad to display their wares.’ He chuckled. ‘My brother-in-law, Viscount Trent, is convinced that the capital will be overrun with foreigners, none of whom are honest or clean, and if they have nowhere to stay will be living in parks and doorways. Not only that, he is positive they will stir up unrest among our own workers.’

  ‘Accommodation will have to be provided for them and the troublemakers weeded out. The Duke of Wellington won’t hear of enlisting the help of foreign police. He is relying on our own police and the army to keep order. I know because he has asked for my help, on account of the fact that I came into contact with some of the revolutionaries when I was in Paris and was able to pass on intelligence to our government. I think he is worrying unduly, but I have said I will do what I can. We are to meet next week to discuss it.’ He paused. ‘I tell you this in confidence, of course.’

  ‘Of course. You will be staying in town, then?’

  ‘For the moment.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘I also have courtesy visits to make to my mother’s friends, which I had been looking on as an irksome duty, but if your delightful sister-in-law should happen to be present at any of their at-homes, it will change from a duty to a pleasure.’

  ‘She is a delight,’ Myles agreed. ‘And I hope nothing happens to spoil that.’

  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘Because she is an innocent and ripe for adventure and could easily be led into accepting flattery and flirtation as reality and falling head over heels in love when the attraction might well be that she is the daughter of an earl.’

  ‘Are you warning me to stay clear?’

  ‘I would not be so presumptuous. I hope you are old enough and wise enough to understand and perhaps look out for her.’

  ‘Does she not have a dragon of a sister to do that?’

  Myles laughed. ‘Oh, she will contrive to slip her rein if the watchfulness becomes too unbearable.’

  ‘A scatterbrain, then.’

  ‘Far from it. She is the youngest daughter and her parents and sisters, Rosemary in particular, tend to treat her like a schoolgirl and a delicate one at that, but she is twenty in two months’ time and not nearly as fragile as she looks. She embraces everything with enthusiasm and is afraid of nothing, but underneath it all, I think she is capable of deep feeling.’

  ‘You know the family well, then?’

  ‘I am married to Esme’s other sister, Lucinda—have been for six years now. Esme is more like Lucy than Rosemary, a free spirit. I wish I could stay and keep an eye on her, but I am anxious to return to my wife and children. Henry, our three-year-old, had a nasty cold and Lucy would not leave him to accompany me and I am not comfortable in the Trent household without her. I am the upstart, a man who likes to earn his living, and though the Earl, their father, has come to accept me, Rosemary has never thought me quite good enough for her sister. Matters are made worse by my support for the Exhibition. Trent is implacably opposed.’

  ‘I see I shall have to avoid crossing swords with him. When do you leave town?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Then I shall bid you adieu now. No doubt we will meet frequently as the year advances.’

  ‘I certainly hope so.’ He paused, smiling. ‘Does your mother count Lady Mountjoy among her friends, my lord?’

  Felix’s grin was one of understanding. ‘Do you know, I believe she does.’

  They left the building together and parted on the street, Myles to return to Trent House, Felix to take a stroll about the town. It was necessary to become familiar with every street, every alleyway, every court, every hotbed of dissent if he were to discharge the duty the Duke of Wellington had set him.

  It was at the end of that perambulation, when he was on his way home again, that he decided to call on Lady Mountjoy in Duke Street.

  Her ladyship received him in her drawing room. She was thin as a rake, dressed in unrelieved black, even down to black m
ittens and a black lace handkerchief. He bowed and explained the purpose of his visit was to pay his respects to his mother’s old friend.

  ‘Fanny Pendlebury,’ she mused. ‘Haven’t seen or heard of her in years. What made her suddenly think of me?’

  ‘Unfortunately she seldom comes to town nowadays,’ he said. ‘But one day she was indulging in a little sentimental remembrance and spoke of the times when you both arrived in London for a come-out Season and what happy times they were. She wondered what had happened to you and how you did, and I undertook to make inquiries. I have lately returned from a protracted stay on the Continent and am rediscovering London.’

  ‘You will not find it much changed, except for all the new houses and railways stretching into the countryside. And I am, as you see me, widowed and living alone.’

  ‘My condolences, my lady.’

  ‘It happened many years ago and I have become used to pleasing myself. I have a great many friends. I go out and about and entertain. I am about to go out now, so I am afraid I cannot stay and entertain you, but come back another time. I am at home on Tuesday afternoon. Married, are you? Or affianced?’

  He thought briefly of Juliette and nearly changed his mind about the whole idea. It was all very well for Myles Moorcroft to ask him to look out for Lady Esme, but Moorcroft did not know the story. Nor, for his pride’s sake, would he tell him, or anyone else, for that matter. ‘No, not married,’ he said. ‘Nor yet affianced.’

  ‘Good. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-seven, my lady.’

  ‘Old enough to settle down.’

  ‘That is what my mother tells me.’

  ‘Ah, now I see. She sent you to me, knowing I knew everyone in town and could help you find a wife.’ She did not give him the opportunity to confirm or deny this before going on. ‘Have no fear, I will introduce you to some nice young fillies. A handsome man like you should have no trouble. No trouble at all.’

  He bowed and took his leave, wondering what he had let himself in for. If Lady Mountjoy wrote and told his mother of their conversation, she would die laughing. Or perhaps she would not; perhaps she would thank her ladyship for taking her recalcitrant son in hand.