A Season for Love

by Blair Bancroft

  In a soft rustle of silk and tulle, Caroline moved to stand next to him, her hands clasped nervously around her fan. “Tony, I am sorry” she heard herself say, even as she had thought to scold. “I did not think you would mind.” The viscount never moved. It was as if she were no more than a ghost come to haunt the terrace, whispering phantom words into the night. “Am I being forward?” Caroline ventured softly. “Have I misinterpreted that awful glare? Were you thinking of robbers and not of me at all? Tony?”

  “You knew very well I minded.” He tossed the words like bullets, while keeping his eyes straight forward. “Women always understand these things. It is men who are left in confusion.”

  Had she been testing him? Caroline wondered, suddenly ashamed. The past few days had certainly been tumultuous. Laurence’s tantrum over going to Eton, last night’s attempted robbery, her own uncertain feelings. Tony’s startling challenge to her long-held beliefs about love and marriage. And, behind it all, haunting her thoughts, were her regrets that her courage had failed on the Dark Walk. That was where she had planned to experiment, where she had thought to explore the grown-up world of men and women with a few moments of delicious closeness. Perhaps, even, one little kiss.

  Yet foolish, frightened Caroline, the country-raised mouse, had snapped to the fore, destroying all her daring intentions as fast as the spring on a trap. After escaping the Dark Walk with her emotions in tatters, she was able to recognize that her mind had transformed enticing swirls of passion into fearsome gargoyles ready to swallow up an unwary maiden.

  In essence, she had panicked.

  And now, tonight, she had shut Tony out, making him pay for what was no one’s fault but her own, with perhaps a small assist from Fate. For how could encountering her father and Jen on the Dark Walk be anything other than sheer ill luck?

  And yet . . . how could she forgive Tony’s public sulks? He had made a laughing stock of them both, making her wish to disappear into the woodwork. Yet her father’s rank, the old scandal of her mother’s desertion, the sensation of Laurence’s existence, and her own reappearance in society made her the cynosure of all eyes. The ton tabbies scrutinized her every move—the slightest smile, a saucy look, a mis-step of any kind—waiting with baited breath for just such a moment as this. Caroline shuddered.

  No! She was a duke’s daughter, Caroline reminded herself sternly. She had apologized to Tony, but no further explanation would be forthcoming. Indeed, there was no explanation. She was wandering through a maze created long ago, nurtured by misunderstanding, fear, and love turned to hate. Errant branches within the maze reached out to grab her; the uneven path seemed to heave beneath her feet. Was that Safety standing there a scant few inches away? Or the Devil come to make her life unbearable, as her mother’s had been?

  What to say . . . what to do?

  Nothing. Avoid the slippery slope. Surely, this was a puzzle that must wait for another day.

  “Speaking of men’s confusion,” Caroline said with what she could only hope was cool composure, “did you see papa at supper? He was positively languishing over that dreadful Lady Pomfret. Has that woman no shame? I was quite certain she was going to pop out of that crimson satin at any moment. Your poor sister . . . the moment her back is turned, papa turns into a flirt.”

  “I assure you, he would not do so in Jen’s presence,” the viscount responded stiffly.

  “But if he cannot be trusted—”

  “Believe me, Caroline,” Tony snapped, “it is a game, nothing more. At the end of the evening Marcus will go home to his wife.”

  “You cannot say the same of the others here,” Caroline countered.

  “Caroline,” Tony said, speaking slowly and with considerable emphasis, “I do not care what the others do. I care only about my family, my friends, and myself. Your papa enjoyed his years of freedom, but I do not doubt his loyalty to Jen now that they are married—even if, as I suspect, they are presently caught up in a quarrel. And if I myself should marry, I, too, would be faithful to my wife. I admit youth is a time for high-jinks, particularly among men, but marriage—a lifetime companionship—is too precious to be jeopardized by philandering. I, like Marcus, might have a wandering eye on occasion, but I would not go farther than that. And I would expect my wife to be faithful as well.”

  For the first time Tony turned and looked Caroline full in the face, appearing more earnest than she had ever seen him before. “On occasion, we may all indulge in admiration for an object of great beauty or vivacious appeal. It is part of what makes us human. But a true gentleman or lady will stand by the vows they made before God—”

  “Which is why they must be so very careful to choose well before they make them,” Caroline interjected tartly.

  “Exactly.”

  She wanted to touch him, lay a hand upon his arm, but, instead, she clutched her fan so hard the carved ivory sticks imprinted her fingers. Tony had just given her a gift of great significance. Unless, of course, his words had been prompted by the green monster of jealousy combined with too many trips to the punch bowl.

  She must say something . . . but what?

  Caroline was still searching for words when Viscount Frayne reverted to his most polished social tones. “Come, Caroline, you must be getting cold. And your next partner will be searching for you.”

  Meekly, Lady Caroline allowed him to lead her back inside the ballroom. She was conscious of a frisson of relief. Further moments on the Grantley’s terrace might have proved fatal.

  On the morning following Lady Harriet’s come-out ball, Malvinia, Lady Worley, called upon her daughter, the Duchess of Longville. Her air of suppressed excitement lasted only a scant few moments after Sims departed the drawing room, leaving her alone with the duchess. “My dear,” she cried with no roundaboutation, “can it be you are you enceinte?”

  Jen, who had anticipated the question, kept her countenance. “What, mama, no inquiries after my headache? No assurances that my presence was sorely missed last night?”

  “Abominable, Eugenia, to leave me on tenterhooks. Come, child, do not gammon your poor mama. You have not had a day of illness since you contracted the measles at age four. What else am I to think but that a happy event is in the offing?”

  The duchess, whose temperament generally matched her sturdy frame, wrung her hands and burst out, “Oh, mama, if only it were so!”

  “Merciful heavens,” declared Lady Worley, instantly ready to defend her child, “do not tell me that you and Longville have quarreled. Is he pressing you for a child, the beast? Why, you’ve scarcely been churched.”

  “No, no, ’tis nothing of the kind,” Jen protested in accents so faint compared to her customary decisive tone that her mother’s concern elevated to alarm.

  “Surely he cannot be up to his old tricks,” Lady Worley declared in accents of loathing.

  “No! That is, I do not think so.” Jen paused to consider. No, she truly thought she could acquit Marcus of womanizing. “‘Tis something else entirely, mama. Something so seemingly simple that it’s a wonder it has become such a issue.” Briefly, she explained the problem of Laurence being sent off to Eton. She did not, however, include just how far their quarrel had gone. Locked doors were a private matter solely between the duchess and her duke. Or so she thought.

  “Oh, my dear,” Lady Worley breathed when the tale was finished, “surely it cannot be wise to come between the duke and his heir?”

  “Perhaps not wise, but necessary,” Jen stated firmly.

  “He is not an easy man, of course,” the countess sighed, “but I thought that if anyone could manage him, Jenny, you could. Amy Carlington was a fool. You are not.”

  “I wonder,” the duchess murmured enigmatically. “I have spent most of my adult life in a world of men. I fear I was too puffed up with my supposedly superior knowledge of their fits and starts. For, truthfully, I have approached this, our first contretemps, in a most childish manner and am not sure, now, what is to be done about it.”
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br />   Malvinia Norville fixed her sharp gaze on the daughter. “Eugenia, what have you done?”

  “I spent most of last evening considering it,” Jen whispered.

  An unsatisfactory reply that brought her mother’s wrath to a boiling point.“Tell me you have not rejected him?” she demanded. “You could not have been so foolish, so childish. That is exactly the sort of nastiness the first duchess was famous for. ‘Twas scarcely a secret,” she continued, correctly reading the shock on her daughter’s face. “The spoiled chit told the whole world. If you but think of how blatant Caro Lamb was about Byron, you may picture Amy Carlington spreading her woes about Longville. I assure you, it was a positive blessing when she ran off. Longville had suffered quite enough.”

  Jen, although ready to sink, could not let the argument go. “But, mama, what other weapon does a woman have against a man of such great power?”

  “Abstinence is not a weapon,” Lady Worley retorted. “It is a two-edged blade that cleaves husband from wife.”

  “A blade is a weapon,” Jen felt obliged to point out.

  “You know quite well what I mean!”

  The duchess hung her head. “Yes, mama, I understand. But someone must defend Laurence. Caroline agrees with me, as does Miss Tompkins, but even the three of us together are powerless. What else am I to do?”

  “Eugenia,” declared Lady Worley most awfully, “only Prinny himself could gainsay Longville. You are foolish even to try and can only bring his wrath down upon your head. Do not throw this marriage away, my dear, because of the uncertain emotions of a boy who has snatched the title from any child of your own.”

  “Mama!”

  “’Tis true, Lady Worley sniffed. “You should have been mother of the heir.”

  “An unlikely prospect, as things now stand between us,” Jen commented drily.

  “Unlock your door at once,” Malvinia Norville commanded, “else all is lost.”

  “I shall not,” Jen declared, chin set in a stubborn line. “The boy is miserable, even terrified. He needs more time at home before being sent off to live among strangers.”

  “Then find another way,” counseled her mother. “You yourself have called your actions childish.”

  “I fear I have trapped myself in a corner, mama. If I concede the bedchamber, I concede Laurence’s welfare along with it.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Lady Worley whispered, dismayed. “Surely you have not forgotten that honey catches more flies than vinegar.”

  The duchess heaved a long-drawn sigh. “No, mama, I have not forgotten. I promise I will think on it.”

  Malvinia Norville, who had come to call buoyed on wings of joy at the hope of becoming a grandmother, took her departure with a heavy heart. History was repeating itself. In her own way, the second Duchess of Longville had turned as intransigent as the first.

  That night, Marcus Carlington also indulged in a repeat of history. He kicked in his wife’s door.

  Jen had been sitting in her bedchamber for a full half hour, propped up on a pile of pillows, staring at the locked door to the dressing room. Her emotions ranged from pinnacle to abyss. She would unlock the door and see what happened. Ah, yes . . . they would have a passionate reconciliation, resulting in Laurence’s deliverance from Eton.

  She would keep the door locked forever and ever. She would follow the first duchess’s lead into exile. She, too, would bear a child in secret, and never, ever, tell Marcus. This son would never go to Eton.

  She would ask Tony to intercede. She should, perhaps, have thought of this approach days earlier. Tony, as a male, actually had some influence. Marcus valued his opinion.

  How extremely lowering to think that her younger brother had more influence with her husband than she. Never would she stoop to asking Tony’s help!

  How could she not? Laurence was so very young, so unhappy. The little boy’s tear-streaked face continued to haunt her. And even though the tears had long since dried, he refused to leave the nursery for fear of encountering his father. Truthfully, neither Jen, nor Caroline, nor Sarah Tompkins had tried very hard to dissuade him. Hiding from the wrath of the Duke of Longville seemed a propitious move to them all.

  She was the duchess, Jen told herself sternly. She had taken on the burden of the duke’s children. That was why he had married her, and she would not falter at the first sign of trouble. If she backed down now, Marcus would ride roughshod over her for the rest of their married lives.

  But it was hard, very hard. Quarreling was not at all what she wished to do with her husband. Jen was swept by a wave of longing, by desire so strong it curled her toes.

  A fortunate moment, perhaps, for the door to shudder once, twice, and come crashing open, banging so hard against the chest topped by a porcelain pitcher and bowl that water sloshed out, dripping down the fine walnut finish.

  Marcus Carlington, quite obviously clad only in his black silk dressing gown with nothing beneath, strode to his wife’s bed. He stood, glaring down at her, arms crossed over his chest as if that were the only way he could keep from wringing her neck. “Never, ever,” he declared, “do that again. There is nothing, Jen, absolutely nothing more designed to turn a man into a balky mule.”

  His wife’s face crumpled. “I know,” she murmured, hanging her head. “It was sheer stubbornness.” With considerable courage she raised her head, looking into the hard depths of his amber eyes. “Do you not see, Marcus? I had to defend the poor child. That is why you married me, to be mother to your children. It was my duty to make you see how wrong it is to send him away so soon.”

  The duke uncrossed his hands, placing one fist beneath his chin and staring at his wife in considerable puzzlement. “Jen,” he said at last, “when I made you an offer, I did not know I had a son.”

  The duchess, after a moment of looking taken aback, recovered quickly. “But you knew you had a daughter to bring out and you wanted an heir.”

  “True . . . but surely you cannot think that is the only reason I married you? I have a remarkable number of relatives who would have been happy to take on the position of Caroline’s chaperon, with the dowager as her sponsor. And, quite frankly, a rather longer list of ladies anxious to stand at the head of the ducal staircase.”

  “Oh.” Jen repressed a sharp frisson of joy. He could not possibly be implying theirs was a love match. She knew better.

  The bed sagged, as with the familiarity of five weeks of marriage, the Duke of Longville shoved aside his wife’s legs, which were beneath the covers, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Look at me, Jen,” he commanded. Slowly, her chin came up, her lashes lifted. Great green eyes regarded him with a strange mix of wariness and hope. In the past few uncomfortable days, Marcus had had ample time to recognize that his wife’s gallant defense of his cub was not at all the same as first wife’s fear of intimacy. For all his hours of anguish and fury, Jenny and Amy truly had nothing in common.

  At least he did not think so. He was here to find out.

  “Do you actually believe,” he inquired silkily, “that I, the man who has taken prodigious enjoyment in women for more years than either of us should think on, would take on a leg-shackle unless I truly wished it?” In the light of a single glass-encased candle beside his wife’s bed, the duke peered closely at his duchess. Deciding the case was desperate, he gambled. “Come, Jen, do you think I would marry such an Amazon of a woman—one who could box my ears, if she chose—unless I fancied her for my life’s companion? Did you think me incapable of admiring your strength, your resolution, your kind heart, your steadfast devotion to your family . . . and to your child?”

  His wife’s eyes had become huge, her lips trembled. Marcus kept his hands off her with some difficulty. “Has it not occurred to you that I looked forward to talking with you, even long ago before you put off your blacks? Surely you cannot be indifferent to the many times we later danced and laughed and talked? If I had not been certain you looked forward to our colloquies as much as I, I never would have decla
red my intentions.” Was that a flicker of hope he saw in those green eyes? He could only hope so.

  “Jen,” he continued on a more teasing note, “do you not recall that evening last year in Wentworth’s garden?” Mutely, she nodded. “And the Pelhampton’s Christmas Party?” The duchess blushed. “Would you call those occasions the actions of a man and a woman making a marriage of convenience?”

  “You are a man of great address,” Jen ventured. “How could I believe your—ah—amorous attentions were solely for me?”

  “Je-en,” the duke warned. “You cannot possibly believe I would trifle with a woman of your stature? No, no, I do not mean your height, silly goose. I speak of your position in society. Worley or your brother would have had me on the greensward at dawn in a trice.”

  “I did not expect an offer,” Jen told him flatly. “I was, in fact, astounded.”

  “And, therefore, in spite of the more than warm moments that had passed between us, Marcus pronounced with thinly veiled sarcasm, “you convinced yourself I was making a marriage of convenience.”

  “Everyone speaks of my competence, of my strength,” Jen countered swiftly. “Truly, I could not imagine your choosing me for any other reasons.”

  Idly, the duke ran his fingers down the bulge in the covers that was his wife’s leg. “Mea culpa,” he admitted. “It pleased me to think you understood what was in my mind, but, more exactly, I had had one wife who was in love with the term love, but who truly did not know what the word meant. Physical love was anathema to her, so much so I became terrified of speaking the word aloud. You can have no idea how grateful I am that you have embraced me as well as our marriage.”