Reluctant Escort

by Mary Nichols

  ‘Of course they are! I am known for my elegance and would not be seen in such dowdy things as those Tony Stacey bought for you.’

  ‘Oh, I know they are not of the first stare,’ Molly admitted, ‘for I have been looking at the pictures in your Lady’s Magazine and La Belle Assembly, but they suit me very well.’

  ‘Oh, they are quite good enough for someone living in the seclusion of the country, which is where you belong. I cannot think why he did not take you straight back to Stacey Manor when he first found you.’

  ‘I think he had arranged to meet Sergeant Upjohn and there was no time. They had business together.’

  ‘I am beginning to wonder if he is this Dark Knight you spoke of, after all. It is the sort of rig he would get up to. I collect he was always falling into scrapes when he was a boy. I would not be surprised if he weren’t playing some deep game of his own.’

  Molly was inclined to agree but did not say so. ‘He cannot be that bad for Aunt Margaret is very fond of him.’

  ‘That don’t mean he ain’t up to something. Are you sure you have told me the whole?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mama.’

  Harriet looked closely at her daughter, wondering if she was as innocent as she sounded. ‘You have not set your cap at him, have you? You will come home by weeping cross if you have. I believe he is still repining for Beth Gooderson and has forsworn marriage.’

  ‘You mentioned the name of Beth before,’ Molly said. ‘And he did admit there was someone who disappointed him, which was excessively unkind of her.’

  ‘She thought he was dead, killed at the Battle of Vittoria or some such, so how was it unkind of her?’

  ‘She married someone else?’

  ‘She married his brother.’

  ‘Oh, poor Duncan! His brother took his title and his love! No wonder he is sometimes a little out of humour.’

  ‘What I should like to know is what he is going to do about it. There will be a farrago over it, to be sure, and I wish we had not got mixed up in it.’

  ‘I am not privy to his intentions,’ Molly said, with a spirit intended to hide her misery. ‘But I’ll wager he will do nothing. I think he will go back to a life on the road. I doubt we shall see him again.’

  The thought of never seeing him again made her feel very, very sad, as if something sweet and wonderful had slipped from her grasp before she had managed to catch it properly. And trying to convince herself there had never been anything between them and that he had kissed her when he was not feeling himself, and that her life from now on would be full of new experiences and new excitement, did not work at all.

  Chapter Ten

  Duncan took his mount back to Connaught House and then went shopping, taking in Weston’s to have pantaloons and waistcoats made up and to Scott for a new frockcoat; they had made his uniform and he liked their military cut. He went to Hoby’s for boots and Locks for hats and finally dropped in at Robinson and Cook in Mount Street on his way back to order a phaeton. None of it would be ready before the end of the week and by that time the money from the War Department would be safely in his bank to pay for it. Then he set out for Holles Street.

  Molly was sitting with her mama in the small parlour when Betty announced his arrival.

  ‘Oh, he has come,’ she murmured, and found her heart lifting with pleasure.

  ‘Show him into the withdrawing room,’ Harriet instructed Betty, and then said to Molly, ‘Stay here. I wish to speak to the Captain alone.’

  ‘Oh, Mama, you are not going to roast him, are you?’

  ‘Naturally I am. He need not think that I will allow him to play fast and loose with my daughter and do nothing about it.’ And with that she swept out of the room.

  The last thing Molly wanted was to be excluded from the conversation and she followed to listen outside the door.

  ‘Your obedient,’ Duncan said, sweeping Harriet a bow. ‘I trust I find you well?’

  ‘I would be better if you had not saddled me with that madcap of a daughter. She tells me you passed her off as your wife, and in a common tavern too.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘Of course she did; she has no idea how to dissemble, as you must know by now. She is no more than an innocent child and has no idea how to go on in Society, but you should have known better. You have ruined her reputation and mine along with it.’

  ‘Oh, I would not say that,’ he said wryly. It was not that he was not sorry for what had happened, because no one regretted it more than he did, but he would be a sousecrown if he admitted that to Harriet, who had done more to ruin her daughter’s hopes than anything he had done. ‘No one will think anything of it if you take her out and about, which is all she wants. She has talked of nothing else since I met her.’

  Molly, creeping to the door and putting her eye to the keyhole, saw her mother sitting on the sofa fanning her flushed cheeks and the Captain standing with his back to the hearth, looking down on her. He was still dressed in his uniform, which set off his broad shoulders and long, shapely legs.

  ‘That will only make matters worse. If any of this is whispered over the teacups, we shall both be undone.’

  ‘No reason why it should,’ he said reasonably. ‘I’m not about to noise it abroad and I’ll wager you will not. As for Miss Martineau, all she wants is for someone to pay her a little attention.’

  ‘Then I suggest you do it.’

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ he said, so softly that Molly, on the other side of the thick door, could not hear it.

  ‘But not in town, not where we will be the laughing stock of the haut monde. Take her back to Stacey Manor.’

  ‘Ma’am, you shock me. How could I do that? It would be highly improper and, besides, she would be so disappointed.’

  ‘It is no more improper than the way you brought her here. I think your disappointment over Beth Gooderson must have addled your brains. You cannot suddenly come to life again and think everything will go on as before. You should not be in town at all. I wonder at your audacity.’

  ‘Oh, I have audacity and to spare, ma’am,’ he said, smiling lazily. ‘But there is no need for you to disturb yourself over it. I am a distant cousin of the Earl up from the country.’

  ‘And you would do well to return there post haste before Beth comes to town. And take my daughter with you.’

  ‘I cannot do that, ma’am; I have other engagements. Things to do, you know. Besides, she would not go.’

  ‘She will do as she is bid.’

  Duncan was not so sure. Molly had a mind of her own and if she decided she would not go, only tying her up and carrying her to a coach would make her budge. That was no way to treat her. She needed to be handled with affection and humour and persuasion—all attributes he had never pretended to have, though he was learning fast. ‘Then you may look to someone else to take her back, ma’am, for I will not do it.’

  Molly was near to tears. She crept away and climbed the stairs to her room and sat down on the bed to stare at the hideous green wallpaper. No one wanted her, not her mother, nor Captain Stacey, and she had been a ninny to think that she could turn up on the doorstep and all would be well.

  Now she would never have the opportunity to wear that lovely ballgown the Captain had bought for her, nor would she go on picnics and to the theatre or to Almack’s, which she understood was the height of acceptability. Her mother would go out tonight and she would be left behind, just as she had been at Stacey Manor.

  She heard the front door shut behind the Captain and it was as if the door had been shut on her happiness. He would go back to his life on the road with Sergeant Upjohn, to have more adventures, while she would be sent back to Norfolk and her humdrum existence there until her mama remarried. If she remarried; it seemed that her unwelcome arrival might well have put that in jeopardy.

  She heard her mother come up the stairs and looked up as she opened the door. ‘There you are, child! I have told Tony Stacey straight what I think of his behaviour and giv
en him his right about.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Very little to the point. Not even an apology.’

  ‘He has nothing to apologise for. Mama, I wish you had not scolded him; you will give him an aversion to me, for he will think I wanted you to do it, and I do not at all wish him to think that. He was very brave and clever and saved my life…’

  Harriet peered at her daughter. ‘I was right. You have developed a tendre for him.’

  ‘No, Mama, there is nothing but cousinly affection between us.’ She was deceiving herself, she knew. The way she felt about him, the tingling sensation in her limbs when he touched her, the enchantment of his lips on hers which made her melt inside, was not a cousinly feeling at all.

  ‘You noddicock! He will not marry you, even if I were to insist upon it, which I will not, for I would not saddle you with a rakeshame such as he is. You would do better to cultivate Andrew Bellamy.’

  ‘Mr Bellamy!’ Molly protested. ‘Oh, Mama, no.’

  ‘Now I am going to rest,’ Harriet went on as if she had not spoken. ‘I must be in looks when I go out tonight. Cook has instructions for your supper. Tomorrow we will sit down and talk about what is to be done.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Do not look so Friday-faced; we will come about.’ With that she was gone, leaving Molly to her tumbling thoughts.

  Her mother’s strange smile had disturbed her. Had Mama suddenly changed her mind about giving her a come-out? Molly’s spirits lifted, but were as suddenly dampened. Two or three weeks before she would have been overjoyed at the prospect but now she was not at all sure she wanted it, if it meant she had to drop the handkerchief to Andrew Bellamy.

  The dream of going into Society seemed hollow now, meaningless, a sham. She had grown up, just as Duncan had said she would. Duncan, Earl of Connaught, soldier, highwayman, rakeshame. She would rather be dashing about the countryside with him, taking risks, enduring discomfort, than be the finest, the most desirable young lady in town. But it was not to be. Her mother had sent him away and she would not see him again.

  Duncan was puzzled when Molly did not appear at any of the innocuous entertainments he would have expected her mother to sanction, though Harriet was very much in evidence, parading the Marquis of Tadbury like a trophy. She had probably passed herself off as a widow with a fortune. If that were so, they were both in for a shock; the Dowager Lady Tadbury was a pinchpenny and kept her son on very short commons. She would make stringent enquiries before she opened the purse strings sufficiently to allow him to marry.

  ‘Where is Miss Martineau?’ Duncan asked Harriet when he met her at a rout given by Lady Driffield. It was a dreadful squeeze and he had spent the better part of the evening wandering from room to room and even into the conservatory and the library looking for her and her daughter among the guests.

  ‘At home, in Holles Street; where else would she be, considering you would not take her back to Norfolk? I see now why not. You prefer to racket about town. I shall be interested to see what happens when someone recognises you.’

  ‘I do not see why they should. I was a mere stripling when I left home and war has a way of ageing a man.’

  ‘I cannot think what game you may be playing, unless you are planning to reclaim your inheritance.’

  ‘And if I were?’ he queried.

  ‘It would be seen as an act of vengeance. Your brother took your title and your betrothed and you cannot forgive him, but I doubt it would make you popular.’

  ‘If there was anything to forgive, I forgave him a long time ago,’ he said, deciding to say nothing of the fact that he had received a letter from Carlton House only that morning telling him that he had been awarded a baronetcy for services to his country; he could now call himself Sir Duncan Stacey.

  ‘And Beth?’

  ‘Beth is my brother’s wife. I wish them happy.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Indeed, I do. And if I hear that you have had a hand in spreading tattle to the contrary I shall fetch Molly from the garret where you have imprisoned her and introduce her to the whole ton. You will have to acknowledge her.’

  ‘I have not imprisoned her,’ she said indignantly. ‘Why, you know very well she has been out with Mr Bellamy.’

  ‘Is he still dangling after her?’

  ‘What a vulgar way of expressing it,’ she said. ‘But then I should not expect anything else from someone who has been out of Society so long—you have not the least idea how to behave like a gentleman.’

  ‘Is he?’ he persisted.

  ‘He has called once or twice and taken her in the park in his phaeton. And do not look so shocked; she was chaperoned by Betty.’

  ‘I am surprised at you allowing it, ma’am. His interest in Molly is not as a wife.’

  ‘Oh, I think he can be brought up to the mark. Molly is not without breeding and she is a pretty little thing. I am persuaded she is already inclined favourably towards him. And anyone can see he is enamoured of her.’

  Duncan was dismayed. ‘You would not force her?’

  ‘No, of course I would not force her. Do you take me for a monster?’

  ‘Then you will give her a proper come-out?’

  ‘There is not the least need for that; the whole thing can be managed very quietly.’

  The interest in the evening’s entertainment was gone and he took his leave, seething on Molly’s behalf. How could Harriet use her daughter so? Not only was Molly not to have the Season she longed for, she was to be married off in a havey-cavey way which would break her heart. And his. He told himself he would not have minded seeing her at every Society function, beleaguered by eager beaux, if it meant she was happy. But to hide her away and only let her out with that rake, Andrew Bellamy, was an unkindness of the first water. He could not let it happen unless Molly herself told him she wanted it. If she did, he would withdraw, leave the country, die a second time.

  Molly’s disappointment was profound, but she did not blame anyone but herself. She should not have run away, nor inveigled the Captain into bringing her to London; her mother was right to be angry. Except for carefully orchestrated outings with Mr Bellamy, she was confined to the house and the overgrown garden and was expected to pass her time with no other company but the housekeeper and Betty, who accompanied her when she went for a walk in the park or to look at the shops or change her book at Hookham’s library. How long would this punishment go on? Would she be sent back to Stacey Manor at the end of it? Would Lady Connaught even have her back?

  It was at breakfast next morning that Harriet, enthusing to Molly about the rout which had, in the eyes of everyone there, been a great success, let slip that she had spoken to Duncan.

  ‘The Captain is in town?’ Molly’s eyes lit up and then immediately clouded again. ‘Why has he not called on us?’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘I hoped…Did he not even ask how I did?’

  ‘No, but then I hardly said five words to him.’ Harriet had no intention of telling her daughter the truth—that Captain Stacey had talked of nothing else; it would only unsettle her.

  ‘How did he seem? Is he fully recovered?’

  ‘I must admit he looked in fine fettle, flirting with every unmarried lady in the room, and even some that were not single.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Harriet looked closely at her daughter’s dejected countenance. ‘Molly, you must put him from your mind, you really must.’

  Molly wished she could. Her obsession with the Captain quite spoiled her outings with Mr Bellamy when she found herself constantly comparing the two men. And though Mr Bellamy was the picture of elegance and his manners were excessively correct when they were in the presence of her mama she sensed a falseness about them.

  He could turn a pretty compliment and brought her flowers and sweetmeats when he called, and she thanked him properly, but she did not think he was sincere. For one thing, she knew she was not the ‘loveliest blossom in all of London’, and it was a falsehood to
say it. Mama said that was how things were done and she ought to learn to accept compliments in the spirit in which they were given. But what she could not fathom was exactly what was meant by that.

  The Captain was different. He rarely praised, preferring to gammon her or even to scold, but when she thought about it carefully she decided she would rather that than Mr Bellamy’s fulsomeness; it was more honest and easier to deal with.

  ‘Will the Captain be at Lady Tadbury’s masked ball, do you think?’ she asked.

  Harriet shrugged. ‘I doubt it. He is, on his own admission, only a poor relation of Connaught’s and only lately come to town, for all the silly articles swooning over him and calling him handsome and daring and mysterious. Her ladyship would have more sense than to include him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because the ball is being given for her daughter Letitia, the Marquis’s sister, and she has only just come out. Only the top one hundred will be invited and as far as the world is concerned Stacey is only a half-pay captain in the Hussars.’

  ‘You will be there.’

  ‘Naturally I will; the Marquis and I have an understanding.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if the announcement were made at the ball.’

  Molly sighed. ‘I wish I could go.’

  ‘You know you cannot. It is not the thing for a young lady not yet out to attend a ball unless it be her own come-out ball.’

  Molly concluded that her mother used the conventions when it pleased her and disregarded them when it did not, but she decided not to comment on that. ‘I should so like to go to a ball before I return to Norfolk.’

  ‘No, Molly. But do not look so glum. I promise you that if all goes as I hope it will I shall have a little supper party and introduce you to a few select people.’

  It was not a supper party Molly wanted. She wanted to wear the lovely ballgown Duncan had bought her, to watch all the guests in their silks and satins, dancing under the chandeliers, to listen to the music and smell the flowers and, most of all, to dance herself.