by Mary Balogh
Specifically if she was still /young/ enough to breed.
He could see only half of her face around the brim of her straw hat. But if he was not much mistaken, she was actually /smiling/. Her voice confirmed the fact when she spoke – there was laughter in it. "You are not to know any such thing, my lord," she said.
The marquess made a show of setting his cane against the side of his chair and moving until his spine was resting against the back and his hands were gripping the arms. "Sheringford," he said without taking his eyes off Miss Huxtable, "I believe you have just done the wisest thing you have done in your entire life – or the most foolish." Duncan rescued his feet and moved the short distance to the side of the sofa in order to set a reassuring hand on Margaret Huxtable's shoulder, though she seemed to be doing very well without his support. "Nothing in between?" he said. "She will not crumble under adversity," his grandfather said. "And there may be much adversity to test her mettle. On the other hand, you will find it impossible to ignore her or to rule her. I will expect to read an announcement of your betrothal in tomorrow's papers – unless, that is, Miss Huxtable returns to her senses before then." "And Woodbine Park?" Duncan gripped the shoulder beneath his hand. "It will be yours on your wedding day," his grandfather said. "Which will be …?" He raised his shaggy eyebrows. "The day before your birthday, my lord," Miss Huxtable replied without hesitation, though it was something they had not decided upon together. "My brother and sisters and Lady Carling are to organize a grand wedding breakfast at Merton House, which you must, of course, attend. We will be able to drink an early toast to your birthday on the same occasion." "I do not leave this house under any circumstance, Miss Huxtable," the marquess said, "having discovered long ago that there is nothing but foolishness beyond my own walls. And, lest you suddenly dream up some wild scheme, I do not entertain here either. Neither do I celebrate birthdays – least of all eightieth birthdays. Anyone who chooses to celebrate an eightieth birthday must have windmills in his head, and a few moths too." "Nevertheless," she said, "you /will/ attend our wedding breakfast, my lord. The Earl of Sheringford is your only grandson, and I will be your only granddaughter-in-law And this birthday will be celebrated as the one on which you were reconciled to your grandson and gained a granddaughter who just might still have a few breeding years left before she withers into her dotage. You would not knowingly spoil my wedding day. I am sure of it. You /would/ spoil it by remaining here in self-imposed isolation." "Hmmph," his grandfather said. "I have just realized who you have been reminding me of ever since you stepped through that door and opened your infernal mouth, Miss Huxtable. You are just like my late wife, God rest her soul. She was a pest, to put it mildly." "But did you love her, my lord?" Miss Huxtable asked softly.
Good God! Duncan could remember his grandmother, a small, smiling, gentle, mild-mannered lady upon whom his gruff grandfather had doted. "None of your business, missy," he said. "Two can play at /that/ game, you see." She was smiling warmly when Duncan looked down at her. "I liked Merton," the marquess said, changing the subject abruptly and looking at Duncan for the first time. "He is a mere puppy, though I daresay he must have reached his majority if he has donned the mantle of head of the family. But he was no groveler, by Jove. He asked his questions, and he made sure that he got his answers." "I will bring him here again," Miss Huxtable said, "and perhaps my sisters too, my lord, once all the arrangements have been made for the wedding and the breakfast. We will come in a body together and tell you all about it, and you will discover that we Huxtables do not take no for an answer when we have set our minds on something." She got to her feet, and that was the end of it. Two minutes later, she and Duncan were out on the street, where a light drizzle was falling. "Well," he said, "that was remarkable." He could not for the moment think of any other words to describe the visit. He would be almost willing to swear that his grandfather actually /liked/ Maggie Huxtable, though it was doubtful anyone had spoken to him as bluntly as she had for years. "I like him," she said, proving that the feeling had been mutual. "He loves you, Lord Sheringford." He almost laughed. That might have been true when he was a boy, though his grandfather had never given much indication of it beyond those endless shillings. But now? He very much doubted it. He struggled with his umbrella and hoisted it over her head and his own. "He has a strange way of showing it," he said. "Not at all," she said. "He has been hurt and angry and puzzled for five years. He must have been dreadfully disappointed in you since you did not offer him any explanation of your behavior. But instead of cutting you off, as he surely would have done if he had truly not loved you, he waited until it was possible for you to fight back, in the hope that you would do just that, that you would give him a good enough reason to continue to love you. Which you have done." "By finding you," he said, "and persuading you to marry me." "He is a little afraid," she said, "that I may be too old to present him with a great-grandson before his death, which is, of course, absurd. But yes, he is happy that you are to marry and return home. He will come to our wedding." "Hell might freeze over too," he said.
They were almost out of the square. The drizzle was already turning into a steady rain, which was drumming on the umbrella. But instead of hurrying onward, Duncan stopped walking abruptly. "He /adored/ my grandmother," he said.
She turned her head to look at him. How foolish she had been, choosing to wear pale blue on such a day, and a straw bonnet, when she had known they would be walking. Was she an eternal optimist? And was he up to the challenge?
He bent his head and kissed her on the lips – and her own pressed firmly back against them and clung for a totally indecorous stretch of time.
He felt slightly dizzy when he thought of the changes six days had wrought in his life.
16
MARGARET had ten days in which to prepare for her wedding and for married life. Ten days in which to have second and third and thirty-third thoughts about the wisdom of her decision to marry a stranger – who had lived with a married lady for almost five years and had had a son with her. Ten days to shop for bride clothes – sometimes with her sisters, sometimes with Lady Carling, sometimes with all three. Ten days in which to draw up a guest list and send out invitations and wait for replies and try to resist the temptation to insist upon involving herself with the planning of the wedding breakfast. That last point was one of the hardest.
She would have been content to keep the guest list short, to have no one at her wedding, in fact, except her family and Sir Graham and Lady Carling and the Marquess of Claverbrook.
Her sisters had other ideas. Of course.
So did Lady Carling. Of course. "You must invite everyone with whom you and Lord Sheringford have even a passing acquaintance," Vanessa told her. "I do agree, Meg," Katherine said. "It is what we decided to do for /my/ wedding, you will recall, and while it was something of an ordeal at the time, I have been so very glad since. A big wedding provides wonderful memories." "But no one will /come/," Margaret protested.
Her sisters looked at each other and laughed. "Meg!" Katherine exclaimed. "/Everyone/ will come. How could they possibly resist? It will be the wedding of the Season." "With only nine days' notice?" Margaret asked doubtfully. "Even if it was tomorrow," Vanessa said. "Of course everyone will come, you silly goose." It was an opinion with which Lady Carling concurred when she called at Merton House the same day. "And even if we were to invite only family," she said, "the numbers would be quite vast, Margaret. There are your brother and sisters and Mr. Constantine Huxtable. And there are Agatha, my sister, and Wilfred, and all my nieces – there are six of them, did you know? All of them are married. And on his father's side Duncan has four uncles and their wives and two aunts and their husbands. Not that they are actually uncles and aunts, since they were my late husband's cousins, but that is what Duncan always called them. And /they/ have so many children all told that I lost count years ago. There are even grandchildren who are old enough to attend a wedding without any fear that they will dash about whooping
and getting under everyone's feet. If you give me paper and pen and ink, I will write down the names and addresses of all I can remember. Most of them are in London and will certainly expect invitations. Duncan was always very close to his cousins and second cousins as a boy. Except Norman, that is. He was a dear enough boy, but he was always very good and very ready to disapprove of any brothers and cousins who were /not/ good. That did not endear him to any of them, as you may imagine. And I suppose we cannot invite him to the wedding anyway, can we? Not when he is married to poor Caroline." Margaret capitulated and invited the whole world – or so it seemed.
Certainly her hand was severely cramped by the time she had finished writing all the cards.
The whole world replied within two days, and at least nine tenths of it was coming to the wedding at St. George's on Hanover Square and to the breakfast at Merton House.
The Marquess of Claverbrook was coming too. Margaret had carried through on her promise to visit him again with Stephen and her sisters, and none of them gave him any chance to say no. Of course, he did save face by declaring that he would attend only to see with his own eyes that his rogue of a grandson really did put in an appearance at his own wedding this time.
The days passed in a blur of activity. Before Margaret knew it, her wedding day had dawned and it really was too late to change her mind even if she wanted to.
She did not.
Crispin caused her more than one restless night, it was true, but she knew that she would never marry him even if she were free to do so.
There were too many things about him that disturbed her, and the leftover dregs of an old attachment were simply not enough.
He was coming to the wedding, though she suspected it was only because Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew were still in London and he did not wish to arouse their curiosity by staying away. Lady Dew was delighted by the approaching nuptials, though she did admit to a little disappointment that her small attempt at matchmaking between Margaret and Crispin had been unsuccessful. She had finally heard of the scandal concerning Lord Sheringford, but she gave it as her opinion that if a lady was foolhardy enough to leave her husband in order to run off with another man, then she must have had a very good reason to do so. For her part, she would not hold it against the earl, especially as he now had the good sense to ally himself to Margaret.
Margaret stood barefoot at the window of her bedchamber early on the morning of her wedding, gazing up at a sky that was deep blue and cloudless – a rarity so far this summer. She was not particularly enjoying the sight, though. She was fighting panic by telling herself that it was surely what every bride faced on her wedding day.
She did not turn to look at the rumpled bed behind her. The linens would be changed after she had left for her wedding. Tonight it was to be her wedding bed. They were to leave in the morning for Warwickshire, she and Lord Sheringford, but tonight Stephen had insisted they stay at Merton House while he went to Vanessa and Elliott's.
Margaret set her forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.
How strange it would be to be married!
And how she ached for it. And for tonight. Was that a shameful, unladylike admission? But she did not really care. She had waited long enough for this. /Too/ long. Her youth was already gone. And since it /was/ gone, and with it all her youthful dreams of romance, then it was as well to turn her mind to the future with a positive wish for it to come as soon as possible.
Today and tonight she would be a bride – and she was going to enjoy every moment. Tomorrow and for the rest of her life she would be a wife. She was going to enjoy that too. It was what she had always wanted, after all, and what she had decided over the winter that she would /be/. It really did not matter that her bridegroom was neither Crispin, whom she had loved, nor the Marquess of Allingham, with whom she had enjoyed a comfortable friendship. She had made her decision to marry the Earl of Sheringford, and somehow she would make something good out of their marriage.
There would be a child to bring up. /Again/.
She smiled fleetingly.
Even before she gave birth to any of her own.
Oh, /let/ it be the right thing she was doing, she prayed to no one in particular as she lifted her forehead away from the window and moved into her dressing room to ring for her maid. /Please/, let it be the right thing.
It was fourteen days since she had collided with the Earl of Sheringford in the doorway of the Tindell ballroom. Fourteen days since he had asked her to dance and to marry him – all in one sentence. His first words to her. /Only/ fourteen days.
Weddings by special license, Duncan discovered during the ten days preceding his marriage to Margaret Huxtable, did not differ significantly from weddings by banns except that one did not have to wait the obligatory month for those banns to be read.
They were going to be married at St. George's in Hanover Square, for the love of God. It was the scene of most /ton/ weddings during the Season, it being the parish church of most of the beau monde. It was where legend had it he had left Caroline waiting tragically and in vain at the altar for his arrival five years ago. Legend erred on the side of good theater, of course, as legend often did, but even so… How foolish of him to have imagined a mere two weeks ago that he would procure a special license, bear Miss Huxtable off to the nearest church, marry her there with only the clergyman and a witness or two for company, and then make off into Warwickshire with her to live obscurely ever after.
He could do nothing but kick his heels while his wedding crept up on him with the speed and inevitability of a tortoise.
The only thing of any real significance he did during those days was to call upon Norman and Caroline. It went severely against the grain to do so. Norman had never been his favorite person. Indeed, he had probably occupied the place of very least favorite for as far back into their childhood as Duncan had conscious memories. He was a pompous ass who had behaved in typical Norm fashion at Aunt Agatha's soiree. And Caroline was no better in all essential ways than her brother. Which meant that she was a pretty rotten human being.
Nevertheless, Duncan had wronged her. Even though he had written to her before he ran off with Laura and had made sure she would receive the letter as soon as she woke up on their wedding day, abandoning her had been an admittedly dastardly thing to do.
He owed her an apology.
And perhaps he needed to hold out some sort of olive branch to Norman.
Losing Woodbine Park, when he had fully expected that it would be his in a few days' time, must be a severe disappointment to him. Though Duncan was not the one who had played cruel games with him, nevertheless he felt bad for his cousin. He had never wished Norm any real harm, even if he /had/ bloodied his nose on one occasion when they were both boys, and blackened one of his eyes on another.
So he called upon the two of them one afternoon and hoped ignominiously that they would be from home – or that they would pretend to be.
He was no more fortunate on that account than he had been when he had gone to tell Margaret Huxtable about Toby.
He was admitted to a small visitors' parlor on the ground floor and left to kick his heels there and otherwise amuse himself for almost half an hour.
Caroline arrived first, looking not a day older than eighteen and as fragile and lovely as ever, though she had had three children during the past five years, had she not?
Duncan bowed.
She did not curtsy. "Caroline," he said, "I must thank you for receiving me." "I do not believe, Lord Sheringford," she said, "I have given you permission to make free with my given name." She spoke with the light, sweet voice that had once so enchanted him. "Mrs. Pennethorne," he said, "apologies are cheap, as I am well aware.
They cannot set right what has been done wrong. Nevertheless, sometimes an apology is all that is available. I beg you to accept mine for all the humiliation and suffering I caused you five years ago." "You flatter yourself, Lord Sheringford," she said. "What you did was rele
ase me from a connection that had grown distasteful to me, though of course good breeding would have forced me to honor it. I am grateful that you felt no such compunction. I am far happier with my dear Mr.
Pennethorne than I could ever have been with you." If she spoke the truth, he was vastly relieved. And why would it not be the truth? She must have grown as unhappy with him as he had with her when he had started trying to enlist her support to plead with her brother to put an end to Laura's sufferings. "I am happy for you," he said. "You will forgive me, then?" Delicate eyebrows arched above large hazel eyes. "Oh, you must never expect /that/ of me, Lord Sheringford," she said as the door opened again to admit Norman. "Certain actions are quite unforgivable. I can certainly be very glad that you left me free to engage in the happiest marriage in the world, but I cannot forgive your behavior. Neither could I /ever/ forgive you for tearing Randolph and Laura asunder and thus destroying a marriage that was made in heaven and that rivaled my own in happiness. Indeed, you might almost be called a murderer. She would very probably still be alive now if you had not dragged her off with you to satisfy your wicked desires." "My love," Norman said, hurrying toward her, taking her by the shoulders, and leading her to a love seat. "You ought to have remained abovestairs and left this unpleasantness to me. But you are always so foolishly brave." "I have never been a moral coward," she said, seating herself. "I even called upon Miss Huxtable at Merton House when I believed her to be the innocent dupe of a scoundrel. It seems I was mistaken in her. She will be sorry she did not listen to me one day soon, but my conscience is clear at least. And she will be getting only what she deserves." The visit went downhill from there. "Norm," Duncan said, "I am sorry about Woodbine. It was just Grandpapa being fiendish, I am afraid. He used you in order to bring me to heel.
