A Second Spring

by Carola Dunn

  “But I’m not at all the sort of female you thought you were offering for, the sort of wife you want.”

  “The sort of wife I thought I wanted. Why should only women be privileged to change their minds?”

  Still Nell hesitated. He was kind, gallant, brave, sensitive, forgiving, and only a man with a lively sense of humour could have laughed as he had in the stable. And yet…

  “If I say yes, you will not mind having Maera in your house?”

  “Our house. Certainly not. I have met many a dowager with less acceptable manners.”

  “You won’t stop me driving by myself?”

  “As long as you take a groom along—or me—to guard against highwaymen.”

  “You will let me play Beethoven?”

  “I’ll buy you everything he ever wrote for the pianoforte, and take you to hear his symphonies and concertos in London.”

  “You will not insist upon directing my reading?”

  “I venture to say you will find my library a considerable improvement over Brantwood’s.”

  “Neither Papa nor Bertie was ever fond of books,” Nell admitted. “You will not try to change my opinions?”

  “Oh yes I shall, but I shall respect them, and you for holding them.”

  “And I may visit the poor?”

  “Unless there is danger of contagion.” His voice thickened. “If I should be so lucky as to win you, you cannot expect me to risk losing you.”

  “Oh.” She wished she could see his face.

  “Have you any other shocking habits I should be warned of?” he teased.

  She guessed at a valiant effort to subdue his emotions, to put her at ease, but his query had the opposite effect. “I have never done anything really shocking before,” she said penitently, “nothing scandalous…except running away from you.”

  “I don’t want you to marry me for fear of scandal!” He straightened, drawing away from her. “All my life, I have sought to avoid being a subject for tattlemongers’ tongues, but I had rather suffer ridicule for being left in the lurch than have you wed me to save me from that fate. Which leaves you with no possible reason to want me. I’m quite useless to you.”

  “Oh Ben, I don’t want a man who won’t let me do things for myself, who won’t let me hellp him. You are a perfect gentleman. If I agree to marry you it would be because…” She hesitated.

  “Because?”

  After all her other questions it was going to sound petty, but she had to know whether she had misinterpreted the warm light in his eyes up there in their shared bedchamber. “Benedict, you truly don’t object to red hair?”

  “Object! My dear, my dearest Eleanor, if you had not kept it hidden from me, I’d have fallen in love with you weeks ago instead of proceeding in my dispassionate way. I doubt I am so perfect a gentleman I’d not have shown you…my passion.”

  His arm tightened about her waist as once again he buried his face in her hair. His lips found the nape of her neck and his kisses sent a glowing tremor through her entire being. She forgot the night, the dog in the vanguard, the patiently plodding horses, the predicament awaiting with the dawn.

  “Because?” he whispered in her ear.

  “Because I love you.”

  * * * *

  Maera led Grenadier to the dog-cart. Nell and Ben emerged from their dream to repair the harness with knotted strips of Nell’s abandoned, ruined clothes, and they set out again. Vesta and Vulcan, now patchily black, pulled them at a steady trot eastward into a sparkling sunrise perfumed with honeysuckle.

  And as she drove, Nell’s apprehensions returned.

  Ben’s acceptance of her quirks was all very well in the middle of nowhere with none but a highwayman and his accomplices for witnesses. How would he feel when the moment came to appear before the Ton?

  * * * *

  As the bridegroom’s closest relative, Juliet Lady Faulk sat in the front pew in the little church, next to the empty place where her brother ought to be. Only the calm, reassuring presence of her husband at her side stopped her pulling off her glove to bite her nails, or running out into the churchyard to question Lord Derrington.

  Her doubts of Lady Derrington’s increasingly anxious excuses had become certainty. Ben and Nell were missing. Which had cried off, which had jilted the other, she could not pretend to guess. Perhaps it was mutual. In any case, it was a major disaster and it was all her fault.

  She held Faulk’s hand tight as the whispers behind her turned into scandalised remarks audible above the organ’s persistent drone.

  Heads turned as the sound of hooves and wheels was followed by a ragged “Huzzah!” from the village urchins waiting outside. Cheering? Jeering? A curious mixture of the two. Juliet craned her neck. Had the bride arrived at last only to be humiliated by the groom’s absence?

  If so, she’d kill Ben.

  Bertie Derrington appeared, looking stunned, and raced up the nave to speak to the vicar. Behind him, two figures stood silhouetted in the arched doorway.

  The organist embarked uncertainly upon Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.

  The bride wore a magnificent necklace of emeralds and diamonds. Her head was wreathed with honeysuckle, from which her unbound hair fell in a fiery veil about her shoulders. Her simple gown of blue muslin was sprigged with…mud? Mud!...to match the ankle-high strip of dried mud around the hem. She walked slowly between the rows of gaping guests, very slowly, for she was supporting…

  Juliet closed her eyes, unbelieving, and reopened them to the same sight.

  Ben had one arm across Nell’s shoulders. His other arm was in a sling and he limped heavily as she helped him towards the altar, in his shirtsleeves and stocking-feet!

  Torn shirt, without neckcloth, and filthy stockings, Juliet noted, beyond incredulity. And one eye was red and puffy, swollen almost shut.

  “Someone has darkened his daylight for him,” murmured Faulk, grinning.

  Yet Ben did not look angry. He was not embarrassed, nor even self-conscious. In fact, as he bent his head to whisper in Nell’s ear, he was positively radiant. So was she.

  So was the huge, filthy dog of uncertain parentage who pranced after them exuding triumph.

  They stopped before the flower-laden altar. Ben’s back was caked with mud from the crown of his head all the way down to his heels. Nell’s face, now turned up to him, was a curious, uniform scarlet quite unlike a maidenly blush.

  The organ music ceased. Before the flustered vicar could pronounce his “Dearly beloved,” Ben once again bent his head. To the aghast amazement of the noble congregation, his lips met Nell’s in a long, loving kiss.

  THE AUNT AND THE ANCIENT MARINER

  Dearest Aunt Chloe,

  I am in the greatest Despair. Papa grows ever more determined to see me wed and off his hands by the end of June so that he need never endure the Trouble and Expense of another Season in Town. Now he vows to marry me to an OLD MAN. Sir Lionel Tiverton is the richest of my suitors and the only one with a title, though he is no more than a Baronet. Papa would have preferred a Marquis, or at least a Baron. But in spite of our grand Connexions, I am not pretty enough to catch a Nobleman, as did my sister, without a larger portion as bait than I possess. Dear Aunt, you know I care naught for wealth or title. I could be perfectly happy with a country Squire, or even a Clergyman, if he were but amiable and young.

  Indeed, I have written to you of the several agreeable, perfectly unexceptionable, young gentlemen I have met here. Though I am not madly in love with any of them, I should willingly wed Papa’s choice among them if only he will not force me into the arms of an Elderly Husband. He will not hear me, but rants and raves and swears I shall have Sir Lionel.

  So you see, my dearest Aunt, I am in desperate straits. Pray come to London at once and persuade Papa to listen to reason.

  Your affectionate, afflicted Niece,

  Georgina.

  Chloe dropped the tear-blotched letter in her lap. Persuade Edgar to see reason? As we
ll ask her to persuade the Emperor of China to fly to the moon. The most she had ever managed was to divert her brother’s easily aroused wrath from his children’s heads to her own.

  Poor Georgie! She was suffering because of the beautiful Dorothea’s marriage to Lord Welch. Catching the heir to an earl for a son-in-law had set up plain Edgar Bannister, Esquire, in his own conceit. Now nothing would do for his younger daughter but a title and a great fortune.

  It was not as if the Bannisters were in urgent need of funds. Whatever his failings as a father and brother, Squire Bannister was a knowledgeable agriculturalist and a competent landlord. His farms brought in excellent rents, though any stranger entering the room where Chloe sat might have been pardoned for doubting it.

  She glanced about the shabby parlour, dingier than ever in the chill grey light of the rainy April day. Edgar saw no point in lavishing the blunt on new furniture and carpets which his muddy riding boots and breeches and his muddier dogs were certain to besmirch in no time.

  Dene Manor had more than enough rooms to set aside one as dog-free. Chloe had never dared suggest such sacrilege.

  As though aware of her thoughts, the setter slouched on the hearthrug pricked up his ears, then rose and came to lay his head on her lap. Hastily she moved her sewing out of his way. Georgina’s letter fluttered to the floor.

  “What am I to do, Fury?” she asked, scratching behind his silky ears. He closed his eyes in bliss.

  Her eldest nephew strode into the room. “Aunt Chloe, Merrow says there’s a letter from Georgie?” Seeing the paper on the floor, he stooped to pick it up.

  “It’s addressed to me, but you had best read it, John. I need your advice.”

  “Mine?” The sturdy young man positively glowed. Though proudly in charge of the estate during his father’s absence, he was not accustomed to being consulted by the aunt who had been a mother to him for half his life.

  He dropped into a chair. Fury changed allegiances, and John absently fondled his head as he read.

  “Look at these spots, she’s been crying!” he said indignantly. “Can Father really make her marry an ancient cradle-snatcher?”

  “You know your father,” Chloe said.

  “He’ll bully her into it. But nothing you can say will make him change his mind. Just going up to Town without his express command would be enough make him kick up a fine dust. He’ll foam at the mouth if you try to argue with him.”

  Chloe shuddered. “Yes, but how can I abandon Georgie without even trying?”

  “Then you want to go?”

  “I don’t want to go.” Nothing could be further from her wishes than to travel so far from her Lancashire home, to a terrifyingly unknown metropolis, to confront her choleric brother. “I feel I must. At least I should be there to support her spirits.”

  “I hate to think of poor Georgie alone. Doro will not be of the least use to her.” He scanned the letter again. “Sir Lionel Tiverton—what business has he taking a bride of eighteen? I wish I could go with you and have it out with the old goat, but what with the planting and the lambing....”

  “No, you cannot leave Dene, John. Edgar would never trust you again. But you have given me an idea. If he proves adamant—”

  “When he proves adamant.”

  “I shall try whether this Sir Lionel will not be more reasonable. Surely he cannot have considered the feelings of a young girl tied to an elderly gentleman, the natural repugnance....” Chloe could not continue. Her own father had proposed just such a match for her, and only the decrepit bridegroom’s timely demise had saved her from the fate now threatening Georgina.

  * * * *

  “Darling Aunt Chloe, I knew you would come to the rescue!”

  Chloe turned from the superb Canaletto view of Venice hanging over the marble mantelpiece, just in time to catch her niece in her arms. Georgie hugged her fiercely.

  “I am come, dearest, and I will do my utmost, but you must not count on your papa listening to me.”

  “At least you are here. You cannot guess how I have missed you.”

  “And I you, Georgie.” Chloe had not meant to make that confession. It was in the nature of things that her charges must grow up and go their own ways.

  Come autumn her youngest nephew, Paul, would be off to join Bernard, his middle brother, at school. Dorothea was Lady Welch. John was courting the vicar’s daughter, a pleasant, sensible girl who would rightly expect to take over the reins of the Dene Manor household when they wed. And Georgina was bound to find a husband to her liking soon, if, by a miracle, Chloe contrived to preserve her from the aged Sir Lionel.

  “Doro is sympathetic when she remembers,” Georgie said, “but you know how she is. She cannot keep her mind on any subject for more than two minutes together. And my brother-in-law and Lord and Lady Chingford are all that is civil but quite distant. I cannot confide in them.”

  “It was very obliging in Lord Welch’s parents to invite you to stay for the Season.”

  “I wish they had not!”

  “Come now, dearest, you cannot tell me you have not enjoyed yourself at all.” With a tired smile, Chloe looked her favourite niece up and down. She was a charming sight in a fashionable high-waisted gown of peach sarsnet, her light brown curls threaded with a matching ribbon. “Gracious, such elegance. What is this nonsense about not being pretty enough to snare a peer?”

  “I shall never be half so beautiful as Doro,” Georgie said dispassionately, drawing Chloe down to sit beside her on a blue striped satin sofa. “It takes that sort of beauty to be noticed if one has neither great family nor great fortune.”

  “Dorothea is a beautiful widgeon. You have ten times her intelligence!”

  “Most gentlemen do not wish for intelligence in a wife. Only look at how Lord Welch adores Dorothea.”

  “Still? I own I have felt some concern as to whether he might grow disillusioned.”

  “No need to fret, Aunt Chloe. He is not much cleverer, just enough to let him feel superior! But even if some clever men desire a clever wife, one must first attract notice or there is no opportunity for conversation. The balls in London are quite different from the assemblies at home, where one knows everybody except a few visitors—like Lord Welch when Doro caught his eye. Here the gentlemen see me as just one among dozens of hopeful young ladies.”

  “But you do have admirers, Georgie,” Chloe said, distressed.

  “Oh yes, young men with insufficient prospects to please the blue-blooded heiresses, or Papa. And Sir Lionel.” Georgina raised hopeful brown eyes to meet Chloe’s. Her expression changed abruptly. “Oh, how selfish I am, dear Aunt. You are much too tired to think about my troubles this afternoon.”

  “I daresay I look positively hag-ridden,” Chloe said wryly. “As Edgar’s travelling carriage is here in London, I came overnight by the Mail rather than face the expense and complications of a post-chaise and having to stay alone at an inn. I am not certain what I ought to do tonight. Lady Chingford is not expecting me. She will think me horridly encroaching.”

  “I’ll ask Doro,” said Georgie, rising, but at that moment the drawing-room door flew open and her father strode in.

  “Chloe!” he bellowed. Already, rich food and lack of exercise had increased his bulk, though city living had not noticeably paled the carmine complexion. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Chloe flinched. After a few weeks of blissful peace and quiet she found herself unprepared for Edgar’s loud, perpetually angry voice. The thought of the storm she would raise when she explained her errand appalled her. Her head began to ache.

  “Hello, Edgar,” she said apprehensively.

  “Hello? Is that all you have to say for yourself? You’re supposed to be supervising the dairy and poultry yard at home, not gadding about like a damn spring chicken!”

  “John promised to keep an eye on the maids, though they are all quite competent and honest.”

  Her brother snorted. “They’ll steal me blind without constant
watching.”

  “It is only for a few days, Edgar.”

  “And what about Paul?”

  “He has gone to stay with the vicar while I am away, so he will not miss his lessons, nor run wild.”

  “It’s you that’s run wild, devil take it! What the deuce do you mean by chasing after—?”

  “How do you do, Miss Bannister,” said a cool, calm voice. A tall woman advanced into the room, richly clad in a pomona-green gown of gros de Naples silk, trimmed with yards of the finest Valenciennes lace. Her cap was an elaborate froth of matching lace lavishly adorned with green satin bows and ribbons. She made Chloe feel drab and dowdy in her practical carriage dress of slate-grey merino, the one she often wore at home to drive the gig to the village or to visit tenants.

  Edgar fell back, bowing. “You recall my sister, Lady Chingford?” he enquired in a much moderated tone.

  “Naturally. I trust your journey was not too shockingly tiresome, ma’am?”

  “A little, thank you, my lady.” Chloe curtsied.

  She was not surprised at Edgar’s respectful demeanour. Quite apart from his esteem for a title, the Countess of Chingford was an imposing figure who would certainly not allow herself to be browbeaten by a mere country squire. Only habitual indulgence toward her son could explain why she had permitted him to marry a lovely nobody like Dorothea.

  Meeting her at their wedding, Chloe had found her distinctly awe-inspiring. Now, travel-worn and uninvited, she felt altogether inadequate to deal with her ladyship.

  To her relief, Lady Chingford did not ask her reason for coming but merely said, “Dorothea will be happy to see you. I expect you will like to take a dish of tea while a chamber is prepared for you. Pray ring the bell, Miss Georgina.”

  Over tea, Chloe meekly, if sincerely, agreed that she would be glad to lie down for an hour or two. Edgar took himself off with a disgruntled mutter about an appointment at his club. Dorothea came in and greeted Chloe with delight.