An Eccentric Engagement

by Donna Lea Simpson

  Cover

  An Eccentric Engagement

  Sorrow Marchand has patiently endured the taunts of London society for her bold speech and curious ways, yet it was those very qualities of the sparkling young beauty that caught the eye of the Honorable Bertram Carlyle and ultimately elicited an offer of marriage from him. But the usually candid Sorrow has kept her ludicrously madcap family a well-hidden secret from her betrothed—and now he is coming to visit!

  Bertram was an exceedingly suitable suitor, but for all his many fine traits he had been harshly schooled under the oppressive thumb of his father and had meekly embraced many of the man’s conventional attitudes. Upon meeting Sorrow’s family and becoming swept up in the endless swirl of silly chaos, he senses a conflict of epic proportions on the horizon—both within himself and with his father.

  As Sorrow grows more concerned that her outrageous relatives will damn her only chance at happiness with a man she truly loves, Bertram must find the courage to defy his very traditional father and become part of a family that’s anything but—and become the man Sorrow always knew he could be.

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Eccentric Engagement

  Donna Lea Simpson

  This is a revised edition of a novella originally published as “Sorrow’s Wedding” in the anthology With This Ring, copyright © 2004, 2017 by Donna Lea Simpson.

  Material excerpted from A Lady’s Choice copyright © 2016 by Donna Lea Simpson.

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  Published by Beyond the Page at Smashwords

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-946069-27-6

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Excerpt from A Lady’s Choice

  Books by Donna Lea Simpson

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sorrow Marchand tugged a brush through her glossy blond curls as she sat at her dressing table and stared absently into the mirror, listening to the pacing outside her bedchamber door. In less than one month she would be married. She had attended the London Season as guest of her honorary aunt, Lady Spotswycke, and had caught the eye of a very eligible beau, the Honorable Mr. Bertram Carlyle, had been wooed, courted, asked and accepted his offer of marriage.

  The pacing outside her bedchamber increased in speed. She smiled at the sound. When the pacer could no longer bear to keep her thoughts to herself she would burst in.

  Marriage. She had her parents’ excellent example and felt confident of her decision. She was nervous, but not unduly so. Bertram was everything he should be, and perhaps more than he knew. They would be happy together, at least most of the time; she was convinced of it.

  Finally, the pacer burst into her room and flung herself down on the stool beside Sorrow.

  “My dear,” Sorrow’s adoptive mother said, “are you sure about everything? And have you . . . have you told Mr. Carlyle?”

  Composed—unnaturally so, some in London had cruelly said—for so young a woman, not yet twenty-one, Sorrow turned on her seat and gave her mother a quick hug. “Mama, I’m sure. And he is Bert, not ‘Mr. Carlyle.’ He will be your son in just three weeks.”

  Mrs. Marchand worried at her lip with her teeth. “But have you told him?” she repeated.

  Sorrow set her ornate silver brush aside on the mahogany dressing table. “Told him what?”

  “About us.”

  “Of course I have. I told him about you and father and how dear you both are and how much he will love you when he comes to know you.”

  The older woman’s brow wrinkled into furrows, and she said, “No, Sorrow dear, don’t avoid the subject. I meant have you told young Carlyle about—”

  A keening moan outside the door stopped them both, and then a thudding noise, followed by the bump bump bump of something—or someone—falling or jumping down the stairs echoed through the old house. Sorrow and her mother both listened, heads cocked, eyes unfocused.

  When there was no further outcry, Sorrow murmured, “It must be all right this time; if Joshua were hurt there would be such a ruckus.”

  “Don’t avoid the subject, my dear. Have you told your future husband about us . . . about how we live. It is only fair that he know what he is marrying into.”

  With the perpetually sunny smile that belied her somber name, Sorrow took her mother’s hands in hers and rubbed them. “Mama, don’t worry, please. Bertram is an excellent young man, very compassionate, good, sweet-natured, and with a sense of humor. He will not be alarmed. Once you meet him you’ll understand.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Mrs. Marchand said, squeezing her daughter’s hand.

  “But you don’t know him, Mama,” Sorrow said, her oval face set in a most serious expression. “Do you think I would have said yes to his proposal if I was not absolutely sure?”

  “But you should have warned him, should have explained—”

  “No,” the young woman said, holding up one hand. “Please don’t say I should have alerted him what to expect. There is no way to describe our life to someone who has never been here, never met you and Papa and the others. In words it sounds . . . oh, ludicrous. Impossibly senseless. Absurd. But in truth it is so lovely and simple and perfect. So don’t say I should have warned him. I could never explain. And if I thought an explanation was necessary, then I would never have said yes to him.”

  “I will trust your judgment, my dear. But what shall you do if he decides he simply cannot face living as we do?”

  “I believe in Bertram, Mama,” she said, looking at her mother with a serene expression. “It will never come to that.”

  Another noise arose in the hall, and someone rapped on Sorrow’s door.

  “Mrs. Marchand, Mr. Howard is having a bad turn, ma’am, an’ I’m not quite sure what to do.”

  “I am coming, Letty,” Mrs. Marchand said, rising from the dressing table stool. Sorrow started to rise, too, but her mother pushed her back down and said, “No, dear, you stay here. I want you to get a goodly amount of sleep tonight. I would not have you looking haggard for your Bertram. He arrives early, I imagine, if he is a proper young bridegroom.”

  She exited t
he room and Sorrow picked up the brush again, brushing her hair until sparks crackled and glittered in the dim reflection, all that could be seen by candlelight. Despite her calming words to her mother she did feel a momentary qualm. For one thing, Bert would not be early, she was sure of it. He was a very diffident young man in many ways, and not as eager for this marriage as her mother seemed to think. He would arrive by luncheon, perhaps, or later.

  And then, though she would never have worried her mother with it, doubt assailed her in the dimness of her room. What if she was wrong? What if Bert was horrified by her life and her unusual family?

  Then he was not the man she thought he was, she decided, laying the brush down again and crossing the bare wood floor to her bed. And she would not have him at any price, if that was the case. She snuffed her candle and snuggled under the covers. Down the hall, even through the heavy wood door, she could hear her mother singing a piece from an opera, her sweet, high voice fluting through the early summer night air and no doubt comforting poor Mr. Howard.

  If Bertram could not see how beautiful her life at the Marchand home, Spirit Garden, was, then he would never understand her, nor what she wanted from life. And if that was true, he was not the man she suspected he was beneath his layers of London conventionality, and they had no business marrying. It would be cold comfort, though, to know that he was not the right husband for her, when she did so look forward to their life together.

  But she would worry about that on the morrow. She closed her eyes, determined to sleep.

  • • •

  The Kent countryside was bursting with blooms in the hedgerows, and the early morning sun was raising a mist off the damp grass. It hovered, giving an eerie impression of phantoms undulating over the meadows. Bertram Carlyle was happy he had decided to ride down, sending his luggage and valet ahead of him, despite his father’s recommendation that for the dignity of his position he ought to arrive at the Marchand estate—the oddly named Spirit Garden—by carriage. Defying his father never came easy, but in this case victory had come a little too effortlessly.

  He suspected that his father, the very elegant and lordly Viscount Newton, didn’t really believe that anything could make his only son dignified or welcome, even at his future bride’s home. Chastising himself for such a disloyal thought, Bertram finally rounded the curve in the road and saw before him the promised view of Spirit Garden.

  Sorrow had told him it was the most beautiful place on earth, and with the song of the lark fluting through the June air, the scent of hedge roses in his nostrils, and the knowledge in his heart that Miss Sorrow Marchand had actually said yes to his proposal, he had to agree with her assessment.

  It was a long, low house, three stories but seeming to melt into the Kentish countryside. Occupying a meadow near a stream, there were willows sweeping the waterway and a long green sward of grass swooping up to the house itself, interrupted only by a white crushed-limestone drive that circled in front of the manse. Beyond, barely visible, was a tiny chapel, the chapel where he and Sorrow Marchand would be wed in just over a fortnight.

  The thought unnerved him.

  He turned his gaze back to the main house as he cantered along the road above the home. Gardens surrounded the building, and he caught a glimpse of a kitchen garden behind that filled the space from house to stable with fat cabbages and other greenery impossible to identify. Even from a distance, as he approached and caught various views from different angles, he could see the early morning activity: a maid hanging laundry in a yard behind the house, another carrying pails of something from the house to a low piggery far from the stable, and a groom currying a horse in a paddock.

  He pulled his mount, Tiberius, to a halt on the rise and waited, expecting doubt, fear, and dread to assail him. But his heart did not thud, nor did his stomach clench. Every bridegroom should be nervous, should he not, at the thought of meeting his future parents-in-law? One would almost think he was coming home, that mythic place of welcome of which he had oft heard but never visited. Newton Castle only ever inspired loathing and illness in him, but in coming to Spirit Garden he felt a calmness overtake him.

  It was most disquieting.

  It was frightfully early and he wondered if he ought to linger awhile, waiting until he could be sure his bride and her parents were awake and arisen. But no, there would be servants, and he could wait in a library or den, surely. Taking a deep, bracing breath of Kentish air, he determined that he would not start this new relationship by being fearful and doubting. He had done that his whole life and it could not continue. It was unmanly. He was going to be a husband soon, and if he was fortunate, a father. A father should be confident, bold, strong . . . everything that was not him, in other words.

  And if he was not careful, pessimistic, gloomy thoughts would darken this glorious spring day, and he would not allow that. He was sure that would come soon enough, when his father joined them to plan and execute the wedding.

  He set Tiberius to gallop and the gelding obliged, so two minutes saw him and his lathered mount arriving at the home of his intended bride. As he pulled his steed to a halt on the crushed limestone gravel, an ancient hound turned its sightless eyes toward Carlyle and bayed, head thrown back in ululating welcome.

  Carlyle dismounted, disconcerted, and became even more so when an elderly groom who appeared to have only one arm trotted out from behind the house and took Tiberius’s bridle, leading the steed away as he said over his shoulder, “They’re awaitin’ ya, mister . . . jist go on in.”

  The hound left with the groom, his job apparently done. Carlyle gazed up at the staid house, larger and grander now that he was in front of it, and took a deep breath, but before he could mount the steps up to the front door, said door burst open and a stout young boy with a round face boiled from the house like a bee from a disturbed hive. He was howling incoherently and clutching his head. After him an older man in just a shirt and breeches, no coat or cravat, followed, hollering as he waved scissors, “Joshua, you must have your hair cut! You know I will not hurt you!”

  The man skidded to a halt on the limestone drive at the sight of Carlyle. “Hello. You must be Bertram. Please go in. Mrs. Marchand and Sorrow are both about somewhere. Excuse me, but I must find Joshua. His hair is wet and I do not wish him to catch a cold.” With that he bolted after the young fellow.

  Carlyle stood staring after them. A woman came to the open door, glanced out, caught sight of him, and said, as she descended, “Oh, good heavens. Mr. Carlyle, is it? I told Sorrow you’d be early, but she was sure you would not. I trusted her judgment when I should have trusted my own knowledge of how a prospective bridegroom would behave. I felt certain you would be eager to arrive and see Sorrow again.”

  “Mrs. Marchand?” he said, moving forward on wooden legs and thrusting his hand out.

  “Yes, of course! How good of you to come to us, Mr. Carlyle, and how much we look forward to getting to know you. Please do not mind Mr. Marchand; he has been trying to get Joshua to allow him to cut his hair, and really, the boy badly needs a haircut, but he will trust no one but my husband right now because he was so badly treated . . .”

  She was still talking, her voice becoming muffled, as she enfolded him in a fierce hug, something he was not prepared for. He didn’t even know the woman! And that was Mr. Marchand, the coatless, cravatless man following the howling boy? And who was this Joshua? Was it Sorrow’s . . . brother?

  “Mama, Letty tells me that Tony told her that a man had arrived on horseback, but I said that it could not be true, but she insisted . . .”

  Carlyle, emerging from the embrace, looked up at the house to see Miss Sorrow Marchand, his bride-to-be and inhabitant of this strange house, daughter to this woman who had just hugged him so ardently. She was every bit as lovely as he remembered—they had parted weeks ago, and he was beginning to doubt his memory of her—blond and lithe, lively and pert. She saw him too, and her alabaster cheeks pinkened.

  His breath caught in hi
s throat. He had forgotten. In that moment he realized that he had forgotten how much he liked her, how at ease he felt in her company and how very beautiful he thought she was, though most in their London circle damned her faintly as “tolerable.” He could not say he loved her, but then he knew she did not love him either. He had no doubt that he was just the most acceptable alternative, as the future Viscount Newton, to life as a spinster. That she was twenty-one, almost, and unmarried, had seemed strange to him until he talked for a while with her and found that her manner of speaking some would call bold. Some whispered, too, that her family was eccentric, but until this very moment he had thought that that perhaps meant they did not go out in company much. Now he wondered.

  And yet . . . he was still very happy to see her.

  “Bertram,” she gasped, and clutched her hands in front of her.

  “Sorrow,” he said, smiling up at her, her mother still on his arm.

  “Come in, come in,” Sorrow said, pushing the door behind her open again.

  “Welcome to Spirit Garden,” Mrs. Marchand said, and mounted the steps with him.

  Chapter 2

  They entered, Carlyle not sure, after such a strange greeting, what to expect. But the entrance was lovely and serene, with spring flowers in heavy urns and sunlight from sparkling windows touching the pale walls and gilt framed portraits. Everything was elegant, calm and decorous, including his bride-to-be and her mother.

  “Your luggage and man arrived yesterday, Mr. Carlyle,” Mrs. Marchand said over her shoulder.

  “Bertram, please, ma’am. I am to be your son!” Even as he said it, he realized that it sounded terribly stuffy coming from him. But the words must stand as he said them.