A Magnificent Match

by Gayle Buck

  A MAGNIFICENT MATCH

  Gayle Buck

  About the Author

  Publishing Information

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Miss Megan O’Connell set spur to her mount. The geld­ing’s powerful hindquarters bunched. Horse and rider soared over the tall wooden gate and landed with catlike grace.

  “Bravo, Megan!” The young ruddy-faced gentleman ap­plauded. “You’ve got the brute well in hand.”

  Megan brought her horse alongside her brother’s mount. “I cannot take all the credit. It is as much Father’s hand as mine,” she said, patting the gelding’s warm muscular neck.

  Captain Colin O’Connell shrugged his wide shoulders. “Oh well, of course. Father bred him and brought him up. But even Father recognizes the talent you have for training the horses and bringing out the best in them.”

  They started walking their horses across the muddy field. It was a cool fall day. The air felt damp against Megan’s face. The soft Irish morning was quiet. Megan responded to her brother’s comment with wry humor.

  “Yes, I am every bit as valuable as a good undergroom,” she said dryly.

  “Here, now!” protested Captain O’Connell. “You know that isn’t quite true.”

  Megan glanced at her brother curiously. “How odd. You have been in the military scarcely two years now, Colin, yet you have managed to forget so much. I find it wonderful.”

  Captain O’Connell frowned, disliking his sister’s statement but too honest to deny its veracity. He had deliberately set himself to forge a new life in the Lifeguards and in the process forget his former one. It had been an uneasy childhood for them all. They had all been left to scramble for themselves. The one common thread that bound the O’Connells was the land and the horses that were bred on it.

  Brother and sister rode in companionable but pensive si­lence for a few moments. “I wish it was different for you,” said Captain O’Connell abruptly.

  “I do not complain, Colin.” Megan glanced at his frowning face with dawning surprise. “Why, do you pity me? You should not, you know. I have had a number of advantages that the rest of you did not.”

  Captain O’Connell snorted. “Yes, farmed out to this place or that so that you would not be underfoot. That was certainly an advantageous upbringing.”

  Megan chose to ignore her brother’s derisive statement. Firmly, she said, “And I now have dear Mrs. Tyler for com­pany. So do not repine on my behalf. Rather pity Celeste, who is anticipating her fourth lying-in.”

  Captain O’Connell stared. “No! Megan, you must be jesting.”

  “I would not say it if it were not true,” said Megan with a smile. She was glad to have successfully sidetracked her brother’s attention from herself. She disliked brooding upon what one might perceive as injustices. Nothing ever came of it except dissatisfaction and bitterness and that robbed one of what joy one did have.

  “Why, Celeste was delivered of a brat not eighteen months ago. You wrote me yourself of the happy event. She cannot possibly be expecting again,” said Captain O’Connell, still dis­believing.

  Megan laughed. Her eyes lit up with amusement at his ex­pression. “But I promise you that she is. Have you not won­dered why she does not come downstairs until luncheon? Celeste is horridly ill every morning, poor thing.”

  Captain O’Connell grimaced. “It never occurred to me, no. Poor Celeste, indeed. I thought only that she had chosen to conform to our mother’s indolent habits.”

  “Did you? More shame to you, then, Colin, when Celeste is your own twin. She was always one to be up with the dawn on horseback just as you were,” said Megan.

  “We may be twins, but we are poles apart in our likes and dislikes,” retorted Captain O’Connell.

  Megan understood him perfectly. “You must try to like Patrick, Colin. He is extremely good to Celeste and the chil­dren. She is happier than she ever was before.”

  “I allow there to be truth in that. However, I find our es­timable brother-in-law to be something of a bore,” said Cap­tain O’Connell frankly.

  “He is rather difficult to abide on occasion,” admitted Megan.

  Captain O’Connell gave a crack of laughter. ‘That is an un­derstatement, dear sister. I am only glad that I am not forced to sit at the table with him except when I am on leave.”

  “Well, I am not either, except when you are on leave,” re­torted Megan. “Patrick and Celeste prefer to stay at home, content in their domestic bliss. They bestow upon us an ex­tended visit only when it becomes known that you are re­turned. So you see, Colin, you are paid a fine compliment. Patrick is partial to your graceless company.”

  “Heaven help me!” said Captain O’Connell, appalled.

  Megan chuckled. She glanced at him sideways. Hesitantly, she said, “Can you not delay for a bit longer before you must return to duty? I would suffer even Patrick’s most longwinded report of his crops for the continued pleasure of your com­pany, my best of brothers.”

  Captain O’Connell reached out to squeeze her elbow in a sympathetic gesture. “Not even for you would I extend my leave. I promised to remain only through our mother’s dress ball. Otherwise the lack of family feeling in our parents’ house would have long since driven me back to England.”

  Megan smiled. She had not really thought that he would change his mind. Her brother was fond of her, but his attach­ment was not of a sort that he would put himself out for her. “I do understand. How I wish that I could go with you just once. I would so like to see something of the world.”

  There was an unconscious yearning in her voice that pulled at Captain O’Connell’s self-interested heart. With suppressed violence, he said, “It is barbaric the way you have been used! You should be gracing the ton, established in your own house­hold and holding fashionable rout parties. Instead of which, you are buried here with not a hope of anything else. If I had a wife, I’d see to it that you were properly brought out.”

  “If you had a wife, you would be as busy as Patrick and Celeste in setting up your nursery,” retorted Megan. “There would not be time to spare for a spinster sister.”

  She was touched by the unexpected depth of her brother’s concern, but also too wise to show how deeply she was af­fected. Colin must not end his leave feeling troubled and both­ered on her behalf. That would be an unnatural state of mind for him and it would undoubtedly result in him becoming an­noyed with her for being the cause of it.

  Captain O’Connell reddened and mustered a protest. “Now see here, Megan! You shouldn’t speak such warm thoughts. No, nor think them either!”

  “Come, Colin, I am not a complete ninny. I have grown up with horse breeding all of my life. No one ever thought to send me out of the room when proper breeding points and lines were discussed,” said Megan.

  “Yes, well, but that is an entirely different matter,” said Captain O’Connell, looking ill at ease.

  Megan eyed his discomfited expression and her eyes gleamed. She then proceeded to tease him until they rode into the stableyard.

  There the riders were met by a stocky gentleman dressed in well-cut tweeds. His heavy locks were cut in a tumbled fash­ion, setting off his broad forehead and handsome face. The Honorable Lionel O’Connell, the eldest of the siblings, was the very picture of a prosperous country squire. “Well, you have certainly been gone long enough,” he grumbled, point­edly flicking open a gold pocketwatch.

  “Yes, it has been an enjoyable ride. We came back across the fields,” said Megan, accepting a groom’s help in dismount­ing. She shook out her riding skins, her crop in hand.

  Mr. O’Connell looked sharply from one to the other. His blue eyes hard, he snapped shut the watch. “Not the Patterson gates, I hope?”r />
  Captain O’Connell had also dismounted. He was consider­ably taller than his brother, a fact that Lionel O’Connell dis­liked intensely and which Captain O’Connell well knew. Captain O’Connell leaned his tall frame against the horse for a moment, regarding his elder brother from under half-lowered lids. There was a gleam of dislike in his eyes. “The gelding jumped beautifully. A pity that you did not see it, Lionel.”

  Mr. O’Connell did not rise to this provoking gambit. Instead he rounded on his sister, his expression flushed with anger. “I told you that the gelding was not ready.”

  “What nonsense, Lionel. Of course he is. I have told you so all week,” said Megan calmly. “There was not the least quiver of reluctance in him. He performed handsomely.”

  The horses had been led off and Mr. O’Connell followed after them, fuming. “I shall see if they have taken any hurt from your reckless impudence!” he flung over his shoulder.

  Captain O’Connell grimaced and fell into step with Megan as they crossed the yard to the manor house. “Our Lionel is scarcely a conciliatory sort. I do not understand how you bear him. I cannot!”

  “He is as single-minded as Father ever was,” said Megan with a slight shrug, entering the hall with Captain O’Connell close behind her. Once again, she turned the conversation away from herself. “Sophronia has quite given up on him, I suspect. She has turned to her own interests these days. She breeds pugs and when she goes to Bath, she orders out a spe­cial carriage for them.”

  “Bath! Pugs!” exclaimed Captain O’Connell. “Whatever does she do it for?”

  “Why, Colin, isn’t it obvious? Sophronia has decided to be a hypochondriac, which gains her the notice in Bath that she cannot arouse in Lionel’s breast, and she breeds pugs because they annoy him so,” said Megan, laughing.

  “Lionel and Sophronia—that is an ill-managed pair! Then Celeste, who eloped out of the schoolroom with stiff-rumped Patrick, while I demanded a commission from my father so that I could escape into the army,” said Captain O’Connell, shaking his head. “What a family we are!”

  “Yes, are we not? Every one of us is selfish to the bone and unwilling to give up our own desires for any of the others.” said Megan, suddenly sobering.

  Captain O’Connell unexpectedly snatched up her hand and kissed it. “Except for you, Megan. You are the best of us all.”

  Megan looked up at him, raising her brows slightly. “You are quite out, Colin. I am as selfish as the rest of you. Do not deceive yourself on that count, I pray you!”

  She left him then, walking gracefully up the staircase, the hem of her riding habit draped over one arm and her whip clenched tight in her hand. Captain O’Connell watched her as­cend, a somewhat startled expression in his eyes.

  At the first landing, Megan was intercepted by one of the domestic maids. “Oh, miss, there ye be! ‘er lidyship ‘as been asking for ye this quarter hour past.”

  Megan glanced down at herself. There were splatters of mud on her habit and her half-boots were also soiled. She would have liked to have put off the riding habit before attend­ing her mother, but she knew Lady O’Connell’s impatient na­ture. “Thank you. I shall go at once.”

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  Megan traversed the long winding hallways to her lady­ship’s apartments. She was expected. The maid immedi­ately ushered her inside. In a hushed voice, the maid said, “ ‘er lidyship is trying her jewels, miss.”

  Megan smiled and nodded her understanding. She walked into the dressing room and paused, not wanting to interrupt at an inopportune moment.

  Lady O’Connell was seated at her dressing table. Her dresser, a woman of superior attitude, respectfully stood by. Her ladyship picked up a glittering diamond and sapphire necklace out of one of the three jewelry boxes opened on the dressing table. Lady O’Connell held the necklace up to her throat, glanced at herself in the glass, then dropped the necklace carelessly onto a tangled mound of earlier rejections. “No, it simply won’t do. Too insipid by half,” uttered her ladyship discontentedly.

  “Perhaps the garnets, my lady,” suggested the dresser.

  “You wished to see me. Mother,” said Megan, advancing into view.

  Lady O’Connell did not turn around but instead met her daughter’s eyes in the mirror. The faintest flicker of annoy­ance touched her features. “Oh, yes! I had almost forgotten. Simpkins, find me the garnets. I shall try them.” The dresser acknowledged her ladyship’s order with a nod and began to look through one of the jewelry boxes.

  Lady O’Connell turned at last to face her daughter. With a sigh and a weary smile, she held out her hand. When her daughter came forward and lightly clasped her fingers for a moment, she said, “It is so fatiguing at times to make the proper decision. One must be so very careful to create just the right nuance, you know.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Megan, knowing that it was expected of her to enter into her mother’s preoccupation with self-adornment.

  There was a striking difference between mother and daugh­ter. Megan was dressed in a green drab riding habit that had seen better days. The cuffs and hem had been mended and the stock at her neck was yellowed with innumerable washings. Lady O’Connell was attired in a frothy dressing gown of pale sea-green gauze and lace. Bracelets circled her wrists and rings sparkled on her fingers. On the bed was laid a day dress of ex­quisite watered silk awaiting the moment when her ladyship decided that she wished to be dressed.

  Lady O’Connell had once been a beautiful woman. Her gold hair had paled slightly and her figure was not what it had once been. But time had not altered her fine facial bones, nor the graceful line of her neck. As a consequence, her ladyship was thoroughly obsessed with necklaces and acquired costly new ones whenever the whim struck her.

  After a glance at the dresser, who was still rummaging through the jewelry boxes for the garnets, Megan asked, “What is it that you wished of me, Mother?”

  “What did I wish you— Oh, yes! Dear Megan, I have had the most delightful communication. Let me see where I have put it. Ah! Here it is, stuck in the side of my mirror so that I should not forget it.” Lady O’Connell plucked the folded sheet from her mirror and waved the white paper languidly. “My dear friend Princess Elizaveta Kirov has written to me. You do remember her royal highness, do you not? She stayed with me briefly two years ago in London when you came for your first visit to a decent modiste.”

  “Yes, I do recall the princess,” said Megan, nodding. She had a vague recollection of a strikingly handsome, very auto­cratic woman to whom she had been briefly introduced before being dismissed again into the hands of her companion. “Princess Kirov impressed me as a very grand lady.”

  Lady O’Connell was pleased and her expression showed it. “Oh, I am glad that you took a liking to the princess, for it makes things all the more delightful. Megan, Princess Kirov has extended a gracious invitation to you to come to her in St. Petersburg. She assures me that she will see to it that you will be introduced to simply everyone and that you will have a wonderful time.”

  “That is gracious of her highness, indeed. However, you had told me that this year I could make my London debut,” said Megan calmly. “I should like to do that, I think.”

  Lady O’Connell frowned. She tapped the invitation on her chair arm. “I scarcely recall. But it makes little difference, after all. The London Season does not begin for months and months yet. You may very well fit in a trip to St. Petersburg before we must think about the Season.”

  Megan knew that once again, as had happened for the past two years, her mother had sidestepped a commitment to bring her out in London. Lady O’Connell enjoyed a very active so­cial life. She was extremely reluctant to interrupt her own pur­suit of pleasure in order to take on the task of bringing out and shepherding a daughter through her first Season.

  This invitation from Princess Kirov had come at a conve­nient time for Lady O’Connell. Her ladyship had developed a habit over the years of giving over the resp
onsibility of her youngest daughter to others. Once Lady O’Connell had found a way to dispense with her maternal duties, she would conve­niently forget Megan’s existence.

  Megan knew the futility of argument. Lady O’Connell was not moved by anything but her own desires. The hope of a come-out in London receded farther and farther out of reach.

  Megan was nineteen. Soon she would be considered to be on the shelf without ever having had the opportunity to see anything of the world except their own estate in Ireland and that little bit of England where her maternal relations resided. It was a pity, as Lady O’Connell had once remarked, that her aunt Leonora was bedridden or otherwise she could have enjoyed her aunt and uncle’s chaperonage for a Season by now.

  Megan had once cherished hopes that her elder sister, Celeste, upon her marriage might sponsor her, but Celeste had never shown the least desire for anything other than acquiring a large family. As for her sister-in-law, Sophronia, Megan had quite decidedly turned down that lady’s once-issued lukewarm invitation to join her in a pilgrimage to Bath. Taking the wa­ters and walking wheezy pugs was not Megan’s notion of en­larging her scope of experience.

  On the spot, Megan decided to make the most of this partic­ular opportunity. Half a loaf was better than none. If she was going to be shuffled off to Russia, she wanted to at least make something useful come of it. She had told her brother Colin that she was as ruthlessly selfish as any of the rest of the O’Connells and she felt that it was quite true. “I suppose that Princess Kirov has offered to bring me out into society?”

  Lady O’Connell brightened considerably. “What a wonder­ful idea! Of course she shall, for Elizaveta is my dearest of friends and will do anything for me. I shall write a letter at once that she must do so and you may carry it to her. My dear Megan, nothing could be more fortuitous! St. Petersburg is fa­mous for its cosmopolitan atmosphere. I have heard that the capital positively teems with bluebloods and well-connected diplomats. You will make your debut there and try your wings a little. And naturally you must make the most of your oppor­tunities.” She smiled archly. “I would not be at all displeased if you were to form a suitable connection, Megan.”