A Most Unconventional Match

by Julia Justiss

  She’d look in the bookroom later. After nuncheon. For now, it was still painting time. She would remain here in this tranquil space for just a little longer. Smoothing her dull black skirts with a trembling hand, she rose and walked to her easel.

  Before she could pick her brush back up, there was another knock at the door and Sands peeped in. ‘Sir Gregory Holburn to see you, madam. Do you wish to receive him?’

  Her immediate response was to refuse, but she bit it back. She’d not met her late husband’s closest friend since the funeral more than a month ago, an event that, transpiring as it had in a blur of shock and misery, she scarcely remembered.

  She hadn’t stepped a foot outside the house after returning from the interment. And since Everitt had cared more for collecting his antiquities than for mingling with society and she had cared about mingling in society not at all, with her family out of England, she’d not had any callers.

  Sir Gregory had always treated her kindly, almost like an avuncular uncle. He would worry if she refused to meet him.

  With a sigh she stripped off the full-length apron she wore to save her gown from the worst of the paint spatters. ‘Very well. Show him to the blue salon and tell him I’ll join him shortly.’

  She walked to the small mirror over her workbench, frowning as she scraped back the loose strands of hair and tucked them into the chignon. Her face was pale, her eyes dull. Everitt would say she looked like she was going into a decline.

  And so I am, without you, my dear, she whispered softly. Gritting her teeth against another swell of useless grief, she forced a smile to her lips and headed for the blue salon.

  Sir Gregory jumped to his feet as she entered. A tall, well-built man in his fortieth year, his light brown hair as yet showed no trace of grey, unlike the silver-tinted locks of Everitt, who’d been five years his senior. Friends from their youth, the two men had grown up in the same area of Oxfordshire and attended the same college.

  His light brown eyes lighting with pleasure, Sir Gregory took the hand she offered and kissed it. ‘How have you been getting on? I’m sorry not to have come sooner; estate business at Holburn Hall kept me tied up longer than I’d expected.’

  ‘I hope everything is going well there,’ Elizabeth said politely. Absently she wondered how Everitt’s neighbouring property, Lowery Manor, was faring. Since their marriage, they’d spent little time there, her husband preferring to reside in London where he might more easily acquire items for his collection.

  ‘Some difficulties with the planting, but well enough.’ Eyeing her more closely, he shook his head. ‘You look tired and careworn. Is Miss Lowery still confined to her bed and unable to assist? My poor Lizbet, I knew I should have come back sooner to check on you!’

  ‘How kind of you,’ Elizabeth replied, acknowledging his concern. ‘I’m afraid Miss Lowery is so far from recovered she must not even think of returning to her duties. I get on well enough, I suppose, though it is…difficult.’ She attempted a smile. ‘So many things to do! Reviewing menus, inspecting linens, checking silver, ordering coal—I had no idea how much was required to run a household. Did you know there are at least seventeen different recipes for preparing chicken?’

  ‘Seventeen?’ He chuckled. ‘Who would have thought?’

  ‘And where does one obtain the coin to pay one’s servants?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Miss Lowery and Everitt spoiled me dreadfully, I’m discovering.’

  Holburn took her hand and patted it. ‘Dear lady, you are too young and lovely to trouble yourself with such trivialities! Now that I’ve returned to London, I do hope you’ll allow me to lift some of those burdens from your shoulders.’ Letting go of her fingers, he extracted a small purse from the pocket of his coat. ‘How much coin do you need for the servants?’

  Tempting as it was to transfer all her tiresome duties into his willing hands, Elizabeth hesitated. Husband’s best friend notwithstanding, there was no link of kinship between them whatsoever. She could not but feel it went beyond the limits of what was proper to accept any of his kindly offered assistance. Without doubt, she knew she must not take money from him, even as a temporary loan.

  ‘That won’t be necessary, Sir Gregory, although I do thank you for offering. You must ignore my hen-hearted complaining! I shall learn to manage soon enough.’

  ‘You are sure?’ When she nodded, he continued, ‘Very well, I shall do nothing—this time. But my offer stands. I should be honoured to assist you in any way, at any time.’

  As the mantel clock chimed the hour, she rose. David would be waiting for her, anxious for his nuncheon. ‘Should you like to join us for some light refreshment?’

  ‘You will take it with your son?’

  ‘Yes. By noon he’s grown quite peckish.’

  ‘I fear I must decline. Another time, perhaps?’

  ‘Of course.’ She escorted him from the parlour, secretly relieved he’d refused the invitation she’d felt obligated to offer. But Sir Gregory did not enjoy children—and David, perhaps sensing as children often do the attitude of the adults around them, most decidedly did not like Sir Gregory.

  Some time this afternoon, she still must solve the riddle of paying her servants. Turning her visitor over to Sands, with a longing glance in the direction of her studio, Elizabeth walked upstairs to find her son.

  In his bachelor quarters on the other side of Mayfair, Hal Waterman frowned at the notice printed in the newspaper. Having returned to London just last evening after spending two months monitoring a new canal project in the north, he was still sorting through the journals and correspondence that had accumulated in his absence.

  Carrying the paper with him, Hal dropped into the chair by the fireplace where his valet Jeffers had left him a glass of wine, gratefully settling back against its wide, custom-designed cushions. Taller and more powerfully built than most of his countrymen, after his sojourn in assorted inns over the last weeks, he was thoroughly tired of trying to sleep in beds too short for his long legs and sit in wing chairs too narrow for his broad shoulders.

  Scanning the notice again, he sighed. Mr Everitt Lowery, it read, of Lowery Manor in Oxfordshire and Green Street in London, unexpectedly expired in this city on the seventh inst.—almost six weeks ago now. Surviving him are his widow, Elizabeth, née Wellingford, and one son, David.

  Elizabeth. Even now, seven years after his first glimpse of her at the wedding of his friend Nicholas to her sister Sarah, the whisper of her name reverberated through his mind, exciting a tingling in his nerves and a stirring in his loins.

  Despite knowing Nicky’s wedding service had been about to begin, he’d barely been able to keep himself from bolting from the room that long-ago day. As it was, drenched in panic, he’d had to station himself as far from the enchanting Elizabeth as the confines of the parlour allowed, remaining at the reception afterwards only until he deemed it was politely possible to excuse himself.

  Until he had encountered Elizabeth Wellingford, armoured by a lifetime of scornful treatment at the elegant hands of his beautiful mother, he’d thought himself immune to those pinnacles of perfect female form who so easily enslaved the men around them. Which, for Hal, made Elizabeth Wellingford the most dangerous woman in England. Even knowing what she could and probably would do to him, he’d still been…mesmerised.

  The only sensible response was to stay as far away from her as possible. Over the intervening years, keeping that resolve turned out to be easier than he’d first feared, given that her sister had married his best friend. A few months after Nicky’s nuptials, shunning a Season, Elizabeth Wellingford had chosen to wed a family friend she’d known all her life, a gentleman more than twenty years her senior.

  So, fortunately for his piece of mind, the bewitching Elizabeth had never joined the ranks of the hopefuls on the Marriage Mart, that small section of ton society in which his mother took greatest interest. Each Season Mama had inspected the new arrivals, choosing those she deigned to honour with her friends
hip, whom she would then parade before her son in the hope, mercifully thus far unrealised, of enticing—or coercing—him into marrying some woman of fashion who might be trusted to try to remake her overly tall, totally unfashionable only child.

  A hopeless task, if Mama would just cease stubbornly refusing to concede the fact. In a society that prized dark, whipcord-slender men like that lisping poet Lord Byron, Hal was too big, too fair-haired, and, from his years of fencing and riding, too firmly muscled to ever be considered one of the ton’s dashing young blades.

  Prizing comfort and utility above all, he had no patience for coats that required a valet to wrestle him in and out of them, shirts with points so high and stiff they scratched his chin or fanciful cravats that threatened to choke him whenever he swallowed.

  And though, with Nicky’s help, he’d overcome the stuttering that had made his school years a misery, he would never be capable of uttering long flowing phrases full of the elegant compliments so beloved by ladies.

  He sighed. He would always be an embarrassment to Mama and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Shifting his gaze to the matter at hand, he looked back at the funeral notice he still held. So Elizabeth was now a widow. Too young and lovely a lady to be wearing black, he thought, a touch of sadness in his chest at the premature loss she had suffered. Then a startling, highly unpleasant realisation brought him out of his chair and sent him rushing to his desk.

  Impatiently he flipped through the papers until he found Nicky’s note. As he reviewed it, a scowl settled on his face.

  Hell and damnation! He had remembered the dates correctly. Nicholas, Sarah, their children and all the rest of the Stanhopes and Wellingfords—all of Elizabeth’s family—had departed for Europe, it appeared, barely a week before Everitt Lowery’s passing. The family party was not due to return to England for another three months at the earliest.

  There was no help for it. Despite his vow never to willingly place himself again in the same room with the lady who had so shaken his world, that lady was Nicky’s sister-in-law. With her family out of reach, Nicky would expect Hal to call on the widow, ensure that her husband’s lawyer and man of business had her financial affairs well in hand and, in Nicky’s stead, offer to assist her with anything she required.

  Going back to his chair, Hal sighed and downed a large swallow of the wine. Please heaven, let Lowery have left a decent will and employed a competent man of business. The Wellingfords had been nearly penniless when Nicky married Sarah, so Hal knew Elizabeth probably hadn’t brought much of a dowry to her marriage. He hoped Lowery’s finances were such that he’d been able to leave his widow a comfortable jointure.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t easily run herself into dun territory. As Hal recalled, a woman’s response to both joy and calamity involved the acquiring of a large number of new gowns, bonnets, pelisses, footwear and the nameless other fripperies females seemed so fond of. That had always been his mother’s way and he had no reason to expect that a woman as stupendously beautiful as Elizabeth Lowery would react any differently.

  With it having been six weeks since her husband’s demise, he’d best gird himself to call on Mrs Lowery immediately to make sure she wasn’t already having to outrun the constable. Lowery’s fatherless son didn’t need to have his mama land them in debtor’s prison.

  Taking another deep draught of wine, he recalled sardonically the bulging armoires in his mother’s several dressing rooms. Only the gigantic size of his father’s fortune had allowed Hal to achieve his majority—and assume control of his mother’s finances—with that lady still possessing a sizeable portion. Unless Lowery had tied up his funds carefully and appointed a vigilant trustee, if she spent her blunt as freely as Letitia Waterman, Lowery’s lovely widget of a wife could swiftly exhaust a modest competence.

  Fulfilling his duty as Nicky’s stand-in shouldn’t be that burdensome, he reassured himself. He’d probably only need to visit the widow once, after which he’d be able to deal directly with Lowery’s man of business. Besides, it had been a very long time since he’d seen Elizabeth.

  Having weathered seven Seasons’ worth of beauties posing, posturing and pouting before him, he was doubtless no longer as impressionable as he’d been that long-ago afternoon. Besides, ’twas likely that, over the years, memory had exaggerated the incident. Wary as he was of winsome women, surely when he met Elizabeth now he’d experience only a mild appreciation for her striking loveliness.

  After all, a man could appreciate a masterpiece of art without aching to possess it.

  Hal took a deep breath. He could do this. And he would…tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would meet Elizabeth Wellingford Lowery again.

  Chapter Two

  As early the next morning as Hal imagined a fashionable lady might be receiving—which meant nearly afternoon—Hal arrived at the Lowery town house on Green Street. To his relief, since he wished to get through this interview as quickly as possible, as soon as the butler read his card, he was shown to a parlour with the intelligence that the lady of the house was occupied at present with another caller, but would see him shortly.

  Telling himself to breathe normally, Hal paced the small room to which he’d been shown, silently rehearsing the speech he’d prepared. If he took his time and didn’t panic, he should be able to avoid stuttering through the few lines that expressed his condolences, offered his assistance in Lord Englemere’s stead for the duration of her family’s absence, and asked the direction of her late husband’s man of business so he might consult this gentleman without having to intrude again upon her privacy.

  As Hal made his third circuit of the room, running a finger under a neckcloth that had grown unaccountably tighter than when he’d tied it several hours ago, a soft scuffling sound caught his attention. Halting by the doorway, he peered out to see a small boy standing in the hallway, a metal toy soldier clutched in his hands as he cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder at the stairway behind him.

  When the boy’s eyes lowered from his inspection of the stair landing, his gaze met Hal’s and he gasped. Tightening his grip on the soldier, with another quick look up the stairs, he whispered anxiously, ‘You won’t tell Nurse I’m down here, will you?’

  Stifling a smile, Hal gave a negative shake of his head.

  Relaxing a bit, the boy said, ‘I shall go back up directly. Only…only the general lost his arm, and I thought Mama would want to know.’ He held up the toy, showing Hal the torso and the detached limb.

  A lady’s drawing room was no place for a young boy, as Hal knew only too well. He ought to save the lad a scolding by encouraging his immediate return to the nursery. But looking down at that small woebegone face, he couldn’t make himself utter the words.

  ‘I was ever so careful, but the arm just…came off,’ the lad continued earnestly. ‘Papa could fix him in a trice, I know, but Papa…’ The boy’s voice trailed off and he swallowed hard, tears appearing at the corners of his blue eyes. ‘Papa has…gone away. He always told me I must never disturb Mama in her studio, but she would want to know about the general, don’t you think? He is my best friend.’

  Suddenly a vivid memory engulfed Hal, so searing it robbed him of breath: a pudgy little blond boy weeping in a hallway, denied entry to his mother’s room. Exiled to the nursery, watched over by an unfamiliar, dragon-faced woman who rapped his knuckles when he cried and told him he should be ashamed of blubbering like a girl. Who refused his pleas to speak with his mother, informing him that Mrs Waterman was too busy to see a whiny little boy.

  Lowery’s son looked to be about the same age Hal had been when he’d lost his father. He’d never forgotten, could feel vestiges still of the loneliness and devastation he’d suffered.

  A deeply buried, smouldering anger welled up to swamp his reluctance to meet Elizabeth Lowery. He might not be the paragon of scintillating drawing-room conversation his mama wished for, but he could make sure this little waif wasn’t shunted asid
e and neglected, as he’d been. Whether the boy’s beautiful mother wished to deal with him or not!

  Without further thought, he stepped into the hallway and went down on his knees beside the child. ‘Hal Waterman here. Your Uncle Nicky’s best friend. Let me see your soldier. Then we’ll tell your mama.’

  The boy’s expression brightened. ‘Uncle Nicky talks about you all the time. I wish he was here. Mama cries and cries. She says Uncle Nicky has gone away too—’ Sudden alarm clouded the lad’s face. ‘Uncle Nicky will…come back, won’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hal assured him. ‘Travelling in Italy. Be back soon. But I’m here.’ Gesturing towards the soldier, he said, ‘Let me look? Maybe I can fix him.’

  ‘Could you?’ the boy breathed. ‘That would be capital! Then you would be my new best friend!’

  If not that, at least the champion of his interests, Hal resolved grimly—until Nicky could take over, of course. Carefully accepting the toy and the arm the boy held out, Hal bent to inspect the mechanism that attached the limb.

  Meanwhile, in her studio down the hallway, for the last hour Elizabeth Lowery had been going over the household accounts. She’d found the books in her husband’s desk yesterday, along with enough cash in the chest to satisfy her disgruntled servants, but Sands informed her that he and the cook must soon purchase additional provisions. She would need to peruse the books to determine how much more cash to obtain from the bank.

  Sighing as she tried to total a column of figures detailing the costs of tallow candles, flour, lamp oil, coal and a long list of similar household necessities, Elizabeth wished she had paid more attention to her governess’s lessons on mathematics. With her older sister Mereydth and younger sisters Emma and Cecily in the room—the girls two and three years her junior and bubbling over with lively conversation—she’d usually been able to escape Miss Twimby’s attention. Daydreaming through the lesson, she’d merely bided her time until she could abandon her books and return to her charcoal and her paints.