“I shall have to give this ribbon up entirely.” She teased him. “Look, you have completely torn it out of my hair. Are you always such a savage, love?”
“Only in the midst of proposing, sweetheart. Hereafter I shall be as meek as a lamb.”
“And bore me dreadfully, doubtless. Well, I seem to have fulfilled my Aunt Dorothea’s predictions and become entirely mad. Madness is pleasanter than I would have thought.”
“A consummation devoutly to be wished, in fact,” he agreed. “But I’m still waiting for my answer. You will marry me, won’t you?”
“I had best, I suppose. Even on the continent, I should never be allowed in anyone’s drawing room unmarried after that kiss. Caro Lamb is nothing to it.”
“Thank God for the conventions!” Mr. Bradwell breathed devoutly, and kissed the tip of her ear.
“But Lyn?” She looked at him seriously, the smallest of smiles waiting in the corner of her mouth. “Do you think we should perhaps wait until tomorrow to announce our engagement?”
“I suppose so; after all, Jane and Jack have precedence,” he agreed judiciously. Another long, sweet kiss. “But by the day after tomorrow we had best be formally betrothed or I shall not answer for your reputation or mine.”
“Very well, Mr. Bradwell, on the day after tomorrow we shall be the happy couple. That is, of course, providing that your mamma and Dr. Cribbatt do not surprise us after all.”
Chapter Nine
Lady Bradwell proved unable to affiance herself to the doctor, or to anyone else, before dinnertime, and afterward, when the party was gathered in the drawing room, Lord Bradwell pleased the company (with the possible exception of his sister-at-law-to-be) by announcing his engagement to Jane Ambercot. Ulysses, who had arrived early in the afternoon to visit with Margaret, was applied to in his capacity as head of the Ambercot household, and his consent was readily and publicly supplied, with a few exhortations not to be such an abominably slow-moving couple when they were wedded. Lord Bradwell tried, with an effort quite visible on his beaming countenance, to produce a suitably tart reply, but in the end only laughed and thanked his new brother.
“I say, Miss Rowena, if Ambercot’s marrying your cousin and I’m marrying Janie, that relates you to our family, don’t it?”
Rowena sternly ignored the secret, sharing smile from Lyn and answered noncommittally that she supposed that it did.
“Indeed, and it means that Mr. Lyndon will be related to our family as well,” Eliza said sweetly. “Ought I to call you cousin, sir?”
“I think...” Lady Bradwell answered for her son with the barest touch of frost in her voice, “that Lyn will do very well for now, child. Have you not always called him so? Or some variation on that? Well, I am ready to drink to our happy couples! May all you children be blessed with happiness, virtue, and more children for me to amuse myself over.” The old lady raised her glass of ratafia solemnly and drained it. “Now, I think I have had a little more excitement than Dr. Cribbatt and his excellent assistant would prescribe. I plan to retire before tea.” Totally unaware of the looks exchanged by several members of the company, she raised herself from her chair. “Renna, my dear, can I trouble you to assist me to my room?”
“Certainly, but I shall trouble you not to talk nonsense. There is no trouble to it.” Exchanging a smile she thought unseen with Lyn, Rowena draped a shawl across Lady Bradwell’s shoulders and offered her arm.
“Good night, my dears,” Lady Bradwell called from the doorway, and was answered in a disorganized chorus of good nights and sleep wells.
Once out of the room, however, Lady Bradwell appeared to recover a good deal of her strength. “We have pulled it off — even Jack and Jane, dear foolish children that they are, cannot announce their engagement and cry off again twice in one lifetime! I begin to see hope. Now if only —”
“You can marry Mr. Bradwell off, you will be perfectly happy,” Rowena finished for her.
Lady Bradwell regarded her with a speculative eye. “Well, of course, child. Then it would only be to wait for the first grandchildren. I find I am becoming dreadfully dynastic in my old age. Are you sure I cannot persuade you to take on Lyn’s case, Renna?”
“As matchmaker? Now, really ma’am,” Rowena began, privately a little ashamed of her resolution to keep her secret even one night.
Lady Bradwell continued her scrutiny. “You know very well what I mean, girl. I’ve a notion, what’s more, that you don’t altogether dislike the idea of Lyn.”
“Surely it’s more to the point whether he dislikes the idea of me, Lady B.”
“Either my eyes are better than you give me credit for, my dear, or yours are very bad indeed. Well, I shan’t meddle — not just now, in any case. When you, or Lyn, or both of you come to your senses, I shall be waiting to hear about it.”
“Ma’am.” Rowena’s voice was serious now. “What makes you think that we should suit?”
“Child, what makes you think that any two people should suit? You’re both bright, handsome people with a little more than the common share of sense and ambition, and thankfully, each of you knows when to laugh. For God’s sake, Rowena, even if I’m wrong about you and my boy — although I misdoubt that I am; it seems perfectly obvious to me — don’t settle for someone who doesn’t share your sense of humor. It’s all very well for Jack and Jane to wed, for neither one of them looks at things the way you do, or I, or Lyn; but did you marry someone like Jack you’d be bored and fractious within a month. Now, you know I’m rather partial to my Lyn — don’t smirk at me, you odious chit — but I do think that you two would suit. And it would make me very happy.”
“Well, ma’am.” They had reached Lady Bradwell’s room and Rowena was about to ring for the maid to come and attend her mistress. “Whatever happens, I thank you for loving me well enough to want me for your favorite son. And just now, I shall thank you more particularly for going to sleep. You are looking a little gray and weary, and whatever your son’s opinion of me, it will not redound to my credit if I permit you to fall sick again.”
Rowena left her mistress in Taylor’s admirable hands and descended to the saloon again only to find that the men had retired to the library to drink a few healths to the ladies and each other. Jane, Eliza, and Margaret sat quietly talking in the parlor and after a time, when the congratulatory noise from the library grew stronger, Rowena suggested that Eliza spend the night, and that all of them retire in short order. It was an anticlimax after the celebration of dinner, and Rowena had privately hoped for a minute alone with Lyn before she slept. Nonetheless she summoned Mrs. Coffee and had a room prepared for Eliza, seeing to the girl’s comfort before taking herself to her own room.
On the dressing table was a note, inscribed in a small, precise hand. “Breakfast? I love you. Lyn.” Smiling, Rowena undressed, washed, and slipped into bed, where she fell asleep quickly to dream of Lyn and warm days of happiness.
o0o
After a very good night’s sleep, Rowena woke before the maid arrived to kindle the fire. She lay in bed luxuriously for half an hour, watching sunlight establish itself in the room, and chatted cheerfully with the girl when she entered with a kettle of hot water and the tinderbox.
“What time is breakfast laid out, Kitty?”
“Abaht half-seven, miss, though nawone’s theer at table afore nine, mawstly.”
“Well, I think I shall go down early this morning. Is it as fair out as it looks from my window?”
“’Tis a fine, fair day, miss. Wi’ you need me annymahr?”
Rowena, examining the fine, fair day for her herself from the window, dismissed the maid and, after reading Lyn’s brief note two or three times and scolding herself for romantic foolishness, began to wash. It was not quite eight when she arrived in the breakfast room; Lyn was already there, being served coffee by Drummey. He rose, greeted her, and when the butler had retired to fetch hot water for tea, crossed the room to kiss her.
“Lyn, if you promise to kiss
me every morning before tea I think I shall like being married very much. It improves this hour immeasurably.”
“You got my note?” he asked from a vantage point just above her right ear, where the breath from each word tickled her distractingly.
“Of course. It’s a wonder it isn’t torn and tattered by now. It’s such a short, sweet little thing I have read it fifty times already this morning.”
“Next time I’ll write something a little longer and meatier, darling. I’m sorry I didn’t see you after you took Mamma up last night, but....”
“I shall have to accustom myself to being abandoned for your jollifications with the men,” Rowena answered in tones of deep martyrdom. “After all, a woman’s place —”
“Good God, Rowena, I beg you not to start! If you’re going to lecture me a platform on the martyrdom of females — I shan’t believe you at all. You’re not the sort of woman who would lend herself to being ill used in any case. And you’re much too beautiful for me to want to leave you solely to look at my brother’s face of your friend Ambercot’s! On the other hand,” — he smiled at her — “I did feel rather celebratory last evening. Do you blame me?”
Chuckling, Rowena gave up the expression of dignified resignation she had assumed. “Not in the least. I felt so myself, and believe me, Lyn, it was very hard to keep from telling your mamma what was afoot when she pressed me to make a match for you.”
“Well, love, today we can tell her you have complied with her wishes. On all counts.” He pressed a kiss on the nape of her neck. “What did Mamma say?”
“Nothing terribly important. Only, she does love you, Lyn, and I think she will not be unhappy when we give her our news.”
A light kindled in his eye. “Why don’t we go awaken the old girl, wish her joy, and give her our news right now.”
“Because,” Miss Cherwood answered crisply, smoothing the somewhat disturbed folds of his neckcloth, “your mamma needs her sleep, and I need my tea, and Drummey will be back here in a moment, and I should like to be kissed once more before I resume the mask of propriety.”
Lyn complied not once but several times, holding her very closely and murmuring appropriate comments between kisses. Only a tactful rattle at the door latch gave them any warning that Drummey was about to enter with the tea water, and when he entered he found Mr. Bradwell in the process of seating Miss Cherwood at table.
“I wonder how much Drummey knows, or suspects, of us?” Lyn said wryly when the butler was gone again.
“Considerably more than you’d think, I reckon. We had a maid in Vienna who I could have sworn was a mind reader, and Drummey strikes me as another such. Clara and Mamma would have fearsome discussions, neither understanding the other, since Clara spoke no English and Mama not a word of German. But when something was to be done, or the time when we were harboring a fellow from the authorities — Lord, that was a story, Lyn! Clara was the only one of the staff who knew, although no one had told her. And very properly did she act, when pressed to it, too.”
“Will you be content to settle yourself with a poor politician after all your adventures, sweetheart?”
“When it has always been my ambition to run a salon with my hair in Recamier ringlets and to lounge upon a sofa being witty and charming? Why, I’d marry you for the chance of that even if you were bandy-legged and cross-eyed and spoke with a stutter.”
‘If those are your requirements...” He helped her to a slice of beef. “I shall try to bandy my legs and cross my eyes. The stutter will take a little more work, but I’m certain I can acquire one in due course. Seriously, Renna, you know it will be some time before there can be any questions of a salon.”
“Well of course, I should dislike to appear to be a mushroom or a cit. If you say the salon must wait then wait it shall.”
“Several things will have to wait until I can establish myself, love. I have sent out letters to Castlereagh and Sidmouth, and I’m hoping to hear something good from them, with Uncle Kelvin’s support. But for a while I shan’t be able to do more than feed you and clothe you.” She looked at him in dismay. “No, not quite that bad, my dear, but as a second son, you know... Well, if we do marry soon, and I hope we shall marry very soon” — his look warmed her — “we shall simply have to be a little careful, is all.”
“I’m used to that, Lyn. I cannot begin to tell you what a luxury it is to live in a place where I needn’t constantly translate for myself, or worry because the messenger with funds for Mamma or Papa has disappeared and we’re down to the last pullet in the yard, or because soldiers — any soldiers at all, English, French, Spanish, German, whatever! — have been sighted a few miles from the house and all the maids have run to hide themselves under the beds crying ‘¡Aiii, Santa Maria ayudame!’ I don’t mind being careful, as you call it.”
“I just don’t want you to form one idea of what our life will have to be at first and then —” he began, deliberately ignoring her teasing.
“Well,” she interrupted diplomatically. “I do have a little money of my own.”
“Do you think I’d touch whatever independence you have? That will be tied up properly for you and the children.” He flushed slightly. “I shall see to that.”
Rowena returned his look warmly, but continued. “But Lyn, love, we could tie up a great deal for the children and myself and still live comfortably — not elegantly, but comfortably — on what is left, at least until you catch the eye of someone in the government.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, certainly I don’t think you would want to run for a seat from my pocket, and I doubt I should care for it either. But —”
“Rowena, just what do you mean by a little money?” Lyn asked quietly. She looked at him in surprise, a little guiltily.
“Your mamma hasn’t talked to you? No, I suppose she wouldn’t. I was funning you a little, Lyn. My parents left me some money is all. You had no idea?”
“I know nothing of how your parents left you. I had assumed that you were — forgive me, but — quite impoverished. Else why would you be here working for my mother?”
“Because, given the choice of living respectably and properly and boringly with my aunt, taking part in the innumerable skirmishes that seem to develop between her and me, and hiring myself out as a companion to someone who really needed me, there was no choice. I’m not eccentric enough to set myself up in an establishment with hired chaperones, and I couldn’t live with my aunt any longer. I’ve been a grown woman, responsible for the management of my life and an establishment for too long to be reduced comfortably to unmarried-niece status and married off to the first convenient peer who offered for me. That was what I faced at Aunt Doro’s, Lyn. Do you wonder that I chose as I did? Your mamma knows the whole of the story, and didn’t object to the fact that I have an easy competence — well, perhaps a little better than that.”
“Just how much better?” he asked sternly.
“Lyn?” She looked at him, uneasy at the tone in his voice.
“Rowena, just how easy a competence is it? I have a right to know, don’t I?”
She steeled herself to meet his gaze. Suddenly everything felt wrong, strained. But she owed him an honest answer. “There’s forty thousand invested in the Navy Fives, and another — I don’t know, perhaps twelve hundred a year from the revenues at Styles — that was Papa’s estate — and the rent of the house and grounds, too, since we haven’t lived there in above seven years. A little less than four thousand a year, I suppose.” She tried to say it nonchalantly.
Lyn had put his fork and knife down and was studying his coffee cup with interest. “You couldn’t have told me all this before, I suppose?”
“Good God, Lyndon Bradwell, what was I supposed to do? Inform you, when you stumbled upon me at the duck pond that afternoon, that I was worth four thousand a year to the lucky man who could snag me? Lord, I can see it now: ‘Good Afternoon, sir. Bradwell, d’you say? How d’you do? I’m Rowena Cherwood, heires
s, companion to your mamma.’ Would it have made that much of a difference?”
“To my loving you? No.” Her heart skipped a beat and she looked up, but his face was still closed and remote. “To my speaking of it — I don’t know. It ought to. Rowena, suddenly you’re Cophetua and I the beggar. It won’t — damn it, it won’t fadge. I can’t set myself up on your money, and it don’t seem fair to drag you along in careful poverty until I’ve found my place.”
“Even if I wish to be dragged? Lyn, what are you saying? Don’t I get a say in the matter?”
“Of course you do. But suddenly — I’m not sure if I should do this to either of us, Renna. No more than I think I can stand to let you go. Suppose you were to wake up one morning and realize that you resented me for marrying you and living off your money?”
“Then hang the money!” she cried impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, Lyn.”
“All right, suppose we do ‘hang the money’ as you say. Then, what if you wake one morning to realize that you might have had your salon and Recamier ringlets and a place in society by marrying differently?”
“O, Lyn.” She pursed her lips together, trying to rally arguments. “What doth it profit me if I gain my ringlets and lose you? You wouldn’t — after all this muddlesome business, you wouldn’t jilt me because I’m an heiress, would you?”
He only looked uncomfortable.
“Lyn, for heaven’s sake, I’ll give my money to the first beggar I meet, and follow you barefoot if need be.” She stared at him, unable to believe the stranger he had become in minutes. “Before God, love, I never thought I’d think my money a curse! It’s been inconvenient sometimes, but now I thought that it would be a godsend to us. Instead —”
He broke in bitterly. “Did you think that you could set yourself up in your salon, and me in a pocket borough? We’d be grand acquisitions for the party, wouldn’t we, love. Bradwell and his wealthy wife.”
“Lyndon Bradwell,” Rowena said quietly. “You would have married me practically from the gutter and made me the wife of a rising politico —” He made a motion to deny her theatrical words. “No, damn it, if you intend to sound like a Covent Garden melodrama I shall certainly oblige you with all the fustian I can muster. You can bring what you will to this marriage, but I cannot? And you will let your stupid male pride get in the way of —” Her voice broke.
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