by Mira Stables
If the butler’s sentimental heart had caused him to slightly overstate the case, it was so far true that Alethea had briefly forgotten her own anxieties in her concern to install her visitor in the only comfortable chair that the room offered. This he accepted and sank into gratefully, though he declined her further offer of a footstool to raise the injured limb, saying gravely that he was not yet so far sunk in decrepitude. He was a little amused by her solicitude, but it seemed to him an odd way to welcome a suitor. Was it possible that Miss Forester was unaware of his purpose?
Then he saw the suddenly downcast eyes, the quivering lips, and promptly absolved her of all duplicity. She knew. And she had acted in innocent good faith at sight of his awkwardness. Poor child! Small wonder that she was embarrassed. This was not how he had planned to woo her.
He said wryly, “We make a pretty pair, do we not? And all thanks to your ingenious cousin! You have been told the whole tale of it, I trust, and will absolve me from the crime of negligence where your safety was concerned?”
“Yes, indeed, my lord,” she returned gravely. “And though I remember very little of the events that followed, I understand that I have to thank you for getting me to shelter before I had caught my death of the lung fever. That, at least, is my maid’s view of the case. And Uncle Matthew describes your efforts in my behalf as truly heroic.”
“Your uncle exaggerates,” he said curtly. “You have little to thank me for. In fact I daresay it was my curst clumsiness that caused you to suffer so many bruises and scratches. The physician whom the Ingesters summoned asked if you had been dragged through a quickset hedge. The thing was, you see, I could not walk and I had to get you into shelter somehow.” He laughed, though ruefully, at the humiliating memory. “Believe me, ma’am, a man loses much of his self-esteem when he can no longer go upright. I made what shift I could, but I fear you were dragged to that barn rather than carried. It was, perhaps fortunate that you were barely conscious.”
“Was that when you put your coat on me? For I do remember that.”
“I thought it might afford you some protection. That bank seemed to be entirely given over to thistles and brambles.”
The thought of his care for her induced a strong desire to throw herself into his arms and burst into tears. Deliberately she fought it down. “It seems very odd that no one came to our assistance. That is usually quite a busy road.”
“We were singularly unfortunate,” he explained—his phrasing unfortunate, too, in the circumstances. “The storm came up very quickly. Such vehicles as might have been on the road had sought shelter, for the rain was a positive deluge, the thunder and lightning almost tropical in their intensity.”
“And no habitation in sight? No belated labourer homeward bound?”
He was apologetic. “None, ma’am, to my vast regret.”
Were ever words so innocently spoken more ill-chosen? He had been thinking only of her comfort and safety, of the soaking she might have escaped. To Alethea they conveyed only his bitter distaste for the situation in which he found himself.
But at least the sting of them braced her failing courage. “So you carried me to this hay barn, where we sheltered until morning,” she said bluntly, anxious, now, only to have done with this painful interview.
There was a sudden, taut silence. Then he said levelly, “Yes, ma’am. Which is one reason why I have called upon you this afternoon. I had intended to wait until you had returned to your own home before approaching your Papa for permission to pay my addresses, but the circumstance you mention rather forced my hand. It would be idle to deny that it might give rise to malicious speculation, speculation that would be distasteful to both of us. It therefore seemed best to post into Kent forthwith and acquaint your parents with the whole story. Your father was so good as to approve both my action and my plea. Miss Forester, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?”
She heard him out patiently to the end, her eyes lowered, her lips pressed tight together to conceal their traitorous trembling. If only she could say, “Yes.” He was doing it so kindly, trying to convince her that he had meant all the time to ask for her instead of, as he put it, having his hand forced. She was all the more determined that he should not suffer for his generosity.
“My lord, you do me great honour,” she said steadily, if a little huskily. “I regret that my cousin’s folly should have put you to so much trouble in my behalf and am deeply appreciative of the great kindness you have shown me. But I do not believe there is any need for such extreme measures as you suggest. Whatever the appearances, we are both of us wholly innocent. I do not see why we should be pushed into matrimony merely to satisfy convention. So while I thank you from my heart for your very obliging offer, I feel myself obliged to decline it.”
You could always rely upon Miss Forester to take an unexpected line, thought Damon, divided between exasperation and amusement. Though he scarcely knew what he had expected. Certainly not a refusal based on the principle of resisting coercion! But somehow, although he could not help knowing that society held him to be a matrimonial prize of the first order, he had not expected her to drop willingly into his arms at the first time of asking. He looked curiously at the tightly composed little face and wondered how best to set about persuading her to see things in a different light.
“I must ask you to bear with me a little longer on this head,” he said politely. “Your cousin’s meddling, the attitude of society, did not prompt my proposal. They only caused it to be made rather prematurely. So could you not bring yourself to ignore those factors? At least encourage me to hope that if I am patient a little longer, as I had meant to be, you will give me a different answer.”
This was unbearable. He was behaving so beautifully, almost convincing her that he really meant it, though well she knew that it was only his chivalry. Not daring to trust her voice, she shook her head dumbly.
“No? Yet I had thought we were good friends,” he said persuasively. “Have you not enjoyed the hours we have spent together? To me they have been delightful. I have felt that we had a good deal in common and would suit very well.”
There was no help for it. Somehow she managed to force a choked little voice out of her desperation. “My lord, I cannot.”
He stiffened. Slowly the old bitterness crept back about his mouth. The grey eyes were bleak. “I see,” he said, his voice suddenly so harsh that she was startled out of her own misery and stared up at him, uncomprehending. “Do you know, I had actually forgot? Of course you could not contemplate marriage with so grotesque a caricature of a man. You can give him your pretty smiles, your animated interest, as you have done so generously. But marriage is different, isn’t it, Miss Forester? Not even to save your good name could you bring yourself to conquer your repugnance. I should be grateful, I suppose, for your honesty. Your cousin would have been less squeamish.”
The sheer injustice of the bitter words was the last straw. Alethea’s hard-held control snapped at last. She forgot all about proper conduct and maiden modesty and sprang up from her chair in a fury that out-matched his own. Before he could rise, hampered as he was, she had set both hands on his shoulders and half shaken, half pushed him back into his chair. “Do you think I would care for a few paltry scars if I loved you?” she flared at him. “How dare you insult me so? You’re obsessed with your scars. No one else notices them one half as much as you do. If I were your wife, I’d be proud of scars so nobly, so bravely won. This is what I’d do to your silly old scars!” Her hands released his shoulders and came up to frame his face, their touch gentle, now. She tilted his head so that the scars were fully exposed, noting, almost impersonally that a new, jagged cut, deep and angry looking had been added to them, and then stooped and gently kissed his cheek, smoothing her lips lightly and tenderly over the seared and puckered skin.
For a long moment they rested so. Then, as fury faded, realisation dawned, and she sprang back, her hands going to her shamed face as she half sobbed, “Oh
! What have I done? Please, oh, please, don’t tell Aunt Maria.” And then, with a touch of her usual spirit, “But you did provoke me so!”
There was an odd little smile from Damon for that. And shall do again, my darling, he thought; deliberately and often. But instinct warned him to tread warily. There was something here that he did not understand. And since, in the last two minutes, he had suddenly discovered not only that there was, after all, such a thing as true love but also that there was only one wife in the world who would do for him, it behooved him to discover why she would have none of him and set about mending matters.
“I’ll promise not to tell Aunt Maria, if you’ll agree to forget the foolish things that I said,” he suggested coolly.
“Oh! Thank you! Yes. Of course I will,” said Alethea, rather disjointedly, and still seemed to be poised on the edge of flight.
“Please don’t run away,” he begged, but lightly, easily, as though it was no great matter. He felt suddenly and fiercely alive, his mind working at racing speed, every faculty alert. “I promise not to distress you with further importunities. But even if you won’t marry me, surely you would still help me? Are we not friends again?”
She assented to that, promptly if a little doubtfully. Friendship—with a man whom one loved to distraction—was like to prove both costly and painful.
“Then will you please consider my position? My reputation is just as much in question as yours. I will allow yours to be your own affair. But unless our betrothal is puffed off within the next few days, I shall be in ill-odour indeed. I shall be marked down as an unprincipled blackguard. Society will cast me out. No more invitations from careful parents. Young ladies will look the other way or plead previous engagements when I ask them to dance with me. ”
She was looking quite anxious, his funny little love. But she was no fool. Better not try her credulity too high, though the bubbling eagerness within him was urging him on to ridiculous audacity. He drew a solemn face. “You, if you were willing, could help me in this.”
“Could I?” she said doubtfully.
“Why, yes. If I promise not to tease you with my attentions, would you consent to visit my parents at Byram? That would put my position in a much more respectable light.”
“Would it?”—even more doubtfully.
“Why, of course it would!” This time that inner exhilaration ran away with him. “Everyone would see that I had done my best to make an honest woman of you. When no betrothal ensued, they would probably lay the blame on my father.”
“But that would be wrong,” she said simply, bewildered by his changing moods.
“Little my father would care! He’s a great gun, for all his quiet ways. You’ll like him, I think. My mother and Rachel—my sister-in-law—you must love. No one could help it. And Byram is beautiful at this time of year, with the corn ripening and the heather just coming into bloom. Please say you will come!”
She scarcely noticed that he was already taking her consent for granted. In this mood it was difficult to refuse him anything.
“I must go home first,” she pondered. Then, more firmly, “Papa and Mama must be told the whole of this scheme of yours. Then, if they approve, I will come.”
FIFTEEN
Everyone was so understanding, so helpful. Aunt Maria, having been favoured with a heavily expurgated account of the interview in the Green Saloon, decided that all was not yet lost. Privately she saluted his lordship’s nerve in treating her niece to such a farrago of nonsense. As though the heir to a dukedom would ever be so ostracised! But the thing was that Alethea seemed to have swallowed it, and far be it from Aunt Maria to undeceive her. She commended the girl’s decision to consult her parents, said that, for her part, she thought Alethea owed his lordship such reparation as lay in her power, and offered the services of Hetty to support her niece in the anxious business of staying with such exalted personages.
Papa listened to all she had to say, remarked mildly that he believed his lordship to have sound principles and a well-informed mind, but said that if Alethea did not feel that she was ready for marriage then her father was only too happy to keep his daughter at home for as long as she chose to stay. As for visiting Byram, she and Mama must decide between them what was proper. He could not help feeling that it would be a pity to miss so rare an opportunity. Byram was very old, very lovely. He was sure she would find much there to interest her.
Alethea, while wholly subscribing to this last remark, if from quite a different point of view, began to feel slightly hunted. She had expected Papa to be wholly opposed to the scheme and she felt that she needed either strong opposition or firm support to help her make up her own mind, for by this time she didn’t know whether she wanted to go or not. Damon had insisted on driving her home, with Hetty to play propriety, pointing out that this would be the least that the interested would expect of him in the way of correct behaviour. He had also done a great deal more, driving down to the Wells twice to enquire how she did and on one occasion putting up overnight at the George and Dragon in Speldhurst in order to drive Mama out in the new phaeton with which he had replaced the wrecked curricle. His behaviour had been exactly that of a gentleman concerned to fix his interest with a lady. He brought her flowers, entertained her with the latest news of her London acquaintance, escorted her on a very prosaic household shopping expedition and strolled with her in the Rectory garden. But since she could not be sure whether he was sincere or merely play-acting, she was more bewildered than ever.
Mama—well—Mama had fallen in love with Damon, or so her husband declared, vowing that he had never seen such an arrant flirtation in his life. The day of Alethea’s home-coming, Mama’s chair had been set in the garden under the walnut tree for coolness. The two of them had come to her there, outlined against the blaze of a westering sun, so that she was dazzled and could see few details. Her first impression of Damon had been of a tall man, dark, and, she thought, very proud, despite the informality of buckskins and driving coat, who still walked with a slight limp.
Their first exchanges had been purely formal but when Alethea had been despatched indoors with the kindly suggestion that she should change her carriage dress for something cooler, Damon had looked full at his hostess and come straight to the point.
“Forgive me, ma’am, if I sound abrupt, but I have a good deal to say in a very short time. Your daughter is not one to dawdle over changing her gown.”
She gave him a little smile for that, but her eyes were watchful. “From what I have not said,” he went on, “you will have guessed that there is no engagement between us. Miss Forester declined my offer on the grounds that she would not be pushed into matrimony just to satisfy convention.”
“A very sensible reason,” she observed seriously.
It was his turn to smile, though only briefly. “I should perhaps add, ma’am, that I mean to do all in my power to induce her to change her mind. With which end in view I have persuaded her, by slightly devious means, to visit my parents at Byram next month. She will tell you all about it herself, will, in fact, only consent to the visit if you and her father approve. What I want to say, ma’am, is, will you help me?”
She looked him over long and thoughtfully, and he endured the scrutiny patiently, never once thinking of a scarred face, intuitively aware that, like her daughter, this woman would see beyond the surface.
Presently she said quietly, “If I like you I will help. But it is early days to be sure. You love her?”
“With all my heart, ma’am,” he said rather grimly. “But I was fool enough to discover it just too late. I proposed to her chiefly on grounds of suitability—common interests—shared principles—I daresay I need not enlarge on that head.”
“But you did not tell her that you loved her.”
“At that moment, ma’am, I was not aware that I did,” he said, a note of exasperation creeping in.
“Ah!” she said wisely. “I see. It is because she refused you that you suddenly became so fond. D
enied you, she was more desirable.”
He swung round on her with what she privily described to her husband as a positive snarl of fury, then remembered that she was a woman, a delicate one at that, and Alethea’s mother. He said quietly, “I cannot blame you for saying it. It is what anyone might think. But it is not so. When Miss Forester refused me, I behaved very badly. I flung it at her that it was because of my scarred face that she could not endure the thought of marrying me. It made her very angry. She said—what she did then—it’s no good, ma’am, I can’t explain it sensibly, but it was like coming out of a dark prison cell full of nightmares and horrible imaginings into clean sunlight and cool air,” he finished simply.
Mrs. Forester, who could imagine very well what her daughter had done and was becoming increasingly aware of a certain desire to imitate the shameless hussy’s behaviour, said softly, “I see.” Then, rousing herself to a slightly more militant attitude, added briskly, “There is just one more point, my lord. You have spoken of suitability—community of tastes and principles. You said nothing of rank and fortune.”
The silence this time was uncomfortable. At last he said slowly, “I know we are not equals in rank. But we have been bred up in the same tradition of duty, integrity and service to our people. Would you punish me for being the son of a Duke?” And then, sensing her sympathy, went on audaciously, “We can none of us help our parents, ma’am.”
The twinkle in her eyes reassuring him, he finished gaily, “As for fortune—well—there’s no use denying my father would rather have seen me wed an heiress. You are a country woman, ma’am. You will understand that a place like Byram has a hungry mouth that is always in need of filling. But there are things of more value than money, and Byram may go short of the stuff for once. If I can persuade—when I persuade your daughter to marry me,” he corrected, the black head tilting defiantly, “I shall be more than content. She has a gift above gold, even above rubies. How many women are there, do you think, who can give a man his faith again? A man bitter and disillusioned as I was. And not even because she loved me, but from innocent warm-heartedness.”
