The Bridal Quest

by Candace Camp

  "But what about his son?" Lady Odelia burst out.

  Irene's eyes flashed to Gideon's face. The old woman's question was the same one that burned on her tongue, but she would not let herself speak it, knowing the agony that Gideon must be suffering. He had learned that he had not been torn from his home and family and thrown into a life of hardship and poverty by villains, but by his own mother. And his father had not even tried to get him back, at least at first.

  Obviously Lady Odelia had no such compunctions, however, as she said, "Gideon was his heir. I cannot believe that Cecil would not have gone after him and brought him back."

  "I urged him to look for the boy," Pansy insisted. "I reminded him that he must have an heir. It did not matter if she was gone, but the succession was at stake." She shook her head. "He did not seem to care. He said it did not matter, that his brother was there to inherit after him. He refused to pursue a woman who did not want him. Who had gone to such great lengths to escape him."

  She looked around at the others' shocked expressions, then added guiltily, "He did not know that Gideon was on his own in London. It never occurred to us that Selene would abandon the boy. How were we to know? We thought that Gideon was all right, that he was with his mother."

  Lady Odelia shook her head, looking dazed. "I cannot believe it. Even of Cecil. How could you have let him? How could you have been so bacon-brained?"

  "I didn't know!" Pansy wailed, bursting into full-blown tears. "I—I meant no harm!"

  Gideon turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

  "Oh, hush, Pansy!" Lady Odelia exclaimed in irritation, turning to her sister and mechanically patting her shoulder.

  Only a foot away from her, Lady Teresa looked about to succumb to a similar bout of tears. Irene, ignoring them both, jumped to her feet and hurried out of the room.

  "Gideon!"

  He was already halfway down the hall, but he stopped and turned back to look at her. She hurried toward him.

  "Wait! I will go with you," she said.

  He shook his head. His face was dark with emotion, his eyes fierce. "No. I am not fit company right now."

  He swung around and continued down the hall, not waiting for her. She ignored his words, trotting after him.

  "I am sure you are not," she told him, catching up to him as he opened the door onto the terrace. "But neither are you fit to be alone."

  Ungraciously he shrugged and strode off across the terrace. She walked with him, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. Wisely she did not try to talk to him, merely walked with him down through the garden.

  Finally, as if he could hold it in no longer, he burst out, "Clearly he cared nothing for me! He let me go without even trying to get me back." Gideon cast a burning look at Irene. "How can that be? A father who has no interest in his son? Even my grandmother seemed to care nothing about me except for the fact that I was his heir!"

  "Perhaps your father believed that you were best off with your mother. You were quite young, only four. And he did not know that you were on the streets of London, after all."

  Gideon gave her a speaking look, and Irene did not try to continue her argument. Clearly it was weak, and, in truth, she could not even believe it herself.

  After a few more minutes, Gideon came to a halt. They had reached a wide-spreading oak that stood at the far end of the garden, a large and solitary outpost of the woods that started not far past it. An iron bench stood beneath its shady branches, and during the day one could sit upon it and contemplate the countryside spread out before one.

  Gideon clamped his hands around the back of the bench and looked out, as if he could see the vista before him. He shook his head and began to speak again, not looking at Irene out staring straight in front of him.

  "My father's indifference to me does not really matter, I suppose, I have long suspected that he did not care enough to look for me. But to find out that my mother—" He bit off the words.

  Irene reached out silently and laid her hand upon one of his. "I am so sorry."

  "I always assumed that my mother was dead. Otherwise, I thought, she would not have let me go. Even as a child, I recall being certain that she must be dead or I would have been with her. After Rochford found me and I learned about the 'kidnapping', I was more certain than ever that she was dead. I knew, deep down, that she, at least, had loved me. Now ... to find out that she abandoned me, that she fled with a lover and left her child to whatever fate awaited him on the streets of London ...! What sort of woman could do that? What kind of a woman was she?"

  "You do not know any of that is true!" Irene protested. "Perhaps your mother did die. You cannot remember what happened—you were too young. Just because the two of you were not abducted, it doesn't mean that she abandoned you. After all, why would she have taken you with her at all if she did not want you? It would have been far easier to have left you behind. It is quicker to travel without a child. Easier to pass unnoticed. And she must have realized that a man would be more likely to chase his wife down if she had taken his son and heir with her when she left him." She shook her head. "No, I cannot help but think that she took you only because she could not bear to leave you behind. She must have loved you very much. Whatever she might have felt about her husband or her marriage or this supposed lover, she must have loved you."

  "Then how did I end up alone in London?"

  "I don't know. I don't suppose we shall ever know," Irene replied honestly. "Any number of things could have happened. She might have fallen ill and died there, so the man she was traveling with left you. Or perhaps he abandoned her along with you, and then she grew ill and died, or was somehow taken from you."

  "Or her lover could have grown tired of hauling a brat around with them and demanded that she leave the boy behind. She betrayed her husband. She besmirched her own name. Why would she balk at abandoning an inconvenient child?"

  Irene's heart was heavy with pity for Gideon. She could not imagine how it must feel to have learned that his mother had abandoned him. Despite her troubles with her father through the years, she had at least always been certain of her mother's love. What, she wondered, must it be like to have had none of that sure, abiding love? Gideon had been on his own for as long as he could remember, with no one to depend upon or trust absolutely.

  "I am so sorry," she murmured, aware of how weak her words must sound. She could think of no way to convey the depth of her sympathy, and of course, she could not fully understand how he felt.

  Gideon shrugged, his face set and unemotional. "This news changes nothing in my life. After all, I have no real memory of my mother. It is not as if someone I knew betrayed me."

  "Yes, but what you believed is as important as what you actually remembered. You were certain that your mother did not abandon you or else you would have been bound to feel betrayed by her."

  "What I believed did not change the facts. I was alone then, just as I am alone now."

  "No, you are not alone!" Irene cried, taking a step closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm. She drew a breath, ready to point out that she was with him, but she realized at the last moment that she was committing herself to a closeness that was not true. She might be literally with him right now, but that situation would not last long. She would not remain with him as a wife or even as a friend when these two weeks were gone.

  Her hand fell from his arm, and she looked away from him. "That is ... I mean, you are about to get married. You will have the companionship and support of your wife, so you will no longer be alone."

  He let out a short, unamused laugh. "A wife who is willing to marry such a disreputable sort as I in order to gain wealth and a title? Somehow I cannot feel that ours will be a close union."

  "It does not have to be that way," she protested.

  Gideon cocked an eyebrow in a look of disbelief. "You cannot really believe that. It scarcely jibes with your refusal to marry. How can I expect support and companionship, even affection from a woman whom I will
, in your opinion, tyrannize and abuse?"

  "I do not think that you will tyrannize or abuse your wife," she replied candidly.

  "You certainly made a very good pretense of believing just that."

  "No, I am simply not willing to subject myself to the life I would have if I am wrong. But I am not like most women. Few women expect or even think of the worst that a marriage can provide. Many woman are in love with their husbands. There are those who maintain that marriage is a partnership, a true union of two people. At the very least, it will provide you with a wife and children—you will have the family you never had as a child."

  "I am not looking to create a family for myself," Gideon replied curtly. "I told you that when I first met you. I am simply doing what is reasonable for a man in my position. What is expected of me. I have no intention of marrying for love."

  "You offer a woman a cold sort of life," she told him, bristling.

  "I offer a woman wealth, a title and an easy life. The only drawback in the arrangement for her is me, and I will make sure that she has to put up with my presence as little as possible." His face was hard and set, his eyes as cold as stone. He looked, Irene thought, like a stranger. "I can assure a woman that she will not be harmed by me nor smothered."

  "No, only ignored," Irene retorted.

  "Why do you care what my intentions are toward my wife?" Gideon snapped, anger flaring in his eyes. "You have made it very clear that you have no interest in that position. I would have thought that such an arrangement would have suited you admirably—being left to your own devices, with none of the inconveniences of a husband. But you have assured me over and over again that you have no intention of marrying me. So I fail to see why you should care what sort of marriage I have."

  "I do not care!" Irene shot back, glaring at him.

  For a long moment they faced each other stiffly, eyes bright with anger. He half turned away, then sighed and swung back.

  "I apologize. I fear that I am very poor company tonight. It is no doubt best if I take my leave of you now."

  He pivoted and walked away toward the house.

  Irene watched him go. Finally, with a sigh, she followed him back down the path. She was annoyed not only with Gideon but with herself. She did not know why she had said the things she had. He had been right on all counts. She was not interested in marrying him; she had more than once assured him that she would not. It was, therefore, no concern of hers what sort of marriage he made for himself. She might wish that he could find happiness in his marriage, but it would mean nothing to her life.

  Looking back on it, she could see the absurdity of their conversation. She had been presenting him with exactly the sort of arguments that her mother and others had pressed on her for years. How many times had she heard that marriage was a true union of souls? How often had people assured her that her husband would provide her with happiness and love for the remainder of her life? She had always scoffed at such statements. Yet today she had been spouting the very same sort of pap to him.

  Could it be, she wondered, that deep down inside she really believed those romantic notions about love and marriage? She did not. She could not. Yes, this afternoon, she had been in something of a turmoil after her talk with Gideon in the garden. He had perhaps shaken her resolve, made her wonder for a while if she was somehow making a mistake in rejecting him.

  But that was just momentary nonsense, she reminded herself. She knew what marriage was really like. No, she did not believe those things she had said to him. She had simply been trying to comfort him in a time of distress, trying to make him feel better. So she had told him the first thing that had come into her head; she had told him what she wished were true.

  Irene came to a halt, struck by that thought. She would not have suspected that such a longing lived in her, but now she could see that it did. She had been too practical, too realistic, to believe in some rosy vision of love and partnership. But deep down inside her, hadn't she wished that such a thing could actually exist? Was there a hunger in her for that sort of love—a hunger that Gideon had awakened?

  She sank onto a stone bench that lay beside the garden path, her legs suddenly shaky beneath her. She felt as if she no longer knew herself. She had always been so sure. So right. She had, she knew, even felt a trifle smug that she was not as weak as other women.

  But what if it was not that she was strong in her convictions but merely that she had never met a man who could make her feel the way Gideon did? So giddy and excited and fluttering with life?

  Irene put her hand against her stomach, almost as if she could hold in the turmoil that bubbled inside her. She liked the way she felt when Gideon kissed her; it was wonderful in a way she had never known, never even dreamed of. But it was scary, as well. Where would that desire lead? Surely she could not go against everything she had believed for all these years just because she suddenly had this hunger inside her.

  Even if she had had a secret wish that love could bloom in a marriage, what did that matter? She knew that it was nothing but a wish, a hope. It was not real. If she had needed any reminder of that, she had just received it from Gideon himself, who held out an offer of marriage so cool and indifferent that it could freeze even the most hopeful heart.

  No, even if her feelings might have changed, the truth of the matter remained the same. Marriage was a trap for a woman, and wavering in that belief would lead to a lifetime of regret.

  She realized that she had been behaving as foolishly as any of the women whom she had criticized in the past. But at least she knew better and could stop behaving in this foolish manner. However much she might feel sympathy for the man, however much she might enjoy talking with him, she was no longer going to indulge in any dangerously lax behavior. There would be no more long walks with him in the garden or flirtations with him as they danced.

  She was here to help Gideon find a suitable wife. The women in question would be arriving the day after tomorrow. And she was going to concern herself only with making sure that one of them became the next Countess of Radbourne.

  Irene nodded sharply, as though she had made a point to someone who opposed her, and stood up. There was an odd little ache deep in her chest that she was determined to ignore. It would go away soon, after all, and she would concentrate on doing what she had come here to do. Back straight, shoulders squared, she strode back to the house.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The house was in a turmoil the next day. Gideon left for the estate manager's office immediately after breakfast and was gone the remainder of the day. His absence excused Francesca and Irene from their usual dancing lessons, which meant that they were free to turn their attention to the upcoming party.

  It was a good thing, Irene decided, for no one else in the house seemed able to do so. Gideon's grandmother took to her bed with a fit of the vapors. Her maid refused to let anyone in, but of course Lady Odelia eventually bullied the poor woman into submission and went in to talk to Pansy. However, since it was Lady Odelia's harsh assessment of the way Pansy and her son had dealt with what happened twenty-seven years earlier that had originally sent the delicate woman into hysterics, Lady Odelia's presence did little to improve the situation.

  The younger Lady Radbourne was also suffering from a fit of nerves brought about by the news. She kept bursting into tears and moaning that she should never have married Cecil. Even the redoubtable Lady Odelia was clearly shaken by the situation.

  It took all of Lady Claire's considerable skills at soothing fears and placating ruffled tempers to keep the three of them somewhat calm. Therefore, all the last-minute details of the large house party fell to Francesca and Irene. There were vases to fill and place cards to write out in elegant copperplate cursive, plans to be finalized for the ball, questions from harried servants to be answered, menus to be approved and changed, and of course, the swarm of problems that always seemed to arise at the final moment.

  It was not until late in the afternoon that Irene managed to p
ry Francesca away from the housekeeper's clutches and lead her out for a restorative stroll about the gardens.

  "Thank goodness you lured me away from the house," Francesca said with a sigh, linking her arm through Irene's and turning her face up, as though to drink in the warm sun. "Such a to-do. Of course, it couldn't have come at a worse time, with all the guests arriving tomorrow. And it is all the worse because I am not familiar with the house and servants. Horroughs, I think, absolutely delights in coming up with reasons why one thing or another cannot be done."

  "You handled him far better than I would have, I can assure you," Irene told her.

  Francesca smiled. "I have had practice. Our butler at the Haughston country house was much the same way. I was so very glad that he went with the entailed estate to Lord Haughston's heir."

  Irene chuckled. "You make it sound as if he was tied to the land."

  "He was the sort who practically was," Francesca resorted. "He was always saying, 'But that is not the way we do things at the Hall, my lady'. One would think that he had been there since the first Lord Haughston laid the first stone of it." She rolled her eyes. "I want to thank you for doing so much to help."

  "I fear copying out names on place cards and arranging flowers is little enough," Irene replied with a smile. "And I have had plenty of time for it, since Gideon seems to have called quits to his lessons."

  "I am sure he was overset by the news." Francesca shook her head. "It must have been a dreadful shock to him. Did you talk to him?"

  "I talked to him, but it did little good. It was a shock, but he was very stony about it all."

  "After being with Teresa these past two hours, I think stony would be a welcome relief. I never dreamed that she could turn out to be such a watering pot."