by Mary Balogh
And finally and miraculously they were on their way only half an hour or so later than Elliott had planned— or five days later, depending upon which plan one was considering.
He had expected all this to be relatively easy—a journey down to Throckbridge in two days, a day here to deliver the news and prepare the boy, a two-day journey back to Warren Hall with the new Merton, and then an immediate and intensive training program so that he would be fit for his new role before summer came.
But his plans had already gone awry, as he should have expected as soon as he knew there were women involved. He had sisters of his own and knew how they could hopelessly complicate the simplest of plans. Instead of allowing their brother to go with him and George and get settled before even thinking about joining him, these sisters had decided to accompany him now. Including Mrs. Nessie Dew.
He conveniently forgot that it was Merton himself who had insisted that they go to Warren Hall with him.
All he did know for sure was that he now had responsibility for Merton and his three sisters, all of whom were great-grandchildren of an earl, but none of whom had been brought up to the life they must now live. They had spent their lives in this village, for God’s sake, the children of the late vicar. Until today they had been living in a cottage that would fit into the grand entrance of Warren Hall. They wore clothes they had obviously made—and mended—themselves. The youngest girl had been teaching in the village school. The eldest had done as much work about the house as the housekeeper. The widow—well, the least said about her the better.
But one thing that could be said of her was that she was incredibly naive. They were all going to have to be brought up to scratch, and it was not going to be easy Neither was it something they could do alone without assistance.
They were going to need husbands, and those husbands were going to have to be gentlemen of the ton since they were now the sisters of an earl. In order to find respectable husbands among the ton, they were going to have to be formally presented to society. They were going to need a Season or two in London. And in order to be presented and taken about during a Season, they were going to need a sponsor.
A lady sponsor.
They could not do it alone.
And he could not do it. He could not take three ladies to London with him and start escorting them about to all the parties and balls with which the Season abounded. It was just not done. It would be scandalous. And though he had courted scandal quite outrageously on numerous occasions during the past ten years or so, he had not done so during the past year. He had been the epitome of strict respectability. He had had no choice. The days of his careless young manhood had come to an abrupt end with his father’s death.
It was a thought that did nothing to improve his mood.
Neither could he leave the sisters to find their own way in their new world. For reasons he could not even explain to himself, he could not simply abandon them to the dismal discovery that it simply could not be done—though he might have been tempted if Mrs. Dew had been the only sister.
He had talked about the situation ad nauseam with George during the past several days. It was not as if they had had a great deal of other activity to distract their minds, after all.
Elliott’s mother was the obvious choice as sponsor. She had experience at preparing young ladies for their come-out and at finding suitable husbands for them. She had already done it with the two eldest of his sisters. But the trouble was that there was still Cecily to fire off—this year, in fact.
His mother could not be burdened with three other females, the youngest of whom was already twenty, who had no experience at all of society and who were not even related to her. Cecily was enough of a handful in her own right.
And she would doubtless not appreciate it either.
There were his married sisters, of course, but Jessica was in a delicate condition again, and Averil, at the age of twenty-one, was hardly old enough to sponsor the Huxtable sisters, two of whom were older than she was.
That left his paternal aunts. But either possibility made him wince. Aunt Fanny, the elder, paraded out a whole litany of new maladies as well as all the old every time he was unfortunate enough to set eyes on her, and talked in a perpetual nasal whine, while Aunt Roberta, the younger, had missed her calling—or her gender— and ought to have been a sergeant-major. She would have excelled.
Much as he resented the Huxtables, he did not in all conscience feel he could inflict either aunt upon them—even if either was willing to accept the daunting responsibility It had taken Aunt Fanny all of five exhausting seasons to fire off her own daughter, and Aunt Roberta was always busy bullying her hellion brood— all male—into toeing the line of respectability.
“I cannot simply leave them at Warren Hall to their own devices while I take their brother under my wing, can I?” he had said over a dinner of tough roast beef one evening. “It will be years before he can do anything for them himself, and by that time they will all be hopelessly long in the tooth. The elder two must be in their middle twenties already Marrying off the widow, of course, is definitely not my concern, though I suppose even she is going to have to be presented to society It will be up to her whether she marries again—if anyone will have her, that is. She does not have anything like the looks of the other two, does she?”
“A little unfair, old boy,” George had said. “She looks quite appealing when she smiles and is animated—as she frequently is. Apparently her husband was extraordinarily good-looking and freely chose her. It was a love match.”
Hard to believe. Elliott snorted.
“What you ought to do,” George said on another occasion, when they were riding along some country lanes for exercise and being coldly drizzled upon, “is marry soon— sooner even than you planned, that is. Your wife could sponsor Merton’s sisters.”
“What?” Elliott asked, turning his head rather too sharply and causing a shower of cold water to stream from his hat brim to his lap. “Without any time for deliberation, you mean?”
He had no candidate for bride in mind yet, though his mother would doubtless be able to count off all the most eligible young ladies on her ten fingers. But he need not think of that for another few months yet.
George shrugged. “It is not as if you would have any problem persuading any woman to say yes. Quite the contrary You may have to beat them all back with a stick when they know you are going shopping at the marriage mart this year. But you could foil them all by marrying before the news spreads.”
“Devil take it,” Elliott said wrathfully “has it come to this? Must I rush my fences over one of the most important decisions of my life—if not the most important— for the sake of an imagined responsibility to three females I scarcely even know? It is preposterous.”
“All the more time in which to live happily ever after,” George said.
“Then why the devil,” Elliott asked, “are you still a single man? And since when has it been a part of any secretary’s duties to advise his employer about when he ought to marry?”
But his friend, he saw when he turned his head again, was grinning. He was actually enjoying all this. As well he might. He had been able to leave behind his office at Finchley Park in order to travel all over the country, but had none of the responsibility that was weighing down Elliott’s unwilling shoulders.
And those women were—dash it all!—his responsibility, Elliott thought now as his carriage containing them moved off from the cottage gate and the villagers raised hands and handkerchiefs in farewell.
His thoughts were interrupted when Merton himself maneuvered his horse between George’s and his own.
“We have lived here all our lives,” he said by way of apology for the delay “Leaving is hard—for everyone we leave behind and for us too.”
“I understand, lad,” George assured him. “Even if the change in your circumstances is for the better, it is still not easy to leave behind all that is familiar and dear.”
But
the boy brightened as they rode clear of the village, the carriages ahead of them.
“I thought,” he said, “I would have to wait until I had finished studying at university and had begun some career before I could do something for my sisters to repay them for all they have done for me and make their lives more comfortable. But now I will not have to wait. I will be able to give all of them the kind of life they deserve but have only been able to dream of until now”
Or he would, Elliott thought wryly even if it was Merton who was footing the bill. And he remembered something else George had said during that damp afternoon ride. He had been joking, of course, but the words had nevertheless stuck in Elliott’s memory like a moth trapped inside a lamp.
“Of course,” he had said, “you could always marry Miss Huxtable, Elliott, and allow her to sponsor her sisters as your wife. That would solve a lot of problems. And she is dashed lovely to look at. I am only surprised that she is still on the market.”
Duties, Elliott decided again now as he had decided a dozen times since the words had been spoken, did have their limits. Why should he even consider marrying the lovely but rather dour Miss Huxtable just because it would be convenient for everyone but him?
Except that he was about to be in search of a wife. And in many ways it would be a convenient thing to do. She was the sister of an earl, after all. And there was no denying that she came in a very delectable package.
Devil take it, he might well be fit only for Bedlam by the time all this was over. Although he never suffered from headaches, it seemed to him that one gigantic one had hovered over his head like a foggy halo for all of six days.
He thought wistfully of his mother and of his pregnant sister and gloomily of his two aunts, and wondered which of the last two might be the lesser evil.
But perhaps his mother would have some decent advice to give him even if she could not be expected to offer her services.
Why could his father not have lived another thirty years or so?
He could be in London now, carousing with his friends and spending his nights in Anna Bromley-Hayes’s inviting arms. He could be without a care in the world. He could be …
But he was not.
And that was that.
6
THEY would be at Warren Hall in about two hours, Viscount Lyngate had said after luncheon about an hour and a half ago. They would be there soon, then.
The countryside was green and rolling. It looked like prosperous farming land. Warren Hall was prosperous, the viscount had said on that first morning. So were Stephen’s other properties. There were three of them— in Dorset and Cornwall and Kent—but Warren Hall in Hampshire was his principal seat.
“Oh, this must be it,” Katherine said suddenly, leaning forward in her seat and pressing her nose against the glass of the window, the better to see what was behind her.
The carriage was making a sharp left turn to pass between high stone gateposts, and Stephen appeared beside the carriage. He had ridden forward and was bending an eager face, reddened from the cold, to look in at them.
“This is it,” he mouthed, pointing ahead.
Margaret smiled and nodded. Vanessa raised a hand in acknowledgment that they understood. Katherine was craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the house, though it was still out of sight beyond the dense grove of trees through which the driveway was winding.
But a few minutes later they could all see it as the carriage drew away from the trees and, as if on cue, the sun struggled free of the clouds that had covered it most of the day.
Warren Hall.
Vanessa had expected a medieval heap, perhaps because it was called a hall. It was actually a neat and solidly square Palladian mansion of pale gray stone. There was a dome and a pillared portico at the front with what looked like marble steps leading up to the doors. There was a stable block off to one side—the driveway led toward it. Before the house there was a wide, flat terrace surrounded by a stone balustrade, with steps leading down to flower gardens beneath it, still bare now in February.
“Oh, goodness,” Vanessa said, “this is all very real, is it not?”
Which was a foolish thing to say, though her sisters must have known what she meant since they did not question her words.
They all gawked in amazement.
“It is beautiful!” Katherine exclaimed.
“I will still have a garden to tend, then,” Margaret said.
At any other time they might all have laughed with considerable merriment over the gross understatement. Even apart from the terrace and flower garden, they were surrounded by cultivated parkland for as far as the eye could see.
None of them laughed.
It was indeed suddenly all very real. None of them could ever have imagined such grandeur and such a total change in their lives. But here they were.
The driveway ascended a slope as it approached the stables and then turned unexpectedly to take them across the terrace to the foot of the house steps. There was a stone fountain in the middle of the cobbled terrace, though there was no water in it this early in the year. There were also many stone urns, which were probably filled with flowers during the summer.
The carriage drew to a halt, the coachman opened the door and set down the steps, and Stephen himself reached inside to hand Margaret down and then to swing Katherine out without benefit of the steps. He was looking very exuberant indeed. Another hand appeared in the doorway before he could turn back for Vanessa—Viscount Lyngate’s.
Vanessa had been in virtual hiding from him since the day on which she had lashed out at him and told him exactly what she thought of him. Afterward, part of her had been appalled at her temerity while another part had been proud that she had found the courage. And all of her had been horribly embarrassed at the thought of coming face-to-face with him again.
The moment had come.
Not that she had not looked at him in private a great deal more than she ought during their journey He was undeniably good-looking—gross understatement—and virile and … well, and masculine. And she admired his effortless horsemanship— she had watched him often while trying to convince herself that it was Stephen she watched. It was all really not fair at all. Hedley had deserved everything good and wonderful this world had to offer and yet he had been thin and weak and very ill during the last couple of years of his life.
Indeed, she felt guilty about admiring someone who was his antithesis — as if she still owed her husband her undivided loyalty.
Hedley was long dead.
“Thank you.” She forced herself to look into the viscount’s eyes as she set a hand in his and descended the carriage steps to the terrace. But then her eyes moved to the house. “Oh, it is far more vast than it looked on the approach.”
She felt like a dwarf. But what gauche words to speak aloud!
“That is because from a distance one sees the house and terrace and flower gardens as a unit and is impressed more by the pleasing vista than by the size of the house,” the viscount said. “One is meant to be impressed by the house itself when one arrives here.”
“The steps are marble,” she said.
“They are indeed,” he agreed, “as are the pillars.”
“And this is where our grandfather grew up,” she said.
“No,” he told her. “This house is no more than thirty years old. The old medieval hall was torn down and this built in its place. It was shabby and crumbling, I have been told. And this is certainly beautiful. I nevertheless wish I could have seen the house as it was. Much character and many memories must have been destroyed in the name of modernity.”
Vanessa looked at him with appreciation for his feelings. But at the same moment she realized that her gloved hand was still in his. She snatched it away as if it had been scalded, drawing attention to the fact, and he raised his eyebrows.
A very superior-looking gentleman, dressed all in black, was bowing to Stephen and indicating the marble steps. Vanessa realized in some shock tha
t he must be the butler. Halfway up the steps stood a plumpish woman, also in black, who was probably the housekeeper. And at the top of the steps, she noticed for the first time, were two lines of smartly dressed servants, one line on each side of the huge double doors, which stood open. The servants were being paraded for their new master.
Oh, goodness. Could their arrival at their new home have been more intimidating? How would Stephen be able to deal with it all?
But Stephen had offered one arm to Margaret and the other to Katherine and proceeded up the steps in the butler’s wake after throwing a glance over his shoulder at Vanessa to see that she followed.
Viscount Lyngate offered his arm, and she took it.
The servants were not wearing cloaks and it was a chilly day despite the sunshine. Nevertheless, not one of them moved a muscle except to bow or curtsy to Stephen as each was introduced to him. He had a word with all of them—as if to the manner born, Vanessa thought with some pride.
She forced herself to smile and nod at all of the servants as she passed, and they bowed or curtsied in return. Rundle Park was like a rural cottage in comparison with this.
Mr. Bowen came behind them.
And then they were inside the great hall, which was great indeed and fairly robbed Vanessa of breath. It was round and pillared and stretched up the full height of the house and into the dome, which was gilded and painted with scenes from mythology Light from its long, narrow windows streamed into the hall below, making patterns of light and shade on the pillars and checkered floor.
They all stood and gaped.
Viscount Lyngate was the first to speak.
“The devil!” he muttered while the rest of them were still standing with their necks craned backward, and the butler and housekeeper waited to escort them elsewhere.
Vanessa looked at him in some surprise. But then she saw that another gentleman was striding into the hall through one of the arches surrounding it, his boot heels ringing on the tiles.
