It Happened One Season

by Stephanie Laurens

  Being shy was a positive curse. She so envied people who could walk into a room, head high, eyes meeting everyone else’s, as if they expected to be welcomed and to be liked.

  Though there were, of course, her looks, which had not improved with age. Cleo always thought of herself as square. There was the shape of her face to prove the point and the short, stocky body beneath it. Well, no, that was no longer true, was it? There had been a time in the Peninsula when she was with Aubrey and the British army as they fought against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte that she had taken consolation for her unhappiness in food and had indeed become stocky. But after Aubrey’s death and her return to England, she had taken herself in hand and lost the excess weight and even the unnecessary weight she had put on as a girl.

  But she still thought of herself as square.

  She had so hoped to find happiness in a new marriage. She had been only twenty-two when she was widowed, twenty-three when she put off her mourning. Little more than a girl, actually.

  Her expectations had never been impossibly high. She had never expected love in any future marriage, not the passionate love of high romance that one read about in storybooks, anyway. She had not expected to attract any very handsome or magnetically charming suitor. All she had hoped for was happiness, which to her was synonymous with contentment. A home of her own with a kindly man and a few children and neighbors and a garden and…

  Well. It was not to be, was it? None of it. And it was time she accepted reality.

  Ah, but she had known that passionate sort of love once, though it had been a foolish thing, entirely one-sided and impossible for every imaginable reason. But there had been a moment…

  Only, alas, a moment.

  But she would hug it to herself for the rest of her life like a priceless jewel, just as she had for six years.

  He had probably forgotten within a day.

  How pathetic she was.

  But she was not usually self-pitying. There was nothing more unattractive than self-pity.

  Cleo removed her head from its resting place on her hands, gave it a little shake, and drummed the fingers of one hand on the dressing table. This was her younger sister’s year. Gwinn—Guinevere. Their father had named all his children after prominent kings and queens of history, but while with Alfred and Elizabeth that fact was not glaringly obvious, the same could not be said of Cleopatra and Guinevere. Gwinn was nineteen and making her come-out under Elizabeth’s sponsorship. And when Cleo went along to balls and other entertainments with the two of them, she felt relegated quite firmly to an older generation.

  Yet another impediment to her very modest dreams.

  There was another ball tomorrow evening, Lady Claremont’s, and finally Cleo was admitting to herself that she hated balls. She hated being a wallflower. She hated having to stand or sit in full view of half the ton, smiling and fanning her face and pretending to be having a rollicking good time among the mothers and chaperons of the pretty young things who were dancing every set.

  And this was where her firm decision came in.

  She was not going to do it any longer. Not after this year, anyway, when she felt obliged to give Elizabeth her company while Gwinn was being made much of by hordes of young, eligible gentlemen. After this year she would retire from society. It was not as if her life would be empty and meaningless. Quite the contrary. She had several worthwhile activities in which to immerse herself and numerous hobbies and a few good friends. And there was nothing obviously pathetic about a widow choosing to live out her life alone in faithfulness to the memory of a long-deceased husband.

  Living a quiet, dignified life of good works and busy industry would be her new goal.

  It sounded dreadfully dull.

  But she had decided. She must dream up a new, more modest, dream. The old one was not serving her at all well. She would never marry again. She would never have a suitor. Or a lover. No one was interested.

  The more fool they.

  Cleo was now drumming the fingers of both hands on the dressing-table top. She looked with firm resolve at her image and then, after a few seconds, she crossed her eyes and poked out her tongue.

  There. That felt immensely better.

  She laughed—at herself.

  And by now Alfred’s carriage must be waiting outside her door to fetch her for dinner. She was to attend the opera afterward with him and Megan, her sister-in-law. She was looking forward to the evening.

  She got to her feet and reached for her shawl and reticule.

  Jack Gilchrist felt somewhat overwhelmed by the greeting he received when he arrived at Waterton House on Portman Square in London late one afternoon. He must have arrived mere moments after the children returned home from a walk with their mother and their nurse.

  Charlotte, Countess of Waterton, his sister-in-law, was pulling off her gloves while the nurse bounced an infant in her arms. A small child was complaining that her bonnet ribbons were in a knot, and a considerably older one was assuring her impatiently that the knot would only get worse if she kept pulling on it. Meanwhile a child between the two of them in age was bending over the younger one and batting her hands away so that she could undo the knot herself.

  They all stopped to look at Jack as he stepped inside the front doors, which were standing open.

  “Jack! There you are!” Charlotte exclaimed, and she stepped forward to hug him, while the baby popped a thumb in her mouth and hid her face against the nurse’s shoulder, the eldest girl curtsied and instructed the others to do likewise in a voice that could only be described as bossy, the younger one rushed at him to show him her new white gloves—which she had kept white throughout their walk—and the one who was younger again burst into tears and resumed her fruitless tugging at the bonnet ribbons.

  Matthew, Earl of Waterton, Jack’s older brother, appeared from somewhere, and stood in the background, his hands behind him, and—wise man—waited for either his wife or the children’s nurse to impose order on the girls again.

  It happened within a minute or two, and all four children disappeared upstairs with the nurse.

  Matthew nodded his head.

  “Jack,” he said. “You are looking well.”

  He was not feeling particularly well. Oh, health-wise, he was fine. He had recovered from his war wounds long ago. He was actually one of the fortunate ones since he still had all four limbs and both eyes and ears, and his scars were not in obviously visible places. But he had not recovered from his aversion to being in public and risking a resumption of the adulation that had so bewildered and embarrassed him five years ago. Heroism was a ridiculous notion when it came to war. One did one’s duty, and as an officer, one looked out for one’s men and one’s superiors. If one happened to be in the right place at the right time—or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending upon one’s perspective—then sometimes one could be of real service to someone, even if only the lowliest enlisted man, at the same time as one furthered the cause for which one fought. It was what anyone would do under the circumstances. There was nothing heroic about it, unless one saw all soldiers as heroic.

  He had used his slowly healing wounds as an excuse to withdraw from all the admiration and adoration to which he had found himself subjected when he returned home from the Peninsula. He had gone to live in the old steward’s cottage on a far corner of his brother’s secondary estate in Dorsetshire. He had made a home of that cottage for almost five years, neither avoiding company nor courting it. Company had largely avoided him, though he did not believe there was anything deliberate about it on the part of his neighbors. He had, he supposed, gained something of a reputation as a recluse.

  He had not minded. He had never intended to make it a lifelong state, but it had suited him while he healed. And one thing he had learned from war was that not all wounds were physical and that those that were not actually took longer to heal.

  He had been called out of seclusion before he was ready to come out of his own volition. Matth
ew had invited him to come to London. No, actually he had summoned Jack. He had informed his younger brother in a terse, formal letter that he was sending the carriage from London to fetch him and that he would be needing the carriage again within a week.

  Jack might have refused to come, of course, but that would be making too much of a point of his reclusiveness. He was not a recluse. He was merely a man enjoying a long stretch of solitude and peace while he learned to be comfortable again within his own body and mind and soul.

  His arrival, first in London, and now here at Waterton House had been somewhat jarring. He had not realized just how quiet and solitary his life had become.

  “So are you, Matthew,” he said in response to the comment upon his looks. And he advanced toward his brother, his hand outstretched. “Your girls are growing up.”

  “Even the baby is walking already,” Charlotte said. “When she chooses to, that is. You will wish to settle into your room, Jack. But do come up to the drawing room for tea first. That journey all the way from Rigdon Hall is a tedious one, as I discover afresh every time we go down there.”

  “Jack would prefer something a little stronger than tea, I am quite sure, my love,” Matthew said. “And somewhere quieter than the drawing room if Rose and Anne are to be allowed down as they usually are. Come into the library, Jack, and sample some superior brandy.”

  Jack smiled apologetically at his sister-in-law and, in some relief, followed his brother into the library. He closed the door behind him and took one of the leather chairs beside the hearth. Matthew poured two glasses of brandy, handed him one, and took up a stand before the unlit coals with the other. He swirled the brandy, took a taste, and gazed down into his glass.

  He was about to discover, Jack concluded as he rolled a mouthful of the smooth liquor over his tongue, why he had been summoned. Matthew was not going to waste any time. Jack sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. He hoped it was something that would allow him to return home soon. Spring in the countryside and by the seashore was his favorite time of year.

  “Charlotte had a difficult time of it with Lily’s birth last year,” Matthew said, still gazing into his glass. “The labor was long and intense. I thought I was going to lose her. So did the physician. He finally had to rip Lily out. By some miracle, both she and Charlotte survived.”

  Jack felt himself flushing. This was more information than he needed to hear.

  “They both look well now,” he said.

  “Rathbone informed us at the time,” Matthew continued, “that there would be no more children, that it would be dangerous to try and impossible to accomplish.”

  “I am sorry,” Jack murmured.

  “We both hoped,” Matthew said, “that by this year, after everything had healed and Charlotte had recovered her health, Rathbone would discover that after all there could be another child. But examinations have been made—all of which Charlotte bore with admirable fortitude—and the judgment was handed down just last week. Nothing has changed. We will have no more children.”

  Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat and lifted his glass to his lips again. He was genuinely sorry. But what did this have to do with him? Had he been brought here to cheer them up? He was surely the wrong person to do that.

  “Jack,” Matthew said, changing position abruptly and sitting on the edge of the chair at the other side of the fireplace. “The title has descended in the direct line for five generations. If there is no heir of the direct line, the title and the property will pass to Hugh.”

  Their second cousin, who had been a bully as a boy and both a bully and a rake of the worst order as a man.

  Jack began to have an inkling of where this was leading.

  “You are only thirty-six,” he said. “Hugh is two years older. And maybe his sons will improve with age. You may live to be eighty and Hugh to be sixty-two. I may live to be ninety.”

  His poor attempt at a joke did not draw a smile from his brother.

  “And I may die at thirty-seven,” he said, “and Hugh at sixty-two, or eighty-two. And you at thirty-one.”

  Next year. Jack frowned.

  “Might you die at thirty-seven?” he asked.

  His brother did not answer the question.

  “You know,” he said, “that almost all the property and fortune are tied up in the entail. There is very little I am free to leave to Charlotte and the girls. Lily is one, Jack, Emily four. Even Rose is only ten. It will be eight years or more before she marries. And how can she marry well if there is virtually nothing for a portion?”

  “Matt,” Jack asked, “is there a chance that you might—?” His mouth felt suddenly dry.

  “There is always the chance,” Matthew said impatiently. “I could drop dead within the next minute. So could you. But yes, Rathbone did find something to concern him when he examined me last week along with Charlotte. Some sort of … murmur was the word he used, about the heart. Nothing serious in all probability, he told me. But he wishes to keep an eye on it. I am not going to dwell upon it. What will be will be. But, Jack …”

  He paused to set down his glass and run the fingers of one hand through his hair.

  “You must marry,” he said abruptly. “Without delay. You must produce a son. Sons. If I could order you to marry, I would. I cannot, of course. But I can beg you, appeal to your sense of family duty and honor, do whatever I need to do to get you to agree. You must marry. And this is the perfect place and the perfect time to do it. This is the Season, the great marriage mart, and a few months of it still remain.”

  Finally he looked up into his brother’s face.

  Jack felt as though he were turned to stone.

  Marry? It was something he supposed he had always intended to do eventually. But … in such haste? Within two months? Matthew was expecting him to join in all the hectic madness of the London Season in order to choose a bride from the hopeful young things who thronged the ballrooms and drawing rooms? And marry and impregnate her without delay?

  All to stop Hugh and his sons from succeeding to the title after both Matthew and he were dead—which of course could conceivably happen long before all Matt’s daughters were safely grown up and married.

  Yes, good Lord, it could happen.

  Besides which, the thought of Hugh ever owning Rigdon Hall and controlling everyone dependent upon it for their livelihood was a ghastly one. Not to mention Mayfield Park, Matthew’s principal seat in Berkshire, where they had both grown up.

  But …

  He was expected to marry? Now? This year?

  His face felt suddenly cold as if all the blood had drained out of it. There must be an alternative. But Charlotte could have no more children. And even if she could, she might have yet another daughter. And Matthew could not simply put her from him, Henry VIII style, in favor of a more fertile alternative.

  “Lady Claremont’s ball is tomorrow evening,” Matthew said, picking up his glass again and swirling the contents. “It is always one of the biggest squeezes of the Season.”

  “You expect me—?” Jack stopped. Of course Matthew did.

  “Yes,” his brother said. “Yes, I do, Jack. Please.”

  It was Jack’s turn to run a hand through his hair.

  “I think I have forgotten how to make conversation with a lady,” he said. Or with anyone, for that matter.

  “You will not need to,” his brother said. “No one will have forgotten exactly who you are, Jack. Especially this year, when the great victory of Waterloo is still fresh in everyone’s mind. And you always were impossibly attractive to the ladies anyway.”

  Jack winced and drained his glass.

  The silence stretched. He was the one who broke it eventually.

  “It would seem, then,” he said curtly, “that I am going to Lady Claremont’s ball tomorrow evening.”

  Chapter Two

  He is a very decent fellow,” Alfred said. “Shall I bring him over here and introduce him?”

  The very decent fellow w
as Mr. Pike, a gentleman from the North of England who did not come often to London but had come this year in order to seek a wife. Or so he had told Alfred in a recent conversation at White’s Club. He was a tall, slim young man with blond good looks and—if Cleo could judge from this distance—blue eyes. He was at present in conversation with two pretty young ladies while an older lady hovered protectively nearby. All three of the young people were laughing. Two fans were fluttering merrily.

  “No, of course not,” Cleo said hastily. It always embarrassed her that her brother felt obliged to try to prevent her from being a total wallflower. “I am quite happy sitting here watching everyone else.”

  “The second set is mine,” he said, “after I have danced the first with Megan. I insist upon it. Don’t go promising it to anyone else.”

  He grinned at her, and she smiled back.

  “I shall reject all the dozens of offers I shall receive in the meanwhile,” she said.

  “It is a waltz,” he told her.

  “Oh, good.” She beamed. She loved the waltz, even when she must dance it with her brother.

  He made his way back to Megan’s side and led her onto the floor, where the opening sets were beginning to form. Elizabeth was out there with Charles, and Gwinn with Lord Kerby, who was becoming one of her many regular beaux. Cleo smiled at Lady Naismith and her sister as they passed in front of her, arm in arm, tall plumes nodding above their heads.

  The ballroom was already crowded, and more guests were trickling in, late though it was becoming. Cleo knew almost everyone by sight. One did, of course, tend to see the same people over and over again during a Season and even from year to year. There was almost never anyone new except for the fresh crop of very young ladies fresh out of the schoolroom each spring and of very young gentlemen newly down from Oxford or Cambridge or newly up from their fathers’ estates in the country.

  Though there was someone now, just inside the ballroom doors.

  He was a tall, powerfully built gentleman with very erect bearing. Cleo recognized it instinctively as military bearing though he was not wearing a uniform. He was with the Earl and Countess of Waterton and was facing away from Cleo.