by M C Beaton
The Perfect Gentleman
M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney
Copyright
The Perfect Gentleman
Copyright ©1988 by Marion Chesney
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795320927
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
The marriage proposal of Lord Andrew Childe, younger son of the Duke and Duchess of Parkworth, was everything it should have been.
For Lord Andrew did everything well. He was handsome and faultlessly dressed. He was a famous whip, he boxed with Gentleman Jackson, he read ancient Greek easily, and he wrote witty poems in Latin.
He saw no reason to trouble himself by pursuing some debutante at the London Season. Some time before it had begun, before the leaves were yet on the trees, he had singled out Miss Ann Worthy as his future bride.
Lord Andrew was thirty-two and considered young misses insipid. Miss Worthy was twenty-eight and hailed from the untitled aristocracy. From her long, aristocratic nose to her long, narrow feet, she was every inch a lady. She never betrayed any vulgar excess of emotion or committed any common faux pas.
Only an admirer of Lord Byron or some such woolly headed creature would have criticized Lord Andrew’s proposal, might have pointed out that the very passionless chilliness of it showed a sad flaw in the character of the Perfect Gentleman—Lord Andrew’s nickname.
He had broached the matter to her parents first and had been accepted by them.
He was left alone with Miss Worthy for a short space of time in the blue saloon of the Worthys’ town house in Curzon Street.
Miss Worthy was sitting in front of a tambour frame, neatly putting stitches into a design of bluebells. She affected not to know what was in the air.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her.
She was attired in an expensive morning gown of tucked and ruched white muslin. A cap of pleated muslin almost hid the thick tresses of her red hair. Her nose was long and straight, and her mouth small enough to please the highest stickler. Her pale green eyes veiled by red and gold lashes might have been thought to be a trifle too close-set. Her hands were very long and white.
Although she knew very well Lord Andrew was standing there, and why he had come, she continued to stitch for that short minute before turning her head and affecting a start of surprise.
“Lord Andrew!” she exclaimed. She rose with a graceful movement and went to sit on a backless sofa in front of the cold fireplace—for the Worthys did not light fires after the first of March, no matter what the weather.
“Good afternoon, Miss Worthy,” said Lord Andrew. “I trust I find you well?”
“Very well, my lord. Pray be seated.”
He was carrying his hat, cane, and gloves—that traditional sign that a gentleman did not intend to stay very long. He laid them down on a small table, approached the sofa, and fell to one knee in front of her.
“Miss Worthy,” he said, “I have leave from your parents to pay my addresses to you. I wish to marry you. Will you accept me?”
“Yes, my lord.”
He stood up and took her hand and drew her to her feet. He bent his head and kissed her on the mouth. The day was cold. Icy lips met icy lips in a chaste embrace.
Right on cue, Mr. and Mrs. Worthy made their entrance. The happy couple stood hand in hand, gracefully accepting congratulations. Mr. Worthy, thin and ascetic and longing to get back to his beloved books, called for champagne after having been nudged in the ribs by his small, dumpy wife.
Lord Andrew took a glass, toasted his fiancée, toasted his future in-laws, and then took his leave.
All just as it should have been.
With the long, easy stride of a practiced athlete, he walked to his parents’ house in Park Lane—although it, like the neighboring houses, still faced onto Park Street. Not so long ago Park Lane had been Tyburn Lane of dubious repute. There was not much of a view of Hyde Park, for the high wall which had been built to screen the residents from the condemned on their way to the scaffold was still there. One enterprising resident had had part of the wall removed and the entrance to his house made leading from Park Lane itself, but the rest still preferred to keep to Park Street, which was still the front entrance for the rest of the houses.
Up until that moment when he walked into his parents’ house and made his way to the library, Lord Andrew would have considered himself the most fortunate and happiest of men. Unlike most younger sons, he was very rich, having been given one of the minor ducal houses and estates as his own. By studying all the latest innovations in scientific farming, he had made it prosper. The money from his estates had been carefully invested. He could have afforded his own town house and could have lived completely independently from his family if he chose.
But the Duchess of Parkworth had managed to turn the large town house into a home. It had an air of ease and prettiness and elegance. Lord Andrew found it restful.
In his early years, he had not seen very much of his parents from one year’s end to the other. He had an excellent tutor whose job it was to turn him into a gentleman. Lord Andrew had admired this tutor greatly. And so Lord Andrew went to Oxford University, and then on the Grand Tour with his tutor, and then into the army to “round him off.”
When his tutor, Mr. Blackwell, died while he was away at the wars, Lord Andrew felt as if he had lost a father. Mr. Blackwell had orchestrated the forming of Lord Andrew’s character, down to choosing his tailor. He had even seen to it that my lord had lost his virginity at a suitably early age at the hands of a lusty and bawdy housemaid. That last experience had caused Lord Andrew to acquire a certain distaste for the female sex. But on the whole, he was happy and carefree and interested in perfecting everything he turned his hand to, always trying to live up to the high standards of his now deceased tutor.
But as he sat down in the library and gazed at the flickering flames of the fire, he felt, for the first time, uncomfortable inside his own skin.
Usually when he had done just as he ought, he could see in his mind’s eye Mr. Blackwell’s smile of approval. But all he could think of was that chilly kiss. What else did he expect? Marriage was one thing, lust another.
He usually looked forward to the Season as a break from the cares of agriculture. He enjoyed racing and fencing and dancing, the opera, plays, and parties. He did not have to attend the House of Lords. That chore fell to the eldest son, the Marquess of Bridgeworth, who enjoyed making long and boring speeches on the game laws.
But for the first time, Lord Andrew began to feel uneasily bored. He remembered when he had been very small, his nurse promising to take him to the servants’ Christmas party. He had lain awake for nights before the great event, trembling with anticipation. But then his nurse had told him that his mother, the duchess, had learned of her plans, and he was not to attend.
He had not cried, for he knew even then that men of five years old did not cry. But life had seemed to lose color for quit
e a long time afterwards.
That was what he felt like now, as if he had just experienced a disappointment.
He shook himself and decided his spleen must be disordered from lack of exercise. He would go riding in the park.
He was just about to leave the library and go to his room and change into his riding dress when his father came in.
The duke was small, burly, and undistinguished. He was wearing a banyan wrapped round his thick body and a turban on his head. The banyan was of peacock silk and the oriental turban was of cloth-of-gold, but he still looked more like a bad-tempered farmer than a duke.
“How do?” he grunted. “See the Gentleman’s Magazine anywhere?”
“Yes, over on the table.”
“Good, good,” said the duke, shuffling forward to pick it up.
“I proposed to Miss Worthy, Father, and she accepted.”
“Well, of course she would,” said the duke, picking up the magazine and fishing in his bosom for his quizzing glass.
Lord Andrew smiled. “You think me a great catch, then?”
“Oh, no,” said the duke, riffling through the pages. “The Worthys have been hanging out for a title this age. She’s got a good dowry, Miss Worthy, and she could have married Mr. Benjamin Jepps this age, but they’d all set their hearts on a title.”
“You did not tell me that,” said Lord Andrew stiffly.
“Didn’t I? Didn’t seem important. She’s good family, and you ain’t exactly in the first blush of youth.”
“Yet I am not in my dotage.”
“Grrmph,” said his father, settling himself down in a wing chair and studying an article in the magazine.
“When does Mother come to town?” “Hey, what’s that?”
“I asked when Mother was coming to town,” said Lord Andrew patiently.
“Next week,” said the duke, “with this Miss Whatsit she’s bringing out.”
“Mother sponsoring another debutante? Why was I not told of this?”
“Why should you be? Not your home. Got enough blunt of your own to buy your own house. Why don’t you?”
“I would have thought my dear mother and father would have been glad of my company,” said Lord Andrew acidly.
“That’s common!” said the duke, much shocked. “You’ve been seeing too many plays. You’ll be sitting on my knee next.”
“Hardly,” said the six-foot-tall Sir Andrew caustically. “Anyway, who is Miss Whatsit, and why is Mama bringing her out?”
“I don’t know,” said the duke tetchily. “Some parish waif. You know what your mother’s like. Lame ducks underfoot the whole time. Poor relations, plain Janes who can’t get a husband. Whoever this Miss Whatsit is, you can take it from me she’ll be as ugly as sin and won’t own a penny. Your mother will have her all puffed up with consequence and vanity, she won’t take, and she’ll be sent back to the country with a lot of useless airs and graces and marry the curate. Now, run along, do,” he added, as if Lord Andrew were still in shortcoats.
Lord Andrew went off to exercise the blue devils out of his system. He rode hard that day, he fenced, he boxed, and then, feeling tired and slightly better, he made his way home again. But as he walked past a row of shops in South Molton Street just as the light was fading, he saw an interesting tableau in the upstairs window of an apartment above a butcher’s shop.
The little shopkeeper’s parlor was ablaze with candles. The butcher and his wife, dressed in their best, were facing a young couple, a pretty girl and a tall, honest-looking young man. The young man said something and took the girl’s hand in his. The girl blushed and lowered her eyes. The young man put his hand on his heart. The butcher’s wife began to cry happy tears, and the butcher raised his burly arms in a blessing.
Lord Andrew felt a queer little tug at his heart. Had he not been the son of a duke, had he been, say, the son of a shopkeeper, he would have been brought up close to his parents. His engagement would have been a celebration, thanks would have been given to God, and he would have received his father’s blessing.
A cold wind blew an old newspaper against his legs, and he angrily kicked it away.
Among their many properties, the Duke and Duchess of Parkworth owned the Sussex village of Lower Bexham. The squire, Sir Hector Mortimer, had recently died, leaving a pile of debt to his one surviving child, Penelope.
The vicar of St. Magnus the Martyr, the church in Lower Bexham, had written to the duchess about young Penelope’s plight.
The duchess wrote back immediately, promising to call on this Miss Mortimer. The Duchess of Parkworth had a soft heart, easily touched, but unfortunately, although she started off with enthusiasm to help her lame ducks, she could not sustain any interest in them for long. She was lame duckless for the moment. The previous charge had been a young footman who had confessed to a longing to be an army captain. The duchess had arranged everything and then had promptly forgotten about the footman. Even when she got a sad little letter from the footman saying he would have to resign his commission, for without any private income, he could not pay his mess bills, she had pettishly thrown it away, saying, “It is of no use to go on helping people who cannot help themselves.”
Fortunately for him, the footman had the wit to then write to Lord Andrew, who investigated his capabilities as a soldier, sorted out his debts, and arranged an allowance for him. When the duchess learned that the ex-footman was still a captain, and when she had not heard further from him, she had gone about saying, “There you are! People must stand on their own two feet.”
She descended on Penelope Mortimer suffused with all the warm glow of a Lady Bountiful.
Penelope Mortimer’s appearance came as rather a shock. The duchess was used to forwarding the careers of plain girls. Penelope had blond, almost silver hair, with a natural curl. Her blue eyes were wide and well spaced and fringed with sooty lashes. Her figure was dainty. She was a trifle small in stature.
Miss Mortimer’s one remaining servant introduced the duchess, who sailed in like a galleon. The duchess was almost as tall as Lord Andrew, but a liking for food had given her a massive figure, which she tried to reduce by wearing sturdy whalebone corsets. She had a small head and small hands and feet. Her massive figure did not seem to belong to her. It was as if she had poked her head through the cardboard cutout of a fat lady at the fairground.
The duchess was enchanted by Penelope’s appearance and manner. She had not been in the house for ten minutes before she was already weaving dreams about what a sensation Penelope would be at the Season.
Penelope, bewildered by plans for her social debut, tried to explain where matters stood. Her mother had died some years previously, her father the year before. Penelope had sold up everything that could be sold, and most of the debts had been paid. She had put her home on the market and had already selected a comfortable little cottage in the village. She had not once considered coming out. In order to explain to this overwhelming duchess about the exact state of her financial straits, Penelope excused herself and then returned with a pile of accounts’ ledgers, all written out in her neat hand. She popped a pair of steel spectacles on her nose and began to explain the figures to the duchess.
But the duchess was staring in horror at those spectacles. Penelope’s dreaming expression had disappeared the minute she put those spectacles on, and her eyes gleamed with a most unbecomingly sharp intelligence.
“No, no, no!” said her grace, snatching the spectacles from Penelope’s little nose. “You must never wear these dreadful things again!”
“But I must, Your Grace,” said Penelope. “I am quite blind without them. How will I be able to read?”
“Books!” said the duchess with loathing. “Young ladies are better off without them, and although I am sure your accounts are correct, it is most unladylike of you to be able to do such things.”
“Through lack of money,” said Penelope firmly, “I am become used to doing quite a lot of things that young ladies are not supposed
to do. I garden and I cook. I find useful occupation most entertaining.”
“Horrors!” said the duchess, raising her little hands in the air.
“In fact, Your Grace, you must not concern yourself with my future. Once I sell this house, I shall have enough to live on for quite some time. I have already put up a sign as a music teacher and have five pupils.”
The duchess’s mouth sagged in a disappointed droop. This gorgeous creature simply must come to London.
She pulled herself up to her full height. “You have no choice in the matter, Miss Mortimer. I command you to pack your things and come with me!”
There was nothing else Penelope could do. The duke and duchess owned the village. Ever practical, Penelope complied. She would try to enjoy herself at the Season and then return to the village.
