He was on the Continent for her first Season, which almost ruined it for her. She had so hoped that seeing her in town as a marriageable young lady would open his eyes to the fact that he had loved her all along. He was there for her second Season and faithfully partnered her and gossiped with her and teased her about her conquests. But he never held her close during a waltz, much less attempted a kiss.
She had offered her sympathy when his father died. She had flung herself into his arms and sobbed uncontrollably when Ned’s coffin was lowered into the ground. A few days later she had penned him a letter, offering her deep sympathy and her own shoulder to cry on, should he ever need it. But he never spoke of Ned to her and had spent this, her third Season, hovering around Claudia Halesworth, Lady Fairhaven.
Lady Barrand was correct: Lady Fairhaven’s parents had seen their pocket-Venus daughter as a meal-ticket. But although an undercurrent of gossip had featured Lord Fairhaven as a Bluebeard, the truth was that he had fallen passionately in love with his petite blonde neighbor almost immediately upon his return from many years in India. He had amassed a huge fortune in his twenty years away, and Claudia’s parents decided that they had no problem with his money coming from trade since there was so much of it. Lord Fairhaven not only took their daughter off their hands but saved them the expense of a Season.
Society predicted that in a year, Justin Halesworth would be indifferent to his wife and that she would embark on an affair with a younger man. Society was wrong.
* * * *
Claudia had gone through the courtship and ceremony in a kind of daze. Her parents had been telling her for years what her destiny was to be. She had accepted their control over her life and had never hesitated in either her response to Lord Fairhaven’s proposal or in her recitation of her vows.
When they reached their new home, however, the reality hit her. She was a complete innocent yoked to a man thirty years her senior whom she hardly knew. She had stolen frightened glances at him in the coach. He was tall and spare with gray hair and weather-darkened skin. Her mother had briefly explained what would be expected of her that evening, but as she looked down at her husband’s long-fingered hands, she began to shake at the thought of him touching her.
Lord Fairhaven noticed her shivering and placed his coat around her shoulders. When her shivering didn’t stop, he took her hand in his and said: “You must be as frightened as I am, my dear.”
Claudia took a ragged breath and looked up into his face.
“Oh, yes,” he continued with a smile, “this is as terrifying for me as it is for you, Claudia. Here I am, a decrepit earl, hoping to make my young bride’s wedding night a pleasurable experience, while she is worrying how she will hide her displeasure.”
Claudia found her voice. “Surely not doddering, my lord,” she said, with an attempt at humor.
“Justin, please, my dear.”
“I am frightened…Justin. But more because I am so young and inexperienced than that you are old.”
“You are as kind as you are beautiful. Claudia,” Lord Fairhaven replied, with a twinkle in his eye. “But I promise you that one good thing about my having so many more years than you is that I also have, um, the experience. You are not to worry about your innocence, Claudia. It is what attracted me to you. Tonight I thought we might just dine privately and retire early and separately. We will make our way slowly.”
Claudia’s grateful look more than enough made up for his forbearance, thought Fairhaven. And so they had a comfortable supper together. He was a great storyteller and had many tales to tell about his years in the East. By the time he led Claudia up to her door she was more relaxed with him than she had ever thought possible.
When she awoke the next morning, she contemplated the door connecting their rooms for a long time. She could wait. He had made it clear that he would wait until she was ready. But why wait like a scared rabbit for something that was inevitable? So she drew on her silk wrapper and opened the door.
Her husband was awake and reading in bed. He looked at her in surprise as she stood on the threshold, and then patted the space beside him with his hand. She crawled under the covers, and he put his book and his spectacles on a bedside table.
“So you have come to brave the old lion in his den, eh?” Lord Fairhaven reached up his hand and gently smoothed her cheek. Claudia gave a slight shiver.
“Still frightened, my dear?”
“No, no. That felt…nice,” she whispered.
Lord Fairhaven ran his finger down her cheek again, stopping at her mouth. “And this?” he asked, as he leaned over to kiss her.
“Yes,” said Claudia with a smile after his gentle kiss.
Her husband slipped off her wrapper and his eyes gazed appreciatively at her small but ripe form. Claudia blushed, and before he could help her, shrugged herself awkwardly out of her night rail and lay flat, her arms by her sides.
“And now you think I am going to just fall on top of you and do it?” asked her husband, with that twinkle in his eye that she was beginning to appreciate.
“Aren’t you? My mother said it would be quick…a little painful…but that I wouldn’t suffer long.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Fairhaven, letting out a laughing groan. “I am amazed this island is populated at all! No, Claudia, one good thing about an older husband is that he will go more slowly and more pleasurably for you. Let me show you.” And he proceeded to caress, gently and tenderly, every inch of her until her arms came up around his neck of their own accord and her legs around his hips without her even knowing how they got there. And after the slight pain, there was indeed great pleasure.
* * * *
Their marriage was a very happy one, despite all the dire predictions. Claudia came to love her husband very much, although she never felt the passion for him that he so clearly did for her. When he died after a brief illness in the fifteenth year of their marriage, she was devastated. She had stayed by his side while he was dying, telling him how happy she had been during their years together.
“And you do not regret marrying an old man, then?” he had asked one afternoon.
“I do,” she replied, “but only because I want more years with you.”
“And my only regret is that I could not give them to you. And that we had no child.”
“You have given me all I could ever want, Justin,” she whispered, tears slipping down her cheeks. She wasn’t telling the whole truth, for she had longed for a child, although she had kept her great disappointment to herself.
“No, but I have given you all I could, my dearest. After I die, I want you to find someone your own age who will show you that there is even more than we had.”
Claudia was sobbing quietly by then. “Please, Justin. I can’t bear it. I cannot imagine wanting anyone else. I mean to live out my years as your widow.”
Justin patted her hand. “All right, we will talk of this no more. But you will remember this: that I wish for your happiness. I don’t want you to bury yourself in Devon.”
“I don’t think I will stay here with Mark, Justin,” said Claudia.
A spasm of pain passed over her husband’s face, but he ignored her concern and said: “Mark will inherit the title and Fairhaven, but I have taken good care of you, Claudia. You will have my fortune. You need never be dependent upon anyone. I have made sure of that.”
He had also made sure that his cousin, who had visited them often over the years, would have a good reason to seek her out. And what could be better than to have his line continued by his cousin and his beloved wife?
Chapter 3
Claudia had returned to her parents’ home almost immediately after her husband’s funeral. She had kept only two secrets from her husband during their married life: one, the depths of her distress over their childlessness, and two, her dislike of his cousin and heir.
Mark Halesworth was only a year older than his cousin’s bride and he made a trip to Fairhaven the summer after the marriage. He was a goo
d-looking young man and, although their acquaintance was recent, the earl and he got along very well. At first, Mark was merely polite to his new relative and Claudia suspected that he disapproved of her, perhaps believed that she had only married the earl for his fortune. As the years went by, however, and it became clear that there would likely be no children, Mark became friendlier. She was so young and naive when she married that it took her all that time to realize that the coldness she felt had little to do with Mark’s concern for Justin’s happiness and all to do with his possible displacement as his cousin’s heir.
Lord Fairhaven had offered to support Mark in the study of law, but Mark begged instead for a position in his cousin’s business. Mark had worked his way up, until, by the time of his cousin’s death, he was the manager of Halesworth Ltd.
Although, according to gossip, he had had several mistresses, his passion was clearly for finance, not for women. Claudia, who had always felt him to be a cold man, was convinced that his sorrow at his cousin’s death was all surface. She was especially suspicious of his relief that she had been left well off.
“For no one could have been a more devoted wife, Claudia. You deserve to be rewarded,” he told her after the will was read.
Claudia, who was still in shock from her loss, hardly took his words in, but later, when she reread the settlements and recalled Mark’s comments, she gave a disbelieving laugh. The estate was entailed, and so Mark inherited both the title and Fairhaven as well as a continued interest in the business, which in itself was no small thing. But Justin’s fortune had been enormous, and Claudia had inherited it all, and after her, any heirs of her body. Claudia had shed tears at this evidence of her husband’s loving hope that she might one day marry again. She had no intention of doing so. But Mark must have been furious, not relieved, to see such a proviso.
Two years after her husband’s death, however, Claudia found herself coming back to life. She was beginning to find her time with her parents boring. Her mother was very much in charge of her own household and Claudia had little or nothing to do with herself. At first that had been a relief, but then it began to drive her to distraction. She could, of course, have gone back to Fairhaven. Mark had more than once invited her, but it was not a welcome prospect, nor did it seem quite within the bounds of propriety. She was his second cousin by marriage, but she was also his contemporary.
She finally decided to purchase a townhouse and move to London for the fall and spring Seasons. Her parents protested, but she was adamant, and so, at thirty-four, she was finally to have a “come-out.” Not that she and Justin hadn’t been to London often, and not, she told herself, that she was interested in a second marriage, but this would be the first time she would be taking part in the activities as an unattached, eligible woman. Not a young woman, it was true. But a very rich one.
Lady Fairhaven was an immediate success. She had always been very well liked for herself and respected for her obvious devotion to her older husband. But she had always stood in his shadow. She was now her own woman, self-assured and still very attractive.
The petite blonde beauty that had attracted the earl had changed little, except to mature and ripen. There were few lines in her face and she could have worn the dresses she had at seventeen, so little had her figure changed.
“Of course, why should she have wrinkles?” complained one society matron who was of an age with Claudia. “Justin Halesworth positively doted on her. She was cosseted all their married life.”
“And never a child to thicken her waistline,” observed another.
“But to give her credit, she is not fast, like Lady Montague, nor high in the instep, although she could be with all that money,” said their companion.
The three ladies agreed that, as rich widows went, Lady Fairhaven was the most likable they had met.
The gentlemen were no less taken with her. A few, like Colonel Blunt and the Viscount Margate, were clearly after her money. And then there was young Littlefield, just down from Oxford, who was clearly in the throes of calf love. But at the beginning of the Season, her most frequent partner was her cousin-in-law, Mark Halesworth.
At first, Claudia was not at all surprised he sought her out. It was, after all, the polite and kindly thing to do. But after the first two weeks or so, Claudia began to notice that Mark was holding her just a little closer than was necessary for the waltz. And bending over her far more solicitously than she was comfortable with as he handed her a supper plate or a glass of punch. His warmth seemed real, but she still didn’t trust him. Nor was she at all attracted to him. Thank God, he resembled his mother more than Justin’s side of the family, but she had never liked his pale complexion or his thin-lipped, angular face. She wondered what was on his mind, and thought she knew. What could be better, from Mark’s point of view, than that he unite both title and fortune by marrying his cousin’s widow? Well, it was unfortunate for Mark that he was the last person in the world she would choose as a second husband. Not that she wanted one, but if she did, it would be someone who had a wide and generous mouth, like Anthony Varden.
* * * *
She had met Tony Varden several weeks into the Season and felt an immediate sympathy for him. He too had lost someone he loved: first his father and then his older brother. She arranged an introduction to him with no great difficulty or comment, and accepted his polite offer to take her in to supper. While they sat together, she offered her condolences. Her words, while conventional, were so clearly heartfelt that he was quite touched. It was the first time that anyone had offered him sympathy for himself alone. All the others, including Joanna, had been suffering their own loss and wanting comfort as well as giving it. This woman seemed to see right through to his heart. To know that he had suffered, was suffering. He stammered out a thank-you, his usual insouciance deserting him.
The next time, he sought her out. And this time really looked at her. True, she was a few years older than he, but she most certainly didn’t look it. In fact, she was one of the most attractive women in the room.
At first, he only set out to be charming to her to keep his mind off his worries. But as the Season wore on, he liked her more and more. She seemed to understand him. And she was refreshingly unsophisticated for a widow. He was sure that she had never been unfaithful to Lord Fairhaven.
There were a few fellows hanging around her, but he easily dismissed them as rivals. As he dismissed Mark Halesworth. Halesworth was being very solicitous, to be sure, but he was a cold fish. Tony had known him at school, where he’d been a few years Mark’s junior. Mark had had a reputation for real cruelty to younger boys. Tony had been lucky enough to keep out of his way, but he had heard enough stories to make him form an instant dislike.
He couldn’t imagine Lady Fairhaven could really like the fellow, so he managed to rescue her from his company as often as he could within the bounds of polite behavior. And by the end of the first half of the Season, gossips were speculating about Lord Ashford and Lady Fairhaven.
* * * *
One afternoon in early May, Mark was announced to his cousin. A slight frown creased her brow when her butler handed her Mark’s card, but she put on a polite smile and had him shown in.
“Good afternoon, Claudia. You are looking quite lovely today.”
“Thank you, Mark.” Years ago she had stopped him from calling her “Cousin Claudia,” which had sounded ridiculous. It still would, of course, but she would have welcomed the distance it would have suggested. The more attention Mark paid her, the more uncomfortable she felt with him.
“I am not come on a social visit, Claudia.”
“Oh?”
“No. I am here as a member of your family to express the concern I have about your welfare.”
Claudia lifted her teacup and took a measured swallow, while gesturing to her butler to serve her cousin.
“And what concern is that, Mark?” she asked evenly. Inside she was seething. Express his concern, indeed! How dare he presume to tell her
what to do? For she knew that was what he was about. Mark was too cold to feel anything, much less concern for her welfare.
“I have noticed, as indeed have others, that you are spending more time with Tony Varden than with any other gentlemen. I am worried about you. My cousin kept you very protected, you know, and you are relatively inexperienced in the ways of the world. Ashford is good-looking and charming, it is true, so I am aware of his appeal. Especially for a woman whose first husband was so much older than she. But his interest in you can be nothing but financial. I am sorry to be so blunt, Claudia. But you are a very wealthy woman, and as such, prey to all kinds of fortune hunters.”
“You mean like Blunt and Margate?”
“Why, yes, they are certainly two of the worst.”
“And you think that I am too old and wrinkled to appeal to Lord Ashford for any other reason than my money?”
Mark set his cup down and took one of Claudia’s hands in his. “Of course not. You are one of the most attractive women in London.”
Claudia slipped her hand out of his. “But I am older than he.”
“You are. And more to the point, he has recently inherited an impoverished title and estate.”
“I know that, Mark.”
“But do you also know that his strategy for bringing the estate back is to frequent the gaming hells? He is an inveterate gambler, Claudia, and I have it on good authority that he is badly dipped.”
Claudia kept her face expressionless. She had known, of course, about Tony’s inheritance. And he had confessed to her himself his unsuitability for the responsibilities he carried. He had compared himself to his brother more than once, and she had responded with the instant sympathy he drew from her and reassured him.
Lord Ashford's Wager Page 2
