The Wicked Guardian

by Vanessa Gray

  Clare lapsed into melancholy thoughts. She was apprehensive about Lady Lindsay’s arrival. She had no word from Benedict or his sister, but only the letter from Mr. Ruffin that informed her that Lord Choate found himself unable, due to his approaching wedding—thus ran Mr. Ruffin’s improvisations—to come to Dorset, but he was sending his sister, and so on, and so on. Clare dismissed the legal roundaboutations and fastened on one thing. Benedict hated his responsibility for her, and seized upon any excuse to get out of it.

  Well, she was glad enough of that! If she had not lost her head at Carlton House, she could, perhaps, have been betrothed to Sir Alexander Ferguson, and while it was not quite what she liked, to look forward to a long life of listening to Sir Alex, yet she could not deny that such a life would be very educational.

  And besides that, she would never have to look at Benedict Choate again. It was above all things what she wanted.

  But, as often happens with strong wishes, hers were to be denied. For just as she had formulated her devout wish, her hopes were dashed. From the window of the drawing room she had an excellent view of the long drive that came sweeping up to the front door of the abbey, through the old oaks, and past the sunken garden that had once held the carp ponds for the monks.

  And the smart rig that now came spanking up the drive, behind beautifully handled horses, was driven by a man, with a groom beside him, and there was no possible hope that Lady Lindsay was arriving.

  Wisby announced, in an awestruck voice, “Lord Benedict Choate, Miss Clare.”

  Benedict entered, to find his ward backed against the long table that stood against the far wall. She was eyeing him with a look that would not be inappropriate were she to be facing the Devil himself.

  Lady Melvin advanced to greet him. “We did not expect you, Lord Choate,” she said with a smile. “But of course, I must say you are very welcome.”

  He lifted one heavy eyebrow. “I must thank you,” he said, not sure to whom he was speaking.

  Clare murmured something in a stifled voice, and Lady Melvin turned chidingly to her. “Come, now, Clare, you must not show your disappointment. You see, Lord Choate, we were expecting your sister, and we have the rooms upstairs in readiness for her and her maid. But of course it is totally ineligible for you to stay here. I must make you welcome at my own home. Across the woods there, you know. I am Lady Melvin, and perhaps you know my husband, Sir Ewald Melvin? But then, it isn’t likely you would.”

  Lady Melvin’s speech flowed gently on, but Lord Choate found, as many a listener had found before, that it was not necessary to heed the content.

  Finally he broke in, “I have made arrangements at the inn, the Swan, I think? Since I will be staying for only a couple of days, I thought I could manage there. And they do seem to know horses.” He glanced at Clare. “I shall only stay long enough to see about what business I must, and then...”

  “Then,” said Clare, emerging from the state of paralysis that his appearance had cast her into, “you will return for your wedding. When is it to take place, sir?”

  “My marriage?” echoed Benedict. “No doubt it will be quite soon.”

  “I am sure you must be anxious for that happy day,” said Lady Melvin. “I remember how Sir Ewald simply would not brook any delays in our wedding. At once, he said; and at once, he meant. But then, you will not be taking Clare back to London, I must suppose?”

  “No, I shall not,” said Benedict. “I have given the matter much thought, and it seems to me that the best thing for my ward is to live out the period of her mourning here at the abbey.”

  Clare still stood where she had been when he entered. But there was a certain uprising within her that was not visible to her companions. She had hoped never to see Benedict again. Now, she realized, she was very wrong. She wanted to see him so that she could remember just how much she detested him. She could not imagine submitting to the high-handed ways that she saw were such a part of him that he was nearly unaware of them.

  To talk to Lady Melvin as though she herself were not in the room, to discuss Clare’s affairs with Lady Melvin as though the squire’s wife had something to say in the matter, was outside of enough.

  And while Clare had been in awe of Benedict in London, where she had felt uncertain ground beneath her feet, yet here she was in her own house on her own ground. And she was accustomed to directing her servants—in lieu of her grandmother’s invalid hand—and altogether knowing full well what she was about.

  And Benedict did not seem even to see her.

  The Penryck resolution—as Lady Thane would have said—was stirring, and Clare was willing to give it full rein.

  “But you have not welcomed Lord Choate,” said Lady Melvin, belatedly remembering that she was here to do her duty to the bereft girl, and not, however delightful it was, to chat with a nonpareil from London.

  Clare stepped forward, casting her eyes demurely down. She half-expected Benedict to say something about the fiasco at Carlton House, but instead, he took her hand in his and held it for a moment before releasing it. “My dear Miss Penryck,” he said, “I collect that the situation in which we find ourselves is as repugnant to you as it is to me, and therefore we will do well to deal with it quickly.”

  “I am certain, Lord Choate, that you can be no more surprised than I was,” said Clare with commendable poise. “Poor Uncle Horsham!”

  “I imagine he is well out of his troubles,” said Benedict, referring to the state of Horsham’s finances.

  Clare misunderstood. So Benedict thought he was heir to Uncle Horsham’s troubles—with Clare Penryck as ward? An obscure feeling stirred within her, one that she did not recognize. It might have been resentment, she thought later, at his high-handed ways of talking to her—even in Lady Melvin’s hearing—as though she were a package of no account, which could be set on a shelf or taken down, at will.

  Or it might have been a mixture of grief and loneliness, a deep need to matter to somebody, even to her obnoxious guardian, whom, of all people in the world, she disliked most.

  No matter, she thought now. She watched Choate with finesse and ruthlessness get rid of Lady Melvin, and then they were alone.

  Benedict said, “Do you have to put up with that woman a great deal?”

  Clare said very softly, “She has been very kind to me. And I have learned to value kindness above all things.” Although her appearance was innocuous, although she seemed to be exceedingly biddable, yet anyone who knew her very well would have been aware of a certain feeling of uneasy apprehension. Clare on her home ground was not quite the same as Clare on her best behavior in London.

  Benedict, however, did not know her that well. Not yet, although in the folds of the future, he was to learn.

  He studied her now, congratulating himself on his handling of the situation. He had gained her submission, he thought, for she had not ripped him up the moment he came in, as he might have expected, since she had been furious with him at their last meeting.

  He would be able to put things into train at once, and then, apart from frequent reports, no doubt, by the garrulous Mr. Austin, he could consider his duty to the Penrycks accomplished.

  “Of course it is ineligible for you to continue here alone. That woman is not the kind of person to guide you, and of course you must have someone to stay.”

  “I have my servants,” said Clare evenly. He was not warned by the calm authority with which she spoke of her staff.

  “Ineligible,” he repeated. “I have thought much about this, and I am persuaded I have the solution.”

  “Indeed?”

  “My sister, Lady Lindsay, is unable to travel to Dorset, as you may have surmised. But she has given me the address of her old governess-companion, who is, I think, quite properly qualified to come to you.”

  “To stay?”

  Benedict’s eyebrows rose. “Of course. You must have a female to lend you countenance here. You must not live alone.”

  “I do not wish to be a t
rouble to you,” Clare temporized.

  “No doubt,” he said dryly. “But somehow you do seem to attract trouble, do you not? And I am persuaded that my sister’s companion will be able to take charge of your training so that the next time you come to London, you may be able to control your impulsiveness.”

  “I shall not come to London.”

  “Oh, yes, you will,” said Benedict with a half-smile. “I shall certainly see that you are given every chance to marry well.”

  Clare found employment for the moment in pleating her skirt with her fingers. Benedict continued, “So, then, it is all settled.”

  “Pray tell me,” she said, lifting an innocent face to him, “what is settled?”

  “Why, that Mrs. Duff will come to stay with you. I shall write to her directly.”

  “Do not trouble, Lord Choate, for I shall not receive her.”

  Benedict stood aghast. Almost his jaw dropped, but his training stood him in good stead and he simply glowered at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said that I shall not receive Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is.”

  “And I say you shall!”

  Clare smiled. “And I say that if she does come, she will not stay above a fortnight. For her life here will be miserable, I can promise you that!”

  Benedict took a deep breath. He was about to lash out at her, but caution, tempered by a certain experience, held him back.

  “You doubt me?” said Clare silkily.

  A long reflective look at her made up his mind. “No, I don’t doubt you. This behavior is no more than I would expect from someone as badly schooled as I found you to be in London.”

  “You will remember that your own behavior was far outside what I would have expected from you.”

  He took a tight rein on his tongue. It was an unaccustomed feat for him, since he was not in the habit of modifying his remarks to anyone. “Come, now. We must muddle through this guardianship as best we can. I know what is best for you, and I have the power to make you obey me.”

  “By force? Will you tie me down? You will go back to your Miss Morton, and I should imagine that your villainous ways would be better employed with her than with me.”

  “This is not to the point...”

  “Quite right, Lord Choate. The point is that I shall not allow any governess-companion to come and tell me what to do. I am mistress of Penryck Hall, and you will do well to remember it.”

  Benedict’s thoughts jostled each other on the tip of his tongue, but he could think of no way to put them into language polite enough for a female’s ears, nor could he be sure that his growing rage was not exactly what she was trying to provoke.

  He had a gnawing suspicion that the weapons he had found effective in the past in dealing with the ladies of his family or of his acquaintance might not serve him here.

  A good soldier knows when it is time to advance. And when to retreat. Benedict, although no great student of military tactics, yet found that he did know when to pull back. This was certainly the time.

  “I find you astonishingly juvenile,” he said cuttingly, “for one who was ambitious enough to attempt a London season. I had thought to deal with you as though with a reasonable individual. Now, I see, I have only a hysterical female to deal with.”

  It was unfair, for she was far from hysterical. But in a few moments, she thought darkly, she could well be.

  “I bid you good day,” he said with punctiliousness. “Pray give the matter some thought. I trust that in the morning I shall find you more amenable to reason.”

  “I doubt it,” she told him.

  He drove off down the drive, and it seemed to her that even the set of his shoulders spoke of his unbridled anger. It was the first time that he had been defied, as far as he could remember, and she suspected that she would be hard put to come out of this encounter with any kind of credit.

  Her eyes filmed over, and she could no longer see her guardian. She brushed past Lady Melvin in the hall, as though she weren’t there, and hurried up the stairs. She barely reached the haven of her own room, bolting the door behind her against interruption, before she burst into racking sobs.

  13.

  Although Benedict was out of sight down the drive, he was far from forgotten. Clare’s sinking feeling did not lighten with her guardian’s absence. Rather, it grew stronger the more she thought about the great fix her grandmother had left her in.

  Uncle Horsham might have been a stuffy old man, but he would never have been as odious, as repellently odious as Benedict Choate!

  What was she to do?

  Lady Melvin followed her up the stairs. She tried in vain to lighten her spirits, touching unerringly upon the very things that most lacerated Clare’s feelings. “How very handsome he is, to be sure! And such elegance of demeanor. I vow, Clare dear, that you could not find, I am positive, another such gentleman in England!”

  Clare nodded vigorous agreement, and bit back the words on the tip of her tongue. Fortunately for England.

  “How much wiser Lady Penryck was to give you a guardian who is up to snuff—now, where did I learn that vulgar phrase?—in all details. Your affairs will march very well with him in charge. I recommend to you that you thank God every night on your knees for such a fortunate delivery!”

  Since Clare’s thoughts ran along entirely different lines, and since she could share them with no one—not even in her prayers—she allowed Lady Melvin’s rhapsodies to float past her, unheeded, and Lady Melvin, secure in the belief that she had given Clare a good deal of sensible advice, left her.

  But Clare was not comforted. Even that night, her sleep was not so much broken as nonexistent. She gazed out onto the sleeping landscape, her thoughts darker than the night. The hours passed, the moon’s rays moved across the window, and still she could not sleep. Was ever anyone in such a fix?

  She knew that Benedict was right. He was powerful in himself, of course, and by sheer force of his intimidating character he could bend her to his will. But in addition to that, he had the entire force of the law behind him. He was truly her legal guardian, and his authority over her was limitless.

  He could shut her up in a cloister, he could provide her with so little pocket money that she could not buy a ribbon without his consent. And this was what Lady Penryck had thought was best for her granddaughter!

  Clare’s thoughts moved on, then, to turn over and over the plans that Benedict had already made. To bring his sister’s companion-governess to live at Penryck Abbey, without so much as a word to Clare, was intolerable. Clare believed she had scotched that plan of his, but she knew Benedict well enough to know that he would prevail in the long run.

  And the devil of it was, he was right! She could not live alone here. Such a plan was totally ineligible. But if Benedict had schemes afoot, Clare decided, he would not be alone. She herself was as determined as he was, and it was her entire life at stake.

  Benedict could simply wave a hand—so he thought—and people would spring to do his bidding, and he could then hasten back to London and the arms of Marianna, leaving Clare to manage whatever was left to her—a companion, a lowering series of instruction on whatever Benedict thought she lacked.

  One thing, she decided, she did not lack, and that was a determination not to let Benedict dictate to her. To arrange her affairs in a lordly fashion and then forget about her—that was outside of enough! Clare came to the conclusion that the one thing she could be sure of in the days ahead was that Benedict would not be allowed to forget her existence.

  Surprisingly, she found great comfort in her decision. She left the window and climbed into her bed, and drifted off to sleep, a satisfied smile still lingering on her lips.

  The next day, when Benedict returned, he found her in a surprisingly amiable mood. He himself had mastered his anger overnight, and greeted her with great civility.

  “Will you take coffee?” she offered. “Perhaps some chocolate? I am not quite sure what kind of refreshment you take in the morning
, but you have only to command me.”

  For a second, surprise showed in his face, but it was gone at once. “Nothing, I thank you,” he said. “The landlady has given me an excellent breakfast.”

  “Then I imagine you would like to take a tour of the grounds?”

  “It is not at all necessary,” he began, but she was already moving through the open door onto the terrace that faced south.

  “I am sure you will wish to understand the properties with which you will be dealing,” Clare said, turning innocent eyes to him. “You are not a person, I collect, who turns over his duty to an underling.”

  Since Benedict had precisely that in mind, he did not reply. He followed her onto the bricked terrace. “My father had this terrace built,” she said. “He said it was to give the local brickmakers employment, but I believe it was more likely to have been designed to provide a comfortable spot for an afternoon nap, in the shade of the beech trees.”

  She moved across the lawn, toward a pergola in the Italian fashion, embellished by a rose vine bursting into red bloom at the top. Talking over her shoulder to him as she went, she pointed out the herb garden beyond the low hedge, and, to the left below the crest of the hill, the stables.

  “Poor Papa would have hated to see the stables in such disrepair, and sadly empty. But I am sure you will put all in order before you leave. I must make Purvis known to you.”

  “Purvis?”

  “Our farm manager—I should not say our, of course. Your farm manager.”

  “I make no claim to Purvis,” said Benedict, ruffled. His hard-won aplomb sat uneasily. “I imagine that your Mr. Austin will tell Purvis how to go on.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” asked Clare, looking up at him seriously. “I had not thought he would know anything about farming. But surely, as my guardian, you must see that my income is assured? And since it all comes from the land...” She left the thought dangling, and turned again to lead the way toward the service buildings.