To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters)

by Ingrid Hahn

  “As a female, I can make but a single vow recognized by kin, king, and country.” By which, of course, she meant marriage. “As such, this is serious business, my lord.”

  It wasn’t precisely what he’d meant, but she had to know that. Which could only imply… His heart gave a leap of renewed hope at her gesture.

  “Well said. Have you been rehearsing that little speech?”

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  But not only was the severity gone from her expression, a faint smile was discernible at each corner of her mouth.

  It was such a little thing, but it made him feel twice his height and worthy of every inch. “Only a little.”

  “As the eldest of four impoverished sisters, I’ve given our positions a good deal of thought.”

  Corbeau sobered again. “Now I’m only left to regret having made any attempt at teasing you about it a’tall and can only beg your forgiveness.”

  “It’s quite all right. You weren’t to know.”

  “But I should have.” He needed to spend more time putting himself in her shoes—imagining what she must have gone through. What she might endure still.

  If he were going to make any gains toward winning this lady, he had to rethink his strategy. And soon.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jane entered Grace’s room just as the maid was finishing readying her for bed. The servant excused herself with a pretty curtsy.

  Staring into the mirror from her seat at the dressing table, Grace caught sight of the correspondence about the governess position she’d left out on the little writing table by the fire. She rose, but didn’t head directly to the other side of the room to hide the evidence. Doing so would only draw attention to a private matter. There was no reason to think Jane would notice the letter.

  “I wanted to check on Mother before retiring, but was told she was sleeping. Do you know how she is?”

  “Mama isn’t asleep.” Unlike all the rest of the females of the family, Jane never bothered with curls. Her straight hair hung in a braid over her shoulder, the strands almost reddish by the light of the few burning candles.

  “Is she feeling better?”

  “She wasn’t feeling badly, Grace, she’s working on trying to find us a new place.”

  “What? What do you mean, a new place?” Her mouth went flat. Part of her already knew what it was Jane was driving at. “Cousin Bickham doesn’t want us back, I suppose.”

  “She didn’t want you to know.”

  “Well, that was foolish. I obviously ought to know, and you’re going to tell me.”

  Jane remained steadfastly resolute, as calm as she was the very picture of steely resolve. It was nothing if not a stern reminder to Grace never to underestimate any of her sisters, least of all the quiet one. “I know you thought Mother was unforgivably rude by descending early upon the earl when we came to Corbeau Park.”

  “I’m quite reconciled to her actions now. I know her very well, and I know why she chose to do what she did.”

  “That’s it, though, Grace, you don’t.”

  “Very well.” She braced herself. “Tell me.”

  “Actually, I came here to talk to you about something else—something rather…rather particular.”

  For a moment, she wasn’t about to allow the change of subject, her mouth open, ready to bring the topic back to the questions left unanswered.

  Then she relented. If it was a difficult matter, perhaps Jane needed to draw more courage. “To tell me all about the spectacle I was making by sequestering myself away with the earl tonight, no doubt. It’s all right, you’ve been saved the trouble. I was fortuitous enough to be near Lady Rushworth when she loudly proclaimed that very thing to her daughter.”

  Jane withdrew a small silver object and placed it with a clink on the surface of the dressing table, her slender fingers lingering to hover over the ornamental surface before withdrawing.

  It was the snuffbox. Father’s snuffbox, the one Grace had sold in London to afford herself the luxury of ensuring her secret correspondence remained absolutely unknown. What hadn’t gone to paying the postman for her letters and servants for their silence had bought their cousin out of an upset. For all the good it did them now, considering he’d turned them out anyway. “I want to talk to you about this.”

  Grace went silent, saying nothing.

  Jane was studying her carefully. “Isabel found it in a shop in London and sent it to me.”

  Grace looked away. “I don’t see what concern it is of yours—either of yours.”

  “Why would you sell this?”

  Now she couldn’t help herself. Grace crossed the room to sit at the writing desk and began tidying the cluttered surface. If she were lucky, her sister would read the action as an attempt at pointedly ignoring the question instead of trying to conceal what she wasn’t yet ready to have revealed.

  She’d done as her mother had demanded—she’d written the letter graciously refusing the position. But she hadn’t posted it. Instead, she’d burned it and written her acceptance.

  “Why would Isabel buy it? And if she had the funds to do so—”

  “Our aunt apparently opened her purse for the purchase.”

  Grace dropped the letter containing the original offer. It fluttered to the ground where it landed at an angle by the fluted chair leg, the surface of the paper catching the dancing lights and shadows of the fire.

  Before Grace could retrieve it, Jane had picked it up.

  Grace reached to take it back.

  Too late. Jane glanced at the direction and halted, brows knitting as she brought the folded page closer to better read the writing. “Miss Landon?”

  What’s done was done. There would be no delaying the conversation. “Well, you could hardly expect me to own my station to my future employer, could you?”

  “Your future employer? It’s settled? You’re going?”

  “Mother allows Isabel to maintain employment. Why not me?”

  Jane appeared utterly disinterested in engaging in a conversation they’d played through so many times, the words could have been scripted. “Oh. It’s not settled, then.”

  The words stuck in Grace’s throat.

  They shared a lingering silence.

  “If Isabel can earn a wage as a companion to Aunt Landon, I can earn a wage as a governess in an equally respectable house. Mother has to relent.”

  Without warning, Jane said something completely unexpected. “That’s just it, though, isn’t it?” She looked Grace dead in the eye. “Isabel didn’t give Mama a choice. She made her own decision.”

  “What?”

  “You could just…go.” She flitted her fingers in the air like a fairy fluttering away.

  Grace blinked. What was her sister saying? That she should go without her mother’s approval? What sort of daughter would that make her? “Isabel didn’t have Mother’s permission to become a companion?”

  Jane tossed a shoulder as if the casual disrespect of a parent weren’t under discussion. “Why should she? She had her own mind about what she thought was the right thing to do and she did it…years ago—she was much younger than you when she made up her mind.”

  That stung. Grace needed no reminding that she was dangerously close to thirty. The towering number was but a few short years away.

  Worse, if she should have made up her mind to have gone a long time ago, then she’d wasted many good years she could have been engaged in honest work. She could have been helping, truly helping.

  Instead, she was a burden—more so than any of the rest of them, because it was she who should have been keeping the family solvent. “So…you think I ought to just…go?”

  If Jane answered yes, Grace might be hard pressed to not set out this very night.

  She wouldn’t, of course, and not only because of the profound betrayal it would be to one of her most deeply held beliefs about the near-sacred importance of honoring one’s parents.

  Her father had broken faith wi
th them all. The last thing Grace could ever do would be to follow in his footsteps—which, painfully, only pointed to accepting the inevitability of marriage to Corbeau. But that was beside the point in the particulars of whether she would or would not run away.

  However little she wanted such a fate, she owed him more respect than she’d show by fleeing in the dead of night. The cowardly road might appear tempting, but she was stronger than that. She would face him and show what it was she knew herself to be. The earl wasn’t the only one bound to honor.

  “Isn’t that what you want to do? Leave?”

  “It’s what I think about doing.” Grace paused after the honest admission and considered her younger sister. “What would you do?”

  Jane played idly with the corner of the letter. “I don’t know.”

  Grace sighed. “I’m not going to leave. Like I said, I’ve thought about it, certainly. But I’d never do such a thing to our mother.”

  “Then you should certainly marry the earl.”

  “Would you take him?” Grace wouldn’t know what to think if Jane said yes.

  “Is he yours to offer?”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Yes, I would take him. Readily. He’s—well, he’s odd in some ways, but really in all the most important particulars he’s so much more than any man ought to be.”

  The point was difficult to argue. If it had been Jane discovered locked in the storeroom with the man… The thought made Grace shudder. It seemed so very wrong.

  Jane went on. “Plus he likes you. He always has. And I’d wager a goodly amount that he respects you, too. What more could you want from a partner in life? Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “Is that enough?”

  “Why ever wouldn’t it be?”

  To that, Grace had no ready answer. “Tell me what it is that Mother didn’t want me to know. And”—Grace sat up straighter, her brows going low—“tell me why she didn’t want me to know it.”

  “She didn’t want you to know because you are how you are, Grace.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t be like that. The same can be said of anyone.”

  “You’re hedging.”

  Jane eyed the letter. “Miss Grace Landon. That sounds so odd.”

  “I didn’t use Grace, just Miss Landon.”

  Her sister hesitated. “Not even an initial?”

  “Like I said, just Miss Landon.”

  Something changed in Jane’s countenance, as if a long-unanswered question might have a possible solution.

  “Jane?”

  “What?” Jane’s attention drifted back to Grace.

  “I have the uneasy feeling that I’ve accidentally done something to influence you in a way I’m going to regret.”

  “I was just thinking—” A touch of color painted her cheeks. “You’ll think me daft.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh… Only that you didn’t have to be Grace when you become a governess. You could be Sarah or Elizabeth, all by simply adopting a new name. Who’d know? Or Catherine. I’m partial to Catherine.” Jane smiled a fanciful smile. “I’d be a good Catherine, don’t you think?”

  The whimsy was uncharacteristic of Jane, made all the stranger by the hint of romanticism. “Those are all perfectly lovely names, of course, but I like my own plenty well.”

  “But you must own there would be a certain freedom to it. You wouldn’t have to be a daughter of the house of Bennington any longer.”

  “There aren’t so few who share my appellation that I should live in any fear of discovery.” Grace knew perfectly well that they were discussing Jane, not her. It hurt her heart that her sister wished to be someone other than who she was.

  Jane continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Our father’s infamy wouldn’t loom over you.”

  “Or be sister to the woman who locked herself in a storeroom with an earl to force him into matrimony?”

  Jane’s lips puckered slightly. “Nobody will remember that once—rather, if you’ve married.”

  Society electing to have a selective memory in favor of being charitable wasn’t anything that could dare be hoped for, much less expected. “There’s one argument in favor of the match—to give the rest of you the opportunity to shed some of those associations and become sister to the Countess of Corbeau.”

  “That’s not at all what I was driving at.”

  “I know.”

  “Grace, I don’t care for public opinion. Let others have their gossip, let them say what they will. I know you didn’t design to be locked in that storeroom with Lord Corbeau in order to trap him into anything.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is Mother doesn’t want me to know.”

  Jane stared into the dying light of the fire. “We haven’t any place to go.”

  “What? Of course we do. We always have. We’ll do plenty well, even without Cousin Bickham’s help.”

  “That’s just it, though, isn’t it? Mother has tried to keep us together, but there are so many of us, and it’s been so many years of relying upon the charity of family and friends.”

  Grace’s heart hardened. The oft-repeated words of their mother came back to her in a rush, and a missing element rose to fill in a previously unknown void. Of course she would try to keep them together. What better way to protect them against the feeling that they didn’t have a home? How many times had she said that a true home was not a place, but the people one loved most in the world?

  When Grace spoke, her voice came out flat—defeated. “And we’ve used up the last drop of that charity. With everyone. Not just our cousin.”

  That was it, then. The decision was made. What choice did she have in the face of this? How could she gamble her family’s security on so little provocation as a governess’s salary? How could she be so selfish?

  Had they lived this way so long that she’d forgotten to take a hard look at what it was they really were?

  They were destitute women living on the mercy of others, and she thought she had a hope of giving them something by working for a few pounds a year as a governess? What a fool she was. What a wretched fool.

  Chapter Thirteen

  …a hungry wretched fool.

  Grace had been abed for what felt like two straight days—two straight days of the night’s darkest hours.

  It couldn’t have been so very long. It might not even have been far past midnight. Not that Grace was much given to objectivity under the current conditions. Sleep seemed like an entirely unknown way of existing—an exotic state that happened only to foreigners, the sort native to strange and distant lands.

  After her conversation with Jane, with what choice was she left? She was going to marry the earl.

  Instead of seething, however, her mind fixed on quite something else and wouldn’t relent. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the fullest implications of what would come with the union. Marital things.

  She put her hand between her legs. What would it be like to have him there?

  It was difficult not to admit, if only to herself, and only in these ungodly hours of darkness, that perhaps that side of the whole arrangement wouldn’t be so terrible. He didn’t seem the sort to make the prospect seem so very off-putting. A husband with personal appeal in delicate matters was an advantage to be counted well above his wealth and status.

  She thought about it sometimes—those marital things. About what it would be like.

  Actually, she thought about it quite a lot. And, because of Corbeau, more so over the past few weeks than perhaps ever before. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to know for herself. She wanted to know quite a lot, in fact, and, around him, with some urgency.

  It was becoming easier to comprehend why couples could lose their heads and relent to certain feelings before they were well married.

  Grace flipped over and stretched, bashing the pillow under her head into a supportive shape. It wasn’t healthy to slumber in such a position as
this, perhaps, but any sleep she could possibly hope to attain at this juncture was sleep she wasn’t going to put any further demands upon.

  Oh, what was the use? She might not be on the brink of unconsciousness, but there was another part of her with distinct ideas about what she should be doing.

  Her belly. That’s what part of her had ideas—notions, really, perfectly normal ones that were so quotidian, good society had been structured around fulfilling the need before one had to pay any thought to it.

  By which, of course, she meant the taking of meals.

  It was only hunger she was experiencing. Nothing else, nothing untoward. Nothing unladylike that might involve the very man she did not want to marry. Just hunger.

  Oh, whom was she trying to fool? She was hungry for something far different than simple sustenance. She was hungry for him, and in the most shocking, the most scandalous way possible.

  She should have been thinking over her conversation with Jane. Instead Corbeau kept playing through her mind again and again.

  Distraction—that’s what she needed. Distraction.

  The way to cope with the situation—the hunger for food that was—would be to call a servant. That seemed horribly unfair, though. She could always venture down to the kitchens herself.

  Although…considering her recent history with storerooms, perhaps she ought to simply pray the servant would forgive her for ringing the bell.

  No. She would certainly not like being disturbed from her slumber after a long day of work.

  Grace thrashed around to her front and tossed back the covers. How exceptionally unlikely was it that what had happened once while prowling a storeroom could happen a second time?

  A stray thought sent a chill around her interior. What if it’d been someone other than the earl with whom she’d been caught?

  With a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the man she’d been trapped with was Corbeau, she felt around in the dark for the tinderbox. Candle lit and the scent of the new flame lingering in her nose, she found a second pair of woolen stockings to roll up her legs, wrapped herself tight, and headed down.