by Laura London
Lord Melbrooke studied her face for a moment, and then wearily spoke. “My poor child, when you have been about the world a little more, then you will see that it is not kind to people who have violated appearances. It’s a hard fact, but you cannot hope to make a marriage without an impeccable reputation. Unless we intend to strangle Lady Marchpane before she leaves the house”—he gave an enigmatic side glance to Lady Eleanor—“she will repeat tales that will destroy your reputation, unless you become my wife.”
Tears of rage were tingling in Lynden’s eyes, but she remained defiant. “I don’t care.”
“Inconsiderate girl!” whined her mother.
“Indeed she is,” exclaimed Mr. Downpatrick. He took a step toward Lynden, his thick brows meeting in a low vee over the bridge of his nose, his round cheeks reddening. “You will listen to reason, my girl, because I’ll have no wench branded a trollop living in my house! You’ll marry Lord Melbrooke to preserve your chaste reputation or I’ll have you out on the streets, aye, and your sister and mother as well! You’ve cost me a pretty penny over the years, you three, and on my Christianity! You try living on the pittance your father left you. You know what it costs me to keep your mother’s nurse? Do you have any idea as to the expense of your tutoring, your dancing lessons, your gowns, your feeding? Mind you, miss, if you defy me now, I’ll have no more of you!”
Lynden’s mother suddenly began struggling for air, gasping and choking, clutching at her chest. Lady Eleanor ran to the door, calling the footman to summon the nurse, and then came back to wave the smelling salts under Mrs. Downpatrick’s nose.
Lynden watched her mother’s struggles, knowing somewhere deep within herself that it was all one foolish, prideless trick. Yet for seventeen years she had lived in a household that bent to the will of a selfish, querulous invalid. Seventeen years’ habit was strong in Lynden and now, when it was most important to resist its force, Lynden found she could not. She passed one distracted hand over her eyes. “Very well, Mama. You win! You all win,” she said in a small hoarse voice and ran blindly from the room.
Chapter Three
Lynden reported the disastrous results of the library interview to Lorraine and Peg, her voice tight with frustration and shock. She was still in a state of stunned surprise, unable to truly believe the day’s events had been real. Marriage? To Lord Melbrooke? He had not wanted to marry her and had only agreed to it to avoid an ugly scandal. How he must hate her.
Lynden’s first impulse had been to run away. But where? To leave without Lorraine would be unthinkable. But how could she drag her gentle sister into a life that even optimistic Lynden realized might be filled with poverty and danger? She could not imagine Lorraine without her poetry books and her literary journals, or without access to the piano, which she played so beautifully. And, as Lorraine pointed out with a worried frown, they were minors under their uncle’s guardianship; it was within his power to use legal means to compel their return.
“You’re right, Rainey,” said Lynden miserably. “We don’t know anything about hiding from the law—there are probably a thousand skills to it that would never occur to us and they’d find us in a snap. Also, we haven’t any money, so there’d be that, too.” She had been sitting before the fire, her knees resting on her chin, looking across at Lorraine and Peg who were seated on the bed. “It’s all so dismal. And the most humiliating point is this: I think Lord Melbrooke suspects that I am part of a plot to trap him into marriage.” There was a cry of protest from her two listeners. Lynden shook her head affirmatively and continued: “Only consider how Melbrooke must view the circumstances. How convenient it was for me to have been in his bedroom when Peg came in with the shaving water and Guess Who was passing in the hallway. It wouldn’t be the first time that matchmaking relations have used cheater’s tricks to make a brilliant marriage for their charge, and Lord Melbrooke doesn’t know me. What’s to tell him that I wouldn’t go along with the scheme? He was so cold to me in the library!”
Her head sank lower between her knees, muffling her voice. “I wish, oh, how I wish I would die of measles overnight and never have to face him again.”
Whether from a lack of contagion or the unresponsive workings of Providence, Lynden arose the next morning unsmitten by disease and was summoned to the library again, shortly before noon.
As she entered the library, Monroe Downpatrick was seated behind his massive, leather-topped desk sprinkling blotting sand on a freshly inked document. Lynden looked beyond him to the bay window where Lord Melbrooke stood, a dark silhouette framed in the yellow glow of the morning sun. The sun’s rays ricocheted cruelly from the long, marbled icicles along the piles of frozen snow on the window ledge to the transparent golden highlights in Lord Melbrooke’s hair. He seemed like an exotic creature brought in from the winter to stand, cold and brittle, ensconced in a crystal bower. His riding attire fought romantic fancy, however: Lord Melbrooke was dressed in a pair of practical, if highly polished, Hessians, an elegantly tailored black riding jacket, and molded buckskin breeches. He scanned her with his cool gaze and murmured a good morning.
Monroe smiled with satisfaction as he carefully brushed the sand from his hands. “Well, Lynden, you’re a lucky young woman.”
Lynden rested her palms on the smooth leather of the desk top, looking at him over the massive desk. “Does that mean the wedding is called off?”
Downpatrick’s smile slowly faded into pouting displeasure. “No! Really, Lynden, I cannot fathom your lack of trust in our ability to arrange matters toward your best advantage. You must have more faith in the intentions of those who care about you.”
Lynden tilted her head to one side, feeling the anger of humiliation seethe within her. “If you think it would be such a good match, Uncle Monroe, why don’t you marry Lord Melbrooke?” she asked sweetly.
Lynden felt a small, futile prick of satisfaction as Downpatrick’s skin gained a splotchy red flush. A gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned and found herself looking up into Lord Melbrooke’s opaque gray eyes. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, as though expressing in this one small movement the utter fruitlessness of her rebellion. Lynden stepped back, away from him, and Melbrooke let his hand drop to his side. He watched her closely a moment longer and then said drily, “Mr. Downpatrick has been discussing the… well, the marriage arrangements. He seems to feel that four days would be a sufficiently long engagement.”
“Four days?” said Lynden, weakly, hardly able to believe even Uncle Monroe could have had the nerve to suggest so soon a date.
Downpatrick shifted uneasily, his embarrassment distracting him from his niece’s earlier defiance. “Under the circumstances, it seems the most appropriate course,” blustered her uncle. “Best get the thing over and done—the sooner it’s over, the sooner talk will die down. We’ll have a small affair—family, close neighbors—very cozy.”
Lynden stared at her uncle, feeling the hard, panicked beat of her heart. Months, she had thought, surely it would take months to arrange the wedding. Months during which she could make plans, think of ways to avoid the marriage, to stop it from happening. Last night she had been angry and frustrated, but somehow it still had not seemed real that two people could be forced unwillingly into marriage. And especially if one of the partners was a man like Lord Melbrooke. But that was it. Of course. Her uncle wanted to be sure Lord Melbrooke had no time to get out of it. Surely there were legal formalities? Banns!
“But Uncle Monroe, there can’t be a marriage in four days! Banns must be posted two weeks before a wedding,” Lynden said, trying to steady her voice.
Downpatrick rubbed his palms together. “Not if one procures a special license. And there will be no trouble with that, what with His Lordship’s brother being an archbishop.” Lynden crossed her arms about her middle, feeling sick and trapped. “No, my dear,” continued Downpatrick, his voice coyly insinuating, “there is no need for these maidenly tremors. Perhaps you are disappointed that you won’t
have a big, fancy wedding? Believe me, the elegance of your new life will more than compensate you for that. Lord Melbrooke and I have completed the marriage settlements. Your allowance will be most generous, in fact, luxurious. As Lord Melbrooke’s wife, you will be mistress of five households. He has three lesser estates besides his principle estate in Buckinghamshire, as well as”—and here her uncle dropped his voice with reverent envy—“a hunting box in the Quorn.” He cleared his throat. “I have, of course, explained to Lord Melbrooke how unprepared you are for such great rank, and he has generously promised that he will use you with the greatest patience. I hope,” he finished, pessimistically, “that you will strive to be worthy of his toleration.”
Melbrooke’s eyes narrowed slightly at the corners and there was a subtle curve of disdain in his upper lip. “I’m not a schoolmaster, Downpatrick,” he said abruptly, coldly, “nor a parson. I have neither the need nor the desire for Miss Downpatrick to be obliged to make herself worthy of me. And now, sir, if you will indulge me, I must take my leave if I am to make any distance today.”
“Certainly, My Lord, indeed, yes!” said Downpatrick, bowing to Lord Melbrooke and then turning back toward his niece. “Lynden, Lord Melbrooke goes south to his seat in Buckinghamshire to order his affairs. He’ll return for the wedding, bringing his carriage to convey you to London afterward where, Lord Melbrooke assures me, his mother will condescend to undertake your presentation into society.”
Lynden closed her eyes, shutting out her uncle’s face, the library with its punctilious leather trim, and Lord Melbrooke. They’re going to do it, she thought. They are really going to do this to me.
She would be married coldly and without preamble to a man she knew only from rumor and the brief, innocent encounter in his bedroom. He had been kind then, but with the teasing charm that one might employ toward a clever child. Had it been only yesterday that she had pooh-poohed Melbrooke’s rakish reputation? It had been one thing to do so from the childish security of the yew hedge. It was quite another to find herself suddenly and totally in his power.
They had nothing in common. Lynden was a country girl from the minor gentry with neither wealth nor age and experience to lend her cachet. Melbrooke was a titled aristocrat, a poet, a member of the intellectual elite of England. Surely he would forever resent Lynden as the “untidy little nobody” he had been forced to wed?
Lynden recalled her aunt’s spiteful prophecy that Melbrooke would “stick” her in one of his houses (had he really five of them?) and forget her. She pictured herself alone in London, ignored or worse by her husband, despised by his sophisticated friends, and hated by his relatives who must see her as the encroaching adventuress who had tricked their Golden Poet into marriage. And did her uncle really think it would be any comfort for Lynden to be placed under the condescending thumb of her future mother-in-law, no matter how “kindly” she might be? Lynden opened her eyes and said, with a resolve born of desperation, “I don’t want to go to London.”
Her uncle’s mustache bristled, the tiny, coarse hairs buzzing with angry energy. Lynden saw a startled light flash in Lord Melbrooke’s smoky eyes. He raised a politely interested eyebrow.
“Where would you like to go?” asked Melbrooke calmly.
Suddenly Lynden found it hard to meet his gently exploring gaze. She looked at her uncle’s desk, letting her gaze follow the line of brass-headed tacks that outlined its leather cover.
“I don’t know,” she said in a low voice. “But not London.”
Monroe Downpatrick began a sputtering comment on his niece’s perversity but was silenced by a sharp gesture from Melbrooke who said, “Very well, then would you rather come to my home in Buckinghamshire until the London season opens?” His voice was cool, formal, nonjudgmental. Lynden found it somehow soothing. She stretched her fingers toward the desk top, laying them against the cold metal heads of the upholstery tacks. Buckinghamshire. But how close that was to London.
“Would your friends come to Buckinghamshire to see us? And your mother?” she asked.
“More than likely. I think we must assume that my… acquaintance will evince no small amount of interest in meeting you, and I have a rather large acquaintance in that area. Yes, I think they would come.”
“Then I don’t want to go to Buckinghamshire,” said Lynden defiantly. Her uncle muttered cholerically that Lord Melbrooke must be astonished by her effrontery, but when Lynden looked sidelong at Melbrooke, he did not seem astonished. In fact, to Lynden’s surprise, he appeared to be amused. The gray eyes shone with the detached warmth that Lynden had seen on their first meeting.
“Would you like to go to China?” he asked civilly, as though it was really a possibility. “I doubt if even the most intrepid of my relations would pursue us there.”
“I suppose you think I’ve been very rude, but I assure you I’m not.” Lynden could not quite manage to meet Lord Melbrooke’s eyes. She stared with dignity at a spot on the wall somewhere behind him and rethought her last remark. “Well, I suppose I am but… do you think it would be so very bad if we waited, um, a while before I met your relatives?”
“Not at all,” he returned quizzically. “I understand perfectly. With your experience, you must take a dim view of the whole Order of Relatives.”
Lynden could not resist a quick triumphant glance at her uncle’s flushing countenance. There was some gratitude in her expression as she looked back to Lord Melbrooke. “Were you not on your way north to the Lake District? Lorraine says that every year you go there for peace and seclusion and stay until April. Could I not come with you? I—I know that you will be writing at your poetry… but I would stay out of your way! I could be so quiet that you might not even notice I was there.”
Melbrooke looked down thoughtfully into the pleading intensity of Lynden’s warm brown eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I’m sure you wouldn’t be in the way, my dear, but, frankly, the Lake country is not at its most congenial in the winter months. The climate is still uncertain in March. The landscape is mountainous and my home there is perhaps more isolated than you are used to. There are few close neighbors. The house itself is small and old fashioned. You see, I’m afraid you might be unhappy. The living would not be elegant.”
“Oh, but, well, I don’t care so much for elegance. A small, old-fashioned house sounds quite… snug. And I don’t mind a bit about the weather because I’m very fond of the out-of-doors and go for walks even on the coldest days!” But with Lorraine, she thought fearfully. If only I could have Lorraine with me, I could face it all. The thought hit Lynden with merciless speed. They’ll separate us, they mean to separate us. She felt a sharp, acid pressure behind her eyelids and she flinched as one bright, sudden tear traced a swift course down her white cheek. She caught it with the back of her hand as it reached the corner of her mouth.
“You’re crying,” murmured Lord Melbrooke. His voice, though gentle, carried no less dispassionate calm than he might have employed in commenting on an unspectacular period of weather. “If you told me why, I would help you, if it were possible.”
“Well, it is,” said Lynden, desolately folding her hands before her, looking at her pale knuckles. “But you won’t like it, I know.”
“If I don’t like it, I’ll tell you. That need not deter you from mentioning it.”
Lynden quickly raised her gaze to Melbrooke’s, finding this attitude more than a little unexpected in a male. A flicker of hope brightened her eyes.
Melbrooke saw it and smiled slightly, encouragingly. “Yes. Don’t let the fear that I will give you a negative answer keep you from asking. I’m sure I won’t mind—then you’ll know and feel relieved.”
“I want my sister Lorraine to come with us,” said Lynden, rushing her fences. From the corner of her eye, she could see her uncle wince. Even Lynden, whose notions of propriety were hazy, knew how unconventional was her request. She was sure that her uncle was wondering how his brother could ever have fathered a female so abandoned as to
demand the presence of her sister on her honeymoon. But Lord Melbrooke, it seemed, did not share this opinion. In fact, he seemed to regard Lynden’s anxiously voiced idea as the veriest commonplace.
“Why, of course, my dear. If you were triplets you would all be welcome. If it will make you happy to have your sister come, then, naturally, invite her. There will be little enough company for you as it is. My friends understand that I go north to work, so we have few guests—only occasional visits from neighboring landowners.”
She had been closely watching the well-formed curve of Melbrooke’s lips and studying the intense grayness of his eyes as she waited for his answer. A small, choked sob of relief escaped her at his words, and her palm interrupted the silver path of another tear as it made its way down her cheek.
“That’s very magnanimous of you, I think,” Lynden said grudgingly. “Because there’s no reason that I can see for you to feel kindly disposed toward me.” Lynden paused. “Will your relatives be angry if we don’t go to meet them in London right away?”
“No. I’ll send them very tactful letters and they will understand.”
Like an old, fat bulldog worrying a mouse, Monroe Downpatrick made a snorting noise with his mouth and throat, then protruded his lower lip and twitched his mustache. “You’ll do as you see fit, I suppose, My Lord, but you’ll find it won’t do to take a light hand on this filly’s reins. You’ll spoil her and then she’ll be wilder yet.”
Lord Melbrooke’s gaze deepened in intensity, the ash-gray eyes noncommittally encompassing Lynden; suddenly he smiled.
* * *
If Lynden had the illusion that the next four days would be a period of nervous introspection and mental girding for her imminent marriage, she was soon relieved of that erroneous notion. No sooner had Lord Melbrooke left for Buckinghamshire than Lady Eleanor cornered Lynden and demanded an item-by-item inventory of the twins’ wardrobes to determine what of their clothing would be appropriate for their new (and more elevated) stations. That inventory took Lynden and Lorraine the remainder of the day and the better part of the next to complete.
