The Loving Seasons

by Laura Matthews

  “Dunn does admit it was clever, then?” Lord Greenwood asked eagerly.

  “Not a trap in which he would himself have been caught, he assures me, but just what he might have known would happen to you . . . or me. He thought you arrogant to believe Sir Robert so simple as to make a foolish wager.”

  “Arrogant!” Stunned at first by such an epithet, Lord Greenwood after a moment’s consideration grinned sheepishly. “I thought he was dicked in the nob, to be perfectly frank. To bet that a message could not be carried fifty miles in an hour! Of course, no postboy could have done it with any number of horse changes, but everyone knew Queensberry had proved it could be done years ago.”

  “Which is precisely why Sir Robert was sure you’d take the bait. Dunn says we should have smelled a rat the moment the old man suggested his terms. His five hundred guineas against your marrying his daughter, sight unseen! He had little to lose, compared with you. But we were so sure of ourselves!”

  “Old Q had hired a team of twenty cricketers to toss the message about in a circle in a cricket ball. They went the fifty miles well within the time and it didn’t seem so difficult to accomplish the task again. I simply assumed Sir Robert had never heard the tale. How was I to know it would be so damned difficult to find twenty capable man at this time of year?”

  “Dunn says you were careless, that you could have assembled the necessary talent if you’d tried hard enough.”

  “I didn’t have the time. Sir Robert only gave me three days.”

  “Dunn says you should never have allowed that stipulation in the wager.”

  “Oh, your brother can go to the devil! I’m not interested in what he says.”

  “Well, you asked me to ask him.”

  Lord Greenwood thumped an impatient hand on his knee. “Yes, and what use was he? Calls me a fool and an arrogant fellow, and tells me to take my medicine like a good boy.”

  “Not exactly,” Captain Midford retorted, thoughtfully stroking his sandy mustache. “Your only hope, according to my brother, is that the young lady won’t accept you. The wager certainly said you were to marry her if you lost, but it would be impossible for you to do so if the girl won’t have you. So Dunn suggested—though he said he would not himself do it on any pretext, but he thought you probably might—that you make yourself as disagreeable to the girl as possible. Not rude, or anything like that, just sullen and as though you were not entering into the contract with any enthusiasm. That might put her off or make her angry enough not to agree to the arrangement. After all, her father is hardly likely to tell her the true circumstances.”

  Though Lord Greenwood’s eyes had lit at the possibility, be frowned and asked, “And why wouldn’t your brother do such a thing?”

  “Because he don’t think it’s honorable, that’s why. Actually, though, I think it’s because, for himself, he wouldn’t want to look bad. Old Dunn can charm the ducks out of a pond; everyone says so. If he sets his mind to a lady, all he has to do is give her one of those looks of his and she’s eating out of his hand. It would he repugnant to him deliberately to set out to discourage a lady, unless she’d been forward or presumptuous or something.”

  There was silence for some time while Lord Greenwood considered the problem. “Why would Sir Robert have gone to the trouble at all if the girl were presentable? And if she ain’t, what in the devil’s name am I to do with her as a wife?”

  “Just what everyone else does, I imagine,” the captain answered practically. “Leave her in the country and go about your business in town. She’s in a school, isn’t she?”

  Greenwood groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’m to go to Kensington with Sir Robert tomorrow to meet her. A schoolroom miss, for God’s sake! You know all my involvements have been with older women!”

  “I thought the Jewel was only five and twenty,” the captain suggested mischievously.

  “Well, that’s a hell of a lot older than seventeen, and several years older than I am! And what will Cynthia say?”

  “Haven’t you told your sister? You really should, Adam. She’ll he upset if you marry without telling her.”

  “I will tell her . . . if I have to. Dammit, Stephen, the man expects me to wed the girl within the week! If I can’t get out of it, I’ll have Cynthia and Morton to the ceremony, of course.”

  “So you’re going to try to discourage the girl?”

  His lordship stomped one elegantly booted foot on the Turkey carpet. “Oh, Lord, I don’t know.”

  Chapter Two

  Lady Anne received Mrs. Childswick’s permission for the three young ladies to absent themselves from their lessons the next morning by the simple expedient of telling her that Sir Robert was calling with a suitor of Miss Somervale’s. Since the schoolmistress’s unstated aim was to prepare her girls for making eligible matches, she acknowledged the wisdom of the two friends providing encouragement, and she hoped a modish toilette, for the shy Margaret, whom she was more than a little convinced would be unable to open her mouth in the presence of a distinguished gentleman. Not that she had anything of which to complain in Miss Somervale’s attention to her studies or her grasp of each of the subjects on the curriculum, but the girl was as timid as could stare when even the dancing master was in her presence.

  It had taken a great deal of effort on Emma’s part to talk Maggie into wearing the figured silk of green leaves on a gray ground. She stood back, her head to one side to study the effect. “You look charming, Maggie. I knew it would suit you, especially the full collar. You really should let us do up your hair into braids on the crown of your head. It’s all the rage.”

  “The ringlets are quite enough. I’ve never worn them so profusely about my face,” she confessed, glancing nervously in the mirror. “You don’t think they make me look more pale?”

  Lady Anne smiled reassuringly. “Not at all. They emphasize your bone structure. I think you’re wise to wear the simpler hat. Have you a fan?”

  As Maggie nodded, there was a tap at the door and Sir Robert’s arrival was announced. The girl’s face drained of color and Emma pinched her cheeks to restore it, saying heartily, “Your father will scarce know you, all rigged out in fashion. I daresay he’s not seen you in aught but schoolgirl clothes. Take heart, my dear, you look splendid!”

  Numbly Maggie walked down the long gallery and through the parlor to the head of the stairs. Visitors ordinarily waited in the ground floor drawing room, but she could see her father standing in the hall below, impatiently tapping his walking stick against his leg. At the sound of her step on the stair, he glanced upward, frowned momentarily, and then nodded. “I’m glad to see you’ve had the sense to dress for the occasion.” His loud voice rumbled up to her. “I’ll just have a word with you before you meet his lordship. Your lady scholar said we might use the study for a few minutes. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “As you wish, Papa,” she whispered, unable to keep her frightened eyes from wandering to the closed drawing-room door. For one hopeful moment she had thought she was to be saved the ordeal, and now she followed the stocky Sir Robert with greater despair than before.

  He neglected to close the door after them, but knowing the penetrating violence of his speech, Maggie swiftly moved to do so. Her father did not suggest that she seat herself, so she stood rigidly by the desk while he paced about the room, punctuating his speech with an occasional thump of his stick.

  “I have gone to a great deal of trouble to arrange this marriage for you. [thump] No young lady could ask for a more advantageous match: Lord Greenwood is young, handsome, well-heeled, and lively. His seat, Combe Lodge, is situated near High Wycombe, but he has several smaller properties in Hampshire and Somerset. I made it a point [thump] to check into his credentials, since men of his cut are given to raucous living, and I didn’t wish to find that he had his estates mortgaged or his income pledged for the next five years. He first caught my attention at Tattersall’s when I heard him discussing the merits of Hallander’s gray. Make no mistake
[thump], he is a fine judge of horseflesh and a splendid sportsman. I’ve talked to any number of my acquaintance in London about him, and other than a certain unsteadiness of character, which he will outgrow, he comes with the highest credentials.”

  “I see,” Maggie said sadly. “Papa, don’t you think it would be best if Lord Greenwood and I had a chance to get to know one another before we decided if we suited? I—”

  “No! Haven’t I just been telling you he is the perfect match? [thump, thump] Everything is settled! You’re marriageable age and it would do you not the least good to sit around Vale Hall to become a spinster.”

  “My friends are to have a season in London. I had written you—”

  “Damnation, girl, you can’t expect me to play duenna to you and pussyfoot all over town escorting you to overheated entertainments where everyone makes polite conversation and there’s nothing decent to drink! A pretty picture I’d look. Don’t think I’ll not he generous with you; in addition to your mother’s fortune, I’m making a liberal settlement on you. His lordship, I think, was rather surprised when I told him the arrangements in the carriage on the way here. Now you go in there and accept him like a good girl. [thump] There’s plenty of time to get to know him after you’re married.”

  As always, Maggie was unable to withstand her father’s autocratic management of her affairs. He expected no opposition, and he would stand for none. Although it had been more common in the past for parents to arrange marriages for their children, the practice still existed in some measure, and even if it hadn’t, Maggie had always considered her father a law unto himself, which one broke with dire consequence. She pressed her hands to her now-flushed cheeks and attempted to summon the courage to face Lord Greenwood.

  Her father took hold of her elbow to usher her to the drawing room, and his grip, as usual, was not as gentle as he supposed it to be, making Maggie wince and hasten her pace to match his lengthy strides. Sir Robert had little social finesse. He shoved her before him into the room where a gentleman stood by the window watching the young ladies promenade in the garden and announced, “This is my daughter, Margaret. Speak to her.” And then, to Maggie’s horror, he left them alone.

  Lord Greenwood took offense at this brusque treatment of himself. He was accustomed to receiving far more deferential and agreeable attention, and he watched the door close with unconcealed annoyance, remaining stubbornly rooted to the spot where he stood. If it had been possible for her to move, Maggie would gladly have advanced to meet him, in propitiation for her father’s rudeness, but her legs felt paralyzed.

  “Pray, sir, take no heed of my father’s gruffness,” she begged, but in a voice so soft that it did not reach his lordship.

  “What’s that you say?” he demanded, refusing to come forward. Maggie made a supreme effort to walk toward him, but her legs refused her commands and she was forced to grip the back of a chair for support. In a voice scarcely louder than before, she repeated her apology.

  Listening carefully, Lord Greenwood caught the message this time but his sensibilities were barely assuaged, and he took further umbrage that the girl had hidden herself behind a chair. What the devil possessed these Somervales? There was nothing especially noteworthy about the girl’s face or figure, and he decided that she was passable, but a suspicion was growing in him that she was lame. Trust Sir Robert not to mention the circumstance! Well, he refused to display such uncouth manners as the distempered baronet. His face a polite blank, he came forward and assisted Maggie to a chair. “Miss Somervale, I beg you will allow me to introduce myself. Adam Greenwood, your obedient servant.”

  “Lord Greenwood! I ... How do you do?” Poor Maggie could think of nothing further to say, search her mind as she would. If she thanked him for calling, it would sound grossly inappropriate, and he might think she was prompting him to get on with his offer. She felt an almost physical pain at her awkward situation, and her countenance betrayed her distress.

  His lordship read this distress as a reaction to his own person. Whether or not he had decided to discourage the girl, he found now that he was stunned by her ready disapproval. In an effort to overcome her reluctance, he set himself to be charming, but his attempt was forced and even in his own ears sounded overly zealous, his voice too loud and his manner too spirited. “Well, then, Miss Somervale, are you an ardent horsewoman? Your father is quite a bruising rider, I hear.”

  “I . . . I don’t like horses. They’re so . . . big.”

  Lord Greenwood was shocked. ““You don’t know how to ride?”

  “Yes, of course I do. My father insisted that I learn. I just don’t like to. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, that’s a fear I’m sure can be readily overcome.” Her obvious dismay determined him to change the subject. “Do you like Windrush House? Your father said it’s a very fine school.”

  “I suppose it is,” Maggie conceded, trying to put some enthusiasm in her voice but feeling very timid before his jocular style. “I . . . have some very good friends here. Emma Berryman and Lady Anne Parsons. Anne said her brother knew you.”

  Lord Greenwood flushed. There had been a small misunderstanding when he had visited Lord William at Parkhurst. The marquess was a very fine man, thoroughly amiable and with a good heart, but he had taken exception to Lord Greenwood’s attempt to seduce a parlor maid. And Lord Greenwood had been too much the gentleman to explain that the maid had been the one to promote the adventure. It was one of the more embarrassing moments of his life and one which he would just as soon have forgotten, that afternoon in the barn. The little hussy had stripped every last article of clothing from her body and teased him until there was no resisting her buxom charms. The Marquess of Barnfield had literally caught him with his pants down, and the interview he had been forced to endure later in the marquess’s study had, for all that gentleman’s kindly and paternal attitude, been the most painful of his life.

  For Greenwood was not used to having anyone censor his behavior. His parents had been dead for some years, and had paid little attention to him when they were alive, other than to promote a magnificent sense of his own consequence in him. To have a man of Lord Barnfield’s stature quietly explain that he did not allow his staff to be taken advantage of by thoughtless hedonists was galling in the extreme. Greenwood was reminded that not infrequently a child was born of such a liaison, to the servant’s perpetual shame. Just as though he had been sixteen years old! He knew where babies came from, for God’s sake! It had not occurred to the young man that the marquess was not offering him a lesson in the facts of life, but in the responsibilities of privilege and licentiousness. Too disgruntled to face the family at the dinner table, he had excused himself from the house party and taken himself off without delay, back to London, where no one cared a hoot whom he seduced.

  If his lordship was remembering his last meeting with Lady Anne’s brother, Maggie, inspired by his flush, had recalled the context of her friend’s disclosure and turned her eyes away from his. This only served to make Greenwood more uncomfortable and he said roughly, “Lord William and I have been friends since Eton, but I’ve not met his sister Anne, so she could know very little of me.”

  “She didn’t claim to know much of you,” Maggie answered softly, her fingers tracing the design on the fan.

  No, just enough to poison your delicate little ears, he thought belligerently. Well, there was no use beating about the bush any longer. If she intended to accept him, he might as well know now. He rose so abruptly from the chair he had taken that he startled her, and her fan fell to the floor. With a tsk of annoyance he swooped it up and replaced it in her cold hands.

  “Miss Somervale, your father has given me his permission to pay my addresses to you. I realize we are not really acquainted, but your father seems to think a match between us eminently suitable, and surely he more than anyone knows what is best for you. My parents are both dead, but I have a sister, Cynthia, married for some years now, with two children. Her husband, Captain Morton
, is in the Guards. My seat is near High Wycombe and I think you would find it a pleasant place. It’s a gray gabled manor house lying in a romantic old garden with acres of parkland about it. The countryside is pretty there and it’s not far from London. I can make the journey from Combe Lodge to Hyde Park Corner in under two hours.”

  If this daunting speed was supposed to impress her, Maggie certainly reacted. Her face paled and she murmured, “Oh, dear God.”

  “That’s with my curricle, you understand. With the traveling carriage it takes better than three hours.”

  “Do you . . . always travel at such a pace?”

  “Of course. There’s no use spending time on the road. But there’s no need to worry. I haven’t overset the carriage in two years.” In order to be strictly honest, he added, “I have scraped it a few times, you understand, but nothing to signify. No need for a new painting or anything like that.”

  He appeared to expect some comment from her so she said, “Yes.”

  “Perhaps your father doesn’t have a sporting vehicle,” he suggested at such patent lack of enthusiasm. “They’re all the rage, you know. Everyone is driving one. Why even . . . well, never mind.” It would not do to tell her that the Jewel had taken to being her own whip in imitation of the foremost courtesans of the day, and Greenwood, for all his amusement, considered the roads a far more dangerous place than they had formerly been. It might be all for the best that Miss Somervale showed no inclination to aspire to such heights, but he thought it showed a want of spirit in her.

  And then he remembered that she was lame (or so he supposed), and burst out, “But of course you won’t want to drive one yourself! There’s not the least need! I have a coachman at the Lodge to take you anywhere you wish in a very comfortable closed carriage. Is there anything else you would like to know?”