“She don’t like men? Good God, what sort of female is she?”
Gideon hesitated, thinking of all the words he might use. Finally, watching Penthorpe closely, he said, “She’s aggravating, exasperating, and too damned hot at hand for her own good, but with a light hand on the rein I think you’ll like her, Andy.”
“Good God.” Penthorpe looked appalled, but he rallied quickly, saying hastily, “That is … well, I say, I hope you haven’t been trying to bridle her yourself, Gideon.” His laugh was forced. “What I mean to say is, I’d find myself ditched if you were to wave your expectations at the lass, don’t you think?”
Gideon did not answer at once, but when Penthorpe began to look rather hopeful, he said quietly, “She’s a woman of her word, Andy. She won’t cry off.”
“Well, you needn’t make it sound like I want her to do any such thing,” Penthorpe said quickly. “Couldn’t say so if I did, not even to my best friend, not without looking like a dashed scoundrel, but you’re talking fustian, you know. Cried off three times before, didn’t she? My uncle told me so.”
Gideon smiled. “The other times were different, or at least she would say they were. This time she gave her word of honor to her father and that, in her view, will make all the difference.”
“Oh.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “I suppose St. Merryn is in town. I’ll have to see him at once.”
“The whole family is in town,” Gideon said, shifting his position. His headache was easing, so long as he did not move without caution.
“Lady Susan and Seacourt, too?”
“Yes. You might as well know before you hear it from the tabbies that there was an unfortunate turn-up in that household before Christmas. Lady Susan ran away from her husband.”
“Ran away? Why?” Penthorpe’s gaze sharpened.
Instead of answering directly, Gideon said, “Seacourt was forced to apply to a magistrate for a writ of habeas corpus to get her back.”
“Don’t babble Latin at me. What the devil does it mean?”
“That she had to return to him or appear before the same magistrate to give cause for not doing so. She said Seacourt beat her. She was heavily veiled, so we did not see her face, but he did not deny it.”
“The devil, you say! Good thing she left him if you ask me. He was a Captain Hackum at school, too. Where’s she living now?”
“The magistrate sent her home.”
“What? How could that be?”
“It’s the law, Andy, even when the fellow’s a bully.”
“Damned fool law,” Penthorpe growled. “Damned fool magistrate, too. What a devilish thing to do! But how do you know all this? Surely, it was not all in the papers.”
“I was there. The magistrate was my father.”
“But, look here, he’s a marquess now,” Penthorpe said. “What’s he doing still playing at being a magistrate?”
“He cannot seem to let his old duties go. They were part of his life for so long and the title came to him so unexpectedly that I daresay it’s difficult for him to leave old obligations behind for the new ones. He’s been trying to do both.”
“It don’t sound as if he’s making a good job of either one. If he could make such a dashed silly decision in Lady Susan’s case, just think what a muck he’ll make of being a marquess!”
Gideon was spared the necessity of a reply by the arrival of the doctor, who greeted him cheerfully, demanded to know what he had done to knock himself up, and announced that he would just bind up his head and cup him, and he would be right as a trivet in no time. Penthorpe fled, but not before promising on his oath to visit both his uncle and St. Merryn the very next day.
The following afternoon, when Penthorpe’s name was announced Daintry dropped the teapot she had been using to pour out tea for several lady callers, and it smashed to pieces, taking a number of china cups and saucers with it.
Lady St. Merryn, clasping a hand to her bosom, cried out in dismay, “The best Sèvres china, Daintry! Whatever were you thinking! And tea stains all over your lovely gown. They will never come out. My salts, Ethelinda!”
Miss Davies complied at once, and Lady Jerningham, who sat beside Daintry and had been entertaining the others with her opinion of the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, newly arrived in England and now known to be the Princess Charlotte’s intended bridegroom, snatched her skirts out of harm’s way and said austerely, “Very careless of you, my dear Daintry.”
Lady Ophelia said calmly, “Clear away the mess, Medrose, and give Miss Daintry a napkin to blot up the tea on her gown. You might have sent to warn us that you were still alive, young man, rather than bursting in upon us in such dramatic fashion. Since you are here, however, pray let me make you known to Lady St. Merryn, and to Ladies Jerningham and Cardigan. I,” she added, “am Daintry’s great-aunt, Ophelia Balterley.”
Daintry was still staring in shock at the lanky, freckle-faced young man who had entered the room in Medrose’s wake, and had paid little heed to the introductions. In the brief moment after Lady Ophelia fell silent, before he could reply, she said, “Did they truly say you are Penthorpe? But surely …”
He smiled and obeyed her gesture to take a chair near her. “Not put to bed with a shovel yet, my lady, promise you. Beg to apologize for any confusion the announcement of my death may have caused you. Came at once to put matters right.”
Lady Ophelia said dryly, “At once? The battle of Waterloo was fought eight months ago, young man.”
“As long as that, was it? Just goes to show. I was pretty well knocked up, ma’am, out of my senses for a good long while, and slow in mending even after that.”
“But surely someone could have written to your people here!” exclaimed Lady Cardigan, a plump, motherly woman, and Lady Jerningham’s bosom bow.
“Suppose someone should have,” Penthorpe agreed, “but there’s only my uncle, you know, and by the time I’d collected my wits it seemed easier to wait and tell him myself once I got home. Then, from one cause or another, I just never quite seemed to get started on the journey.”
Lady Ophelia said sternly, “I don’t mind saying you behaved disgracefully. Did you not think it incumbent upon you to inform your betrothed wife that the news of your death was untrue?”
“I thought she might have made other arrangements by the time I came to my senses, ma’am, and if she had, the news would have put her in a dashed awkward position.” He gazed innocently around the room. “I wasn’t fit to do anything more than swallow a dose of rhubarb occasionally for more than six weeks—didn’t know my own name for days at a time—you can see how it was.”
“I do see,” Lady Ophelia said with a grimace. “Daintry, don’t sit staring like a want-wit. Go and change your gown. Penthorpe will not mind waiting while you do.”
Still in a daze, Daintry stood up as Penthorpe said, “In point of fact, I’d hoped to see St. Merryn, but his man said he had gone out. When do you expect him to return?”
Lady St. Merryn put down her vinaigrette and said, “Why, he has gone to the House of Lords, sir, and might not return till all hours. I am sure I cannot think what they can find to talk about for so many hours each day.”
Lady Ophelia said tartly, “They ought to be talking less and doing more, for goodness’ sake. You might not know it yet, young man, but times are dark in this country right now. What with heavy taxation, bad harvests, and downright selfish legislation enacted by those who ought to know better …”
Daintry did not wait to hear more, but slipped out the door and ran to her bedchamber to change her gown, trying to collect her scattered wits as she did. When she returned, freshly garbed in a gown of pale-pink sprigged muslin with ribbon knots and a wide sash of darker pink silk, she met her father coming upstairs from the hall. “Papa, I thought you had gone to the House.”
“And so I had, but what with the back-benchers shouting at the front, all bickering over a dozen things they find of more interest than the price of corn, I could not stand
it any longer. Thought I’d step round to White’s this afternoon instead, and just came along home first to see if Charles wanted to go.”
“He went out an hour ago,” she said.
St. Merryn looked at her sharply. “He and Davina at it again, are they? Dashed if I ever saw such a pair.”
“She went out earlier,” Daintry admitted. “We had just finished writing all the invitations for the ball we are to give when she suddenly looked at the clock, jumped up, and told me to tell Charles she was meeting some friends for a drive to Richmond Park and that he should not look for her return before dark.”
St. Merryn grunted. “Hope he went to fetch the lass straight home again, but if I know Charles, he’ll end up at some gaming hell or other instead. Between them, they mean to ruin me, for if she isn’t purchasing some extravagant kickshaw or other, he’s losing a monkey at the tables. Well, that’s neither here nor there. If he’s out, I’ll just take myself off.”
“I am afraid you cannot go just yet, Papa.”
“And why not? Look here, miss, if you think you are going to start telling me what I can and cannot do, you’d better—”
“Of course, I would not do that, sir, but Viscount Penthorpe is in the drawing room with Mama and Aunt Ophelia, and several others, and I thought you would wish—”
“Who?”
“Penthorpe, Papa. Apparently, he was not killed after all.”
“The devil you say!” And, brushing past her, he hurried to the door of the drawing room and flung it open. “Penthorpe, my dear lad, what a miracle this is, to be sure. Upon my word, but you are a sight for sore eyes, my boy. Thought I’d never marry the lass off, but here you are, so all’s right and tight again.”
Penthorpe leapt to his feet when St. Merryn erupted into the room, and Daintry, entering on her father’s heels, saw him grab the viscount’s hand and pump it enthusiastically up and down.
“Just a minute, Papa,” she said abruptly.
St. Merryn glanced at her over his shoulder, then turned back to Penthorpe, saying, “Upon my word, but I’m glad to see you. To think I’d be grateful for a bunch of chowderheads wanting to talk only of the great profits they make by keeping foreign wheat and corn out of England. And here was a grand surprise just waiting for me on my doorstep.”
Daintry kept silent. Her first impulse, to point out that the viscount could not possibly have taken their betrothal very seriously since he had not so much as sent word of his good health to her but had let her continue to think him dead, gave way to the realization that she could say no such thing, and certainly not before such gossips as Lady Jerningham and Lady Cardigan. She felt trapped by convention, but the last thing she wanted was to create a scandal, and in any case she was given no opportunity to speak.
“Lady Susan and Sir Geoffrey Seacourt, and Lady Catherine Chauncey,” Medrose intoned from the doorway.
Despite her own predicament, Daintry stared to see Catherine, but St. Merryn turned to the newcomers with delight. “Just see who is here,” he said. “Penthorpe ain’t dead, after all, and the wedding is right on again. We can leave for Cornwall just as soon as the session ends next week.”
There was a chorus of objections to this impetuous plan, but Daintry’s carried above the rest. “Papa, how can you suggest such a thing? We cannot pack up and leave when we have just invited upwards of four hundred people to a ball to be held a fortnight from now. The invitations went out this morning!”
“Lord, what a kickup there was!” Penthorpe told Gideon an hour later, having gone straight to Jervaulx House upon making his escape from Berkeley Square, “I never saw anything like it. Females have changed since Waterloo, and that’s all there is about it. You never saw such a row, what with the tabbies all lighting into St. Merryn when he said he was going to take them back to Cornwall in a sennight, and Daintry and her great-aunt—Lord, what a dragon that one is!—both telling him to his head that he could do no such thing.”
“Who won?” Gideon asked curiously, though he had little doubt what must have been the outcome of such an encounter.
Surprising him, Penthorpe said, “I think you’d have to call it a draw, but if Seacourt hadn’t put in his mite, St. Merryn would have been routed. First Daintry tells her papa she can’t leave before the St. Merryn ball—Oh,” he added, scrabbling in his pockets and drawing out a crumpled gilt-edge card, “nearly forgot. Odd way to invite a fellow to a ball, but Lady Ophelia slipped this to me as I was going and told me to give it to you.”
“Did she now?” Gideon said, smoothing the card. Then, grinning, he added, “I think you will like Lady Ophelia, Andy.”
“Well, I don’t think it,” he said roundly. “It’s my belief the old dragon is responsible for Daintry’s dashed odd notions.”
“Oh, yes, you are quite right about that,” Gideon said, rubbing a hand across his aching brow.
“Sore head?”
“A little,” he admitted, “but Kingston left me several packets of headache powders to take until they go off. I’d take one now, but the damned things send me right off to sleep.”
“Don’t let me keep you up,” Penthorpe said with a sigh. “Dash it all, Gideon, I never meant to put everyone in an uproar, but what’s a fellow to do? It’s plain as a pikestaff St. Merryn means to have me in the parson’s mousetrap before the cat can lick her paw, and what’s more, so does Daintry.”
“Does she?” Gideon regarded him more alertly.
“Just told you she did. Not that I’m complaining, of course, but I did hope for time to find my feet again before I got riveted, and I won’t deny she ain’t what one would expect Lady Susan’s sister to be. Not that she’s not well enough, and not that Susan’s looking her best these days either,” he added. “Looks pinched, and she’s a dashed sight too thin for my liking.”
“You’ve seen her then.”
“Oh, aye, they came in while St. Merryn was flying into alt over my rise from the dead. She was too pale, and skinny as a broom straw. Does Seacourt starve her as well as beat her? And who the devil is Lady Catherine Chauncey?”
“Ah, so she is back in the play, is she?”
“Don’t know about any play, but she was there right enough. Thought at first she must be some relation to Susan, because she kept hovering over her, begging her to sit down and rest as if she were recovering from an illness or some such thing, then sat down right beside her, telling Captain Hackum to fetch his wife a pillow and to ask the footman to bring her a glass of water. She seemed kind enough but a bit odd. Who the devil is she?”
“According to your betrothed, she is Seacourt’s mistress.”
“Do stop calling the wench my betrothed, Gideon!” He flushed, adding, “Your tone ain’t at all polite, dash it, so if you don’t want to answer to me, old son, mind your lip.”
Gideon smiled lazily. “Well, if you think you can—”
“I don’t mill down cripples,” Penthorpe said with a crooked grin. “Oh, sit still, or you will have to be taking those dashed powders of yours. What did the sawbones say in the end?”
Chuckling, Gideon said, “That’s right, you milk-livered turn-tail, you ran off and left me to his damned untender mercies, didn’t you? By heaven, I ought to get up to you.”
“Cupped you, did he?”
“He did not. I’ve too great a desire to keep my blood in my veins after Waterloo. We had a bit of a discussion about it, but the result was that he predicted a high fever for me, which never came about, and headaches, which did. He ordered me to keep to my bed until the headaches pass.”
Penthorpe made much of looking around the well-appointed library. “Lots of furniture in here, of course, but I don’t see a bed anywhere. Got it hidden behind one of the bookshelves?”
“If you must know, I came in here to escape a pair of my servants who insist upon competing with each other to nursemaid me, but never mind about that. “You were telling me the encounter was a draw. Are they returning to Cornwall?” He glanced at the card he s
till held in one hand. “They cannot be if Lady Ophelia is sending me an invitation for the twenty-sixth.”
“They go directly afterward,” Penthorpe said, “but that’s on account of Captain Hackum. Said he never could fathom how it was St. Merryn had so little control over his household. He made a joke of it all, but I could see Daintry did not think it was so dashed amusing, and nor did St. Merryn. Seacourt told him, the first thing they knew, she’d be advising the Princess Charlotte to begin as she meant to go on and never let poor old Prince Leopold get the upper hand, and St. Merryn blustered back as to how she would do as she was bid. Don’t see the problem, myself. Dash it, what would Daintry have to do with advising a princess?”
“Nothing, of course. It is just Seacourt’s way of making mischief. He doesn’t like her much, you see.”
“Well, the feeling is mutual if you ask me,” Penthorpe said. “If looks could kill, that man would be dead, but I don’t think she likes you much either, my lad, although when I first chanced to mention your little accident last night, I thought she cared a great deal—went paper white, and I’d swear her hands trembled and she had to catch them together and hold them in her lap—but the next moment I knew I must have been mistaken, for as soon as I said you’d be as right as a trivet in a day or so, she turned to Lady Jerningham—Did I mention the old gossip was sitting smack in the middle of all this with the Cardigan woman, and both of them soaking it all up like sponges, I’ll wager, while pretending to tell Lady Catherine all about this Prince Leopold fellow and how he means to visit the Regent at Brighton? Well, Daintry turns to her and says”—he raised his voice an octave—“‘And what did you think of Prince Leopold when you met him, ma’am?’” Dropping his voice back to its normal tone, he went on, “Five minutes later she had them all talking politics, of all ridiculous things, though even St. Merryn seemed willing enough to listen to her spout off about the wickedness of the Corn Laws. Only Seacourt disagreed with her—said it was important to keep the corn prices up so the landowners didn’t lose their shirts—but she snapped his nose off, said she’d expect just such nonsensical talk from him and that he was a fool.”
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