by Norma Darcy
“I will agree to your terms,” he announced at last.
The occupants of the room let out a collective breath and grins broke across their faces.
“On one condition,” continued the earl.
“Which is?” demanded Ned belligerently, still clearly smarting from his lordship’s tongue-lashing earlier that morning.
Lord Marcham paused. So here was the moment. Was he certain? he asked himself. Why, when he had failed to speak the words to Lady Emily Holt, was he now considering speaking those very words to a woman he hardly knew? Was it the way something inside him leapt whenever their eyes met? Was it the laughter he saw lurking in her eyes or the passion he saw when she had burst into his home and pulled a gun on him? He had rarely felt such an attraction for anyone before, even the reputed beauties with whom he’d had enjoyable affairs. Something about the way she looked at him made his heart double its speed. He found himself wondering once again what it would feel like to hold her in his arms. He knew she’d be good for him. He promised himself he’d be good for her. And ultimately, he wanted her and knew there was only one way to achieve his aim.
“I would ask your sister, Miss Georgiana Blakelow, if she will do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage,” said the Earl of Marcham, calmly raising the tankard of ale to his lips and watching the lady in question over the rim as he drank.
Miss Blakelow was obliged to grip the back of the chair to steady her as the room spun before her eyes.
“What?” demanded Ned, surging to his feet wrathfully. “You will not!”
“I need a wife. You have deprived me of the hand of Lady Emily Holt and so I need a replacement. I find that I cannot bear the thought of going through the elimination process again, and so I may as well take the nearest eligible female and have done with it.”
“The elimination process?” echoed Catherine. “Is that how you choose your wife, my lord?”
“It is as good a method as any other,” his lordship replied, putting down his tankard.
“What about love?” asked Elizabeth.
“What about it? You don’t imagine that I am in love with your sister after two hours’ acquaintance, do you?”
“I think that any of us would rather die than see her married to you!” flashed Ned, his face red with anger.
The earl pushed away his plate, his hunger apparently sated at last. “Indeed?” he said politely. “You may get your wish if I were to inform the authorities as to what has gone on here the past few days.”
“You are mad,” breathed Georgiana.
“Quite possibly,” he conceded, turning his eyes at last upon her. “And so, my bluestocking, what do you say?”
“You cannot be serious. You cannot wish to marry me . . . Do you?” she asked.
“Not in the least,” he replied with unflattering bluntness. “But I do need a wife. You seem to be the nearest unwed female of marriageable age. I can conceive of worse fates than being married to you.”
She put a hand to her head. “But every proper feeling must rebel. You . . . I mean . . . I am not of your world, my lord. Your way of life is . . . is so . . . You must see that it would not answer.”
“I see nothing of the kind.”
“And you are engaged to Lady Emily Holt,” she pointed out.
“Lady Emily married Thomas Edridge two days ago by special license.”
Miss Blakelow was astonished. “Did she?”
“They had been fond of each other for some time. I . . . er . . . merely bumped their heads together and made them see sense. So you see, there is no reason for you to concern yourself with Lady Emily. But your unruly family has stopped me from informing Lord and Lady Holt that there was to be no wedding yesterday. No doubt the world thinks me a cad of the highest order.”
“Indeed, we are very sorry for it.”
“Are you? Well, I am not sure that I am,” replied Lord Marcham.
“Oh,” said Miss Blakelow.
“You and your revolting family have made me realize that if I cannot have love, I will at least have laughter with the woman I marry.”
“I see,” she replied, much struck by this revelation. “Then why not consider Mrs. Finch. Newly widowed and young. She’s always laughing.”
“She squints.”
“Or Miss Kate Busby. She would make you a creditable wife. Pretty as a picture and sweet natured too.”
His lordship grimaced. “And she would run a mile every time I tried to make love to her.”
Miss Blakelow shot him a look, then regarded the stunned faces of her youngest brothers and sisters. “You forget yourself, my lord. There are impressionable minds present.”
“My apologies. I mean only to say that I want fire, not ice.”
“Please let us drop this subject,” she said coldly.
“And you are most definitely fire.”
“My lord—”
“Does the thought of intimacy with me terrify you?” he asked her gently.
She could not meet his eyes. “Will you stop speaking to me in that way?”
“It needn’t,” he continued regardless.
“How romantic!” cried Marianne, her hands against her heart.
“Oh, shut up, Marianne,” recommended her brother tersely, at which juncture Marianne promptly burst into tears. “There is nothing romantic about it.”
“Oh, Lord, there she goes again!” said young Jack, expressively rolling his eyes. “Women!”
His lordship’s lips twitched. “Exactly so. Well, Miss Blakelow, what is your answer?”
The lady clasped her hands before her. She took a deep breath. “I should thank you for the very great honor you have done me in making your proposal, but I do not think that you meant to say it. What I mean to say is that I think it surprised you as much as it did me to hear yourself speak those words aloud.”
The earl was mildly irritated that she had read him so unerringly. Very well, Miss Blakelow, if plain speaking is what you are after, then plain speaking you shall have. “You are not my first choice and I doubt I am yours, but we will deal tolerably well together.”
“And is that what you want of wedlock?” she demanded. “To deal tolerably well?”
He shrugged. “I am no romantic, Miss Blakelow.”
She gave a scornful laugh. “You do surprise me.”
He pushed back his chair from the table. “I need a wife. I need an heir.”
“I’m sure you do,” she replied with heightened color, “but I am unable to give them to you. I am neither of marriageable age nor inclination. I thank you for your very flattering offer—”
“My what?”
“Your very kind offer,” she corrected primly, “but I cannot accept.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t wish to be married.”
“Every woman wishes to be married.”
She raised her chin. “Not this one.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“You refuse me?”
“I’m sorry, my lord, but I do.”
A silence fell across the room. The younger siblings of Miss Blakelow had followed this exchange as if watching a ball thrown back and forth, their eyes alternately swinging from the face of their eldest sister to his lordship and back again.
The earl stood up and bowed stiffly. “Very well then. I bid you all good day. I am not an unreasonable man, and I give you three months to resolve your affairs. But I trust you will be ready to move out of Thorncote at the end of that time.”
He tossed down his napkin upon the table, sketched the merest outline of a bow, and was gone.
CHAPTER 10
IT DID NOT TAKE his lordship long to discover that news of his encounter with highwaymen on the main road to Holme Park had spread far and wide. That he had been waylaid by adolescents hell-bent on revenge was a fact he was not about to divulge when he was widely considered a formidable marksman. He was a man with a
certain reputation to keep up, after all, and he was considerably embarrassed to have been caught napping.
Not a man to prevaricate, he went the next day to Lord Holt and disabused him of the notion that he was to gain the Earl of Marcham for a son-in-law. Any hopes that Lady Holt cherished that the marriage would still take place were dashed in an instant when Lord Marcham informed them that their daughter had married Mr. Thomas Edridge several days before. The reaction to this news was all that his lordship had hoped for, and the memory of the sour look upon her ladyship’s face was one that would give him pleasure for some time to come.
He told them that he had made a mistake, and that he should never have raised expectations of matrimony in their daughter’s breast. He was looking for a wife, and he had believed himself to be utterly indifferent to whom he chose to fill that role. It proved to be the opposite. He was in fact very particular about whom he wanted.
His lordship reimbursed them every last penny of their expenditure, going even as far as to pay for the satin shoes his bride wore while she married Mr. Edridge. He put a large wad of notes into Lord Holt’s clammy fist and watched the chubby fingers close around it with indecent haste.
He rode home feeling much relieved, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. He wondered how Miss Blakelow had slept after his proposal. He smiled as he imagined her lying awake, wondering at his sanity and his reason. Did she think that he was mad? Did she think that he was toying with her? The image of her silhouetted body in her threadbare nightgown flashed into his mind. He smiled again and took the road to Thorncote before he knew what he was about.
He found the family entertaining two male visitors. When Lord Marcham was announced, young Jack Blakelow was being lectured very sternly by a ponderous-looking man in his early thirties with a ruddy countenance, auburn whiskers, and fleshy lips. The man seemed determined that the whole county should hear his strictures and spoke in so loud a voice as to drown out the announcement by the butler that they had a visitor. No one was aware of his lordship’s arrival, and he was able to observe the scene unnoticed. The butler and the earl exchanged wry smiles, and then the butler went away and his lordship melted into an alcove, the better to enjoy the entertainment.
The fleshy man rolled back and forth upon the balls of his feet, looking down his nose at the young lad. Clearly this gentleman considered himself a father figure of sorts to the Blakelows. “I’m sure it was very amusing to you, but I can assure you that I don’t find it so,” the man said.
“I said I was sorry, Mr. Peabody,” said Jack petulantly, scuffing his toe against the carpet.
“I hope you are, young man. In my view, a boy of your age should have been packed off to school long ago. And young Ned here. The best thing for boys is hard discipline.”
Ned Blakelow, clearly fuming that a man who was not even related to them should seek to undertake the chastisement of his younger brother, snapped, “Jack already knows he was in the wrong, and he does not need you to tell him twice.”
“Enough, Peabody. The boy has said he is sorry,” said the other visitor, a quiet, elegant man seated on the other side of the fireplace.
“It’s alright for you, Bateman. It was not your carriage that was assaulted,” said Mr. Peabody, his cheeks red with anger.
“Hardly that. It was a boyish prank, nothing more,” replied Mr. Bateman calmly.
“A boyish prank? Have you any idea how much that carriage cost? The paintwork alone cost well over—”
“Mr. Peabody,” put in Miss Blakelow hastily, “come and sit by the fire and have some tea.”
“Yes, do,” exclaimed Marianne, giving him her most winning smile.
“And have a cake,” chimed in Kitty, brandishing the plate at him.
“Or a biscuit,” said Lizzy, thrusting another plate under his nose.
Not immune to being the focus of female attention, the gentleman was persuaded to sit down and partake of some tea.
“As much as I admire you, Miss Blakelow,” continued Mr. Peabody, “and respect your opinion, I do not think that you fully understand how to handle young men. They are a rowdy bunch and much inclined to get up to mischief as soon as your back is turned. It is my belief that they should be packed off to school without delay and from there sent to Oxford. Nothing like an education for ridding a young man of his wilder tendencies. Don’t you agree, Bateman? And another thing . . . I saw you wandering alone in the field above the house the other morning. You must know that it is highly improper for a delicate female to be abroad entirely unescorted.”
“Oh, what nonsense,” said Miss Blakelow, mildly irritated. “I am long past the age where I give a fig for that.”
“But you are an innocent, impressionable female. And we all know whose estate borders Thorncote.” He paused to give her a significant look. “The Earl of Marcham, ma’am. You cannot pretend to be ignorant of his lifestyle. His reputation is scandalous. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that there are stories . . . orgies, parties, and drunken assaults on the women of the village.”
“Hardly,” said Miss Blakelow, suppressing a peculiar desire to laugh at the outrage on Mr. Peabody’s face.
“You do not take me seriously. I can tell by your face that you do not.”
“What business is it of ours if the earl wishes to throw a party?” she demanded reasonably.
“Quite right,” said a voice from the doorway.
“Lord Marcham!” cried Marianne. “However did you get in here?”
“Your butler showed me in some moments before,” he said in his deep voice, “but you were . . . ah . . . otherwise engaged. You were saying, Peabody?”
Miss Blakelow spun around so quickly that she knocked her cup of tea flying, and it landed unerringly on Mr. Peabody’s pantaloons. He shrieked, stood up, and dabbed at the offending wet patch with a napkin. He looked so much as if he had wet himself that it was all the Blakelows could do to keep from laughing.
“Oh, sir, I do beg your pardon!” cried the lady, seemingly genuinely mortified.
“No matter, Miss Blakelow,” replied the man stiffly. “I know you would not do such a thing deliberately. Really, it is no fuss at all. To be sure these are a new acquisition and of the finest material, but it is of little matter, my dear, little matter. I went to London for them especially, and I fancy that they look very fine, very fine indeed. But rest assured, I know that you would not have done such a thing deliberately. Such good friends as you and I are. I am certain that no such thought would enter your head.”
Lord Marcham, raising a silent brow of inquiry at Miss Blakelow as she came forward to greet him, saw the look of pure exasperation on her face, and he struggled to suppress a smile.
“It appears,” he remarked in a low voice only she could hear, “that you must try harder to be rid of him.”
She looked up at him, a guilty flush stealing into her cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
“I meant only that he appears to be more persistent than you may have thought. Good aim, by the way. I shall be wary should we ever play billiards together. What a penchant you have for attacking a gentleman in the unmentionables!” he marveled in a low voice. “First you rendered Harry Larwood unable to perform the most basic of natural functions after you assaulted him at my house, and now Mr. Pearbody suffers the ignominy of tea spilled over his very fine pantaloons. Remind me to keep my unmentionables well away from you.”
“Then don’t tempt me into assaulting them,” she whispered. “And it’s Peabody. Not Pearbody.”
His eyes met hers. “Shall I kiss you here and now in full view of everybody? I begin to think that only drastic measures will see him off.”
She choked on a laugh. “No, you wretched man, don’t you dare!”
“Then shall we begin again in the proper manner?” He grinned as he made her his bow and took her hand. “Miss Blakelow, how do you do?” he asked, the very picture of politeness as their gaze met again, and he squeezed her
fingers for the briefest moment before releasing them.
“Don’t ask.”
“I see. And may I ask, what has Jack done now?”
She lowered her voice, although they were already speaking in an undertone. “He scrawled the word ‘Peabrain’ into the muddy paintwork of Mr. Peabody’s carriage.”
“Ah,” said his lordship.
“And it is not funny.”
“No.”
“Then stop laughing.”
He spread his hands. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes. Why are you here?” she demanded. “What do you want?”
“Well, that is not very polite, is it?” he asked, amused.
“Can you not see that I have my hands full?”
“Yes, but you always have your hands full. I am here to see you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Why, for the pleasure of your company, ma’am.”
“Tosh,” she said and then in a louder voice, “Are you here to pick up where your man of business and the odious baronet left off?”
“Ah. Yes, I heard about that. I can only apologize.”
“Anything you see here that takes your fancy, my lord?” she demanded.
“Indeed there is.”
“I meant the paintings.”
“I can assure you, I had no idea Sir Jeremiah had any intention of paying you such a visit, and if I had, I would have put a stop to it. Sarah went behind my back.”
“She wants Thorncote.”
“Yes. Her husband’s land is all in Ireland. She wants a home in England. And the Thorncote estate neighbors Holme Park, where she grew up. It is not really so very hard to understand.”
She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Do I have your word, as a gentleman, that you had no part in it?”
“On my life,” he said and bowed.
Miss Blakelow eyed him speculatively, saw that he was in earnest, and smiled. “Then won’t you allow me to introduce you to our guests?”
