by Norma Darcy
“But you’d have to kiss him and . . . and submit to . . . other things,” said Marianne, a comical look of disgust on her face.
Miss Blakelow, who had been considering that very unappealing fact herself, tried to be sensible, even though in her heart of hearts she knew she could never consent to such a marriage. Assuming she could stomach being intimate with Mr. Peabody, marriage to him would only be a temporary solution. Sooner or later, the man hunting her would find out where she had gone, and Miss Blakelow was certain her new husband would be no match for the man.
But in the short term, if the world thought her engaged to Mr. Peabody, would it silence the rumors concerning her and Lord Marcham? Would Lord Marcham himself stop pursuing her once he found out she had accepted another man? It was a consideration. She had promised Mr. Peabody that she would think about his offer and that was exactly what she planned to do—even if she knew her own heart well enough to know that she could not lead the poor man on by accepting him. However irritating he could be, he did not deserve that. “I am not romantic, Marianne . . . at least, I cannot afford to be. Mr. Peabody is offering to give us a home at Goldings . . . all of us.”
“I cannot live with that man,” said Ned, tossing a ball of wool at the wall and catching it as it rebounded into his hand. “I will not live with him.”
“We do not have many options,” said Miss Blakelow simply. “Mr. Peabody is one such option.”
“And so is Lord Marcham,” Kitty pointed out.
Miss Blakelow colored despite herself. “Lord Marcham is not willing to loan us the money to set Thorncote to rights. I had hoped he would see it as an investment, but it seems that he is not interested in helping us.”
“He will if you marry him. He said so,” returned her sister.
“I’d rather live at Holme Park than Goldings any day,” said Ned. “Lord Marcham may be a rakehell but he’s not a bore.”
“No, and he’s handsome,” put in Lizzy, arranging a shawl around her shoulders. “And he has a very good figure.”
“And he has bought us new dresses for the ball,” added Kitty.
“Why won’t you marry him, George?” asked Marianne.
Miss Blakelow felt uncomfortable as five pairs of eyes swiveled in her direction and stayed pinned to her face. “Because I can’t.”
“Why?” asked Lizzy.
“Does it have something to do with when you lived in London?” asked Jack, lounging in one of the window seats.
“Yes,” said Miss Blakelow, “it has something to do with that.”
“What happened, George?”
Miss Blakelow looked down at her hands. Perhaps her brothers and sisters were old enough to know the truth now—perhaps they had even guessed it. Besides, after ten years, she was sick of carrying her burden of lies. “I was extremely foolish, that’s what happened.”
“You fell in love,” guessed Marianne.
Miss Blakelow was silent.
“Yes,” said Kitty, “ . . . with a man who was . . . unsuitable.”
“Why unsuitable?” asked Lizzy.
Miss Blakelow sighed. “Because he was married already and he did not tell me.”
“Oh.”
“His wife was an invalid and lived in the country. Because I was supposed to marry another man, a wealthy man who was considerably older than I was. I kept my love for this married man a secret . . . and thus, no one was able to warn me that he was . . . a rake.”
“What happened?”
“I was ruined,” said Miss Blakelow shortly, bringing that particular subject to an abrupt close, “which is why I cannot marry Lord Marcham. Mr. Peabody knows what happened because Father told him, against my wishes, I might add, but he told him nonetheless. Mr. Peabody is kindly prepared to disregard the past.”
“Magnanimous of him. No doubt he will remind you of the fact every moment of the day,” muttered Ned with astonishing insight for one so utterly inexperienced in the ways of the world.
“He is a kind man . . . and he has been good to us.”
“He is a pompous, conceited bore,” said Ned.
“Why do you not tell Lord Marcham your story?” asked Lizzy.
Miss Blakelow shook her head, imagining the scene, imagining the look of disgust that would come into his eyes, the same look that had come into another man’s eyes when she had told him. “I can’t.”
“But he is a man who does not care for public opinion. If anyone is likely to understand, it is him,” said Ned.
“Yes, and he’d probably congratulate you for doing something half so daring,” Marianne said, laughing.
Given that the man who contributed to her ruination was Lord Marcham’s brother, Miss Blakelow highly doubted that. She stood up. “I cannot. You are young . . . You do not fully understand.”
“We do understand,” said Ned. “You fell in love and you made a mistake. Women do it every day.”
Miss Blakelow’s bottom lip trembled at this young man who was growing up before her eyes. “In my experience, men are not so forgiving. Mr. Peabody is an unusual case. I must go and think.”
“What is there to think about? Go and find the earl and tell him that yes, please, we would like to come and live at Holme Park,” said Ned.
“And that we would like to learn to box like he does . . . well, Ned and me anyway . . . please,” put in Jack.
“And that we won’t spend all his money on dresses,” said Kitty with a giggle.
“And that you will marry him just as soon as it can be arranged,” said Lizzy.
“And that you love him,” added Marianne simply.
CHAPTER 22
“ISN’T THAT PEABODY?” ASKED Hal Holkham of his brother as he rode up to him.
“I do believe it is. What a coat to be sure,” marveled his lordship, riding a magnificent gray horse into Loughton high street, “a pea-green coat for a Peabody.”
Hal chuckled. “You are too cruel, Robbie.”
“I would be a lot less cruel if he weren’t so damned worthy,” he replied. “He always looks at me as if I were recently excreted from the back end of his horse.”
Hal laughed. “And so you were.”
“Thank you,” he responded lightly. “Good morning, Peaham.” He tipped his hat, intending to pass on.
“Indeed it is,” replied Mr. Peabody from atop his gig as he gathered the reins into his hands. “A very good morning indeed.”
“You are jolly today, Mr. Peabody,” observed Hal with a friendly smile.
“I am the happiest of men. Miss Georgiana Blakelow has agreed to be my wife.”
The earl’s gray horse skittered at the sudden tug his master performed upon the reins, and it took his lordship a moment to calm his startled mount. He glared at Peabody from under a thunderous brow. “What did you say?”
Mr. Peabody smiled smugly. “I have already sent an announcement to the papers. I am the happiest of men. Not even you can kill my mood today, my lord. Well, I must be off. I have arrangements to make. Two hundred guests and very likely more. A grand affair and the lady dressed in the finest clothes Loughton can buy. I will send you an invitation, never fear.”
“Don’t bother,” recommended the earl savagely.
“You have lost, Marcham. The game is up. The lady is mine, and I intend to give her a babe to swell her belly just as soon as I can.”
It was fortunate that Hal placed his hand on his brother’s arm at that moment, for his lordship had started to move toward the portly gentleman with such a grip on his riding whip and such a vicious look on his face that Hal feared for the other man’s safety. “Not here, Rob,” he said.
His lordship wrestled with the urge to drag the man from his carriage and throttle the life from him with his bare hands. “You had better watch your tongue, Peabody, or I swear . . .”
Mr. Peabody smiled into the furious face of his lordship. “I see that you can remember my name when you wish to, my lord. Well, good day to you both. I must get along. The wedding wi
ll be at Goldings in January. I am off to buy the lady a gift. What say you to pearls? Or are they too young for a lady of Miss Blakelow’s advanced years?”
Hal gave him a chilly smile as his brother whirled his mount around in the direction they had just come. He heard the sound of rapidly retreating hooves as his lordship urged his horse into a gallop. “I believe pearls are the established gift, sir. Good day to you.”
He turned his own horse around, following his brother, who was by now practically out of sight. It was no very difficult task to guess where he was going. He urged his horse toward Holme Park and mentally sent Miss Blakelow his sympathies.
His lordship threw the reins to a groom and ran lightly up the front steps at Thorncote house to knock imperatively upon the front door. On being told that Miss Blakelow was not receiving visitors, he barged past the startled butler and strode into the hall, calling out her name.
John took one look at the earl’s face and instantly abandoned any vague plan he may have had of throwing his lordship out of the house; if he was not much mistaken, Lord Marcham was in a rare old taking. He quietly closed the front door and watched with a wry smile as their lordly neighbor took the stairs two at a time. There would be fireworks before the day was through or his name was not John Maynard.
The earl found Miss Blakelow in her bedchamber, seated by the window with a book. He entered the room and virtually slammed the door behind him. She started and the book fell from her hands, her eyes wide and her mouth open in surprise.
“How dare you barge in here?” she demanded, standing up swiftly and reaching for her glasses from the dressing table.
“Don’t you dare put those damned things on!” he fumed, her spectacles becoming the irrational focus of his anger.
Miss Blakelow glared at him and pointedly disobeyed him, pushing them over her ears. “I need them to see with and I do not take orders from you—”
“You see perfectly well without them,” he said, as he flung down his gloves upon the corner of the bed and strode toward her. He took her spectacles from her face, dropped them to the floor, and very deliberately crushed them with his heel, mashing the twisted metal and broken glass into the carpet.
She gasped. “How dare you destroy my property?” she demanded.
“And this!” he said, yanking the ribbons of her cap from her hand and flinging it onto the fire. The low flames swamped it in a riotous dance of golden heat. “There is only one thing your ugly caps are good for, and that is kindling.”
She was speechless with anger. It took her several moments to summon the words to convey her feelings. She moved toward the door and opened it, her hand upon the doorknob. “You are insufferable. Get out of my room and get out of this house.”
He stared at her for a moment from across the room, tight-lipped, rigid with anger. “Well, madam, I hear that congratulations are in order,” he said in no gentle voice.
Miss Blakelow blinked at him. “Congratulations?” she repeated frostily. “For what?”
“Your engagement. Do you pretend to be ignorant of it?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“Don’t you, by God?” He flung away to the window and stared out for a moment before coming back to face her. “And am I to receive an explanation as to why you have accepted that pompous idiot Peabody, when you have so roundly rejected me?”
Miss Blakelow stared at him in confusion for a moment, and then she closed her eyes as the realization dawned on her that Mr. Peabody had taken her vow to think about his offer as an acceptance of it. As angry as she was with Mr. Peabody for forcing her hand, she was fast becoming even angrier at Lord Marcham’s assumption that she needed to ask his permission before accepting another gentleman. And just because she had seen fit to turn down his offer, that did not mean that she needed to justify to him or anyone else why she wished to accept another man, however pompous he might be. She calmly folded her hands before her, forming a desire to teach his lordship a much-needed lesson.
“You are being overly dramatic, my lord. I have never given you cause to believe that there was any agreement between us. I made it perfectly clear at the outset that I was not interested in matrimony.”
“No,” he agreed, “although it seems that matrimony with Peabody suits you just fine.”
“Whom I choose to marry is none of your business,” she said frigidly. “Now I must ask you to leave. It is highly improper for you to be in here—”
“I thought you had sworn not to marry any man,” interrupted his lordship rudely. “If that is the case, then why is Peabody accepted when the rest of mankind is kicked aside?”
She lifted her chin mutinously. The words were on the tip of her tongue to deny the rumor, to shout from the hilltops that she’d rather die an old maid than marry a man as loathsome as Joshua Peabody, but she kept quiet. Perhaps if Lord Marcham thought her engaged to another man, he would finally stop pursuing her, and she need never tell him about her relationship with his brother. He would go back to London and find amusement with another woman. She could leave without fear of him coming after her. It would give her enough breathing space to get far away. “Mr. Peabody is . . . familiar with my circumstances,” she said guardedly.
He frowned at her. “What circumstances?”
“I am unable to . . . I must ask you to leave. Immediately.”
“What circumstances?” he repeated. “Tell me.”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell you . . . It is . . . I cannot.”
“Is it so very bad then?”
She made no answer and stared at the floor in silence.
“Oh, I see,” he said, making an impatient gesture with his hands. “I am not good enough for your confidence, is that it? I am not to be trusted with it. And yet you choose to confide in Mr. Peabody.”
“He has been a friend of the family for years,” she said coldly. “And who I choose to confide in, my lord, is—”
“And have I shown myself to be unworthy of your confidence?” the earl demanded.
“You don’t understand.”
“Damn right I don’t,” he replied, balling his fists against the mantelpiece.
She flinched at the anger in his voice. “Shouting at me is hardly likely to induce me to confide in you, my lord.”
He suddenly came toward her and so caught her by surprise that she did not have time to move. She was trapped against the wall. He reached out a finger and lifted her chin so that he could look into her face.
“Am I so very bad, Georgie?” he asked in quite another tone, a tone that tugged at Miss Blakelow’s heartstrings. She could not look at him. She stared at the folds of his cravat, judging her gaze to be safe there.
“No, my lord,” she whispered.
“Am I not handsome enough for you? Is that it? Too old, perhaps? Or are my manners completely beyond the pale?” he asked softly.
She shook her head, confused by his sudden change of tack. His anger she could cope with, but these gentle reproaches against himself slipped under her guard and tore at her resolve.
“Perhaps you would rather see me in that hideous cherry-striped waistcoat he wears? Or lavender-colored pantaloons? I am obviously far too dull a creature for a woman like you.”
“Oh, don’t . . . You don’t understand . . .” she cried, her voice choked by emotion. “I need to provide for my family.”
“Then let me provide for them,” he said. “If you think that Joshua Peabody is going to become a father figure for those young brothers of yours, then think again, my girl. The man is far too selfish to be bothered with any of them.”
“He is a good man . . . who . . . who I am grateful to.”
“Grateful?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can remedy that,” he said promptly. “Take Thorncote. Take the whole damn lot and be grateful to me instead, and we’ll be married just as soon as I can arrange it.”
She shook her head, smiling faintly.
“Georgie . . . am
I so repulsive to you? Can you not stomach me as your husband?” he whispered.
“It’s not that,” she said in a tremulous voice, looking down at her hands as if they held the answer. “But I . . . I cannot bear to have my heart broken again. It . . . it took me many years to find some sort of peace . . . here, at Thorncote. And I know that I am not enough for a man like you. You think you want me now, but that is because a woman who refuses you amuses and fascinates you—for a while anyway. But the novelty will wear off soon enough, and I don’t want to be cast aside when you tire of me.”
“What nonsense is this?”
“It is true, my lord. You are used to . . . to taking your pleasures wherever you find them. But I am a selfish creature, and if you were my husband, I would not want to share you with anyone else.” She turned away and walked to the fireplace. “And now I think you should leave.”
There was a silence.
“So that is it?” he asked, staring at her. “You have already made up your mind about me. You have already found me guilty of adultery when I have not even placed my ring upon your finger.”
She returned no answer. In truth, she could not.
“I am not leaving this room until you convince me that you don’t love me,” he said, squaring his shoulders.
She gasped. “You are unbelievable!”
“Well?” he demanded.
“No, my lord, shocking as I know it must be to you, but I am not in love with you.”
“Really.”
She glared at him. “I don’t mean to give you pain, much though you deserve it, but although I esteem you—”
“You what?”
“If you will allow me to finish, my lord, I was about to say that I esteem you and have a little affection for you, it is true, and we have become friends—good friends—but that does not mean that I—”
“Friends be damned,” he muttered, coming across the room with several long strides, and before she knew what he was about, he had jerked her into his arms. He took her chin in one hand and turned her face up to his. “Do you mean to tell me that you have not imagined us like this?” he whispered.
