A Man Most Worthy

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  He continued walking, unmindful of how many blocks he’d gone. His collarbone ached with the swinging movement of his arm. His ribs throbbed with each stride.

  He was in no shape to seek another job now. Not until the sling was off. But he would not return to clerking in a bank. Soon, his wages would run out. He’d have to find something before then.

  His steps slowed as he reached the river and stood gazing outward.

  He pictured Miss Shepard’s face, the way she’d met his kiss with innocent ardor. He shook the image away. She was only a girl. Best to forget the sentiments she’d awakened in him.

  But he couldn’t prevent the bitterness that threatened to swallow him up at the notion that she could never be his. He was tired of Britain and the ceiling it imposed over his head. No matter how much he worked, he’d never be good enough to set his sights on anyone like Miss Shepard. It was vain to think that some day, if he earned enough money, he could ever win the approval of her father.

  He tried to pray, knowing the Lord advocated humility and forgiveness. But he felt no inclination now to humble himself and accept the consequences of his rash act.

  Was it so wrong to fall in love with a girl like Miss Shepard?

  And for a few moments he allowed himself to dream of what it would have been like to be able to work to attain her. He could have risen in her father’s firm to the position of a junior partner. And then he would have dared to offer for her. He would have worked hard for her. He wouldn’t have begrudged her anything.

  But it was never to be. He’d never find a comparable position as he’d had at Shepard and Steward, not now, when Shepard would likely give him a bad reference or none at all.

  It was time for a drastic change in his life.

  He looked at the ships downriver and he felt the answer. Was the Lord telling him to leave England? Did his future lie across the ocean where so many had gone before him to make their fortunes?

  The idea took hold. He’d take his last wages and book passage to America.

  He’d work as hard as it took. By the grace of God, he’d make it and then—

  Then he’d return and claim Miss Alice Shepard’s heart.

  Confined to her room for the rest of the day, Alice spent the time on her knees, alternately pleading for leniency for Mr. Tennent and reveling in the memory of her first kiss.

  What had come over her to ask him to kiss her? Her cheeks heated at her brazenness. But she was not sorry she’d done it. She remembered the look in his dark eyes: shock and then wonder and then he’d leaned toward her and she’d been astounded to know that he felt the same as she did.

  Oh, the second his lips had touched hers, she’d felt herself falling off a precipice, a delightful precipice from where there was no return.

  Why had Father walked in at that moment? He’d ruined everything. She hadn’t been able to hear anything through the door and had had to run up to her room, afraid he’d see her in the corridor when he left the veranda.

  She looked in vain out her window, but it faced the back of the house, and she had no idea what could have happened to Mr. Tennent.

  Nicholas. She whispered the name to herself, liking the sound of such a fine name, watching the glass cloud up under her lips. Nicholas Tennent. Alice Shepard Tennent. Mrs. Nicholas Tennent. Her heart thrilled at each variation.

  Her father would have to allow them to marry now, since he’d caught them kissing. No matter that she wasn’t quite seventeen. She was willing to wait however long Father required. Surely, by the time she was eighteen she would be old enough to be Nicholas’s wife. She’d prove how able she was!

  At dinner, her father summoned her downstairs to his office.

  “I’ve sent Tennent away,” he said with no preamble.

  “Away? Where, Father?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His tone was its usual even one, with no emotion, simply matter-of-fact as if he were discussing his latest business acquisition.

  She took a step forward on the thick carpet. “But Father, I love him. You can’t just send him away.”

  “You have behaved disgracefully today. I cannot have my only daughter carrying on with every man in my employ as if she were some hoyden.”

  “Father! I was not carrying on! I love Mr. Tennent and am going to marry him!”

  He looked her up and down. “Has Tennent actually had the temerity to propose to you?”

  She tossed her head. “You didn’t exactly give him the opportunity.”

  “You’d better get any notions of marriage out of your head. There will be no proposal. Tennent has left my employ. It’s clear you cannot be trusted to carry on like a well-behaved young lady under your own roof, so I will have you spend your future holidays with your Uncle Sylvester and Aunt Hermione.” He raked a hand through his hair and gave a weary sigh. “I should have done so long ago…since your mother died.”

  She fell back. Her father sounded as if he were giving up on her for good. What had she done so wrong, but fall in love?

  In the coming days, no matter how much she cried and pleaded with him, her father remained unmoved. As she watched her trunk being packed, she waited for rescue from Mr. Tennent. Somehow, he must be able to get word to her, so she could tell him that she was being sent away.

  She had no idea how to reach him, and her father had Miss Bellows, her companion, watch her like a hawk now.

  She spent the final days of her holiday far from home with her strict aunt and uncle and their unpleasant offspring. They treated her like a person in disgrace.

  Of her father she heard nothing. By the times here turned to school, her tears had dried up. Life held no joy and each day was a drudgery to be gotten through.

  The hope she had of hearing from Mr. Tennant grew slimmer and slimmer over the year until it finally disappeared altogether, leaving only a hollowness in her heart.

  Chapter Five

  July 1890

  Nick allowed his valet to put the final touches to his cravat and turned from the glass. “Thank you, Williams.” He turned to the room’s other occupant. “Well, will I pass muster?”

  “The picture of a young millionaire.” Lord Asquith, a good-looking gentleman in his mid-thirties, lounged against the settee in Nick’s hotel suite.

  Nick raised an eyebrow. “Young?”

  The baron rose with an easy grace, his evening suit looking as natural on him as if he’d been born in it. “Of course. What are you? Thirty-five, thiry-six?”

  He grimaced. “Thirty-eight last March.” Where had the last decade of his life gone?

  “Just as I said, young, rich, powerful, just returned from America, and—” he lifted an eyebrow significantly “—unattached. The society mamas will latch on to you like a swarm of hungry locusts. Come along, I know just the place to take you this evening.”

  Nick picked up his white kid gloves from the table. “What did you have in mind? I hope nothing like last night when I was subjected to about as much boredom as a man should be required to endure for an evening.”

  Asquith chuckled. “Oh, no, nothing like. I do apologize. I know Lady Petersham is insufferably stuffy, but she has connections. If she accepts you into her circle, then everyone will follow suit.”

  “Who said I wanted to be accepted?” Nick closed the door to the hotel suite at the Savoy and the two headed down the corridor.

  Asquith just shook his head as if the question were not even worth an argument. Upon his arrival back in England, Nick had been introduced to Asquith by a business associate. The young baron had taken a liking to Nick and decided he needed to be “introduced” to London society.

  They rode down the lift to the spacious marble lobby of the newly opened hotel. At the front doors, the porter bowed and held one open. “Do you require a cab this evening, sirs?”

  Asquith gave a brief nod.

  While they waited under the porte-cochère, Nick glanced down the busy street. Gaslights cast their glow over the dark sheen of cabs and private
carriages. Pedestrians hurried down the Strand. It was a city as choked with traffic as when he’d left it fifteen years ago.

  “As I was saying, you’ll have a very different experience this evening at Mrs. Alice Lennox’s gala.”

  Alice. Nick cast a quick glance at Asquith, but then gave a mental shake. The name was common enough.

  The truth was he’d been thinking of the person the name conjured up ever since he’d decided to return to London. It had been too many years, he’d told himself every time he thought of her. Too late to do anything about something that never really had a chance to begin.

  Nick hardly heard Asquith’s words as he pictured the lively face of a girl he’d known for such a brief time, but whose equal he hadn’t met since.

  “…a most elegant woman, charming, beautiful and eminently worthy. I tell you, her virtues are innumerable.”

  Nick pulled his thoughts back with an effort. “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies…”

  Asquith quirked an eyebrow at him. “What’s that you say?”

  “It’s something my mother would oft quote me.”

  “Well, your mother would doubtless approve of Mrs. Lennox. A modern day saint, if there ever was one.”

  Nick slapped his gloves against the palm of his hand. “I have yet to find one who couldn’t be bought off with a fine pair of rubies.”

  “You are a cynic when it comes to women.”

  “Merely a realist.” He’d discovered that to his misfortune once he’d achieved financial success, and time had not proved him wrong as his wealth grew.

  “Ah, but you haven’t met Mrs. Lennox.”

  A hansom cab pulled up at the curb and the two got in.

  Nick glanced at Asquith as the porter closed the folding doors in front of their legs. “Where are we headed?”

  Asquith opened the trap door behind them and spoke to the driver. “Clarendon’s.” Then he settled back in the snug seat and rested his hands atop the ivory head of his walking stick. “You know the hotel on Albemarle, don’t you?

  “I know of it, though I’ve never been in it.”

  “Now, where were we?”

  “A paragon among women,” Nick replied dryly.

  “Ah yes, Mrs. Lennox. You said yourself you were looking to make a donation to a worthy charity. Well, Mrs. Lennox is your answer.”

  Nick glanced sidelong at Asquith, his curiosity aroused. “How’s that?”

  “She runs a housing charity.”

  Housing was an area of definite interest to him. “Tell me more.”

  “She is forever fighting with the building companies for decent housing for the working classes. Tonight she is hosting a ball for the charity, as a matter of fact. It has a long name to it. The Society for the Betterment of the something or other.” Asquith tapped his fingers against his walking stick. “It’ll add to your stature if you donate to a cause such as hers. She’s loved by society and working man alike, not to mention the fact that she’s a goddess among women.”

  Nick pictured some imposing matron as cold and quelling as a London fog. Certainly not the girl he’d dreamed of for too many years before relinquishing the cause as a hopeless youthful fantasy. God had blessed him immeasurably in his business pursuits. It was enough.

  They were driving through the most fashionable streets of the West End. He peered through the hansom window at the streetlamps and quaint facades of the men’s clubs along St. James’s.

  “Have you joined any clubs yet?”

  He looked at the young lord in surprise, not having considered such a prospect. “As I recall, those require membership by invitation.”

  Asquith shrugged. “I can put your name up at a few of mine. Filled with doddering old bores for the most part. Still, you’ll want to join one or two. They’re quiet places where you can read the papers and get a hot meal when you tire of hotel fare.”

  Nick shook his head, glancing back out at the passing street, unable to accustom himself to his new stature in London. When he’d left, he hadn’t enough in his pocket to buy provisions for his sea journey, and now he was negotiating to buy entire companies.

  They entered a quiet tree-lined square before being stalled amidst several coaches. “We can get out here or we’ll be sitting in our cab all night. Mrs. Lennox’s balls are renowned. Come on.”

  Nick followed Asquith out of the cab. On the next block, a crowd congregated under the portico of the large hotel. Ladies in long dark silk capes and upswept hair ascended the red-carpeted steps on the arms of gentlemen in black evening attire. Music wafted from the open doorways into the street.

  Asquith nodded to several people on his way in but didn’t stop for anyone. “The invitation says it’s in the grand ballroom.” Nick followed him up the curving marble staircase at the rear of the lobby.

  The strains of music grew louder as they approached the room on the floor above. Asquith presented his invitation to a doorman and they entered the long ballroom studded with marble columns and crowned by crystal chandeliers.

  They stood a moment at the edge of the sea of well-dressed people. Although he’d attended several society events in San Francisco, Nick had never grown used to them. London society was a different kettle of fish altogether. He’d never learned the subtleties of family names and histories. His gaze traveled over old and young faces. All looked as if they were part of an exclusive club to which only they knew the language.

  His senses were assaulted by perfumes and pomades overlaid with cigarette smoke. The chandelier light glinted off the jewels in women’s hair and around their throats.

  With a tap at his elbow, Asquith began to weave through the crowd. Nick followed in his wake, his suit brushing against a palette of colorful gowns, taffetas and crepes, lace ruffles and wide puffed sleeves.

  He had little chance to observe anyone in detail as Asquith strolled from group to group as if greeting guests in his own drawing room. “Good evening, Lord Dellamere…Good evening Mrs. Stanton…Yes, a lovely evening…I saw him at the club earlier…”

  Amidst his casual exchanges, he turned to Nick. “Come on, let’s find the bar.”

  The marble-topped bar in an adjoining room was three-deep in black-coated gentlemen and wreathed in smoke.

  “Just a soda water for me, thanks.”

  Lord Asquith gave him a second look before nodding. “Very well.”

  Nick took the time to let his gaze wander back through the wide doors into the ballroom. Not one familiar face, but he hadn’t expected to see any acquaintance. He’d certainly not moved in these circles when he’d left.

  “Here you go, soda water.”

  He took the thick tumbler from Asquith. “Thanks.” He’d never cared for spirits much. His mother had been a strict teetotaler and during all those years of fighting to succeed, he’d considered it just another dangerous habit and needless expense when every penny counted. Now that he could afford to be liberal, he had no taste for the stuff.

  Asquith lifted his champagne coupe in a salute. “Welcome back to the beau monde.” They sipped their respective drinks in silence.

  An orchestra was playing a waltz and the ballroom filled with dancing couples. The thrum of voices swirled around him like a swollen river, its noise undulating in volume but never lowering enough to make the words distinguishable from one another.

  “Where do so many people come from?” Nick mused.

  “I told you Mrs. Lennox’s galas are coveted events.”

  Asquith surveyed the room over the rim of his glass. “Quite a good turn-out. The Society’s coffers should be filled. Ah, there she is.” With the stem of his glass he indicated a cluster of people coming through the ballroom doors. “The queen of the event. Surrounded as usual by her court.”

  Nick focused on the group of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen. They did indeed appear to be surrounding one individual but he couldn’t see her through the mass.

  Asquith took him gently by the elbow and urged
him forward. “Time for introductions.”

  Nick had to fight the urge to hang back. Would this grand lady look down her nose at him, seeing beyond the evening clothes to the former clerk, the son of a miner?

  With a greeting here and a pleasantry there, Asquith made his way to his target. Before reaching it, the group abruptly parted, and Nick saw her.

  Standing about ten feet from her, he came face-to-face with the girl of his dreams.

  The years fell away, and he was back in Richmond, a twenty-three-year-old clerk with nothing to recommend him but his ambition, and Miss Alice Shepard was exacting a kiss from him.

  He stared at her, hardly believing the reality. She hadn’t changed. As beautiful as on that long ago summer, and yet completely transformed. For the woman in the emerald green evening gown that hugged her small waist before flaring out at her hips in a fall of cascading lace was no longer a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl but an exquisitely fashionable lady as foreign to him as he must appear to her.

  He’d both dreaded and longed for this moment. Torn between the desire to go in search of her once he returned and a greater fear that he’d wake to the grim reality of finding her another’s, he’d been paralyzed into inaction.

  At that instant her eyes met his.

  Like a dream, he read the question in her eyes give way to uncertainty. He knew the instant she recognized him.

  She left the company around her and directed her footsteps toward him. Would she indeed remember him? He swallowed, finding his throat tight. His heart drummed in his chest and his breathing became erratic.

  Nicholas Tennent. Alice could scarcely believe her eyes. Was her memory playing tricks on her? Surely the distinguished gentleman looking so intently at her was not the same man she’d given her childish heart to so long ago?

  She didn’t have to search her memory for his name. How many times had she repeated it to herself and written it down in her diary, making long scrolls under his name and hers in her schoolgirl script?

  Nicholas Tennent. The name evoked pain and longing. For a second she thought she would faint. All the old wounds of anguish and abandonment threatened to erupt.