“But you told me that you were my father’s solicitor!”
“No, you assumed that I was, as I assumed that you were a servant. So now we are even, Lady Caro,” he retorted with his most winning smile.
“What a nice smile you have,” she said approvingly. “My cousins will be excessively happy to see you. They have been in a fit of the sullens since Mercer Corte told them that he did not think you would come on account of your hating matchmaking parties.” She examined him with frank curiosity in her eyes. “Is it true that you are more faithful to your mistress than most men are to their wives?”
“What?” Ashley demanded incredulously.
“That is what Emily Picton told Mary Milbank when she said that you had rakish tendencies. Are you?”
Ashley, dismayed that his private affairs were apparently a matter of public discussion, said sharply, “That is not a question a young lady of—”
“Yes, I know,” Caro interrupted impatiently, “but I am not a lady.”
“I, however, am a gentleman, and I do not discuss such subjects with innocents,” he said firmly. Had any other woman asked him such a question he would have given her a crushing setdown, but Caro’s naive candor and innocence defused his anger.
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Well, I daresay that if you cannot be faithful to your wife, it is laudable to be so to your mistress.”
Chapter 4
Mrs. Olive Kelsie, tall and stout with a habitually discontented face, looked into Bellhaven’s morning room. The four young ladies gathered there were all dressed in the first stare of fashion, but Mrs. Kelsie noted with satisfaction that her nineteen-year-old daughter Grace obscured the others with her loveliness.
Grace was statuesque, with flirtatious eyes of cornflower blue and skin as pale and smooth as the finest ivory. Charming ringlets of guinea-gold hair framed her heart shaped face. She was, as always, perfectly groomed in a new lavender muslin gown with not a single hair out of place.
Jane Kelsie, younger than Grace by a year, was a rather pallid copy of her elder sister, lacking her perfection of face and form but still lovely and as impeccably turned out.
Olive Kelsie was well pleased with her daughters. Grace was an Incomparable, and Jane as lovely as Emily Picton, who was such a hit in London. Mrs. Kelsie, who wanted no young lady about whose charms could compete with her daughters, had tried to prevent Emily’s being invited, but Caroline had insisted. Mrs. Kelsie had ached to strangle her niece, a longing that she felt frequently.
Thankfully, the lovely Emily had a tendre for Mercer Corte, Lord Corte’s second son. As soon as Mrs. Kelsie learned Emily would be coming, she had seen to it that young Corte was invited, too, knowing that Emily would notice no one else. Certainly she was welcome to Corte. Although he was of a fine family, his lack of title and his modest expectations rendered him unacceptable as a possible candidate for the hand of Grace or Jane.
At the top of Olive Kelsie’s list of marital prospects—and both her daughters’ as well—was Lord Vinson, and she was determined that one of her girls should capture him. What a feather it would be in her cap to have her daughter—she did not much care which one—snag such a prime catch. Second on her list was Lord Sanley, the duke of Upton’s heir. Mrs. Kelsie smiled to herself. She would be the talk of London if she managed to marry her daughters to a future duke and a future earl, especially when they were the biggest fish to be had in the marriage pond.
Continuing down the hall past the morning room, she was well pleased at how, on the pretext that it would help his daughter, she had managed to convince her odiously disobliging brother-in-law to invite the cream of eligible males to Bellhaven. Mrs. Kelsie blamed Levisham for her daughters’ disappointing first season in London. Had her darlings had the proper address and clothes, they would have taken London by as great a storm as the famous Gunning sisters had done three score years earlier. But their uncle had not opened his elegant London residence for their use. Instead, they had had to let a house with an inferior address. And he had given them only a paltry few hundred pounds for clothes instead of the several thousand that their beauty deserved. (Although Mrs. Kelsie had a quite comfortable income of her own, she did not see why she should be expected to spend it on her daughters’ gowns when she considered that expense the responsibility of the head of the family.)
Small wonder, given these handicaps, that Grace had received only two offers, neither of which met with her or her mama’s approval, and Jane had had none. What a brilliant season they would have had if only they, not that wretched Caroline, were a marquess’s rich daughters.
Mrs. Kelsie had never forgiven her late husband for dying before his brother and thereby preventing her from becoming the marchioness of Levisham. Her only consolation lay in knowing that now her son, Tilford, would become marquess. Poor Tilford’s prospects in life had been dim until the death of Brandon, Levisham’s only son, had made Tilford his uncle’s heir.
Providence, which had given the ambitious Mrs. Kelsie much to work with in her daughters, had been less generous in her son. No taller than his sisters, he was a plump, dour man of four and twenty, much addicted to the bottle. His lack of stature and good looks was not offset by intellectual acuity or charm, for he had neither. He was the sort of son only a mother could love, and the widow Kelsie, oblivious to his faults, doted on him.
A door behind Mrs. Kelsie opened, and she turned to see her brother-in-law dressed in riding coat and breeches. Once Levisham had been a robust man with a strong, squarish face and lively, penetrating gray eyes that bespoke keen intelligence. Now, however, his face was thin, gray, and sunken, the eyes dull and listless. His clothes hung loosely, betraying the weight he had recently lost. Where once he had moved and acted quickly, with decisive energy, now he did so slowly, as though the effort were almost too much for him.
His decline had begun last spring when he had been stricken with a fever that had very nearly killed him. Although he had survived, it could not be said that he had truly recovered. His body remained frail and tired, regaining neither the weight nor the energy that the fever had sucked from him.
“Come with me to the estate room,” he told his sister-in-law. “I wish to discuss Tilford with you.”
Mrs. Kelsie bit her lip angrily. For some inexplicable reason, the marquess held her darling Tilford in particular repugnance. This antipathy was a daunting—and exceedingly vexing—impediment to her most cherished scheme: to marry her son to Caroline.
Not that Mrs. Kelsie approved of having that ramshackle girl for a daughter-in-law. It was shocking the way Levisham had let her run wild: riding bareback, climbing trees, and even, if one particularly horrifying report was to be credited, swimming half naked in her shift. But although Caroline was unattractive to her aunt, the great fortune that the chit had inherited from her mother was irresistible. Only the Bellhaven estate, which would be frightfully expensive to keep up, and the house in London were entailed. The rest of Levisham’s fortune was his to do with as he wished, and he would leave it to Caroline, who did not need a sixpence of it, instead of to her poor Tilford.
If her son—and she with him—were to live in the style his title required, he would have to marry a fortune. Much as she doted on him, even she had to admit that he did not acquit himself well in society. With so many odiously handsome fortune hunters stalking even ugly heiresses of sizable fortunes, his chances of claiming one as his wife were not high. Olive, who had been in charge of Levisham’s guest list, had invited Mary Milbank, an heiress to a considerable fortune, but the bran-faced creature had been so rude as to make clear her contempt for Tilford last night. Caroline remained Tilford’s best hope of marrying an heiress. Besides, he had developed a quite unaccountable tendre for his skinny little cousin.
The marquess led his sister-in-law into a small room dominated by a massive carved mahogany desk that had been designed for his great-grandfather by William Kent. Along one wall, a mahogany bookcase held an impressive number of acco
unt books, all neatly labeled. On the wall facing his desk hung a large painting of the late marchioness, a delicate beauty with a halo of golden curls. At first glance, she looked like an ethereal angel until one noticed the mischievous expression in her big sea-blue eyes.
As Levisham closed the door, Mrs. Kelsie noted how weary and frail he looked. It would not be long before her darling Tilford would be the marquess and Caroline his ward. Then Olive would impose on her niece the strict discipline that she needed. A few whippings would do her a world of good. And no one could stop Tilford from marrying her. Once she was his ward, then his wife, life would be very different indeed for the annoying brat.
The marquess gestured with a thin hand for Mrs. Kelsie to sit in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair. No doubt he was going to cut up stiff over poor Tilford’s having gotten a trifle bosky at dinner last night, and she tried to divert him by asking, “Do you approve of the guests that I invited?”
“But of course. I knew that you could be depended upon to select the best male catches on the marriage mart without a fortune hunter among them.”
Discomfited by the mockery in his voice that she did not understand, she said stiffly, “I felt it my duty to see that dearest Caroline was introduced to the most eligible of possible suitors.”
“Did you, indeed?” The marquess lifted an eyebrow. “Dearest Caroline will not thank you. You know that she is passionately opposed to marrying.”
For which Mrs. Kelsie was most grateful. Levisham would never force Caroline to do anything, so she would remain single until after her father’s death, when Tilford could claim her. Her aunt, concealing her delight at this situation, exclaimed, “Surely you cannot want dearest Caroline to be an ape leader.”
“Of course not,” Levisham admitted.
“Nor I. That is why I have taken such care to invite the most eligible young bachelors. Perhaps one of them will fall in love with her and make her forget her objections,” Olive lied. None of the male guests, who could have the pick of the marriage mart, would be attracted by such a thin slip of a girl with a brown complexion, unruly hair, and a wretched tongue that had already given both Sanley and Sir Percival a disgust of her. Nevertheless, Olive had taken the further precaution of isolating Caro between her and her son at meals. If Olive had thought that one of the male guests might take a fancy to Caroline, she would never have suggested the party. Great as her ambitions were for her daughters, her darling Tilford took precedence.
Levisham said thoughtfully, “Despite their outrageous cost, I do not think the clothes you convinced me Caro must have suit her well.”
Olive felt something akin to fear prickle at her. Surely he could not suspect that she had worked out a special arrangement with her dressmaker. The amount of fabric ordered for each of her niece’s gowns had been enough for Grace or Jane to have one, too, and the cost of making it up had been concealed in the price charged for Caroline’s. The marquess unknowingly had paid for two dresses for each one that his daughter had gotten. Furthermore, Olive had seen to it that Caroline’s gowns enhanced her numerous bad features.
“It is not the clothes,” Olive said, hiding her unease in vehemence, “but the careless way dearest Caroline wears them. She runs about like a scullery maid with her hems crooked, her ruffles tom, and her hair falling down.”
At that moment, the young lady herself scampered by the estate room window in a faded blue calico frock, and her aunt was able to say, “Only look at her now. All the beautiful gowns I had made for her, and what is she wearing but a wretched dress that is years old.”
Levisham frowned. “When we are finished here, tell Caro that I wish to see her.”
“I’ll do so immediately,” Olive said, rising from her chair in the hope of escaping before her brother-in-law recalled the reason he wished to speak with her.
“No, not until we discuss Tilford’s disgusting behavior last night, treating us to that tasteless, drunken harangue and then passing out in a stupor in the drawing room. To ensure that there is no repeat of this, I have ordered that the servants pour him no wine tonight. He is to drink nothing for the remainder of his stay here. I will not have him disgrace us again.”
Olive was outraged that he could talk of her darling Tilford so after the way his own rag-mannered daughter had mortified them with her incorrigible tongue and behavior. Neither Lord Sanley nor Sir Percival would ever forgive her. Worse, Jane had seen her sneaking out early this morning to ride bareback even though her aunt had prohibited her from doing so while guests were at Bellhaven. “Tilford was only slightly in the altitudes, and it was nothing compared to what dearest Car—”
The marquess cut Olive off. “Tilford was drunk as a wheelbarrow. If he does not abide by my orders, he will leave Bellhaven on the morrow.”
Olive recognized from the implacability of Levisham’s tone that it would do no good to argue with him. How infuriating that she had never been able to bring him under her thumb as she had both his brother and her son, who would never have dared to oppose her in anything. She cried petulantly, “I do not know how you can be so hard on poor Tilford when Caroline flagrantly disobeys me.”
“What has she done?”
“Sneaked out to ride bareback this morning. What will our guests think of such shameless conduct?”
“I doubt that any of them will be up early enough to witness it,” Levisham replied calmly.
This indulgent answer further fueled Mrs. Kelsie’s rage. If Levisham would not require Caroline to obey her, she would find another way to enforce her edicts. She was not a woman to be defied. By heaven above, she would do whatever was necessary to impose her will upon that disgraceful hoyden.
Chapter 5
When Caro entered the estate room in answer to her father’s summons, he was standing by the corner of his big desk, looking sadly preoccupied, and his eyes did not light up as they usually did when he saw her. She had seen that unhappy look frequently recently, but when she asked him what was wrong, he would deny that anything was. Seeking to divert his thoughts to more cheerful channels, she said, “Oh, Papa, I have just seen the most splendid pair of chestnuts. You would be proud to own them.”
“Where did you see them?”
“They belong to Lord Vinson. He gave me a ride behind them. He is a top sawyer with the ribbons, and so nice, too. I like him the best of all our guests.”
The marquess asked anxiously, “Did you meet Vinson looking as you do now?”
Caro glanced down at her faded, paw-stained dress, then back up at her father in surprise. Unlike her Aunt Olive, who raised such dust-ups about how she acted and dressed, Papa never seemed to mind.
But now he said in a reproving tone that he had never before used with her, “Look at you. That dress should have been consigned to the rag bag and your skirt is covered with dirty prints.”
This censure, coming from her beloved father, who never criticized her, stung Caro as painfully as a whiplash.
She hung her head, acutely aware of how untidy she looked.
“No doubt you gave Lord Vinson a disgust of you, looking the way you do,” Levisham said, frowning unhappily.
Remembering how shocked Vinson had been when he had learned her identity, Caro knew that her father was right. This realization was oddly painful to her. Ashley was so understanding and so much fun to talk to. And so very handsome, too. She could see now why her cousins were wildly infatuated with him. He was not at all toplofty like Lord Sanley or affected like Sir Percival. So different, too, from her dour cousin Tilford. A shudder of revulsion coursed through Caro at the thought of him.
“Your aunt has been complaining to me about your appearance, Caro, and she is quite right to do so.”
Caro bit her lip. Her appearance was not, as her aunt seemed to think, deliberate. She would have liked nothing better than to be as immaculately turned out as Grace and Jane, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never manage to look neat and stylish and cool as her cousins did.
&nb
sp; Her hair, fine as silk and unruly as a colt, defied all attempts to confine it in a neat coil or knot. Long skirts, too, were a severe trial. Her hems never seemed to hang quite straight, perhaps because she frequently hitched up her skirts to climb fences that got in her way. For some maddening reason, her ruffles seemed especially prone to catch and tear. She could rarely remember to slow her purposeful, impatient gait to the sedate, graceful glide of a lady. Nor could she hide her boisterous high spirits and irrepressible candor behind the colorless decorum that her aunt insisted was the mark of a young lady of quality.
“How do you expect to attract a husband looking as you do?” her father demanded in exasperation.
Caro’s head snapped up. “But, Papa, you know that I do not intend to marry. I shall devote myself to you as Abigail Foster did to her father.” Abigail, a pretty woman of wit and intelligence a decade older than Caro, had rejected several flattering offers, refusing to surrender herself to a husband’s domination. Instead she had dedicated herself to caring for her widowed father, an old curmudgeon whom Caro secretly had not thought worthy of Abigail’s devotion.
Levisham’s frown deepened at the mention of Abigail. “I think that both you and she were too much affected by Lady Fraser’s jaundiced views of marriage. Remember that Lady Fraser and her husband disliked each other from the moment they met. Their parents were fools to have forced them into an arranged marriage. Never were two people more ill-suited. He cares only for London and its parties; she, for the country and her horses. And both have suffered.”
It was true that Caro’s views of marriage, and of Lord Fraser, too, had been darkly colored by his lady, and she cried angrily, “I never thought to hear you defend that odious man.”
“To Lord Fraser’s credit, he permits her to live where she wishes with their son, although he would prefer the boy to be with him in London.”
Lady Caro Page 4
