Mercer grinned at him. “And what do you say to that, or do I dare ask?”
“He is right,” Ashley said glumly. “That is why I am here.”
Mercer’s smile faded. “Are you hoaxing me? I thought that you had eyes for no woman but Lady Roxley.”
“I don’t. But since she is already married, I can hardly wed her.”
“I collect that you have a lady in mind.”
“I do not, but my father has seven from which I may choose. Five of them, including your charming Emily, are here, so now you understand why I am, too.”
“Are you telling me you mean to try to fix your interest with Emily?” Mercer cried, firing up.
“Good God, no! You are my friend. I would not try to do so even if I thought it were possible, which it clearly is not. She adores you.”
“Not as much as I adore her.”
“How very lucky you are,” Ashley said, sighing. “I had always thought that when I married it would be for love. Fate has decreed otherwise. So now I may choose from the Kelsie sisters, Mary Milbank, or Lady Caro.”
“But Caro is a mere child,” Mercer protested.
“Utterly unsuitable,” Ashley agreed, “but my father was unaware of that. It had been reported to him that she favored her mother.”
“Which, of course, she does not. I’ve seen the marchioness’s portrait. What a beauty she was! Poor Caro is so plain, although I confess I find her delightful. I wager that Sanley never had such a setdown in his life as she gave him yesterday.”
“I am sorry that I missed it.”
“You should be,” Mercer assured him with a grin. “My Emily is much attached to Caro. She says that there is no more honest, generous, and kindhearted girl alive than Caro even though she sometimes says and does outrageous things. Which one of the fair ladies on your father’s list do you mean to choose as your bride?”
“As long as I cannot wed a woman I love, it matters naught to me which one I marry!”
“Now you are hoaxing me,” Mercer protested. “Surely you must have some criteria.”
Ashley’s lips curled in a bitter little smile. “Only that she be a woman of exceptional understanding.”
Mercer nodded his head in comprehension. “In other words, one who will understand about Estelle.”
“How astute you are, Merce.”
“I suspect a number of women would be willing to overlook Lady Roxley in exchange for the opportunity to become countess of Bourn.”
“At least until the knot is tied,” Ashley retorted cynically. “The difficulty is in finding a lady whose superior understanding will last beyond our wedding vows. If I find her, she is the one I shall marry.”
A stout figure in a satin wrapper drew back from one of the second-story windows overlooking the terrace where Ashley and Mercer were talking. Olive Kelsie was well pleased with the fruit of her eavesdropping. So Vinson was ripe for the plucking. All that would be required to shackle him was to convince him of how broad-minded her daughters were. Now the only remaining difficulty was which of them should have him. Both were infatuated with him, but their mother favored Jane for the very practical reason that Grace would have the better chance of snaring Lord Sanley.
Downstairs from Mrs. Kelsie, a second eavesdropper, as edified as the first, stepped back from the shadows of a French door that was slightly open, fading deeper into the darkness that had concealed him from the two men on the balustrade, and began laying very different plans.
Chapter 7
The room was gray with the first light of dawn when Ashley awoke the following morning, sorely troubled by the marital commitment that he must make. Despite his careless words to Mercer Corte that it mattered not at all which of the young ladies on his father’s list he married, he did not, in truth, want to marry any of them.
What he needed, he decided, was a bruising ride to lift his spirits. But he could hardly invade his host’s stables at this early hour without his permission, so he decided to settle for a walk in Bellhaven’s park instead. Fortunately, he was not a man dependent on his valet. When he had finished his morning ablutions, donned his double-breasted brown riding coat and buckskin breeches, and tied his white linen neckcloth with a skill that would have left Brummell envious, Ashley looked so well turned out that any valet would have been proud to take credit for having dressed him.
Ashley’s room faced east, and he stopped at the window to enjoy the beauty of the sunrise that streaked the sky. His peripheral vision caught a dash of red fluttering to the ground from another window farther down the wall. Startled, he stared down at what appeared to be a girl’s skirt lying on the ground beneath a large, gracious elm. Foreboding seized him as his eyes traveled up the tree.
He was not entirely surprised, though nonetheless horrified, to see Caro inching her way along one of the elm’s sturdy limbs. Her position, combined with the riding breeches she wore, gave him a tantalizing view of her little derriere. Good God, the chit would break her neck yet! He dared not call out to her, for fear he would startle her as he had yesterday and she would fall.
He dashed out of his room and down a back staircase that he had noticed the previous night. But when he came out in the rustic, his progress was checked as he blundered about its dreary, unfamiliar halls looking for an exit. Finally, he found one, but it brought him out behind the steps of the portico and he had to run around to the east side of the building.
As he turned the corner, he was vastly relieved to see that Caro was not lying crumpled at the foot of the elm. But his relief quickly faded as he realized that both she and her skirt had disappeared.
Hearing a horse galloping from the stable, he turned toward the sound. Caro, riding bareback, her hair streaming loose in the wind, was racing away on a fleet white pony. It would do no good to call to her. She was too far away to hear him over the sound of her mount’s hooves. He cursed under his breath. If she did not know the dangers attendant on such a ramshackle ride, he did.
Noting the direction in which she was headed, he ran to the stable, which was barren of human presence. Hanging from a peg in the tack room was the long red skirt that Caro had dropped from the window. Grabbing a bridle and saddle, he selected a swift-looking mount and within five minutes was thundering down the path he had seen her take.
It was another ten minutes before he had her in sight, and then only because she had slowed her mount to a canter in a pretty lane banked by goldenrod, bluebells, and heather where the air was scented with the sweet smell of bedstraw.
He galloped toward her, calling, “Caro, stop!”
She complied. When he reached her, the guilty expression on her mischievous face reminded him of William’s three-year-old daughter when Ashley had caught her clandestinely sampling a plate of little cakes prepared for her mama’s guests.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Coming after you. I saw that you were again in need of rescue.”
“I was not!” she responded ungratefully.
“You cannot ride alone like this.”
“Oh, fustian! You are as tiresome as my aunt.” Her little lower lip protruded stubbornly. “And I thought you were a prime ’un,” she said in a tone of deep disillusionment.
Ashley felt it was his unhappy duty to increase Caro’s indignation by warning her that she was likely to break her neck if she persisted in exiting second-story rooms via the window.
“Oh, no, it is not the least dangerous when there is a tree there,” she reassured him.
A dark suspicion crossed his mind. “Have you done so when there was no tree?”
She nodded. “When I was thirteen, my aunt prevailed upon Papa to send me to stay with her for a week. It was dreadful. Even then she was determined that I should be a lady, and she would not let me do any of the things that I liked. When I sneaked out early to ride, she caught me and locked me in my room. But there was no tree.”
“How did you overcome that difficulty?”
“I ti
ed the bedclothes together into a makeshift rope and climbed down them. It was capital fun!”
The hoyden was incorrigible! “Was it not exceedingly difficult to return by that route?” Ashley demanded.
“I did not have to. Aunt Olive left the key in the lock, so I was able to open it from the hallway and sneak back in. She generally slept until noon, and never suspected that I, not one of the maids, had unlocked it.”
“But why the devil did you choose such an unorthodox route to depart from the house this morning?”
“The door to my room was locked. I am certain that it was Aunt Olive again. She has prohibited my early morning rides while guests are here.”
Ashley was shocked. “She must have locked it because she is concerned about your safety.” Even as these words left his mouth, he was conscious that he was most likely telling a whisker. The emotion he had seen in Mrs. Kelsie’s eyes when she gazed upon her niece was something very different from either concern or affection.
Caro shrugged. “Perhaps, but I think it is because she cannot bear to be disobeyed.”
Disgusted as he was by her aunt, Ashley was still conscious of his duty as an Older Person. “Do you not think it wrong to disobey her?”
“She is not my guardian, although she orders me about as though she were. Nor did I give her my word that I would not ride,” Caro cried, as if that made all the difference. “Had I done that, I would never have broken it.”
He could not help but be impressed by how seriously she regarded the sacredness of her word. “Does your father know that your aunt locked you in your room?” Ashley had seen the previous night the deep love with which Levisham watched his daughter and was certain that he would not condone her aunt’s action.
“No, and I shan’t tell him, for she will only deny it and will find some way to get back at me for telling Papa.” She frowned unhappily. “It is a terrible thing to say, but I fear that my aunt is not always a truthful woman.”
Ashley suspected that this observation was as true as it was sincere. Caro’s little brown face, which seemed all eyes, reminded Ashley of a wood sprite. He wondered what he should do now. Although she was clearly oblivious to the dangers attendant upon careening bareback and alone about the countryside, he was not. Yet he knew that any request that she return with him to the house would meet with instant rejection. Instead, he asked, “Would you give me a tour of Bellhaven’s park, elfin?”
“Why do you call me that?”
He grinned. “Because it describes you so well. Shall we ride?”
They took a circuitous route through the park, Caro showing him all the favorite spots where she and her brother, Brandon, had played. By the time they headed back toward the stable an hour later, Ashley had acquired, from her running comments interspersed with adroit questioning on his part, a fair notion of the isolated, protected life that she had led.
She and her brother had grown up with only each other as playmates, except when Emily had visited her grandfather, who lived on a neighboring property.
“Since my brother died, there has been no one else to talk to when Papa is busy with the estate.” Caro’s face clouded. “I miss Brandon so. We did everything together. Do you have a brother?”
“I did, but he, too, is dead.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” she cried, reaching out to touch Ashley’s arm in an instinctive gesture of comfort, her big gray eyes radiating sorrow and sympathy.
Ashley, used to far more sophisticated, scheming women, was struck—and touched—by Caro’s innate, uncalculating sweetness.
“You must miss him dreadfully,” she murmured.
“I mourn for him, but I fear we were never very close. He was much older than I.” Ashley had loved his half brother, but pompous, humorless William had had no patience with a mischievous, fun-loving little boy nine years his junior, especially one who could not learn to treat the elder brother with the deference and respect William had thought his due.
It was clear from what Caro said that her father had cut himself and his children off from not only the ton but most of his neighbors, too. Apparently finding the latter—including the drunken Mr. Burk, Sir John Wesley, the wastrel, and Mr. Potter, the wife beater—brutish and boring, the marquess had restricted his social circle to Barton Picton, Emily’s paternal grandfather, the Reverend Laken, who held the living, Dr. Baxter, the local physician, and Sir Ronald Foster and his daughter, Abigail, who had clearly been an important influence on Caro.
Ashley had known Abigail Foster, a very pretty, witty woman who would be twenty-eight now since she was his age. During her first season in London she had turned down several excellent offers for her hand. She had done so, Caro confided admiringly to Ashley, because she refused to give herself over to the uncertain mercy of a husband. Instead she devoted herself to her father, an example that Caro was determined to emulate. Ashley suspected that Abigail Foster had had a stronger influence on Caro’s views of marriage than Lady Fraser.
By the time they returned to the stable, he had learned that Caro had never been farther from Bellhaven than the local village, and that he and his fellow guests were her first exposure to the fashionable world to which she had been born.
As they reached the stable, she said, “Promise me that you will not tell my aunt or my father about our ride. She would ring such a dreadful peal over me, and Papa will not like it either.”
“I promise I won’t tell your aunt, but it is my duty to tell your father.”
“If you do, you shall be in my black books permanently,” Caro said firmly.
Ashley was saved from this dire fate, however, because her father was in the stable yard when they stopped their mounts. Giving Ashley a cold, searching look, he demanded, “Where have you and my daughter been?”
“Don’t fly into the boughs, Papa,” Caro said calmly, jumping down from her horse. “He saw me leaving and would not permit me to ride alone. I own I do not apprehend why riding alone sinks me below reproach.”
She handed the reins of her pony to a groom and strode into the stable to collect her skirt.
Her father turned his weary, sunken face to Ashley. “I collect that I owe you both gratitude and an apology. I had an uneasy moment.”
“Yes,” Ashley said dryly, “your daughter informs me that I have a reputation for rakish tendencies. However, I assure you that I have never trifled with innocents.”
“If you knew Caro better, you would understand my concern. She is not fly to the time of day, and she naively tumbles into trouble without being aware that she is in it. I tried to shelter her from all that is unpleasant in life, and in the process I fear I have let her remain a child too long. How is it that you noticed her leaving this morning?”
“Her departure was difficult to ignore. She was climbing down the tree outside her window.”
“Good God! She always was half monkey, but why the tree?”
“Her door was locked, by her aunt, she thinks.” Levisham’s face reddened in anger.
“That evil woman! Why did Caro not tell me?”
“She believes that her aunt will only deny it.”
“And Caro is right,” the marquess said grimly. “Olive knows I would not permit such a thing. How I wish I could send her and her drunken son packing immediately, but...”
“But her presence is required for propriety until your guests depart.”
Levisham nodded, then asked abruptly, “Are you excessively shocked by my daughter’s unconventional tongue and behavior?”
Ashley was disconcerted by the speculative look that had suddenly appeared in his host’s eyes. He had seen it all too often in the gaze of determined mamas anxious to marry him to their eligible daughters. “She is a most amusing enfant,” Ashley said, subtly emphasizing the last word. “I find her candor a trifle startling, but I overlook in a child what I would be dismayed by in an adult.” He was puzzled by Levisham’s clear eagerness to have his beloved daughter marry when she herself strongly opposed it.
“She is so like her mama!” the marquess exclaimed. Ashley could not keep his disbelief from showing. Seeing it, Levisham explained, “Not so much in looks, I grant you, for Caro has my coloring, but in character and vibrancy. Her mama could never curb her tongue either and used to say the most outrageous things.”
But Caro’s mama had been a great beauty and the toast of the ton. Such an exquisite creature could have gotten away with much that a plainer girl could not. But apparently the marquess did not realize that.
“Her mama was my sun, and moon, and stars.” Levisham’s sunken face seemed to cave in more upon itself. “After she died, I lost interest in everything but my children. I retired from society to nurse my grief and devote myself to raising them. I thought that here at Bellhaven I could protect them from any harm, from the evil and disease that plague the world. Only now do I see what a foolish hope that was. Death cannot be outwitted.”
Vinson looked sharply at his host’s shrunken face and body. So Levisham was a dying man. What, Ashley wondered uneasily, would happen to Caro when her father was dead? Custom dictated that she become the ward of the new marquess and head of the family, Tilford Kelsie, who was both a drunkard and a mama’s boy. Furthermore, Ashley had not liked the way that bacon-faced Tilford had eyed Caro the previous night in the drawing room, rather like a hungry cat stalking a mouse.
What kind of life would poor Caro lead once she no longer had her father to protect her?
Chapter 8
When Ashley finished dressing for dinner that night, he sent his valet on a reconnoitering mission. Swope returned with confirmation of his master’s suspicion that Grace and Jane Kelsie, as they had the previous night, were again hovering just around the turn in the hall, waiting for him to emerge. Such overeager females, no matter how lovely, disgusted Ashley.
Opening the door silently, he tiptoed down the hall in the opposite direction to the back stairs and took them to the first floor. Heading toward the drawing room, he heard, through the half-opened door of the dining room, Olive Kelsie’s shrilly raised voice. “But I would never have locked dearest Caroline in her room. She is dreadfully mistaken.”
Lady Caro Page 6
