“I do not,” Caro replied truthfully. She was perfectly aware that handsome Corinthians like Ashley did not fall in love with anecdotes like herself. She had not led that sheltered a life.
“Yes, you do, you silly little fool,” Grace cried spitefully. She had long cursed an unjust fate that had wasted fortune and birth upon such a paltry girl as Caro instead of bequeathing it to her; she, with her great beauty, was far more deserving. “You hope he means to make you an offer!”
“I do not!” Caro retorted, knowing that to be an impossibility. “You know that I am determined never to marry!”
Grace’s cornflower-blue eyes glittered cruelly. “You say that only because no man would marry you except for your fortune.”
Grace was right. Never would a man look at Caro in the adoring way that Mercer Corte looked at Emily. The thought of what it would be like to have Ashley look at her that way made her knees grow weak for an instant before her good senses took hold and reminded her that she was a pea goose to think of such a thing.
Caro examined herself despairingly in her mirror. All her flaws seemed to leap out at her from her reflection: eyes too big, face too thin, skin too sallow. If only she could do something with her complexion and mousy, uncontrollable hair. She had wanted to have it cut short, but her aunt had objected strenuously, telling her father that it would make her look even less like a lady than she already did.
Having recently seen an advertisement that called Gowland’s Lotion “the most pleasant and effective remedy for all complaints to which the Face and Skin are liable,” Caro surreptitiously acquired a supply. Her face and skin had so many problems that she would be a true test of Gowland’s claims.
For the first time in her life, she began to pay close attention to her clothes, none of which, she thought despairingly, seemed to make her look very attractive. She tried hard to act more ladylike, too, walking at a slower pace and even fluttering her fan occasionally.
Each morning, Caro would peer eagerly into her mirror to see whether Gowland’s Lotion had yet changed her complexion for the better. And each morning, she was disappointed. Nevertheless, she persevered in using it lavishly.
All of her other efforts seemed to go for naught, too. Inevitably, Ashley caught her in some childish caper when she had momentarily reverted to her old ways. It was positively perverse the way he managed to come upon her when she was climbing an elm tree to rescue Muffy again or when her father’s hounds had just left their enthusiastic welcome of her imprinted on her skirt. No wonder Ashley thought her nothing more than an amusing child.
One night Ashley asked Caro whether she would like to ride in his curricle the following day so that he could show her his chestnuts’ pace. She hesitated, then replied truthfully, “I should like it above anything, but I fear that I must make my rounds tomorrow.”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Your rounds, elfin?” She explained that once a week she visited the ailing among her father’s tenants and dependents.
“Let me take you around,” Ashley volunteered.
“You will be bored,” Caro warned.
Not half so bored, he thought, as he would be trapped in her cousins’ company. Smiling, he said gallantly, “How could I be bored in your company, elfin?”
Her heart seemed to bump against her ribs. Determined to know the truth, she bluntly asked him why he was paying her so much attention.
“Except for Emily, who loves Mercer Corte, you are the only girl here that is not trying to leg shackle me,” he told her. “You, child, are my armor against the others.”
Caro was deeply wounded that Ashley saw her not as a woman, but only as an amusing child to be used as a shield against women who wanted to rivet him. Despite the lump in her throat, she managed to say lightly, “Yes, you are quite safe with me.”
The following morning, Vinson was abruptly summoned to attend Levisham in his estate room. When Ashley entered the chamber, the marquess rose from behind his massive desk that half-filled the small room and gestured to him to take a straight-backed chair. As Ashley complied, he was again struck by how frail his host looked.
“I shall waste no time but go immediately to the reason that I called you here,” Levisham said abruptly, his directness reminding Ashley of his daughter. “We each face serious dilemmas. I propose a solution that would solve both of them, I believe, to our mutual satisfaction.”
“I fear I do not comprehend,” Ashley said, at a loss to know what his host was talking about.
“You must wed, and I must marry off my daughter. If you were to wed her, it would solve both our problems.”
Ashley was so thunderstruck that he blurted, “But Caro is a child!”
“A very temporary state,” Levisham replied calmly.
“Nevertheless, my only reason for marrying is to obtain an heir and a gracious chatelaine. A girl barely out of the schoolroom will not do.”
“I grant you that Caro is young for her age, but in no time she will make a lucky man as excellent a wife as her mama did me. I propose to make you that lucky man.”
“How very kind of you,” Ashley said dryly, “but why is it that Caro must be married off in such haste?”
“Because I fear that I do not have long to live. The fever that struck me last spring has weakened my heart. When I die, Caro, unless she is married, will become a ward of her cousin Tilford. She will be at the mercy of him and his evil mama, who will force her to marry him.”
“Good God!” Ashley exclaimed, horrified at the prospect of Caro being shackled to that drunken dolt. “Why would your sister-in-law want such a union? It is clear that she does not even like your daughter.”
Levisham’s lip curled contemptuously. “Olive has two driving passions: ambition and greed. It is true that she detests my daughter, but she lusts for the great fortune that Caro inherited from her mother. Furthermore, Tilford cuts such a sorry figure that he is not likely to win the competition for any other great heiress.”
“His mother would not rest until she has squeezed every bit of spirit and liveliness out of Caro,” Ashley said in disgust. “It cannot be permitted to happen.”
Levisham gave him an approving smile from across the broad desk. “You have a quick understanding, like your father. The only way that I can ensure Caro escapes that fate is to see, before I die, that she is married to a man who will care for her properly, a somewhat older man who has the patience and experience to guide her with kindness and affection into adulthood.” Levisham fixed Ashley with a penetrating eye. “I believe you are that man.”
Ashley shifted on the uncomfortable straight-backed chair. “Why me?”
“I always had great admiration for your father, who was as honorable a man as I have ever met. I have made inquiries of you. Your character is as highly regarded as his. In addition, you have an amiable disposition and you like Caro, even though you are put off by her age. You are the only man I know that I am willing to trust my daughter to.”
“How flattering, but why the devil should I wed a hoydenish child?”
Levisham plucked a quill pen from the inkstand and absently smoothed its feather. “Because you must marry, and Caro was on your father’s list of acceptable young ladies.”
Ashley was horrified. Had everyone at Bellhaven overheard his conversation with Mercer Corte? How could he tell Levisham that the earl of Bourn, whom he so greatly admired, would never countenance Caro as his heir’s wife?
“I hardly need remind you,” Levisham continued, “that Caro’s breeding is excellent and her fortune very large. Her husband will control it once she is married, for I dare not turn it over to her to squander.”
“Caro does not strike me as a spendthrift,” Ashley objected.
“She would not squander it on jewels, expensive gowns, and other extravagances like most young women, but on the needy—and the unscrupulous. In her kindhearted innocence, she has frequently been an easy mark for those with a sad, untrue tale.” Levisham’s left hand continued alter
nately to ruffle and smooth the feather of the pen that he held in his right. “She is constitutionally incapable of resisting anyone who sheds a tear in her presence and must be protected from her own generosity.”
“I might waste her wealth,” Ashley warned.
Levisham gave him a shrewd smile. “You might, but you won’t. In fact, you would manage it prudently and for her benefit, would you not.”
“Yes, of course I would,” Ashley said impatiently. “But it is not a responsibility I seek. Nor do I want to wed a child, and most particularly one who does not wish to marry me or any other man.”
Levisham sighed. “I fear that my own selfishness is much to blame for that. She is so much like her dear mama that I could not bear the thought of losing her to a husband. I encouraged her distaste for marriage, which was not difficult. This neighborhood offers several unfortunate examples of the misery that can befall a wife. Caro, who cannot bear to see another suffer, took their experiences much to heart.” The marquess dipped the point of his pen into the inkpot and began doodling absently on a sheet of paper. “But I have seen the way that she looks at you, and I am certain that in time you could, if you were of a mind to, capture her heart. You are reputed to make love charmingly.”
“I hardly think that would win the approval of a prospective father-in-law,” Ashley said grimly. “Furthermore, if you overheard my talk with Mercer Corte, which I think you must have to be aware of my father’s list, you must also know that there is another woman in my life.”
“Yes, I know about your mistress,” Levisham said calmly.
“Since we are speaking plainly, Caro deserves better than a husband who loves his mistress.”
“Yes,” her father agreed, “but she insists that she wants a marriage in which her husband has another interest.”
“But, my lord,” Ashley cried, profoundly shocked, “whatever you daughter’s naive sentiments may be, surely my attachment must make me ineligible in your eyes.”
“Not at all. In truth, I prefer it, too.”
Ashley’s jaw dropped. This was not a conversation he would ever have envisioned having with a prospective father-in-law. “Good God, why?”
“A man with other interests will make fewer demands on her.” The marquess’s face clouded, and the pen slid unnoticed from his fingers. “She is as tiny and delicate as her mama.”
Tiny perhaps, Ashley thought, but Caro was about as delicate as a steel rod.
“And too young and fragile for endless childbearing.” Levisham’s face suddenly sagged with grief, and his voice broke. “Just as her mama was when we married. But I had such a passion for her that I could not keep my hands off her.” His voice dropped to an agonizing whisper. “Childbirth and miscarriages sapped her health, and she died giving birth to Caro’s little sister, who lived but forty-eight hours.”
“So, if I were to marry Caro, you prefer to have me in my mistress’s bed rather than my wife’s,” Ashley said sharply. “While I have no wish to turn my wife into a brood mare, I must remind you that the reason I must marry is for an heir.”
“But once she has given you that...” Levisham broke off, asking abruptly, “Whom else on your father’s list would you prefer to marry?”
The question silenced the viscount, for the answer was clearly no one.
Levisham smiled shrewdly. “You see. And I promise you that Caro will never raise any objection to your mistress.”
“I think you are wrong about that, and that is why I cannot marry her.” Ashley had come to feel like a protective big brother to Caro. He was too fond of her to offer her a marriage that would hold no happiness for her.
“I know my daughter very well, and I assure you that she will not object. You said that if you found such a woman, you would marry her.”
Yes, Ashley had said that, but Caro deserved better. “I cannot—”
Levisham silenced him with a wave of his hand. “How can you be so cruel as to consign her to Tilford and Olive Kelsie? Do not give me your answer yet. Think about it for a few days.”
Chapter 10
It was a subdued, thoughtful Ashley who took Caro on her calls later that morning, but she seemed not to notice as she told him about the people they were to meet. He was surprised by how much she knew of the history and families, the pleasures and problems of her father’s tenants and retainers.
Ashley was struck by the genuine affection that the people they visited had for Caro, and by hers for them. He was struck, too, by how good she was with the children and the ill. There was a maturity about her in these moments that he had not seen before.
One of their stops was at the cottage of a tenant farmer whose five-year-old son was slowly recuperating from scarlet fever. Little more than skin and bones, he lay listlessly on a narrow straw bed in a corner of the cottage’s one room.
The abode was clean, its bare stone floor well swept and scrubbed, but sparsely furnished. A long trestle table of rough pine, flanked by two benches, took up the middle of the room. Ashley suspected that an old, much scarred pine chest against one wall held the family’s entire wardrobe. The wall across from it was dominated by a stone fireplace with cooking pots upon its brick hearth. A roughly woven curtain had been drawn around the corner opposite the boy’s pallet to hide his parents’ bed. The child’s blue eyes, still dull from his illness, lighted with joy at the sight of Caro. She had brought him a top, striped with green and yellow and red, to play with and a basket of delicacies from Bellhaven’s kitchen to tease his nonexistent appetite. She coaxed him into letting her feed him while she enthralled him with lively tales about knights. and dragons.
Ashley, who sat down on one of the benches at the rough trestle table, enjoyed Caro’s imaginative bent for storytelling as much as the boy did.
“A miracle it is, the way he eats for her,” the child’s appreciative mother told Ashley. “She has a way with little ones. A dear, kindhearted girl, she is.” The woman’s face darkened. “But there be those who would take advantage of her kindness.”
Ashley remembered what Levisham had said about Caro being the prey of frauds.
“Innocent little thing can never resist tears, and there be some who would cry to her, not from trouble but for gain!”
When Caro rose from the boy’s bedside to leave, he clutched at her hand until she promised that she would come back another day and tell him more stories.
Later, after Caro and Ashley were back in his curricle, she asked, “May I handle the ribbons?”
He turned them over to her, and she proved to be a natural and daring driver. Watching her, Ashley nodded approvingly. Another one of her unconventional, but very real, accomplishments.
Only once did she get into trouble, and that was not her fault. As they rounded a curve on a narrow stretch of road at a fast pace, they met a cart, piled high with corn, hogging the roadway.
Ashley grabbed the reins. It required all his skill to miss the vehicle and keep his own upright. He was forced to drive partially off the road, and Caro was thrown against him. Reflexively his arm shot around her to hold her protectively against him. When he again had the curricle under control, he looked down at her frightened face, which seemed all big gray eyes and provocatively opened lips.
Their gazes met for an electric moment, and Ashley was nearly overcome by a temptation, as strong as it was surprising, to kiss her. But, remembering the revulsion that she had expressed to him the day they had met, he reluctantly quelled his urge and removed his arm from about her. It would not do to frighten her.
Until today Ashley had thought of Caro only as an entertaining child, but accompanying her on calls had given him a very different view of her. No longer did he doubt her father’s prediction that she would eventually make a man an excellent wife. If she wished to marry him. What irony that she wanted to wed no more than Ashley himself did. If he accepted her father’s proposal, would she even agree to marry him?
As the curricle came into sight of Bellhaven, Ashley said tho
ughtfully, “You are so good with children that I do not understand why you do not wish to wed and have your own.”
Pain flashed in the gray eyes for an instant before her delicate chin rose defiantly. “I am determined to remain a spinster and devote myself to Papa as Abigail Foster did. Not that her father was worthy of her! Indeed, I do not understand how she could have been so devoted to such a demanding, ungrateful curmudgeon!”
“I apprehend, elfin, that you did not like him.”
Caro’s gray eyes flashed angrily. “No, I did not! Instead of rewarding her for her devotion to him, he tipped her the double.”
Ashley’s brows rose questioningly. “How?”
“Abigail turned down several handsome offers to devote herself to him, and he promised to provide her with an independent income on his death so that she might set up her own household. Instead, when his will was read, it was found that he had placed her portion under her brother’s control until she marries, which, of course, she never will. Surely her father must have known how it would be for Abigail with her brother’s odious wife.”
“Her brother lives under the cat’s paw, does he?”
Caro nodded her head in vigorous assent. “He is very nearly as henpecked as my poor uncle was by Aunt Olive.”
“What did the odious wife do to Abigail?” Ashley asked, firmly holding his chestnuts to a trot.
“Had her packed off to Scotland to live with a cantankerous old aunt, whom Abigail has always cordially disliked.”
Ashley’s face tightened into a frown. An even worse fate would await Caro if she were not married before her father died. “So Abigail now finds herself in the very situation that she had sought to escape by not marrying.” His voice was suddenly brusque. “She might have wed a man who would have made her very happy. Remember her, elfin, when you would reject any thought of matrimony.”
She looked at him with puzzled eyes before she said briskly, “It does not signify, for no man is likely to want to marry me.”
Lady Caro Page 8
