The Loves of Lord Granton (The Changing Fortunes Series, Vol. 2)

by M C Beaton

  “I suppose you have the right of it, Mama,” said Annabelle.

  “And he will be here,” said her mother. “You will take walks together and dine together. Nothing can spoil your chances.”

  “He does have a wild reputation, Mama.”

  “That was in his youth. All men are wild before marriage.”

  A rare gleam of amusement lit up Annabelle’s brown eyes. “Was Papa wild before his marriage?”

  “Alas, yes, my dear,” said Sir Giles, ruefully shaking his head. “But once I met your mama, I became a reformed character.” Sir Giles was fond of referring to his hellfire youth when in fact it had been staid and dull and deprived of either adventure or incident. He had inherited Townley Hall from his father and had lived there ever since.

  It was a large, square, comfortable mansion bedecked with many bad oil paintings. Art, as Sir Giles was fond of saying, was his one weakness, but he had an unfailing eye for the tasteless and mediocre and liked to brag of discovering hitherto unknown artists, which meant their services had not cost much. Witness to this was a family portrait of himself, his wife, and his daughter that hung in the drawing room which showed them grouped round a pedestaled urn in the gardens of the Hall. Sir Giles was leaning on the urn, his legs nonchalantly crossed. The artist had not been very good at legs. Lady Giles stared out of the canvas with a peculiar expression of outrage on her face, and her daughter, seated on the very green grass at her feet, looked as if she was about to be sick. The artist had meant to portray a dove flying overhead, but it appeared to be growing out of the top of Lady Crown’s hat.

  They maintained a large staff of servants who were loyal to them, jobs being hard to find in the country.

  “Where are you going?” Lady Crown asked her husband as he rose to his feet and began to pull on his gloves.

  “I am going to call on Hadley at the rectory,” said Sir Giles. “I have some parish matters to discuss with him.”

  “I will come with you,” said Annabelle, who suddenly craved an audience for her “triumph.”

  Soon they were entering the rectory drawing room to be pleasantly fussed and fawned over by Mrs. Hadley.

  “Do tell us all about this Lord Granton,” begged Amy, while Harriet chorused, “Yes, do tell.”

  Annabelle gave a satisfied little smile. “I really do not think I should discuss my fiancé with you.”

  Frederica was not present. Mary, Amy, and Harriet looked at Annabelle in dismay. “We did not know you were to be wed!” exclaimed Mary, thinking of the poem she had started working on to impress Lord Granton.

  “My daughter is joking,” Sir Giles said hurriedly. “Lord Granton is simply coming on a visit.”

  “Then why did you call him your fiancé?” demanded Mary.

  Annabelle adopted what she hoped was a worldly air. “When an unmarried gentleman travels to the country to stay at the home of a friend who has an unmarried daughter, then it is a foregone conclusion that he has marriage in mind.”

  “But he has not actually proposed,” insisted Mary.

  “Oh, I am sure he will,” said Annabelle, smoothing down a fold of her skirt.

  She noticed to her annoyance that the girls had visibly brightened again, and resolved to make sure that Lord Granton never called at the rectory. Sir Giles was now deep in conversation with the rector.

  The door opened and Frederica came in. She curtsied to Sir Giles—who did not notice her—and then to Annabelle.

  “We are trying to find out all about Lord Granton, Frederica,” said Amy.

  “I thought we already knew all there was to know.” Frederica sat down with that vague air of boredom that always seemed to cling to her. Annabelle surveyed her with irritation.

  “And what could such as you know about the viscount?” demanded Annabelle.

  “Gossip,” replied Frederica, turning to look through the window at a blackbird pecking for worms on the lawn. “That Lord Granton is a heart-breaking rake who nearly drove one lady to suicide and who has fought a duel.”

  “I do not like to think that our guest is being gossiped about in this vulgar way.” Annabelle bridled. “How did you come by such tittle-tattle?”

  Mrs. Hadley shot a fulminating look at Frederica and rushed into the breach. “You must realize, Miss Annabelle, that we at our humble rectory always have your welfare at heart.” Poor Mrs. Hadley saw any hopes of invitations to social events fading away. She began to praise Annabelle fulsomely on her gown and her beauty until Annabelle began to smile. Mrs. Hadley had in fact culled the gossip from one of her own maids who was friend to a maid at the Hall who had eavesdropped on her employers.

  Lord Granton and Major Delisle arrived at Townley Hall a week later under a blistering sun on an exceedingly humid day.

  As his carriage bowled up the long drive to the Hall Lord Granton experienced an unusual frisson of excitement. He felt suddenly sure that something exciting was going to enter his life. This Miss Annabelle Crown had been at the Season, that much he had learned from her father, but he could not quite bring her face to mind. Perhaps for once in his dissolute life, he might actually fall in love.

  He and Delisle climbed down from the carriage. Sir Giles himself came out to meet them.

  “Welcome!” he cried. “You are both welcome. Come in, come in! You must be tired after your long journey.”

  He would have taken both of them to the drawing room to introduce them to his wife and daughter, but Lord Granton protested that he would like to bathe and change out of his traveling clothes. So the butler took them abovestairs and showed them two well-appointed bedchambers. Lord Granton’s valet set about laying out clean clothes for his master and demanded that a bath be carried up.

  Downstairs in the drawing room, Annabelle and her mother waited impatiently.

  But Lord Granton, after he had bathed, realized he had not had much sleep the night before, and the heaviness and heat of the day were making his eyes droop.

  He climbed into the high bed and fell soundly asleep and was awakened much later by the ringing of the dressing bell.

  His valet appeared and said, “The family dine at six, my lord.”

  Not quite country hours but not London either, thought Lord Granton, stretching and yawning. Major Harry Delisle came in and lounged in a chair by the window while Lord Granton was dressed. He looked out the window.

  “Pleasant here,” he said, “after the hurly and burly of London.”

  “There wasn’t much hurly-burly when we were there,” pointed out Lord Granton, his voice muffled by the cambric shirt his valet was pulling over his head. “Everyone had left Town.” His head emerged. “I trust our hostess is not offended by our nonappearance, but I confess I was deuced tired.”

  “Guilty of the same thing,” said the major. “Slept like a log.”

  He waited patiently while the viscount was helped into a black evening coat, knee breeches, silk clocked stockings, and pumps. “I wonder what Miss Annabelle is like,” commented the major, watching the viscount’s long white fingers searching in his jewel box for a stick pin.

  “We shall see.” Lord Granton deftly placed a sapphire in the snowy folds of his cravat. “Let us join the ladies.”

  When they entered the drawing room, various people rose to greet him. He bowed to Lady Giles and turned and bowed to Annabelle, his eyes registering appreciatively that the girl was indeed pretty. She was wearing a white silk gown with an overdress of green silk, and on her head was one of the new Turkish turbans. She dimpled and curtsied prettily.

  Then he and the major were introduced to the rest of the company, Squire Huxtable and his wife, a Lord and Lady Blackstone, and the rector, Dr. Hadley.

  The conversation at dinner Lord Granton damned as dull and provincial. But his friend, Harry Delisle, was not so critical. He appeared enchanted by Annabelle and happy with the company. The dinner was excellent and the wine good. Warm evening air floated in through the open windows. The major began to feel happy and relaxed.
The viscount found the company boring: Harry found it undemanding and pleasant.

  Why cannot I relax and appreciate this company, this life? wondered Lord Granton. Why am I so critical? I found London increasingly tedious. Miss Annabelle is vastly taking. It is bad mannered and ungrateful of me to show my boredom.

  He set himself to please, telling anecdotes of London life that the company eagerly absorbed and saved up for subsequent less distinguished dinner parties.

  When the ladies retired and the port was passed around, Lord Granton addressed the rector. “It is a difficult life in the country for a parson, I think, when you have no wife to support you in the parish duties.”

  “On the contrary, my lord,” said Dr. Hadley, looking puzzled. “I do have a wife and four daughters.”

  “They are not indisposed, I trust?”

  “No, my lord, all are well.”

  Lord Granton raised his thin brows. He had never approved of the practice of clergymen being invited to dinner at great houses while their wives and families were excluded. He thought that in Dr. Hadley’s place he would have refused the invitation and then immediately realized that Dr. Hadley could not do so because he owed his living to the Crowns.

  “So you have four daughters,” he pursued. “A heavy liability.”

  “I would have liked a son,” said Mr. Hadley ruefully. “What man would not? And yet my girls are good and beautiful. Mary, the eldest, is very clever and talented; Amy and Harriet are pretty and charming.”

  “You said four daughters.”

  “Ah, yes, there is also Frederica.” He fell silent.

  “Tell me about Frederica,” inquired Lord Granton curiously.

  “There is nothing much to tell, my lord. I am very fond of my youngest. Frederica is but eighteen years, and alas, what can a young girl expect in life but a suitable marriage? Frederica, unlike her sisters, is a trifle plain and too bookish.”

  “Ah, novels.”

  “Not entirely. Works of travel, Greek classics, philosophy—most unfeminine.”

  “I am of the opinion that a young lady with a well-informed mind would have well-informed children.”

  “Provided she did not have girls,” said Dr. Hadley with an indulgent laugh. “Sir Giles, this is most excellent port. I am always saying that the fare in the Hall rivals that of the best London tables.”

  Lord Granton took a mild dislike to the rector. He surely did not need to fawn so blatantly. He wondered about this Frederica. If the little girl was bookish, it followed that she was intelligent and sensitive. How did she view her father’s behavior in front of the Crowns? He dismissed the question. Toad-eating was the way of the world.

  Annabelle played the harp for them when they joined the ladies in the drawing room. Her plump white arms moved smoothly over the strings. The light from an oil lamp behind her shone on her face. Outside the long open French windows, birds chirped sleepily in the branches to the sound of the harp.

  Perhaps I have been looking for contentment in the wrong places, thought Lord Granton. Perhaps I should retire to the country and forget London and foreign parts.

  At the end of the evening, Sir Giles said the family would be going to church in the morning, the following day being a Sunday. Perhaps Lord Granton would like to rest instead?

  But the viscount said he would be delighted to attend. Annabelle thought of making an entrance in the church with him and wondered if she could somehow get him to take her arm.

  When they entered the gloom of the church the following morning, Annabelle was accompanied by her mother while the gentlemen walked behind.

  The Hadley girls were already in their pew, one of the high old-fashioned type that blocked off a view of anything much other than the altar and the pulpit.

  Dr. Hadley preached a surprisingly good sermon. Amy and Harriet fidgeted and giggled and whispered all through it. Amy longed to stand up and look over the back of the pew to see if Lord Granton was in the church. Mary frowned at her two livelier sisters. She was sure Lord Granton had only to see her to be struck by the fineness of her eyes. The Hadley sisters were in their best gowns with the exception of Frederica, who was wearing a simple white muslin and a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with a wreath of daisies plucked from the rectory lawn. Mrs. Hadley noticed those “ridiculous” daisies only when they all rose at the end of the service to leave the pew, but she scarcely could snatch the offending flowers from her daughter’s bonnet in the middle of the church.

  Annabelle had told her mother to make sure the Hadley girls were not introduced to either Lord Granton or his friend Major Delisle “for they will push themselves forward so, Mama.”

  But it was the major who noticed the girls clustered behind their father on the church porch. “Do introduce us to your family, Rector,” he said.

  Lord Granton noticed the rolling-eyed look of a frightened horse that the rector cast in the direction of Lady Crown. But the man dutifully did introduce his wife, then Mary, Amy, and Harriet. The major wondered if Mary suffered from indigestion because on curtsying to himself and Lord Granton, she primped up her lips and fixed Granton with a steady look and winced. Mary was trying to convey to Lord Granton that she was his intellectual equal and not like Amy and Harriet, who were giggling and flirting with their eyes over their fans.

  “Four daughters,” said Lord Granton. “That’s what you said, Dr. Hadley. Where is the fourth?”

  “Oh, Frederica,” said the rector dismally. “She is somewhere about.”

  “Frederica!” called Mrs. Hadley shrilly. “Come here!”

  Lord Granton looked over their heads and saw a slim figure approaching them through the tombstones. Frederica was wearing a muslin gown that hung rather loosely on her slim body. He wondered if it was one of her plumper sisters’ hand-me-downs. On her head was a shady straw bonnet embellished with daisies around the crown. Her silvery fair hair was worn straight down her back, and as she came nearer, he could see that her large gray eyes held a wary look.

  Lord Granton felt bored and restless again. What on earth was he doing standing in a country churchyard, striving to be pleasant to dull people? Frederica was introduced to him. He met her gaze and received a slight jolt. For in those large eyes boredom such as he himself was enduring was plain to see.

  “How delightful to make your acquaintance, Miss Frederica,” he said.

  She did not reply, merely nodding slightly and looking gravely at him.

  “The weather is very fine, is it not?” he pursued.

  But her three sisters pushed forward, answering for her, assuring this handsome lord that, yes, the weather was tremendously fine, that they thought the thunderstorm had marked the end of the good weather, but wonder upon wonders, the sun had shone again; he must have brought the good weather with him. And all the while the banter and flirting went on, his eyes followed Frederica, who was once more moving away.

  He was amazed that Frederica’s lack of interest in him should cause him pique. He continued to watch her until she had rounded the corner of the church and disappeared from view.

  Chapter Two

  Had Major Delisle been as bored as his friend, Lord Granton would have found some excuse to take his leave. However, the major kept saying how jolly country life was and what a splendid time they were having and how pretty Miss Annabelle was, and the viscount did not have the heart to spoil his fun.

  They went on picnics and rides through the heavy Cotswold air and under a burning remorseless sun.

  Annabelle flirted and chattered prettily, but the more she flirted and the more she chattered, the lower Lord Granton’s spirits fell.

  One afternoon after he had endured a week at Townley Hall and after a particularly filling dinner, he pleaded a headache and slipped out of the hall after changing into top boots and breeches. He made his way down the long drive under the fluttering lime trees and headed briskly along the road, feeling more relaxed and free as he put distance between himself and his hosts.

  He
saw a small wood off to his right and climbed over a stile and around a field and entered the wood, enjoying the late sunlight slanting through the trees. At the end of a winding path, he saw the dark gleam of water. He came out at a still, round pool and there, sitting on a mossy bank at the edge of it, he found Frederica. She had her back to him, but she was hatless and he recognized that odd silvery hair.

  He wanted the evening to himself and turned around to retreat, but his boot cracked on a dried twig. He knew she would hear it, so he reluctantly turned back. Frederica rose to her feet and curtsied. She looked poised for flight.