by M C Beaton
Aloud, he said politely, “It is well known I am not interested in marriage, and although you seem an estimable lady to me …”
Aunt Rebecca giggled like a schoolgirl. “I’faith, my lord, you flatter me. I do not propose marriage for myself, but on behalf of Harriet.”
“I was not aware Miss Harriet hoped for a proposal from me,” said the marquess coldly, thinking. The minx! Never say she has told her aunt about that kiss and is trying to coerce me into marriage.
“Harriet knows nothing of this,” said Aunt Rebecca firmly.
The marquess’s features relaxed. “Then what leads you to suppose I should wish to marry Miss Harriet?”
Aunt Rebecca peered at him hopefully from under the eaves of her bonnet, but he did not look in the slightest like a man in love.
“You will naturally wish to marry sometime,” she said cautiously. “Most men do.”
“I have not felt that urge as yet, nor am I likely to.”
“Oh, but you will,” pleaded Aunt Rebecca, “and then you may marry someone quite unsuitable. Gentlemen often do. The curate at Lower Maxton, he said he would never marry, not having either the money or the inclination. But he did. He married Miss Oglethorpe, quite a coarse sort of girl. Most unsuitable. But it was a very fine spring, and gentlemen do silly things in the spring.”
“You are well versed in the ways of our sex,” said the marquess dryly. “I appreciate your concern for your niece, Miss Clifton, but I am afraid I must reject your very flattering proposal.”
“I will find someone,” said Aunt Rebecca, wearily heaving herself to her feet. “Harriet has worked and slaved to look after me. There must be some man who will appreciate her. She should have a home of her own, and children. Thank you for your courtesy and patience, my lord.”
He rose to his feet and bowed, then went to hold open the door for her. “May I offer you my carriage, Miss Clifton?”
“It is not far,” said Aunt Rebecca. “I would rather walk.”
He escorted her to the step and watched her shabby figure trailing off along the side of the square.
And then quite suddenly he thought of Harriet married to someone else, someone who would hold her in his arms, kiss her, take her to bed, and give her children. Perhaps even Bertram? Bertram had been bitter and sulky before he went to bed, announcing his firm intention of calling on Harriet as soon as possible. He would find she was to be banished to the country and would no doubt propose on the spot, and there was really nothing he, the marquess, could do about it, for Bertram’s doting mother would certainly let her darling boy wed the girl of his choice.
Hatless, he ran after Aunt Rebecca, catching up with her in Pall Mall.
“Miss Clifton,” he said. “You may tell Miss Harriet I will call on her at three o’clock.”
“I will do so,” said Aunt Rebecca gravely. “But it would be better to arrange to meet her, say, at the Piccadilly gate of Green Park. I fear Lady Bentley would not allow her to see you.”
“Very well,” he said.
Aunt Rebecca curtsied and walked sedately off.
That dissipated young blood, Mr. Postlethwaite, stood on the steps of Brooks’s in St. James’s Street and tried to rub some of the night’s fatigue from his eyes. “The deuce!” he said to his friend, Jeremy Pomfret. “There’s an old gel covered with scarves on t’other side of the road dancing a jig.”
“It’s the gin,” said Mr. Pomfret wisely. “Pay her no heed.”
Chapter Five
The marquess was long to wonder why on earth he had picked such a public rendezvous. As he approached the Piccadilly gate of Green Park, he was hailed by Mr. Tommy Gresham and two of his other friends.
“Where to, John?” cried Mr. Gresham, one of the very few who called the marquess by his first name.
“I am taking a walk,” said the marquess. “I am going into the park to commune with nature.”
“Don’t do that,” said Mr. Gresham earnestly, “or you’ll get like that cousin of yours and end up writing bad poetry. I say, that’s a deuced fine ladybird.” He fumbled for his eyeglass and then raised it to admire a young miss who was walking sedately along with her maid.
“I had enough of people last night, Tommy,” said the marquess. “A little of my own company would do me a power of good.”
“We’ll walk with you a little and then we’ll leave you to the birds and trees,” said Mr. Gresham cheerfully.
The marquess saw Harriet on the far side of Piccadilly. “Look, Tommy,” he said urgently as they all moved into the park together. “You are de trop.”
“De what?” asked Mr. Gresham vaguely. “What are you doing, Charlie?” Charlie Brentham, one of his friends, had jumped on a park bench.
“Bet I can walk along the top of it without falling over,” said Charlie.
“Bet you can’t,” chorused his friends.
Harriet appeared at the gate of the park, a slim figure in black.
She looked across to where the marquess stood. Charlie teetered along the top of the bench and then fell with a resounding crash. Everyone cheered.
Harriet turned and started to walk quickly away. The marquess cursed under his breath, then turned and ran after her.
Tommy Gresham let out a war whoop, and he and his friends ran after the marquess. Am I like this? thought the marquess wildly. An overgrown schoolboy?
He turned and put a hand on his friend’s large chest. “Down, boy,” he said. “Good dog. Go home.”
“But—” Mr. Gresham began to protest.
“No!” said the marquess firmly.
Harriet scurried along Bolton Street, her head down and her cheeks flaming.
Aunt Rebecca had merely told her in a mysterious way that she was to meet the Marquess of Arden at the Piccadilly gate of Green Park at three. When she saw him with his noisy friends, her one thought was that he meant to make a game of her. No one who wished to communicate anything important or serious turned up with a party of noisy bloods.
“Miss Harriet!”
She swung about and curtsied.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I should have arranged to meet you in a less busy place. Oh, blast! Good afternoon. Lady Jenkins. May I present Miss Harriet Clifton. Miss Harriet, Lady—You have met. Yes, Lady Jenkins, it does look like rain, and normally I would be happy to stand on this drafty street corner discoursing on the weather for an age, but I have important business to attend to. Your arm, Miss Harriet.”
Despite her nervousness, Harriet giggled. “Poor Lady Jenkins, she looked so startled. Are you usually so abrupt?”
“I usually do not have any reason to be rude. I am anxious to—Afternoon, Colonel. Yes, yes. Looks like rain. May I present Miss Harriet Clifton? Miss Clifton, Colonel Merriweather.”
“I say,” said the colonel, his little eyes twinkling in a groggy face, “ain’t you that heroine who rescued the old Duchess Thingummy?”
“Yes, indeed she is,” snapped the marquess. “Good day to you, Colonel.”
“Why is London so full of such curst people?” he muttered, leading the way into Berkeley Square. “We will go and eat ices in Gunter’s, and if anyone approaches our table, I will bite them.”
“My dress is unsuitable,” pleaded Harriet, tugging at her old black silk gown.
He looked down at her with surprised arrogance. “If you are with me. Miss Harriet,” he said, “then you are suitable, no matter what you are wearing.”
The famous Gunter’s was founded in 1757 by an Italian pastry cook, Domenico Negri, who later took Gunter into partnership, making and selling all sorts of English, French, and Italian wet and dry sweetmeats, Cedrati and Bergamet chips, and Naples Divolini at the sign of the Pot and Pineapple in Berkeley Square. Gunter’s was also celebrated for its turtle soup, made from turtles killed in Honduras.
Gunter’s ices were famous, made from a secret recipe. But deliveries of ice depended on winds and tides. A small notice in the window stated: “Messrs Gunter respectfully beg to inf
orm the nobility and gentry who honor them with their custom that this day, having received one of their cargoes of ice by the Platoff from the Greenland seas, they are able to supply their cream fruit ices at their former prices.”
The marquess secured a table in a dark corner at the back of the confectioner’s, ordered ices for them both, and gave instructions they were not to be disturbed.
Harriet had never had an ice before. She gazed in wonder at the strawberry confection placed before her.
“Where did you get that scratch on your face?” demanded the marquess.
But Harriet was dreamily beginning to eat her strawberry ice. She thought she had never tasted anything quite so delicious in her life.
What a schoolgirl she is, thought the marquess impatiently. I must be mad to even think of proposing to her.
“If you can tear your mind away from that ice you are worshipping,” he said acidly, “you might try to show a little curiosity as to why I wished to see you.”
“Why did you wish to see me, my lord?” asked Harriet, raising her eyes to his. Her gaze was caught and held by his amber eyes. Her spoon clattered nervously against her plate, and she laid it down carefully.
The marquess studied her, from her scratched face under her dowdy bonnet, to the drab black of her gown. He thought she looked a fright. He thought someone ought to take her in hand. He suddenly thought that someone really ought to be himself.
“Will you marry me?” he said.
Harriet looked at him in a dazed way. “Why?”
“Why! Why does one usually want to get married?”
“From what I have observed, for the lady’s dowry, her title, her connections, her beauty, so I ask you again…. Why?”
The only answer he could think of was that he did not want anyone else to have her.
“I don’t know,” said the normally articulate and urbane marquess. He began to eat his half-melted ice.
Harriet studied him. Her heart felt heavy. To her horror she realized that she would have thrown herself into his arms right in the middle of Gunter’s if he had but said he loved her.
In a slightly tearful voice, she said, “Since your feelings on this matter appear to be somewhat vague, I am sure my rejection of your suit will not trouble you overmuch.”
“It puzzles me,” he said equably. “I gather you are to be banished to the country.”
“How did you learn that?”
“From Miss Clifton. Did she not tell you she called on me?”
“No. I assumed you had sent a footman to Hill Street with a message. Oh, dear, now I have it. Aunt Rebecca asked you to marry me.”
“Yes.”
“How shaming! You must pay no heed, Lord Arden. Aunt Rebecca is a dear. She worries overmuch about me.”
“Miss Harriet, do I look like the sort of man who would propose marriage simply because someone’s maiden aunt asked me to?”
She looked at his hard, handsome face, his impeccable tailoring, his easy air of elegance and breeding.
“No,” she said baldly. “I do not wish to be insulting, but have you slept at all?”
“No.”
“Ah, that is the reason. You do not know quite what you are doing or saying.”
This was very near the truth. The marquess felt the whole scene had an air of unreality about it. He felt as if he were in a play. The lowering sky above the plane trees of Berkeley Square cast a greenish light into the dim, genteel recesses of Gunter’s. The air was still and heavy. The girl with the scratched face before him was probably the dowdiest-looking female he had ever entertained. And here he was, trying to persuade her to marry him. Ridiculous!
“I have no wish to coerce you into marrying me,” he said. “Let us forget about the whole thing. I wish you well in your return to the country. How do you travel? By Lady Bentley’s traveling carriage?”
“No, my lord. The stage.”
“Then allow me to lend you mine.”
“You are very kind, but I must refuse.”
“Why? Your aunt would be glad of the comfort even if you are not.”
Harriet bit her lip. She remembered that this man had been—or perhaps still was—enamored of her sister. She could not bring herself to tell him that she dreaded the scene that would ensue with Cordelia if her sister found out she was to use the Marquess of Arden’s traveling carriage. Harriet felt she had used up all her courage in defying Cordelia by dancing at the ball. She simply shook her head.
“Would you like another ice?”
Again Harriet shook her head.
She felt sick and slightly dizzy. At least she could not be in love with the marquess. Love was supposed to be heady and tender and wonderful. It surely did not make one feel as if one had eaten something bad.
She looked so forlorn that something made him try again. “Think on it, Miss Harriet,” he urged. “Last night you were prepared to wed for security. I am offering you that security.”
“It is very gentlemanly of you,” said Harriet, “and it is very flattering to receive a proposal from such as you. There is no need to marry me. I have almost forgotten our intimacy in the garden at the ball. I am persuaded you were foxed.”
“If it makes you comfortable to think so, please do,” he said coldly.
The color drained from her face, leaving it looking thin and pale.
There was no use prolonging this painful discussion. All he wanted to do was get to bed and forget that Harriet Clifton had ever existed. He could not even bring himself to think of Cordelia. Another man had lusted after her, a man he did not recognize. Harriet, with her large eyes and dowdy clothes, had taken away his taste for full-blown mistresses, and he did not know how she had managed to do so.
He paid for the ices and escorted her outside. A heavy drop of rain struck his cheek.
“You will get wet,” he said.
“I have only a little way to go. Thank you, and good-bye, Lord Arden,” said Harriet.
And then she was gone.
The Marquess of Arden walked for a long time until it really began to rain in earnest. He realized he was cold, and his wet clothes were stricking to him. He would feel better after a few hours of sleep.
Harriet found her aunt sitting at the window in their private sitting room. Through the open bedroom doors, Harriet could see that their trunks were packed and ready. She removed her hat and sat down wearily.
“Well, what did Lord Arden say?” asked Aunt Rebecca eagerly.
Harriet sighed. “He proposed marriage to me, just as you had asked him to do, and I … I refused.”
Aunt Rebecca’s whole face seemed to crumple. “Why?” she wailed, beginning to sob. “He is such a fine man, and so rich and handsome. I do not understand you, Harriet. I am persuaded you are not indifferent to him. It would have meant a home for me. Oh, dear, dear. What shall I do? I cannot possibly face another winter of cold and loneliness. It is too much to bear.”
Aunt Rebecca was not a saint and therefore subject to as much self-pity as any other human being. For the first time in her life, she thought bitterly that Harriet was a very ungrateful little girl.
Before Harriet’s return, Aunt Rebecca had been indulging in rosy dreams. Harriet’s wedding would be the greatest affair of the Season. She, Aunt Rebecca, would be the envy of every matchmaking mama in town. They would whisper behind their fans that Miss Clifton was a cunning old genius to have secured such a prize for her dowerless niece. Now all of her magic castles were tumbling about her ears, and she cried and cried.
“Don’t, oh, please don’t,” begged Harriet. If Aunt Rebecca had gone into one of her famous bouts of hysterics, Harriet could have borne it; in fact, she felt she could have borne anything other than this desperate weeping.
“I did not realize I had been so selfish,” she said, half to herself. She gave her aunt a hug. “Please don’t cry, Aunt. Everything will be all right.”
The Marquess of Arden pulled his nightshirt on, settled his nightcap on his head, and cli
mbed into bed. He would sleep and awake refreshed to a world that did not contain Harriet Clifton.
A fire had been lit in his bedroom and the curtains tightly closed to shut out the wet afternoon. The sheets smelled of lavender. He stretched out with a sigh of satisfaction, his eyes already beginning to close. The clock on the mantel ticked soporifically.
And then came a scratching at the door, and his valet entered the room.
The marquess eyed him with one malevolent yellow eye. “What is it?” he demanded. “I told you I did not wish to be disturbed.”
“It is a Miss Clifton, my lord,” said the valet. “She is downstairs. I would have sent her away, but she assured me that you would be furious if I did so. Miss Clifton said she had an urgent matter, to discuss with you.”
“Damn the old fool to hell,” grumbled the marquess. “Oh, well, it will only take a minute. If she were younger I would show her the door.”
“But—” began the valet.
“Show her up,” snapped the marquess, staring in amazement at the look of disapproval on his valet’s face.
He could not be accused of impropriety in seeing an elderly lady in his bedchamber. He climbed out of bed, pulled on a dressing gown, thrust his feet into a pair of red morocco slippers, and sat down by the fire.
“Miss Clifton,” announced the valet in a hollow voice.
Harriet walked into the room, a deep blush staining her cheeks as she surveyed the marquess in all the glory of his undress.
“The deuce!” he said. “I thought my man meant your aunt had come back. Sit down. I will not eat you. In fact, I am quite sure I might even be glad to see you, were I not so confoundedly tired. Well, then, out with it. What brings you?”
Harriet wanted to turn and run away. He had risen at her entrance. Now he sat down again and crossed his ankles.
To her horror, she noticed his ankles were bare, and, not only that; he was only displaying several inches of naked leg under his dressing gown. She closed her eyes and prayed that she would not faint.
“Sit down,” he barked.
Harriet opened her eyes and, staring fixedly at the brass fender, sat down opposite him.
