The Countess

by Catherine Coulter

  Lord Anston grinned to display his own surprisingly perfect teeth, patted the man’s shoulder, and thwacked his lion-headed cane on the flagstone. He was wearing black satin shoes with large silver buckles. He strolled, I thought, very gracefully for a man walking two inches off the ground.

  If I’d moved more quickly, the man wouldn’t have seen me, but I was looking at those shoes of Lord Anston’s, wondering how they’d look on me; then I stared at a mud puddle not three feet away, mesmerized, because I knew he was going to step into it, and thus I didn’t move in time. He was on me in the next two seconds, smiling that white-toothed smile of his as he said, “What? No George? Poor fellow, he’ll grow fat with lack of exercise.”

  “George suffers from an ague right now. He’s improving, but it is still too soon to bring him out into the elements.” There weren’t really any elements to speak of, it being a bright sunny day, but the man merely nodded. He said, as would a wise man pontificating, “The ague is always a tricky business. I would keep George close until he’s able to stick his tail up straight and lick your hand at the same time.”

  I smiled, damn him, seeing George and that flagpole tail of his at breakfast, wagging wildly when Mrs. Dooley had hand-fed him a good dozen salmon balls, all small and hand-rolled.

  “I’ve got you now,” he said, and I took a step back before I realized it wasn’t at all necessary. He cocked his head to one side, in question, but I wasn’t about to tell him that I didn’t trust him or any other man any further than I could spit in that mud puddle some three feet away from me.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said finally, and he was frowning, perplexed, his head still cocked. “What I meant was if a man can make a woman laugh, she’s his.”

  I was shaking my head when he added, smiling again now, “That was a jest, but not really. Lord Anston told me who you were. I told him not to scare you off by calling out to you. And he said, ‘Eh, what, John? Scare off that Jameson girl? Ha! Not a scared bone in that melodious little body of hers. She sings, you know, which makes for a melodious throat. Perhaps the melodiousness extends to the rest of her, but I don’t really know anything else about her body. Maybe it’s sweet, who knows?’ Yes, that’s exactly what Lord Anston said. He also said he’d known you since you were puking up milk on his shirt collar.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But I don’t remember doing that. Lord Anston was a lifelong friend of my grandfather’s. I play the pianoforte much better than I sing. My fingers are melodious, not my throat.”

  “He told me who you were. I must admit that it surprised me. How small the world shows itself sometimes. You’re Peter Wilton’s cousin. I’ve known Peter since we were boys at Eton. You’re Andrea. Peter has spoken of you countless times.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not Andrea. You’ve made a dreadful, yet perfectly understandable, mistake. Mistakes happen. You will not dwell upon it. You will forget it by tomorrow. Good-bye. I wish you a good day.”

  I looked back when I reached the corner. He was standing there, just looking after me, his head still cocked in question. He raised his hand to me, then slowly lowered his arm and turned away.

  It was the third time I’d seen him, and I still didn’t know who he was. Just his first name: John. A common, ordinary name, but I knew he wasn’t either of those things.

  Knowing his first name was fine. I wouldn’t ever know anything more about him. I knew to the soles of my slippers that he was dangerous.

  Any man who wore laughter like a well-loved shirt was dangerous.

  Chapter Two

  I was lying on one of Grandfather’s beautiful Axminster carpets, my feet propped up on his big leather chair, reading about my hero, Lord Nelson. If only I had been aboard the Victory with him, to guard his back, I know that he would still be alive today. At least he had known he’d won the battle before he died. Now he was only a beloved memory, a part of history, a hero for the ages and the pages of books. But I’d wager anytime that he’d rather be here, with me, telling me his adventures, particularly the amorous ones involving Mrs. Hamilton. Ah, what wickedness, Grandfather would say. Not that I approved, but that was the way things were. I’d learned that at a very young age. It was infuriating, and it was despicable, but it was the way things were.

  “A man’s man he was,” Grandfather had told me more times than I could remember. “He didn’t cater to incompetence, deplored the madness of the king, fought the ministry to get enough money, ships, and men to fight those damnable French, and he remained true to his country. I knew him well. I will never know another man with more guts and courage.”

  And, sometimes, when Grandfather was feeling a bit of the devil’s encouragement, he would tell me how Lady Hamilton had wanted him, not Lord Nelson, but Grandfather had been married, more’s the pity, and so she’d had to accept Lord Nelson. “He was short, you know, Andy. Dreadfully short, but he made up for it with brains. Sometimes his brains didn’t help him, though. He couldn’t seem to figure out how to keep the ladies happy, despite all those brains he had. Not to say that ladies are stupid—they’re not. Just look at your grandmother; now, there was a lady who kept me at half-mast, her tongue and her brain worked so well together. Well-oiled, both tongue and brain.

  “No, what I mean is that Lord Nelson was always coming up with excellent new strategies, and never one of them involved how to make a lady happy.”

  I wanted to ask him where he got that precious theory. I wanted to tell him that men only wanted to make themselves happy. Once they had a woman in their power, why would they care?

  “Andy, where the devil are you?”

  I looked up at my cousin, Peter.

  “Peter.” I had to look a long way up to get to his face. “Goodness, you’re in Paris. But now you’re not. You’re here.”

  “And you’re lying there on the floor with your feet up and a book pressed to your nose. I’ve pictured you in my mind that way more times than you can imagine.”

  I leapt from the floor and hurled myself at him. Luckily for me, he did raise his arms in time to catch me. I kissed his face thoroughly, even his earlobes. “You’re home,” I said in his ear and kept kissing him and hugging him.

  He was laughing as he hugged me back. Finally, he set me on my feet and held me back from him. “You’re looking well,” he said at last, and I knew a lie when I heard it. I looked white and thin and had eyes that were so shadowed they could scare children away from the door on a sunny day.

  I kept rubbing my hands up and down his arms, wanting to reassure myself that he was really here, with me. “Why are you here? I didn’t expect you. Oh, goodness, is something wrong?”

  Peter dropped his arms. “I won’t be here long,” he said over his shoulder as he walked to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy. “I must return to Paris soon.” He held up the decanter, and I nodded. He poured me a bit in one of grandmother’s magnificent crystal snifters.

  We clicked our glasses together and drank. I realized then that he was angry. How very odd to see his movements so measured, to see how he was holding himself in. I stepped back and waited. I hadn’t seen him for six months. He hadn’t changed, save he was perhaps more handsome now than when he’d left England the previous May to go to Brussels. I’d never prayed so often or so rigorously in my life as in those weeks before the fateful Battle of Waterloo. Peter was Grandfather’s heir, son of Rockford Wilton, who had died, his wife with him, when Peter had been only five years old. He’d been nominally raised in my parents’ household until Grandfather deemed Peter ready to go to Eton. I remember that Peter had been fond of my mother. I had no idea what he had thought of my father.

  Peter reminded me of that man, John, a man I still didn’t know even if I had seen him on three different occasions.

  That last time had been three months ago. Time had dragged. It was now in November, cold and damp, not a glimmer of sun to be seen for days at a time. I hated it. The air was thick with smoke from too many coal fires. White was
n’t the color to wear during a cold London autumn and winter.

  I wanted to go to the country, where the air was clean and fresh, but Miss Crislock wasn’t well. I couldn’t very well demand that she travel for four days—at least not now.

  Grandfather’s study was warm, the draperies drawn against the cold gray late afternoon. “Sit down, Peter,” I said at last, still drinking in the sight of him, “and tell me why you’re angry.”

  “I’m not angry,” he said in an amazingly clipped, hard voice that could shatter the glass I was holding.

  I realized then that Mrs. Pringe, my grandfather’s housekeeper for many years longer than I had been on this earth, was standing in the open doorway, watching us, one of her thick black eyebrows arched upward a good inch.

  “I should like some tea, Mrs. Pringe,” I said, nodding to her. Mrs. Pringe was a large lady, larger than Grandfather had been, and she always wore heavy bombazine violet gowns. I could tell she didn’t want to leave, bless her. She’d known both of us forever. She wanted to know what was going on. She wanted to fix whatever was wrong. And she’d always scented when something was out of kilter. I, naturally, had a very good idea why Peter was here and why he was angry, but still, I figured I had the right of first hearing, without Mrs. Pringe hovering with pursed lips and patting hands.

  But Peter just stood there, staring at me as if I were a soldier in his unit and I had sent my bayonet through a friend rather than a foe. Too handsome for his own good, Grandfather had always said. Too much hair, more than a young man needs or deserves, he would howl. There was no justice in life, none at all. Grandfather had lost most of his hair six months shy of his fortieth year.

  Peter could have looked like an angel or a monster, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. I wasn’t afraid of Peter. I’d trusted him implicitly since I’d been three years old and he’d pulled me out of a sinking mud hole by a pond that was dragging me under. I had worshiped him ever since, much to his disgust and chagrin, since he’d been a strapping boy at Eton and had occasionally brought his friends home, only to have his little cousin staring up at him with naked adoration, her skinny arms held wide for him to pick her up.

  “Tell me that it isn’t true,” he said at last.

  “Is this why you came here? Is this why you’re angry?”

  “Naturally. I knew nothing of this. I had to learn about it from Major Henchly, who read it in a letter from his wife. You didn’t even have the nerve to write me and tell me yourself what you planned to do. Tell me it’s a mistake, a bit of unappetizing gossip, nothing more. Tell me.”

  “I’m twenty-one years old. I am my own woman. I don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything. You are not my guardian, Peter.”

  “You’re wrong there. Not only am I the seventh Duke of Broughton, I am also your guardian. You may be a grown woman, but you’re still a woman and that means that as long as there is a male relative, it is his responsibility to see that you come to no harm.”

  “We’re not talking about protecting me from harm here, Peter, we’re talking marriage, a simple, straightforward marriage.”

  “Nothing in your life to date has been simple or straightforward. You have a Machiavellian mind, Andy. Grandfather always told me you did. He marveled at the way your mind worked, wrote me endlessly about how you would solve this puzzle, come up with three options for the resolution of another problem, and dance until dawn, all at the same time. He said you thirsted after conundrums.

  “In my opinion, your mind is a woman’s mind, twisted and brilliant, all of it mixed together, and many times you don’t realize which one is which.”

  “Have you just insulted me?”

  “No. You’ll know it well enough when I insult you. Like now. Prepare yourself.” But he didn’t give me more than a second for any preparation. He shouted right in my face, “You’re an idiot, Andy, if this nonsense is true. A blithering idiot who needs to be locked away, something I might well consider.”

  “You’re a man when it comes down to it,” I shouted back, and I heard my own deep anger, the miserable bitterness lacing through my words. “I wouldn’t be surprised at how low even you would stoop, if it pleased you.”

  He backed up a step, reined himself in, and said more quietly, “I apologize for yelling at you. No, we are not going to leap for each other’s throats or say things that will do irreparable damage. I’m going to be calm about this. I am your senior by nearly six years. I am a man filled with reason, overflowing with common sense. I am now the Duke of Broughton. You are my responsibility now. I love you. But now it’s time for you to tell me the truth.”

  I watched, holding my tongue, fascinated at the fury I saw building up in him. He drew in a deep breath, held it, then it burst out, and he shouted again at the top of his lungs, “What the devil has gotten into you, you damnable twit? And don’t try to sidetrack the issue, as you do so well. Tell me what the hell is in that twisted mind of yours.”

  I took another sip of my brandy, still silent. That caught his attention. He frowned, then proceeded to sidetrack himself. “I gave it to you, damn me. You shouldn’t drink that stuff. Only men drink brandy. Grandfather gave you the taste for it. Curse him for not realizing you were just a thirteen-year-old girl when he gave you your first snifter. Damnation, speak to me, Andy, and don’t you dare tell me why you must needs drink brandy.”

  “I’ve done what I deemed right and proper for me,” I said, and nothing more. I waited. There were usually after explosions, smaller outbursts, after the great initial one or two. But not this time. This time Peter pointed to a lovely brocade wing chair. “Sit and listen to me.”

  I sat.

  “I’ve come from Grandfather’s advocate, Craigsdale. I’d been putting it off. You are a very rich young lady, but you already know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Very rich, that’s me.”

  “I went to see Craigsdale before coming to see you because I needed time to think about all this. Naturally he brought it up, so I guess it’s the truth, even though I’m praying that you’ve broken it off. Don’t do it, Andy. Don’t.”

  “I will do it,” I said. “I’m sorry that you disapprove, Peter, but when you peel things right down to the core of the apple, it’s my life, my choice, not yours, not anyone else’s. You may be my guardian, but you are not my jailer. I shall do what I believe is best for me. Do you think I am so stupid, so unthinking, that I would agree to something that could harm me?”

  “Andrea,” Peter said, and his use of my full name nearly brought me to my knees. He hadn’t called me Andrea since I had been fifteen and crammed my mare over a fence too high for my abilities and nearly broke both my legs. He’d been furious, which at the time I hadn’t understood, since I was hurting so badly I wanted to die. But then I did understand, later. Now I was Andrea again. He was very upset with me.

  He said, “I happen to know that the Earl of Devbridge is in his fifties, if not older, a widower, and has two nephews, one of whom is my age, who is his heir. In short, he is an old man, much too old a man to wed a girl who is barely twenty-one years old. Tell me that Henchly’s wife and Craigsdale are wrong. Tell me you have retracted this, or that it was all malicious gossip in the first place, or tell me you have come to your senses and sent the earl about his damned business.” He paused a moment, and eyed me. “Dammit, you’re white as my cravat. What the hell is wrong with you? You did it, didn’t you? Damnation, you’ve said you would marry this wretched old man.”

  I had the horrible urge to beg his forgiveness in the face of his absolute disgust and disbelief, but I didn’t. I just sat there, watching my cousin, realizing fully now the depths of his shock, of his incredulity. But it wasn’t ridiculous. There were many spring-winter marriages, and no one said anything about those decisions. Surely Lawrence wasn’t beyond autumn in his years. He still had all his own teeth. He wasn’t stooped over or didn’t need to keep his foot swathed in covers and propped up on a stool because of the gout.

 
“I would have informed you,” I said. “I would have written you a letter. I didn’t intend for you to come to the ceremony, for it will be a very small one, and you didn’t come to Grandfather’s funeral, did you? And so why would you come to my wedding? Yes, I would have written to you tomorrow.”

  He jumped up from the settee and paced the long narrow room. Then he came up to me, leaned over, and cupped my chin in his hand. He forced my face up. “Damn you, look at me.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “Yes, you are, but are you seeing? See me, Andy, see your cousin who loves you, who thinks of you as he would a beloved sister. All right, I’ve yelled enough. Yelling never does anything except to another man. With another man, yelling unplugs the sink and lets everything erupt, mainly curses to blue the air and a fist here or there, ending up with reasonable words.

  “With women, it brings either tears or mutiny. But it doesn’t bring wisdom or reason. No, listen to me, now, as well as look at me. I won’t yell at you anymore. All I ask is that you tell me why you’ve agreed to marry a man who is nearly three times your age.”

  What could I say that sounded logical and reasonable? That it was done all the time and what was his problem? No, that would make him froth at the mouth. He was still staring down at me, still holding my chin against his palm. I had to say something that would make sense to him. Instead, what came out of my mouth was “The earl isn’t that old.”