Love and Other Perils

by Grace Burrowes

  But if the lady was wealthy, and she could afford to send an earl packing, why settle for the likes of Nagle, who neither respected her nor had much of anything to recommend him?

  “You can take Beelzebub to bide with Lucifer,” Dagger said, petting the kitten’s tiny head. “And we’ll keep Lancelot here until he’s feeling more the thing, aye?”

  “Aye.” The kitten, against all sense, was purring. “Nay. The little wretch can stay, but Beelzebub won’t be joining Lucifer.” Max passed Dagger the ruddy kitten. “And Lancelot is no sort of name for a kitten.”

  Dagger cradled the cat against his skinny chest. “It fits him, and he likes it. He’s a white knight, all on his own against the cruel world, and if he has a fancy name he’s more likely to find a fancy home.”

  “The Lancelot of old was a naughty fellow.” Caught between conflicting loyalties and demands of the heart.

  “Sir Lancelot was brave, sir, and that matters more than a few mistakes.”

  The argument had abruptly become philosophical, and Max had no philosophy left in him. “Call him whatever you please. If he’s not used to cow’s milk, he’ll make a right mess by morning. Make sure he sees Hannibal and Edward using the dirt box on the balcony.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Max undressed, washed, and climbed into bed, but sleep eluded him. Antonia’s behavior made no sense, unless she was a cruel and shallow woman, which every instinct told him she was not. Perhaps she’d wanted a lark before accepting the bonds of matrimony, perhaps she knew exactly the sort of man she’d be marrying and had reasons of her own for choosing him.

  It all made no sense. Max eventually drifted off, determined that he’d stick to his experiments henceforth, and leave luscious librarians to their own gothic adventures.

  When the weather was fine, Antonia drove out with Peter, who fawned, flirted, and tried to bring up setting a date at least once an hour. Two weeks of that courtship and she was ready to box his ears, but nobody—not Aunt Emily, not the many domestic advice authors, not her own good sense—had explained how to refuse a man’s suit when the lady had herself invited his overtures.

  The library, which had been a refuge, had become a place where memories haunted Antonia. When she’d not only correctly shelved every novel in Mr. Kessler’s boxes, but reprimanded him sharply for failing to explain her duties to her, he’d turned up nauseatingly obsequious. Yesterday, he’d offered her the paying post. She’d taken that offer under advisement, because having become attached to an increasingly rotund gray cat was no excuse to remain associated with the library.

  An earl’s daughter could donate her time to a charitable institution, but accepting employment even from the same organization would cause endless talk. Antonia hardly cared about the talk; though if an heiress was vulnerable to the machinations of the unscrupulous, an eccentric heiress was a staked goat in the wilderness.

  “And where are we off to today?” Miller asked, holding Antonia’s cloak for her.

  “I am paying a call.” A call she’d put off for days.

  “Shall I have the horses put to, your ladyship?”

  “Thank you, no. I have acquired the habit of walking, Miller. Bundle up, though we aren’t going far.”

  Antonia had one friend in all of London, one person whom she felt she could rely upon for honesty and discretion. She’d never called on him in the capacity of friend before, but then, she’d never shared intimacies with one man while accepting the addresses of another before either.

  A more foolish muddle, she could not imagine.

  “Lady Antonia Mainwaring,” she said, as Miller passed her card over to the butler, “to see the Earl of Casriel.”

  “Very good, my lady. I will see if his lordship is at home.”

  The fellow bowed deferentially, and Antonia was left trying to formulate the reason for her call in words that didn’t make her look like an imbecile. Max Haddonfield hadn’t dropped by the library, hadn’t sent a note, hadn’t brought another cat around. Lucifer looked up from his basket every time the bell in the library door jingled, and Antonia looked up as well.

  Two weeks after the most passionate interlude of her life, and all she had from her lover was a loud silence. I think you very delectable.

  “He also found me very forgettable.”

  “I beg your pardon?” a blond woman asked. She’d come up the corridor so quietly, Antonia hadn’t noticed her approach.

  “Lady Casriel.” Antonia curtsied, for what else was there to do? The earl was rumored to be besotted with his countess, and of course she would be at home at such an early hour. Antonia knew the lady socially, which meant, not very well at all.

  “Lady Antonia.” The curtsy was returned. “Lovely to see you again. I believe we last met at a Venetian breakfast? I was just about to order a fresh pot, and now you are here to provide me good company too.”

  Such friendliness, such graciousness. “My lady, you need not, that is—I came to see your husband.”

  Such an admission raised awkwardness to dizzying heights, but Lady Casriel merely linked arms with Antonia.

  “His lordship thinks the world of you, as do I. But for your common sense, he and I would never have had an opportunity to marry. We are very much in your debt.”

  Antonia let herself be gently towed down a corridor tastefully appointed with still lifes, a pair of sunny seascapes, and a portrait of a mastiff.

  “The purpose of my call is somewhat personal, my lady.”

  “Good. If we’re to sit about swilling tea and munching cakes, we might as well get to know each other. Casriel is off at his brother’s club, discussing investments or politics or something equally dreary. I recall that you are quite well read.”

  Well read. Nobody called Antonia well read. She was a bluestocking, bookish, an antidote. For a few hours, shelving novels with Max Haddonfield, she’d felt well read, and for a few hours after that, she’d felt well cherished.

  But as Max’s silence stretched from hours to days to a fortnight, the lovely glow of his regard had faded to consternation and then something else altogether.

  “I love books,” Antonia said, as Lady Casriel led her to a cozy parlor done up in cream and green. The wallpaper was a pattern of leafy boughs adorned with songbirds and the occasional gilded blossom. The effect was like walking into a summery bower in deepest winter, a conservatory without the dampness or scent of dirt.

  “Books have been my refuge,” Antonia went on, choosing an armchair upholstered in cabbage roses, “and my parents never discouraged me from reading whatever I pleased. This room is exquisite.”

  “My husband is homesick for Dorset,” Lady Casriel replied, settling into a second armchair. “He calls this the pastoral parlor. He gave me leave to redecorate one parlor for my personal use, and this is the result.”

  A footman brought a tea tray bearing a porcelain service, also adorned with flowers, leaves, and twittering birds.

  “You suit his lordship,” Antonia said. “Casriel is fortunate in his marriage.” And she was glad about that. The earl was decent to his bones and he deserved a happy match.

  Lady Casriel lifted the pot, but set it down without pouring. “I haven’t any money to speak of. We will live quite modestly.”

  A shocking admission, which Antonia’s hostess made with a bashful smile, as if living modestly should be the secret ambition of all couples.

  And perhaps it ought to be. “But you and his lordship are happy.”

  “Disgracefully so.” The smile became an outright grin. “Do I take it nuptial vows now loom in your future, my lady? You’ve been seen driving out with Mr. Nagle, and he looks most pleased to escort you.”

  “He is a family connection, a second cousin.” Antonia could allow that to suffice—she and Lady Casriel were only casually acquainted—but this woman had won Grey Birch Dorning’s unending esteem, a comfortably settled widow who had had no need to remarry anybody. “Might I be frank?”

  “Be nothing but,
” Lady Casriel said. “Casriel admires your forthright nature.”

  That the earl had spoken with his wife about Antonia, and admiringly, was encouraging. “Peter Nagle has asked leave to court me, and I have allowed it, but I cannot see that he and I will suit. He will be very unhappy that I’ve permitted the courtship but not the wedding.”

  “Unhappy,” Lady Casriel said, pouring two cups of tea. “He’ll have a tantrum?”

  “He will be hurt. I have no other prospects in mind, I can’t tell him I’m rejecting him for another. Peter is charming, but I don’t esteem him. He has no use for books, he’s not liked by my staff, and I don’t care for the way he’s treating my household as his own already.”

  “Gracious, and he is family, so the matter won’t die quietly.”

  Antonia rose, because putting her dilemma into words made her feel more foolish—and more trapped—than ever.

  “We have no interests in common, which would be a tolerable failing if we got on well, but I fear Peter and I have no values in common.” She paced the width of the pretty carpet, feeling like songbird trapped in a lovely cage.

  “He maunders on and on about using wind power to keep foul miasmas from the better neighborhoods,” she continued, “but why should London’s stink become Southwark’s problem? Should foul miasmas and the sickness they bring become the lot of only those too poor to blow them away? He has no greater vision, he’s like a small boy who has only one poem to recite or one joke to tell. Thirty years of living in close proximity to such as he—I cannot bring myself to do it.”

  “Why should you?” Lady Casriel asked, adding a small silver spoon to each saucer. “You turned down a handsome, mannerly earl because you preferred the company of your books. Why settle for an impecunious poor relation now?”

  Antonia returned to the sofa. She could not voice all of her fears to Lady Casriel, but she could consider the question. “You’re saying Peter is just another fortune hunter. I thought his papa left him fairly comfortably well off.”

  “How do you take your tea?”

  “Plain will do.”

  “If Mr. Nagle is so comfortably well off,” Lady Casriel said, “why hasn’t he married elsewhere? Why haven’t his sisters married? They are pretty, agreeable young ladies and they are connected to a title through your side of the family. One concludes they have either particular tastes or insufficient portions.”

  “Oh, dear.” This scenario—Max would call it a theory—fit the available facts. “Or they had adequate portions and Peter has managed their funds poorly.”

  The countess peered at Antonia over her teacup. “Very bad of him, if that’s so.”

  “And he could marry me, put all to rights, and I’d be none the wiser, but much the poorer. This explains why my great appeal as a wife has only recently occurred to Peter.”

  “If you must marry him, the settlements can be written to give you continued control of your fortune.”

  “That can be done?”

  The countess took a sip of her tea. “The agreements and trusts must be carefully worded, but yes. Casriel was insistent that my money remain mine to do with as I please. The solicitors might have thought it odd, but they wrote the contract as his lordship required.”

  An idea tugged at the back of Antonia’s mind, a possibility. She sipped her tea and nibbled a biscuit to be polite, while she considered that the challenge of how to be rid of Peter might have a solution. Possibly. Maybe.

  She still had no idea how to go on where Max Haddonfield was concerned.

  “I am so pleased you called upon me,” Lady Casriel said when Antonia rose to leave. “His lordship will be sorry he missed you. May I confide your situation to him, or would you prefer the matter remain private between us?”

  Casriel’s discretion was utterly trustworthy. “I consider his lordship a friend, my lady, and had thought to put my situation to him directly. Peter presses me daily for a decision and I lacked the fortitude to give him the answer I must.”

  “And here, I thought you sought Casriel’s aid negotiating settlements on your behalf. Are you free Thursday afternoon?”

  “As it happens, I am.”

  “Would you like to join me for a tea at Lady Bellefonte’s? She’s keen on libraries as is her sister-by-marriage, Lady Susannah. You would get on well with them splendidly.”

  Antonia’s hostess escorted her to the door, and as Antonia buttoned up her cloak, a snippet of conversation popped into her head. Something Max had said about Lady Bellefonte and cats.

  “You are well acquainted with Lady Bellefonte?”

  “Better acquainted recently. Casriel’s next-youngest brother married Lady Susannah Haddonfield, and she is of a literary bent. I think you and she would disappear into raptures about Donne and Shakespeare, and leave all the tea cakes for the rest of us.”

  Antonia pulled on her gloves, ready to use the walk home to think through the possibilities Lady Casriel had raised. Peter needed money apparently, and Antonia needed to be free of his attentions.

  “Haddonfield?” Antonia said, pausing with her bonnet in her hands. She knew Lady Susannah by sight, though they weren’t even what Antonia would call acquaintances.

  “I am gradually getting to know the whole tribe,” Lady Casriel said. “Max, the youngest brother, keeps a distance to elude his sisters’ matchmaking schemes, but Susannah claims he’s the smartest of the bunch.” Lady Casriel took the bonnet and settled it onto Antonia’s head, tying the ribbons in an off-center bow.

  “They sent Max up to Cambridge,” she went on, “when he was fourteen because he’d outstripped his tutors. He nearly blew up the stables when he was eight. The family has many Max stories, all told with the sort of awe reserved for the seafaring adventurer. I look very much forward to making his acquaintance.”

  Antonia had started the day in a welter of anxiety and confusion, but the notion that Max Haddonfield was an earl’s errant son solved at least a few puzzles. He had the manners and education of an aristocrat, while the determination to be of use to society was uniquely his.“He must be a different sort of earl’s son,” Antonia said. “What does this Max do now?”

  “We’re not sure,” Lady Casriel replied, passing Antonia her scarf. “Max doesn’t say much about his scientific pursuits, which also makes him a different sort of man, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe he’s waiting to be asked about those pursuits, my lady.” Or about a certain delightful interlude behind locked library doors. “I will wish you good day and send you a note regarding Thursday’s tea.”

  Chapter Six

  Galileo’s proposed arrangement of the planets with the sun at the center of the universe had neatly explained the observable data. The Church’s insistence that Earth occupied the center of the universe had, by contrast, required increasingly unsatisfactory corollaries and conjectures. The Church’s theory had been wrong, of course, a fiction convenient for the popes and cardinals.

  Max had no business dining with Lord Hamblin and Miss Huntly for the second time in a fortnight, another inconvenient truth. Some theory was afoot in their minds, some grand, unifying stratagem complete with corollaries and exceptions, and like Galileo, Max would soon be faced with the choice of bowing to their wrongheaded notions or supporting a falsehood.

  “More tart, Mr. Haddonfield?” Miss Huntly asked from the hostess’s end of the table. “Or perhaps another glass of the Château d'Yquem?”

  The dessert was sweet, the wine was sweeter still, the lady’s smile was too sweet by far. “No, thank you. The meal has been splendid. My compliments to your chef.”

  “Jess planned the whole menu,” Hamblin said, beaming at his niece. “Very clever lady, my Jess.”

  Miss Huntly rose. “I am also a lady who knows when the gentlemen are ready for their port. If you will excuse me, Mr. Haddonfield.” She extended a pale, slender hand, over which Max bowed, then she moved around the table to kiss Hamblin’s cheek. “Don’t keep Mr. Haddonfield up too late, Uncle. He ha
s much important science to be about.”

  She left the room, the footman closing the door in her wake, and Max was unaccountably relieved she’d gone.

  “Let’s have our nightcap in the library,” Hamblin said, as the footman began to clear the dishes from the sideboard. “I’m sure you are as ready as I am to be up and moving.”

  Max was ready to be home, to be checking the day’s calculations, a cat purring at his elbow, Dagger snoring in the inglenook. He was ready to resume staring off into space, pondering the riddle of Lady Antonia, and wondering why no engagement announcement had been posted to the papers.

  Perhaps the settlements were proving problematic.

  Perhaps Nagle had lost his nerve.

  “I’m told you enjoy libraries, Haddonfield,” Hamblin said, closing the library door.

  “Every man of learning should enjoy libraries,” Max replied. “You have a sizable collection.” The room was surprisingly warm for such a large space, suggesting both fireplaces had been kept roaring all day.

  “M’wife bought the books. An estate sale here, a shop going out of business there. Said a library needed books, and she had a nose for a bargain, so the shelves are quite full and my pockets weren’t emptied in the process. I miss Lady Hamblin’s practical nature almost as much as I miss her hand guiding the domestics.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, my lord. Has she been gone long?” And what had this to do with anything?

  “Five years, and there’s my darling Jess, no auntie to oversee her come out. My sisters did what they could, but Jess has been a bit lost, poor lamb.”

  The poor lamb had her uncle wrapped around her dainty finger. “Miss Huntly is lucky to have such devoted relations.”

  “Let’s sit, shall we?”

  They’d sat for the better part of three hours at supper, and Hamblin himself had declared a desire to move.