Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 45

Chapter Fourteen

‘Ah, Farenze, can’t say I expected you to come since you’re supposed to be busy with that ramshackle old place you bought off your brother-in-law. Is this your viscountess? Good evening, my dear. Delighted you could join us after all the invitations your husband has refused on your behalf. I dare say he wanted to keep you to himself.’ The Earl of Trethayne bowed to the mystery lady the ton had been so eager to meet all Season and preened himself that they’d had to wait until his granddaughter’s ball to do it.

The latest Trethayne chit and this grand waste of money his daughter-in-law had forced on him would be the talk of the town after tonight and for once he didn’t begrudge the money all this show and frivolity was costing him. His gaze drifted onward to gauge what effect this social triumph was having on whoever was next in the receiving line, then sharpened abruptly, as if he’d been replaced by a statue of a grumpy old cheeseparing aristocrat instead of the real thing.

‘The chit must know she ain’t welcome here, I told her last time she was here never to bother me or mine again,’ he managed to stutter out between stiff lips as the statuesque lady dressed in the first stare of fashion reached him and looked as if she wasn’t quite sure why she had bothered.

‘I’m not a chit any longer, if I ever was, and I don’t know why you imagine I need your welcome now, sir—I found none when I came to you and begged for help when I was seventeen and alone in the world but for three little brothers.’

‘French whelps,’ he almost spat at her as if she had suggested he helped her to look after a litter of unwanted puppies rather than three then very small children.

‘Half-French,’ the stripling at her side informed him with nearly as much brass-faced impudence as his sister.

‘I can assure you the other half is pure Trethayne,’ the next gentleman in line said with his usual casual impudence and Earl of Trethayne frowned at the Marquis of Mantaigne and wondered why he’d never told the idle fool exactly what he thought of him before tonight.

‘What the devil do they have to do with you or the Farenze connection?’

‘Lord Farenze and I were brought up together, so we share a lot of family feeling, Trethayne. I’m sure you know the ones I mean—love, loyalty and caring for the welfare of others even when you don’t always want to? I hope you don’t expect Lord Farenze and I to ignore each other as our wives make their first forays into the ton tonight. That would be downright unnatural for such close connections, don’t you think?’ Tom asked silkily.

His host paled and flashed a glance from one to the other of the striking group taking up so much of his guests’ attention there was near silence in the overcrowded ballroom. For a moment he seemed about to admit that the unlikely group of people in front of him were indeed connected in some way he didn’t understand, then he gathered his senses and his long-standing conviction he was right and they were all wrong and fought back.

‘What’s that sentimental rigmarole got to do with them?’ he said with a dismissive wave of his hand at Polly and Toby Trethayne, who stood surveying the glittering ballroom as if they were far more interested in the spectacle of the ton at play than anything their reluctant host might have to say about them.

‘Firstly there is the fact we all value the company of your great-niece and great-nephew and would not go anywhere they are not welcomed. Secondly—’

‘Thank you, my lord, but we are quite capable of speaking for ourselves, are we not, Tobias?’ His beanpole of a great-niece had the effrontery to interrupt an even more important nobleman than his lordship knew himself to be. ‘Pray don’t splutter like that, sir, it isn’t becoming and since we’re related it won’t reflect well on us for it to be known our great-uncle cannot string two words together without recourse to cursing or roaring and ranting like a lunatic.’

‘I don’t know how you got in here...’

‘No, I’m quite sure you don’t, since you have done your best to make sure we all went straight to the devil. I may have begged you for help and been turned away time after time seven years ago, but I didn’t have to walk here with a babe in arms and two little brothers at my heels this time. Nor do I need to plead with you to help me put food in their bellies, because I have somehow managed to do that myself for the past seven years, since you threw us out of your house as if we carried plague. You don’t need to worry, my lord, we’re not here to beg for help you have no intention of giving us tonight. I know from past experience it would not be forthcoming.’

Now the silence that had greeted the delightful surprise of Lady Farenze making her first public appearance at this débutante ball was giving way to a flurry of delighted speculation, and Lord Trethayne didn’t have to turn round to know whispers that he’d let such youthful members of his own family all but starve were sweeping about the ballroom as the witch paused for a moment, as if selecting the best spot to slip in the killing knife blow.

‘What do you want?’ he managed to grab enough presence of mind to ask, before any further revelations could fall from the giant female’s mouth and ruin the night he’d paid out so much to bring about.

‘An apology would do nicely to begin with,’ she told him softly. By now his guests were straining so hard to hear her he was surprised they didn’t just pitch up and form a circle.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured with a furious glance at his open-mouthed daughter-in-law and that wispy little chit he’d gone to so much trouble to get off their hands.

‘I didn’t quite catch that, Trethayne,’ Mantaigne very nearly bellowed with that almost-an-idiot grin of his that Lord Trethayne suddenly realised he’d always found so damnably irritating.

‘Sorry,’ he barked more loudly.

‘Such a gracious manner as you’ve always had with us, don’t you agree, Tobias?’ the woman murmured and had a dowager or two reaching for their ear trumpets.

‘I remember,’ the boy said, and Lord Trethayne could see he did from the hot glitter in those green-and-blue Trethayne eyes he’d managed not to notice when he scouted the French hussy’s brats out of his house and slammed the door behind them for the last time.

‘I very much wish you could not, but how could a boy of eight forget such a harsh dismissal from this very house and the life of beggary you condemned us all to seven years ago?’ his sister said as if all this was for the boy’s sake and not her own.

‘Come to force me to frank a Season for you, have you, m’dear?’ he made himself ask as if he was a genial uncle to a niece whom the very idea of a Season and presentation at court would make a hardened matchmaker blench. Make a joke out of the girl and the polite world would laugh with him and forget he’d rid himself of her so hastily last time she dared darken his doors.

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you for anything, but my friends and my husband requested my company, so I agreed to come here tonight very much against my better judgement,’ Paulina the Pauper had the brass-faced cheek to drawl as if she’d been taking lessons in being elegantly annoying from Mantaigne.

‘Ah, so you persuaded some fool to wed a girl who will always make a fool out of him by overtopping him at every turn, have you?’ He forgot his audience long enough to gloat. If the awkward filly was already wed, there was nothing for him to do but shrug and make it obvious he pitied the poor idiot his mistake.

‘No, I laid siege so determinedly that in the end Miss Trethayne gave in and agreed to wed me out of sheer boredom at having to say me nay one more time,’ Tom lied with a smile for his gallant love that ignored the apoplectic-looking peer and everyone else in the room but her and their friends and family.

‘You?’ the old fool barked out at the top of his voice.

‘Me,’ Tom replied with infinite satisfaction and a long, hot look for his bride that made her blush delightfully, despite the presence of her brother and the small matter of around three hundred of his lordship’s closest acquaintances.

‘She’s a marchioness?’

‘My wife is a marchioness, something I expect she will forgive me for one day if we both live long enough. That’s what happens when a woman weds a marquis, you know, Trethayne? Whether she wants to or not, she becomes his marchioness.’

‘Wants to? Of course she wanted to, that’s why she married you, isn’t it? Can’t think any sane female would want to unless you had some strawberry leaves on your coronet.’

‘I do have one or two more of them than you, though, don’t I? Ah, well, never mind, I’m sure my lady will resign herself to them in time.’

A titter or two greeted that outrageous piece of play-acting, except Tom knew they were wrong and he meant it. Had he been a commoner it would have been a lot easier to persuade Polly to marry him, then come to London and grasp her right to a certain position in the social world, if only for the sake of the boys. As he was thinking of that, his eyes hardened on the steely old bruiser in front of him.

‘My friend here acts for me on matters of delicate family business. You might have done well to employ him in your long and frustrating search for your nephews and niece after you let them think you would not help them upon their father’s death, Trethayne. I hate to imagine how hard you must have looked for them after Tobias’s godfather died and left most of his fortune to the boy, with you to hold it all in trust until he came of age. One can only imagine how ill at ease you must have felt at knowing you let them leave after one of those heated family arguments we’ve all heard so much about once you held such a fortune in hand for them and no heir anywhere in sight. Not being able to track them down to explain their abrupt change of fortunes must have galled you to your very soul.’

‘Er...yes, distraught, weren’t we, Robina?’ the old fox picked up his cue as Tom fixed him with a cold stare that dared him to refute Polly or Toby again.

‘I have often heard you speak of it with great sorrow for your loss of temper, Papa-in-law. Such a shame Miss Trethayne took your hasty words so much to heart that she and her brothers were gone before you could calm down and tell her you didn’t mean them,’ the lady said smoothly enough, but something about the glint in her eye told Tom a corner had been turned in her relationship with the miserly old hypocrite as well and he would not dominate the rest of his family so easily from now on.

‘Knowing you as we all do, I’m sure you will have taken the utmost care of Tobias’s fortune, Trethayne. Peters here will be visiting you tomorrow to discuss all the wise investments I’m sure you’ve made on the boy’s behalf while he was too young to manage his fortune for himself.’

‘That will be delightful, but tonight I’m sure you came here to renew your connections with your family, then dance and enjoy being with us on such a joyous occasion, Cousin Paulina?’ Lady Robina said with a lot more conviction than accuracy, and Tom stepped back and let his wife meet the woman on her own terms.

It was how she lived her life after all, and she had done such a fine job of it up to now he didn’t see any need to interfere, even if she would let him.