Читать книгу The Viscount's Betrothal - Louise Allen - Страница 7

In a charming breakfast parlour overlooking a sweep of wintry parkland in the county of Nottingham, three people were partaking of the first meal of the day in an atmosphere of quiet refinement and elegance.

Miss Ross placed her slice of toast neatly upon her breakfast plate, wiped her fingers in a ladylike manner with her linen napkin and smiled at her sister-in-law.

‘Over my dead body.’

‘Dessy!’ Charlton spluttered into his morning coffee. Decima felt dizzy, as though something inside her had snapped. Had she really just said that?

Charlton put down his cup and wiped his lips with an irritable dab. ‘What is the reason for that outburst? Hermione merely suggested that we should pay a visit this afternoon to our neighbours the Jardines. I told you about them—they have only been at High Hayes for six months and are a most charming family.’

‘Who just happen to have a most charming and eligible gentleman staying with them, if what Hermione told me last night is correct.’ Some stranger was inhabiting her body, uttering all the things she had always thought and had never dared articulate.

Nine years of increasingly desperate attempts by her family to marry her off had left Decima with an acute sense of when another ‘suitable’ match was threatening. She always did as she was bid and trailed along obediently to make painful conversation to the unfortunate gentleman concerned.

Obediently and spinelessly, she told herself, staring blankly at the platter of ham and eggs before her half-brother. Now, without any conscious volition on her part, it seemed the spineless worm was finally turning.

‘We could have visited them at any time in the past fortnight, but I collect this gentleman only arrived two days ago and therefore we must go now,’ she added, heaping coals on the blaze.

She glanced out of the window, suppressing a shiver despite the warmth of the room. The lowering sky was threatening snow after a week of dry, cold weather, but to escape this fresh humiliation she was quite ready to pack her bags and set forth at once. Why had walking out never occurred to her before? It was hardly as though she were a prisoner with nowhere else to go.

‘Why, yes, Mrs Jardine’s brother. An unmarried, titled gentleman as it happens, but that is not why I suggested we call.’ Lady Carmichael, an unconvincing liar at the best of times, faltered to a halt as Decima’s grey eyes came to rest on her and looked imploringly at her husband for support.

‘One does not wish to intrude upon family Christmas gatherings,’ Charlton blustered, slapping down his newspaper. His wife jumped. ‘Naturally we could not call before.’

Decima regarded her half-brother with a calm that she was far from feeling. What she wanted to do was enquire bitterly why he persisted in humiliating her by parading her in front of yet another potential suitor whose lukewarm attempts at civility were bound to remind her yet again why she was still a spinster at the age of twenty-seven. But even her new-found rebellious courage failed her at that point.

‘We have made upward of a dozen calls this holiday, Charlton, and have received as many,’ she said mildly. ‘Why should the Jardines alone be so exclusive?’

Really, Charlton’s expression of baffled frustration would be amusing—if only she did not know that he was quite incapable of understanding her feelings and would most certainly plough on with his insensitive matchmaking come hell or high water.

‘It is nothing to do with Mrs Jardine’s brother,’ he stated with unconvincing authority, ignoring her question. ‘I don’t know why you cannot oblige Hermione by accompanying her on a social call, Dessy.’

‘Well, Charlton, one reason is that I will be leaving today.’ Decima put the lid on the preserve jar, concentrating on stopping her hand shaking. Never before had she been able to stand up to his bullying, but then, she saw in a flash of self-realisation, never before had she been legally and financially free of him. At least, she would be in two days’ time, on New Year’s Day.

‘What! Don’t be absurd, Dessy. Leaving? You have hardly been here a sennight.’ Around the walls the footmen stood, blank-faced. Charlton ignored their presence as usual; it never occurred to him that browbeating his sister before an audience of what he considered to be menials might cause her distress, or them discomfort.

‘Two weeks and a day, actually,’ Decima interjected, and was ignored.

‘I made certain that you would stay here at Longwater for at least a month. You always stay a month at Christmas.’

‘And I told you when I arrived that I intended staying for a fortnight, did I not, Hermione?’

‘Why, yes, but I did not regard it…’

‘And Augusta will be expecting me. So I must finish my breakfast and set Pru to packing or the morning will be well-advanced before we set out.’ Charlton was becoming alarmingly red. Decima took a last bite of toast she found she no longer had any appetite for and turned to smile at the butler. ‘Felbrigg, please will you send to the stables and ask the postilions to have my carriage at the front door for half past ten?’

‘Certainly, Miss Ross. I will also send a footman up with your luggage.’ Decima suspected that Felbrigg rather approved of her; he was certainly able to ignore his master’s infuriated gobblings with aplomb.

‘You will do no such thing, Dessy! Just look at the weather, it will be snowing in a minute.’ As she got to her feet Charlton glared past her in frustrated rage to a portrait of his own father, side by side with the petite figure of their mother. ‘I can only assume that you get this stubborn, disobliging streak from your father, along with so much else. You certainly do not inherit it from our dear mama.’

Decima glanced at Hermione’s distressed face and bit back the bitter retort that was on her lips. The worm that was turning seemed to be a full-grown adder, but to let it loose now would only wound her sister-in-law. She forced a smile. ‘It was a lovely stay, Hermione, but I really must be leaving now or Augusta will fret.’

Decima made herself walk calmly to the door. As Felbrigg shut it behind her, she heard Hermione say with disastrous clarity, ‘Oh, poor dear Dessy! What are we going to do with her?’

Six miles away Viscount Weston raised a dark and sceptical eyebrow at his youngest sister. ‘What are you up to, Sally? You know I said this was a flying visit and I was leaving by the end of the week.’

‘Up to? Why, nothing, Adam dear, I only wanted to know if you were going to be here in case our neighbours, the Carmichaels, call.’ Lady Jardine fussed with the coffee pot. ‘Another cup?’

‘No, thank you. And what is the attraction of the Carmichaels?’ Sally assumed an air of innocence, belied by her heightened colour. Adam smiled slightly—Sal had always been as easy to read as a book. ‘An eligible daughter?’

‘Oh, no, not a daughter,’ she replied, with what he could tell was relief at being able to deny something.

‘An ineligible middle-aged sister,’ his brother-in-law put in suddenly, emerging from behind his Times with an irritable rustle of newsprint. ‘Carmichael’s desperate to get her off his hands by all accounts. I do not know why you let yourself get drawn into this silly scheme of Lady Carmichael’s, Sally. If Adam wants a wife, he is more than capable of finding one himself.’

‘She is not middle-aged,’ his affronted wife snapped. ‘She is under thirty, I am certain, and Hermione Carmichael tells me she is intelligent and amiable—and very well-to-do.’

‘Adam is in no need of a wealthy wife,’ her loving spouse retorted, ‘and you know as well as I do what intelligent and amiable means. She’ll be as plain as a pikestaff and probably a bluestocking to boot.’

‘Thank you, George, a masterful piece of deduction if I may say so. I gather neither of you has set eyes on the lady?’ Adam flicked a crumb off his coat sleeve and thought about what his brother-in-law had said. He was certainly in no need to hang out for a well-dowered bride, but as for finding himself a wife, he was not so sure.

Not sure whether he ever wanted to be leg-shackled and not sure either that the woman for him was there to be found in any case. With a ready-made and eminently satisfactory heir already to hand, the matter was one that could be very comfortably shelved.

‘No, we have not met her.’ Sally sounded sulky. ‘But I am sure they will call today—look at the weather, anyone can see it is about to snow soon and tomorrow might be too late.’

‘It will certainly be too late, my dear.’ Adam stood up and grinned affectionately at his favourite sister. ‘In view of the weather, I will be setting out for Brightshill this morning.’

‘Running shy?’ Sir George enquired with a straight face.

‘Running like a fox before hounds,’ Adam agreed amiably, refusing to be insulted. ‘Now, don’t pout at me, Sal; you know I said this would only be a short stay. I’ve a house party due in two days, so I’d have to be leaving tomorrow morning at the latest in any case.’

‘Wretch,’ his loving sister threw at him as he left the room. ‘I declare you are an unrepentant bachelor. You are certainly an ungrateful brother—you deserve a plain bluestocking!’

Decima stared unseeing out of the carriage window at the passing landscape. It gave her no pleasure to be at outs with Charlton and Hermione; she would have quite happily stayed another week at Longwater if only they had left her in peace. Cousin Augusta, the placid eccentric whose Norfolk home she shared, would greet her return with pleasure, or her absence for a little longer with equanimity—just so long as she had her new glasshouse to occupy her.

This ability not to fuss was much prized by Decima, although she did wish sometimes that Augusta could comprehend how miserable her other relatives’ attempts at matchmaking and their scarcely veiled pity made her. But then Augusta had never had any trouble doing exactly what she wanted, when she wanted to, and found it difficult to understand Decima’s compliance.

Widowed young with the death of her elderly, rich and extremely dull husband, Augusta had emerged from mourning and scandalised all and sundry by declaring that she was devoting herself to gardening, painting—very badly, as it turned out—and rural seclusion.

At the age of five and twenty Decima, in disgrace for failing to please when paraded in frilly pink muslin before a depressing dowager and her equally depressing and chinless son, was sent to rusticate in Norfolk. The cousins formed an instant attachment and she was allowed to stay there.

‘Out of sight and out of mind,’ she had said hopefully at the time. Although not, it had proved, completely out of mind. She suspected that Charlton and her various aunts made notes at regular intervals upon their calendars that read ‘Marry Off Poor Dear Dessy’, and took it in turns to summon her to stay while they produced yet another hapless bachelor or widower for her. And always, meekly and spinelessly, she had gone along with their schemes, knowing each and every one was doomed to failure. And each and every one left another scar on her confidence and her happiness.

Enough was enough, she had decided while helping Pru fold garments into her travelling trunk. Why it had taken until breakfast this morning for the penny to drop and for her to realise that, by coming into control of her inheritance, she had also come into not just the ability but the right to control her own life, she did not know. It was part and parcel of the passivity she had shown in the face of her family’s constant reminders of what a disappointment she was to them. Of course, the kinder of them agreed, she not could actually help it. She was a sweet girl, but what, with her disadvantages, could one expect?

Decima bit her lip. If she looked critically at her life since she was seventeen she could see it as a series of evasions, of passive resistance aimed at stopping people doing things to her. Well, now it was time to start being positive. Just as soon as she had decided what it was she wanted to be positive about—that was the first thing.

She certainly had much to learn about taking control of her life. Why, it had just taken three months, since her twenty-seventh birthday, for her to realise that the fortune, which she had always known she possessed, was the key to more than financial independence. Charlton had been very cunning, giving her a generous allowance that more than covered her needs and her occasional fancies—nothing to rebel against there, no reason to grasp the prospect of access to her entire capital with desperation.

After today, Decima decided, she would leave immediately on each and every occasion in the future when her relatives tried to matchmake. If she was not there to hear them, what did it matter how much they lamented her shortcomings?

She was reviewing this resolution, and deciding that it was an admirable one for New Year, when Pru exclaimed, ‘Look at this weather, Miss Dessy! This is taking an age—we only passed that dreadful ale-house, the Red Cock, twenty minutes ago.’

Startled out of her reverie, Decima focused on the view. It was indeed alarming. Although it was only about two in the afternoon, the light was heavy and gloomy as it fought its way through the swirling snowflakes. Great mounds of snow hid the line of roadside hedges, the verges were an expanse of unbroken white and the trees, which at this point formed a little coppice, were already bending under their burden.

‘Oh, bother.’ She scrubbed at the glass, which had clouded with her warm breath. ‘I thought we would make Oakham for a late luncheon quite easily, now we will be lucky to arrive there for supper. I suppose we will have to stay at the Sun in Splendour overnight.’

‘It’s a good inn,’ the maid remarked. ‘It will be no pain to stay there, and in this weather I don’t expect there’ll be that many folks out on the roads. You should get a nice private parlour with no trouble.’ She sneezed violently and disappeared into a vast handkerchief.

The prospect of a roaring fire, an excellent supper and the Sun’s renowned feather beds was appealing. And there would be no one to nag her. She could kick off her shoes, drink hot chocolate curled up in a chair with a really frivolous novel and go to bed when she felt like it. Decima contemplated this plan with some smugness until the carriage came to a sudden halt.

‘Now what?’ She lowered the window and leaned out, receiving a face full of snowflakes. ‘Why have we stopped?’ Through the snow she could just make out that they had halted at a crossroads and that another vehicle, a curricle and pair by the look of it, had stopped on the road that intersected with theirs.

One of the postilions swung down from his horse and made heavy weather of stamping back through the snow to the door. ‘Can’t go no further, miss. The snow’s too deep, drifting right across the road. Look.’

‘Then we’ll have to go round.’ The snow was blowing down her neck now and she pulled the velvet collar of her pelisse tighter.

‘Round where, miss?’ the man asked bluntly. ‘This isn’t just some little local shower, it’s a regular blizzard—I’ll wager it’s this bad right across the Midlands. Only thing to be done is to go back to the Cock—the horses won’t manage to get further than that, not until this lets up. There’s nowhere else for five miles.’

‘The Cock?’ Decima stared at him, horrified, the vision of the Sun’s snug private parlour dissolving like a snowball in a muddy puddle, into an image of the squalid alehouse. ‘That is out of the question. They have no bedchambers, let alone a private parlour, and we could be stranded there for days, in goodness knows what company.’

The man shrugged. ‘Not much option, miss. We’d better be getting back now, before the place fills up with other travellers in a like fix.’

‘Might I be of assistance?’ The man’s voice reached them clearly, despite the snow, and Decima strained to make out the speaker through the thickening whiteness. The voice sounded reassuringly deep and pleasant, but as the figure loomed up she gasped. It was a giant.

Then he came nearer, wading through the drifts, and she realised that he was simply a particularly tall gentleman wearing a many-caped driving coat and low-crowned hat.

‘Ma’am.’ He doffed the hat, revealing dark hair that instantly became spangled with white, and came right up to the carriage. ‘I suspect, like me, you have come to the conclusion that the road ahead is impassable for carriages.’

‘Indeed, sir. My postilion is convinced that the only shelter is the alehouse back a mile or so, but—’

‘But that is quite unsuitable for a lady, I could not agree more.’ What Decima could see of him was reassuring. A formidable breadth of shoulder, a pair of level grey-green eyes, a determined chin and a mouth that, although serious now, seemed ready to smile. And he agreed with her, a definite point in his favour in a world of men who all seemed determined to point out to her that she was just a foolish woman.

‘Yet there seems no alternative, unless you know of some more reputable hostelry in the vicinity, sir.’

Adam dug beneath his greatcoat and found his card case. What a lady with only a maid as companion would make of his proposal, goodness knows, but as her alternatives were to be snowed up in a flea-ridden drinking den or to freeze to death in her carriage, he suspected that all but the most straitlaced would agree.

‘My card, ma’am.’ She took it and studied it, giving him an opportunity to study her. Large, wide-set grey eyes, now masked by thick lashes as she read; brown hair peeping from beneath a stylish green velvet bonnet; a generously wide mouth, set in serious lines, and a wild sprinkling of freckles all across her nose and cheeks.

Her maid began to sneeze violently and she glanced across, a slight frown between her brows. ‘Bless you, Pru.’ She turned back to Adam, eyes frankly searching his face as the snow blew between them, her mouth now set in a thoughtful pout that made him want to lean forward and nip its fullness in his teeth. Adam blinked away the snow and took a grip on his imagination.

‘Lord Weston. I am Miss Ross and this is my maid Staples. If you have some alternative suggestion to make, I would be extremely glad to hear it.’

There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I am travelling to my hunting box near Whissendine, about five miles distant. I do not believe I can drive any further beyond here with these drifts, but my groom is with me and two of my hunters. I propose that we unhitch my carriage horses and use them to carry our valuables and essential baggage. My groom will take up your maid on one of the hunters and I will take you on the other. It will not be an easy journey, but I can promise you a warm refuge at the end of it. Your postilions can take your carriage and our remaining baggage back to the alehouse where they can take shelter until the weather breaks and they are able to collect you and take you on to your destination.’

Miss Ross looked down again at the card and then up at his face. He saw her lips move slightly, Adam Grantham, Viscount Weston. Behind her the maid went off into another paroxysm of sneezes. ‘Who else will be at your box, my lord?’ A pleasant voice, even now when it was constrained by both formality and caution.

‘Today, my housekeeper, a maid and a footman. Tomorrow I expect a small house party consisting of two married couples, one of whom is my cousin, Lady Wendover, and her husband.’

‘If they can get through.’ She sounded thoughtful rather than dubious. ‘Very well, my lord. Thank you for your most kind suggestion. Could you ask the postilions to pass my luggage down into the carriage so I can decide what to take?’

He gave the order and trudged back through the drifts to the curricle where Bates stood huddled, holding the carriage horses’ lines in one hand and the reins of the two hunters in the other.

‘We’ll take the women up with us on Ajax and Fox and the baggage up on the greys. Let me sort out a valise—is your gear all together?’

Bates grunted and gestured abruptly with his head towards a battered bag strapped on behind the curricle seat.

‘Good, then unhitch the greys and shorten the reins off.’

Adam rummaged rapidly through his bags and reduced his essentials to one valise, thankful for a lifetime’s habit of travelling light. Goodness knows what a lady with that taste in bonnets would consider she could not do without, and how many bags that would involve. He hefted the rest down and carried them back to the carriage. The snow was deepening by the minute; this was going to be a nightmare of a journey.

‘We are ready, my lord.’ By some miracle the two women were swathed in heavy hooded winter cloaks with not a sign of a fashionable bonnet. On the seat were two valises and a dressing case.

‘I congratulate you on both your dispatch and your packing, Miss Ross. Now, if you will just stand on the step I will carry you across to the horses.’

The wide grey eyes stared at him, then, disconcertingly, she coloured deeply. Now what had he said? Surely a lady willing to go with a stranger on trust was not going to baulk at being carried through a snowdrift?

‘Ma’am?’

The previously assured figure before him seemed to shrink back into herself. ‘My lord, I should tell you…I am five foot ten and one-quarter inches tall.’