Читать книгу A Kind And Decent Man - Mary Brendan, Mary Brendan - Страница 8

‘You have a fine memory, Mr Lorrimer,’ David Hardinge quietly, drily commented.

Long, sooty lashes swept to shield the horrified embarrassment darkening her eyes before Victoria snatched a glance through them. David’s face gave nothing away. He was watching her father with what could have been wry amusement twisting his hard-moulded mouth. Any anger or umbrage was admirably concealed. Victoria steeled herself to hold the narrowed blue gaze that sliced to her, hoping he could detect in her expressive eyes her heartfelt regret at her father’s indiscretion.

‘Hah, you see, I have a fine memory.’ Charles Lorrimer smugly emphasised his point by clawing at his chair with skeletal fingers and inclining his fragile frame towards them. ‘She will not believe me when I tell her so,’ he conspiratorially confided to David Hardinge. ‘She says I am confused. But it suits her to say such things…to be cruel to her father and to lie to me.’

‘Papa!’ Victoria gasped, hurt and shame hoarsening her voice.

‘I remember she said she would fetch me a nice glass of warm brandy, but she has not,’ was next sniped craftily at his white-faced daughter.

‘I said a glass of porter, Papa. And I will fetch it, or get Sally to do so, if you are just patient a moment—’

‘And where is Daniel?’ Her father tetchily cut short her hushed placation. ‘Danny said today I could have snuff. Where is my son-in-law? He treats me better than my own flesh and blood; I swear he does. He is a true friend, a fine fellow. He will fetch me snuff and brandy…’

‘What is up with you now, Charles?’ a female voice boomed into his senile self-pity. ‘What are you blathering on about?’ Matilda Sweeting’s black-bombazine-clad figure pushed forward and she thrust one of her glasses of mulled wine towards her brother. ‘Here, take this and cease crabbing,’ she ordered him bluntly. ‘And don’t guzzle it so or ‘twill make you cough. No doubt your lungs will then be my concern…’

As Matilda continued to upbraid her brother good-naturedly while tugging at his blankets to neaten them, and Charles ignored her advice and gave hearty attention to his wine glass, Victoria instinctively withdrew. The past few fortifying minutes had drained her complexion and dilated her pupils to glossy gunmetal. She thankfully noticed that none of those standing close seemed to have overheard her father’s impropriety. Or, if they had, they were paying scant attention to Charles Lorrimer’s latest odd ramblings. Indeed, there was an atmosphere of pleasant gregariousness about the mourners now that Sally and Beryl had set to and mulled wine was being freely distributed and imbibed. Victoria finally allowed her dusky eyes to glide up to David Hardinge’s face, for she was aware he had moved away from her father’s chair as she did.

‘I’m so sorry…’ she breathed.

‘I have to be going…’ he said.

Their quiet words collided and they fell silent together too. After an awkward pause, Victoria resumed her low apology. ‘I assure you he meant no real offence. He cannot help the way he is. I sincerely regret if he has caused you—’

‘He has caused me nothing. Nothing at all,’ David interrupted lightly, his eyes on a spot on the ceiling. ‘But you have every right to feel slighted. Is he often so?’

Victoria glanced hastily away from eyes that had swooped to hers, feeling more humiliated by this man’s pity than by her father’s rudeness. She simply nodded quickly, casting about in her mind for a change of subject in case he enquired further.

He did not. He repeated mildly, ‘I have to go now, Mrs Hart. I’m not offended, I promise. My leaving has nothing to do with your father…’

David glanced down into her beautiful, solemn face. Well, that’s the whole truth, ran self-mockingly through his mind as he forced his eyes away again. It certainly was nothing to do with her decrepit father. It was everything to do with her. If he stayed longer she might tempt him to do or say something he was sure to regret. The urge to touch her was tormenting him. He longed to discover if her hair was as silken; even now he could recall its fine texture slipping beneath his fingers. He wanted to glide his thumb across her sculpted jaw, the delicate ridge of her cheekbones—repossess skin that looked so incredibly pale and soft.

But he could control it, he sardonically reminded himself, because he was different now. He readily acknowledged burgeoning lust; more worrying was a stirring of emotional commitment. But it was a while since that had mangled him and the notion of ever again allowing such vulnerability was so ludicrous, it almost prompted him to laugh.

So what if her father treated her ill? It was none of his concern. So what if she was now widowed? It was hardly the time or place to capitalise on it. Propositioning a woman on the day she buried her husband was beyond even his amoral sensibilities.

So he was still leaving, right now, and going back to what he knew he wanted: a good tavern, a good friend and a good night of uncomplicated roistering. Because that was what he was good at. And then tomorrow, as he journeyed home to Mayfair and his life of luxury and debauchery, he could leisurely castigate himself for ever being idiotic enough to come here at all. God only knew why he had. Travelling in freezing weather to watch earth shovelled atop some distant relative he barely knew…sheer madness!

David flicked a glance at the elderly man he had once despised and felt nothing. No disgust, no hatred. But he avoided looking back at that man’s daughter, because he knew he couldn’t pretend the same apathy, much as he wanted to.

‘I shall just find one of the servants to fetch your coat,’ Victoria politely informed him, feeling ridiculously hurt that he would not stay longer; that he could not even seem to look at her for longer than a second.

Cool hallway air fanned welcomingly against her flushed cheeks as she sped to find Samuel. Her head hammered with tension and haunting words she’d believed she had successfully buried so long ago but never would stay forgotten.

‘He wanted to buy you…he said he would do it. He wanted to buy my daughter as though she was some common whore. But then that is all he is used to and all you mean to him…’

Her father’s bellowed words of seven years ago throbbed in her head. She had dismissed it all as lies. Everything she had heard whispered abroad about David and his family she had rejected as vile rumour. She was aware that the beau monde loved nothing better than to maliciously dissect reputations, especially those of their peers. Even when Aunt Matilda had tendered cautions about her socialising with roguish David Hardinge or his wayward friends, Victoria would have none of it. She was too much in love, too obsessed with this man who wooed her with a captivating, tender passion yet never once attempted to coerce or take advantage of her. And she knew there had been times when he could have, when fate and obliging friends had allowed them a stolen hour alone, and she would have summoned little resistance had he decided to seduce her.

During their short, six-month courtship, David had shown her more affection, more gentleness and respect than any other man she had known. Even her own father. And she’d told her father that, earnestly, and it had earned her a hefty blow and her immediate banishment from Hammersmith to Hertfordshire. Following her father’s ranting censure, still she would not believe that David Hardinge was a callous rogue who did not love or want her.

Unknown to her father, she had managed to smuggle out two letters to David and had been certain he would soon rescue her. In them she’d made so plain her love for him, and the fact that she was prepared to wait, to elope, to do whatever he wanted, so long as he still loved her and would soon come for her. Yet the weeks had passed with no message, no reply…

Then one afternoon, when her father was away from home, Matilda had managed to sneak to her room to gently break the news that David had left the country and was believed to be travelling abroad. With those few whispered words had come real despair. The first inkling that she had been duped…abandoned had iced her skin and made her stomach churn so violently, so indelibly that she could taste the fear again now. Curled on her bed on that autumn afternoon, she had finally given way to a keening, draining grief that no amount of calming draughts or soothing platitudes from Matilda could ease, and only exhaustion could curtail. The redolence of that earthy, rain-spattered October day teased her nostrils anew; the memory of the incongruous perfection of the rainbow that had later bridged the house dazzled her mind. Swollen-eyed at her window, she had watched the drizzle soften into a harvest evening of such serene beauty that somehow she had found the strength to weep again.

Yet still she would have waited…so desperate was she to believe David honourable and her trust in him justified. But the empty days had crawled by, her father’s rancour had escalated to new, demented heights and a final, painful decision had had to be made.

And now she finally knew the truth of it…The awful fear that she had been wrong to marry so soon, that she should have suffered in that harsh, soulless environment longer, had evaporated. Her decision to accept Daniel’s offer of shelter in an unconventional marriage had been vindicated.

‘I suppose…you’ve come back to buy my daughter…’ her father had just said in his painfully honest way, and David Hardinge had simply smiled and complimented him on his fine memory.

Her black lacy veil tumbled forward onto her brow and Victoria swiftly unpinned the hat, dropped it carelessly onto a hall table and hurried on.

What did any of it matter now? It was all seven years old! she impressed upon herself, furious that a wedge of melancholy was blocking her throat. How could she even dwell on it? She had just buried her dear husband. He had been a fine, generous husband for seven long years. David Hardinge had been a reprobate playing a convincing role for just six months.

Daniel’s selfless goodness had stirred feelings of guilt: he might have made a second marriage to rival the consummate success of his first. But whenever Victoria had mentioned such doubts he would smile, with his pale eyes distant, and tell her that such love came but once and that once was a privilege. But a daughter to care for…God had never been that kind to him…until now.

Victoria sighed, dragging her thoughts to the present. If only Daniel had not made her promise to write to David Hardinge, she would have been as oblivious to his disturbing presence today as she had been last week…last month…last year. But for the worry of Danny’s illness and her papa’s worsening dementia, she had been virtually content with her lot in life here at Hartfield. Now she felt hot and restless…and queasy, as though a nest of vipers writhed in the pit of her stomach.

Nearing the kitchens, she spied Samuel’s broad back huddled close to the short, plump figure of Sally, one of the domestics. She had believed Sally still to be serving refreshments in the drawing room. A sigh of impatience escaped her.

‘Samuel, Lord Courtenay is leaving. His coat, please…’ The young couple immediately shifted away from each other. Sally bustled past with a deferential dip of her brunette head but her face was blotchy from weeping.

Victoria closed her eyes in sheer exasperation. She could not countenance dealing with any histrionics from the servants…not today. She already felt as though she was wound as tightly as a spring. Just one more twist and she would snap; of that she was sure.

Samuel tried to pass her too with a gruff, cooperative, ‘I’ll fetch it straight away, ma’am.’

Victoria placed a restraining hand on his beefy arm. ‘Samuel…this is too much today. Can you and Sally—and I suppose it’s Beryl involved too—can you not at least cease your bickering on a day such as this?’ she stressed in a voice quivering with emotion.

‘Sorry, ma’am…’ Samuel mumbled, his coarsely attractive features ruddying in embarrassment and remorse. Straightening his waistcoat with a businesslike jerk, he sedately walked on.

Victoria stared at the kitchen door then momentarily closed her eyes, composing herself, before swishing about and calmly retracing her steps.

She emptied her mind. Nothing was allowed other than the need to get through this day. She concentrated on whether any mourners would expect bed and board. The weather was now so inclement it would invariably come to that, she decided. That would entail arranging chambers and linen, further meals…She was exhausted and desirous of solitude, not extended company. But it was her duty and she would deal with it, just as she always had since Danny’s illness had shifted such mundane matters onto her slender shoulders. For with his declining health had come declining fortune when he’d no longer devoted attention to his business affairs. And as their income had reduced so had the number of servants they could employ at Hartfield. But she had been happy to take over housekeeping duties when Mrs Whittaker had retired and gone to live with her sister in Brighton. And thus the first economies had been made.

Victoria completely ignored the reflexive jump of her heart as she rounded the corner into the main hallway and immediately spied David Hardinge’s tall, imposing figure. He was chatting to Sir Peter by the double arched entrance doors. She focussed on being relieved that Samuel had speedily set about the task of returning the Viscount his coat. That comforting emotion was immediately whipped from her as she anxiously noticed Beryl’s neat, black-uniformed figure sidling up to Samuel by the hall table. But they both appeared fully occupied attending to guests’ cloaks and gloves and quite oblivious and uncaring of each other.

A grateful sigh escaped. Any further embarrassing domestic situations and she was sure she would scream or weep. Instead she stifled a wry laugh at the very idea; such selfish indulgence was a luxury, and there would be no more of those.

Having cordially shaken hands with his old acquaintance, Sir Peter turned back to the warmth of the drawing room. Victoria received a friendly, slightly inebriated grin as he passed.

‘Thank you once again, Lord Courtenay, for being good enough to attend Daniel’s funeral. I hope the weather improves for your safe journey home.’

David inclined his dark head, acknowledging her civil good wishes, even though they held the same arctic quality as the air outside. His eyes reluctantly shifted from her face to gaze at something distracting behind her. ‘One of your servants seems a little upset,’ he mentioned impartially.

Victoria felt a stinging surge of blood heat her cheeks. So Beryl and Samuel had not contained their differences, not even for the five short minutes that would have been necessary for David Hardinge to have taken his leave. Narrowed blue eyes scanned her pink, tense face as he said, ‘You already know about it…?’

The hint of mild concern in his tone snapped up her glossy black head. She had no use for his pity and would have liked to tell him so. Instead she murmured stiffly, ‘Yes, I do know, thank you,’ while wishing the floor would open up and swallow her…or this taciturn man who assuredly never tolerated tantrums from his domestics.

Pride aided her swift composure. ‘It has been a very sad time for us all. My husband was well liked and respected by the servants…by all who knew him.’ It was a quite truthful prevarication. The rustling of Beryl’s stiff skirts as she scurried away was all that broke the ensuing silence.

‘I believe I’ve been remiss in not yet offering condolences on your loss, Mrs Hart,’ David eventually said. ‘Was he a good husband?’

Grey and blue eyes linked then strained. ‘I’m sure there was never better,’ Victoria quietly stated, and something about the way he found that cool sincerity amusing twisted her stomach.

He extended a hand in farewell and she allowed him one of hers for the briefest moment. His smile quirked sardonically as she exactly matched his reaction to her touch earlier. Then all that was left with her in the hallway was an icy draught and a dusting of snowflakes melting on the marble flags.

The sun was lost early today, Victoria realised glumly as she glanced out through the casement window in Hartfield’s small library at the clouding sky. She finished totting up the column of figures in the household accounts before pushing the ledger away from her and laying the quill back on the blotter. It mattered little how many times she did the sums; the balances never looked any healthier. But she had made economies before; it was simply a case of cutting back a little further.

Daniel had always praised her housekeeping skills, in the early days of her undertaking the task, marvelling at the way she could make do and mend, bargain with tradesmen and generally pinch a penny until it squeaked. As he’d grown weaker, she’d known he no longer had strength enough to worry or enquire as to how she did.

She had no idea where her talents for parsimony came from: until her marriage she’d had no experience of household budgeting or hiring servants or paying wages. But she had been reared on thrift. Her father had never been a generous man where she was concerned—either in his time, his affection or his coin.

She withdrew her mother’s locket from the pocket of her serviceable serge gown and laid it on the blotter. A finger traced the carved gold surface before she opened it with gentle reverence and looked at the miniature portraits of her parents. The likenesses had been painted shortly after their marriage, some twenty-eight years ago. Her father was strong and handsome, his hair as black as her own, despite the fact that he was then in his forties, and his eyes bright and alert. Her mother looked serene: her luxuriant auburn tresses swept back from the delicate bone-structure of her ivory-skinned, heart-shaped face. She had been more than twenty years younger than her husband.

Whenever Victoria feasted her hungry eyes upon the beautiful mother she had never known, she understood how awful it must have been for the man who’d doted on her to have lost her. She understood why her father resented her; why she had grown up shunned as an unwanted burden rather than a cherished child. For her mother had relinquished life in order that Victoria could have hers and she knew her father had found that impossible to forgive. The sad irony was that her late husband had lost both his new-born daughter and his first wife in childbed and had cherished Victoria as his child-wife.

In her early years, her dear aunt Matty had done her best to substitute herself as the mother Victoria had never known. She had also upbraided her brother many times for his coldness and neglect of his only child. Victoria had overheard their cross words on occasion, and knowing she was causing her father that family pain too had served only to turn the screws of the awful guilt that racked her. And she marvelled at her aunt Matty’s temerity. For she had been, during their days in Hammersmith, an impecunious widow reliant on her brother’s charity, and to scold him as she did, and on another’s account…

Matilda Sweeting’s life had never been easy. She had married a penniless scoundrel who purported to be a naval officer, given birth to a son and been widowed all in the space of two years. Despite her wastrel husband having frittered away all his own money and then hers too, Matilda had managed to retain her pride and her sanity. And then when her only son, Justin, had disappeared in his sixteenth year, she had again drawn on that unbreachable resilience to overcome the disaster. He had been press-ganged, or so they believed, for there was no other credible solution to his disappearance some eleven years ago in the vicinity of the London dockland. Matilda spoke rarely of him now, but when she did it was as though he was alive and well but just too busy and successful to visit yet awhile.

Victoria focussed again on her parents’ youthful, attractive faces. There had been a lot of heartache for the Lorrimers in the past twenty-five years. A troubled sigh escaped as she dwelt on her father’s dementia. Heartache wasn’t yet over.

A bar of warmth gilded her clasped hands on the desk as the sun escaped cloud. She turned her dark head to the window. The bitter winter was extending into late March but had not prevented spring bulbs spearing the frozen ground. The sight of yellow and mauve crocuses interspersed with snowdrops bobbing their drooping heads prompted a wistful smile. The sky was clouding again already, slowly obliterating the lucid sunlight, but she resolved to go. Each afternoon in the hour between finishing her bookkeeping duties and organising preparation of the evening meal, she would walk the short distance to the chapel and tend her husband’s grave.

‘I thought I might find you here.’

Victoria started, gasped and twisted about so quickly that she almost pitched forward onto her knees. She shielded her eyes as she peered up at the man standing a few paces away on the shingle path. He stepped jerkily forward, belatedly steadying her with a meaty hand.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hart; I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he earnestly apologised. ‘Samuel said you’re to be found here most afternoons. I…I needed to speak with you…’ He looked at the grave, the pretty arrangement of pastel spring flowers atop the cropped grassy mound. ‘I apologise for intruding on a private moment…I just…I’m afraid it is important….’

Victoria banged earth from her gloved hands. ‘Please don’t apologise, Mr Beresford. In any case, I was just about to return to Hartfield. ‘Twill soon be time for dinner. Will you stay and dine?’ she pleasantly invited her late husband’s attorney.

Alexander Beresford reluctantly demurred but with grateful thanks for the kind offer as he gallantly helped Victoria to her feet. She was surprised to see him. He usually made the trip from the town of St Albans to the village of Ashdowne about once every six weeks to advise her on Daniel’s investments and her current financial situation. She was sure not yet a fortnight had passed since last she had seen him. He was a pleasant, stocky man of perhaps thirty-five. He seemed efficient in all he did and had been a great deal of help to her in the weeks following Daniel’s death, patiently explaining exactly what provision Daniel had made for her and that, with careful administration and a tight grip on the purse-strings, the funds would prove adequate to frugally maintain Hartfield.

She noticed he seemed more nervous than usual. Despite the chill afternoon air, a beading of perspiration glistened along his hairline. ‘Is something amiss, Mr Beresford?’

He cleared his throat, thrusting large hands into his greatcoat pockets while gazing off into the distance. This was to be a momentous day for both of them and he still wasn’t sure how or where to start. So he didn’t. ‘You have made that look very nice indeed, Mrs Hart. Those bright flowerheads can be seen from beyond the chapel gate.’ His praise was fulsome yet not once did he glance at the crocuses he so admired.

‘Is there something amiss, Mr Beresford?’ Victoria persisted, seeking contact with his evasive brown eyes.

‘Yes, Mrs Hart, there is,’ Alexander Beresford told her bluntly, his gaze finally colliding with hers. ‘But I think we should leave further discussion until we’re back at Hartfield.’ With a solemn air of finality he offered her his arm.

‘Surely the warehouse ought to have been insured against fire?’ Victoria demanded of Alexander Beresford, seated opposite her, his papers spread across her small library desk.

The man raked some chubby fingers through his brown hair. ‘It seems it was not, Mrs Hart. I have to admit to being equally amazed and angry at this discovery.’ A stubby finger poked between his neckcloth and his red-mottled throat. ‘The clerk charged with dealing with insurance cover on the premises at the East India Dock had not paid over the cash to the insurance company. In short, the man appears to have fraudently used the money as his own and allowed the policy to lapse.’ Mr Beresford clapped both hands down on the table, pushed himself back in his chair and issued a hearty blow of mingled annoyance and resignation. ‘None of which helps your cause, I’m afraid, Mrs Hart. Practically all Daniel’s stock was lost in the inferno. The rogue could possibly be punished, if the theft was proven and his whereabouts discovered. I have it from a reliable source that the coward is gone to ground. No doubt he trusted the theft would go undetected.’

Victoria gazed at him with wide grey eyes. The enormity of what he was saying was slowly penetrating her mind, in terrifying fragments. ‘Just how badly will I…will Hartfield…be affected by this loss, Mr Beresford?’ she asked quietly, determinedly.

His thick fingers plucked distractedly at the papers in front of him before clasping together. ‘To pay off creditors Hartfield must be sold,’ he eventually burst out.

‘Never!’ Victoria whispered in fierce astonishment. She certainly had not anticipated that things were as bad as that. ‘Daniel bequeathed Hartfield to me to provide a home for us all. And also to retain the servants who have served him…us so faithfully. Some have been at Hartfield for twenty years or more. Samuel was but nine years old when he commenced work in the stables. I would feel I had utterly failed Daniel…betrayed him, and so soon. It is barely eight weeks since his death. No! There must be some other way…’

‘I have searched for other ways, I assure you,’ Alexander Beresford stressed quite truthfully, his fleshy face ruddying in indignation. ‘The bank that forwarded loans to Daniel for the speculative purchase of those silks and cottons, now mere ashes, is pressing for payment. I need to forward some cash soon. An interim payment might appease them for a short while. I suggest sale of the last of the sterling bonds…’ He swivelled some papers towards her as he spoke, but they barely received a cursory glance. Her grey eyes were pinned back on his face, desperate for some reassurance that this awful, unexpected situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. None came.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but Hartfield will need to be sold. And as soon as possible. There is no stock now to sell to meet the interest or the principal. You probably know that during your late husband’s illness his finances declined quite considerably. There is the matter of the overdue rent from the Holdbrook farm, but I know Daniel was not keen to sue for that while the family were suffering such tribulations.’

Victoria nodded, murmuring her wholehearted agreement with Daniel’s forbearance. The tenants at that farm were experiencing dreadful hardship: two of the sons had been taken with consumption and just before Daniel had died of the same pitiless condition they’d had word that the youths’ mother was also afflicted. Adam Holdbrook, a man in his late forties, was now struggling to run his farm single-handed and rear three young children under five years of age. To insist on payment of overdue rent at such a time would have been beneath humanity. In fact, it was time she visited the family with a little of Hartfield’s butter and cheese. Samuel had told her only that week that, in desperation, Adam Holdbrook had sold the family’s last dairy cow. At one time, Daniel had been in a position to help luckless villagers. It had cemented good relationships between landlord and tenant. Now there was very little she could offer at such times. Her thoughts raced back to her own predicament. The awful truth was that she might soon be in need of a little charity herself.

‘Will there be any residue from the sale? Enough to provide a home for myself and my father and aunt?’

‘There will be very little, my dear…very little indeed.’ Alexander knew there would be nothing but voicing as much was beyond his courage.

Victoria stared at him, obliquely aware that he was kindly trying to comfort her. He had done so before on the fateful evening Dr Gibson had told them that Daniel would be dead before morn. And when reading Daniel’s will to her and explaining that everything her late husband owned was to be hers.

Hartfield was to be hers to keep or sell as she would but no other man would ever lay hands on it. Codicils had been added to the deeds to Daniel’s estate so it could be bequeathed to her yet never pass out of her control and into the unworthy clutches of a future husband, should she remarry.

Alexander Beresford’s brown eyes settled on the woman he secretly desired and admired. He strove for the boldness to voice his proposal. ‘There is another way, Victoria.’

The immediate bright hope in her eyes made him blurt quickly, ‘You could…you should remarry.’

Victoria frowned across the library table at him. ‘Remarry? My husband is barely eight weeks buried. It is far too soon; besides, I have no wish…’

‘I realise, my dear, that so soon might seem indelicate but in circumstances such as these…desperate circumstances…people understand such behaviour. What choices have you? A man to support you or employment are the only options if you are to avoid the parish relief.’

‘Well, which man would take on a widow with an estate and property to upkeep that will never be his own? He would need to be a wealthy saint. No such man exists.’

‘Well, naturally, Victoria,’ Alexander Beresford said mildly, ‘no man would burden himself so. Hartfield must be sold to meet your debts, for no man would take on such losses. But you still need protection and security. And any amount of gentlemen would be proud…happy to have you grace their home…’ And their bed, ran involuntarily through Alexander Beresford’s mind, making his chubby features perspire at such lustful thoughts. He repeated quickly, ‘No, Hartfield must be sold to pay your debts and I expect you would feel obliged to make provision for your relatives before you wed, if at all possible.’

‘My relatives? You mean my papa and Aunt Matilda? Well, naturally they would live with me…’

‘Daniel Hart was indeed philanthropic. But a new husband might not countenance such an arrangement, my dear,’ Alexander warned firmly. His brown eyes roved discreetly over her fitted buttoned bodice. Even the drab mourning grey and serviceable material could not deflect an appreciative glance at her slender ribcage and small rounded breasts.

He was determined to make his offer and in the circumstances was reasonably confident of it being successful. But his means and generosity would never stretch to her extended family. He earned a reasonable salary, had good prospects, and a comfortable home in St Albans. Victoria was very welcome to share it as his wife but his duty ended there. He had no intention of charitably boarding and lodging her brain-sick father or her outspoken widowed aunt, no matter what precedent Daniel Hart had vexingly set.

She would lose Hartfield. She had debts to pay and would thus lose the home her husband had had in his family for three generations. This was all that dominated Victoria’s mind. Daniel had left it in her safekeeping and within two months of his death it was to be lost. But how could she have prevented it? She could never have averted this disaster. Was there sense in Alexander’s proposal that another good man might be her salvation? She had married one kindly husband who had cared for her and her family. But then Daniel Hart and Charles Lorrimer had been old acquaintances: she had known her late husband all her life. She had always liked him…trusted him implicitly. It was the reason she had agreed to marry him when her future looked so bleak. She sighed dejectedly. ‘My papa and my aunt are settled here. I so wish my father could see out his remaining days at Hartfield.’

‘Well, I would do all in my power to please you, my dear,’ Alexander said. ‘But retaining Hartfield even for one more month is, I believe, quite beyond me.’

Victoria looked at him with wary grey eyes. Surely he didn’t mean…?

‘I see you have guessed, and I can’t say I’m surprised for I know I have difficulty at times in shielding my feelings for you. I have long admired you, Victoria. To my shame, I held you in great affection even when Daniel was alive. I envied him so…’ The admission seemed ripped from him.

‘Please, I feel I should stress that I…that I…’ Victoria could think of nothing to add quickly to make him stop.

‘No, let me finish. I must say these things, my dear. I have loved and admired you for a long while. It would make me the proudest man alive if you would consent to be my wife. I have a comfortable villa in St Albans and good prospects and salary. I have my business premises there and ambitions to expand and take on a partner—’

‘Please, I have to speak.’ Victoria softly interrupted him. She smiled and it prompted the florid-faced man to spontaneously reach across the table and grasp one of her small-boned hands in his pudgy fingers. The instinct to withdraw from his moist palm was not easily curbed. ‘I truly thank you, Mr Beresford, for your proposal. But I cannot…I cannot even countenance remarrying at present. Your kindness in offering to share your home with me does you great credit and me great honour. But at present I cannot consent…’

‘I understand; of course I do. A year at least to mourn one’s dear departed is usual…indeed expected. I have spoken too soon in the normal way. But circumstances are no longer normal. People understand that financial hardship countermands such codes. But I understand you need time to think.’ He gave her a rather sweet smile. ‘I pray you will consider quickly and favourably, Victoria.’ He hurriedly collected together his papers and within five minutes was gone from Hartfield.

As Victoria pivoted on her heel in the hallway after the great door closed behind him, she pondered on all he had told her. She thought of her father and her aunt and, because he was a kind man, she knew Alexander would provide for them. She turned back and stared at the arched oaken doors of Hartfield. He was quite right: her circumstances were exceptional. Protection for herself and her family was a priority; clinging to social niceties was not. She suddenly felt sorely tempted to run after him and give him her answer now.