A Gamble on Love (3 page)

“
Indeed.”

The room darkened as the sun was obscured by
a cloud. Presently, Aurelia picked up her quill. With her thoughts
coalesced at last, she began her letter to Lady Morville.

Miss Augustina Aldershot, ignoring her
misgivings, followed her employer’s lead. Having once, if briefly,
known love, she had hoped that Relia, like her parents, would find
a true and lasting love. Evidently, it was not to be. In the
careful penmanship Miss Aldershot had imparted to Aurelia when she
was her governess, she wrote the promised letters to her friends,
informing them that Miss Aurelia Trevor was in search of a husband,
landless but not impoverished.

Gussie’s letters bore first fruit. Just over
a fortnight later a post chaise drew up to the front portico of
Pevensey Park, disgorging a tall man of uncertain age. As Aurelia
heard Biddeford striding across the tiles toward the front door,
she scampered away from the window, where she had been peeking at
their guest, and plumped herself down upon a gold and cream striped
satin settee, whose scrolled fruitwood arms gleamed with beeswax
polish.

In a few moments Mr. Oswald Pitney was
bowing before her. He was so tall and thin, so solemn, she almost
expected him to creak as he straightened up, rather like the
bending of a giant pine or perhaps one of the marble statues in the
park. But he was not unpleasant in appearance, Relia noted with
relief, for, in spite of her grand words, she
would
have to look at him for the rest of her
life. He was just a bit . . . well, craggy—rather like a
mountainside she had once seen when the family visited
Wales.

After her guest was perched, somewhat
awkwardly, on the edge of a chair that matched the settee, Miss
Trevor said, “I understand you are an academic, Mr. Pitney?” She
had been hopeful for exactly this reason, as her papa, though a
conscientious landowner, had spent the better part of each day in
his library, surrounded by his beloved books.

Mr. Pitney stretched his long neck, as if his
cravat were interfering with his thought processes, then declared,
“Indeed, Miss Trevor, I have been quite content in my quiet
residence in Oxford. Happy with access to the many treasures there.
But when I heard Pevensey . . . that is, when I was informed there
was a lady in distress—one to whom I might give assistance—I felt
it my duty to meet with you.”

“
I see.” Aurelia seized upon the faint
hope in these words. “Then you find your studies, your quiet life,
fulfilling? Worthy of absorbing all your time?”

“
I do indeed,” Mr. Pitney responded
with the first sign of animation she had seen from him.

Excellent. Kent was some distance from
Oxford. Mr. Pitney might spend considerable time away from Pevensey
Park.

“
My father is a baron,” her guest
offered with cool pride, “able to provide me with a comfortable
independence. I was intended for the church, but found my calling
is to books and not the cloth. Although I have never been in the
petticoat line, I am not so unworldly as to eschew an advantageous
marriage when coupled with the impelling call to provide guidance
to a female left rudderless in this harsh world.”

Rudderless indeed!
Miss Trevor determined on the instant to eschew Mr. Oswald
Pitney. If at all possible. In a few short minutes she thanked the
solemn Mr. Pitney for journeying all the way from Oxford into Kent.
She was considering several suitors, she told him, and would inform
him if he would be required to uproot himself from the hallowed
halls of academia. Though obviously shocked by a gentle maiden
demonstrating calm control of such a delicate situation, Mr. Pitney
made a stiff farewell and took himself off.

As the front door shut behind him, the
Pevensey ladies looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“
He is, nonetheless, a possibility,”
Aurelia sighed. “I doubt he would be much bother.”

“
My dear child,” Miss Aldershot
sputtered, “I doubt you’d ever get a child out of him!”

“
Gussie!”

“
Aurelia, there are certain things we
have never discussed. I will say only that when a rake is over
thirty and unmarried, no one questions his virility. But
that man
was thirty-five, if he was a
day, and not a sign of an interest in anything but
books.”

“
He was panting over my acres, you know
quite well he was.”

“
Undoubtedly—what else could you
expect? But,” Gussie added ominously, “if there is one thing I know
you want besides Pevensey itself, it is an heir, someone who will
love and care for the Park as you do. And I tell you,
that man
won’t do.”

The ladies waited, but, alas, Miss
Aldershot’s three letters produced only Mr. Oswald Pitney. Their
last hope was Lady Morville, who finally communicated her triumph
in a letter recommending a Darrell Carswell, Viscount Hanley. She
would send him down to Pevensey Park directly.

And now—a scant three weeks before she might
wed without her guardian’s consent and with little time left for
vital repairs before winter set in—Lord Hanley was here. Aurelia’s
knees threatened to fail her as she walked through a succession of
finely decorated rooms on her way to the drawing room. Twyford.
Harry. Mr. Pitney. And now Lord Hanley. Surely, it was time for
fortune to smile on her.

Relia paused at a pier glass in the small Red
Ante-Chamber just outside the drawing room. What would Lord Hanley
see? She smoothed the fall of her silver gray silk gown, its hem
banded in narrow strips of black lace. The raven curls tumbling
artfully over her ears had not been disarranged by any mischievous
gust on the terraces. The rest of her hair was piled high on her
head and fastened with mother-of-pearl combs. The face staring back
at her was round, young and surprisingly sweet, giving little hint
of the stubborn and aristocratic nature beneath. Except for her
eyes, which were a surprisingly intense blue. Swiftly, Relia
lowered them, as she noted their sharp, penetrating stare was not
completely disguised by her long thick fringe of lashes. Gentlemen
did not care for intelligent women. Controlling women, they
despised.

Nor was she was in her best looks. Mourning,
even gray, did not become her. And the strain of her husband-hunt
was showing. Her eyes seemed more deep-set than usual, and there
were smudges—more truthfully, visible half-circles—beneath them.
Yet, surely, a woman, even six months into mourning, might not be
expected to look as dewy fresh as a schoolroom miss.

Lord Hanley was waiting.

Aurelia took a deep breath, ordered her lips
into a smile, and entered the drawing room.

Oh, my!
Darrell
Carswell, Viscount Hanley was positively beautiful. Dressed in
perfect town attire of finely fitted blue tail coat, striped vest,
fawn trousers, and mirror-polished Hessians, Lord Hanley showed his
gleaming white teeth in a charming smile and took her hand,
feathering a kiss just above her knuckles.
The devil!
Kissing a lady’s hand was a greeting
from her parent’s generation. But was there a lady of any age whose
heart did not flutter, at least a trifle, over such an intimate
gesture?

His pockets are sadly to
let
, Lady Morville had written,
but his prospects from a favorite aunt are excellent, so I do
not consider him in true need of an heiress. Although
,
she had added judiciously,
the boy would be
a fool to ignore such a splendid opportunity as Pevensey
Park.

“
The boy” was, Aurelia judged, not more
than five or six and twenty, but he exuded what was known as town
bronze from every square inch. In fact, in spite of his charming
façade and apparent good nature, she felt herself diminishing from
Lady of the Manor to Country Mouse.
Control
. She must seize control.

“
You enjoy life in London, Lord
Hanley?”

His blue eyes lit with what Miss Aldershot
would later describe as a fanatical gleam. “I guarantee you will
love London, Miss Trevor. It is the only place to be, don’t y’know?
All that’s important happens in town.”

Relia’s heart plummeted, but perhaps things
wouldn’t be so bad if Lord Hanley preferred to stay in town and was
willing to leave her in the country—a common arrangement, she knew.
“You do not care for the country then?” she asked.

“
The country?” Viscount Hanley made a
brave effort. “An occasional weekend is acceptable,” he allowed. “A
bit of shooting, a hunt now and again.”

“
Am I to understand you prefer to live
in London year-round?”

“
Is there anything else?” he asked with
an arch look ameliorated by an insouciant smile. “Just think, Miss
Trevor,” he continued, positively quivering with eagerness, “if we
are wed, we can furnish a townhouse with nothing but the best, give
the finest parties, become leaders of the
ton
—”

“
I—I fear I have no interest in London,
Lord Hanley,” said Aurelia, clinging desperately to a mask of calm,
even as she felt her last hope being wrenched asunder.

“
Dear girl,” he cried, “you cannot
expect me to live in the country? Why . . . good God, it
smells
!”

Pevensey Park. Which smelled of fresh-scythed
grass and flowers. Of waving stands of wheat and ripening fruit. Of
hops and oast houses. Of sheep and cows and pigs. New-turned earth.
Spring rains and summer lightning. Of fish in the stream and the
sweat of dedicated labor. Of life—birth, death, renewal.

Here she was and here she would stay. Somehow
she would find a way.

Though Viscount Hanley’s failure to live up
to expectations was a bitter blow to the ladies of Pevensey Park,
the very next morning Miss Trevor, ever resilient, ordered up her
carriage and journeyed into Tunbridge Wells. There, she consulted
Mr. Josiah Eastbridge, a rival solicitor to the man who had served
her father for so many years and who now, apparently, served only
her Uncle Hubert. Mr. Eastbridge, a gentle soul, could scarce
believe he was to be entrusted with any modicum of the Trevor
family business—however secretive Miss Aurelia might be about her
true purpose. He was, therefore, only too happy to recommend a
solicitor in London. His old schoolmate, Sir Gilbert Bromley, a man
of rare perspicacity, sometimes know—he informed her proudly—as the
Solicitors’ Solicitor.

Miss Trevor, pleased with both Mr. Eastbridge
and her own daring, gave her maid and Gussie Aldershot only minimal
time to pack before the three women set off for London. After
securing a fine suite of rooms at Grillon’s—for which Relia gave
thanks that her papa’s will included a generous pin money
allowance—a letter of introduction was despatched to the
much-vaunted Sir Gilbert Bromley. The solicitor responded with
flattering prompness.

The ladies made the considerable journey
across London from Albemarle Street to Lincoln’s Inn Fields in near
silence. Aurelia did not hesitate to peer out the window,
fascinated by the sights, sounds, and smells of a town she had seen
only on rare occasions before her mother’s illness. She looked on
it as a spectacle—something to be viwed, even savored for a few
moments of time—then left behind. With relief. For everything was
so squeezed together—how could people live this way? Miss Trevor
welcomed the park-like green of Lincoln’s Inn Fields with pleasure.
London’s solicitors and barristers had displayed surprisingly good
taste in choosing this spot as their own.

For a man who had been described to her
as “distinguished,” Sir Gilbert Bromley was, on first glance, a
disappointment. A man of perhaps fifty, his body was as rotund as
Squire Stanton’s, his face as round as a cartwheel, as was the
shining bald spot on top of his head. But his eyes, Relia saw, were
a clear blue, the kind that could see to far horizons or penetrate
the depths of a murky pond.
Thank you, Mr.
Eastbridge
.

After the ladies were seated, Sir Gilbert
smiled benignly and said, “And now, ladies, what may I do for
you?”

As Miss Trevor spoke, the solicitor’s smile
faded. A wealthy, landless husband, strong enough to deal with a
greedy uncle, an importunate suitor, and a cowardly steward, yet
disinterested enough in country affairs to let the reins of
Pevensey Park remain in his wife’s hands? “Good Gad, woman!” Sir
Gilbert burst out, “have your wits gone begging? I’m no matchmaker.
And even if I were, your demands are outrageous.”

But Relia had fluttered her long lashes and
looked so woebegone, the brilliant London solicitor never stood a
chance. Such a beauty . . . granddaughter of a marquess. Such a
fine property . . . and magnificent income. And then Miss Trevor
named a fee that might have tempted the Prince Regent himself. Sir
Gilbert shook Miss Trevor’s hand, bid Miss Aldershot good-day, and
promised to give the matter his most serious consideration.

When the ladies were gone, Sir Gilbert
narrowed his eyes, gazing into space. He drummed his fingers on his
desk until, finally, a slow smile played across his face.

~ * ~

“
You’re mad!”

Since Thomas Lanning’s least whisper
could be more intimidating than a bull’s roar, his solicitor and
long-time friend, Charles Saunders, retreated into the depths of
the burgundy leather wingchair that faced the broad expanse of his
employer’s desk and contemplated another approach. Truthfully,
Thomas, who was once again bent over the paperwork on his desk,
looked as immovable and as impervious to change as the Rock of
Gibraltar. A handsome man, was Thomas Lanning, Mr. Saunders had to
concede—until you looked into the depths of those piercing gray
eyes and began to wonder if he had any of the weaknesses of mortal
men. Yet in the matrimonial market he was considered a fine catch.
If his bride did not mind a man with the resilient strength of a
Toledo blade . . . and the sharp cut as well. Not that Thomas
Lanning was arrogant or aloof—he was much too clever to offend his
colleagues in the City or his high-flying acquaintances in
the
ton
. But for all the
bonhomie he could display on occasion, no one ever quite knew what
Thomas was thinking. But this time . . . this time Charles had to
make him listen.