A Second Spring (8 page)

He would have thought no one guessed his real purpose were it not for Lady Derrington’s constant hints and determined chaperonage of her sister-in-law.

He was well satisfied with what he had seen of Lady Eleanor. She seemed at ease among her brother’s guests and, he gathered, had played hostess to admiration in her equally hospitable father’s time. Her dress was neat and proper, neither dowdy nor excessively fashionable. Her face was pleasant, distinguished neither by daunting beauty nor plainness. She was neither fat nor thin, and she moved with grace. When she played Haydn or Scarlatti upon the spinet in the drawing room after dinner, her touch was light and sure. Benedict looked forward to musical evenings in his own home.

If Lady Eleanor had a fault, it was that she was rather too quiet. On the other hand, Lady Derrington talked enough for two, enough to convince him the last thing he wanted was a garrulous wife. He had decided to propose.

His interview with Lord Derrington proved most satisfactory. Lady Eleanor possessed a considerable fortune in her own right—naturally he would settle it upon her and her children. He had no need of her money but at least it proved she wouldn’t be marrying him for his wealth.

He was not ill-looking. He had every intention of being a considerate husband, and he’d provide her with a family and an establishment of her own. What more could any woman desire?

The music-room door was closed. As Benedict opened it, a flood of sound engulfed him, urgent, demanding, troubled. Startled, he stepped forward. The music came to a sudden halt.

Lady Eleanor sat at the pianoforte, her hands still on the keys. She stared at him as if turned to stone by his sudden appearance.

“What were you playing?” he asked to put her at her ease, advancing towards the instrument.

She jumped up, closing the music. “A new piece, Lord Clifford. I fear I have by no means yet mastered it. Were you… were you looking for me?”

“Yes. I have something particular to say to you, Lady Eleanor. Will you not be seated?”

“No, thank you,” she said with an odd hint of defiance. Tall and elegant in leaf-green sarsenet trimmed with white Valenciennes, she moved to the window where she gazed out at a glinting April shower.

For the first time, Benedict felt a hint of awkwardness. After all, he had never before proposed marriage. But gentlemen did it every day. It was nothing out of the ordinary. There was even a prescribed form of sorts—stuff about hands and hearts. However, he was not going to lower himself to offer Spanish coin. Hearts had nothing to do with the matter.

“I have spoken to your brother,” he said. “He has given me permission to address you and reason to hope that you will not look unkindly upon my suit. Lady Eleanor, you will do me the greatest honour if you will grant me your hand in marriage.”

She turned. With the bright rectangle of the window behind her, he was unable to read her face, but he thought her regard was searching. Surely she wasn’t trying to find a courteous way to tell him his hopes were unfounded!

After a moment, she said with quiet dignity, “Thank you, sir, I am happy to accept your flattering offer, and I shall do my best to be a good wife to you.”

And now, Benedict found, came the truly awkward part. He could not take this cool, self-possessed woman in his arms and kiss her as instinct bade him. He would not lie and tell her she had made him the happiest of men. In any normal social situation, precisely the correct words were always on the tip of his tongue, but now he found himself at a loss.

“You are very kind,” he said. “I shall do my best to be a good husband. You do not care for a long engagement, I trust? I believe a June wedding is traditional, if you can be ready in time.”

“June will do very well.”

She held out her hand to him and he bowed over it, venturing to touch his lips to her knuckles. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so he left her.

She had accepted him. Why, then, this chilly, hollow feeling of disappointment?

As he politely closed the music-room door behind him, he realised he didn’t know the colour of her hair or eyes.

* * * *

“I can’t do it, Agnes, indeed I cannot!” Staring into the looking-glass, Nell saw the panic in her voice reflected in her grey-green eyes. Her face was pale above the white nightgown.

Her misgivings had grown during the four weeks since Lord Clifford’s proposal, and had come to a head during evensong that very evening. She hadn’t seen her prospective husband since the day after his offer, when he had bowed to her wish for a quiet wedding in the village church. Sitting in the church today, she had tried to imagine herself standing with him before the altar, promising to love, honour and obey a stranger. Impossible!

Her abigail paused with the hairbrush in one plump hand poised above the flowing copper tresses. “Then you shan’t, my lady,” she said soothingly. “Though when all’s said and done, he’s a handsome, well-set-up gentleman, with a good handle to his name and no need of your fortune, from what I hear.”

“Handsome? He might be handsome if there were only a little animation in his face. His features are well enough, but so impassive I never saw him smile, or even frown. When we discussed the arrangements for our wedding—even when he proposed to me—we could have been planning the dullest of dinner parties.”

“There’s some men don’t care to show their deepest feelings, dearie.”

“Even to the women they’re going to marry? I don’t believe he has any feelings. How can I spend the rest of my life with a block of wood? A block of ice!”

“His valet says he’s a good master, a good landlord, and a good brother.”

“But I should not be his servant, his tenant, nor his sister.”

“Ah well, ‘tis not the end of the world,” said Agnes philosophically, resuming the brushing of Nell’s hair with long, rhythmic strokes. “You’ve turned down others afore.”

“But never after first accepting them. And then I had a happy, peaceful home… Oh, Agnes, I miss Papa so! If he were still alive, I’d not have considered accepting Lord Clifford.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. Nell never directly criticised her sister-in-law to any servant, but her abigail knew well enough what was driving her from Brantwood.

When Bertie married, Nell had welcomed the new Lady Derrington and willingly turned over the reins of the household. That was not enough for Phyllis, whose chief joy in life was the exercise of authority. First, Miss Lindisfarne must go.

Lindy, Nell’s governess before she went away to school, had returned as her companion when her mother died. But Nell needed no companion, Phyllis said, now that her brother’s wife was living at Brantwood. Nell would have fought, but Miss Lindisfarne, foreseeing endless battle, chose a graceful retirement.

At once Nell made plans for them to set up house together. Her personal income was adequate for a perfectly comfortable existence with as many of the elegancies of life as interested either. Phyllis was horrified. Everyone would say she had driven her husband’s sister from her home.

For Bertie’s sake, Nell stayed. Envying Lindy her escape, she frequently visited her friend at her cottage near Hungerford, some five-and-twenty miles distant. Phyllis promptly made it plain that she didn’t actually
want
her sister-in-law at Brantwood. It was Nell’s duty to find a husband and remove herself in an unexceptionable way for which no one could hold Phyllis to blame.

So Nell had accepted Lord Clifford.

“I cannot live with a man who never laughs,” she said firmly as Agnes loosely plaited her hair for the night. “We shall go and live with Miss Lindisfarne.”

“Just give me the word, my lady, and I’ll pack.”

“Bless you, Agnes. What should I ever do without you?”

Nell felt much better for having come to a decision. She fell asleep quicker than she had in weeks, but when she woke in the small hours of the morning, all the difficulties seemed overwhelming.

The moment she revealed that she meant to cry off, the nagging would start. Phyllis was quite capable of following her to Lindy’s and making both their lives a misery. In the end, if only for the sake of peace, Nell would give up and return to Brantwood. She’d find herself tied for life to a man she didn’t know.

Throwing a wrap about her shoulders, she went to sit on the windowseat. Maera scrabbled out from under the bed and came to lay a heavy, loving head in her lap. Outside, beneath a full moon, white candles bloomed on the chestnut trees in the park and the fragrance of lilac wafted in through the open window. Under the calming influence of the May night, the answer came to her.

If she disappeared the day before the wedding, it would be too late for anyone to fetch her back.

To desert him at the last minute was not very fair to Lord Clifford, she acknowledged, but it was not as if they were to be married at St George’s, Hanover Square, before half the peerage. Besides, it allowed him three more weeks to reveal to her what sort of man he was. If he showed himself to be a real person with feelings to be hurt, she would reconsider.

If he remained distant, impassive, uninterested in discovering what sort of person
she
really was, let him look elsewhere for a bride.

She went back to bed and slept soundly.

* * * *

In the three weeks to follow, Nell received two letters from her betrothed. One informed her that he was at his country house, refurbishing and redecorating the apartments which would be hers. Apparently it did not dawn on him to consult her taste in colours and furnishings. The second letter informed her that he would be unable to arrive at Brantwood until the eve of the wedding as he had business in London the previous day. He failed to explain his business and expressed only the most polite, proper, perfunctory regret.

Both missives addressed Nell as “Madam,” and were signed with equal formality, “Your most obedient, humble servant, Clifford.” She didn’t expect professions of undying love, but still…

Nell told Agnes to pack.

“I wish you could come with me,” she said, “but Miss Lindisfarne’s cottage is far too small. You shall join me as soon as I have found a suitable house to rent. In the meantime, I wish you would take a holiday and visit that brother of yours who is forever inviting you. Of course I shall pay the coach fare and your salary and a living allowance.”

“And you’ll look for a house right away, my lady?” the abigail asked anxiously.

“Oh yes, at once. Maera will scarcely fit in the cottage and I don’t like to entrust Vulcan and Vesta to outside stables. Now, how are we to smuggle my bags down to the dog-cart?”

“Any of the footmen’ll do it, my lady, and gladly, and won’t none of them nor the grooms neither give you away to… anyone.”

That was part of Phyllis’s trouble, Nell realised. Brantwood’s staff were still loyal to her, not to their new mistress. Well, she’d be taking advantage of their devotion for the last time.

She smiled at Agnes. “I shall leave it to you, then. Don’t pack more than is absolutely necessary for a few weeks. I shan’t take any jewelry. I’ll leave immediately after luncheon, claiming I need an airing to calm my nerves. With luck I shall not be missed until dinner.”

* * * *

By three o’clock on that fine June afternoon, Nell was well on her way. Beside her on the seat of the dog-cart Maera perched, her black nose in a constant state of twitching ecstasy. Vulcan and Vesta, chestnut coats gleaming in the sun, trotted westward through the maze of lanes between hedges twined with wild roses and the white trumpets of bindweed.

In the exuberance of her new freedom, Nell took off her blue-ribboned Leghorn bonnet and set it under the seat. “A few freckles are a small price to pay for the warmth of the sun on my face,” she told Maera. “No one is about to see except the haymakers in the fields, and little they care if Lady Eleanor Lacey is so lost to propriety as to go hatless.”

In the hamlets she drove through, an occasional villager stared as she passed. She waved blithely and Maera barked a greeting.

Maera began to pant, her tongue lolling from the corner of her mouth. Vesta and Vulcan were sweating. Next time they came to a patch of woodland, Nell drew rein in the shade of a huge old oak to rest the horses and let them cool off.

Maera leapt down from the carriage. First she went to touch noses with her equine friends, then she loped off beneath the trees on the scent of a rabbit or a squirrel. Nell knew she would not wander far.

Though dressed in thin blue muslin rather than a shaggy brown fur coat, Nell herself was hot and glad of the shade. The flask of lemonade she had brought with her was very welcome. Her neck was sticky where her hair had started to come down, and her face in particular felt hot and rather tight. Guiltily she pushed in a few loose hairpins and put on her bonnet.

Corking the lemonade, she called for Maera.

Nearby bushes rustled and shook. From them emerged not a large, happy dog but a large, masked man with a pair of pistols in his hands.

And both pistols were aimed unwaveringly at Nell.

“Stand and deliver!”

She held herself rigid. “I cannot stand any stiller,” she pointed out, hoping she sounded more reasonable than terrified, “and I have no valuables with me.”

“As to vallybles, we’ll see about that, missy, but it’s them prads as interests me.”

“Prads?” she asked uncertainly.

“Hosses.” He moved forward, larger and more threatening with every step. “That’s a fine pair o’ prancers you has there.”

“W-what does a footpad want with a pair of horses?”

“Footpad! Here, you watch who you’re calling names, missy! I’m a bridle-cull, a gentleman o’ the road, I am.” He wore riding breeches and boots, she saw, shabby but clean, as were his green coat, shirt, and the yellow Belcher handkerchief at his neck. The mask hiding the upper part of his face was incongruous black satin, fit for a masquerade ball. “My Rumbo were shot out from under me,” he continued, “and it’s another nag I… Hey, you keep away!”

Maera had appeared from nowhere. Stiff-legged, teeth bared, she stalked towards the man, a low rumble issuing from her throat. The thick hair on her neck bristled in a ruff, making her appear even larger than usual.