Joan Smith (13 page)

Before he had ridden a mile, he regretted his rash words, but pride and anger kept him from returning. He had offered to marry her. What more did she want? A runaway match was no less degrading for him than for her, but it was the only marriage open to them. And if they kept meeting, the outcome would be even more degrading. A forced wedding, with a pregnant bride. He could hardly control himself tonight. If Arabella had not brought it to a stop—and even she did not really want to—there was not much doubt how it would have ended.

No, he would not dishonor Arabella or himself by such low behavior. He was still a gentleman after all. Throckley had refused him permission to even call, much less to marry Arabella. If she truly loved him, she would have agreed to go to Gretna Green.

Arabella was equally adamant, and equally angry. Alexander was bored with her. Cuddling and kissing weren’t enough to satisfy him. Oh, but it was so lovely tonight, when he held her breasts in the palms of his hands and said in that choking way that he wanted her. She had felt, for those few moments, that she could do anything she wanted with him, and then he had turned into a poker, before her very eyes.

She shook the memory away. He had invented this quarrel for an excuse to go to London and carry on with the debs and lightskirts. That’s all it was. She was better of without him. He’d make a terrible husband. She’d never know what he was up to when he was away from her. As the days passed and no word came from him, her anger hardened. She read the local journal, and discovered that he had gone to London. Why should she sit on her thumbs when she knew perfectly well he was carrying on with lightskirts?

Under the approving eye of her guardian, she gave some halfhearted encouragement to William. He was not slow to push his suit forward, but she knew she cared for him no more than she cared for her spaniel.

She allowed him to kiss her once, so she could boast of it later to Raventhorpe. In her heart she knew he would be back. Every day she expected to hear of his return. Kissing William was like kissing a statue. He hardly seemed to know what to do with his lips, and did nothing with his arms except let them hang slack by his sides. If he were Alexander, he would have crushed her against his chest until the air was forced out of her lungs, and her heart felt as if it had leapt up to her throat. His flaming lips would make ruthless demands of hers. William was not so much kissing her as allowing her to kiss him. After two attempts, she gave it up, and William did not institute any lovemaking on his own.

That autumn and winter seemed to drag on endlessly for them both. Raventhorpe did indeed try to amuse himself in the ways Arabella feared, but he found no solace in his former pursuits. The debs seemed like vacuous prudes, and the lightskirts were—lightskirts. The more one paid, the more eager they were to please. It might ease the sexual itch, but what had that to do with love? He wanted Arabella, but he dared not go back to her until they could marry.

In the end, he found solace in pouring out his misery in poetry. It was at that time that he penned his youthful love sonnets, which gave him his first taste of literary fame. Half-ashamed of vaunting his aching heart, he had them published anonymously. John Murray brought them out at the beginning of the year. Raventhorpe remained in town to oversee the proofs during the Christmas holiday. To his astonishment, they were an enormous hit. All of London was seeking to discover their author.

“It wouldn’t do the sale any harm to advertise they were written by an eligible and handsome young nobleman,” Murray said, peering to assess the poet’s mood.

“No point hiding my light under a thimble, eh?” Raventhorpe laughed. “I don’t know that I want my name on them, but if you care to whisper the secret in a few select ears, it won’t be a secret long.”

“Shall I whisper the lady’s name as well?” Murray ventured.

Raventhorpe’s face closed up like a door. “I think not, Mr. Murray.” Then he relaxed into a smile. “A little mystery is a wondrous thing. The lady is not known in London. Her name would add no éclat to the verses. Let her rest in peaceful anonymity.”

“A married woman,” Murray said to himself, and let the matter drop. But he whispered the secret to Lady Melbourne and Lady Jersey, commonly known as Silence Jersey, in honor of her unflagging tongue, and before long it was the best-known secret in all of London. Everyone was whispering it. Raventhorpe was famous. His cartoon was seen in store windows, mooning over a lady with a question mark for a face. The chef at the Pulteney Hotel named a raised pie after him; the Prince Regent invited him to an extremely tedious musical evening at Carlton House, and Lady Oxford tried, without success, to seduce him. His slender volume, bearing his name in the second edition, sat on every lady’s toilet table and on half the sofa tables of polite London. He luxuriated in his unexpected fame, and could not bring himself to leave London.

Arabella would have his sonnets; they would do his courting for him. Naturally she would buy a copy now that it was common knowledge that he was the poet. He smiled to think how the poems would please her vanity. He thought she might manage to get a note to him, complimenting him. It would be easier for her to write than for him. Her mail was very likely scrutinized by Sir Giles, and they had not arranged to use some disinterested third party as a go-between.

He watched the mail eagerly, and was hurt when no billet-doux came. Never mind, she was angry with him, but she would get over it. But as spring approached, Raventhorpe began to wonder at her prolonged silence. He began scanning the betrothal announcements with a fearful eye. Arabella would not wait forever, even for him. William was with her every day, and with Sir Giles there to nudge them on, anything might happen.

The season of rebirth and renewal after the long chill of winter called up memories of those still-cherished trysts with Arabella, and a desire to reprise them. The air grew warm, and the ladies appeared in their new spring finery. The birds and the fruit trees blossoming in the park reminded him of Chêne Bay. As to a willow tree, he could not see one without repining. It was time to reclaim her. It seemed impossible that Sir Giles could refuse him Arabella’s hand now, when he was the cynosure of all eyes in fashionable society

Even if he did refuse, Raventhorpe felt he now had enough prestige to carry off an elopement without any fear of ostracism. Society would hardly expect less from its premier romantic poet. He would compose a hundred or so lines on the adventure for a lark.

Flushed with success and eager to resume his romance, he had a copy of his
Sonnets to a Lady
bound in white leather with gilt lettering, and inscribed it to Arabella. He set out for Chêne Bay with the book in his pocket.

Chapter Fourteen

At Chêne Bay, Arabella waited impatiently for Alexander’s return. It was only the thought of his coming back at Christmas that carried her through bleak November and December. She watched the leaves on “their” willow tree fade from green to yellow, then fall and turn to brown. The very heavens seemed to mourn with her. Tears fell from the leaden sky and oozed drearily down her windowpane. Would Christmas never come?

When he came home for Christmas, she would run away to Gretna Green with him, if he still wanted her. But Raventhorpe did not come at Christmas. He did not even smuggle a message to her. All Christmas day she was on tenterhooks. She went often to the window and peered out at the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of him hiding behind a tree. The days were short in early winter; it was dark before dinnertime, and still he had not come. When she went to her bedchamber on Christmas night, she took the idea that he was waiting for her at the weir. She bundled up in her pelisse and went quietly downstairs.

A light snow was falling. It dusted the ground with diamond sparkles and seemed to hang suspended in the air, but it was not enough snow to keep Raventhorpe away. She stepped carefully, as she had worn her best slippers. Chancing to look behind her, she saw her footprints. Sir Giles would know she had been out! She peered through the park and saw the unmarked snow. There was no need to go farther. He had not come. She took the broom left by the door to wipe off the snow from incoming boots and brushed out her footprints, then went back to her room. Her heart felt as cold as the snow that covered the land.

Later, rumors of Raventhorpe’s growing fame trickled to Chêne Bay, to destroy the last of her hope. In his newfound fame and glory, he had forgotten all about her. Sir Giles, who was interested in politics and subscribed to the London journals, was at pains to keep Arabella informed of Raventhorpe’s social progress and to paint it in the deepest hues of lechery. He took the precaution of forbidding to have the book of poems in the house as unfit for decent company. As Arabella was never allowed into Lyndhurst without Mrs. Meyers, this was easily achieved.

“I am glad you turned the fellow off,” Sir Giles said, peering at Arabella to see her reaction. He knew of their public meetings and suspected the clandestine ones amounted to more than two meetings in the meadow while riding, but had no positive proof of it. He knew Raventhorpe had been in London for some months in any case, and only made his gibes to prevent a recrudescence of the infatuation.

“Raventhorpe is a byword for lechery in London with these scandalous rhymes he has written—to a lightskirt, very likely, or why is he ashamed to tell the woman’s name? I shan’t burden your ears with reports of such licentious drivel, Arabella. No decent lady would have him. Well, he is a limb from the family tree when all is said and done, and the world knows what his father was. Now I read he has been taken up by Prinney’s set.”

“He was at Carlton House?” Arabella exclaimed, impressed in spite of herself.

Sir Giles was swift to talk it down as no honor. “I read that Raventhorpe was invited to join that rackety crew. He will be right at home there. They are no better than they should be, and a deal worse if a quarter of what one reads about them is true. Mistresses and drunken orgies and gambling for high stakes. The lad will be head over ears in debt before the year is out. What a sad trial he is to his poor mama. I pity the lady who marries him.”

This last remark brought Arabella to attention. “Does it say he is betrothed?” she asked in alarm, grabbing for the journal.

“Not in this paper,” the wily Sir Giles replied. “I read a mention of it somewhere else.”

“Who is she?” Arabella demanded.

“Some noble trollop, who thinks a title puts her above the laws of God and man. Best they stick to their own sort and leave respectable people alone. But what is Raventhorpe to us, eh?” he asked heartily. “The only wedding we are interested in is yours, my dear Arabella. I expect you will be choosing your groom one of these days. You are not far from your sixteenth birthday.”

He watched as her pointed little chin quivered, and she struggled to fight back the tears. “Why, my dear, you are not still thinking of that ramshackle lad? I made sure you were over him long ago. He could not wait a year for you—I told him, against my better judgment, to come back when you were sixteen. How long would he have been a faithful husband if he could not wait a year? You know who cares for you more deeply and truly, I think,” he said, with a sly glance from the corner of his eyes.

Arabella turned and fled from the room. She did not cry after all; she was beyond tears. She paced her chamber in a fit of fury, tossing obstacles aside and kicking the furniture to vent her wrath. What a fool she had been to think Raventhorpe loved her. He complained at having to ride ten miles to see her. He had darted straight off to London and fallen in love with some grand lady. He need not think she was crying willow for him! If he meant to bring his lady to the neighborhood and lord it over her, he would get his comeuppance. She would marry William, and it would not be an ignominious dart to Scotland to be married over the anvil either. How dare he suggest she make a runaway match to Gretna Green? That should have showed her what kind of man he was.

That evening after dinner she asked to speak to Sir Giles in his study. He was not slow in darting forward to accompany her thither.

Sitting on the very edge of the chair he drew forward for her, she said in a voice bereft of emotion, “I have decided to marry William, if you would like, Uncle Giles.”

His fleshy face broke into smiles of delight. “My dear! You have made me the happiest man in England. William will be in raptures.”

“He hasn’t asked me, actually,” she said, in an ironic tone she had never used before, “but I am happy that it pleases you.”

“He will ask you this very night; you may be sure of that. I see no point in dallying, now that the matter is settled. Fifteen is a little young, to be sure, but your birthday is fast approaching. What do you say we have the marriage the day after, on June the tenth?”

“Whatever you think best, Uncle. I have only one stipulation.” Sir Giles looked at her warily. “I would like a lavish wedding,” she said. If Alexander offered her a runaway match, she would show him what other beaux offered.

“Whatever you wish, my dear,” he said, stifling a sigh of relief. “We want only your happiness.”

“I want the finest wedding the parish has ever seen. We must begin preparations at once.”

“I shall speak to Mrs. Meyers within the hour. My dear, what pleasure it will be to hear you call me Papa. You know, I think, it has always been my wish that you and William should marry. What could be more natural, more right? Cousins, friends from the egg, both of good character. No one in his right mind could say a word against it.”

“Why should anyone object?” she asked.

Sir Giles was ambushed by the memory of a pair of steaming black eyes and the insolent speech.
I am suggesting you would be very happy to see your son marry Arabella’s fortune. You shall hear from me if you try forcing her hand.
But he was not forcing her. She had suggested it herself. She would be sixteen before the marriage took place, the age he had mentioned as being eligible.