Lady Roma's Romance (22 page)

“I could sail to the Indies and dig a fortune out of the hills, but I think I had better go to Ireland instead.” Again he kissed her cheek. “I’ll never forget that you honored me like this. I shall remember you until I die.”

Roma clung to him for one last breathless moment. He kissed her, and she gave him all her love in one embrace. “It’s wrong,” she said at last. “It’s all wrong for you to leave me. If I could only say the right words to make you stay, but if ‘I love you’ won’t work, I can’t think what will.”

“It’s snowing,” he said softly.

She felt the cold touch of a snowflake falling on her cheek like the frozen tear of an angel. It instantly melted, wetting her face. “We had better go in, then. Will I... We had better say good-bye now.”

Bret crossed the stone floor and opened the door for her. “Go on, my love. Farewell.”

“Good-bye.”

Roma did not seek the shelter of the cloakroom this time. She made her way to her father’s side. The music sounded dull and brassy, the dancers revolving like puppets in a music box. “It’s starting to snow, Father, just as you said.”

“Did I?”

Sabina slipped her hand into Roma’s. “Well?”

“Not well. Not at all well.”

Turning to her fiancé, Sabina mimed a shiver. “We’d better go home. I should hate to be overturned on the way.”

“The snow won’t amount to anything,” Lord Yarborough said firmly. “It’s too early in the year. But if you wish to go, my dear, you need only say so.”

“Ride back with us?” Sabina asked Roma. “I can’t wait to tell you all the funny things people have said to me.”

“I should like that,” Roma said, noticing with gentle amusement her father’s disappointment at not having Sabina all to himself again. She was surprised to find that she could still smile. Nevertheless, she felt a certain reluctance to take a deep breath or move quickly, afraid that somewhere inside something vital had cracked and that too much exertion would shatter it completely.

She shook hands gingerly with her host and hostess, taking a moment to thank each of them for a lovely evening. “I met so many pleasant people, Mr. Morningstreet. I think you have the nicest friends in the world.”

His handsome countenance, always a little rigid when in her company, relaxed into a smile that showed his excellent teeth. “Thank you, Lady Roma. I always say that nothing and no one beats the army.”

“So true. Good evening. Good evening, Mrs. Morningstreet.”

As she left on her father’s other arm, she heard Mrs. Morningstreet whisper, ‘Why can’t you fall in love with a nice girl like her?”

In the coach, Roma leaned back against the velvet squabs. She could almost share Mrs. Morningstreet’s wish. If one could choose whom to love, weighing individual merits, who could say but that she might have chosen Jasper Morningstreet had she met him first. Though she did not rate herself as a Venus, she could have won him from Dina, just as she had, all unknowingly, won Elliot. He had fortune, family, ambition, charm, and a certain appeal. No one would have raised an eyebrow over the suitability of a nobleman’s daughter and a nabob’s grandson making a match. But an avowedly penniless former soldier, however honorably wounded ... the world would say she had run mad.

“Perhaps I have,” she murmured, watching the fat white flakes sifting down from a sky turned as dull and gray as her future.

“Roma,” Sabina whispered.

She looked across at the dimly lit couple. Her father seemed to be gazing back at her, but as she watched, his head nodded, bounced, and jerked up again. When the wheels rocked over an uneven place, his head bent forward again and stayed there.

“Roma, what happened? Are you engaged or... ?”

“Or. Regrettably.”

“But that’s impossible. He loves you, I’m sure of it. The way he never takes his eyes off you when you are in the room together, the way he speaks your name, everything tells me that he loves you.”

The repetition of what Sabina had told her in the cloakroom was no less sweet to her ears now that she knew it was fact, not just one woman’s opinion. The thought that Bret loved her both made her heart ache and lessened the sting of his rejection.

“He loves me. He said so. But he feels there is too great a disparity in our circumstances to wed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he feels that my position is a bar between us. Or his lack of position. It’s the same thing in the end. He has too much pride to live on the money I have inherited, and I—I have too much pride, I find, to let him.”

Tears prickled in her eyes, and she pulled up the collar of her cape to hide even more completely than with darkness for a screen. Dear as Sabina had become to her in so short a time, she was not prepared to weep in front of her.

“What will you do?” Sabina asked after a little in a shocked tone.

“That remains the question. I made a mistake. If only I hadn’t fallen in love with him, I could have found someone else. But now, I’m back where I was. Neither flesh nor fowl, neither married nor heart-whole and free.”

“I know you are reluctant to consider it, but you need fear nothing if you continue to live with your father after our marriage. I don’t think I could find it in me to play the wicked stepmother. And I could never make a drudge of any woman, after my own experience with it.”

Roma leaned forward against the momentum of the coach to lay her hand reassuringly on Sabina’s knee. “I’m not afraid of that. How could I be? I merely think it wisest that I should find a home of my own. I hoped that I had.”

“He may yet change his mind.”

“Who can say? I may lose every penny on the ‘Change. Then he could have the fun of playing generous king to my beggar-maid.”

“It is not an enjoyable role, that of beggar-maid.”

“Oh, Sabina,” Roma said, conscience-struck at being so tactless. “There was no personal meaning in what I said. I was merely talking idly.”

“I know it,” Sabina said kindly. “Though ‘tis true I bring nothing to this marriage save only the wish to do well by him and make him happy.”

“I’m sure you shall. He already looks happier than I have ever seen him.”

Both women turned to look fondly on Lord Yarborough, only to surprise him with his eyes open. He snapped them shut, but their outcries caused him to open them again and look sheepishly about. “I never can sleep in a carriage,” he said.

“You heard what we were talking of,” Sabina accused.

“Such was not my intention. Though I did not know you were talking secrets until it was too late to tell you that I was listening for the secret was already out.”

Roma muffled her mouth in her cloak, hastily reviewing all she had said. With a resigned sigh, she realized the folly of attempting to conceal what was already in plain view. “What do you think, then, Father?”

“About Sabina’s earnest wish to make me happy? I intend to do all that I can to make it come true,” he said, clasping his fiancée’s hand tightly in both of his. “Your hands are like fish! That cloak is too thin. Let me put my arm around you.”

“I am perfectly well,” she said firmly. “What do you think about Roma’s predicament?”

He grew serious, the tone of his voice deep and resonant. “I think very well of the young man for his resolute refusal to live under the cat’s foot. He could never call his soul his own if his wife held the purse strings.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” Roma protested, even though she knew lovers had been making that promise in the same words for centuries. Countless times had those vows been broken yet it still served. “If that is the objection, then I shall make my fortune over to him, shillings, pence, and pounds.”

“I couldn’t let you do that,” her father said. “Nor would it be of any use. He would still know where the money came from and be ashamed.”

“Ashamed?”

“Any man of quality would be ashamed of such a thing. If ever you meet a man who is not, then you may know he is not of any quality but the lowest.”

“Like Elliot,” Roma said. “Yet you were willing to let me marry him.”

“I gave my consent before I had his measure, my dear. Having once given my permission, I could not well withdraw it. Later, when I saw how inconsolable you were, I hadn’t the heart to make my true feelings known to you. It wouldn’t have mattered by then anyway.”

“What do you think of Mr. Donovan, Father?”

“He seems a fine young man. Loyal to his friends, kind to boring old men, and good to his aunt. A very likable chap.”

“If he changed his mind, would I have your consent?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Roma saw Sabina withdraw her hand from Lord Yarborough’s clasp. She tucked it into her sleeve, so perhaps her hands were merely cold, yet they could not be so frosty and severe as the look she turned on him. Roma could have sworn the temperature in the stuffy carriage went down by ten degrees. “Why not, pray?”

“He is a man of no background. He has only the little money he collected from his pay and prize money earned in Spain. Who are his family? Where is he from? Is he Church of England, for heaven’s sake? I know nothing of him.”

“He’s Lady Brownlow’s nephew,” Roma said, realizing how belittling it was to reduce Bret to this four-word phrase.

“Lady Brownlow’s a very good sort of woman but, pardon me, not precisely out of the top drawer. Good-hearted, yes, generous to a fault, kindness self is she, but who are her parents? What was her family?”

“Her family was good enough when I was engaged to Elliot”

“That was a different tale. His father bore a title, of sorts, though it did not become him particularly well. But his son would have been accepted everywhere.”

Roma laughed. “I never knew you felt this way.”

He looked at her with great kindliness and love. “These things mustn’t be left to chance, Roma. Marriage is too important a step for a highborn lady to throw herself away on some handsome face. I’m very glad he had enough sense not to propose to you. Shows he has at least the instincts of a gentleman. No doubt his son will be all that one would wish, provided, of course, Mr. Donovan follows some suitable profession.”

There were so many surprising notions in this speech that Roma hardly knew which to answer first. She’d hardly opened her mouth when her father said, “God bless my soul. Home already?” He pulled out his watch, turning it this way and that, to make the light fall upon the face. “Only an hour. I call that very good for the weather. Come, my dearest,” he said, reaching for the door latch.

“Tell them to drive on to your house, please, Roger.”

“But your sisters and mother are already at the door.”

“Tell them to drive on, please.”

The brief remainder of the trip was performed in silence, except for the cry of the driver to the horses. The wheels rolled smoothly over the lightly dusted street. When the equipage drove up in front of their house, Wilde had the door open in a trice and came down the steps with an umbrella extended for their shelter.

“Shall I have the carriage wait?” he asked, when Sabina emerged.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I shall stay the night with Lady Roma.”

“Very good, miss.”

Roma forbore to smile as she passed Sabina in the hall. However, she could not resist a round of pretended applause, making no more noise than a heartbeat. Her tone and attitude toward the butler had been “to the manor born,” and Roma could tell that Wilde recognized it, too.

“Tea, I think, Wilde,” Roma said, reminding him that it was still his duty to obey her.

“It is already prepared, my lady.”

“You know, Roma, I begin to suspect that Wilde is a treasure.” Sabina said with just enough force to reach the ears of a man closing the door.

He nearly ran into his lordship, who had taken off his dancing pumps in the hall in favor of a pair of comfortable slippers. “I—I beg your pardon, my lord,” he said with a bow, opening the door for him.

“The man’s nervous,” Lord Yarborough said, holding his hands out to the fire as it crackled and snapped. “What does he have to be nervous about?”

Sabina ignored this gambit. “Roger. Answer me plainly. Do you mean to say that if Roma married Mr. Donovan or someone like him that you . . . that you would cast her off?”

“Don’t hold my feet to the fire, Sabina,” Lord Yarborough said. “Roma wouldn’t marry a man of low degree. She has too much pride. You heard her say so yourself.”

Roma studied her father, wondering just how completely he identified with the heavy Roman fathers of antiquity. There had been plenty of them to ape. “I confess I begin to be devouringly curious to know your answer. Would you, indeed, cast me off?”

He hesitated, taking a deep breath. “I would have arranged this matter for you, had you taken me into your confidence.”

“Which matter?”

“A marriage. If I had known you had recovered from your grief for Elliot Brownlow, I would have taken it upon myself to find you a suitable husband. I have friends enough with sons. Surely one of them would have done for you.”

“I don’t wish to be married to someone who will ‘do’ for me. Perhaps once it would have been enough but not now. I’m sorry I never told you that I had recovered from Elliot’s death. I didn’t realize I had, not at first. But when I met Bret, I knew I had. I never would have thrown myself at Elliot’s head the way I have with Bret.”

“What?” her father demanded.

“He didn’t propose to me, Father. I proposed to him.”

“The impudent dog,” Lord Yarborough said. “Refusing my daughter? Outrageous.”

The two women looked at him in surprise. “But, Roger, you just said...”

“Such a marriage is impossible. But he should have been flattered enough to accept.”

“Father, you cannot be angry with him for not accepting me and appalled that he might have proposed to me. Not at one and the same time.”

“I don’t care to discuss the matter any more tonight. Sabina, if you wish to return to your mother’s house, pray let me know and I will escort you thither. I don’t believe this snow will amount to much.”

“I will go back, after I’ve drunk some tea to warm me.”

Wilde came in, then, his arms outstretched to balance the massive silver tray. Someone in the kitchen had pulled out all the stops to impress their future mistress. There were enough cakes for a small party of famished men and a stacked epergne of fascinating variations on the usual sandwich. It was a pity no one felt like doing it justice. Roma hoped no feelings would be hurt when the tray returned nearly untouched.