Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career (27 page)

Thomas frowned and stared down too, as if seeing the glove for the first time.

“Isn't that how it is done?” he asked, whatever fire raging in him banked by Gatewood's calm.

“I wouldn't know,” Gatewood said. His hand still to his face, he bent down to retrieve the glove.

“It is a challenge, my lord, a challenge to a duel to the death for the hand of Ellen!” declared Cornwell as though he had just recalled a phrase read in a bad novel and memorized it over too much brandy.

“Her hand?” Gatewood inquired. He dabbed at his eye. “My intentions go far beyond her hand, sir. Tell me, you must be Thomas Cornwell.”

Cornwell nodded and accepted the glove. “Yes, my lord. I have loved Ellen for years and years.”

“A tedious business, indeed,” the marquess said. “I congratulate you on your stamina.”

Cornwell grinned.

“Well, I like that!” Ellen declared.

Her bracing words recalled Cornwell to the matter at hand.

“Sir, I demand satisfaction!”

The marquess pursed his lips as though engaged in deep thought and shook his head. “I've never dueled before, sir. I wouldn't begin to know how to go about it.”

It was Cornwell's turn to stare. “But I thought … I assumed … don't you marquesses and dukes and earls and such know all about that sort of thing?”

Gatewood shook his head with vigor and quickly put his hand to his eye again. “It's not one of the rules for membership in the peer-age, Mr. Cornwell. I really haven't a clue, and would rather not fight at a wedding. Bad form, don't you know.”

By now, the hall was filled with spectators. Fanny Bland, her eyes red and rabbity from weeping, had heard the commotion and come out on the second-floor landing.

Ellen looked from Thomas Cornwell to Lord Chesney. She took a deep breath. “Alas, Thomas, you wouldn't want to kill this helpless man who is much more at home in libraries.”

“Well, I like that!” exclaimed the marquess in turn, a smile playing around his lips.

She ignored him and stepped between the two men. “It was a lovely thought, Thomas,” she said, resting her hand lightly on his coat lapel. Fanny burst into noisy tears. “There are times when I think a duel would greatly improve the marquess.”

“Daughter!” the squire exclaimed. “She doesn't mean a word of it, your worship.”

Ellen colored with embarrassment. She patted Thomas Cornwell's lapel one last time and stepped in closer to the marquess, crossing her fingers behind her back where he could definitely see them. “Thomas, I have promised myself to Lord Chesney.”

Fanny stopped sniffling. The squire sighed with relief.

“I mean, if you have any regard for me, you wouldn't want to kill the object of my affection, now, would you?”

“Not a convincing argument, Ellen,” the marquess whispered in her ear. “Think of the temptation.”

It was Thomas's turn to frown and purse his lips. “I suppose I do not.”

The marquess stuck out his hand. “I like your style, Cornwell, I really do.”

Cornwell grinned and shook hands. He turned suddenly serious. “But you had better be good to her, my lord.”

“I aim to make her happiness my sole object in life.” There was a commotion on the upstairs landing. Fanny Bland, prosaic old Fanny, had fainted and was draped over the railing.

Ellen took Thomas by the arm again. “Thomas, be a dear and see Fanny home,” she whispered.

He nodded, his eyes on the second-floor landing. He took the steps two at a time. In another moment, he had picked up Fanny—a substantial handful—as though she were a bag of feathers. He came down the stairs carefully with his burden.

“If you should ever change your mind, Ellen,” he said, “I'd be happy to shoot this fribble.”

Lord Chesney raised his eyebrows as Thomas stalked away, Fanny lolling in his arms. “I've never been accused of being a fribble,” he complained. “Come to think of it, I've never been challenged to a duel before. And I thought the country would be slow. Ellen, you have made me a happy man.”

She could tell by the twinkle in his eyes that he was about to burst into sustained and uncontrolled merriment that would be difficult to explain to Papa, who was eyeing them both with an expression bordering on ecstasy. She took the marquess by the arm and marched him into the book room.

He tried to take her in his arms again, but she warded him off. “I didn't mean a word of it, Jim,” she protested.

He didn't take the news badly. “Ellen, do you mean to ruin my new year entirely?” he asked.

“I hadn't planned on it.”

“You won't mind then, if I propose to you occasionally during the coming year?”

“Well, I …”

“Just to keep in practice?”

“Be serious, Jim!”

“I am!”

“You are not!”

“Oh, yes I am!”

Ellen opened her mouth and then closed it again, embarrassed.
Here I am, worrying about the impression my family is going to make on this man, and I sound like Martha brangling with Ralph.
Her chin went up. “Very well, sir, you may do as you choose. As I am not returning to Oxford, I doubt our acquaintance will extend much beyond this wedding.”

Lord Chesney only nodded and looked thoughtful. Ellen watched him with suspicion.

“You are scheming something, I know it!” she declared flatly.

He merely bowed and opened the bookroom door. “My dear, let me set the record straight. The Marquess of Chesney never schemes. As a matter of fact, he hardly ever gets angry.”

“Thank goodness for that,” she retorted, preceding him through the door.

“What he does do is get even.”

She couldn't even be sure he had said that.

The house was crammed with relatives and it was easy to avoid the marquess, especially as her father kept dragging that obliging man from uncle to cousin to aunt, introducing him as “His Worship, Ellen's future husband, even though we are to keep it under the hatches.”

She cringed at her Papa's bad manners with one part of her mind and heart, while the other part applauded his vulgarity, convinced that a steady application would soon send the marquess screaming into the night.

But James Gatewood was made of sterner stuff. He bore the toadying and vulgar stares with aplomb. To her amazement, he even seemed to enjoy himself with the younger cousins in a bloody duel to the death with jackstraws, while the older members of the family yawned over cards.

“I like him, Ellen,” Horatia ventured to say, when she could tear herself away from Edwin and his slack-jawed devotion.

Ellen set down the bridesmaid's dress she was hemming. “He is an unprincipled rogue, Horry!”

“He could never be that,” Horatia declared, “else you never would have fallen in love!”

Ellen picked up the dress again, struck by her sister's words.

“Do you know, Horry, that is quite the nicest compliment from you.”

Horry merely patted her arm and rose to return to Edwin, who looked bewildered, sitting by himself. “I know you would never love a rake.”

She watched her sister return to Edwin and sit on the low stool at his feet. She observed with some amusement the way Horry looked up at her husband-to-be with such adoration and trust.
I am sure I am not in love
, she thought, attending to her hemming again and wondering why it was coming out so uneven.
Of course, I am not so sure that Jim would find it comfortable to have me crouch at his feet like a spaniel. I know I would not care for it.

She raised her eyes to the marquess, who was sitting on the floor with her rowdy cousins, Martha in his lap, as she shook the jack-straws.
If our common touch does not disgust you, Lord Chesney, then I suppose you will be harder to dissuade than I thought
, she considered.

As she watched him, he turned and winked at her. To her further disgust, she winked back.

Because the house was full, Lord Chesney was condemned to room with Ralph. He accepted his sentence with a cheeriness that amazed Mama.

“I would have thought that such an exalted personage would be picky about his bedmates,” Mama whispered to her as they handed out candles to the relatives and bid them good night.

“Mama, do not call him exalted! You act as though he were a member of the Blessed Trinity!”

“I am sure I do not!” Mama protested. “It wouldn't hurt you to appear a little more lover-like, my dear.”

Ellen rubbed at the frown between her eyes. “Mama, this is Horry's big occasion. I will not turn it into a circus, not for anyone.”

“Yes, but you have scarcely said more than five words to him all evening.”

“No, I have not,” she agreed quietly. What she really wanted was a turn about the shrubbery with Lord Chesney, to assure him once again that she had no intention of marrying him. But the shrubbery was cold this time of year. She sighed. And the house was full of relatives.

She caught up with Ralph and Lord Chesney on the stairs, heads together, engaged in earnest conversation. “Jim,” she called out. “I mean, Lord Chesney.”

“I still prefer Jim,” Gatewood replied, stopping and handing Ralph the candle they shared. “Go on, lad. I'll join you in a minute.” He turned to Ellen. “I trust you are not planning to apologize for the accommodations, as your father has done, this half hour and more. Ralph and I have been discussing
Hamlet
, and the scene in Act V that Shakespeare did not write and should have, in Ralph's opinion.”

“Will you have him write a paper?” she asked as he trailed her down the hall to the lesser-used third-floor landing. She sat down on the steps and drew her knees up to her chin.

“I believe I will. If his scholarship is sound, it could be an excellent essay to secure him entrance into Winchester, my old school.”

“Papa would never allow it,” she said. “He says Ralph is to go to my uncle's counting house in the City.”

“We shall see, dear Ellen, light of my life.”

“You have got to stop talking like that. I crossed my fingers behind my back when I told that fib to Thomas.”

“So you did,” he agreed, his good humor intact. He touched her lips with his fingers before she could draw away. “That mulish look on your face tells me that I had better change the subject. My dear, I do not have to cross my fingers to tell you that your paper on
Romeo and Juliet
has no equal for wit and sarcasm. Even Dean Jonathan Swift—
requiescat in pacem
—would agree with me, I am sure. It is a classic.”

“I would like to have it back.”

He shook his head. “I did not bring it.” He took her by the hand. “And why, may I ask, did you give your complete Shakespeare to Ralph?”

She would not look him in the eye. “I probably will not have any use for it here at home.”

“Not even to press flowers?” he asked lightly and then sobered immediately. “That was rude of me. Excuse it. No use?”

She shook her head.

“That remains to be seen,” he said. “Come, my dear, and kiss me quick. Tomorrow is going to be an awful day, I assure you. Desserts will burn, flowers in the church will wither, relatives will fall out with one another, and the weather will turn sour.” He laughed. “At least I need not fight a duel too. And Horry will probably finally realize that marrying her elegant blockhead means going to bed with him.”

“Jim!”

He looked about elaborately. “No one heard me.”

When she refused to kiss him, he pecked her on the cheek and strode down the hall to Ralph's room, humming softly under his breath.

The tune sounded like a wedding processional.

The day began precisely as Lord Chesney had predicted on the third-floor landing the night before. The desecration of burned pudding permeated the entire house, and Mama was finally forced to lie down and sob out her misery in the lap of her sister, who had been through a similar ordeal the year before. Horatia stalked about the house, her face pale, her expression wooden. Gordon was quarreling with his cousins in the stables, and Martha sulked in her room because she had to share her toys.

Only Ralph appeared content. Ellen found him in the library, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with her folio open to
Hamlet
, and scribbling notes at a furious rate. He spared her only a grunt of recognition and then turned back to his labors.