Mr Forster's Fortune (21 page)

‘But...but I saw her always with him. I thought she preferred him to ... well, I thought she...’

Miss Forster awaited his confession. It was something he was finding most difficult to do.

‘Yes?’ she said, enquiringly. ‘You thought that she did what?’

Her brother looked a little sheepish and shuffled in his seat. He muttered out his story to her. It sounded very bad. But his sister did not seem to think so. She did not feel at all concerned. She looked at his lordship with a mixture of sympathy and incredulity. Really, gentlemen could be so peculiar at times. They truly could not see what was staring them in the face.

‘So you think I might
still have a chance with her, Rachel?’ he asked. ‘I was really very rude to her when I wanted to ask her before.’

‘No, you will have no chance at all unless you ask her – but I think
she might forgive you if you did. Especially,’ she added wickedly. ‘Especially if you get down on your knees and sound incredibly contrite.’

Perhaps some of Lady Cecily’s
mischief had rubbed off on her. She rather liked her new idea. She rather liked the thought of her haughty, proud young brother prostrating himself to her friend.

‘And if you think about it, Robert,’ she went on, quite reasonably. ‘She obviously didn
’t realise that you thought her much less wealthy than she really is. She is a most intelligent creature. She will soon collect that you were prepared to court her anyway. She will be perfectly clear that you are not as mercenary as she had obviously been informed. And if your affection for her is so patently apparent to me, dear brother, then do, for goodness’ sake, believe it to be even more apparent to her. She will know that you love her – she will know it just as well as I know that she loves you.’

For the first time in days, the new Lord Barnham smiled. His sister bent over him and kissed him
fondly on the forehead.

‘So you’ll let me invite her, Robert? I could do with a sister, after all.’

She side-stepped him smartly to avoid the playful slap that she sensed might be coming her way and peered through the window at the lively scene below.

‘
Oh,’ she said suddenly, looking intently at the building on the other side of the road. ‘Isn’t that the bank with which our great-uncle held his account?’

Lord Barnham
graciously allowed her to switch the conversation. After all, the subject had been rather disconcerting.

‘It is indeed,
Rachel, though it is hardly worth even enquiring after. It looks like the bank is closed, in any event.’

‘
Well, it’s probably closed for the evening now, but it will doubtless open again in the morning. We should have a few hours to spare before setting off again. You’re not likely to come to Newbury very often. You might as well do some business whilst you’re here. Have a look at the account. You never know, our great-uncle may have left a few shillings in it. If we’re lucky it might even pay for our stay. You might as well close it whilst we’re here.’

Lord Barnham had no objection to make to this plan.
So the following morning he allowed himself to be persuaded into taking a leisurely breakfast with his sister before wandering idly across Bartholomew Street and stepping inside the bank.

‘Mr Forster’s account, sir?’ repeated the clerk, as he explained his errand. ‘Yes, indeed. Would you care to wait just a moment, sir? The manager will be with you in a moment.’

Wondering vaguely why the clerk felt incapable of dealing with the paperwork himself, Lord Barnham took the proffered seat and scanned the newspaper that was respectfully placed before him. A door to the rear office opened a crack and he could just make out two pairs of eyes peering out at him into the gloom. Some whispering took place behind the door, which then opened a little more fully into the office. A round, jovial-looking gentleman with an unlikely-looking shock of curled ginger hair stepped cautiously over the threshold, replacing his jacket, and bowed obsequiously, if a little jerkily, to the visitor in the room.

‘
May I offer my condolences on the sad loss of your relation, Lord Barnham?’

His lordship graciously accepted his condolences.

The jovial-looking manager bowed a little jerkily once again. ‘Would your lordship care to step this way?’

His lordship would
, and did so.

‘And may I offer your lordship some light refreshment?’

His lordship politely declined.

‘I have just come to close my great-uncle’s account,’ he stated, a little tersely. ‘You may be aware that
I am his next of kin. I have all the requisite paperwork. His attorney assured me that he held an account with you.’

The manager bowe
d obsequiously once again. He seemed strangely loath to do anything. Lord Barnham was starting to feel just a little bit annoyed.

‘He did indeed, my lord. He did indeed hold his bank account with us.’

‘And what, if anything, did he actually have in that account?’

Here the manager looked him directly in the eye for the very first time.

‘I will need to check the exact sum, of course, my lord,’ he assured him solemnly. ‘Though from the top of my head I recall it being in the region of ninety.’

Lord Barnham’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

‘Ninety pounds?’ he repeated. ‘Quite a tidy sum. I had not thought him to be the owner of half as much as that.’

The manager shot him a hasty glance
. He was looking a little surprised.

‘Nine
ty pounds? Oh no, pardon me, my lord. Mr Forster did not leave you ninety pounds. No indeed he did not. Mr Forster was a very rich man, my lord. He was a most successful privateer but he would never touch so much as a penny of anything that he’d earned. He has left you a good deal more than ninety pounds, my lord. He has left you the sum of ninety
thousand
pounds.’

Leaving Miss Forster to organise the staffing for a temporary stay in Town, Lord Barnham’s first task, as soon as he could wrench himself away from his attorney, was to acquire himself a curricle and then drive, as quickly as he could, along the
road to Dorking.

‘Is that a carriage I can hear, Lady Cecily?’

Mrs King had just taken up some sewing. She was retrimming one of her favourite bonnets with yellow ribbons and apricots ready for spring, in imitation of something she remembered seeing in Goodes’ – or was it Brightlingstone’s? - not very many weeks before, and was trying unsuccessfully to persuade her niece into doing something similar with one of hers.

Cecily listened carefully for a moment.

‘Indeed it is, aunt, though it’s not one which I immediately recognise. I’ll just slip over to the door for a moment. It sounds like it’s coming down our drive.’

The door opened onto a blaze of sunshine, a blaze of sunshine which was instantly
replicated in Cecily’s heart as she recognised the driver of an unknown curricle, who was just then in the process of leaping from his seat. Both he and his tiger were clad in deepest mourning. She knew in an instant exactly who they were.

His lordship
flung the reins to his tiger and turned hastily towards the door. Then he noticed her and hesitated, looking at her rather sheepishly as she stood at the top of the steps.

Cecily walked
uncertainly towards him. She could feel her heart pounding as if it would fly from her chest. She hoped that he could not hear it.

‘May I offer you my sincerest condolences,
Lord Barnham?’ she murmured, curtseying deeply and offering him her hand. ‘I was so sorry to learn of your most distressing loss.’

He looked into her eyes, took the hand and kissed it.
The day was an unseasonably warm one but Cecily still shivered at the silky touch of his lips.

‘I am so sorry, Cecily,’ he said. His voice was breaking with emotion. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.
I was most incredibly rude to you – unforgivably rude. I really do not know quite what came over me. Jealousy – uncertainty – despair – these can be my only excuses. Will...can you... do you think you could bring yourself to forgive me – to forget our last meeting in that awful park and see me as...as your friend?’

Cecily
stared at him blankly. She could hardly bring herself to speak.

Lord Barnham looked
hopefully and uncertainly at her. He had retained her hand in his. It seemed only right for him to kiss it once again.

‘I can
not
bring myself to forget our last meeting, my lord, and I certainly have no wish at all to think of you as my
friend
.’

He shot her a startled glance. She was looking directly at him. She was trying to look severe but was finding it impossible to do so.
He noticed it immediately. The surge of heady relief was almost tangible.

‘Then may I beg leave to try to persuade you in another way altogether
, my lady?’ he requested, most politely, with only the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth to provide any outward signal that he had comprehended what she meant.

She had come out of the house,
gloveless, bonnetless and in her old shawl dress and apron, purely to see who had driven up the drive. She was in no fit state to be seen out of doors at all, and particularly to be seen out of doors with a handsome young peer of the realm. But to her eternal shame she thought nothing of that as she looked in his eyes. She certainly had no wish to gainsay him. So she took his arm as he offered it to her and guided him dextrously away from any windows and towards some woodlands across a gentle swathe of lawn.

He explained, and apologised for, his behaviour towards her – the fact that he had misunderstood his father, and why he had felt the need to
do what he’d thought that he’d wanted - and his relief and utter delight when he had finally learned the truth. He told her a little of what had happened since she had last seen him – that an uncle had died as well as his brother and papa, that he had been overwhelmed by paperwork and the need to retrench, and of the demands placed upon him by his highly distraught mama. He told her of his comfort in his father’s last few days – of how he had come to know, understand and esteem his father and of how he now hoped to use him as his guide. He told her of his mailcoach trip to London, with Rachel, and the stop in Newbury half way along the road. He told her how much he had missed her, how she had filled his thoughts from morning to night, how he had wished above everything that their final meeting had never taken place, that he had listened to his father instead of insecurities of his own. But he said nothing at all of his inheritance. He would keep that back for later.

They had reached a little bower with a seat within. It looked directly onto a hillside across the
wood. A blackbird was singing from a bough above them. The warmth of the sun had caused the crocuses to bloom. Lord Barnham sat upon the seat and pulled her, unresistingly, onto his knee. Rachel had mentioned something about knees. He was hoping that this would suffice. One arm was clasping her gently round the waist. He used the other to draw her face to his.

‘I love you, Lady Cecily,’ he murmured, allowing himself the privilege of stroking her cheeks before bringing his lips
, very softly, very tenderly, very seductively to hers. She shivered exquisitely as he did so. Suddenly all the trauma, all the heartache, all the uncertainties of their hesitating, stumbling, maddeningly off-and-on courtship – suddenly, all her agonies fell entirely away in a most delightful heady moment of total and absolute joy. ‘I love you, Lady Cecily, I love you utterly and desperately and deeply. I love you, Cecily Seymour, and I want you to be my wife.’

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