The Miser's Sister (18 page)

“How do you do, Mr Pardoe?” she greeted him with a cool smile. “I hope your trip was worthwhile?”

“Thank you, Lady Ruth, most satisfactory.” He took his cue from her, though more warmth than he had intended crept into his voice when he added, “I am glad to be home.”

“You were startled by Rose’s conduct. Did Lady Pardoe not tell you how things are with her?”

“I have not seen my mother yet. Bartlett told me
...
my sister was out here, and I came straight out. Was not that Barrington?”

“Yes. Rose and Theo were mutually attracted at their first meeting, and longer acquaintance has deepened their feelings. Sir Edward and Lady Pardoe have given their blessing, and Lady Radnor has just been persuaded to honour Rose with an interview. That is what all the excitement was about, and why Rose did not stay to greet you properly.”

“Rose is going to be married? I was not even aware
...
I thought you
...
I beg your pardon, Lady Ruth. I am taken quite by surprise.”

“Of course,” she soothed. “You must expect sometimes to find things changed when you are absent so often. You will wish to speak to your mother now, I am sure.”

“Yes, I
...
thank you, you are right. I must go to Mama.”

“I shall stay here for the present. The garden is quite lovely.”

“Pray excuse me, Lady Ruth.”

She watched wistfully as he returned to the house. He paused at the top of the steps and looked back, but she could not read his expression.

Recalling their brief conversation, she decided that at least he was no longer up in the boughs. She was rather pleased with her own efforts. It was much more difficult to be distant with Oliver than with Lord Sarbury, but she was determined that she would treat both the same way. She must give no one cause to say she favoured either, let alone suspect how much she loved Oliver.

Seeing him again after his absence, having now other suitors and any number of acquaintances with whom to compare him, she was quite certain that she could never marry anyone else. She had rather be his friend than any other man’s wife, and if that was all he wanted of her she would continue to take an interest in his experiments and never let him see her true feelings.

In spite of herself, Ruth shed a tear or two, then went to give Lady Pardoe a fuller account of Theo’s triumph than Oliver could provide.

* * * *

Rose, meanwhile, approached Radnor House in some trepidation. Ruth’s description of her interrogation had not been reassuring. But she could not let Theo down. No trace of diffidence was visible on her face as she descended from the carriage.

The butler regarded her with interest, and there seemed to be an unusual number of servants in the hall. So this was the young woman for whose sake poor Master Theo had stood up to the Gorgon!

“Her ladyship is in the salon,” the butler murmured discreetly. “Master Reginald
...
his lordship, I should say, is with her.”

Theo was heartened. He would have an ally. Rose was looking magnificent in cerulean blue, and feeling her hand tense on his arm he knew he could face anything for her. Besides, he reminded himself, he had been told that within a fortnight he would be appointed to a new post abroad.

He was surprised at how easy it was. With Rose at his side and the memory of the morning’s victory, his mother no longer seemed so formidable. The pride and assurance with which he presented his beloved silenced Lady Radnor’s planned attack. If the girl had that effect on her nodcock of a son, perhaps the marriage would not be so shocking a mésalliance after all.

Rose could not have described her reception as cordial. The marchioness was unable to summon up a smile, even once she had decided to make the best of a bad business, which she soon did. It seemed Miss Pardoe’s papa was well able to buy an abbey. Money was not to be despised, even in the pockets of a Cit. And Theo would doubtless bear her off to some out-of-the-way part of the world, so that his family need not receive hers in the normal way.

“Very well,” she yielded at last, “if you are quite sure, Theodore, that you will soon go abroad, you may marry Miss Pardoe with my consent.”

“Oh, I say, Mama!” protested Lord Radnor, but Theo was perfectly satisfied. He had no desire whatever to stay in his mother’s vicinity.

“Thank you, my lady,” said Rose, without gratitude, as she curtsied.

The dowager bowed her head in regal dismissal.

As soon as the three of them were out of her hearing, Theo turned to his brother.

“Reggie, I’d like to borrow your study for a half hour. I have private business to discuss with Rosie.”

“Of course, old fellow, take as long as you like.” The marquis winked at him and bowed over Rose’s hand. “Welcome to the family, ma’am,” he said genially. “Been trying to persuade Sir Edward to support the Government for years, but I daresay you’ll convert Theo into a Whig in no time. I’ll have a word with Castlereagh about Vienna before he finds out. Believe things are very gay there; you’ll enjoy it.” He kissed her cheek nonchalantly and walked off.

“I told you he was a good sort,” Theo reminded her. “Come into the study now.

The first order of business was a long and most satisfactory embrace, followed by mutual congratulations. Then Theo took a small box from his pocket and went on one knee before Rose.

“I’ve never proposed properly,” he began humbly and diffidently. “Somehow it never seemed necessary. So now I’ll just say, Rosie, you have made me the happiest man in the world, and I hope you will marry me very soon and come to Vienna with me, if that is where I am sent. I bought this for you.”

“Theo, I’ll go with you if they send you to China,” Rose assured him, opening the box. The sapphire ring within was not expensive or elaborate—even added to a younger son’s allowance, a diplomat’s salary was scarce better than a pittance—but to Rose it was more precious than the fortune in jewels her father had given her over the years.

Theo found the way she chose to thank him more than satisfactory. It was a while before they returned to business.

“Shall I get a special license?” he asked at last. “Reggie knows some bishops, I’m sure. We could get married tomorrow.”

“That would be wonderful,” Rose admitted, “only I must give my family time to prepare. Mama will be so disappointed if I do not have a proper wedding, and Oliver hardly knows you, Theo.”

“If we put up the banns immediately, that would give you three weeks, nearer four.”

“That will be plenty of time. I do not want you jauntering off across the Channel without me.

“They could not make me!” Theo assured her.

Preparations for the wedding were set in train as soon as they arrived back at the Pardoes’. Theo was closeted with Sir Edward, discussing settlements, while Rose retired above stairs with her mother and Ruth to consider the far more interesting matter of her trousseau. Oliver was left feeling rather out of it.

He had been delighted to find, on his return from Manchester, that Ruth was once again resident in his own home. He wondered how he could have thought that she might have grown so top-lofty as to agree with her aunt’s opinion of his family. To add to his relief, it turned out that Lord Theodore was making a match with Rose, not, as he had feared, dangling after Ruth.

On the other hand, her manner toward him had been noticeably lacking in the informality and warmth he had come to rely on. Had her sojourn in the Polite World robbed her of the unaffected spontaneity he loved? Or did she simply view him with new eyes now that she could compare him with gentlemen of rank and fashion? He had thought that she regarded him as more than a rescuer and hoped that he might be looked on as more than a brother. Now he felt that she was treating him as a mere acquaintance.

Well, if he must start again from scratch he would do so. He would woo her to the best of his ability, and then if she chose someone else over him, at least he would have the grim satisfaction of knowing that he had tried. He could not after all let her go without a fight.

Chapter 17

Ruth soon found that her life with the Pardoes was quite as busy as it had been at her uncle’s house. But how different the atmosphere was! Her visitors were made welcome without her feeling that her aunt was measuring their eligibility. She no longer had to deal daily with Letty’s selfishness and spite, and her own guilt that she had not succeeded in forming her sister’s character as she would have wished.

She was able to confide in Rose everything except her feelings for Oliver, and in spite of Rose’s preoccupation with the coming wedding, she was assured of her sympathy and interest. Lady Pardoe’s good-natured placidity was unruffled by the rush to prepare for her daughter’s marriage, and Ruth knew herself to be useful to her kind hostess. She addressed invitations, helped choose tableclothes and sheets to add to those that had been packed away in a hope chest over the years, and she kept Lord Theodore amused while Rose attended endless fittings.

Her admirers, including Lord Sarbury, found it very difficult to seize a moment alone with her. When Theo was not wistfully trailing after her, Oliver generally managed to add his presence to her outings, when he did not monopolise her entirely. He had the totally unfair advantage of seeing her daily at the breakfast table, where he invariably discovered her plans for the day and inserted himself into them.

Lord Sarbury bitterly resented this and would soon have been driven to distraction had not Oliver occasionally been forced to attend to business. As it was, on the Friday following Oliver’s return, his lordship managed to extract Ruth from the Pardoe house without picking up any unwanted retinue.

“At last we shall be able to talk in peace,” he said as he handed her into the high-perch phaeton, with his groom up behind. “No, we are not going to the park to be accosted by all and sundry. I thought we might cross the river and drive toward Wandsworth, if you should like it. On a day like this the city seems an excrescence on the fair face of the earth.”

It was a glorious day, had been a glorious week. As they left behind the heavy traffic of Blackfriars Bridge and found themselves among woods and fields, the chestnuts seemed to feel the exhilaration of the fresh, balmy air. They pranced untiring up hills, along deeply rutted lanes, and Lord Sarbury had his hands full keeping their pace to a safe trot. Ruth was glad that he was unable to devote his attention to her, but in the joy of escaping from the town she could not sustain the feeling of apprehension with which she had started out.

After driving for some miles, they came to a common, and Lord Sarbury pulled up his horses.

“There are always violets here,” he told Ruth, “and early primroses, though it is too soon to hope for bluebells. See, the paths are sandy and quite dry. Will you come and gather a nosegay?”

Ruth found it impossible to refuse, though she suspected she would regret her lack of firmness. The groom jumped down and went to the horses’ heads, and she accepted his lordship’s arm.

They soon had all the flowers they could carry. Lord Sarbury spread his coat on a mossy log and invited her to sit down and rest a while. Ruth could guess what was coming. His attentions had not been affected by her attempt to hold him at a distance, and she knew that sooner or later she would have to reject him in no uncertain language. Whether this was the right time and place was a moot point. Did she want to drive all the way back to the city with a disappointed suitor? Was it best to get it over with? She had no opportunity to decide. She found herself sitting beside his lordship, her hand in both his and their posies abandoned on the ground.

“My dear Lady Ruth,” he began resolutely, “I think you must realise how I feel about you. You are everything I ever looked for in a woman and more, and my only wish
...
”

Ruth gently withdrew her hand from his clasp.

“Pray do not continue, sir,” she interrupted with a calm she was far from feeling. “You do not really know me. You did not know of my existence a month ago, you know nothing of my past, and you will soon forget me
...
”

“No, Ruth, you do not understand!” His carefully prepared speech was scattered like the flowers at their feet. “I love you. I want to marry you because I adore you and want you by me always.”

His agitation filled her with pity but did not shake her outward composure.

“I must always be grateful for your regard, and I hope I deserve it,” she said steadily. “But, I repeat, you do not know me. You know only the person I have been these last few weeks, who is like a stranger to me.”

“You do not think I have fallen in love with a society butterfly? Ruth, nothing you can do conceals your essential sweetness, your spirit, and your confiding nature. It is you I love, not your past, not your present.”

Tears came unbidden to her eyes. That this poised, sophisticated, and proud man should plead with her was more than she could bear. She had taken the wrong tack; there must be some way to convince him without humiliating him.

“There are reasons why I cannot return your regard,” she tried tentatively. Oliver’s behaviour in the past week had revived her hopes, and she was no longer so adamantly set against rousing any suspicion of her feelings for him.

Lord Sarbury’s eyes flashed.

“I have a rival, I know. Do not say that your affections are irrevocably fixed on him!”

Ruth blushed and hesitated.

“No,” he continued, “I have no right to ask you that. Ruth, I will not press you now, but allow me to hope. Do not forbid me to see you, to try to win your heart.”

“I cannot forbid you, nor can I offer any hope. Would it not be less painful to put me at once out of your mind? I do not wish to hurt you, believe me! You have been so very kind.”

“It seems I have little reason for optimism.” He smiled wryly. “Well then, my lady, I shall try to convince myself that mine is a lost cause, but I anticipate a long struggle. May we be friends, if we can be no more?”

“Indeed I hope so. It is what I have wished for.”

“Ah well, better a wanted friend than an unwanted lover. Come, Lady Ruth.”