Thea's Marquis (6 page)

“No, I say, Rod,” Will protested. “Not at all the thing.”

“The crowds are far from genteel,” he conceded, watching Thea, “and one must go at daybreak for the widest variety, but I believe you would find it interesting.”

Taking a deep breath, she looked him full in the face. “Thank you. Lord Hazlewood, I should like to go.”

“If Mama permits,” Meg reminded her.

“What am I asked to permit?” came a quiet voice, and the dowager entered the room, followed by her redheaded daughter-in-law, a Junoesque figure in green sarcenet.

After an exchange of greetings, Meg explained. “Lord Hazlewood has invited Thea to visit Covent Garden Market. At dawn! I would not go for the world!”

“Oh, Thea,” said young Lady Kilmore regretfully, “I wish I could go to keep you company.”

“So do I, Penny dear, but it is out of the question. Mama, I shall be perfectly safe with Lord Hazlewood, and surely I am past the age to need a chaperon.”

The dowager dithered. Patently, she had no desire to brave the vulgar crowds at that hour, nor did she want to disappoint her daughter. She shrank from offending the marquis, but equally she did not care to entrust Thea alone to him, whatever her age.

With the last, Rod agreed. “Cannot your maid accompany you, Miss Kilmore?” he suggested.

This solution was greeted with relief, and Will took his turn to propose his outing to Kew. “Everyone accepted
my
invitation,” he pointed out smugly to Rod as they departed a short time later.

 “What possessed you to plan an excursion to Kew?”

 “I discovered that Meg adores flowers.”

 “And what flowers, pray tell, do you expect to find at this time of year?”

“There’s bound to be something blooming in the hothouses,” said Will optimistically. “What the devil possessed
you
to invite Miss Kilmore to the market? Not at all a suitable place for a lady.”

“Miss Kilmore is no ordinary lady,” said Rod, unruffled.

“How odd in the marquis to invite you to Covent Garden Market, Thea,” said her mother, perplexed. “Are you quite sure you did not misunderstand a reference to the theatre?”

“No, Mama.”

“One does not attend the theatre at daybreak,” Penny pointed out.

“Then you must have been talking of parsnips. Oh dear, I did warn you not to.”

“It was my fault,” Meg confessed. “I’m sorry, Thea. Mr. DeVine was shocked, I’m afraid, but the marquis took it quite in his stride.”

“I fear Lord Hazlewood appears to be a trifle eccentric.” The dowager sounded vaguely worried.

Thea flared up. “He is all that is obliging!”

“Yes, my love, but I cannot help wondering why he is taking such pains for strangers with no conceivable claim to his benevolence.”

“I heard Mr. DeVine mention ‘another quixotic start,’ ” said Thea hesitantly.

“Oh, that is all right, then,” her mother said with relief. “If it is a habit with him to help lame dogs over stiles, he doubtless simply regards us as a cause for charitable concern.”

“I am not a lame dog!” said Meg, her face pink with indignation.

Penny laughed. “Not now, but the epithet fitted both you and me when we arrived at the Haycock.”

“I suppose so. I wish Mr. DeVine had not seen me when I was so odiously ill and dressed in the dowdiest clothes.” Her attention was caught by something outside the window. “Penny, look. Two drays just pulled up in the street. I believe it is the painters and paper-hangers.”

With the competent assurance Thea admired, Penny took charge. At her bidding, workmen were soon busy throughout the house in an orderly chaos of buckets and paste pots, brushes and ladders.

The ladies escaped for a few hours to attend fittings at the dressmaker’s. When they returned, laden with packages, the house reeked of paint. Already tired, Penny found the smell unbearable, and she was further distressed to find Jason not yet come home.

Begging Thea to go with her, she retired to the chaise longue in her dressing-room to rest before dinner.

“I have scarcely set eyes on him since we arrived,” she said unhappily, having dismissed the new abigail the two of them shared. “He leaves before I am well enough to go down in the morning, and if he returns for dinner he goes out again afterwards. What do you think he is doing?”

“It must be something important to keep him from you,” said Thea, seated on the stool at the dressing-table. “You must not trouble yourself about it.”

“But why does he not tell me?”

“He has been used to his freedom these many years. I daresay it does not even dawn on him to account to anyone for his coming and going. You ought to ask him.”

“I could not bear him to think me a nagging wife, especially when I fear he already regrets having married me.” She clasped Thea’s hand. “Will you ask him where he goes?”

“If you wish,” she said, with deep misgivings.

“I wish I had let Angus stop at the Haycock, as he intended!” Penny cried. “I’d be his wife now, and Henrietta would be Jason’s. The life of a doctor’s wife might be dull, but even if he, too, had regretted marrying me, it would be less painful because I did not love him.”

“What happened at Wansford?” Thea asked, long-suppressed curiosity getting the better of her.

“That was the first time I made a deliberate effort to meet Jason again, before Angus and I were taken up in his coach. He and Henrietta were ahead of us. He had mentioned that they meant to take luncheon in Stamford, and I persuaded Angus to go on there instead of stopping at the Haycock. Then Henrietta insisted on letting her dratted kitten play in the meadow by the river at Wansford. When Angus and I reached the bridge, I saw them. I made Angus stop the carriage and went to help Jason rescue a mole from the kitten.” A reminiscent smile played on her lips, then faded. “I wish we had driven on!”

“Well I do not, for I’d never have known you. How dreadful it would have been to have Henrietta for a sister-in-law.” All too clearly Thea recalled the spoiled girl’s careless contempt.

There was a tapping on the door and Meg put her head around it. “Penny, you are not sleeping? Now that I have seen the colour of the walls, I want to consult you about the hangings for my chamber.” She flitted in, her arms full of swatches of gauzy material. “It is going to look simply splendid.”

Distracted from her woes. Penny cheered up. Thea left them comparing shades of rose-pink, Meg’s favourite colour, and went to her own chamber.

Crossing the room to the window, she watched the lamplighter make his rounds of the square. She was troubled. Penny’s megrims disturbed her, and she was vexed with Jason for the unexplained absences that only made matters worse. And now that she had leisure for reflection, she realized that her spirits were low on her own account.

Lord Hazlewood’s unexpected visit, his invitation to the market, had raised hopes that she had found a friend who accepted her despite her shyness and her proclivity for committing
faux pas.
She should have known better. After all, she had heard Will DeVine speak as if his cousin’s acts of benevolence were frequent enough to be a joke. To the marquis she was no more than—in Mama’s phrase—a lame dog. The words had annoyed Meg, yet Thea could not resent his generosity.

Nor could she bring herself to reject the semblance of friendship. She believed him sincere when he told her she could say anything to him. When she was with him, she would dismiss the guard on her tongue.

Instead, she must set a guard on her heart. The Marquis of Hazlewood was a man with whom she’d find it all too easy to fall in love, but she must never forget that to him she was merely an object of charity.

She smiled ruefully at her reflection in the window. In King Arthur’s day, knights in shining armour wed the damsels in distress they were called upon to rescue. In unromantic modern times, no wealthy, distinguished nobleman was likely to ask a penniless, maladroit spinster to be his bride.

Thea was glad to have her gloomy musing interrupted by her sister’s arrival. “Have you chosen a colour for your chamber?” she asked.

“Yes, and it will look very well, but...” Meg’s voice trailed to silence.

“But?”

“Did you hear what Mr. DeVine was saying just before we joined them in the morning-room?”

Thea shook her head. “You did, I collect.”

“He only called because we will not have any other visitors and he felt it his duty to cheer us up. I wish Penny would sell this house and buy one in Mayfair.”

“Meg, you never said so to her!”

“I thought I ought to ask you first.”

“Then you have guessed that it is out of the question. For a start, because of the insult to her father’s situation. Then the ingratitude, when she has been so good to us, not only allowing but pressing Jason to bring us to Town and buy us new clothes. And to suggest such a thing when her health is so uncertain!”

“I didn’t suggest it, Thea, not to Penny. I can see that it’s impossible. I will not mention it again, I promise.” Meg sighed. “Things never turn out as you expect, do they? I suppose I should be glad that Mr. DeVine has a strong sense of duty.”

“Cheer up, love. I don’t believe for a moment that duty brought him to our unfashionable doorstep, and duty certainly will not take him to Kew Gardens. The lure is your pretty face.”

“Well, I do think he admires me a little, but I cannot rely upon him to offer for me. If I am to find a husband, I must meet other gentlemen. What a pity Lord Hazlewood is so old, and so large! He is quite nice and I should like to be a marchioness, but he makes me feel like a beetle talking to a bull.”

Thea laughed. “A butterfly, Meg. No one could ever mistake you for a beetle. Now go and put on your new wings. It is time to change for dinner.”

“With all the wet paint about, I’ll not risk my new gown. I shall suffer through one more evening in that horrid old pink rag.”

As Meg pattered out, the new abigail came in. Thea found the gaunt, grey-haired woman somewhat intimidating, but she had excellent references and she reminded Penny of the dearly loved maid her uncle Vaughn had dismissed. Penny had never heard from Nancy, who had been her nurse. She still missed her and worried about her fate.

“Her ladyship says she’ll dine in her room, miss,” said Farden now, setting a ewer of hot water on the washstand. “You’ll be wearing your new gown?”

“No, the old one, because of the wet paint,” Thea said absently. “Farden, is Lady Kilmore feeling ill?”

“Just dog-tired, miss.”

Worrying about Penny and Meg, Thea spoke scarcely a word while the woman helped her change and dressed her hair. She went down determined to tackle Jason on behalf of both, if he dined at home.

Her brother had sent a message to say he would be out until late.

* * * *

During the night, the fine weather broke. Thea woke to the sound of rain being dashed against her window by gusts of wind. In the square, sodden leaves lay in drifts and the few passers-by hugged their overcoats about them. Hoping that Jason would not leave the snug haven of the house, Thea went down to breakfast.

He was there already, preoccupied with a sheet of paper on which he made occasional notes as he ate. Greeting her, his handsome face sombre, he said, “Mama is with Penny, as usual. It’s a cursed nuisance, this morning sickness.”

“Yes, but she is better in the afternoons, as you would know if you were ever at home.” She was not quite bold enough to ask outright where he went and on what business. “Surely you will not go out today?”

“I cannot let foul weather coop me up. Darlington is expecting me at noon, and I am engaged to meet a number of others at Brooks’s later. Fortunately, I have a wide acquaintance among the ton.”

Fortunately! How was she to tell Penny that her husband spent his days amusing himself with his friends? She made no effort to keep a certain dryness from her tone as she enquired, “May we hope to receive invitations from some of your acquaintance? Meg is eager to enter the social whirl.”

“I have mentioned that you are all in Town, of course, but it’s the ladies who issue invitations. Mama must take you to call on
her
acquaintances.” His mind elsewhere, he scribbled some figures on the paper near his plate.

Thea tried in vain to picture her vague, retiring mama calling uninvited on Society hostesses, with three young ladies in tow. She was not at all sure the dowager even had any acquaintance in London. Since her marriage she had resided in Northumberland, never setting foot farther south than Kendal.

Had they all escaped from their isolation for nothing? Meg
must
have the chance to make a respectable match. Mr. DeVine and Lord Hazlewood were their only hope.

CHAPTER SIX

“It’s stopped raining, my lord, and it’s a bit warmer, though it’s still overcast.”

Rod blinked up at his valet’s stolid, candlelit face. “What the...?”

“Covent Garden, my lord,” said Pelham with deep disapproval. “You did ask me to wake you before dawn the first morning it didn’t look like rain.”

“Oh yes, quite right.” He sat up, the draught from his movement making the candle flame flicker. “What time is it? Send Billy to Russell Square with the note I gave you the other day. Did you order the carriage?”

Hurriedly dressing, he felt an unexpected tingle of anticipation, the excitement of a schoolboy rising early to raid an unsuspecting farmer’s apple orchard. A mere association of ideas, no doubt—leaving his comfortable bed at daybreak to visit the fruit market. What the devil had possessed him to suggest anything so harebrained?

The plain fact of the matter was that he had been unable to stand by without trying to extricate Thea from her painful embarrassment. He had said the first thing that came into his head and she, full of pluck, had accepted his invitation despite Will’s remonstrances.

Will was right, of course, that the market was no place for a lady. Gentlemen might stroll through on occasion after a long night on the Town, the sort he had not indulged in since he’d taken Sue under his protection. Though she was his mistress and the widow of an actor, in her way Sue was as conventional as his mother; she’d be shocked to hear of his latest freak.