Those Endearing Young Charms (2 page)

The false spring gilding the November day had tempted Mary Anstey to leave the house. With a calash over her hat to protect her head in case the rain should return, and pattens on her feet to raise her above the mud, she walked rapidly in the direction of the village. Above the trees towered the spire of St.

Martin's. Mary Anstey was seeking sanctuary from her troubled thoughts, hoping the peace and solitude of the church would take away the worries and anxieties that had come to plague her after the initial excitement of her forthcoming marriage had died down.

She walked around the church on a narrow, well-worn path and let herself in by a side door.

The church was still and empty, faintly scented with incense, charcoal, old paper, and damp hassocks. A few candles flickered in the cool, dim light, and a double column of arches soared up and vanished into the blackness at the roof.

Instead of entering the family pew, Mary sat down on a little rush-bottomed chair at the back of the church. She tried to let her mind float away from its worries, off into the dimness of the church, but all the little anxieties kept nagging at her brain.

I am old, she thought. Ten years older since he saw me last. I am practically an ape leader, yet he will be considered in his prime. I know his pride was deeply hurt by Papa's rejection of his suit. Oh, dear! I do remember Peregrine had a great deal of pride -- brave and touching in a young man. But what if that pride has hardened into arrogance? I am so nervous I can hardly remember him. But I am very lucky, she chided herself. It is sinful to be so ungrateful. I am marrying the only man I have ever loved.

Dear Emily will be able to come and live with us....

A shadow crossed her face. She had always assumed Emily would always be with her. But what if her husband had other ideas?

She looked up with a start to find the vicar, Mr. Cummings, surveying her anxiously.

"I was thinking so hard," said Mary, rising to her feet and dropping him a curtsy, "that I did not hear your approach, Mr. Cummings."

"You look distressed," he said. "It must be a very worrying time for you."

"But I am very happy!" exclaimed Mary. "I am to finally marry the man of my choice."

Mr. Cummings's eyes were level with her own. Mary thought she had never before noticed how blue they were or how kind. He had a square, boyish face, although he was in his late thirties, and an unruly thatch of fair hair, which had a habit of sticking straight up from his head no matter how much he tried to water it down.

"I should think," said Mr. Cummings, turning his eyes away from Mary's face to stare at the traceried panels of the alms box, "that it must, however, cause some worry and concern to be seeing one's fiance for the first time in ten years. But everything will be all right when you _do_ see him."

"Do you _really_ think so?" asked Mary, with a sudden rush of gratitude. "I _was_ worried, and how very perceptive of you to guess. But you are quite right. It is the waiting and ... and ... wondering that make me nervous."

"It is a very fine thing to be marrying an earl," said Mr. Cummings, almost as if he were trying to convince himself. "One should not think of such worldly matters as rank and title, but at least you are not being forced into a distasteful marriage. That I do not think I could bear." The last sentence was said in such a low voice that Mary did not hear it.

"Your parents are well, I trust?" added Mr. Cummings quickly. "And Miss Emily?"

"Oh, yes. We are all invited to the Harrisons for supper. Mama is in high alt."

"And you?"

"I think it is very gracious of Sir James and Lady Harrison," said Mary, primly.

"And yet," said Mr. Cummings, "I have seen Sir James and his lady snub your parents quite dreadfully outside this very church."

Mary sighed. "That was before I was known to be marrying an earl. For my part, I do not care to go, but you must realize it means so much to Mama."

Mr. Cummings looked at the delicate oval of Mary's face, at the brown curls peeping out from under the clumsy covering of her calash, at the faint shadows under her wide brown eyes. He seemed to be in the grip of some strong emotion. He half held out his hand toward her, and Mary saw with a kind of wonder that the hand shook slightly.

"Miss Anstey," he began. There was a silence. The wind rose and howled about the church. Up in the steeple, a bell moved and sent down a high, silvery chime. The candles on the altar flared and dipped and flared again.

"Yes, Mr. Cummings?" Mary studied his face anxiously, wondering if he was ill.

"I simply want to wish you all the happiness in the world," he said in a stifled voice. "I have some calls to make in the parish. Allow me to escort you home."

It was a very silent walk, Mr. Cummings wrapped in his own thoughts and Mary brooding once more on how she would feel about her fiance when she saw him on the morrow.

Mary said good day to Mr. Cummings, and hurried up the short drive toward home, unaware that the vicar was still standing mournfully in the road, hat in hand, watching her until she was out of sight.

* * * *

Miss Emily Anstey toyed with her food at the Harrison supper table and reflected that Sir James and his lady were amazingly like her own parents. They were loud, blunt, and crude. But Mr. and Mrs. Anstey had a certain warmth and kindness that was all too lacking in the Harrisons. Sir James had made it quite plain, over the turtle soup, that he was doing the Ansteys an immense favor by allowing them to cross his threshold. His wife asked innumerable questions about the earl, saying she quite doted on him already.

Their son, Billy Harrison, a squat, rather brutish youth, was mercifully silent, although his parents, with many broad winks and hints, put out that he was quite enchanted with Miss Emily.

Emily's head began to ache and ache, until it seemed as if the pounding in her temples was drowning out every other sound in the room.

Then she heard Mary's voice. "You have become quite white, Emily. I fear you are unwell."

"It is the headache," said Emily wretchedly. "I feel if I could return home and lie down, I might recover quickly. I am sorry Sir James, Lady James, but I fear I must take my leave."

Mary volunteered to accompany her sister, but her move was pooh-poohed on all sides. The future countess was to be kept till the bitter end.

At last, it was decided that Emily should return alone and send the carriage and servants back again.

Feeling a trifle guilty, Mrs. Anstey volunteered to accompany her daughter, but Emily, with the thought of escape so near, was quite vehement in her insistence that she would do very well alone.

As soon as she was safely ensconced in the darkness of the carriage, her headache disappeared like magic. Emily thought of Mary left to the tender mercies of the Harrisons and debated whether to return.

But it would be considered very odd of her, and no doubt Sir James and Lady Harrison, whose vanity was only matched by their doting affection for their brutish son, would decide she had returned to be at repulsive Billy Harrison's side.

The Elms seemed like a sort of modern furniture shop to Emily as she stood in the hall, unfastening the strings of her bonnet after having sent the carriage back.

Everything was so quiet and polished and new and glittery and hushed. It would hardly have surprised her, she thought, if a deferential young man in a long-tailed coat had emerged from the shadows and tried to sell her the hall table. The only things lacking in the house were little white cards with prices on them.

She raised her hands to her head to remove her bonnet and then stood frowning, her hands still up to her head.

There was a bustle and commotion outside. Perhaps some of the neighbors had come to call, although the hour was late. The servants, apart from those who had returned to wait for the rest of the Anstey family, had been given the evening off.

Emily wondered whether to answer the door or pretend there was no one at home.

She hesitated, wondering what to do. The knocker resounded against the door. The imperative rapping seemed to make up her mind for her.

She swung the door open.

A tall man with a harsh, tanned face stood on the threshold. He was dressed in the first stare from his curly, brimmed beaver hat to his many-caped driving coat, opened to reveal a glimpse of formal dress, white cravat, and snowy linen.

"Mary," he said in a husky voice.

Before Emily could protest, the tall man had swept her into his arms, forced her chin up, and started punishing her mouth with a deep and savage kiss, which held in it ten long years of frustrated passion.

"It's the earl," thought Emily. "He was supposed to come tomorrow." She made a faint noise against the hardness of the lips pressing down on her own, but that only seemed to inflame the earl further. "I cannot possibly say anything until he is finished," thought Emily, resigning herself to his embrace.

That was a mistake. She became aware of strange surgings in her own body, a feverish heat swept over her, and then she forgot everything and everybody and kissed him back with such passion that the earl groaned in his throat and picked her up in his arms and carried her across the threshold. Her hat tumbled off onto the tiled floor of the hall. The soft glow from the latest thing in oil lamps shone on the gold of her hair.

"The deuce!" said the Earl of Devenham, releasing his grip. Emily fell with a crash onto the hall floor.

She sat up, rubbing her back, and looked ruefully up into the cold gray eyes of the earl.

"Welcome home, my lord," said Emily Anstey, overcome by an unmaidenly fit of giggles.

"W-welcome h-home."

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*Chapter Two*

The Earl of Devenham stood in front of the fireplace in the drawing room. He had divested himself of his coat, hat, and gloves.

He took out his quizzing glass and turned it this way and that in the light to make sure there was no mark on it, and then raised it to one eye and surveyed the slight figure of Emily Anstey.

Emily looked calmly back until he let the glass fall. He had not said a word since he had helped her to her feet in the hall.

"I owe you an apology," he said in chilly accents. "With the bonnet hiding your hair, I took you for Mary. You, I gather, are Emily. I remember you well. Always getting in the way." His level gaze seemed to imply that she had not changed.

"You did not allow me time for explanations," Emily said crossly. She remembered that kiss and tried to fight down the blush she could feel rising to her cheeks.

"You have not accepted my apology."

"Your apology is accepted." Emily bobbed a curtsy. "It is the servants' night off. Mary and mother and father are visiting a neighbor. I returned because I had the headache. I do not have it now. Would you care for some refreshment?"

A flash of humor briefly lit up his eyes as he listened to the staccato sentences and surveyed the stiff little lady before him. "I would like some wine," he said in more gentle tones.

"Of course." Emily hesitated in the doorway. "We expected you tomorrow, my lord."

"I was anxious to see my future bride," he said curtly. Then he smiled. "I fear you may have taken all the first warmth of my greeting. I had hoped to reserve it for Mary."

Emily opened her mouth to reply and found that she could not think of anything to say.

She turned and left the room. When she pushed open the door leading to the servants' dining room she found the staff seated at table.

The butler, Parsons, rose at her entrance, followed by the rest of the servants.

"I am so sorry, Parsons," said Emily. "Lord Devenham has arrived and wished wine and ... and ...

perhaps he has not eaten. I did not think to ask. Mama said it was your evening off, so..."

"I will attend to it immediately, Miss Emily," said Parsons. "His lordship's room is ready for him."

"But it is your evening off...."

"There is nowhere to go in Malden Grand," said Parsons. "Please return upstairs, Miss Emily. I will follow in a few moments to attend to Lord Devenham's wishes."

"There really _is_ nothing to do," thought Emily, as she scurried back upstairs. "I never thought about it before. I imagined them all visiting other servants, but other servants never seem to have evenings off at all."

Emily realized with some surprise that her mother, despite her faults, was a kind mistress, and the thought gave her a comforting glow inside. The elegant and formidable earl, with his rich clothes and studied elegance, had been making her dread the return of her parents, so it was pleasant to think of something worthy about them. Certainly the earl must consider them harsh for having refused his suit. On the other hand, even a little place like Malden Grand was full of gossip about Miss This or Mr. That who had had their love life equally ruined. Meg, the baker's daughter, was in love with a farm laborer, Jim Smithers, but the baker considered Jim far beneath them, so the romance was not allowed to flourish.

Because Mr. Anstey had worked hard and long to make his fortune, it was understandable in a way that he should want the best for his daughters when it came to marriage. Mr. Anstey was fond of saying that love and poverty could not live together.

Emily hesitated in the hall. She vaguely remembered the earl when he had been young Captain Tracey. Well, the young and eager captain had gone and was now this formidable amalgam of elegance and tailoring. What on earth would shy little Mary make of him now?

Taking a deep breath, Emily entered the drawing room. She was struck afresh by the harsh and handsome sophistication of the man facing her. His gray eyes were as cold as the North Sea and his jet black hair grew to a widow's peak on his forehead. He had an autocratic nose and thin, supercilious black brows. His face was tanned, his mouth hard and severe. His mouth ... One would never think, looking at that hard and uncompromising mouth, that only a short time ago ...

Emily blushed. "The servants are here ... I m-mean, they did not go out, and Parsons, that's our butler, will be bringing your wine directly."

At that moment, Parsons entered behind Emily, bearing a tray with a decanter of wine and one of brandy which he set on a table beside the fire.