Treasured Vows (9 page)

And the uncomfortable thought struck Phadra that maybe she’d gone
too
far in her effort to prove her point.

P
hadra placed her spoon next to her bowl and forced herself to complete the point of her demonstration in a much softer tone. “If Cambridge allowed women to attend, I think the country might actually be the better for it.”

No response.

She looked from stunned face to stunned face and realized that she had crossed an imaginary line and had no idea how to return to the other side. Worse, Miranda was positively gloating.

“Perhaps Miss Abbott is correct,” came Mr. Morgan’s deep voice. “Perhaps we could do with fewer rules.”

Lord Phipps turned to him, a look of interest in his eyes. “What do you mean, Morgan?”

Mr. Morgan shrugged. “There are times I find myself bored with the expected. Who needs a soup spoon?” To the shock of everyone—including Phadra—he threw the spoon over his shoulder. It hit
the wall and clattered to the floor. He then picked up his soup bowl and, after lifting it in her direction as if in a toast, drank from the rim.

Phadra’s mouth dropped open in shock. Mr. Morgan, elegant and handsome in his black evening clothes, was the last person she’d expected to do something so outrageous—or to support her outspoken behavior. Evidently everyone else at the table agreed with her. Except for Lord Phipps.

His lordship raised his eyebrows and broke into a big grin. “I tire of rules, too! Down with the tyranny of etiquette and the stuffiness of dining rooms. I’ve had enough!” He tossed his spoon over his shoulder where it was caught in midair by an alert footman and lifted his soup bowl. “To you, Miss Abbott, for setting us free.” Putting his lips to the edge of his bowl, he slurped noisily. Reggie Evans laughingly seconded the toast, threw his spoon
at
a footman, who dodged in time, and drank from his own bowl.

It was on the tip of Phadra’s tongue to explain that to use a soup spoon or not to use a soup spoon was not the point of her demonstration. However, one look at the horror-stricken expression on Lady Evans’s face as she watched her carefully planned dinner party turn into chaos convinced Phadra that this was not the time to call attention to the fact that it was she, Phadra, who had started this nonsense.

Mr. Morgan turned to his friends. “Duroy, Jamison, won’t you join us?” he asked.

Mr. Jamison frowned, and Phadra sensed that he’d rather plunge his butter knife into his breast than take part in this inanity. However, Captain Duroy met the challenge. He rose to his feet and raised his bowl. “To Grant Morgan and his fiancée, the lovely
Lady Miranda. May they share a long and happy life together.”

“What?” Lord Phipps said, looking up from his soup bowl. He turned to Miranda, a dribble of soup on his chin. “You and Morgan are going to tie the parson’s knot?”

Lady Evans uttered a soft, frantic gasp.

“Oh, I thought everyone knew,” Lady St. George said with mild surprise.

Lady Miranda sat still, as if she’d been hit by lightning and couldn’t move, let alone comprehend Lord Phipps’s question…and then, ever so slowly, she turned her head to stare in shock at Phadra. Phadra leaned back in her chair, preparing herself for the worst.

“Oh, Miranda, that is wonderful news!” said her sister-in-law, Mrs. Evans, her voice breaking the silence. Lady Margaret and Lady Roberta added their congratulations. It couldn’t have been lost on Miranda, Phadra hoped, that there was more than a touch of envy in their voices.

“To Morgan and Lady Miranda!” Lord Phipps cried, his exuberant voice bouncing off the dining room ceiling, and raised his bowl once more.

With such a toast, there was nothing to do but for everyone to lift their soup bowls and drink.

Reggie discovered he could blow bubbles in his soup, and his wife giggled at his antics. Lord Phipps was so charmed that he too tried his luck at blowing bubbles in the oxtail soup, and blew some soup up his nose. Lord Dangerfield sat back, apparently amazed by all of this. Finally he raised his bowl and silently toasted Lady Sophie, who blushed and raised her own bowl to shyly salute him.

The older couples looked as though they would rather have their hands cut off than touch their soup bowls.

Miranda appeared to bask in the attention, her lips curved into a charming smile that never touched her eyes. Phadra noticed that her hand was clenching her soup so tightly her knuckles turned white.

At last everyone appeared to tire of the soup, and the footmen stepped forward to remove the bowls and prepare for the next course. Lady Evans leaned forward, the ostrich plumes of her headdress bobbing, and said, “Well, that was entertaining.” She looked directly at Phadra. “I wonder what we’ll do for the next course.”

After dinner, the women left the men to their port and adjourned to the yellow parlor. Grant waited until Sir Cecil had nodded to the butler to serve before excusing himself from the company. No one would miss him. He’d discovered that his nondrinking presence was not always appreciated by men interested in emptying a bottle.

He didn’t even bother to check the drawing room, to which the women had retired. Phadra Abbott wouldn’t be there. When the women had left the dining room, it was obvious they considered Miss Abbott a leper in their midst. Nor did he think she would escape to her bedroom.

He walked down the hallway to the back of the house, where a set of doors led to the walled garden. He took the garden’s gravel path and found Miss Abbott where he thought she’d be, sitting on one of a trio of benches in the heart of the garden. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t appear to hear his approach.
She sat as poised and graceful as a classic Greek sculpture, the moonlight turning her hair to silken silver and her skin to alabaster.

Grant stepped out of the shadows. “When I didn’t see you with the others, I assumed you would be out here.”

She appeared startled at the sound of his voice. Her gaze met his, and then she looked away. “I thought you would be with the men, enjoying your port.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice. She resented his intrusion of her privacy.

He sat on the bench across from her and said lightly, “I tired of Reggie’s jokes about men who don’t drink.”

The expression in her large eyes turned sad. “I suppose we’re both outsiders, aren’t we?” He didn’t get a chance to answer because she went on, her voice very serious, “This isn’t going to work, you know.”

“What isn’t going to work?”

“Marrying me off. Tonight was my first introduction to society, and you saw what I did. I always get carried away. I always do the wrong thing.”

“Miss Abbott—”

“I made a fool of myself.”

“You weren’t a complete failure.”

“I wasn’t a total success.”

“Did you want to be?”

Her eyes widened at his question. Then she blinked and looked off into the garden as if considering this issue for the first time. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I did. I was nervous before the party, and Henny told me everything would go well. Of course, she also warned me to keep my opinions to
myself.” She smiled ruefully. “I didn’t follow her advice.”

“The courses after the soup went well,” he pointed out in a mild attempt at humor.

“Do you think Lady Evans will remember that?” She took a long, deep breath before asking him, “Why did you come to my rescue? Why didn’t you just let me die a peaceful social death and be done with it? I’ll warn you now, I can’t change. No matter what the situation, I always end up speaking my mind. Even in school, my tongue made me an outcast. My imagination runs away from me, and then…” She gave a small laugh. “I can’t believe
you
drank straight from your bowl.”

“You make it sound as though I was playing St. George.”

“Trust me,” she said, giving a nod toward the house, “the dragons have their heads together in the drawing room. You are probably being painted just as black as I am right now.”

“Miss Abbott, I know how you feel—”

“You couldn’t possibly,” she interjected. “You can’t know how it feels.” Her eyes gleamed with tears in the moonlight, and she averted her face. “I don’t feel particularly well, Mr. Morgan.” She rose. “Perhaps the night air isn’t the best thing for me. I hope you’ll excuse me if I retire to my room,” she said, already starting to walk away from him.

He pursued her. “Is that it, then?” he asked. “You’re going to accept defeat and run to the safety of your room? I thought Phadra Abbott had more spirit than that.”

She stopped, the gravel crunching underneath her
kid slippers as she turned to face him. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes, I do. You’re talking about your father again.” He snorted. “Miss Abbott, having a father doesn’t guarantee that everything in your world will go fine or stop you from making a fool of yourself.”

She lifted her chin proudly. Her refusal to see her father as a selfish scoundrel angered Grant.

“You want to know about fathers, Miss Abbott? Let me tell you about mine. Noble blood flowed through his veins, but he carried no title. Of course, that didn’t stop him from acting like a lord. He was a great swordsman and an outstanding horseman. He was educated at Eton, and his friends represented all of the noble houses of Europe. He gambled, ran up huge debts, drank too much—” Grant paused for a moment, “And made love to other men’s wives. That was his career, drinking and making love to women.”

She gasped lightly at his admission, as he knew she would. “Did I shock you, Miss Abbott?” He “tsked” softly. “You are provincial. It is the duty of great would-be lords such as my father to spread himself out among women. It demonstrated that he was a man, and, to be honest, women melted in his presence. It’s funny, but I don’t remember him as handsome. Perhaps that is because I didn’t like him.”

“You didn’t like your father?” she asked. She spoke as if the idea was completely foreign to her.

“It’s an unnatural thing when the child doesn’t love the parent, isn’t it? Everything I’ve been taught from my prayer book to my primer says that I must love him and give him filial devotion…and for years I tried to. Not that my father demanded my
love or even loyalty—he was far too self-absorbed to need anyone else’s approval other than his own.”

“You sound so bitter.”

He looked up at her. “Do I?” For a second he looked into the dark shadows of the tree, looking straight into the past, seeing the memories, the demons that sometimes haunted him, even there in the fragrant peace of the garden. “Yes, I am,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

“You always have a question, don’t you, Miss Abbott?”

“How else will I understand, Mr. Morgan?”

Grant sat down on one of the garden seats. He shouldn’t answer her. He never talked about it, but…He started speaking, needing to tell her, needing to let someone understand. “It started at Eton. The first day I was there.” He could recall it all perfectly, the smell of books, slate and chalk, the shuffling of the older students as one by one they noticed. “I looked across the schoolroom, and there sat a boy who looked almost exactly like me.”

She didn’t understand, so he explained, “This was no cursory likeness. The boy and I were close enough in looks to have come from the same womb. He was a marquess’s son, heir to a grand estate, and held a title of his own. I was the son of a titleless gentleman whose very name made the other boys’ mothers whisper behind their hands and their fathers threaten to withdraw their sons from the school if I remained. In fact, there had been some question about my even being accepted at Eton because of my father’s reputation. Fortunately, my mother was related to Marlborough, and he spoke on my behalf.”

“Are you going to tell me that boys can be as cruel as girls?”

He laughed. She evidently understood. “They can be worse. One day the boy’s mother visited the school but didn’t ask to see her son. Instead she asked to see me. When I went into the headmaster’s office to meet her, she burst into laughter and told me I was better-looking than my father. That night, my half-brother and his mates gave me the worst beating of my life.”

She sat down on the bench beside him. “No! What did you do?”

“Learned to fight back.”

“Did you say anything to your father about your resemblance to this boy?”

“Of course. There was a part of me that wanted him to deny the truth. I loved my mother and still had a child’s deeply held opinion that my father must love her, too.” He looked at her. “Life is very simple when we are children.”

If she understood his point, she gave no sign but asked instead, “What did your father say?”

Grant shrugged. “He laughed.”

“He laughed?”

“He informed me that he didn’t understand what I was upset about.”

“I think he was the one who didn’t understand!” she said, her spirited indignation returning. Grant smiled. Phadra Abbott loved to champion causes.

He almost hated to destroy her illusions. “No, he made me understand. That night he took me to his favorite brothel and purchased a girl for me.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “What did he want you to understand?”

“How to be a man, Miss Abbott. The type of man he thought I should be.”

“And did you become a man?”

He wondered if this young woman, cloistered for so long in a girls’ school, really had any idea of what they were discussing. In his mind’s eye he could recall the features of the prostitute, who had been little older than himself, and his blundering attempts to make his father proud of him…his own confusion. He erased the night from his mind and responded coldly, “I wanted to please my father.”

She frowned, as if she wasn’t certain that she had heard him correctly. “But you were so young.”

He laughed, the sound without mirth. “Trust me, Miss Abbott, I learned it all at my father’s knee—gambling, drinking, whoring.”

She sat back, sliding him a shrewd glance. “But you are not like him today.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “When I turned seventeen, I came home on holiday and found my mother dying. She had a brain sickness and had been ill for months.”

“And no one told you?”

Grant leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, finding the memories almost too painful to recall. “My uncle, who was looking after my mother and sisters, didn’t see fit to tell me because he considered me too much of the ‘devil’s own image.’ He never got along with my father.” His uncle’s words still had the power to hurt. “Father knew Mother was ill, but he hadn’t gotten around to paying her a visit. I remember that she lay in the middle of her big bed, calling his name over and over. She didn’t even recognize me.”