A Regency Match (26 page)

“I wouldn't worry about your mother. Always takes things in her stride, Charlotte does. Never known a woman so unflappable.”

Without ado, Marcus went in search of her. He found her in the greenhouse, repotting some seedlings, her full sleeves rolled up and her silk gown covered by a large, soiled apron. She smiled at him absently. “Off for a bit of riding?” she asked.

“No, not now. I've come to show you this item in the
Times
.” He offered it to her.

“Hold it for me,” she said, wiping her hands on the apron. “My hands are too dirty.” He held it before her face, and she scanned it quickly. Then she looked up at him with eyebrows raised and read it again. “Did you know about this?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, leaning back against a worktable. “Iris told me about her feelings before she left.”

“I see. Then it was something that happened
here
that caused her to change her mind?”

“So it seems. My abstracted behavior and the lack of attention to her made her realize that I was not sufficiently … how can I put it?… enamored of her.”

His mother nodded. “She is a wise girl. I noticed the same thing.”

Marcus frowned in irritation. “Oh, you
did
, did you? Well, if you had not saddled me with a collection of mismatched and troublesome guests to supervise, neither one of you would ever have noticed anything!”

Charlotte casually turned to her flowerpots. “I knew you didn't love Miss Bethany even—”

“Miss Bethune, Mama, Beth
une
!”

“Bethune, then. I knew you didn't love her even before she set foot in the door.”

“How astute of you! Next I suppose you'll tell me that you arranged to ask your little Sophy to visit in the full expectation that her antics would so distract me that Iris would be driven off.”

Charlotte's lips curved in a half-smile. “I make no claim to such god-like prescience. Do you think me a witch?”

He eyed her askance. “I sometimes wonder.” He walked around the worktable so that he could see her face. “Then am I right in assuming that you are not too disappointed at this turn of events?”

“No, not at all. Are you?”

“Not disappointed. Only ashamed that I may have caused pain where it was not deserved. But I'm curious, Mama. Did you not
like
Iris?”

“I liked her very much. She's a fine, respectable, and well-bred young woman. But I felt from the first that she was not the sort of girl you need.”

“You may be right.” He picked up a seedling and played with it absently. “I wish I knew what sort of girl I
do
need,” he said glumly.

His mother regarded him with her enigmatic half-smile. “You know
exactly
the sort you need.”

“Nonsense. I don't know what you mean,” he said in disgust. “I wish you would not always speak in riddles.”

“I mean Sophy,” she said promptly, not looking up from her potting.

“
Sophy
! What are you
saying
, Mama?”

She took the seedling from his hand and placed it carefully in its new pot before she answered. “I'm saying,” she declared when the seedling was properly set, “that you should ride to Wiltshire without delay, rescue the girl and marry her.”

He stared at his mother aghast. “Marry
Sophy? Marry
her? Have you gone
mad
? Can you imagine the sort of life we'd have together? Can you picture the horror of it? I would never know a moment's
peace
. Just
think
what my days would be like. There would be tears at breakfast because I didn't compliment her hair, and diatribes over dinner because I'd skipped luncheon. If we were going out for the evening, she would want to stay cozily at home, but should I suggest the cozy evening, she would rail at my selfishness in keeping her locked away from society. When I'd leave to attend to matters of business, she'd weep at the prospect of terrible loneliness, and when I'd return she'd greet me at the door in wild distraction over some trumpery household crisis. If I smiled at one of her friends, I'd be jealously denounced for flirting, but if I didn't smile, I'd be accused of snobbery. I should live on the razor's edge of suspense, wondering what crisis she'd next have me face. Not a day would pass without some calamity or misadventure of her making. Cataclysm and catastrophe would become part of my ordinary existence. I'd become intimately acquainted with apprehension, consternation, perturbation and foreboding. As the days would pass, I'd find my bride more and more melodramatic, overwrought and maddening. And as the years would pass, instead of finding her more mellow and serene with maturity, I would find that she'd presented me with half-a-dozen children—all girls!—who would be every bit as impetuous, disquieting, skittish, impassioned and histrionic as their mother.
Marry
her? Why don't you rather send me off to fight Cossacks in winter? Or to sail down a waterfall in a cockleshell? Or to explore the heart of darkest Africa? Or to push a rock up a mountain like Sisyphus.
Marry
her?” He paused, cocked a sheepish eye at his mother who was smiling at him tolerantly and asked, “Do you think she'll
have
me?”

Chapter Nineteen

S
OPHY HAD HOPED THAT
, by maintaining a quiet, guarded tongue and an agreeable, modest demeanor, she would manage to live with her Evangelical stepmother in a modicum of peace. But Lady Edgerton, her suspicions aroused by the unconventionality of Sophy's return, was belligerent and hostile from the first moment of her arrival. Sophy had been sent home in disgrace, Lady Edgerton was convinced, because of some heinous, immoral transgression, and she would not rest until she had ferreted out from the girl all the details and had meted out the proper punishment.

Lady Edgerton, born Oriana Scarpe, was a formidable woman. A product of the union of an outspoken, loose-living father and a prudish mother, she early embraced the philosophy of John Wesley in its most extreme form. Her life was the very model of virtuous, Christian womanhood. Her time was spent in reading sermons, attending services, quoting from scriptures and doing good works. Her beliefs held strongly to the narrowest interpretation of the Evangelical moral standards.

Her late-in-life marriage to Lord Edgerton had come as a great shock to the families of both sides. Lord Edgerton had been a widower for several years and had shown no inclination to remarry. Nor had he ever exhibited the slightest religious propensities. He had no interest in life comparable to his love of his horses. He rode them and bred them and talked of them. Oriana Scarpe, on the other hand, had never ridden in her life. Of course, one could understand that a woman in her forties, who had never been married, might succumb to an offer from a gentleman of rank and property. But Lord Edgerton's reasons for
making
the offer were never understood. Miss Scarpe had neither wealth nor beauty, being a large, red-faced woman with narrow eyes and closely-crimped dark curls which hung over her ears, making her look like an angry jurist with a black wig. But they
had
married, much to the amazement of their families and acquaintances, and they lived together in apparent harmony, each one changing not a whit to suit the other.

Lady Oriana had immediately ordered daily family prayers which were attended by all the servants, but not by the master; and Lord Edgerton went about his daily exercises on horseback, a practice in which his wife never joined. Thus the two went their separate ways, as if to prove that marriage need have little or no effect on people of strong character.

The victim of this strange union was Lord Edgerton's sixteen-year-old daughter. The new Lady Edgerton looked upon young Sophia as an unruly hedonist; the child, completely unschooled in the devout and holy life, rode her horses as wildly as a boy, took too great a pride in her appearance, wore dresses that were as vulgar as a courtesan's and spoke with the free tongue of a doxie. Her stepmother set about converting the girl to moral virtue in the only way that seemed effective—by breaking her spirit. The resulting struggle only made Sophy miserable and roused an unalterable resentment in her bosom against the monster who had become her stepmother. Sophy's flight to her grandmother in London had been the result.

Lady Edgerton regarded her return as a sign from above that she had been given a second chance to convert her stepdaughter to the ways of the righteous. Sophy was not only expected to attend “family” prayers with the servants, but she was forced to endure long sessions of private devotions with her stepmother three times a day. In addition, she was subjected to an endless series of questions regarding her activities in the years of her life with her grandmother (whom Lady Edgerton denounced repeatedly as an irreverent, godless incorrigible who would burn in Hell) with particular emphasis on the circumstances which had caused Sophy to return to the fold. Sophy explained repeatedly, and as calmly as she could, that she'd come home because she'd been embarrassed by the persistence of an unwanted suitor. But her stepmother suspected a much more lurid motive and would not be content with that simple explanation.

Sophy, inwardly burning with fury at the insults to her grandmother and to her own moral conduct, nevertheless tried to maintain her outward equanimity. If matters became unbearable, she told herself, she could always go to her father for help. Her father had always indulged her, calling her his little poppet and pinching her cheek with hearty affection. But one day, at luncheon, when her stepmother was berating her with unusual venom, Lord Edgerton had merely said, “Oriana, stop badgering the girl,” and had taken himself off to the stable. At that moment, it became clear to his daughter that Lord Edgerton managed to maintain a peaceful relationship with his wife by staying as far away from her as possible.

So Sophy was forced to bear the endless scoldings and sermonizings without hope of assistance or sympathy. Lady Edgerton was convinced that Sophia had sinned—although the exact nature of the crime was withheld from her—and Sophia must be punished. The girl was kept indoors, even on the warmest summer days, to sew a heaping pile of shirts for the poor and to listen to her stepmother's renderings of the sermons of Whitefield and Wesley.

After a few weeks of this grim life, Sophy noticed a change in her stepmother. She became, suddenly, more cheerful and less critical. She told Sophia to dress her hair and put on a more cheerful gown than the dark blue bombazine she had been heretofore required to wear. The reason for the softening became clear in short order: Lady Oriana had arranged for a suitor for her stepdaughter!

Lady Edgerton was not so blind that she didn't realize that Sophia disliked her. The presence of a stubborn, willful girl in her well-run, exemplary household was a constant source of irritation. If she could marry Sophia off to a respectable and virtuous gentleman, would not her obligations to the girl be fulfilled? The husband could then take over the reformation of her character. And, happily, she knew the very man. She had a cousin, not a day above forty, who was the vicar of a small parish near by, and who had a growing reputation for the awesome effects of his hell-fire sermons.

When her stepmother's object became clear, Sophy attempted to resist. She explained patiently that she'd just endured a difficult time with an unwanted suitor, and that she couldn't face the ordeal of entertaining another. She intended never to marry, she declared fervently, and she hoped Lady Edgerton would not require her to subject the gentleman in question to useless embarrassment.

“Nonsense, my dear, of
course
you'll marry. It is the duty of good Christian women to do so. The Reverend Mr. Scarpe, a cousin of mine on my father's side, will be calling this afternoon. I want you to welcome him with cordiality—showing proper restraint, of course—and to say nothing … I repeat, Miss,
nothing
!… which might discourage him from making an offer.”

“But, ma'am, you don't understand. There is nothing I can say to encourage him. I cannot
think
of matrimony, at least not at this time.”

“And why not, Miss? In what debauchery have you indulged to make you feel thus unworthy?”

The rudeness of the question left Sophy speechless. Realizing that arguments would be useless, she bit her lip and took herself off to change her dress as ordered. She reappeared later in a puce-colored jaconet gown completely unsuited to the hot weather but quite decorous in its high neckline and long sleeves, which Sophy felt was the most unflattering item in her wardrobe. Characteristically, her stepmother was quite pleased with it.

Unfortunately, the Reverend Mr. Scarpe was pleased with it, too. The moment he laid his protruding black eyes on Sophy, they shone with a lascivious light. Mr. Scarpe, a round-shouldered, balding gentleman, whose barrel-like body was set on a pair of long, spindly legs, had not often come upon a young woman of Sophy's undisguisable charms. He could barely conceal his leering eagerness to acquire this toothsome creature for his own. He sat down beside her on the sofa in the shaded drawing room and, disregarding the fact that Lady Edgerton was observing the proceedings from across the room, allowed his knee to bump into hers. Sophy inched away and tried to distract him with a polite question about the composition of his parish. “A most loyal and God-fearing flock,” he said complacently. “I doubt if a finer group could be found in all England. Although, of course, I, like John Wesley, look upon the
world
as my parish. But tell me, Miss Edgerton, about yourself. How is it I've not seen you here before?”

“I've been residing with my grandmother in London,” she explained, feeling his knee again and inching away.

“Living amidst all ‘the pomp and vanity of this wicked world,' I have no doubt,” her stepmother interjected coldly.

“‘Judge not according to the appearance,'
John
, 7:24,” the vicar quoted solemnly. “I'm sure this little flower remained pure in the midst of the sinning around her. ‘Unto the pure all things are pure,'
Titus
, 1:15.” He beamed at her benignly.