Anne Barbour (10 page)

“Oddly enough, there was a strong resemblance between Joanna and Jennifer. Both were tall and fair and slim. The two little girls were similar in appearance as well, with golden curls and brown eyes.”

The marquess sighed heavily. “I was not told that Ben and Jennifer intended to take Joanna and Serena along on their yachting holiday, though I suppose, given the relationship, I should not be surprised.”

A profound silence settled on the group then, until Bran spoke at last.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “we have assumed here that Martha is Serena, but what if she is Felicity, after all?”

“What?” Martha and Lord Canby turned to him in surprise.

“Well, just consider. Serena’s clothing would have been just as fine as Felicity’s. The locket, found in Mary’s hand, might well have been snatched from Martha’s neck in the rough and tumble of their brief sojourn in the boat. The shawl may have been snatched up at random and thrown about the handiest child before dropping them both into the boat. And then,” he concluded almost as an afterthought, “Martha is left-handed—as was Felicity. That seems to me a great coincidence.”

He halted, gazing at the other two.

“Yes,” said the marquess after another extended silence. “It is possible, isn’t it?” he said wonderingly— almost pleadingly. He turned again to the young woman beside him. “My dear—

Martha spoke at last, in a voice filled with pain and bewilderment. “Then, I still cannot be sure who I am. I have no wish now to claim what is not mine, but—”

Her voice caught on a sob. “I thought for a moment I had recovered my identity. I thought I was Serena Worth—not as exalted a name as that of Felicity Marshall, to be sure, but it was my place in the world. Mine alone.” She glanced around. “I suppose I am talking nonsense,” she concluded with a watery smile.

The marquess reached for Martha’s hand and said brokenly, “My son had two daughters, one of whom I never acknowledged. I do not know which of you has been returned to me, but now I tell you, it makes no difference. You are my granddaughter, and if you will forgive an old man for his foolish intransigence so long ago, I would like very much to welcome you home—again.”

He stood, opened his arms, and with a joyful cry, Martha ran into them.

Bran joined them to add his own expressions of satisfaction, and it was some minutes before the rejoicing abated and the tears were dried.

“So, what the devil are we to call you, my dear?” the marquess asked, smiling. “Besides, Granddaughter, of course.”

After a moment, Martha opened her mouth to speak. Since the moment of her recognition of Lord Canby’s fob, other memories had begun to surface— recollections, for example, of a magnificent house with sparkling chandeliers—and there was a tall, laughing man she called “Papa dearest.” Interspersed with these were faint images of another man—perhaps a younger version of the marquess?—upon whose knee she climbed for loving embraces. The time was approaching, she felt, when her identity would be produced from her own mind. Until then . . . She hesitated.

With a glance at his betrothed, Bran interposed. “I rather think the Countess of Branford has a nice ring. We can work out the informal address later. Do you not agree?”

After several moments of stunned silence, the marquess uttered a pleased shout. “Do you mean it, boy? My dear? You would not bamboozle an old man once again!”

“Never again, Grandpapa,” whispered Martha—or Serena—or possibly Felicity.

“I can only tell you this,” Bran declared with great aplomb. “I devoutly hope your next descendant will be a boy—and he will bear the name Stewart Marshall Storm, Viscount Weatherby, heir to the Earl of Branford.”

“What a terrible mouthful to inflict on a helpless infant,” chuckled his beloved.

It was not long before the marquess, quite worn with the events of the day, retired for the night, leaving it up to his friend the earl to deal with whatever protests might further issue on the subject of forthcoming progeny.

All of which were vanquished most successfully, and in a wonderfully effective manner, by the designated father of said progeny.

**

The Wooing of Lord Walford

“Confound it, Sally, is this any way to treat a guest?”

Sarah Berners, the young woman thus addressed, gazed down at the gentleman who spoke so importunately. His dark eyes were intensely alive below a mop of dark hair, arranged in modish carelessness,

“Charlie.” She lifted damp curls from her forehead as she spoke with some asperity from atop a rather wobbly ladder. She had been tending plants in her greenhouse, a sprawling collection of glassed-in buildings, and she had accomplished only half the tasks she had allotted to herself. For half an hour she had been laboring with several pots of maidenhair, set on a high shelf, and the heat and humidity and her uncomfortable position were beginning to take a toll on her temper. “You have been running tame in this house since you were in short coats, so even though you rarely grace the neighborhood with your presence these days, I hardly think I need consider you a guest.”

“But I want to talk to you.” Charles Darracot, the second son of the Earl of Frane possessed a great charm of manner, of which he was only too aware. He stretched a hand to Sally with a coaxing smile, and sighing, she accepted his assistance and slid down to ground level.

Really, it was too bad of Charlie, she thought, with an absence of rancor. She had much to do this morning, and had given strictest orders that she not be disturbed in her sunny haven. Orders, of course, meant nothing to Charlie. She could just picture the persuasive grin he must have projected at Carlisle, reducing the usually austere butler to stammering ineffectually.

“What is it, Charlie?” she asked, removing a clutter of clay pots and trowels from a nearby bench. “I have just started on the arrangements for Lady Winstaunton’s Valentine’s Ball, and there is much to be done.”

“Valentine’s Ball! Good God, we’re hardly into December. Why are you beavering away at Valentine’s Day already?”

“Because,” she replied impatiently, “as you would know if you thought of anything but your own affairs, it always takes months to fill Lady W.’s order. She insists upon masses of dried flowers, as well as the forced fresh, and then there’s the big jars of potpourri she likes to place in every room.” Motioning Charlie to be seated, she settled herself, wiping grimy fingers on her already stained muslin skirt.

“Lord yes,” he muttered. “I remember now. She gets the place smelling like a French—that is, it’s always rather stultifying.” The young man, after a dubious glance at the dirt-streaked surface of the bench, lifted the tails of his elegantly cut riding coat and perched instead on the relatively clean corner of a potting table.

Sally eyed him suspiciously. “What are you doing back in Somerset, Charlie? Come down from London on a repairing lease, have you?”

A shadow crossed his attractive features, but his grin crinkled as engagingly as ever. He sketched a bow from his seated position. “I came just to see you. Yes, truly,” he added in response to her expression of unrelieved skepticism. “I have a proposition for you.”

Sally rose precipitously from her seat and began to reascend the ladder. “The answer is no. Or rather,” she amended, “absolutely, irrevocably, and never in this world, no.”

Charlie, too, shot upward and, plucking her from the ladder, replaced her on the bench. He remained standing above her to prevent any more such attempts at flight.

“You haven’t even heard what I have to say,” he said, a look of hurt dismay in his eyes that did little to diminish the mischief sparkling in their black depths.

“Stop bamming me, Charles George Darracot. If you think I am going to lend myself to another of your hair-brained schemes, you’ve gone barmy. Do you recall,” she asked, her foot tapping ominously on the earthen surface of the greenhouse floor, “the last time you ‘had a proposition’ for me? You left me standing knee-deep in a duck pond at two o’clock in the morning while you hared off to Brighton with that brazen little lightskirt.”

“Sally!” Charlie’s voice was filled with shocked reproach. “She was not a lightskirt, that is, not precisely, and she ...”

“I rest my case,” said Sally, attempting once more to rise. Charlie, however, possessed himself of her hands and drew her down again on the bench to sit beside him, the pristine folds of his riding coat forgotten. His expression turned serious.

“Sally, listen. Are you, or are you not, my best friend?”

“Of course, but ...”

“And have I, or have I not, always come to your assistance when you needed me?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Yes, I suppose,” said Sally in a small voice, “but, Charlie ...”

“All right, then. Just listen. I think you’ll find my, er, plan of great interest.”

Sally felt her insides clench warily, but she returned his gaze without comment.

Charlie’s eyes fell before hers, and he stared at his hands for a moment before speaking.

“Have you ever heard of a tontine?”

“A what?” Sally looked at him blankly.

“A tontine. It’s a sort of wager, or rather ...”

He broke off and ran long fingers through his disordered locks.

“I’d better begin at the beginning. It all started a long time ago, when I was at Oxford.”

“Oxford!” Sally’s voice rose in startled query. “Charlie, is this going to take very long? I really do have a great many things ...”

“No, it won’t take long,” he replied testily, “if you’ll just let me continue.” He drew a deep breath. “As I was saying, one pretty latish evening during my last year there, a bunch of us were sitting about in Fremont Major’s rooms. I won’t say we hadn’t been at the brandy barrel, but we weren’t jug bitten, or anything of the sort. James Wentworth was complaining that his mother was already on the lookout for a suitable parti for him. And he only nineteen for God’s sake. Then Freddie Bremerton chimed in to say that his bride had been chosen for him when he was still in his cradle. Pretty bitter about it he was, too.

“Before long, we were all in full cry against a system that forces a chap to marry just when he gets out in the world and has a chance at a little jollification.”

“If you think it’s bad for a man, what about a female?” interrupted Sally. “I mean, just look at you and me. If we hadn’t dug in our heels three years ago, we would have found ourselves married to one another.”

“Precisely my point. We were lucky. Our parents wished us to marry, but they had some regard for our feelings. Others, however, simply push their progeny into the pit with no regard to their preferences. Anyway,” he continued, taking up the thread, “at the end of it, we all—there were twelve of us in the room— made a vow to resist all the parental machinations and society’s expectations and all the rest.”

Charlie rose and began to pace the floor.

“Then,” he continued, “Horace Belwharton spoke up. He’d actually been studying his history, and he came up with this tontine idea. It seems,” he went on hastily, observing further signs of impatience in his listener, “that a couple of hundred years or so ago, some of the more rapacious citizens of Italy, thought up a unique sweepstakes scheme. Simply put, a group of men would shove a fairish amount of money into a pot, and the last man alive would collect it all.”

Once more, he was the recipient of a blank stare.

“I’m not saying it’s a very sensible sort of undertaking—I rather think it must have led to some duty work—stilettos in dark alleys and that sort of thing— but the whole idea seemed especially designed to fit our particular situation.”

“Charlie,” said Sally with great firmness. “You’re babbling, and I really don’t ...”

“No, no.” Charlie spoke impatiently. “Just listen, will you? I don’t mean we wagered on who would live the longest. We amended the scheme. We each agreed to scrape together a hundred pounds and give it to Tom Falwell to invest for us. Tom is the best of good fellows, even though his father is a cit—owns a couple of banks or some such, and he’s considered a financial genius. We solemnly vowed to fight our families’ matrimonial plans tooth and nail, and the one who remained successful the longest—that is, the last of us left unmarried would claim the ducats.”

Sally stared at him thoughtfully. “Well,” she said at last. “The whole thing sounds idiotish in the extreme, but—let’s see ... You’re, um, twenty-three, so that must have been six years ago. If your financial genius did well by you, I suppose there must be a fair amount of money accrued by now. You, of course, are obviously still in the running to capture the prize, but”— her eyes narrowed—”what has all this to do with me?”

Sally contemplated her friend uneasily. It was true, they had been in each others’ pockets almost since they had been in leading strings. Their estates marched together, and they had been inseparable through all their growing-up time. A year Charlie’s junior, Sally had acted first as worthy opponent in endless games of toy soldiers and mumblety-peg, and later as indefatigable carrier of his game bag and fishing pole, as well as target of daring ambuscades and brilliant military maneuvers. In turn, Charlie had put in duty as doll mender, defender against every other small boy in the neighborhood, and arranger of funerals for the assortments of birds, kittens, and rabbits discovered by Sally in various states of terminal distress on their tramps through meadow and forest land.

It was true, she reflected uneasily, that she and Charlie had delivered one another from more than one sticky situation. If she had aided him in some of his more totty-headed schemes, he had always been there to rescue her from the results of her own folly. That was all in the past, however, she reflected stiffly. The last time she had sought Charlie’s aid—the episode of Lady Melksham’s pet pug, if she were not mistaken—she had still been in her teens. She was now a dignified lady of twenty-two years and far beyond such escapades.

Charlie, on the other hand, had never outgrown his capacity to fall from one scrape into another. He was wild to a fault, and at a time when other young men of his class were embarking on careers in the military or the church, Charlie toiled not, neither did he spin, living precariously on the allowance he received from his father and monies inherited several years ago from an indulgent uncle. He seemed happy in his hedonistic life-style, but lately—well, now that she came to think of it—she had noticed a certain pensiveness cross his features from time to time on the rare occasions when he had descended on the neighborhood from London. He was still high-spirited, and yet, she could have sworn he was not entirely happy these days.