Barbara Metzger
Authors: Lady Whiltons Wedding
Lady Whilton's Wedding by Barbara Metzger
Lady Whilton’s Wedding
By Barbara Metzger
Copyright 2012 by Barbara Metzger
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass
and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
Previously published in print, 1995.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Also by Barbara Metzger and Untreed Reads Publishing
An Angel for the Earl
The Duel
A Suspicious Affair
Ace of Hearts (Book One of The House of Cards Trilogy)
Jack of Clubs (Book Two of The House of Cards Trilogy)
Queen of Diamonds (Book Three of The House of Cards Trilogy)
Father Christmas
She wasn’t berating him for tearing her heart out, nor was she throwing herself on his broad chest in joy that he’d come home safely. Her hands weren’t even shaking. Those twenty-three months had taught her something besides arithmetic, after all
How kind the years had been to her, Gray was thinking. He’d aged, a century it felt like, with scars and weathered wrinkle lines, but Daphne had ripened. Only her unruly blond curls remained of the hoyden who used to tag at his heels, but now the vibrant gold locks were cropped into a short fashionable do, with a ribbon threaded through to keep the curls off her perfect face. She looked like a wood nymph, innocent and seductive both.
When it came to fools, he’d take every prize…
Lady Whilton’s Wedding
By Barbara Metzger
To Ramona the Donor and all the other givers of this world.
Chapter One
It was
an arranged marriage. Unlike most such marriages of convenience, this one was arranged by the bride-to-be herself. Miss Daphne Whilton of Woodhill Manor, Hampshire, left the crowded lawn of her birthday party and approached Lord Graydon Howell, heir to the Earl of Hollister, where he stood apart from the other guests under a shading elm tree. She kicked him on the shin to get his attention and said, “All of the other boys are toads. You’ll have to marry me, Gray.’’
Lord Graydon rubbed his leg and looked back toward the others. The boys were tearing around, trying to lift the girls’ skirts. The girls were shrieking or giggling or crying for their mamas, who were inside taking tea with Lady Whilton. At least Daffy never carried on like that. And she could bait her own hook. He nodded. “I s’pose,” he said, and they shook hands to seal the contract.
Their parents were delighted to join two ancient lineages and fortunes so pleasantly. Their children would be out of the reach of fortune hunters and adventurers and misalliances. Besides, the couples were lifelong friends and neighbors. The Hollisters preferred the politics and parties of London to the rural pleasures of their Hampshire seat, whereas the Whiltons chose to spend their days close to the land on their Woodhill barony, but the two families spent summers and the Christmas holidays in nearest and most welcome proximity. Their offspring had played together since they were in leading strings. Each being an only child in the house, and the only children of nobility in the region, they were natural playmates.
Since he was the elder by three years, and a boy besides, with the run of the neighborhood, young Lord Graydon ran tame at Woodhill Manor. He often stayed there overnight when his parents accepted a house party invitation elsewhere, rather than remaining in solitary, servant-surrounded splendor at Howell Hall. It was Graydon who taught Daphne to ride, albeit not in a style conducive to her mother’s mental ease, had Lady Whilton known. And ’was the handsome lad who taught Lady Whilton’s curly-haired blond cherub to climb trees, catch fish, and carry the hunting bag without complaining. Miss Whilton, on the other hand, caused her young Lancelot to learn how to repair dolls, how to sit through countless imaginary teas, and, most important, how to be gentle with small, fragile things.
Daphne thought the sun rose and set with Graydon’s company; Graydon supposed he liked Daphne better than his spaniel, who sometimes didn’t come when he called. Daffy always did.
If not made in Heaven or Almack’s sacred precincts,
the proposed marriage still gladdened the hearts of the readers of both
Debrett’s Peerage
and purple-covered romance novels, and the couples’ fond parents. No announcement was made, of course, due to the tender ages of the pair, nor papers drawn, since neither father wanted to force his child’s hand if preferences changed with time. No formal notice would be taken, the earl and the baron decided, for ten years, until Miss Whilton turned eighteen and had a London Season. But the understanding was accepted, acknowledged, and toasted with champagne. And watered wine for the children.
Succeeding years did bring changes, as time usually does. First, the death of Daphne’s aunt Lillian brought her two new boys to dote upon, the little brothers she never had. Torrence and Eldart were just five and six when their mother took her own life, rather than suffer their father’s profligate ways. At twelve Daphne was too young to understand the servants’ gossip about Spanish whores, French pox, and Greek love, but she knew they didn’t mean Uncle Albert was well traveled. Her father’s brother was a mean-spirited, angry-tempered man who kicked dogs, shouted at children, and had hair growing out of his ears and nose. Daphne didn’t blame Aunt Lillian a bit, despite the scandal. She vowed to be even kinder to the quiet, timid little boys her father fetched home from London, rather than leave to Albert’s untender mercies. So she passed on Graydon’s teachings while he was away at school, the riding and fishing, skating and sledding. Her letters to him were full of her cousins’ achievements, how Dart could climb Gray’s favorite elm tree, how Torry loved the rope swing Gray had built for her.
If Graydon felt the merest twinge of jealousy when he read his old playmate’s letters, it was more for her carefree days than for the affection she was showering on her little cousins. Why, Daffy spent a scant few hours a day with her governess, then some minutes practicing her scales and perfecting her needlework, while Graydon was hard at work at his studies and his sports. He hardly had time to learn the ways of the world, which, for a teenaged boy, meant women, wine, and wagering. Those happened, in fact, to be the vices Daphne believed Uncle Albert indulged in, and which she therefore, for her cousins’ sakes, deplored.
Uncle Albert couldn’t have cared less about the opinion of his brother’s girl-child. He could hardly remember the chit’s name. Nor was he jealous of her attention to his sons either, no more than Graydon. Albert was only glad someone had relieved him of the burden of the brats’ upkeep. For certain he was not about to offer his brother any recompense for taking in the motherless boys.
Then Daphne’s father died in a hunting accident and Uncle Albert became baron. He got so castaway, celebrating his succession to the title and estates, that he missed the funeral altogether, to no one’s regret.
Graydon stood by Daphne’s side during the service, while his parents supported her mother. He didn’t complain when Daffy’s tears made his neckcloth go limp, although it was the first creditable Waterfall he’d managed to tie, nor that she wadded up his monogrammed handkerchief and stuffed it in her pocket. She was his to comfort and protect, especially now that she had no father. She was his even if, at fifteen, she was as graceful as a broomstick, with a figure to match. His father nodded approvingly.
Graydon returned to his books and burgeoning manhood. Daphne washed and ironed his handkerchief and slept with it under her pillow. With foresight, Graydon’s parents stayed on in Hampshire to assist Lady Whilton. Despite having more funds at his disposal than he ever hoped or dreamed of, Uncle Albert would have tossed all of his relatives, his own sons included, out on their ears and sold off the property to finance his gambling, if not for the entail. Even then he would have emptied the coffers and beggared the estate, except for the power and influence of Lord Hollister, who was watching out for his friend’s widow’s interest. The earl threatened to take Albert to court if he mishandled Dart’s inheritance; he threatened to see him blackballed from every club and gaming den in London if he misused the widow or the children.
Lady Whilton could have taken her handsome jointure and her well-dowered daughter and set up a comfortable household of her own, but she stayed on at Woodhill Manor for the sake of the boys and the tenants. The new Lord Whilton stayed away for the most part, except when he came to see what monies he could bleed from the Manor acres, what costly repairs he could refuse to make, which servant he could dismiss to save the price of his wages. But Lady Whilton stood firm, the bailiff and her loyal butler beside her. Daphne was always nearby, too, which only served to infuriate her raddled uncle further, since he believed the earl would have kept his long nose out of Whilton business if the chit weren’t to be Lord John Hollister’s future daughter-in-law.
“And a good thing you made a cradle-match, too,” Uncle Albert sniped at his ungainly young niece whose unruly curls refused to stay in ribbons or braids, whose skirts were muddied from playing with the barn cat, and whose face tended to break out in spots. “For you’d never snabble such an eligible
parti
as Hollister’s whelp on your own, no matter how large your dowry.’’
Daphne stuck her tongue out at him from behind her mother’s back. If Graydon were here, she told herself, he’d call the old mawworm out. But Graydon wasn’t there. He was at university, practicing profligacy, or in London being introduced to his parents’ world, which amounted to the same thing. Veering between the
ton
’s debs and the demimondaines, he might have agreed with Uncle Albert’s assessment of the betrothal, if he thought of it at all. Marriage and the future and Hampshire seemed an eternity away.
Barely a year later, Graydon’s mother contracted an inflammation of the lungs at a boating party and passed on between the ball at Devonshire House and one of Catalani’s solo performances. Her last comment was that she’d be sorry to miss the fireworks at Vauxhall.
Distraught, Lord Hollister could not bear being alone at Howell Hall in the country with so much extra time on his hands, since even the local assemblies and card parties were denied his mourning state. The earl leased the Hall to an India-trade nabob and returned to his life in London, throwing himself deeper into politics and errands for the Foreign Office. He did maintain a warm correspondence with Lady Whilton, and he did make sure Albert knew he kept his interest there. Lord Hollister’s presence in London kept in check Albert’s greed, if not his gambling and affinity for low company.
Daphne and Graydon met occasionally when his father sent him to Hampshire to confer with the Hall’s steward. He came between university terms and house parties and walking tours and hunts in Scotland. They still roamed the countryside together, Daphne sopping up the tales of his experiences, expurgated, of course, like a thirsty seedling. And like a tender flower, she turned to his warmth as to the sun. Like the sun, he smiled down, accepting her worship as his due.
He taught her to shoot and to use a bow and arrow, and to retrieve his practice cricket shots. He also instructed her in what ladies of fashion were wearing and reading and thinking. In turn Daphne taught him not to laugh at a girl’s first attempts to bat her eyelashes or flutter her fan. His knuckles were raw from that lesson, but he learned, the same as she learned the latest dance steps. They were the best of friends. She still thought he was Romeo and Adonis and the hero of every one of Maria Edgeworth’s novels combined; he thought she was all right, for a dab of a chick.