Courting Constance (Fountain of Love) (3 page)

Chapter Three

When the bell over the shop door tinkled the following morning, Constance automatically looked up and smiled her greeting.  She froze when she saw it was Charles standing before her.  What was he doing here?  He didn’t even have a wife to buy dresses for.  “How can I help you, my lord?”

Charles leaned on the counter in front of her.  “May I take you to lunch today?”

She shook her head.  “I can’t go to lunch with you.”  How could he think she would?  “You can’t be seen with a shop girl.  You’re an earl!”

He shrugged.  “Being an earl means that I can be seen with whomever I choose to be seen with.  In London it might be a problem, but not here in Devon.”  He took her hand in his.  “Please, Constance, have lunch with me.  I want to get to know you better.”

“I can’t.”  She turned from him and put the orders received that morning into the basket that was meant for the seamstresses.  If she got to know him better, she knew she would just fall
deeper in love with him.  Her heart was already aching for him and she barely knew him.  Getting to know him better was the last thing she should do.

“Then meet me after work.  I want to talk to you.”
  His voice was begging her to do as he wanted.

She shook her head.  “I can’t.”

He studied her for a moment before taking the book of dresses off the counter.  “I want to order five dresses please.”  The words were loud and rang out through the shop.

Constance turned back to face him.  “And who are you buying them for, my lord?”
  Five dresses?  Mrs. Jackson would be thrilled for the order, but why would he order them?

He shrugged.  “For anyone who needs dresses, I suppose.  If you’ll only talk to me as part of your work day, then you can sell me some dresses.  I’ll buy them for you.”

She stared at him in shock.  “You can’t buy me dresses!  It wouldn’t be proper.”

He sighed heavily.  “Who
can
I buy dresses for then?”  There had to be someone he was allowed to buy dresses for.  He was the only man in the world who could fall in love with a girl who worked in a dress shop who was worried about propriety.  Didn’t women in dress shops all want to find a way to get out of them?

She looked at him with wide eyes, considering his question.  “Your sister is the only woman I can think of.  It’s not terribly proper for you to pick out her dresses, but it’s not something that would be scandalous either.”

“My sister?  Of course.  Let’s buy Lily some dresses.  Do you have her measurements?”  He grasped the idea with both hands, willing to jump right in.

Constance nodded.  “Yes, she was here and ordered two new dresses yesterday.”

He smiled at her, taking her hand in his.  “Well, then we can order dresses for Lily.  Do you have any you would like to recommend?”

She snatched her hand from his, looking over her shoulder to be certain that Mrs.
Jackson wasn’t watching.  “I know what she chose yesterday, so we can look at some of the other dresses that would look good in her last months, but can be taken in after the baby is born.”  She flipped through the book quickly to find the right page.  “What about this one?” she asked.

He stared at her face as he said, “Just beautiful.”

Her heart skipped a beat.  Why was he pursuing her so relentlessly?  What had she done to catch his interest this way?  “What color would you like it in?”

He shrugged.  “What color would you recommend?”

Constance sighed.  “Green?  To match her eyes?  Lady Lily has beautiful eyes.” 

“They were huge when she was little.  She was always sneaking out of the house while her governess slept.  She wasn’t supposed to, but she hated being inside, and that particular governess hated being outdoors.  I almost think she pretended to nap half the time to get Lily to sneak out so she wouldn’t have to go with her.”

She laughed.  “It sounds like she was a real handful.”

He nodded, enjoying her laugh.  How could he convince her to spend time with him?  “She was.  I don’t know how Father kept finding governesses for her.  She ran them all off one by one.  He finally just had my aunt move in to ‘teach her to be a lady.’”

Constance smiled.  “It seems to have worked out for him.  She certainly acted like a lady today.”

“That’s because you didn’t check to see if she had shoes on under her dress.  Anytime she entertains, she’s careful to wear a full skirt so no one can see that she’s barefoot.”  Charles shook his head.  “Father was mortified.”

She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.  “She sounds perfectly dreadful and wonderful all at the same time.”

Charles smiled, his mouth quirking up slightly on one side.  “Yes, she was dreadful to anyone who tried to turn her into a lady, but she was also a wonderful girl.  She’s become a wonderful woman.  She teaches all the orphans to read and
write all the while making them all feel important.  She’s going to be a wonderful mother.”

Constance nodded.  “She is.  I’ve never met anyone quite like her.”

He caught her hand, keeping her from finishing writing up the order she was filling out for him.  “I’ve never met anyone like you, either.”  His eyes pled with hers.  “Please let me take you to lunch today.  I want to get to know you better.”

She stared down at the counter separating them, wishing he would stop asking her to do things she desperately wanted to do but knew she shouldn’t.  “I just can’t.  I’m sorry, my lord.”

He sighed, and left a short time later after paying for all the dresses he’d purchased. 

*****

The gifts began arriving a few hours later.  The single red rose was first, and she brought it to her nose and sniffed it, running it to the back and putting it on the single dresser in the small room she shared with Alice.  Alice waited at the front while she did, claiming she needed to go to the necessary.  She didn’t want to get into trouble, but she also didn’t want her employer to see the rose.

Next was a pair of white elbow length gloves, the kind a lady would wear for a ball.  She took them out of the long white box they were inside and smiled.  She would never have occasion to wear something like that, but she treasured them just the same. 

By the end of the day, the counter was covered with many small gifts.  A blue ribbon, a book of poems with a page marked in it that she told herself she’d read later, a bouquet of daisies, and lastly, a pretty white shawl.  She did her best to hide everything off to one side, but she knew her employer was watching her. 

“Do you have an admirer, Constance?” Mrs. Jackson asked in her carefully practiced voice.  She’d told Constance that her accent had once been perfectly dreadful, but she’d worked very hard to make it sound like she was from a higher class than she was.  Her voice still didn’t have the perfectly modulated tones of the upper class, but she preferred not to work in front of the store anyway.

Constance blushed.  “I don’t know what I have.”

Mrs. Jackson looked over the gifts that had been pushed aside.  “I need you to ask him to stop sending you gifts here.  You may receive them in your room, but not during business hours.  It was too distracting.”

Constance nodded, her head down.  She didn’t want to get in trouble when she’d just begun her job.  “I’ll try.”

“What do you mean you’ll try?”

Constance sighed.  “I don’t know how to get a message to him.”

Mrs. Jackson shook her head.  “
The gifts must stop.”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Once she was in her room, Constance looked at Alice.  “How am I going to stop him?  He’s an
earl
!” 

Alice shrugged.  “I guess we need to walk over there and tell him he’s endangering your job.” 

“I don’t even know how to get to his home!”  Constance felt the panic welling up inside her.  She really didn’t want to have to tell Charles that his gifts were unacceptable.  She couldn’t lose her job over it, though.  It wasn’t like the man would marry her to take her away from her life of drudgery. 

“I do.  I had to go there to take a gift to Lady Lily once.” 

Constance thought about it for a moment looking out the window.  It would be dark before too long, and she didn’t want to be on the road at night.  “How long will it take us to get there and back?”

“Oh, the walk will take about an hour, but he’ll have someone drive us back.”  Alice opened the door and pulled Constance outside with her.  “The weather is clear.  It will be fine.” 

As they walked, the two women chatted about their day.  Constance was a decent seamstress, but she was needed at the front of the shop, so she knew little about what went on in the back.  “All the girls were asking about the gifts and how you know Lord Charles.”

“Did you explain that I just met him last night?” Constance asked.  She still couldn’t understand why the man had become so fixated on her.

“I did, and that’s when it got even worse.  They wondered what could have happened during dinner at his sister’s house to make him fall in love.”

Constance sighed.  “He’s not in love.  He hasn’t even told me what he wants other than to have lunch with me.”

“He wants to marry you and show you what a life of leisure is.  You can be his countess and sit in the parlor all day doing nothing.”  Alice’s voice took on a dreamy quality as she spoke; obviously she loved the idea of a man taking her away from her life of hard work.

Constance laughed.  “You’ve read one too many fairy tales, my friend.  All a man like that wants from me is sexual favors.”

Alice shrugged.  “If you get to live in his fine house with him and he loves you, what difference does that make?”

“I can’t live that way.  I know I’m not meant to be the wife of a nobleman, especially not an earl.  I need to encourage him to move on and leave me to live my life.”  Constance felt her resolve strengthening as she said the words.  As the gifts had piled up that afternoon, she’d wondered if it would be so terrible to be a nobleman’s mistress, but she couldn’t do it.  There was no stability.  If he decided
he was tired of her after a week or two, where would that leave her?  What about children?  She couldn’t bear to have children who would never be recognized by their father.  No, she had to stay strong, no matter how she felt about him.

She thought about his brown eyes and her heart began to melt a little, but she hardened it again. 

Alice sighed.  “He’s the best looking man in the whole county, and even better, he’s the richest.  How could you say no to that?”

Constance sighed.  “I can’t let myself rely on a man.  I need to rely on myself.  If I became his mistress, and he tired of me, where would I be?  What if we had children together?”
  She loved the idea of spending her life with Lord Charles, but not as his mistress.  She couldn’t do that.

“Then you wouldn’t be alone any longer.”  Alice’s voice had a wistful air to it.  Obviously she’d thought a great deal about what it would be like to be the mistress to a powerful nobleman.

Constance put her hand through Alice’s arm.  “I’m not alone.  I have you!”

Alice laughed.  “So you do!  And when you’re the wife or mistress of Lord Charles, you can hire me to be your lady’s maid.  I promise I’ll do your hair just the way you say and call you Lady Constance.”

Constance laughed.  “I promise not to hit you with my fan if you get in my way too often, and I’ll always remember your name.  I might call you ‘maid’ or ‘girl’ on occasion, but I’ll always remember that your name is really Althea.”

“Oh, so kind of you!” 

They continued bantering back and forth as they walked, dreaming up more and more ludicrous things Constance could do once she was Lord Charles’s wife.  They were laughing uproariously by the time they reached Marsgate Manor, and Constance found herself suddenly nervous as she stared up at the old house.  “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him.”

Alice hugged her friend.  “Just tell him that he’s going to get you sacked.  Be clear.”  She walked to the front of the house and sat down on a bench.  “I’ll wait here.”

Constance looked at Alice, and wished she could ask her to stay with her while she went inside, but she knew that was cowardly.  She walked to the door and raised her hand to knock, and found it wrenched open before she could.  Charles stood in front of her, and gave her a surprised look.  “I was just about to come to town to badger you to eat dinner with me.”

Constance sighed.  “We really need to talk, my lord.”

He opened the door wider to let her inside.  “Come to my study.”  He led the way down the long hall, and Constance followed behind staring around the house.  She had never seen such a fine home, and she felt more determined than ever to get him to leave her alone.  She didn’t belong in his world, and he would never fit in with hers.

He led her to the study, but instead of taking his seat behind the desk, he sat on the couch across the room.  The couch was blue with huge overstuffed cushions.  He sat in the middle, so she stood looking down at him, wondering where he wanted her.  “You can’t keep sending me gifts.  Mrs. Jackson is threatening to sack me if it doesn’t stop.”