How To Rescue A Rake (Book Club Belles Society 3) (14 page)

He laughed gently. “That was just a jest, Miss Bridges. I fear young Sarah Wainwright took me seriously. She does not know me as well as the rest of you. Surely you know that the things I say should be tasted with a pinch of salt.”

After that, both females at the table showed their annoyance and disappointment by banging tureens and lids about. He thought again of what his sister had said about his flirting and the trouble it could cause. But he didn’t always know when he was doing it, or what might be construed as “flirting.”

Was his annoying little sister right after all?

After dinner he retired with Mr. Bridges to the tavern storeroom, which apparently also served as the fellow’s sanctuary—a place where he consulted his ledgers, calculated his accounts, and mostly just escaped his wife and children.

“So, Captain, this business you wished to discuss with me had naught to do with my daughter after all.” Mr. Bridges pulled up two chairs around a barrel and bade his guest to sit. “You’ve caused quite a stir in this house, I’ll have you know.”

“Yes, so I see. I’m sorry. It was not my intention.”

“Aye. Fellows like you always say that.” Mr. Bridges poured some port for them both. “But I know my girl gets airy ideas in that head of hers that bear little resemblance to reality, so I’m sure it ain’t all your fault.”

Nathaniel took the glass he was offered. “The Book Club Belles do tend to get romantic notions after they read those novels.” He hesitated. “I must put a word in for Samuel Hardacre, however.”

“Yon carpenter?”

“He’s a solid young man, hardworking, ambitious, reliable, and honest. And I believe he has a keen eye on Lucy. Although he hesitates to say it.”

But the tavern keeper puffed his chest, stretched his legs out, and crossed his ankles. “Well, my girl will have bigger fish on her hook now. Soon enough she and her mother will have something else to put a spring in their curls.” As he exhaled a gusty sigh of contentment, his ruddy face cracked in a broad smile. “We’re about to be rich, Captain.”

“Indeed?”

“That crotchety old baggage, my wife’s mother, went and left us a nice bit o’ property in Hampshire and some coin too. I ain’t said a word yet, but I just signed the papers and we shall be off to Basingstoke by summer’s end. Can you imagine the surprise on the lasses’ faces when I tell ’em?”

“Then you’ll be leaving the village?”

“Once I find someone to buy this old place.”

It couldn’t have worked out better for Nathaniel. This was exactly the business that had brought him to Hawcombe Prior.

* * *

Rebecca, Justina, and Sarah came to return her coat that evening, all three very anxious to see their friend. They were distraught about leaving her behind in the rain, but the race to get a sick child home had momentarily panicked the group.

“My brother insisted he would find you,” said Rebecca. “Poor Diana! To be caught in the downpour.”

She assured them they were forgiven for leaving her behind. “After all, I wandered away from the party. It was not your responsibility to look after me.”

Her friends exchanged strange, secretive glances.

“Sherry did find you, did he not?” Jussy asked with an airy sort of unconcern that was almost believable.

“Yes. Not that it was necessary. I was capable of finding my own way home.”

Again the odd looks. Evidently the news of her riding his horse down the High Street had traveled with the speed of fire through dry kindling.

Diana sighed and blew her nose loudly. They had better not get any ideas about her and the reckless captain, just because he was wearing a new suit of clothes and they thought she was an unhappy, unfortunate spinster with no other prospects.

But their company soon lightened her spirits, and even when Sarah let it slip that Captain Sherringham was dining with the Bridges and the other two women glared at her, Diana carefully showed no reaction beyond a polite smile.

She had other things to think about and look forward to. Fortunately.

“I am being sent to Bath,” she told her friends solemnly as they sat around the bed. “Mama has written to our cousin Elizabeth.” It made Diana feel special that she was being “sent” anywhere, for she’d rarely been farther than Manderson. It was too expensive to travel far, and her mother would never condone the wastefulness. Until now. She was eager to get her daughter away from Captain Sherringham, of course.

“Oh no!” cried Rebecca. “Why would you want to stay with that dreadful snob, Elizabeth Clarendon? I cannot see her companionship making you feel any better, only worse!”

“She is not a Clarendon now,” Diana reminded her. “She is Lady Plumtre. And she has invited me several times now to visit. She will not be put off forever.”

Her mother’s cousin had married a baronet the previous year and now resided just outside Bath in what her letters described as “merely an adequately sized manor.” The main reason for her discontent appeared to be the fact that she had to share a pretty piece of parkland with a larger house in which her husband’s mother and his unmarried siblings lived.

Sir Jonathan Plumtre was a newly knighted baronet, a wealthy merchant banker who had inherited considerable property, but he did not think it fair to turn his mother and siblings out of the big house when his father died, so he and his bride lived in a smaller house on the estate. To think of proud, haughty Elizabeth reduced to living in “an old stone cottage with only tiny, damp rooms and more drafts than windows” had given the Book Club Belles many a laugh.

“
Poor Diana
.” Rebecca reached for her hand with both of her own, as if to save Diana from tumbling over a cliff. “To spend your spring away from us and in her wretched company. It cannot be borne!”

Jussy, on the other hand, exclaimed that she thought Bath might be a very good idea. “I would invite you to stay at our townhouse in the Crescent, but unfortunately my husband’s stepmama and her family are in residence, and I would not wish
that
society on anybody.”

“Oh, can I go?” Sarah almost leaped out of her chair. “I have so wanted to dance at the Upper Rooms. I know Bath is not as fashionable as it once was, but I should love to see it.”

Rebecca intervened swiftly. “Diana is going there to rest and recuperate, not to chaperone noisy young girls about in society.” She squeezed the patient’s hand. “I fear we have already asked her to look after you too many times lately when she should have been nursing this cold. We’ve all been caught up in our own lives and should have been looking after
her
!”

“There will be time enough for you to go next year, Sarah,” Jussy added, comforting the girl with the promise that they would all go and have a vast amount of fun. “I once said I would never go there again, not even for a lifetime supply of hot chocolate, but since Bath is where I met my beloved Wainwright, I can have nothing against the place now. This time, however, it is Diana’s turn to spread her wings and have adventures without us. She will return and tell us all about it.”

“But what of
Persuasion
?” cried Sarah. “We cannot finish it without Diana.”

“No,” Jussy agreed. “We will wait until she returns to find out how it ends. She is going to live her own story in Bath, and when she comes home, she’ll give me plenty of material for my next novel.”

Diana smiled warmly at her friends and their optimism. It would be strange to go so far with none of them at her side, but Jussy was right. It was time for her to experience more of the world. She was a little fearful, yet excited too. A change of scenery would surely do her good.

As for Captain Sherringham, she had wished him well and put the past behind them. She hoped. Going to Bath would get her out of his way. She need not be witness to his courtship of Lucy Bridges. Or any other woman.

Her mother came up later to see how she fared and to show her a new beaded trim she was sewing on Diana’s best gown.

“You must put on a good face in Bath,” she told her daughter. “I won’t have Cousin Elizabeth sneering at your clothes.”

“Mama, I believe that a sneer is Cousin Elizabeth’s usual expression. As such, I assure you I can never take offense at it.”

“But I must pack your trunk with care, for there will be some important social engagements while you are there. The Plumtres are very well connected.”

She guessed her mother was thinking that eligible bachelors must fall from the clouds over Bath. “They are new wealth though, Mama, just like the Wainwrights,” she pointed out wryly. “They are not old nobility. Cousin Elizabeth claims they lack fashionable manners, that Mrs. Fanny Plumtre wears a worsted pinafore all day and was born the daughter of a shoemaker, and that her daughters know nothing of the rules of precedence when going in to dinner. Are you sure we should approve of the Plumtres? I might come away with shockingly bad habits.”

“It would be very nice if you came away with a suitable husband.”

“I thought I was going there to convalesce.”

“And so you are, Diana, but if an eligible bachelor should take an interest—”

“I will think him unhinged.” She chuckled dourly. “I admire your frugality, Mama, in killing two birds with one stone.”

Her mother frowned. “I see you’re feeling better already. Dr. Penny’s iron tonic must work wonders. You sound inebriated, for goodness’ sake. What is in that bottle, gin?”

“Don’t fret, Mama. I will be on my very best behavior in Bath.”

“I know you will.” Her mother hesitated and then leaned over to kiss her forehead gently. “You have always been a good daughter.”

Diana felt her heart warm with surprise and joy.

“We have had only each other for twenty-seven years. It will be strange indeed not to have you here, Diana.”

“But you will be busy teaching my students as well as your own while I am gone. You will have no time to feel alone. And I will return before you know it.”

“I meant when you are married, Diana.”

“Oh.” Her mother’s enthusiasm, it seemed, was renewed by the prospect of this trip.

“There is nothing I have ever wanted more for you than a respectable, suitable marriage.”

Diana replied quietly, “One that eluded you, Mama?”

“What can you mean?”

The breeze buffeted the curtains, and outside the window a sparrow chirped. Shadows and sunlight shifted and flickered, making ghostly shapes that danced around Diana’s room. She took a breath and valiantly proceeded. “He didn’t marry you, did he? My father didn’t turn up at the church. He deserted you.” In that moment of panic and desperation when Diana had come in from riding on Nathaniel’s horse, her mother had made a rare slip.

She stood very still at the foot of the bed, lips pressed tight, eyes weary. Lowering her lashes for a moment, she swallowed visibly. “Where do you get your ideas? Those novels, I suppose.” But her voice was faint, pushed out under pressure.

“Why did you not tell me, Mama?” Diana persisted gently.

Fingers clasping the lace at her throat, her mother managed finally to say, “There are things in this world that one must try to protect one’s children from. Especially daughters.”

“The truth? What good would protecting me from the truth do?”

Her mother sighed heavily. “I wanted to protect you from the shame.”

“Mama, I don’t care what people think of me. My friends would love me no matter what I was.”

“An innocent’s view of the world, indeed,” her mother muttered. “I had neither the money nor the family support to shield you. And I meant
my
shame, Diana. Do you think I wanted you to be ashamed of me, knowing what I had done?”

“But you were in love with him. The fault is not yours.”

On a halting breath, her mother continued. “Yes, I made a fool of myself falling in love. And in sinful lust.”

“What was he like, Mama?” Diana asked softly. “What was he really like? You never told me much.”

After a pause, the reply escaped on a frail whisper. “He was handsome. Beautiful, really. All the ladies pined for him. When he gave me his attention, I was flattered, swept up in it, would do anything to keep it, for I knew how it wandered. He was generous when he could not afford to be, lavish with his presents and his love. He knew how to make a naive girl feel special, wanted. But when his attention passed, I felt nothing but pain and humiliation that I had ever succumbed to it.” She gazed forlornly through her daughter’s bedchamber window.

“Perhaps you are still in love with him, Mama?”

“Nonsense,” came the sharp response as her mother recovered briskly. “I learned my bitter lesson. I do not want you to suffer the same.”

Before Diana could answer, her mother left the chamber, one hand shielding her face.

The sparrow outside ceased its song and the breeze died down. Diana looked around now with newly opened eyes. She felt sadness for her mother. All these years of struggle were even more poignant. No wonder she was so scathing about Sarah Wainwright. Watching that girl taken in and loved by her family must have stung, reminding her mother of all she’d not been able to give her daughter in the same circumstances. Her own family had not been so forgiving.

Hard as it was to imagine her mother losing to the wicked temptation of the flesh, it must have happened. That mysterious army officer had encouraged her to run off with him and then left her with child, escaping his responsibilities and abandoning them both to the censure of the world. The deceit she was forced to play must have mortified her proud mother.

And when she looked at Nathaniel, she saw a man who was just the same.

The bell cord that hung by Mrs. Makepiece’s front door had the springiness of one that was seldom pulled. It wasn’t frayed from use, as many were in that village. In fact, it was rather grand for the small cottage and might have been at home on a larger house where a servant came to answer the bell when it rang.

But the wooden door beside it was chipped and had weathered badly. It did not match the grand bellpull or the superior haughtiness of the women who lived behind it.

Nathaniel tugged hard, and there was a lengthy pause until he heard steps in the hall. The door swung open.

Mrs. Makepiece almost stumbled when she saw him there on her step, a bunch of pale pink tulips in his hand.

“I heard that Miss Makepiece is unwell. I’m quite sure you won’t allow me to see her, but please give her these. If she cannot get out at present, I thought I would bring the spring to her.”

Diana’s mother took the flowers, her face empty of expression.

“I hope she is feeling better,” he added.

Just as he thought she would not speak, the dour woman surprised him by exclaiming, “Diana is stronger than she appears. Her health will soon improve. She will not be brought down by a cold.”

“I am glad to hear it, madam.”

He tipped his hat and was about to leave, when she muttered, “Just as she will not be brought down by the antics of a man who thinks to use her, to take advantage of her.”

Nathaniel paused, then turned back. “I cannot imagine who would try to take advantage of your daughter, Mrs. Makepiece.”

“A man perhaps who thinks he catches her at a low point, when she feels left out because her friends’ lives have moved on. A man who enjoys a challenge and cannot be content until he has made a conquest of every woman to whom he takes a fancy. A man who has been out in the world and has experience of the sort that my innocent daughter does not.”

The tulips were already drooping from her fist, as she choked the life out of their stems.

Nathaniel pointed to them now and said, “That’s what you are doing to your daughter, madam. But you always preferred your flowers dead and dried in a bowl, did you not?”

She glowered fiercely, the flowers trembling.

“Your daughter is devoted to you, madam. I daresay you will have her at your side for the rest of her life. I hope you treat her well, as she deserves.”

He could have said so much more, but her ears would not hear. She would surely never pass his concerns on to Diana. So he walked away.

What, he mused, would Mrs. Makepiece do when she found out that he’d purchased the Pig in a Poke tavern as another house for his brewery, when she saw the new sign with “Sherringham and Mawbry” painted beneath it in gold and red. She would still turn her nose up.

Ever since Nathaniel had enjoyed a substantial win at the Newmarket races and used it to pay off his debts and invest in a brewery, he’d imagined coming back to Hawcombe Prior one day and putting his sign over the tavern.

However wealthy he became, he wanted to leave his mark—his name—there in Hawcombe Prior, as he had done all over Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Oxford. The Sherringham and Mawbry brewery was flourishing with a tied estate of fifty public houses across the countryside, and Nathaniel’s tireless enthusiasm had pumped new lifeblood into the business. He liked ale, he liked taverns, and he liked people. He’d been told he had a charmingly persuasive manner. It was, therefore, the perfect business for him. He thrived in it and had found something he could make a success of at last.

Nathaniel had returned to Hawcombe Prior thinking Diana married to another, yet purchasing the Pig in a Poke was still something he had to do to get her out of his veins for good. Like putting an official ink stamp on a document or a wax seal on an order of execution.

He stopped and looked back at the Makepieces’ cottage. If she’d heard him at the door, he would have expected Diana to peer out of the parlor window at least. To give him a wave. They’d known each other ten years—since she was seventeen. All that time she’d kept him under her spell, but she didn’t even mean to do it. She had no idea of the power she held over him. Sometimes he didn’t think she felt anything for him but scorn or pity. It seemed she wavered between the two. She was not the sort of woman who would ever indulge in bold displays of affection or talk about her emotions. It wouldn’t be proper.

But, as he had said to Diana, he simply could not behave himself around her. He said too much and she said too little.

It was, therefore, for the best that he was leaving.

* * *

“Who was at the door, Mama?” Out of bed today, Diana paced in the kitchen by the fire.

Her mother walked in carrying the wilted tulips. For a moment it looked as if she might toss them into the fire, but suddenly she thrust them toward Diana. “That restless rogue Sherringham. He left you these, but he had no time to come in.”

Diana stared at the flowers. “Oh.” Slowly she took them from her mother’s fist. “They look… sad.”

“I daresay he stole them from someone’s garden.”

She wondered why her mother had even told her they were from him, why she hadn’t consigned them to the fire. Rebecca would say that a man only sent flowers when he was guilty of something. Diana got the feeling that guilt was certainly involved when these flowers were delivered into her hands, but she wasn’t sure it was Nathaniel’s.

A few petals had already dropped to the flagged floor and she saw her mother itching to sweep them up, so Diana walked out through the back door, worried the flowers might lose more petals simply from that withering regard.

“Don’t wander out there in the cold,” her mother exclaimed, back to her usual stern manner today.

“I have my shawl, Mama, and besides, the sun is out again.” She sniffed her flowers, hiding her smile within the petals.

For a while she stood watching an industrious sparrow as it flew back and forth, collecting sticks for a nest up in the branches of the old oak. She liked to imagine this was the same bird she had set free from the Manderson assembly room last week. How nice that would be if the bird had followed her home to raise its babies in the tree under her bedchamber window. A fanciful idea her mother would sniff at.

Sheltering her eyes from the sun’s glare with one hand, Diana looked up into the oak and caught a gleam of something trapped in a notch of the rough bark where a thick branch met the trunk. It was too high for her to reach, but it looked like…a button. A tarnished, weathered brass button of the sort that might be lost from an army uniform.

She clutched her flowers tighter.

He had come back to Hawcombe Prior, but not for her. Surely not for her.

* * *

“Well, I must say, one moment you abandon me here in this muddy, unfashionable ditch of a town for days on end, and then you come back and announce that we are leaving immediately!” Caroline could barely get her words out. Feebly sprawled upon a chaise under the window, she made no move to pack her things, despite his urgings of haste.

“Caroline, we must be on our way. If you don’t pack your trunk and pull yourself together, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you here in this
unfashionable
place, because I am not coming back.”

That got her up at last. “What happened? What have you done that has you in such haste to go? Have you seduced some local maiden and need to take flight to escape her father’s blunderbuss?” She tittered, still reclined with one hand pressed to her brow like a bad actress.

“Not this time,” he replied dryly. “My mission here is concluded. I can now deliver you to your aunt as I promised. And get on with my life.”

The sooner he got away from here and back to business, the better. He was irritable, restless. When such a fever had come upon him in the past, he would have found a nearby tavern in which to blur his worries and forget his disappointments. These days he found that travel helped. Speedy movement and finding something to keep him busy and his thoughts occupied until the mood passed.

“But what about me?” she whined.

“I just told you. I shall deliver you to your aunt in Bath, as you begged of me when you came to my lodgings.”

She lifted her head enough to peer at him sulkily. “You mean to be rid of me. It seems your interest in me has waned since we came into the country.”

He sighed. “Caroline, I told you when we took to the road together that there would be nothing of that sort between us.”

“But why not? We could do well together. Neither of us takes life too seriously. You charm the ladies and I charm the gentlemen.”

She finally slithered from the chaise and wandered over. “We shared some good times once.”

“Long ago,” he said sharply, moving away from her and stepping around the open trunk. “My definition of ‘good times’ has changed since then.”

Pouting, she set her hands on her waist. “You don’t mean to take me under your protection then?” she demanded, forgetting the headache that had supposedly weakened her until she could barely speak. “Be careful of my silk shawl!”

“Caroline, I offered to escort you to Bath. That is all. I do not desire a mistress.” How tired he was of women like her—pushy, loud creatures demanding his notice and forcing their way into his life. “I am off women!” he exclaimed. “Tired of them hanging on me!”

There was much to be said for the company of a quiet woman who didn’t want to be noticed. He was beginning to appreciate that fact more than ever.

* * *

The day before she left for Bath, Diana learned of the Bridges family’s windfall.

“We are to spell our name with a
y
now,” Lucy told her as they met outside the village shop. “And I shall have far better prospects than some silly village carpenter.”

Diana congratulated her, although she felt extremely sorry for Sam Hardacre. Did those new prospects include Nathaniel? She could not bring herself to ask.

As Lucy and her troop of brothers moved away, Diana held Jamie Bridges back by his collar and asked if he had ever lent his slingshot to Captain Sherringham.

The boy’s face was the picture of innocence as he replied that he knew nothing about it.

“I ain’t seen nothin’,” he exclaimed proudly.

“That’s a double negative, Master Bridges.”

“I hope you’re spelling that name with a
y
,” he replied cockily. “And giving me the respect I deserve now I’m rich.”

“Respect is earned, young sir, not purchased.”

He promptly stuck out his tongue and ran off to join his siblings. Like a clucking, weaving line of ducklings they followed their sister across the common. Diana was left to wonder about the tarnished brass button she’d found.

How else could it have become lodged in the oak tree if not from Nathaniel’s uniform? A magpie perhaps?

Unless soldiers made a habit of climbing that tree to look in her window.

An amusing thought indeed. She had better check every night just to be sure.