Joan Wolf (18 page)

Anne, who remembered vividly Jane's elaborately casual questions about having babies, agreed fervently. She had been terrified when Jane, who had evinced no interest in her pregnancy thus far, had suddenly become inquisitive. She had been afraid to tell the Marquis of her suspicions. If Jane were having David Chance's child, God alone knew what he would do. Anne didn't, but the very thought petrified her.

Now, of course, everything was different. They could be married without committing any social sins. It would be an alliance between two of the oldest and noblest families in the country. Anne knew that Jane would have been ready to marry David if he had been a chimney sweep. If it had come to a confrontation over the question of marriage, Anne had unwillingly come to the conclusion that she would have to support Jane. The ordinary social conventions just didn't hold in this case. Several months of Jane's company had been very liberating for Anne. However, she could not but share the Marquis's relief. No one could have any objections to the marriage now.

Jane felt the same way. The day after Lord Wymondham had left, she had told David that everything was all right, she was not going to have a baby. There was no great pressure on them now. They could simply get engaged and then married like everybody else.

It was a plan that David wholeheartedly endorsed. The night before he was due to leave for Wymondham, Jane talked a footman into leaving the side door open after everyone had gone to bed and at two in the morning she sneaked out. She went down the drive to the stables and slipped, unobserved, into the tack room. There was a light burning and David was waiting for her.

He bolted the door and turning, took her into his arms for the first time since the night of Julian Wrexham's death. She lifted her face to him and their kiss had the intensity of lovers on the edge of the void. Her slender body was arched up against his. Her hands slid under his jacket to hold him closer. He felt passion and surrender in her mouth and looked with longing at the stack of blankets on the floor. But then the thought of Anne stabbed across his fevered brain and, with taut lips and shaking hands, he put her away from him.

"We can't, Jane,” he grated. “We can't take the chance."

She was trembling. “I don't care,” she whispered.

"Well, I do,” he said brutally. “We were lucky before. We may not be again. I want to be able to ask for you honorably and marry you honorably. I don't want to have to face Lord Rayleigh, who has never been anything but kind to me, and tell him I've gotten his niece with child."

She looked at his tense mouth and pinched nostrils. She sighed. “You can't help being honorable, I guess. It must be in your blood, or something."

At the mournful note in her voice his mouth relaxed. “I'm sorry, love,” he said. “But it's for the best, believe me."

"Oh, I do,” she responded glumly. “Uncle Edward is honorable, too. That's why he wouldn't have let me marry you before."

His lips twitched. “Men are terrible,” he said gravely. “But you'll only have to put up with it for a short time. I'll explain how we feel to Lord Wymondham, and make the proper request to your uncle for your hand. I can't see anything that would stand in our way. If Lord Rayleigh was ready to accept one Wrexham for you, I expect he'll be willing to take another."

"Of course he will. And your father can hardly object to me."

David grinned at the complacency in her voice. “Of course not,” he agreed.

She made a face at him. “Half of London wanted to marry me, I'll have you know. Lord Wymondham should know his son is getting a prize."

"I
know I am,” he said soberly. He held her face between his hands. “Jane."

In the dimly-lit room her eyes glowed like huge light gems. She smiled at him. Lightly she touched his cheek. “Check out Wymondham's stables, David. If we're going to live there, we may have a lot of rebuilding to do."

He laughed and bent to kiss the top of her head. “God got lucky on the day he made you,” he told her. “Don't come to see me off tomorrow. I'll write as soon as possible."

"Yes sir,” she said, mockingly sketching a curtsy.

"It won't be so bad, Jane. We've been separated before.” He sounded as if he were reassuring himself.

She smiled a little wryly. “Let's hope this is the last time."

"It will be,” he said intensely. “I couldn't go through this again."

It was worse for him, she knew. He was going to a strange place, to a position he had not been reared for, to a father he did not know. It would have been so much easier for him if she were there. “I know, David,” she said softly. “It will be all right. Just be yourself. Everything will work out just fine. I know it will."

He reached out once more and pulled her against him. This time it was Jane who stepped back first. “I've got to get back,” she said breathlessly.

"Yes.” His face was still in the lamplight. “I won't say goodbye."

"No. I'll hear from you soon. Good luck, my love.” She unbolted the door and went out. He watched as she went up the drive, her back very straight. She did not look around again.

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A plague o’ both your houses!

—William Shakespeare

David came to Wymondham, principle seat of the Earls of Wymondham and his future home, on a clear day in early June. Lord Rayleigh had insisted upon sending him in his own coach so David at least had the comfort of traveling with familiar faces. They had made an early start and it was dinnertime by the time they reached Derbyshire.

As they entered the Earl's grounds, David sat forward in his seat, curious to see the land that was his heritage. The coach drove for some time through a beautiful wood which stretched on either side for as far as the eye could see. Gradually the ground rose and eventually the coach came out on the top of a hill which led down into a lovely valley. On the other side of the valley, backed by a ridge and high, woody hills and fronted by a stream, stood Wymondham House. David swallowed as he took in the magnificent stone building set so perfectly in the beautiful landscape. His forehead and the palms of his hands felt damp. How could he ever hope to live up to all this?

They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the door. A major domo in magnificent livery came down the steps as Lord Rayleigh's footman sprang to open the coach door for David. As he descended, Tom, the redheaded footman he had known for years, winked at him. Some of the constriction left his throat and he winked back. Then, gravely, he walked up the stairs and into his father's house.

Lord Wymondham stood in the drawing room window and watched his son walking toward the house. David was dressed in buckskins and an old coat. He had been out riding again, the Earl realized. He watched the tall figure with its easy and unhurried stride until it passed out of his view in the shadow of the house.

The Earl was profoundly grateful for David. When he thought of what the boy could have been, given his upbringing, he realized how fortunate he had been. He remembered his nervousness on the first night of David's arrival as they had sat down to dinner. He had eaten with David once before, but the circumstances had been far removed from the elegant dining room at Wymondham with its priceless silver plate and china and its rows of hovering servants.

David's table manners had been faultless. Tante Heloise had had her foibles, but she had insisted that her nephew learn the manners of a gentleman. David's speech, also, was free of any lower-class accent or dialect. For that, if Lord Wymondham had cared to inquire, he could thank Jane. David had spent his boyhood with her and not with the children of the townspeople; his speech reflected his company.

Actually, Lord Wymondham thought as he turned away from the window, there was very little to keep David from taking his place comfortably in the ranks of his peers. His clothing was atrocious, of course, but that was a problem easily remedied. The Earl had taken him into town to make some initial purchases; the rest of his wardrobe could be purchased from Weston once they went up to London.

In fact, there were only four areas where the Earl felt David needed tutoring. He didn't fence; he was a terrible shot; he rode magnificently but was a poor driver, and he didn't dance. The Earl had begun to teach him how to drive. David enjoyed that and he was a quick pupil. The Earl found great pleasure in it as well. There was little constriction between them as they drove behind his spirited grays, both intent on the same purpose. It was at these times he felt closest to his son.

The Earl had had less success in his endeavors to teach David to fence and to shoot. “I fail to see the point of it, sir,” he had said in his quiet, courteous voice. “I have no intention of ever dueling with anyone, either with swords or with guns."

"Fencing is perhaps not necessary,” Lord Wymondham agreed. “But you must learn to shoot. Every gentleman shoots, David."

"I know.” A shade of distaste crossed David's face. “They kill birds and animals. I won't do it.” He got his love of animals from his mother, the Earl thought. He remembered vividly how she would care for strays and injured wild things. But David was a man. He should learn to shoot.

"I am sorry, sir,” David said finally, “I would like to oblige you. But I have no interest in shooting. None.” And there the matter rested. Under the soft-spoken exterior, the Earl was discovering, David could be solid steel.

He had better luck with the dancing. David's initial impulse had been to refuse, but then he remembered that Jane danced. She might like to be able to dance with him. He acquiesced and a dancing master was engaged.

Three weeks after David's arrival at Wymondham, the Earl invited a few of his neighbors for a dinner party. It was David's first introduction into upper class society and it went very well. Sir Hubert and Lady Spenser had brought their eighteen-year-old daughter Clarissa, and it was obvious from the time that she first saw David that he was going to be a success with the girls. It was easy to see why, the Earl thought as he watched his son bend his head to listen to something Lady Mary Lorring was saying to him. He wore impeccable evening dress. His hair was freshly cut and neatly brushed across his forehead. He looked so new, Lord Wymondham thought, so pure and male and beautiful. There wasn't a woman in London who wouldn't count herself lucky to stand talking to him.

He had gotten along very well with the men, also. “Damn fine boy, Wymondham,” Sir Henry Mellon had grunted as they left the dining room to rejoin the ladies. “Extraordinary, your finding him like that."

After the company had gone, Lord Wymondham and David sat alone in the drawing room. The Earl had a glass of brandy in his hand. David had refused one. “I'm not used to drinking very much,” he had said. “Tante Heloise never had anything in the house. In fact, the only time I ever had more than ale before coming here was when I was fourteen and Jane stole a couple of bottles of burgundy from her uncle's cellar."

Lord Wymondham raised his eyebrow encouragingly. David very rarely volunteered information about his past life. He was easy-going and courteous, but reticent. The Earl felt comfortable with him, but had no feeling of knowing him. If he had any inclination for confidences, the Earl would be most receptive. “What happened?” he asked.

David laughed. “We each drank a bottle. Jane got sick and threw up most of what she had drunk. I wasn't so lucky. I developed a splitting headache and felt miserable for the whole rest of the day. We never did it again."

The Earl smiled reminiscently. “I remember my brother and I doing exactly the same thing. You'll learn to drink and to enjoy good wine, David. It takes time."

David smiled faintly. “If you say so, sir."

He had never yet called Lord Wymondham father. The Earl looked at him as he sat easily in the winged chair on the other side of the fire. He looked as at home in the high-ceilinged, silk-hung drawing room as he had in the shabby parlor of his cottage in Newmarket. There was a quality of relaxation about David, the Earl realized, that made him fit in wherever he happened to be.

"I thought perhaps we would go up to London,” he said into the silence. “You're still a bit young for the social scene, most young men your age are at Oxford or Cambridge, but a little town bronze wouldn't hurt you at all. Then we might do a little traveling. See the parts of the world Napoleon has left untrammeled so far."

David turned his eyes from their contemplation of the fire until they rested on his father's face. “You are very kind, sir,” he said peacefully, “but there is really only one thing I want to do at the moment and that is to get married."

There was a deep line between the Earl's brows. “To Lady Jane Fitzmaurice, I take it."

"To Jane, yes."

"She's a beautiful girl,” the Earl said objectively. “Good family, too. If you are of the same mind in a few years time and she's still available, I shouldn't object at all."

David sat up straight in his chair. “A few years’ time!” he said sharply.

"Yes.” The Earl was firm. “You are only eighteen years of age, David. You have seen nothing of the world. You are far too young to be tying yourself down in marriage. I want you to have the opportunities you missed all through your youth. It is very painful for me to think of my son working as a common groom. I can't tell you how I blame myself for your unfortunate childhood. But that is all finished with now. You are David Wrexham, Viscount Audley, and I want you to have a chance to enjoy your new position and your new freedom."

David's face was set and stern. He had been attending carefully to what his father was saying. “There is no need for you to feel pain because of what happened in the past,” he answered now. “No blame attaches to you. You tried to find me. I certainly don't hold your failure against you.” David's eyes dropped and he regarded his own strong, slender hand as it lay on the arm of his chair. “It was not, as you seem to think, an unhappy childhood. True, I had to work. But I loved what I was doing. I was very good at it. And,” there was a pause, then he said softly, “there was Jane."