Marry in Haste (2 page)

He gave an angry and, to her, unfamiliar exclamation, then continued on a milder though still formidable note. “You quite mistake the matter,” he said; “you have not been invited so much as abducted. I am not the arrogant earl for nothing and I intend you shall spend the night at Haverford Hall. If it makes you feel any happier about it, I am probably old enough to be your father and have yet to meet the woman for whom I would trouble myself so much as to miss a day’s hunting. You will be safe enough with me, a good deal safer than in the hands of the rascally landlord of the Blue Boar, about whom I know nothing good. So, come, let us say no more about it and do you tell me, instead, what you think of Lady Elizabeth Foster.”

“She has always been kindness itself to me.” Her voice was dry.

“And therefore you found it necessary, on the death of your original patroness, to find yourself a situation.” Again there was a note of laughter in his voice. “But it is not fair to tease you, Miss Forest, and you are right to refuse to gossip about her, and equally right not to remain at Devonshire House under such ambiguous circumstances. It is bad enough for the Duke’s own children ... but I will not gossip either. Tell me, instead, what possessed you to think Mrs. Cummerton a possible employer.”

“Have you ever tried to find a position for a governess?” she asked.

“Why, no, since you ask me, I do not believe I have. But what is that to the purpose?”

“Because if you had, you would not ask such foolish questions.” She was amazed at her own temerity, but, once in, went boldly on. “There is not such a demand for governesses, specially ones educated at Devonshire House, that I found myself in a position to be particular. I was grateful to Mrs. Cummerton for sinking the gossip in the snob and engaging me.”

“And what will you do now?” he asked.

It was what she had been wondering herself, but she contrived a confident enough answer. “Oh, visit my father for a little and redeploy my forces.”

“Your father? Oh yes, of course, the Comte de Foret. I have met him, I think. Where can it have been?”

“At Watier’s, I have no doubt, or one of the other gambling clubs. I hope you did not play with him, sir.”

She was aware of his eyes, in the near darkness of the carriage, fixed on her with an uncomfortably piercing scrutiny. Then, “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I would not have spoken of him if I had remembered the whole in time. But consider, Miss Forest, that it is not given to everyone to shine in adversity. His example makes your behaviour all the more exemplary.” He broke off. “I cry your pardon again. It is inexcusable to preach at you so. But here we are at last at Haverford Hall where you are to consider yourself my guest, under whatever protest you wish, until morning. And here, you will doubtless be glad to see, is my Cousin Harriet to greet us.”

The carriage door was flung open and Camilla saw a flight of wide stone steps leading up to a lighted doorway in which stood a stolidly middle-aged figure with grey hair under a dowager’s turban.

Lord Leominster leapt lightly down, turned to give his hand to Camilla, and led her up the gently sloping steps towards the light.

“Cousin Harriet, you should not be out here in the cold.” He shepherded them both indoors as he spoke. “I have brought you a guest, you see. The mail coach has broken down and Miss Forest was like to be benighted, so I have brought her home to you. She is sadly chilled and will be glad, I am sure, to be taken to her room at once.” A footman shut the big door behind them as his master made the two women formally known to each other. Most of the qualms Camilla had been feeling at this unorthodox visit vanished at sight of Cousin Harriet’s formidable respectability. What Mrs. Lefeu thought about Camilla was another question. She was busy with a speech of warm greeting for Lord Leominster, who had, Camilla gathered, been away for some days on a visit to his grandmother, the Dowager Lady Leominster. As he answered his cousin’s questions about this lady’s health, Camilla was able, for the first time, to take a good look at her rescuer. She liked what she saw, but realised with a little shock of surprise that something positive about his manner, together with his own remarks about being old enough to be her father, had seriously misled her. She had been treating him as she would an uncle, or (if he had had any) a friend of her father’s. Now, looking at him by the warm candlelight of his hall, she decided he could not possibly be more than thirty, which, though a great age when viewed from the standpoint of twenty, is still hardly decrepitude.

More alarming still, he was formidably handsome. His dark hair curled shortly round a high forehead and his large and piercing eyes gave a romantic impression to his face which was somewhat contradicted by a straight nose and small, firm mouth. Looking at him, Camilla was perfectly certain that she should never have agreed, however tacitly to spend a night in his house.

He, too, while apparently absorbed in talk with his housekeeper, was getting his first real look at his guest. He saw a slight, graceful girl, not beautiful, although there was something appealing about the large brown eyes in the thin face and something else about her that he had recognised even in the dark carriage. Very much the aristocrat himself, he had been aware of breeding in her despite the governess’s drab costume and awkward plight. He had known her at once for a lady; now, looking at her, with her soft brown curls escaping from under the unbecoming bonnet, he thought her almost a child, and it was with an adult’s impatience that he broke off what he was saying to Mrs. Lefeu to exclaim: “But Miss Forest is soaked to the skin and we keep her standing here. Had you not best take her to your apartments while a fire is lighting in the Blue Room?” Having thus indicated to his housekeeper that this unexpected guest was to be treated as an honoured one and given the best guest chamber, he took a quick leave of Camilla, hoping formally that she would do him the honour of dining with him when she felt more herself.

Camilla, appalled now at what seemed in retrospect her incredible boldness, merely curtsied, too shy to speak, and thus, though she did not know it, did much to win over Mrs. Lefeu, who had so far been regarding her with well-concealed distrust. She had seen too many lures thrown out for her handsome cousin not to be suspicious of this child’s story. Now, however, she reserved judgement, confining herself to polite nothings as she led the way up a handsome flight of stairs and down a long corridor to her own apartments, where Camilla, shivering as she removed her sodden shawl in front of the fire, turned to her with an impulsive gesture.

“Dear madam, what
am
I to do? I beg you will advise me. He said he was old enough to be my father and—I believed him. He sounded so—so composed that I thought there could be no harm in spending the night here with him and his—excuse me—his housekeeper. But now I see it will not do at all. What
shall
I do?”

Thus approached, Mrs. Lefeu, who heartily agreed with her as to the impropriety of her visit, found herself in something of a quandary.

“Well, my dear,” she temporised, “it is not perhaps an arrangement that would quite satisfy your friends. Can you not send to have them fetch you away? I am only surprised that Lord Leominster did not propose it.”

“But that is just the difficulty.” And Camilla plunged headlong into the story of her troubles. Mrs. Lefeu, who had begun to purse up her lips when she heard that her cousin’s protégée had been brought up at Devonshire House, relaxed a little when Camilla turned to her after describing the death of her patroness the Duchess: “I
loved
her so. And then, when she was gone, Lady Elizabeth just stayed and stayed. ‘To look after the poor dear Duke,’ she said. And how could I stay then? It was bad enough for the others, but he was their father, they had to. But I—I could not bear it.”

“And quite right, too,” said Mrs. Lefeu. The gossip about Lady Elizabeth Foster and the Duke of Devonshire had been widespread enough so that there was no need to pretend ignorance. “So what did you do?”

“I went to stay with my father, but I found that would not do either.” Camilla coloured. She did not wish to tell anyone how appalled she had been by her father’s way of life. It was all very well to meet him, the man about town, sauntering elegantly in the park, but something else again to be let into the sordid secrets of his ménage. “So ... I could not think what to do for the best. We have no money, you know, Bonaparte has taken our estates. Father says we shall get them back one day, but what is the use of ‘one day.’ Besides, I do not believe it ... Anyway, ‘one day’ is too late. I have

to live now. So, altogether, there seemed nothing for it but to go for a governess, and Miss Trimmer—she was the governess at Devonshire House, you know—was so good as to find me a place with Mrs. Cummerton.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Lefeu was beginning to see.

“Yes. Mrs. Cummerton was only too happy to have someone recommended from Devonshire House. I do not believe she would have minded it I had been as ignorant as she is herself; all she cared about was to be able to tell her friends that she had me ‘from the dear, dear Duchess.’ Which was not true, since the Duchess died a year ago. But it went well enough, just the same, and I was fond of little Harry and Lucy. They were just beginning to mind me when Gerald came home from Oxford.” She stopped, colouring.

“I have heard about Gerald,” said Mrs. Lefeu helpfully.

“So I can imagine. Even the housemaid warned me about him. But what could I do? He was forever making excuses to come to the schoolroom, and how could I give him the setdown he deserved in front of his brother and sister? But to have his mother say that I had encouraged him—” She stopped, scarlet with mortification at the memory of that scene in the shrubbery, where Gerald had come upon her unexpectedly; of the stale smell of wine on his breath as he forced his kisses on her, and the hot moisture of his hands on their rough way down the front of her dress. At first, when his mother irrupted upon them, she had felt nothing but relief, but when she found that it was upon her not Gerald that Mrs. Cummerton’s reproaches fell, she had flared up in self-defence. The result had been instantaneous dismissal and that weary vigil at the crossroads where Lord Leominster had found her. And so she was back at her immediate problem. “Dear madam,” she said again, “advise me. What must I do?”

“Why, make the best of things, I think, my dear,” said Mrs. Lefeu kindly. “And be grateful you have fallen into such good hands. At least you can have nothing to fear from my cousin, who is indeed ...” She stopped, then made a new start. “For a moment, when he handed you out of the carriage, I hoped ...” Again she paused. “But what am I thinking of to keep you gossiping here? The fire will be lit in your room by now and you must be changing for dinner. Leominster always dresses, even when he is alone.”

“Alone? But dear madam, you will dine with us surely?”

“No, no. Our arrangement was, when I came to live here, that I would dine with him only by invitation. And tonight.” Once again she paused., “Tonight I have not been invited.”

CHAPTER 2

Camilla found the Blue Room full already of firelight and dancing shadows. Her box had been unpacked and her best muslin laid out for her, but she gratefully declined Mrs. Lefeu’s offer of her own woman, Hannah, to help her dress. “I am used to manage for myself,” she said with truth, forbearing to add that her shattered nerves cried out for a few minutes alone before the ordeal of dining with Lord Leominster. And yet, when she was at last alone, she could not help a thrill of enjoyment at the unwonted luxury of the room. Life had been like this before, at Devonshire House, and now, as she brushed out her curls in front of the fire, the whole misery of the cold and dreary attic at Mrs. Cummerton’s seemed like a dream. This was her world, and she was back in it at last.

But only for one night, she reminded herself, as she turned to the glass to adjust the soft folds of her dress and then, with hands that would not stop shaking, tied her one jewel, the miniature of her mother, on its ribbon round her neck. Ready all too soon, she turned from a last reassuring glance in the glass, then stood for a moment, hesitating, in front of the fire. The sound of a gong, growling somewhere below-stairs, alerted her. She must go down and face her host. And after all, she told herself, what was there to be afraid of? How often, as she ate her meagre supper in the schoolroom at Mrs. Cummerton’s, had she longed for one more civilised evening. Now, she was to have one. Why not make the most of it?

Just the same, it was with some trepidation, and a becomingly heightened colour, that she joined her host in the small salon Mrs. Lefeu had pointed out to her, and allowed him to conduct her, as formally as if they were met for a great dinner, across the hall into the dining room. To her relief, this was not so formidable an apartment as she had feared. The mahogany table had been contracted to its smallest extent, and as the room’s whole light came from the heavy candelabrum that stood on its centre, it was possible almost to forget the outer reaches, where only firelight flickered. Settled on Lord Leominster’s right, Camilla was able, for a moment, to consider him unobserved as he turned to give an order to a footman, and congratulated herself, as she took in his impeccable evening attire, on the trouble she had taken with her own.

The meal was a simple one, but was accompanied, to her slightly shocked surprise, by champagne. Catching her eye as her glass was filled, Leominster smiled at her for the first time. It changed his face entirely, transforming the rather formidable handsomeness into something infinitely more engaging. “My butler thinks I am run quite mad,” he said, lifting his glass to hers, “to be drinking champagne with my soup, but I hoped it would be what you would like. Besides,” his smile included her in a small conspiracy, “I like it myself. I trust I do not need to reassure you that this is not the prelude to a scene of seduction. Nothing, I promise you, is farther from my thoughts.”

Camilla, who had been wondering that very thing, smiled, blushed, disclaimed, and drank to him. If it was not exactly a complimentary speech, it was certainly a reassuring one. “Though indeed,” he went on, “I have what you may think a somewhat unusual proposition to make to you—later, when we are a little better acquainted. In the meantime, pray let me help you to some of this pate which my chef, being a compatriot of yours, makes to perfection. But I beg your pardon, I remember that you did not wish to be considered as French. You have no hankering, then, to return and throw in your lot with Bonaparte?”

“Good God, no. You must understand, sir, that I do not
feel
French. After all, I have lived in England ever since I was three years old. Patriotism, I think, is a plant of later growth.”