Mutual Consent (3 page)

Before her marriage, Mrs. Cribbage had been a shy, dutiful young woman who had never had a cross word spoken to her. She never got over her terror of, and her secret contempt for, her common husband. Through the years the burden of her sacrifice upon the altar of duty and her family’s abandonment of her weighed ever more heavily upon her spirit, and when Barbara turned ten years old, she succumbed quietly to pneumonia.

Mrs. Cribbage’s younger sister had defied the general family wisdom of shunning her and had remained in touch with her. Lady Azaela Terowne was made of sterner stuff than Mrs. Cribbage. During the early years of Mrs. Cribbage’s marriage, as she gradually learned of Mr. Cribbage’s brutal insensitivities, she had urged her sister to consider the shocking possibility of divorce. But Mrs. Cribbage had shrunk from such an appalling course, with its attendant scandal and the certainty that her husband would never tamely let her go. Her greatest fear was that if she dared such a thing, he would out of spite keep their child from her.

“And that I could not bear, dear Azaela. My poor little Babs. I am the only one to stand between her and Mr. Cribbage, and I am such a poor protectress at that,” she had said with a rare laugh, her hand lovingly caressing her daughter’s glossy auburn curls. She had suddenly looked up, her gaze fixed with such unusual intentness upon her sister’s face that Lady Azaela was shaken. “Promise me that you will do all in your power for my Babs,” Mrs. Cribbage had demanded.

Lady Azaela had willingly assured her sister that she would indeed do so, never suspecting that she would be called upon so soon. Six months later Mrs. Cribbage had breathed her last and Barbara’s nurse had sent an urgent message to Lady Azaela.

Lady Azaela had suffered herself to endure the first of what would prove to be through the years her several confrontations with Mr. Cribbage. She had arrived in time for her sister’s funeral, unannounced and unwanted, as her brother-in-law had made quite plain. But she had ignored his heavy insults until after the sad business was done and Mrs. Cribbage at last was allowed her measure of peace.

Then it had come time to turn her considerable personality to the needs of the living. She had never before had occasion to observe her niece, who was a little dab of a thing, in Mr. Cribbage’s company. The girl was obviously in terror of her own father. Lady Azaela’s heart had been stung to anger, but she knew better than to allow her emotions to show. Lady Azaela had not listened to her sister without learning something of Mr. Cribbage. With seeming casualness she had said, “I am willing to take the girl.”

“Be damned for your impertinence! The brat belongs to me, to do with as I please,” Cribbage had said.

Lady Azaela had shrugged with feigned indifference. “As you wish. She would naturally stand a better chance of achieving a brilliant marriage if she were raised by one intimately acquainted with the social mores of the
ton.
But as you say, she belongs to you. And undoubtedly the expense of providing properly for her would be rather prohibitive, so perhaps this is best, after all.”

With that, she had swept out of the drawing room to greet those of the neighborhood who had come to convey their condolences. Mrs. Cribbage had been well liked by those in the lesser society in which she had passed her days, having been one to quietly offer a kindness whenever it chanced that she was able to do so. Lady Azaela hoped that what she had said to her brother-in-law would work to her advantage in the short time remaining before her own departure, or otherwise her promise to her sister would be very difficult to meet.

Mr. Cribbage was a man of decision. He detested his sister-in-law; she represented much of what he despised in the so-called quality. But her words worked upon his obsession to a nicety. He abruptly put forth a business proposition to Lady Azaela. He wanted her to take his daughter and ingrain in the girl all the ways that any well-bred young lady was endowed, and in return he would pay any expenses incurred in the task.

Lady Azaela made a show of hesitation. Mr. Cribbage upped his offer of remuneration and was contemptuous when Lady Azaela accepted the higher consideration. His experience was that any of the quality could be had for a price. One simply had to hit upon the right figure.

When Lady Azaela left her sister’s former house, she was accompanied by her niece and the girl’s nanny. Babs recalled that she had been a bewildered and frightened ten-year-old girl. She had lost her mother and she was leaving the only life she had ever known. The future was suddenly filled with uncertainties, but even so, young Barbara had not been altogether displeased to be going away. Rather, she had felt relief that she was leaving her father behind.

The following seven years had been relatively happy ones for Barbara, marred only by the infrequent appearances of her father. Mr. Cribbage had remained a terrifying quantity for her, but she had slowly and unconsciously learned how to deal with him in the cool manner demonstrated by her aunt.

Lady Azaela thoroughly detested Mr. Cribbage, but she suffered his intrusions into her well-ordered life because she was mindful that the man was her niece’s legal guardian. She had tried to have herself named to Babs’ guardianship, but Cribbage would never agree to it, knowing from past experience never to accede too much to one of the quality. He believed that one must retain some hold over them to be able to command their attention. He had early on sensed Lady Azaela’s attachment for his brat, and that, coupled with the monies he gave to her that he was convinced she could not do without, were his insurance that she would continue to acknowledge his importance to the scheme of things.

Babs herself had not dared to completely trust in her aunt because of the financial arrangement between Lady Azaela and her father, until the day she realized that Lady Azaela was neither indigent nor greedy, but was simply making use of her father’s absolute faith in the power of his money to manipulate him. His continued agreement to leave his daughter in Lady Azaela’s care hinged upon his belief that he had his sister-in-law in his power.

Mr. Cribbage could never have understood Lady Azaela’s very real compassion for the lonely child and would have regarded it with such suspicion that he most probably would not have contemplated letting Babs go to Lady Azaela at all. But the fact that his sister-in-law did respond to his wealth assured him of her motives and engendered in him the mistaken notion that he had a financial hold upon her.

Lady Azaela was a gentlewoman of uncommon shrewdness and foresight. She knew it was inevitable that one day Mr. Cribbage would demand the return of his daughter. Lady Azaela had no wish to see her niece completely and forever at Mr. Cribbage’s mercy, and she had done what she could to provide for the girl’s future.

Lady Azaela carried out to the very letter the promise she had made to her sister upon Babs’ behalf. Miss Barbara Cribbage was a most properly educated and socially graceful young lady upon her comeout at age seventeen. Lady Azaela had hoped to milk Mr. Cribbage’s obsession with the
ton
to her niece’s benefit by tirelessly working to cultivate just those modest connections that would be most advantageous to a young lady whose obvious gently bred manner, lovely face, and considerable dowry could be expected to override the disadvantage of her paternal birth.

But in the end it had all come to naught.

Lady Azaela had planned to lease a residence in a respectable street for the Season, from which she could properly launch her niece into London society. Mr. Cribbage had thought his sister-in-law’s notion to be ridiculous. He had not seen the need of hiring a fashionable address. Despite Lady Azaela’s protests, Barbara’s comeout had taken place in her father’s house. The address was well enough, but it smacked unmistakably of the City and
nouveau riche.
The villa itself was appallingly ostentatious, filled with a clutter of ugly bric-a-brac and the most expensive and faddish furnishings that money would buy.

Lady Azaela had been forced to make do. She had banished the worst of the atrocities to the back parlors and bedrooms and softened the impact of the overpowering rooms with satin sheetings and flowers. The musicians and menus were ordered as they should be. Her niece’s gowns for the first evening and the succeeding entertainments were in every way quite satisfactory. All in all, she had been rather pleased with the arrangements.

Mr. Cribbage had frowned heavily at Lady Azaela’s changes to his house and her studied plans. The functions that Lady Azaela put together were designed to tastefully showcase Miss Barbara Cribbage, but he did not perceive them that way. Mr. Cribbage thought them paltry affairs, and beginning with his daughter’s comeout, he had done all in his power to arrange things more to his taste.

On the evening of Barbara’s comeout. Lady Azaela was enraged by the unexplained appearance of gold plate, intrusive musicians, glittering gems nestled in the flower arrangements, and fountains of champagne. Most of the changes were not of themselves exceptional, but taken altogether, a veneer of undoubted vulgarity was visited upon Lady Azaela’s careful efforts.

Through the rest of the Season, Mr. Cribbage flaunted his wealth. He positively thrust ostentation down the throats of those of the
ton,
who were eventually put off by the reeking merchant’s taint of the address. Lady Azaela watched, helpless and virtually impotent to repair the damage, as her niece was catalogued and dismissed and thereafter forgotten by polite society.

Babs’ first and subsequent only Season ended in complete and ignoble disaster. She received not one eligible offer, though there were a few on the unsavory side. Her pride and self-esteem had received blow after blow. Fully cognizant of how her father’s pretentiousness appeared in the eyes of those of taste, she had been deeply humiliated and shamed. It said much of her strength of character and her social training that she had retained a cool composure in the face of the amused contempt of those who attended to the progress of her comeout.

Her exile back to Derbyshire had been a welcome relief. She had dreaded ever returning to London, which would be forever for her the scene of her humiliation. Whenever the thought of her father’s determination to make her a branch of his own twisted ambition had intruded itself into her mind, she had swiftly and determindedly banished it. Nevertheless, she had known that the day would come when she would be forced to return to London.

Lady Azaela had spoken to her niece frankly on the subject. She had advised Babs not to reject her father’s plans for her out of hand. Instead, Lady Azaela recommended calm assessment of the offer that Mr. Cribbage had gotten for her and the gentleman behind it. “It is possible that you will be pleasantly surprised. And if not, you always have a home with me,” Lady Azaela had said.

Thus Barbara had obeyed her father’s summons. She had quietly listened to his command that she was to marry the gentleman he had in mind for her. Then, at the first opportunity she had taken a practical step in heeding Lady Azaela’s excellent advice.

Babs smoothed a crease in the skirt of her pelisse. She knew herself to be dressed in the height of fashion. She had dressed carefully for this first meeting with her intended husband, hoping to establish herself as other than a merchant’s daughter. However, she could not shake her feeling of nervous dread. It was one thing to accept Lady Azaela’s advice as sound; it was quite another to put it to the test and actually pay an uninvited and unexpected call upon a gentleman whom she had never met.

The hackney cab stopped. Barbara got out of the carriage. She quietly requested the driver to wait for her return. For reassurance, she touched a finger to the heavy veil that covered her face. Then she took a deep breath and ascended the steps of the Earl of Chatworth’s town house.

She pulled the bell. The door was opened by a porter and she was ushered into the entry hall. She was prepared to give her name as she requested an interview with the Earl of Chatworth, but she was given no chance to do so.

“I shall inform his lordship of your arrival,” the porter said. He showed her into a small sitting room and quietly shut the door.

Barbara was disconcerted by the ease of her reception. But she was of a quick intelligence. It was readily apparent to her that the earl had received anonymous female callers such as herself before.

She glanced around the well-furnished sitting room, noting the priceless Ming vase, the sumptuous oriental carpet, the gilded candle branches, the cut-crystal Waterford flower bowl charmingly set off by an arrangement of blushing pink roses, and the striped rose silk upholstery covering the chairs and the settee. The Earl of Chatworth appeared to be a wealthy gentleman, an appearance that she knew was deceptive or otherwise her father could not have gained the leverage that he had claimed to have over the nobleman.

Babs sat down on the pretty settee. Through the mesh of her veil she thoughtfully regarded the portrait hanging over the mantel. The subject of the painting was a gentleman of another age, pomaded and laced in the extravagant style of the century past, whose handsome saturnine features and droop-lidded knowing eyes transcended the canvas and time. The earl’s ancestor had definitely been a rakish fellow, decided Babs, and if the porter’s high discretion was anything to judge by, so was the present earl.

All the trappings of wealth, probable libertine tendencies of the worst sort, and under her father’s thumb, thought Babs. She tugged gently at the strings of her reticule as she reflected. Perhaps she had come on a fool’s errand. She had very nearly decided to go find the porter so that she could tell him that she had changed her mind when the door to the sitting room opened.

The Earl of Chatworth entered, shutting the door gently behind him.

Barbara regarded the gentleman with acute interest as he sauntered toward her. Her immediate impression was favorable, which surprised her.

The earl was younger than she had expected, apparently but a few years older than herself. He was a well-set-up gentleman, broad of shoulder and lean of limb, as was evidenced by the exquisite cut of his morning coat and the close fit of his pantaloons. The earl’s attire was finished with an intricately tied white silk cravat and Hessian boots. His dark hair was cut fashionably short and looked to have been impatiently run through with heavy fingers; Babs could not but wonder if it had been the porter’s announcement of her own presence that had earned that particular reaction.