Playing to Win (28 page)

Chapter 18

Mr. Whitlatch, despite his upbringing,
was not a regular churchgoer. And even if he were, church services
would be the last place in the village he would choose to be seen
with Clarissa. It seemed ill-advised, to put it mildly, to flaunt
Clarissa in the face of the parish when he still hoped—however dim
the prospect seemed at the moment—to eventually make her his
mistress.

On the other hand, since she appeared
determined to go, it would be unseemly to allow her to go alone.
Unseemly and a trifle cruel, to send her alone into that lion’s
den! It spoke volumes about her innocence that she would even
suggest
attending church while residing unchaperoned at a
bachelor’s residence. But she came downstairs on Sunday morning
gloved and bonneted, her right hand buttoning her redingote over
the white muslin she had worn her first evening at Morecroft
Cottage, and a battered prayer book in her left. She apparently
took it for granted that respectable persons attended church of a
Sunday.

Trevor did not care to explain to his
guest the exact reasons why the thought of attending church with
her on his arm made his hair stand on end. So he gritted his teeth
and called for his carriage. If Clarissa wanted to go to church, to
church they would go. He would find some way to deal with the
consequences. After all, he reminded himself grimly, he always
enjoyed a challenge.

He had braced himself to be met with
stares and whispers, so Trevor bore the villagers’ scrutiny with
equanimity. Clarissa’s serene indifference surprised him, however,
until he recollected that she had been used to stares and whispers
all her life. She sat through the entire service apparently
untroubled by the mild sensation her presence caused. Nothing
disturbed her poise or caused her earnest attention to waver; her
sweet, serious expression was unfeigned. One had to admire both her
courage and her piety.

He was amused to discover that
attending church went a long way toward establishing not only
Clarissa’s respectability in the village’s eyes, but his own as
well. Mr. Henry had obviously been busy. The word had spread like
wildfire that the lovely girl with the modest demeanor was Mr.
Whitlatch’s ward. When they stepped out of the vestibule after the
morning service, they were quickly surrounded by eager
well-wishers.

Mr. Whitlatch had not foreseen this
development. Now that Clarissa seemed ready to accept the role he
had recklessly assigned her, he realized that she had been right in
the first place: telling the village that Miss Feeney was his ward
could easily prove disastrous. To him! The wench was so damnably
charming, ten to one she would have the whole village in her pocket
inside of an hour. It would be a black day for Trevor Whitlatch,
when and if the parish ever learned that he had compromised the
popular Miss Feeney! One could almost imagine a crowd of villagers
marching on Morecroft Cottage with torches and pitchforks,
demanding his blood! Still, he exerted himself to be cordial to the
various persons who approached them.

Most people were friendly, many were
curious, and some were frankly agog to know who, and what, Clarissa
was. But a few of the parishioners swept past them coldly,
disapproval writ large on their forbidding faces. Mr. Whitlatch
discovered within himself an irrational desire to box the ears of
these worthy folk, merely because they had jumped to conclusions.
Correct conclusions, of course, but he still wished he could wipe
the sneers from their sanctimonious faces.

Clarissa’s lovely manners seemed to be
winning the day; a small crowd had gathered; and then, to Mr.
Whitlatch’s annoyance, young Mr. Henry pushed his way through to
Clarissa’s side. He seized her hand and wrung it, his round face
beaming.

"Miss Feeney! How splendid to see you
again!" he exclaimed, removing his hat. His unruly brown locks had
been pomaded into strict order. In fact, his entire person shone
with cleanliness, and his clothing looked suspiciously new. Mr.
Whitlatch felt his hackles begin to rise.

"How do you do, Mr. Henry?" said
Clarissa, smiling at him in a friendly way. The degree of tolerance
she was showing this silly halfling struck Trevor as
excessive.

"Oh, capital! Never better! But you
must allow me to present my parents to you. They are excessively
anxious to make your acquaintance!"

Trevor watched in cynical amusement as
young Mr. Henry, placing Clarissa’s hand upon his arm with a kind
of ecstatic reverence, ushered her tenderly over to where the vicar
and Mrs. Henry stood. He could imagine just how anxious the vicar
and his wife were to make the acquaintance of a girl whose
antecedents were entirely unknown, and who had been described to
them as the ‘ward’ of the rakish Mr. Whitlatch! He saw Eustace,
fairly tripping over himself in his eagerness, go through the
motions of presenting Clarissa. He saw Clarissa’s modest curtsey.
He saw the stiffness of the vicar’s bow, and the limpness of Mrs.
Henry’s handshake. The vicar’s wife was making a palpable effort to
appear civil, but it was plain as a pikestaff that beneath her
rather sickly smile she was quivering with hostility and
alarm.

Trevor had to cough to hide his smile.
Really, if Mrs. Henry’s animosity had been directed at anyone other
than Clarissa, he could find it in his heart to sympathize with
her. No mother enjoys meeting a penniless unknown who has thrown
her only son, at a tender and impressionable age, into a fever of
admiration.

Eustace did not seem to notice his
parents’ lack of enthusiasm; his worshipful eyes never left
Clarissa. He looked completely besotted. He looked, in fact, like a
prime idiot. A coterie of young men began to form, hovering
hopefully on the fringes of the Henry group, and Mrs. Henry began a
spirited effort to include these gentlemen in the round of
introductions to Clarissa. Eustace’s aspect promptly took on the
semblance of a dog guarding a bone. Trevor nearly laughed aloud. He
had never thought to derive so much entertainment from attending
church.

His amusement faded, however, when he
learned that Clarissa had given Mr. Henry permission to call upon
her at Morecroft Cottage. She innocently dropped this leveler on
him during the drive home, and, heedless of Dawson’s presence on
the box, he rounded on her.

"You did
what?"
he
thundered.

Clarissa opened her eyes in
astonishment. "Why, what objection can you possibly
have?"

"What objection! I’ve
every
objection! Why the devil do you think I brought you here, rather
than set you up in London? I want to keep you out of the reach of—"
he stopped, recognizing the shock in Clarissa’s expression, and
hastily amended what he was about to say. "I’ve no wish to trip
over Eustace Henry every time I open my door!"

But Clarissa had noticed his
about-face, confound it. Anger glittered in the glorious blue eyes
turned up to his. "If your intent was to keep me from the society
of
Eustace Henry,
" she uttered disdainfully, "I should think
Morecroft Cottage was a very silly place to bring me!"

Of course that was not what he meant,
and she knew it. But this would be a much safer battle than a
discussion of what he
had
meant.

He glared at her. "As my
ward,
Miss Feeney, I relied upon your sense of propriety to prevent such
a misstep! Why did you not apply to me for permission, before
granting that idiot leave to run tame in my house?"

"Well, how unfair!" she gasped,
diverted as he had hoped she would be. "You introduced me to him,
for heaven’s sake! How was I to guess you held him in aversion? He
seems a perfectly blameless young man!"

"Blameless? I daresay he may be!
But—"

"And as for letting him run tame in
your house, I never heard anything more unjust! I gave him
permission to
call,
not to move in with you! If you feel so
strongly about it—although I still cannot imagine why you do—you
need not meet him. I will see him alone."

"Then next, I suppose, I will have to
hire some female dragon to guard your reputation!"

Clarissa gave a little crow of laughter
and vexation. "Sir, you are the most exasperating person of my
acquaintance! You cannot suspect poor Mr. Henry of any evil
design!"

"That’s not the point!"

"Well, what
is
your point?
Anyone would think you expected him to descend upon us for hours at
a time, or on a daily basis! I assure you, if he calls at all,
which is far from certain, it will be a very correct morning call
of a quarter of an hour. He will very likely bring his mother with
him! He is only trying to be neighborly."

Trevor gave a snort of derision. "You
don’t believe that any more than I do."

She flushed. "Why should I not believe
it?"

"Neither the vicar, nor any member of
his family, has called on me since the first week I took up
residence in the neighborhood!"

"Well, I could not be expected to know
that!"

"No, but—"

"And now that you have added to your
household—or at least that is what you deliberately led them to
believe—why should they not call again? It is only proper, after
all, for the vicar, or the vicar’s wife—"

"Or the vicar’s
son!
" he
interjected jeeringly.

"-- to call upon your ward!" she
finished, a martial light in her eye.

"Miss Feeney, I am a man who likes his
privacy. If you intend to turn Morecroft Cottage upside down with
social engagements—"

"No such thing! It is your house, sir;
I am perfectly mindful of it."

He eyed her grimly. "Once you have
opened the floodgates, we will be deluged."

"Oh, pooh! You are making a mountain
out of a molehill. Are you really such a hermit? I must say, I
think this sudden desire to barricade yourself in your home is most
unaccountable! You are neither scholarly nor pious, and if you
expect me to believe you are
shy,
why, I never heard such
a—such a
rapper!"

Trevor could not suppress a grin. "No,
I confess I have never suffered from shyness."

"I thought not! And at any rate, it can
hardly signify if we are ‘deluged’ for a time. All you need do is
rebuff everyone, in your inimitable way! They will speedily learn
to leave you alone again. I will not be here much longer to keep
the floodgates open."

He was startled. "Where are you
going?"

Clarissa turned to him, eyes wide with
amazement. "It is Sunday," she told him carefully, in a tone
suitable for teaching backward children. "Tomorrow is Monday. You
promised that you would begin seeking a situation for me. You
cannot have forgotten!"

He had not, of course. But he had hoped
she might have forgotten, or perhaps changed her mind. It was
rather wounding to hear once more how determined she was to leave
him. He hunched one shoulder pettishly. "I have found you a
situation, Clarissa. You are my ward."

Her hands clenched on the prayer book
in her lap. "No," she uttered, her voice sounding suddenly choked
and breathless. "No, you are not serious. I can’t believe—I
won’t
believe that you have deliberately deceived
me."

Trevor’s eyes snapped dangerously.
"Very affecting! But I have had enough of these die-away scenes,
thank you! Stop behaving as if I’d insulted you! What the devil is
wrong with being my ward?"

Clarissa’s voice was barely audible. "I
thought it was merely a tale you were using to shield me from
gossip." She covered her eyes with a shaking hand. "I ought never
to have acquiesced in such a crazy story; I ought to have done
something to scotch it. Now I am in a worse fix than ever! And it
is my own fault, for I have lent credence to the tale through my
own behavior. What was I thinking?"

He pulled her hand away and held it in
a strong grip. "Look at me!" he commanded. She did so, albeit
unwillingly. Her eyes were full of pain. Trevor swore impatiently.
"Clarissa, you have made a habit of despair! I’ve no patience with
it. Obstacles and setbacks are not calamities, they are
opportunities! With each obstacle you overcome, you will become
stronger. If you fall into a fit of the dismals and wallow in
self-reproach every time you put your foot wrong, you will never
succeed at anything. And what is more, you will annoy me!
Exceedingly."

Some of the pain left her eyes. "A
habit of despair," she repeated slowly. "Is it really possible to
make a habit of despair?"

"Certainly. And it is just as possible
to make a habit of optimism. I recommend the latter."

The ghost of a smile flitted across
Clarissa’s troubled features. "The Whitlatch method. You ought to
write a book."

"I haven’t time. I’m too busy enjoying
life, and turning everything I touch to gold."

She laughed a little. "Very well. Now
teach me how I may turn this situation to gold, if you please! I
confess, I do not see a way out of these difficulties."

Trevor shrugged. "What difficulties? I
will not renege on my promise, Clarissa. I will put feelers out
tomorrow, seeking a situation for you as governess to a tribe of
spoiled children, or as companion to some rich old harridan, or
some other delightful bit of drudgery. In the meantime, you will
remain here, ostensibly as my ward. And, Clarissa—" He took her
shoulders and turned her toward him. She looked up at him warily.
"Let me know, if you should change your mind," he told her quietly.
"You know I would be pleased to have you stay."