Slightly Sinful (18 page)

"Mrs. Streat, Mrs. Leavey, Miss Clover, and Sir Jonathan and Lady Smith, formerly Miss Rachel York, to wait upon Baron Weston," Jonathan said briskly, handing the man a calling card. "He is at home?"

"I will see, sir," the servant said noncommittally. But he did stand aside to admit them to the house.

Jonathan had even remembered to have calling cards made.

Rows of tall fluted columns soared upward from a checkered floor to fan outward in support of the floor above. The celling was gilded and painted with what appeared to be angels and cherubs. Marble busts on stone pedestals gazed with stern, sightless eyes from their wall niches. A grand, wide staircase opposite the doors led upward and divided at the first landing into two curving branches. A great chandelier hung down over the staircase.

It was a hall designed to awe the visitor, Rachel thought. It certainly succeeded with her.

The servant disappeared up the stairs.

Rachel had always imagined Chesbury Park as a sizable manor surrounded by sizable gardens. She had not expected a great mansion or-despite its name-a vast park. For the first time she understood the enormity of her mother's defiance in insisting upon marrying Papa despite Uncle Richard's opposition. She had gone from this to the dark, crowded rooms they had usually rented in London.

"It is enormous," Phyllis said in a whisper.

They were all gazing about them with open awe-except for Jonathan, Rachel noticed. There was a look of interest on his face, but he appeared to be perfectly at his ease. Did that mean he was accustomed to such surroundings?

After what seemed like forever, the servant returned and invited them to follow him. He led them up the left branch of the grand staircase to the second landing, from which wide corridors led in both directions. But they did not proceed along either one. Instead, they were ushered through the tall double doors directly ahead of them into a drawing room. Its wine-colored brocaded walls were hung with portraits and landscape paintings in heavy gilded frames, its coved ceiling was lavishly painted with scenes from classical mythology, and its long windows were hung with rich velvet. A Persian carpet covered most of the floor, and the heavy gilded furniture was arranged in conversation groupings, the dominant one being about the high, ornately carved marble fireplace and mantel.

There was a gentleman standing before the fireplace, his back to it. He was not very elderly, though he appeared to be at first glance. He was thin and gray-even his complexion seemed to be gray-tinged-and stoop-shouldered. But even had he stood upright, he would have been no taller than medium height. Rachel had not seen her uncle for sixteen years and looked intently at him now. He was very different from the man she remembered. Could it be he?

He looked back at her from keen eyes beneath bushy gray eyebrows as she stepped toward him ahead of the others and curtsied with deep formality. And she recognized him at last. She remembered those eyes, which had always looked very directly at her. So many adults did not really see children at all.

"Uncle Richard?" She wondered if she ought to close the rest of the distance between them and kiss his cheek, but she hesitated a moment too long, and then it was impossible to do. Besides, he was a stranger to her even if he was her only known relative.

"Rachel?" He kept his hands behind his back as he inclined his head courteously but quite impersonally. "You resemble your mother. So you have married, have you?"

"I have," she said. "Just last week in Brussels, where I went before the Battle of Waterloo." She turned her head and smiled warmly as Jonathan appeared at her side. "May I present Sir Jonathan Smith to you, Uncle Richard? Baron Weston, Jonathan."

The two men exchanged bows.

"I was living with dear friends in Brussels before my marriage," Rachel said, "and since they were also returning to England this week, they were kind enough to give us their company here. May I have the pleasure of introducing them? Mrs. Streat, Mrs. Leavey, her sister-in-law, and Miss Clover, who was kind enough to act as my chaperon after I left Lady Flatley's service."

Bows and curtsies were exchanged.

"Phyllis and I positively insisted upon accompanying our young friend to your very door before proceeding on our way," Flossie explained, "though of course it was unnecessary to do so when she is now wed to Sir Jonathan and when she has dear Bridget to keep her company. But such is our fondness for her." Somehow she succeeded in looking both picturesque and weary to the bone, as if coming here had been a great ordeal and a noble sacrifice.

"We assured dear Rachel that Baron Weston would be vexed with us if we abandoned her as soon as we came to England's shores," Phyllis added with a gracious smile, like a queen conferring her notice upon a commoner. "Though I daresay you would not have been too vexed, since she is now a married lady. It is still hard even for us to believe, is it not, Floss- Flora? Such a whirlwind courtship and such an affecting nuptial service."

"Do have a seat, ladies," Rachel's uncle offered. "And you too, Smith. The tea tray will be arriving in a moment. I will have rooms made up for all of you. It is out of the question for you to continue on your way until you are well rested after your journey."

"That is extraordinarily kind of you, my lord," Flossie said. "I am not a great traveler and confess to being quite exhausted after a few days of being on the move."

"And I retch most miserably whenever only the flimsy boards of a ship stand between me and the deep blue depths," Phyllis said. "I suppose vomit would be a more genteel word, would it? But I am famous for my plain speaking, am I not, Flora?"

Rachel seated herself on a settee and Jonathan sat beside her. Their eyes met, a slight grimace in her own, a hint of laughter in his, though he had played the part of dignified gentleman very well so far. She hoped Flossie and Phyllis would not talk too much.

But she soon turned her attention back to her uncle. She gazed at him with troubled eyes. This was the tall, robust, laughing uncle of her childhood memory? Even given the fact that she had been very young and had regarded him from a child's perspective, he had surely changed considerably in sixteen years. He seemed ill. No, there was no doubt about it. He was gaunt and weary-looking.

She had expected that she was coming here to pit her wits against a robust, blustering, stubborn man-against someone she would feel justified in deceiving and defying. She resented the fact that he looked frail.

She was also disturbed by it, even a little frightened by it.

He was, as far as she knew, her only living relative, the only person who kept her from being all alone in the world. It was an absurd concern when her only contacts with him in twenty-two years had been those few days when she was six, and two letters since then, both of them denying her what she had asked for.

But she felt upset.

A LLEYNE WAS HAPPY TO BE IN ENGLAND. IT FELT LIKE home, even though he had no idea to which specific part of it he belonged. He also felt perfectly comfortable in his present surroundings, though they looked quite unfamiliar to him. So did Lord Weston, though he had wondered if perhaps the baron would recognize him. Matters would have been hopelessly complicated if he had, of course.

Weston was not at all what he had expected-a bluff and boorish bully. But invalids could be petulant and quite unpleasant, and Weston was clearly an invalid. However it was, Alleyne was feeling exhilarated by the challenge now that they were finally putting it into effect. The last couple of weeks had seemed interminable as his leg had healed sufficiently for him to travel.

But he could see that Rachel was looking disconcerted. It was understandable. This was her uncle, her only relative. He took her hand in his and set it on his sleeve before holding it there. Flossie was commenting on the beauty of the house and informing the assembled company that it reminded her of her brother-in-law's house in Derbyshire-Phyllis's brother's house, she must have realized suddenly.

"Would you not agree, Phyllis?" she asked, smiling graciously.

"I was having the exact same thought, Flora," Phyllis agreed.

"How are you, Uncle Richard?" Rachel asked, leaning forward slightly in her seat.

"I am well enough," Weston said as he lowered himself into a chair by the fireplace, though he looked to Alleyne more like a man with one foot in the grave. "This is all rather sudden, is it not, Rachel? You went to Brussels as Lady Flatley's companion. Did you already know Smith at that time?"

"I did," she said. This was all a part of the story they had invented, of course. "We met in London last year, not long after Papa's death. And then we met again in Brussels and Jonathan began to court me in earnest. When Lady Flatley decided to return to England before the Battle of Waterloo, Bridget offered me a home with herself and these ladies, her friends."

"Bridget is our dearest friend," Flossie said just in case Weston had not clearly understood that it was a particularly dear relationship.

"And she was my nurse for six years after Mama died," Rachel explained. "I was more than delighted to discover her again in Brussels and gladly accepted her invitation, especially when it was kindly repeated by Flora and Phyllis. And then Jonathan persuaded me to marry him before we came home."

Weston was looking consideringly at Alleyne, but before he could make any further comment the tea tray arrived. Phyllis settled herself behind it without a by-your-leave and proceeded to pour and hand around the cups and saucers.

"We all agreed, my lord," Bridget told Weston, "that I should accompany Lady Smith here since she is only very recently married. And then Flora and Phyllis could not resist coming too."

It still amused Alleyne to look at Bridget and see a pleasant-looking, respectable-seeming, youngish woman who just happened to speak in the same voice as the Bridget Clover he had known in Brussels.

Weston meanwhile had fixed his gaze upon Alleyne again.

"And you, Smith?" he said. "Who might you be exactly? Smith is a common enough name. There are some of good lineage in Gloucestershire. Are you one of them?"

"I doubt it, sir," Alleyne said. "I am from Northumberland, and most of my family has remained there for generations."

Northumberland was the farthest north they had been able to place him without putting him in Scotland.

He went on to explain that he had inherited a sizable and prosperous estate from his father two years before-but neither too sizable nor too prosperous, though Geraldine and Phyllis would have made him into a veritable nabob and Croesus all rolled into one if they had had their way. Alleyne, seconded by Rachel, had pointed out that he must be the sort of gentleman of whom Baron Weston would approve but not someone of whose existence even in remote Northumberland he would feel he ought to know.

He had gone to Brussels, he explained, because his cousin was stationed there with his regiment.

"And there I met Rachel again," he said, turning his head to smile fondly at her and curling his fingers beneath her hand as it rested on his sleeve. "I had not forgotten her. How could I? I fell head over ears in love as soon as I set eyes on her again."

It was interesting to see her blush and bite her bottom lip.

"I was never more affected in my life than by the sweetness of the romance developing before the watchful chaperonage of our dear Bridget," Phyllis said with a sigh, "and before the benevolent eye of Flora and myself, my lord."

"Sir Jonathan reminds me so very much of my beloved late husband, Colonel Streat," Flossie said, a handkerchief materializing in one hand. "He died a hero's death in the Peninsula two years ago."

Streat had been promoted to dizzying heights, Alleyne thought. He had started out two weeks or so ago as a captain, had he not? He hoped the ladies did not plan to be too expansive with their lies-not unless they had very good memories.

The baron set aside his empty cup and saucer.

"I am disappointed, I must confess," he said, "that Rachel saw fit to marry without first coming to me. I am well aware that she is of age and could marry whomsoever she chose for the past year and more. She certainly did not need my permission. But I would have liked to be asked for my blessing. And if I felt that I could give it, I would have liked to host the wedding here at Chesbury. But I was not consulted."

And so, Alleyne thought, he was starting at a disadvantage. He was being seen as a man whose passions had led him into an indiscretion. He had not brought Rachel home to England to marry, he had not taken her to introduce to his family in Northumberland, and he had not brought her here to Chesbury Park to seek a blessing from her uncle. Any sane person would wonder why he had done none of those things.

But then, Weston had never shown any real interest in his niece. His concern now was hypocritical, to say the least.

"Sir Jonathan is wondrously romantic and impulsive," Phyllis said, her hands clasped to her bosom. "Nothing would do for it, my lord, but there had to be a nuptial service in Brussels so that he could bring Rachel home with him as his bride. My dear Colonel Leavey is much the same."

"So was Colonel Streat," Flossie added. "He insisted that I follow the drum all about the Peninsula with him, summer and winter."

Ah, another colonel. And had not Flossie just claimed to be a poor traveler?