The Hazards Of Hunting A Duke (8 page)

for his horse. “I will speak with Miranda.”

“B ut how did you meet him?” Phoebe demanded for the hundredth time since they’d arrived home yesterday afternoon. “I don’t recall your being introduced.”

“Don’t you? I suppose it happened before Mother died,” Ava said as she quickly dressed to go out, her mind on an extremely urgent matter.

“No, I don’t,” Phoebe insisted. “I am certain I would have recalled it. And why should he ask for a place

on your dance card now? It’s not as if you are out in society, and even if you were, he rarely attends the balls. I don’t quite understand it.”

“There is nothing to understand,” Ava said. “He was just being kind. And really, we have far more important things to think about than that.”

“Perhaps you do, but I am rather curious,” Phoebe said, and looked up from her sewing.

“It seemed as if

he knew you.”

“Dear lord, will you please think of something else?” Ava said. “Think of a butler. We must have a butler

if we are to reenter society.”

No one argued, for the three of them were perfectly aware that every fine hous e in Mayfair had a full coterie of servants, and if a house did not have them, it was a foregone conclusion that the house no longer had its fortune. And if the poor souls of a house were thought to be without fortune, they were thought to be without prosp ects.

As it happened, they had reached the most desperate of moments several months ago, one that called for

the most unthinkable actions, but nevertheless, Ava and Greer had begun to slowly and steadily fill the

house with servants. They had done it by j oining the Ladies’ Beneficent Society, their only escape during their long months of mourning suffered under Lucy Pennebacker’s watchful eye. She was never far from their side, hovering about them like a vulture, taking her charge to look after them very m uch to heart—

she was fiercely determined to see after them and their virtues.

Their only way out was through charitable works, for even Lucy couldn’t object to that.

The society was

a group of women formed under the auspices of St. George’s parish church , whose function was to help those less fortunate than themselves. Each week, the ladies assembled to visit a small parish workhouse, where they took fruit and sweetmeats to the poor souls who had come from what the ladies assumed

were wretched dens of ini quity. In exchange for the fruit and sweetmeats, the parish wards were asked to listen to the ladies’ recitation of select Bible verses, and at the conclusion of the readings, to affirm that

they had dedicated themselves to leading proper, God -fearing lives.

Lady Downey used to laughingly say that this practice was the least the good church ladies could ask, being so astoundingly free of sin and poverty themselves.

The members of the Ladies’ Beneficent Society were delighted to see Ava and Greer among their number, and spoke fondly of Lady Downey and her wonderful sense of charity. It was something the girls had never really known about their mother. Honestly, Ava had believed it to be a soci al club.

At the parish workhouse—which was, surprisingly, situated behind the public stables on Portland Street, near the fashionable Regent Street —Ava and Greer handed fruit to the residents, read aloud the Bible verses, and shrewdly studied the inhabita nts when they weren’t working to appear very pious.

Through a series of visits to the parish poorhouse, they managed to convince a few carefully chosen

inhabitants to come to the Downey house on Clifford Street, where they would be given food and shelter

in exchange for their service.

The lack of wages, however, made it a difficult proposition to even the poorest of the workhouse’s denizens. Ava and Greer had managed to coax only three into their home.

Sally Pierce, a reformed harlot, had become their lady’s maid.

“But what if she is not entirely reformed?” Phoebe had fretted the first night Sally was in their employ. “Best hope that she is, darling, for we shall all be completely ruined if she is not,” Ava had whispered. They had also managed to retai n Mr. William Pell and his son, Mr. Samuel Pell, who had both been

injured in a horrible carriage accident. Mr. Pell the senior had lost a leg and therefore could no longer

light lamps, as was his profession. His son, an apprentice, had a mangled arm that hung at a strange angle

on his left side. But between the two of them, they managed to make one fairly decent footman.

The Fairchilds did not, however, have the services of a butler, and Ava could imagine nothing worse than

if someone were to call and be greeted at their door by Lucille Pennebacker. She was determined to

pluck a suitable butler from the ranks of the poorhouse at once, so that she might teach the lucky man a

bit about butlering before they reentered society.

She was preparing to do just th at when Greer stood. “Ava. Before you go, there is something I must tell you.”

Both Ava and Phoebe, who was working to hem a gown —she was altering old gowns to make them look new for their reentry —turned and looked at her.

“I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking about our situation, and…well, here it is: I’ve an uncle on my

father’s side to whom I believe my father’s fortune was bequeathed when he passed,” she said, clasping

her hands tightly together. “Uncle might be of so me use to us, for if I am correct, there are no other male heirs to whom the family fortune would naturally go. There is a good chance that I may be the sole heir. Therefore, I have written my uncle requesting an audience and I intend to make a plea that h e advance a bit of my inheritance now. An annuity or something very near to it, to help us make our own way. What

do you think?”

“It’s a marvelous idea!” Phoebe exclaimed at the same moment Lucy bustled in carrying an armful of

freshly laundered linens. “ Where is he, then? Berkeley Square, I should think —there are scads of elderly folk milling about there.”

“Who is at Berkeley Square?” Lucy instantly asked.

“Berkeley Square?” Greer asked incredulously, ignoring Lucy. “That’s not as much as a mile from here, Phoebe! Wouldn’t you suppose that were he in Berkeley Square, I might have called on him? No, no — he’s in the Marches, silly!”

“The Marches?” Phoebe cried, clearly taken aback. “Greer! You cannot possibly think to go there! It’s practically all the wa y to America!”

“No…but it is Wales,” Greer said with a thoughtful frown. “I’ve not seen it in some time.”

“You’ve not seen it since you were eight, Greer,” Ava reminded her as Lucy dropped the linens and gaped at Greer.

“But I’ve not forgotten it,” Gree r said quickly. “I have rather a good memory of it, actually, and a letter

with a direction in my mother’s things. I can make my way about.”

“Dear God, she is serious,” Phoebe said, aghast.

“I shall be away for only a few months,” Greer doggedly cont inued. “Perhaps three at the utmost. How long could it possibly take to reach Wales and then convince my uncle to loan me a bit of my own inheritance? I think it should be very tidy, really.”

“Tidy? Don’t be absurd!” Ava cried. “How do you think to even get to the Marches?”

“In a public coach…with Mrs. Smithington. She asked Lady Purnam for recommendations of a good traveling companion, and Lady Purnam thought of me.”

“Oh, I am certain she di d!” Ava exclaimed with great exasperation. Lady Purnam’s meddling in their lives had not abated in the least since their mother’s death.

“But it’s so far away!” Phoebe said.

“Don’t be a ninny, girl,” Lucy said harshly. “Let her go if she wants. She’

s got a proper traveling companion and it’s one less mouth to feed, isn’t it?” “Lucy!”

Phoebe cried.

“What, then, you think it is easy to feed you and the poorhouse rats underfoot on what Egbert allots?”

“Lucy, please,” Ava said irritably. “The parish pay s us five pounds per person to take them off the poorhouse rolls, yet you won’t allow them to eat more than a few potatoes —

”

“I suppose I should give them your food, should I?” she responded, just as irritably. “Let her go,” she said again. “When Egbert r eturns, you’ll all be gone,” she added ominously, and turned on her heel, quitting the room.

Her words sobered them all. No one spoke —they just looked at each other as the truth of Lucy’s words closed in around them.

“I leave on the morrow,” Greer said q uietly. “Mrs. Smithington desires to begin in Hertfordshire and leisurely make our way west.”

“Oh no,” Phoebe said, and a tear slid down her cheek. “I won’t be able to bear your absence.”

“Dear God,” Ava sighed, giving in, and moved to embrace her sister . Greer joined them, and the three of them held each other tightly for some time, whispering that they would reunite, that this would all one day

be behind them like a bad dream.

That afternoon, as Ava walked across town to the parish poorhouse, she struggled to hold on to her

belief that these were only temporary circumstances for them, that there would come a day again,

perhaps soon, when their lives would return to what they had always known. Ava had to believe it, for she had nothing else in which to believe.

And besides, she’d had another idea, something she’d been mulling over for several weeks now.

No one could possibly understand the weight of the responsibility she felt a long with her grief of losing

her mother, but she was keenly aware that as the oldest, she was the one who should look after Phoebe and Greer. She felt alarmingly unprepared to do that and terribly anxious about it—she fully expected

Lucy was right, that her stepfather would want to rid himself of the three of them quickly.

Worse, she had

no doubt that she would be the first to be offered up in marriage.

It was inevitable. It had been inevitable from the moment of her birth. But it had occurred to her—late one night as she lay awake worrying, as had become her habit —that if marriage was indeed inevitable, then wouldn’t she be wise to take advantage of her stepfather’s absence and shape her own destiny?

In other words, if she secured an offer for her hand —a proper offer—before her stepfather presented one to her, she could provide for Greer and Phoebe and thereby prevent them from suffering the same

fate as she, of having to marry before they were fully prepared to do so.

She really had no other recourse. S he was a woman. It wasn’t as if she could suddenly take up a trade and earn their keep, for God’s sake —or buy a commission in the Royal Navy, or inherit her mother’s estate, or invest the thirty pounds she kept hidden in a porcelain box.

Yet marriage! It seemed such an astonishingly huge proposition.

Lord God, how she missed her mother! Her mother would know precisely what to do.

Life had been so gay when she was alive —Mother embraced life and relished the soirées and dinners she attended, loved more tha n anything else to shop along Bond Street for clothing and accessories and

linens and furnishings for her house. She was always laughing, delighting in the tales the girls would bring back to her from the many assemblies they attended, matching them with tales of her own.

She’d been a good mother to them. She’d taken Greer in when she was eight, and while Ava’s father was alive, they had all lived at Bingley Hall.

In the summer, the girls would play in the meadow amid wildflowers and grazing horses.

During the long cold winters, Mother would organize plays for them to perform, and they would dance and sing for

Father, who always clapped enthusiastically for each and every performance. If they did their

schoolwork, they were rewarded with a trip to Mother’s closets to play among her many gowns and hats and shoes.

“Mind your manners and be a proper young lady, and one day you shall have as many gowns as this,”

she’d told them all, twirling around in the latest fashion to arrive from London.

“I shall make my own,” Phoebe would insist. Even at the age of six she’d had a love of needlework.

“Shall we all go to balls?” chubby little Greer would ask, and Mother would catc h her by the hands and twirl her around and reply in a singsong voice, “You shall attend balls and soirées and assemblies, of course! You shall be the toast of London, my darlings, and every man shall desire to marry you!”

But then she would grow sober an d sink to her knees so that she could look them square in the eye. “But you will promise me, won’t you, my dear lambs, that you will not be silly and fall in love, for marriage is

an act of combining money and convenience. Love comes afterward,” she’d add with a wink.

Of course they’d all dutifully promised, but Ava never really understood her mother’s reasoning. She believed her mother had truly loved her father —the days at Bingley Hall were halcyon days. Surely her father’s fortune hadn’t mattered to her mother. But Ava harbored no illusions about her mother’s second marriage. There was perhaps a bit of affection between her and Lord Downey, but love? All -consuming, heart-stopping love?

No, never.

It wasn’t until Ava came out into society that she un derstood what her mother had meant—several debutantes had married men who had matched them more in fortune and standing than in temperament. She could think of only two debutantes who had purportedly married for love, and their standing in

society had not profited from their unions. If anything, their status had been somewhat reduced.

But was that so terribly wrong? Was social standing more important than love? Ava couldn’t help wondering if a person’s life was not dramatically improved with a bit of genuine affection for one’s bedmate, regardless of wealth.

Her confusion on the matter was one of the reasons why Ava had never really settled on a particular

suitor. Now she was regretting her carefree life. Now she was worried what would become of them and feared the worst. She could almost hear her mother: “Now it is a matter of convenience, darling. Now it