The Tutor (House of Lords) (10 page)

“Very well. You know why I have come.”

She batted her eyelashes at him and said in a false simper, “Why, no, Your Grace. I cannot imagine why you are here in my little parlor.”

He threw his hat down on the sofa in lieu of shouting. “What did Leo tell you?”

“Lord Sidney? He told me nothing—nothing more, that is, than he told me on Friday night at the Farringtons’.”

“But he has made you think the worst of me.”

“No,” she snapped, “you have done that all on your own.”

He took a deep breath.
Be calm
, he told himself.
She will never accept you if she doesn’t know the truth
. “May I tell you the story?”

She shrugged and dropped onto the sofa. “If you wish.” She gestured to the seat opposite her. He ignored her and sat down beside her.

“Leo—Viscount Sidney—has three younger sisters: Eleanor, Georgina and Maris. The last two are twins, and they made their come-out last year. I barely know either of them, but Leo was worried that they would not take, and asked me and the Earl of Stowe to do them a good turn, dance with them at balls and walk with them at parties, that sort of thing. But then Stowe married, and his wife found herself in a delicate condition almost immediately, and he was much occupied with her.”

“Yes, I know,” Cynthia said.

He had forgotten that she and the Countess of Stowe had been friends. “Of course. Anyway, I ended up escorting the girls all over the place for most of the Season, and Georgina—she is the more sensible of the two—saw it for what it was, a polite gesture by a friend of their brother. But Maris took it into her head that I was courting her, and when I didn’t propose to her at the end of the season as she expected she was rather put out. But then our paths crossed again at the Middlebury’s house party in September and she did something rather...foolish.”

“What?” Cynthia asked, clearly not caring that she had dropped her disinterested facade.

“Instead of arranging to be caught in a compromising position with me as any other smart debutante would have done, she tried to make me jealous by flirting with Lord Tamarline for two days. Then she came up with an elaborate scheme, the central point of which was that I would discover the two of
them
in a compromising position and fly into a jealous rage. Instead, Georgina told me about the plan and I broke it up, but in the process I gave Lady Middlebury the impression that it was I who had planned the assignation and not Lord Tamarline. It was all very embarrassing, though not bad enough to be strictly ruinous, and Lady Middlebury is a circumspect woman. But Leo has barely spoken to me since, and I suppose he still thinks the worst of me.”

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

Charles looked away. “Because he wouldn’t have believed me. I have a reputation as a...as a...”

“A rake?”

“Yes. And I think he was prepared to assume I was guilty. I have worked very hard to cultivate the impression that I am a shameless libertine, after all.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Miss Endersby,” Charles said, unable to keep from smiling a little, “I am about to let you in on a great secret: I have no talent for dissolution. For some men, drinking and carousing and visiting brothels is endlessly exciting, but I do not find it so.”

“Then why cultivate that image?”

“It suits my purposes,” he said. He could not tell her about Jacqueline, about the lengths to which he had gone to protect his half-sister. Not yet, anyway. He didn’t want to frighten her off.

“But I don’t understand,” she said. “You have hardly compromised my reputation any more than you did Lord Sidney’s sister’s. So why are you here?”

“You mean, why am I about to propose to you?”

“Is that what you’re planning to do?” she asked evenly. Couldn’t she at least have the decency to be a little flustered?

“It is.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons, Miss Endersby. First: because the incident with Miss Maris was not printed in every scandal sheet for days on end and bandied about town by every gossip with a tea-table. Second: because I didn’t want to marry her.”

“But you want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

She blinked at him. “Why?”

“You use that word with startling frequency,” he said. “I am beginning to dislike it almost as much as I dislike the word ‘duty’. I wish to marry you, Miss Endersby, because you are beautiful and intelligent and graceful—in short, you are all the things a duchess should be. But I must be frank: I also wish to marry you because it will preserve my family’s good name and yours.”

“I see.”

“So?”

“So what?”

Charles realized that he hadn’t actually asked her yet. He slid off the sofa and dropped slowly onto one knee. “Miss Endersby,” he said, feeling a little light headed, “will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

“No.”

He gaped at her. He opened and closed his mouth, but couldn’t quite make any sound come out. At last, he managed to stammer, “N-no?”

“That is correct. My answer is no.”

“But...whyever not?”

“Because I do not wish to marry you.”

Charles blinked a few times, wondering if he had somehow fallen asleep and was still sitting in the carriage having some sort of terrible dream. “I don’t understand.”

She gave him a look of mock sympathy. “I know,” she said in a pitiful tone, “but I think you will survive it all the same.”

He stood. “You cannot mean it.”

“I assure you I am in earnest,” she said calmly. “I will not marry you.”

“Your reputation will be ruined,” he said.

“I would rather that than punish a respectable man eternally for such a minor infraction. My answer is firmly, finally no.”

He looked down at his hands, then back up at her. What was the girl thinking? “If I went to see your father right now, would he give me the same answer?”

She smirked. “My father is away from home until Friday,” she said, rather too smugly, he thought. “He made it quite clear that he did not wish to be troubled with the matter until then,” she added, and the bright tone of her voice dimmed ever so slightly. They had had an argument about it, Charles realized. If her father was angry with her, then what was she playing at by refusing him? There were more forces at work here than he recognized, but there was still an avenue, an opportunity to change her mind. If her father was not back until Friday, that gave him a little time.

“Very well,” he said. She nodded and rose. “But there is still the matter of our agreement.”

She froze. For a moment she kept her gaze fixed on the doors, but then she sighed and looked down at him. “What of it?”

“You have agreed to tutor me, to help me prepare for the session. I cannot lose that—you have seen how much work there is to be done.”

She nodded, lips set firmly in a frown.

“So here is what I propose. There are six more Tuesdays and Thursdays until the Opening. Six days that you have agreed to give me, and it just so happens that there are six days until your father returns and I can press my suit.”

She sat back down, leaning against the arm of the sofa as if trying to put as much space as possible between them and folding her arms across her chest. It made her ample décolletage even more visible, which was inconvenient for him. “These things are all true,” she said.

“You and I will keep our afternoon appointments for the next six days. But that will do nothing to help your reputation, and I think you would rather preserve your standing in society if you can. Am I right?”

She nodded stiffly.

“My sisters and I will come up with a list of social events at which we can appear as a party. This will give the appearance that you and I are …connected in some way. It will quell some of the rumors, at least, though only the official announcement of our betrothal will silence them completely. At the end of the week, you will give me your answer to my proposal.”

“I have already given you my answer,” she insisted, but he held up a regal hand to silence her.

“You cannot imagine the consequences of refusing me,” he said.

“On the contrary,” she argued. “I believe I understand the consequences very well. I am simply prepared to accept them.” She looked so grave that he was inclined to believe her. Perhaps she thought she could escape the traps that were laid for women who lost their good reputations. But even she was not that clever.

“But wouldn’t it be easier to accept my proposal, to continue to live the life to which you are accustomed? You and I both know what happens to gently bred women without the protection of a family or independent means.”

“I suppose it would, Your Grace. But I have decided never to marry, and I mean to hold firm to that.”

He stared at her, trying to understand the jumble of thoughts whirling through his mind. When she held her chin like that and insisted upon her independence, it made her so frightfully attractive to him that he began to suspect there was something wrong with his brain. How could it be that with every refusal he only found her more appealing? He had never particularly liked strong-willed females, and yet he found this one so irresistible that he was convinced he would never be satisfied until she was his. “Miss Endersby,” he said, trying again, “I like you. I find you…attractive. And I want to help you. I don’t want to see you forced down that path. You understand, don’t you, that it would be very easy for me to force you into matrimony if I wished?”

She nodded.

“But that is not the kind of marriage I want. So I mean to give you a choice, to show you that ours would not simply be a marriage of convenience. Six days, Miss Endersby. Not even one week. Give me six days to show you that there is a better option than poverty and ruination. Please.”

And then he did something that was either very foolish or very wise. He reached out and took her hand. She jumped when his fingers brushed hers, but she made no other move. She looked up at him, and a small smile touched the corners of her lips. “All right,” she said very softly.

Ridiculously, his heart swelled. He took her other hand and pulled her close, and a moment later his lips were touching hers. It was only then that he asked himself what he was thinking, but then she shifted a little and kissed him back and he forgot all his scruples. His hands slid around her waist, pulling her even closer.

She made a muffled sound of protest and pushed him away, springing up off the sofa at the same time. For a moment she stood staring at him. She put one hand to her chest as though trying to catch her breath. “My sentiments exactly,” he said, rising. He glanced at his watch. It was half past twelve. “I will see you at Danforth House in an hour and a half.” Then he turned and strode to the door. But just as he reached it, he remembered the question he had meant to ask before her little smile had gotten the best of him. “Why did you agree?” he asked, turning back.

She looked evenly at him. “Because you said please,” she said.

He nodded and left without another word.

TEN

After the duke had gone Cynthia sat in the parlor for a long time, trying to plan her next move. First, she thought, she would get her hands to stop shaking. Then she would take several deep breaths. Then, when her mind was a little calmer, she would forget the way his lips had felt against hers, the firmness of his hands at her waist.

That was as far as her plan went. What happened next was a mystery.

She leaned back against the sofa. Why on earth had she agreed to his ridiculous plot? She knew why, though she didn’t wish to admit it to herself.

She wanted him.

If the confusion she had felt at the Farrington’s ball and her strange dream that morning hadn’t told her that, his kiss certainly had. Perhaps her father had been right after all, and the romantic novels he had forbade her in her adolescence but which had been sneaked to her by Clarissa had, indeed, warped her mind. As he had kissed her, all the legitimate arguments she had against agreeing to his foolish plan had flown from her head, replaced by thoughts of what his wooing her entailed. They would go to the theatre and balls and parties. He would say romantic things to her, would try to win her favor.

But at the end of it, she would still have to choose. Being wooed by him might be romantic, but could she really sacrifice every promise she had made to herself if she lost her heart to him? She felt as though she was standing at the bottom of a deep hole, with no notion of how she had gotten there. How had it come to this? She was faced with two equally repugnant choices: either she could marry him and save her reputation but not her soul, or she could leave her father’s house and take her chances in the wide world alone. Cynthia had always considered her powers of reasoning and logic to be exceptional, but she found herself at an impasse now.

Six days.

She had six days to make an impossible choice. She had bought herself time, but not the ability to decide, and she suspected that the choice would only be harder when the six days were up.

But she had made an agreement, and she would not now go back on her word. She might be risking her heart and her soul, but at least she could keep her honor. “But what good is that,” she said to the empty room, “when your belly and purse are both empty?”

She heaved a sigh, went out into the hall, and told Mallory to call a hackney.

Twenty minutes later she was standing on the street in Belgrave Square, looking down the drive to Stowe House. It was an impressive building, but that was not what gave Cynthia pause. The stately mansion was also the scene of one of the worst nights of her life—the night when she had revealed the terrible truth to Clarissa.

Cynthia walked up the drive, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. When she reached the door she almost lost her nerve, but she made herself knock, and when the butler answered she handed him her card. She waited for what felt like an eternity in the spacious foyer, and then Clarissa herself appeared on the landing above, looking rather flushed and smiling broadly as she brushed the wrinkles out of her skirts. She had been on the floor, Cynthia realized, playing with her twins.

“Cynthia!” she cried. “Do come up, dear, and meet the children!”

Feeling as though she were treading ankle-deep in water, Cynthia climbed the stairs. When she reached Clarissa, however, the other woman’s expression changed from one of joy to one of concern. “What’s happened?” she demanded.

This was precisely why Cynthia had come, to be asked this question, but now that she was facing it she felt a sudden urge to retreat. But Clarissa grabbed her hand and pulled her into the first room, which was set up as a study with two desks placed back to back before the windows. Clarissa guided her towards one, taking the seat behind it only after dragging over another chair for Cynthia.

“We work here together during the session,” Clarissa said, “but Anders is in the nursery now, and we shan’t be disturbed.”

Cynthia looked around again at the space where Clarissa shared her husband’s work. It was a cozy room, and it spoke to her of shared opinions, of respectful, thoughtful discussions, of two heads bent to a singular purpose. But there was something more, something about those two desk pushed so close together that two people sitting at them could probably reach across and touch each other. Perhaps they did.

“You love your husband, don’t you?” she asked.

A strange, faraway look came over Clarissa’s face, as though she were looking through the walls into the nursery. She looked so different from the serious, single-minded child she had been that she was almost unrecognizable. Where had this dreamy woman come from? “Very much,” she said softly.

Clarissa had found something very rare in her marriage. Cynthia wondered now if the duke would be the same sort of spouse as the Earl of Stowe. It did not matter, one part of her mind argued. But there was another part of her that cried out that she was wrong, that there was merit in his proposal. “Oh, Clarissa,” she said, “I am so sorry for barging in on you like this...”

“Nonsense,” Clarissa said. “I only wish you had come earlier. How you have managed to endure all this on your own I have no idea. Now, please tell me what has happened.”

“You were right,” Cynthia began. “He did propose.”

Clarissa smiled. “I am delighted to hear it,” she said, “though my knowledge of your character tells me that that is not the end of it.”

Cynthia laughed bitterly. “You know me better than perhaps anyone else on this earth,” she said. “You are right, of course. I have refused him, or tried to at any rate.”

“Tried to?”

“He and I have come to an...agreement.” And she told Clarissa about their bargain, about her father’s angry words—about almost everything except that sudden, surprising kiss.

“Oh, dear,” Clarissa said when she had finished. “This sounds dangerous.”

“Why do you say that? Don’t you trust my ability to withstand his charms?”

Clarissa laughed. “Not for a minute. And you know, I once made a similar wager with Anders.”

“How did it end?”

Clarissa held up her hands in a sweeping gesture that encompassed everything: the house, her husband, her life. “I think we both won,” she said.

“Something tells me my story may not have quite such a happy ending.”

“You might be surprised. Perhaps you will both get what you want.”

“What I want is to be free,” Cynthia insisted, “to be completely independent.”

“No it isn’t,” Clarissa said. “And it’s not what you need, either.”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard what you said. What did it mean?”

“I meant that you have never wanted to be independent. You have been a liberated woman your whole life, Cynthia. You have always made your own choices. But none of them have ever made the man you call father happy, have they? Nothing you have ever done has brought a smile to his face or made him proud. What you want, Cynthia, is to be
wanted
. And that’s all well and good. Being wanted feels wonderful, and if you chose, I think you could make the duke want you in a heartbeat. Roger Endersby saw to that, the monster. But it’s not enough. Having what we want doesn’t make us happy. Remember your Rousseau.”

“‘We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered once it is lost’?” Cynthia quoted.

Clarissa shot her a withering look. “‘We always seek our own good, but we do not always see what it is’,” she said. “You cannot see the forest for the trees, Cynthia.”

“Tell me then, oh philosopher-queen,” Cynthia shot back, “what is it I need?”

“Love.”

Cynthia almost laughed, or cried; she wasn’t quite sure which. “Love?” she finally managed to ask.

“Yes. Name me one person in this world who has ever truly loved you, and who you loved in return.”

“You, Clarissa.”

Her friend reached out and took her hand. Suddenly there were tears sparkling in her eyes. “Oh, Cynthia. Of course I love you. We are bound together, you and I, by an invisible tie that can never be cut. Our fates will always be linked. Our love for each other made us strong, strong enough to withstand even the terrible things that happened to us. Yet you seem to think that
falling
in love would make you weak. You run from it. Why?”

Cynthia could not answer her. She glanced away, and her eyes fell on the mantle clock. It was almost two. “I must go,” she said, and she rose, but Clarissa kept hold of her hand.

“Promise me you will try, Cynthia. Not for me, but for you.”

Cynthia had to think for a moment. Could she really make such a promise? “I will,” she said, and she meant it.

At six minutes past two, Charles heard the door. A few moments later, Partridge appeared with Miss Endersby in tow. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, looking rather flustered as she rushed in.

“Not at all,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I have completed the assigned reading,” he added, pulling out a chair for her. She sat.

“Good,” she said. “Shall we begin with the earliest?”

“No,” he replied. “I think I’d rather begin with the Rousseau.”

She looked at him so strangely that he almost asked if he had mispronounced the name. But if there was one thing he had excelled at, it was languages. His French accent was impeccable. It was something else that troubled her, but after a pause she said brightly, “Very well. What did you think of his social contract theory?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t understand it at all,” he groaned. It was true. He had muddled his way through all three of the books she had selected, but he had not been able to make sense of them. Perhaps it was because his mind had been otherwise occupied.

“Then I see why you wished to start with Rousseau,” she said, “since he is the simplest of the three.”

“Simple?” he demanded. “All that babbling about suffering and innocence and life being nasty, brutish and short?”

“I see you read the Hobbes as well,” she said. “It’s not babbling. The social contract is a vehicle for a larger discussion of human nature and the purpose of society. Why do human beings come together in groups? Why do we make laws? These are the questions these three hoped to answer.”

“And did they?” he asked, for he was certain he still didn’t know the answers to those questions, and he really had read all three books cover to cover.

“In their own ways. Thomas Hobbes, as you probably discovered, felt that humans were inherently bad and had to be controlled by a firm, absolute monarch. But he was writing during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when everything was uncertain. There were many great thinkers who felt that it was a dangerous business to dispose of a king, and even worse to have no one to put in his place.”

“Yet witness our current system. The king has virtually no power compared to Parliament,” he said, and when she smiled at him he knew she was pleased.

“Thus John Locke. He wrote later, when things had calmed considerably, which likely influenced his view that man is naturally good, that we will try to do our best for each other but fail because we lack the social constructs to succeed. So we form societies and make laws to protect the weak and innocent.”

“I suppose every Whig worth his salt has read this,” he said, picking up the book and waving it at her.

“You really aren’t convinced you made the right choice in joining them, are you?” she asked. Her question cut so close to the quick that for a moment he was not sure how to answer. But she saved him by picking up the third book. “Now, what does Monsieur Rousseau say about the matter?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “I believe his argument is that it doesn’t matter what our nature is. Whatever our wants and dreams, society expunges them to preserve order.”

“That is one way to read it, I suppose.”

“How do you see it, then?” he asked.

“We make sacrifices,” she said, “in order to show each other that we have value. But once we do, we transform that self-worth into a hierarchy, a tiered system where some are worth more than others. Men are superior to women, adults to children—”

“Dukes to commoners,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Would you be so reluctant to marry me if I weren’t a duke?” He was straying from the subject, but the question had been at the back of his mind since their interview a few hours earlier.

She looked levelly at him. “It has nothing to do with your being a duke or not,” she said, but then immediately, “no, that’s not true. Your being a duke certainly influences my choice.”

“But not in the way I would hope, I think.”

She laughed. “Perhaps not, but also not for the reasons you think.”

“Then what is the reason?”

She looked down at her hands. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” he said.

She stared at him for a long while, clearly considering. But then she picked up the book again. “Now, what does Rousseau have to say about inequality?”

She had almost told him. For the barest instant she had been convinced that he would accept it, that he wouldn’t mind when she explained that she was nothing more than an experiment, an unwanted, useless castoff from a great exercise in social theory. But then she had wondered if telling him she was worthless would make him see her that way, too. If she told him how little her father wanted her, would he cease to want her as well?

She could not bear it, not yet. She would tell him later in the week, when she was more certain what his reaction would be. Then she could be in control, could gauge the timing of her revelation for when it would have the most effect.

Now, as he told her about his meeting with Lord Brougham, she was asking herself what effect she wanted her story to have. Did she want him to be disgusted by her, to wish all connection between them severed? Foolishly, she found herself wishing for more time to make this decision.

“...but then I said that I thought we should also be considering the educational opportunities available—”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, realizing that she hadn’t been listening at all.

“I told Lord Brougham that I thought there should be provisions in the Poor Laws for greater educational opportunities for the poor and indigent, that children should not be denied learning to read and write simply because their parents cannot afford to pay for their schooling.”