The Earl's Marriage Bargain Page 10

  By his side was a tall, thin saturnine man who raised one hand in greeting to Ivo, then turned the gesture into a polite lift of his hat to Jane. ‘Good day, ma’am. Problem, Kendall?’

  ‘You gents know this man?’ the more belligerent chairman demanded. ‘He says he ain’t troubling this young lady and she says she’s his intended, but he said she was his sister and we’re worried about the young lady.’

  ‘Didn’t know you had a sister, Kendall,’ the chubby man said, peering at Jane. He, too, lifted his hat. ‘Don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, ma’am.’

  ‘I do not have a sister,’ Ivo said between audibly gritted teeth.

  ‘Clearly, our friend was merely exercising some discretion,’ the dark man said, rather too obviously kicking his companion lightly on the ankle. ‘This is a most respectable gentleman, I can assure you.’

  ‘He is, truly,’ Jane interjected before Ivo reached boiling point. ‘Thank you so much for your concern, it is most gallant of you.’ She smiled at the chairmen and gave Ivo a little nudge.

  He dug out something from his pocket and passed it to the two men. ‘Thank you for your concern. It is most encouraging that ladies in Bath can rely on such protection,’ he said tightly. There was a clink and they visibly relaxed as Ivo handed them the tip.

  Jane stood with the three men on the pavement and watched as they shouldered their carrying harness again and jogged off to answer the summons of an elderly lady who had just emerged from the direction of the Abbey.

  When she turned back Ivo was looking blank, the chubby man was clearly agog with curiosity and his companion was regarding Ivo with the air of a man waiting to be entertained.

  ‘Do allow me to present my friends,’ Ivo said. Jane was convinced she could still hear the gritted teeth. ‘Colonel Marcus Bailey.’ He nodded towards the thin man. ‘Captain Lord George Merrydew. Bailey, Merrydew, Miss Newnham.’

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Jane smiled and they bowed.

  ‘So!’ Lord George was almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. ‘Congratulations are in order, it seems. When is the happy day?’

  ‘It was just a mis—’ Jane said and clashed with Ivo.

  ‘It is not what—’

  At which point the two men waved at another who was balancing several brown paper bags in his arms. ‘I say, Pennington!’ Lord George hailed him as he crossed to their side, limping heavily. ‘Come and meet Miss Newnham who is about to make Kendall a far happier man than he deserves! Miss Newnham, ma’am, this is Captain Henry Pennington.’

  They were attracting attention now and Jane realised that a service must have just finished at the Abbey, for a stream of ladies was emerging from that direction, some with gentlemen by their side, some with maids in attendance.

  ‘Oh, Lord, there’s Mama with Lady Tredwick,’ Lord George muttered as two fashionably dressed matrons crossed to join them. ‘Never mind, Kendall, she’ll hear sooner or later, can’t keep news of nuptials from her for long. Mama! Lady Tredwick, ma’am. We were just congratulating Kendall here. This is Miss Newnham, his intended, the lucky dog.’

  He continued to prattle on, introducing Jane to the ladies, reminding them—quite unnecessarily, it seemed—that they’d known Ivo since his cradle and commenting happily on what a lark it was that he and Bailey and Pennington should encounter their old comrade in arms in Bath of all places.

  ‘Sold out, the lot of us,’ he finished by way of explanation to Ivo. ‘Pennington’s leg’s not up to it any longer, Mama wants me home now Papa isn’t so hale and hearty and Bailey’s inherited that pile in Northumberland from his great-uncle.’

  The ladies ignored him; both had their attention on another victim entirely. Jane swallowed and managed a polite bob of a curtsy, realising what a field mouse watched by an owl must feel like.

  ‘Miss Newnham?’ Lady Tredwick said. ‘One of the Norfolk Newnhams?’

  ‘Of Dorset, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh. Felicitations.’ Her smile was frigid. ‘This is a surprise. I had thought Kendall... But never mind that,’ she added hastily.

  ‘Er... That is... We are...’ She caught Ivo’s gaze, saw the almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. This was all too public. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Indeed, thank you for your good wishes, Lady Tredwick,’ Ivo said. ‘We are intending to keep it private at present. My father, you understand.’

  ‘You are not in mourning, however, Kendall,’ the other matron observed. She lifted her eyeglass, quite unnecessarily in Jane’s opinion—however short-sighted she was, she could not fail to see that Ivo was wearing buff breeches, white linen and a deep blue coat.

  Jane decided that she really must learn how to do that with her eyebrows. Lady Merrydew managed to combine disbelief, disapproval and reproof all in one elegant arch.

  ‘My grandfather’s wishes, Lady Merrydew.’

  ‘No doubt we will have the opportunity to see more of Miss Newnham in due course. You are staying in Bath?’ Lady Merrydew’s gaze seemed to assess, price and judge everything from the crown of her bonnet to the tips of her practical boots.

  The owl was about to swoop. Jane swallowed. ‘No, ma’am. With my cousin, Miss Lowry, in Batheaston.’

  Why couldn’t I think of some convincing lie? Too late now.

  ‘Miss Lowry? I do not think that I have the pleasure of her acquaintance. I regret that we are due elsewhere and cannot continue this enlightening discussion. George, you will accompany us.’

  ‘Mama.’ With a jaunty wave Lord George followed his mother, his friends at his heels.

  Jane looked around and found they were alone again outside the shoe shop. ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘That hardly begins to cover it,’ Ivo said grimly. ‘We need to talk and the urge to dive into the nearest inn and drown myself in gin is too strong. Respectable tea will have to do.’

  He raised his cane and gestured to a pair of chairmen. ‘The Assembly Rooms.’ He handed Jane into the chair and the door was closed before she had the opportunity to say more. Jane sank back against the rather lumpy upholstery as the chair lurched and then settled and the men set off on the long uphill climb.

  This was a hideous situation, there was no pretending otherwise. No gentleman could have stood there in public, in the presence of the lady concerned, and announced that he was not betrothed to her—it was up to the lady to laugh lightly and explain that it was all a foolish misunderstanding or a joke. If she’d had rather more social experience, she could probably have pulled it off, Jane knew. As it was, she had hesitated and stammered and had presumably looked the picture of a lovelorn young woman whose secret had been discovered.

  The ladies would probably not waste an instant in finding a copy of the Landed Gentry and scouring it to see just who this Miss Newnham of Dorset was, she who had so improbably captured the heir to a marquess.

  It was her fault that Ivo was in such a fix and it was up to her to repair the damage, because the thought that he might find himself honour-bound to make the betrothal real made her feel quite ill with embarrassment. He must despise her and she could not blame him. In fact, she decided, plunging into total gloom as the chairmen paused to cross George Street and tackle the final climb up Bartlett Street, Ivo probably suspected she had been planning something like this from the moment she discovered who he was.

  * * *

  Jane virtually tumbled out of the chair when it halted in front of the Rooms. She had no idea whether the tea rooms were open when there was no Assembly in progress, but Ivo seemed confident enough when he paid the chairmen and turned to the open front door.

  ‘Hopefully it will be quiet at this hour.’

  ‘I will write to them, all of them,’ she gabbled as he swept her inside without a pause. ‘I will explain that it was just to reassure the chairmen and get us out of an awkward situation. I know I should have said something at once and that
you could not, but I—’

  ‘Shh,’ Ivo said. ‘Take a deep breath, sit down here.’ He glanced around the tea room. Only three other tables were occupied, all by parties of ladies deep in conversation and none of them close enough to overhear. A maid arrived before they could even take their chairs. ‘Tea for two and cake. A selection,’ he added with a glance at Jane.

  ‘I panicked,’ Jane admitted the moment the girl had gone. ‘I should have explained the moment I realised they had overheard. I will write to the ladies,’ she repeated. ‘Tell them all about the chairmen.’

  ‘It was not your fault.’ For a man who had found himself accidentally betrothed in the middle of Bath, Ivo was looking remarkably calm, if serious. Perhaps it was shock. ‘I should have squashed George the moment he bounced up.’

  ‘If you had not been so cross with me about the shop then we would not have been arguing and the chairmen would not have thought I needed rescuing and none of it would have happened,’ Jane said, determined to accept her full blame.

  ‘And if we could all foretell the consequences of every action nothing would ever be done,’ Ivo retorted.

  ‘Yes, but usually one’s actions do not lead to anything so ghastly happening.’ She broke off to smile her thanks to the maid who set the tea tray on the table and walked away slowly, clearly agog to hear more about the ‘ghastly happenings’.

  ‘I am sorry if the prospect of marriage to me is so distasteful.’ Ivo disposed of a blameless jam tart with a snap of white teeth.

  ‘If I were not resolved to remain unwed and if our ranks were not so disparate that I would spend my entire marriage trying not to disgrace you and if we did not spend so much time arguing, then I am sure that marriage to you, my lord, would be delightful,’ Jane said crossly as she pushed a cup of tea across the marble table top without too much care not to slop any into the saucer.

  Ivo’s lips twitched into his almost-smile and he licked a crumb of pastry from the lower one.

  He does have very good teeth, Jane mused. And a well-formed mouth.

  She was thinking as an artist, of course she was, she told herself. But the sight of those lips brought back the memory of that fleeting kiss, of the taste of him, and she felt herself blushing.

  ‘The matter would be dealt with perfectly simply, as you say, with notes from you to the ladies and by me having a word with my erstwhile comrades in arms.’ Ivo was looking at her face, which did nothing to help the blush subside.

  ‘But? There is a but, isn’t there?’ Jane eyed the cakes and decided that she had no appetite.

  ‘Eat,’ Ivo said, correctly interpreting the glance. ‘You need sugar. Lady Tredwick is an old friend of my grandfather. A very close friend. Apparently, they still meet weekly to play cards and assassinate the reputations of all their acquaintance, or so Partridge, our butler, informs me. Not quite in those words, but you get the gist. I imagine the first thing she will do when she arrives home is to pen a note demanding to know why he has not informed her of my betrothal.’

  ‘Then you need to reach him first and explain,’ Jane said. ‘What is the time? Is there long before your groom brings the phaeton around?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Ivo said, with a glance up at the clock at one end of the long room. ‘Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. My grandfather is, understandably, anxious about the succession and he is urgent in his desire to see me married. In fact, he has as good as arranged a match, although fortunately I was able to stop him before matters progressed too far. I have not met the lady concerned and I most certainly do not want to find myself committed before I have any idea whether we may suit.’

  ‘Goodness, how awkward for you. The Marquess seems to be a very, um, commanding figure.’

  ‘He’s an old tyrant who has had no one to say him nay for decades,’ Ivo said ruefully. ‘He and I will lock horns sooner or later, but I’m conscious that he has had a difficult time lately with my father’s death, not that he’ll admit to it. I do not want to make things worse just now.’

  ‘Therefore the sooner you explain about me, the better.’

  ‘Yes. However, when he first raised the matter of Miss—of the bride he had selected for me—I told him that I had met a young lady, was uncertain of the nature of my feelings for her and needed time to decide whether to propose to her or not. I told him, when he probed, not your name, but that you were from a gentry family.’

  ‘You were uncertain of your feelings for me?’ Jane stared at him, teacup halfway to her lips. ‘Me?’ It came out as a squeak.

  ‘The feelings I was unclear about, as I am sure you realise, were a choice between amusement, exasperation or panic,’ Ivo said. ‘But it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment and had the virtue of being true, even if my grandfather chose to read more into it than I actually said.’

  Jane put down her teacup with a rattle and stared at him. It was not often that she found herself speechless, but this... The shock of thinking, even for a few seconds, that Ivo meant he was falling for her, was considering proposing, was literally breathtaking. Not that she wanted him to, of course not, but even so... And then he had tossed out words that were as bracing as a bucket of cold water over her. She amused him and exasperated him.

  Not as much as you exasperate me, my lord.

  Now her brain was working again she could see why Ivo was so concerned. ‘Lady Tredwick meets your apparent betrothed, who, she quickly realises, is no member of the aristocracy. We are both flustered, you say we had not intended to announce the betrothal yet. When your grandfather hears that, then he is either going to assume that I am the lady you told him about and will take a poor view of you changing your mind virtually the moment you propose or he will conclude that you have two young gentlewomen dangling and that you are not behaving in a gentlemanly fashion.’

  ‘Or he will realise that I was inventing a story to thwart his well-meant plans for my future. Oh, and dangling after innocent young women in the process,’ Ivo said leaning back in the spindly chair and gazing at the ceiling as though expecting celestial guidance. ‘Ah well, nothing for it but to make a clean breast of matters. I will go and confess all, with your permission. I shall have to tell him the entire story of our journey together, but you may trust him entirely to be discreet about your identity.’

  ‘I had better come with you,’ Jane said. ‘He is not going to be very trusting if you produce an even more unbelievable tale than the first one about your confused feelings for some country gentleman’s daughter.’

  ‘It would make you far too late returning to Batheaston,’ Ivo protested. ‘Besides, this is entirely my problem.’

  ‘Aargh!’ Jane threw up her hands, making the maid, who was approaching with a fresh jug of hot water, shy away. ‘This is exactly what I meant about not wanting to marry. Men are so unreasonable when you get a notion into your heads. This is our problem, not yours alone. It was my decision to pull you into the chaise, my misjudgement when I said to the chairmen that we were betrothed instead of supporting you and pretending to be your sister. My fault that I did not immediately correct the impression that the ladies and your friends formed.’

  Ivo had that stubborn expression again—he certainly had the jaw for it. He was not going to allow her equal blame in this, or an equal part in setting it to rights. She tried another tack. ‘Besides, when Lady Tredwick looks up my family, as she surely will, she cannot fail to find the Dorset Newnhams with a daughter of my age called Jane. We, together, must tell your grandfather everything and then he, surely, can control Lady Tredwick’s propensity for gossip?’

  ‘But not today,’ Ivo said. ‘I will take you back to your cousin, then attempt to convince Grandfather that this is all a complete misunderstanding by telling him everything. If he still will not accept it, then I will come and collect you. He cannot fail to take a lady’s word on the matter.’ He gestured to the maid for the reckonin
g. ‘What will you tell your cousin?’

  ‘Everything,’ Jane said with a sinking heart. ‘Everything except my plan to be a painter.’

  Ivo made a sound suspiciously like a growl.

  Chapter Nine

  First thing the next morning Jane asked permission to drive into Bath again with Charity the maid as chaperon. She would confess the previous day’s dramas when she had the facts about the painting scheme. Violet, frowning over a letter from her sister, nodded vague agreement. ‘Match me some of the lilac embroidery silk would you, dear? Hopkin’s Haberdashery just off Milsom Street, Charity knows it.’

  Hopkin’s shop proved to be next to an elegant jewellers. Jane sent the maid in to buy the silk and announced airily that she would enquire about having a loose clasp repaired. Ten minutes later she emerged from the shop, clutching her reticule and decidedly shaken. The diamond set was, the jeweller said, not diamonds at all, but a very nice example of paste and would deceive anyone without a loupe to their eye. The pearls were just the thing for a young lady, but worth perhaps twenty guineas. Her nest egg was nothing of the kind.

  Perhaps the shop rent would be very cheap, given its condition, she told herself, bundling a surprised Charity into the carriage and telling the driver to take her to Milk Street. It was certainly very low, the agent informed her, given the small size and poor condition. A positive bargain, in fact, he said, quoting an amount that made her gasp.

  ‘This is Bath, madam,’ he said reproachfully as she stared at him. ‘A bargain, I assure you.’

  Jane did her calculations in the carriage driving back. Rent, repairs, redecoration, equipment, advertising, a maid, her own maintenance. It was impossible. Ivo had been right and thank heavens she had thought to check before she did anything irrevocable like sign a lease. She sat in the corner, staring at the figures until they blurred, gloom creeping over her, yet, strangely, she did not feel as disappointed as she would have expected. In fact, it was almost a relief.