The Earl's Practical Marriage Read online

  Laurel leaned back, too, following the line of his pointing finger. ‘So brave, singing its heart out, trying to touch the heavens.’

  She lost her balance and stumbled. The man caught her, turned her and stood, his hands cupping the points of her shoulders. ‘Dizzy? I have you.’

  Yes, yes, you do.

  There was something about him, something so familiar, so dear and yet so tinged with regret and sadness—and yet, surely she had never met this man before.

  She stood there, looking deep into the blue depths of his eyes, stood far too close, too long, his palms warm even through the thickness of her pelisse and gown. Then he took his hands away, as though freeing a captured bird, and, very slowly, giving her all the time in the world to run, he bent forward until his mouth met hers.

  It was the merest brush, a caress without pressure, without demand. He stood still, lips slightly parted as hers were, exchanging breath in a way so intimate she felt an ache of longing in her breast.

  Then he stepped back abruptly, his face as neutral and guarded as if they had never stopped talking about birds and landscape. ‘The horses will be rested sufficiently now. We had best be on our way.’

  Laurel blinked at him, dazed, then caught herself. She was behaving like some bemused village maiden when she was a sophisticated, experienced lady who had been kissed dozens of times. Well, six at least, by partners at local Assemblies and once, embarrassingly, by the curate emboldened after three glasses of the New Year’s Eve punch.

  She lifted her chin and walked away towards the chaise without a word, lowering her veil as she went.

  The postilions got up from beneath a hawthorn bush where they were sharing a clay pipe between them. Neither looked very happy at such a speedy return. Doubtless they thought she had disappeared for a prolonged period of dalliance, leaving them to their leisure, Laurel thought, thankful for the concealing veil.

  Although who vanishes into the countryside to misbehave with a chance-met stranger with their maid on their heels?

  It had been the merest chance that Binham had turned back in a sulk, the merest chance Laurel had almost fallen and he had caught her.

  Or perhaps she was being naïve and he had lured her out and unbalanced her on purpose. She certainly knew very little about dalliance, inside or in the open.

  The track wound its way downhill, the carriage lurched and swayed, and Laurel, searching for something to take her thoughts from that magical moment on the hilltop, could appreciate why the turnpike trust had given up on maintaining it and opened up the longer, gentler route. They passed other lanes, a few farms, and then after perhaps twenty minutes drew up on the level in a small hamlet in front of an old inn, sprawling under a canopy of trees.

  The horseman wheeled his mount and bent to speak to her through the window. ‘Here you may try the famous Sandy Lane pudding at the Bear Inn, as favoured by none other than the late Beau Nash himself, or press directly on to Chippenham. The roads are metalled again from this point so your journey should be smooth.’ He did not sound like a man who had just kissed a complete stranger on top of the Downs.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I will press on, if you would be so good as to tell the postilions.’ She did her best to sound as politely indifferent as he did. ‘I appreciate your suggestion and your guidance, it has saved me a long detour.’

  ‘My pleasure, ma’am.’ He touched his whip to the brim of his hat, then called out instructions to the men before urging the grey horse forward.

  ‘A small adventure,’ Laurel commented to Binham, who pursed up her mouth in response. An adventure and a lesson not to be so suspicious and grumpy. The chance-met stranger had been a not-quite-harmless Samaritan and only slightly a dangerous rake. She had no excuse for regretting his departure, she told herself firmly, resisting the temptation to run her tongue over her lips.

  * * *

  The Earl of Revesby shifted in the saddle and thought longingly of sinking into a deep, hot tub at the Christopher Hotel. But first he was going to see where the discontented traveller with the mysterious deep brown eyes and the glossy dark hair and the cherry-sweet lips was bound for. He dug into the pocket of his greatcoat, found the worn lump of pewter inside and turned it between his fingers, the infallible remedy for impatience, restlessness, nerves.

  Arthur, the big grey, named for the Duke whose nose resembled his, cocked up a rear hoof and relaxed, and his rider slapped his neck. ‘We’re both tired, a stable for you soon, boy.’ He had waited for the chaise to pass him, as patient as any highwayman in the shelter of a copse, then had followed at a distance all the way to Bath, driven by curiosity, arousal and a nagging sense of familiarity.

  What was he doing kissing a chance-met lady? His head reminded him firmly that, besides any other considerations, that kind of thing led to consequences which could range from a slapped face to a marriage at the end of a shotgun wielded by a furious father. But there had been a compulsion, a spur-of-the-moment irresistible impulse far louder than the competing voice of common sense.

  He’d had no difficulty ignoring the many lures thrown out to him on his way home from Portugal, yet now he had fallen victim to a pair of fine brown eyes. Again, he reminded himself savagely. He appeared to have developed a dangerous partiality for dark brown eyes and, given how much trouble simply smiling at the owner of a fine pair of them had got him into, it was madness to escalate to snatching kisses.

  As he watched, a footman hurried out of the elegant house on Laura Place, followed by a grey-haired lady who embraced the passenger almost before she set a foot on the ground. Neither of them looked round as the horse walked past down Great Pulteney Street. The irritable lady with the sense of beauty and the tantalising gaze was safe and he knew where she was. That was quite enough for one day.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Darling Laurel, here you are at last! Welcome to your new home, my dear. I expect you would like to freshen up a little before we have some tea—Nicol, show Lady Laurel and her maid to her rooms—and then we can be cosy and talk.’

  Aunt Phoebe, the widowed Lady Cary, spoke as rapidly as ever, Laurel thought. Slightly breathless after her first encounter in years with her mother’s sister, she followed the butler up two flights of stairs. She had been given a suite of rooms, he told her and she found it took up the entire floor—on one side a bedchamber and dressing room overlooking the garden at the back and on the other a sitting room with a view of Laura Place with its fountain in the middle of a railing-encircled patch of grass and shrubs. Behind the sitting room was a bedchamber for Binham, who was pleased to give it a stately nod of approval. Laurel took off her bonnet, gloves and pelisse, washed her hands and face then went back down again, leaving Binham to unpack.

  ‘Darling, is it all right?’ Phoebe picked up the teapot and began to pour the moment Laurel stepped into the drawing room. ‘I thought that apple green for the hangings in the bedchamber was appealing, but you must change it if you loathe it.’

  ‘It is delightful. All the rooms are.’ She took the cup and sat down. ‘I am so grateful and I will do my very best to be a good companion for you. You must tell me exactly how you want things done and how you would like me to go on.’

  ‘Laurel, what nonsense! I do not need a companion, not the kind I give orders to, that is. I am very happy to have your company and to give you a home, but I have more than enough to fill my life without having to take on a companion. What a ghastly thought, it makes me feel ancient. Although I suppose I am not quite a spring chick, although I don’t feel it, at least I do not when I have a new hat or go dancing or... Yes, dear?’

  ‘But Stepmama said that I could be of some use to you.’ Laurel studied her aunt, who looked younger than her sixty-odd years, highly fashionable and very active and lively indeed. A severe critic might murmur something about mutton dressed as lamb, or Chatterbox!, but that would be unkind, Laurel decided. Her aunt w
as clearly amiable and well meaning. She certainly was not the elderly invalid Laurel had been expecting. Had this journey been in vain and there was nothing here for her usefully to do and no chance of a new life? ‘She said that this was one place where I might be of some use to someone, in fact.’

  ‘Have a ginger biscuit. My sister-in-law is an old cat. I cannot imagine what your father, Lord rest him, was thinking of when he married her. How old are you, Laurel dear? Twenty-six soon? And I suppose she tells you that you are on the shelf, simply because your father’s dynastic plotting went awry nine years ago and now you are out of mourning she is too tight-fisted to give you a London Season and let you find a husband for yourself.’ Phoebe snapped a ginger biscuit between small white teeth.

  ‘I do not look for marriage, Aunt Phoebe. I had the chance, although I did not realise it at the time, and I made a mull of it.’ She and Giles between them. ‘He was in love—’ or, more accurately, in lust ‘—with someone else and I...I made rather a fuss about it.’

  That was putting it mildly. She had turned a family crisis into a full-scale district-wide scandal, ruined her own chances and drove Giles into exile in Portugal, of all things. And, inevitably, into disgrace with his father. ‘I expect Papa told you all about it at the time.’

  ‘Your father sent me an absolute rant of a letter about undutiful daughters, idiot youths and lamentations about the failure of his scheme to join the two estates. I could not make head nor tail of most of it. I was going to invite you to stay with me in town to get away from the fuss and botheration, but then your dear mother died and then my poor Cary and when we were all over the worst of that your father wrote to say he needed you to look after young Jamie... Oh, dear, I knew I should have insisted that you come to me.’

  ‘Jamie did need me. He was so devastated when Mama died—he was only five. And then Papa married again and... It was all rather difficult. Jamie did not take to Stepmama and she found him difficult to accept. I do not think she ever came to terms with him being illegitimate. I could not understand at first, but now I suppose she thought that if Papa could raise his late cousin’s son, then he might have a tolerant attitude towards infidelity, when of course, it was quite the opposite. He and Mama deplored Cousin Isabella’s actions, but they believed an innocent child should not suffer for them.’

  Not many people could, to be fair. It was a good thing Jamie had gone away to sea now he was old enough to be hurt by snubs and chance remarks about his mama, who had run off with her groom and who had died giving birth to their son. ‘It was all too much for a little boy,’ she explained. ‘He needed the stability of someone familiar to care for him. And then with Papa dying a year ago...’

  ‘He needed you for nine years? After a few months you could surely have employed a governess and then some tutors and freed yourself to live your own life. You could have married, dear.’

  ‘Jamie needed me. He was—is—very much attached to me,’ Laurel flared, on the defensive. Was this going to be like living at home all over again? Who would she marry when the whispers all around the area were that years ago Lady Laurel had driven away her suitor—a young man much liked in the district—and that her father had decimated her dowry in fury at having his plans thwarted?

  ‘Oh, bless him. So young to be leaving home to become a midshipman. It must have been a terrible wrench for him, poor little lad.’ Phoebe fumbled for a tiny lace-edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course it was.’ The ‘poor little lad’ had scrambled up into the gig, all five foot six of lanky fourteen-year-old, his precious new telescope clutched under his arm. He had immediately begun chattering to Sykes, the groom whose son was a second mate on a cutter, about life at sea and his ambitions and his new ship and how well he had done in his midshipman’s examinations.

  ‘...third in the geometry paper and second in...’ His voice had floated back down the driveway to where his stepmother Dorothy and Laurel, her handkerchief scrunched in her hand and a brave, determined smile on her face so he would not turn around and see her weeping, stood on the steps to wave him goodbye. But Jamie had not turned round, not for a second.

  His letter home, sent from Portsmouth just before he boarded his ship, was blotted, scrawled and bubbling with excitement. He’d met some of the other midshipmen—great guns all—and seen the captain, trailing clouds of glory behind him from his last engagement with the French, and as for the ship, at anchor in the bay, well, the Hecate was the finest thing afloat. It was capital not being tied down with boring lessons any more and having all the other fellows to talk to, Jamie wrote before signing his name. And that was the only reference to her.

  ‘I expect he is homesick and perhaps seasick,’ Laurel said, fixing her smile in place securely. ‘But I am sure he will recover from both soon enough.’

  Stepmama had been right. Jamie had not needed her, had not needed her for years. It was she who had used him as a shield behind which she could do more or less as she pleased, provided that did not involve straying more than five miles from home. And now she was not needed at Malden Grange at all. Her stepmother had the domestic situation firmly under control and did not welcome another woman’s finger in her pies—literally or metaphorically. And she had begun to make snide remarks about Laurel’s allowance now Jamie required fitting out and would doubtless need more financial support as he climbed the ladder of his new career.

  Her second cousin Anthony, now Earl of Palgrave, had been most gracious in allowing them to remain at home and not requiring them to move out to the Dower House immediately. He apparently enjoyed living at the original seat of the earldom, Palgrave Castle, on the other side of the county, but surely he would marry soon and might well want to move his bride into the more modern and convenient Malden Grange that her father had always used.

  ‘I only want to be of use,’ she had said and her stepmother had pointed out tartly that no help was needed and that if she thought she was going to turn into one of those do-gooding spinsters, setting up schools for dirty orphans or homes for fallen women, then she was not doing it at Dorothy’s expense or from under her roof.

  At which point it had occurred to Stepmama that Laurel had a widowed aunt in Bath. Bath was full of old maids, widows and invalids, therefore Aunt Phoebe, who was certainly widowed, was probably also an invalid. Laurel could go and be useful looking after her, she had declared. Lady Cary could well afford a companion, as it was common knowledge that both her father and her husband had left her well provided for.

  ‘And I do not want a husband,’ Laurel added firmly. She was too old and cynical now to be starry-eyed about men and she was approaching the age when no one would expect her to find a spouse. She would be that creature of pity, a failure, an unmarried woman, and she would be happy to be so, she told herself. Her judgement of character had proved disastrously faulty, now she had no wish to risk her heart and her future happiness. She had managed to hide away while she was at the dangerous age when everyone expected her to marry—now, surely, at almost twenty-six she was safe from matchmakers?

  ‘Really, dear? You do not want to marry? But you are so pretty and intelligent and eligible: it is such a waste. I will not despair and I will be very glad to have your company, of course, until some sensible man comes along and snaps you up.’ She leaned forward and patted Laurel’s hand. ‘Your home is here, dear, for as long as you want it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Laurel said with some feeling. It was reassuring to have someone who wanted her. ‘But I cannot live off your charity, Aunt Phoebe. If you required a companion, then of course, board and lodging in return would be fair, I suppose. But I do have my allowance from Papa’s estate and what Mama left me, so I can pay my way and share expenses.’

  ‘Bless you, child.’ Phoebe waved a beringed hand at the cake stand. ‘And eat, Laurel, you look ready to fade away.’ She cocked her head to one side and Laurel tried to return the beady loo
k calmly. ‘You are too pale and with that dark brown hair and eyes you need more colour in your cheeks. I expect a year in mourning has not helped matters. I have no children,’ she added with an abrupt change of subject. ‘My poor dear Cary always felt that very much, but he never reproached me. You, my dear, are as welcome here as my own daughter would have been.’

  ‘I am? But, Aunt...Phoebe, I do not know what to say. Except, if you are certain, thank you. I hardly know—’ It was impossibly good news. Welcome, a new home where, it seemed, she could be free to be herself. Whoever that was.

  ‘There is no need to thank me,’ Phoebe said with her sweet smile. ‘I am being a perfectly selfish creature about this. I have no expectation of keeping you long, whatever you say—there are too many men in Bath with eyes in their heads and good taste for that!—but I will very much enjoy your company until the right one comes along and finds you.’

  * * *

  ‘Our best suite, my lord.’ The proprietor of the Christopher Hotel bowed Giles Redmond, Earl of Revesby, into a pleasant sitting room overlooking the High Street. A glance to the right through the wide sash windows revealed the Abbey, basking golden in the early evening light. To the left the bustle of the High Street was beginning to calm down.

  ‘Thank you. This will do very well. Have bathwater sent up directly, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly, my lord. Your lordship is without a valet? I can send a man to assist with unpacking. Your heavy luggage came with the carrier this morning and has been brought up.’

  ‘My man will be arriving shortly.’ Dryden was with Bridge, his groom, bringing the curricle and team on in easy stages from Marlborough where they had all spent the previous night.

  The man bowed himself out leaving Giles to contemplate the unfamiliar English street scene below. The family had always stayed at the Royal York Hotel, higher in the city on George Street, but now that felt too much like coming to Bath as a child. Then he had been with his father on their visits to Grandmama on her annual pilgrimage to take the waters.