A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (27 page)

And she was off with the bit well between her teeth and running, but Antigone could find no fault. The sooner Cassie became engaged, the sooner Antigone could make sure her own spurious engagement was irrevocably ended.

“I’ll see to the carriage, Mama, and you may be sure I will see to it that everything is just so.”

“The old landau will serve? Oh, would that we had a barouche—”

“Mama, the landau will answer perfectly. I will see that it is spotless.”

Antigone wanted to think she had a part in the visit, that this invitation from his mother was something else Will Jellicoe had engineered with her in mind, but it could not be true. He was going away soon, and would have no reason to introduce her to his mother.

But Cassandra, on the other hand, had every reason to hope. Antigone was more than pleased to see Cassie was happy. “There, you see.” She pulled her sister to her in a fierce hug. “It is just as I said it would be. You may just be happy, and be your lovely self, and all will be perfect.”

“Perhaps,” Cassandra hedged, but she was still smiling. “I can more easily be myself when you are with me.”

“I think you can more easily be yourself if Viscount Jeffrey is with you.”

And so it was. The next afternoon, the Prestons’ ancient but well-maintained landau took them the six miles from West Sussex into Hampshire, and through Downpark’s perfectly tended gates in perfect time.

They came upon the tall, elegantly balanced, seventeenth-century redbrick building from the rear, where Viscount Jeffrey awaited their arrival under a cool, colonnaded portico.

“Mrs. Preston, Miss Preston, Miss Antigone,” he greeted them as he handed them out of the carriage himself. “Welcome to Downpark.”

They were conducted up to the oldest part of the house, where the lofty drawing room done up in elegant, fresh green overlooked an incomparable view of the downs. There, beneath the rows and rows of grand paintings lining the walls, the Countess and Lady Claire awaited them.

“Mama.” Viscount Jeffrey did the honors. “May I present to you Mrs. Preston, Miss Preston and Miss Antigone. My mother, Countess Sanderson.”

The Countess Sanderson was a tall, elegant white-blond woman with something of her second son’s wide blue eyes, and all of his easy charm. “Welcome to Downpark, Mrs. Preston. I am very pleased to meet you. Do come sit with me. My daughter and sons have been full of nothing but praise for the Misses Preston, and I am glad of the chance to meet you all. I have felt quite deprived of my share of the acquaintance.”

“You are very good, my lady.” Mama was at her most gracious, but she had none of the countess’s natural warmth.

It was easy to see from whom the Jellicoe children inherited their lively sense of fun. “I believe my daughter, Lady Claire, is known to you all, as well as my other sons, Commander Jellicoe and Master Thomas.” The Countess Sanderson included them all under the warm sun of her smile. “I am glad the weather has held fine today. I felt we should all begin to float away if it rained too much longer. One felt when ordering the carriage that one ought to ask for an ark instead.”

They all smiled and made polite murmurs of assent, while Antigone devoted her attention to examining the toes of her shoes, lest she give herself away. Because the moment he had walked through the door to the drawing room, Will Jellicoe had captured every last living shred of her attention, and played havoc with her composure, by bowing very correctly, and then looking up at her and winking.

The day might belong to Cassie and James, he seemed to say, but there is no reason why we may not have some small measure of fun to ourselves.

Antigone was saved from her impulse to run to him by Lady Claire, who patted the chaise next to her in courteous invitation. “Miss Antigone, come sit with me. Thomas tells me that you and he hunted with the Ditcham yesterday, and he has been telling famous tales of your jumping. You must tell me about this saddle of yours, for I am dying to go out with a hunt.”

“A friend of my late father’s directed me to a very able saddler—a Mr. Acton in Melton Mowbray—and I arranged it by correspondence with him. I think there are probably many ladies there in Leicestershire who hunt and jump, for Mr. Acton altered my saddle easily enough with the addition of an extra horn that steadies my seat enough for jumping.”

She kept her gaze focused on Lady Claire, but all of her other senses were attuned to Will Jellicoe strolling slowly across the room, for all the world as if he were out for a promenade at Brighton, and not coming to stand directly behind his sister, where Antigone could see his every move, and read his every mischievous expression.

He looked stunningly handsome in his black wool coat, blindingly white linen, and golden waistcoat that brought out the burnished qualities of his bright, cropped hair. He kept himself quiet, letting Claire and Thomas direct the conversation around riding and horses, and the necessity of having a mount that one considers one’s own.

“It’s difficult to always be underestimated,” Lady Claire was complaining.

“You’re not underestimated, you’re just not that good,” Thomas said uncharitably.

“Yes, but I can’t get any better if I’m always being underestimated. What I need to do is pick my own horse, based on—”

“But you don’t have enough experience to choose—”

“And around and around it goes. What do you think, Will? You’re not like Thomas and Father. You don’t underestimate ladies at all from what I can see.”

“But he doesn’t ride,” was Thomas’s complaint.

Antigone tried to attend to the conversation, but it was a trial to sit, and try not to look, and try not to think about Will Jellicoe five feet away from her, especially because she was supremely conscious of her mother’s narrow, perceptive gaze monitoring her every move.

She was, however, able to take some pleasure to see that Cassie, for all her professed nerves, was doing very well with Viscount Jeffrey. Granted, all her sister had to do was smile dazzlingly at the young lordling whenever he addressed his gaze to her. The young gentleman was obviously smitten.

It was almost painful to watch, and know that she and Will could not be smitten. To know that however much Cassie would be allowed to walk out with Viscount Jeffrey, and ride alone in carriages with him, Antigone could not enjoy the same freedom.

“Now, Miss Antigone.” The countess recalled her attention with a kind smile that was not quite mirrored in the careful expression on her mother’s face. Up close, Antigone could see the delicate cobweb of tiny lines around the countess’s eyes had been woven there by mirth and not disapproval. “I have heard much of you from my son and daughter,” she said with a kind smile. “What a lovely tall girl you are.”

“Thank you, ma’am. One does one’s best.”

“Antigone!” Mama never did understand her humor. It had always been Papa who laughed and patted her shoulder and appreciated her wit.

“She is but eighteen, my lady.” Mama trotted out her old lie again as excuse, but to what purpose, Antigone could still not fathom. “And not much used to company.”

“Claire will be eighteen soon, as well.” The countess met the information with another easy, gracious smile. “We must have her out, Mrs. Preston,” she insisted politely. “Such beautiful daughters need to be shown to the world. And I understand from my son James, Viscount Jeffrey, Miss Preston relies much upon her sister for company.”

“Yes, my lady.” Cassie spoke up softly, but quickly, before their mother could interject. She had evidently recovered from her terror of Countess Sanderson and was now all steadfast loyalty. “I am often … shy of strangers, and … she is my … greatest comfort in company.”

“Exactly how a sister should be. I am sorry the time of the year will not afford the young people many more parties before we go up to London for the Season,” the countess added as she turned back to Mama. “But perhaps we will think of something as all the young people seem to have found great pleasure in each other’s company.”

“That is very good of you, my lady. But perhaps we will be able to see you in Town after all, for we have the great pleasure of going to Town ourselves this year.”

“Mama!” Cassie could not contain her surprise at this announcement, and Antigone was happy to note that for the first time her sister seemed to like the idea of going up to London instead of spending the spring quietly in Sussex.

“Indeed, it is all arranged. We have the honor of being invited to stay with Lord and Lady Barrington in Dover Street, in celebration of my daughter Antigone’s engagement to Lady Barrington’s brother, Lord Aldridge.”

Chapter Sixteen

The news was greeted with a stunning lack of celebration. No one said a word. Not even Mama, who had tossed her bomb, and now sat watching it explode with such devastating result.

Antigone felt nothing and everything all at the same time. She was numb with the wretched heat searing her lungs—filling them up until she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t speak. But she could hear the gasp of shock from those closest to her, and she could see Will draw back, away from her, as if she were a viper, and he had just been struck by her poison.

He stepped away, moving behind her where she could not see him. Slowly backing away from her, withdrawing all of his mirth, all of his charming comfort. Taking all of her air and sunlight and will to endure with him.

“Is it true?” Lady Claire asked in a shocked whisper. “But he’s so old.”

“Claire,” someone said. Was it Viscount Jeffrey?

“Lord Evelyn Aldridge?” Lady Sanderson inquired carefully. “Well, I must say that it is past time. And it has taken such a lovely girl to have tempted him out of his bachelorhood. You have my most sincere congratulations, Miss Antigone.”

“Yes, congratulations,” Viscount Jeffrey echoed.

And then they were all chiming in, too polite to say anything less.

“I hope you will be very happy,” Claire added, though her worried eyes showed she could not mean what she said.

And then his voice from somewhere behind, low and quiet, and all the more cutting for its serene calm. “You are to be congratulated, Miss Antigone. And to think I worried that you did not know what you were doing.”

Antigone could say nothing, nothing without exposing them all to a scene of the most distressing sort. But she could not sit on her hands while Mama played fast and loose with the truth. “Mama. You should not say— Nothing has been settled or agreed upon.”

But Mama knew exactly what she was doing. She ignored Antigone, and addressed herself to the countess. “All settled, but indeed, my lady, I am almost ashamed at how long it took to come to an agreement. But nothing could be decided, of course, while we were in mourning.”

“Of course. My condolences on your loss.”

“You are very kind.” Mama reached out to pat the countess’s hand. “But I am happy to say that things are settled at last. It is such a comfort at my time of life to have a daughter so well provided for.”

Every word was a well-aimed dart that spread its poison. Every word drove Will Jellicoe farther and farther away, until at last he was quietly able to quit the room, and she could see him no more.

And Antigone knew that nothing, nothing, not even the happiness of a most beloved sister would ever make up for the tearing, searing pain in her chest that was the irrevocable rending of her heart.

*   *   *

Well, damn him for an arrogant fool.

Lord Aldridge. All this time—all this time that Will had been with her, holding her and kissing her and thinking about a hundred and twenty-four ways of having her—she had been engaged, or about to be engaged to Aldridge. And there Will had been, dashing about the countryside thinking he was saving her. Clearly, she had no desire to be saved.

And yet, she had said, “He is nothing to me,” with such feeling, with such desperate determination, he could not reconcile the words with the inconvenient fact.

They haunted him, those words, echoing around in his head all that day and night like the ghost of a dead friend, until he felt he must leave Downpark, or go mad.

While his family, under the direction of his mother, packed themselves into the traveling coach for London, Will fled to a safer port in this particular storm—and no port was safer to him than Portsmouth. He told himself he was glad of the trip. He told himself that he should have made it sooner to try one last time to exercise any influence to his benefit that could be found among his friends, former shipmates, or fellow officers in the navy, before he sold his soul to the devils of the British East India Company. He told himself he would take the first commission that came on offer and forget her.

What he found was sobering. The Royal Navy Dockyards, which had until recently always been the scene of great bustling activity, were like a ghost town. The wharves and sally port were silent and empty, and the anchorage in the harbor was full of stripped-down vessels being put in ordinary rather than being readied to go to sea. The reductions in men and materiel were drastic. With the exception of one or two of his former captains who were still so fortunate as to be at sea in their ships, every man jack Will knew in Portsmouth had been living rough and hauling sharp in boardinghouses or decrepit inns, subsisting on half-pay and half-rations, and the occasional beneficence of a public who rarely remembered Trafalgar.

What Will learned was that not everyone was as lucky as he—lucky to have a family to rely upon to put food upon the table, and keep the bill-collecting wolves from the door. And damnably lucky to have found an offer of potential employment in the Indies trade.

“By God,” his friend Marcus Beecham told him when Will ran him to ground in his cramped rooms off Portsea Street. “If I were you, I would be on my hands and knees, begging my father the earl to go see the Viscount Melville in Whitehall, or his drawing room in Mayfair, or wherever it is the First Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty is to be found these doleful days, and see what the old man could turn up for you. And then, when you get a command, you can take me on and give me some damned employment.”