A Marriage of Inconvenience (10 page)

He smiled and shook his head. “You do not know how great are the hardships you would face. While I am sure that your husband would never wish to be deprived of your company, if he truly loved you, he would leave you here, where you would not be subject to so many shocks and dangers.”

She sat up straighter. “I am certain my cousin Alec loves his wife, and he would never leave her behind. She would never allow it.”

“An entirely different case. She is a colonel’s daughter and has never known any other kind of life.”

“So you do not think a woman would endure trifling hardships for the sake of love, unless she had grown up with that sort of hardship?”

“I am sure that she
would,
but I do not think she
should.
”

Anna sighed. When she was an officer’s wife, she wanted to be part of her husband’s life, not to remain eternally behind, keeping up her home or visiting friends. She wasn’t sure she wanted to do as Alec’s wife Helen did, and travel with the army on campaign, but surely she need not stay in England. Some of the officer’s wives who had sailed with Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army meant to take up lodgings in Lisbon. Perhaps she could do the same.

They sat in uncomfortable silence, the first they had endured in their acquaintance. After a moment Lieutenant Arrington cleared his throat. “What is that portrait Lucy and your uncle are examining so intently? Is that your mother?”

She smiled, glad for the change of subject, and was pleased to see Uncle Robert and Miss Jones standing before the mantel, talking quietly but with animated gestures. “Yes,” she answered. “My mother and James, painted in ’86. We have a Reynolds of Father, too, but it’s in the gallery.”

“Is there a portrait of your mother and you together?”

She shook her head. “No. She—she died the day I was born.”

“How very dreadful! I’m sorry I spoke of it. I hadn’t known.”

“You couldn’t have, and it was so very long ago. I wish I had known her, but my aunt is very much a mother to me.”

He inclined his head. “I thought so.” Aunt Lilias chose that moment to join Uncle Robert and Miss Jones, and she caught Anna’s eye and smiled. “The affection between you is obvious,” Lieutenant Arrington continued, “and charming to behold.”

“Thank you,” Anna said, thoroughly in charity with him again. She so greatly admired his dignity and gravity, and she felt so much more serious, so truly grown-up, in his company than she had with any of her previous suitors.

The butler appeared to announce dinner, and they stood to join the others in procession to the dining room.

Lucy stood before the Reynolds and took deep breaths, collecting her thoughts and ignoring the buzz of conversation all around her. At least the first meeting with Lord Selsley was past, and she believed he was almost as embarrassed as she was. In less than a fortnight Portia and Lord Almont would be married, and Lucy could leave Gloucestershire and its disturbing residents behind forever.

She gazed at the painting, studying its colors, its balance and its composition, and doing her best to ignore the fact that the baby was Lord Selsley and the woman his mother. It was marvelous, really, how Reynolds had worked with light and shadow, the way the painted candlelight glinted off the mother’s and son’s glossy black hair, and the shadowed folds of the mother’s white round gown, so much fuller and more flowing than current fashions. The color, too, was beautifully managed, and Lucy wondered if Lady Selsley had chosen deep sapphire blue for the sash at her waist to match her and her son’s eyes, or if the artist had simply painted it that way.

What a fine thing it must be, to work in oils. Miss Bentley had only trained her to sketch in charcoal and to paint with watercolors, so she could not even attempt anything like this. She shook her head at her own presumption. She was no master painter, but simply a girl with a rather better-than-average talent for sketching, a talent that would have helped her as a governess if she hadn’t been offered the opportunity to marry—and that might serve her still, if Sebastian…she glanced over her shoulder and saw that, of course, he and Miss Wright-Gordon were seated together on a sofa, talking in low, intimate tones.

“My sister Margaret.”

Lucy started slightly. She had been too preoccupied to hear Lord Dunmalcolm’s approach. Tonight he wore conventional English attire, as he had every time Lucy had seen him except for that first dinner at Almont Castle, and she wondered if he still planned his Burns recital. “She was beautiful,” Lucy said sincerely.

“Bonny and merry and bright. I miss her still.”

His musical Scottish voice was distant and full of reminiscent sadness. “How long?” Lucy asked softly.

“Twenty years next week.” Now he looked toward Sebastian and Miss Wright-Gordon. “The day Anna was born.”

Lucy stared at the painting, at the joyous mother with her laughing son gazing up at her adoringly. Her eyes suddenly stung. “How dreadful for them all.”

“It was. It truly was. Yet, Margaret had a happy life, for all it was much too short. And I understand you suffered a similar loss at quite a young age yourself.”

“But I do remember my mother,” she murmured, still looking at the portrait. Her mother had never looked so blithe and carefree.

“I wish the children could remember Margaret. Wee Jamie has the look of her—you can see that even in the painting—but Anna has her ways.”

Lucy had meant to avoid so much as looking at Lord Selsley more than she must, but at that remark she could not help finding him. He stood about ten feet away, talking to Lord Almont and Squire Cathcart and looking every inch the dignified, powerful young lord that he was.
Wee Jamie?

Lord Dunmalcolm followed her gaze. “You’ll not be telling him I called him that, will you, lass?”

Lucy stifled a laugh. “Never in life, sir,” she assured him.

“I never call him so now, of course, but looking at that painting takes me back. You’ll understand, in a quarter century or so.”

She smiled. She liked the earl very much and couldn’t believe how friendly he was to a nobody like herself. “I’m sure I shall,” she agreed. But she dreamed of the nearer future, of being a mother, of having a plump, happy baby of her own with black hair and dark blue eyes…no, that wasn’t right, if her children didn’t inherit her own brown coloring, they would have blond hair and lighter blue eyes.

Dinner was announced, and Lucy managed to separate herself from her own family and Lord Selsley’s, taking a place at the middle of the table between Mrs. Cathcart and her oldest son, Ned. He spent most of the meal boasting about his favorite horse and their exploits together in the hunt, and Lucy listened with half an ear and tried not to gape at the white-and-gilt elegance of the Orchard Park dining room.

She’d thought herself accustomed to splendor after almost a week at Almont Castle, but Orchard Park’s grandeur was of a different order. The castle was a little larger, but it was also ancient, creaky and even a trifle worn and shabby if one closely inspected its hidden corners, and its furnishings seemed too heavy and ponderous for use. Lucy had found her tall, curtained bed at the castle lumpy and uncomfortable to sleep in, and the chairs in the castle’s dining room almost bruised her legs and back. Orchard Park, in contrast, seemed equally an ostentatious display of wealth and a comfortable family home. Everything Lucy had seen so far was airy, bright and comfortable, and many tall windows lined the walls, letting in the sunlight of a long summer evening.

When the ladies returned to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen to their port, Lucy stayed by Mrs. Cathcart and her daughter, ignoring Miss Wright-Gordon’s smile of invitation to join them as she sat down with Portia and Aunt Arrington. Lucy supposed, with a stab of resentment, that Miss Wright-Gordon meant to ingratiate herself with Sebastian’s family. She hid a sigh. Her resentment was unjust, and she knew it. Miss Wright-Gordon had no way of knowing that Lucy and Sebastian were engaged, and it wasn’t as though she were casting out lures toward an uninterested man.

If only Miss Wright-Gordon wasn’t so friendly and kind, then Lucy might persuade herself that she hated her because she was unpleasant. But no, she disliked Miss Wright-Gordon because she was beautiful and rich, and because she wore a fine silk dress that had surely cost more than Lucy’s entire wardrobe, and, above all, because Sebastian admired her so excessively. Lucy was petty and envious, and for that she despised herself.

The gentlemen did not linger long over their port, and when they rejoined the ladies, Lucy blushed to find Lord Selsley standing before her.

He inclined his head. “Mrs. Cathcart, Miss Jones, Miss Cathcart. My uncle told me he thinks Miss Jones would like to see the paintings in the gallery, and it occurs to me that Miss Cathcart has never seen them either. Would the three of you like a tour?”

Lucy breathed again. While the thought of being in close proximity to Lord Selsley still disturbed her, with the Cathcart ladies along she need not fear his presence. He could not kiss her again, nor even speak of what had happened.

“May we, Mama?” Miss Cathcart asked.

“Of course,” Mrs. Cathcart said. “Do you join us, Miss Jones?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She stood and smiled tremulously at Lord Selsley. His answering smile, warm and relieved and with that note of mischief in it, made her heart beat faster.

As luck—or perhaps Lord Selsley’s design—would have it, she found herself on his arm, her gloved fingertips resting as lightly as she could manage in the crook of his elbow, with the other two ladies trailing just behind.

“I’m glad you decided to come,” he said softly. “My father put together such a fine collection, and you’re the sort of person who can properly appreciate it, more so than I can, I daresay.”

“I can hardly wait to see the Rembrandt,” she said reverently.

“I’m sure the Rembrandt is the best, but the Jacques-Louis David is my favorite.”

Just then they passed Lord Dunmalcolm, and he raised an eyebrow at his nephew. “Boasting of that Jacobin painting of yours, laddie?”

“Better Jacobin than Jacobite,” Lord Selsley said serenely.

“Jacobin painting?” Lucy asked as they emerged from the drawing room into the entry hall.

“It isn’t really,” Lord Selsley said. “My uncle and I just sometimes like to accuse each other of being extremists rather than a perfectly ordinary Whig viscount and Tory earl.”

“I’m sure neither of you is
ordinary,
” Lucy said dryly.

“The David was painted before the Revolution, or else my father wouldn’t have been traveling in France, and he couldn’t have bought it. It has a perfectly unexceptionable classical theme. It’s true that David became a friend of the Revolution—and now he is a friend of Bonaparte.”

“It sounds as though he’s a friend of whoever happens to hold the reins of power.” Lucy twisted up the ends of her skirts in her free hand as they began to climb the great marble staircase.

Lord Selsley shrugged. “Many men are—perhaps most.”

“But not you, I think.”

“I hope not,” he said seriously. “I certainly try to put principle over power. But I am a politician, Miss Jones, and not a revolutionary. All too often I am obliged to compromise, to accept trifling improvements rather than holding out for an ideal. So I am no Jacobin, but a mere Whig who would like to make a better England without tearing the one we have apart.”

“Surely that is the better way.” No cause that she could imagine would be worth putting England through the upheaval that France had endured throughout Lucy’s life.

“I quite agree. But there is a part of me that hates to yield on ideals, even if I know their consequences might be destructive. Perhaps I owe more to the Jacobites in my ancestry than I’d own. If there was ever a case of idealism turned to tragedy, it was their uprisings.”

The Cathcart ladies drew near. Mrs. Cathcart, whom Lucy had heard complain of an aching hip, climbed slowly. Lord Selsley offered her his arm for the last few steps.

When Mrs. Cathcart had safely reached the landing, he released her and rejoined Lucy, crooking his elbow. She took his arm with only the slightest hesitation.

“It’s just down the hall here on the left.” He led them to a door which he flung open with something of a flourish.

Lucy couldn’t help it. Her mouth fell open. She had never dreamed of such riches in one person’s home, not even one as grand as this. The gallery was a long, narrow room, half the length of the house, with paintings large and small hung all along its walls. Lamps were lit at regular intervals, though some evening sunlight remained. Lucy stepped hesitantly into the room, looking from one end to the other. She didn’t know where to begin.

Mrs. Cathcart felt no such confusion. She pushed past Lucy and Lord Selsley, daughter in tow, and stared up at a portrait over the mantel on the narrow left-hand wall. “There’s your father, I see,” she said with a brisk nod, “and as like him as life.”

Lucy joined her and examined the painting. It had to be by Reynolds, as similar as it was to the portrait of the infant Lord Selsley and his mother in the drawing room. It was a much more formal portrait, however. The first Viscount Selsley sat at his desk, half-turned from it toward an open window, a hale, ruddy-faced man of forty-five or fifty. Arrayed on the desk were the usual accoutrements of prosperity—a globe, books, papers. On closer inspection, Lucy saw that the viscount’s hand pointed toward India on the globe, and that a strange statue, like a man with an elephant’s head, stood beside it. The open window revealed a distant glimpse of the sea, with ships sailing into port—rather a fanciful conceit, given how far inland Orchard Park was.

Lord Selsley had joined her, and she studied him, trying to trace a resemblance.

He smiled. “We both look like our mother,” he said, “though Anna has his eyes, and I think his forehead.”

She considered painting and man more closely. “You have his hands,” she said.

“His hands?” Mrs. Cathcart said. “Fancy noticing hands!”