Belle of the ball (25 page)

True busied herself with ordering a restorative for her elder cousin, and shooing away the curious staff. Annie, Lady Swinley's maid, followed in and was questioned by Arabella.

"What has upset my mother so, Annie? What has happened? Was it—was it the moneylenders again?"

"Oh, no. Miss Swinley," Annie said, collapsing in a chair, unbidden, an unusual thing for the girl to do. "The moneylenders are satisfied now, and all of Lady Swinley's gambling debts bin paid off, too. 'Tis something else entirely; it is—"

"Shut your mouth, girl," Lady Swinley ordered, sitting up straighter in the breakfast room chair, her face red with anger.

"Gambling debts? What—?"

But Arabella was not fated to have that query answered at that moment. Lady Swinley raised her hand and pointed at the newspaper. "Page eight," she said, wearily.

Together, True and Arabella spread the paper out on the breakfast table and read page eight over until they came to the gossip column. There was the usual tittle-tattle about who was seen where and with whom, but near the bottom they finally came to the piece Lady Swinley was in such a taking over.

"It is said, " the column read. ''That the elderly Lord P., who was so recently betrothed to the scandal-plagued Miss S., is being sued for breach of promise by Lady J., his 'particular friend' of some years standing. She has a witness, it is rumored, who will positively state that the gentleman in question promised that if and when Lord P. ever married, it would be to her. Lady J. As a result of this suit, shall Lord P.'s name soon be amended to Lord Pay-her-more!

Arabella shook her head in dismay. It was the work of seconds to identify herself, her betrothed, and his paramour in the story. "This is not pretty, Mama, and I certainly do not like my name being bandied about so. 'The scandal-plagued Miss S.,' indeed! But other than that, I do not see how this is to hurt us. Lord Pelimore certainly has enough money to pay Lady Jacobs to drop the suit."

Lady Swinley was on her feet, pacing and wringing her hands, though, and would not be cheered. "Oh, you do not understand! This is terrible. Terrible! What a scandal!"

Arabella shrugged. After what she had endured when the whole story of the episode at the Farmington estate came out, she was not acutely distressed over a little breach-of-promise suit. She had stayed in London long enough after her betrothal was announced to feel the full affect of the shunning she was subjected to. Suddenly doors that had always been open to the Honorable Miss Swinley were slammed shut. She was
persona non grata
in London society, and would be for some time to come.

This bit of news would just titillate the gossip-mongers even more. But Pelimore would set it out of court; men always did if they had the money.

Free of any worry about her status in the city and among people who had turned their backs on her, her mind came back to something Annie had said. The girl had crept away, so Arabella turned to her mother. "Mama, what did Annie mean about your gambling debts?"

Lady Swinley looked guilty, but her chin went up in a gesture Arabella recognized in herself, and she stood stiffly. "The girl is an idiot! I play cards, but I really seldom gamble, and rarely—well, infrequently lose any amount at all."

"Has my dear, devoted husband-to-be settled any gambling debts? Was that a part of your . . . your agreement with him?" Arabella felt a dreaded calm overtake her, instead of the outrage she should be feeling. She saw True's worried glance, but had no time to reassure her that she would be fine.

Lady Swinley's gaze slid away and she stared at a candle sconce on the wall. "My dear, you know he agreed to set all of our debts. I ... I don't really remember them all! Life is so costly, and especially you, with three fruitless Seasons—"

"Mother, do not try to evade the question. Did you have gambling debts, and has Lord Pelimore paid them as a part of your agreement with him that I should marry him?"

Her beady eyes holding a sly light, the baroness said, "Well, no dear, Pelimore has paid no gambling debts for me at all."

Arabella knew there was more but could not think what it would be, until she saw where her wording had allowed her mother an out. "But he is going to, is that not so?"

Trapped, Lady Swinley nodded. "I ... I feel faint. True, dear, may I have a room?"

Lady Swinley kept to her room for the remainder of the day, and all of the next. Arabella really did not want to see her mother anyway. She was terribly afraid that if she did see the woman, she would be unable to contain the ire that was building in her heart. She thought back to Eveleen's assertion that men treated women as chattel. How would that ever change when women were wont to do the same? Her mother had sold her for a shabby handful of gold; there was no other way to look at it.

True watched her younger cousin and worried. The revelations of the past couple of days had started her thinking, and she was deeply troubled.

"Wy," she said to her husband, 'I think we have all misread Arabella, even I."

"How so, my love?" Drake curled one fine lock of her hair around his finger and kissed it. He whispered something in her ear, and she blushed a rosy color.

"Stop! I am trying to be serious."

They were sitting on a patch of lawn in the garden on a blanket, True curled up in her husband's arms. Arabella was working not far from them, ferociously weeding an until-now ignored corner of the garden. True had told her time and again that they had gardeners for the hard work. She was supposed to do the ladylike chores of planning and pruning, and no more. But she seemed to find an outlet in physical labor, so True let her go at it, knowing that this was how Arabella's restless nature found relief. And if she had callused hands at the end of it, a little peace was well worth it.

"I am always serious, my love," Drake said, kissing his wife's ear

"I was saying I think we have all misread Arabella. I think she only agreed to marry Pelimore because her mother was having financial problems. I never knew her before to be so avid about money, and from what I heard in the breakfast room, I think Lady Swinley forced Arabella into marrying because they were in financial trouble. I should have thought of it earlier from something she said last autumn, but I was— well, I was distracted at that time."

Both were silent. The previous autumn Drake had been very sick and the doctors had despaired of his life, but True had miraculously pulled him through with the force of her love and a little herbal concoction.

"Say you are right. What has that to do with anything now? She has agreed to marry the old codger, and seems quite content to follow through."

True looked at her husband incredulously. "Content? She has been miserable! She is eating her heart out over that cad, Oakmont! I do not know what happened between them; she will not speak of it. Not even to me. But since he was here there has been even more sadness in her eyes."

Arabella, too far away from them to hear their whispered conversation, sat back on her heels and passed one hand over her brow, leaving a long smudge of dirt there. Drake remembered how prim and proper she had seemed to him the previous autumn during her stay at his parents' home. She was more concerned about her dress and gloves than about anything else. Maybe there was something wrong, but whatever it was, he had every confidence that she would survive. Arabella Swinley was much tougher than his wife thought. Even if her marriage to Lord Pelimore turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to her, she would live through it.

However, he hated seeing his wife as upset as she was over her cousin's predicament. But he did not see what he could do about it. She was betrothed to Lord Pelimore, and a betrothal, though not legally binding for the lady, was a promise. If she broke it off there would be another enormous scandal attached to the Swinley name, and it might never recover. Right now, with her marrying respectably, it could be hoped that her reputation would recover.

As little as he cared about society and reputation, it seemed to him that Arabella had always cared very much about such things. Could she live ostracized from all that she held dear? And breaking away from Pelimore would not gain her Oakmont, or financial security of any kind. Drake would do anything for his wife, even allow Arabella to stay with them forever, but he could not support her and her mother's expensive habits, nor pay off Swinley Manor, if all that had been implied in Lady Swinley's unguarded moments were true.

He pulled True back down and nestled her against him. "Sleep, my dear. You are far from strong yet and I brought you out to this shady spot to get you to rest. There is nothing you can do to help Arabella right now. It is her own life, after all, and she must do what she thinks right."

The next morning, two mornings after Lady Swinley arrived, she finally deigned to descend for a meal. Arabella, after her initial alienation, had spent much of the last twenty-four hours in her mother's room and had apparently brought her some sense of peace, for she looked relatively cheerful, or as close as Lady Swinley ever got to that halcyon state.

All of them were gathered, Drake staying to breakfast when he normally did not, because he suspected his wife was not eating enough to regain her strength after almost dying in childbirth. He was fanatical about her health, filling her plate himself at most meals and assiduously making sure that she ate every morsel. He had consulted an old beldame in the village and was following her instructions, even down to buying a nanny goat and urging True to drink a cup of goat's milk every morning. He was starting to relax a little now that the roses bloomed once again in True's cheeks, but any little fluctuation in her eating, and he would become as guarded as before. The upsets of the la«t few days had brought him back to his role as her nursemaid.

True gazed at her plate in dismay, at the pile of eggs and cheese and kippers that she knew she would have to get through before her husband would rest his vigil. Manfully, she started, while Arabella picked at a piece of toast and Drake tucked into ham and kedgeree and a side dish of chutney. Lady Swinley took a cup of coffee and three buttered scones to her place and picked up one of the neatly folded London papers that lay on the sideboard.

There was silence for a while but for the rustle of the paper, and True's occasional sigh as a pleading glance at her husband was met with a shake of his head. She knew that he was only doing it for her own good, and if she really said no he would certainly never force her to eat; it was not his intention to make her uncomfortable. But it relieved his mind to see her eat, and she would do anything to spare him worry. She remembered too well a time when he was out of his mind with fever, and how she had felt. She knew he had suffered similar agony when she was ill before and after Sarah's birth. He would relax soon. And in the meantime she could not deny that she was feeling better for the diet he had prescribed.

A gasp from Lady Swinley, and a high shriek rent the peaceful morning, drowning out the birdsong from the open window.

Arabella leaped to her mother's side. **What is it? Mama, are you ill?"

The baroness could only gasp and point to a piece in the gossip column of the same paper that had caused her to come down to Thorne House in the first place.

Arabella snatched it from her mother's hand and read it out loud.

"Lord P.—why don't they just say his name, for heaven's sake— 'Lord P. has gone to novel lengths to settle the breach of promise suit laid on him by the importunate Lady J. It can now be told that Lord P. and Lady J. have slipped off to the Continent to be married, as it appears that Lady J. is in an interesting condition, thus fulfilling Lord P's requirement of a bride!' Do they mean she is going to have a baby? What bosh! Poor Miss S., to whom he was betrothed . . . will she now bring a suit for breach of promise against the gallivanting Lord P.?' Not likely," Arabella finished, throwing down the paper.

She felt a curious lightness, as though a weight had been lifted from her. If this paper was to be believed, and she did not see any reason to doubt it, she did not have to marry Pelimore! She would not be tied for life to that snuffling, wheezing old man, a man she could not even respect, much less like. She was free, free!

But it only took a few seconds for her to realize that nothing at all was solved. If she was free of Pelimore, it was only to find her and her mother in the same tiresome predicament as before, and possibly even worse off. She looked over at her mother, who was weeping silently, tears streaming down her face. Nothing was solved.

Twenty

"I have a what?"

"You got a visitor, sir ... I mean, my lord." Mrs. Brown fidgeted at the door of the decrepit library, twisting her work-roughened hands in her stained apron.

What on earth had made the woman start "my lording" him all of a sudden? Normally, in a twisted understanding of his new position, she called him Mr. Oakmont, or Lord Westhaven. He had begun to think it was deliberate on her part, an insolence he should abhor but instead found amusing. Marcus tossed the book he had been pretending to read down on the moth-eaten sofa and stood, stretching his long legs out.

"A visitor. No one knows me around here. Tell him— or her—to go away. I am in no mood for company."

"Beggin' yer pardon, m'lord, I would ask that you do it yerself. He's a right proper swell, an' I wouldn't know how to—I wouldna know what to say."

Curious. Mrs. Brown always knew what to say. Once broken through, her outer taciturn shell proved to hide an inner magpie.

Feeling she had not expressed herself, she glanced once over her shoulder in a shifty manner and crept into the room, whispering, "He's like a god, sir, like one o' them Greek god fellers in one o' the books Lord Oakmont has in here. All golden and noble. He's the prettiest fella I ever seen, an' that is God's own truth."

Marcus thought for a moment, then put his head back and roared with laughter. It took a couple of minutes, but he got himself under control and said, "I do believe you have just met Lord Drake, known also as Major-General Prescott. Well, so that is the affect he has on the female half of creation. I am not surprised, and he is indeed the prettiest fellow I ever saw, too. Show him in, Mrs. B."