Delsie (3 page)

“Oh, it won’t be the position of mistress that pops into her head. You have very little notion of how a young lady’s mind works. Just because she wears dark gowns and plain bonnets don’t mean she isn’t a romantic. All those trips to the lending library—it is always the
romances
she takes out. I know because she generally beats me to a new one. I wonder if she has returned
Evelina
yet. I am eager to read it. Why, I daresay she’s been dreaming of nabbing you for years.”

“Widgeon!” deVigne replied, dismayed at the charge.

“Ah, you’ve never been a girl, there’s the problem. They always pick out the richest, handsomest gentleman within their view and dream about him. The more impossible it is they’ll ever land him, the harder they dream. Smile, and tell her you would consider it a great personal favor, and you’ll bring her around your thumb. See if you don’t.”

“Rather a shabby trick to play on the schoolteacher, don’t you think?”

“Who are we interested in, the schoolteacher or Roberta? Besides, when she sees what a grouch and dictator you are, she won’t be long in giving up on you.”

“Thank you, love. I wondered how long your praise of my charms would go on before turning to its more customary abuse. Do you really think this plan has any chance of succeeding? I would happily play the fool for half an hour to secure Roberta’s future.”

“What have you got to lose?”

“Half an hour,” he replied, and finished off his drink. “What time does the school close? I’ll catch her there before she leaves.”

“At three-thirty in the fall, when the days are short. Wear your new bluejacket and drive the crested carriage. Give her the full treatment, and remember to
smile.”

“No, I don’t plan to lead her on, but I’ll outline the advantages to herself, and if she is sensible, as one hears she is, she may at least consider the offer. And then, of course, I shall have the delightful task of approaching Grayshott and seeing if he still favors the girl. I haven’t heard him rant on about the soulful eyes for a year or so.”

“I’ll do that much for you. I’ll do it now, before you go to the school, and before he has time to get drunk.” She arose and was helped into her violet cape. “I’ll stop back here on my way to the Dower House,” she advised him, then was off through the park to tackle Grayshott.

The summer home built for Louise and Grayshott at the time of their marriage was a pleasant half-timbered cottage, hewn out of a corner of the deVigne holdings. It had deteriorated badly since Louise’s death. The garden was overgrown; what had once been a lawn was now a pasture. The place needed paint, and the windows were dirty. Like its master, the place had been allowed to run to seed. Lady Jane’s nose revolted at the dust and dirt within, but despite the unpleasantness of the surroundings in which the meeting took place, it was a success.

Grayshott continued insanely infatuated with Miss Sommers. As he stumbled about the house in an alcoholic stupor, he thought often of her and Louise, who had blended into one ideal woman in his disordered brain. They were rather alike in their general appearance, both dark, handsome women. It was this which had first attracted him to her. He was not alert enough to realize he was past reclaiming, and still harbored the hope that he would win Miss Sommers. He assured Lady Jane in a weak voice that he would adopt a life of sobriety if the girl would have him. Yes, yes, he would be delighted to make her Roberta’s guardian, in the unlikely event anything should happen to himself before his daughter was full grown. This he considered a very unlikely contingency. He never liked Clancy above half, and was only making him Bobbie’s guardian to spite that stiff-rumped deVigne.

She darted back to the Hall. “Success! It is done. He still wants the girl. Mercy, but I doubt she’ll have him if she gets a look at him. Hair flying down to his shoulders like a madman. You must get a firm promise from her, Max, or she’ll bolt at the first glimpse of him. But he cannot last long. He’s skin and bones. Go at once, and be sure you drop by and let me know what she said, hear?”

Chapter Three

DeVigne had no alternative but to press on with his half of the bargain. At three o’clock he had his crested carriage harnessed up, two liveried footmen standing behind to lend him consequence, his new blue superfine jacket on his shoulders, and a wary expression on his face. His timing was perfect. Out of the door of the schoolhouse erupted a stream of screaming students just as he drew up. Every one of them had to come and admire his carriage and horses before dashing off home to tell the parents deVigne was at the school.

It was Mr. Umpton who first saw him and ran out to make him welcome, but within three minutes he was in Miss Sommers’s room, sitting atop a student’s desk with his curled beaver in his hands and feeling more foolish than he had ever felt in his life, to put his preposterous scheme to this dignified gray-eyed woman who was looking at him in astonishment, and not friendly astonishment either. She appeared hostile, and he scarcely knew where to begin.

“How do you like teaching here?” he asked, to play for time.

“Fine. I like it very much,” she answered calmly, wondering why he had come, and fearing Umpton had at last arranged to be rid of her. She had had words with Umpton only recently about her seeing some of his students after school. Lord deVigne was going to fire her!

“That’s nice,” he said, though it was not what he had hoped to hear. If she liked it, she would not be eager to leave. “Still, it must be a difficult life for a young lady.” He didn’t hesitate, even mentally, over the word lady. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that Miss Sommers was just that. Well-spoken, dignified, even pretty, with an elegance unrelated to her toilette but inherent in her bearing.

“The hours are long and work demanding, but I enjoy it. Why is it you have come to see me?” she asked immediately, when he had planned to broach the matter by degrees. Her eyes took in every detail of his splendor. A coat that seemed poured on his back, so well did it fit. An immaculate and intricate tie, above which his well-shaped head sat at a proud angle. Dark eyes, an aquiline nose, a lean face, with a touch of arrogance that was caused more by the arrangement of features than by his expression. Through the window she saw the impressive carriage, the footmen, and wondered at all this display, only to fire her.

“It is a family matter,” he told her, after clearing his throat. “My brother-in-law, Mr. Grayshott...” He noticed her face took on a wary look at the name. “You are acquainted with him, I believe?” His dark brows rose in a question.

She realized this was not mere chitchat. The visit had to do with Mr. Grayshott. “I know him very slightly,” she allowed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have met him twice, very briefly.”

“But I understood—I thought you were better acquainted than that!”

“No, I was only speaking to him twice in my life.”

“I see.” He came to a standstill. The eyebrows settled down, and he blinked twice in surprise. She hardly knew Andrew, and here he thought there had been some romance between them. His proposition was clearly ineligible. A fool’s errand, “I understood there was more to your relationship than that. I thought he had offered for you.”

“He did. Twice.”

DeVigne stared hard at her, out of penetrating, dark eyes. “He
met
you twice, and twice offered marriage to you? To a virtual stranger, in fact?”

“Yes, it was very strange,” she agreed. “The first time ever I met him, he asked me to marry him. He was—he had been drinking, I believe, which would account for it.”

“Very likely,” he murmured, rapidly considering what to say next.

“What about Mr. Grayshott? Has your coming something to do with him?” she pressed on.

He was favorably impressed with her and, though he was pretty sure she would not accept the plan, he decided to put it forward, having come this far. Indeed, he could think of no other way of extricating himself from the classroom. “He is not well, you know,” he said.

“I haven’t seen him about the village for some months now.”

“No, he is ill. Very ill.”

“I am sorry to hear it.”

“Dying, in fact,”

“Ah, that is too bad. It will leave his daughter an orphan.” That’s why he is come, she thought, her spirits lifting. I am at last to be offered the post of her governess, and I shall accept this time, if Grayshott is indeed dying.

“Yes, the reason I am come has to do with his daughter, Roberta.” She smiled a little in anticipation. “She will be left under the guardianship of her uncle, Clancy Grayshott, when her father dies. It is not what we wish for her.”

“Would you not be a more proper guardian, milord, being also an uncle?”

“I think I would, but there is some—disagreement between Grayshott and myself. We have not got along for years, since his wife’s death. A family matter. So Roberta will leave the area and go to Clancy Grayshott, which the family is anxious to prevent.”

“In what way can I be of help? I don’t see what all this has to do with
me.”

As she was always rushing him on to the facts, he decided to blurt it out, and have it over with. “You could marry Andrew Grayshott. He still wants to marry you. If you did so, you, as her stepmother, would be appointed guardian. You would not be left alone in charge of her. I—the family—would give you every help. We would be most eager to help you in every way. You would live at the Cottage—you know, I expect, where Grayshott lives?”

“Yes. Oh, yes, a charming place. But I must tell you before you say any more, milord, that I am not at all in favor of this plan. Twice I have refused Mr. Grayshott in person, and I am not at all interested in marrying him.”

“He is very ill, dying.”

“Yes, but he’s not dead yet, and who is to say he won’t recuperate?” she asked frankly.

The possibility of this could not be totally ignored. He was rapidly drinking himself to his grave, but if he did actually engage in the life of sobriety he had mentioned to Jane, he might pull through. “I cannot guarantee his death,” deVigne admitted.

“I didn’t mean that! Indeed, I hope he does not die at all, but I cannot marry him.”

“He likes you very much. Loves you, he says.” This was a mistake. She drew back involuntarily, and he diluted the claim of passion as much as he could. “He is impressionable. When he cares for someone, he is eager to please her. He made my sister Louise a good husband; his drinking did not set in till after her death. If you married him, he might very well settle down and make you a good husband.”

“No, he would not be a good husband for
me.
I dislike him intensely.”

“Only think of the advantages. You would be freed from this life you lead. You say you enjoy the work, but you must confess it is hard on you, working every day from dawn till dark, with very little pay, and living in straitened circumstances. As Grayshott’s wife you would live a life of ease, in a fine home that you could soon set to rights. You would be a respected member of society, with a carriage of your own, good company to visit, a completely different life from what you have now.”

She brushed all this aside immediately and firmly. “The perquisites of the position are clear to me, clearer than they could possibly be to you who are not really aware of the alternative, but I do not wish to marry Mr. Grayshott. My present life is not
that
distasteful to me. If it were a job you were offering, your niece’s governess I had thought, then I would happily accept. I cannot enter into marriage with a man I actively dislike, do not respect at all. My past dealings with him were of a sort to make me very decided in this matter.”

“The marriage would be only a formality, in his condition. The doctor feels he
—”

“Yes, we have been through that, but still, he might
live
for years, and I do not wish to marry him.”

“We had planned to make a settlement on you.”

Her back stiffened at this. “Thank you very much, milord, but I am not for sale,” she said, and arose from her seat to accompany Lord deVigne to the door. Perforce, he too arose and walked reluctantly behind her. It irked him to be the receiver of the last word instead of the giver. He was not accustomed to being balked, but in this affair he had not much hoped for success. He could have accepted failure if it had been more kindly worded, or more meekly.

“If you change your mind...” he said at the doorway, but she immediately overrode this suggestion.

“My decision is final,” she said, with a certain set to her square chin that informed him to retire, before further angering her.

“Good day, ma’am. I am happy to have made your acquaintance,” he said, and bowed and left to enter his carriage and return home, while the teacher stood at the door, smiling ironically at all his entourage, the footmen hauled out on this foolish errand. She must think him a coxcomb of the first water.

Delsie had been tired when he arrived, after her day; his short visit exhausted her utterly. She hardly had the strength to crawl home. If she had accepted, she supposed he would have offered to drive her. She climbed the stairs to Miss Frisk’s attic apartment and threw herself on the bed. This is a new twist, she thought, sending his relatives to propose for him. What next, a minister with a ring, a choir hired, and a white veil? She shook her head and smiled, but in annoyance at their presumption, to think they could
buy
a person.

It was the first time she had spoken to Lord deVigne. He was not as she had expected. But, really, she had never satisfied him to look before. She made a habit of looking another way when he rode past, to show her disinterest. She found she had missed a good many interesting details.

His hair, for instance; she had not noticed that it was worn brushed forward. The Brutus do, it was called. And the outfit—with a little gold watch fob shaped like a wishbone. Who would have thought deVigne was superstitious? His eyes, too, were darker than she had thought, almost navy blue. He had a commanding aspect which suggested to her he was not Grayshott’s tool in the affair. Had the idea possibly originated this time from the baron himself? Was he that aware, then, of her existence, as to have known it was herself Grayshott would accept as a wife in this peculiar circumstance?