Double Deception (2 page)

"Oh, no," she assured him, marveling at the tenderness in blue eyes he was too young to veil. "I am not such a poor creature as you seem to think, sir. I am country born and bred, and have even campaigned in Spain with my husband."

She stopped abruptly, wondering why she had not revealed her married state sooner.

"Your husband?" the young man repeated blankly, his face suddenly serious. "I thought..."

"My late husband," Athena amended quickly. "John was killed at Talavera and left me a widow with a small daughter," she added in a rush, wishing to leave no doubt in this innocent young man's mind how unfitting she was of his notice.

His reaction startled her.

"The widow of one of England's heroes," he murmured reverently, his eyes revealing none of the withdrawal she had anticipated. "How I envy your husband, Athena," he added simply, without the slightest hint of flattery. "It must have been a terrible experience for you, of course, but how glorious to give one's life for England like that."

Peregrine had spoken fervently, his blue eyes shining with passion, confirming to Athena, as nothing else could, his extreme youth and innocence. Only the very young and naive would glorify what had always seemed to her a shameful waste of England's best young men. The soldiers she had encountered in Spain had not glorified the war; they had endured it, and all too often died for it, as John had.

No, she thought, gazing sadly into Peregrine's shining eyes, only an innocent could possibly believe in the glory of a soldier's death in battle. Her own eyes misted over, and she turned away.

"I have upset you," Peregrine blurted, instantly contrite. "Forgive me, Athena. I am a perfect brute. It is just that my father refused to buy me a pair of colors, and it is my dearest wish to fight with Wellesley in the Peninsular campaign."

"He is a wise man, your father," Athena said, feeling the weight of her years descend upon her again as they wandered back towards the thinning flock of guests on Lady Hereford's pristine lawns. "And I am sure that your mother would agree with me."

"I am sure she would, too," Peregrine responded in a sober voice. "But my mother was taken from us several years ago. Influenza. It carried off half the village."

Athena gently squeezed his arm. "I am sorry to hear it," she said. "My own mother died ten years ago of the same thing."

They walked along in silence for several minutes before Peregrine seemed to pull himself out of the gloom that had fallen over them.

"What is your daughter's name?" he wanted to know.

"Penelope."

He laughed, and Athena was unaccountably relieved to hear the sound. "I see that a love of the classics runs in the family. My father is a bit of a scholar himself. I think you would like him, Athena. In fact, I am sure you would."

Athena smiled but made no reply. Since her chances of meeting the elder Mr. Steele were too remote to merit consideration, she dismissed the thought. Instead, she concentrated on committing to memory the enchanted hour she had spent with his son.

Cornwall, Summer 1811

"Are we nearly there, Perry?"

The elegant traveling chaise had made yet another stop, this time at the Swan Inn at Okehampton, for refreshments and a change of horse, and young Penelope had posed her oft-repeated question to Viscount Fairmont.

It had come as a shock to Athena to discover, the very afternoon following that riverside encounter at Hereford House, that her new acquaintance had not been simply a delightfully naive young man who could make her laugh at his nonsensical starts, but the only son and heir to the Earl of St. Aubyn.

Athena glanced at him now, marveling as she had so many times in the past tempestuous weeks at the unfailing good humor the viscount showed to the eager child who clung confidently to his hand and danced along at his side. Perry—she could not think of him as a viscount in the privacy of her mind—had been an instant success with Penelope. From the very first, he had insisted upon including her daughter in their frequent drives about London in his smart curricle, in the impromptu picnics he organized on particularly pleasant days, and on the long, leisurely expeditions into the countryside that had come to make up the texture of her days after Peregrine's boisterous eruption into their lives.

"We shall be at St. Aubyn Castle in plenty of time for dinner," Athena heard him say. "But if you get to feeling a mite peckish before then, Penny," he added with a deep, infectious chuckle, "there is a wee pastry shop in Launceston where they have the best cream buns in all England. I daresay your mother will let us stop to buy a dozen or so to tide us over 'til dinnertime."

He glanced at her then, his blue eyes dancing with mischief, and Athena was struck again with the boyishness of this man she had promised to marry. Had she done the right thing? she asked herself for the umpteenth time since that afternoon when she had finally succumbed to his insistence that only as her husband could he take care of and cherish her and Penelope as they deserved. This argument had swayed her as none of his protestations of undying love had been able to. The notion of protecting her darling daughter from the rough edges of life had demolished Athena's resistance. By accepting Peregrine's offer, she would escape the skimping and scrounging to eke out an inadequate pension, the genteel poverty of her aunt's existence, and the humiliation of having to pretend that she had not been cast off both by her husband's family and by her own father.

The realization that the late Major Standish's pension would never allow her to provide her daughter with even the smallest luxuries she herself had taken for granted as a child had caused Athena to relax her scruples. But in moments such as these, when Peregrine appeared even younger than his nineteen years, doubts assailed her, and she wondered if perhaps she had been selfish in thinking only of the benefits marriage to a wealthy viscount, even one who had yet to reach his majority, could bring them.

These benefits had made themselves felt almost immediately. Athena felt a twinge of conscience at Penelope's new bonnet and pale blue pelisse, both purchased on what she still considered a rash spending spree organized by Peregrine one afternoon soon after he became a regular visitor to her aunt's modest house on Mount Street. Her protests at Perry's extravagances had been drowned out by Penelope's squeals of delight and her aunt's exclamations of approval.

She herself had not escaped the bounty of Perry's generosity. The very afternoon following their betrothal, Perry had escorted her to the best warehouse on Piccadilly Street and—despite her urgent protestations that she was well provided with gowns for her modest needs—purchased a dazzling array of Indian silks, shimmering satins, the softest muslins, and other materials that he insisted his future bride should not be without. These purchases had been made up into a rare assortment of fashionable gowns by none other than Madame Lucille on Harley Street, who was only too happy to add a future viscountess to her distinguished clientele. "May we, Mama?
Do
say we may." Distracted from her guilty thoughts by her daughter's voice, Athena raised an eyebrow.

"May you do what, darling?"

"Stop at Launceston for cream buns, of course," Penelope said eagerly.

Athena smiled. The notion of stopping on a whim to purchase a dozen cream buns seemed so incongruous after their previously sparse diet of butterless bread and boiled vegetables that Athena winced.

"Perhaps you will not be hungry again before dinner, dear," she murmured, unwilling to admit that she considered the consumption of cream buns in the middle of the afternoon an unnecessary extravagance. "After all, we have yet to eat our nuncheon."

"Oh, my dear Athena," her aunt cut in quickly. "I do think that is a wonderful treat for us all that Perry is proposing. And remember that our darling Penny is a growing girl. Besides, we shall be stopping for a cup of tea anyway, so why not include these famous cream buns? I do declare my mouth is watering already."

Athena could well believe that Aunt Mary's sweet tooth had been titillated by the mention of cream buns, so she made no further protest and was rewarded by a dazzling smile from Perry.

"You will not be disappointed, love," he murmured, his irrepressible grin melting her resistance.

The proposed stop at Launceston was an undeniable success, as Peregrine had promised. The cream buns were pronounced beyond anything delicious by Aunt Mary, and Penelope had to be severely reminded that well-brought-up young ladies did not make pigs of themselves at the tea-table.

For Athena, however, the delay at the Blue Stag Inn at Launceston—where Perry was greeted with genuine delight by the stout innkeeper and his wife—was a welcome postponement of what she could only anticipate as an uncomfortable encounter with the Earl of St. Aubyn. Despite Perry's insistence that his father was a great gun, top-of-the-trees as a parent and completely up-to-snuff as a friend to his only son, Athena felt her apprehension grow the closer their carriage came to the Cornwall estate of Perry's family.

"Great-Aunt Sarah will love you to death," her betrothed had assured her with his usual exuberance. "I have written expressly to tell her all about you, Athena, and I do not doubt she will receive you with open arms."

Athena was not at all convinced. From Perry's ingenious flow of reminiscences, Lady Sarah Steele had emerged as more of a dragon than a benign personage. She also considered Perry's choice of words rather unfortunate under the circumstances. The notion of being loved to death by a formidable female, who might naturally be expected to look upon her great-nephew's nuptials to a widow of eight-and-twenty with disfavor, caused Athena to quake in her new kid half-boots.

When the chaise turned into the well-kept grounds of the park in the early summer twilight, Athena found she could not give the magnificent centenary oaks that lined the driveway the admiration they deserved. Her thoughts were too full of the enigmatic figure of the earl, the master of all this splendor. Although Perry had assured her that his father was far too engrossed in his lifelong obsession with Oriental treasures to pay much heed to the pedigree of his future daughter-in-law, Athena dreaded this encounter more than she had imagined. In Lady Sarah she hoped to find, if not an ally and friend, at least a female whose sensibilities might allow her to understand if not condone the pressures that had driven Athena to accept Perry's offer.

She had no such expectations about the Earl of St. Aubyn, and as she allowed Perry to hand her down from the carriage before the imposing entrance to the austere mass of stone and mullioned windows that was St. Aubyn Castle, Athena's heart sank even further. How foolish she had been to believe for a moment that she could ever be accepted as the mistress of this magnificent residence, home of the Steele family for countless generations. Doubtless they would be back in London within the week, seeking new ways to stretch the scanty pension John had left her. The thought was utterly depressing.

***

The Earl of St. Aubyn rose to his feet when his son and heir burst unceremoniously into the library, but he made no attempt to move out from behind the heavily inlaid mahogany desk that had belonged to his great-grandfather.

"We are here, Father," Perry said, with a hint of defiance in his voice that Lord St. Aubyn did not fail to notice. "I hope I find you well, sir," he added, when his father made no reply.

Peregrine paused and cleared his throat nervously.

The earl did not smile.

"We?" he inquired softly, his tone deceptively mild. "Whom have you brought down to the Castle this time, boy? I trust it is not another parcel of young bucks who will turn the place upside-down again?"

Perry winced visibly at this reminder of a recent debacle perpetrated over the Christmas holidays by some of his London cronies, but the earl's stern gaze did not waver. He knew whom his son had brought to the Castle, for his butler had informed him of that fact not ten minutes past, after ushering the viscount's party into the Blue Dragon Saloon, where Lady Sarah sat at her needlework.

"No, sir," Perry stammered. "Nothing like that. I have brought Mrs. Standish with me as I wrote in my last letter to you, sir. Surely you received—"

"I received it all right," the earl cut in sharply. "And I distinctly remember writing by return post to inform you that I do not welcome fortune hunters here at St. Aubyn's."

The earl noted that his son looked acutely uncomfortable, but he refused to relent.

"Mrs. Standish is no fortune hunter, Father," Perry protested, his chin rising defiantly. "I know that, when you meet her, you will find her as well-bred and charming as I do myself. And as for Penelope, why she is a treasure of a child—"

"This widow has a child?" the earl demanded in ominous tones.

"Why, yes," Peregrine stammered. "Did I not include that in my letter, sir? I could have sworn that I did."

"Do not prevaricate, Peregrine," Lord St. Aubyn said shortly. "You know perfectly well that you said nothing of any child. How old is this ... this treasure?"

"Penelope is nearly seven, sir. And you can take it from me—"

"Seven?" Lord St. Aubyn's voice exploded into the tense atmosphere of the library like a rifle shot. His lips thinned into a forbidding line, and he felt his temper rise as the full import of his son's irresponsible action dawned upon him.

Perry's face turned a sickly white, but he held his ground.

When the earl spoke again, his voice was icy. "Am I to understand that you have dared to bring your doxy and her child to St. Aubyn's?"

Peregrine gasped at his father's harsh words. "A-Athena is n-no such thing, Father," he stammered. "She has a-accepted my offer of m-marriage. We are b-betrothed."

"Betrothed?" The earl's voice was a sneer. "What utter nonsense! Did I not warn you—repeatedly, I might add—to avoid the company of destitute females masquerading as members of the
ton
. This Standish female is obviously one of these encroaching creatures who aspire to entrap just such a country flat as you have turned out to be. How could you be so taken in, Peregrine?"