Elizabeth Mansfield (19 page)

The plans she had to make concerned Cicely's happiness, not her own. Cassie was convinced that she would soon be receiving word that her daughter was betrothed. When that word came, she would have to face her prospective son-in-law. She wanted no hint of her past association with Jeremy to interfere in any way with her daughter's marriage. Although she knew she would never forget (barring another tumble down a stone stairway) what Jeremy had been to her, it was essential that he forget her. He had to begin thinking of her as a mother-in-law instead of as a woman he once thought he loved.

But how was she to make him see her as a mother-in-law? She tried to remember her own mother-in-law. The dowager Lady Beringer had been a decent sort, much kinder than her son, but of course quite old. Like many of the elderly women in London social circles, she'd always dressed in dark dresses with long, lacy sleeves, had kept her hair tightly bound in a chignon pinned to the back of her head, and always covered her hair with a white widow's cap. She'd worn the cap all day, everywhere she went, even outdoors, under her bonnets or hidden beneath the turbans she donned for dinner parties. And there were other appurtenances that added to the impression of advancing age: Lady Beringer had walked with a cane and kept a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose. Cassie, remembering her fondly, realized now that her appearance had been eminently suitable for her mother-in-law role.

The trouble was that Cassie's mother-in-law had been, at that time, more than thirty years older than Cassie was now. But Cassie could certainly adjust her appearance to give a similar effect. She could borrow one of Annie's white caps, and she could wear it over tightly restrained hair. And though she hadn't any dark lace gowns or turbans, she could certainly have some made. She even had a pair of magnifying spectacles stored away somewhere that she'd once used when she was learning to paint miniatures. She would, this very day, set about looking for them. With these accoutrements, she might be able to become a very proper mother-in-law indeed.

With this scheme in mind, she became more relaxed. She had her first good night's sleep since the night Jeremy had surprised her in the turret room. And the following morning, knowing she had no responsibilities at all for the day, she luxuriated in bed for two full hours past her usual time of rising. She was still abed—though awake—when Annie bustled in. "I hate to disturb you, my lady," the housekeeper said breathlessly, as if she'd run up the stairs, "but he's downstairs, askin' for Miss Cicely!"

"He?" Cassie sat up with a shudder, having a premonition of trouble. "Not—?"

"Lord Inglesby, yes'm. And he's furious that he wasn't told she's gone to London. He told Mr. Clemson that he'd not budge till he gives you a piece of his mind."

"Then he
didn't
go to London, after all." Under those circumstances, she could see why he was out of temper. It must have seemed to him that, while he'd kept his part of the bargain, she'd not kept hers. She threw off her covers and slid out of bed, her mind racing over possibilities. "I don't suppose," she murmured speculatively, "that Clemson could convince him to go away. He could suggest that his lordship call again... at some other time."

"I don't think so, ma'am. His lordship told Mr. Clemson to tell me to get you downstairs if I had to pull you by the hair from bed and push you out in your nightshift!" She gave her mistress a shrug that was half-alarmed and half-amused. "I don't expect he really meant it, do you? But neither do I expect that he'd agree to depart the premises."

Cassie sighed. She would have to see him, that much was obvious. In nervous haste, she ran barefoot to the mirror and peered into it. Everything was wrong about her appearance this morning. Just when she wanted to look peaked and haggish, she was looking well. With her hair hanging in tousled profusion about her face and her cheeks rosy from sleep, she looked almost youthful. This was not the mother-in-law-ish face she wanted to present to him. Something had to be done.

She immediately began to dress her hair. As she pinned it into a topknot, she glanced at the hovering Annie. "Annie, I know you'll think this strange," she said hurriedly, "but don't ask questions now. Please, my dear, let me borrow your dress. It's a dark gray, not black, but it will have to do. Oh, and your cap, too. The cap is perfect."

A few minutes later, dressed and capped, she peered at herself in the mirror, but what she saw did not yet convey the impression she wanted. Desperately she began to rummage through her dressing-table drawers. "Help me, Annie," she begged. "See if you can find my magnifying spectacles. They must be here somewhere."

Annie turned them up a moment later. Cassie put them on and returned to the mirror. But she couldn't see properly through them. She lowered them on her nose and looked over them. There! she thought in considerable relief. That was a bit more like the old biddy she wanted to be.

Leaving a gaping, half-dressed Annie behind in her room, she started down the hall to the stairs. She had to take off the spectacles in order to navigate the stairs, but just outside the drawing room, where Jeremy was waiting, she put them on again. "Good morning, your lordship," she said cheerily as she stepped briskly over the threshold. She took a step forward with hand outstretched, tripped over the carpet and fell right into his arms.

This clumsy entrance might have been amusing, but he was too furious to be amused. He set her on her feet, stormed over to the door to shut it so that the staff would not be privy to his scold and began to lace into her at once. "After extracting a promise from me to offer for your daughter, ma'am," he began icily, "it seems to me you might have kept her on hand so that I might—"

By this time he'd turned back to face her. At the sight of her, words failed him. She was standing in the middle of the room, watching him warily. She looked different, somehow, from the woman he remembered. He stared, wondering for a moment what the difference was. She was wearing a dowdy garment much too large for her, with a white mobcap covering her hair, and she was peering at him over the silliest-looking pair of square, silver-rimmed spectacles he'd ever seen. It was those spectacles, of course, that were the cause of his befuddlement! They couldn't be real. They were too thick, too ill-fitting. And she'd never worn eyeglasses before, not once in all the time he'd known her. Was it some sort of jest she was playing on him?

Yet she looked utterly adorable, he thought, with those ridiculous glasses on her nose. How could he possibly remain angry with her while she stood there peering at him in that irresistibly appealing way? All the pent-up anger—anger that had been stoked throughout this past fortnight, during which he'd had to prepare himself to make an offer he had no wish to make, that had burst into a blaze when he discovered Cicely was gone and that had intensified to a hot flame in the more than half an hour he'd been kept pacing the floor waiting for her to put in an appearance—was immediately smothered, dissipated, gone. Worse, a hiccupping laugh gurgled up from his throat.

She drew herself up in offense. "Are you laughing at me, my lord?"

The grin he'd been trying to hold back broke out and lit his face. "Can you actually see through those spectacles, ma'am?'

"Would I be wearing them otherwise?" she snapped. "What's wrong with them?"

"Nothing at all. I find them charming. You look like... like..."

"A dowager? A crone? A grandam?"
 

"No, not at all. You look... scholarly. Like a schoolmistress."

"A forbidding old hag of a schoolmistress?'' she asked hopefully.

"More like a schoolmistress to whom all the little boys send drawings of hearts with arrows piercing them."

"Oh,
Jemmy,"
she breathed, "what a very sweet thing to say!" She was so touched she didn't realize she'd called him by the nickname people used for him only in moments of intimacy. His affectionate words had made her throat contract They were little arrows, piercing her heart.

But her disguise had not worked. She took off the glasses and pocketed them, sighing in defeat. "I was hoping to look like a... a..."
 

"Yes?" he urged, amused and curious.

She glanced at him ruefully. "Like a mother-in-law."

He blinked for a moment and then burst into a guffaw. Laughing, he fell down upon the sofa, where he rocked with laughter until the tears came. "A mother-in-law?" he roared, and laughed some more.

She stood there watching him until he'd wiped his cheeks and caught his breath. "It's not a matter for amusement you know," she said worriedly.

"Isn't it?" He stood up and confronted her, his expression turning serious. "But, my darling idiot don't you see? This proves how impossible, how ridiculously impossible this situation is. Did you really believe I would stop loving you if you dressed like a mother-in-law? Don't you know that I would find you adorable even if you dressed up like... like Hickham?"

"Then tell me what to do!" she cried in real agony.

"Isn't it obvious? Give up this silly game. This ridiculous pretense. Marry me, and let Cicely find someone else to wed."

"No. I can't! I won't!" She took a turn around the room, her determination strengthening with every step. Then she wheeled round to face him. "Dash it, Jeremy," she exclaimed, "you gave me your word."

He stared into her face and saw in it the end of all his hopes. Something in his chest cracked with pain, the pain of realizing that she didn't really love him. He'd wrestled for two weeks with this problem, but only now was he facing up to it: she couldn't truly love him if she was willing to give him up forever, to sacrifice him on the altar of mother love. Well, he would do as she asked, but he'd not forgive her for it. "Yes, I did," he said, tight-lipped. "I gave my word. And I'll honor it. My mother raised her son to honor his word at all costs. I suppose I'll learn to live with it."

"Live with it?"

"I will have to take a vow, will I not? To love and to honor and to forsake all others? How can I do it when I know that you're somewhere close by?"

"Then I'll go away. I should have thought of that before. After the wedding, I'll go abroad, for an extended stay. Yes, that's it! I'll go to Italy and rent a villa and... and paint. I'll see Rome. And Paris. And by the time I come back, you and Cicely... you'll have lived together intimately... you'll have a child... you'll have forgotten—"

"Stop! I don't want to hear any more. We'll both do what we must." He got up and strode to the door.

It was not until he'd put his hand on the knob that he remembered why he'd demanded to see her. "By the way, why on earth did you send Cicely to London?" he asked, his earlier fury coming back to him. "Didn't you think I'd keep my promise?"

"I had no doubt you would." She flashed him a wry smile. "I knew you were the sort whose mother raised him to honor his word."

He did not smile back. "Then why didn't you keep her here?"

"I thought you'd find it easier to court her there."

He nodded glumly. "Yes, I suppose I shall. Well, then, it's good-bye, ma'am. I'm off to London to keep my blasted promise."

"Thank you, Jeremy," she said with quiet misery. "I wish with all my heart that you'll be happy."

"I'll try to make the best of it," he muttered as he threw open the door and strode off down the corridor, "but I'd be a happier man if my mother had raised a cad."

Chapter 27

Cicely did not find London much to her liking. It was almost a week since she'd moved into her aunt's town house, and Charles Percy, Lord Lucas, had not yet called on her. She knew he was aware of her presence, for she'd wormed the information from Clive, who'd already visited her four times. She'd quizzed him on the subject during their very first meeting. "Do you stay with your uncle?" she asked in a not-very-subtle attempt to bring up the subject of Lord Lucas.

"No, I have rooms on Upper Seymour Street," Clive responded with irritating indifference, "but I'm only a step away from him. His place is on the other side of Portman Square."

"I know where he lives," she said impatiently. "So you are only a step away? That means, I suppose, that you often dine with him."

"Dine with him?" He looked at her as if she were touched in her upper works. "Why would I dine with him?"
 

"Why would you not?"

"I don't care to dine with elderly relations," the idiotic fellow replied. "Nothing is more of a bore than that. Though I did see him at the boxing match the other night. Looked trim as a trencher in a green cord coat. Weston cut it, I'd give odds. Up to the mark, my uncle Charles, I'll give him that. Looked neat as wax."

"For an elderly relation," Cicely retorted. She glared at the boy in frustration, wondering how to get the information she wanted without giving herself away. "I hope the 'elderly relation' was well."

"Ripping," Clive said blandly. "By the way, I told him I was coming to see you tonight, and he sent his best."

His best!
Cicely had had to be content with that meager message. But ever since, she'd lived in eager anticipation of a visit from Charles. He knew she was in town. He
had
to call, she thought, if only out of mere politeness. She jumped every time she heard the door knocker. But it was never he.

As the days passed and her discouragement grew, Cicely became despondent. Clive noticed it. Even Aunt Eva noticed it. And Aunt Eva would not let her beloved niece wallow in despond. "Let's go to the opera tonight," she suggested with sunny enthusiasm. "It is
Cosi Fan Tutte,
with that wonderful new soprano, Madame Pesta. A performance of
Cosi
is bound to cheer you. We'll let Clive escort us."

Cicely, who knew that falling into the dismals would do her no good, tried to feel festive. She put on her loveliest gown— it was a Saxony green, of the very softest lawn, and with a wide satin sash that tied in the back with an enormous bow. She permitted Eva's abigail to dress her hair
a la grecque,
a style requiring a great number of curls to frame the face, with the rest of the hair pulled back and tied in place with spangled ribbons. She even wore the strand of pearls that her mother had given her on her last birthday, that she usually saved for the most special occasions.