Elizabeth Mansfield (30 page)

Gussie looked down at her sister questioningly. “Do you think that’s what happened? That Denham didn’t offer after all?”

Prue, without taking her eye from the keyhole, shrugged. “What else could it be?”

Further speculation was interrupted by the opening of the front door. Their brother, Edward, strode in, his riding boots clattering loudly on the worn marble of the entryway as he hurried to the stairs. But he stopped short at the sight of the three girls grouped before the sitting room door.

“What on earth are you doing?” he demanded suspiciously.

Two pairs of eyes looked at him guiltily. “Oh, Ned, it’s Letty!” Gussie said breathlessly. “Aunt Millicent is furious with her, and Mama has fainted twice, and—”

“They’re eavesdropping; that’s what they’re doing, Neddie,” Clara declared self-righteously. “You ought to make them stop.”

“That’s just what I intend to do, infant,” Ned said, looking down at his youngest sister with distaste, “though you needn’t think I’m doing it as a result of your tattling.”

Prue had returned to the keyhole and now made her report. “Aunt Millicent is pacing again. And Letty is biting her lip. That means she’s about to cry, the poor thing.”

Ned pretended a disinterest he was far from feeling. “Get up, Prue, before someone catches you! Hang it, it ain’t the thing for a girl your age to behave like a parlormaid!” he scolded.

Prue rose calmly and brushed off her skirt. “And what do
you
know of parlormaids? Was
that
why you were sent down from Oxford? For shame, Ned!”

Ned took a threatening step toward her. “Mind your tongue, goosecap! Get back to the schoolroom at once, and take your sisters with you, or you’ll have to deal with me!”

Prue regarded him speculatively. He was only one year her senior and barely an inch taller than she, but although he had not yet reached his full height, his shoulders were broad and the muscles in his arms fully developed. Previous experience had taught her that he was not easily bested in a fight. Besides, now that she was seventeen, it was no longer seemly to engage in a tussle with her brother. She shrugged and marched in brave retreat to the stairs. Gussie, meeting his glare, took Clara’s hand and ran quickly after Prue. Ned waited until they had disappeared around the bend in the stairs. Then he listened for the closing of the schoolroom door; after which he promptly knelt down and peered into the keyhole to see for himself what was going on.

Inside the room the tension was palpable. Letty, seated in the far corner of the room, seemed immobile, her back straight, the hands in her lap hidden inside her fur-trimmed muff, her head lowered,
her face shaded by the brim of her plumed bonnet, her eyes fixed on a worn patch of carpet at her feet. Only the sharpest of observers could have detected the movement of her fingers inside the muff as they clenched and unclenched in distress and the frequent flicker of her eyelids as she battled valiantly to keep the tears from flowing over.

Her aunt paced the room with an angry stride, the stiff silk of her rather old-fashioned skirts whispering with matching anger every time she turned about. Letty began to count her aunt’s paces … eight steps to the window, swish … eight steps back to the sofa, swish … eight steps to the window, swish …

A groan from the sofa caused Letty and Aunt Millicent to turn their heads. Lady Glendenning, stretched out full-length, sighed and raised her hand from her eyes. Her arm made a tremblingly nervous arc through the air and fell to her side where it dangled over the edge of the sofa in listless despair. “Whatever are we to do now, Millicent?” she asked in a quavering voice. “Whatever are we to do?”

“Ask your daughter!” Millicent said with asperity. “
She’s
the one who whistled a fortune down the wind!”

“Letty, my love,” her mama asked tearfully, “
how
could you have done it? How could you have
refused
him?”

Letty, her lovely hazel eyes filling with tears, merely shook her head. Her aunt looked at her closely. Aunt Millicent, the formidable Lady Upsham, was no fool. No girl in possession of her senses could turn down a man like Lord Denham without a very good reason. “There
must
be someone else,” she said for the third time. “You’ve fixed your heart on some ineligible wastrel, no doubt, and hope to make a match of it, in spite of your mother’s wishes and your family’s need, isn’t that it?”

Letty looked up, blinking, as two tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’ve told you and told you. There’s no one else. N-no one. I j-just c-could not …”

“You could not accept an offer from the most eligible bachelor in England? I fail to understand you, Letitia. It is not as if we were marrying you to an ogre. Or even to an old dodderer with nothing to recommend him but his purse. Denham is
more
than a wealthy peer. He is nothing if not charming and witty. His address is excellent, his mind is superior to most of the young men of your flibberty-gibberty generation, and God knows he’s as handsome a man as I’ve ever seen, even if his complexion is darker than I like and his eyebrows somewhat heavy …”

“Was
that
it, Letty dear?” her mother asked in concern. “Did you take an aversion to his eyebrows?”

Letty had to smile, even if somewhat tremulously. “Oh, Mama, of course not!”

“His complexion, then?”

Letty’s smile faded, and she returned her eyes to the patch in the carpet. “There’s nothing at all amiss in Lord Denham’s appearance,” she said in a flat voice.

Lady Glendenning pulled herself up on one arm and peered closely at her daughter. She had never seen Letty in such distress. The poor girl looked positively hagged, although Lady Glendenning had to admit that even her excessive pallor failed to detract appreciably from the loveliness of Letty’s face. Letty was blessed with thick auburn hair, high cheekbones, a clear complexion, and a full, expressive mouth. And her eyes, even when red-rimmed and tearful, were large and lustrous and showed clearly the gentleness and intelligence that were her nature. Lady Glendenning had waited for two years, ever since Letty’s come-out at eighteen under the auspices of her sister-in-law, Lady Millicent Upsham, for Letty to choose one of her rich suitors to marry. It was Letty who would save the family from sinking into a mire of debt. But Millicent had urged Lady Glendenning to curb her impatience. Millicent had a match in mind for Letty that would solve all their problems. Letty would marry the man most girls in London
only
dreamed
of attaching. Millicent was saving Letty for Roger Denham, the Earl of Arneau.

Lady Glendenning sighed. Millicent’s hopes for Letty had made her, Letty’s own adoring mother, uneasy from the first. Lord Denham was past thirty and had never succumbed to matrimony. All Millicent’s assurances that Roger Denham would come up to scratch failed to ease her mind. Lovely as her daughter was, Lady Glendenning knew that there were others more beautiful, more well connected, or more lively, and that Lord Denham had ignored them all. Letty, quiet and self-effacing, was not likely to catch quite so big a fish. Couldn’t Millicent be content with a lesser prize?

But Millicent had been adamant. Her connection with the Dowager Lady Denham was very close, and she knew that she, Roger’s mother, was quite taken with Letty. And, just as she had predicted, Lord Denham had taken an interest in Letty and had
offered
! Millicent and Lady Denham, between them, had done the trick. It was Letty herself who had ruined everything! What maggot had found its way into her devoted and very dutiful daughter’s head to cause her to do such a terrible thing?

Lady Glendenning lay back on the pillows with a groan. “I don’t understand you at all,” she said tearfully. “If you don’t hold his appearance in aversion, what
is
it that made you refuse him?”

Aunt Millicent snorted. “The answer is obvious. There’s nothing about Lord Denham to revolt a girl. Why, there’s not another girl in all of England who would refuse him. Your daughter has her eye on someone else. It’s the only possible explanation.”

Lady Glendenning shook her head. “No, Millicent. Letty wouldn’t lie to us. She has always been the most devoted, the most obedient, the best behaved of all my children. She’s never lied to me or given me the slightest trouble. She would not ruin her family by refusing a fortune—not for such a reason as that. You are not in love with some penniless fellow, are you, my darling?”

“No, Mama,” Letty said quietly. “I swear I’m not. I’ll marry anyone else you say.
Anyone.
” Her eyes filled with tears again. “But not Lord Denham.”

“Then at least tell us
why
!” her aunt demanded impatiently.

She shook her head. “Please don’t ask me to explain. I … can’t explain it to you. I c-can’t!” she answered in a choked voice.

“Don’t you realize, you silly peagoose, that there’s not much chance of finding someone else now?” Millicent asked in disgust. “No one will believe that you turned Denham down. They will all say that he found
you
unsatisfactory and did not come up to scratch.”

“Oh, my God!” wailed Lady Glendenning from the sofa. “I’d never thought of that …”

“Neither had your daughter, apparently,” Millicent muttered angrily. “Perhaps if she had, she would not have been so quick to refuse him.”

“It would have made no difference. I would have refused him in any case,” Letty said in a flat, dead voice that her mother barely recognized.

“Stop badgering the girl, Millicent,” Lady Glendenning said helplessly. “I can’t bear to see her so unhappy.”

“What about
your
unhappiness? And the rest of the family’s?” Millicent demanded. “Why didn’t she think of
that
?”

There was no answer. Lady Glendenning covered her eyes with trembling hands, and Letty stared in miserable silence at the carpet. Finally, Millicent sighed in defeat. “Well, go up to your room, Miss. I want to talk to your mother in private.”

Letty rose quickly and hurried out, almost colliding with her brother who had not moved quickly enough from the door. “Ned!” she gasped.

“Quiet!” he hissed nervously, carefully shutting the door behind her. “Do you want Aunt Millicent to know I’ve been eavesdropping?”

“Then you heard—?”

“Most of it. Whatever made you do it, Letty? Do you really dislike him so much?”

“Oh, Neddie, don’t
you
start on me, too!” Letty cried, and she burst into long-suppressed tears and fell against his shoulder.

Ned looked down at his sister’s bonnet in perplexity. “There, now, don’t cry,” he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. “You know I can’t abide waterworks. Besides, there’s no need for tears
now.
It’s all over and done with.”

“D-done with?” Letty raised her head from his shoulder. “W-what do you m-mean?”

“You’ve turned him down, haven’t you? It’s done with. However much they may scold, they can’t make you marry him now.”

This brought out a fresh flood of tears. “You d-don’t understand,” she sobbed against his shoulder. “You d-don’t unders-stand at all!”

“What is there to understand? Lord Denham asked you to marry him. You didn’t want to marry him, so you refused him. Let Aunt Millicent carry on all she likes. It’s too late for her to force you to marry him now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” his sister nodded, still sobbing.

“Then I’m dashed if I can see what you’re crying about. Stop it, will you? You’re soaking my riding coat. Here.” He lifted her head and handed her his handkerchief. “Dry those eyes, you silly puss. Everything is going to be fine.”

Letty took a deep breath and tried to control her tears. Sniffing bravely into his handkerchief, she muttered, “Everything is going to be dreadful.”

“Nonsense,” her brother said decidedly. “You’ve only to weather a little scolding. They’re bound to give up sooner or later. And when the noise is all over, you’ll no longer have to marry a man you dislike.”

“That’s just it,” Letty said, gulping back her tears and thrusting his wet handkerchief into his hand. “I
don’t
dislike him. In fact, if you want to know the truth, there’s no man in the world I’d
rather
marry than Roger Denham!” And she fled up the stairs, leaving her brother staring after her in openmouthed bewilderment.

Prologue

October, 1803

Thomas Collinson stood leaning on the rail of the merchant ship
Triton
, watching the waves slap away at the worn piles of the Southampton dock where the ship was moored. The wharf was dingy and rotting, but it was what the crew of a merchantman had come to expect in these days of war. Nelson’s naval vessels had first choice of moorage space, and the vessels of the East India Company had their own prime anchorages. So ships like the
Triton
took what was left.

It was already dark; the sails had been furled and the rigging secured an hour earlier. The captain and most of the crew had already gone ashore, but a few stragglers were still making their way down the gangplank toward the waterfront taverns or, if they were lucky, a woman’s bed. Most of these tag-tails were the ones who hadn’t signed on for the next voyage and had spent the past hour packing their gear. Tom gave an occasional wave of the arm to a departing sailor. He, the ship’s mate, had been given the watch, but he felt no resentment as his glance followed his shipmates, their seabags slung over their shoulders as they walked across the wharf and disappeared into the dark shadows beyond the dock where the light from the ship’s forward lantern couldn’t reach. He didn’t mind having the watch. He was in no hurry to get ashore; there was no place on land for which he had any particular fancy.

A man came stealthily up behind him—a sailor, moving quietly toward the railing on tiptoe. He was not as tall as Tom but so powerfully built that the heavy seabag resting on his shoulder seemed a lightweight triviality. His approach was soundless, but some instinct made Tom whirl about. He gave a snorting laugh. “You didn’t think you could sneak up behind me with success, did you, you whopstraw, with me waiting to see you off?”