Lady Caro (5 page)

Chapter 5

When Caro entered the estate room in answer to her father’s summons, he was standing by the corner of his big desk, looking sadly preoccupied, and his eyes did not light up as they usually did when he saw her. She had seen that unhappy look frequently recently, but when she asked him what was wrong, he would deny that anything was. Seeking to divert his thoughts to more cheerful channels, she said, “Oh, Papa, I have just seen the most splendid pair of chestnuts. You would be proud to own them.”

“Where did you see them?”

“They belong to Lord Vinson. He gave me a ride behind them. He is a top sawyer with the ribbons, and so nice, too. I like him the best of all our guests.”

The marquess asked anxiously, “Did you meet Vinson looking as you do now?”

Caro glanced down at her faded, paw-stained dress, then back up at her father in surprise. Unlike her Aunt Olive, who raised such dust-ups about how she acted and dressed, Papa never seemed to mind.

But now he said in a reproving tone that he had never before used with her, “Look at you. That dress should have been consigned to the rag bag and your skirt is covered with dirty prints.”

This censure, coming from her beloved father, who never criticized her, stung Caro as painfully as a whiplash.

She hung her head, acutely aware of how untidy she looked.

“No doubt you gave Lord Vinson a disgust of you, looking the way you do,” Levisham said, frowning unhappily.

Remembering how shocked Vinson had been when he had learned her identity, Caro knew that her father was right. This realization was oddly painful to her. Ashley was so understanding and so much fun to talk to. And so very handsome, too. She could see now why her cousins were wildly infatuated with him. He was not at all toplofty like Lord Sanley or affected like Sir Percival. So different, too, from her dour cousin Tilford. A shudder of revulsion coursed through Caro at the thought of him.

“Your aunt has been complaining to me about your appearance, Caro, and she is quite right to do so.”

Caro bit her lip. Her appearance was not, as her aunt seemed to think, deliberate. She would have liked nothing better than to be as immaculately turned out as Grace and Jane, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never manage to look neat and stylish and cool as her cousins did.

Her hair, fine as silk and unruly as a colt, defied all attempts to confine it in a neat coil or knot. Long skirts, too, were a severe trial. Her hems never seemed to hang quite straight, perhaps because she frequently hitched up her skirts to climb fences that got in her way. For some maddening reason, her ruffles seemed especially prone to catch and tear. She could rarely remember to slow her purposeful, impatient gait to the sedate, graceful glide of a lady. Nor could she hide her boisterous high spirits and irrepressible candor behind the colorless decorum that her aunt insisted was the mark of a young lady of quality.

“How do you expect to attract a husband looking as you do?” her father demanded in exasperation.

Caro’s head snapped up. “But, Papa, you know that I do not intend to marry. I shall devote myself to you as Abigail Foster did to her father.” Abigail, a pretty woman of wit and intelligence a decade older than Caro, had rejected several flattering offers, refusing to surrender herself to a husband’s domination. Instead she had dedicated herself to caring for her widowed father, an old curmudgeon whom Caro secretly had not thought worthy of Abigail’s devotion.

Levisham’s frown deepened at the mention of Abigail. “I think that both you and she were too much affected by Lady Fraser’s jaundiced views of marriage. Remember that Lady Fraser and her husband disliked each other from the moment they met. Their parents were fools to have forced them into an arranged marriage. Never were two people more ill-suited. He cares only for London and its parties; she, for the country and her horses. And both have suffered.”

It was true that Caro’s views of marriage, and of Lord Fraser, too, had been darkly colored by his lady, and she cried angrily, “I never thought to hear you defend that odious man.”

“To Lord Fraser’s credit, he permits her to live where she wishes with their son, although he would prefer the boy to be with him in London.”

“Will you also make excuses for Potter and Burk and Coleberd?” Caro cried. Her kind heart, which could not bear suffering of any nature, grieved for their poor, mistreated wives.

“No, I do not. While I grant you that Lady Fraser can cite unfortunate examples, such as those, of ill-treated wives, there are also a great many happy ones,” Levisham said. “Furthermore, look at how unhappy Abigail Foster is now that her father is dead. She would have been wiser to have accepted ... one of the offers she rejected.”

Caro, whose soft heart ached for poor Abigail, had a difficult time fighting back tears. Upon the death of Abigail’s father eight months ago, his country seat had passed to his son and heir. The latter’s shrewish wife, determined not to share the house with the woman who had so long presided over it, had not rested until Abigail was packed off against her will to live with a crotchety old aunt in Glasgow.

“I beg of you to consider carefully, Caro, whether marriage would not have been preferable for Abigail to her present situation.”

“But I do not have an odious sister-in-law,” Caro objected.

“You may have worse,” he said abruptly.

“Papa, what are you talking about? Surely you cannot want me to marry,” Caro protested in a small, betrayed voice. “You have always said that you wished me to remain with you.”

Her father, looking quite as miserable as she felt, said sharply, “Like Abigail’s father, I shall not live forever. Furthermore, I want grandchildren. With Brandon dead, you are my only chance for them. I beg of you to reconsider your opposition to marriage. You could find among our guests one who would make you a good, loving husband.”

“I do not want a loving husband,” Caro cried passionately. “I find the thought of such attentions repugnant.”

Clearly startled by her vehemence, Levisham said softly, “But, my child, that is only because you have not yet met a man who has touched your heart.”

“And I never shall,” she cried impetuously. “If I must marry, I pray that it be a marriage like Lady Fraser’s.”

“You cannot mean that, Caro. They never see each other, and he lives with another.”

“I mean it most sincerely. It is precisely the kind of marriage that I want. I cannot bear the thought of a man touching me.”

Her father looked thoroughly alarmed. “What has given you such an excessive aversion to men?”

Caro longed to tell him, but she had given her solemn word to Tilford that she would not, and she could never go back on that. A month ago, while her father had been away on a two-day inspection of another of his estates, Tilford had appeared, thoroughly foxed, at Bellhaven. Caro had been in the deserted stables checking on a new foal, and he had trapped her there.

Before she had realized what he was about, he had crushed her to him, his odorous breath nauseating her. Then his mouth had ground down on hers with such force that her lip had bled.

For Caro, who had never before been kissed, it had confirmed her worst apprehensions about men and marriage. So this was what a man’s lovemaking was like, she had thought with revulsion. In that brief, brutal encounter, Tilford had sealed her determination never to marry and subject herself to a husband’s cruel, repugnant desires.

She had kicked and scratched and struggled until she had escaped his embrace. When he had started after her, she had picked up a bucket of water and thrown it over him. It had brought him to his senses, and he had begged her forgiveness.

She had told him bluntly what she thought of him.

To her amazement, he had begun to cry, begging her, with tears streaming down his cheeks, not to tell either his mother or her father. Caro, who had always before felt more pity than dislike for her oafish, slow-topped cousin, was incapable of resisting anyone’s tears, and she had given him her word that she would not tell. After all, informing her father, who hated having Tilford as his heir, would only make the marquess more unhappy.

“I repeat, Caro,” her father was saying in alarm, “what has given you such an abhorrence of men?”

Unable to tell him the truth, she cried, “I have only to look about me! I will never marry!”

Chapter 6

Dinner that night proved to be far livelier than it had been on the previous evening, thanks to the addition of Lord Vinson to the company. He frequently kept those around him in laughter, but Caro, seated at the opposite end of the table between her aunt and Tilford, could catch only occasional snatches of what Ashley said, and she found herself straining her ears vainly to hear more.

Vinson was flanked by Grace and Jane. On the other side of Grace was Lord Sanley, the duke of Upton’s son. Jane had drawn Lord Charles Harley, the earl of Wendover’s heir. Caro, who had been been uneasy with Tilford since the incident in the stables, had wanted to cry with vexation when she had discovered that she was again seated between him and her aunt, who was presiding at the foot of the table.

Sitting next to Tilford robbed her of whatever appetite she might have had. Her only consolation was that tonight he was not getting foxed, which always made him argumentative and loudly obnoxious. His wineglass remained empty, and the servant stationed behind him made no attempt to fill it. Once Tilford touched it as if to call the minion’s attention to it, but his hand dropped away hastily at a quelling look from his mother. He remained sullen and silent as a stone throughout the meal.

After dinner, the men stayed behind in the dining room to enjoy coffee and brandy with their host while Aunt Olive led the females into the drawing room. Although it was large and formal, its walls hung with Spitalfields silk brocade and the ceiling with three crystal chandeliers, it had a comfortable, inviting atmosphere that was achieved by the invitingly casual groupings of settees and armchairs.

Caro and Emily listened quietly as Grace, Jane, their mother, and Mary Milbank cruelly dissected the absent males. Lord Charles Harley was the most cruelly maligned. His nickname was the Nose, and even Caro had to concede that his face did appear to be all proboscis. Worse, its enormous size had the misfortune to project from an excessively sloping forehead and receding chin that gave him a startling triangular profile. But Caro liked him. He was intelligent, friendly, and good-hearted, all qualities she valued far more than a nose.

But clearly Jane did not. With one hand pulling on her nose to extend its length, she acted out a cruelly slanderous lampoon of poor Lord Charles. Her mother, sister, and Mary Milbank laughed uproariously while Emily and Caro sat in uncomfortable silence.

Only Ashley escaped
_;
criticism. Even Mary seemed to have either forgiven or forgotten his rakish tendencies as she joined the Kelsie daughters in complimenting his charm, fine looks, impeccable dress, good manners, and wit.

Grace turned suddenly to Caro, who had taken no part in the conversation. “Which of our guests would you like to marry?”

Caro, taken aback by the abruptness of the question, answered, “None of them. You know that I wish never to marry.”

“You say that because you know only a fortune hunter would marry an anecdote like you,” Grace scoffed.

Caro’s pride would not allow her cousins the satisfaction of knowing how much their many cruel jibes hurt her. She either pretended to take no notice or shrugged them off with a cool comment as though they mattered naught. Caro displayed the same feigned indifference to their mother’s incessant criticism. Now, forcing a smile to her lips, she said, “I say it because I am not so foolish as to think marriage need be a woman’s only purpose in life.”

But part of her opposition to marriage stemmed from the knowledge that no man would ever fall madly in love with a plain thing like herself. Were she to receive an offer, it would be, as Grace said, based on other considerations, principally her fortune. Caro had observed the unhappy fate of plain heiresses, such as Amelia Colebard and Clara Potter, and she had no intention of sharing it. She had seen no example of a husband who, having married for other than love, treated his wife well.

When the men rejoined the ladies in the drawing room after finishing their brandy, most of them gravitated immediately toward Grace and Jane, who, in complimentary shades of pink and blue, were artfully arranged on a sofa with their mama beside them.

Mercer Corte and Vinson, coming into the drawing room together, went immediately toward Emily Picton, but Mrs. Kelsie insisted that Ashley join her and her daughters on the sofa. As he crossed to it, Caro wondered in mortification how she could ever have mistaken him for a solicitor. The quiet elegance of his faultlessly tailored midnight-blue coat and white breeches, and the intricate arrangement of his snowy cravat with a single sapphire glittering in its folds, eclipsed his far more showily dressed companions, even that satin-clad pink of the ton, Sir Percival Plymtree, whose waistcoat was as crowded with fobs and seals as his fingers were with rings.

Caro was suddenly conscious of how deficient her own appearance was and wished that she had spent more time on her toilette. She was wearing one of the new gowns that Aunt Olive had ordered for her, a skimpily cut blue muslin. Although her aunt had proclaimed it perfect on her, it seemed to Caro to emphasize her thin, boyish form, and its color did not become her complexion at all.

Lord Charles joined Caro, who, remembering how Jane had made fun of his nose, went out of her way to be friendly with him. A few minutes later, Ashley left the sofa and the Kelsie sisters to join Mercer and Emily. Jane, accompanied by Mary Milbank, promptly came up to Charles and Caro.

It was not long before Jane had the audacity to compliment poor Charles’s nose, saying it gave him a noble appearance.

“Do you truly think so?” he asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes,” Jane cooed.

Incensed by such duplicity, Caro detached herself from the group and moved away. Having never before been exposed to the
haute monde
or the mating game of its young, she was repelled by the machinations of the females as they honed in on male targets, even those they professed not to like. Hypocrisy shocked her, and she could not fathom how they could simper so sweetly to a gentleman after savaging him behind his back.

“What has inspired such a furious look, Lady Caro?” inquired Ashley’s voice behind her.

An odd little tremor of pleasure that he had sought her out coursed through her, and she turned to him with a smile. He was so tall and she so small that the top of her head did not reach his shoulder. Incurably honest as always, she told him of her cousin’s mendacity, adding passionately, “I would not object to her making fun of Sir Percival’s corset or of Paul Coleman’s front teeth, which he’s so foolishly filed into points. But I think it is excessively cruel and unjust to ridicule an unfortunate nose that one cannot help. Then to toad-eat him to his face is the outside of enough!”

She looked at Ashley defiantly, half expecting him to tell her she was a silly goose, but he merely said gravely, “I quite agree.” He smiled at her, saying lightly, “I imagine all us poor males suffered from Jane’s faultfinding tongue.”

“Oh, not you!” Caro exclaimed. “Even Mary Milbank seems to have forgotten your rakish tendencies. I daresay that between her and my cousins you shall not have a moment’s peace.”

He frowned at her words, but before she could ask him what was wrongs Aunt Olive and her daughters bore down upon them like a flagship flanked by two frigates.

“Dear Lord Vinson,” Aunt Olive began, “I do hope that dearest Caroline has not shocked or insulted you. She has the most wayward tongue. One never knows what will pop out of her mouth.”

“To the contrary, I find her conversation charming.”

“How gallant you are,” Aunt Olive twittered, coyly fluttering her fan. “Caroline dearest, do go repair your hair. It is flying all about. And I do believe you have spilled something on your new gown, too. What a clumsy child you are. You have surely given Lord Vinson a disgust of you, although he is too polite to say anything.”

Caro, ready to sink at being chastised so in front of Ashley, turned away.

As she fled, Aunt Olive said in long-suffering accents, “I have tried so diligently to make dearest Caroline into a lady, but I fear the task is hopeless, Lord Vinson. She serves to remind me, however, how fortunate I am in my own two daughters whom, I do believe, were born perfect young ladies, so superior have their behavior and manners always been.”

Caro, humiliated by her aunt’s words, stopped in front of a mirror in the hall to examine her gown. She could find no trace of the spot her aunt had talked about.

After the ladies and most of the gentlemen had retired to their rooms that night, Ashley opened one of the French doors that led from the drawing room to the terrace and slipped outside. The night had been very still and hot, but a cooling breeze was at last wafting across the terrace that ran the length of Bellhaven’s elegant south front.

Seating himself on the stone balustrade that overlooked the formal garden, he considered with cynical amusement the guests who had been invited to Bellhaven. With the exception of Mercer Corte, the males were all bachelors of great fortune and impressive family. Some of them, like buffle-headed Paul Coleman or that malicious gossip, Percy Plymtree, had nothing else to recommend them. Which convinced Ashley that they must have been chosen by that scheming Olive Kelsie. Wien she had accused her niece of disgusting him, it had been all he could do to keep from telling the harridan that it was she, not her niece, who did so.

Although Caro did not disgust him, she had sorely disappointed him. On the road to Bellhaven, his one sustaining hope had been that she would be a diamond of the first water whom he would come to love.

But she had turned out to be a child, an amusing one to be sure, but a child nonetheless. And one shockingly wanting in conduct at that. Yet he would have much preferred to have been seated beside her at dinner instead of between her two far lovelier cousins.

That meal had been Ashley’s longest continuous exposure to Grace and Jane Kelsie. By the time the ladies had risen from the table to leave the men to their coffee and brandy, he had realized with dismaying clarity what dead bores they both were. Furthermore, he was now certain that beneath their gushing exterior, as syrupy as sugar water, they were very much like their domineering shrew of a mother.

He thought glumly of the other girls on his father’s list: Emily Picton was in love with Mercer Corte; Lady Margaret was beautiful but boring and stupid; Elizabeth Trott’s self-absorption offended him; Mary Milbank was dull and missish in the bargain; and Caro was too young.

Hearing footsteps, Ashley looked up to see Mercer Corte approaching him.

“Such a beastly hot night,” Mercer said, settling beside Ashley on the stone balustrade. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m devilish glad you came. I happened on something very early on the day I left London for here that greatly disturbed me. I saw again the one-eared man who was lurking on Curzon Street before your brother’s race.”

“Where?” Ashley asked eagerly.

“In the back slums of St. Giles with your cousin Henry.”

“Good God!” Ashley exclaimed. “What the devil were you doing in such a wretched spot?”

“Paul Coleman dragged me there. Insisted he wanted to explore the Holy Land, and he was so in his cups that I did not dare leave him to do so on his own.” Mercer shuddered visibly. “Why it’s called the Holy Land is beyond me. I have never seen such squalor and degradation and misery in my life.”

“Horrifying, isn’t it,” Ashley said grimly. “ ’Tis said to get its name because its residents are more holey in their garments than righteous in their conduct.”

“That’s true enough! Never felt so uncomfortable in my life as I did in that boozing ken where I saw your cousin. I don’t mind admitting that I felt lucky to get out of there without my throat being slit. Your cousin was huddled in a secluded corner with the one-eared man.”

Ashley jumped up from the balustrade, much agitated, and began pacing in front of Mercer. “Are you absolutely certain that it was the same man that you saw coming from the stable that night?”

Mercer, looking up at Ashley as he towered above him, met his gaze steadily. “No doubt about it. If you ever saw him, you would not mistake another for him. He’s a hulking bruiser, as ugly as mud, with two nasty scars on his face. And, of course, his right ear is missing. As soon as I saw your cousin with him, I thought about those horrifying rumors about Henry and that fatal race.”

Ashley’s hands unconsciously clenched into angry fists. He had thought that Henry, whatever his other faults might be, was not a murderer. But in the face of this new evidence, his father’s suspicions appeared to be nearer to the truth. But why would his cousin have wanted to kill William? Surely it had not been merely to win a large sum on the curricle race. Henry did not need the blunt, having been very plump in the pockets since he had won a hundred thousand pounds from Lord Whittleson two years ago in one sitting.

There could be only one possible motive for Henry to kill William, and it chilled Ashley to the marrow. His cousin must mean to inherit the Bourn title and fortune. But before he could do that, he would also have to eliminate two additional obstacles in his path: the earl and Ashley. If Henry was cold-blooded enough to have murdered William, he would not hesitate to kill again. Ashley had to find out the truth, if not from Henry, then from the one eared man.

The viscount sat down again on the balustrade beside Mercer. “When we get back to London, would you take me to that alehouse?”