Lord Greywell's Dilemma (2 page)

“He doesn’t want a wife,” Hampden insisted.

“He doesn’t know he wants a wife
yet.
It’s the perfect solution to both of our problems.” His eyes glazed over with satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair and took a sip of the brandy. “I think the thing for you to do is return to Warwickshire immediately and bring him here. Will he leave the child for a few days?”

“Edward, I think your wits have gone begging. Why would Greywell listen to such a crackbrained scheme? He’s still grieving over his wife. He’s not likely to dishonor her by marrying again so soon.

“Hmm. Here’s what you can tell him. His wife gave her life to present him with a son, his heir, and it’s his duty to see that the babe lives to perpetuate her memory. Yes, yes. That’s exactly how it should be. No one is going to criticize him when he marries for the sake of his child. They’ll understand the necessity and admire him for his courage in seeming to flaunt convention. Did his wife have family?”

“Only a maiden aunt in Yorkshire, who was too ill to journey to Ashfield. She raised the girl and had a friend bring her out in London, where David met her. Look, Edward, it’s not the family who’re going to oppose your scheme; it’s David himself.”

Hampden swirled the remaining brandy in his glass with more vigor than necessary. “From his point of view, a new wife wouldn’t have a vested interest in keeping the child alive, would she? A new wife would want to present him with an heir of her own, to solidify the match.”

Edward’s brows drew together in a prodigious frown. “I doubt if even Greywell could conceive of a woman’s allowing a child to die because she wanted to present him with his heir. It’s too monstrous to contemplate,” he added self-righteously. “You know Elspeth better than that, and I’m sure you can convince your nephew of her rectitude. No one who’s ever met Elspeth doubts her rectitude.”

Hampden finished off his brandy in a gulp and set his glass on the table nearest him with a decided thump. “I’m due in London. You’ll have to excuse me from going back to Warwickshire, Edward.”

Seeing the futility of urging that particular plan, Edward wisely backed off from it. “Of course, of course. You’re a busy man, and you’ve already allotted a generous amount of time to your nephew. It was unconscionable of me to suggest such a scheme. A letter would be much the better idea, in any case. That would give Greywell a chance to mull over the proposal. He’s likely, as you have, to reject it out of hand at first sight, but its merits may appeal to him after a little consideration. Well, of course they will, because it’s an eminently suitable arrangement for everyone involved. Write him that he must come to stay with me and meet her before he makes up his mind.”

“And what of Elspeth?”

“I can handle Elspeth,” Edward assured him, with ungrounded optimism. “You have only to do your part and the thing is as good as done.”

* * * *

Hampden and Elspeth sat across the breakfast table from each other in the morning after Sir Edward had been called away to settle an urgent estate matter. No mention had been made of Lord Greywell and his sickly son. Elspeth was calmly buttering a muffin while she spoke of her parish activities. Her gray wool dress did not completely disguise her attractive figure, but went a good way toward doing so, and the style in which she wore her hair, pulled starkly back from her face, did little to soften the strong features with which she’d been endowed.

Her eyes were more hazel than green and were given to observing one in a disconcerting way, as though she had no patience with circumspection. Her high cheekbones and straight nose were emphasized by the scalped coiffeur she affected, and would have been greatly softened by some ringlets about her face. There was no way to conceal the soft, full lips other than keeping them in a prim line, which she attempted for the most part to do. When she smiled they curved slightly, but Hampden wasn’t honored by a laugh.

Not the way she’d been as a child, he thought unhappily, when her lips were forever curling with delight, and her luscious laughter had bubbled forth without a moment’s thought. Her golden-brown hair had more often than not been slightly disarrayed then, from her youthful exertions; still, that was a great deal more attractive than the matronly knot she wore now at the back of her head.

Hampden remembered Elspeth as a spirited child, running almost wild over the estate, to the consternation of her mother and the delight of her father. The change in her had come about shortly after her mother’s death, he thought, and the mischievousness that had so endeared her to the childless Winterbournes had never returned.

Hampden’s wife had been Elspeth’s godmother, and had looked forward after Mary died to bringing Elspeth out in London, but even that hope had faded as her own health deteriorated. Elspeth had insisted it made no difference; her letter had been full of concern for Mrs. Winterbourne, and had just mentioned that the frivolity of London was not, after all, just the sort of setting to which she was accustomed. Hampden had always thought it might have made all the difference, induced her out of her narrow life. But that chance was gone.

“You seem to keep quite busy,” he remarked as he added cream to his coffee.

“Oh, there’s always more to be done than there’s time for,” she said, giving him one of her half-hearted smiles. “The rector is a great one for putting idle hands to work. Things run so smoothly at Lyndhurst I rarely have to spend more than an hour or two a day on my household duties. I’m afraid we didn’t give you much of a treat last night,” she apologized, remembering the rumpsteak-and-kidney pudding, and the curried fowl. “If you’ll stay over another night I’ll plan something special—fricasseed sweetbreads or savory rissoles, with a second course of sirloin of beef and roast partridges. Papa didn’t expect you until today.”

“Can’t stay, I’m afraid, my dear. I have business in London, and then I must go off to Kent as soon as may be. I long for my own bed, and my own things around me. You must understand how it is.”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “Actually, I’ve seldom been away from Lyndhurst since I was a child. The only times I’ve spent a night other than in my own bed were when I was nursing a sick child elsewhere, or was forced by inclement weather to spend the night at a neighbor’s.”

“Would you like to travel a bit?”

Elspeth looked surprised. “Travel? How should I do that? No, no, there is no chance of it, and I’m content to do my wanderings in the books I read. I’m needed in the parish, you know. These are difficult times for the poor folk. They make so little for their piecework, with the manufactories producing so much at such low cost. Not that I approve of how they treat their workers! You mustn’t think that. The conditions and the hours are quite appalling. I hear of the hardships. Whole families have moved to Manchester and Birmingham in hopes of making a better living, and they find themselves little if any better off than they were in the village. Often worse.” She sighed and set down the remaining bite of her muffin. “We have so much compared to them.”

“Yes, well, that’s only to be expected, isn’t it?” Hampden asked rhetorically. Such discussions made him uncomfortable.

“But we live in complete idleness and comfort while these people work and starve,” Elspeth protested. About to let herself get carried away, she noticed that his expression was pained, and she abruptly reined in her enthusiasm. Too often that glazed look had come into her father’s eyes, indicating the hopelessness of further expostulation. She picked up the last bite of muffin and asked, “Will there be decent hunting in Kent this winter?”

Relieved, Hampden set down his coffee cup to eye her with approval. Smart woman, to know when she’d gone past the bounds of pleasing. While he extolled the merits of his pack of foxhounds and his various hunters, he was turning over in his mind the possibility that Edward’s plan might not be so farfetched after all.

Elspeth was a good listener, asking the right questions, and making the right comments. Her sympathy with the downtrodden was evidence of her kind heart, and if there was one thing David needed just at the moment, it was someone with a concern for the weak. Maybe he would just write that letter before he set off for London after all. What harm could it do?

* * * *

“Too bad Hampden couldn’t stay longer,” Sir Edward muttered as he watched the traveling carriage disappear at the end of the drive. “We don’t see much of him these days.”

“No,” Elspeth said absently. “A pity. Maybe you could visit him in Kent sometime. I gather he was only up this way to see his nephew.”

Edward studied her face as she rearranged the candlesticks on a hall table. “Poor fellow, Greywell. I suppose Hampden told you about his misfortunes.”

“About his wife’s dying in childbirth? Yes. How dreadfully sad.”

“And he mentioned the baby, and how sickly it is?”

“Yes. I told him he should write his nephew and suggest a different wet nurse. Sometimes one’s milk won’t agree with the child.”

Edward didn’t want to think about things like that. The thought of childbirth and nursing babies was almost (but not quite) enough to put him off lovemaking for good. “I’m sure it’s more than that. The child obviously needs constant care, and no village girl is going to know how to give the proper attention. Certainly Lord Greywell doesn’t know a thing about it. He needs someone capable to come in and take charge for him.”

His insistence on the topic caused Elspeth to glance at him sharply. “If he wants the child to live, I’m sure he’ll think of that.”

“How could he not want the child to live?” demanded her father. “It’s his heir, for God’s sake. He’s the fourth viscount, and he’s not going to want to see the title lost after his time.”

“I dare say,” Elspeth rejoined indifferently. “If you’ll excuse me, Papa, I should check the kitchen garden. There’s going to be a frost tonight.”

“Don’t you
care
if the child dies? You who spend your entire life fussing over those . . . children in the village? Doesn’t Greywell’s plight affect you in the least?”

Elspeth paused at the doorway, frowning slightly. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, Papa. It’s very sad, of course, and I shall remember the poor child in my prayers. Don’t forget you promised you’d go around to Mr. Knowle’s this afternoon to see the gray mare.” With a slight nod, she disappeared through the door.

* * * *

The kitchen garden was protected by a stone wall covered with deep-red ivy at this time of year, as were all the buildings at Lyndhurst. Elspeth grew various herbs there, for cooking and medicinal purposes, and she planned to gather any lingering growth before the first real frost rendered the plants useless. It was only an excuse, though, to leave her father. She could have picked them at any time during the day, and even if she’d forgotten, there wouldn’t have been much lost.

Why had Sir Edward suddenly taken an interest in Hampden Winterbourne’s nephew and his sickly child? Her father
,
charming but callous, had never shown the least concern for his own love children, sick or well, and she was highly suspicious of this sudden charity in him. Elspeth speculated that he might want her to go off to Coventry and take care of the child, leaving him in peace, but he must know as well as she did that such a scheme was totally ineligible. With no relationship between them, she couldn’t very well live in the same house with Greywell, even if he had a dozen housekeepers to chaperon them. Besides, she didn’t know the viscount, had never met him in her life.

As she mused over this mystery, the garden gate swung open to admit the Reverend Mr. Blockley, smiling in that fatuous way he had. “Beeton told me I’d find you here,” he intoned in his deep, dramatic voice. That was perhaps Blockley’s only really appealing quality, his voice. And issuing from his cadaverous body it had more a melancholy tint than one of holy reverence. Still, he was dramatic enough in appearance to hold the villagers’ attention during services on Sundays, though his learning was slight and his breath often bad.

Mr. Blockley had recently latched onto the idea that Elspeth had conceived a passion for him, and had coyly courted her for several months before she put a stop to his absurd declaration. Though things had been awkward between them for a few weeks, Elspeth hoped she had weathered his scowls and attempts to find fault with her parish endeavors. She was by now accustomed to the moods of men, and had developed a sort of pious blanket which their barbs could not penetrate without greater malevolence than most of them were willing to expend on her.

“You look charming,” he said, quite untruthfully, since he didn’t approve of her low-necked gray wool gown, though it was worn with a lace tucker.

The dress was actually one of Elspeth’s best daytime gowns. She had worn it expressly because Hampden Winterbourne was visiting and seemed to merit some special effort on her part. Unaware that he thought it dowdy, she was even less interested in Blockley’s opinion, which she rightly guessed to be quite opposite from his remark. “We’ve had a visitor,” she said, wandering over to the herbs and beginning to pluck and put them in her basket. “An old friend of my parents’. He’s just left. He only stopped over on his way back to London.”

“You didn’t mention expecting anyone. I’d have been happy to call.”

“He only spent the night. I wasn’t expecting him until today, actually. There was no need for you to call.”

Mr. Blockley was offended. Only on account of Elspeth’s visitor’s taking such a very short stay was he able to forgive her for not notifying him of the occasion. The fact that her visitor had come a day early was totally irrelevant.

The few sprigs left in the garden found their way to her basket, and Elspeth realized she had no option but to invite Mr. Blockley to tea with her. He invariably acted as though there were some unspoken significance in the gesture. “Won’t you join me for tea?” she asked now, already heading toward the house. “Papa may still be here, though he’s supposed to go to the Knowles’ this afternoon.”

“I’d be honored,” the rector replied, a smirk twisting his lips. “If Sir Edward is still at home, of course I’d wish to pay my respects to him.”