Lord Greywell's Dilemma (4 page)

Abigail wore only a thin shawl against the cool October evening, and he brought her back to the study where the fire would warm her.

“You really shouldn’t come out so ill prepared for the weather,” he chided as she huddled into the chair he set by the hearth. There was no use mentioning the length of her walk, or the lateness of the hour. He seated himself opposite, regarding her with rueful gray eyes.

“I don’t feel the cold so much,” she insisted, toasting her hands and feet at the blaze. “The exercise is good for me.”

“Would you care for a glass of wine or brandy?”

Mrs. Waltham kept no spirits or wine in her house. Despite the appearance of her ancient clothing, it was a very handsome house, and she had a very handsome income on which to live since her husband’s death a dozen years previously. She drank beer at home, as her servants did, perhaps out of economy, perhaps out of conviction. But when she was abroad (and sometimes Greywell thought it the reason she went abroad) she was easily induced to imbibe a little something against the cold, or against the length of her return walk home.

“I don’t mind if I do,” she said now, and watched as Greywell gave a tug on the pull.

“Perhaps you’ll join me for dinner.”

“No, no, I couldn’t do that. The cats expect me at dinnertime. They wouldn’t approve of my being out.”

Greywell nodded, never surprised at any answer she might give. Sometimes it was the cats, sometimes the servants who expected her. Occasionally she slipped into the past and thought it was her husband. When Selsey entered to his summons, the viscount instructed him to bring the best brandy, since he knew Abigail was particularly fond of it.

“I came because you needed to talk to me,” Abigail informed him when Selsey had bowed himself out the door.

“I see.” Greywell allowed no hint of surprise or amusement to filter into his voice. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Abigail. Did you . . . perhaps know what it was I wished to discuss?”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully and regarded him with her small, sharp eyes. “You would be the one to know, wouldn’t you? I’m not a reader of minds.”

This was probably true, as Greywell had not consciously determined to speak to anyone, about anything. It was as good an excuse as any for her to come by and have a glass of brandy, but it seemed rather a long walk for so simple a pleasure. Finding it incumbent on him to look for a matter to discuss, he happened to notice his uncle’s letter on top of the stack on his desk. “I’ve had a letter from Hampden Winterbourne,” he said.

Abigail nodded. “An upsetting letter,” she surmised.

“Not exactly.” When she looked disappointed he corrected himself. “I suppose it would be upsetting, if one took it seriously.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Actually, I dismissed it.” Greywell was finding this rather hard going. He ran a hand through his straight brown hair and decided to simply tell her his uncle’s suggestion. He was on the point of doing so when Selsey returned with a bottle of brandy and two glasses on a small silver tray.

Abigail watched with interest as Selsey poured a proper amount of brandy into each of the glasses and offered her one on the elegant tray. Her chapped hands, with their stubby fingers, looked slightly incongruous as she gripped the fragile crystal tightly and took a sip of the fiery liquid before Greywell was even offered his glass.

“Good stuff.” she murmured, to Selsey’s disapproval and Greywell’s amusement. “Your father put it down, you told me once.”

“Yes, he always kept the cellars well stocked. It’s not as easy to replenish them with such a superior spirit.”

“I suppose not,” she admitted, rolling the glass between her hands and gazing into the tawny liquid. “Your father always did the proper thing.”

Unsure whether this was meant as a compliment or a criticism, Greywell decided it was best to ignore the remark. “I was telling you about the letter I had from my uncle.”

“So you were.” She sounded a little bored as she waved the glass under her nose. Her nose, he noticed, seemed to twitch from the strong fumes. “I’ve known Hampden Winterbourne for more than twenty years. A well-meaning man.”

Greywell flicked the letter with an inpatient finger. “He may mean well, but he doesn’t always use his head. The long and short of this letter is a suggestion that I remarry immediately.”

Her drooping eyelids shot up over her small brown eyes. “That doesn’t sound like Winterbourne to me. He’s every bit as proper as your father was, and he’s just been staying with you. Knows the lay of the land. There must be some mistake.”

“Apparently he stopped the night with an old friend of his, Sir Edward Parkstone. I’ve met the man a few times. Not at all proper,” he informed her, with a hint of mockery in his tone.

Abigail had a distracting habit of dividing the world into those who were proper and those who weren’t, in spite of her own bizarre behavior. Presumably she respected people who did the right thing, behaved in the accepted manner, but Greywell had his doubts.

“Ever since Sir Edward’s wife died, he’s led the life of a rake, though he must be in his mid-fifties. Sometimes I think Hampden envies him.”

There was no comment from Abigail. It was impossible to tell if she was even listening, since her whole concentration appeared to be on the glass of brandy and the comfort of her large chair near the fire. Greywell continued.

“Sir Edward has a daughter, Elspeth, a twenty-five-year-old spinster, who is, in Hampden’s words, an ‘Angel of Mercy.’ She provides for her father’s illegitimate offspring and generally wanders about the countryside, I gather, doing good works. Hampden assures me she isn’t unmarried from want of suitors, but neither does he explain why she hasn’t married one of these eligible fellows. I am told,” he said, referring to the letter now, “that she is a ‘handsome woman,’ not at all given to excesses of adornment on her person. Do you suppose that means she’s a shabby dresser?”

Abigail frowned on his levity. “An Angel of Mercy,” she muttered, nodding intently. “Indeed she is.”

“You know her?” Greywell asked, surprised.

“Of course I know her. A heart of pure gold. The disposition of an angel. Handsome, did he call her? Yes, that suits. There’s a subtle elegance to her bearing which one would not describe as beauty, since it hasn’t the capriciousness gentlemen attribute to women with standard looks. Ah, the poor child. Think of the burden she suffers with such a father! To be caught in a small community where everyone knows exactly what’s going on! I wonder why she hasn’t married. Perhaps I could just have another small sip of this brandy.”

Greywell refilled her empty glass. He’d hardly touched his own, since he wasn’t in the habit of taking brandy before dinner. To his certain knowledge Abigail hadn’t been farther than Coventry in the last three years, which made him highly skeptical about her rhapsodies on Elspeth Parkstone. How could she have met the young woman? Well, perhaps young was not precisely the right word. Of course, Caroline had been twenty-two when she died, and she had seemed very young to him still. When he had replaced the brandy on the tray, he asked, “Have you known Miss Parkstone long?”

“Long?” she repeated, her voice a trifle hazy. “I’ve lived a long time; I’ve met a great number of people, my dear Greywell. Why, I remember you when you were swaddled. A very ugly baby you were, too, with a red face and no hair. You had the most piercing cry. When your sweet mother (a very proper woman she was) first brought me to the nursery to see you I thought I should like very much to have a child of my own. Until you started crying. Lord, there was never such a racket! Your mother confessed to me that you quite gave her the headache. Small wonder. You could go on for hours at a time, and there was hardly a place in Ashfield where you couldn’t be heard. Your father used to shut himself up here, but it wasn’t far enough from the nursery and he got in the habit of leaving the house for a ride every time you started in. Of course, that was only when you were very small. Later you were given to temper tantrums where you stomped your feet.”

His lordship took these reminiscences in good part, only once using his booted foot to kick the logs in the grate. “I dare say you haven’t known Miss Parkstone quite as long, or as intimately, as you have known me,” he pressed, his voice remarkably pleasant.

“One wouldn’t have thought such a small child could have made the house shake so when he stumped his feet. I remember having tea with your mother in the Long Gallery when the whole place began to tremble. One of her best vases rocked on the mantel so I was sure it would fall and smash to smithereens. It was as though the earth itself quivered. There was an earthquake in London once, you know. From what I was told of it, I was quite sure that was what was happening. ‘An earthquake,’ I cried, jumping to my feet. But she assured me it was only you, dear boy, having one of your tantrums. Your father soon put a stop to
that!”

There are those who remember the good things about their parents, and those who remember the bad, and Greywell was decidedly of the former group. He did, however, remember two occasions on which he had been firmly chastised by his long-suffering father for unacceptable behavior. He had never cherished the illusion that his progenitor was a wicked, unjust man in the distribution of punishment. The third viscount had been a reasonable man, neither dotingly indulgent nor overly strict in his management of his only child. Greywell was not, however, particularly pleased to be reminded of these episodes, since they cast his early character in a somewhat dubious light.

“Miss Parkstone was not given to crying and tantrums when she was a child, I take it,” he offered, in a decidedly cooler tone, as he absently flicked a snuffbox open and closed.

“Certainly not! Haven’t I told you she has the disposition of an angel? Just so it has always been, from the very moment of her birth. A better-natured person has never walked the face of the earth. You are more than fortunate she would consider your suit, when she could have anyone she chose.”

“She isn’t considering my suit! There is no suit!” No wonder the woman usually drank beer, Greywell silently fumed; she got everything confused when she had something the least bit stronger. He stifled his desire to remove the brandy glass from her roughened hands and toss it into the fireplace. In a few minutes he could send her home in his carriage, but first he made some effort to clarify her mind. It would do no good for her to be “just mentioning” to the neighborhood folks that he had offered for one Elspeth Parkstone, whom he’d never met and had no intention of meeting.

“The letter, Abigail,” he reminded her. “It was Hampden’s letter that suggested she would make me a good wife.”

“And so she would.”

“Yes,” he said patiently, “but I’m not looking for a wife. Caroline has only just died and I have no intention of remarrying.”

“Then why did your uncle suggest it? He must have gotten the idea somewhere,” Abigail replied, as though it were perfectly reasonable to assume so. Her head rested against the chairback at a birdlike angle. her eyes observing him with quick, blinking glances.

“It seems Hampden felt Miss Parkstone would be the solution to some of my problems. He’s aware, of course, of little Andrew’s sickly constitution, and Miss Parkstone has dealt a great deal with children, despite her unmarried state. There was the suggestion that if I married her, I would be free to go off to Vienna, where I am needed, and leave the child in her capable hands.”

“An excellent plan.”

“I hardly see it that way, myself,” he retorted, but her eyes had closed and her head listed to the side. He felt as though he were speaking to a bundle of rags. In a moment a gentle snore issued from them, her face now lost from sight behind the chair wing. Raising his voice to rouse her, he said, “I’ll ring for my carriage.”

Abigail straightened abruptly. “Are you going somewhere?” she asked, querulous.

“Your cats are expecting you.”

“Not yet, not yet,” she insisted. Her hands still gripped the glass with its few remaining sips of brandy. “I understand now why you wanted to see me. It’s a slightly tricky problem, to be sure, but I can help you. Just what poor Caroline would have wished,” she said shrewdly, as she lifted the glass to her lips. “She was determined to have that child, and she would see how fitting it is for you to find a woman with a heart of gold to care for him. Not just any woman would do, you know. There are women who wouldn’t be willing to care for it as though it were their own. But not Elizabeth.”

“Elspeth,” he corrected, a frown forming between his brows.

She waved one hand to indicate the negligibility of this point. “Yes, yes. Elspeth. A nickname, I imagine. Certainly of the same derivation as Elizabeth. The problem, my dear boy, is not the woman, but in the parish,” she announced with some vigor.

Drawing the shawl a little more closely about her hunched shoulders, she leaned toward him, reaching to tap one short finger on his knee. “There will be astonishment at your marrying again so soon, but I’m just the one to take care of
that
sort of thing. I need only make the situation perfectly clear, spread the word among the gentry and the working folk. Oh, they’ll listen to me. Never doubt it.”

“I don’t,” he murmured.

“Let’s see. I shan’t call it a marriage of convenience; that has overtones of money and position, and marrying for personal advantage. I could call it a marriage of practicality, but that sounds far too mundane. Not quite the sort of thing such an angelic young woman would ordinarily do, if you see what I mean. But of course! I shall call it a Marriage of Mercy. Perfect, my dear Greywell, absolutely perfect. They’ll all understand; see if they don’t. You won’t stay with her here, of course, and she will need to have the parish folk on her side, willing to lend her a hand. What could be more fitting for our purpose than to call it a Marriage of Mercy?”

“What indeed?”

She blinked uncertainly at his ironic tone. Her brandy was gone and he didn’t offer to refill her glass, so she set it aside with a gesture of supreme indifference. “Your grief has disordered your mind, Greywell. Nothing could be more injurious to our plan than for you to marry and stay at Ashfield with her.”