Miss Lindel's Love (23 page)

“Of course,” she said, trying to move in again but his strong forearms were braced against her.

“What do you say to that?”

She paused. “Thank you?”

“Maris,” he said, the twinkle in his eyes fading. “Without sounding like a popinjay, I know you loved me once ...” He stopped when she shook her head, his hands dropping slowly away, as though cherishing this last instant of contact.

Maris smoothed her own hair back from her forehead, her coiffure having unaccountably begun to loosen. “I never loved you, Kenton. That wasn’t love. It was a mixture of hero worship, immaturity, and self-preservation. I wasn’t about to risk falling in love with someone who might love me back. Much too frightening.”

“I understand,” he said. Kenton stepped back, folding his arms across his chest as though holding some pain at bay.

“No, you don’t.” Maris pushed him gently into the big armchair beside the fire and sank down on her knees beside him. “I didn’t fall in love with you—with
you,
Kenton Danesby, not some imaginary, untouchable prince—until we met in London. You were so approachable, so friendly. I felt happy whenever we met. Then you became so entangled in that woman’s plotting that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for you. Something, by the way, the great and noble Lord Danesby never made me feel. He
never needed anyone’s help or fell into any difficulties from which he could not instantly extricate himself. But you needed me, if only to refuse to marry you when all the world seemed to demand it.”

“And now, Maris?” Kenton said, grasping her hand and pulling her up onto his lap. “What now?”

Breathless and trembling after a kiss wherein she gave as much as she received, Maris whispered, “Whatever you want, Kenton.”

“I think we should be married, don’t you?”

“Gretna Green? We could borrow Rigby’s chaise.”

Kenton pulled another pin from his beloved’s hair. “We owe it to the
ton
to be married as ostentatiously as possible.”

“With two marchionesses to hold up my train,” Maris murmured. “But I’ll settle for doves.”

“Whatever you want, my darling.”

Half an hour later, still ensconced together in the big armchair, they heard a commotion on the stairs. A baby was crying lustily, a woman was speaking very rapidly in a foreign tongue while another woman defended herself in far from parliamentary tones. Every now and again a voice unmistakably Rigby Barrington’s broke in, throwing conciliatory clichés into the storm.

This cacophony burst into the coffee room as though shot from a cannon. Without ado, Kenton stood up, swinging Maris to the floor. She stood, trying to bundle her fair hair into some sort of order, while he attempted to achieve silence.

A short, plump, and very blond girl pushed the crying child, an infant of about two years of age, into Kenton’s arms. The little body piked straight out, as though tacking a sailboat.

“My wife,” Rigby said. “Lady Barrington.”

“And I told her and told her that a little warm goose grease rubbed in careful like would relieve it, but she didn’t pay me no mind,” said a young woman who bore a remarkable resemblance, minus a few years and a few pounds, to the landlady. “It’s not my fault that baby is possessed of a devil, is it?”

At this, the Spanish girl’s shaky English broke down and she began throwing the sort of phrases that made Kenton glad Maris didn’t understand Spanish.

“Pray be quiet, both of you,” he said.
“Silencio! Silencio, por Dio.”

Maris, laughing at him, took the baby from his arms and began to joggle it gently. “There, there, little man. What’s the matter, then?”

“He cry and cry,” his mother said, changing with bewildering rapidity from shrieking virago to concerned parent. “I t’ink milk in this place not like him. It smell of onions.”

Maris had noticed that the baby’s stomach seemed rather distended. “We’ll find something in the kitchen to ease him,” she promised.

“I told ‘er goose grease,” the landlady’s daughter put in. Maris had noticed from the smell that this remedy had already been tried.

“Enough about the goose grease,” Maris said, giving the baby back to his mother. “We shall manage without it. Come with me, Lady Barrington.”

“You will call me Yolanda,” the Spanish bride said with the same air of decision that marked her mother-in-law. “We are to be friends.”

Maris stopped on the doorstep. “The chaise won’t hold us all, Kenton. Will you make the arrangements for everyone?”

He bowed. Turning to the landlady’s daughter, he ordered two pints of ale to toast his lady in. Sir Rigby would never be his dearest friend, but he had been the indirect cause of all his happiness. He’d share a drink with him. Besides, the man looked as if he needed it. “A fine son,” he said.

“It’s a daughter. I didn’t know Yolanda was pregnant when I left Spain.”

“Your mother will be delighted.”

Rigby brightened. ‘That’s true. So am I, actually. You should get married, Danesby. There’s nothing like it.”

* * * *

Yolanda Barrington had been very grateful for Maris’s assistance with her child but had scorned the idea that she needed anyone to soften the news of her existence. Maris, knowing Lady Barrington’s yearning for a grandchild, knew Yolanda already had the only advocate she would need and so let Rigby and his bride go on their way without a qualm.

In the dark, riding home cuddled up close to Kenton in the inn’s hired gig, Maris felt a great sense of peace, as though she’d come to a resting place. It was not the end of a journey, but a pause before she began on a new path. With Kenton to aid her, she wondered how high she could climb.

They stopped in the square and it was some time before Maris even thought of going into her house. “It’s really your house, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes. I leased it to Dominic.”

“But Tremlow said ...Tremlow? Your butler?”

“My butler. And Dominic is now the Duke of Saltaire. It’s a long story, full of second cousins once removed, attainders, and attorneys. You’ll hear all about it later.”

“Later is better,” she said, drawing his head down to hers once more.

Though there wasn’t much room in the gig, after a little, Kenton put Maris into the farthest corner and sat with as much distance between them as was possible. “I shall go to London tomorrow for a special license. How soon can you and Miss Menthrip return to Finchley?”

“For this, she would travel all night.”

“And you?”

She laughed, softly and tenderly, stealing her hand into his. “I wanted to go to Gretna, remember?”

Kenton reached for her again but restrained himself to Maris’s expressed disappointment. “I’ve bent my gentlemanly code far enough for one night,” he said, tucking his hands firmly under his thighs to keep them from wandering. Unfortunately, that left him with no means of defense.

This time, she called a halt. “Is that a constable?” she asked, peering into the darkness under the oak.

“I’m surprised it isn’t an outraged moralist,” Kenton said, touching his cravat. So much for his reputation as a well-dressed man. “You had better go in. What excuse did you give to Miss Menthrip for your leaving with Barrington? “

“A whist party that needed an extra player. Which explains why I seemed to be eloping in pale coffee silk.”

“Which becomes you very well,” he said.

“Well, it’s sadly crushed now, isn’t it? I shall have to hold my cloak together and hurry upstairs.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Kenton said, slip ping an arm around her. The pale coffee silk warmed like flesh under his hands. He felt giddy, like a boy in the throes of his first affair, and yet sanctified, knowing that this was his true wife in every way but the lawful one. That would happen as soon as humanly and legally possible.

“I’ll come to visit you in the morning. Can you leave for Finchley by noon? That way, I can escort you until your halt for the night. Then I’ll head toward London and you’ll have only a half day’s journey on. We can hire outriders at the George in Shifton.”

“I think so,” she said hesitantly.

“What is it?” Kenton asked, alive to every shade of nuance in her voice.

“Couldn’t we be married in London? I’ll write Mother ...”

“We could. But, well, all my family has married at Finchley, ever since the beginning. Except my great-grandfather but we don’t discuss him.”

“If it’s a tradition that we flout at our peril, then of course we shall marry in Finchley.”

“Why not?”

“It’s only that... I’ve heard them talking at home about you and what it is to be lord and lady of the manor.”

“You
will make a splendid lady of the manor.”

“But they expect you to bring home some amazingly accomplished creature to be your lady. Someone to guide them and be an example and a Lady Bountiful. And what are you bringing them? Me—the girl next door whom they’ve known all their lives and, to be truthful, don’t rate very highly. What will they think?”

Kenton laughed. “They’ll think it is the greatest romance of the century.”

And so they did.

Copyright © 2004 by Cynthia Bailey-Pratt

Originally published by Zebra (ISBN 0821776355)

Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.