Miss Truelove Beckons (Classic Regency Romances Book 12) (16 page)

“Well, I . . . I just wanted to announce . . . that is . . .” Drake felt a sweat break out on his forehead. Infernal fire! Who needed a fire on a mild autumn evening? He had not meant to make a speech out of a simple statement of what he was doing with the school! “Miss Becket and I went for a drive yesterday afternoon, and I came to a decision.”

A gasp came from somewhere in the room, but he was determined not to let it stop him. He forged ahead. “She, more than anyone else, is responsible for the decision I have come to.” Oh, God, worse and worse. Now all eyes were turned to Truelove, and he had not meant to place her in an awkward position.

All right. He must marshal his scattering wits as he would his soldiers.

“I have purchased a property, and am starting a . . . a school for ex-soldiers, to learn a trade. That is it.”

At that exact same moment, Arabella Swinley gave a ladylike scream and fell into an elegant swoon.

Chapter Eleven

“Do you know how close we came to disaster tonight, my temperamental young miss?” Lady Swinley’s voice was a hiss as she followed Arabella to her chamber.

Forced to withdraw from the parlor after her disastrous attempt at a bit of drama, Arabella was not in the mood for one of her mother’s lectures, but she was also badly frightened. Her mother was more angry than she had ever seen her. She closed the door behind them and turned, her hands trembling at her sides. Somehow she thought this moment would determine her course for the rest of her life, and she did not know if she could face it. Better to plead a headache or a chill and retire to her bed.

But no. She had never run from anything or anyone in her whole life, and this was her
mother
, the woman who had given her life. They were the only real family each of them had. She squared her shoulders. She would force her mother to talk about money.

“Mother, you must tell me the truth. How far in the soup are we? Are we badly dished?” Arabella took a deep breath, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat. It was the only reason she could think of for her mother’s unwarranted anger. She sat down at the vanity table while her mother paced. Her faux swoon had been calculated to give her a few moments to think if Lord Drake’s announcement had been that he was to marry Truelove. Thank the Lord it had not been that! How would she face the humiliation of her country cousin plucking a prime plum right out of her hand? But her faint had also ended the evening, though it was not that late. Still, she was so tired! The effort of keeping up with Lord Drake all day, and of walking with him, listening to his dreary conversation about soldiers and battles and death! It was enough to put a lady off male companionship for life.

“Mother? Did you hear me?” She glanced up at her mother when the woman did not answer. A gnawing fear in her stomach made it growl, though the lack of food that day had probably as much to do with it. She had merely picked, mindful of her “ladylike” appetite, until Lord Conroy, concerned for her health, demanded that she eat a biscuit. He had been much impressed when she had been “unable” to finish even that. Why could Lord Drake not be so easily impressed? Why did capturing his interest require listening to long, desperately boring lectures about the war and the sorry state of all the old soldiers?

But she
must
not get distracted from the matter at hand. “Mother, tell me the truth,” she demanded. “How bad is it?” She had imagined a little financial distress, but her mother’s anger seemed to portend something much worse.

“We are . . .” Lady Swinley paced to the window and stared out into the gloom. “We are badly in need of financial aid, I will admit.”

“But what happened? I thought Father left us well provided for. There is no entail, since there is no legitimate heir, and so Swinley Manor stays with us. And Swinley Manor farms are prosperous; the steward has sold off some of the timber. We had money!”

Lady Swinley strode over to her daughter and glared down at her. Her eyes were hostile and her mouth pinched into an unattractive grimace. “Yes, but do you think that will pay for three Seasons for a foolish daughter who will not settle on one of the rich beaus her loving mother has paraded before her? I cannot believe the ingratitude, after all my hard work, and you will not so much as lift a finger to do what you are supposed to do.”

The attack left Arabella breathless. “But you said . . . you said I need not marry, because I had Lord Drake in my pocket, and then you would not let me marry Lord Sweetan when I wanted to, and—”

“Lord Sweetan had no money! I wanted you to marry Sir Richard Fosdick, but you turned your nose up.”

“Sir Richard is ancient!” Arabella cried, leaping from her seat. “I accept that I must marry, but I will not marry a . . . a fossil! I want a
man
, not a dried-up old prune! I want a man who can take me in his arms and—”

Lady Swinley’s hand flashed up and the smack across Arabella’s cheek echoed in the quiet chamber. Arabella held her hand to her cheek and stared down at her much shorter mother. “How could you do that?” she cried, tears starting in her eyes.

Eyes wide, pinched face bleached a ghastly white, Lady Swinley covered her mouth with one shaking hand. “Arabella, my darling girl, I’m sorry. I am overwrought.” She collapsed on the chair near the vanity table. “I cannot face being poor! I’m too old to live in poverty, forced to rely on the charity of the church. The manor is mortgaged to the hilt and if we do not show signs of turning things around, or if you do not marry well and
soon
, we shall have to leave it and . . . and . . .” She broke down into tears, burying her face in her hands and sobbing.

Arabella, stunned to see tears coursing down her mother’s lined cheeks and through her fingers, felt a moment of tenderness she had never experienced before. With all her faults, her mother was still her mother. She approached the woman many damned as cold and put her arms around her shaking shoulders. “Don’t worry, Mother, you will not have to leave Swinley Manor. I shall marry, and marry well. I promise I’ll take care of you.”

And she would start her campaign that very night. Because first, she must eliminate the competition.

• • •

A book propped on her lap, True tried to read by the flickering light of her candle. It was impossible, though, when her mind kept going back to the scene in the parlor. She could not get out of her mind how Drake had made his innocuous announcement after such a build-up! What had he been thinking? It was guaranteed that more than one person had thought there was an announcement of marriage in the offing.

And then Arabella had swooned. Was it genuine this time? She had appeared insensible for a good three minutes or more.

But what kept True’s mind off Maria Edgeworth’s
The Absentee
was what she, and evidently others, had thought Lord Drake was going to say. The way he had started, and then bringing her name into it . . . it had every appearance of an announcement that he intended to wed
her!
Was that why Arabella had swooned when the real announcement turned out to be something so very different?

Perhaps. Bella and Lord Drake had spent the whole day together talking and walking, and maybe she had discovered all there was in the viscount to love and value. He was gentle and thoughtful, good-natured and intelligent, gallant and . . . and she had no business cataloguing his virtues. Had Bella fallen for the handsome lord?

True shivered, laid her book on the bedside table, and pulled the covers up over her shoulders, staring at the paneled walls of her elegant chamber. Her mind returned to the afternoon before. They had walked down to the brook and sat down to talk. The sun had been warm and she had felt sleepiness overtake her; before she knew it he was tilting her head back and kissing her with such gentle, persuasive passion, that she had found herself responding, unable to resist. But she could not fool herself. It was not as if she was out of her mind, or anything so ridiculous. She had
wanted
him to kiss her, had been hoping for it. Ever since the night at the inn when he had kissed her in the hallway, she had been wishing for a repeat of that caress to test her memory of a sweetness singing through her that she had never felt in her life.

But what had possessed her to lay with him on the banks of that brook, in his arms, reclining as if she were inviting him to . . . her mind turned away from what her actions were an invitation to. He was too much the gentleman to take advantage of her that way. Instead, silence had fallen between them, as if the moment was too precious to spoil with words.

And they had slept together in the golden sunshine like two children, their arms wrapped around each other. Later—it must have been an hour or more that they stayed in that scandalous pose—she had awoken to find his fond gaze on her. She had been hideously embarrassed, her modesty finally awoken from a slumber deeper than her body’s. She hardly remembered if she said anything, but she had scrambled away from him with flaming cheeks at the memory of her lax behavior. She was indeed lucky he was a true gentleman.

He had escorted her without comment back to the gig—they found the little stable boy dozing under a tree near the horses—and they had returned to Lea Park with Drake chatting happily about the school. Nothing had been said between them of their odd lapse from propriety.

But the next day he had devoted himself to Arabella. He had smiled at True, and had not avoided her company at any time, but his companionship was solely for her beautiful cousin. True had watched them walk away, golden heads together as they talked and strolled, making a gorgeous matched couple. Had he decided that he needed a helpmeet in his path? Was he intent on giving his mother’s choice a fair trial?

There was a light tap at her door, and True said, “Come in.”

Arabella slipped in, her long blonde hair down around her shoulders. She looked hesitant and so very young. She stopped just inside the door, shivering and with an unhappy expression on her pretty face.

“What is it, Bella? Do you want to talk? Are you recovered?” True patted the bed beside her and Bella crossed the room and climbed on the bed as she had when she was a little girl, and in True’s charge.

“Oh, True, what am I going to do?” she cried, snuggling close to her cousin and taking her hand.

Surprised but pleased by this return to the intimacy they had shared as children, True smoothed her cousin’s blonde tresses away from her high, pale forehead. There were worry lines there, and True gently smoothed them too. “What is it, love?” This was the cousin she remembered, the cousin who would come to her with her troubles. When Lady Swinley had descended on the vicarage on Bella’s seventeenth birthday and informed her daughter that they were to go to London, and that this was likely the last vacation she would ever spend at the vicarage, Bella had wept on True’s shoulder and promised that no matter what happened, the vicarage was her home. She was afraid of her mother, she said, and what the woman had in mind for her.

No matter what, True told her, she would always have a home with her cousins. She had meant it then and she still felt that way, no matter what divided them. Bella held the place in True’s heart of another sister, just like Faithful.

“Sweetheart, what is the matter?”

“What am I going to do? I have fallen in love with Lord Drake, but he does not love me, does he? Oh, what shall I do if he does not love me? I’ll go mad with sorrow!”

Shocked but unwilling to let Bella see that she was, True enfolded her in her arms. She swallowed a lump in her throat and said, “Hush, love, hush. Everything will be all right.”

After her sobbing confession and a tormented torrent of tears, Bella slept. True had shed some tears herself, but now was calm as she stroked her cousin’s silky hair and stared into the dark. The candle had long ago burnt out, but sleep would not come to True for a very long time, she feared.

They were both in love with Lord Drake. Yes, she had finally admitted to herself her feelings. She loved the man, though she had intended to stay heart-whole. But Bella loved him too, with the powerful love of one surprised by the emotion.

But what, or whom, was best for Drake? Should he marry at all? It was up to him, of course, but on the whole True had started to think he would very soon come to the conclusion that marriage was his next step. Just the way he had phrased his announcement in the library showed that he was thinking of the future now, not the past. His mind had turned, and he could now look ahead. That was good and right, as it should be. He would make a superb husband and was capable, True thought, of great love.

His inherent sweetness had been displayed every day to True, in the little gestures of affection and preference toward herself, gestures that she saw now could be construed as, well,
brotherly
. He had kissed her, yes, and at least one of those kisses had been passionate. But that was the night at the inn; he was a little drunk and it was the first couple of days of their acquaintance. The kisses of the previous day, as sweet and lingering as they were, could have been intended as affectionate, friendly, she supposed. All of the other constructs she placed on them could be her own treacherous, feminine whimsy, seeing love where it was wanted so very much. She was inexperienced in such matters, and reluctant to jump to conclusions.

But one thing she did know: Drake was a decisive man when he wanted something. Look at how quickly he had acted on his idea for a school! If he had fallen in love with her, or meant more by those caresses than simple gestures of affection, he would have offered for her.

And she was meant for other things, was she not? She was meant to marry Mr. Bottleby and do God’s work in the north. That was what her would-be fiancé believed. He felt that he had been called by God, and that she had been indicated as his suitable helpmeet. Granted, the fever in his eyes had made True uneasy as he said that, but it was just the fervor of a God-fearing man, a
good
man.