So Wild a Heart (2 page)

"I have no idea how she looks or acts," Lady Ravenscar replied, "but I am sure that Rachel and I can clean her up. If she's a complete embarrassment... well, I am sure she will be happy living in Derbyshire with her father putting Darkwater in order. Honestly, Devin, don't you realize that everyone who is anyone in this country knows that you are steeped in sin? It pains me as a mother to have to say this, but no self-respecting Englishwoman would be willing to marry you."

Devin made no reply. He knew as well as his mother that her words were true. Since adulthood, he had a led a life that had scandalized most of the people of his social class. There were several hostesses who would not receive him, and the majority of the others did so only because he was, after all, an earl. Fortunately, he had no desire to mingle with most of the peerage and their disapproval left him unmoved. He had also years ago accepted the fact that his mother shared Society's opinion of him—and his father had considered him blacker of soul than everyone else did.

"I don't know why you should worry about the American's social blunders, anyway," his mother plowed on. "I am the one whose standing could be ruined by a rustic daughter-in-law."

"Let me remind you that I am the one who would be legally bound to her. I can see her now—too homely to catch a husband back home, even with, all her money, wearing clothes ten years out of date, and not an interesting bit of conversation in her head."

"Really, Devin, I am sure you are exaggerating."

"Am I? Why, then, did they come to England for a husband? To find someone with a crumbling estate and a vanished fortune, desperate enough to marry anyone with money! Really, Mother, that is the outside of enough. I won't do it. I'd find some way to get along. I always have."

"Gambling?" his mother retorted. "Pawning your watch and your grandfather's diamond studs? Oh, yes, I know how you've scraped by the last few months. You have sold everything that isn't encumbered and has any value. We've laid off half the staff at Darkwater. You have lived a ruinous, licentious, extravagant lifestyle, Devin, and this is the consequence."

Devin turned toward his sister, who had held her silence through most of the conversation. “Is this what you want for me, Rachel? To marry some chit I've never laid eyes on? To have the same sort of happy marriage you do?"

His sister stiffened, tears springing into her eyes. "That is cruel and unfair! All I want is your happiness. But how happy are you going to be when you have to give up this house and live in some one-room flat? You know how much money you spend, Devin. I dare swear it's far more than what Strong sends you from the estate, and that is only going to get smaller and smaller. You have to put some of that money back in to your lands if you want to keep them profitable, and neither you nor Father ever did that. I know that when Papa cut you off you scraped by on your card-playing skills and the money Michael and Richard gave you. But you won't want to do that the rest of your life."

He looked away from her, his silence an assent. Finally he said, "I am sorry, Rachel. I shouldn't have said that." He glanced at her, and a faint smile warmed his face. "I have a damnable headache, and it goads me into sarcasm. I know you sacrificed your happiness for the sake of the family."

"What nonsense," Lady Ravenscar put in exasperatedly. "Rachel is one of the most envied women in London. She has an exquisite house, a lovely wardrobe and a most generous allowance. A large number of woman would be quite happy to have made that sort of 'sacrifice.'"

Devin and Rachel glanced at each other, and amusement glinted in their eyes. Happiness for Lady Ravenscar would indeed consist of just such things.

"As for you, Devin, I am not asking you to offer for the girl. I merely ask that you consider the proposition. I am having a dinner tonight at my home, and I have invited her to come. The least you can do is come to dinner and meet her."

Devin let out a low groan. A dinner at his mother's house ranked almost as low on his list of preferred things as meeting an American heiress.

"I will be there, too," Rachel put in encouragingly. "Do say you'll come, Dev."

"Oh, all right," he said grudgingly. "I will come tonight and meet the girl."

******************

The "girl"—much to Lord Ravenscar's astonishment, if he had known it—was at that very moment engaged in a war of words with her family along the same lines.

"Papa," Miranda Upshaw said firmly, "I am not marrying a man I've never even seen, no matter how eager you are to get your hands on a British estate. It's positively medieval."

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at her father implacably. Miranda was a pretty woman, with large, expressive gray eyes and a thick mane of chestnut hair. Her figure was small and compact, nicely curved beneath the high-waisted blue cambric gown she wore, but her force of personality was such that people often came away with the impression that Miranda was a tall woman.

Joseph Upshaw gazed back at his daughter, his arms and face set in a mirror image of hers. He was a barrel-chested man not much taller than his daughter, whose lithe build had obviously come to her from her mother. He was as used to having his way as his daughter was, and they had gone head-to-head with each other on more than one occasion.

"I’m not asking you to marry him tomorrow," he said bow in a reasonable tone. "All you have to do is go to his mother's house tonight and meet the man. After that, you can take all the time you want getting to know him."

"I doubt I shall want to get to know him. He probably has spindly calves and squinty eyes and...and thinning hair. Why else is his family so eager to marry him off? Even without money, an earl should be a good catch. Surely there are wealthy Englishmen who would be willing to sell their daughters for a title."

"Are you saying I'm selling you?" her father retorted indignantly. "That's a fine thing to say about a man who's trying to give you one of the oldest and best names in this country. If there's any selling going on, I'm the one buying him for you."

"But I don't want him." Miranda knew as well as her father did that in reality he was wanting to buy a son-in-law for himself more than a husband for Miranda. Ever since Miranda could remember, Joseph had been an Anglophile, reading everything he could get his hands on about the English aristocracy—their rankings, their histories, their estates. He was fascinated with English castles and mansions, and wanted desperately to get his hands on one.

"How can you turn him down when you haven't even seen the man?" he asked her now. "He's an earl. You would be a countess! Just think how pleased Elizabeth would be. As soon as she's feeling not so under the weather, I'm going to tell her all about it. She will be thrilled."

"I am sure she will," Miranda replied dryly. Her stepmother, Elizabeth, herself English, was even more enamored of the idea of Miranda marrying British nobility than Joseph was. She had come from a 'good family' herself, she was fond of telling whoever would listen; and the improvident, impetuous husband who had brought her to New York, then committed the final folly of catching a chill and dying, leaving her stranded in the New World with a baby daughter, had come from a family even higher up the social scale. Her dream was for her daughter Veronica, now fourteen, to live in the world of British aristocracy—to have her coming out, to hobnob with the members of the
Ton,
to marry a suitably noble husband. The easiest method of accomplishing this dream, she had decided, was for Miranda to marry into the aforesaid aristocracy and then bring Veronica out in a few years.

"You know how fond I am of Elizabeth," Miranda went on. "She is the only mother I've ever known, and she has always been quite kind to me." Possessed of a kind, easygoing, and rather lazy nature, Elizabeth had never mistreated her stepdaughter or tried to take away control of the household from her. Indeed, Elizabeth much preferred letting someone else handle all the troublesome details of keeping a large house with numerous servants running, for it allowed her to concentrate on her various "illnesses." "And I love Veronica, too."

"I know you do." Her father beamed at her. "You've always been like a little mother to that child."

"But that doesn't mean," "Miranda went on firmly, "that I am going to marry someone just because Elizabeth wants Veronica to make her debut in London society."

"That's not the only reason," Joseph protested. "There's a grand estate in Derbyshire. And a house— not a castle, grant you, but almost big enough to be one.
Darkwater.
Now there's a name for you. Doesn't it conjure up history? Romance? The Earl of Ravenscar. My God, girl, is your heart dead?"

"No, Papa, it is not. And I will be the first to admit that it's a very romantic name—although, I might point out, a wee bit spooky."

"All the better. There are probably ghosts." Her father looked delighted at the thought.

"Happy thought."

"Yes, isn't it?" Joseph Upshaw was immune to irony at the moment. His eyes sparkled and his face positively glowed as he began to talk about the house he had spent the evening before discussing with Lady Ravenscar. "The house was built by one of Henry VIII’s closest friends and supporters. He built the main hall during Henry's reign. Then, when his son inherited and grew even more prosperous during Elizabeth's rule, he added two wings onto it to form the classic E-shaped Elizabethan mansion. It's grand, but it's falling into complete ruin. Rot in the wood... tapestries in shreds...stone crumbling." He related the problems of the house with zest, ending, "And we can restore it! Can you imagine the opportunity? The house, the grounds, the estate. We could rebuild it all."

"It does sound delightful," Miranda agreed truthfully.

Real estate was one of her primary interests. During her father's years of dealing with John Jacob Astor, she had had many conversations with that shrewd gentleman, and she had wisely followed his advice and had invested much of her father's profits in real estate in Manhattan. The risks had already paid off handsomely, and Miranda was sure they would provide even more income in the future. The speculation of buying land to sell at a future date for high profits was fun, but what she truly enjoyed was developing projects—buying land and building something on it that she could then rent to someone, or investing in another's plan to build or expand or create.

So the thought of restoring a grand old house to its former glory did appeal to her, and she had lived with her father for too long not to have absorbed a great deal of interest in British history and architecture. But she did not want to renovate an estate so much that she was willing to marry to acquire it.

With the look of one delivering the coup de grace, her father went on proudly, "It even has a curse."

Miranda raised her eyebrows. "A curse? That would be splendid, I'm sure."

"Oh, it is indeed. 'Tis a wonderful curse. There was a powerful abbey in Derbyshire, you see—Branton Abbey—and during the Dissolution, when Henry VIII seized all the monastic lands and goods, he took this abbey and gave it to his good friend Edward Aincourt. Well, the abbot at Branton was a tough old coot, and he didn't go easily. As they dragged him out of the church, he cursed the king and he cursed Aincourt. He cursed the very stones of the abbey, saying that nothing would ever prosper there and 'no one who lives within these stones shall ever know happiness."'

He looked at her triumphantly.

"Well. That
is
an impressive curse," Miranda admitted. She knew her father's love of drama and romance too well to be surprised to think that he would find a ruined, cursed house the perfect spot for his beloved daughter to live. To Joseph Upshaw, such a place would be a treasure.

"Isn't it? They say that Capability Brown did the original gardens. Miranda...how can you pass up an opportunity like this? It isn't only the house and grounds that need restoring, you know. Apparently the whole estate is also a financial wreck. You could rebuild that, as well. It could be one of your projects."

Miranda chuckled. "That all sounds very delightful, I'm sure, but there is still the fact that in order to get my hands on the house and the estate and all that, I would have to marry a complete stranger."

"He wouldn't have to be a stranger by the time you married him," Joseph pointed out "You could have a long engagement, if you wish. We could start to work on the house in the meantime."

Miranda smiled at her father and shook her head. "I am not marrying, Papa, just because you are bored. Talk about wanting a project..."

"But this would be the project of a lifetime! And it's not just because I'm bored since I sold out to Mr. Astor. You know I've wanted to get my hands on a grand old house like that for years." He paused, considering her, then went on in a wheedling tone. "Anyway, Miranda, my love, I'm not asking that you marry the fellow tonight All I want is for you to meet him. See what he's like. Consider the possibilities."

"Yes, but then you'll be asking me about how I feel and 'couldn't you just give the man another chance' and wanting me to go to this Darkwater place to see it, and..."

Her father put on a shocked face. "Miranda! You do say the most terrible things about me. As if I would badger you..."

Miranda quirked an eyebrow at him, and Joseph had the grace to smile. "Well, all right, I do badger you sometimes. I admit it. But not this time—I promise. Just meet the man. It will be nothing but going to an elegant dinner party and making polite conversation and taking a little look-see at him. Couldn't you do that much for Elizabeth and me?"