The Hermit's Daughter (3 page)

He unbent somewhat from his first stiffness, enough to make a few polite comments to Mrs. Hermitage and his nephew’s choice. His errand was to look over the prospective bride; she passed muster within minutes, so far as appearance and behavior were concerned. From then onward, Monstuart’s gaze more often than not was on the sleek, raven-haired enchantress. He noticed that hers strayed frequently to him as well. She sat so still she might have been made of stone, but stone was not the material her supple body suggested. More like a jungle cat hiding to pounce on its prey.

It was unusual to find so elegant a creature in the country. Her hair, her gown, her manner—all had the aura of the city. From the corner of his eye, he observed her in three-quarter profile. From that angle a long sweep of black lashes projected, while her high cheekbone gave some indication of the face’s shape. Studying her in this surreptitious manner, Monstuart knew he had not seen such an Incomparable in several seasons. He was keenly interested in Incomparables. When he directed some inconsequential remark to Sally, she turned to face him, answering with a smile.

Her teeth were white and rounded at the corners in an unusual and attractive way. There wasn’t a sharp angle anywhere in her whole makeup. She was a delightful bundle of supple curves. Like Der-went first casting eyes on Melanie, Monstuart decided on the spot he would make a visit of indeterminate duration with his relations the Colchesters.

When the butler brought wine, it was Miss Hermitage who handed Monstuart his glass. He looked at her long-fingered, graceful hand, with a fine but small emerald ring on one finger, and observed her delicate pink nails, carefully manicured. He hadn’t seen such fastidious grooming on any woman outside of the muslin company, whose bodies were their only asset. When tasted, the wine to be proved unexceptionable. Monstuart was so favorably impressed that the image of Lady Mary DeBeirs began to recede from the forefront of his mind.

From the moonstruck expression on Derwent’s face, Monstuart saw little likelihood of detaching him from Miss Melanie. It would be a relief to have the lad settled down. He was demmed tired of pulling on his leash. He had no real authority over anything but the purse strings, and even that minimal control was dwindling as Derwent approached his majority. The rest of the visit would be mere formality. The dowry wouldn’t match DeBeirs’s, of course, but the Hermitages seemed a suitable connection. He turned purposefully to Mrs. Hermitage. “Shall we leave the youngsters and get the business settled, ma’am?”

Mrs. Hermitage cast an appealing glance on her elder daughter, who returned a look of sympathy but had no concrete help to offer. The words “lamb to the slaughter”
popped into Sally’s head. With her insides shaking like a blancmange, Mrs. Hermitage led Lord Monstuart to the study. The closing of the door sounded dreadfully like a death knell.

Sally remained behind with the others. It was never pleasant being with the lovers. They ignored one totally and sat staring at each other and smiling, but today it was sheer hell. Sally’s mind was in the study with her mother and Monstuart. What would he say upon learning that there was not a penny of dowry? She found his character impossible to gauge. He appeared a cold person from the little she had seen; calculating, looking for a flaw. Yet he had expressed no open disapproval.

The meeting in the study was brief, but it was the most enervating quarter hour of Mrs. Hermitage’s life. Her husband’s rages at her extravagance were nothing to it, and his temper had always sent her, into a swoon. She was completely floored by the pair of steel-gray eyes staring at her as though she were a lunatic when she opened her budget to him.

“A thousand pounds! A
thousand pounds!”
he exclaimed in disbelief. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny. If you’re serious, madam, it’s a demmed good joke.”
But her pink face told him it was no joke.

When Sally heard the study door open, she could no longer hold her seat. She bolted into the hall to see her mother on the point of tears, her face fallen and her eyes anguished. Behind Monstuart’s back, she shook her head and threw up her hands in despair. Monstuart was striding at an angry pace toward the saloon, and upon intercepting Sally, he said coldly, “Tell my nephew to come now, please.”

His imperious manner sent her blood racing. “What has happened?”
Sally demanded.

He turned a sneering face to her. “Negotiations have broken down. I was called here on a fool’s errand, as you have nothing with which to negotiate.”

Sally’s hands clenched into fists, and her lungs felt suffocated. Looking to the study, she saw her mother go back into the room, shoulders sagging. Her anger rose to see her so overwrought. “You have not forbidden the match out of hand!”

“I have forbidden it to prevent being out of pocket.”

“It won’t be
your
pocket!”

“No, and it won’t be my nephew’s either. Try another quarry, miss. You’ll find the bird you’ve chosen is not so easily plucked.”

“No one is trying to take advantage of him. He is in love.”

“He is ‘in love’
with one pretty face or another fifty times a year. He doesn’t marry them, however.”

“No, you mean to see him marry Lady Mary DeBeirs’s thirty thousand pounds, whether he likes her or not, and take care that no one else finds out about her fortune.”

Monstuart’s eyes diminished to slivers of ice. “You are well informed. She’s one of the ladies I have in mind, but whether he eventually marries her or someone else, you may be sure the Earl of Derwent will not marry a solicitor’s undowered daughter.”

He stalked to the doorway of the Rose Saloon, where some little hint of the altercation had already been overheard. Melanie and Derwent were standing, staring at each other in dismay.

“Come along, Derwent,”
Monstuart said in the tone a schoolmaster might use to an unruly ten-year-old.

“I usually stay awhile,”
Derwent was so bold as to mention, but in a tentative voice.

“Come!”
The monosyllable sounded like the bark of an angry dog. With a last, languishing look at Melanie, Derwent went.

The three ladies immediately converged in the Rose Saloon. Melanie was weeping noisily. Mrs. Hermitage was not far from it, and Sally was foaming with fury. The reason for the match being disallowed was difficult for Melanie to comprehend.

“But why won’t you give me any money?”
she demanded in a tone of pique, with an accusing look at her mother.

“Because we don’t have any,”
Sally said with a snort.

“But Derwent is rich,”
the girl replied in confusion.

“He will be richer when he marries; you may be sure of that,”
Sally informed her sniveling sister.

“I never had such a wretched experience in my life,”
Mrs. Hermitage said weakly, and sank, puffing onto a petit point chair.

Sally’s heart constricted with pity, but her voice was hard. “What did he say?”
she demanded.

“My dear, he as well as accused us of being fortune hunters, or worse. To speak of my having set up a velvet trap, bated with two ...”
Words failed her, and like her younger daughter, she was soon weeping into a handkerchief.

Angry green sparks flashed in Sally’s eyes. “Two what?”

“Two well-plumed chicks,”
Mrs. Hermitage gasped, and bawled harder.

Sally turned to the window. If the gentlemen had not already been on their way down the street, she would have run after them and banged their heads together. She was nearly as angry with Derwent as Monstuart. Most of all, she was angry that Monstuart’s insults contained a grain of truth. What
were
they doing but setting up an establishment well beyond their means, in the hope of trapping rich husbands? That both she and Mellie had been unaware of it salved her conscience somewhat, but it did not calm her nerves or lessen her anger one iota.

“I wonder you didn’t scratch his eyes out,”
she said.

“Oh, my dear, and that is not the worst of it,”
her mother continued. “He thinks you and I and all our relatives intend to batten ourselves on Derwent. ‘A set of dirty dishes,’
he called us. As though your Uncle Calvin or Aunt Stepney would
think
of such a thing. You and I are the worst of the lot in that respect.”

“I hope you didn’t tell him that!”

“I don’t know what I may have said. You have often mentioned visiting them in London, but I never agreed you planned to batten yourself on them permanently. One thing I did set him straight on is that we are not
dirty,
for I had that nice liver-shaped bathtub put in just last year.”

Sally gave a snide grimace. “What had he to say
to that?”

“The man is unconscionable. He said the likes of us had best keep our feathers plumed, for it is all we have to offer. I swear, Sal, I think he meant—
something—not quite nice.”

Sally’s mouth fell open in shock. A cold anger gripped her, rendering her speechless.

“I hate him! I hate him!”
Melanie declared, raising her tear-streaked face from her lap. She had never been heard to express hatred for a soul in her life before. Even a convicted murderer was allowed to have been under great strain, and the French couldn’t help being Frenchmen.

Seeing that some order must be brought from the chaos around them, Sally said, “This is getting us nowhere. He has forbidden the match, but we had foreseen that possibility. It does not mean no match will take place. Derwent has already suggested living on our money for the two years till he comes into his own.”

Mrs. Hermitage peered hopefully at her elder daughter. “You said it wouldn’t do,”
she reminded her.

“That was before I met Monstuart. What better can he expect from lightskirts? I begin to think the threat of it will do very well—for a lever to force him into accepting the match.”

“He’ll never accept anything,”
Mrs. Hermitage predicted gloomily.

“Will he not? He may hold the cheese, but the knife is in Derwent’s hands. When he comes back...”

“He didn’t say he’d come back,”
Melanie said, and fell into a fresh bout of tears at his lapse. Derwent always said he would come back.

“I don’t suppose he means to leave the neighborhood without saying good-bye to us,”
Sally pointed out. Her eyes narrowed to green slits, and her nostrils quivered dangerously. Watching her, Mrs. Hermitage felt a shiver up her spine. Sal had hardly a feature in common with her father, but in this mood, she bore such an uncanny resemblance that Mrs. Hermitage was strongly of a mind to let Sal take the reins.

“When he comes, we shall trip the spring in our velvet trap. You must plume yourself well, sister,”
Sally said in a voice of silken menace.

“Monstuart won’t let him come,”
Melanie hiccoughed. “He had the coldest eyes, like an iceberg.”

A sinking sensation came over Sally. Melanie was a simpleton, but she was right about this. Derwent had risen like a puppet on a string at a command from his guardian. It was incomprehensible to her that a man of independent means should be so subservient. The matter was discussed for a long time, but all depended on Derwent’s coming, and in the end there was nothing to do but wait and see if he came.

* * * *

To do Lord Derwent justice, he intended not only to return but to proceed with the match in the teeth of his uncle’s strenuous objections. He knew he was slipping deep into sin to set up his back against Monstuart, who had directed his life for fifteen years as a substitute father, but he intended to do it all the same.

Though he had been in love numberless times, he had never been so deeply, hopelessly, irrevocably in love as now. The string of blondes who had preceded Mellie were but weak imitations of her. She was the apotheosis of his dream. The sweetest, blondest, most adorable girl in the world. He hadn’t a doubt he would die if deprived of her. Nothing of this was said to his uncle, however. Derwent’s courage was not so great that he intended a direct confrontation. He would slip away as soon as he could escape from Monstuart, and marry behind his back.

When Lord Monstuart returned to the Colchesters, he was in a foul mood. He gave his hostess a hint that she had been negligent to have let Derwent fall into the clutches of a fortune-hunting bunch of harpies. His cousin stared at him in shocked disbelief.

“The Hermitages are unexceptionable, Monstuart,”
she said at once.

“No, ma’am, they only appear unexceptionable, and hardly that, with the late Mr. Hermitage a mere solicitor.”

“Oh, but not just any solicitor. He was the Hermit.”

Monstuart, usually a highly composed gentleman, gave a start of alarm and exclaimed, “What?”
in a loud voice.

“He was the Hermit. You must have heard of him—he was famous.”

“Certainly I knew the Hermit, but he was as rich as may be. His widow and family would not be living off their capital in some provincial backwater.”

Mrs. Colchester stiffened at this slur on her chosen neighborhood. “Some of us like it here,”
she informed him.

“You said these people come from Bath.”

“They were at Bath for a while, and Brighton, too, before settling here.”

“I thought I had heard the family moved to Bath. They ought to be wealthy.”

“I made sure they were. Everything is of the first style of elegance. You never mean their pockets are to let!”
she inquired with avid curiosity and not a little satisfaction. Mrs. Hermitage’s exquisite toilette had plagued her for many months.

“Not completely broke,”
Monstuart admitted, “but in tighter straits than the Hermit’s family ought to be. They are related to any number of good families that should ... Oh, lord!”
Monstuart realized that his quick temper had led him into a highly disagreeable situation, antagonizing so many worthies. He was often called upon to rescue Derwent from such persons as he imagined the Hermitages to be, and wasted no ceremony in the doing of it. Perhaps his reaction on this occasion had been a little more ferocious than usual.

In some danger from the feline lady himself, he had intended making the rupture totally irreparable, to forestall any unseemly alliance on his own part. Demands as to why he had not been informed of the family’s background were futile. He hadn’t, and he had acted unconscionably as a result. He still didn’t consider the match with Miss Melanie a good one by any manner of means, but the extrication must be more seemly than he had made it.