The Notorious Lord Havergal (7 page)

“It is my favorite room in the house.”

After admiring the window view, he turned back to examine the room itself. A pair of long tables ran down the center, with lamps at either end and chairs all around. This seemed a good time to begin flattering her erudition. “Like a dining room for feasting on great works of literature,” he said.

There were more comfortable, stuffed chairs in the corners, and a pair drawn up beside the grate.

He strolled toward them. “I wager this is where you and Miss FitzSimmons curl up with a good book on a rainy afternoon.” A table between the two chairs held an assortment of magazines, a bonbon dish, and other telltale signs of frequent occupancy. He lifted a book, opened facedown on the table, and glanced at it.

“It is Frances Burney’s latest,
The Wanderer,"
she said.

“This, I take it, is Miss FitzSimmons’s book. What are
you
reading?”

“I am reading that.”

“Ah.” It was going to be difficult praising her bluestockings if she admitted bluntly to reading Burney. “I rather thought from your conversation yesterday that you were interested in philosophy.”

“Oh no. I usually get my philosophy secondhand—that is, I used to, from Papa.” She looked rather wistfully at the shelves. “There is a great deal of worthwhile stuff here that I expect I ought to be reading, but somehow when evening comes, I seem too tired to tackle such weighty things.”

“If one is truly interested, I expect one would have to set oneself a course and start on it bright and early in the mornings. A sort of university at home.” He was willing, indeed eager, to pursue this, with himself as her mentor.

“Yes, I expect so,” she said, and revealed her total lack of interest by turning away. “I shall leave you to the books. The gallery is just across the hall. I will be happy to accompany you when you are ready. Our pictures, I fear, were not executed by artists you will immediately recognize, but are mostly family portraits by local painters. Unlike books, the works of the best painters are not so easily available.” She smiled and turned to leave.

Havergal felt he was getting along famously with Miss Beddoes and wanted to continue the conversation. “Wait! Let us go to the gallery now—if you are at leisure, that is,” he said, fearful that he was imposing.

“Yes, certainly.”

The gallery was not what Havergal would call a gallery. It was just a large rectangular room with portraits down either side and sofas and tables at either end. “This is Josiah Beddoes, the man who built Laurel Hall in 1695,” she said at the first portrait. A glowering visage with piercing eyes glared at them. “Josiah was an officer. He went to Ireland with William the Third and was rewarded with land here when they won the Battle of the Boyne.”

“Ah, a military family.”

“Just so, and this is Josiah’s son, Thomas. He was at the siege of Gibraltar. He was the last soldier. As the family seemed to produce only one male in each generation, they gave up soldiering and went to court. Till my grandfather’s time, that is. He had no use for London and turned into a country squire.”

They continued down the wall, looking at the pictures of ancestral squires and their wives. Havergal scraped his mind clean to conjure up compliments. By the time they got to Lettie’s father, he had run dry, so he turned to her favorite topic, young Tom. “Soon your brother must have his portrait taken,” he said.

“Not for a few years yet. He will wait till he has reached full manhood. He is only one and twenty.”

“He would be offended to hear you say he is not a man at one and twenty.”

“Men mature more slowly than women, I think” is all she said, but he soon read a slur into it.

“I hope you will remember to have him call on me when he goes up to London. I will be happy to help see him settled.”

“That is very kind of you.”

They were finished with the tour, and while Havergal felt they were on a slightly firmer footing, he wished to advance further. With a lady no course occurred to him except flirtation. “Is it not the custom for the young ladies of the house to have their likenesses taken?” he asked. “I don’t mean to deride your ancestors, but a few more pictures of ladies would improve your collection a hundredfold. If the daughters were all so pretty as yourself, Miss Beddoes ...” He gave a charming smile.

Lettie had virtually no experience in flirting, and none with such an accomplished flirt as Lord Havergal. She felt woefully out of her depth and stiffened in embarrassment. “It is the custom for ladies to have their pictures hung in their husbands’ galleries, I believe. If I marry, then I shall be painted.”

“If?” he exclaimed, feigning astonishment. “Surely you mean
when,
Miss Beddoes. The gents must be lined up for miles. I am surprised you have waited so long to accept—that is—not that I mean to imply you are—” He came to a stumbling halt.
Dolt!

“I am seven and twenty, like you, Lord Havergal. Three months older, actually.”

“
Is
that all?”
The horrible words were out, echoing endlessly in the still room, while Havergal stood, openmouthed at his own incredible gaucherie, and Miss Beddoes stared dumbly, as if she had been struck. “Not that I mean twenty-seven is old! Good gracious, I consider myself quite a young sprout, I promise you.” He laughed inanely to cover his gene.

As his full meaning sunk in, Lettie felt as if she had been bludgeoned with a hammer. Bad enough to be seven and twenty and single, but to hear from a gentleman that he took her for much older was a severe blow. “Yes, appearances to the contrary, that is all,” she said in a glacial tone. “A female of seven and twenty years is called a spinster, not a sprout,” she added, reigning in the urge to crown him.

He saw her jaws working in vexation, saw a moist sparkle in her eyes, and was seized with a dreadful premonition that she was going to cry. His warm sympathy was engaged at once, and he reached for her hands. “I’m sorry, Miss Beddoes. I ought to be drawn and quartered for that. It is this bizarre business of your being my guardian. I came expecting an old man, and having got over the shock of your being a woman—
lady
—I am still grappling with the fact that you are young.”

She whipped her hands away, fighting back tears of anger and shame. “You must not feel compelled to sympathize, Lord Havergal. I am not quite on the verge of expiring yet. I doubt you will expect condolences in three months when you reach my advanced years. Though of course you will not have to face the odium of being called a spinster,” she added tartly.

“What’s in a name?” he asked, trying to lighten the mood. “I see you have not put on your caps in any case.” He let his eyes linger admiringly on her black hair. It formed an attractive frame around her pale face, coming to a point in the middle of her forehead. He found himself gazing into her eyes. She had truly fine eyes, her best feature. Serious eyes, dark gray with golden flecks.

Lettie was flustered at that look and spoke brusquely to hide her embarrassment. “I did, two years ago, but I took them off again.”

“Ah—you met a gentleman!” he said roguishly.

“I found the caps a nuisance. They kept slipping off. Would you like to go back to the library now? Perhaps some coffee and a fire ...”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself. I have just had coffee, and it is warm enough to do without a fire.

In fact, I believe I’ll just step out into that charming garden.”

“If you like.”

“Are you the gardener?”

“I have an herb garden. Violet does the flowers.”

“That is appropriate!” he exclaimed. She gave him a blank look. “Violet—flowers,” he said, feeling foolish.

“Oh, yes. And I expect that makes me an herb.”

“No, an herbalist,” he said, defeated. Some men, Samuel Johnson decreed, were not clubbable. Miss Beddoes was not flirtable.

He left, feeling as foolish as he had ever felt in his life. What a thing to say! God, quite apart from wanting to get Miss Beddoes into a good mood, that was a wretched thing to say to any older lady. And she looked so stricken. She wasn’t really
that
old. He would be especially nice to her during the rest of the day.

Lettie remained behind, thinking. The meeting and Havergal’s awkward outburst had devastated her. To make the matter worse, she had taken the ridiculous idea that he wanted her company when he asked her to show him the gallery. Wanted it not just to plead for his money, but to be with her. In short, she thought he found her attractive, and all along he thought she was an old lady. He
pitied
her. She saw the sympathy in his eyes when he reached for her fingers. He was an impulsive creature. Quick to wound by a thoughtless word and quick to regret it. A man ruled by his passions. She had never met one before.

And it was his passion for gambling that brought him here, that forced him to be civil to her. She knew it perfectly well. Yet even knowing it, knowing he thought her an old lady, she could not totally harden her heart against him. The way he had studied her hair and face when they were talking about caps—the admiration in his eyes had seemed genuine, and he hadn’t mentioned the money again. In any case, she would enjoy the trip into Ashford on his arm. How her friends would stare!

She went upstairs to look over her bonnets and select the most attractive for the outing. She had bought a new bonnet for springtime, but it would not do in the open carriage. Standing in front of her mirror, she frowned at her coiffure, her face, and her gown. Plain, countrified. She was not only old, but an old dowdy. She wished with all her heart she had some dashing London gowns to put on and astonish Havergal, but she had no such articles. She turned from the mirror and left the room.

She glanced in an open door to a guest room as she went down the hall. To her utter astonishment, she saw Jamie, a lower footman, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. She hurried in. “Jamie, what is the matter?” she asked.

He lifted a pale face and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “I think I’m coming down with something, mum,” he said weakly.

“Oh dear! And Cook was feeling poorly, too. I must have Dr. Cooley in. You’d best go to bed. It is fortunate we are dining out this evening, for it seems the whole household of servants has taken ill.”

Her greater concern was that she would take ill herself to cause further ravages to her appearance, with the treat of a curricle ride and the trip to Canterbury awaiting her. She sent for the doctor and went to her room. Through the window she saw Havergal strolling through the garden. He seemed genuinely interested in it. Odd, to see a city buck like Havergal enjoying a country garden. How attractive he looked, even from this height. A squirrel caught his attention, and he made a game of trying to draw it nearer. It ignored him. He leaned forward and smelled the honeysuckle, then snapped off a twig and stuck it in his lapel. When he took the path to the stable, she left the window.

The face in the mirror reassured her that she wasn’t ill. She looked a little more tired than usual, but it was Havergal’s infamous comment that accounted for that. His presence in the house and the duke’s pending visit lent an unusual excitement to her day and prevented further repining. What was there to regret? She was only a few minutes older than when she had gone into the gallery, and she felt fine then. She was twenty-seven, not ninety-seven. What difference did age make anyway? You were only as old as you felt, and on this spring day she felt young. Havergal and his opinions were nothing to her.

The sunshine and flowers beyond her window lifted her heart. It was spring, and there was the assembly looming close. She felt, for the first time in years, a young restlessness and a determination to wrest a few surprises from life before she really was old. Havergal hadn’t thought twenty-seven too old for marriage in any case.

She lifted her new spring bonnet from its form and examined it. She must keep it for Canterbury, but she put it on and examined herself. It was a more dashing bonnet than she usually wore, and the strange thing was that Violet had accused her of buying a widow’s bonnet when she came home with it. The plain black straw had been rather severe, so she added a ribbon and a flower. A narrow band of pink satin encircled the crown, and from the brim one pink rose peeped flirtatiously. It was not a deb’s bonnet, but a bonnet for a dashing older lady. Her only fear was that it was too sophisticated for Ashford, but it was certainly not too sophisticated for a duke and a viscount—and an archbishop.

Lettie filled the time till Violet and Havergal returned from their outing by arranging tomorrow’s dinner party. This meant a battle with Mrs. Siddons to augment the already lavish meal, but first she studied her guest list, seeing it with her new guests’ eyes. Mr. Norton was the last person she wanted to have sit down with the duke and Lord Havergal, but he was a close friend, and he would be mortally wounded if he were put off.

No, unthinkable to offend her friends to impress mere acquaintances. And there was Miss Millie, Norton’s sister cum housekeeper. The Smallbones from the next estate were presentable, and that left only the vicar and his wife to round it off. No apologies were required for a vicar, but her mind
would
compare him to the Archbishop of Canterbury. That made a total of five couples, ten people in all, about as ill-sorted a group as she had ever assembled under her roof.

At least it was only for dinner. They would be leaving immediately after for the assembly. She called Cook into her office for the confrontation regarding the new menu.

“I don’t suppose turtle soup is possible?” Lettie asked doubtfully.

Cook rustled her aprons and sniffed. “Where would we be getting a turtle, mum? There’s never been a turtle in Ashford.”

“Fish then. A nice fresh salmon.”

“The fishmonger likes a week’s warning for salmon. I’ve ordered turbot, which will do as well with my white sauce.” Lettie gave up pretending she had anything to say about the menu, and Cook continued. “Luckily I have a brace of dandy green geese hanging out back. With some of our own mutton, peas, and turnips you need not blush for your dinner.”