The Wicked Guardian (20 page)

Relenting, Benedict said in an altered tone, “I wouldn’t for the world repay Lady Fenton’s kindness to me in the past by saddling her with that imp!”

Ned nodded. “It really wouldn’t do, you know. I should hate to think what mischief the child could do in Florence...” He thought a moment, then added, “Or in Bath, for that matter.”

A queer light gleamed in Benedict’s eyes. “I am going to take care of that chit of a girl. I will set out tomorrow morning for Bath, and I will set that child straight, once and for all!”

Ned laughed. “I think I have a pressing need to arrive in Bath tomorrow myself. I wouldn’t want to miss this for the world!”

22
.

Although Benedict had left London with his anger still burning well, by the time he arrived in Bath he was able to meet the host of the Christopher, whom he knew, with affability, and a sure knowledge that no pains would be spared to house his cattle well, that the bed would be warmed and dry, and there would be plenty of wood for the fire in his grate, were the weather to turn cool.

Ned Fenton, who had driven down in his own curricle, was lodged in the next room, and watched Benedict set off toward Laura Place with some misgivings. He was well aware that the more affable Benedict seemed, the more iron had entered into his will.

But when Benedict was announced in the drawing room of Lady Thane’s rented house in Laura Place, Clare Penryck and her companion were unaware of the formidable mood of the man who came in and made his bow.

Clare was normally quick-witted, but her attention was still taken up by the disagreeable discussion that she and Miss Peek had carried on ever since breakfast, resulting in an uneaten lunch and an anxiety that fretted her nerve ends.

Miss Peek, remembering belatedly that Lord Choate had expressly directed her to remain with her charge at Penryck Abbey, now wished to make amends for her dereliction by returning to Dorset at once, but Clare, equally set upon her own scheme of bringing her existence to Lord Choate’s attention, remained adamant in her determination to stay in Lady Thane’s house, even unchaperoned.

Clare was nettled because she had not heard a word from Lord Choate in the three days since Lady Thane had left, but her heart leaped when she heard his voice in the hall and, a moment later, he entered the room. With creditable poise she rose and extended her hand civilly to Lord Choate, and he took it.

Now that her guardian was actually in the room, he seemed larger than she remembered. She began to suspect that she had committed a great folly.

She was not comforted when she saw a spark, which she mistook to be anger, flaring in his eyes, before he bowed over her fingers. By the time he turned to Miss Peek he had himself well in hand again.

“I am gratified that you came so quickly to bear my ward company,” he said. “It was most kind of you.”

“N-not at all,” stammered Miss Peek, wishing desperately that she had not acceded to Clare’s wishes and come to Bath in the first place.

“Perhaps you would be kind enough,” said Benedict smoothly, “to bring Miss Penryck a cup of tea?”

“But I do not in the least feel the need of a cup of tea,” objected Clare promptly, clutching at the safety of Miss Peek’s presence.

With the utmost affability Benedict said, “You will.” The smile with which he accompanied his words could only be described, Clare thought with a sinking feeling, as wolfish.

“Pray, Miss Peek,” she began, her hand outstretched in a pitiful appeal, “don’t go.”

But Lord Choate looked levelly at the governess, and Miss Peek, her head in a whirl, scuttled out of the room. Choate watched the door close behind her, and then turned to his ward, who had taken up a defensive position before the gold-and-white mantel.

“Now, Miss Penryck,” he said evenly, “perhaps you will provide me with an explanation?”

“Of ... of what?”

“Of why I am forced to post down from London to find you here, when I did not expect to.”

“Then where, sir, should I be?”

“In Penryck Abbey,” he said repressively. “Or, if you persist in staying in Laura Place, then with Lady Thane. Instead of that, I perceive that you are here without your godmother, with only Miss Peek to keep you company.”

Clare had expected him to post down from London. After all, this was what above all else she wanted. The reality was not quite the same as the interview she had constructed in her dreams.

“My poor memory has served me badly,” he said mendaciously, “but I thought I distinctly told you that Miss Peek was not able to lend you sufficient countenance in Bath.”

He lifted one black bar of eyebrow, inviting her comment. She could not keep
silence. “You
did, Lord Choate. But it was surely not my fault that Lady Thane had to leave Bath. I did not know what else to do.”

“I don’t suppose it would have been eligible for you to go with Lady Thane when she left?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“Oh, no, sir, you cannot think that.” Clare widened her eyes.

“This establishment,” he said with a stifling air, “was set up, since you wished strongly to stay in Bath, on the understanding that Lady Thane would be here. You cannot accuse me of thwarting your
every
wish, you know.”

“Not quite that,” said Clare with reviving spirit. She was quick to sense an advantage with her guardian, and while she had expected that he would roar down upon her breathing fire and smelling of brimstone, so far he had been reasonable. “But I did not think, either, that you would wish me to die.”

“Good God,” he said, startled. “What kind of Cheltenham tragedy are you enacting for me? Who said anything about dying!”

“You did,” she said unfairly. “You wished me to go with Lady Thane ... and no doubt catch the plague.” Mystified, Lord Choate watched her. “Plague? Surely not?”

“She clasped me to her bosom,” improvised Clare, “as though we would not meet again. In this life. For you must know that Harriet’s son has taken the infection and the doctors fear the worst.”

Lord Choate took out a blue enameled snuffbox and studied its contents. Then, without taking any, he closed it and put it away again. His anger fled, routed by the liveliest amusement. How artless the child was, and how unexpectedly she displayed flashes of wisdom! He became aware that his interest had been fairly caught, a fact that must be firmly set aside.

But he could not refrain from asking, in a conversational tone, “How much of that is fustian?”

“You guessed!” Clare exclaimed. “Not really much—except the part about not meeting again. But the boy seems really dreadfully ill, so Harriet wrote, and Lady Thane could not stay while there was such an urgent need of her.”

“I should like to see Lady Thane in a sickroom being of any use,” he said critically. “But then again, perhaps I misjudged her in that way, too.”

Miss Peek opened the door, but neither of the two inside the room noticed her. She took one look at the antagonists and withdrew as silently as she had come. Quite properly recognizing that the request for tea was a subterfuge, she told a footman to remove the tray to the kitchen, and herself went across the entry to the book room to wait out whatever scheme was being laid out by Lord Choate.

While she would not have yielded to anyone in her affection for Clare, yet she was uneasily aware that the little girl with the mischievous disposition had outgrown her control. She hoped, truly, that Lord Choate would find some other female to cope with the child. What Clare needed was either a thorough thrashing, a strange thought from a governess who had long inveighed against corporal punishment—but there were some cases! she thought obscurely—or a husband who would tame her. Miss Peek, knowing the prospects, had little hope of the latter.

If only Lord Choate weren’t betrothed! He possessed sufficient strength of character to tame a wife. Miss Peek sighed and gave herself over to speculation about what was really happening on the other side of the salon door.

Lord Choate, Miss Peek guessed correctly, was glaring at Clare. “I fully understood the urgent reasons for Lady Thane’s departure,” he said, in a close approximation of an apology. “But her letter was ill-writ. At any rate, this changes nothing.”

Clare sank into a small bergere chair that was uncomfortable at best. Now she scarcely heeded it.

“Lady Thane’s presence is the only possible condition that would allow you to stay here in Bath. You are in mourning, you are a very young female, and only your godmother’s company would make your presence in Bath eligible. And you do not now have such protection.”

“But what will I do then?” It was not quite a wail.

“You will return to Penryck Abbey.”

Clare clasped her hands tightly in her lap. It was all going wrong. She had longed to see Choate rushing to her, and he had done so. But he had still the air of regarding her as a dreary nuisance, no more. And while Clare had no very clear idea of what she wanted, she denied with every fiber the notion that she would once again be put on the shelf.

“And what will I do at Penryck Abbey?”

“Stay there,” he said, with a blast of fierceness. “And stay out of mischief until you grow up!”

His sudden attack put to rout the last of Clare’s self-possession. She had bungled all, .and since her confidence was built on shifting sands—a maturity beyond her years in some ways, but a dreadful lack of experience in other phases—it crumpled all at once.

She could not look up at him. All the memories of London came back to her—the accident in Oxford Street, the prince regent’s ball, Harry Rowse in the dark garden.

Harry Rowse trying to scrape up her acquaintance here in Bath, and her snubbing of him—knowing that she was at heart afraid of him.

And underlying all of this, the exacerbating presence of her wicked guardian glaring down at her and treating her as though she were a left parcel. It was more than shabby.

At a moment when what she needed more than all else in the world was understanding, a bit of reassurance, and someone to tell her all was well, she looked up to see Benedict’s hard gray eyes and tight lips, looking like a man holding tight rein on his rage lest it burst its bounds and bring him to disaster.

The words were wrung out of her. “Did I do so badly?” Benedict, watching his ward with mixed emotions, felt the stir of an emotion he had not heretofore experienced. Call it compassion, he told himself. He was moved to say, “Not at all. For someone with so little experience, and so young in addition, you did quite well. I think Lady Thane was too sanguine when she expected that Ferguson would make an offer. And of course you would not have accepted it.”

“I wouldn’t?” said Clare, startled.

“But that is all past. I would suggest that you put it out of your mind. There is no need for you to think of marriage, at least until your mourning is out.”

“And then?”

“Then ... we will see,” Benedict temporized.

“I see,” said Clare, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. “It will depend, of course, upon what Miss Morton wishes.”

Aghast, Benedict stared at her. “What has Miss Morton to do with it?”

“You remember that you have in the past discussed my affairs in great detail with her. I am well aware of her low opinion of me. I wonder that you did not send her to see me, to transmit your wishes.”

Benedict eyed her levelly. “I may have spoken rashly in the past. But we are now on a different footing, you and I, and you misunderstand me if you think that I have so little sense as to discuss my business affairs with Miss Morton.” In fact, he added to himself, I shall refrain from discussing much of anything with her. The years stretched ahead, surprisingly barren and dismal. He had not quite seen them so before.

Clare went on as though he had not spoken. “Strange—I had never thought that I was not competent. I managed Penryck Abbey on my own for much of the time. Of course,” she continued, striving to be fair, “I would not have ordered the ceiling repaired, or new carpets to be fitted without Grandmama’s permission, but never did I need Miss Morton’s approval to guide me in how I should go on.”

Benedict stiffened. But Clare paid no heed. It was as though she were seized by a powerful emotion. “I shall, in the future, make it my affair, Lord Choate, to avoid bringing myself to your notice. For your regard, you know, is tantamount to Miss Morton’s attention. And I do not think I could abide being under her discipline.”

She glanced up at him, and was surprised to notice that he seemed strongly moved. But she could not refrain from prodding once more. “It is all very well for you to be directed by her wishes. But my grandmother did not have Miss Morton in mind when she made her last arrangements.” She eyed him with speculation. “Nor, I think, did she fully consider the consequences of the arrangements she did make. It is too bad that I did not have an opportunity to enlighten her in time.”

Benedict had now had time enough, to consider his remarks. Ordinarily he would have given Clare, or any other person of whom he had charge, crisp instructions or directions, and that would be the end of it. But something in Clare’s vulnerability reached him, and he softened his intended remarks. Unfortunately, his words still came out more unfeeling than he knew.

“I agree,” he said repressively. “I too should have liked to talk with your grandmother. But, unfortunately, I had no idea she intended to fob...” He brought himself up short, not quite in time.

“Fob me off onto you?” said Clare. “I feel, somehow, that Miss Morton’s words, not yours, are coming to me. Is this true?”

“Leave Miss Morton out of it,” gritted Benedict out of his own guilty conscience.

“I shall be glad to,” said Clare tartly. “Especially since she is not yet your wife. And I do not understand why she has so far refused to wed you. Can it be that she had knowledge of your evil temper?”

Stung into unwise retort, Benedict said, “She has set the date, twice.”

Warned by the leaping light in her eyes, he said, “Never mind. My evil temper has nothing to do with it.”