Thea's Marquis (21 page)

Jason and Penny would welcome her to live with them, and she loved them dearly. Yet she would always be a poor relation, playing second fiddle there, too. A spinster of five and twenty, with a meagre dowry, could not afford to be choosy.

But she wanted Rod!

She became aware that Lord Stewart had taken her hand and was patting it anxiously. “Miss Kilmore, dear lady, I fear I have taken you by surprise, shocked you. Shall I ring for a glass of wine, or your vinaigrette?”

“No, sir, I thank you. I am very well, and most sensible of the honour of your obliging offer.” Raising her eyes to his concerned face, she knew she had to give the Marquis of Hazlewood one more opportunity to abandon his prized bachelorhood. “But I fear I must refuse.”

“My dear, I wish you will take some time to consider. I am aware that it is a great responsibility. If you wish to make the children’s acquaintance before you come to a decision, that is quite understandable and can be arranged without committing you to anything.”

“You are very kind, my lord. I do not think I shall change my mind. Pray excuse me. I must speak to my mother.”

“Most natural. Allow me to express once more my fervent desire to make you my wife.” He kissed her hand and opened the library door, accompanying her into the hall. “I believe I shall go for a ride now. Mr. DeVine has generously invited me to stay at Goff’s Acre tonight so as to be able to leave for home early on the morrow. However, if you have not enough time to reconsider my offer before your own departure, you can always inform me by letter.”

Under the eyes of the interested footman stationed in the hall, they mounted the stairs together.

Thea paused outside the door of Meg’s chamber until she heard Lord Stewart’s chamber door click shut as he went to change into riding dress. Then she sped back down the stairs.

“Do you know where Lord Hazlewood is?” she asked the footman.

“His lordship is in Mr. DeVine’s study, miss.” His expressionless face conveyed as clearly as words his curiosity about such carryings-on among the gentry. No doubt the servants would dub Thea as wayward as Meg after her sister’s misbehaviour last night. “Down the right passage, miss,” he directed her, “and the second door on the right.”

As she hurried down the corridor, she tried to plan exactly what she would say. She would ask for his advice, but what she really wanted was for him to cry, “You can’t marry Stewart, because I want to marry you.”

Second door on the right. She knocked.

“Come in.” It was Will’s voice, full of gloom.

She opened the door. Both Will and Roderick were slouched in their chairs, their feet on the desk. When they saw her they hastily lowered their legs and jumped up.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “I do not mean to interrupt. I just wanted a word with Lord Hazlewood, but it can wait.”

“Not at all,” said her host courteously, waving her to his chair. “I was thinking of going for a ride.” He trudged out, even his gait expressive of dejection.

Too agitated to sit down, Thea passed the chair and stopped before a bookshelf. She found herself facing such titles as
A Short Essay on Agricultural Improvements
and
Observations on the Barrenness of Fruit-Trees.
She took down the latter and flipped through it blindly.

“I’m sure Will would be happy to lend it to you.” Roderick’s amused voice came from close behind her.

With a gasp, she shook her head and pushed the book back between its companions.

“Are you come to plead Miss Megan’s case?” He smiled as she turned to him. “I have already put in a good word, you know. She was simply misled by youthful exuberance.”

“Yes. Thank you. No.” She made a gesture of hopeless confusion.

He caught her hands in his. “What is it, Thea?”

“Lord Stewart has asked me to be his wife.”

Dropping her hands, he swung away to lean heavily with both fists on the desk. “My dear Miss Kilmore, I cannot possibly advise you. You must do as you see fit.”

She stared blankly at his back. His anger would be preferable to the coldness in his voice. Shivering, she slipped past him and fled up to her chamber.

With relief she recalled that he was not to drive her back to Town. She needed time to regain her composure before she would be able to face Rod again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Unlike Thea’s misery, Meg’s gloom was of brief duration. By the sixth day of January, her resilient spirits were restored to their usual exuberance.

“Is it not a splendid notion to perform
Twelfth Night
on Twelfth Night?” She waltzed around the drawing-room with an imaginary partner, her skirts swirling. Her gown was of palest pink
crêpe lisse,
with wild roses in a slightly darker pink set on around the hem, some in bud, some open to show a circlet of gold stamens.

“You are merry as a cricket,” said Penny drily, her knitting needles clicking away.

“He is willing to forgive me.” She stopped before Thea and sank in a deep curtsy. “Do you not think he is willing to forgive me? Lady Lewin invited us both to the theatre before...before that night, but he could have found an excuse to cry off. Could he not. Mama?”

“I daresay,” said the dowager, smiling. “He is a gentleman of considerable address.”

“I shall dazzle him,” said Meg, twirling again, “and not spare a single glance for any other gentleman.” She paused by the window and peeped out. “Oh, here is the Lewins’ carriage come to fetch me.”

“Come, then, darling.” The dowager folded her embroidery and set it aside. “I shall see you off. I want to be sure your abigail understands that she is to wait for you at the Lewins’.”

They
went out.

“I hope she is right,” said Thea. “How odd it will seem to see my little sister wed.”

“Do you regret having refused Lord Stewart?” Penny asked.

“No. Especially since we heard that he is already betrothed to an impoverished widow with two daughters! I might have regretted it, simply for the sake of his children, if he had offered for Mrs. Wilmington, but this Mrs. Philpots sounds ideal for him.”

“True, but seriously, do you not wish to be married?”

Thea sighed. “Before you came to Newkirk, I held the lowest opinion of marriage. My parents did not precisely provide an example of domestic felicity! Seeing you and Jason so happy has changed my view. I should like to be wed, but not to a man I do not love and who does not love me.”

“Forgive me, Thea dear, if I am wrong, but I believe you have already given your heart—to Lord Hazlewood. Will you not tell me what is wrong? You restored harmony between Jason and me, and I cannot remain aloof when you are unhappy.”

“He has only called once since we came home, and that such a short, formal visit!” Her voice wavered. “Oh, Penny, I told him Lord Stewart asked for my hand, thinking that if he loved me he would advise me to refuse, even insist that I refuse. But he just told me coldly to make up my own mind. He doesn’t love me. He only befriended me because he is a gallant gentleman and I needed his aid.”

“My dear, I cannot answer for his feelings, but how could he possibly guess that you care for him when you led him to believe you were considering an offer from another man?”

Thea winced. “I have been as caper-witted as Meg, have I not? I did see a parallel with her behaviour, before I went to him, but I rushed on without reflection. What shall I do?”

“For a start, make sure he is aware that you rejected Lord Stewart.”

“Yes, of course. But I cannot be so forward as to tell him that I love him unless he gives some sign of reciprocating my feelings.”

“No, it would be shockingly vulgar to set your cap at him,” Penny agreed, “and quite dreadful if he gave you a set-down. Let me think. Suppose you were to—”

“Oh, hush, Mama is coming back.”

Jason came in with his mother. “I’m away,” he said, bending over the back of Penny’s chair and putting his arms around her, “if you are sure you don’t mind, love?”

“A fine thing it would be if I were to stop you going to meet Lord Hazlewood, when he has so kindly agreed to advise you on finding a good bailiff!”

“I only wish he had accepted my invitation to dine here, but he was already engaged for dinner. He chose Brooks’s because he is to meet someone else there later, I collect. He is a busy man and I must find a factor soon. I shall not be long gone, not more than a couple of hours.” He leaned down to kiss Penny’s cheek, waved a farewell to his mother and sister, and departed.

“Drat,” said Penny, “I’ve dropped three stitches.”

* * * *

Rod was agreeably impressed by Jason Kilmore’s serious intention of improving his estate. He had always considered the baron a fribble, his determination to buy back the farms his father had sold nothing more than a matter of pride. Though they had spent ten days in the same house, he had had little to do with the fellow, being occupied in courting Thea.

Like his own, Will’s courtship had ended in disaster, but before that, apparently, he had shown Kilmore around the Goff’s Acre farms. Kilmore had been impressed enough to ask advice about hiring a bailiff, and Will—damn his eyes!—had referred him to his cousin. Hence this reluctant meeting in the reading-room at his club.

“I only hope poor old Bodger doesn’t take his enforced retirement to heart,” Kilmore said now, surprising Rod yet again. Who would have thought the man sensitive enough to be concerned over his present bailiff’s feelings?

“From what you have said, I suspect he will be relieved,” said Rod. “For whatever reasons, he has had little experience...” Pausing, he nodded to the waiter who had come up to them bearing a silver salver.

With a frown, Kilmore took the proffered letter. “You’ll excuse me if I read it at once, Hazlewood? My wife...” His frown deepened as he read the superscription. He broke the seal with an abrupt gesture and perused the note. Suddenly pale, he jumped to his feet. “Hell and damnation!”

“I trust Lady Kilmore is not taken ill?”

“Taken hostage!” He groaned. “If he has hurt her, I’ll kill the ruffian! Five thousand pounds! Where am I to find five thousand pounds at this time of night?” He dropped back into his chair and sank his head in his hands. “Oh Penny, Penny, if he has hurt you!”

“Her uncle?”

“Yes.” Kilmore started up again. Pacing and gesturing wildly, he raised his voice to a near shout. “I shall kill him, I swear it. I should have done it long ago.” He swung to face Rod. “Lend me five thousand.”

Everyone in the room was staring. Rod deplored his companion’s loss of self-control and his resulting inability to think straight. “Sit down,” he said sharply. “Don’t be a numskull. What would you do with five thousand pounds? Give it to Vaughn and he’ll come back later for more. If you intend to kill him, there’s no earthly reason to pay him first, though it’s not a course of action I can advise. You would certainly be convicted of manslaughter, if not murder.”

“What am I to do?”

“Let me see the letter.” The scrawled message was easy enough to decipher:

I have your wife. Bring £5,000 to 3, Chapel Court, Swallow Street, by midnight. Come alone if you want to see her again alive.

Too short a time to lay plans. Having met Vaughn, Rod had no confidence in the fellow’s ability to keep his temper if Kilmore were not there by midnight. To kill his niece would avail him nothing, but one could not rely upon him to let that restrain his violence. “Let’s go. It can’t be more than half a mile. It will be quicker to walk than to send for a carriage.”

The distraught husband was not to be held to a walk, nor even a rapid stride. They ran along Piccadilly to Swallow Street. As it was in process of being transformed into Regent Street, a grand approach to Regent’s Park, that narrow thoroughfare was lined with rubble. Reflected from a low overcast, the gas lights of the respectable streets to the west provided just enough illumination to prevent Rod and Jason from breaking their necks. Stumbling, steadying each other, they sped northward.

At the corner of Swallow Street and Chapel Court was a heap of broken bricks, sprouting here and there a splintered beam. Looming over it, a blank wall towered: the end of the Chapel Court tenement. The terrace of three tall, narrow dwellings, fronting directly onto the short street, stood dark, dilapidated, derelict, ready for demolition.

Only the nearest showed any sign of life, a faint glow of light in one ground-floor window. A need for caution at last dawned on Jason Kilmore and he crept towards the lighted window while Rod gently tried the front door. It was on the latch.

One corner of the sackcloth draping the inside of the window was torn. For what seemed an age, Kilmore peered through the gap, then he pressed his ear to the pane for two or three minutes. He shook his head and stepped back to let Rod look.

Vaughn sat on a broken chair at a rickety table. Before him stood writing materials and a bottle. He was raising to his lips a tumbler of a clear liquid, doubtless gin. Light from an ill-trimmed oil lamp flickered on his unshaven chin, his broken-veined nose. His brown coat was threadbare and a limp blue muffler enveloped his neck. In the few weeks since Rod had last seen him, his appearance had deteriorated from that of a respectable-looking tradesman to a back-slum bully.

Two empty chairs stood at the table. What little Rod could see of the rest of the room was bare, with mildew stains on the walls, broken glass and yellowed newspapers roughly swept into a corner.

Kilmore tugged on his sleeve and they retreated.

“I can scarce believe it is the same man,” the baron whispered. “The one time I saw him before, he looked like a prosperous man of business, though he behaved like a brute.”

“When I saw him, he was somewhere between the two.”

“You
saw him?” Kilmore asked, incredulous. “When?”

“So the ladies never did tell you? I am surprised that they managed to keep the secret. Vaughn came to your house, and I arrived just in time to prevent him from attacking your elder sister.”

“You are very busy about my affairs, my lord! It seems you know more of my household than I.”