A Gamble on Love (22 page)

So this is why they
came
, Relia sighed. Just when she thought the shock of
her marriage had dissipated—that the ripples on the smooth pond of
life in Kent were going to be allowed to slide away unremarked.
This must be where she was supposed to drag out the story she had
hoped never to use except with Lord Hubert and his family. Somehow,
here and now, it was much harder to tell, perhaps because the gap
between herself and her husband had become a chasm.

They were all looking at her. Expectantly.
Accusingly.

“
Really, my dear,” said Margaret
Stanton, “I believe you owe us some explanation. All of us must
live with Mr. Lanning in our midst.”

“
And do not tell us it was a love
match,” said Lady Trent, a gray-haired matron whose strident voice
belied her wispy figure, “for we shall not believe you. The only
glances exchanged between you and Mr. Lanning at table appeared to
carry nothing but the gravest animosity.”

Caught. As neatly as a
gamekeeper’s trap
.

“
You cannot know that, mother,” said
Jane Edmundson quite unexpectedly. “You know couples are not
expected to live in each other’s pockets. And you also know there
is a good deal of strain in entertaining. Just because Mr. and Mrs.
Lanning have had a falling out is no reason to assert theirs is not
a love match.”

Oh, thank you, my dear Mrs.
Edmundson
.

Solemnly, as if from the witness box, Relia
repeated the story of an old attachment between herself and Thomas
Lanning that had been given to the Hubert Trevors. Then, in all
fairness, since she was speaking to her closest neighbors, she
added a bit of the truth. “Pevensey Park is a business. It seemed
best to find a man of business to take charge.”

“
Your father managed quite well,” Lady
Gravenham pointed out. “As do all our husbands. What does a man of
the City know about a country estate?”

“
He is learning.” And why on earth was
she defending him? It was absurd. If only Captain Alan had come
home sooner . . .

“
Madam.” Biddeford’s voice interrupted
the uncomfortable scene. “Master William Stanton has just poked
Master Nicholas in the cheek with a billiard cue. The matter is not
serious, but I felt you should know.”

God bless all butlers!

Relia and Margaret Stanton dashed off to
determine the extent of the emergency, leaving the remaining ladies
to continue to dissect their host’s antecedents and their hostess’s
good judgment. By the time Mrs. Lanning and Mrs. Stanton returned
to the drawing room, the gentlemen had just come bursting into the
room on a wave of alcohol fumes and raised voices, the Earl of
Gravenham preceding his host through the door. “Ah, ladies,” he
boomed, “we have had a splendid idea. What think you, Lady
Gravenham, of having an MP for a son? There’s a By-Election coming
up for old Yelverton’s seat. The squire thinks our Alan should
run.”

“
How wonderful!” Relia cried. “You are
quite correct. A splendid idea indeed.”

“
No, no,” Captain Fortescue protested.
“I cannot at all picture myself in Parliament.”

The ladies, their attention totally diverted,
protested loudly. The captain would be an ideal candidate for MP
They could not imagine why no one had thought of it sooner.

“
Surely there would be no opposition,”
Lady Trent declared. “Who would dare run against the son of an
earl, a wounded veteran of the Peninsular War?”

“
I believe that would be I,” Thomas
Lanning said as the laughing murmurs of agreement began to die
away. “I am the Whig candidate for Marcus Yelverton’s
seat.”

~ * ~

With grim deliberation Thomas Lanning walked
down the long corridor toward the suite of rooms he shared with his
wife. His feet made no sound on the hall runner; his candle cast
wavering shadows against the walls. Except for the silence, he
thought, this must be how the condemned felt on their last steps up
to the gallows. Pevensey Park’s astonished guests had departed long
since; even the servants had sought their beds. But Thomas had
lingered in the library, swirling brandy round and round in its
glass, holding it up to the flickering firelight, then staring off
into the dark corners of the room. He never touched a drop. He had
had enough for one night. Enough to make him careless. Enough to
bring out the bravado he usually kept well hidden.

In front of the most powerful man in
the district—the man whose son was likely to be his Tory
opponent—he had announced his own candidacy for Parliament. He had
taken a social affair that was intended to enhance his status with
his neighbors—his voting neighbors—and managed to alienate them all
when it became so glaringly apparent that his wife was as shocked
as everyone else. And yet . . . what else could he have done?
He
was
running for Parliament.
And concealing the fact under such circumstances would have been
worse, making him appear sly and devious—not at all the portrait of
the sophisticated, knowledgeable man of the world he wished to
present as MP for this particular portion of Kent.

She’d been splendid, of course, his
wife. Aurelia Trevor Lanning—a lady to the core, revealing yet
again her strong sense of honor. She had recovered swiftly, putting
a fine face on it all. Calming Gravenham, who looked as if he were
about to have an apoplexy. Bravely exclaiming about what an
interesting
By-Election this would
be. And then there had been that moment in the general confusion
following his announcement when Captain Fortescue had told his
host, most discreetly, that he would visit him on the morrow. Now,
that was definitely intriguing, for Thomas rather thought Fortescue
meant it when he said he did not care to be an MP And if so . . .
there was no one else who could present a sufficient
challenge—

He had arrived at the end of the corridor,
where the narrow top of the T-shaped hallway led left and right to
nearly invisible doors into their respective dressing rooms. The
door to the sitting room, however, loomed straight in front of him.
If he were a coward, he would sneak into his bedchamber through his
dressing room . . .

But, of course, Thomas Lanning was not a
coward. Not in business, not with people . . . but a wife was
something else altogether. Aurelia had been avoiding him since his
outburst a few days ago. Although he had sent her a written apology
the following morning, the sitting room had remained empty each
night, the door into her bedchamber firmly in place. For a few
precious moments after her near-disaster in Tunbridge Wells, they
had hovered on the brink of openness with one another. Then he, who
was never open with anyone, had retreated, shutting her out, even
before he had fled back to London.

It wasn’t that he did not want more from his
marriage. She was a lovely creature. Soft skin, shining hair, eyes
alight with intelligence . . . and barely concealed scorn. Pride
had demanded he grant her a reprieve from her wifely duties. His
body, however, had little use for such nonsense. Each day he kept
his promise, he was forced to draw further back. Each day the
breach between them grew wider, more difficult to close.

But tonight . . . tonight she would be
waiting. He could have lingered below until Hell froze over, but,
still, she would be waiting. The guilt was all on his side. And a
most uncomfortable place it was, not at all where Thomas Lanning
was accustomed to be.

Had Charles not warned him of the risk?
Thomas took a deep breath and opened the door.

He was right. She was there, her midnight
blue dressing gown a dark swath against the lighter blue of the
sofa, her face a pale oval where it rested on a cherry red cushion,
her nightbraids catching a glint of firelight. For a wild moment,
unworthy of him, Thomas wondered if he could tiptoe on by, save
this confrontation for morning. He was never to know what he might
have done, for his wife’s eyes flew open, and in an instant she was
erect, sitting primly on the edge of the sofa, hands folded in her
lap. Gray-blue eyes regarded him with considerable solemnity. She
opened her mouth.

“
Before you say a word,” said Thomas,
holding up his hand, “kindly allow me to explain.”

“
Explain?” declared Mrs. Lanning, her
voice as steady as it was cold. “I assure you no explanation is
necessary. You have used me quite brilliantly for your own ends.
’Tis perfectly plain now why you married me. In my naïveté I
thought Pevensey Park was the attraction, but it was Pevensey’s
power and prestige you wanted, was it not? In fact, if Marcus
Yelverton had not died, you would not have married me—”

“
If Marcus Yelverton had not died,”
Thomas retorted, stung out of his bemused contemplation of his
wife, “you would not have needed me. He was a good man, a strong
one. It is one of the reasons I wish to take his place in
Parliament.”

She stared up at him, half her face illumined
by his candle and the dying fire, half lost in shadows. “Then we
are even, I think—you and I,” she murmured, “though how we will
manage to go on I do not know. This is a far greater blow than I
had expected.”

“
Aurelia—” Her eyes flashed at him out
of the darkness. Thomas threw himself into the cherry striped
chair, which was angled toward the sofa. He leaned forward,
straining to see her face. “Relia, you have a man’s sense of honor.
I admire that—immensely—but sometimes I wish you would scream at
me. Rant and rave about what a thoughtless brute I am. Tell me that
I have turned your peaceful world upside down. Instead, you absorb
each blow that comes your way, straighten your shoulders, square
that lovely little chin of yours, and determine to uphold your part
of the bargain. This, you tell yourself, is the price you must pay
for searching out a mate to save Pevensey Park. Well, let me tell
you, my girl, even though I am a man who does not like to be
gainsaid, your accommodation is positively frightening.”

Daringly, Thomas laid a hand over hers.
“Relia, look at me! It is all right to quarrel with me. I am just
as much of an arrogant unfeeling wretch as you think I am.”

Her lashes fluttered. A quick peep, then her
gaze returned to the large fingers clasped over her own. “I fear I
do not know how to shout,” she told him.

Thomas heaved a sigh. “Very well . . . but I
still need to explain why I did not tell you I was running for MP.”
Slowly, she nodded, but she winkled her hands out from under his,
hiding them in the soft folds of her robe. Thomas leaned back in
the wingchair, choosing his words with care. “Listen to me, Relia.
I have never spoken to you about my life. I should have, but ours
was a business arrangement—we both knew that—and our personal lives
did not seem to enter into it. You deigned to trade yourself to a
Cit in return for the enticement of a vast country estate. That was
our bargain. It seemed unnecessary that you should know that I had
no need of Pevensey’s income. Or that I did indeed welcome the
power and prestige that went with the estate. “An arrogant
assumption, I grant you,” Thomas added quickly, “but I have long
been accustomed to keeping my own counsel in business
arrangements.” He managed a rueful half-smile. “But I had no
experience at all in being married.”

His wife’s nod of understanding, however
slight, broke the dam of Thomas’s long-held reticence. “I had not
had any family life since my mother died when I was nine,” he told
her. “Again, a similarity in our situations which you can
appreciate. And when my father married again, my life and his
became almost totally estranged. I did not care for my step-mother,
and when she ran off with Nicolas’s tutor, I felt only grim
satisfaction.” Ignoring his wife’s gasp, Thomas continued his
confession. “I should have shown sympathy—for my father, for the
poor abandoned children. Instead, I did nothing more than duty
demanded, not even after my father passed on, leaving me guardian
to a girl and boy I scarcely knew.”

“
You sent them away to school. And to
Aunt Browning.” It was an accusation, not a
commendation.

“
Yes. And Nicholas to strangers for his
holidays as his aunt would not have him in the house. Neither of
the children was real to me. They were not part of my life. Which
was all the more despicable, as I am not the vulgar self-made Cit
you expected, Relia. My family has been in banking for three
generations. I came into this world with more substance than most
young nobles, and I was given the education and training to make
the most of it. Which I have done. But I wanted no part of my
father’s other family.”

“
And then you received an offer of
marriage.”

Thomas allowed his gaze to wander over
the delectable vision, so close, yet so far away. “And then I
received an offer of marriage,” he agreed. “And I began to think of
the advantages for Olivia and Nicholas, as well as for myself.
Livvy was growing up, soon to be ready for a come-out. And Miss
Aurelia Trevor of Pevensey Park could ensure vouchers for Almack’s
and all that went with it. Nicholas was beginning to cause enough
trouble that I knew it was well past time I personally shouldered
the responsibility. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to mention them to
you any more than I could mention my political ambitions . . .”
Thomas paused.
Devil it, but this was
difficult!
“Truthfully, when Charles first brought the
matter to my attention, I thought him mad. Marriage to some female
I had never heard of . . .” One who was such an antidote she had
found it necessary to employ a solicitor to find her a
mate.