Carola Dunn (21 page)

“With respect, sir, Nathan Rothschild is a highly esteemed banker, and on the friendliest terms with the Duke of Wellington. I am proud to have been his agent, but my reward will, I believe, permit me to leave his employ.”

His father was startled. “So much?”

“Nineteen thousand.”

“Nineteen thousand pounds?” His father paled and sat down abruptly. “What did you do to earn so much?”

“Nothing to be ashamed of, I promise you, but a confidential matter which I cannot discuss. Sir, am I right in thinking this will allow me to offer for the lady I admire?” His parents both stared at him. “The lady you admire?” repeated his mother warily. “Do we know her?”

“I believe you must be acquainted with her mother, ma’am. She is Lady Sophia Gerrold, the elder daughter of the Marquis of Daventry.”

“Daventry’s daughter!” Lord Westwood exclaimed. “My dear boy, why did you not tell us you had reached an understanding with the girl? With her fortune, something might have been arranged despite our lack of funds.”

“Lady Sophia? A thoroughly suitable choice, Felix. I did not know you had so much common sense. A well-bred young lady of superior family--an excellent match.”

“Not a settled one, however! I beg your pardon if I have misled you, but we have no understanding. Though I flatter myself she was uncommonly kind to me just before her family left Brussels, Lady Sophia has rejected many suitors.”

The earl and countess were only slightly disappointed. Neither believed that Lady Sophia could possibly reject the heir to Westwood, now that his fortunes were reestablished. Their confidence was contagious, so Felix wasn’t sure why he felt a vague dissatisfaction with life as he followed them upstairs later.

As he had assured Fanny, his parents agreed that Lady Sophia would be the perfect wife for him. What more could he ask?

“I shall be able to quit working,” he explained to Vickie, leaning against the post of her pink-and-white curtained bed. Perhaps that was the trouble--he enjoyed his work. “I’ll come home to live and learn to manage the estate.”

“Good. Shall I have a Season, Felix? I’ll be seventeen next month.”

“Yes, if you behave yourself until the spring.”

“Impossible,” she sighed, “but I shall try.”

He didn’t tell her about Lady Sophia. She was too young to understand, even if the marbled cover of a Minerva Press novel was poking out from beneath her bedcovers.

Connie was waiting for him, reclining on a chaise longue in her dressing room, a shabby blue Paisley shawl about her shoulders.

“I’ll buy you a silk dressing gown,” he said, perching on a corner of her dressing table, “and how would you like a cashmire one for winter?”

“Did Mr Rothschild really give you so much money? What did you do to earn it?”

Swearing her to secrecy, he told the story. “Father will be able to make me an allowance suited to my station,” he continued, “so I could live in Town but I mean to settle at Westwood, except when you are in London.”

“I? Why should I go to London?”

“You and Vickie shall have your Seasons in Town.”

“Oh no! I am too old to make my come-out.”

“Yes, my dear, you are an ape-leader and an antidote, which is why that callow puppy of a curate never took his languishing eyes off you throughout dinner. You will enjoy the balls and the theatre, Con, and you will meet gentlemen more proper than a country curate to be your husband.”

“But Felix, I don’t want to go. I have had offers from eligible gentlemen, you know, even here in the country. Two or three times I was quite in disgrace for refusing splendid matches, but I could not bring myself to marry a man I did not respect, only for the sake of the family.”

He frowned, unsure why he was more disturbed than her words appeared to warrant. “You did not care for any of them?”

“How could I, when they all seemed to believe they were doing me a favour by offering for my hand? Mama said I must not regard it, that a daughter of the Earl of Westwood, even portionless, is a fit bride for the highest ranking peer in the land.”

“So she is, and you, my dear, are a prize beyond compare. I am glad you were strong enough to hold out against the coxcombs who did not appreciate you. But now you’ll have a dowry, everything will be quite different.”

“I don’t want to go,” she said stubbornly.

“Even if you had my wife to chaperon you instead of Mama?”

“Your wife! Felix, are you going to marry? Tell me all about her at once!”

“She’s known as the Goddess to her admirers, of whom she has many, alas.” Felix explained the situation and described Lady Sophia’s fair, graceful beauty and cool dignity.

“She sounds very like Mama,” murmured Connie. “I expect she will make a superb countess one day.”

“I can only hope she will choose to be an English countess, not a Belgian comtesse. One of her suitors in Brussels was an excessively wealthy Belgian count.”

“A foreigner, however rich, is surely no competition for you. Who are her other beaux?”

“Mostly officers, with the advantage of showy uniforms. However, some may have met their end at Waterloo,” he added sombrely. “Believe me, that’s not how I would wish to overcome my rivals.”

“Those poor soldiers! I wish I could do something to help them. Did you...did you lose many friends?”

He told her about Sir Alexander Gordon, and Canning, and De Lancey. “And others were badly wounded. Lord Fitzroy Somerset lost his arm, though he is remarkably cheerful about it! Frank Ingram was blown up by one of his own shells and dashed near kicked the bucket.”

“Ingram? I remember you mentioned in one of your all too rare letters that you were sharing lodgings with a young couple called Ingram.”

“Brother and sister, not a couple. He’s an artillery officer, as was their father. Miss Ingram has followed the drum all her life. She’s an admirable person, Connie. Though she has been through the greatest hardships, she keeps a sense of humour, and she is always kind and hospitable. She and Frank adopted the daughter of a fellow officer who was killed in Spain, an adorable little girl. Fanny could not care for her better if she were her own child.”

“I should like to meet Miss Ingram.”

“Impossible, I fear. They have no connections and don’t move in the first circles. Indeed, when I brought them to England, Fanny was quite overcome by the grandeur of Miriam and Isaac’s establishment, and the Cohens live in a simple, unpretentious way, you know.”

Connie gave him an odd look. “You brought the Ingrams to England?”

“Frank needed Miriam’s care. I’ve told you how she saved my shoulder in France with her medical skill.”

“Yes, of course. And I have wanted to meet Mr and Mrs Cohen this age.”

“You’re a dear, Con.” He crossed to the chaise longue and gave her a hug. If only his parents were like her! “I’d like nothing better than to make them known to you, but it can’t be done. Mama would flay me alive with her tongue if I introduced my friends to you.”

Chapter 15

Summoned to his mother’s private sitting room a few days later, Felix entered with a feeling of trepidation, a vestige of his childhood. The formal, if slightly faded, elegance of gilt scrollwork and green striped satin did nothing to set him at ease.

Lady Westwood glanced up from her writing desk. “I am writing to Augusta,” she said. “Have you any message for your sister?”

“My compliments will suffice, I thank you.” He had no great affection for Gussie, who had been a prim and proper miss--and given to tale-bearing--since earliest youth.

Her ladyship wrote a few words, set down her pen and turned to him. “Much as we enjoy your company, Felix,” she said, “I feel you would be wise to pay your addresses to Lady Sophia in the near future. According to the Post, many members of the ton are departing for Paris in the train of Wellington and King Louis.”

“If you think it advisable, ma’am, I shall leave in the morning.”

“Westwood informs me that you have expressed Radical ideas about farm wages and the Corn Laws.” Only a slight curl of the lip indicated her disapproval; her tone remained calm and collected. “You will do well to hold your tongue on such subjects when you speak to Lord Daventry.”

“Yes, ma’am.” As though he would rattle on about agriculture, especially Isaac’s liberal views, when he begged the Goddess’s father for permission to pop the question! At most he would assure the marquis that Lord Westwood had not, like many another, let the estate go to rack and ruin to pay for the improvements to the house.

Felix had never taken much interest in the work of the estate. He had been pleasurably surprised, as he rode around the farms with his father’s steward the past few days, to discover that the land was in excellent heart. The orchards and fertile fields of the Somerset plain were well-ditched and drained, the upland farm productive, buildings in good repair, woodland cleared of undergrowth and dead limbs.

Mortgages had their disadvantages but, now that the debt could be paid off, Westwood was able to support tenants and landlord alike in comfort. With Lady Sophia’s dowry, the family fortunes would be restored to their former splendour.

“I have discreetly mentioned Lady Sophia’s name to one or two of my correspondents,” Lady Westwood continued. “Everything I have heard confirms my belief that I could not hope for a more suitable daughter-in-law. Your choice is admirable, my son, and it only remains for me to wish you good fortune in your application for her hand.”

She tilted her head in a way that was both dismissal and permission to kiss her cheek. Felix obliged.

* * * *

At six o’clock of a sunny evening, Felix rode into London. The first thing to be done was to discover Lady Sophia’s whereabouts. He could call in St James’s Square to enquire, but should the Daventrys be in residence it was an awkward hour to make his bow.

Dinner at Brooks’s, he decided--even in July many of his friends were probably in Town.

His thoughts turned involuntarily towards Nettledene. Two or three hours of daylight remained. He could easily ride down there, make sure all was well with Fanny, and return to Town in the morning in good time to call in St James’s Square. He had spent so much time in the saddle recently that another twenty-odd miles was nothing.

He arrived at Nettledene just before the dinner hour, left his horse in the stables, and went into the house by the back door. As he reached the front hall, a light step on the stairs made him glance up.

Fanny was coming down. Lost in thought she didn’t notice him. Instead of making his presence known, he watched her. She looked like a wood sprite in a leaf-green gown trimmed with knots of brown ribbon, a green ribbon threaded through her shining brown curls. Felix hardly dared breathe lest he startle her into flight.

As she came closer, he saw that she was a melancholy sprite, her pensive face clouded. What was wrong? Dismayed, he was about to step forward and demand an answer when Samuels entered the hall.

“My lord! Welcome back. I’ll set another place this instant.”

“Felix!” Sun broke through the clouds as Fanny sped down the remaining steps with sparkling eyes and glowing smile. Then she stopped, put her hand to her mouth, and blushed delightfully. “I beg your pardon, my lord. It’s just that Miriam and Isaac call you Felix and I...”

He took her hands. “And I trust you will, too. We are still friends, are we not?”

“Oh yes.” Her flush deepened. “Yes, I hope we are friends. You will call me Fanny?”

“If I may?” he teased. “I don’t wish to presume.”

“Felix!” Miriam came down the stairs with Isaac behind her. “What a surprise.”

He grinned at her. “Is it not always a surprise when I inflict myself upon you?”

“A surprise, but hardly an infliction,” said Isaac. “Come and have a glass of sherry before dinner.”

“I ought to change out of my dirt.”

“That is not necessary,” Miriam assured him. “Fanny and I don’t object to a little odor of horse with our horseradish, do we?”

She linked arms with Fanny, who smiled and shook her head, still very pink-cheeked.

“Horseradish?” queried Felix. “Roast beef for dinner? Fanny, do you recall Henriette’s Yorkshire pudding?”

“How could I forget?” She laughed, her confusion dissipating as she told the Cohens about the Yorkshire soufflé.

They went into the drawing room. A glass of sherry in his hand, Felix cornered Miriam.

“Has Fanny been unhappy?”

“A little.”

Looking towards the French doors, where Fanny stood chatting gaily--almost flirtatiously--with Isaac, he frowned. “She does not seem so.”

“Now, she is not!” said Miriam, exasperated.

Puzzled, he asked, “Is she worried about Frank?”

“I hardly think so. He improves daily, and walks in his chamber. He will come downstairs tomorrow.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But what is wrong with Fanny?”

“Perhaps she has not enough to do.” She seemed evasive. “She is used to a busy life, remember. Here at Nettledene, the housekeeping is out of her hands, Hannah takes care of Anita, and even Frank no longer permits either of us to tend to his wounds. Fanny reads a good deal, but she is accustomed to more activity.”

“Does she not walk?”

“In the garden. It is not safe to walk alone beyond at present. We are close to the Dover road and discharged soldiers are beginning to flock back to England. Of necessity they were taught to be aggressive, but without the army’s discipline many of them are disorderly, to put it mildly.”

“No, she must not go outside the garden alone!”

“If you are staying for a day or two, you might walk or ride with her, or take a carriage and go farther afield.”

“I’m on my way to propose to Lady Sophia, but I daresay I can spare a day or two. My mother fears the Daventrys may follow the ton to Paris, but if so I can always go after them. My parents are cock-a-hoop, Miriam, that I have found so eligible a bride--always supposing that she accepts me. She will be an ideal countess one day.”

“No doubt,” Miriam said dryly. “Fanny has told me something of her.”

“Fanny may not have done her justice,” Felix protested, discomforted. “Lady Sophia was...well, rude, to give you the word without the bark. No blame attaches to her. She was brought up, as I was, to judge people by their status in Society. It was you who taught me how muttonheaded that is.”