A Lady's Point of View (4 page)

In this parlour far from London,
Meg saw the members of the
beau monde
for the foolish, artificial people
they really were. Such fuss over Beau Brummell, whose only accomplishments were
his choice of a tailor and his rapier wit! How absurd that the highest lords
and ladies should shun a woman merely because she failed to acknowledge his
greeting.

The first few months of this past
season had been met with hope and eager expectation. At each ball she had
imagined she might discover a man who would meet her heart’s needs.

Now Meg could see that she had
become disenchanted even before her ridiculously aggrandized scandal. Perhaps
her departure was a blessing in disguise. But what lay ahead?

A rapping at the door roused her
to herself.

“Yes?” She wondered if the
pounding of her heart could be heard by the unseen visitor.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but
the innkeeper said there was a Miss Lindsay here and I’m sent to fetch her to
her carriage,” said a polite male voice.

Much relieved, Meg drew the bolt
and opened the door. Before her stood a coachman exquisitely clad in
black-and-silver livery. It was beyond any uniform she would have expected for
a post chaise driver, but no doubt this fellow took pride in appearances, and
Meg could only think well of him for that.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she
said, willing to overlook his mispronouncing the name Linley as Lindsay. In her
experience, it was a common mistake among tradesmen.

“This is your trunk then, miss?”
In a trice, the driver and a young groom carried the cases downstairs, with Meg
hurrying in their wake. To her surprise, the driver insisted upon paying the
innkeeper for the parlour. “I have my instructions,” he said when she
protested, and Meg silently thanked Karen for her thoughtfulness.

The bustle in the courtyard was
as great this afternoon as it had been in the morning. Meg could perceive
little beyond a great blur of motion and colour, with high-perch phaetons
weaving perilously between rude wagon-carts.

“This way, miss,” said the
driver, taking Meg’s arm to help her into the chaise.

“What a smart carriage,” she said, impressed by the
gleaming black-trimmed silver paint. She even suspected, as he opened the door,
that she might have seen a coat of arms on it, but she couldn’t be sure.
Perhaps the crest of the inn, she mused.

“Yes, indeed, ma’am.” Despite the
correctness of his reply, she heard a puzzled note in the coachman’s voice as
he closed the door.

The interior was as elegantly
appointed as the rest of the coach. Meg detected no sign of wear in the red
velvet of the squabs. This was superior transportation indeed.

She hadn’t been able to see the
horses well, but the easy movement of the chaise proved them to be a well-matched,
quick-stepping team. Again, Meg marvelled at the fine service in Manchester.

Relieved of the fears that had
plagued her at the inn, Meg gazed out with curiosity as they rumbled along.
Impossible to recognize landmarks, but that was only to be expected in her
case. Still, she enjoyed the rich green colours of rural Cheshire.

The carriage halted much sooner
than she’d expected. She squinted through the windows. They had pulled up in
the driveway of a great Tudor house, its white-painted plaster set off by a
darkened latticework of timbers.

Wherever they were, this most
certainly wasn’t Derby.

The Most Honourable Andrew
Harwood Davis, the Marquis of Bryn, laid aside the quill pen with which he had
been inscribing a letter to his man of affairs in London.

Surely, he reflected wearily as
he franked the letter, it should not be necessary for him to make a trip
personally on the matter of a marriage settlement. Standish should be able to
send him the necessary figures and considerations by post.

The marquis rose from behind the
heavy oak desk and moved to the window of his study, gazing through the
many-paned glass and over the broad lawns of Brynwood. He would prefer never to
visit town again, although one could not forever put aside the duty to resume
one’s seat in the House of Lords.

Once he was married, at least he
might be spared the attentions of ambitious mothers and their insipid, giggling
daughters, Bryn reflected. These past two years, he could barely tolerate the
thought of London society and its petty self-absorption.

He turned back to face the dark,
masculine room that so perfectly reflected his own appearance. Not a bit of
frippery was to be seen among the leather-covered chairs and stern bookcases.

What changes would a wife make?
Andrew wondered, leaning back against the desk. None, he hoped, at least not
the wife he planned to take.

Germaine Geraint was far from
missish, more interested in her horses than in her draperies, he suspected from
their one brief encounter at a house party. She ought to blend into his
countrified existence with scarcely a ripple.

His interest in her might have
struck the casual observer as perfunctory, but Lord Bryn had no jumped-up
notions of romance. Marriage for a wealthy nobleman must be a means of securing
heirs, with a respectable-enough mate to assure their future acceptance into
society.

The marquis put no credence in amorous tomfoolery,
and neither, he was pleased to note, did the lady to whom he meant to declare
his intentions. Nevertheless, he must order up some new coats and trousers from
Weston, who had his measure, and boots from Hoby’s. The marquis glanced down at
the aging pair of Hessians he wore. They suited him well enough, but his valet
should have remarked on their condition long ago. If Harry were still alive...

A vise squeezed the marquis’s
conscience. Harry would indeed have been alive, had it not been for the
vainglory two years ago of a young nodcock named Andrew Davis.

The butler knocked lightly at the
door and entered. “Begging your pardon, my lord,” said Franklin, “but the
children have vanished.”

“Vanished?” repeated Bryn.

“Bertha was tending them—the new
upstairs maid, my lord—and they placed a certain small animal about her
person.” The butler cleared his throat, and Bryn wondered if he might be
covering a chuckle.

“Small animal?” When it came to
the misdeeds of his niece and nephew, Bryn frequently found himself repeating
words in disbelief.

“A mouse, I believe,” said the
butler. “In her, er, consternation over the creature, she lost sight of them,
and now they are nowhere to be found.”

“Search the house,” instructed
his lordship.

“That has been done.” Franklin
betrayed a hint of exasperation. “We know their hiding places, my lord, and
they are not in them.”

How one seven-year-old girl and
one five-year-old boy could create such continual chaos, Lord Bryn could not
imagine. In the eighteen months since his sister and her husband died in a
carriage accident, the children had demolished no fewer than three governesses.

“Then search the grounds,” he
said.

“Yes, my lord, we are doing so,”
replied Franklin. “However, I thought you might wish to be informed.”

“How long have the children been
missing?”

“Three hours, my lord.’’

That was a long time for two such
small children. “They may have got themselves in too deep this time.” The
marquis pushed away from his desk. I’ll take King Arthur and join the search.”

A few minutes later, he was
urging the roan stallion forward. This time his young charges might be in
serious difficulty, and if night fell before they were rescued, their
misadventure could prove dangerous, even deadly.

The rolling countryside of the
Cheshire Plain was deceptive. One had the impression that one could see
everything for miles, but, in truth, clumps of trees provided more than ample
hiding for a pair of tots. Here and there lay crumbling Roman fortifications.
Most were located high on wooded ridges, beyond the distance a child might hike
in a few hours.

But Bryn knew well from his own
childhood that one could stumble upon an intriguing pile of rocks in the most
unlikely places. Of these innocent-seeming ruins, more than one had tumbled in
treacherously upon a curious child. He had barely escaped injury in such an
accident himself.

Tom and Vanessa. They’d been
entrusted to him. Had he failed them as tragically as he’d failed Harry?

Distressed, the marquis spurred
his horse on toward the town of Marple. He doubted the children had got that
far, but couldn’t disregard the chance they had become lost on the moors.

Prior to the past year and a
half, it had been Lord Bryn’s impression that his niece and nephew were angelic
sprites who, done up in bows and ruffles, descended from their nursery to bow
and curtsey silently to their elders before retreating.

He had never been more mistaken
in his life.

Perhaps the problem was the
governesses one could secure, living so far from London. Well, Standish had
apparently found the solution to that, and if the woman were on the mail coach
as planned, she should be arriving at Brynwood that same evening. A welcome
sight she would be, too, if she proved the equal of this pair of scalawags.

As the sun sank toward the west,
the marquis’s spirits lowered accordingly. After shouting their names until he
was hoarse, he rode back by the house to be sure the children hadn’t been
found. They had not.

Darkness would soon arrive, he
thought worriedly, heading south this time. “Tom! Vanessa!” His voice mingled
with the thud of King Arthur’s hooves against the soft earth.

Damn. His blasted leg was
beginning to hurt where the bullet had nicked the bone. The pain brought with
it, as always, a double hurt, the memory of one hot humid August day on the
coast of Portugal two years before.

Fresh from his triumphs in the
ballrooms of London, the swaggering young Lord Bryn—as he unflatteringly
considered his younger self—had set out with Wellington’s troops to teach that
Frenchman Bonaparte, a lesson in English courage.

The scene blurred, as the marquis rode through the
gathering twilight shouting the youngsters’ names. So long ago, so far away...

The horse leaped a fence and
jolted his rider’s sore leg. The renewed torment brought the event back
sharply.

Andrew could hear again the
shouts and see the white summer uniforms of the French advancing toward the
scarlet-clad British. Volleys of shots rang out; pain seared his leg. He fell
into the dirt as the columns broke and bayonets flashed around him in the
sunlight.

Then someone dragged him off the
battlefield. Harry. Where had he come from? Bryn had meant to order the valet
to stay safely on board ship. But in his excitement at the forthcoming battle,
he’d forgotten.

A shot rang out nearby, and Harry
fell. Moments later, the French fled the field, defeated. But for one loyal
servant from Cheshire, the respite came too late.

If I’d commanded him to stay
behind, we’d both have been safe,
Bryn reflected for the hundredth time.
But
I never gave him a thought. I was too full of my own pride to worry about
Harry.

A small cry blotted out his
memories. “Uncle Andrew!” Faint, but unmistakable.

Bryn reined in King Arthur and
turned east. He spotted a grove of trees, and, emerging from it, two grubby
urchins, their faces smeared with purple.

“Berries!” cried Vanessa, the
eldest, holding up juice-stained hands.

“You should be whipped, the pair
of you!” The marquis tried to hide his relief. The children needed discipline
badly, but he’d never been able to bring himself to administer it, not after
their tragic loss.

“But they taste so wonderful!”
Tom stopped behind his sister, eyes round with delight. “Then it got late.”

“We were only adventuring,” said
Vanessa primly. “Like the knights of old.”

“Now where did you hear about
that?” Charmed in spite of himself, Bryn descended to collect his errant
charges.

“Miss Smithers. Or was it Miss
James?” Vanessa shrugged. “One of the governesses liked to tell us stories.”

“Was that the one you poured ink
over, or the one you frightened off by pretending to be ghosts in the secret
passage?” demanded his lordship, grasping each youngster firmly by the collar.

The children exchanged startled
glances. “I didn’t tell!” Tom cried.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t me,”
returned Vanessa.

“Despite what you may think, we
adults were once children, too,” said Lord Bryn, depositing Tom to the front of
the saddle and Vanessa to the rear. “I want none of your nonsense with your new
governess, do you understand? Or there’ll be no pony at Christmas, Vanessa.”

“I promise,” she said at once.

Mounting carefully between them,
Lord Bryn reflected grimly that Christmas was a long time off, and children’s
memories were notoriously short.

They set out at a canter. Despite the long search
that afternoon, King Arthur maintained a creditable pace, and the trio arrived
at Brynwood in time to see a young woman descending from his lordship’s
carriage.

“It’s her!” shrilled Tom. “Vanny,
it’s our new governess.” His young voice carried a note of calculation, as if
he were already probing for weaknesses.

And a wonderful sight we make,
the marquis thought, glancing at the children’s berry-stained faces. He guided
the horse into the drive and halted, taking a good look at his new employee.

Standish had described a female
of three and thirty, but Bryn would have put her age at considerably less.
Furthermore, his man of affairs had given him to believe the woman possessed a
starchy air, but this chit seemed bewildered. Moreover, he noticed as he
descended and lifted down the two delighted youngsters, the new governess had a
squint. Was it vanity that prevented her wearing a glass? But what use had a
governess for vanity?