A Most Unconventional Match (3 page)

Despite knowing Nicky's wedding service had been about to begin, he'd barely been able to keep himself from bolting from the room that long-ago day. As it was, drenched in panic, he'd had to station himself as far from the enchanting Elizabeth as the confines of the parlour allowed, remaining at the reception afterwards only until he deemed it was politely possible to excuse himself.

Until he had encountered Elizabeth Wellingford, armoured by a lifetime of scornful treatment at the elegant hands of his beautiful mother, he'd thought himself immune to those pinnacles of perfect female form who so easily enslaved the men around them. Which, for Hal, made Elizabeth Wellingford the most dangerous woman in England. Even knowing what she could and probably would do to him, he'd still been…mesmerised.

The only sensible response was to stay as far away from her as possible. Over the intervening years, keeping that resolve turned out to be easier than he'd first feared, given that her sister had married his best friend. A few months after Nicky's nuptials, shunning a Season, Elizabeth Wellingford had chosen to wed a family friend she'd known all her life, a gentleman more than twenty years her senior.

So, fortunately for his piece of mind, the bewitching Elizabeth had never joined the ranks of the hopefuls on the Marriage Mart, that small section of
ton
society in which his mother took greatest interest. Each Season Mama had inspected the new arrivals, choosing those she deigned to honour with her friendship, whom she would then parade before her son in the hope, mercifully thus far unrealised, of enticing—or coercing—him into marrying some woman of fashion who might be trusted to try to remake her overly tall, totally unfashionable only child.

A hopeless task, if Mama would just cease stubbornly refusing to concede the fact. In a society that prized dark, whipcord-slender men like that lisping poet Lord Byron, Hal was too big, too fair-haired, and, from his years of fencing and riding, too firmly muscled to ever be considered one of the
ton
's dashing young blades.

Prizing comfort and utility above all, he had no patience for coats that required a valet to wrestle him in and out of them, shirts with points so high and stiff they scratched his chin or fanciful cravats that threatened to choke him whenever he swallowed.

And though, with Nicky's help, he'd overcome the stuttering that had made his school years a misery, he would never be capable of uttering long flowing phrases full of the elegant compliments so beloved by ladies.

He sighed. He would always be an embarrassment to Mama and there was nothing to be done about it.

Shifting his gaze to the matter at hand, he looked back at the funeral notice he still held. So Elizabeth was now a widow. Too young and lovely a lady to be wearing black, he thought, a touch of sadness in his chest at the premature loss she had suffered. Then a startling, highly unpleasant realisation brought him out of his chair and sent him rushing to his desk.

Impatiently he flipped through the papers until he found Nicky's note. As he reviewed it, a scowl settled on his face.

Hell and damnation! He
had
remembered the dates correctly. Nicholas, Sarah, their children and all the rest of the Stanhopes and Wellingfords—all of Elizabeth's family—had departed for Europe, it appeared, barely a week before Everitt Lowery's passing. The family party was not due to return to England for another three months at the earliest.

There was no help for it. Despite his vow never to willingly place himself again in the same room with the lady who had so shaken his world, that lady was Nicky's sister-in-law. With her family out of reach, Nicky would expect Hal to call on the widow, ensure that her husband's lawyer and man of business had her financial affairs well in hand and, in Nicky's stead, offer to assist her with anything she required.

Going back to his chair, Hal sighed and downed a large swallow of the wine. Please heaven, let Lowery have left a decent will and employed a competent man of business. The Wellingfords had been nearly penniless when Nicky married Sarah, so Hal knew Elizabeth probably hadn't brought much of a dowry to her marriage. He hoped Lowery's finances were such that he'd been able to leave his widow a comfortable jointure.

Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't easily run herself into dun territory. As Hal recalled, a woman's response to both joy and calamity involved the acquiring of a large number of new gowns, bonnets, pelisses, footwear and the nameless other fripperies females seemed so fond of. That had always been his mother's way and he had no reason to expect that a woman as stupendously beautiful as Elizabeth Lowery would react any differently.

With it having been six weeks since her husband's demise, he'd best gird himself to call on Mrs Lowery immediately to make sure she wasn't already having to outrun the constable. Lowery's fatherless son didn't need to have his mama land them in debtor's prison.

Taking another deep draught of wine, he recalled sardonically the bulging armoires in his mother's several dressing rooms. Only the gigantic size of his father's fortune had allowed Hal to achieve his majority—and assume control of his mother's finances—with that lady still possessing a sizeable portion. Unless Lowery had tied up his funds carefully and appointed a vigilant trustee, if she spent her blunt as freely as Letitia Waterman, Lowery's lovely widget of a wife could swiftly exhaust a modest competence.

Fulfilling his duty as Nicky's stand-in shouldn't be that burdensome, he reassured himself. He'd probably only need to visit the widow once, after which he'd be able to deal directly with Lowery's man of business. Besides, it had been a very long time since he'd seen Elizabeth.

Having weathered seven Seasons' worth of beauties posing, posturing and pouting before him, he was doubtless no longer as impressionable as he'd been that long-ago afternoon. Besides, 'twas likely that, over the years, memory had exaggerated the incident. Wary as he was of winsome women, surely when he met Elizabeth now he'd experience only a mild appreciation for her striking loveliness.

After all, a man could appreciate a masterpiece of art without aching to possess it.

Hal took a deep breath. He could do this. And he would…tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would meet Elizabeth Wellingford Lowery again.

A
s early the next morning as Hal imagined a fashionable lady might be receiving—which meant nearly afternoon—Hal arrived at the Lowery town house on Green Street. To his relief, since he wished to get through this interview as quickly as possible, as soon as the butler read his card, he was shown to a parlour with the intelligence that the lady of the house was occupied at present with another caller, but would see him shortly.

Telling himself to breathe normally, Hal paced the small room to which he'd been shown, silently rehearsing the speech he'd prepared. If he took his time and didn't panic, he should be able to avoid stuttering through the few lines that expressed his condolences, offered his assistance in Lord Englemere's stead for the duration of her family's absence, and asked the direction of her late husband's man of business so he might consult this gentleman without having to intrude again upon her privacy.

As Hal made his third circuit of the room, running a finger under a neckcloth that had grown unaccountably tighter than when he'd tied it several hours ago, a soft scuffling sound caught his attention. Halting by the doorway, he peered out to see a small boy standing in the hallway, a metal toy soldier clutched in his hands as he cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder at the stairway behind him.

When the boy's eyes lowered from his inspection of the stair landing, his gaze met Hal's and he gasped. Tightening his grip on the soldier, with another quick look up the stairs, he whispered anxiously, ‘You won't tell Nurse I'm down here, will you?'

Stifling a smile, Hal gave a negative shake of his head.

Relaxing a bit, the boy said, ‘I shall go back up directly. Only…only the general lost his arm, and I thought Mama would want to know.' He held up the toy, showing Hal the torso and the detached limb.

A lady's drawing room was no place for a young boy, as Hal knew only too well. He ought to save the lad a scolding by encouraging his immediate return to the nursery. But looking down at that small woebegone face, he couldn't make himself utter the words.

‘I was ever so careful, but the arm just…came off,' the lad continued earnestly. ‘Papa could fix him in a trice, I know, but Papa…' The boy's voice trailed off and he swallowed hard, tears appearing at the corners of his blue eyes. ‘Papa has…gone away. He always told me I must never disturb Mama in her studio, but she would want to know about the general, don't you think? He is my best friend.'

Suddenly a vivid memory engulfed Hal, so searing it robbed him of breath: a pudgy little blond boy weeping in a hallway, denied entry to his mother's room. Exiled to the nursery, watched over by an unfamiliar, dragon-faced woman who rapped his knuckles when he cried and told him he should be ashamed of blubbering like a girl. Who refused his pleas to speak with his mother, informing him that Mrs Waterman was too busy to see a whiny little boy.

Lowery's son looked to be about the same age Hal had been when he'd lost his father. He'd never forgotten, could feel vestiges still of the loneliness and devastation he'd suffered.

A deeply buried, smouldering anger welled up to swamp his reluctance to meet Elizabeth Lowery. He might not be the paragon of scintillating drawing-room conversation his mama wished for, but he could make sure this little waif wasn't shunted aside and neglected, as he'd been. Whether the boy's beautiful mother wished to deal with him or not!

Without further thought, he stepped into the hallway and went down on his knees beside the child. ‘Hal Waterman here. Your Uncle Nicky's best friend. Let me see your soldier. Then we'll tell your mama.'

The boy's expression brightened. ‘Uncle Nicky talks about you all the time. I wish he was here. Mama cries and cries. She says Uncle Nicky has gone away too—' Sudden alarm clouded the lad's face. ‘Uncle Nicky will…come back, won't he?'

‘Yes,' Hal assured him. ‘Travelling in Italy. Be back soon. But I'm here.' Gesturing towards the soldier, he said, ‘Let me look? Maybe I can fix him.'

‘Could you?' the boy breathed. ‘That would be capital! Then you would be my new best friend!'

If not that, at least the champion of his interests, Hal resolved grimly—until Nicky could take over, of course. Carefully accepting the toy and the arm the boy held out, Hal bent to inspect the mechanism that attached the limb.

Meanwhile, in her studio down the hallway, for the last hour Elizabeth Lowery had been going over the household accounts. She'd found the books in her husband's desk yesterday, along with enough cash in the chest to satisfy her disgruntled servants, but Sands informed her that he and the cook must soon purchase additional provisions. She would need to peruse the books to determine how much more cash to obtain from the bank.

Sighing as she tried to total a column of figures detailing the costs of tallow candles, flour, lamp oil, coal and a long list of similar household necessities, Elizabeth wished she had paid more attention to her governess's lessons on mathematics. With her older sister Mereydth and younger sisters Emma and Cecily in the room—the girls two and three years her junior and bubbling over with lively conversation—she'd usually been able to escape Miss Twimby's attention. Daydreaming through the lesson, she'd merely bided her time until she could abandon her books and return to her charcoal and her paints.

'Twas no use; she'd lost track of the total again. With a huff of frustration, she pushed the book away. Such an interesting pattern the figures made, flowing down the page in her husband's neat hand. The three at the edge of the page, turned on its side in her current viewing angle, looked like a bird seen at a long distance, its wings curved in flight. While the seven at the bottom reminded her of a tall crane, balanced on one skinny leg, bill facing into the wind as he stood at the edge of a marsh.

She was smiling at the image when a tap sounded at the door. The portal opened to reveal Sands, but before the butler could utter a word, a swarthy, powerfully built man shouldered past him into the room.

‘Needn't announce me like some toff,' the man said as he strode in. ‘Smith's the name, ma'am. I'm here at the behest of my employer, Mr Blackmen. And since my business is with the lady…' he looked back at Sands ‘…you can take yourself off.'

Despite the intimidating stare the intruder fixed on him, Sands held his ground, looking at Elizabeth. Lifting a hand to signal he should remain, she said coolly, ‘I don't believe I am acquainted with a Mr Blackmen, sir. Perhaps you have mistaken your errand.'

Smith gave a crack of laughter. ‘Not likely. Old Blackmen, he don't tolerate mistakes. And you might not be “acquainted”, but I guarantee your lately departed ball-and-chain was. Knew the boss right intimate, Mr Lowery did. If you know what's good for you and your little boy, you'll let me tell you what he sent me to say. A personal matter, so you'd best send old long-nose there packing.'

Alarmed—but also angered—Elizabeth hesitated. On the one hand, she didn't relish being left alone with a man who looked like a ruffian out of a tenement in Seven Dials. But if the matter were sensitive, perhaps she should receive his message in private.

Swiftly making her choice, she nodded at Sands. ‘You may wait in the hall.'

The butler bowed. ‘As you wish, madam. I shall be outside the door.' Despite his advancing years and the fact that the visitor outweighed him by several stones, Sands gave Smith a challenging look. ‘
Directly
outside the door, if you should need anything, ma'am.'

While the butler bowed himself out, Smith laughed again. ‘As if I couldn't snap that old coot like a twig if'n I wanted! Got to credit him for gumption, though.'

‘Perhaps you could just deliver your message,' Elizabeth interposed, unnerved and appalled by her unwanted visitor's vulgarity.

‘Let me just do that, then,' Smith said affably. ‘I can see your late husband had a hankering for pretty things.' He looked Elizabeth up and down, the insolent inspection making her want to slap his face.

‘Didn't always have the blunt to purchase his niceties, though,' Smith continued. ‘Which is where my employer came in. Always there to help a gent who's a little short of the ready, for a modest return, of course. I'd guess your man meant to pay back what he'd borrowed, but then—' he made a swiping motion at his neck ‘—cocked up his toes afore he could make good on his expenditures. Now, my employer being a soft-hearted man, he gave you a month after the funeral for grieving. But now he's wanting his blunt.'

Mr Blackmen must be a moneylender, Elizabeth surmised, consternation flowing through her. Why would Everitt resort to borrowing money? Were dealings with a cent-per-center even legal? If they were, could she be held accountable for repaying the debt? And, if so, where was she to obtain the funds?

Desperately trying to mask her distress beneath a façade of cool uninterest, she said, ‘I know nothing of these transactions. You shall have to take this matter up with Mr Scarbridge, my husband's man of business.'

Smith made a rude noise. ‘Scarbridge—that incompetent? Seeing how deep he's in River Tick hisself, I doubt he'd know a groat about handling anyone's finances—if he was to leave off his gaming and whoring long enough to try, that is. No, little lady, my master intends to settle this business with you personal.'

This was too much—she simply couldn't handle one more disaster. An almost hysterical anger burning through her alarm, she snapped, ‘Do you expect I know any more than Mr Scarbridge does? I'm neither a solicitor nor a banker. You waste your time here, sir! Good day.'

Smith's genial expression hardened. ‘I wouldn't be so quick to run me off, Mrs High-and-Mighty,' he said, advancing on her. ‘Don't expect you'd be so high in the instep if the magistrate was to come calling, ready to haul you and that boy of yorn off to Newgate.'

Her momentary flash of bravado extinguished, Elizabeth gasped. Newgate! Could this awful Mr Blackmen truly have her imprisoned for debt? Her mind slammed from panic to anger and back like a child's ball tethered to a string.

What should she do? Nicky was a peer; he would know. Oh, why did he and Sarah have to be away now?

‘No need to get yourself into a pelter,' Smith said, recalling her attention. He gestured around the room. ‘Got lots of fancy things here—that silver inkpot, them vases on that shelf, those marble heads of soldiers over there by the divan. Fetch a pretty penny, I'd wager. Lowery paid enough for 'em.'

‘Those are classical Greek, my husband's pride,' Elizabeth protested.

‘His pride, eh?' Raising his eyebrows, Smith leaned across the desk and put his hand over hers. With a moue of revulsion, Elizabeth tried to snatch it back.

Laughing softly, Smith seized her fingers, tightening his grip until his nails bit into her skin. ‘You kin lose the fripperies…or yer house. Or,' he said in a deeper tone, his dark eyes heating as he stared at her, ‘we could deal in another commodity.'

His gaze fixed on her bosom, he lifted his free hand to tug at a strand of golden hair. ‘You're a fine-looking woman. My master might like that—or I might.'

No one had ever looked at her or talked to her so crudely—as if she were some Covent Garden strumpet procured for his amusement. ‘My husband would kill you for speaking to me so!' she said furiously.

‘Lucky for me he's already dead then, ain't it?' Smith replied.

Renewed outrage drowning her fear, Elizabeth wrenched her hand free. ‘Get out!' she cried, her voice shaking with indignation and rage.

Smith made her an exaggerated bow. ‘I'll leave—for now, Mrs High-and-Mighty, but I'll be back. You can bet the golden curls on your head on it.'

As if concluding a normal business call, Smith pivoted and walked with a jaunty tread to the door. Opening it, he gave her another mocking bow before shutting it behind him, leaving Elizabeth appalled, outraged…and thoroughly alarmed.