A Regency Charade (19 page)

“But Priss does not
wish
to remain in your house.”

He met her eye angrily, but the weakness of his position gave him pause. He had no right to tell Priss where to live. She couldn’t be expected to remain in London to please
him
. “If you are determined to go back to Derbyshire … well, then I’ll … have to tell him,” he said worriedly.

“But that’s just the point. If you tell the Earl about you and Priss … well, Priss thinks it may …”

“Kill him?” Alec looked at her helplessly. “Then what am I to
do
?”

“I don’t know. If I had a solution to this impasse you’ve gotten us into, I wouldn’t have demeaned myself by coming here.”

“Your daughter had a hand in creating this ‘impasse,’ ma’am, even if you’re unwilling to admit it,” he muttered resentfully.

“If you are going to try to tell me that my daughter’s innocuous little peccadillo caused this monstrous predicament, I shall stand up and scream!” Lady Vickers snapped.

His eyebrows went up in sardonic scorn. “I wasn’t referring to your daughter’s ‘innocuous little peccadillo.’ I meant that if she’d let my solicitor proceed with the annulment six years ago, my grandfather would have learned the truth at a time when he could have managed to survive it!”

“If there is anything in this world I most dislike, Alec Tyrrell, it is the phrase ‘if you had only.’ Hindsight comes cheap, young man. What I’d like to know is what you intend to do
now
?”

“I have no idea, ma’am,” he said coldly, rising from his chair. “But as a first step, I’d like to ask if you came in your carriage and if you intend to return to Hanover Square at once.”

“The answer is yes to both questions,” she replied in some surprise. “Why?”

“Because I’d be obliged if you’d take me up.”

“If you like. Do you wish me to drop you somewhere?”

“Yes. At Tyrrell House. I have a couple of matters that I think I had better discuss with
my wife.
”

Chapter Fourteen

When the carriage arrived at Hanover Square, Alec jumped out and strode angrily up the steps of the house without waiting for Lady Vickers. It was undoubtedly an act of extreme rudeness, but since they’d spent the time during the ride engaged in a vehement quarrel, he’d already passed beyond the bounds of polite behavior anyway. The argument had centered around the wisdom of his paying a call on Priss at this time. Lady Vickers, anticipating with considerable trepidation an explosion of wrath from her daughter merely because she’d taken the liberty of visiting Alec without permission, did not want to accept the additional responsibility of bringing him back with her to make this unannounced visit.

“But it is not your responsibility, ma’am,” Alec said reasonably. “It is all mine, I assure you.”

But her ladyship was not reassured. She tried every argument she could think of to dissuade him. Alec, after several fruitless attempts to reason with her, quite lost his temper. “Your daughter and I are both of us old enough,” he told his mother-in-law coldly, “to make our own decisions about our lives without requiring parental permission at every turn.” And to forestall any further argument, he leaped out of the carriage as soon as it rolled to a stop.

He brushed by Craymore and strode into the hallway, but there he stopped abruptly. The appearance of the house was a shock to him. Every bit of furniture had been covered, and the windows of the rooms into which he could see were shuttered and draped. The house looked dark and lifeless. The last time he’d seen it this way was after his mother’s death. “What on
earth
—?” he asked angrily, turning on the butler. “Have they closed the house already?”

The elderly servant shrugged. “All but the bedrooms and the morning room. May I take your hat, my lord?”

“No, don’t bother. I don’t intend to make a long stay.” He placed his hat on what he knew, under its sheet, was the hall table and looked at Craymore with a troubled frown. “I say, Craymore, her ladyship hasn’t given
you
notice, has she?”

The butler gave a slight smile. “Oh, no, my lord, don’t worry about that. I’m to stay on as caretaker. I’ll be right as rain.”

Alec nodded. “Will you ask Lady Braeburn to come down? I’d like to see her on some rather urgent business.”

Lady Vickers loomed up in the outer doorway. “Never mind, Craymore. I’ll tell her myself.” And she marched to the stairs, passing her son-in-law without so much as a nod in his direction, her nose very decidedly out of joint.

But before she’d climbed three steps, her daughter appeared at the top. She was backing down the stairway carrying, with the help of a housemaid, a tall, elaborately framed looking glass. She was holding up one end and the maid the other.

Lady Vickers was horror-struck. Not only was her daughter doing a heavy, menial task, but her costume was even less dignified than that of the housemaid who accompanied her. The housemaid was wearing a neat apron and a frilled mobcap, but Priss had covered
her
hair with a shabby scarf and pinned up her skirts so that her legs, in their thin white stockings, were exposed to the knees! “Priss!” she cried. “What in heaven’s name are you
doing
?”

“Hush, Mama. Don’t distract me.” Carefully looking over her shoulder at the step below, she cautiously began to back down. “It’s Grandmother Vickers’ Venetian looking … glass …”she explained, her breath a bit short from her exertions. “Becky and I … decided it would be safer to pack it … downstairs in the hallway … than upstairs in all that … confusion.”

“But why couldn’t you ask Craymore, or one of the footmen—?”

“I didn’t want … to take any chances with it.” Her pace was now more certain, and the mirror was carried down several steps during this exchange.

The maid, who was facing front, could see a gentleman gaping at them from below. “Pssst, my lady,” she whispered to Priss, “ye’ve got a gent—”

“Hush, Becky. Save your … breath. Wait ’til we … get down,” Priss ordered, taking another gingerly step backward.

Lady Vickers threw Alec an agonized, I-told-you-so glance. Clearly this was not the time for him to be paying unexpected calls on his wife. Lady Vickers would at least have liked to have had an opportunity to warn her daughter that he was here, but she very much feared that, if she told Priss now, a broken mirror might be the result. “Priss, my love, you
will
hang on to that glass carefully, won’t you? But I think you ought to know …” she began dubiously.

“What, Mama? Goodness, this is … heavier than I thought. But … we’re almost down. There! The last step, Becky. Let’s set it down right here ’til I catch my breath.”

They set the mirror down carefully, leaning one end against the wall. “Well, Mama, that’s—” At that moment, she caught a glimpse in the glass of a man standing behind her and whirled around. “Oh, my
God! Alec
!”

“I
told
him not to—” Lady Vickers said in a hasty attempt to exonerate herself from blame.

But Alec cut in. “Excuse me for intruding,” he said, his emotions swinging wildly between his residual anger at her and amusement at her obvious embarrassment, “but I have some urgent matters which I must discuss with you.”

“I
told
him,” Lady Vickers began again firmly, “that he should wait for a more propitious moment.”

Priss, her heart beating much too rapidly to bear, clenched her fists to keep herself in control. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said with icy breathlessness, “he needn’t have bothered at all. I have not the slightest intention in the world of speaking to him. If he will take the trouble to think back to our last conversation, he might recollect that we had agreed that all communication between us would be handled by Mr. Newkirk.” She turned her back on him, but the sight of herself in the mirror made her gasp. Humiliated, she snatched off the scarf from her head and hastily unpinned her skirts.

“This is not a matter in Mr. Newkirk’s province—” Alec was saying, but suddenly his eye was caught by a shocking change in her appearance. “Good
lord
, Priss! What have you done to your
hair
?”

“What?” Her hand flew uncertainly to her head. “Oh. I’ve cut it, as you can see. Although I’d like to remind you it’s not the slightest business of yours.”

He frowned and turned away, disturbed by a feeling of completely unwarranted annoyance. “No, you’re quite right. It is
not
my business. If you want to surrender to every foolish impulse and every turn of fashion, it means less than nothing to me.” He made an angry turn about the hallway and circled back. “But I would just like to mention,” he said venomously, “that the looking glass, if it is the one from the large bedroom, is
not
Venetian glass and was
not
your grandmother’s. It is Stourbridge and was rolled—at very great expense, I understand—especially to my mother’s specifications a decade before I was born.”

“That’s not
so
!” Priss cried, outraged. “I remember
distinctly
that my mother gave me the Venetian glass for our … for the bedroom! Didn’t you, Mama?”

“Well, I
think
so,” Lady Vickers said, thrown suddenly in doubt, “although it is
possible
, I suppose, that the Venetian piece is still at home in Derbyshire.”

“It is
not
! I recall distinctly receiving it and ordering it to be placed upstairs,” Priss insisted.

“I know my mother’s looking glass when I see it,” Alec said, brushing a fleck of dust from his sleeve with casual indifference, “although I would be delighted to let you have it. Especially if it will encourage you to step into the drawing room so that we may have our talk.” He glanced depressingly at Lady Vickers, Craymore and the maid Becky, all of whom were following the scene with rapt attention. “In private,” he added pointedly.

Craymore and the housemaid scurried off, but Lady Vickers held her ground. “You needn’t agree to see him, my love,” she advised her daughter. “If I were you, I should send him packing. He can return at
your
convenience, instead of demanding
your
time at
his.
”

“It’s important, ma’am. There are a number of matters which should be cleared up between us,” Alec pressed.

Priss met his eye, her chin up proudly. “Very well, since you’ve come. But I have only a few minutes to spare. We are very busy here, as you can see.” She marched into the drawing room without a backward glance. Alec, after nodding to his mother-in-law in some satisfaction, followed after her and closed the door behind him.

“Now, then, my lord,” Priss said with brisk formality, “what do you want of me?”

“I want to wring your neck!” he responded promptly, striding to the sofa and pulling off its sheet-like cover. “How
dared
you say to the world that this is not your home?” He crossed to the wing chair and whipped the dustcover from that, too.

“I did
not
say it to the world! Only to Mama. Why on earth are you pulling off the covers?” she asked in annoyance.

“I
hate
covered rooms,” he said, pulling off the rest of them in a showy display of temper. “They are ugly, dreary and oppressive.”

“Then you needn’t stay. Oh,
look
at what you’re
doing
! You’re crushing those Hollands dreadfully … and dragging them on the
floor
. At least give them to me and let me fold them.”

“I shall do no such thing,” he said, dropping them in a pile behind a chair. “I am waiting for a proper answer, ma’am. Why do you say this is not your house?”

“Because it isn’t.”

He came across the room and confronted her. “What sort of ogre do you think me, ma’am? Do I pull wings from flies for sport, or beat little children? Do you seriously believe that I would permit you to, as you so charmingly put it, ‘go b-begging for b-bread in the snow’? Did you really think I would leave you without a roof over your head or a sufficient competence to permit you to live in comfort?”

“I don’t know if you’re an ogre or not,” she answered slowly, searching his face. “I don’t know
anything
about you any more.” She stared up at him for a moment with an expression he found completely unreadable. Then she turned her back on him. “I only know that I was quite sincere when I told you I would take nothing from you. Understand me, Alec. I shall take
nothing.
”

He wanted to shake her. “I don’t require your permission, you know. This house is yours, whether you like it or no, as well as anything else I choose to bestow upon you.”

“Then you will, of course, do as you like. I can’t stop you. But I can’t be coerced into
using
what you choose to bestow, can I?” She turned back to face him. “Is that all you wish to say? If so, I must ask you to excuse me. I have a great deal of work to do.”

“Hang it all, Priss,” he said, grasping her shoulders angrily. “Why must you behave in this childishly pigheaded fashion? There is no
need
for this sort of upheaval! I never meant to uproot you like this.”

“I have no stomach for charity, especially yours,” she said proudly.

“But it is
not
charity!”

“A decree of nullity, as I understand it, means that the marriage never truly existed, isn’t that right? Then I have never been your wife, and this house has never been, nor can ever be, mine. Therefore, if you give it to me, what else can it be but charity? And your bruising my arms will not alter the facts.”

He let her go, shamed and speechless. She went to the door. “Good day, my lord,” she said quietly.

“You are adamant, then?” he asked in a choked voice. “About returning to Three Oaks?”

“Yes, I am.”

“No matter what it means … to your life … and to Grandfather’s?”

With her hand on the knob, she hesitated. “
Grandfather
?” She turned around, her eyes wide. “The letter! You
saw
it, didn’t you? Did
Mama
…?”

“Yes, she did.”

Priss frowned in chagrin. “She needn’t have done so. I fully intended to send it round to you myself.”

“Thank you. That would have been most kind.”

She came a few steps toward him. “You know I wouldn’t go back home,” she said, her brow furrowed with worry, “if I had anywhere else …”