Elisabeth Kidd (19 page)

“I hope you do not mind our taking advantage of you in this way, Robert?” Jane asked forthrightly, as they filled their plates from a selection of oddities ranging from cheeses and cold meats to chocolate-dipped candied fruits.

“Not at all,” he said candidly. “Believe me, I sympathize with your—er, plight. And you are doing me a great favor in return.”

Jane seated herself on a sofa and indicated that he should join her. “Would you care to tell me about it? I will not be offended if you wish to keep your affairs to yourself, of course.”

Robert did briefly outline his difficulties with Sabina Bromley, and when Jane listened sympathetically and did not swoon and exclaim that she had never heard such a romantic tale, he began to feel even more at ease with her. He apologized for being unable to dance well, and she assured him that she would much rather sit and talk, and perhaps tomorrow he would be good enough to take her for a drive, for she had been feeling closed in ever since coming to town.

This completed Robert’s capitulation, and since Jane was an accomplished hostess in her own right, having run her diplomat uncle’s house in Paris, and was well-read in two languages, he found the evening passing more quickly than any five minutes since he had arrived.

What was more, he knew that Lady Northrup would hear about his apparent fascination with Lady Jane and report it back to Lavinia, and he would be spared that most dreaded of all male predicaments, a nagging female.

By the time he rose the next morning to pick Jane up for an unfashionably early ride in Hyde Park, he was feeling positively chipper, a fact that Lady Northrup did not fail to notice on his return for a late breakfast.

“Well, Robert, I suppose I ought to be offended that you enjoyed yourself most at an affair that I did not arrange for your amusement—and a mere musicale at that, but then Sophie Callendar has always prided herself on her unconventionality. You
did
enjoy yourself, did you not?”

“Yes, Aunt, thank you. I’m sorry you were not there, but I daresay you have already heard all about it.”

Lady Northrup laughed and confessed that she had made it her business to do so. “And I assure you,” she said, “that I will be happy to write to Lavinia at once to reassure her that I have been doing my duty—even if I have not.”

“Thank you, Aunt. I would be grateful—and will naturally give you all the credit when I return home.”

“I don’t know what you are up to with this sudden craving for society, dear boy, but I daresay you do. Do you have plans for this evening?”

He had indeed already contracted to meet Lady Jane at a small private dinner party at Captain Gerard’s house, but aware that it would aid both his cause and Jane’s to be seen together more publicly, they had agreed to go on to the theater later and perhaps even a late supper at the Piazza.

And thus it was that Captain Ashton was soon known to be “sitting in Jane Gerard’s pocket” and that Lady Jane was encouraging the attentions of one of the most eligible bachelors in town, and for the next week, the affair was talked about in terms of the greatest satisfaction even for those who had no hand in bringing it about. An engagement notice began to be expected even before the Season got fully under way.

Since he had few qualms about deceiving the
Ton
in this fashion—for it loved nothing so much as speculation and forgot nothing more quickly than alliances that did not materialize—Robert found himself for the first time enjoying London. He began to look at its attractions with new eyes and even to think about bring Sabina here one day—if she could be persuaded to leave Leicestershire—to show her around and shower her with expensive trinkets from the shops to which he escorted Lady Jane. Sabina could set the
Ton
on its ear, if she chose.

Engaged in this pleasant speculation, he almost lost track of the days, and it was only when he called for Lady Jane one morning to take her riding that time again took up its course. He found her in a euphoric mood, waving a letter at him as she came to greet him in the hall.

“Oh, Robert, I must tell you—oh, do come into the library.” She glanced at the interested footman still hovering near the door and contained herself until a door was closed between them and the servants.

“Marius will be here tomorrow!”

Robert felt an unexpected twinge of jealousy. It was absurd, of course—this was what they had both been waiting for, and Monsieur le comte de Abbreville had timed his appearance to a nicety. But Robert suddenly realized that he had enjoyed Jane’s company more than he had expected, and he would be sorry to lose it. He smiled just the same.

“Dearest Jane—I’m delighted to hear it.”

She threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him impulsively. “Thank you, Robert. I do hope you will like him.”

“I? What has my opinion to do with anything?”

She gave him a searching look. “But we are friends, are we not? I want my friends to like my husband, and I want to keep my friends despite my marriage. You will remain my friend, won’t you, Robert?”

He smiled. Of course, he must. How could he think that Jane would forever disappear from his life when her Marius returned to claim her?

She gestured for him to sit down. “I’m so sorry, Robert. I quite forgot that although my future is settled—or at least, looking much rosier—yours is not. Will you go home now? Have you done sufficient penance in exile to satisfy your family—and make Sabina miss you? I know I should be desperate by now, if I were her.”

“Would you be, Jane?”

She put her hand over his. “Any woman whom you love must be desperate to be with you all the time, Robert, believe me.”

“I’ve been told that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Nonsense. I know from experience that absence only makes the heart lonely. My poor heart would not have survived this summer without your company, Robert, but you must now think of your own loneliness. It will come back, you know, although I think I have helped you to forget it for a little while, just as you have done the same for me.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. “You have been a lifesaver, Jane.”

“I’m glad. But I think you must go home now, Robert—at least, after you have met Marius—and claim your lady. No weapon is more powerful than a loving and faithful heart to win a woman, Robert, and while absence may make Sabina miss you, your presence will win her heart. Go to her, dearest.”

He realized all at once that this simple advice was what he had felt himself would eventually prove the key to Sabina’s heart, no matter what elaborate stratagems and deceptions he or anyone else invented to bring it about.

He kissed Jane on the cheek and squeezed her hand affectionately. “I’ll go at once, Jane. Thank you.”

And despite his impulse to leave London that very day, Robert did stay to meet Jane’s Marius, and was relieved to find that he liked him as well as he did Jane. They all three spend a good part of two days together, until it became obvious to Robert that even Jane was eager to leave, to take her husband to Devon and present him to her father. He wished them luck, promised to visit when they had settled into a home of their own, and finally set his own mind toward home.

Robert and his uncle were sitting at the breakfast table the next morning, reading the morning newspapers in companionable silence. When Lord Northrup put down The Times to refill his coffee cup, Robert folded The Morning Chronicle over and looked up at his uncle.

“I believe I shall return to Ashtonbury Abbey today, Uncle, if that is not too impolitely abrupt a departure for you.”

“Not for me, dear boy. Expected it two days after you got here. But do talk to Althea as soon as she gets up. She won’t take kindly to finding you gone when she comes down to breakfast.”

“I would not dream of upsetting her.”

“Good boy. You’ll mention to Richard that I’d like first dibs on Firefly’s new foal, won’t you?”

“I will do that.”

“Good, good. Didn’t think that was the sort of thing you’d forget—not like chits’ names, eh, boy?”

Robert smiled. “I am a sore disappointment to Lady Northrup, I fear.”

“Not at all, boy. You gave her a week in the limelight. She enjoyed being your sponsor, even if you did not give her a chance to choose a wife for you.”

Lord Northrup raised his newspaper again, remarking by way of ending the conversation, “Expect you’ve had one picked out all along, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, good.”

* * * *

Robert woke before dawn, as the sounds of morning activity at the Old Oak Inn in Northampton began to penetrate the darkness, and sat up expectantly. He got up and rang for a waiter, then dressed hurriedly, threw his things into his traveling pack, and wolfed down the hearty breakfast the waiter produced. Half an hour later, he was driving north again.

It was still early morning when he began to recognize landmarks and calculated that he could not be more than an hour’s drive from home. He slowed the horses to an easy pace and put his mind to how he would approach Sabina. Would she have missed him as much as Jane had assured him she would? Would she have heard about Jane and been a little jealous? He could not imagine how she would have heard anything in so short a time, but conventional wisdom said that her jealousy could only work in his favor.

Nonetheless, Sabina could not be relied on to react conventionally to anything. She might refuse to see him. He would have to find a way to see her where she could not get away from him and must give him a chance to speak.

He was considering how he might lure her to the canal again when he arrived at home, to a boisterous welcome from his nephews, a nearly warm welcome from his sister-in-law, a quizzical glance from his brother—and an invitation, waiting on the silver tray in the hall, to dine at Bromleigh Hall.

Chapter 13

“Will it
never
stop raining?” Sabina inquired despairingly of her sisters-in-law.

She had not seen or heard from Robert Ashton for more than a week and refused to admit even to herself that she missed him or cared where he was or what he was doing. Further, her plans for her new life at Carling Manor were progressing apace, and her present enforced idleness ought, in view of her own professed desires, to be something in the way of a well-earned rest.

“It has not been raining for very long,” Alicia observed sensibly. “Although it did wake me when it started—it could not have been later than four o’clock this morning, for I remember that it was very difficult to fall asleep again. I may as well have risen then, for I have no energy today.”

“That is the trouble with rainy days,” Dulcie added. “Not only does one feel too languid to do anything, but gray days are sad days, I believe, making one think of the winter and cold weather to come.”

The ladies were ensconced cosily in the library with a fire to add to their comfort and put the lie to their gloomy expectations of a turn in the weather. Indeed, upon being applied to by the countess, the head gardener had predicted cheerily that the weather would clear later in the day and that autumn was still a “goodish way off, my lady.”

“What does Edina have to say?” Alicia enquired.

Sabrina had reluctantly accepted Fletcher’s insistence on a companion, although she had been unable to think of any relative outside her immediate family with whom she would care to live. At Alicia’s suggestion, however, she was considering her cousin Edina Bromley, a childless widow who took an even greater interest in family history than Sabina did, and Edina had been invited to spend a sennight at Bromleigh Hall. The matter of engaging Edina as her companion was touched on only delicately, but Sabina suspected that her cousin would understand the invitation clearly enough.

In the meanwhile she had already received several letters from her cousin following her own brief letter of invitation. Edina’s letters were gossipy and friendly and contained no hint that the writer considered herself a poor relation dependent on her noble kinswoman for support. Indeed, she seemed to have a degree of personal pride, neither excessive nor overbearing, of which Sabina approved. She could not bear a poor-spirited woman, who could not find occupation for herself and might never let Sabina be alone. She was beginning to think that Edina might do well enough as a companion.

Nonetheless, she had been gazing at the crossed and recrossed lines of her cousin’s latest missive for some time—no longer seeing them, although she would never have confessed this to the countess.

The letter contained the information about Edina’s scheduled arrival time at Bromleigh Hall. Another page was taken up with her profuse thanks to Fletcher for making his town carriage available for her journey to Leicestershire. As usual, all the correspondence and organization of this favor had been undertaken by Alicia, and Edina must have guessed this, for she added a gracious note to Lady Bromleigh.

“She thanks you for your hospitality, Alicia, and says she will arrive on Tuesday and is excessively grateful to be able to ride in comfort in Fletcher’s carriage.”

Dulcie smiled. “I suspect that ‘excessive’ is putting it mildly. I hope you will not find Edina’s effusiveness overwhelming when she is finally with us, Sabina.”

Sabina shrugged. “I cannot know until I meet her.”

“Well, if she does prove trying, a word in her ear should be sufficient to curb her enthusiasms, I think. Edina is perhaps foolish, but I do not believe she is stupid.”

“She is a very amiable woman,” Alicia put in. “I have never heard her utter a word of complaint or criticism of anyone.”

“Just the same,” Dulcie observed, “she is a poor relation and well aware of it. I believe condescension would hurt her more than a little kind advice.”

Dulcie and Alicia continued their conversation, apparently unaware that Sabina had ceased to take part. Instead, she stared out the window, as if to dispel the mist by the very intensity of her gaze.

She tried to empty her mind of all thought, in order to look at things afresh and try to see more hope in them. In this she was only partially successful, as the words spoken between the other ladies began to intrude on her concentration. She knew they were discussing Edina, but she could not help hearing their words in terms of her own behavior.