Miss Hartwell's Dilemma (26 page)

She did not dare ask him to elaborate, especially when it occurred to her that he might be speaking from kindness, not knowledge. She wished passionately that she was in love with him. The curricle drew up in front of the school, and he handed her down.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must think I have been playing fast and loose. I did indeed intend to accept. You know I hold you in the greatest affection, and I would have tried to make you happy.”

“Hush, love. How could I be happy, knowing that your heart was given to another? I wish you every happiness with…him.”

“Can we be friends?”

“One day. Yes, one day. It is too much to ask of me now.” He bowed and swung himself up into the carriage.

“You are the most perfect gentleman I have ever known,” she said in a soft voice.

His eyes were on his horses. ‘Yes,” he agreed bitterly, “I am a gentleman.” He drove off.

Amaryllis went into the house and up to her chamber without seeing anything on the way. She sat down on her bed, stiff and straight, staring blankly at the wall. She had driven Lord Daniel away. She had refused Bertram. Tizzy was to be married, and Aunt Eugenia was making plans with her new friend that did not include her niece.

Only Papa was left to her. When Amaryllis went down to dinner, some hours later, she announced in a cool, calm, and decided tone that come June she would be going to Philadelphia. Miss Tisdale and Mrs. Vaux exchanged glances and did not argue.

It was only two days until the school reopened for the spring term. Amaryllis rose early the next morning to complete her preparations. There was a cold, empty place inside her. She ignored it and concentrated on her work, defying the ghosts that wandered through her office.

At a little after eleven Daisy knocked on her open door. “There’s a gentleman to see you, miss. Here’s his card.”

Not Lord Daniel, then, nor Bertram. The maid knew them both by name. She looked at the card.

George, Lord Winterborne.

“Show him in, please, Daisy.”

When she heard his steps in the passage, she rose and went round the desk to greet him. He closed the door behind him and stood looking at her in silence. She returned his gaze.

George Winterborne: tall, dark, and handsome; gazetted flirt; breaker of hearts though he had never broken hers; something of a rake if rumour spoke true; heir to the Marquis of Bellingham and as such one of the most eligible gentlemen in the kingdom. Yet, careful Mamas had warned away susceptible debutantes. Lord Winterborne was not hanging out for a wife.

At six and thirty, George’s waistline had thickened a little. There were a few grey hairs at his temples, adding to the thoughtful maturity of his face—that face, so like his brother’s. She closed her eyes to avoid the sight.

“Miss Hartwell.” He bowed.

“George.” She tried to collect her wits. “Will you not be seated?” She sat down, and he followed suit. “I did not expect a visit from you.”

“You know I have been staying at Wimbish?” he asked guardedly.

“Isabel mentioned it. She is very fond of you.”

“And of you. Miss Hartwell, it is going to be difficult explaining my errand. I hope you will be patient with me.”

She nodded. She did not remember ever seeing the self-assured Corinthian looking so uncertain.

“Three days ago, I went to visit friends,” he began. “I did not return to Wimbish until afternoon the next day, when I discovered the house in an uproar and Daniel and the girls missing. Before I could decide what to do, they returned. I ought perhaps to say that these past few weeks I have thought that at last, after eleven years, Daniel was beginning to forget the past. He has been in better spirits than I can remember since he was a boy, and I have had intimations of your responsibility for the change.”

She made a gesture of denial.

“Do not demur,” he said quickly. “It is in all respects a change for the better. But when he came home that day, he looked hag-ridden and ill. He told me what had happened, and that you had believed the Spaniard’s tale. He had not talked so openly to me since...since he told me a story that I should like to repeat to you, if you are interested.”

“What makes you think I might be interested?”

“Pomeroy came to Wimbish yesterday. He did not see my brother, but he asked me to tell him that you had refused his offer of marriage. That is all.” He looked at her enquiringly.

She sent a silent blessing after Bertram and asked, “Did you tell him? Lord Daniel?”

“No. I thought it best to speak to you first. God knows I do not want to raise any false hopes. Danny has been through hell, and I want to explain that hell to you.”

“I am willing to listen.”

“It began in 1808. Danny had always been mad for a pair of colours and when Wellington—Wellesley he was then—was ordered to Portugal, my father allowed him to join the army. He went out to the Peninsula in November, just in time to march with Sir John Moore into Spain. I have talked to others who were on the retreat to Corunna, as well as to Danny, and I will try to make you understand what it was like. Picture the scene, Amaryllis—the Spanish mountains in winter…”

The pallid youth clasped his right arm, with its bloodstained bandage, closer to his chest as the cart hit a particularly vicious pothole. Shifting his legs, he tried to ease the position of the man lying in his lap. He scarcely noticed the major’s constant moaning now.

More disturbing were the occasional groans and whimpers of the others in the cart, but worst of all were the cries for help, the savage cursing, of those for whom there was no room. Wounded, frostbitten, or simply too tired to move, they would lie in the trampled snow by the stony mountain road till death or the French caught up with them.

The young man shivered convulsively.

A cheerful voice hailed as Lieutenant Gerald Fox rode up beside the cart, his mare stiff-legged with fatigue. “Danny, can you make room for a lady? The wheel came off a carriage full of Spanish refugees back there.”

Perched on the mare’s crupper, a slight figure swathed in black gazed pleadingly at the passengers. Her eyes, black as her clothes, glowed huge in a pretty face now pinched with cold. The men moved uneasily, trying to make room where there was none. Then one spoke in a hoarse voice.

“Looks like Jem’s bought it, sir. ‘E won’t mind now if the Frogs get ‘im.”

The driver glanced over his shoulder, then hauled on the reins to bring his plodding mules to a halt. Lieutenant Fox summoned a pair of nearby dragoons, and while they unloaded Jem’s stiff body, Fox made the introductions.

“This is Lieutenant Lord Daniel Winterborne, ma’am. He’ll take care of you. Danny, the Doña Francisca Cortés. She speaks a few words of French.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” muttered Lord Daniel, blushing a fiery red and looking down quickly as his eyes met hers. He tried to smooth down his unruly, dark hair. “Gerald” he added desperately as his friend dismounted and swung the lady down, “my French ain’t exactly fluent.”

“Nor is hers,” the lieutenant assured him blithely and deposited Doña Francisca beside him. “How’s the arm, old boy? The guides say we’re nearly through these confounded mountains. If we can just beat Soult to Corunna we’ll be home in a week.” With a salute that was more of a wave, he rode off.

Napoleon’s marshal on his heels, Sir John Moore marched his diminishing army northwest towards the Bay of Biscay. Six thousand men he lost, to skirmishes, cold, and exhaustion. When at last the demoralised column straggled into the port of Corunna, the promised transports had not yet arrived.

“They had no time to set up hospitals in Corunna,” said George. “Think of it, Amaryllis. Danny was just nineteen, reduced from dashing cavalry officer to semi-invalid, feverish too, for all I know. And there’s this pretty young woman with languishing black eyes looking up to him as the hero who can save her from the ravishing Frenchmen. Is it surprising that he married her as soon as he found a willing priest? As his wife she could count on a place on the transports…”

Two days passed before the fleet sailed into the harbour. As the ships dropped anchor, Marshal Soult’s corps was sighted in the hills south of the town. While the wounded and sick were hurried onto the transports, the general led his troops out to battle. The French were repulsed, but there were no songs of victory. Sir John Moore was dead. They buried him hastily in the citadel. Next day the army sailed for England.

When they reached Portsmouth, Lord Daniel took rooms for his bride and commended her to the care of his brother officers. He wrote a brief and shaky note to his parents to inform them of his return and his marriage, and then submitted himself to the knives of the army surgeons. The bullet they removed from his upper arm had smashed against the bone and fragmented. By the time they had finished, muscle, nerve, and tendon were mangled. Full recovery of the use of the arm was doubtful.

“I arrived a week later,” Lord Winterborne went on. “By that time Doña Francisca—she never wanted to be called Lady Winterborne—was no helpless waif. Danny’s friends had rallied round, taken her shopping, encouraged her to learn English. She visited Danny every day, Gerald Fox saw to that, and spent the rest of her time holding court in that little room or gadding about the town with the officers. Oh, she was an attractive minx, with an enchanting giggle and a way of looking at a man as if he was the only one in her universe. If she had saved that for Danny…”

The colonel went to see Lord Daniel. By that time he was clearheaded, able to sit up in a chair, and he accepted with equanimity the news that his military career was at an end. He had already planned to sell out for Francisca’s sake. She could not, like other officers’ wives, retreat to the bosom of her family while her husband was occupied.

He left the hospital, rejoined his bride, proudly accepting compliments and congratulations on his marriage. He adored his pretty wife with her engaging ways.

His brother, staying in a nearby hotel, tactfully left the newlywed couple to themselves until he discovered that the constant entertaining was continuing. After three days, Danny was no stronger, and when George suggested a peaceful day without visitors Doña Francisca pouted and declared she could imagine nothing duller. However, Major Tomlin had invited her to drive with him, so Danny could rest while she was out.

“Major Tomlin was a notorious libertine,” George said, frowning down at his linked hands. “A handsome, dashing, redheaded Irishman, who had been in Portugal with Wellesley since the beginning. Danny asked her not to go, and she sulked all day. That was when he decided he was well enough to travel to Bellingham.”

“What did Lord Bellingham think of the marriage?” asked Amaryllis.

“He was not happy. Danny was nineteen. A foreign bride, a Papist marriage, no acquaintance with her family. But there was no fear of his disinheriting my brother. He gave him the manor at Wimbish. My mother was shocked at the news, of course, but far more concerned about his health. She wanted him under her care. We took the long journey into Northumberland in easy stages, but it exhausted him, and drove Doña Francisca wild with impatience.

“Perhaps we should have waited. It seemed more important to remove Doña Francisca from Major Tomlin’s influence, especially when Gerald Fox told me of hearing a rumour that they had met in Lisbon, before ever Danny went out there.”

Chapter 20

The visit to Bellingham was not a success. At first Francisca was impressed and a little overawed by the vast mansion, but within a few days she was bored with it and its inhabitants. She made no effort to hide her boredom. She found the wintry moors about Bellingham dreary, the Tyne a rivulet compared to the Ebro, the neighbours who came to pay bride visits as dull as their surroundings. She was impatient with Danny when his arm failed him.

An attempt at flirtation with George led to general embarrassment, and George escaped to his Dorset estate. Lord Daniel found himself defending her against unvoiced criticisms at every turn.

“I rarely saw them after that,” George told Amaryllis. “How could I visit my brother when his wife gave every appearance of setting her cap at me? They came down to Wimbish in February. Danny intended to spend the Season in London, showing off his prize to the world, but in March I heard from Mama that Doña Francisca was increasing. She was brought to bed in June and delivered of a fine child, my niece Isabel, not six months after their marriage.”

“A fine redheaded child,” said Amaryllis, horrified.

“You recall the major. Francisca and Daniel were both dark, and Daniel did not even arrive in the Peninsula until late November. It is possible, but unlikely, that Isabel is his daughter.”

Daniel sent a curt announcement of the birth to his parents, now in London. On their way north to spend the summer in Bellingham, the marchioness made a detour to see her granddaughter. She burst into tears at the sight of the baby, embraced her brooding son, and refused to speak to his wife. Within a quarter of an hour, she was gone.

Francisca recovered quickly from the birth. She had no interest in her child, and the charms of domesticity had palled. She wanted to go to London and refused to believe Daniel when he told her that the Ton shunned the city in the summer. She sulked, until she discovered by chance that his old regiment was recently garrisoned at Colchester.

Within a few days a group of officers rode over, and from then on the house was rarely without a uniform or two.

“I paid a brief visit in August. Already Danny had withdrawn into himself,” George said. “He doted on the baby and divided his time between the nursery and his estate, leaving Francisca to entertain the callers. He would not talk to me, not the way he used to when he was wont to bring all his problems to his big brother. I did not stay long.

“One of the most frequent visitors was a dashing Irish major. In October the regiment was sent back to Spain. Doña Francisca went with it.

“She was faithful to Tomlin, I will give her that. She followed him through Spain and into France. He went to Vienna with Wellington in ‘14 and I saw them there. She had aged. She must have been older than Danny, though God knows he aged too. He is five years younger than I, and I do not flatter myself when I say that he looks as much older. It was in Vienna that Tomlin abandoned her, after all those years, and went off in pursuit of an Austrian heiress. He was killed in a duel. The next time I saw her was in Italy. I paid her fare to Barcelona.”