Passion's Song (A Georgian Historical Romance) (2 page)

Lady Sarah touched his golden hair and fervently
hoped her husband would age as gracefully as his father. Lord
Hartforde was an exceptionally handsome man.

II

30 April 1775
Boston, Massachusetts

Isobel Frederica Rowland was a charming girl who
had, one week ago, turned six years old. She was standing next to
the fortepiano while she listened to her mother play a popular new
song with a great deal of emotion but, alas, not quite the same
degree of skill. When Mrs. Rowland finished playing, she rested her
hands on the keys and turned to look at her daughter. Her blue eyes
sparkled, as they often did when they rested on her only child.

There was no doubt the two were mother and daughter.
Both had light blond hair and pale rose-tinted complexions, but
where Mrs. Rowland’s blue eyes were cerulean, Isobel had her
father’s expressive deep blue eyes. In temperament the two were as
alike as night and day. Mrs. Rowland was by nature a light- hearted
woman, and even though she’d had her share of misfortune during her
five and twenty years, she never quite lost the sunny disposition
that, in spite of everything, had made her husband fall in love
with her. Isobel was like her father. She was prone to moodiness
and had so serious an aspect one might never have suspected her of
being capable of laughter. Although she was only six years old, she
most emphatically had a mind of her own.

Mr. Rowland doted on Isobel, and when the girl was
four he had begun to teach her to read, despite his wife’s most
vehement entreaties not to. Mrs. Rowland did not care much for
books, or for learning, either, and she was fond of telling her
husband no good would come of trying to teach a girl so much. To
Mrs. Rowland’s horror her daughter became a voracious reader. Had
she not been convinced Isobel could never grasp it, she would have
been aghast when her husband began to teach her Latin and Greek. He
was constantly filling her head with, it seemed to her, anything
and everything without regard to what it was proper for a girl to
know.

Not content to sit in a distant chair when her
mother was playing the fortepiano, Isobel always stood close by the
instrument and stared at the keys so intently that Mrs. Rowland was
tempted to believe she meant to memorize every note she heard. “So,
my little Isobel,” Mrs. Rowland said in her clipped British tones.
“Do you want to learn to play?” There was no mistaking Isobel’s joy
at her mother’s long-awaited question. Mrs. Rowland reached down to
swing her onto the bench. “Oof! You are getting too big to lift!”
she gasped. “Shall I show you how to play?”

“
I already know how to play,
Mother,” Isobel said.

“
Oh?” There was only the barest
smile at the corners of her mouth. “Then you must play for me.”
Just as she was about to chide Isobel gently for her boast, the
girl put her hands to the keys and began to play, with uncanny
accuracy, the tune she had just heard her mother play for the first
time.

London—1781

I

Lady Sarah grimaced when her maid pulled a little
too sharply on her hair. “Mary! Have a care!” She rebuked the
diminutive woman who was painstakingly attempting an elaborate
coiffure.

“
Forgive me, my lady.” She looked
properly chastised and Sarah decided to leave it be this time,
though she resolved the woman would have to be let go if she tugged
on her hair like that again. “His Lordship will be pleased at you
tonight, Lady Sarah.” Mary stepped back to check the tortured style
milady had insisted on.

“
Think you so, Mary?” she said
absently as the woman patiently went back to work on the stubborn
locks.

It did not occur to Sarah to care what her husband
might think of her appearance. She never called him by his given
name, nor did she encourage the little shows of affection he
insisted on making to her, even in public. She found his attentions
to her acutely embarrassing. It was not that she did not want her
husband to be in love with her, on the contrary, she depended on
the fact. She only wished that he were not so obvious about the
depth of his feeling for her.

Sarah was so sure Alexander doted on her that when
she made the astounding discovery that he had taken a mistress, her
first reaction was to be angry that he could even think of going to
another woman’s arms when he was so desperately in love with her.
Her second reaction was to think that he must have noticed her
attraction to his father after all, and the woman was just an
attempt to return tit for tat. She discarded the theory on the
grounds that her husband believed her incapable of infidelity and,
in any event, she had had no real luck with the marquess. Sarah was
puzzled, and a trifle put out, when, although Alexander continued
to come to her with regularity, in all other aspects of their
marriage, he began to affect a distant politeness. She complained
bitterly to her father of her husband’s indifference, with the
eventual effect that relations between son-in-law and father-in-law
were severely tested as the duke became convinced Alexander was
deliberately cruel to Lady Sarah.

Alexander’s demeanor warmed after Sarah began to
make the effort to be more charming to him. It was a great relief
to her, for one of her greatest fears was that he might become so
jealous that he would forbid her to go out or, even worse, send her
to Hartfordeshire where she would surely die of boredom. As long as
he continued to come to her bed, she was certain of his love and
their marriage.

She waited while Mary put the final touches to her
toilette and then went downstairs to supper with her husband.

II

“
Will you go out tonight, Lady
Sarah?” Alexander asked when she came into the salon where his
sister, Julia, and Lord Hartforde were waiting.

She nodded to the dark-haired girl, but Julia’s
greeting in return was cold. The animosity of a fourteen- year-old
was of no concern to Sarah, and she merely shrugged her shoulders
at the child’s rudeness. “Yes,” she answered, turning her head to
glance at Alexander when she took Lord Hartforde’s arm to go into
supper. She was smiling because Lord Hartforde appeared to notice
she had taken especial care with her dress. It was a new Paris gown
that set off her coloring to distinct advantage.

Alexander took his sister’s arm and followed his
wife in to table.

As usual when they were all present, the atmosphere
was strained, and Lady Sarah filled the frequent silences with
chatter, though she directed it mainly at Lord Hartforde. A dessert
of pudding and fruit was being cleared before there was another
lull in the conversation.

“
And where are you going tonight,
Lady Sarah?” Julia’s question filled in the quiet.

“
To the opera.” She watched the
two men at the table.

“
And with whom do you go?” Julia
persisted.

“
Well, since you are so
interested, my dear, I am to go with Lady Braithewaite and one or
two others.” If she had been looking at her husband she would have
seen he understood quite well that she was to meet her lover.
Because of her profound deafness, Lady Braithewaite was a popular
companion for women bent on adventure. They were interrupted by a
servant announcing her carriage was ready. “I take my leave of you
then.” She stood up and was almost to the door when Alexander’s
query stopped her.

“
Lady Sarah?”

“
Yes?” She turned back.

“
I would have a word with you
tomorrow.”

“
Until tomorrow, my lord,” she
said gaily as she went out.

“
How do you stand her, Alexander?”
Julia threw down her napkin and frowned at her brother.

“
Julia, such childish behavior ill
becomes you.”

III

“
How can you accuse me of such a
thing?” Sarah fumed as Alexander stretched out his long legs and
settled himself more comfortably in his favorite chair.

“
Do you deny you and Wolperton
have shared a bed?” He sighed at her outraged expression. “Sarah,
you misunderstand me. I am not asking you to end your affaire de
coeur, I only desire you to be more discreet. ’Tis obvious you
don’t care to spare my feelings, but, I might remind you, I am well
within my rights to insist that you not flaunt your liaisons quite
so publicly.”

Sarah was shocked to discover that she had been
mistaken in thinking his silence on the subject of her lovers was
due to his ignorance of them. It came as an even greater shock to
discover that he knew and did not care in the least. This reaction
was incomprehensible—he was in love with her! Every man she took a
care to humor loved her, and she had eventually humored her
husband. “Do you hate me so much?” she asked in a small voice,
hoping to throw him off guard by a change in tactics.

“
Hate you? No, I don’t believe I
hate you.”

“
Then you do care!” she
cried.

Alexander lifted his eyebrows in two perfectly
matched arches. “Don’t misunderstand me further. I care for you
just as my father cares for you, or Lord Fistersham, or any of the
lovers you have not bothered to hide from me. Which, as you may
gather, means not a great deal. It seems they tired of you rather
sooner than I did. It should be a comfort to you to know that I
have decided to give up our bed. Neither one of us has particularly
enjoyed that aspect of our marriage.”

“
But what about an heir?” She
blurted out the question because she had never ever imagined he
would stop trying for an heir. Although she would be the last to
admit it, she had come to look forward to his caresses. He was a
most skillful lover, she had learned as much by comparison. She
felt herself flushing from the sudden fear that he might decide to
divorce her. The humiliation would be too much for her to stand.
She was well aware that if he should actually take such an extreme
course, society would no longer turn a blind eye to her
behavior.

“
If not having to lie with you
means the title reverts to some other branch of the family”—he
shrugged—“’tis a small price to pay.”

On 25 July, Lord Hartforde died and Alexander
Spencer Grey became the 11th Marquess of Hartforde.

Boston—1781

Isobel hurried home, a few flaxen curls falling out
of the heavy braid hanging down her back, humming to herself as she
walked briskly down the street. She held a brown paper-wrapped
package in her arms and every third step or so she gave an
exuberant skip and threw the book up in the air, slapping it safely
between her hands when it fell to the level of her chest. At this
juncture in her life, Isobel had but three passions. The first was
her music and the second was ancient Greece. She could never read
enough about Socrates, Plato, or Alcibiades, and her father would
have been scandalized to learn she had managed to read nearly all
of Sappho. Her third passion was her music teacher, Mr. Standifer.
With the steadfast conviction of her twelve years, she fancied
herself deeply and enduringly in love with Mr. Standifer. To her
unmitigated joy, the object of her affection had been at the
bookstore. He had made her an elegant bow and kissed her hand just
as though she were grown up, which she naturally considered herself
to be. She refused to acknowledge Mr. Standifer’s wife as an
obstacle to her (as yet) unrequited love, and in any event, her
very existence made her love for Mr. Standifer all the more tragic.
So, she had dallied at the bookseller’s instead of going straight
home, as she had promised her nursemaid, Miss Forbes, she would.
She knew Miss Forbes would be angry with her for having been gone
so long, but she accounted the golden moments she was able to spend
with Mr. Standifer as well worth whatever punishment her governess
might see fit to mete out.

When at last she reached the gates of the neat
clapboard house, she was only a little out of breath. She paused
long enough to let her panting abate before continuing up the
flower-bordered path to the door. Ever since her mother’s death two
years ago, her father had insisted on planting bluebells because,
he said, even though they were English flowers, they reminded him
of Catherine. Isobel thought they were depressing. Every time she
saw bluebells she thought of death. The war with England, her
father’s lengthy absences, and her mother’s death had all somehow
become associated with the flower. Her hand was on the latch when
she suddenly stopped. She was still standing, looking at the
flowers, when Miss Forbes herself opened the door.

“
Where have you been?” Miss Forbes
pulled her inside and pushed the door so hard it shut with a bang.
Her normally bright eyes were reddened with tears and she let go of
Isobel to dab at her eyes with the hem of her lace
apron.

“
Father?” Isobel felt her stomach
tighten with sickening apprehension.

“
Your father has taken a turn for
the worse.” Miss Forbes took her hand and gave her a pitying look.
She had let Isobel go to the bookseller’s because she did not want
the girl to worry when she summoned the physic for the third time
in as many days. Never had she dreamed Mr. Rowland was so close to
death.

Jonathon Rowland had made his fortune from the
English trade in the American colonies, and by the 1770s he was the
owner of one of the largest fleet of ships in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. At the outset of the revolution, there were those who
wondered exactly where his sympathies lay; after all, his wife was
British, and the war threatened his very livelihood. Rowland,
however, ended such speculations when he threw his substantial
resources behind the revolutionaries. In the process, he made a
second fortune relieving British ships of supplies being
transported to occupied New York. He knew the Hudson tributaries
better than almost any man alive, and time after time the British
found themselves cursing the luck of the American pirate. It wasn’t
until the death of his wife that Rowland’s luck changed. Shortly
afterward he was seriously wounded during an escape so narrow that
half his crew swore they would never set foot on another Rowland
ship, not even if General Washington himself ordered it. Sent back
to Boston to recuperate, his health slowly worsened, and not even
the devoted attentions of his daughter could improve his
condition.