The Bargain Bride (20 page)

At least she was pleased with her new son-in-law by marriage. Constance was in alt that Westfield's first appearance after the general's fire was at her home, and she intended to see that the
on-dits
columns knew it, even if she had to send a notice around tomorrow herself. Perhaps she should have invited a few of the neighbors after all, Constance considered, to see the prize in her parlor.

Penny agreed that her husband was indeed superb. He was dressed this evening in quiet elegance—Constance whispered that she would have preferred a bit of color instead of the austere dark blue and stark white—and showed perfect manners to match. He was more handsome than any man had a right to be, and appeared larger in the cluttered drawing room. Best of all, according to Penny's stepmother, he had a small bruise on his cheek from the rescue, giving him an air of danger, excitement, and daring.

Penny saw Constance glance at her own husband, who was shaking West's hand. Sir Gaspar was short, squat, with thinning hair and thickening waist. Constance would have frowned at the comparison, Penny thought, except that made wrinkles.

“Ah, well,” Constance said, for Penny's ears alone, “your father has something your attractive Lord Westfield never had, and that is gold, lots of it, whole bank vaults of it. When a woman has her children's futures at stake, she has to look beyond a pretty face to a full pocket.”

Penny knew that Constance took the lines of the marriage ceremony to heart, what she chose of it anyway. She'd married for the better the first time, plain Miss Pease wedding a viscount's grandson. She'd married for richer the second, taking Gaspar Goldwaite before he was knighted. To the devil with worse or poorer.

“Not that you have not made quite a catch,” Constance acknowledged, showing Penny a shred of approval, “even if it took blackmail and bribery to bring the thing about.” The approval faded when she took in Penny's plain gown, a faded blue Constance's maid would not have worn. Penny had a simple strand of pearls at her throat, with her hair pulled into a tight spinster's knot at the back of her neck. “You could have dressed more in keeping with the occasion, your first outing as a married woman, at your father's house, no less, and more in tune with your husband's splendor. But then you have never done what anyone could wish, have you?”

Penny had married West. That was enough. She was not about to trick herself out like a Covent Garden convenient . . . like Constance in her red satin.

Constance shrugged her beefy shoulders, exposed by the low-cut gown along with more of the woman's assets than Penny wished to see. “Well, at least your dowdy outfit will not put me or my girls in the shade.”

Nothing could. Besides her skimpy scarlet satin, Constance was wearing half the gems in her jewel box, the better to impress the viscount. Her girls were wearing the rest. Constance saw how the viscount was admiring her daughters, and smiled.They'd caught his eye, all right, so now he would introduce them to his friends. “Not any rackety racing crowd, either,” she warned Penny, “but titled gentlemen with property and investments.”

The sooner the better, it seemed. As soon as greetings were exchanged and the newlyweds were seated in the newly renamed Grecian Room with glasses of sherry, Constance lost no time. “Now that Westmoreland House is in order, my lord, when will you and Persephone be ready for your first grand entertainment? The girls are quite looking forward to it.”

The girls were looking as if they had dressed for a ball this very night, Penny thought. She'd worn a favorite blue dinner gown, not too fancy for a quiet family meal. Her stepsisters wore frothy lace overskirts bedecked with sequins and flounces, feathers in their hair, which was a riot of bouncy brown ringlets. Speaking of rings, they each wore several, plus bracelets, brooches, and necklaces and earbobs. Mavis, the older at eighteen, wore orange and yellow stripes, which was unfortunate with her spotted complexion. Seventeen-year-old Amelia's gown was white, at least, all the frills and furbelows of the thing. Even Penny, long out of London society, knew that young females of proper breeding wore white or pastels, and no colored gemstones until they were older or engaged. Her stepsisters were dressed like Gypsies, she decided, or pirates' doxies, decked in the latest booty.

Their manners were no more appealing. Mavis gushed all over West, barely acknowledging Penny's presence. Amelia was as shy as ever, not raising her eyes, barely whispering the civilities at the introductions before fleeing to the corner of the parlor. She could easily get lost among the decor with her white gown and pale cheeks.

Constance had chosen Greek this time, or her version of it at any rate, and a lot of it. White marble busts stood on columns, Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian, all mixed together. White plasterwork plinths and carved caryatids held up armless athletes, headless torsos, and urns. Some had been painted; some of the figures had been draped in white to suit Constance's notion of decency. Every surface was filled with small unidentifiable shards of imitation antiquities. The carpet was bordered in a black-and-white Greek key design, which was repeated across the ceiling and over the mantel and around the walls and on the window hangings. Even the furniture tried to appear classical, with long, low, uncomfortable benches scattered here and there, as if waiting for a group of to gaed guests.

Instead, they held a banker, his boorish wife, and the girls done up as bachelor fare. Penny was speechless.

“Stunning, ain't it?” her father asked. “All the rage, you know. Egyptian is gone, and Oriental has been overdone. Can't you just imagine some great orator spouting his philosophy here?”

No, but Penny could easily picture Socrates drinking hemlock. “It's lovely. Truly,” she added for emphasis, “but to answer Lady Goldwaite's question, I have no idea when Westmoreland House will be ready for company. There is a great deal yet to be done.”

“And you'll need to do something about your wardrobe, too,” Constance said with a superior tone. “But you must not wait too long, you know. As they say, time nor tide waits for no maiden.”

That was not what they said, but Penny understood that Constance was desperate to see her daughters settled.

Sir Gaspar seconded his wife's urging. “Before you know it, you'll be breeding and wanting to make your nest instead of dancing all night.”

West cleared his throat and Mavis giggled. Constance rapped Sir Gaspar on the shoulder with her fan. “Not in front of the girls.”

“What, they don't know that married gals have babies? Of course they do. Haven't you been warning them they better have a ring on their fingers afore they drop their handkerchief and raise their skirts?”

“Father!”

“Well, I have been waiting a long time to see my grandson.”

And he would have a long wait more.

Penny's face felt so hot, she knew she was blushing like a schoolgirl.

West came to her rescue. “It is far too soon to think of filling the nursery. Lady Westfield deserves to simply enjoy herself on the Town. I am looking forward to taking her to the opera, the theater, the other sights of the city.”

Sir Gaspar was disappointed. He'd be more so, Penny thought, if he knew the truth, that his grandson was no closer than a few kisses and some heavy breathing.

Her father was never one to be defeated for long. He pointed to the mark on West's face and mentioned the fire. “Knew you'd make my daughter proud.”

Penny was nearly speechless again. She should be proud because her husband ran into burning buildings? He'd taken two years off her life with that bit of bravery.

West changed the subject quickly. He thanked Sir Gaspar for his efforts at cleaning the Prospect Street house, and the loan of the furniture and paintings.

“Oh, those are no loan. Consider it all a wedding gift.”

“No, we cannot accept, although we appreciate your generosity, and your charming wife's efforts. You did tell Penny she could choose, however, so she has her own tastes in mind.”

Now Penny found her voice. “And you did offer to pay for it all,” she reminded her father.

“Now, puss, ladies and gents do not discuss financial arrangements in company, you know.”

“Neither do they discuss procreation. You are trying to get off cheaply.”

“Me? Your own father?” He looked over at West, whose good favor he still needed if he was ever to get his wife's daughters out of his house and into another man's expenses. “You just send the bills to me.”

Penny answered, “I will, never fear. And for my trousseau, in case you've forgotten.”

“What's this about a trousseau?” Constance demanded. “You never told me you were going to throw more money away on the drab? That is, on your daughter. She's already wed. Let her husband pay her bills.”

Luckily for everyone's tempers and manners, Constance's son, Nigel Entwhistle, strolled into the room right then. A year older than Penny at twenty-seven, he was tall and thin, wearing exaggerated shirt points. His linen was not half as pristine white as West's, Penny noted, nor was his neckcloth tied so expertly or intricately. She also saw the cool greeting the two men exchanged. They reminded her of George when he spotted another dog, his fur ruffled, his stance wide. She would not be surprised if Nigel and West started kicking dirt behind them.

After the pleasantries, which were far less pleasant than before, and they were on their way into dinner, Penny asked her husband, “Do you know Nigel, then?”

His reply was brief but informative. “By repute. I seldom frequent the same venues.” He did not say it, but the scorn was in his voice: Nigel was not of his class or character.

Neither was Penny.

Nigel sought to remedy the coolness and the distance at dinner. Talking across the table, claiming they were too small a party to stand on ceremony, he hinted about invitations to West's club, a round at Gentleman Jack-son's, a fencing match at Antonio's. “We are family now, of course.”

“We'll see,” was all West offered. He couldn't see how he was related to the dirty dish when his wife barely was. Nigel Entwhistle was a gamester, and not necessarily an honest one at that. He'd been shipped out of the country to avoid one scandal that West knew of, and barely avoided several more when he returned. He was not welcome in polite society, and barely tolerated at all but the lowest gambling parlors and kens. He was somewhat wellborn, his sire being related to a title on the cadet branch, but only Goldwaite's gold kept him from jail or from getting a knife in his back down some alley. West supposed Entwhistle wanted to use the excuse of his sisters' presentations to edge himself into the
ton
and find some gullible heiress to wed or new lambs to fleece. Not if West could help it, no, not even if they were connected through Penny. A loose screw was a loose screw, no matter whom his mother married.

Penny never cared for Nigel, either, less so after she'd heard he wanted to marry her for her dowry. For once, West's assurance and arrogance were welcome; he put Nigel in his place by directing his own attention to the others. He patiently tried to elicit a conversation from Amelia over the soup. He gently discouraged Mavis's flirtations over the fish course. He subtly deflected Constance's constant matchmaking with his bachelor friends over every unpalatable bite he took.

Penny was finding her own patience, gentility, and subtlety wearing thin, with Nigel seated at her side.

“You'll never hold his attention looking like a country dowd, you know,” he told her. “The man is used to dashers, diamonds of the first water.”

Penny was wearing a favorite gown, one she had not bothered to alter, since she would soon have a new London-made wardrobe. She intended to start in the morning, but not with Constance and the girls at her side, despite their offers to lend their dubious assistance. Meanwhile the blue merino was lower waisted and higher necked than fashionable, but the color was becoming to her, she always felt, and this was supposed to be a small dinner among family.

“My lord admired the gown,” she told Nigel now. “He said the blue made my eyes sparkle like gems, and the cut showed off my elegance. So there.”

Nigel ordered the footman to refill his wineglass, then said, in the servant's hearing, “He must want more of your fortune. You can't hold a candle to Maeve Greenlea.”

Penny was furious. Perhaps West did hope to get his hands on her personal fortune, despite his denials, but he did not have to give false compliments to get it. Besides, the way his breathing was labored when he first saw her, and his smile started at his mouth and rose all the way to his eyes, showed that he did appreciate her looks. She did not think a man could feign the protrusion in his pantaloons. West wanted her, in whatever she chose to wear, or out of it. He might not love her—he might never love her, which was something Penny had to face—but he did desire her, not some wayward widow. He'd broken off with her, hadn't he?

No, Nigel was simply always one for bursting bubbles. He was one of those nasty creatures who thrived on causing dissension, destroying confidence, creating distress, just for the underhanded pleasure of the thing. As a youngster he used to make his sisters cry by stealing their dolls and smashing them. He seemed still to be a toy breaker. As such, he was not worth her attention. Penny turned her back on him and listened to West's conversations instead. If she had seen the expression on Nigel's face, much less known his foul thoughts, she would not have been so sanguine. No, she would have tossed her wine in his lap.