The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (31 page)

“Lord Clun has said he will honor his vows. He’s a man of his word.”

“He is a de Sayre.”

“Meaning?”

“He is a man of his word, child.” The baroness sighed theatrically. “Tell me, has he ever told you he loved you?”

“Not explicitly.”
 

By Lady Clun’s smug expression, Elizabeth knew the truth was plain on her face. He had not. Not once. Well, except in the context of denying its place in a sound marriage.
 

“I know, it’s not romantic of me to say so, but perhaps what you believe to be his feelings are the result of your own girlish hopes. I pray you will not make the mistake I did. My son has always declared himself uninterested in a love match. He prefers a rational arrangement. Yours was meant to be an arranged marriage, was it not?”

Elizabeth could only shake her head slowly ‘no.’

“Yes, dear. I fear it was so. In fact, while you’ve been procrastinating for your own obscure reasons, there is another young lady, who shares my son’s views on marriage.”

“Who?”

“I shouldn’t speak out of turn, but you ought to know. If not for this unfortunate situation, I believe he would come to an understanding with the Honorable Horatia Mangold. To say more would be indelicate.” The baroness had sown the seeds of doubt as intended. She dared not overplay her hand. Her son had yet to meet Miss Mangold.
 

“Clun has said nothing to me.”

“Nor would he. He waits for you as he must.”

“Ah,” was all Elizabeth could say, which evidently delighted the baroness.

“You must know men prefer to avoid unpleasantness of this nature. That’s why we women must deal with it for them. If you have any regard for Clun, you will do what is right and fair. You will release him without delay.”

Elizabeth sat silent. The baroness, on the other hand, beamed with good humor.

“Thank you for tea.” Lady Clun waited until Elizabeth set her jittering teacup down before asking, “Is your father at home?”

“He’s in his library.”

“It would be remiss of me not to say hello before I go.”

“He prefers not to be disturbed while at his scholarly work.”

“I won’t disturb him for long, dear,” the baroness said and stood up. Elizabeth went to pull the bell cord.

Nettles opened the door.

In a fog, Elizabeth addressed the butler, “Lady Clun would speak to my father briefly before she leaves. Will you announce her first?” Nettles bowed himself out to do as she asked.

Elizabeth escorted Lady Clun into the hallway.
 

“His library?”
The baroness asked.
 

The earl opened a door further down the hall, peered over his spectacles and squinted. He waved to the baroness with a vague, friendly smile, “Georgiana, what a surprise. Have you a moment to rescue me from my scraps of foolscap and dusty dictionaries?”

“Indeed I do, Morefield, I’d welcome a brief coze, if I won’t disturb you,” she cooed and smiled a smug dismissal to Elizabeth before floating down the hall toward the earl. The two disappeared into the library and the door closed behind them.

The baroness’ words cut Elizabeth to the quick. Was she keeping Clun from the kind of marriage he desired? He’d said plainly enough he wanted no love match; his behavior demonstrated something else, something warm and considerate. It was something very like affection.

Rather than let herself become discouraged, Elizabeth grew angry. She stood stewing, long after Lady Clun disappeared into the library.
 

Back in the morning room, she dashed off a note to Constance and pressed it into a footman’s hand. She told him to make haste delivering it and to await reply. Her friend’s response was not what she’d hoped. Constance would see her at the Roebuck fête that evening and promised to find her there as soon as possible.
 

It would have to do.
 

Constance found Elizabeth in the cream and gilt splendor of Lord and Lady Roebuck’s townhouse and led her from the ballroom into the ladies’ withdrawing room, which was unoccupied. Elizabeth had hardly begun to retell the tortures of the afternoon when Lady Clun herself entered the room, ostrich plumes swaying over a silver silk turban. They cut off their conversation abruptly and watched the baroness.

“Do go on, girls. Pay me no mind. I cannot imagine why Lady Roebuck refuses to open the windows. A morbid fear of catching a grippe or perhaps she frets that the night fog will besmirch her pristine draperies. Only the foolish would think creams and ivories a good notion in Town. Such a crush, she must be
aux anges
. Still, a little air, however smudgy, would do a world of good.”

Other ladies drifted in after Lady Clun because the musicians in the ballroom had paused. The women fluttered to seats or flounced by to use the convenience in the adjoining room. Elizabeth and Constance remained silent and watchful, perched on the settee.

The baroness walked right up to them and looked down at Elizabeth with cold, pale eyes. “Oh, I see how it is. You are telling your friend how the odious Lady Clun came to tea and spoilt all your dreams of cupid’s darts and fairy dust.”

Thanks to rumors of the de Sayre-Damgogan debacle-to-be, the lounging ladies fixed on the scene playing out by the settee.
 

“T’is better to know what to expect before one marries, don’t you think?” This last barb, the baroness addressed to Constance, as if asking her opinion.

Elizabeth cut in, murmuring sweetly, “Your ladyship mustn’t infer from one de Sayre’s disdain for his bride that the next will dislike his.”
 

Gleeful glances shot back and forth. Mouths contorted to stifle amusement. No one ever dared throw Lady Clun’s self-proclaimed failure of a marriage in her face, much less blame her for it. Constance stared aghast at her friend. Everyone else leaned closer. The spectators to this gladiatorial match eagerly waited to see who would next draw blood.

“The earl and I are of one mind you should know,” Lady Clun murmured. Her mouth turned down in a taut smile that should’ve warned Elizabeth to caution.
 

“That is hard to credit. My father thinks highly of your son.”
 

“Would that you did as well, child,” Lady Clun delivered her
coup de grâce
. Elizabeth defending her son only vexed the baroness more. True, she rarely disguised her disappointment in him in correspondence to friends, but brutal honesty, she believed, was a parent’s prerogative.
 

Lady Petra had entered the withdrawing room with her friend Lady Wesley and arrived in time to hear enough of the exchange to know it must not continue. She cast a glance at her friend, who took her hint and spoke up in the fraught silence.

“Georgiana, it’s been a dog’s age since I’ve seen you! What a becoming gown,” Lady Wesley said to Lady Clun. “And such a festive display of ostrich plumes. Well, why not! No sense saving one’s finery just for court, is there?”
 

The effusion of plumes in question quivered atop the baroness’ head as the subtle set-down landed. Her ostentatious display was noted and found amusing by one of the
ton’s
wittiest women
²⁴
. What’s more, Lady Wesley’s droll delivery quelled any retort the baroness might’ve offered.
 

“Girls,” Lady Petra said, “have you refreshed yourselves? The musicians are about to resume.” She held her hands out to Constance and Elizabeth. “Shall we?”

Lady Clun and Elizabeth looked daggers at one another while Lady Petra and Lady Wesley herded the young woman from the hushed room.
 

Tongues wagged for the rest of the ball. Those who’d suffered Lady Clun’s waspish set-downs in the past anticipated the joy of dining out on The Confrontation till New Year.
 

* * *

When, at breakfast the next day, the Fury fussed about Elizabeth’s impertinence, wilted hope revived and bloomed anew in Clun’s breast.
 

Sadly, that was exactly how his lordship felt — hopeful after a lifelong drought. Yet, he would never have described his improved mood in such mortifyingly flowery metaphors before meeting Elizabeth. Such lapses into poetical nonsense occurred all too frequently now and, by God, it irked him when he caught himself at it. Any day, he was bound to make a complete fool of himself
out loud
if he didn’t nip this ghastly mooncalf-ishness in the bud.
 

Thus, he berated himself for hoping when any rational man would recognize hopelessness and carry on stoically. It was futile, he reminded himself sternly, mooncalfery notwithstanding. (Though not a proper word, mooncalfery ought to be, he felt certain Elizabeth would agree.)
 

Clun reminded himself that his mother brought out the worst in some ladies. The Confrontation meant nothing. His engagement was no less doomed in its aftermath.
 

In this vein, Clun discouraged himself until comfortably wretched once again.

Chapter 28
 

In which our heroine seeks blood from a turnip.

E
lizabeth returned home early from the evening. In truth, she’d escaped from the fresh whirlwind of gossip she and the baroness whipped up in the Roebuck’s cream and gilt withdrawing room. Before she fled, Lady Petra consoled her that the Christmas season seemed to encourage bad behavior so another imbroglio was bound to surpass hers quickly. Cold comfort indeed.

As soon as she handed her velvet cloak to Nettles, she sought out her father for consolation. She found him at his writing desk, piles of open dictionaries arrayed around him.
 

When she entered the library, he put down his quill and leaned back in his chair.

“You look lovely.” He perused her over the top of his reading spectacles. “Did you enjoy your evening, Elizabeth?”

“No, I did not. Lady Clun will not be satisfied until she has crushed any hope I have of a happy marriage with her son.” She recounted the baroness’ several attempts to interfere.
 

“Daughter, I grieve for you, but you have brought this on yourself with your inexplicable behavior. You announce your engagement to the world — against my explicit wishes — then dilly-dally rather than marry the man. You are unfair to Clun and risk irreparable harm to your own reputation.”
 

“Has Clun complained?”

“No, he has not. He is too gentlemanly to do so. Lady Clun expressed concern on his behalf.”

“She hates me, Father, I know it.”

“No. She cares for her son.”

“She thinks of herself and no one else.”

“She has his best interests in mind. You have set tongues wagging all over London. At minimum, you are condemned as fickle, at worst, that you scheme for a more advantageous offer which,” he shook his head when she opened her mouth, “I know is not true in either case. Elizabeth, I cannot cope with the chaos you’ve caused or the criticism you’ve called down upon yourself. If you intend to cry off, do so. Stop shilly-shallying. Spare us all further upset.”
 

“I am not dallying for some frivolous, selfish reason. I hope to establish the proper foundation for our marriage, but Clun insists love has no place. So I must convince him.”

“Have you considered that he might not change his mind? That he might not wish to be convinced.”

“I don’t believe he means what he says.”

“But Lady Clun does.”

“What does she know?” Elizabeth said with a snort, “She only sees her spouse in him. That’s an awful burden for a child to bear at any age.” Without meaning to, she described her own life as much as the baron’s and saw the earl’s expression stiffen in reaction.
 

“Father, she is the first to point out his faults, even before he exhibits them.”
 

“Better you accept him as he is than set your heart on changing him to suit you. If you cannot let him be, let him go. Release him.”

“No. I love him and I suspect he loves me.”

“Then by all means marry him,” the earl said with growing exasperation.

“I can’t until he has a change of heart.”

The earl removed his spectacles carefully and set them aside. “If only you were more like your mother, God rest her soul,” the earl said morosely, “She was a practical miss not the dedicated romantic you like to imagine.”

“But she loved you and you her.”

“She most emphatically did not. Nor I her. Not when first we married. She was entirely too managing and opinionated.”

Elizabeth’s eyes goggled at the earl. “No.”

“We fell in love after we married,” he said. “And she made me promise to do for you as her father did for her, to find you a worthy man. In Lord Clun, I thought I had.”

“You did.”

“I’m glad you have at least that much sense. Mrs. Abeel and I always worried you were too susceptible to flights of fancy. We feared an unscrupulous man would take advantage of your sensibility and break your heart.” The earl shook his head slowly. “This unseemly hesitance cannot continue, Elizabeth. If you will not marry Lord Clun, I must insist you end the engagement immediately.”

“Immediately, why?”
 

“I have let this go on too long.” Elizabeth opened her mouth to argue, but the earl
 
declared, “You will end it or I shall on your behalf.”

“A little time, Father, just a little more time. A few weeks,” she asked, her voice thick with unshed tears.

“To what purpose?”

Elizabeth cast about for an excuse. “Lady Petra believes it would be best done after Twelfth Night, with fewer gossips in Town to stir up a scandal broth. That’s not much more than a fortnight from now. Please.”

“You will do so by then, daughter, or I shall. In the meantime, you’ll go to Devonshire after Christmas, do you hear? There you will rusticate until this brouhaha blows over. By Twelfth Night, you will do what you must. That is all.” He waited for her to acknowledge his order and when she barely nodded, he added, “I am sorry, Elizabeth.”

 
Without looking at her again, the earl returned to his books, clearly uncomfortable with her turbulent emotions. She stood for a moment to watch him resettle himself in his large, leather chair. He brushed his papers free of sand and aligned the leather mat perfectly parallel to the desk’s edge. He did not look up when she walked out and quietly closed the door behind her.