The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (35 page)

It wasn’t the girl’s fault, he reminded himself, so he did the pretty with good grace.
 

Clun soon discovered Miss Mangold was like so many females in Society. Those well-born young ladies sought an advantageous connection with unemotional, single-minded focus. Love mattered little when a title and satisfactory income was in the offing. Miss Mangold was exactly the sort, in other words, that he’d thought to marry at one time. That was before Elizabeth. Now, Miss Mangold reminded him of no one so much as his mother, which left a bad taste in his mouth to complement his sour, curdled mood.

He danced face to face with what might have been his fate if not for unaccustomed good fortune and Elizabeth. He’d dodged a bullet. He practically felt it whistle past his ear as the quadrille went on. He could not sink indifferently into a tepid, sensible marriage. Not now.

As they danced, Clun caught sight of his mother and Lady Presteigne, heads together watching them avidly. Then, oddly enough, they both waved their fans at them.

Without warning, Miss Mangold felt overcome by the heat and required immediate assistance to a quiet place in which to recover. (The only females more detestable than weepers, he grimaced, were fainters.) Nevertheless, he helped her down a hallway to the first available room, an adequately lit saloon, where he intended to deposit her on the nearest upholstered surface and find a footman to sort her out.
 

Instead, the chit took his lapels in a death grip and moaned, “Please don’t leave me. I feel so weak.”
 

He grappled as gently as he could to disentangle himself when he heard a sound that sent icy shivers down his spine.
 

The door creaked open.
 

Clun felt only numbing, cold dread. Caught alone with Miss Mangold in such compromising circumstances, Viscount Presteigne would demand he marry the girl. Elizabeth would throw him over in a heartbeat. All was lost. Damn, damn, damn, he repeated to himself. Thus, he cursed himself and his fate, without bothering to look over his shoulder, until whoever-it-was spoke up in a crisp voice behind him.

“Clun, is she unwell?”
 

It couldn’t be.

The fainting chit let him go in surprise when Her Grace, the Duchess of Ainsworth,
 
threw the door wide open and swept into the room. Ever the apothecary, she plunked herself down beside Miss Mangold and in her no-nonsense way offered “to slap her back to health and good sense.”
 

At this, the fainter revived miraculously.
 

The duke strode in shortly after, alarmed by his wife’s precipitous departure for the withdrawing room.
 

Seelye and Percy jammed themselves up in the doorway, gabbling over one another, “The Fury…Lady Presteigne…Coming this way!”
 

Leave it to his friends to add the final
quelque chose
to the drawing room farce underway.
 

“Clun,” the duchess pointed out, “you must take care from now on. In a few months, I won’t fit through a doorway to come to your aid.”

“But I— ” quavered Miss Mangold.

“Hush dear,” Prudence cautioned, “or I shall administer treatment.”

Lady Clun preceded the gleeful viscountess into the room with a triumphant “Well, well.” Finding a crowd where she expected to find her son alone with Miss Mangold, her eyes narrowed. “What have we here?”
 

The duke assumed the cold hauteur of his rank, drawling, “Clun, would you be so kind?”

The baron made the introductions. The baffled viscountess dipped a curtsey with alacrity; the Fury, not one easily subdued, curtseyed albeit stiffly.
 

“Your daughter suffered a fainting spell. Luckily, I was here to help and she is better now, are you not?” The duchess asked Miss Mangold in a steely tone. The girl nodded slowly, looking from Her Grace to her mother.
 

“Ainsworth,” Prudence said and lifted her hand, “may we go? I have a last-minute errand that cannot wait.” The duke helped her to her feet and led her from the room.

The viscountess thanked Clun awkwardly for his assistance, waved her daughter to her side and shrugged at Lady Clun on the way out. The room soon emptied, leaving Clun with his mother.

“I recognize your hand in this,” he said and stalked out.
 

She called after him in a low voice, “It’s too late, Clun. She’s going to cry off. She will not have you.”
 

“We’ll see about that,” he growled back at her.
 

This was another aspect of de Sayre bad luck apparently: that a man born to the name only knew what to do about a female after the opportunity to act was lost. Or in his case, he was blinded by enlightenment only after he’d refused his heart’s desire for fear of falling short.
 

Finally, Clun recognized his pessimism for what it was, abject fear parading around in fearsome disguise. He was a coward who hid behind gloom rather than dare hope and have his hopes dashed to bits. Just as Elizabeth had said. The Fury would choke on her own tongue if she knew she’d authored this epiphany with her unsubtle trap.
 

Clun searched everywhere for Elizabeth. She had gone.

If it hadn’t been well past midnight and indecently early for a morning call, Clun would’ve instructed his coachman to drive directly to No. 1 Damogan Square. As it was, he decided to sleep a few hours. It wouldn’t do to match wits with his betrothed when only half of his functioned.

* * *

Rather than spy on Clun embracing Miss Mangold, Elizabeth fled down the dark hall to the foyer where a footman called for the earl’s Town carriage. Mr. Wilder came up and took her aside.

“Dear Elizabeth, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost. What’s happened?”

She glanced around and whispered confidentially, “I must leave London but the earl’s travel carriage is still in Devonshire, and it won’t be here for two days.”

“I am at your service,” he said tamping down his glee. “Hiring a travel carriage and four in Town tomorrow will be nigh impossible. If you’ll allow me, I can arrange a suitable vehicle for you and your maid at an inn on the toll road beyond Paddington Gate. I’ll be happy to take you there myself.” He smiled a reassurance to her and added, “Dress warmly, propriety requires an open carriage.”

“It would be a signal service, Mr. Wilder. I will be forever in your debt.”

“When would you like to depart?”

Elizabeth considered the things she must do after Christmas breakfast: Boxing Day gifts for the servants and her own packing. “Will half-past-noon give us enough time?”

“Indeed. I will come to Damogan—“

“No. Await us in Sloane Street, if you please. At half-past-noon.”

“Till then, my dear, I wish you a happy Christmas.”

Chapter 32
 

In which our heroine has a wary Merry Christmas.

C
hristmas morning, Elizabeth stared out her bedroom window at the city fog obscuring the street lamps and blurring the bare tree branches in Damogan Square.
 

Her thoughts were no clearer than the air. Clun’s mother said he could not love. He himself said he would not love and refused to marry her — even on his own terms. Yet his kisses contradicted all his protestations.
 

With Washburn’s help, she dressed in her warmest undergarments and wool walking gown.
 

During a subdued breakfast with her father, Elizabeth gave him a rare dictionary,
The
New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, In its Several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggars, Thieves, Cheats, &c
. published in 1699, which delighted him. She knew this because he blinked rapidly though the rest of his face remained immobile. In turn, the earl gave her a breathtaking fringed shawl of lavishly embroidered Oriental silk. He said that he’d seen it in a shop window and thought she might find a use for it. Elizabeth thanked him and mentioned her plan to call on the Travistons, adding that she would also discuss with Lady Petra how best to end her betrothal.

Before the earl retired to his library, he said, “I look forward to a quiet Christmas evening
en famille
.”
 

“I thought to go to the country early, if you have no objection,” she replied.
 

“But you’ll miss Mrs. Abeel’s Christmas plum pudding. I know you’re as partial to it as I,” he said in a coaxing tone.

Elizabeth shook her head, but she could not speak.

“Well, dear, do as you wish.” He turned to leave the room, stopped and turned back to smile at her. “I miss her, too, child. I will always be grateful to her for all she gave you.” Having emoted far more than customary, the earl left to recover in his bookroom.

For the rest of the morning, Washburn and Mrs. Dawes helped Elizabeth finish packing the servants’ gift boxes for the following day. She was exceedingly generous to household staff on behalf of the earl, putting in each maid and footman’s box a gold guinea wrapped in a new, monogrammed cotton handkerchief along with small gifts and a bulging bag of sweetmeats they could share with family on their day off. For upstairs maids, she tucked two coins into a new pair of York tan gloves for Sundays. (Usually 4 shillings each at the draper’s, but by buying eight pairs at once, the salesman at Layton & Shear’s offered them to her for 3s/2d each.) Nettles, the earl’s French chef and Mrs. Dawes would each receive three guineas as well as special gifts.
 

To her lady’s maid Washburn, she gave a pretty chip bonnet, matching gloves and a length of ribbon as well as a gift box with three gold crowns, all of which Washburn left in her quarters rather than take with her to Devonshire.

Elizabeth walked to No. 10 Damogan Square to wish the Travistons a happy Christmas. She found no chance to discuss anything privately with Lady Petra. There would be time enough before Twelfth Night.

When Elizabeth returned home, Nettles presented a folded note with an elaborate blue wax seal, saying, “For my lady, a footman hand-delivered this. No reply is requested.”

“I don’t recognize the hand, who could it be?” She stripped off her gloves, pelisse and bonnet and walked to the morning room window. In the weak light, she cracked the seal, unfolded the note and read its few lines. Without a word, she refolded it and tucked it into a pocket in her dress.
 

She patted her pocket and came to a decision. If Clun intended to have the blonde pygmy strumpet, Elizabeth would cry off. First, however, he would have to tell her so, face to face.
 

Indeed, if she had to stalk the baron across England to learn the truth from his own lips, so be it. She’d already arranged for a travel carriage to Devonshire. She could bribe the coachman to take her elsewhere if the price were right. No one, not even the baron, would expect her and her lady’s maid to turn up in Shropshire, which made it the perfect plan to confront him.

If Clun cut up ugly, Elizabeth would release him on the spot and return to Devonshire. If, however, he did not want the little blonde baggage, they could negotiate their differences once and for all. In the meantime, everyone would think she’d gone to the country as her father ordered.
 

Did she dare? ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ Mrs. Abeel often said.
 

Elizabeth would need all of her pin money for this adventure.

Twenty-five minutes past noon, Elizabeth snuck from the house with Washburn carrying their two small portmanteaus. Mr. Wilder awaited them in Sloane Street. He muffled them with warm lap rugs and whisked them away in his curricle. They would only be cold and cramped a short way, he explained cheerfully, because he’d hired a bang-up travel coach for their trip from London. After thanking Mr. Wilder for his assistance, Elizabeth and Washburn fell quiet.
 

At a coaching inn not far beyond Paddington Gate, Mr. Wilder helped both women down from his rig and saw them into a private parlor to wait inside while he oversaw the ostler hitching the team of four to the hired carriage. He also conferred briefly with one of the inn’s grooms outside before he returned.
 

“We’re ready to depart, ladies,” Mr. Wilder announced in jolly spirits.

“We? There’s no need for your escort any farther,” Elizabeth said. She popped another piece of candied ginger into her mouth, thankful to Clun for the duchess’ advice. “We can manage on our own from here. Thank you again.”

“We’re heading in the same direction as far as Basingstoke, my destination, I merely assumed—” Mr. Wilder also assumed a wide-eyed, innocent gaze of confusion to add impetus to his falsehood.

“Wouldn’t be proper, Lady Elizabeth,” Washburn murmured.
 

“But my curricle’s gone, the groom’s driving it back. You wouldn’t strand your faithful friend on Christmas, would you?” He tilted his head and smiled.

“No, of course not. It’s of no consequence, Washburn,” Elizabeth said.

Mr. Wilder bowed with a sweep of his tall beaver hat, “Thank you, my lady. If you wish, I can be your brother for the journey to avoid any whiff of impropriety.”

Washburn had no qualms. “And lying’s not improper? Hmphf!”

He was too pleased with the progress of his scheme to pay the snarling maid any heed. All would be well by nightfall.

Despite Elizabeth’s taciturnity, the inauspicious circumstances and three being a crowd, Mr. Wilder began to make love to the heiress before they cleared the inn yard.
 

“I cannot credit my good fortune to be the man you’ve turned to in your hour of need, my dear,” he cooed.
 

Elizabeth laughed, assuming he was joking. Her maid laughed much harder, perceiving he was not.
 

Seeing they’d offended him, Elizabeth tried to smooth his ruffled feathers. “Mr. Wilder, it’s not my hour of need. Unless you refer to my need for transportation.”

“Yet, you were frantic to run away and now you are doing so with me,” he said with less warmth.