Viscount Vagabond (4 page)

Without waiting for an answer, the elderly lady continued, “No, I would expect not. I am sure she had not another thought in this world but of him, and what a pity that is. She was the most conscientious instructor I have had since I founded this school, and the girls doted upon her. Naturally, I was compelled to discharge him. I have never held with
these odd conventions that it is always the woman’s fault. Men are such wicked deceivers. If even Miss Fletcher could be overcome, what hope is there for weaker vessels, I ask you? To be sure, he was a most charming man. Ten years with us and always most correct in his behaviour, though the girls
will
become infatuated with the music master.”

Catherine barely heard the headmistress. Miss Fletcher, that paragon of propriety, had run off with the music master? No wonder she hadn’t answered Catherine’s last letter. By the time that epistle reached the school, Miss Pelliston’s former governess had already become Mrs. Brown and departed with her new husband for Ireland.

“I’m so sorry you have come out of your way for naught,” Miss Collingwood continued. “I feel responsible. I should have counselled Miss Fletcher: marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

“I’m sure you did all you could,” was the faint reply. “I should have waited until I heard from her... though it was inconceivable that she should not be here. She last wrote me but two months ago and only mentioned Mr. Brown in passing. Still, I was at fault.”

Greatly at fault, Catherine’s conscience reminded. She had let her hateful passions rule her and was now reaping the reward.

“No doubt,” Catherine went on, pinning what she hoped was a convincing smile on her face, “Miss Fletcher’s reply is at home awaiting me.”

After assuring Miss Collingwood that the trip would not be a total loss, and concocting some plausible story about doing a bit more shopping (that explained the bandboxes) with the aunt who’d supposedly travelled with her and was now visiting friends, Catherine took her leave.

She made her way slowly down the street, not only because she did not know where to go, but because her conscience was plaguing her dreadfully and she must argue with it.

She would not be in this predicament if she hadn’t run away from home, but she wouldn’t have run away if her
papa had only stopped now and then to think what he was doing. However, he never thought—not about her certainly. His cronies, his hounds, his wenching and drinking were much more important.

Papa should have arranged for her to have a Season. Even Miss Fletcher had believed he would, or she’d never have accepted the post in London three years ago. Instead, he had sent Catherine to live with Great Aunt Eustacia. If that elderly lady had not died a year and a half later, Catherine would be there yet. She would have endured those endless monologues on religion and genealogy day after day until she dwindled into a lonely spinster like Aunt Deborah, who’d been the old lady’s companion for some thirty years before Catherine came.

She had no illusions about her attractions. Her sole assets were her lineage and her father’s wealth. She knew she had no chance of attracting a husband unless she entered an environment where suitable bachelors abounded. That meant the London Marriage Mart.

Yet, even after the family’s mourning period, had Papa troubled himself about his daughter’s Season? Of course not, she thought, staring morosely at her trudging feet. He thought only of himself. He went off to Bath and found himself a handsome young widow. Upon his return, he’d announced his own and his daughter’s wedding plans simultaneously.

Lord Browdie, of all people, was to be her mate. He was more slovenly, crude, and dissolute than Papa. The man was ignorant, moody, and repulsive. Catherine had never expected a Prince Charming—she was no Incomparable herself—but to live the rest of her days with that middle-aged boor! She had borne much in the name of filial obedience, but Lord Browdie was past all enduring.

Now she knew better. Now she knew what it was to be utterly helpless, utterly without protection, and virtually without hope. She had no idea how to get home, dreadful as that homecoming would be. She had not a farthing to her name, and Mr. Demowery must be miles away by now.

Her eyes swam with tears and Catherine scarcely noticed where she walked. She would have stumbled into the path of an oncoming carriage if a hand had not shot out to grab her elbow and drag her back to the curb.

“Damn if you ain’t an accident waiting to happen,” said a familiar voice.

Still immersed in her misery, Catherine looked up into a lean, handsome face. As she had the previous night, she caught her breath, as though the piercing blue of his eyes had stabbed her to the heart.

“You ought to be carried about in a bandbox yourself.” He took her baggage from her.

“Mr. Demowery, how—what are you doing here?”

“Protecting my investment. I wasn’t about to watch fifty quid trampled into a puddle. Not to mention how it mucks up the streets, don’t you know?” With that, he strode swiftly away from the square, and she, seeing no alternative, followed him. They had not gone many yards before he located a hackney. Not until her luggage was stowed away and she had been hustled into the musty-smelling vehicle did Catherine venture to ask where they were going.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” was the abstracted answer.

“Oh, no. I mean, there isn’t anything to figure out. I shall have to go back now.”

“Back where? Granny Grendle’s?”

“Good heavens, no! I shall have to return h-home.”

Though her voice broke at the last, Catherine squeezed back
the
tears that had welled up as soon as she’d thought what she’d be returning to.

“Is it as bad as all that?”

The sympathy she heard in his voice nearly undid her. So unused was she to sympathy of any kind that it rather frightened her, in fact. “Oh, no. I’ve made a dreadful mistake. I see that now, and it has been a lesson to me—not to let my passions rule me, I mean,” she explained, just as though he had been Miss Fletcher and had asked her to examine her conscience.

“What passions are those, Miss Pettigrew?”

“Resentment, certainly. And pride. And—oh, everything opposed to reason and good sense. If I’d stayed and done what I was told, none of these horrid things would have happened to me—”

“What were you told?” he interrupted.

Subterfuge was alien to Miss Pelliston’s character. She was, as she had admitted, an inept liar. The fibs she’d told Miss Collingwood had cost Catherine agonies of guilt. Besides, she could conceive of no more unworthy return for his unexpected kindness than to lie to him.

She told him the truth, though she eliminated the more sensational elements in order to present the matter with dry objectivity. She did not enlighten him regarding her true identity, either, and named no other names. Though that was not precisely objective, she had rather keep her disgrace as private as possible.

“So you ran away because you couldn’t stomach marrying the old fellow your father chose for you?”

“I never stopped to consider what I could endure, Mr. Demowery. I’m afraid I did not weigh the matter as carefully as I ought,” she said, gazing earnestly into his handsome face. “I just took offence—”

“And
took off.” He smiled—not the crooked, drunken grin of last night but a friendly, open smile. “Yes, I see now what a passion-driven creature you are. Oh, don’t go all red on me again. The colour’s too bright and you must think of my poor head. I ain’t fully recovered, you know.”

She drew herself up. “Actually, I am seldom ruled by emotion. This is the first time I can remember ever behaving so—so unsensibly.”

“Sounds sensible enough to me. As you said before, people shouldn’t be forced to marry. M’ sister felt the same. Bolted, when m’ father tried to shackle her to some rich old prig. They tried to get me to fetch her back, but
I
wouldn’t. You wouldn’t either, if you knew Cousin Agatha. That’s who Louisa went to. That’s what you need, Miss Pettigrew—a Cousin Agatha to terrify your papa into submission.”

“Well, all I had was Miss Fletcher and she doesn’t terrify anyone, and now she’s gone,” Catherine answered ruefully.

“What, no old dragon ladies in the family to scorch your papa’s whiskers for him?”

Catherine shook her head.

“Then I think,” said Mr. Demowery, turning his blue gaze to the greasy window, “you had better meet Louisa.”

***

“Bolted?” Lord Browdie exclaimed. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

He ran his thick fingers over the rough, reddish stubble on his chin. Probably should have shaved, he thought, though that seemed a deal of trouble to go to merely on Catherine’s account.

Miss Deborah Pelliston left off snuffling into her black-bordered handkerchief long enough to offer a weak protest. “Oh, don’t say it,” she moaned. “I cannot believe Catherine would do such a thing. Surely there is a misunderstanding. She may have met with an accident or, heaven help us, foul play.”

“And left a note? That don’t make sense.”

The glass of Madeira at his elbow did, however, make sense to his lordship. Therefore, he turned his attention to that while nodding absently at his hostess’s stream of incoherent complaint.

Should have married the little shrew right off,
he thought sourly. She’d be broken to harness now. Instead there was going to be a deal of bother and no one but himself to deal with it.

The whole business ought to have been simple enough. James Pelliston had decided to marry a handsome widow from Bath. The widow didn’t think a house required two mistresses and had dropped a hint to her future husband. Pelliston, as usual, had confided the problem to his crony: what was to be done with Catherine?

The crony had considered the matter over a bottle of brandy. He considered the property Catherine’s great aunt had left her and found that agreeable. He considered Catherine’s appearance and decided he’d seen worse, especially now she was out of that hideous mourning. He considered that he himself had long been in need of an heir and therefore a wife, which in any other case would require a lot of tedious courtship. Catherine’s like or dislike of himself he considered not a jot.

“I’ll take her off your hands,” he’d charitably offered.

By the time the gentlemen emptied another bottle, the dowry had been settled and an agreement reached whereby the two households would take Aunt Deborah by turns, until such time as neither could put up any longer with her whimpering and she might be packed off to quarters in nearby Bath.

The two men had toasted each other into a state of cheerful oblivion after settling matters to their satisfaction. Since that time, over two months ago, Lord Browdie had spoken to Catherine once, at her father’s wedding. Their conversation had consisted of Lord Browdie’s jovially informing his betrothed that she was too pale and skinny and should eat more. Like the other wedding guests, Lord Browdie then proceeded to drink himself into a stupor. He never noticed his fiancee’s disappearance. He had enough trouble remembering she existed at all.

Yesterday, the engagement ring he’d ordered in a fit of magnanimity had arrived. He’d come this afternoon to present it to his affianced bride. The trouble was, she’d fled three days ago during the wedding celebration, and this sniffling, whining, moaning creature sitting on the other side of the room had been too busy having migraines and palpitations to report the matter to him immediately. By now Catherine might be anywhere, her trail so cold he doubted that even his well-trained hounds could track her down.

“Wish you’d told me right off,” his lordship grumbled when there was a break in the snuffling and sobbing.

“Oh, dear, I’m sure I meant to. That is, I wasn’t sure if I ought. I never missed her that night because I’d gone to bed so early with a terrible headache. Then, when I found that dreadful note next day, I had such fearful palpitations and was so ill I couldn’t think at all, and with James away... Well, one cannot trust the servants, because they
will
talk and the scandal would kill me, I know it. So I kept to my room. But who could have imagined she would do such a shameful thing? Such a good, biddable girl she has always been.”

“Never thought she had the pluck,” said Lord Browdie, half to himself. “Anyhow, where’s the scandal in it?” he asked his hostess. “Ain’t no fine Society hereabouts to be shocked. Just let on she’s sick.”

“But the servants –”

“Will keep their tongues in their heads if they know what’s good for them. I’ll talk to them,” Lord Browdie assured her as he dragged his gangly body up from the chair.

“You are too kind. You make me quite ashamed that I did not confide this trouble to you immediately –”

‘Yes, yes. Just calm yourself, ma’am. Important to behave as though nothing’s happened out of the ordinary.”

“But surely James must be told—”

“No sense interrupting his bridal trip. By the time he’s back we’ll have Cathy home safe and sound, and no one the wiser.” He had no difficulty speaking with more confidence than he felt. Lord Browdie was accustomed to swagger.

Miss Deborah sighed. “It is such a relief to have a man take charge. I cannot tell you how beset I’ve been, not knowing where to turn or what to do. Why, I’m frightened
half to death each time the post is delivered, not knowing what news it will bring—though she did say she would be perfectly safe. But will not her friends wonder when she doesn’t answer their letters?”