Chapter Twelve
“And when the fair young maid required a pair of strong arms to convey her to shore, I obliged,” Sherbourne said. “Take that dratted cap away, for God’s sake. I’m little more than thirty years old and in possession of a full head of hair.”
“My apologies, sir.” Turnbull put the nightcap back in the chest beneath the window. “Will there be anything else?”
“What do you hear about the Windham ladies?”
Socializing belowstairs, swilling ale in the servants’ hall, and befriending everybody from the housekeeper to the boot boy also numbered among Turnbull’s duties.
“The two younger Windham sisters are recently wed to a Scottish duke and his heir, respectively, and both are off to Scotland. The older sisters are highly regarded.”
Of course a pair of ducal spinsters would be highly regarded. “I’ll take the green dressing gown,” Sherbourne said. Miss Windham had worn green today, and looked quite fetching. Miss Charlotte hadn’t cut the same elegant, relaxed dash, though her walking dress of brown and cream muslin had been pretty.
Fashion mattered to the titled set. Sherbourne had learned that before he’d gone up to university.
Turnbull held out the desired dressing gown, which was velvet lined with lighter green silk, and worth a year of the valet’s wages for the embroidery alone. Even a practical man was allowed the occasional touch of vanity.
“Miss Charlotte has a tart tongue,” Turnbull went on, “but is kind to the maids. The bachelors seem to regard her with a mixture of awe and dread. Miss Elizabeth is a champion of lending libraries and literacy and is left mostly to her own devices by the aunt.”
No news there. “The aunt being Arabella Windham, Lady Pembroke, who is probably the pattern card for Miss Charlotte in later life. As for Miss Elizabeth Windham, what sort of woman likes lending libraries? She even confessed this predilection to me. Books just sit there, collecting dust and making one feel guilty for not having read them.”
“Sherbourne Hall has a fine library, sir,” Turnbull said, turning down the sheets.
“I have a library full of books bought by the box from estate sales to fill the shelves, as you well know. Is there talk concerning my intended?”
Turnbull came around the four-poster bed, a lovely old specimen that would comfortably hold six people. Sherbourne couldn’t fault Haverford’s hospitality—yet.
“Lady Glenys is said to be bearing up well.”
“What does that mean? She’s frolicking the entire day away with a bunch of handsome idlers.” While Sherbourne endured more tittering, fan-waving, and simpering than sanity allowed. No wonder Haverford had a reputation for lurking among his books.
Turnbull left off fussing the bed. “Frolics, as you call them, do not happen spontaneously. Somebody must decide where to place the tent, what recipe to use for the punch, how many cakes to make, and how to get them all under the tents. Somebody must ensure the boats have a fresh coat of paint and are seaworthy. Her ladyship has managed the whole and will have far more to do than her guests.”
This was why Sherbourne paid Turnbull exorbitant wages. The valet was more astute than a royal finishing governess, and knew when to be blunt—seldom—and when to be deferential—always.
“Then I can ingratiate myself into her ladyship’s good books by being useful?”
“A gentleman never ignores a lady in need, sir.”
“Is there a lady whom Haverford finds difficult to ignore?” The Trelawny creature, perhaps. Haverford had got a good soaking pushing her boat to shore, then inquired after her well-being solicitously at supper. He’d taken off his boots before wading into the lake, though, suggesting—delightful thought—even the cost of a pair of new boots would pain him.
Miss Trelawny was exactly the sort of featherbrain His Grace ought to marry. She’d make him miserable, but bring him closer to solvency. To trade personal happiness for financial health was the best bargain Haverford would make with life and better than he deserved.
“His Grace is cordial to all of his guests, sir.”
All save Sherbourne. “Off to bed with you, Turnbull. There’s more to be learned tomorrow, I’m sure. Keep a lookout for how I might be of service to her ladyship or to the Windhams. Miss Elizabeth is not hard on the eye, for all she’s getting long in the tooth.”
“Of course, sir. Good night, sir.”
Perhaps Haverford fancied one of the Windhams. Miss Charlotte’s vinegar would suit his dour nature, and Miss Elizabeth would get on well with Lady Glenys.
Regardless, Haverford could have neither of the Windhams. Sherbourne would see to that. When His Grace married, he’d be in such financial difficulties, he’d be grateful to wed an American banker’s lisping, giggling daughter.
* * *
“Chocolate.” The word was distinguishable amid other mumblings coming from Lady Glenys’s bed. Radnor made out “toast,” “damn,” and “mustn’t tell Haverford.”
Radnor’s beloved talked in her sleep. Did anybody else know that about her?
He lifted the covers and joined her in the bed. “Glennie?”
“Please not yet.”
“We must talk.”
She flopped onto her side, giving him her back. “Go away.”
Then she sat up straight. “What in the illuminated holy scriptures are you doing in my bed, Radnor?” Her hair was a thick dark braid going frazzled near the end. She whipped it over her shoulder, lashing Radnor’s cheek.
“You’re awake.”
“I’m not awake. I’m having a nightmare if you’re paying a call at this hour, especially if you somehow got turned around and intended to end up in somebody else’s bed.”
The pillow had creased her cheek, and her nightgown had pink rosebuds embroidered on the décolletage. Radnor hoarded those details and folded his hands beneath his head lest he touch her.
“I’m in the right bed, at the only hour when we’re likely to have privacy. I love you.”
She drew the covers up under her arms. “You’ve been drinking.”
Not the most encouraging response. “I haven’t had a drop since dinner, and may I compliment you on the merlot.”
“That wine was from your cellar, and you need to get out of my bed.”
Radnor needed to kiss her. He didn’t dare touch her. “I love you, I have for years, and I’m determined to court you.”
She ceased fussing with the covers. “That’s very sweet of you, also insulting. I can inspire somebody to offer for me without you pretending an interest, Radnor.”
“We’re in bed. The least you can do is call me Cedric.” He caught her braid and tugged her down, so she rested against his side.
“You bathed,” she said, sniffing his shoulder. “You don’t smell of those awful cigars. I need to find another location for the evening card parties, or the library will stink for the next twenty years.”
God rot all card parties and all ducal libraries. “Glenys, I want to marry you.”
Her sigh fanned across his chest. “No, you don’t. You’re being noble, or gallant, or a good friend—I know not what. You have to marry somebody, I want to marry somebody, and you perceive what I should have known all along: Haverford can assemble as many titled bachelors as England has pubs, and none of them will offer for me. I’m not…I’m not attractive in the way women attract eligible men.”
Radnor laced his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “I agree. You are entirely lacking in silliness, vanity, stratagems, flirtation, chatter, and jealousies.”
“I am not winsome,” Glenys said, gravely, as if this mattered.
“I’ll be winsome enough for the pair of us,” Radnor replied. “You worry over both of your brothers, which few would have sense enough to do, though Haverford and Griffin are equally worth worrying over. You never complain, you manage this household with too little help, you are kind and sensible, and you will never expect me to be something I’m not.”
“I expect you to be out of this bed immediately.”
“Glenys, there’s not another woman whom I esteem half so much as I do you. I’m baring my soul to you. Please be serious.”
She raised herself up on one elbow and peered down at him. The hearth held some coals, but the room was dark. Fortunately.
“You’ve bared your chest to me too.” She ran a hand over Radnor’s belly, then over his heart, and across his collarbones.
He endured that torture, but refused to allow the moment to turn into a dalliance.
“I used to spy on you,” Glenys said, pillowing her cheek on his chest. “You and Haverford. You’d go swimming in the river, and I’d hide in the oak to watch you. I was very naughty.”
“Very resourceful. I need a resourceful marchioness.”
She kissed him, a quick press of lips, as if tasting a glass of wine to see if the vintage went with the dessert.
“Haverford would kill me if I let you court me. I’ve incurred such expenses with this damned house party, Cedric.…You have no idea what extravagance I’m guilty of. I had no idea. I can’t be seen to engage your affections, or the bachelors will one by one find excuses to leave early. The young ladies will join them, and my house party will be the realm’s costliest failure.”
To Radnor, whose mental processes were admittedly suffering a momentary inefficiency, calling off the whole house party seemed a capital notion. He was reminded of Haverford’s warning, though: Women set store by a social agenda that men treated far more casually. A failed house party would follow Glenys’s reputation for decades.
“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Do you object to my attentions because they will discourage all the other bachelors and ruin your house party, or because you cannot esteem me as a woman esteems her intended?”
Delicately put, if he did say so himself.
“I’ve been esteeming you as a woman esteems a handsome, charming, bothersome specimen since I was fifteen years old, Radnor. You came home from university and I wanted to gobble you whole. I was years away from making my bow, though, and you never lacked for female attention.”
She esteemed him—she esteemed him!
“Many of those women were simply trying to gain your brother’s notice.” Radnor hadn’t figured that out. One of the ladies had told him, straight to his face, even as she’d asked him to lace her up. In some ways, he’d been as naïve as dear Griffin.
“Everybody wants Julian’s notice, but that’s another reason why you must not be seen to court me. He needs a wife, Cedric. I hadn’t seen it before, but he’s lonely. I think he regrets letting Griffin establish a separate household, though Griffin’s happy, and Julian would never impose on anybody.”
Haverford was showing signs of imposing on Miss Elizabeth Windham, and she on him. Now was not the time to distract Glenys with that development.
“I will be just another gallant swain for the duration of this blasted house party, then,” Radnor said. “But the day those coaches disappear down your drive, expect to be besieged, Glennie. I’ll sing ballads beneath your window, recite poetry while I climb your trellises, and swim naked for you in the river.”
“The next seventeen days will be an eternity,” Glenys said. “Do gallant swains ever steal kisses?”
Radnor shifted over her. “All the time, my dear. All the time.”
* * *
“A word with you after breakfast, if you please.” Julian kept his voice down, because other guests were finding places at the breakfast table, Sherbourne among them.
“Of course,” Glenys replied.
In the sunshine slanting through the tall windows, she looked tired, but also relaxed. Perhaps she’d realized that a house party wasn’t quite as complicated as moving an army across Spain, though it was to cost Julian nearly as much.
He held her chair, he greeted his guests, and he nodded cordially to Sherbourne, who was turned out in the first stare of fashion. Julian’s neighbor was clearly pleased to be strutting among a crowd of titles, and if Sherbourne was pleased, somebody else was bound to be suffering soon.
“Tea, Haverford?” Glenys held one of the six matching Meissen teapots that graced the table, a fortune in antique porcelain.
Julian didn’t want any damned tea. “Thank you. May I fetch you some eggs?” He didn’t want to fetch anybody any damned eggs either.
“I’d like some eggs,” Cousin Delphine said from Glenys’s left. Cousin Hugh was nowhere to be seen, but then, the day was fair.
“Your servant, ladies.” Julian rose and bowed.
“Haverford, good day,” Sherbourne said, helping himself to the strawberries at the sideboard. “I’m surprised to see you joining us at the breakfast table.”
“Do you think I subsist without the same sustenance other mortals require?” Julian ought not to have said that. Nobody had overheard, but Sherbourne’s smile went from smug to gloating.
“I’m sure your consequence alone keeps you warm at night, but did you know your walking partner has left the premises without you?”
“I have a walking partner now? How fortunate for me. Will you leave a few strawberries for anybody else? I hadn’t taken you for a glutton.”
A petty victory, but Sherbourne had heaped a bowl nearly to the brim with fresh fruit.
“I’m sure your larders can supply an endless bounty, you being a duke and all, and we wouldn’t want such luscious fruit to go to waste, would we? I refer to Miss Elizabeth Windham, whom I saw walking up Tudor Hill on the arm of some other swain.”
The innuendo—luscious fruit—had Julian slapping eggs onto a plate. “You saw Miss Windham walking out with my brother, whom she has pronounced better company than many at this very table. Would you care for some eggs?”
Julian held the serving spoon, heaped full of eggs, and measured the angle necessary to splatter those eggs all over Sherbourne’s intricate cravat.
Sherbourne’s smile faltered. “She’s walking out with your brother?”
“He’s teaching her the Welsh words for our local flora and fauna. Miss Windham’s mother is Welsh, and she will enjoy surprising her mama with an expanded vocabulary.”
The moment turned lovely. Griffin in the role of teacher was something Sherbourne clearly could not fathom, and that Elizabeth preferred Griffin’s company was a source of further confusion to Julian’s neighbor.
“Miss Windham is a lady,” Julian said. “A true, genuine lady, and Griffin is a gentleman. I do hope all those strawberries won’t make you ill.”
He dumped the spoonful of eggs onto Sherbourne’s plate so they half-covered the toast, which would have driven Griffin wild, then served more eggs onto plates for Delphine and Glenys.
Sherbourne scraped most of the strawberries back into the serving bowl and marched off to take a place between Haldale and Lady Pembroke.
Bad form, that, putting food back into a serving dish.
Julian endured breakfast, though he was pleased to think of Griffin and Elizabeth up on the hill, trading words and phrases as the sun rose. Griffin loved to expound, though he sometimes had no grasp of the facts he recited—much like half the House of Lords when delivering their speeches.
“I’ve had enough tea to float a royal barge,” Glenys said as the meal wound down. “If you’re to deliver a verbal flogging, let’s go to my tower.”
“Excellent suggestion.”
Julian loved his sister dearly, but what he’d found in the tower upon rising came perilously close to a betrayal, and from the one person whose loyalty he’d felt entitled to rely on.
Glenys was stopped twice on the way upstairs, once by the housekeeper asking if twenty kites would be enough for the afternoon’s activity, and another time by the butler asking if storing the excess wine in the root cellar was acceptable until room could be made for it in the wine cellar.
“We’re flying kites this afternoon?” Julian asked.
“You have a better suggestion?”
Griffin was wicked good at flying kites. “I would approve the activity as involving singularly little expense, except I know you’ll put out punch, sandwiches, and cake in great quantity, kite flying being a strenuous endeavor.”
“You’re angry.”
Julian held the door to her parlor. “Furious, and not a little bewildered.” Glenys scuttled past him, and he felt like a bully, though he’d simply been honest.
“You snooped through my correspondence,” Glenys said when the door was firmly closed.
“I did no such thing. I came up here last night in search of privacy. Your shawl was on the back of the chair, and I thought to use it as a makeshift blanket while I enjoyed some solitude. When I rose to replace your shawl where I found it, the stack of bills sat in plain sight.”
The shawl was neatly folded across the back of the chair, a supporting witness to Julian’s edited recitation.
“I haven’t been through them yet,” Glenys said, retrieving the shawl and draping it around her shoulders. “Are they very bad?”
Julian dropped onto the sofa where he’d found such comfort the previous night. “They are awful, Glenys. An ice sculpture of a swan in the heat of summer? What possessed you?”
She took the place beside him. “Ignorance possessed me. I’ve never purchased an ice sculpture before, you see. Nor pineapples, nor kites. I had no idea.…Haverford, I’m sorry. This is my fault, and if you must reduce my settlements to pay for the party, then reduce them.”
“Your settlements involve very little funds anymore,” Julian said, though he’d reviewed the situation with her at the turn of the new year, as he did every year. “I’d have to sell land, which means reducing rental income, and land prices aren’t what they were.”
She worried the hem of her shawl with her forefinger against her thumb, a habit left over from infancy. “Are we rolled up, Julian? Have I spent our last groat?”
He was her brother, the head of her family, and in some regard responsible for her ignorance. He should have given her a budget, should have asked her for estimates—but then, he’d never purchased pineapples or ice swans either.
His parents and grandparents had done rather too much of both, and more than too much of purchasing books.
“In a detailed sense, I don’t know where we stand, Glenys. I’ll have to tally the sums due, see what assets I might be able to discreetly liquidate, prevail on Radnor for a spot of cash, and hope it tides us over to harvest and fall markets.”
“You’ll hate asking Radnor for help.”
“And Radnor will hate that I’m reduced to needing his aid, but there’s nothing else for it.” The exposed stone walls surrounding Julian for the first time felt not like a testament to long family history and sturdy defenses, but like a prison. His grandfather and father had decorated their prison with books, and borrowed from Sherbourne’s antecedents to do so.
Julian had never decided if borrowing under those circumstances had been sheer stupidity or arrogance.
Probably both. “How do you fancy having Miss Trelawny for a sister-in-law?” he asked.
Glenys left off worrying the edge of her shawl. “She’s silly, vapid, and half your age. I’d say she might mature out of it, but her own mother put her up to that stunt with the boat yesterday.”
“She’s very likely my best prospect for surviving our current penury.” The notion of marrying for money, theoretical for years, loomed as all too real—and awful—now. “Consider how the vaunted St. David book collection will fare in her hands, what sort of mother she’ll be to your nieces and nephews, and how she’ll take to having Griffin for a brother-in-law.”
Glenys rose. “Haverford, you can’t. There has to be another way.”
“She’s a viscount’s daughter—a mere third viscount—and she’s an heiress, Glenys. I can’t afford to ignore her, and you invited her here exactly because I must consider her, and women like her for my duchess.”
Glenys began to pace in a circle, for that was all the chamber allowed. “I hate this. I hate that you can’t have any joy, nothing but duty, nothing but drudgery, and there’s Sherbourne, happy as a spring lamb, very likely scheming to snatch Miss Trelawny from under your nose.”
“She’d bore him silly in a week. I suspect it’s you he wants.”
Glenys dropped into the chair at the desk. “I had that thought, but it was a cobwebby notion—I brushed it aside and pretended it wasn’t there. What makes him think I’d entertain his suit? He’s not awful, and he’s not bad-looking despite his Viking dimensions, but he’s…he’s not warm.”
Julian suspected the same criticism could be leveled in his direction. “He is exceedingly well fixed, Glenys, and there were debts between his father and our late papa that I haven’t been able to pay off.”
Ten years after Papa’s death, more than three hundred monthly payments already made, and a substantial sum—probably the exact value of Julian’s soul—was still owing to Sherbourne. The promissory note that had most recently come due only added to that misery.
“And then I order ice sculptures.”
Plural? “You can un-order them. The ball isn’t for two weeks. We have flowers aplenty this time of year, and they will have to do for centerpieces. The pineapples can be un-ordered, and you can limit the afternoon offerings to punch and dry cake. Add a bottle of wine to the punch and nobody will complain about the lack of sandwiches.”
Glenys leafed through the stack of bills. “Radnor might have some ideas about how to economize.”
She’d saved Julian from making the suggestion. “Once the kite flying is over,” he said, “I’ll go through those bills and see what else might be done to reduce expenses. Put aside your animosity toward Radnor long enough to gain the benefit of his cleverness, but do not, under any circumstances, accept a loan or a gift of money from him, Glenys. I’ll handle that discussion if it becomes necessary.”
“Radnor will assist any way he can. You might consider consulting with Miss Windham too, Haverford. She’s been to many a house party and has already made useful suggestions. I like her.”
I love her. The thought flew into Julian’s mind softly, the way a dove landing on an open windowsill brought sunshine and joy into a whole room.
“Then we will also consult with Miss Windham, but please do not think to matchmake in that direction, Glenys.”
Glenys set the letters and bills on the far corner of the desk. “Why not? She’s of suitable family, she’s sensible. She’d do, Haverford, and she is about as well connected as an unmarried woman can be.”
“While I am a ruralizing, penniless duke. Imagine how that will look, when our solicitors approach the Duke of Moreland, hat in hand. My family seat is decades overdue for repairs, my heir has the wits of a ten-year-old, and I’m rumored to have a by-blow in my best friend’s nursery. Add to that, I struggle to pay even the trades, and no sane duke should allow his niece within three counties of me.”
Glenys hugged the shawl more closely about her, though the room wasn’t particularly cold for a woman used to living in a castle. “The debts are worse than I thought, then.”
“And the talk is worse too. I vote my seat, in part because a conscientious record in the Lords is one way to repair the damage gossip does to our standing season by season.”
He and Glenys should have had this talk five years ago, or even ten, and regularly thereafter. He hadn’t wanted to burden her with their misfortunes, and now pineapples and ice sculptures had been heaped on the damage done by Papa and Grandpapa.
“I should never have arranged this house party,” Glenys said, moving to the window. The frame still bore the contours of an arrow slit, the windowsill forming a wedge that narrowed to a small aperture fitted with mullioned glass.
“You were determined to find me a bride. I was determined to find you a husband, and it appears Sherbourne, of all people, intends to offer for you. He’s the last man I’d like to see you marry, though, so you’re not to consider him seriously. We’ll get through this, Glenys.”
“Right,” she said, arms crossed. “Dry cakes, no sandwiches, and cancel the flourishes. I can do that. You should still consider Miss Windham.”
“Not if I esteem her, which I do. See what ideas Radnor has, and I’ll look forward to flying kites in the park after lunch.”
Glenys’s eyes bore banked panic, and Julian was tempted to offer her some token comfort—a single ornamental pineapple, one modest ice sculpture—but that way lay yet more bills he could not pay, more years without a duchess, while Sherbourne perched like a raptor on the castle parapets.
Julian would keep to his budgets and plans, despite all temptation to the contrary, even if affording a duchess took another ten years.
And he would spend his afternoon flying bedamned useless kites and pretending to enjoy it.