Regency Christmas Parties, page 7
Clara shifted on her seat as she recalled all the arguments she’d had with Lieutenant Warren over Bella’s determination to go through with this marriage. How she’d insisted the poor girl wanted security, above all else.
Why, oh, why had she put out of her mind what a very naughty girl Bella could be? Why had she forgotten all the misdemeanours she’d committed and instead recalled all the times she’d been affectionate? And grateful to Clara for her help?
As she watched Bella repeat her marriage vows, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Clara was filled with foreboding. Because she could see Bella not only using her position to settle old scores, the way she’d done with the stepmother, by making her give place to her on the front pew just now, but also in taking a lot of pleasure in thumbing her nose at anyone who tried to cross her in future. And, far from being beaten down, or upset, Clara could foresee Bella revelling in the skirmishes.
No wonder Lieutenant Warren had such a grim expression on his face. She wouldn’t say he’d been completely right, in all respects, but she could concede that he might have had good reason for having his doubts about this marriage.
But it was too late now. The Duke’s personal chaplain was proclaiming them man and wife.
Bella let out a most unladylike shriek, jumped up and down on the spot, and raised both hands in the air in a sort of triumphal dance. She then flung her raised arms round the Duke’s neck and kissed him full on the lips, making him chuckle fondly. She then turned from him, grabbed Clara’s hands and, in a gesture that took her so much by surprise she was unable to resist the momentum, pulled her to her feet and whirled her round in a way that would have been more fitting in the middle of a country dance than the chapel of a duke’s palace.
The Duke’s family, unsurprisingly, looked down their noses at this display.
‘Disgraceful,’ sneered Lady Baguley, the Duke’s eldest daughter, who had been acting as his hostess.
‘How can he,’ hissed his next daughter, ‘have given her the family diamonds to wear?’
‘She will never be fit for the role our dear mama filled with such grace and decorum,’ said the third, rather more loudly.
Although the Duke gave no sign that he had overheard, he surely must have done. Bella certainly had, because, having given Clara one extra twirl, she turned to the Duke’s daughters, making sure she had her back to the Duke himself, and stuck out her tongue at them, provoking a collective, shocked gasp.
She then turned to her new husband and, with a huge grin, linked her arm with his so that they could leave the chapel and make their way to the dining hall for the wedding breakfast.
Lieutenant Warren stepped forward, his arm outstretched, making Clara realise she was going to have to accept his escort, along with his disapproval. Because he clearly saw her as an accomplice to what his whole family seemed to regard as something very like a crime.
And, for the first time, it occurred to Clara that perhaps she could not blame them.
Chapter Nine
Hugo felt as if he’d swallowed a rock.
How had he managed to get it so wrong? Wrong about the bride, wrong about his uncle’s motives for marrying her and, to his way of thinking worst of all, wrong about the girl who was clutching at his sleeve now as they followed the bridal couple from the chapel.
He’d just worked his tongue round his mouth to try to dislodge the imaginary rock lodged in his throat, so that he could explain himself, when Miss Isherwood cleared her own throat.
‘Lieutenant Warren,’ she said timidly, ‘I have an apology to make.’
‘You do? No, no, it is I who must apologise to you.’
She frowned up at him. ‘What? But you were right, all along. About the unsuitability of this match,’ she said, nodding at the couple who were sauntering along in front of them. ‘I had forgotten just what a very naughty girl Bella could be. How she would take it into her head to...to defy anyone in authority for the mere sake of it, sometimes. What pleasure she took in getting away with mischief.’
‘You...you think she has married my uncle for some sort of mischievous reason? But you claimed you believed she did it to gain security.’
Miss Isherwood hung her head. ‘I wanted to believe the best of her. It has always been a weakness of mine, according to Miss Badger, that is, the head teacher. She says I am too soft-hearted and allow compassion to overrule my better judgement. That I should never have unpicked Bella’s embroidery and done it over, when she’d made a mess of it. That I should not have opened the window to let her back in when she’d run off to go to the fair, but made her sleep on the back step all night. That I should have known better than to allow her access to improving books when I might have known she’d only asked for them so she could tear out pages to use as curl papers.
‘Although, in my defence, I was the only one who could get through to her, on occasion, the only one she would listen to. And I did make her behave better. Often. I did!’
‘I am sure you did,’ he said soothingly.
‘Don’t patronise me when I am trying to apologise,’ she hissed. Probably because they’d reached the Chinese gallery and two footmen were standing in the doorway, handing out glasses of hot negus.
‘Is that,’ he asked, steering her to a cabinet full of ugly chinoiserie, which everyone else was avoiding, ‘what you are trying to do?’
‘Yes. And to admit that,’ she said, lifting her chin, ‘you may have had reason to oppose the wedding. And I am sorry that I have come to this realisation too late for it to do any good.’
He shook his head. ‘You did more than you know.’
She looked up at him sharply.
‘You challenged my assumptions, which led me to share my concerns with the Duke himself.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes. Last night.’
‘Clearly, you didn’t persuade him to change his mind.’
He took a sip of his drink before replying, ‘No. But then a man of honour cannot withdraw from a betrothal. However, he did confide in me, a little, about his motives for marrying your former pupil. His first marriage had been far from happy.’ Lord Braid had actually described his first wife as a cold fish. As Hugo’s eyes strayed to where that very woman’s daughters were standing, shooting their father and his new bride poisonous looks, he could well believe it.
‘And that he felt that at his time of life he had every right to snatch at what happiness he could, while he still could. Then I...ah...’ He paused, wondering why he felt the need to make a clean breast of it. Pushed the doubt aside and just plunged headlong into his confession. ‘I am afraid that then I used something you told me to try to, well, at least put him on his guard. I told him she was only marrying him for his money.’
‘I never said that!’
‘You used the term security, but it amounts to the same thing.’
‘It absolutely does not.’
‘Well, anyway,’ he put in swiftly, ‘it made no difference. He just said he was glad an old buffer like him had anything to offer a lovely young creature like her. And then he began to sing her praises. He believes she is genuinely fond of him and that therefore he doesn’t need to worry about...’ Well, the Duke had used the word cuckolding, but he wasn’t sure if an innocent like Miss Isherwood would know what that meant. ‘Well, he has seen how loyal she is to those who show her kindness, because so few people have done so, during her short life.’
Hugo also skipped the part of the conversation where the Duke had used the way his bride had invited her withered-up spinster schoolteacher to be her maid of honour, rather than someone of fashion or influence, as an example of that loyalty, for obvious reasons.
‘Then he chuckled and said he knew she was a minx, but that he was looking forward—and I’m quoting him as accurately as I can recall—to watching her “setting his starched-up daughters in a bustle, before going on to ruffle the feathers of all the stuffy society matrons who would thoroughly disapprove of her antics”. It seems that, of late, he has been growing increasingly jaded and felt he had nothing to look forward to, during what he termed his twilight years, but boredom and fatigue. But no longer, because he would never know what she might take it into her head to do next.’
Miss Isherwood gaped at him. ‘You mean he regards her in the light of an...an amusing sort of...pet? They both,’ she continued, before he could form a suitably tactful response to that, ‘if you don’t mind me saying so, appear to have taken leave of their senses.’
‘No,’ he mused, ‘actually, I think they will both be getting what they want from this match. And I can imagine them both being content with one another. At least for some time.’
She glanced up at him sharply. ‘But you were so set against this marriage. Whatever has made you change your mind?’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘It was the way she flung herself at him. With such exuberance, once she’d become his wife, legally. It was...well, so different from what I’d been dreading. You see, I got her all muddled up, in my thinking, with another girl I knew, whose parents forced her to marry a much older man because he was rich and titled. Julie begged me to help her escape her fate, but I could do nothing. I was a young man with no influence, and no hope of marrying her myself since we were both underage. My failure to do anything for that poor creature has weighed on my conscience ever since.
‘And when I heard of my own uncle’s intention to marry a girl barely out of the schoolroom, I... I suppose I acted without looking at all the facts. And today I have seen that although neither of them is marrying for reasons that I would consider essential, they are both going into it with their eyes open, of their own free will.’
‘Oh, I see. Oh, but that makes perfect sense,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘You were, in fact, trying to rescue her, not trying to protect your uncle, which was what I assumed at first.’ She set her empty glass on a tray proffered at the precise moment she’d finished, by one of his uncle’s extremely efficient footmen. ‘It is all of a piece,’ she added, with a shake of her head.
‘All of a piece? What does that mean?’
‘Only that you seem to go round trying to rescue females all the time. Whether we need it or not.’
‘May I remind you that if I hadn’t stepped in when I did, you would first have been trampled by a horse and then kissed, or perhaps worse, by Lord Baguley.’
‘If I had been trampled by the horse, I would not have been in danger from Lord Baguley. Since I presume I would have been lying down somewhere having my broken bones set.’
‘And you accuse me of being pedantic! Look, I have just tried to apologise to you, d—’ He stopped himself before uttering a curse word.
Now it was her turn to sigh. ‘You are right. I seem to have dropped into the habit of arguing with you for the sake of it, don’t I? Which is foolish, since we are, at last, coming to some sort of understanding.’
‘Are we?’ He felt suspicious of her sudden about-turn. Her valiant effort to be conciliatory.
‘Well, yes. I mean, you said that it wasn’t your idea of what marriage should be about and I can totally agree with that! I mean, I would never gain any pleasure from thumbing my nose at people, just to see them bridle, nor could I glean any satisfaction from spending my time working out how I could settle scores with all the people who have wronged me.’
As she gazed round the room at the various factions in his family who clustered in groups, disdainfully eyeing those with whom they’d fallen out, he found himself wondering which people had wronged her. And wanting to run them to earth so he could settle their hash.
Only she didn’t want him to ‘rescue’ her, let alone avenge her, did she?
‘And I,’ he said, as the butler dramatically flung open the doors to the dining room, ‘would take absolutely no pleasure in having a bride who saw me only as a provider of life’s luxuries. Who would expect me to turn a blind eye to her escapades. Or even laugh at them.’
‘No, you would only marry a woman if you truly cared for her,’ she sighed.
‘And if I could be certain she cared for me,’ he replied bitterly, as he caught sight of one of his aunt’s protégées darting him a languid look over her shoulder as she began to follow her group in the direction of the open doors. ‘Rather than just fixing on the possibility of a coronet.’
‘Any sensible woman would see that there is more to you than the potential to offer her a position in society,’ she declared, with some heat. ‘I mean, although I do not, myself, have any ambition in that quarter, since I have a secure place in my own right, being valued by the head teacher for my skill and intelligence...’
‘Even though she thinks you are too soft-hearted with the naughty girls?’
‘A secure place,’ she continued, adding a degree of frost to her words, but carrying on as though he hadn’t spoken, ‘because the world will never run out of orphans in need of a decent education.’
More and more people were putting down their emptied glasses and drifting from the room. He supposed, as groomsman, he ought to be leading the procession, rather than lingering in a corner. But he wanted to hear what Miss Isherwood had to say first. And she wasn’t likely to confide in him where anyone else could overhear.
‘So what,’ he asked, lowering his voice as he moved closer and stepped in front of her to obstruct her, should she decide to walk off just when things were getting interesting, ‘do you think I have to offer a woman, then, even though you, yourself, do not wish to avail yourself of my person?’
‘I... I... Oh, you are so infuriating that I forget!’ Her eyes darted right, then left, before she raised them to his face. ‘Even if I did think, for a moment, there was something, right now I cannot imagine why I ever thought there could be.’
‘You do not find me physically attractive, perchance? You do not sometimes wonder, when all those kissing games are going on, what it might be like to kiss me?’
Her face turned bright red. ‘How dare you accuse me of any such thing? Why, I...’ Her eyes darted away. She wrung her hands. And then she looked up at him in puzzlement. ‘How did you know?’
His heart skipped a beat. What was she saying? That in spite of all the animosity she’d shown him she found him attractive? As attractive as he found her?
‘Because I have been thinking exactly the same thing,’ he said thickly. ‘And I’m damned if I know why. You are the most infuriating, argumentative, ungrateful woman I have ever come across.’
She stopped wringing her hands. She looked up at him. Looked to the doors through which everyone else was already making their way.
‘And you,’ she said, as a very determined look came to her face, ‘are the most overbearing, insufferable male I have ever met.’
Then she stood on tiptoe, rested her hands flat against his chest as if for balance, before planting her lips fleetingly, yet firmly against his own.
And then, while he was still reeling from the shock of it, she darted away from him.
Leaving him so stunned he was completely unable to move.
Chapter Ten
Could Clara blame her behaviour on the negus? For she’d drunk it on an empty stomach since, in spite of Bella saying they could have breakfast sent to her room, neither of them had actually ordered any. And she wasn’t used to strong drink, at any time of day.
No. It would be feeble to blame anything but her own overwhelming need to seize the moment. Nor, she decided mutinously, was she going to allow guilt to creep up on her and ruin a moment that she would much rather treasure like a precious Christmas gift. After all, when would she ever get the opportunity to kiss a handsome man, again? When was she ever likely to meet another man like Lieutenant Warren, come to that? Handsome men weren’t exactly thick on the ground at Heath Top School. Miss Badger did her utmost to keep them away. Which was why girls like Bella had to climb out of windows to meet them.
Clara wasn’t, and never had been, that type of girl. And so she made sure they were never alone again, for the rest of the day. It wasn’t that hard, since the Duke had organised no end of festivities to celebrate his wedding. There was the lengthy feast, to start with. After which a troupe of carol singers came from the village to sing to them.
Then there was a professional ensemble, imported direct from Drury Lane, who performed a comic piece, followed by some operatic arias. And then everyone went to change for dinner. Then there was dinner. And then there were more boisterous games for the younger set, while the older guests gambled enormous amounts of money on whist or piquet.
Lieutenant Warren hovered about, eyeing her darkly. But she had no intention of giving him any chance to accuse her of being like all the other women he said kept on trying to trap him into matrimony. Or to say he’d been right to suspect she was the sort of woman who could have somehow trained Bella to develop the wiles she’d deployed to entrap her wealthy Duke. Which was laughable! How could she, a spinster, with no experience of men whatsoever, have been able to teach a girl like Bella anything to do with anything worldly? If anything, it was the other way round.
It was exposure to the atmosphere of this place that had changed her. Somehow, she must have absorbed the lax morality and become corrupted. Had excused her behaviour by saying what all the gentlemen had said as they’d brandished their sprigs of mistletoe. It’s only a kiss.
It was just as well she was returning to her school in the morning. There, she would no longer be tempted to feast until she felt as if her stomach would explode. Or have to play games that entailed dodging the questing hands of lecherous men. Or puzzle over riddles that had answers which made all the worldly wise, titled people shriek with laughter, but which had left her sensing that if she had understood the joke she would have been rather shocked.
