Chapter Nine
A t three in the afternoon, Aunt Penelope’s small garden was already in the shade of the houses surrounding it, and an uninviting chill hung over the drab flowerbeds and evergreen shrubs. Jack closed the drawing room doors behind them, and led Elenora down from the paved terrace onto the gravel pathway that traversed the garden. Lady Wetherby had been right when she’d said it was quite a proper place for a walk, as it possessed not the least nook or cranny to be private in. Not that he had any wish to tarry with Miss Wetherby in a discreet corner. Of course he didn’t. No. Definitely not.
His own defensiveness surprised him. Did he want a nook or cranny in which to be alone with this strange girl with her barely present hand on his arm? Was he interested in her further than as a lighthearted amusement? Absolutely not. Why on earth was he even letting this thought intrude into his mind? He gave himself a mental shake. In a few months their charade would be over and he could go back to what he did best—enjoying himself. Only… wasn’t he quite enjoying this? Ridiculous.
“I’m afraid Aunt Penelope’s gardens are nothing to write home about,” Elenora said, her tone a mixture of the matter of fact and apology. She kept her head turned away from him as she spoke, possibly deliberately. She seemed to have a strong aversion to looking him in the eye, as she’d already admitted, and even, now, to looking at the lower portion of his face. What a conundrum she was.
But she was right about the garden. And it was cold. He smiled. “I’m not walking in it for the pleasure of admiring its appearance.”
She stayed silent, perhaps trying to work out what he’d meant by that, and they reached the end of the garden, which did not take long, and the high brick wall that must separate it from the garden of the house behind, or maybe from the mews.
However, silence did not seem to suit her, and clearly she hadn’t worked out his meaning. “Then why are you walking in it?” She paused and he was forced to halt as well. Her head turned and she appeared to be regarding his chin. “And why have you chosen to walk in it with me?” Her rather blunt way of talking was not unattractive. Refreshing after the dissembling of every other young lady he’d ever met. It seemed that if she wanted to know something, she wasn’t going to beat about the bush.
However, now she’d asked the question, he wasn’t at all certain of the answer. “We are an engaged couple now.” Stating the obvious. “And we need to satisfy certain requirements in order to maintain the illusion. One of these is that I should call on you here at your aunt’s in order to spend time with you. And that is what I am doing now.” How stuffy and pompous that sounded. So unlike the open way she talked.
Her eyes rose for a moment to meet his, then dropped again to somewhere around his lapels. “Pray don’t feel that you must do this, Lord Broxbourne. I am quite certain that the fact you have requested my hand in marriage will be enough for my mother. She will think no less of you if you absent yourself from my aunt’s house for long periods.”
A sense of feeling affronted arose in Jack’s chest. Did she not want to spend time with him? Unused to this sort of reaction from women he met, whether ladies of the Ton or not, Jack felt piqued. “I fear your mother is not the only one who will be observing our behavior, Miss Wetherby. The eyes of the Ton will be upon us, for you have snared for yourself, or they must think that you have, one of the most sought after of bachelors. I bring you an earldom, or I would if our engagement were real, and they are few and far between. Many an ambitious mama will be watching the progress of our engagement with an envious eye. If we deviate from the normal, they will be quick to gossip. And I have no desire, as yet, to be the subject of the gossip of the old biddies who fancy themselves as arbiters of taste and good behavior.” As if he wasn’t already, with his so recently ended liaison with Louise and all that had gone before it. But best not to mention that.
“That is a very long speech to say you’ll be calling on me just to keep up appearances.”
Was she finding the situation amusing?
He shrugged and they set off again along the bottom of the garden, where the stunted, heavily-pruned rosebushes bestowed a sad appearance on the flowerbeds. “I am known for my long speeches when in my cups.”
Her eyes rose again, this time with a definite twinkle in her blue eyes. “And are you in your cups now?”
He burst out laughing. “You are a most original young lady. I begin to think that being engaged to you for the length of the season might be quite amusing.”
A frown marred her brow and the thought that perhaps her openness was rubbing off on him arose.
She pursed her lips before speaking. “Are you laughing at me? I must inform you that I do not like to be mocked.” Anxiety filled her eyes. Had others mocked her in the past, perhaps for the attributes he found the most attractive? How unkind. The longing to be kind to her, much as he had been kind to little Josie, swept over him. Good heavens. He must try to keep it in check. With children like Josie he could allow himself free rein with kindness, but with an impressionable girl like Miss Wetherby, he must be more circumspect. Josie might repay his kindness with trust, but a girl of his new fiancée’s age might take it quite the wrong way.
They turned the corner and started back toward the terrace, past a small pond with a Grecian statue at its center. He shook his head. “Heaven forbid that I should do that. My intention was to flatter you, Miss Wetherby.” He paused. “Although, as we are engaged now, perhaps you will allow me to address you as Elenora?” Such a pretty name, the desire to say it aloud waxed in his breast. He pushed aside the part of him that questioned the wisdom of such a move.
Her eyes twinkled again, the hunted look dispelled. “I think perhaps that would please Mama. She would see it as a ‘good sign’.” She paused, drawing in her lower lip over her teeth as though in deep thought. “And,” she ventured, “if you are to call me by my name, might I also call you by yours? It’s Jack, isn’t it? A delightful name, I think, redolent of the countryside and bucolic idylls. I love the countryside far better than London.”
He laughed. “You have some novel ideas. I had no idea my name held such connotations. Please call me by it… Elenora.” Her name flowed off his tongue like water burbling in a little waterfall.
Wait. What was he thinking? This smacked of romantic thoughts. No, he had to stop this. He couldn’t possibly be cherishing those sort of thoughts about her, despite the loveliness of her name and her blonde beauty. She was not at all the sort of young lady who should promote those sort of feelings in him. No, he preferred women of experience who liked to play the game of love with him, and who didn’t come with the threat of marriage. Although, he had to admit Elenora didn’t come with that threat either, despite what her family thought.
She nodded. They were climbing the three steps to the terrace by now. “Jack. I shall definitely call you Jack as I like the name so much. Although… it does occur to me, now I think of it, that it would be an excellent name for a dog.”
They were at the door. Through the glass Jack could see the drawing room now held Lady Wetherby and her sister-in-law, although etiquette had kept them from pressing their noses to the window. Thank goodness. He burst out laughing. “And now I think you are mocking me.”
She stopped, raising her eyes to his for a moment. He could see the effort it cost her. “Why, Jack, I would never mock you.” She kept her face straight, but her eyes were laughing as she reached for the doors.
The sudden realization that this season was going to be quite fun washed over Jack as she opened the door and they stepped back into the drawing room. Still laughing.
Once Jack had taken his leave, Elenora, much to the annoyance of Mama, who seemed inordinately pleased to have caught the engaged couple laughing together, repaired to the late Sir George Dandridge’s library. This was where Mama had decreed the book she’d borrowed from Jack should be kept. If Mama had her way, it would have rested unopened and inviolate on the large desk under the tall sash window as some kind of symbol of their engagement. However, Elenora was not about to waste the chance to read it by sitting sewing with the other ladies in the family. Not when a fascinating book about the antiquities of Athens was available.
It was there that her two brothers found her some two hours later, when they called to dine with the family.
Matthew, ever the more boisterous of the two, flung the library door open and fairly catapulted into the room, his gangly limbs reminiscent of Bluebell’s latest foal at home in Penworthy. “What’s this I hear, Sis?” He flung himself into one of the high-backed leather chairs by the blazing fire and set his booted feet on the fire surround. “Papa tells me you’re hitching yourself to an earl.”
Jolyon, the elder by two years, strolled in with more decorum, as befitted Papa’s heir.
“Not an earl, you nincompoop. Do you never listen? The heir of an earl.”
“Makes no difference.” Matthew gave a derisive snort. “An earl one day, that’s for sure. And our little sis to be a countess, no less. That’s a few steps up on a mere baronet, Joly.”
Jolyon sat down on the window seat, stretching his not-so-long legs out in front of him. Both young men stood a head shorter than their tall father, having inherited their stature and rather sallow looks from Mama. Elenora was herself only an inch shorter than Matthew, the shorter of the two. Jolyon tapped his nose at his brother. “It’s not so much that she’s betrothed to an earl’s heir, you numbskull. More which earl’s heir she’s to marry.”
Matthew’s dark brows rose but he didn’t stir himself from his seat in front of the fire.
Oh dear. Elenora had an inkling where this was going. Both her brothers suffered from the totally unnecessary desire to protect her. It had been the same all her life. For some reason they saw themselves as her champions. This had been a nuisance to her on numerous occasions, such as when she’d been teaching herself to swim in the lake at Penworthy and they’d thought she was drowning and dived in to save her.
“It matters nothing to which earl’s son I am engaged,” she snapped, closing her book with a thud. Now her brothers were here, she was unlikely to get the peace required to read it again. And besides which, she should be going upstairs to change for dinner soon. Perhaps she could escape their attentions that way.
“Which earl’s son is it, then?” Matthew asked.
Jolyon sighed. “As I said, you never listen, do you? Papa told us not ten minutes since when you were staring out into the garden like a sap, probably thinking about that actress of yours in Oxford. It’s Lord Broxbourne she’s engaged to. The Earl of Amberley’s heir.”
Realization dawned on Matthew’s plain face, as well as a self-conscious flush. He was not the brightest spoon in the drawer, that was certain. “Oh. That earl’s heir.”
Annoyance washed through Elenora. Why were her family picking holes in her engagement? The fact that it wasn’t real was forgotten. She needed to defend Jack. “And what is wrong with being engaged to Jack Deveril?” she snapped. “He’s very eligible and Mama is overjoyed.”
“Thought you weren’t going to marry anyone?” Matthew, who was only a year older than her, so her closest sibling, asked. “Last summer, before I went off to Oxford, you swore to me you were going to stay a spinster and turn into a mad maiden aunt to all our children. When we have them, that is.” He colored a little, perhaps at the thought of what he’d have to do in order to obtain these hypothetical children.
She scowled at him. “A girl can change her mind.”
Jolyon crossed his legs at the ankles. His boots, unlike Jack’s were lacking in shine. “And Mama said you had to marry someone rich in order to pay off Papa’s debts, which Broxbourne surely is. Lucky fellow. I wish someone would pay mine off. Do you think your beau might do that for me, too?”
Irritated, Elenora shook her head with vehemence. “If Papa were not so addicted to gambling, I would not have to be marrying anyone. If I were you, Joly, I would give up the gambling as it will only serve to turn young ladies and their mamas against you. And no, I will not ask Jack to bail you out. It’s bad enough that he’s bailing out Papa.”
She shuddered. “I find it quite mortifying that my engagement is purely a financial agreement.” Did she? Well, she wasn’t about to admit to anything else. Certainly not to finding Jack Deveril interesting. Although thinking him interesting didn’t mean he was someone she might break her vow for. And anyway, he had such an air of supercilious entitlement about him, she couldn’t possibly ever like him in that way. No, she could never think of any man at all as anything other than a friend.
“Jack, is it?” Matthew said. “I see you have it badly, Sis.”
Fury rose. “I do not as you so crudely say ‘have it badly.’ Ours is a marriage of convenience only.” And now she was defending the fact she’d just bemoaned. So confusing. “If I have to marry, then I would prefer it to be to someone who can help our family.”
Goodness, her story was getting deeper and more complicated. Who’d have thought that the simple idea she and Jack had concocted last night would require so much elaboration? And the likelihood of it growing more tangled loomed ahead of her. Had she done the right thing in agreeing to this? At least Papa was no longer being dunned for what he owed, though. That was one achievement. In fact, as it was the achievement her engagement had been meant to bring about, she must surely now be absolved of further sacrifice. And she had no intention whatsoever of self-immolation on the bonfire of Joly’s debts. The fact that he’d not learned from Papa’s mistakes and Mama’s unhappiness rankled.
Her brothers exchanged wary glances, as though they might be sheltering a secret neither wanted to share with her.
Oh well. “And you can stop looking at each like that. I already know Jack’s a rake.” There, it was out in the open now. “If that was what you were both wondering about telling me. I know all about rakes.”
“You do?” Jolyon sounded disbelieving. “Are you sure?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We-ell,” Matthew said. “From what I’ve heard, and I’ve not been in Town that long but rumor does get about, he has a mistress.”
Jolyon nodded. “And she’s not his first.”
Matthew raised his eyebrows. “She’s not?”
Jolyon sighed. “Of course she’s not, you nincompoop. The man must be nearly forty. You don’t get to that age, unmarried, without leaving behind a string of unsuitable liaisons.”
Silence fell. Elenora and Matthew exchanged glances this time.
“Do you have a mistress, Joly?” Elenora asked.
His blush, deep and crimson and encompassing every square inch of skin above his cravat, gave her the answer.
“You do?” Matthew’s eyes had gone wide. “You sly dog.”
Jolyon had the grace to look awkward. “Not in front of Sis. Not for her ears. And don’t tell me you haven’t found a fancy piece in Oxford. I know how you fancy that actress.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Elenora snapped.
They both shook their heads in unison, faces a matching shade of puce.
Elenora couldn’t help herself. She had to giggle. “You should see your expressions. You’re both very funny and no doubt consider yourselves as suitable husband material despite Joly having a mistress and Matthew having had liaisons with… with ladies of… of lesser virtue in Oxford. So in what way does that enable you to pass judgment on my betrothed? You should think of your Bible and remember the saying ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
Jolyon found his voice first. “I say, Sis, I’m sorry if I flew off the handle a bit. Just trying to look out for you. If this fellow suits you, then it’s your choice. I’ll be honored to welcome him into our family. And the last thing I’d like to be classed as is ‘suitable husband material’—not for a long while yet at any rate.”
“Me too,” Matthew said, with a wide grin. “If he can make you happy, then we’ll be happy too.”
Elenora hugged herself inside. “You may rest assured, my dear brothers, that being engaged to Lord Broxbourne is making me very happy indeed.” Which was practically the only true thing she’d told them. She rose to her feet. “And now I think I’d better change for dinner.”
And with that she swept, she hoped regally, out of the library. Behind her she heard Matthew saying, “Now, what was she reading? One of those silly books on history she so likes, I’ll be bound. And it is!”
Brothers.