Chapter Five #3
‘Ruse? Oh, you mean telling him it is an arrangement? Well, my father knows how bad my first Season was, how much I hated all the subsequent Seasons and how much I am dreading being dragged to another. Neither of us can stop my indomitable mother, who won’t cease throwing me at men until she finds one who doesn’t throw me back.
Father has simply accepted that I have found an effective way out of an unwanted and difficult situation. ’
‘That statement has raised so many questions I hardly know where to start.’
‘Well, we have a long walk ahead of us if everyone is to see how respectable we are. What do you wish to know?’
‘Why was your first Season so bad?’
Margaret huffed out a sigh.
‘If you don’t wish to tell me, that is perfectly all right.’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just a tedious story that has probably been told many a time before.’
He waited. Margaret was unsure that she wanted to reveal anything about her past, although she did want him to know what being out in Society was like for a debutante, something he not only did not understand but saw as a source of amusement and ridicule.
She took a deep breath and plunged on before she could falter.
‘I thought I had fallen in love,’ she said matter-of-factly, as if this was not the most devastating thing that had happened to her.
‘I actually thought Cupid’s arrow really had struck me and I had fallen in love at first sight, just as you described it to Lady Chedmore. ’
‘And?’
‘The man was…’ She hesitated. ‘The man was a charmer, a notorious rake and someone who took pleasure in seducing debutantes.’
She felt him stiffen beside her.
‘But don’t worry. I saw through him before anything untoward happened. I remain completely respectable and still suitable for your purpose.’
Instead of causing him to relax, his body grew tenser. ‘Men like that should be horse-whipped.’
She looked up at him in disbelief. ‘What? Rakes? Seducers?’
‘Yes, men who prey on the innocent.’
‘Is that not a case of the pot calling the kettle black?’
He came to a halt and looked down at her, his jaw tense. ‘No matter what you may think of me, Miss Whitmore, I am not a seducer and until now have never been associated in any way whatsoever with a debutante.’
She noticed that he did not deny being a rake.
But as that was well documented in those newspapers her father thought she did not read, it would be foolish to try and do so.
And she would have to take his word regarding his claim not to be a seducer of the innocent.
Not that it mattered because he most certainly would not get a chance to seduce her, even if he wanted to, which she had ample evidence to prove he did not.
‘So, what happened to this blaggard?’
‘Well, he did try to have his wicked way with me, as they say in all the best melodramas.’ She laughed off what had been far from funny at the time. ‘And let’s just say the man discovered a woman can sometimes wield a parasol as effectively as a fencer his sword.’
To prove her point, she gave a quick jab in the air with her closed parasol.
‘Good for you. But did your father not do anything about it? He’s already threatened to ruin me if I harm you. Surely he did the same with this scoundrel?’
‘At first, I chose not to tell Father, and he put my change in mood down to being thwarted in love, which in a way I suppose I had been. But when I saw the man behaving in the same solicitous manner towards another debutante I was so furious I told Father everything before he could cause further harm to another young lady.’
‘And?’
‘I’m not entirely sure what Father did, but no one saw…
’ She paused, not wanting to mention that vile creature’s name.
‘No one saw him again during the Season as he had departed for Australia. I heard rumours that his eminently respectable family were so horrified at their son’s behaviour they sent him out there with instructions never to return.
I believe in such cases the reprobate is paid to remain on the other side of the world, with the threat that the family will financially cut him off entirely if he ever sets foot in England again. ’
‘Yes, remittance men, but such a fate is far better than he deserved,’ the Duke mumbled. ‘I am so sorry you went through such a terrible ordeal. Is that why you hate the Season so much, because you think all men are like that?’
She shrugged, not knowing the answer to that question.
‘That does make perfect sense,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘So why do you keep attending each Season? I would have thought no one could make a woman with your strength of character do anything she did not want to.’
Again, she shrugged, not entirely sure herself. ‘For a while I suppose I still foolishly lived in hope of meeting a man who would be all that I wanted in a husband.’ She huffed out a derisive laugh. ‘But mostly it’s because it’s just easier to go along with what Mama wants.’
She could have added that it did not take long for her foolish hope to be replaced by cynicism.
Despite, or because of, her mother’s increasingly desperate efforts to find her a husband, no man showed any interest in her during her second Season.
By the third Season she was well and truly confined to the wallflower corner and knew that was where she would find herself during her fourth.
‘Am I to assume you never told your mother about what happened?’
‘You assume correctly. While Father and I have a relationship based on honesty, with Mother things are slightly different and we do try to protect her. Although, because I never told her what really happened, Mother thinks it was all my fault and I allowed a suitable husband to get away.’
‘I see, but your relationship with your father is not entirely honest either.’
She stopped walking and stared up at him. ‘How can you possibly say that? I never lie to Father.’
‘But you did not tell him the entire truth regarding our arrangement.’
‘Hmm, well, no, I felt it best, given the reason why you need this engagement, to keep some of the, well, sordid details back from my father.’
‘Yes, a good idea, but it is not what I meant. You can’t deny that you told him that we plan to marry, which we don’t, and never have.’
‘If you’d listened more closely to what I said, you would have heard me make it clear this was an arranged engagement. That’s all I ever said.’
‘But an eventual marriage was certainly implied.’
‘I thought it prudent to leave that somewhat vague. What inference my father took from my words is up to him. I never said I intended to marry you.’
He laughed loudly, drawing the attention of several passing strollers. ‘With a mind as sharp as yours and your gift for twisting words to your own advantage, I do believe you should be a politician or a lawyer.’
Margaret tensed, remembering what the Earl of Northwood had said, that a quick wit and knowing one’s own mind were admirable qualities in a politician, but not in a wife.
‘Except, like illustrators for Punch, they are two more occupations that do not welcome women,’ she said with more bitterness than she intended.
‘Well, that should certainly change.’
‘On that, we are in complete agreement.’
They continued walking in silence, and Margaret admonished herself for once again becoming upset by that overheard conversation between the Duke and the Earl and wished she could stop going over and over it in her head.
It mattered not that he had said she meant nothing to him.
He meant nothing to her either. And that was as it should be.
And yet she had revealed more about herself to this man who meant nothing to her than she had intended.
Was it because she wanted him to know that once she had been like those debutantes the Earl of Northwood saw as ideal wife material?
Was that why she had told him about her horrid first Season?
So he would see she had not always been quite so disillusioned?
That she had once optimistically hoped that love, marriage and happiness would come her way?
Was she trying to convince him that she had not always been a wallflower but had first retreated to that corner after her unpleasant experience because it felt safe?
Then, as she’d become increasingly invisible to the courting men, or in some cases the topic of cruel ridicule, she’d become more guarded, putting that reputed quick wit and sharp tongue to effective use against those offensive dullards, all the while having to deal with the increasingly desperate behaviour of her mother.
They were among the reasons why she was twenty-four and unmarried, but she could only wonder why he had not taken a wife.
As the Earl had said, many a debutante would be happy to let him live however he chose in exchange for becoming a duchess.
And dukes were expected to marry and to sire a child or two, as the Earl had so crudely put it. There was only one way to find out.
‘Tell me, why have you not married? Aren’t dukes expected to do so? Didn’t your parents insist you marry, have children and carry on the family line?’
‘My parents are both dead, so what they expect of me is irrelevant as they’re in no position to make demands,’ he said with a laugh that did not sound entirely amused.
‘Yes, I did know that both your parents had died and I should not have mentioned them. I’m sorry and did not mean to be flippant,’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m better off without them.’
She looked up at him, shocked at his statement and certain it could not be so.
‘Did you ever meet the late Duke of Rosedale?’ he said, registering her expression.
She shook her head.
‘Lucky you. The man was a brute, and that was when he was in a good mood.’ Once again, he said this with a laugh that appeared to cover a wealth of pain.
‘That must have been very hard for you when you were a child,’ she said quietly.