Chapter Nine
The very next day, Verity decided to walk around to her father’s lodgings in Bruton Street.
She refused point blank Aunt Josephine’s offer to accompany her, mainly because she didn’t want her aunt to see what sort of lodgings Papa had.
However, her aunt put her dainty foot down and insisted she accept the services of one of the footmen to make sure she remained safe.
“So many disreputables about, my dear. I couldn’t bear it if anything were to happen to you now we are so happily reunited. ”
Marrying her off to a disreputable didn’t seem to be bothering her much though. Just because he had a title and a huge income.
Verity gave in with polite good grace. And she forbore from telling her aunt how she’d negotiated the dangerous back streets of cities like Venice, Rome, Florence, and Paris in her travels, almost always alone.
She also didn’t reveal to her the fact that she was in the habit of carrying a slender knife tucked into the side of her boots and a small muff pistol in her reticule.
Such a revelation might have come as a shock to so gently bred a lady.
She’d been less adept at preventing her aunt from insisting on providing her with a wedding trousseau, probably because she’d rarely had any new clothes and the whole idea of a complete new wardrobe was intoxicating.
“I have only the one daughter who is now long married,” Aunt Josephine exclaimed, wagging an admonitory finger at her niece when she protested that it would be too expensive.
“None of her beautiful daughters, my grandchildren, are as yet out, and I have several years to wait until even Eleanor, the oldest of them, will require my services. So you must, you simply must, allow me the pleasure of dressing you for your wedding. It is a mother’s duty, and as you no longer have one, I would consider it an honor if you were allow me to undertake that role. ”
Faced with such an onslaught carried out in so beseeching a manner, and coupled with the knowledge that Papa’s nonexistent resources could not have furnished her with even a pair of new gloves, Verity had agreed.
And pushing aside her misgivings about just about everything, she had relaxed enough to enjoy the sensation of being looked after by someone else.
She’d been the one doing the looking after for so long, each time her aunt did something nice for her, or spoke a kind word, she inexplicably found herself tearing up.
She had to get a grip or she would turn into one of those awful weepy women she so despised.
So it was that after a morning spent at her aunt’s dressmakers, as three new gowns were simply not enough, followed by a light luncheon in the parlor, Verity set out, in the company of a tall and sturdy young footman called George, in the direction of Papa’s lodgings.
The house in Bruton Street had been divided into numerous rooms let to the less well-off who might aspire to occupy the fringe of society.
Older men like Papa who were down on their luck, young men, often younger brothers, just come up from Oxford or Cambridge in the hope of snaring a rich wife, and a few merchants who were in town to do business, so were frowned upon by those who did not need business in order to survive.
However, despite having lived there for several weeks with Papa, Verity had encountered none of them.
Papa’s rooms were on the third floor up a staircase that had seen better days when this house had belonged to one family. With George following in her wake, Verity climbed the stairs and tapped on Papa’s door.
Nothing.
She deliberately counted to a hundred in her head, to allow him time to get up, shuffle across, and answer the door, before she knocked again, a little more loudly.
This time she heard the distinct sound of something being knocked over and some swearing. Beside her, George’s expression remained politely blank, although he must be wondering where it was she’d brought him.
The door opened.
Papa, dressed in the same banyan he’d had for years and which was more threadbare every time she saw it, took a moment to recognize her.
Unsurprisingly, as she could smell the alcohol on his breath even from six feet away.
His eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed, and his still-thick white hair stood out from his head in a fuzzy halo, giving him the appearance of a puzzled cherub.
“Verity?”
She sighed. Did he not know his own child?
She nodded to George to remain outside and stepped through the door.
Having closed it behind her, she looked Papa up and down.
Much as she loved him, she couldn’t deny that most of their problems were due to his behavior.
To his refusal to believe that he couldn’t make their living from playing cards and conning people.
Although, to be honest, he was considerably better at conning people than he was at cards.
If only he wasn’t in the habit of taking the money he made in a con and frittering it away on cards, life might have been a lot easier for them both.
But it was no use crying over spilled milk, as her grandmother had liked to say when something went wrong.
“Papa.” She gave him a quick, hard hug, and pulled him over to sit at the table.
The room was furnished with a bed, a wardrobe and this table, with just the two chairs, one of which was wobbly.
Her own tiny boxroom, from which Aunt Josephine’s emissaries had collected her meager belongings only a few short days ago, was next door.
She took the seat opposite his and covered his gnarled old hand with her own.
Having been away from him now for longer than they’d ever been parted, even that time he’d been clapped in jail in Vienna, it came as a shock to her how she felt she was seeing him anew, as if through Aunt Josephine’s eyes.
Instead of her wonderful Papa, she saw an old, broken man, turning to drink to drown his sorrows.
A sick old man with a cough he couldn’t shake off, lurching from one desperate attempt to make money to the next.
It was surprising how even so short a separation could render them almost strangers.
She didn’t like the way it made her feel one bit.
His eyes crinkled in a gentle smile and in an instant he was no longer a stranger she felt sorry for and was back to being her beloved Papa.
“Verity, my love. I didn’t think to see you again now I hear you’ve moved into high society with such ease.
” The slight slur in his words betrayed his inebriation, and his hands shook.
As with many drunks, it took a lot to get him slurring.
A lump rose in Verity’s throat. “How could I not come to you? You are my dear Papa and I love you above all else.” She squeezed his hand.
“You know you are.” He’d been the center of her world for so long, how could he not be now?
She could forgive him anything, even handing her over to a stranger to pay his debts.
His smile widened. “And I find all has worked out well, as I knew it would, and you are to be married. To an earl, no less. The gods are smiling on us at last. On you, and through you, on me also.”
She wasn’t quite so sure about that, not with what her husband-to-be clearly suspected her of.
That was no way to begin a marriage. Indecision wracked her.
What she had come here wanting was for him to tell her everything would be all right and that they could slip away to Dover and the Continent and she wouldn’t have to marry a man who despised her.
But, now she was face to face with his obvious happiness that she was to move up in society, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to do that.
He seemed so happy at what had happened to her, did she dare burst his bubble?
But she needed someone’s advice and she had no one to turn to but him.
She took a steadying breath. “I have to inform you, Papa, that I do not much care for the gentleman everyone seems to want me to marry.”
His faded-blue eyes widened for a moment before narrowing.
She’d seen that obdurate expression many times before.
“Frankly, my dear, I do not in any way see that as a barrier for marriage. Especially not as good a marriage as this one. It is not considered essential to love one’s spouse.
That will surely come when you get to know Lord Dunster better. ”
“I did not say I don’t love him, although I most certainly do not. I said I do not care for him. Perhaps I should be more blunt and say that I do not like him at all.”
Papa’s expression barely changed. He patted her hand as though in encouragement. “I am sure that will pass. It’s natural that on short acquaintance you might mistakenly think you do not like your betrothed. When you get to know him better, all will change.”
“Papa! He is a rake. His nickname is the Black Earl and people say he’s sold his soul to the devil. I have to tell you that I do not think he is a nice man at all.”
That obdurate expression hardened into mulishness. “Now, Verity, do not vex me. I think you should be thanking me for having procured you such an advantageous marriage.”
What? Verity had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from being rude to her father.
Did he truly believe that he was responsible for her impending nuptials?
That marriage could follow on his using her to pay a debt, just as the sun follows the moon?
Was he addled in the head? She looked down at his shaking hands. Probably.
She set her jaw, but she had the long habit of doing what he told her, and rebellion did not come naturally.
No, maybe not addled. Just drunk. And like many a drunkard he had an inflated idea of his own importance.
And now he saw himself as a matchmaker it would be nigh on impossible to dislodge that idea.