Chapter Two
Richard Whiting, Viscount Burkhart, eldest son of the Earl of Westport, had been surprised to receive a letter from the Marquess of Hemmings. He of course knew of the fellow as he would one day take on the mantle of duke. He’d not known him at Eton, though, as Hemmings was before his time.
The letter claimed Lord Hemmings had not done his duty in establishing the connection and was determined to rectify the error through an invitation. That was well enough, but they were not to meet in Cumberland. He was not to travel to the ducal residence.
He was to go to Chemsworth Hall in Oxfordshire, the seat of Hemmings’ father-in-law. It did not make a lick of sense, however, he had heard certain things about Hemmings that made him think the fellow might be exceedingly eccentric.
At Eton, it was said that he had been a very brooding individual who was in the habit of writing morose poetry and forcing his friends to listen to it.
If reports were correct, it was always very drab verse about there not being a point to anything.
That habit had, apparently, got worse when he was a bachelor in Town and matrons had despaired of it.
Then he’d wed and the bad verse had stopped.
He’d probably picked up some other eccentric habits to replace it, and maybe inviting strangers to his father-in-law’s house was one of them.
Whatever the cause, it was somewhere to go that was not York. His father did not keep a house in Town, considering York to be metropolitan enough for their purposes.
It most definitely was not sufficient for his purpose.
He’d been to York many times and knew all the usual inhabitants.
There were some ladies as yet unwed who attended the assemblies and private balls there, but the number of actually suitable ladies were few and he was not drawn to any of them.
Some ladies in the northern counties that he would like to meet he never did meet, as their fathers took them to Town.
The earl refused to even consider keeping a house in Town.
He had an aversion to the place and Burkhart had not been privy to the cause for a very long time.
Eventually, his mother had told him the story.
Back when he’d been a young gentleman enjoying his first season, he’d been ousted from Almack’s for dramatically slapping another gentleman with his glove.
The cause of the slap was all too predictable; he’d hardly needed his mother to say it.
The fellow hailed from Lancashire and had thrown out some bon mot about the white rose being a rather losing sort of rose.
The countess claimed his father had been very lucky that the thing had not ended in a duel.
The earl’s father and the gentleman’s father had a tense meeting and agreed to remove both of their progeny from the town, as they were both only sons and a duel could not be risked.
He and the countess had been quietly wed in York and had not shown their faces in London since.
His mother really could not understand how an argument from so long ago managed to continue to be debated in the modern era. She said the whole scene at Almack’s had been absurd.
That was because she was from Sussex. Feelings still ran deep in the north between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Every family could look back in time and note ancestors who were lost to the battles. Many of the families, including his own, could look back to a house lost to pillage and fire.
Further, for a Yorkshireman it was a disgrace that the red rose had prevailed. England, over time, had been ruled by all sorts of kings. Some good, some ineffectual, some greedy, some short-lived. But none of them had ever reached the heights of depravity of Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII.
The man went through six wives! Never mind his thievery and how many in his circle met a bad end. That’s what England had got for allowing the Tudors to step onto the throne.
It was no use saying that it was all long ago.
Every time he saw that ridiculous Mr. Lelander, who was only to be a viscount so Burkhart did not know what he was always on his high horse about, he glared daggers at the fellow.
Lelander was a typical Lancastrian—looking down his nose and dressed too prettily.
At least, that was how his family saw it—a Yorkshire man was strong and manly, a Lancashireman was a more delicate sort who depended upon stealth and trickery to gain his aims. Yorkshire was direct, Lancashire was sly.
He had not any firsthand knowledge of stealth and trickery regarding Lelander, but he was a Lancashireman so Burkhart must imagine the fellow was full of it. All of his friends at Eton had agreed with him. The Burkhart set and the Pepperdon set had not mixed. At least, not while he’d been looking.
It would be pleasant to go somewhere that was not York. It might be pleasant to visit a southern county where nobody spoke of the Roses War at all.
He had no idea who resided in that Oxfordshire neighborhood but there might very well be a suitable lady that was worthy of being the next Countess of Westport.
Let Lelander sit on his little patch at Pepperdon Hall, going nowhere.
Where would he go? Preston? Manchester? Maybe he’d wed a miller’s daughter.
That would suit him. He could guess that Lelander would burn with envy to know that his Yorkshire rival was off traveling to the south.
Perhaps he would positively burst into flames if that rival came home with a wife.
It was a small neighborhood, he would hear of it all.
It was very satisfying to think about.
Mr. Smuckers, Chemsworth Hall’s long-serving butler, had spent the past years in relative repose.
After Miss Lily’s house party had positively run him into the ground, the viscountess had sent him on a long trip to his sister in Bath to rest and take the waters.
He’d taken full advantage of it, as his sister was of the fussing variety and he very much needed some fussing over.
It had been the first time in his memory that he’d woken in the morning and then rolled over and slept another hour.
The waters themselves were ghastly, and he’d not managed more than a sip of the stuff, but the town was genial and his sister’s cook was very good.
How enjoyable it had been to sit in front of the fire of an evening without a thing to accomplish.
Nobody was waiting on him to do anything.
His housekeeper, Mrs. Featherstone, was back at the Hall, predicting disasters to somebody else while he was gone.
He lived the life of a lord during that respite.
Upon his return, the duties in the household were not as arduous as they once had been.
Most of the Granger ladies had wed and they were only left with Miss Poppy and Miss Pansy.
Those two young ladies did not get up to half the trouble they used to.
He still shuddered to remember the treasonous letter sent to Carlton House as their cockamamie idea to be helpful to the prince.
Fortunately, they had been much chastened by that experience.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Granger had come home and, along with them, the delightful Master Teddy. He was really quite charmed by the fellow!
Teddy was a regular visitor to his butler’s closet for tea and biscuits and had no end of interesting opinions on things.
At the moment, he was inquiring into understanding why birds could fly and rabbits could not.
Why did not rabbits and mice and other creatures get wings from God?
Smuckers had not had an answer for that one, other than speculating that it might have to do with where they liked to keep their nests.
Teddy had considered that and said, “That would explain why we do not have fur or feathers. We nest in a house and don’t need them.”
Such a clever little fellow.
The days had gone on very satisfactory. However, as the years passed and the twins grew into proper young ladies, a little bit of a cloud had crept over the house.
The cloud had begun as just a grayish sort of overcast. Over time, it had grown larger and darker.
At the moment, it was the sort of black cloud that threatened to release a deluge.
What on earth was anybody to do with the twins? How were they to be settled? How were they to be separated, in order to be settled?
Now, he had received the news that, through their sisters’ efforts, two gentlemen were to arrive from Yorkshire. The gentlemen in question lived very nearby one another.
That appeared to be ideal, but clearly it had not been thought through! Yes, the gentlemen hailed from nearby locations so if the thing were to take off, the twins would not be separated.
But that seemed to be the only thing anybody had thought of! It was as if they all expected a fairie with a magic potion to turn up and direct which gentleman was to gravitate toward which twin and vice versa.
As a usual thing, the ways these set-ups could go wrong were always spectacularly vast, but now it was multiplied by two.
That was very, very vast. What if both gentlemen preferred the same twin?
What if both twins preferred the same gentleman?
What if everybody preferred somebody who did not prefer them?
Four people, all going in the wrong direction.
Had he been asked to develop a plan, he would have sent the twins to two different sisters where they were in no danger of admiring the same fellow. It might not have resulted in them living close by one another, but at least it was realistic.
All of that was very bad. And then the final blow had come. The viscountess relayed where exactly these two gentlemen were from. One was from Barrowford and the other was from Barnoldswick. The viscountess had described them as two Yorkshiremen. That was not quite the case though.