Chapter Three
“The wedding could be arranged within the week,” Sir Peregrine’s man was saying. “Quietly, at Sir Peregrine’s expense, with only the two families present. Discretion would serve everyone in this room.”
Victoria sat in the corner of her cousin’s morning room and listened to five people arrange her life as though she were a chair damaged in transit, to be mended before anyone noticed the crack.
The room was too warm for the hour, the fire built high against the grey morning, and the tea had gone cold in its pot while the company attended to the more pressing business of her future.
“You will forgive me, Mr Dabney,” she said quietly, “but you speak of a wedding as though I had already agreed to one. I am also at a loss to understand why my late husband’s family has been invited to negotiate it.”
Lady Agatha’s expression did not alter. “Because Gerald’s daughter will be affected by whatever folly her mother chooses next.”
“My daughter has a name, and I have not asked any of you to bargain on her behalf.”
“A formality, Lady Hemsworth,” Mr Dabney interposed. He was a neat, apologetic man who conducted his cruelty by the clock and went home to supper untroubled by it. “Consent follows arrangement in matters of this delicacy. The lady’s agreement may be assumed once the terms are shown to be generous.”
For a moment, Victoria merely looked at him.
“Sir Peregrine is prepared to be very generous,” he continued. “He would settle a sum upon you, undertake the child’s maintenance, and ask in return only that the past be allowed to rest.”
“He would settle a sum upon me with money he does not possess, maintain a child who is not his, and purchase a silence I have not offered for sale. Forgive me, Mr Dabney, but your master’s generosity has the particular smell of a debt gone looking for a woman to marry it.”
“Victoria.” Lady Agatha set down her cup. “You are in no position to refuse. That position closed on Tuesday, in a conservatory, before witnesses.”
“I was followed into that conservatory,” Victoria said. “I did not invite the man. I did not want the man. And I will not marry him merely to spare this company the inconvenience of telling the truth about him.”
“The truth will not dine with you when the invitations cease,” Lady Agatha said. “It will not sit beside the child when she is feverish. It will not pay the coal merchant. A good name will do all three, and you had one once. You may have it again for the price of a quiet wedding.”
“I had a good name once, with a bad husband beneath it,” Victoria said gently. “I have since discovered which of the two a woman must actually live with.”
“She has done nothing wrong,” Amelia said, her voice rising. “Nothing at all. I was there. I saw the whole of it.”
“You saw the end of it,” Lady Agatha replied. “Everyone else saw the shape of it, and the shape is what survives. Do sit down, Mrs Ashcombe. You are not helping her by fluttering about the furniture.”
Amelia sat, wretched, and Victoria loved her for the attempt and hated the room for making it useless.
“There is another consideration,” Roland said, in the tone of a man offering a handkerchief to a weeping woman, “which I had hoped not to raise. But you leave me little choice, cousin, and it is better spoken plainly among family than whispered later by strangers.”
“Say it, Roland.” Victoria did not look up. “You have been polishing it since you arrived.”
“Gerald’s will named me guardian of the child.”
The words entered the warm room and altered its temperature. Victoria’s hand closed hard upon the arm of her chair.
“That is not possible,” she said, too quickly. “She is my daughter. I am her mother, and I am alive.”
“You forget that I have read the will as often as you have. It names me guardian jointly with you. Jointly, cousin. Not in your place.”
“Then jointly is where it ends. I am her mother. No court in England would remove a child from a fit mother.”
“Jointly, while both guardians remain fit,” Roland corrected smoothly, with a gentleness that was almost tender.
“The word does a great deal of work, and it does it quietly. If one guardian is found wanting, the other assumes the whole responsibility. I should be desolate to carry it alone, but I would carry it. Duty is duty.”
The word duty in his mouth turned her cold. Gerald had used it in precisely that tone, as a key that unlocked any cruelty while leaving the man who turned it blameless.
“You would carry my daughter away like a parcel and call yourself desolate for the length of the drive.”
“A mother may be living and yet be judged unfit to retain charge of her child,” Roland continued, as though she had not spoken.
“The law makes provision for it. Gerald made provision for it. The ordinary case presumes a mother of unblemished conduct. A widow whose name has become a public question is no longer the ordinary case. You see how the marriage answers everything. A respectable husband, a respectable name, and the question of your fitness need never arise.”
Victoria understood then, fully and coldly, what the whole slow performance had been building towards. The scandal was not the danger. It was the key, turning a lock that had lain quietly within Gerald’s will for five years, waiting for a hand patient enough to use it.
“This is monstrous,” Amelia burst out. “Gerald has been in the ground more than a year, and you would use his will as a net.”
“Gerald wove the net,” Roland said. “I merely read it aloud. If it catches her, Mrs Ashcombe, that is his doing and her conduct, not mine. I simply decline to cut the strings for a woman who has given the world such excellent reason to keep them tied.”
“You would take her,” Victoria said, and her voice was not quite steady. “You would take my child and call it the law.”
“I would hope it never came to that,” Roland said. “But if you refuse Sir Peregrine and the matter becomes public, questions may be asked about Sophy’s care. You know as well as I do that the court would consider every circumstance.”
She had no answer that was not a plea, and she would not plead to Sir Roland Hemsworth if the ceiling came down upon them both. She said nothing.
The silence was the nearest thing to surrender the room had yet drawn from her, and Lady Agatha’s mouth curved to receive it.
Then the door opened without a knock, and the footman’s announcement followed the visitor by half a second.
“The Earl of Harwood.”
Elias entered dressed for a morning call and entirely at his ease, as though he had been expected, and as though rooms full of people conspiring against a widow were a thing he encountered most days before noon.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he said, addressing no one in particular and therefore all of them. “I would have sent up a card, but cards are slow, and the matter under discussion will not wait upon my manners.”
“Lord Harwood.” Lady Agatha recovered first, as she always did. “This is a family matter.”
“It became rather more than a family matter on Tuesday, when a man laid hands upon Lady Hemsworth, and the account of it began to shift against her. I have come to correct that account.”
Roland looked at him. “You take a considerable interest in Lady Hemsworth’s affairs.”
“I take an interest in accuracy,” Elias said.
“I was present, and I have no intention of allowing convenience to improve upon what I saw. A drunkard followed a widow into an empty room, took her by the wrist, and prevented her from leaving. The remedy upon which this company has settled is to reward him with her hand. Have I stated the case fairly, or have I been too generous to one of you?”
“You state it like a partisan,” Roland returned.
“I state it as a witness, since I was the man in the doorway.” Elias allowed that to settle before continuing. “Here is what I propose instead. Lady Hemsworth does not marry the man who assaulted her. She marries me.”
For a moment, no one in the room could find a word. Then three of them found words at once, and the noise filled the morning room.
“You cannot be serious,” Lady Agatha said sharply. “You scarcely know her.”
“I know her slightly better than Sir Peregrine does,” Elias replied, “and with the considerable advantage of wishing her no harm. At present, that is enough to put me ahead of him.”
“And what does Harwood gain by it?” Roland demanded. “Another man’s widow, another man’s child, another man’s scandal. No man takes on all three for nothing.”
“A quiet life, once I have won it. And I mean to win it.”
Through the clamour, Victoria heard her own voice emerge, low and unsteady with a feeling that was not gratitude.
“No.”
Elias turned towards her. For the first time, the ease left his face, and careful attention took its place.
“You would prefer Sir Peregrine?”
“I would prefer to be asked.” Victoria rose. “I would prefer that one man in this room, only one, might put a question concerning my life to me before deciding the answer. You are all the same. You differ only in the manners you employ while arranging me.”
Elias inclined his head, accepting the charge without defence. The ready surrender took the force from her anger and left her unsteady in the midst of it.
“That will do,” Amelia said, rising with a firmness none of them had suspected her of possessing. “Lady Agatha, Sir Roland, Mr Dabney, I must ask you to withdraw to the blue parlour.”
“This discussion is not concluded,” Lady Agatha said.
“It is concluded in this room. My cousin has been spoken of, spoken around, and very nearly disposed of without once being consulted. If Lord Harwood now intends to address himself to her, he may do so properly.”
Amelia crossed to the writing desk near the window and seated herself with her back partly turned to them.
“I shall remain here, of course,” she added. “But I assure you that I can become remarkably deaf when the occasion requires it.”
They withdrew, because nothing was to be gained by remaining and a great deal might be lost by quarrelling with a hostess in her own house.