A Lady's Choice Read online

  Or at least nominal mistress. She glanced over at Lady Yarnell again. The woman was still talking. Had Yarnell ever answered her question about his mother and the availability of a dower house for her use? She had the dread premonition that Lady Yarnell would remain as the mistress of Yarnell’s home and she would only ever be a guest tolerated for life.

  Her musings were brought to an end by the return of Yarnell himself. He entered smiling, a rare expression for him, and after making his obeisance to his mother, he joined Rachel on the sofa. He was a very handsome man, she thought, taking him in in one sweeping side glance before demurely casting her eyes down to her gloved hands again. Dark hair and gray eyes, manly physique, not a blemish or fault to be found, though some might quibble with the cold expression on his face.

  But when he smiled, she began to feel some hope of happiness in her future. As man and wife they might think differently, and she may have to sort out the various familial relationships, starting with his austere and masterful mother, but she could do it. This marriage was everything she had set out to accomplish in this Season, and she was a lucky young lady.

  And she knew it. She was the daughter of a viscount. Yarnell was a marquess, and his family history was old and illustrious, with honors heaped upon accolades. It was a miracle he had entered the Season unattached. She could not imagine why that was, but his very particular taste must explain it. She was proud, then, that she was his chosen.

  “I have something for you,” he said, with the smile still on his face. “Every prospective groom searches long and hard to find the perfect bride gift for his lady, and I think I have topped them all.”

  Rachel glanced over at Lady Yarnell, wishing, for once, that the woman would take a hint and leave them alone, as her mother did. But Lady Yarnell was not to be moved. She was sewing, and she continued her long, fine even line unhindered by any thought that the young people might like a moment in private. She appeared engrossed in her work.

  But she was listening. Rachel could tell that. It was in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head. She had a feeling that she would come, over the years, to know every minute movement of Lady Yarnell’s, and perhaps, to despise it. She tried to ignore the cold clutch of fear in her heart; the future was not set in stone, and she could manage. She must have faith in her own powers.

  Besides, Lady Yarnell could not live forever.

  Her betrothed was awaiting her response. “Have you really found the perfect bride gift?” she said softly to her fiancé, touched by his excitement. It attested to the depth of feeling she was sure must truly be there, beneath his frosty demeanor.

  “I have.” He pulled a box out of his jacket and presented it to her with a flourish. “I hope you like it.”

  Rachel gazed at the box. Would it be a ring, or a necklace? A locket with a lock of his fine, dark hair? Or even a miniature of himself? She would like a miniature. It would mean that he wanted her to be able to see him and think of him even when he was not present. She slipped the silk ribbon off the box and opened it, then, with trembling fingers, pulled away the tissue. And stared. It was a long, oval, enameled case. She touched the lovely enamel work and the rosette of diamonds that adorned the lid. It was very pretty, but—

  “It is a huswife,” he said impatiently.

  “I . . . I know.” She picked it up. It was very pretty, enameled in pink and blue with a scene of a shepherdess and her swain, in a baroque painted frame ornamented by curlicues and roses, each rose centered with a diamond. She opened it. In the lid was a thimble, and the case itself was cunningly fitted with tiny scissors, a folding fruit knife, a set of needles and other implements. “Thank you, my lord.”

  He frowned. “Do you not like it?”

  Tears starting in her eyes, she looked up at him. A set of sewing implements. That was his notion of the perfect wedding gift for her. She sighed, deeply, and felt the tears spill over. Let him think it was the emotion of the moment. “I am overcome,” she said simply, and he was satisfied.

  “I knew it would be perfect,” he said. “Now, I have to leave again. I have some very important business to attend to.”

  Chapter Three

  Andromeda Varens and Belinda de Launcey sat at the breakfast table planning their day over toast and marmalade. Andromeda glanced up over her glasses and watched thirteen-year-old Belinda drinking coffee, an unanticipated privilege and one of the many reasons she said she liked being with her new friend. You are so unexpected, the child had said one day. What exactly that meant Andromeda was not sure.

  True, she had made friends among many different circles of people since descending upon London: the literati, the theater folk, and even a dedicated circle of bird-watchers who were planning a foray into the countryside to view, variously, the chaffinch, willow warbler and reed bunting. And it was also true that she had a singular sense of humor, finding amusement in the most serious of subjects at times. Inappropriate, her laughter had been called, but so be it. She was beginning to think she had bowed to societal pressure for far too long, keeping herself stiff and correct when she really wanted a bit of fun.

  She had finally confessed to herself—the shock of spending time in London after many years isolated in Yorkshire speeding her voyage of self-discovery—that she was not the grand lady she had fancied herself while in her insular Yorkshire society. In the sparsely populated environs of Lesleydale, she was second only to the Neville ladies in consequence. Here she was much lower in status, and would have to humble herself if she wanted to clamber up to a better level of society by becoming a bootlicking sycophant, not a role she would willingly take on. The second shock was finding out she did not care to attain that hypothetical higher status. She liked who she was, not who she thought she should be. Salutary lesson, that.

  Belinda was drinking coffee, humming, reading a book and eating toast with Seville marmalade as she kicked restlessly at the table leg in a most unladylike way. The girl missed her uncle, but she had been kind enough to say that Andromeda was a “smashing substitute”! Andromeda treated her as an adult, most of the time, and perhaps that was a novel experience.

  Glancing back down at her notebook, Andromeda bit her lip. “Belinda, do you think it would be too shocking if you went backstage with me at Mr. Lessington’s theater Wednesday evening?”

  No answer.

  Looking up from her notebook, glasses down on her nose, Andromeda said, “Belinda! Did you not hear a word I said? I asked if you thought it would be too shocking if you went backstage with me at Mr. Lessington’s theater Wednesday evening?”

  “It wouldn’t be shocking at all,” Belinda answered.

  “You wouldn’t think so, would you? And even if you did, you would not admit it,” Andromeda replied dryly. She gazed at the girl with affection. If she had ever been blessed with a child, she would have liked a girl like Belinda, up to any rig, fun-loving, smart. But at thirty-one she supposed her wishes would never bear fruit, nor would her body. And with Haven married now . . . She abandoned that old hurt and glared down at her notebook. She had really loved her old neighbor, the playmate of her youth, with a kind of desperate love that had made her do embarrassing things she would just as soon forget. But he was married now, and try as she might she could not dislike his wife, Jane, the new Lady Haven. She had wondered, lately, if her love for Haven had been more for who he once was than for who he was now, or even just an old habit.

  But all of that, the hopes and dreams of a giddy girl, were behind her now. At her age, Andromeda felt she had lost whatever youthful attraction she had had; she had never been a pretty girl, and now was too bony and hard, she feared, to attract anyone but a fellow desperate for a wealthy wife, and she would never stoop to the advances of a fortune hunter. She was wealthy in her own right, with more actual available money than her brother as a result of her late maternal grandmother’s legacy. She supposed she must resign herself to staying husbandless.

  She smiled at Belinda’s eager expression. Th
e idea of going backstage at the theater had been canvassed before, but Andromeda would need to be sure nothing truly shocking was going on before she allowed it. She had only a vague idea, but she had heard that sometimes the actresses were . . . she shied away from her scandalous musings. “Well, we shall see. First, I am not sure that the play at Mr. Lessington’s theater is suitable viewing for one of your impressionable age. We may have to go to another theater. I would do nothing to alarm your uncle, even if he might learn of it too late to prevent it from taking place.”

  “My uncle is the one who allowed me to ride astride, in breeches, in Hyde Park!” Belinda claimed stoutly.

  “That was because he was besotted with Pamela,” Andromeda said about Strongwycke’s new wife, her old friend Miss Pamela Neville. “He would have done anything for love of her.” She sighed deeply, wondering what it was like to have a man so in love with you as that. At that moment Colin limped into the breakfast room.

  “What on earth has happened to you?” Andromeda said, rising from her chair and hastening to her younger brother’s side.

  He held out one hand to ward her off. “Leave off, Andy,” he said irritably. He took a seat at the round breakfast table and signaled to the footman, garbed in Strongwycke’s family colors of buff and rust, for coffee.

  Belinda and Andromeda both frankly examined his face. His jaw was dark, bruised along the bone line. He winced as he drank the hot coffee, then sighed and sat back in the chair. Becoming aware of their scrutiny, he said, “Just a little dust-up, that’s all!”

  Voice trembling, Andromeda said, “This was no tavern fight, brother. You’ve been boxing again, haven’t you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s my life, Andy, in case you have forgotten. There’s nothing wrong with boxing. It is a sport, just like fencing or riding.”

  “Except in fencing you do not run your opponent through.” She fought down her anger. It was fear and she knew its genesis; more than one man had been killed in the ring, to her knowledge, even in their confined Yorkshire community. How much more dangerous would it be in London? In Lesleydale Colin was accounted a fair bruiser, but one did not need to know London society to be able to figure out that there would be many bigger, harder, more capable men in so large a society. Colin was in real danger.

  “You listen to me, little brother,” she said, waggling one long, bony finger in his face. “I will not have you killing yourself in some ring because you have been unsuccessful in love!”

  He flushed and glanced at Belinda. “Don’t tell me what to do, Andy. I am my own man, and do not box out of some insane desire to be beaten. Nor am I pining away from unsuccessful love, not for Pammy, nor for . . . for Rachel.”

  Belinda was pretending not to hear, intent on the book she had in her hands, but Andromeda knew she was listening and didn’t care. The girl was family, or practically so, anyway. “If this is the result of your first London bout, then I would say it is a fair indication you are outclassed,” she said, indicating his bruised jaw. “And you’re limping.”

  “That’s because of the way I fell. I just need some practice. I’m going to find a boxing trainer I have heard of. I won’t go into my next match unprepared, like I did this one.” He sipped his coffee and grimaced.

  “You will not box again, do you hear me?” She heard her voice, the hysteria rising like tidewater. Taking a deep breath, she sat down in the chair next to him and examined his bruises. His face had never been pretty; he had a low-slung jaw and a beaky nose, and his hair was a tumble of careless curls. With the bruising he looked even worse, like a low-class street fighter. But she loved him just the same, and had since the moment she had first seen him, as a tiny, squalling red-faced baby. She remembered that moment with great clarity, even though she had been only three herself; their mother had presented the baby boy newly brought into the world for his big sister’s examination and she, in her baby mind, had thought of him as a gift for her. From that moment forward she had protected him whenever she could, and feared for him when she couldn’t.

  He would recover . . . this time. Forcing a note of calm in her voice, she said, “Colin, it is one thing in Yorkshire to box the local fellows because you’re bored, but there is so much more to do in London! It is alive with culture and entertainment. Why do you not come to the theater with me, or to the bookstore!”

  “You have your interests and I have mine. I don’t tell you to leave off watching birds fly around to come and see a boxing match, do I?”

  “At least my interests are civilized,” she snapped. “I do not understand why men need to beat each other senseless and then call it sport.”

  “You’ll never understand.” A footman brought a cold cloth to Colin, and he applied it to his bruised chin, giving a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you, James,” he said, looking up at the footman, who was concealing a grin behind his mask of a perfect servant’s blank expression. “I can tell you have likely done this a time or two yourself, my lad.”

  Andromeda stood and indicated to Belinda to follow. “I will never condone what you do, Colin. It is brutal and uncivilized, and you must be mad.”

  “I’m a man, Andy. Ladies have been accusing us of brutality for eons. At least this brutality is focused upon each other.”

  She glared down at him. “If you’re trying to be humorous, you are falling flat. Come, Belinda, we have a brilliant day ahead of us. We are going to make the most of what this marvelous city has to offer.” Head lifted high, she swept from the room.

  • • •

  Rachel was just beginning to realize how much she missed her brother and sister, especially her younger sister, Pamela. She had not been the best sister, she thought, for many years now. But lately she had felt closer again to Pamela, though that was cut short by her sister’s marriage and departure. It was almost as though she had been in a deep freeze for years, like ice at the bottom of the deepest moorland caverns, and for some reason was beginning to thaw. She was not sure that was a good thing; frozen, one never could be hurt. But this London Season had seen many changes in her, and had forced her to confront many truths.

  Primary among them was that this advantageous marriage she had agreed to would not make of life a picnic. There would be a price to pay for the prize, and the bill was coming due even before she received the goods.

  It was a lovely spring Tuesday afternoon, and yet instead of walking in the park, as she would like to be doing, she was forced to immure herself in the gloomy depths of Haven House. Lady Yarnell had made the necessary visit to her prospective in-laws’ residence in the company of her sister, and Rachel’s mother and grandmother were present as well. They were sitting in the best drawing room, and even though it had recently been refurbished to some extent, it was still gloomy and awkward and dingy. All in all it was as uncomfortable a meeting as one could imagine.

  Rachel sat alone on a sofa, staring out the window. Spring through the high window looked like a glorious, misty painting viewed in a Stygian gallery. The palette outside was green and blue; inside, all was gray and brown. Her mother and grandmother were seated in hard, high-backed chairs opposite the other ladies. Ostensibly they were to talk of wedding arrangements, but they had not reached that point yet.

  Lady Yarnell’s sister was widow of an admiral lost in the wars, off the coast of Spain. Lady Beaufort appeared haughty, but today she was making a concerted effort to ease the discomfort of the gathering by chattering about gossip: who was new to London, who was leaving, what scandal was just being hinted at in the papers.

  Lady Haven, Rachel’s mother, who had at first seemed afraid of Lord Yarnell’s mother, appeared to be exceedingly put out by the other woman’s manner and was making up to Lady Beaufort. It was a frosty little confrontation, as Lady Beaufort mediated between the groom-to-be’s mother and the bride-to-be’s mother, trying to lead them both into pleasant conversation. Grandmother, for once, was holding her tongue. Rachel could only pray that continued.

  She was grateful for the
appearance of more company, even if it was just Miss Andromeda Varens, with whom she had not gotten along for many years now, and Belinda de Launcey, Strongwycke’s headstrong, impulsive niece. “It is so good to see you both,” she cried, rising, and was ashamed to see how surprised Andromeda was by her pleasant greeting.

  But, not one to hold a grudge, Miss Varens led Belinda to the sofa as Rachel sat back down, and took a seat beside her, after being introduced to the rest of the gathering. Rachel was so relieved to see Andromeda’s familiar face that she felt quite in charity with the other woman for perhaps the first time in years.

  “How are you enjoying your London stay?” Rachel asked, aiming the question at both the younger and the older lady.

  Belinda was silent, merely shrugging an answer. Andromeda cast her a questioning glance, but then turned and said to Rachel, “I am enjoying it far more than I anticipated. I came, originally, just to purchase books for the ladyschool at Lesleydale, you know, but now that I’m here I’m finding much more to enjoy than I thought I would. Either London has improved or I have become more tolerant.”

  “Have you been to the theater lately?” asked Rachel, prompted by a sudden impulse. “We are going tomorrow night, and I would be so pleased if you would join us.”

  “I shall have to converse with Colin to see what he has planned,” Andromeda said hesitantly. “We did intend to go to the theater tomorrow night, but I have not seen about a box yet.”

  “He is welcome, too,” Rachel said desperately. She felt the need for someone who was unequivocally on her side. Her mother and grandmother had a previous engagement, and it would be just her, Lord Yarnell, and his mother, otherwise. “Yarnell very kindly told me that if I had any acquaintance, I might invite them when the box was not full.”