An Eccentric Engagement Read online

  He sounded overwhelmed. She had to remind herself to allow for that. It all seemed so natural to her that she never understood other people’s reactions. “Would you have understood if I had tried to explain?” She watched his eyes, the flickering emotions that changed them from dove gray to charcoal and the pupils from small to large.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And does it change who I am?”

  He breathed in a deep sigh. At long last he said, “No. I don’t suppose so. But it still doesn’t mean that we understand each other.” He reclined beside her and faced her, gazing into her eyes and tentatively reaching out to touch her cheek. “You’re so pretty.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his hand. “I think you must care for me to say such a lovely thing, for I am nothing in looks compared to Lady Mary Rountree, the last girl you asked to marry you.”

  He flinched and she was sorry she had said such a thing.

  “Bert, I’m sorry! I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know . . .” She stopped and searched her heart. “That’s not true. I do know. Bert, the other girls you asked to marry you were much prettier than I, but they said no. Did you ask me because you thought I might say yes? I know that . . . I know that you have been wanting to marry these last two Seasons, and that you will come into your maternal inheritance when you do.”

  “Stop,” he said, putting his finger over her mouth. He leaned forward and kissed her. “I see we are to be honest with each other.” He faced her, gazing down at her with a determined expression on his square face. “So I will tell you. At first I asked you because I thought you might say yes. You’re almost twenty-one, and I thought . . . that is . . .”

  “That you were my last chance?” She giggled and lay back, gazing up through the green leaves. She stretched and put her hands behind her head. “Oh, Bert, I do want to be married! But I would never have married just anyone. I love my life and my parents, and I’m happy enough most of the time.” She looked back at him and was touched by the hope in his eyes. She sat up. “Bert, I saw you and liked you before you ever noticed me.” She told him then the story of seeing him intercede for the poor maid at the dinner party.

  He was silent. “I have to say, Sorrow, that . . . well, that was an aberration for me. I don’t usually go out looking for maidens to save. It was just that Charles was being so beastly to that poor girl, and . . . but I’m not like your father, you know. I don’t know if I ever could be.”

  It struck her that perhaps he thought she expected to live the same way as at Spirit Garden, taking in lost souls and the ill or infirm. She didn’t know if she did; that was what she hoped to discover with a man like Bert. She knelt in front of him and pulled him up. “Bert,” she said, putting her arms around his waist. “I don’t need you to be a knight on a charger. I just want someone to care for me. And I don’t plan to go looking for wounded spirits to save; I don’t know what is in my future. Our future. I don’t know if that is how we will live. That’s something we’ll decide together!”

  He gazed down at her and his gray eyes gleamed in the filtered sunlight. “Oh, Sorrow!”

  He kissed her again, and together they tumbled to the ground in a storm of kisses and caresses. She felt every last barrier in her heart give way and knew then that she truly had fallen in love with Bertram Carlyle.

  Chapter 5

  Bertram and Sorrow walked back to the house arm in arm, with Sorrow leaning her head on his shoulder. Bertram thought he had never been so happy in his life. The day had taken on a golden hue, with everything from the humblest rock and weed to the loveliest flower gilded.

  Chance. It had all been chance that Lady Mary Rountree had not said yes, and the girl before her. Not a one of them could hold a candle to Sorrow Marchand, the prettiest, sweetest, loveliest girl in the kingdom. He was a fortunate man and his life was going to be good. He looked forward to his nuptials now with an unreserved enthusiasm, knowing that he and Sorrow would be partners in life.

  He strolled with her up the green sward and topped the rise to see a carriage drawn up to the house with the red and gold crest of the Newton coat-of-arms. His father was there already, two days early. The golden day turned drab.

  “It’s your father, Bert. He’s early. He must be looking forward to the visit!” Nothing could dim Sorrow’s happiness that day, and she was determined to learn to like Bert’s father, no matter how daunting that task seemed.

  She pulled her fiancé forward and they approached the house to find that Lord Newton was overseeing the unloading of his carriage, and that he seemed to have brought enough trunks and valises to clothe several men for a stay of some months, instead of just one for about two weeks. She and Bert strolled up to the viscount.

  “Bertram,” the man said with little enthusiasm. “Miss Marchand.”

  Sorrow, determined to be herself, threw her arms around Lord Newton and hugged him hard, then placed an exuberant kiss on his chilly cheek. “Father-to-be! Welcome to Spirit Garden.”

  “What kind of name is that for an estate?” he asked, disentangling himself from her embrace with firm hands.

  Sorrow was determined not to take offense. “My mama and papa didn’t have a country estate when first they married. They only had a London home. But after Papa had an accident, and when I came along, they decided they wanted a home in the country, and this was it!” She swept a hand around indicating the entire estate. “It was vacant, and its history was very sad. The people who had owned it for a hundred years, their family—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Lord Newton said impatiently. “Bertram,” he said, turning to his son, “have you told Miss Marchand that after you marry you will be expected to come back to Newton Castle for a formal reception? Miss Marchand’s family is, of course, welcome, but by no means—”

  The front door flew open just then and Joshua, pushing Billy’s Bath chair, flew out the front door and down the steps with the chair-bound boy laughing merrily. Sorrow’s father followed, gasping out, “Joshua, be careful, please! I never intended you to go outside the house with young Billy! Please, son, be careful!” Mr. Marchand stopped and stared at the carriage. “Oh, good Lord, no one told us we had company.”

  As Lord Newton gaped, Sorrow’s father stepped back to the front door and hollered, “Mother, we have company! I do believe it is Lord Newton, and he has brought more trunks than I have ever seen.” His message delivered, he strode forward to the viscount, grabbed his hand and pumped it vigorously. That action not enough for his overflowing bonhomie, he clasped the other man to him in a manly embrace. “Newton, good to meet you! Bertram is a wonderful lad, and we couldn’t be prouder than that our Sorrow has nabbed him.”

  Sorrow giggled. If she had hoped to see the stuffy Lord Newton deflated, she need only have imagined this meeting. The viscount was speechless. She glanced up at Bertram to see if he was enjoying the spectacle, but her fiancé was gaping too, and looked alarmed. Perhaps she ought to intervene.

  “Lord Newton, you must be tired after your journey. I understand you have been back to Newton Castle in the interim, between London and here. Let me show you to your room.” She took the viscount’s arm and led him up the steps to the front door, but threw one look over her shoulder at Bert. He shrugged.

  As they entered, Mrs. Marchand bustled forward in the hall with a worried expression. “My lord, welcome to Spirit Garden. I apologize for the informal welcome but really, we didn’t expect you for two more days.”

  Sorrow exchanged a glance with her mother, who had already expressed concern over how best to break to the viscount their original way of living. It appeared all their speculation was for naught, given his precipitate arrival.

  Mr. Marchand was following them in with his arm around Bertram, who, with the arrival of his father, seemed to have pokered up into the stuffy fellow he often appeared to be in London. Sorrow felt rather as though she were in a careening carriage headed downhill with a lake at the bottom. There seemed to be no way to avert disaster
, and she wondered if she ought even to try. If Bertram would let his father affect him so at his age, then there was no hope he would behave like a man ought when married.

  “Father, you should have sent a message ahead,” he said, just as she was thinking that. “The Marchands have a busy household and would have appreciated word that you were coming early.”

  “Busy household? Does that include that mad child and the legless boy?” The viscount looked disgruntled and completely unaware of the silence that had fallen around him.

  Bertram disengaged himself from his future father-in-law and confronted his father as the sunlit hall dimmed. “Yes, those children are a part of this household. I think you owe both the boys and the Marchands more respect when you address them.”

  The June day had turned chilly, even wintry, inside the normally warm and sunny home. Lord Newton bowed. “My most sincere apologies if I have offended anyone in saying only what appeared to be fact. I would like to rest in my room for an hour or so, if that is permitted.”

  “Certainly,” Mrs. Marchand said faintly. “I will have someone show you to your room.”

  • • •

  It was a day of discovery for Bertram. He had barely found his own feet at Spirit Garden and wished his father hadn’t come so quickly, but Lord Newton’s arrival made him determined to meet all of the inmates of the home and make his own judgment as to how the Marchands lived.

  His father was deeply offended by his reprimand and would likely stay in his room for the rest of the day, punishing all, he would reason, by depriving them of his lordly presence. So Bert, knowing that Sorrow had duties to attend to, volunteered to retrieve Joshua and Billy, first, and to make sure they had come to no harm. He found them in the garden outside, with Joshua ambling aimlessly by the hedge and Billy tending as best he could to a topiary shaped like a . . . well, Bert couldn’t quite tell what it was, but the boy was concentrating fiercely, snipping with trimmers with precision and determination.

  At breakfast he had noticed that Billy, though shy, was a normal ten-year-old boy in every other way but that he had been born with no legs. Bert approached him and said heartily, “What are you doing there, young fellow?”

  The boy, with a withering glance worthy of an adult, said, “I am trimming a shrub.”

  Bert stifled a smile and sat down on the gravel path near the bush so he didn’t hang over the child like a giant. This was clearly a lad to be taken seriously. “Ah, but you see it is clear you are meaning to make it a certain shape, but that shape is not obvious to me yet, dunce that I am, so you will have to tell me exactly what you are doing. There is a difference, you see, in what I meant and what you thought I meant.”

  Joshua, listening, hovered close by. He, on the other hand, Bert thought, was physically quite capable but did not like direct confrontation except with those with whom he was familiar.

  Frowning, Billy said, “I am trying to make it into a dragon.”

  “A dragon?”

  “Yes. A dragon flying. I saw one in a book.”

  “You mean like the one St. George killed?”

  “That is just a legend,” Billy said, snipping again, carefully. He regarded the bush. “I know people say dragons never lived, but . . . but how wonderful if it is true, and they really did fly!”

  Bert’s breath caught in his throat. To fly! Yes, how wonderful that must seem to a boy who never had the chance to even walk. “I think you were just about flying a while ago when Joshua was pushing your chair.”

  Billy’s eyes gleamed and he shared a glance with Joshua, who chuckled to himself and danced away to torment a butterfly, chasing it about the garden. “He likes to push me about. I think it makes him feel that he is like Mr. Marchand, you know . . . helping people.”

  Helping people. It seemed so simple, the way Billy said it. A shiver raced down Bert’s back. He remembered his father-in-law’s words the night before in the library, about how wonderful it would be if everyone in the world helped each other to the best of their abilities. A naïve concept, his London friends would say. And yet there was something to it. It seemed to grow from there, like an infection, only in a good way, leaping from one person to the next and inspiring hope and determination.

  He gazed at the bush and began to see what Billy’s careful snipping was achieving, branch by branch, cut by cut. There was a wing, and there the long extended neck, and behind, the beginning of a stubby tail. “I see it!” he said, and ran his hand over the wing. “This is the right wing of the dragon!”

  “Yes,” Billy said. “By autumn, I hope he is in full flight.”

  Bert clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure he will be, young man. I know he will be!”

  • • •

  Looking out an upstairs window as she passed from one room to the next, Sorrow spotted Bert in the garden with Billy and Joshua. He had his hand on Billy’s shoulder and they were looking at the boy’s topiary. Hope coursed through her. Maybe . . . maybe they would have a life together that would fulfill all her own dreams and perhaps even more. She had to believe in her intuition and believe in Bert.

  Lord Newton stamped up the stairs in that moment. He stopped at the top and stared at her. “I was in my room, but there was a noise. I went to investigate, and what do I find but some . . . some relic of an ancient fellow having a nightmare in the middle of the day!”

  “Oh, dear,” Sorrow said. “Was it poor Mr. Howard? Is there someone with him?”

  “Yes, your mother came.” Lord Newton approached and stared out the window, down at his son. “What on earth is Bertram doing out there? He is sitting on the gravel!”

  “Yes, with Billy. Isn’t it marvelous?”

  “No, it most certainly is not!” He turned to Sorrow. “Young lady, if I had known . . .” He shook his head and walked away, back to his room down the hallway.

  Margaret, coming down the stairs from the third floor, watched him storm into his room and slam the door. “W-what is wrong with him? That is Lord Newton, isn’t it? I s-saw him from the parlor earlier b-but I didn’t come to meet him. What is wrong?”

  Sorrow took her friend’s arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Nothing, really. He was just resting and Mr. Howard disturbed him with one of his nightmares. It’s all right.”

  But try as she might to convince her friend, Sorrow had a foreboding that Lord Newton’s ire would not have a happy ending for any of them.

  Chapter 6

  “How did I never hear of this?” Lord Newton said, pacing up and down in the cramped quarters of Mr. Marchand’s library. He tripped over a heap of books and they slid sideways with a soft thump; he glared at them for a moment, then scowled down at his son. “How did I never hear that the Marchands gather every cripple, every dying old man or woman, every . . . every idiot into their household?”

  Bert, sitting where he had to speak with Mr. Marchand the night before, gazed up at his father but didn’t respond. What was there to say? Over his life Lord Newton had dominated him, he knew, but the viscount was an overwhelming obstacle when once his ire was raised, and it had just been easier to go along with his father than fight him every inch of the way.

  But something had changed. Anger was building in Bert at the way his father was characterizing the Marchands, whom he had found to be charming, if eccentric, and welcoming in an oddly heartwarming way. Though their life was perhaps not one he would choose for himself every day, he respected their decisions and disliked hearing his father’s demeaning assessment of their work.

  He took a deep, steadying breath. “Father, the Marchands are kind people and have dedicated their lives to helping people others ignore. I was . . . well, I was surprised at first myself, but I’m sure after you have spoken to some of the people and—”

  “Nothing will change my mind,” the viscount roared. “I am sorry now that I ever thought of Miss Marchand for you.”

  “And I’m ashamed that I didn’t find her myself,” Bert retorted, rising. “For though I had seen
her, I paid her no mind until you pointed out that she was nearing one-and-twenty, of a tolerably good family and single still. I’m a fortunate man that fate seems to have conspired to bring us together. That the Marchands rescued her mother and adopted her twenty years ago, and then that—”

  “Adopted her? She is adopted?”

  “Yes. Her mother died bearing her, and the Marchands adopted her when she was just days old.”

  Lord Newton covered his heart with his hand and leaned against the desk. “This is a blow. Why is this not common knowledge? Is she trying to hide her antecedents? That is likely it; she’s of low birth and does not want anyone to know. Are the . . .” He paled. “The Marchands . . . they are trying to ally themselves with our family. Of course; why did I not see it before?”

  “What? How can you . . . ?”

  “Our name, our title, our family history!” Lord Newton, his smooth cheeks pale but with a sheen of perspiration, trembled visibly. “Oh, that I have brought this shame down upon our family name! There is only one solution, of course.”

  Bert, stunned by the quicksilver shifts in his father’s mood and reasoning, stood staring at the man. “What are you talking about, Father?”

  “You must find a way out of this engagement . . . or . . . or I shall do it for you. That will serve. I will go now and tell the Marchands that it has been a mistake, and that you shouldn’t suit after all.”

  His stomach wrenched as if squeezed by an invisible fist. Bert cried, “You will do nothing of the kind! Father, I want to marry Miss Marchand!”

  “But you can’t!” The viscount frowned and twisted his mouth in a grimace. “They may sue for breach of promise, but if they do we’ll find a way to keep it quiet. We’ll offer money. Or I will merely point out to Mr. Marchand that our family’s reputation will certainly stand up better than his, and that no monetary settlement can ever regain the girl’s reputation once it is bandied about that she has done something that makes her unfit for—”