Imogen thought about that.
“On that subject,” Griselda said, “I would prefer that you did not choose my brother for your further adventures…I think it is time that he married.”
“Do you?” Imogen found it extremely difficult to imagine the Earl of Mayne (who was riding beside the carriage) tied to anyone’s apron strings.
“What’s more, these little affairs are much better conducted out of the public eye. Everyone would take particular enjoyment in watching you and Mayne, given their delight in your so-public flirtation last year.”
“Nothing came of it,” Imogen said hastily.
“I know that. But if you and he are still seen together in the coming season, it will be a truly fascinating on-dit, given my brother’s apparent inability to continue a relationship with a woman past a few weeks.”
“Mayne is not a possibility,” Imogen said. Never mind the fact that he showed no interest in her. Mayne was not what she had in mind. He was too volatile, too sophisticated and altogether too uncomfortable. “I thought to have a friendship with someone unknown to the ton.”
“That is an excellent idea,” Griselda approved. “A gentleman, naturally, but someone who keeps to himself. Perhaps Rafe has some particularly rustic friend who might interest you for a brief time. It is better to find someone who is absolutely not husband material.”
Imogen shook her head. “I am amazed, Griselda. Truly, I am.”
“If you will forgive me for saying so, my dear, you have been quite at the mercy of your emotions for several years. But emotion is an unreliable guide to men. I find it helpful to observe the male sex objectively whenever possible. They have great charms. Yet one should avail oneself of those charms only in situations in which one has the upper hand at all times.”
She settled her rug around her more snugly. “Men are troublesome to one’s dignity and one’s peace of mind. Keep that firmly in mind, and choose a man with no wish to claim you in marriage.”
“I am amazed,” Imogen repeated. “Amazed.”
Griselda raised an eyebrow. “Amazement is a necessary precursor to sophistication, my dear. Let me add that if you feel the inclination to befriend someone, do so for one night, or at the very most, two. If we females become overly intimate, we run every risk of falling in love. I have seen it happen to friends a hundred times.”
Imogen opened her mouth but Griselda held up a delicate hand.
“I am well aware that you have already suffered a bout of love. While it undoubtedly cured you of a desire to repeat the experience, beware! Be very careful.”
Imogen nodded. Griselda referred to love with all the horror that one might describe a bout of measles. It was eye-opening.
“One night, or perhaps two, if the gentleman in question is particularly amiable. Naturally, you must avoid having a child. I can give you some instruction on that matter.”
“Nothing came of my marriage,” Imogen said sadly. “I’m not certain that children are something I should worry about.”
“You were only married for a few weeks. Now I was married for a year, but the truth of it was that poor Willoughby was rather too large to be comfortable in those circumstances. My dear friend, Lady Feddrington, tells me that her husband suffers a similar indisposition.
“End the affair briskly, and without allowing the slightest room for doubt,” Griselda continued. “Tell the gentleman that while you are grateful for the lovely time that you spent in his company, you have seen the error of your ways and wish to lead a celibate existence. You can add some flummery about his having given you pleasure you never experienced before, if you wish.”
Imogen nodded, wishing that she had Josie’s little book to take notes in.
“On occasion, a hitherto rational man might act in a thoroughly distracted fashion when you inform him of your wish to end the relationship. I generally inform them that while I am not betraying poor Willoughby (he is dead, after all), I have decided, upon reflection, that I am betraying myself. They never have any adequate rebuttal, and you can part on the best of terms. If it weren’t for this foolish stomach of mine, I could perhaps think of something else…oh, there is one more thing.”
“Does every widow know these rules?” Imogen asked, fascinated by this glance into Griselda’s life.
“Certainly not, or there wouldn’t be so many foolish women throwing their reputations away. The most important rule is that you never look to the servants. I have to tell you, my dear, that there have been ladies who looked aside to footmen.” She widened her eyes impressively. “Even gardeners!”
Imogen and her sisters had studied every London journal they could find during their childhood in Scotland, and they were well acquainted with the occasional shocked comment that the Countess of Such and Such had escaped to France in the company of a member of her household.
“Widowhood can be a long and a lonely state of affairs, Imogen. But only—” Griselda smiled—“if one chooses to experience it in that fashion.”
Imogen nodded.
“I foresee a happy widowhood for you,” Griselda observed. “Will you ring that bell again, my dear? I am afraid it is a matter of some urgency.”
4
In Which it is Discovered That Marriage is the Greater of Many Evils
A house party, Wintersall Estate
Somerset
Gillian Pythian-Adams was bored. It wasn’t an unusual sensation, but it was certainly an unpleasant one. “Mr. Wintersall,” she said, painstakingly reminding herself that in matters of grave importance, sincerity was not important. “I honor you enormously. I—”
“My mother is quite carried away by the boldness with which I affirmed to her that you were the spouse of my choice,” Mr. Wintersall stated. “I think I hardly need tell you that, generally speaking, I take my mother’s advice in all things. In fact, she asked particularly that I should assure you of that. I am not a man who refuses to take advice from a woman.”
“I am touched by your—your boldness,” Gillian said. “But—”
“Miss Pythian-Adams,” Mr. Wintersall interrupted. It was likely a constitutional problem with him.
“Yes?”
“It seems to me that you may be laboring under a misapprehension…” And he was off again. Gillian caught sight of herself in the mirror on the opposite side of the room. There she was: green eyes, red hair, her mother’s slender oval of a face. Her gown was, if she said so herself, exquisite. She was the picture of a perfect lady. So why was she so different from the other young ladies of her acquaintance?
Why was she the only one who found it a torment to listen to the insipidies and stupidities of men, to pompous, arrogant proposals given by half-baked men who expected her to respond with gratitude, if not slavish adulation? Her father laughed and said it was the penalty for reading too many plays. Her mother looked worried and said a man would come along who was not a fool.
For some years, Gillian had believed her. In the beginning she had punctiliously attended every ball to which she was invited, awaiting the moment when her less-than-foolish future husband would stroll into her presence. When that hope dwindled, she engaged herself to a fool, Draven Maitland, thinking that saving her family’s fortunes was a passable alternative to loneliness. Then Draven had taken himself away, which left her prey to proposals.
The worst of it was that she was starting to dislike everyone. She no longer met a strange gentleman with the hope that he would prove himself different; she merely watched, indifferent, as the creature sprouted his silly chatter, his foolish persiflage. From Gillian’s point of view, all men, including Mr. William Wintersall, were primitive, direct and deadly (to borrow a phrase from a second-rate play) in their pursuit of one thing. She wished she could pretend it was pursuit of beautiful eyes, or even desire for her company in the bedchamber.
As far as she could tell, her dowry trumped the above.
Mr. Wintersall provided an excellent example of pure lust for lucre overcoming his obviou
s lack of interest in her person. He had (finally) dispensed with his mother’s views of marriage and had launched into a genial hymn of self-praise. Gillian had no doubt that were she dull-witted enough to accept his hand in marriage, that particular hymn would grow into a daily chorus in which she would be compelled to join. The very thought of it made her shudder.
“Mr. Wintersall,” she said firmly, “I cannot marry you.”
“Oh, but—” he said, floundering into a sentence so full of platitudes that he couldn’t see his way to the end.
“I never alter my opinion when it comes to things of this nature.”
He blinked at her uncertainly. “In questions of marriage,” she clarified. Then she patted the seat next to her. “You must tell your mama that you actually wish to marry Miss Hazeleigh.”
Alarm filled his dull blue eyes. “But I don’t! I wish to marry you.” All the same, he stumbled off his knees—all that weight around his middle must have been putting terrific pressure on them—and sank into the seat beside her.
“You do not wish to marry me,” Gillian said calmly. “Your mother told you to marry me. You wish to marry Lettice Hazeleigh. And I think there is”—she paused for a moment—“a reasonable chance that she might return your affections.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t—I mean, I don’t wish—”
“I recognize that her lack of dowry may be seen in some quarters as a problem. But you, Mr. Wintersall, do not seem to me a man whose soul is engaged in such material pursuits.”
He gaped at her.
“While one naturally has confidence in the opinion of one’s mother,” she explained, “one does not wish to follow her lead in all things. In pursuit of the woman you love,” Gillian said meditatively, “I can see that you, Mr. Wintersall, would be completely unlike all the silly men of the ton. No, you strike me as a man who would be primitive, direct, and deadly in your pursuit of the woman of your heart!”
Mr. Wintersall snapped his mouth shut. Gillian congratulated herself on the effectiveness of that particular line. Luckily, lines of dialogue were somewhat interchangeable.
“Tell your mama that you intend to marry Lettice,” Gillian said.
Mr. Wintersall frowned.
“A man of your quality does not allow his mama to choose his wife.”
“But my mama doesn’t wish me to marry you,” Mr. Wintersall blurted out. “She was of the opinion that you were long in the tooth and difficult to bring to the bridle.”
Gillian recoiled for a second and then nodded. “She was right.”
“I—I would like to marry you anyway,” Mr. Wintersall said. He toppled off the sofa again and pressed his lips to Gillian’s hand, painstakingly, moving his mouth up approximately two inches with each kiss.
At this rate, Gillian thought, he will reach my elbow by next Tuesday. Apparently it was wishful thinking when she decided that Mr. Wintersall had formed an attraction for Lettice. Lettice needed a husband, and Mr. Wintersall would have been just right for her.
He was reaching the edge of her glove and might actually touch her skin, so Gillian withdrew her hand. “Mr. Wintersall,” she said, coming to her feet in a brisk movement, “I must make my regrets. I have an important appointment, and I can give you no further audience.” She made up her mind on the moment. “Tomorrow morning my mother and I are leaving to attend a house party. You see, the Duke of Holbrook has requested my assistance in opening his private theater.”
Mr. Wintersall’s eyes narrowed slightly. “My mother feels that private theatricals are rather risqué, nay, even rash for a young lady.”
Gillian thought about smiling and decided not to make the effort. “Your mother is slightly out-of-date,” she said. “Everyone from Lady Hardwicke to the Duchess of Bedford are engaging in private theatricals these days. Why, before she died the Duchess of Holbrook herself was passionately interested in the theater. By all accounts, the theater at Holbrook Court is modeled on that of the Duchess of Marlborough, and you know hers is declared the most elegant outside London.” Until this moment, Gillian had thought to reject the Duke of Holbrook’s invitation, but she was feeling more interested by the second.
“If we were married,” William pointed out, “no one would gainsay your interest in theatricals. No Mrs. Wintersall’s virtue has ever been questioned.” His chest swelled with pride.
Gillian thought of the sour, virtuous face of his mother and agreed.
William bounded to his feet with an ungainly enthusiasm. “You haven’t given me time to argue my case!”
“There is no need to tax yourself. I—”
“Surely no theater can compete with my feeling for you.” William enveloped her so suddenly that she didn’t see it coming. His lips pushed down on hers, and she was pulled against a body that felt as softly rounded as her own. But strong.
“Mmmmfff!” Gillian said, struggling to free her mouth.
“Miss Pythian-Adams!” William said, panting a little as she managed to pull her head away. “You are right about me! Primitive and direct is precisely what I am!”
And before she could move, he pulled her against his body again. In the resulting fracas, Gillian inadvertently opened her mouth to scream at him, which led to some nauseating intimacies that incited her to violence.
“Ouch!” William shrieked, his voice rising to a level that belied his dark, primitive directness. “You—you kicked me.”
Gillian caught up the bodice of her gown. “Whereas you mauled me.” She was so angry that she couldn’t even speak clearly. “You—you impertinent buffoon!”
Mr. Wintersall’s eyes narrowed. “There is no call for discourtesy between us.”
“If you don’t label your attack on my person discourtesy,” Gillian snapped, “then you are precisely as caper-witted as you appear.”
“My mother didn’t just say that you would be hard to bridle!” William said. His face had turned so red that it matched the upholstery. “She said that your profile was undistinguished and your chin showed a sad lack of principle. She expressed grave misgivings about your character, given your evident addiction to theatricals.”
Gillian’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, so Mrs. Wintersall—”
He interrupted, naturally. “Obviously, your addiction to the stage shows a sad unsteadiness. One must wonder what other foolish notions you may be cherishing.”
“If it is foolish not to wish to marry a man of your impoverished intelligence, then I am, indeed, foolish!”
“I am sorry to confirm, Miss Pythian-Adams, that I have come to agree with my mother,” William said.
Gillian dropped the slightest of curtsies. “I shall be most—”
“No one in my household had the slightest hesitation as to why Lord Maitland was so eager to terminate your engagement that he fled to an impudent marriage. I braved the tide defending you, Miss Pythian-Adams. Indeed I did!”
“To speak ill of the dead is the mark of a particularly ill-bred person,” Gillian snapped.
Mr. Wintersall pulled his heavily embroidered vest over his stomach. “In fact, I was merely applauding Lord Maitland’s intelligence and forethought.”
Touché.
Gillian chose the coward’s way out and slammed the door behind her.
5
In Which Imogen Meets a Man Unsuitable for Marriage…if Eminently Suitable for Other Pursuits
Griselda and Imogen arrived at Holbrook Court late on a Thursday evening, after supper. After one look at them, Rafe’s butler, Brinkley, began murmuring about fires, baths, and toddies, and two minutes later Imogen was walking into the so-called Queen’s Bedchamber.
There was no call for Imogen to feel a rush of nostalgia on entering the room. It wasn’t the same bedchamber in which she’d stayed when the four Essex sisters first arrived from Scotland. She wasn’t sleeping in it the night that she first met Draven Maitland on English soil, nor yet did she elope from this house. Instead, she had ridden a matter of three miles to the west, deliberately fallen off he
r horse and in so doing, sprained her ankle, and then spent one night in the Maitland household before she and Draven eloped.
Before, she thought rather bleakly, she had talked Draven into eloping with her.
Her current bedchamber faced east, not west. She couldn’t see anything of Maitland land. But she had looked that direction from the window of the carriage. Yellow leaves were tipping the willows between Draven’s and Rafe’s lands. There were blots of crimson low to the ground, probably rowan berries. Now those were her rowan berries, and her willows, and all the pretending in the world wouldn’t erase the fact that her young husband had died, and his mother had died after him.
It is an odd truth that when grief wanes, other unpleasant emotions rush into the space left by mourning. Even the thought of Maitland House made her feel sick with guilt. Why should she own even a single Maitland rowan bush? She was practically a stranger to the family. The new baron lived in Dorset because Maitland House, unentailed, had passed to Imogen. She hadn’t brought herself to enter the house since Draven’s mother died. And yet she could feel it looming, full of ghosts, to the west.
She turned from the window impatiently. Her maid, Daisy, had unpacked her things and run a bath, so Imogen obediently sank into the pool of steaming water and tried to think of more cheerful subjects.
Of course it didn’t work. She could hear Daisy talking to herself as she put away clothing, tut-tutting over the wear her clothing had taken on the journey from Scotland.
Draven’s clothing was in that house. She couldn’t let his cravats molder into silence and decay. She should parcel up Lady Clarice’s things and give them to the poor, send her jewelry to female relatives, order the furniture muffled in Holland cloth. Perhaps she should sell the house.
It used to be that she would climb into the bath, and the very act of surrounding herself with water would bring on tears. But she hadn’t cried in days. Her two-week marriage was starting to feel like a childhood memory, one of the vivid ones that slips from your fingers even as you try to remember it.