“You would not!” she gasped.
“Don’t look so terrified, my dear. I’m not about to snatch you from the cradle, but I need your help. If I go without you, your papa will be after me in no time.”
* * * *
The woods were carpeted with bluebells. Now and then, through the trees, Chloe caught a glimpse of the winding Thames at the foot of the hill and mile after mile of woodland beyond, a hundred shades of green fading into the blue distance. The view failed to raise her spirits.
The dreaded moment had come. She had watched Sir Lionel follow Georgina and call her aside, watched Edgar approach them and clap his future son-in-law on the back. Even now the proposal was doubtless being uttered. Chloe ought to be there, trying to the last to protect her niece, but she simply could not face it.
She had failed Georgie. Yet she could no longer deny that her heartache was not caused by fear of Georgie’s future unhappiness with Sir Lionel. The truth was, she wanted him for herself.
Why, oh why, had she come to London? Safe at Dene, she had been well on the way to convincing herself she would not mind going to her grave a spinster. But since meeting Sir Lionel—
“Sir Lionel!” Startled, she stepped back.
He smiled at her. Georgie, at his side, looked remarkably merry. “Aunt Chloe—”
“Run along, there’s a good girl,” interrupted Sir Lionel, “and don’t let your papa see you until everything is settled.”
Georgina scampered off, giggling.
Chloe found her voice. “Everything is not settled yet?” Perhaps he was allowing her a last chance to plead for Georgie.
“Nothing is settled.” He took both her hands in his strong clasp. “Miss Bannister, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
Chloe’s head whirled. “But you love Georgie!”
“I like Georgie. I cannot imagine a more delightful daughter.”
“You wanted to marry her.”
“Ah, now there you are wrong. My desire to wed your niece never existed outside your brother’s head.”
“Truly?” she said, perplexed. “But even with Edgar, something must have put the notion there. You must have paid her a great deal of attention.”
“She is Arabella’s dearest friend, and I have frequently taken Arabella about, to relieve Elizabeth’s burden. Besides, as I told you at our first encounter, Georgina is the most unaffected young lady I have met in Town. I like her—but I never did love her.”
“Are you sure?”
Sir Lionel grinned, “Quite sure.”
“But you came up to London to find a bride, and Georgie would have suited you admirably but for her stupid prejudice against your age.”
“What a number of misconceptions you labour under, my love! I had no intention of seeking a bride before I felt myself thoroughly settled in my new life on shore. Now I see that I shall never settle properly until I am hitched.”
“Not to Georgie? Why did you not tell me sooner? You could have spared me so much worry if you had told me at our first meeting!”
“I was afraid you would disappear back into the country.”
“I would have,” Chloe admitted.
“I could not risk never seeing you again,” he said softly, “because, you see, I fell in love at first sight.”
“Oh, Lionel! At first sight?”
“Well, perhaps at second.” He considered. “Yes, I cannot claim I was entranced by your greeting, however complimentary—you told me I was not elderly, you recall? I believe it was when you described yourself as a fainthearted poltroon—”
“Lionel!”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly, and Miss Chloe Bannister discovered she did not at all want to go to her grave still a spinster. Her limbs turned to water, just as if she was going to swoon, yet she had never felt so alive in her life. Every nerve tingled and her heart thudded in her breast, matching Lionel’s beat for beat.
“But I cannot marry you until Georgina is wed,” she said reluctantly, straightening her bonnet as he led her, an arm about her waist, to a nearby rustic bench, “and what about the boys in the school holidays?”
“The boys may come to us for the holidays if they choose. Georgie shall make her home with us and may go to as many assemblies as she pleases.”
“And have another Season next year if she does not find a husband to her liking in Warwickshire?”
“Of course, my love. We shall come up for the concerts, in any case.”
“I fear she will be very hard to please,” Chloe sighed. “Anyone who can resist you must be practically impossible to satisfy.”
His finger beneath her chin, Lionel raised her face to his. “Do you mean that?” he demanded, gazing deep into her eyes.
“Why yes, Lionel.”
“Say it.”
“I love you. I believe it was when you first described yourself as the Ancient Mariner—”
“Chloe!” Lifting her onto his lap, he silenced her with another kiss. When at last they emerged, he said, “Georgina may wait as long as she wishes before she marries, but our banns will be read next Sunday without fail.”
“So soon?” she said, snuggling against him.
Lionel laughed, the sound booming in Chloe’s ear, pressed to his chest. “I don’t care to disappoint my brother-in-law to be,” he said jubilantly, “and I promised him he should see a June wedding!”
PIRATE PENDRAGON
London, 1814
“Very pretty-behaved girls,” said Mrs. Drummond Burrell graciously. “I congratulate you, Lady Ransome.” With a stately nod, the highest stickler of all the Almack’s patronesses passed on, her train brushing the toes of Alicia Ransome’s grey satin slippers.
Alicia beamed after her. Of course she knew very well that her daughters were pretty-behaved, but the encomium was not to be despised, coming from so influential a lady.
In front of her the row of gentlemanly backs, blue, black, and Life Guards red, shifted as another couple twirled down the centre of the set. Between two backs, she caught a glimpse of Emilia and Frederica, their dark heads together as they chatted, awaiting their turns to dance. Though a trifle shortsighted, Alicia could tell from her seat among the chaperons that her girls were quite the prettiest within the sacred precincts of Almack’s, besides having pretty manners.
The fashionable gentlemen of the metropolis had not been slow to discover the Ransome girls’ charms--which included, admittedly, very handsome dowries. Since soon after the beginning of the Season, lovesick swains had swarmed about the Twin Goddesses.
Goddesses perhaps, thought their mother with fond amusement, remembering certain less than heavenly childhood mischief. Twins, no.
Though scarcely a year separated the two, Emilia, the elder, was half a head shorter than her sister, with a slight figure and emerald eyes. Apart from the eyes, she much resembled Alicia in youth. Frederica was more like the late Viscount Ransome, tall for a woman and sturdily built, her shape already at seventeen distinctly curvaceous. A Pocket Venus and a Juno, the gentlemen agreed.
There went Emilia now, in rose-petal pink with a crimson ribbon at the high waist. She skipped down the set on the arm of young Lord Ames, heir to an earldom, with a besotted look in his eye. At least, Alicia could not make out his expression just now, but it was plain enough when he was close. And Emma laughed up at him, but Alicia had seen the joy and tenderness in her face when Richard Ames requested the dance.
Frederica, in blue and silver, took her turn down the middle. Watching, Alicia’s heart twisted in an involuntary pang.
Darling Freddie was already happily betrothed to Mr. Alwin Fairweather. Both Mr. Fairweather and Lord Ames were entirely unexceptionable gentlemen, well able to support her daughters and apparently deep in love. Of course Alicia was delighted. But what would she do without them?
Up in the balcony, Neil Gow’s Band played a final chord. The dancers bowed and curtsied, and all over the room gentlemen delivered young ladies to their hopeful mamas. Before Emilia and Frederica reached Alicia, she was surrounded by would-be partners for the pair.
Smiling, she shook her head. “I fear their cards are filled, Sir Adrian, Mr. Lambert.”
“Dash it all, ma’am,” sighed a third disappointed spark, “one must indeed arrive betimes to hope to dance with Miss Ransome or Miss Frederica. The doors will not close for another ten minutes.”
The girls came up and the beaux’ attention turned to them. In the midst of the laughing, chattering group, Alicia was not precisely ignored, yet she felt herself apart. She was too young to be relegated to the ranks of the dowagers, she thought mutinously.
But she had forgotten how to rebel, since that last, fruitless rebellion which had ended in disaster.
Her daughters swooped down to drop a kiss on either cheek before going off with their new partners. “Pray do not look so sad, Mama,” Emilia whispered, “when Freddie and I are so very, very happy.”
As the floor cleared to allow the dancers to take their places, Alicia noticed a stir on the far side of the room, near the entrance. At eleven o’clock, the patronesses closed the doors and admitted no one, once having turned away even so august a personage as the Duke of Wellington. A couple of gentlemen had arrived just in time. Alicia saw heads turn to stare at the newcomers, but at that distance she could not make out what made them particularly worthy of note.
The music started, and she gave herself up to the pleasure of the tune, hiding her tapping toe beneath the dove-grey sarsnet of her skirts. Emma was right, she must not succumb to melancholy when she had attained every mother’s dream: to find excellent husbands for both daughters in their first Season.
Freddie was the first to return to her side. “Mama, who is that gentleman who cannot take his eyes off you?”
“Where? Do not point, Frederica! I am sure I have told you a hundred times.”
“At least. Leaning against the pillar over there, beneath the musicians’ balcony.”
Alicia cast a quick glance in that direction, but all she could see was a figure in a dark blue coat and the requisite black knee-breeches. “I cannot tell, not without staring rudely.”
“Well, he is staring quite rudely, Mama. Why should not you, likewise? But there, how silly of me, I expect he is too far off for you to see clearly without your spectacles.”
“Perhaps there is something amiss which only he has noticed?” Alicia patted her hair, still as dark as her daughters’. “My toque is not slipping sideways, darling?”
“Not at all. You are all perfection, Mama. Here comes Emilia. Emma, do you see the gentleman propping up the pillar over there, who gazes so intently at Mama?”
“Yes,” said Emilia. “I am told he is but recently come to Town after many years abroad. I doubt he has not seen so charming a sight as Mama this age. It is not surprising that he should have no notion of manners, for he is a sea-captain and only think, they call him Pirate Pendragon!”
The room swirled about Alicia’s head.
“Mama, you have gone quite pale!” exclaimed Frederica. “It is only a nickname, you know. He is not a real pirate, I am sure, but even if he were the greatest rogue in Christendom, he could not make anyone walk the plank here, surrounded by the Beau Monde.”
Emilia, more perceptive, pressed Alicia’s hand. “I believe Mama knows him, Freddie,” she said softly, “or used to, rather. Dearest Mama, do you wish to go home? Frederica shall gather our wraps and I shall send for the carriage at once.”
“No, no,” Alicia said faintly, distractedly. “It would look most particular. Your evening would be quite spoilt. I am perfectly all right. He can have nothing to say to me after so long. When we were children....Indeed, my darlings, go and dance. The music is starting and here are your partners patiently waiting.”
The partners, seeing the ladies in earnest conversation, had held back. Now they came forward to offer their arms to Emilia and Frederica. With many an anxious backward glance, the girls went off.
Alicia did her best not to look towards that slight, blue-coated figure, but despite her utmost efforts her eyes turned that way.
The man known as Pirate Pendragon was talking to another, taller gentleman, who wore the scarlet coat of a guards officer. The girls were mistaken, then, he had not been staring at her after all. He could not possibly recognize her after so many years, and if somehow he had, she could not be more to him than an object of mild curiosity. At least, his present interest had been momentary.
Or perhaps he had forgotten her altogether, she thought, not without a twinge of pique. But the moment of resentment quickly passed. He had shattered her world, left her desolate, and what she felt now was a deep sadness.
She had loved him. She had loved him for as long as she could recall.
Cornwall 1781
It was the Honourable Miss Alicia Roscoe’s fifth birthday. Mama and Papa were in London for the Season, but she already knew better than to expect any token from them. Her three elder brothers, who seldom agreed on anything, had clubbed together to give her the new cricket bat and ball they so desperately wanted. Rupert promptly borrowed them back, then grew impatient when she cried.
“Selfish little meanie!”
“It’s not I don’t want you to play with them,” she sobbed, “but you never let me play too.”
“All right, if you stop blubbing you can one day,” promised James, “but not today because we’re meeting the Pendragons for a game.”
“But today’s my birfday!”
“Now, now,” said Nanny, tyrant of both nursery and schoolroom, dominating meek governesses and tutors alike, “you young gentlemen oughta be ashamed of yourselves. Miss Allie’s old enough to go with you now. You just take her along of you this one day out of all the year.” Nanny believed in fresh air and exercise for little girls as well as boys, which gave her time to nap.
So Alicia went along with the boys, and that was the first time she met Peter Pendragon.
He was the third of the Earl of Orford’s four sons, just three years older than Alicia, the same age as her youngest brother, Edward. Orford’s principal estate in Cornwall marched with Baron Roscoe’s. Their lordships’ sons played together whenever all were let loose at the same time. Seven boys aged from six to twelve--along with accompanying spaniels and pointers--were enough for all sorts of fun and gig, especially as a stream formed the boundary.