“Are you all right?” Harry hovered protectively.
She smiled and nodded. “What were you arguing about?”
“Nothing,” Harry said immediately.
She raised her brow at him, then turned to his aunt.
“About where to have the wedding,” Lady Gosforth said. “But perhaps you want to delay it.”
Nell shook her head. “No. There’s no point in delaying. What was your disagreement about?”
Lady Gosforth waved her hand. “Oh, I had everything organized, and now he wants to overturn all my arrangements.”
“Why?” Nell asked.
“Because we’re not getting married at Alverleigh,” Harry growled, glaring at his aunt.
“What is Alverleigh?” Nell looked at Harry.
“The family seat,” Lady Gosforth answered.
“My half brother’s lair,” Harry said at the same time.
Lady Gosforth glanced at Nell. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, my dear, but you must acknowledge that there will be talk, if only from the way Harry kidnapped you in Bath. If you are married from Alverleigh, it gives a clear signal to the world that both you and Harry have the support of the Earl of Alverleigh and the rest of the family. Then if any whiff of scandal surfaces later, it will not signify.”
“It’s the Renfrew family seat,” Harry said. “Not my family at all. I’m a Morant, remember?”
Lady Gosforth gave an airy wave. “Pooh, just because your mother married a Morant, it doesn’t make you one. With that face, you’re a Renfrew through and through.”
Harry scowled at her and she added, “Besides, I hope you’re not going to deny Gabriel as a relative.”
“Of course not.”
“Well, Gabriel’s spending Christmas at Alverleigh with his wife, Princess Caroline.”
“What?” He looked astounded. “The whole of Christmas? I thought he’d be having it with us.”
“He is. We’re all invited. The whole family,” his aunt stressed the word “whole.”
Harry didn’t look too pleased. “When was this arranged?”
Lady Gosforth waved a vague hand. “Ages ago. I believe Nash arranged it when he was in Austria. He popped over to Zindaria and to all intents and purposes got on famously with everyone there.” She gave Harry a beady look. “But then Nash has charming manners.”
He grunted. “Nash is a diplomat. Being charming is his trade.”
“Mules being yours,” his loving aunt said sweetly.
His lips twitched. “I can put up with sharing a table with Nash if I have to, but not Marcus.”
“Marcus?” Nell asked.
“The Earl of Alverleigh, the head of the family and Harry’s oldest brother,” Lady Gosforth explained.
“Half brother,” Harry snapped. “And he doesn’t acknowledge me.”
“He does now,” Lady Gosforth retorted. “He has ever since he came into the title. It’s you who don’t acknowledge him.” She snorted delicately. “That stiff neck of yours is pure Renfrew, too.”
“He’s a coldhearted bullyboy, like his father.”
“His father,” Nell noted, not “our father.”
“He’s soon to be Nell’s brother-in-law. I’m sure at this time it will be a comfort to Nell to know she has a whole family ready and willing to welcome her into their hearts,” Lady Gosforth added pointedly.
Harry gave her an arrested look. “How do you know they want to welcome her?” he asked in a milder voice.
“Because Marcus told me so when he offered to have the wedding there in the Alverleigh family chapel.”
Harry frowned. “Why there? Why not in London?”
“Because despite her colors, Nell is still in mourning for her father, and now, of course, for little Torie.”
Nell’s eyes flooded. She turned away, pressing her quivering lips together until she had control of them again. Harry put his arm around her in instant support. Nell nodded her thanks then stepped away. She had to learn to manage on her own. She could not be forever falling in a heap on him.
“So it would not be appropriate for her to be married in St. George’s, Hanover Square,” Lady Gosforth continued more quietly.
“Her own village church would be appropriate,” Harry said firmly.
For a moment, Nell was so tempted. To go home to Firmin Court and be married in the church she was baptized in . . . To see the church pews filled with all the dear familiar village faces she’d grown up with—they’d all come to see her wed, she knew.
But she’d planned to have Torie baptized there, at the ancient stone font where Nell had been baptized, and Nell’s mother, and her grandmother, and who knows how many generations before her had been baptized. Somehow, she couldn’t yet face that font, not after having lost Torie.
Lady Gosforth was clearly trying to broker some sort of reconciliation between the estranged half brothers. Harry was defensive and hostile about the two older brothers. Nell didn’t understand why, and she didn’t want to interfere.
But she knew what it was like to have no family at all.
“I would like to be married at Alverleigh if you don’t mind,” she told Harry.
“Why would you want to go there?” Harry demanded. “You don’t know any of them.”
“No, but I would like to,” she said simply. “I don’t have any family and I would like to meet yours. But not if you don’t want them to meet me, of course.”
Harry stared at her. “Nothing of the sort. They would be privileged to meet you. It’s not that, it’s just—oh, hang it, Nell, do you really want to go there?”
“Not if you don’t want to.” She waited.
He threw up his hands. “Then we’ll get married at Alverleigh, but don’t blame me if you hate it there.” He looked at his aunt, whose eyes were gleaming with amusement. “And don’t blame me if I punch Marcus in the face.”
“No, dear boy, we won’t; we’ll probably be delighted if you do,” Lady Gosforth said.
“What?” Nell and Harry both said in surprise.
She shrugged. “Men always start out punching each other and then end up the best of friends. Nell, the day Harry and Gabriel met, they were just little boys and yet according to my aunt they tried to tried to kill each other—and from then on they were inseparable.”
She smiled at Harry, “So if you pick a fight with Marcus, we’ll know that in your peculiar masculine way you’re just trying to make friends with him, won’t we, Nell, dear?”
Harry looked so appalled by this view of things that Nell was forced to fold her lips and look at the floor for fear of smiling. She didn’t trust herself to meet Lady Gosforth’s eye.
Lady Gosforth continued, “Now, run along Harry, now that Nell’s up, I want to talk to her about her trousseau. You do something about yours.”
Harry gave his aunt a narrow look. He was well aware of his aunt’s tactics, Nell decided.
Lady Gosforth added, “And mind you have something decent to wear instead of that old coat. Take Rafael with you. That boy is elegant to the fingertips; he can advise you. And hire a valet while you’re about it; heaven knows you need one.”
“Yes, General Gosforth,” Harry said dryly. He turned to Nell. “She’s a designing old harpy, so don’t let her wear you out.”
“What do you mean old?” his aunt said indignantly.
Harry winked at Nell. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said in a low voice.
She gave him a misty smile. “I know, but I want to.” And to her surprise, she did.
The moment Harry left the room, Lady Gosforth embraced Nell. “I am so proud of you, my dear.”
Nell was puzzled. “For what?”
She gestured Nell to sit with her on the sofa. “For the way you handled Harry just now. It was perfect. And I’m enormously grateful. He needs his family, but he’d deny it to his last breath. My brother’s actions wrought emotional havoc among his sons, and now he’s gone, it is my dearest wish to see the family whole and at peace again. Your wedding could be the beginning of that process.”
“Then I’m glad of it.”
The older woman hugged her again and said in a different voice, “And I’m proud of you for getting up and going on, though I know how hard it is for you, my dear.”
Nell looked away as her eyes filled with tears again. “Do you?” she said dully.
“I bore four living babies in my youth, four beautiful boys,” Lady Gosforth said in a quiet voice. “Not one of them lived to his first birthday.”
Oh God. Nell turned back, tears spilling down. “They all died?” She couldn’t imagine it. “I’m so sorry.”
Lady Gosforth nodded, her own eyes wet. “My tiny darlings. To this day I cannot hear a baby cry without thinking of them.”
“How did you ever go on?”
The old lady gestured in a poignant echo of her usual airiness. “One keeps busy, as you and I will do in the next few days. Thank God for shopping, eh, my dear? And fittings and visits and anything else you can do. Keep busy. It’s all one can do. One must not give in to despair.” She rose from the sofa.
Suddenly Nell understood so much more about Lady Gosforth’s relationship with Harry and his brothers. And even his friends. No wonder she wanted the four brothers to be reconciled and be a family again. Her family.
“Now, I know you’re not in love with my nephew—”
“But I am,” Nell interrupted.
“What?”
“I love him very much. With all my heart,” Nell told her. “I have from the beginning, I think, only it all happened so fast I wasn’t sure.” She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t see how anyone could help loving him.”
Lady Gosforth sat down again with a thump. “Oh, my dear, you cannot know how glad that makes me. He doesn’t know, of course.”
“He must.” She’d shown it to him as clearly as she could.
Lady Gosforth shook her head. “Harry doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love. Never has. And now he’s failed you—”
Nell stared. “Failed me? How can he think that after all he’s done?”
Lady Gosforth shrugged. “It’s what he thinks. As to why? He’s a man. They think differently to us.”
Nell thought about it. She’d never told him she loved him, but there were reasons for that. “He said right at the beginning that he doesn’t want that sort of thing from me.” And she’d used it as an excuse for not saying it ever since, she realized.
Lady Gosforth snorted. “A thickheaded Renfrew to the core. What he means is that he’s not going to let anyone close enough in case they reject him or abandon him.”
“I see,” Nell said slowly. Yes, of course. She’d been so lost in her own misery and loneliness for such a long time, she couldn’t see his. She hugged Lady Gosforth tightly.
“What was that for, my dear?”
“Harry is so lucky to have you, Lady Gosforth,” Nell said. “They all are.
We
all are.”
“Oh, pish, tush, my dear,” she said, clearly delighted. With a resumption of her usual manner, she added crisply, “And it’s high time you started calling me Aunt Maude. Now let’s get on with this trousseau.”
Nell was almost tempted to call her General Gosforth, as Harry had, but all she said was, “Yes, Aunt Maude.”
T
he next few days passed in a frenzy of shopping. Nell had very little time to herself, and though grief was always a part of her, like a huge, gaping hole in her center, she was grateful for the distraction.
Lady Gosforth was right. Keeping busy did help.
They visited so many shops her head was in a whirl; milliners, glove makers, haberdashers, jewelers, and perfumers. Nell became familiar with places such as Bond Street and the Pantheon Bazaar where she was almost tempted into buying a colorful parrot, as well as a lovely green shawl.
And all the time she learned things about herself she’d never known before.
Lady Gosforth had put it very bluntly: “Ladies like you and I, Nell, will never be pretty, but we can be elegant, which is a great deal more useful. Prettiness fades after a few years, but elegance only increases with age.”
Nell was struck by her wisdom. It was true. Lady Gosforth, with her long face and Roman nose, wasn’t what people called pretty, but she was immensely elegant and, despite her age, still very striking.
And the best thing about it was that unlike the features you were born with, elegance was something you could control. She resolved to become elegant.
At the mantua maker’s Nell learned that simple lines and soft colors became her best. She was amazed at the difference to her looks some colors made. All these years she’d worn dark brown for practical reasons and it made her look sallow. But a light gold, or peach shade made her look quite different, and soft greens really suited her.
She learned to be bold. After the disaster of her coming out, where her own quiet tastes had been scorned and she’d been dressed in fussy, frilly dresses in white or bright “girlish” colors, she’d lost all confidence.
This time her clothes had also been chosen by someone other than Nell, but oh, what a difference. Cooper had done her proud, she realized, as had Bragge and Lady Gosforth. There was nothing she didn’t like—not one thing! And some clothes she really loved.
As she donned dress after dress for fittings, she slowly realized that she’d been right, back then; that simple styles did suit her better, that the soft colors she preferred did suit her.
At the milliner’s, trying on dozens of hats, Nell learned from Lady Gosforth, Bragge, Cooper, and the milliner that she had a good face for wearing hats. She’d never known that before.
They went to the tailor where two riding habits had been commissioned. The first had been made in camel-colored fabric with blue and gold trimmings. It was beautiful and fitted her perfectly. The second one Lady Gosforth had left for Nell to choose the fabric. She looked at all the selections, her eyes automatically going to the browns and dark-colored lengths. And then she saw a length of purple fabric and her breath caught.
Be bold, she thought. “I’ll have it in that,” she said.
There was a short silence. The tailor, Lady Gosforth, and Bragge exchanged glances.