Carola Dunn (2 page)

“And it was clever of Nathan to think of waiting until we reached London to sell the diamonds.” She saw his expression brighten. “They brought a much better price than the Durham jeweller offered. We shall be able to afford a few extravagances without ruining our budget.”

Tad came in with the luggage and the ladies retired to their chambers to tidy themselves for dinner. Her room was small but comfortable, Jessica noted as she took off her bonnet and set it carefully on the dressing table. It was her best bonnet, the finest Durham had to offer, but she knew it was sadly unmodish. The thought failed to disturb her. She had every intention of refurbishing her wardrobe in the fashionable shops of Milsom Street.

The maid, Sukey, knocked and came in. “Can I help you, miss?” she offered.

Jessica looked at her, nonplussed. “You could hang up my pelisse,” she suggested dubiously.

She had always managed perfectly well without a personal maid, but an abigail was necessary for appearance’s sake. Tad was doubtless hovering over Nathan, attempting to play his new role of valet, which he was to alternate with that of footman. Jessica smiled as she recalled his delight in his smart bottle-green livery.

For the present, she reminded herself, appearances were all-important.

CHAPTER TWO

“I fear my brother is in something of a miff, Matthew.” Miss Caroline Stone regarded her favourite nephew with a worried look as he limped across the maroon-patterned Aubusson to take her hands in his and kiss her cheek.

He smiled down at her, his grey eyes dancing. “If you will go so far as to say Uncle Horace is ‘in something of a miff,’ I take it he’s primed to explode?”

“That might be more accurate,” she admitted. “It’s no joke, so I wish you will not laugh at me in that odious way. Indeed, my dear, you must tread carefully.”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Caro, I’ll turn the old boy up sweet. That’s a mighty becoming cap you have on.”

“Flatterer.” She touched the froth of Valenciennes lace and coquelicot ribbons perched on her dark hair, streaked with grey though she was not yet forty. “It is pretty, is it not?”

“To be sure, but what I meant is that you are prettier than ever in it. I daresay I had best beard the lion in his den and get it over with. In the library, is he? I rely on you to stitch me up when he is done mauling me—if you will promise not to embroider my hide with rosebuds.”

Caroline watched him go, tall, broad-shouldered, jaunty despite his limp, dressed in the pink of fashion. At twenty-seven, he still had the dark hair inherited from her sister, without a touch of the early greying which ran in the family. Picking up the embroidery she had been working on when he came down after changing from his travelling clothes, she sighed. Horace had taken some notion into his head and was not going to be easily placated.

Matthew paused in the vestibule for a last check on his appearance. His uncle, Viscount Stone, was a stickler and there was no point setting up the old fellow’s back for nothing.

Not without satisfaction, he stared at himself in the looking glass. The swallowtail coat of dark blue superfine, a new one from Scott, fitted without a wrinkle though it was not so tight as to impede his movements. His neckcloth was elegant without ostentation, moderately starched and neatly creased. He gazed thoughtfully at the sapphire pin which nestled in its snowy folds. Would Uncle Horace consider it extravagant? Surely not; the viscount gave him an allowance sufficient to purchase occasional baubles of the kind.

He continued the inventory: modest waistcoat of pale blue satin; skin-tight fawn inexpressibles; boots spotless, glossy yet not so shining as to suggest the expense of champagne in the blacking. While far from being a pinchpenny. Lord Stone regarded wasting money with an attitude not unlike that of a Methodist towards sin.

As he crossed the wide, high Tudor hall, Matthew realized that driving his curricle the ninety miles from London along the busy Bath road had tired him more than he thought. Fatigue always made the wound he had received in the Peninsula ache like the very devil. To limp into his uncle’s presence, however, would be too much like a plea for sympathy.

Knocking on the library door, he entered the book-lined room and strode with steady steps towards the small, white-haired man behind the large mahogany desk.

“How are you. Uncle?” he asked cheerfully.

“None the better for the news I had t’other day from half a dozen busybodies in Town,” snorted Lord Stone, scowling. “Don’t stand there towering over me, Walsingham. I can’t abide it.”

Matthew was glad to pull up a chair, but his uncle’s unusual use of his surname worried him. “I came as fast as I could on receiving your letter.”

“Wearing out that high-stepping pair o’ bays you’re so proud of, I daresay.”

“No, sir, I left them at the first stage with Hanson to bring them on slowly.”

“And wasted the blunt on hired horses! You might as well have told him to take them back to Town, for you’ll not be staying here long. I’ve had enough of your care-for-nobody ways. Pushing your chère-amie in a wheelbarrow down St. James’s Street in her petticoats! Disgraceful!”

Matthew tried to repress a grin at the memory of Lulu kicking up her heels and squealing with delight. “It was a race, sir, for a wager.”

“Aye, so I’ve heard. Two hundred guineas!”

“But, Uncle, I...”

“Two hundred guineas!” the viscount repeated, purpling at the thought. “Your trouble, my boy, is that you have no comprehension of the value of money. You’ll learn it soon enough when you have to manage on the pittance your father left you. My lawyer’s coming tomorrow to change my will in favour of your cousin Archibald. Not another penny will you get from me.” A thump of fist on desk punctuated this declaration.

Matthew was aghast. To lose his income now and Stone Gables in the future, all for a harmless prank that, in a more sanguine humour, the viscount would have laughed at as a very good joke! And to lose it to his sanctimonious cousin Archibald Biggin—it didn’t bear thinking of. Yet the lawyer was already sent for. Once Lord Stone had made up his mind, argument only hardened his determination, and Matthew was not prepared to crawl, not even in such dire straits.

All the same, there were others to be thought of.

“I have debts in London, sir,” he said tentatively.

“Gaming debts, no doubt,” his uncle growled. “You need not think I shall pay them. From now on you’ll not be moving in fashionable circles anyway, so what matter if you are cast out of decent society.”

“Not gaming debts, sir. It was you who taught me to play and pay.”

“A little genteel betting on the cards for modest stakes, not two hundred guineas for a scandalous jape! You owe your tradesmen, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doubtless they are used to whistling for their money. It’s just as well you told your groom to come on here, for you’ll not be daring to show your face in Town. I suppose you’ll have to stay until he arrives. Now get out, and tell Caroline I’ll dine on a tray in here.”

Matthew stood up and leaned with both hands on the desk. His leg ached fiercely. “I suppose it’s no good promising to reform,” he said.

“Too late. I’ve been patient with you and this is the last straw. Now get out! Get out!” shouted the viscount.

The march back down the long room seemed endless. Matthew closed the door softly behind him and slumped against it. Then he realized the butler was lurking nearby. Straightening, he attempted a smile.

“I’m afraid his lordship’s in a devil of a passion, Bristow.”

“He’s been cross as a bear with a sore head all week, Mr. Matthew. It’s the collywobbles—dyspepsia the sawbones calls it. Well, you know for yourself, sir, how his lordship likes his food.”

“Too much jugged hare, eh? Mrs. Bristow’s cooking is enough to tempt any man to overindulge. My uncle asked for a tray in the library this evening.”

He returned to the drawing room, but Aunt Caroline had gone up to change for dinner so he had to wait until they met, at one end of the long dining table, to pour out his woes.

“I shan’t starve, of course,” he said gloomily, helping himself to a second serving of vegetable marrow stuffed with minced veal. “The Consols my father left me bring in around four hundred and fifty a year. But I shall have to choose whether to live by my wits on the fringes of Society or to abjure the Polite World altogether.”

“You might consider taking up a respectable profession,” his aunt proposed.

Matthew brightened. “I have always been interested in architecture, though I consider it merely a hobby. The trouble is it would take a long time to get started, and I have debts that ought to be paid soon: my tailor, my bootmaker, my landlady, the coal merchant, and at least half a dozen others. You don’t suppose Uncle Horace will relent?”

“I wish I could give you some hope, but Horace has always refused to listen to persuasion, since he was a small boy, according to your mama. I recall her telling me of an occasion when she was eight—he would have been six—when he insisted on going shoeless in the snow. No matter what anyone said, only the actual experience of frozen toes changed his mind.”

“I shall have no opportunity of proving myself sober and frugal, since he will doubtless consider that in my straitened circumstances I have no choice.” He sighed. “You know, Aunt Caro, it’s dashed rotten timing.”

“Very true, alas. If he had not heard from those busybodies at a time when he is suffering from dyspepsia, I daresay he would have thought your antics a very good joke.”

“Yes, there’s that, but what I meant is that I’d just about had enough of cutting up larks anyway. It’s not as if I meant to spend the rest of my life on the spree.”

She patted his arm. “I have often thought that your enthusiastic embrace of the amusements of Town was more of an attempt to forget the horrors of war than a defect of character.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. Half his friends dead in the Peninsula and himself laid up for the better part of a year, not knowing if he would ever walk again—yes, the horrors of war was one way to describe it. “Dearest Aunt, you may just be right.” His smile was crooked. “However, it’s past time to put the wretched business behind me. I shall strive to become a useful citizen.”

“That seems to be your best course,” she said, laughing at his dismal tone, “unless you can find an heiress to marry.”

His fork half way to his mouth, he stopped with an arrested look. “Now there is a famous notion. It will take some time to set up as an architect, so I might as well look about me for a rich bride in the meantime.”

“Why not? Bath was said to be a fertile ground for fortune hunters in my youth. The living was cheaper and the competition less than in London.”

She was teasing, but the more Matthew thought about it the more it seemed an excellent solution. At worst. Bath would provide superb buildings for him to study in pursuit of his new profession.

“And it’s only fifteen miles,” he said, “so I shan’t spend a penny on post horses getting there.”

“You really mean to do it?”

“Don’t look so worried. Aunt. I’ve no intention of abducting my heiress should I be so lucky as to find one. All fair and square and above board.” Well, nearly, he admitted to himself. If he was perfectly honest about his comparative poverty he would never meet an heiress in the first place. He’d have to put up a show. “I don’t suppose it would be possible to stay at Uncle Horace’s house on North Parade?”

“He never goes there,” she said doubtfully, “since he blames the waters for ruining his digestion. Certainly they always made him bilious. He has really only kept the house because when there are no tenants I like to spend a few days there occasionally. In fact he was talking of selling it, and it is not let at present, I believe.”

“Be a dear and give me a letter to the housekeeper,” he coaxed. “Is it still the same woman?”

“Yes. She always had a soft spot for you and never fails to ask after you. Very well, Matthew, I shall aid and abet you in this horrid scheme, and we must hope that my brother never comes to hear of it.”

“On the contrary. I cannot think of anything more like to persuade him of my respect for money than to turn up with a wealthy wife on my arm.”

“Possibly.” She shook her head wryly. “I can let you have twenty pounds to keep the wolf from the door for the present.”

“Bless you, but if I am to save the cost of lodgings by staying in North Parade, I can manage until quarter day. That’s what is so infuriating about the whole business,” he added with a rueful grin. “Uncle Horace is on his high ropes because of that wager—and I won it!”

CHAPTER THREE

The first thing Jessica did on their first morning in Bath was to send Nathan to obtain subscriptions to the Pump Room, the Assembly Rooms--both Upper and Lower, and Harrison’s Circulating Library and Reading Room. She would not for the world have him go with her to hire lodgings, or they would find themselves tucked away up a pair of back stairs in a back street.

Having obtained from the landlord the name and direction of a reputable house agent, she and Miss Tibbett set off for Old Bond Street. The pale amber Bath stone of which so much of the town was built seemed to catch and reinforce the sunlight, a pleasant change after yesterday’s dreary weather. Jessica kept her hand firmly tucked under her companion’s arm, for Tibby kept casting longing looks towards the Pump Room as they passed. Indeed, so determined was she on looking backwards that they had a narrow escape from the wheels of a phaeton as they crossed the busy corner of Cheap Street.

“You shall explore the baths to your heart’s content as soon as we are settled in lodgings,” Jessica promised, “if you manage to survive until then.”

She herself found it difficult to resist the lure of the shop windows, but they reached their destination without further mishap. The house agent assured them that they had arrived early enough in the Bath Season to have a wide choice of desirable residences in all areas of the town.

“The upper part is considered more salubrious,” he explained, “and is therefore more expensive.”