The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (12 page)

Realizing she could manage neither stays nor gown alone, she pulled on the red brocade dressing gown her host had lent her over her shift and went downstairs to find a human being. She wandered along a promising corridor and found the kitchen, but Mrs. Wardle was nowhere to be seen. Trying the other side of the staircase, she caught a glimpse of Mr. Compton through an open door.

“I need help with my stays,” she said. “And my gown. It fastens at the back with laces and I can’t manage them alone.”

By the time she noticed the visitors it was too late to withdraw.

“Miss Seaton, isn’t it? I never forget a face.”

Neither did Celia, certainly not this one. She’d never seen a human being with a greater resemblance to a parrot than the lady seated at the table. Her impulse to flee she suppressed with regret. The Duchess of Amesbury had recognized her. Across the table from his aunt, Mr. Compton stood like a statue. Celia didn’t mistake his glacial expression for indifference. He’d spent most of the previous evening, before they retired to the separate bliss of beds with mattresses, impressing upon her that no one—
no one
—must ever learn she’d spent the night under his roof without a chaperone.

Just her luck she’d been caught at Revesby by someone who knew her. She looked down at the floor and wished her ankles weren’t exposed. Mrs. Wardle had found undergarments and shoes for her, but not a single item of hosiery.

Slightly to her surprise she had the presence of mind to summon a curtsey and her knee poked through the opening of the robe. “Your grace,” she murmured, straightening hastily.

The duchess’s eyes bored into her. “I had no idea, Nephew, that your habits included the seduction of well-bred ladies.”

“You misunderstand, your grace,” Celia cut in quickly. “Nothing of
that
kind happened. Mr. Compton rescued me from a very difficult situation. He has behaved like a perfect gentleman.”

“I see. How very chivalrous of him. Did you spend the night in this house?”

“Yes, but . . .”

When the duchess smiled, Celia learned, she ceased to resemble a parrot and turned reptilian. “When is the wedding?”

“There’s no need for him to offer for me, I assure, your grace.”

“You and he are alone here?”

“Yes, but . . .”

Mr. Compton cut off her protest. “Miss Seaton is a young lady of unimpeachable virtue.” She had to say that for him: he knew how to lie with conviction. “So virtuous, so innocent, that she doesn’t understand how the impure minds of others will perceive her situation.” If their plight weren’t so grave she’d have giggled. “I have not yet had an opportunity to broach the topic since we hadn’t yet met this morning. Naturally I shall offer her my hand in marriage.”

Celia broke in. “There’s no need . . .”

A stern glance bade her be silent and she thought she’d better obey. They could find a way out of this fix later.

“Come here, girl.” The duchess summoned her with a nod.

“Her name is Miss Seaton.”

His aunt ignored the interruption. “If you are to join our family I need to know more of yours than that foolish Trumper woman told me. She’s been known to present some odd birds to the
ton
but she charges a pretty penny so I imagine your fortune is more than respectable.”

“I have none.” Celia disdained to lie to this rampaging elephant of a woman.

“How can that be true? Did you lie to Trumper?” The duchess’s eyes gleamed with avid curiosity. “I never thought she could be deceived about money.”

“My late uncle,” Celia answered with as much dignity as she could summon when clutching a man’s dressing gown closed at the front, “sadly died before he made provision for me.”

“Such carelessness about business would not be permitted in the best families. I know some Seatons in the north. Are you one of them?”

“I have no idea. My father lived in India and that’s where I grew up.”

“Not a nabob, I take it. A pity. Inferior connections may be eradicated by a truly large fortune.”

Celia hadn’t thought Mr. Compton had anything in common with his formidable aunt until she was on the receiving end of this set down. But he surprised her by coming to the rescue.

“Don’t be vulgar, Duchess. There’s nothing the matter with Miss Seaton’s connections. She was the niece of a most respectable man in Lincolnshire. Her lack of fortune was an accident, and my own is adequate to our needs.”

His chivalry touched her. He knew little of the respectability or otherwise of her late guardian, while the unpretentious shabbiness of Revesby Hall made her wonder about the truth of his second claim.

The duchess looked as if she’d like to argue, but even she, without actually quailing, retreated before Mr. Compton’s icy rebuke.

“I shall take my leave then,” she said, getting to her feet, “and give you a chance to come to an understanding. Miss Seaton, I have no idea why you disappeared from town last year, or what you’ve been doing since, but you will do very well for Tarquin.” She walked to the door, leaving Celia with the feeling she meant something quite different, then paused at the threshold. “I do recommend, dear Miss Seaton, that you put on some clothes before hearing my nephew’s proposal. You wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”

“I should go upstairs,” Celia said weakly, as she watched the duchess’s retreating back, trailed by her husband, a man so insignificant in appearance that Celia had only noticed his presence when he offered hasty felicitations. “My attire . . .”

“Stay.” Mr. Compton gripped her arm. “Sit.”

“I am not a dog.” He glared at her. She sat.

They shared an uneasy silence until they heard the duchess’s carriage depart.

Mr. Compton’s eerie calm was fraying at the edges. “Do you make a habit of entering dining rooms in a state of dishabille?”

“I needed help with my gown. Mrs. Wardle was nowhere to be found. I had no idea you weren’t alone.”

“Don’t you have ears? Didn’t you hear us speaking? Didn’t you think before you stumbled into a public room in a dressing gown? A
man’s
dressing gown?”

“There’s no need to shout.”

“And when you realized someone was with me, why didn’t you have the wit to flee? If the duchess hadn’t known who you were, we wouldn’t be in this mess. She’d have assumed I’d brought home a woman of easy virtue.”

“That’s what I am, isn’t it?” She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes to dispel a prickly weakness.

“No,” he said, moderating his pitch. “That is not what you are. The blame for our actions is equal. And now we’ve been caught, we must marry.”

The words were generous, gallant even, but they didn’t sound that way. While no longer shouting he clearly remained furious.

“I don’t want to marry you and you don’t want to marry me.”

“Of course I don’t.”

“The duchess is the only one who knows. Can’t you explain to her what happened? I find it hard to believe she’d welcome me to her family if she knew the truth. She’d be glad to save her nephew from a disastrous match.”

“If the duchess knew the truth she’d broadcast it to the world.”

“But surely she cannot wish to put you in a difficult position?”

A short humorless laugh was his only response.

“My goodness, you mean she would!”

“The Duchess of Amesbury likes to make people dance to her tune. In recent years I’ve managed to avoid putting myself in the position of having to. If we don’t marry she’ll make sure I suffer public embarrassment. And you will be ruined. Not that she bears you any ill will beyond the general malice with which she regards the world. You are merely an irrelevant bystander caught in the crossfire of our lifelong mutual loathing. Your ruin would be my fault as much as hers.”

Irrelevant bystander or innocent victim, Celia rejected either role. She hadn’t escaped from that cottage and lied and cheated her way across the dales to find herself back where she started, at the mercy of fate and the whims of others.

“You forget,” she said. “I am already ruined.”

“That is why our marriage is your only option.”

“I could return to Mr. Baldwin and explain.” Even as she made the suggestion her voice faltered. She saw herself telling the tale under Bertram’s confused gaze and his sister’s scornful one. Kidnapped by the man they thought her lover; locked up without her clothes; escaping across the moors, almost naked, in company with yet another man. Only a simpleton would believe such a tale.

“If he wouldn’t believe in your innocence before, he certainly won’t now.” Unspoken but ever present was the fact she was no innocent.

As she stared at the table a chill seeped through her veins and she faced the truth. There was no one to whom she could turn. She’d love to spurn his grudging offer, made only to save face in the eyes of the world.
I shall go to my father’s cousin Sir Lordly Baronet. I have no need of your help.
She might have any number of baronets, even a peer or two, among her kin. But if so she didn’t know them. Other than her former guardian Mr. Twistleton, her mother’s sister’s widower, she possessed not a single connection. And, worse still, not a single penny and no means of earning one. Needless to say, the Baldwins weren’t going to supply her with a reference. The mysterious disappearing Mrs. Stewart had been her only hope. She was absolutely alone in the world.

“There’s no alternative, Celia,” he said. “I don’t see a way out.”

His use of her Christian name, for the first time since he remembered his own, comforted her a little. While he still seethed with barely suppressed rage, the slight effort to be civil was to be commended. If she had any sense, she ought to accept his offer with relief and gratitude. He risked only the loss of his reputation; her life was at stake.

She hadn’t been in love with Bertram Baldwin, even a little, but she’d been ready to marry him and be a good wife. He offered his name and home, she’d be a mother to his four sons; it was a fair exchange. But with Mr. Compton, Tarquin, the condescension was all on his part. And perhaps it would be easier to contemplate wedding him without affection if there hadn’t been a few hours—impossible to believe it was only yesterday when it seemed a lifetime had passed—when she’d fancied she loved him.

He loomed over her, frightening in the perfection of his person. Not a wrinkle, a snagged thread nor the slightest blemish marred his clothing. His hair was a sculpted masterpiece. And how did he get that jaw so smooth? His forbidding expression killed any impulse to touch it. The man she’d loved had been a temporary product of a blow to the head and never really existed. The idea that she, with her lack of prettiness, unruly reddish hair, no fashion sense (and lack of wardrobe of any kind, modish or otherwise) should wed this haughty paragon was absurd. She’d spend the rest of her life feeling inadequate, a shabby wraith in the shadow of his magnificence.

Tired of having him tower over her, she stood and moved to the other side of the table. “Mr. Compton,” she began. “I am sensible of the honor you do me, but I’m not overcome by joy at the prospect of our marriage. I’m sure you feel the same way.”

“That is of no importance. We have no choice.”

“We have a choice, as long as we haven’t stood before a clergyman and spoken our vows. Let’s not do anything hasty. If we wait, some other course will occur to us.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“I am trying to save us both from a lifetime of misery and you’re making no effort to help.”

“What makes you believe we are condemned to a lifetime of misery?”

“The expression on your face, for one thing. You look as though you’d stepped in something odious.” She threw up her hands. “I’m going upstairs to dress.”

“You can’t fasten your stays, remember, which is why we find ourselves betrothed.”

It was the thought of her wardrobe that almost brought Celia to tears. If she wanted to wear anything other than twenty-year-old ball gowns, she would have to ask him for money. She detested her utter dependence.

“Now sit down, there’s a good girl.”

She blinked furiously, gritted her teeth, and sat.

“I have a plan. I shall take you to stay with Lord and Lady Iverley. Sebastian Iverley has been my closest friend since Cambridge. He married a few months ago and his wife can chaperone you. We must make sure everything appears proper before our marriage. I don’t want a hint of scandal.”

“Oh no! Everything must appear proper,” she muttered mutinously.

“They are visiting her family in Shropshire, less than two days away by post. Mrs. Wardle can come as your companion for the journey.”

“Would Lady Iverley help me find a position? Perhaps she could be persuaded to furnish me with a reference.”

“You’d rather be a governess than marry me?”

Instead of a blunt
yes
Celia strove for a measure of tact. “I think our lack of enthusiasm is mutual.”

“Let’s not start that again,” he said. “The best thing is that Diana Iverley has perfect taste. There’s no better-dressed lady in London. She is the very person to make you presentable.”