The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (16 page)

He responded with a stiff little bow. “My felicitations. It is better that way. A rushed marriage and early birth always causes talk.”

“There’s no need for a marriage at all.”

“I say otherwise. My honor demands it.”

“Keep your honor. I am breaking off our engagement.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can and I do. The only reason I agreed to it was that I had no money and nowhere to go.” She sounded churlish to her own ears, but it was better to make a clean break, even if she added discourtesy to her list of sins.

“You still don’t.”

“Lady Iverley has offered to help me find another position as governess, or even a different husband.”

“The devil she has! What business is it of hers?”

“I thought you’d be relieved.”

He towered over her, with his most formidable glare, his wrath as great as when he first discovered her deception. She raised her hands, palms out.

“What do you want?” she almost shouted. “You ought to jump at the chance to get rid of me.”

Then he kissed her.

There was no sweetness to it. His hands gripped her shoulders painfully; his mouth on hers was hard, punishing. And she loved it.

She loved the instantly familiar touch of his lips, his spicy taste now overlaid with a hint of tooth powder. She loved his subtle untraceable scent, and the feel of his shaved chin against hers. She seized his head between her hands and pulled him closer, opening to his kiss and returning it.

All too soon she was free again. He stepped back, softly panting and looking more furious then she’d yet seen him.

“Why?” she said, catching her breath. “What was that for?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and she recognized that his state of agitation must equal her own. Normally Tarquin was so physically controlled.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t understand. You are
not
the kind of woman I am attracted to.”

She stood there with her hands on her hips, hair disarranged, glaring up at him with wild eyes. She was letting him off the hook, tossing him back into the pond, and Tarquin knew he should be happy.

She wasn’t pregnant and she’d been embraced by his friends who would help her get settled without him. And instead of feeling pleased, all he could think was that he’d never make love to her again. What was it about this tall, flat-chested, ill-dressed governess that he found irresistible? Why had he spent the previous night wishing she wasn’t sharing a room with Minerva so he could join her in bed? When he thought about being married to Celia, about sharing his life with her, he shuddered with horror. But when he thought about sleeping with her his heart pumped and his body stiffened.

Good manners slipped away. “You are an impossible woman. I don’t know what I see in you.”

“In that case,” she said, “it’s a good thing we do not have to be married. I shall inform our hosts that our engagement is over.”

“Fine,” he said and stamped off.

Chapter 20

Gentlemen are not, as a rule, interested in young children.

C
hantal, Diana’s maid, terrified Celia. The Frenchwoman was middle-aged, tiny, and dressed entirely in black. She had strong opinions and no compunction about expressing them. To Diana’s suggestion that Tarquin should be consulted about Celia’s attire she replied with a single French-accented word.

“English.” It emerged like an expletive and Celia took malicious pleasure in her scorn for the arbiter of fashionable London.

Draped, pinned, and poked, she watched her wardrobe take shape. Not even during her London season had she possessed such finery. Lady Trumper had dressed her in the youthful, pale garments of a debutante but not even the genius of Chantal could make Diana’s sophisticated gowns simple. Neither did she wish to. The maid agreed with Diana’s assessment that Celia needed to be dressed in rich colors.

The details of cut and trim baffled Celia and she accepted whatever Chantal and Diana suggested. But she loved the materials. She had a weakness for the caress of silk, velvet and fine muslins and linen on her skin. She mourned her yellow silk, lost when Constantine stole her possessions, the only evening gown from her London wardrobe she’d kept. Everything else she’d sold when her guardian’s death left her penniless.

Deeply grateful for Diana’s generosity, she couldn’t but remain uneasy at the uncertainty of her position. While wonderful to have found friends, it was humiliating to have nothing of her own. She kept wondering if she should have held Tarquin to his reluctant engagement. At least he offered security.

Or did he? Without knowing much about the law, she had the impression a wife had little power of her own. From the conversation of other girls in London she’d gathered two things about marriage among the upper orders: that a girl without a fortune found it hard to find a husband, and without a marriage settlement a married woman could find herself without pin money during her husband’s lifetime or a jointure at his death. With no guardian to act for her, no money to bring to the marriage, she could wed and be left a neglected wife and a penniless widow. To be on her own and know so little of English customs was infuriating. Low burning anger at her father flamed up.

As she knew only too well, reliance on the support of men didn’t always work out. Deliberately or not, one by one her father, her guardian, and her fiancé had abandoned her and left her helpless.

In the end, she suspected, she was going to have to find a way to support herself. Meanwhile she thrust her worries to the back of her mind and enjoyed the company of the Montroses.

The end of her engagement to Tarquin had been greeted with the same easy acceptance from the Montrose family as her unexpected arrival as his fiancée.

“I don’t blame you in the least,” Diana said. “Tarquin is much too unyielding in his habits to make a comfortable husband. Although,” she added with a tinge of doubt, “no one was more set in his ways than Sebastian when I married him.”

“What do you think is important in a husband?” Celia asked.

“Reliability, I suppose. It’s good to have a man there when you need him. And not when you don’t.” Diane looked mischievous. “Take me, for instance. I love to rearrange my houses and find new furnishings and bibelots. But Sebastian, as long as I don’t interfere with his library, doesn’t care. I’d find Tarquin with his everlasting opinions quite tiresome.”

“To me a room is just a room, as long as it’s comfortable and contains the necessities for its function.”

“Just as well you aren’t married to Sebastian then. The pair of you would live in squalor.” Diana liked to exaggerate. Lord Iverley, though by no means a dandy, dressed with a neatness and propriety that matched his character. Once recovered from the terror inspired by his wife’s lying-in, he displayed a measured and heartfelt consideration for her that inspired Celia with envy. As for the mixture of bafflement and pride with which he approached his infant son, always studying the tiny creature to discover his secrets and needs, Celia found it funny and touching.

“What about love?” she asked. “Do you think it matters?”

“It matters most of all,” Diana said, “for those of us who are lucky enough to find it.”

T
arquin saw little of Celia for several days. Except when they met at meals, she was closeted upstairs with Diana and her maid. One day, with Minerva for company, she went shopping in Shrewsbury. Since their hosts had accepted the end of their engagement without concern and seemed to have appointed Celia an honorary Montrose, he considered leaving Wallop. But no other destination appealed to him.

He should return to Yorkshire and finish the business that had been interrupted by his assault and memory loss. While there he might call on Celia’s former employer and fiancé and look for clues to their mystery from that end. But for now he preferred to remain where he was. The idea of leaving her without his protection made him uneasy.

So he stayed on and lack of occupation frayed his temper. Normally he would have passed the time with Sebastian, boxing, riding, conversing about their mutual interests, especially their libraries. Since first meeting at Cambridge, they’d shared adventures in bibliophilia and co-founded the Burgundy Club, an exclusive association of young book collectors. But between his wife, his new son, and extensive business correspondence, his best friend hadn’t leisure to spare for him, as he had before acquiring a peerage and a family.

Sebastian found time one afternoon to accompany him on a visit to the Duke of Hampton’s library at Mandeville House. To Tarquin’s surprise they spent as much time discussing their estates as they did the rare treasures in the collection. Talking through a couple of the problems raised by his land agent helped Tarquin make decisions regarding the future development of his property.

They returned to Wallop Hall to find the house invaded by Vikings, although invaded was perhaps the wrong word when the two arrivals were sons of the house, big, fair men, male versions of Mrs. Montrose and Minerva. William, the eldest of the family, was very brown, as befitted a man who had just returned from two years in South America and a summer sea voyage across the Atlantic. His brother Henry was a medical student in Edinburgh and correspondingly pale, neither the Scottish climate nor the habit of study being conducive to a tanned complexion. The family ran to good looks and this pair was no exception. Very handsome devils, though a trifle unrefined if one were to ask Tarquin, which no one did.

William Montrose had reached London only in the last week. Though news of his sister’s marriage had reached him when he emerged from the Amazon jungle where he’d been gathering botanical specimens, this was the first time he had met his new brother-in-law. Henry and Sebastian were already friends.

Tarquin had observed Sebastian’s rapport with the Montrose family and was glad for his friend, who’d had a lonely childhood. Seeing him embraced into the society of his brothers-in-law, who were chaffing him on his new state of paternity, didn’t upset him exactly. But after years of being Sebastian’s closest, almost his only friend, Tarquin was disconcerted to find himself on the sidelines.

He stepped back from the scene and quietly wondered which of these Norsemen he’d have to share a room with, when Minerva and Celia appeared at the doorway, Celia as he’d never seen her before. The pomona green round gown in jaconet muslin appeared simplicity itself, if one ignored the three layers of French work on the skirt, but Tarquin knew better. Diana Iverley had tricked his erstwhile betrothed in a garment that spoke eloquently of Bond Street. And her hair! The bushy locks had been tamed into gleaming curls that would pass for auburn. They framed the face, making her complexion look creamy and sending her high cheekbones into relief. Diana’s maid had lived up to her reputation. The new Miss Seaton was highly presentable as well as damnably attractive.

The Montrose brothers seemed to agree. Acting as one, they made a beeline for the new arrival and demanded introductions. In no time Celia was swapping tales of Indian flora with William and folk remedies with Henry. Tarquin leaned against the mantelpiece feeling disgruntled.

Minerva came over to join him. “Celia could have been born a Montrose,” she observed. “She fits in perfectly.”

Tarquin strove for politeness and barely succeeded. “You mean she’s naturally boisterous?”

“I meant unconventional. Our family is quite mad. But I suppose we are a bit noisy, especially when the boys come home.” She looked at him curiously. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Two sisters.”

“And was your family always sane and quiet? Even three children can make quite a din.”

He remembered that, in the nursery at Revesby, or tearing around the garden. Before London and the regime of the duchess, where any expression of emotion might be repressed or punished.

“At Amesbury House exuberance was not encouraged,” he said.

“I don’t know if it’s precisely encouraged here. It just seems to happen. As you’ve probably noticed, we live on the edge of chaos.”

As if on cue, a dog rose from its peaceful repose on the hearth rug, barking and nudging at Celia’s skirts. The animal quieted at once when she patted it but the oldest Montrose, quite unnecessarily, went down on one knee. Celia laughed down at the genuflecting giant and their hands brushed on the canine head.

To crown his irritation, Diana made her first appearance downstairs since the birth of her son, now gloriously named the Honorable Aldus Manutius Iverley after the celebrated Venetian printer. Not that he was unhappy to see her, but she had young Aldus with her and the infant made Tarquin profoundly nervous. He’d always avoided close contact with his sisters’ babies and had no intention of changing his policy now.

The boy’s uncles had no such reluctance. The Vikings took turns holding and rocking him, attention the baby accepted with good-natured tolerance. Tarquin tried to fade into a corner but Celia, curse her, spotted him, just as she had taken Aldus from Henry and was cooing at him.

“Mr. Compton,” she said, with a glint in her eye he swore was malicious. “Wouldn’t you like to hold your godson? Aldus, meet your godfather.”

There was nothing for it. He let her place the baby across his arms and prayed he wouldn’t drop him. Aldus stared at him with unfocused blue eyes and opened his tiny mouth like a fish’s. “I think he’s about to cry,” Tarquin said.

“No,” Celia said. “It’s just wind.”

What the devil did that mean?

“Hold him upright, like this.” She adjusted the child in his arms. “There.”

Aldus blinked once and opened his mouth again, ejecting a milky emission over the lapel of Tarquin’s superfine wool coat.

C
elia knew the baby would spit up. She was only sorry it was so little. A gallon of sour milk soaking Tarquin’s coat would have been cause for celebration.

She hated him.

He hadn’t said a single word about her appearance, not one. All the time she was talking to the Montrose brothers she watched him out of the corner of her eye. She’d been dying to see what he thought of her now that Diana and Chantal had pronounced her presentable. Well, she had the answer.

Nothing. He thought nothing. The lovely new Celia wasn’t worth a smile or a comment from the Grand Panjandrum of London style. She might have guessed she’d never be good enough for him and she scolded herself for caring.

The admiration of the new arrivals soothed her bruised sensibilities and she’d be inhuman had she not enjoyed their pointed admiration. Never in her life had she been the recipient of gallantry from not one but two very handsome young men. Sitting on either side of her at dinner, both showered her with compliments. But she began to sense a more pointed interest on the part of the elder.

He eagerly listened to everything she had to say on the subject of Indian botany. William knew a great deal more than she, having conducted extensive correspondence with botanists at the gardens in Madras and Calcutta. He had been engaged by an aristocratic patron to design and oversee the construction of a large hothouse for tropical plants.

“I hope to travel to India myself,” he told her, “and bring back specimens. It’s far more satisfying to gather them
in situ
. And I would like to see a giant banyan. They can grow over three hundred yards in circumference. Did you ever see such a thing?”

She denied acquaintance with such a monstrous tree and, though she’d lived in Madras for a few years, had never visited the botanical garden there. But she did her best to describe the plants in the luxurious gardens surrounding her father’s house.

“Do you wish to return to the land of your birth, Miss Seaton?”

“I have no connections remaining there,” she said, though not sure if this statement was true, “and the journey is long and uncomfortable.”

“To one whose whole life was spent there, the climate in England must appear very cold.”

“Cold, Mr. Montrose? After this summer we shall all be grateful for a little temperance. Even a snowflake or two.”

“During two years in the jungle I dreamed of snowdrifts every night. What do you miss, if not the heat?”

“Why, vicious biting insects and poisonous snakes. The English countryside is so tame and lacking in challenge.”