The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (29 page)

“Others may not be as discreet—or forbearing,” she said. “I envy you. You seem to have found a way to make a life on your own. I wish I could do the same.”

The countess tilted her head and looked at her for some little time, as though trying to come to a decision.

“I have a better idea. When I hand this jewel over to its new owner I shall receive the final payment of ten thousand pounds. Since half of it was your father’s share of our profit, you shall have it.”

“I don’t think he deserved it.”

“No, but you do. And five thousand is not a great fortune, after all.”

It sounded a vast sum to Celia. It represented her independence. “Can you afford it?” she asked.

Julia waved aside her concern. “There’s always more money to be found. I spent most of my capital on my Paris wardrobe so I could present myself in London as a rich Hungarian widow. Not that I ever find it a sacrifice to spend money on clothes.”

“Who are you, truly?”

“I never tell unnecessary lies. I was born a Hartley and I am the widow of a Hungarian count, but not a rich one. Don’t worry about me. Five thousand pounds is ample to start me off on my next adventure.”

“Then I accept your offer with gratitude. Thank you.” She held out her hand but instead Julia gave her a quick embrace, saluting her on both cheeks. “Do you think you will remain in England?”

Julia laughed. “Why of course? How else am I to marry Mr. Compton?”

The door opened to admit William Montrose. “Celia,” he said. “Min told me you’d come back to us.”

He strode across the room toward her then stopped dead. His welcoming smile froze and his blue eyes grew wide. “And who is this?”

“Allow me to present Countess Czerny. Julia, this is Mr. William Montrose.”

William looked as though he’d been hit over the head with a large blunt object. “Countess,” he gasped and took her hand. “I am honored to make your acquaintance.” He kissed her hand.

“I am happy to make yours, Mr. Montrose. I was just leaving.”

“I’ll see you to your carriage.”

Without another glance at Celia, he took the countess’s arm.

“Tell me,” she heard Julia say as they left the room. “Are you related to Rufus Montrose? I met him in Athens once . . .”

Good thing about the five thousand, Celia thought. Marriage to Will Montrose was clearly no longer an option. Much as she liked Julia, it might be better if she did leave the country.

The lovely adventuress was not, however, going to take Tarquin from her. Not if Celia had anything to do with it. On the other hand, it was time to put Tarquin in possession of the unvarnished truth. She sat down at the writing desk and found pen, paper, and ink.

Chapter 33

Those who have your best interests at heart may not be right.

“W
hat have you done with Celia?”

“Good afternoon, my dear boy. Yes, thank you, I am very well today.”

Since Hugo set great store by polite forms, Tarquin would not normally burst into his uncle’s chamber without ceremony. He bit back his impatience. “I beg your pardon, Uncle. I understand you walked with Miss Seaton after breakfast.”

“Do sit down. May I point out that the symmetry of your neck cloth is off by a few degrees.” Hugo was more than usually languid, but Tarquin, who knew him very well, detected an undercurrent of unease. He was in no mood to investigate the cause.

“I don’t give a damn about my neck cloth.”

“My dear boy! Are you quite well?”

Tarquin dragged an ottoman next to Hugo’s wing chair and tried to contain his impatience. “After she spoke with you, Miss Seaton packed her belongings and left in one of the Mandeville carriages. I would like to know what you said to cause her to depart.”

“Nothing to upset her, I am sure. Perhaps she merely felt she had stayed long enough. These country house parties can be so fatiguing.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, this and that. We may have broached the topic of marriage and what makes for a happy one. We found ourselves in agreement.”

“Hugo,” Tarquin said in a warning tone. “Have you been meddling?”

Hugo looked aggrieved. “I have nothing against Miss Seaton. She seems a nice enough girl, though without much elegance of dress or manner. And she has no fortune.”

“Are those your only objections?”

“Her upbringing. Not only did she live in India until a year or two ago, so that she has no experience or connections in English life, I gather from her former chaperone Lady Trumper that the circumstances of her upbringing were somewhat scandalous.”

“Such intolerance is unlike you. I daresay her father was a little disreputable, but that’s hardly her fault.”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

“I don’t care and I don’t want you to tell me. It all happened in India so who’s to know?”

“Now you are being naïve, my boy. People always know.”

“This has nothing to do with Celia, does it? It’s about Julia Czerny.”

Hugo nodded. “Julia is clever and beautiful, witty, and modish. Just the kind of person we enjoy.”

Tarquin had never felt so much at odds with Hugo. Yes, Julia Czerny was a dazzling woman but Celia was also clever and witty and beautiful. And frankly he didn’t care whether or not she was modish. The heretical thought crossed his mind that perhaps he didn’t enjoy the same kind of person as Hugo.

“I think you’d like Celia very much if you gave her a chance.”

It would be too much to say he slumped, but Tarquin’s practiced eye detected an infinitesimal slackening in Hugo’s perfect posture. His voice grew serious, without his usual witty flourishes. “I was very fond of Julia’s late father but I also owed him a debt of gratitude. Without him I would have been ruined. Jonathan Hartley helped me out of a tight spot involving a moment’s indiscretion on my part and a blackmailer.”

Tarquin squeezed the old man’s hand. “There’s no need to tell me the details, unless you wish to.”

“Thank you, I won’t. Suffice it to say I would like to repay my debt to his daughter. And I can’t think of a better way than to see her wed to the man I regard as a son. And I believe a lady of wit, elegance, and fortune will suit you far better than a harum-scarum former governess of dubious antecedents.”

Unable to dispute Hugo’s assessment of Celia’s worldly position, Tarquin wondered how much of
Julia
’s he should reveal. At the very least the countess was guilty of considerable sins of omission: she might still be the widow of a rich Hungarian nobleman (though Tarquin wouldn’t want to lay money on the accuracy of that description) but it wasn’t all she was. Having castigated Celia for her lies, he’d come to believe in her fundamental honesty. He wouldn’t bet sixpence on Julia’s.

Not upsetting Hugo, however, was a priority for him, however much he might be out of charity with his dear uncle in this instance.

“I have reason to believe,” he said carefully, “that Cousin Julia may be a bit of an adventuress.”

Hugo actually smiled. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she took after her father in that regard. Jonathan was a Hartley by birth but too far down the line to come into a Hartley fortune. He lived abroad mostly, traveling around. He died a few years ago, somewhere in the East Indies. I never inquired too closely how he managed to live.”

“So you have no particular objection to me marrying an adventuress. I’m very glad to hear it.”

Tarquin felt slender fingers tremble as they rested on his own, papery skin reminding him of Hugo’s age and frailty. His uncle spoke with indubitable sincerity. “As I have always said, I only want you to be happy.”

“In that case, Hugo, you must accept Celia. She makes me happy.”

Hugo looked into his eyes, long and hard. Finally he nodded. “Very well. Just as long as she loves you.”

“I believe she does.” Doubt assailed him as he realized something. “She’s never actually said she will marry me.”

“Did you ask her?”

“Of course!” He paused. He wasn’t sure he’d ever rendered a proposal in the form of a request. “Perhaps not.”

“My dear boy! This is not a matter on which I can advise you from experience, but I am tolerably sure it is good
ton
to make an offer of marriage in a humble and beseeching manner.”

As happened numerous times over the years, Tarquin and Hugo exchanged looks of complete mutual understanding. “Thank you, Uncle. Your guidance in these matters has never failed me yet.”

A knock at the door preceded the entrance of a footman with a letter. For Tarquin. Ripping off the seal, the first words relieved his anxiety with the news that Celia had traveled no farther than Wallop Hall.

Her missive filled two full sheets. He’d never seen her handwriting before. It reminded him of her: idiosyncratic and slightly disordered, the product of an interrupted education. The letter spelled out in detail exactly how she’d lived in the years after that education was cut short.

He swore viciously as he took in the final piece of news. The last veil of uncertainty was ripped to shreds and his feelings were clear as summer noon.

“Bad news?” Hugo asked.

Tarquin wanted to kill Julia Czerny. “It appears that Miss Seaton has come into a nice little independence. She no longer needs to marry for her own security. She can manage without me.”

Chapter 34

Never get into a cart with a strange man.

B
y late afternoon Celia began to fear Tarquin wasn’t coming, the chance she’d taken when she set him free.

Still, he might have risen very late. The night had required a great deal of energy on both their parts and she wished now she’d been able to sleep. Fresh air, she decided was what she needed to counter her own fatigue.

Enjoying her freedom to venture out without fear of another kidnapping, she turned down Minerva’s halfhearted offer of company. The latest edition of
The Reformist
had come in the day’s post and the younger girl was fully engrossed. In a heady abandoent of convention, Celia left off bonnet and gloves and set out at a brisk pace, making believe she was back on the moors.

Refusing to cry because the companion of her Yorkshire adventures was absent, she scarcely allowed herself to hope she might meet him on his way to Wallop Hall. She turned out of the drive into the lane and reached the back gates to Mandeville but refrained from peering through the iron bars. So far she’d walked the best part of a mile without seeing a single living creature not propelled by wings. Resolutely undisappointed, she carried on, refusing to look back. Then she detected the clop of a single horse moving at a slow walk, clearly not a gentleman on horseback or in a smart carriage. Instead, as it drew nearer, she judged it to be pulling a cart and glanced over her shoulder to find her guess correct.

Her heart thudded. The driver was a dark man wearing the rustic smock of a farm laborer. Thus had the adventure begun. She stopped and waited. The vehicle drew to a halt. A voice hailed her in a miserable facsimile of a Yorkshire burr.

“Can I give you a lift, miss?”

“Why would you do that?”

“So I can take you off to a lonely cottage, tear off all your clothes, and ravish you.”

“In that case,” she said, putting a hand on the seat and hoisting herself up beside the driver, “by all means.”

He had come. It remained only to discover if she read the message of his costume correctly.

He gee-upped his horse, turned around, and drove back into the Mandeville park, tossing a coin to the gatekeeper.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Wait and see.”

They followed a grassy ride though a stand of trees, away from the road to the house. She waited for Tarquin to speak first.

“Tell me about your brothers,” he said.

She took a deep breath. Apparently her letter hadn’t been enough. He wanted the whole story. “When I was twelve we left Madras. I never knew why, but I think my father had disgraced himself with the Company. That’s when I discovered he already had another home where he kept his bibi. That’s what the Indians call a mistress.”

“I assume, even in India, it was unusual for a man to take his daughter to live with his mistress.”

“All the English, in India and here, were shocked about this. I learned to accept it. We had separate quarters and servants, but I was lonely when my father was away so I’d cross the courtyard and visit Ghazala and later the children, when they arrived.”

Beginning with the missionary and his wife who’d accompanied her on the voyage to England, everyone had cautioned her to silence, advised her to forget that she’d spent seven years in such scandalous circumstances. Now she could finally speak about this part of her life, Celia found she couldn’t stop. She poured out her memories of the graceful compound with its well-tended gardens, the lovely girl, only a few years older than herself, who was the true mistress of the house, and above all of Arthur Akbar and George Ghalib. Her beautiful little brothers, whom she’d held in her arms as newborn infants, had been only five and three years old when she’d bid them farewell, weeping bitterly that she’d never play with them again.

From time to time during her narrative, she looked at Tarquin, dreading to encounter the distaste she’d seen on the faces of the few who had heard the story. She’d never dared tell Bertram Baldwin.

While driving the cart Tarquin could do nothing more than listen. But he sensed it was a tale Celia needed to tell, one she’d locked inside herself for too long.

“I understand now why your first impulse when we met was to make up a story. It’s been a habit for you, hasn’t it?” At her stricken look he took her hand and held onto it. He could drive this placid mare with one hand. “I didn’t mean that as a criticism. Since your father’s death, everyone has encouraged you to lie about yourself.”

“But I didn’t have to,” she said. “I should have had more courage.”

“It’s easy to be brave when nothing threatens you.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you the truth. You deserved to hear it.”

He swallowed, proud that she had brought herself to confide in him and resolved to be worthy of her trust. “Have you ever heard what happened to your brothers?” he asked.

“Never. But Julia told me today they and Ghazala were safe and my father had provided for them. I know now that he was not at all a respectable man, but at least he didn’t abandon his family.”

“Perhaps she could help us find out where they are. I expect you’d like to write to them.”

Us
. He’d said “us.” Celia hadn’t known her heart could be this full. All she could manage was a strangled “Thank you,” from a throat tight with rising tears.

“It’s funny that you have two younger brothers,” Tarquin said, squeezing her hand. “I have two older sisters, you know. I don’t see them often but we write to each other. We’ll have to visit them. Claudia has six daughters and Augusta a boy and a girl.”

Celia recovered her voice. “Did they live at Amesbury House, too, after your parents died?”

“For a while. The duchess tolerated them better than she did me, but she still married them off quickly. Claudia was seventeen and Augusta only a little older.”

“Are they happy?”

“Happy enough, I suppose. Neither one of them made a love match.”

Her heart beat faster. “So you don’t believe love is important in a match?”

“I used not to. But as Uncle Hugo pointed out not so long ago, I appear to be, at heart, a romantic.”

“Does Lord Hugo wish you to make a love match?”

“I believe he does. Hugo loves me and wants me to be happy.”

“I see. He thinks you are in love with the countess.”

“If he ever did, he knows now he was sorely mistaken.”

Hardly daring to believe the evidence of her ears, Celia fell silent and paid attention to their whereabouts. Tarquin had driven them to a distant part of the vast walled park, with not a classical temple, nor any other building in sight. Instead they approached a stream of middling size. Celia guessed it must eventually feed the lake close to the house, though neither was in view. Around them no signs of human life or habitation were visible and the only sounds were birdsong, the hum of insects, and the trickle of running water.

Tarquin stopped the horse, descended, and helped Celia down. While the tranquil beast lowered his head to munch on grass, he led her to the edge of the stream, to a gentle bank under a willow tree. Oblivious to the danger of grass stains on the pale breeches he wore beneath his smock, he settled on the ground.

“Sit with me,” he said, guiding her down beside him.

Side by side, leaning on their bended knees, they gazed at the water. Were it not for the peaceful domestication of the landscape with its soft meadows and picturesque stands of trees, they might have been in Yorkshire. “I miss those days on the moors,” she said. “We were hungry and dirty and uncomfortable and they were the happiest of my life.”

“I’ve missed them too.”

Courage, she decided, should become a habit. “I’ve missed Terence Fish,” she said. Her heart raced as she learned that truth could be a heady quaff. “I loved him.”

His hand glanced over her hair and came to rest, warm and firm, on her neck. “Do you think there’s any chance you could love Tarquin Compton as well?” His breath was a warm buzz in her ear.

Her throat clenched and her voice emerged in a croak. “I do love him, and just as well. No, I love him more.”

“Thank God for that. I love you too.”

She finally looked at him and was rewarded by an expression of heart-melting tenderness with not a hint of cynicism or reserve. Then he pulled her into his arms and tumbled them down till he lay on his back with her sprawled on top. Holding her head fast, he joined their mouths into a deep kiss that lasted an age and left her reeling with joy.

“Are you sure?” she had to ask, when they came up for breath. “Are you sure it’s not just duty because we shared a bed? Now you know all about me, you understand why I don’t have quite the same feelings as a proper English lady would have about that.”

“One of the things—the many things—I love about you.” He kissed her again.

“Stop,” she said before things got out of hand. Despite his protests she rolled off him and sat up again. “I have something I want to say.”

He gave an exasperated sigh, but she could tell he wasn’t serious. He sat beside her again and put his arm around her. “Yes?”

“I have five thousand pounds and you don’t need to worry about me. I can manage without you.”

“That’s how I knew I loved you,” he said. “I kept telling myself I couldn’t leave you alone while you were in danger. As soon as we resolved that threat, I knew I’d been lying to myself and I had no intention of letting you go. But I wanted to kill Julia Czerny for giving you the means to live without me.”

Celia wanted to laugh for joy then fall into his arms and do something Featherbrainish. “One more thing . . .” He was trying to kiss her again. She put her fingers to his mouth but he shook them off.

“What more is there? I love you, you love me, we’ll be married and live happily ever after.”

Pulling herself free, she got up on her knees beside him and folded her arms to stop herself touching him. “There’s still my background, which everyone is bound to find out about. Moreover, I’m still shabby Celia. Well not shabby, perhaps, but I’m never going to be fashionable and elegant and witty and I don’t even want to be. And you? Well, you know what you are. And you know what people will say.”

“My darling love, I think you have a fundamental misconception about what it means to be a great dandy. I have better taste than anyone else so I don’t care what anyone else thinks about anything. I am right and they are wrong.”

Celia didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. She did both, softly. “I always knew you were the most arrogant, toplofty beast ever born. How could I live with you?”

“Because you are the exception, the one person whose opinion matters to me.”

“Truly? You mean you’d take my advice on your clothing?”

“Probably not, but I’d listen. And I would care what you think.”

She grinned down at him and fingered the collar of his smock. “I like your costume today. Is it the same garment?”

“Yes.”

“It appears to have been laundered.” She ran her palm up his sleeve, feeling the contours of his arm beneath the rough linen, now starched and ironed to a state of smoothness. “Very nice.”

“I brought it with me from Revesby. When he found it in my bags my valet didn’t know what else to do with it.”

“Why did you bring it?”

His smile contained a sweet humility she’d never seen in him before. “I didn’t know why, not then.”

“And now?”

“I realize I didn’t mind being Terence Fish. But, if I have to be a country bumpkin, let me at least be a well-appointed one.”

“Do you have to be a country bumpkin?”

“I’ll be anything if it makes you stay with me. I don’t want to live without you in London but perhaps you’d be prepared to share Revesby with me.”

“I loved Revesby. I thought it was perfect.”

“Well, come with me to Yorkshire and we’ll go fishing and restore my mother’s garden and I’ll learn to be a country gentleman and a good landowner.”

She desperately wished to credit the sincerity she read in his eyes. They held her gaze, dark, earnest, pleading. “I’m going anyway,” he said. “With or without you. It’s time I went home for good. But it would make me very happy if you would come with me. Will you marry me? Please? I beseech you humbly.”

Tarquin waited for her answer. He hadn’t realized he had tensed up until she hurled herself into his arms, knocking the remaining breath out of him. “I will, I will,” she cried. “I’ll marry you and go with you, to London, or Yorkshire, or anywhere in between.” And started kissing him again.

With soaring spirits he put her aside, for the moment, and hauled her to her feet. “I brought you here because I thought I’d try and catch us a little supper. I’d like your help.”

“Are you going to teach me to tickle trout?”

“First you have to undress. You can’t lie on the bank and dip your arms in the water in that modish morning gown.”

“Really?” she said. “Do you find it à la mode?”

“How would a country bumpkin like me know that?”