The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (49 page)

No, that was not true in her case. He had insisted in the marriage settlement he had made with Mr. Watkins and Cousin Horace that Sindon Park and all her inheritance was to remain hers. He had been kind to her even in that—unbelievably kind.

She was constantly aware of his kindness. Had she merely owed him her life, she might have come to hate him during those weeks. She might have rebelled, despite herself. But in saving her, he had been kind to her. And
after
saving her, he had continued kind. And had given up his own freedom in order to take her safely home.

When she was not alone, she was the person she had been trained to be by her future mother-in-law. She was the person she had chosen to become, because of an obligation that lay heavily on her. But she felt like a stranger to herself.

Only occasionally and all too briefly did she break free.

They were at the Royal Academy art gallery one afternoon in company with Lord and Lady George Munro
and the Earl and Countess of Greenwald, her future in-laws. Her arm was drawn through the duke’s. They were all sedately viewing the crowded tiers of paintings and commenting on their various merits and demerits. Stephanie judged with her emotions. If a painting lifted her spirits, she liked it. She did not try to analyze her feelings.

But His Grace smiled when she explained this to him. “Then you miss a whole area in which you might exercise your mind,” he said. “You do it with books, but not with paintings, Miss Gray? You surprise me.” And he went on to analyze a Gainsborough landscape she had admired in such a manner that she was enthralled and felt that she had simply not seen the painting at all before.

“Oh,” she said, “and I thought it was merely pretty. How foolish I feel.”

“I must confess,” he said, “that I react to music much as you do to painting. I suppose sometimes we need to allow our intellects to rest in order that we may merely enjoy.”

She smiled at him.

And then beyond him, she spotted two couples standing before a canvas, absorbed in viewing it. Her eyes fixed on them and widened. It could not be—but it was. She forgot everything but them. She withdrew her arm from the duke’s, took a few hurried steps across the gallery, and stopped.

“Miriam?” she said uncertainly. “Tom?”

She had not seen them for six years. For a moment she thought she must have been mistaken. But when all four people turned their heads to look inquiringly at her, she saw that she had not. Tom Reaves stood before her—and Miriam, his sister, the one closest to Stephanie in age—looking hardly any different at all than when she had last seen them.

“Stephie?” Miriam questioned, her eyes growing as wide as saucers.
“Stephanie?”

And then they were in each other’s arms, hugging and laughing and exclaiming.

“Steph?” Tom was saying, loudly enough to be heard above them. “Good Lord!”

He caught her up in a bear hug, swinging her off her feet and around in a complete circle. She was laughing helplessly.

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“You look as fine as fivepence—as sevenpence.”

“I cannot believe it!”

All three of them spoke, or rather yelled, at once. All three laughed.

“I cannot believe it,” Stephanie said again. “To meet my dearest friends again, and in London of all places. How very wonderful!”

“Steph, you look … like a duchess,” Tom said, his eyes sweeping over her from head to toe.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Miriam asked again. “You are supposed to be in the north of England, teaching. What a
fortunate
coincidence to run into you here, Stephie.”

“We are here for a month of sightseeing,” Tom said. “With our spouses, Steph. This is my wife, Sarah.” He smiled at the young lady standing beside him. “And Miriam’s husband, Perry Shields. Stephanie Gray, my love. She grew up close to us at the vicarage. The best female cricketer it has ever been my misfortune to know. She had a formidable bowling arm.”

They all laughed merrily. And then the two couples looked inquiringly beyond Stephanie’s shoulder. She was brought back to reality with a sickening jolt. Oh dear, she thought. She had abandoned him in the middle of the gallery and had proceeded to shriek and laugh like a hoyden—or a country bumpkin—with people who were
strangers to him. She had hugged Miriam with unbecoming enthusiasm. She had allowed Tom to sweep her right off her feet and swing her around.

The Duke of Bridgwater was looking at her with raised eyebrows when she turned.

“Oh.” She felt herself flushing. And then the part of her that no longer did anything impulsively or spontaneously felt the awkwardness of a dilemma. If one should meet an acquaintance while in company with someone else, the duchess had taught her just a few days before, one ought to avoid introducing the two people unless permission has been granted beforehand by the socially superior of the two. Thus one avoids putting that person into the regrettable situation of having to acknowledge an unwanted acquaintance.

But she had no choice in the matter now. He had followed her across the gallery room, as his sister and brother had not. That meant, surely, that he wished to be presented. Or did it merely mean that he had come in the hope of preventing her from making a further spectacle of herself?

“Your Grace,” she said, “may I present Mr. and Mrs. Shields and Mr. and Mrs. Reaves? Miriam and Tom are dear friends from my girlhood.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment of the introductions.

“May I present His Grace, the Duke of Bridgwater?” she said, looking at her friends. Their faces registered an almost embarrassing degree of surprise.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” the duke said. “You are in town for long?”

“For ten more days, Your Grace,” Tom said. “We have come to see the sights. The ladies have come also to shop.”

“Oh, and the gentlemen too,” Miriam said, “though they hate to admit it.”

“Perhaps,” the duke said, “you can be persuaded to extend your stay by a few days. Miss Gray and I are to be married in two weeks’ time. Yet it seems that the guest list consists almost entirely of my relatives and friends.”

Miriam’s eyes had widened still further if that was possible.

“Oh, Stephie,” she said, “is this true? I am so happy for you.
May
we, Perry?” She looked eagerly at her husband.

“Will you like it, my love?” Tom was asking his wife at the same moment. “Shall we stay?”

It was all arranged within the next couple of minutes, before His Grace took Stephanie’s arm in a firm clasp and led her back to their companions, who were discreetly viewing another portrait, their backs to the other group. Miriam and her husband and Tom and his wife were to attend the wedding. The duke had asked for their direction—they were staying at a hotel not frequented by the elite of the beau monde—and had promised that an official invitation would be sent there the same day.

Foolishly, although they went to Gunter’s for ices after leaving the gallery and then walked home so that there was all the time in the world for conversation and even for some private words since the six of them did not all walk abreast in the street, Stephanie talked determinedly on a number of topics, but did not once mention the meeting with her friends.

She felt a little like crying. It was almost as if her dreams of her youth had conjured up Miriam and Tom. She felt a huge nostalgia for those days, for her parents, for the vicarage, for the simplicity and happiness of her first twenty years.

But she felt embarrassed too. She had forced the duke into an acquaintance that was not of his choosing. By
describing Miriam and Tom as her dearest friends, she had perhaps made him feel obliged to issue the invitation to their wedding. Surely, he could not want them there. Although of gentle birth, they did not move in
ton
circles.

And she felt unhappy at the implied snobbery of her embarrassment. Was she ashamed of her friends? No, of course she was not. They were most dear to her because they had filled her childhood with friendship and happiness. She was merely concerned that they would be treated with condescension and even perhaps downright contempt at her wedding. And yet even that thought suggested uncomfortably that she
was
perhaps ashamed of them. Would she have preferred it if they had refused, if they had used their planned departure for home as an excuse not to attend?

She realized afresh how wide apart her two worlds were, the one to which she was about to belong, and the one to which her heart cleaved.

It was the Duke of Bridgwater himself who mentioned them as he was taking his leave of her in the hall of his mother’s house.

“I shall send the invitation to your friends as soon as I return home,” he said. “They seem pleasant people.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

He held her hand silently for a few moments longer, gazing into her eyes as he did so. Then he raised her hand to his lips and took his leave of her.

Her uninhibited exuberance had probably disgusted him, she thought as she climbed the stairs wearily. She should have excused herself quietly, talked with Miriam and Tom quietly, and then returned to her group quietly. Quietly and decorously, in a manner to embarrass no one. That was what Her Grace would have expected of her. But she had spied her friends and had forgotten everything she had learned in the past two weeks.

She would not forget again, she vowed.

But she did forget again only a little more than one week later.

T
HE
D
UKE OF
Bridgwater had been delighted to hear that his closest friend, the Marquess of Carew, was on his way from Yorkshire with his wife and children. The wedding invitation had been sent, of course, but the duke had not really expected that they would come. They rarely came to town, claiming that life was too short to be spent going where one
ought
to go when one loved no place on earth better than one’s own home.

But they were coming to his wedding. So were the Earl of Thornhill and his family.

“We have all been telling one another to the point of tedium that we really ought to join you and Francis and Cora in London for a few weeks of the Season,” the marquess had written. “And then your announcement and your invitations arrived. There is to be no keeping us away now, of course. Expect us to arrive in plenty of time to look over your bride and give our approval. Samantha declares that it is high time. I leave you to interpret that comment for yourself. She has persuaded me to allow her to travel, by the way, despite the almost-imminence of the event that must have been obvious to you when you were here.”

They arrived, the four of them plus their families, true to their word, one week before the wedding. The Earl of Thornhill had opened his town house. He and his countess invited the Duke of Bridgwater and his betrothed to dine with them two days later in company with the Carews and Lord and Lady Francis Kneller. It felt like a reenactment of a few weeks before except that circumstances had changed. And Stephanie had not been in Yorkshire.

It was an awkward evening, though Bridgwater was not sure that anyone but him felt the awkwardness. Stephanie looked beautiful in a gold evening gown with a simplicity of design he was beginning to recognize as characteristic of her. She was poised and charming and apparently quite at her ease in the company. His friends treated her warmly. Conversation throughout dinner was lively.

“A beauty, Bridge,” the Earl of Thornhill said when the ladies had retired to the drawing room and the gentlemen had settled for a short while with their port. “And she certainly knows what to wear to show off that hair.”

“And a charming lady,” the marquess added. “I hoped she would not be intimidated by us all as I remember Cora was when she first met us.”

Lord Francis grinned. “I still see that twinge of panic in Cora’s eyes when there is a new title to meet,” he said. “She is fond of Miss Gray, Bridge. She has kept Cora company a few mornings in the park with the children after I have been banished to enjoy myself at White’s. The children even refer to her as Aunt Stephie, for which familiarity I was advised not to scold them. It seems that Aunt Stephie requested it.”

The rest of the evening progressed just as smoothly as they conversed and played cards and took tea in the drawing room.

But the Duke of Bridgwater found the evening uncomfortable. Actually, he found every day and every evening uncomfortable. He had hurt her and insulted her on the evening of his sister’s ball, and he knew that she had not forgotten, even though he had apologized—with deep sincerity—and she had given her forgiveness. There had been a barrier between them since that evening that had proved insurmountable.

It was not that she was sullen or even silent. Quite the
contrary. She never lacked for conversation. He could not fault her on any detail of her behavior either with him or with society in general.

But there was not the slightest hint of anything personal in their relationship. The warmth and the smiles he remembered from those days on the road—how long ago they seemed now—were gone. The shy uncertainty of those first days in London and the hints of feeling, even of passion, had disappeared.

He had tried to make their conversation more personal when they were alone. He had tried to get her to talk about her girlhood again. He had failed utterly. She always turned the conversation. He had hoped when they met her friends at the Royal Academy—how totally enchanted he had been by the bright vivacity of her manner there—that perhaps he had found the answer. He had hoped she would talk about them, suggest that they call on them at their hotel. But there had been nothing.

She had shut him out of her world. He was being punished, he thought, for daring to criticize her behavior at his sister’s ball. How he longed for a repetition of that behavior. And now that it was too late to go back and do things differently, he wondered why he had been so alarmed and so ashamed. She was, as she had pointed out, his betrothed. It was to be hoped that as man and wife they would find each other desirable, since for the rest of their lives they would find that sort of pleasure only with each other or not at all. They had found each other desirable three weeks before their wedding—and he had accused her of wantonness and himself of an unpardonable lack of control.