The Harem Bride (20 page)

“
Lady Rocksley,” her husband’s
solicitor said, with a neatly executed bow, “may I offer my
congratulations on your marriage? You are a most welcome addition
to Cranmere and the county.”

Murmuring an automatic response, Penny asked
him to be seated. She folded her shaking hands on top of the linen
inventory and regarded the solicitor inquiringly. Inside herself,
she felt as icy cold as the night of her arrival at Rockbourne
Crest. Her mind was in tumult, yet her heart seemed to have
stopped.

“
Ah, yes, here we are.” Mr. Tickwell
drew a stack of papers from the leather case at his side. “Lord
Rocksley deeply regrets that urgent business took him to London
before he settled the matter of your allowance. He has asked me to
rectify the situation. He did not, of course, intend to go off and
leave you without a feather to fly with.” Mr. Tickwell beamed at
his own mild humor, adjusted his gold rimmed spectacles, then once
again dipped his head to the papers in front of him. “The earl
wishes you to have an allowance of a five hundred pounds per
quarter, my lady, with the stipulation that any extraordinary
expenses, such as a court dress, will be paid from his funds.”
Stiff parchment rustled as the solicitor turned to a different
page. “And the earl further acknowledges that you have a right to
access the income from the monies left to you by your father, the
late Lord Christopher Blayne. Lord Rocksley’s solicitor in
London—and indeed I concur—believes that Mr. Hector Farley erred in
cutting you off from these funds as your father’s will stipulates
the monies should come to you on reaching your
majority.”

Penny’s manners deserted her. “W-what?” she
stammered.

Mr. Tickwell favored the countess with a look
of avuncular indulgence. Obviously, he was most pleased to be the
bearer of such good tidings. “Your parents were not enormously
wealthy, my lady, but the younger son of a marquess does not go
unshod into the world. “Your inheritance was some twenty thousand
in the funds that has grown quite nicely over the past seventeen
years. I am most happy to tell you, Lady Rocksley, that the earl is
placing the accumulated interest of these funds under your
control.”

The solicitor’s cheerful everyman face was
dimmed for a moment by a frown. “A most unusual action, I assure
you, but he was adamant. The money is yours, he said, to do with as
you wish. Miss Pemberton’s monies,” he added carefully, “will also
come to you directly, as stipulated in her will. But for those, I
fear you must wait until your thirtieth birthday.”

Mr. Thomas Tickwell sat back in his chair,
looking quite pleased with himself, while Penny continued to stare
at the sheaf of papers in his hand as if they were a snake that
might come alive and strike at any moment.

The papers did not move. They did not
suddenly burst into flame.

“
I am independently wealthy,” Penny
murmured at last. “Truly?”

“
Most truly, my lady.” I have been in
direct correspondence with both Lord Rocksley and his London
solicitor. He held out two sheets of parchment. “You have merely to
sign here and here, and I shall be on my way. After, of course”—he
rummaged through the contents of his leather case, reaching all the
way to the bottom—“I am to give you this,” he said, triumphantly
producing a leather pouch obviously filled with coins. “Your first
quarter’s allowance, my lady.” He jingled the bag, his smile close
to mischievous.

Penny knew she should say something, but the
reality of this meeting was so far from her dire imaginings that
her tongue seemed turned into one of Lord Elgin’s forever-frozen
marbles. Wordlessly, she laid the two legal documents on top of the
linen inventory and signed her name where indicated, recalling in
the nick of time to add Lisbourne at the end.

Somehow she also remembered to say
thank you as she handed the pages back, remembered to shake hands
and offer the usual polite phrases of farewell. But never afterward
would she recollect exactly what she said.
Jason did not want a divorce!
He had made her
independently wealthy. He had, in fact, given her her
freedom.

Freedom to run away to that cottage in the
country. To bury herself somewhere so far from civilization that no
one would ever know . . .

Oh, no, that was not the case at all. More
like, Jason was mindful of the story about the little bird released
from its cage that came flying back, of its own free will, to its
master.

Master
.
Unfortunate thought.
Master
was not a word she cared for. Not a whit. It reminded her of
Mustafa Rasim and the Sultan.

For days now her mind had been preoccupied
with just one thought—how to make her marriage viable. And it would
appear Jason had thoughts of a similar nature. He did not want a
divorce. He wanted a wife . . . and children.

A pity,
the
earl had said when she rejected all memories of Gulbeyaz,
I rather thought she was
enchanting
.

Did he really?

Very well, she was now free to go to
London and find out. She would acquire a wardrobe fit to dazzle a
prince, let alone an earl from the wild marches of Shropshire. She
would captivate the
ton
with
stories of her world travels. She would even help defend Lord Elgin
and his marbles, attesting to seeing them torn from the buildings
on the heights of the Acropolis in Athens with her very own eyes.
She would urge Jason to speak on the subject in Parliament. She
would become a grand political hostess . . . or perhaps she would
have a salon, featuring the finest poets, musicians, artists, and
thinkers.

The schoolgirl Penelope Blayne clapped
her hands for sheer joy. Yes, she would burst upon the
ton
in the come-out she should have
had long years ago when they were still traveling the Americas. And
it would all be a surprise. Yes, that was it. She would not again
arrive on Jason’s doorstep the poor bedraggled woman she had been
the night of the sleet storm. She would burst upon his vision a new
woman, done up to the nines in the latest fashions, from the hair
on her head to the tips of her toes. From the set of her shoulders
and the jauntiness of her walk to the confidant smile on her face.
She would be . . .
beautiful
again.

Beware, Jason, your wife is
on the attack
. Like Wellington at Badajoz, she would
besiege her husband’s heart. And conquer. He would find her too
dazzling, too tantalizing, to turn from her in disgust.

Penny raised her eyes to stare out the window
at the fresh shoots of green now decorating the trees and bushes.
Hope springs eternal, was that not the ancient adage? And she
believed, because she wanted to believe. She had a marriage to
resurrect, and somehow she must manage it. For if Jason wished to
be rid of her, granting her all this money was surely not the way
he would have gone about it.

So now, all she had to do was find a way to
slip into London quite anonymously . . . Penny bounded to her feet,
her energy suddenly shooting up to a level not seen since before
Cassandra Pemberton’s last illness. She must find Noreen. The Irish
had a talent for survival. Together, they would contrive. Ah, yes,
Noreen O’Donnell was the very one to aid and abet the Countess of
Rocksley’s last desperate bid for love.

~ * ~

Ten days later, a modest hotel on the edge of
Mayfair was honored with the patronage of the Widow Galworthy.
Eschewing the elegancies of the Pulteney, the Clarendon, or
Grillon’s, Mrs. Edmund Galworthy, clad head to toe in unrelieved
black, her face obscured by a black silk veil which fell in
graceful folds from the rim of her bonnet all the way to her
elbows, stood wilting to one side of the hotel desk while her most
superior maid demanded a suite of the Ashley Arm’s finest rooms.
Mrs. Galworthy maintained her silence, with grand stoicism, until
the porters had deposited the ladies’ baggage in their rooms,
acknowledged their generous vails with salutes and a grin, and
bowed their way out.

The so-called Winifred Galworthy then
stripped off her veil—with all its hated recollections—and, with a
cry of triumph, threw herself into a great overstuffed chair placed
near their third-floor window. “We’ve done it,” Penny cried. “We’ve
actually done it. We are in London, and no one has the slightest
idea who we are or how to find us. It’s—” The Countess of Rocksley
broke off, searching for some way to express the unexpected surge
of emotion that had overtaken her the moment the door closed behind
the porters. “In my whole life, Noreen,” she said at last, “in my
whole life I’ve never really been free. Everyone in Shropshire
assumes I am at Rocksley House, and my lord is happily certain I am
safely stashed away in Shropshire.”

“
And does it not occur to you freedom
could be a mite lonely?” the Irish maid cautioned.

Penny stretched her arms high above her head,
as if reaching for the sky, holding them there for a moment before
allowing them to fall back into her lap.. “You are, of course,
quite right,” she admitted. “Aunt Cass was free, was she not? And
though she loved roaming the world and discovering new things, I
cannot believe it brought her much happiness in the end.”

Noreen paused, her hand on the first buckle
of her mistress’s trunk. “I don’t believe I’ve ever told you,” she
said slowly, “but your Aunt Pemberton contrived to be in
Constantinople when Lord Lyndon was there. It was all they could
talk of below stairs in the weeks before we left for Greece. She
was writing letters to all her cronies, she was, asking what fine
young gentlemen were making the Grand Tour. Chose Lyndon for you,
she did. And was overjoyed when he had to marry you.”

“
Then why—”

“’
Tis as we’ve said before, m’lady.
Miss Pemberton thought Lyndon had violated you—though what would
have been so bad about taking your virginity, I’m sure I never saw.
You were married, and sixteen is not a child, no matter how your
aunt thought on the matter.”

“
So when she discovered Jason was
positively heroic in his defense of my virtue . . .” Penny’s voice
trailed into a drawn-out sigh. “I cannot think about that time
without my spirit curling into a knot of anguish. I
was
a child, Noreen. And acted most
foolishly.”

“
And now,” Noreen declared briskly,
“you are both ten years older, yet discovering neither of you is
ten years wiser. This journey to London is merely the beginning,
the entry to the path that will heal the breach.
If
you tread lightly, my girl, and
remember that fine gentlemen expect to give orders and have others
jump to their tune. Even wives.”

“
Merciful heavens, Noreen, are you
saying we should not have come?”

The Irish maid considered. “Ah, no, my lady.
With you in Shropshire and his lordship in London, there was no
path to peace at all, now was there? I’m just saying you might
tread careful around the thought of freedom, for it’s not a word
goes hand in hand with marriage.”

By this time Penny’s chin had sunk into
her hands, her
joie de vivre
vanished as if it had never been.

“
Ah, Miss—my lady! I’d no call to damp
your spirits. I’m that sorry, truly I am.”

“
No, you are quite right, Noreen.
Although I shall always treasure these few days of freedom, I
cannot imagine living this way forever. I am here to bring an end
to my brief freedom and to my husband’s, which has gone on far too
long. I am here to bedazzle him so well that he will willingly
accept the concept of two people, long separated, becoming one. And
overlook my rather shocking transgressions,” Penny added
softly

In a sudden change of mood, Lady Rocksley
flashed her maid a brilliant smile. “Leave the unpacking, Noreen.
Go down straightway and inquire the names of the finest modistes
and milliners on Bond Street. Tomorrow, we start our campaign. And
may it not take as long as it has for Wellington to triumph over
the French!”

The Widow Galworthy, with the aid of
well-placed golden guineas and Noreen O’Donnell, who combined the
arrogant command of the most superior butler with the
organizational skills of a duke’s housekeeper, was granted
after-hours appointments at the best establishments on Bond Street.
Long accustomed to serving a noble clientele who paid their bills
in a manner that ranged from snail-pace to never, the Widow
Galworthy’s advances upon her bills produced gleeful smiles on the
faces of tradesmen hovering behind the fine storefront facades of
Mayfair.

The midnight oil burned, and generous
vails went to the many assistants who also worked late, for, as
Mrs. Galworthy informed those who labored on her behalf, she had
traveled the world and well knew the value of good service. Though
it’s true the various shopkeepers, including the vastly superior
modiste, Madame Madelaine (of Chelsea), who garbed some of the
finest ladies of the
ton
, and
thought the Widow Galworthy an odd duck indeed, they were
scrupulous in their attendance upon her. For they were all agreed
that, no matter how strange her ways, the Widow Galworthy was a
lady of the first stare. Knew her way around the world, she did.
Yet never failed to thank those who gave her service, not even the
lowliest maid who brought her tea. Yes, a right fine lady was Mrs.
Galworthy. And if some of those coins were paid out for privacy,
then they were glad enough to give it. Lady knew what she wanted,
she did. And who were they to say her nay?