Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

prologue

Yorkshire, England

24 May 1812

“May I see him?” the girl asked. She was a girl in truth, scarcely seventeen. Her blue eyes enormous in a chalk white face etched with pain and fatigue, she seemed at present far too young to be a mother.

Hers had been a long labor, and she was not out of danger yet.

The two older women attending her—one, though modestly garbed, obviously a lady and one as obviously a servant—exchanged worried glances.

The lady had become the Marchioness of Lithby and the girl’s stepmother scarcely a year earlier. Yet her manner was as compassionate and affectionate as that of a mother or sister. She bent over the fair head on the pillow. “My love, it would be better if you did not,” she murmured. “Better to rest now.”

“He’s quiet,” the girl said. “Why is he so quiet?”

Lady Lithby stroked her forehead. “The baby is…not strong, Charlotte.”

“He’s going to die, isn’t he? Oh, you must let me see him. Only for a moment, Lizzie, please. I am so sorry to be so much trouble—”

“You are not to blame,” Lady Lithby said sharply. “Never think that.”

“You listen to her ladyship,” the woman servant said. “It was that wicked man’s fault. Along with the worthless creature who called herself a governess. It was her job to watch out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. But she didn’t, did she? She left it to you—and how’s an innocent girl to know anything about the wickedness of men?”

The wolf in sheep’s clothing was dead, killed in a duel—over a woman, naturally. Lady Charlotte Hayward was by no means the first or the last Geordie Blaine had wronged, though perhaps the youngest and highest born.

“There, you see?” her stepmother said. “Molly is on your side. I am on your side.” A tear slid down her cheek and onto the pillow. “Never forget that, love. You can always come to me.”

If only you had done so last summer…

Lady Lithby did not say this, yet the awareness hovered like a ghost in the quiet room.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I was so foolish. I am so sorry. But please, Lizzie, please may I see him? Only for a moment. Please.”

She spoke between ragged gasps. Her eyes filled, and her bosom rose and fell rapidly. The two women feared they would lose her, though they were careful not to let their anxiety show.

“I don’t want her agitated,” Lady Lithby murmured to the maid. “Let her see the child.”

Molly went out and into the next room, where the wet nurse had taken charge of the babe.

All had been so very carefully and discreetly arranged: the midwife, the wet nurse, the carriage that would take the boy to his new parents. His mother’s indiscretion had been well concealed.

The maid returned a few minutes later with the infant. Charlotte smiled and rose a little on the pillows, and Molly laid him in her arms. He made what seemed to be a feeble attempt to find her breast but gave up with a sigh.

“Oh, don’t die,” his mother said. She stroked over the white down on his head. She drew her index finger lightly over his nose and lips and chin. She touched her finger to his hand, and the tiny fingers curled about it. “You mustn’t die,” she whispered. “Listen to Mama.” She whispered something else, too low for the others to hear.

She looked up at her stepmother. “They will take good care of him?”

“He goes to a good family,” Lady Lithby assured her. “They have tried and tried to have a child. They will lavish all their affection on him.”

If he lives.

This, too, went unsaid.

Too much went unsaid, perhaps, but Charlotte was too conscious of the wrong she’d done and the painful position in which she’d placed her stepmother—too conscious, in short, of all she owed these women, to say what was in her heart.

Perhaps, as well, the ache in her young heart went too deep and left her without words.

She only gazed at her baby and grieved as she had not thought it possible to grieve. She gazed at her son, her beautiful son, and thought of how she’d wronged him.

She’d believed Geordie Blaine had broken her heart, but that was nothing to this. She had brought an innocent child into the world. He was weak. He needed his mother. But she couldn’t keep him.

Love.

Because of it, she’d wronged so many—and above all, the one innocent being she most wanted to protect.

Love.

It made one blind, truly. Blind to others. Blind to past, present, and future. Blind to all but one conscienceless man and the wicked feelings he inspired: desire…passion…

They were poetic words for simple animal urges. She saw that now, too late. Those feelings quickly faded.

What remained was the ache of grief, almost beyond enduring.

Love.

Never again. Her soul could not bear it.

Charlotte kissed her baby’s forehead. Then she turned her glistening blue gaze to the maid. “You may take him now,” she said.

Chapter 1

The trouble with Darius Carsington was, he had no heart.

Everyone in his family agreed that the Earl of Hargate’s youngest son had started out with one. Everyone agreed that he had not, at the outset, seemed destined to be the most aggravating of Lord Hargate’s five sons.

Certainly he was not so very different from the others in appearance.

Two of his brothers, Benedict and Rupert, had inherited Lady Hargate’s dark good looks. Darius, like Alistair and Geoffrey, had Lord Hargate’s golden brown hair and amber eyes. Like all of his brothers, Darius was tall and strong. Like the others, he was handsome.

Unlike the others, he was scholarly, and always had been. He’d commenced aggravating his father by insisting on going to Cambridge, though all the males of the family had always attended Oxford. Cambridge was more intellectually rigorous, he said. One might study botany there, and iron smelting, and other subjects of natural and practical philosophy.

True, he’d done well at Cambr

idge. Unfortunately, ever since he completed his studies, he seemed to have let his intellect gain the upper hand of his affections as well as his morals.

To put it simply, Darius divided his life into two parts: (1) studying animal behavior, especially breeding and mating behavior, and (2) devoting his leisure hours to emulating this behavior.

Item Two was the problem.

Lord Hargate’s other four sons had not been saints when it came to women—except for Geoffrey, that is, who was monogamous from the day he was born. When it came to quantity, however, none of the others matched Darius.

Still, his being a rake was a minor issue, for his father, mother, and the rest of his family were far from puritanical. Since he drew the line at seducing innocents, they could not complain that he was a cad. Since he was astute enough to confine himself to the demimonde or the very fringes of the Beau Monde, they could not complain of scandals. Morals among those groups were lax anyway, and their doings seldom raised eyebrows, let alone appeared in the scandal sheets.

What infuriated the family was the methodical and impersonal way he carried on his raking.

The creatures he studied meant more to him than any of the women he bedded. He could list all the differences, major and minor, between one breed of sheep and another. He could not remember his last paramour’s name, let alone the color of her eyes.

Having waited in vain for his twenty-eight-year-old son to finish sowing his wild oats or at least show a sign of being human, Lord Hargate decided it was time to intervene.

He summoned Darius to his study.

All of Lord Hargate’s sons knew what a summons to his study signified: He meant to come down on them, as Rupert would put it, “like a ton of bricks.”

Yet Darius strode into what Alistair called the Inquisition Chamber as he might stride to the lectern to present a paper: shoulders back, head high, the fierce intelligence burning in his golden eyes.

All arrogant certainty, he stood in front of his father’s desk and met his gaze straight on. To do otherwise was fatal. Even a man of lesser intelligence would have learned this, growing up with four strong-willed brothers.

He made sure to give the impression, too, that he’d taken no special pains with his appearance, since that would look like an attempt to appease the monster.

The fact was, Darius always knew exactly what he was doing and the impression he created.

Perhaps he’d merely swiped a brush through his thick brown hair. But the observant eye would note how the cut emphasized the natural golden lights, which his time out of doors—too often hatless—had bleached to tawny streaks. The sun had burnished his chiseled countenance as well. Likewise, the deceptively simple suit of clothes drew attention to his powerful frame.

He did not look scholarly at all. He didn’t even look civilized. It wasn’t simply the brawny physique and golden glow of strength and health but the animal energy he exuded, the sense of something un-tamed lurking beneath the surface.

What many observers, especially female observers, saw was not a wellborn gentleman but a force of nature.

Women were either swept away or wanted to tame him. They might as well try to tame the wind or the rain or the North Sea. He took what they offered, caring no more about them than the wind or the rain or the North Sea cared.

He saw no reason to behave otherwise. These dealings with women were, after all, transient by definition. They would have no impact on society, on agriculture, on anything of significance.

His father saw it differently, as he made plain. He said that raking was common and a sign of vulgarity, and the quantity of paramours made Darius appear to be in competition with other idle, thoughtless men incapable of doing anything more meaningful with their lives.

The lecture went on at some length, in the pithily devastating style that had made Lord Hargate one of the most feared men in Parliament.

Reason told Darius the speech was an illogical diatribe. All the same, it stung, as he knew it was intended to do. However, the rational man did not let emotion rule his actions, even under extreme provocation. If refusing to let his emotions rule him was Darius’s great crime, so be it. He had learned long ago that logic and a cool detachment were powerful weapons. They kept overbearing family members from crushing one with the force of their personalities, prevented manipulation—by women, especially—and won respect—from fellow intellectuals, at least.

Thus Darius retaliated by giving the most aggravating reply he could think of on short notice: “With respect, sir, I fail to understand what emotion has to do with such matters. It is the natural instinct of the male to copulate with the opposite sex.”

“It is also, as you have reported in several articles regarding animal courtship, the natural instinct of several species to choose a mate and stick with her,” Lord Hargate replied.

Ah, here it was, finally—and not altogether surprisingly. “In other words, you want me to marry,” Darius said. He’d never seen the point of mincing words—yet another of his many aggravating traits.

“You chose not to pursue a scholarly career at Cambridge,” said his father. “Had you pursued an academic career, naturally, one would not expect you to wed. But you have no profession.”

No profession? At only eight and twenty years old, Darius Carsington was one of the most highly regarded members of the Philosophical Society. “Sir, if I may say, my work—”

“Half the aristocracy seem to be writing pamphlets and papers to impress one scholarly society or another,” Lord Hargate said, with a dismissive wave. “For the most part these gentlemen have a source of income, however, and the source is not their fathers’ purses.”

The gesture rankled, and Darius wanted to retort.

What was I to do with my life instead? he could have said. How was I to distinguish myself from the others: Benedict the paragon and philanthropist, Geoffrey the model family man, Alistair the war hero and incurable romantic, Rupert the lovable rogue and, lately, bold adventurer. How else was I to stand out than by cultivating my one advantage—my intellect? How would you get out from their shadow?

Though these questions were more than reasonable, he would not ask them. He refused to be baited into defending himself against a rebuke so patently unjust and illogical.

Instead he pasted an amused expression on his face. “In that case, Father, perhaps you would be so good as to choose a well-dowered bride for me. My brothers seem satisfied with your selections for them, and it is a matter of complete indifference to me.”

He truly was indifferent. This, he was sure, deeply aggravated his parent. This offered some consolation but not much, since Lord Hargate was an expert at not showing his feelings.

“I haven’t time to search for a suitable bride for you,” his lordship said. “In any event, I said nothing about marriage to your brothers until they were on the brink of thirty. In fairness, I must allow you another year. I must give you an opportunity as well to make yourself useful instead, as I have given the other younger sons.”

The eldest son, Benedict, did not have to follow a profession or find a rich bride, since he would inherit everything. To date, the other younger sons had married money. They had married for love, too, but Lord Hargate knew better than to mention that subject.

Darius classified Romantic Love in the category labeled Superstition, Myth, and Poetic Nonsense. Unlike attraction, lust, and even familial love and affection, which one observed in the animal kingdom, Romantic Love seemed to him to be an emotion constructed primarily by the imagination.

He was not contemplating love at the moment, though. He was wondering what his Machiavellian father was up to. “What sort of opportunity?”

“A property has lately come into my possession,” said Lord Hargate. “I will give you a year to make it produce income. Do so, and you are excused from marriage altogether.”

Darius’s heart leapt. A challenge, a true challenge. Had his father at long last realized what he was capable of?

No, of course not. That was impossible.

“It can’t be that easy,” he said. “Where’s the trap, I wonder?”

“It won’t be easy at all,” said his sire. “The property was in Chancery for ten years.”

Chancery was London’s court of equity. It was far, far easier to get a case into Chancery than to get it out again, as numerous parties had, to their grief, found out.

“Ten years?” Darius said. “You must mean the Cheshire property. The mad old woman’s place. What is it called?”

“Beechwood.”

The “mad old woman” was Lord Hargate’s cousin, Lady Margaret Andover who, by the time of her death, had not been on speaking terms with any of her family or her neighbors or anybody, apparently, except her pug, Galahad—now long deceased—to whom she left the property, in a codicil to a will whose codicils went on for two hundred eighteen pages. They contradicted one another, as did the many other wills she made out during the later decades of her life. This was why her estate had ended up in Chancery.

The puzzle pieces fell into place. “Is the house still standing?” Darius said.

“Barely.”

“And the land?”

“In what state do you imagine it would be after a decade’s neglect?”

Darius nodded. “I see. You offer me a Labor of Hercules.”

“Precisely.”

“You must be certain it would want not one but several years to bring it into order,” Darius said. “That is the fly in the ointment.”

“It once provided a handsome income and holds the potential to do so again,” said his sire. “Lord Lithby, whose land adjoins it to the east, has coveted it this age. If you feel unequal to the challenge, he will be happy to take it off my hands.”

There—as he obviously knew, the manipulative devil—he caught Darius on his raw spot. And it worked, as the devil knew it would. Even the most powerful intellect rarely won a battle with masculine pride.