Viscount Vagabond (Regency Noblemen 1)

“Anyhow, my brother-in-law’s no stranger, and no one intends to make you face your papa at all, because Louisa’s set on keeping you with her in London. You don’t know my sister, Miss Pelliston. She’s got scads of energy and intelligence and no productive use for ‘em. She wanted dozens of children and would have been happily employed domineering them, but she’s been unlucky that way. She needs to take charge of someone. She took to you right off, and that’s all the reason she needs. I do wish you’d give her half a chance—you’d be doing her more of a favour than you would yourself.”

That last was a stroke of inspiration. Catherine might have persuaded herself that she did not deserve to be rewarded for undutiful, ungrateful behaviour with a Season. She was not proof, however, against a plea on another’s behalf.

Lord Rand seemed to believe his sister needed her, and Catherine wanted badly to be needed. Though she was distressed to abandon Jemmy and Madame, and thought that they—Jemmy especially—being less privileged folk were more entitled to her help, she knew that she’d never be allowed to return to work. She was not certain she could possibly do the self-possessed, breathtakingly beautiful Lady Andover any good, but Lord Rand claimed she could.

“If matters are as you say, My Lord, I would be both ungrateful and un-Christian to object. I am deeply sorry now that I behaved so rashly.”

“Oh, never mind that,” his lordship answered generously. “I like a bit of rash behaviour now and again. Keeps things interesting, don’t you think?”

Lord Pelliston had spent a most enjoyable fortnight touring the Lake District with his bride. So enjoyable was the experience that more often than not he forgot to have recourse to his usual several bottles of strong spirits per diem. He had no idea he was being managed and would have scoffed at anyone who had the temerity to advance such a ridiculous notion.

His new wife had helped him forget a great many things, actually, including his dismal sister and waspish daughter. Now he had a letter from the Earl of Andover and one from his sister, in both of which Catherine’s name seemed to appear repeatedly. He was not altogether certain of this fact because he was too vain to wear the spectacles he needed or allow his new wife to see how far away from his face he must hold the epistles in order to peruse them.

He glanced at his helpmeet, who was tying the ribbons of a most fetching bonnet under her dimpled chin. She was a dashed handsome woman. Just as important, she understood a man and talked sense.

Lady Pelliston turned to meet his gaze.

“Why so thoughtful, my dear? You don’t like the bonnet? Say so at once and I shall toss it on the fire.”

“No, it’s the da—dratted letters. Don’t anyone know how to write legible any more?”

His wife smiled and held out her hand. “Let me see them,” she offered. “I seem to have a knack for deciphering anything.”

A few minutes later she looked up. “Well,” she said. “Well, well.”

“Can you make ‘em out?”

“Yes, dear. How I wish you’d explained matters to me more fully. I might have talked to the girl... but there, it is no business of mine. Catherine is your daughter and I do not like to interfere.”

“With what? What’s Andover palavering on about?”

“My dear, I believe you need a glass of wine.” Lady Pelliston knew he’d prefer a few bottles, after which he would become unpleasant. This was her idea of a compromise.

Not until after he’d been supplied with refreshment did she set to work. “Catherine is not a strong girl, I take it?”

“If you mean in will, she’s obstinate as a mule. If you mean body strength, well, what does she expect? Plays with her food instead of eating it and then goes gadding about among a lot of whining peasants, poking her nose where it don’t belong or else locked up in her room with her infernal books. Plagues the life out of me,” the baron complained.

“I see.” The baroness rapidly readjusted her previous estimation of her stepdaughter. “Apparently, these unfortunate habits resulted in unsettled nerves. She ran away on our wedding day and left a note for your sister saying she was driven to it because she could not abide Lord Browdie.”

“Ran off! There now—didn’t I just tell you what a stubborn, plaguey gal she was? Ran off where? As if she had any place to go, the little bedlamite.” Lord Pelliston polished off his glass of wine, muttering to himself between gulps.

“Evidently, she did not get far. Lord and Lady Andover happened to run across her. He does not say where, but he does remark that Catherine was quite beside herself. Very ill, he says, and terrified half out of her mind. I hope, James, it was not Lord Browdie who terrified her. His rather brusque ways are liable to intimidate a delicate lady. Particularly one,” she hastened to add, “accustomed to more refined treatment from her papa.”

“That’s ridiculous. Browdie tells me that if he so much as says a word to the gal she glares at him like she meant to turn him to stone.”

“As a Pelliston, she would scorn to show her fear, whatever she felt within,” the baroness flattered. “Dear me, I had no idea she objected so to the match. Though I daresay,” she quickly corrected, “that was mere missish-ness. How I wish I had been her mama and might have talked to her—but I am not and it is none of my affair. What do you mean to do, James?”

“Fetch her back, curse her. She ain’t back, is she?” he asked hopefully.

“No, she is in London with her cousin and his wife.”

“Cousin—fah! Family’s never had a word to say to me unless they wanted hounds. Sold Andover a fine pair too, years ago, and that was the last I heard of him. Why the devil didn’t he take her home again? Now we must be traipsing off to London—filthy, stinking hole that it is. Where’s that bottle, Clare?”

Lady Pelliston was a young woman, and she did not mean to waste her remaining youth buried in a remote country village. She had every intention of visiting London in the near future. She meant, in fact, to spend every Season there until she grew too decrepit to stand upright. Interrupting her bridal trip in order to drag an unwilling stepdaughter to the altar was not part of these plans.

The situation was bound to be unpleasant, and Lady Pelliston hated unpleasantness. Also, she knew that the action would not win her husband—and herself by association— the earl’s esteem. She had taken into account the Andover connection as systematically as she had all Lord Pelliston’s other assets, and meant to use it to her advantage. The baroness was a practical woman.

Lord Andover wrote of his wife’s intention to bring Catherine out. That was very odd of them, to be sure, but the Earl and Countess of Andover must be indulged their eccentricities. Lady Pelliston was not about to permit her spouse to interfere with those plans and thus wreak havoc upon her own. Accordingly, she removed her bonnet, poured her husband another glass of wine, and set about the formidable task of making him see reason.

Chapter Nine

Lord Browdie frowned at the heavily embossed sheet of vellum in his hand. Old Reggie had procured him the invitation to Lady Littlewaite’s ball, thinking to do his friend a favour. Reggie had been visiting the day Pelliston’s note arrived, and Lord Browdie being at the time more drunk than discreet had shared its contents with his friend. A good thing too. He might have dropped into a sulk if he’d been alone.

Fortunately, Reggie had been there to rally him, repeating his red-haired crony’s many complaints about the girl’s sour disposition and physical inadequacies. She had told her papa she couldn’t abide Lord Browdie. Well, she’d soon learn that no one could abide her, and in a few months her papa would be apologising again and begging Browdie to take the shrew back.

Lord Browdie thought this unlikely. Lady Pelliston must have engineered the betrothal’s end, just as she had instigated its beginning. Pelliston, he told Reggie, had been henpecked before he ever reached the altar. Pitiful, it was.

> “Don’t waste your pity on him,” Reggie had argued. “Hell be feeling sorry for himself soon enough. You’re a free man again—in London in the Season—with a hundred pleasanter females ripe for the plucking. What better time and place to find a wife? They’re all here, my boy, from the baby-faced misses fresh from the schoolroom to the lonely widows who know what they’re missing.”

Hence the invitation. The trouble was, Lord Browdie had far rather spend his time with the accommodating Lynnette than at the tedious work of courting either innocent misses or less innocent widows. He was even beginning to think seriously of setting Lynnette up in a modest house in Town. Though that would be a deal more expensive than what he now paid for her company, he’d have that company whenever the mood seized him, instead of having to cool his heels in Granny Grendle’s garish parlour while his ladybird entertained another fellow.

Lynnette was greatly in demand. If he did not remove her from the premises soon, some other chap might. Still, no reason a man mightn’t eat his cake and have it too. He’d take a look at Lady Littlewaite’s display of potential breeders. If nothing there appealed to him, he’d pay Lynnette a visit. Meanwhile, he’d better see about that house.

“What in blazes is that?” Lord Rand demanded, staring out the window.

Blackwood looked out as well. “Jemmy, My Lord.”

“I know it’s Jemmy. What the devil is he doing there?”

“Sweeping the steps, My Lord.”

“May a man ask why he is sweeping my steps when I have a regiment of servants already stumbling over one another looking for something to do?”

“Gidgeon set him to it, My Lord. The boy’s been haunting the neighbourhood this past week, and the footmen complain that they hardly dare step out the door for fear of tripping over him.”