The Survivors' Club: Only Beloved Part 2

He patted her hand and released it, and she sat down again. Rather than loom over her, he resumed his seat too. Idiot that he was, he had not thought much beyond the proposal itself. Or, at least, he had not thought of the actual process of wedding her. His mind had been focused more upon the imagined contentment of the years ahead. Yet he had just been caught up in all the frantic busyness of a wedding and knew it did not just happen without planning.

"Ought I to go to Lancas.h.i.+re," he asked her, "to speak to your father?" It had not occurred to him until now that perhaps he ought.

"I am thirty-nine," she reminded him. "My father lives his own life with the lady he married before I moved here. There is no estrangement between us, but he has little or nothing to do with my life and certainly no say in how I live it."

George wondered about that family situation. He knew some of the facts but not the full reason why she had left home and moved so far away. It was an unusual thing for an unmarried lady to do when there were male relatives to support her.

"We have none but our own wishes to consult, then, it would seem," he said. "Shall we dispense with a lengthy betrothal? Will you marry me soon?"

"Soon?" She looked across at him with raised eyebrows. And then she lifted both hands and pressed her palms to her cheeks. "Oh, dear, what will everyone think? Agnes? The viscount and viscountess? Your other friends? The people in the village here? I am a music teacher. I am almost forty. Will I appear very . . . presumptuous?"

"I believe," he said, "indeed I know that my friends will be more than delighted to see me married. I am equally sure they will approve my choice and applaud your willingness to have me. Your sister will surely be happy for you. I am not a bad catch, after all, am I, even if I am nine years older than you? Julian and Philippa-my only nephew and his wife-will also be pleased. I am certain of it. Your father will surely be happy too, will he not? And I believe you have a brother?"

Her hands fell to her lap. "This is all so very sudden," she said. "Yes, Oliver is a clergyman in Shrops.h.i.+re." She worried her lower lip again. "We will marry soon, then?"

"In a month's time if we wait for banns to be read," he said, "or sooner if you would prefer to marry by special license. As to the where-the choices would seem to be here or in Lancas.h.i.+re or at Penderris or in London. Do you have a preference?"

Her sister and Flavian had married here at the village church last year by special license. The wedding breakfast had been held at Middlebury Park, and Sophia had insisted that the newly married couple spend their wedding night in the state apartments in the east wing there. It had all been lovely, perfect . . . but did she want to do exactly what her sister had done?

"London?" she said. "I have never been there. I was to go for a come-out Season when I was eighteen, but . . . Well, it never did happen."

He thought he knew the reason. Scandal had almost erupted last year after her sister went to London with Flavian following their wedding. A former fiancee of Flavian's, who had abandoned him when he was badly injured in order to marry his best friend, was now a widow and had hoped to marry Flavian after all. When she discovered that she had missed her chance, she had dug into Agnes's past and found dirt there. Agnes's mother-and Miss Debbins's-was still living, but her father had divorced her years ago upon the grounds of adultery. It was a spectacular scandal at the time, and even last year it had threatened malicious gossip and social ostracism for Agnes, the divorced woman's daughter. The ton would have eaten her alive if Flavian had not stepped in boldly and skillfully to handle the situation and avert disaster. That initial scandal would have been happening when Agnes was a child and Miss Debbins a young lady about to make her debut in society. It would have deprived her of all that excitement and, more important, of the respectable marriage she could have expected to result from a London Season, the annual grand marriage mart. She had stayed home instead to raise her sister.

Miss Debbins undoubtedly had a few ghosts to put to rest as far as London and the beau monde were concerned. Perhaps now was the time.

"May I suggest London for our wedding, then?" he said. "As soon as the banns have been read? Before the end of the Season? With almost all the ton in attendance? If we are going to marry, we may as well do it in style. Would you not agree?"

"Would I?" She looked unconvinced.

"And, on the more practical side," he continued, "if we want friends and acquaintances around us, and I would suggest that we do, then London poses the least inconvenience to the largest number of people. I believe Ben and Samantha, Hugo and Gwen, Flavian and Agnes, and Ralph and Chloe are still there after Imogen's wedding. Percy and Imogen should be back from Paris. Vincent and Sophia will be happy to travel back to town, I believe, if the alternative is to miss our wedding. Perhaps your father and your brother can be persuaded to make the journey. I would guess Agnes and Flavian would be delighted to house them."

"London." She was looking a bit dazed.

"At St. George's on Hanover Square," he said, "where most society weddings are solemnized during the Season."

Her cheeks flushed as she gazed across at him, and her eyes were bright. It was only as she lowered her head that he realized the brightness was caused by tears.

"I am to be married after all, then?" Her voice was almost a whisper. He had the feeling she was not really talking to him.

"In London at St. George's one month from now," he told her, "with the very creme-de-la-creme of society filling the pews. And then a honeymoon if you wish in Paris or Rome or both. Or home to Cornwall and Penderris, if you would prefer. We may do whatever we wish-whatever you wish."

"I am to have a wedding with all the world present." She still sounded a bit dazed. "Oh, my. What will Agnes say?"

He hesitated. "Miss Debbins," he asked softly, "would you like to invite your mother?"

Her head snapped back, her eyes widened, her mouth opened as though she was about to say something-and then it closed again as did her eyes.

"Oh." It was a quiet rush of breath more than a word.

"Have I distressed you?" he asked her. "I do beg your pardon if I have."

Her eyes opened, but there was a frown line between her brows as she looked at him. "I am feeling a bit . . . overwhelmed, Your Grace," she said. "I must excuse myself. I need . . . I would like to be alone, if you please."

"Of course." He got immediately to his feet. d.a.m.n him for a gauche fool. Perhaps she did not even know that her mother was alive. Perhaps Agnes had not told her about last year. "May I do myself the honor of calling again tomorrow?"

She nodded and looked down at the backs of her hands, her fingers spread on her lap. She clearly was overwhelmed, a fact that was hardly surprising when she had been given no warning of his coming.

He hesitated a moment before leaving the room, then closed the sitting room door quietly behind him.

The village street was empty as he strode along it in the direction of the entry to Middlebury Park, but he was not fooled. He did not doubt that word had already spread of his presence here and the call he had made upon Miss Debbins. He could almost feel curious eyes watching him from behind window curtains all along the street. He wondered how soon it would be before everyone knew why he had come and what answer he had received to his marriage proposal.

He wondered if he would say something to Vince and Sophia, and decided that he would not. Not yet. He had not asked her permission, and it was important to him not to appear high-handed. He was sensitive to the fact that he had a ducal t.i.tle while she, though the daughter of a baronet, was now living as a spinster in a country village, teaching music.

The announcement could wait.

He wondered how the news would be received at Penderris and the neighborhood surrounding it. He wondered if he would be opening some sort of Pandora's box by taking a new bride home with him and setting about being a contented married man. He often found himself thinking of another saying, the one about leaving sleeping dogs lie, when he thought about his life at Penderris. There had been so much unpleasantness surrounding the death of Miriam even apart from the horror of the suicide itself. Although all the people whose opinion he valued had rallied around him and stayed staunchly with him ever since, there had been and still was an element of the population who had chosen to blame him.

Sleeping dogs had been allowed to lie until now. Apart from the weeks of each year the members of the Survivors' Club spent with him, he lived a pretty solitary life when he was in the country. Perhaps it was perceived as a lonely life, and perhaps the perception was accurate. Perhaps those people who had blamed him twelve years ago felt he deserved his loneliness at the very least.

What would it be like, taking Miss Debbins there as his d.u.c.h.ess? There would be no unpleasantness toward her, surely? Or . . . worse. But what could be worse? All those events, about which he never spoke, not even to his fellow Survivors, had come to their dreadful conclusion many years ago.

Surely he was ent.i.tled not to forget-he could never do that-but to live again, to reach for companions.h.i.+p, contentment, perhaps even a little love?

He strode along the driveway within the park gates in the direction of the house and shook off the strange sense of foreboding that had struck him, seemingly from nowhere.

Predictably, Mrs. Henry bustled in no more than a minute or two after the duke had left, openly agog with curiosity.

"You could have knocked me down with a feather when I opened the door, Miss Debbins," she said as she bent to pick up the tea tray. "I had not heard that the viscount and his lady brought visitors back with them from London."

"They did not. His Grace arrived today," Dora said.

"And came to call so soon?" Mrs. Henry was rearranging the dishes on the tray. "I hope he did not bring any bad news about Lady Ponsonby."

"Oh, no," Dora said. "He was able to a.s.sure me that Agnes is well."

"I did make a fresh pot of tea to bring in," Mrs. Henry said, "but you did not call for it and I did not like to disturb you."

"His Grace had tea at Middlebury Park," Dora explained.

Mrs. Henry decided that the sugar bowl was not positioned to her liking on the tray, but after moving it and glancing at Dora, who was obviously not going to volunteer any more information, she removed the tray and closed the door behind her.

Dora set two fingers of each hand to her temples and imagined how her housekeeper would have reacted if she had been told that the Duke of Stanbrook had come to Middlebury Park for the specific purpose of calling here to propose marriage to her mistress. But Dora's own mind could scarcely grapple with the reality of it. She was certainly not ready to share the news.

He knew about her mother. That was the first clear thought that formed in her mind. Agnes and Flavian must have told him. Or perhaps he had heard it from general drawing room gossip in London last year. He knew, yet he had still chosen to make her a marriage offer and wanted to wed her very publicly in London before the Season was over. He was even prepared to invite her mother to the wedding.

Did his status allow him to flout public opinion so?

For the whole of the evening and on into the night the fact that he would invite her mother if she wished churned about and about in Dora's mind along with everything else that had happened after he stepped into her living room. Even the next morning the unreality of it all continued to distract her while she tried to give her full attention to Michael Perlman. He was one of her favorite pupils, a bright little boy of five whose plump fingers always flew over the keyboard of his mother's harpsichord with amazing precision and musicality for one so young. His round little face always beamed with pleasure as he played, and he did so with such total absorption that he would start with surprise if she spoke. Michael Perlman was one she would miss.

Her mother had run away from their family with a younger man after Papa had accused them at a local a.s.sembly one evening of being lovers. In a dreadfully public scene that still had the power to haunt Dora's dreams, he had accused Mama of adultery and declared his intention to divorce her. He had been drinking too deeply, something his family always dreaded though it did not happen often. When it did happen, he was almost invariably in company, and he would say or do horribly embarra.s.sing things he would not dream of saying or doing when he was sober. His behavior that evening had been worse than usual, the worst ever, in fact, and Mama had fled and never come back. The threat of divorce had been carried out amid lengthy and terrible publicity. Dora had neither seen nor heard from her mother since the evening of that a.s.sembly. Nor had she wanted to, for her mother had fled with her lover, surely confirming Papa's accusation. Dora's own life had changed catastrophically and forever.

Last year, when the old scandal had threatened to rear its head again, Flavian had discovered where her and Agnes's mother now lived and had called upon her. She had married the man with whom she had fled that night and they lived quite close to London. Agnes had chosen not to pursue the acquaintance, though she had told Dora about Flavian's meeting with her.

The duke's offer to invite her mother to their wedding had been the final straw for Dora when her mind had already been in a hopeless whirl. Good heavens, one minute she had been relaxing in her sitting room, too weary even to read, and thirty minutes later she was betrothed and discussing plans for her wedding in St. George's, Hanover Square in London-with the Duke of Stanbrook.

Had she really had the effrontery to ask him to leave her house? Perhaps today he would consider his offer null and void. There was a note awaiting her on the tray in the hall when she returned home after the lesson. Her name was written on the outside in a firm and confident hand that was unmistakably masculine.

"A servant from Middlebury brought it," Mrs. Henry said as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. She hovered in the hall for a few moments, probably in the hope that Dora would open the note there and divulge its contents.

"You need not bring me coffee this morning, Mrs. Henry," Dora said. "Mrs. Perlman was kind enough to send some in to the music room."

She took the note into the sitting room and opened it without even sitting down or removing her bonnet and pelisse.

Her eyes moved first to the signature. Stanbrook, he had written in the same bold hand. She unconsciously held her breath as her eyes moved up the page. But he was not after all rescinding his offer-and how silly of her to fear that he might. The offer had been made and accepted, and no gentleman would withdraw from such a commitment. He had written that he understood she was to come to the house during the afternoon to give Vincent a lesson on the harp. He would do himself the honor, then, of coming to fetch her after luncheon. That was all. There was nothing of a personal nature.

But there did not need to be. He was her betrothed. They were engaged to be married. The truth of it struck her as though she were only now fully realizing it. She was going to be married. Soon. She was going to be a d.u.c.h.ess.

She folded the note neatly and took it upstairs with her. She changed into older clothes, armed herself with her gardening tools and gloves, and strode out into the back garden to wage war on the weeds that had dared encroach upon her property. Gardening had always soothed the most turbulent of her emotions, and none were more turbulent than the ones that had raged within her yesterday and still did today.

The weeds did not stand a chance against her.

4.

Dora was dressed neatly again and ready to go soon after luncheon since the duke had not stated exactly when he would come for her. Normally she would not leave for Middlebury for another hour and a half, but she did not want to be caught unprepared.

Today was worse than yesterday in some ways. Today she expected him. And today her stomach-and her brain-churned dizzyingly and quite out of her control, partly with excitement, partly with a fearful sort of awe. He was a duke. The only higher ranks were king and prince.

The gardening had soothed her for a while before luncheon, but she could not go back outside now. She seated herself at the pianoforte in the sitting room instead. It was a battered old instrument, which had been ancient even when she was a girl, long before she brought it with her to her cottage nine years ago. But she did not feel deprived for not having a worthier instrument. She loved the mellow tone of this one. She even loved the two tricky notes, one black, one white, which no amount of coaxing and fiddling with and adjusting by piano tuners could quite induce to behave as the other keys did. They felt a bit like old friends. This pianoforte had seen her through all the joys and sorrows, all the upheavals and tedium of several decades. In all that time it had never-or almost never-failed to bring her joy and to soothe away any trouble of her soul. She sometimes felt that she would not have survived without music and her pianoforte.

The Duke of Stanbrook must have knocked on the outer door. Mrs. Henry must have opened it and then tapped on the sitting room door before admitting him. He would scarcely have walked straight in as though he owned the cottage, even if he was betrothed to its owner. But the first indication Dora had of his arrival was an awareness of something large and dark at the edge of her vision where there had been no such object before. Her hands fell still on the keys and she turned her head slowly. He was standing just inside the door, where he had stood for a while yesterday.

"I beg your pardon," they said simultaneously.

He bowed. "I must say," he continued, "that it was extremely clever of me to choose a wife who can fill my home with music for the rest of my days."

He was doing what she remembered his doing last year when she was seated beside him at dinner prior to playing for the guests at Middlebury. He was smiling with his eyes and saying something that would set her at her ease. And she remembered the most vivid impression she had had of him that evening and during the subsequent days, that he had not only smiling eyes but also kind eyes. One did not expect kindness from a man of his lofty rank. One expected aloofness, even haughtiness of manner.

It was his eyes and what they suggested about him that had caused her to dream of him while he was still at Middlebury and after he left, though dream was the key word. In reality he had seemed universes beyond her reach. His was merely the kindness of condescension, she had told herself more than once.

He had the loveliest eyes of anyone she had ever known.

"I did not hear you arrive," she said, getting to her feet. "But I am ready. Are we walking?" But they must be. She surely could not have been so deeply absorbed in her playing that she had missed the sound of a carriage stopping outside her gate.

"Will you mind?" he asked her as she put on the bonnet she had set ready on a chair with her shawl. "The lovely weather is still holding, and it seems a pity to waste it."

"I do not mind," she a.s.sured him, draping the shawl about her shoulders. "I walk everywhere." She would have longer to spend with him if they walked. And she would have the rest of her life to spend with him after they married.

Oh, my. Oh, goodness. Suddenly she felt almost giddy with the pleasure of it all.

It occurred to Dora as they left the cottage and stepped out through her garden gate onto the village street that the arrival of the Duke of Stanbrook here yesterday would not have gone unnoticed. Word would surely have spread to every inhabitant before the day was over, as word of anything remotely unusual always did in a small community. She would be willing to bet that by now half the village knew he had returned today and that more than a few people fortunate enough to live or have their businesses on this street were watching discreetly from behind their window curtains for his emergence from her cottage. Now they were witness to the sight of Dora proceeding along the street in the direction of the gates into Middlebury Park, her hand drawn through the duke's arm.

She would not have been quite human if she had not felt a certain enjoyment at these realizations. Speculation would be rife for the rest of the day. Mrs. Jones, the vicar's wife, perhaps not purely by chance, was standing at her garden gate talking across it with Mrs. Henchley, the butcher's wife. They both turned and smiled and curtsied and commented on the lovely weather and looked significantly at Dora. The duke touched the brim of his tall hat with one hand, wished them a good afternoon, and agreed that yes, summer appeared to have come early this year. They would regale the rest of the village for what remained of the day with an embroidered account of the encounter, Dora guessed with an inward smile of fondness for her neighbors.

She and the duke turned between the gates into the private park about Middlebury but did not remain for long on the main driveway. Instead, the duke turned them to their left to walk among the trees that bordered the southern wall of the park, and there was an instant impression of peace and seclusion. The light of the sun was muted by the branches and the canopy of green leaves overhead. There were the lovely smells of earth and greenery, something Dora had never noticed in her many walks along the driveway.

It struck her suddenly, just as though one of the shafts of sunlight penetrating the trees had shone directly into her mind, that she was happy. It was a strange realization, perhaps, for she had lived most her life with the conscious determination to be contented with her life. She had never allowed herself to dwell upon any of the factors that might have made her unhappy. But she knew in these moments, as they enjoyed their surroundings in a companionable silence, that she had never known true happiness until now.

She felt it with an inner bubbling of exuberant joy. All her dreams were suddenly, unexpectedly coming true, even if it was happening twenty years later than she had once hoped. That did not matter, though. Nothing mattered but the fact that it was happening at last. It was happening now. She wondered how the duke would react if she removed her hand from his arm and twirled about, her arms stretched to the sides, her face turned up to the distant sky, song and laughter on her lips. She smiled at the bizarre image of herself the thought provoked and lowered her chin so that he would not see beyond her bonnet brim.

But something needed to be addressed before they went any farther.

"I would rather we did not invite my mother to the wedding," she said abruptly.

"Then we will not." He set a hand over hers on his arm and looked down at her. "You must provide me with a list of the people you do wish to invite, Miss Debbins, and I will put it into my secretary's capable hands with my own list the moment I return to London within the next couple of days."

So soon? The next couple of days?

"I wish to arrange for the first banns to be read next Sunday," he explained, "if, that is, I am not rus.h.i.+ng you too much. But having conceived the idea of marrying, and having secured your consent to my offer, I am now all impatience to have the deed done."

Could he possibly know how sweet those words sounded to her ears?

"I will make a list when I return home," she said. "It will be a very short one, though."

"Then you must tell me," he said, "whether you wish my list to be equally short. I really do not care how small or how large our wedding is, provided only that you and I are there with the requisite number of witnesses to make all legal."

"Oh," she said, and was conscious of a certain disappointment.

Perhaps he saw it in her face.

"But if you have no strong preference either way," he continued, "may I reinforce a suggestion I made yesterday? You told me then that you could not possibly be a d.u.c.h.ess. Until you said that, I had thought only of persuading you that perhaps you would care to marry me. I had forgotten that I must also convince you to marry that formidable being, the Duke of Stanbrook. I suppose I take him for granted because he has been with me for a long time. But though I hope we will spend most of our married life at Penderris, there will undoubtedly be times when I must be in London, and I most certainly would not wish to leave you behind in the country. You also told me yesterday that you have never been to London or mingled with the ton. Perhaps the best time to do both is now during the month leading up to our wedding and during the wedding itself-the grand wedding, that is. Will you come to London, if not with me during the next day or two, at least soon after? Your sister and Flavian are still there. So are most of the other Survivors, and I fully expect that Sophia and Vincent will return there too. Let them all introduce you about town. Let me do likewise as soon as our betrothal has been officially announced. Let me organize a betrothal party."

They had stopped walking and she had drawn her arm free of his. He stood looking down at her, his hands clasped at his back, kindness and concern in his eyes.

"Oh," she said again.

"But it is a mere suggestion," he said. "I am your servant, Miss Debbins. All will be as you wish."

Dora was strongly tempted to take the coward's way out and choose the quietest of weddings in London after all-or even perhaps a wedding here at the church where Agnes had married Flavian last year. But . . .