The Reluctant Widow Read online

  “I thought you were looking a little grave. Is it serious?”

  “Serious enough, but they’re all as close as oysters over it. Of course, things do leak out. Well, if you have old fools like Bedlington dabbling their fingers in state affairs, what can you expect? There are plenty of people like him who can’t keep their tongues still. Oh, they don’t mean to give secrets away, but they’re damned indiscreet! That’s why Wellington has been keeping his plans so dark this time. But from what Bathurst told the doctor, there’s something more than indiscretion in this business. You won’t repeat this, Ned, but there’s an important memorandum gone astray, and they’re all in an uproar over it. By what I can make out, it’s to do with his lordship’s campaign for this spring, and there are only two copies in existence. You may guess what Bonaparte would give to have an inkling of what Wellington means to do, whether he will march on Madrid a second time, or strike in some new direction!”

  “I can indeed! Do you say this memorandum has been stolen?”

  “No, I don’t say that, but I do know it is missing. However, from all I have ever seen of the way they go on at the Horse Guards, it will very likely turn up in the wrong file, or some such thing.”

  “You are severe!” Carlyon said, looking amused.

  “Why, I dare say Torrens would say the same, for you must know that there are too many of Prinny’s creatures foisted on them at the Horse Guards, and a shabbier set of fellows you’d be hard put to it to find than most of ’em! Such jobbery!”

  “Oh, now you are back at Bedlington!”

  “Hun, and some others. Lord Bedlington!” John enunciated scornfully. “And why, pray?”

  “Distinguished military career,” murmured Carlyon.

  “Distinguished military fiddlesticks!” snorted John. “A.D.C. to the Regent! Pander to the Regent, more like! But, there! I do not know why I am boring on in this way. Will you be able to bring Nick off safe, do you think?”

  “Yes. Though Eustace would have been glad to have injured him if he could have done it.”

  “What a damned fellow he was!” John said warmly. “I should like to know what harm Nicky ever did him!”

  “Well, he seems to have treated him very roughly tonight,” Carlyon pointed out. “But it was not Nicky he meant to hurt so much as me, through Nicky. Fortunately Greenlaw sent the nurse away as soon as Eustace began to talk, so there’s no harm done.”

  “Oh, you had Greenlaw there, had you? Well, he’s a disrespectful old dog, but safe enough! Td give something to know what he must have thought of your freaks this night!”

  Carlyon smiled. “Oh, I tried his civility too high, and he got to remembering helping me down from the church steeple, and digging the shot out of your leg, John, that time we stole one of my father’s fowling pieces, and I peppered you so finely—do you remember? He was within an ace of giving me as stem a homily as you have probably given Nick.”

  “Impudent old rascal!” John said, grinning. “I wish he had done so! But, Ned! This will! Is it in order? Might it not be contested?”

  “I believe it is legal enough. I shall certainly not contest it.”

  “Not you, no! But Bedlington must be next of kin to Eustace, and it occurs to me that he might try to set the will aside on that score. For once Eustace was married—”

  “No, you are. forgetting. By the terms of the original settlement, in default of appointment by Eustace, the estate must have devolved upon me. To invalidate the will would not benefit Bedlington.”

  “True, so it was! Did you think to name an executor?”

  “Yes, myself and Finsbury.”

  “That was a good thought, to bring a lawyer into it,” John approved. “But I must say I wish you were well out of the business!”

  “Why, so I soon shall be, I trust,” Carlyon said, setting down his empty glass and rising to his feet.

  “It seems to me you are left with this widow on your hands!”

  “Nonsense! Once probate has been granted I dare say she will sell the estate, and I hope she may be able to live very comfortably upon the proceeds.”

  “It has been so mismanaged since Eustace came of age that she may find it hard to find a purchaser,” John said pessimistically. “Ten to one, too, there will be so many charges on it that the poor girl will find herself in a worse case than ever. Was he in the moneylenders’hands, do you know?”

  “I don’t, but I should think very likely. His debts will have to be paid, of course.”

  “Not by you!” John said sharply.

  “Well, we shall see how it goes. How long are you staying with us, John?”

  “I must be in London tomorrow, but I shall come back, of course, now that things have turned out in this way.”

  “You need not.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt you will manage it very well without me!” John said, smiling at him. “But that young rascal will have to give his evidence at the inquest, and naturally I shall not stay away at such a time.”

  Carlyon nodded. “As you please. Snuff the candles if you are coming to bed—I told the servants they need not sit up longer.”

  “I have a letter I must finish first. Good night, old fellow!”

  “Good night.” Carlyon picked up the branch of candles that stood on one of the tables and went to the door.

  John had seated himself at the desk again, but he looked round. “I don’t know why I should be surprised at Nicky’s wild ways, after all!” he remarked. “I still have the scars of those shots in my leg!”

  Carlyon laughed and went out, closing the door behind him. John stayed looking after him for a moment, a half smile on his lips, then he sighed, shook his head, and turned back to his correspondence.

  Mrs. Cheviot slept late into the morning, being, awakened at last by a maidservant who brought her a cup of chocolate arid the information that breakfast would be served in the parlor at the foot of the stairs. She placed a brass can of hot water on the washstand, and after ascertaining that madam required no assistance at her toilet, withdrew again.

  Elinor sat up in bed, luxuriously sipping her chocolate and wondering how many of the fantastic events of the previous day had had existence only in her imagination. Her presence in this well-ordered household seemed to indicate that at least some of them had been real. She was unable to refrain from contrasting her present situation with what would have in all probability been her lot in Mrs. Macclesfield’s house, and she would have been more than human had she not enjoyed the very striking difference. She got up presently and looked out of the window. It commanded a view of some formal gardens, just now showing only some snowdrops in flower, and beyond these the outskirts of a park. Lord Carlyon was evidently a man of consequence and fortune, and nothing, she reflected, could be more unlike the squalor of his cousin’s house than the quiet elegance of his own establishment.

  She dressed herself in one of her sober-hued round gowns, and putting a Paisley shawl over her shoulders, betook herself downstairs. While she hesitated in the hall, not quite knowing where she should go, the butler came through a door at the back of the house, bowed civilly to her, and ushered her into a snug parlor, where her host and his two brothers were awaiting her before a bright fire.

  Carlyon came forward at once to take her hand. “Good morning. I trust you are rested, ma’am?”

  “Yes, indeed, thank you. I do not think I can have stirred the whole night through.” She smiled, and bowed to the other two men. “I fear I have kept you waiting.”

  “No, no such thing. Will you not be seated? The coffee will be brought in directly.”

  She took her place at the table, feeling shy, and glad of the butler’s presence in the room, which made it impossible for the conversation to go beyond the commonplace. While Carlyon exchanged views with John on the probable nature of the weather, she took covert stock of him. He proved, when seen in the light of day, to be quite as personable a man as she had fancied him to be. Without being precisely handsome, his features
were good, his carriage easy, and his shoulders, under a well-cut coat of superfine cloth, very broad. He was dressed with neatness and propriety, and although he wore breeches and top boots in preference to the pantaloons and hessians favored by town dwellers, there was no suggestion in his appearance of the slovenly country squire. His brother John was similarly neat; but the high shirt collar affected by Nicky, and his complicated cravat, indicated to Elinor’s experienced eye an incipient dandyism. That Nicky’s attire had been the subject of argument soon became apparent, for at the first opportunity he said in a contumacious tone, “I do not see how I should well wear mourning for Eustace. I mean, when you consider—”

  “I did not say you should wear mourning,” interrupted John. “But that waistcoat you have on is the outside of enough!”

  “Let me tell you,” said Nicky indignantly, “that this fashion in waistcoats is all the crack up at Oxford!”

  “I dare say it may be, but you are not, more shame to you, up at Oxford at this present, and it would be grossly improper for you to be going about the countryside, with our cousin but just dead, in a cherry-striped waistcoat.”

  “Ned, do you think so?” Nicky said, turning in appeal to Carlyon.

  “Yes, or at any other time,” responded his mentor unfeelingly.

  Nicky subsided, with a sotto voce animadversion on old-fashioned prejudice, and applied himself to a formidable plateful of cold roast sirloin. Carlyon signed to the butler to leave the room, and when he had done so, smiled faintly at Elinor and said, “Well, now, Mrs. Cheviot, we have to consider what is next to be done.”

  “I do wish you will not call me by that name!” she said.

  “I am afraid you will have to accustom yourself to being called by it,” he replied.

  She put down the slice of bread and butter she had been in the act of raising to her lips. “My lord, did you indeed marry me to that man?” she demanded.

  “Certainly not: I am not in orders. You were married by the vicar of the parish.”

  “That is nothing to the purpose! You know very well it was all your doing! But I hoped I might have dreamed it! Oh, dear, what a coil it is! How came I to do such a thing?”

  “You did it to oblige me,” he said soothingly.

  “I did not. Oblige you, indeed! When you as good as kidnapped me!”

  “Kidnapped you?” exclaimed John. “No, no, I am sure he would not do such a thing, ma’am! Ned, you were not so mad?”

  “Of course I was not. Accident brought you to Highnoons, Mrs. Cheviot, and if, when you were there, I overpersuaded you a trifle—”

  “Well, that is what you say, but from what I have been privileged to see of you, my lord, I should not be surprised to find it had all been a plot to entrap me! I was asked by the servant if I had come in answer to the advertisement. Did you indeed advertise for a wife for your cousin?”

  “Yes, I did,” he replied. “In the columns of The Times. You may often see such advertisements.”

  She regarded him speechlessly. John said, “It is very true. But I own I do not consider it a respectable thing to do. I was always against it. Heaven knows what kind of female might have arrived at Highnoons! But as it chances, it has all turned out for the best.”

  She turned her eyes toward him. They were remarkably fine eyes, particularly so when sparkling with indignation. “It may have turned out for the best as far as you are concerned, sir,” she said, “but what about the abominable situation in which I now find myself? I do not know how I am any longer to possess any degree of credit with the world!”

  “Have no fears on that score!” Carlyon said. “I have already set it about that your betrothal to my cousin was of a long-standing, though secret, nature.”

  “Oh, this passes all bounds!” she cried. “I do not scruple to tell you, my lord, that nothing would have induced me to have entered into an engagement to marry such an odious person as your cousin!”

  “A very pardonable sentiment,” he agreed.

  She choked over her coffee.

  “Mrs. Cheviot’s feelings are perfectly understandable,” John said reprovingly. “I am sure no one can wonder at them.”

  “Yes, but Eustace is dead!” objected Nicky. “I cannot see why she should feel it so particularly! Why, by Jupiter, ma’am, now I come to think of it, you are a widow!”

  “But I do not want to be a widow!” declared Elinor.

  “I am afraid it is now too late in the day to alter that,” said Carlyon.

  “Besides, if you had known my cousin better you would have wanted to be a widow,” Nicky assured her.

  “Be quiet, Nicky!” Carlyon said.

  Elinor bit her lip resolutely.

  “That is much better,” Carlyon encouraged her. “I do indeed appreciate your feelings upon this event, but it is quite useless to be crying over spilt milk. Moreover, I do not think you will find that the consequences of your marriage will be as disagreeable as you suppose.”

  “No, depend upon it we shall see to it that they shall not be,” said John. “There may be a little awkwardness in some quarters, but my brother’s protection must guard you from ill-natured gossip. If we are seen to accept you with complaisance, there can be no food for scandal, you know.”

  She sighed. “I see, of course, that there can be no undoing it now. I have come by my deserts, for I knew all along that I was acting wrongly. But I do not mean to tease you to no purpose! I suppose I can be a governess as well widowed as single.”

  “Undoubtedly, but I trust there will be no need for you to continue in what I am persuaded must be a distasteful calling,” said Carlyon.

  She looked quickly round at him. “No, no, I told you I would not be your pensioner, my lord, and to that at least I shall hold fast!”

  “No such thing. My cousin signed a will leaving the whole of his property to you.”

  “What?” she cried, turning quite pale. “Oh, good God, you are not in earnest?”

  “Certainly I am in earnest.”

  “But I could not—It would be quite shocking in me—!” she stammered.

  “Are you imagining that you have become a rich woman overnight?” Carlyon inquired. “I wish it may be found so, but I fear it will be no such thing. You are more likely to discover that you are liable for God knows how many debts.”

  The widow sought in vain for words in which to express her feelings.

  “Lord, yes!” said Nicky cheerfully. “Eustace had never a feather to fly with, and it’s my belief the gull gropers had their talons fast in him!”

  “And I,” said Elinor, controlling her voice with a strong effort, “am in the happy position of inheriting these debts?”

  “No, no!” said John. “They must be paid out of the estate, of course! Fortunately, he could not mortgage the land—not that you will get much for it if you should decide to sell it, for since my brother ceased to administer it everything has been allowed to go to ruin.”

  “But what a charming prospect for me!” Elinor said, with awful irony. “Saddled with a ruined estate, crushed by debt, widowed before ever I was a wife—it is the most abominable thing I ever heard of!”

  “Oh, it will scarcely prove to be as bad as that!”

  Carlyon said. “When all is done, I hope you will find yourself with a respectable competence.”

  “Indeed, I hope so too, my lord, for I begin to think I shall have earned it!” she retorted.

  “Now you are talking like a sensible woman,” he said. “Are you willing to be guided by me in how you should go on?”

  She looked at him in some indecision. “Is there no way in which I can escape this inheritance?”

  “None at all.”

  “But if I were to disappear, which I should like very much to do—”

  “I am persuaded you will not be so poor-spirited as to draw back at this juncture.”

  She swallowed this, and after a moment said in a resigned voice, “What ought I to do, then?”

  “I have alrea
dy considered that, and I believe it will be most natural for you to take up your residence at Highnoons,” he said.

  “At Highnoons! Oh, no, indeed, I had rather not!” she said, looking very much alarmed.

  “Why had you rather not?” he asked.

  “It would look so presumptuous in me to be residing there!”

  “Presumptuous to be residing in your husband’s house?”

  “How can you talk so? The circumstances—”

  “The circumstances are precisely what we all of us wish to conceal. It would be ineligible for you to remain under my roof, for mine is a bachelor household.”

  “I have no desire to remain under your roof!”

  “Then we need not waste time upon that point. You might, with perfect propriety, seek refuge with some relative of your own, but you will be obliged to attend to a good deal of business, and since I shall be joined with you in that, it will be more convenient if you are within reach of this place.”

  “I would not go to my relatives in such a predicament as this for any consideration in the world!” Elinor declared with a shudder.

  “In that case, you have really no choice in the matter.”

  “But how shall I go on in such a place?” she demanded. “I am sure it is quite covered in dust and cobwebs, and very likely overrun with rats and black beetles, for I saw quite enough of it yesterday to convince me that it has been shockingly neglected!”

  “Exactly so, and that is one reason why I should be glad to see you there.”

  The widow’s bosom swelled. “Is it indeed, my lord? I might have guessed you would say something odious!”

  “I am not saving anything odious. If we are to dispose of Highnoons advantageously, it must be put into some kind of order. I will engage to do what I can with the land, but I cannot undertake to set the house to rights. By doing that you will at once oblige me and give yourself an occupation that will divert your mind from all these troubles which you imagine to be gathering about your head.”