Annie Burrows Read online

  As Rose made an appropriate reply, she deliberately looked away. And it was then Lydia noticed her hands had clenched until they’d formed fists.

  Well, now she could unclench them. Rose had seen through him. Whoever Lord Rothersthorpe decided to marry, it was highly unlikely to be Rose. So she wouldn’t have to purchase Rose’s trousseau and write out invitations, and organise the wedding breakfast, all the while feeling as though she was being torn apart inside.

  Before she had much time to wonder why she still felt as though Lord Rothersthorpe’s marriage was an issue that would cause her such grief, when she’d just decided he was not worth a single one of the tears she’d shed after he’d demonstrated that she didn’t mean enough to him to give up his bachelor freedoms for, the door burst open and Robert strode in.

  ‘Thought you had better see this, Mama Lyddy,’ he said, waving a letter he was clutching in his hand. ‘Oh,’ he said, coming to a halt when he spied Rothersthorpe. ‘I thought all Rose’s admirers had left.’

  ‘All but me,’ he replied, crossing the room with his hand extended.

  Robert folded the letter swiftly before accepting his hand. ‘Have you had tea?’ Robert glanced at the detritus left behind by the pack of Rose’s younger suitors.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ said Lydia, aghast to discover that she’d spent the entire duration of his visit flailing around in a morass of negative emotions which had apparently robbed her of the ability to act as a competent hostess. ‘I shall ring for some more. If you are staying?’

  ‘Please do not trouble yourself now,’ he replied sarcastically. ‘I can see your stepson has some pressing business he wishes to discuss with you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robert, looking rather taken aback by Lord Rothersthorpe’s rudeness. ‘Very pressing business, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And I have still to call upon Miss Hill.’

  Of course. His other dance partner from the night before.

  She did not miss the way Rose’s lips tightened in displeasure at his announcement that this had been a mere duty call.

  Oh dear. That was two marks against him.

  So it came as no surprise when, the moment he’d left, Rose informed her that she rather thought she would as soon go to the Lutterworths’ soirée, as anywhere.

  The one place where they were certain not to encounter Lord Rothersthorpe, even if he did decide to take Rose’s hint and abandon his plans to attend Almack’s. Now that he was in the market, he would have so many invitations to choose from that he would be spoilt for choice. And he’d become so very top-lofty nowadays, to judge from their two brief meetings, that he would not deign to enter the house of a family that had made their fortune from pickles.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Robert, ‘but I really do think you should read this.’ He pulled out the folded letter from the pocket where he’d tucked it earlier. ‘It is from Marigold.’

  ‘Oh. Is there some problem at Westdene?’

  ‘It is Cissy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No!’ She snatched the letter from him with a trembling hand.

  ‘I did not want to worry you about her before,’ Robert confessed. ‘But all the reports I have received suggest she is growing worse by the day.’

  Lydia sank down on to a chair to read the letter. Rose came up behind her, so she could read over her shoulder.

  ‘Robert,’ said Rose with a soft gasp, when she came to the middle of the page. ‘How could you have kept this from us?’

  ‘Because I thought she would improve! I thought at first, when Mrs Broome wrote that she was not doing very well, that it was only to be expected, but that after a reasonable period of time, she would settle down. And I did not want to worry you. I did not want any shadow to fall over your Season, Rose.’

  He paced to the console table and began to fiddle with the flowers scattered across its surface.

  ‘Things have not always been between us as they should. I regret that now, and I wanted to...to make it up to you. I wanted this time in London to be perfect...’

  ‘And to think I was grateful for the way you took charge of the more tedious aspects of organising this trip to town,’ Lydia breathed. She’d actually told him that she could not have picked a finer house than this one he’d rented for them, nor staffed it with more suitable servants. She’d appreciated the fact that he’d seen to the provision of carriages and horses, and been incredibly impressed when he’d even managed, through the amazingly wide circle of acquaintances he had, to arrange for Rose to have a court presentation. And all the time, he’d been keeping...this from her.

  She looked down at the letter which she’d crushed between her fingers.

  ‘But no more. This has gone too far. We must return to Westdene,’ she said, getting to her feet and moving towards the door. ‘And I am sorry, Rose, but this means the end of your Season—’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ put in Robert.

  ‘Of course it does,’ cried Rose. ‘Lydia has to go to Cissy. And I cannot stay in town without a proper chaperon. And anyway, how could you think I would want to stay here now I know what it has cost Cissy?’

  ‘I didn’t, of course. It is just that I think I have found a way to deal with this problem without curtailing your Season completely.’

  ‘Cissy is not a problem,’ said Rose indignantly. ‘She is a darling!’

  Lydia looked at the way brother and sister were squaring up to each other and sighed. They’d come so far in the months since their father’s death. The Colonel had been hopeless at demonstrating his feelings for his children when they’d been little. It had left Robert resentful at being sent away to school in England while he’d kept the girls with him, and them feeling second-best. They only saw that he’d been educated as an English gentleman, while they’d had ayahs and tutors. It had taken some time to explain that the Colonel had been afraid Robert might succumb to some tropical infection, as his English mother had done. That he was trying to protect him, rather than rejecting him. And that, conversely, he couldn’t bear to be parted from all his children.

  She could not let all their newly established rapport disintegrate, just because Lord Rothersthorpe had put her out of countenance. For that was what it boiled down to. She had been angry before Robert had even entered the room.

  ‘I think we should both try to calm down and hear what Robert has to say,’ she said wearily. ‘There is no sense in us all falling out with each other.’

  While she sank into the nearest chair, Rose flounced on to another and folded her arms.

  ‘It was meeting Lord Rothersthorpe that put me in mind of a solution, funnily enough,’ Robert began. ‘It made me recall how I used to treat the house, before Lydia married Father. How I used to invite parties of friends to row up and picnic in the grounds. And how popular those outings used to be.’

  ‘You mean, even though we will be staying at Westdene, we could still write and invite people down for the day?’ Rose sat up straighter. ‘Yes, that would work. What do you think, Mama Lyddy?’

  Lydia flushed and looked down at her feet. It had been on one of those picnics that Lord Rothersthorpe had raised her hopes, for those few brief, exhilarating minutes. Robert surely was not going to suggest she organise another? It would mean reliving the pain of rejection all over again.

  Fortunately, before she could draw breath to voice her reluctance, Robert spoke again.

  ‘That was not quite what I had in mind. I rather thought we might have a fully fledged house party. Mama Lyddy accused me of not letting you get to know any of these young men who claim to have been smitten by you. So I thought, if you have them about you all day, we will soon discover what they are really made of.’

  Rose let out a shriek of delight, leapt to her feet and flung her arms round Robert’s neck.

  ‘Robert, you are brilliant! It is just the thing. I need only invite—’ she broke off with a blush ‘—the people I really like. And we will soon see what they are really made of, by the way they react
to Cissy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Robert with a frown. ‘I had not thought of that. And really, you know, perhaps that wouldn’t be quite fair. You cannot use Cissy as some sort of...test.’

  ‘What did you expect when you suggested having visitors, then, Robert?’ Lydia fumed. ‘Did you think I would keep her hidden away?’

  ‘Well, no. But she spends most of her time in the nursery, anyway.’

  ‘If anyone,’ said Rose, ‘says one unkind word to Cissy, I will send them packing.’

  ‘It might be a little too late for Cissy by then, though...’ said Robert pensively.

  ‘She is not as fragile as all that,’ said Lydia. ‘Provided we are there to love her, she will not care what anyone else may say to her, or think of her.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Well, probably. ‘And as Rose has so astutely pointed out, what better way to find out what a person is really made of, than to force him to confront a girl with all of Cissy’s disadvantages?’

  It had certainly proved that she had made the right choice in accepting Colonel Morgan’s offer. He might have blustered and barked orders, and lost his temper when things were not done to his exacting standards, but he had not been, at bottom, a cruel man. When he’d first seen Cissy, he had lost his temper—oh dear me, yes. But he had done so to good effect, reducing those who had been maltreating her to quivering wrecks.

  There was a great deal of difference between a man’s manner and his true self. She only had to think how she’d been taken in by Rothersthorpe’s charm when she’d been a naïve girl. Looking back now, she could see that though he had it in him to be kind, those random acts that had so impressed her were all of a rather showy variety. And none of them had cost him anything.

  Even when he’d caught her up in his arms and carried her indoors, it had been the kind of act that would have caught the eyes of all the other ladies in the party. When he returned to them, she would wager they had mobbed him, treating him as though he was some kind of hero.

  But she couldn’t help reflecting that he’d managed to leave her side before she’d emptied the contents of her stomach all over the drawing-room floor. Nor had he meant a single word he’d spoken to her in such tender tones.

  ‘Men,’ she said with just a touch of bitterness, ‘can appear to be all that one would wish for in a husband, but turn out to be far from what you first thought them to be, only when it is too late. Invite who you will to Westdene, Rose. So long as I am there to support her, nobody will be able to do Cissy any harm.’

  ‘Anyone who tries will have to answer to me, too,’ said Robert gruffly, taking her hand.

  ‘And we will send them packing,’ said Rose with a militant lift to her chin and the light of battle in her eyes. ‘For I wouldn’t dream of marrying a man who could not accept Cissy exactly as she is.’

  Chapter Four

  Rose was all for getting into their carriage and leaving town at once, then writing to the people they would invite to stay with them for a week.

  Robert said it was the worst thing they could do.

  ‘People will become intrigued if we all just up and leave in a hurry. And they will ask questions. If we prevaricate, their curiosity will be roused to fever pitch. Do you really want Cissy to become the topic of gossip?’

  ‘Mama Lyddy,’ said Rose, turning to her imploringly. ‘What do you think we should do?’

  While the two siblings had been squabbling, Lydia had been sitting quietly, thinking. There was only one event she still really wanted Rose to attend and it was only a few days away. She would be willing to put off their departure from town until after the soirée at Lord Danbury’s house, so important for Rose’s future did she believe it could be.

  ‘On this occasion,’ she therefore said, ‘I concede that Robert has raised a good point. I do think it would be for the best if people thought we were leaving town because we’d decided to throw a house party, rather than having been called home for an emergency. And if I were to write to Marigold and tell her the exact date on which we will return, she and Michael could help Cissy to count down the days. It might help her to calm down, a little.’ Perhaps.

  * * *

  Once they’d agreed this was the course to take, she had written to Marigold, outlining their plans. She had left it to Rose to write out the invitations to her favourites, merely requesting a copy of her list so she could warn their housekeeper, Mrs Broome, how many people to expect.

  She could not stop worrying about Cissy, but she thought she managed to hide the depth of her concern from Rose. The last thing she needed was to hear that she did not believe anything would calm Cissy down but her own return to Westdene.

  * * *

  At last it was the eve of their departure and there they all were in Lord Danbury’s house, courtesy of his daughter, Lady Susan.

  She had her suspicions that the lady in question had her eye on Robert, though her invitation had included them all. Robert had wealth and reasonable looks, and, from what she could see of the other guests, Lady Susan had a kind of fascination for the unusual. And from the way she had questioned Rose, upon their arrival, at such length about her mother and her life in India, she had appeared truly interested, if a bit patronising in her manner.

  Perhaps, after this, when they returned to town, other society hostesses would begin to admit Rose to their ranks. If only Rose managed to make a good impression while she was here. The trouble was, even though Lady Susan had told Robert this was to be ‘a gloriously informal evening’, she wasn’t too sure what that meant. She had a horrid suspicion that the daughter of an earl could get away with much, under the banner of being ‘informal’, but that if the dark-skinned daughter of a colonel in the East India Company army behaved in exactly the same way, she would be condemned as ‘fast’.

  Not that Rose was doing anything more outrageous than attracting a group of her admirers and holding court in her usual, impartial manner.

  But ought Lydia to be part of the group? Was it acceptable to stay on the far side of the room, observing? Or should she, as chaperon, stick much closer to her charge?

  She did not really want to intrude and put a damper on Rose’s enjoyment. It was just that several rather haughty-looking people had looked down their noses at the jolly group of youngsters as they had stalked past. Was it the fact of finding a nabob’s daughter, and a couple of junior naval officers in Lord Danbury’s house at all, or their free and easy manner of interacting, which was drawing down such disapproving stares?

  She had almost decided that she ought to go and stand a little nearer, just to give them more of an appearance of respectability, when she was startled by an all-too-familiar, dark-brown voice drawling into her ear.

  ‘Champagne?’

  She did not need to look round to know that it was Lord Rothersthorpe standing behind her, offering her a drink. She knew his voice only too well.

  Though for the life of her, she could not think why he had approached her tonight. They had seen nothing of him since his visit to their house on the day they had decided to leave town. And on that occasion he had made it quite plain that he despised her for having die-away airs which made her so vulnerable she could only ever have been an encumbrance to him.

  Though it made no difference to her, not now. How could it?

  ‘It does not have poison in it,’ he said, moving to stand in front of her, which gave her no choice but to acknowledge him. ‘I just thought you looked as though you could do with some fortification.’ He glanced across the room to where Rose was holding court.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, though she took the glass from his outstretched hand. It was the only way to make his arms go back to hanging by his sides. It was ridiculous of her, but having his hand stretched towards her like that made her remember things better left forgotten. Like how it had felt to be held in his arms. And taking a drink would give her something to blame for the peculiar fizz that was rushing down her
spine. For it was not, it could not have been, created merely by the sound of his voice.

  ‘You were debating whether you ought to go over there and lend an air of respectability to the proceedings,’ he said.

  Since it was ridiculous not to look at him while he was talking to her, she lifted her head, and did exactly that. The initial fizz turned into a sort of slow burn.

  ‘And I would guess, from the look of trepidation on your face, that you were also imagining the beauty’s reaction should you attempt anything so heavy-handed.’

  She hated the way he’d read her so accurately. But what she hated even more was the way her body leapt to attention, just because he was standing so close and giving her his undivided attention. Bother her heart for fluttering and her lungs for needing to drag in extra amounts of air, and her knees for behaving exactly as they always did in his vicinity. Could they not pay attention to her head? It had been a mistake to been so taken in by him when she’d been a girl. She’d known it then and he’d confirmed it by the way he’d spoken to her since. He was not, and had never been, the man for her.

  ‘I fail to see why it should concern you,’ she retorted waspishly.

  ‘Nor do I, to be perfectly honest.’ He rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that had just held her champagne glass, his eyes growing uncharacteristically perplexed.

  ‘I have come to town to look for a wife, but ever since discovering that you are here, I keep looking out for you instead. And now that we happen to be at the same event, I have not been able to stay away from you. Have you any idea how annoying that is?’

  He couldn’t stay away from her? He had been looking for her? Didn’t he mean, for Rose? She instinctively looked across the room and saw Rose looking back at her with open curiosity.

  Oh dear. She hoped he would not linger talking to her for long, or Rose was bound to want to know what they had been discussing. And Rose was far too perceptive and inquisitive to be fobbed off for very long. Though her own thoughts in regard to Lord Rothersthorpe were far too muddled for her to comprehend, let alone attempt to explain to anyone else.