The Arrangement by Mary Balogh
3
“Iwas firm,” Vincent protested, his chin raised as Martin tied his neckcloth in a manner suitable for evening wear. “I refused to go there for dinner. I don’t suppose anyone quite understands how tricky it is chasing food about on one’s plate without knowing quite what food it is one chases while holding a polite conversation at the same time—and wondering if one has dribbled gravy down one’s chin or onto one’s cravat.”
Martin was not to be deterred.
“If you had been firm,” he said, “you would not have gone at all. Old March, for the love of God! And Lady March! And Miss Henrietta March! Need I say more?”
“If you do,” Vincent said, “you may well run out of italics and exclamation points, Martin. Yes, they were a haughty trio and treated the rest of us lowly mortals as if we were worms beneath their feet. But we had a great deal of sport out of them and must not complain.”
“Do you remember the time his nibs set up that stone bust of supposedly ancient Roman origin on a pedestal in his courtyard,” Martin asked, “and invited all the neighborhood to gather around at a respectful distance while it was unveiled with great pomp and ceremony? And then, when old March pulled off the cover with a grand flourish, everyone except the Marches themselves collapsed in a heap of mirth? I’ll never forget that bright blue, winking eyelid with long black eyelashes, or the scarlet up-curling lips. You excelled yourself with that one.”
They snickered and then outright guffawed for a while at the memory of that winking, leering monstrosity of stone.
“Yes, well,” Vincent said, “I almost got caught that time, you know, when I was getting back into the house through the cellar window. The keg beneath it wobbled and would have fallen with a crash if I had not hurled myself beneath it and deadened the sound. I nursed a good few bruised ribs for the following week or so. But the suffering was worth it.”
“Ah, those were the days,” Martin said fondly, indicating with a tap on Vincent’s shoulder that he was ready to go. “And now you are going to pay them an evening call. You are capitulating to the enemy.”
“I was taken aback when March knocked on the door,” Vincent said, “and was not thinking straight. I was still half asleep.”
“You must have been,” Martin said. “There I was at the door, explaining to his nibs that he was mistaken, that I had come alone to Barton Coombs to visit my mam and dad and was staying here with your permission, and there you were walking down the stairs behind me as bold as brass, in full view from the door, to make a liar out of me.”
“It is the mark of a good butler,” Vincent said, “that he can lie with a straight face and perfect conviction.”
“I am not your butler,” Martin reminded him. “And what would you have been even if I were? An optical illusion? You had better come down to the kitchen and have some of the rabbit stew I made and some of Mam’s fresh bread before you go. She loaded me down with enough to feed the five thousand.”
Vincent got to his feet and sighed—and then laughed again. This morning had been like a well-rehearsed farce and had left him wondering if the village was ringed about twenty-four hours a day with lookouts whose sole task was to give instant notice of the approach of any and all comers. Sir Clarence March had come soon after eleven, all puffed up with his own importance and magnanimity—nothing had changed there in six years. He had left, in some haste, only when a seeming army of ladies had arrived to welcome Vincent home. Miss Waddell had been the spokesperson, but she had named each of the other ladies in a slow, distinct voice and repeated the list after he had invited them all to be seated—just before he remembered the holland covers. But they had been removed, he discovered when he sat down himself. Then, before the ladies could settle into any flow of conversation, the vicar had arrived, though his wife, who was a member of Miss Waddell’s committee, had scolded him before everyone with the reminder that he had known the ladies were coming at a quarter past eleven and ought to have waited until at least a quarter to twelve before coming himself.
“Poor, dear Lord Darleigh will be feeling quite overwhelmed, Joseph,” she had told him.
“Not at all,” Vincent had assured them, smelling coffee and hearing the rattle of china as Martin carried in a tray. “How delightful it is to receive such a warm welcome.”
He had been rather glad he had not been able to see the expression on Martin’s face.
Several minutes later, just as the Reverend Parsons was setting the finishing touches to his windy welcome speech, Mr. Kerry had arrived with elderly Mrs. Kerry, his mother, and the volume of conversation had increased considerably, for she was deaf.
At the first slight lull in the chatter, perhaps twenty minutes after that, Miss Waddell had delivered her pièce de résistance. There was to be an assembly tomorrow evening, she had announced, in the assembly rooms above the Foaming Tankard Inn, and dear Viscount Darleigh was to be the guest of honor.
And at last light had dawned in Vincent’s brain. His mother! And his sisters! They had guessed he might come here, and they had probably used a pot of ink apiece writing letters to everyone they knew in Barton Coombs and within a few miles of its outer bounds.
So much for his few days of quiet relaxation.
With a smile on his face and thanks on his lips, he had suffered ladies dashing at him from all directions—to pour his coffee, to position his napkin on his lap, to lift his cup and saucer from the tray and set them on the table beside him where he could easily reach them, to set them in his hand a moment later lest he have difficulty finding them on the side table, to choose the best cake from the plate of Mrs. Fisk’s offerings and set it on his plate, to set his plate in his other hand, to set his cup and saucer back down on the table so that he would have one hand free to eat his cake—there were some amused titterings over that—to … Well, they would have eaten and drunk for him if they could.
He had forced himself to remember that their ministrations were kindly meant.
But an assembly?
A dance?
And right now, this evening, a private evening visit to the Marches at Barton Hall.
Perhaps, he thought in one moment of weakness, he ought to have married Miss Dean a month or so ago and put himself out of his misery.
Lady March had been relieved to learn that Viscount Darleigh was not coming to dinner. Henrietta was disappointed that he was coming at all. But neither lady had been able to get any further information from Sir Clarence when they had asked about his lordship’s appearance and demeanor. He had merely smirked and looked self-important and told them that they would see.
“Which is more than Darleigh is able to do,” he had added, his smirk widening and deepening, making him look like the cartoon Sophia had drawn of him the evening Henrietta had first danced with the Marquess of Wrayburn.
Henrietta picked at her food during dinner. She was dressed for the evening in her silver shot-silk ball gown, an extravagance for an evening in the country, perhaps, but suited to the grandness of the occasion, her mama assured her. For tonight a viscount was coming to call, and such an opportunity might not come again.
Aunt Martha was looking rather formidable in purple satin with matching turban and tall, nodding plumes. Sir Clarence could not turn his head more than an inch in either direction. If he did, he would be in dire danger of piercing an eyeball with a starched shirt point.
How silly they all looked, especially when their expected guest was a blind man.
Oh, how Sophia’s fingers itched for her charcoal.
She herself was wearing one of Henrietta’s cast-off day dresses, which she had cut down to size. In the process, of course, she had completely destroyed any style and flow the dress had once had, for she was very much smaller than Henrietta in every imaginable way. Sophia did not go so far as to tell herself that it was a good thing Lord Darleigh was blind. That would be cruel. And it would presuppose the ludicrous notion that he might notice her if he could see. But truly she looked like someone’s abandoned scarecrow.
At the precise moment the guest was expected, there were the sounds of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves and creaking, jingling harness from the courtyard below the drawing room, and everyone except Sophia leapt to their feet and smoothed out skirts and checked that plumes had not wilted and straightened a cravat and cleared throats and looked nervous and then … smiled with gracious ease as they turned in a body toward the opening door.
“Lord Darleigh,” the butler announced in tones a majordomo in Carlton House might envy.
And in stepped two men, the one with an arm drawn through the other’s before he slid it free and the other took a step back, then disappeared behind the closing door with the butler.
The other man was the burly one who had stepped first out of the carriage this morning.
Sir Clarence and Aunt Martha made a rush for the remaining gentleman and made a great to-do about helping him to a chair and seating him on it. Sir Clarence boomed pompously and Aunt Martha spoke in the sort of voice she might have used to an ailing infant or a harmless imbecile.
Sophia did not notice what Henrietta did in the meanwhile. She herself was too caught up in a personal moment of surprise, and, quite frankly, she stared. It was a good thing he was blind and would not notice.
For Viscount Darleigh was everything she had observed this morning and more. He was not particularly tall, and he was graceful and elegant. He also looked well shaped and well muscled in all the right places, as though he lived a vigorous life and was fit, even athletic. He was dressed for evening with perfect good taste and no ostentation. He was, in fact, really quite gorgeous, and Sophia felt foolishly smitten. And that was just her reaction to what she saw below his neck.
It was what she saw above his neck that caused her to stare in such surprise, though. He had fair hair, a little long for fashion, perhaps, but perfectly suited to him. For it waved softly and was a little disordered—attractively disordered. It looked shiny and healthy. And his face…
Well, it was not ruined after all. There was not even the merest scar to mar its beauty. And it was beautiful. She did not really consider individual features, but the whole was wonderfully pleasing, for it looked like a good-humored face that smiled often, though he surely could not be feeling very happy at the moment about being so fussed. Surely, once he had been shown to a chair, he could have bent his knees and lowered himself safely to the seat without having to be hauled and maneuvered there.
Oh, but there was one feature of his flawless face upon which Sophia’s eyes focused, one feature that raised it above the ranks of the merely good-humored and good-looking and accounted for his almost breathtaking beauty. His eyes. They were large and wide and very blue, and they were fringed with eyelashes any girl might envy, though there was nothing even remotely effeminate about them. Or about him.
He was every inch a man, a thought that caught her by surprise and suspended her breath for a moment, for she did not have any idea what the thought meant.
She gazed at him in wonder and awe and retreated a little farther into her corner, if that was possible. She found him utterly, totally intimidating, as though he were a creature who inhabited another world from her own. She had depicted him in her cartoon earlier as a small man with a bandaged face. She would never do that again. Cartoons were for people over whom she wished to indulge a private and not always kindly laugh.
He looked up at his hosts with those blue, blue eyes. And he looked at Henrietta when Sir Clarence drew her forward to introduce her—or rather re-introduce her.
“You remember our dear Henrietta, Darleigh,” he said with bluff heartiness. “She is all grown up, leading her mother a merry dance and being a naughty puss for her father. She has been taken to town for the past three Seasons and might have married dukes and marquesses and earls by the dozen—enough of them have sighed over her and paid court to her, I would have you know. But nothing will do but she must hold herself aloof for that special gentleman who will come along to sweep her off her feet. And you know, Papa, she says, I am as likely to find him at our own home in the country as I am in the ballrooms of the ton in London. Can you imagine that, Darleigh? Where is she likely to discover her special gentleman in Barton Coombs? Eh?”
He did not often laugh, Sophia reflected, but when he did, everyone else cringed. Aunt Martha cringed and smiled graciously. Henrietta cringed and blushed—and gazed in raptures at the unmarked face of the man she had declared she would never marry if he was the last man on earth.
He really was blind, Sophia decided from her quiet corner of the room. She had doubted it for a moment. It had seemed impossible. But he had got to his feet again in order to bow to Henrietta, and although he appeared to be looking directly at her, in reality he was gazing just above the level of her right shoulder.
“If Miss March is as beautiful as she was six years ago,” he said, “and I daresay she is more beautiful as she was just a girl then, I am not surprised that she has been so besieged by admirers in London.”
He was oily, Sophia thought, frowning in disappointment. Or perhaps he was just being polite.
Everyone sat down and launched into stilted, overhearty conversation—at least, the three Marches did. Lord Darleigh merely made the appropriate responses and smiled.
He was being polite, Sophia decided after a few minutes. He was not oily at all. He was behaving like a gentleman. She was relieved. She felt predisposed to like him.
He had been an officer in an artillery regiment during the Peninsular Wars, she had learned. A very young officer. He had been blinded in battle. It was only later that he had inherited his title and fortune from an uncle. It was a good thing too, for there had been very little money in the family. Recently he had left his home in Gloucestershire after his mother and sisters had tried to force a bride upon him. They had all been agreed that it would be best for him, for any number of reasons, if he had a wife to care for him. Clearly he had disagreed, either with the general principle or with their specific choice. He had stayed away for some time, and no one had known where he was until he had arrived at Covington House this morning, as Mrs. Hunt had predicted he would in letters she had written to various ladies in the village.
He had once been plain Vincent Hunt, and Sophia had weaved stories about him. He had been a leader among the youth of the village, good at all sports and the ringleader of all mischief. One night, for example, after Sir Clarence had boasted of a red carpet he had walked across to enter some grand house in London, he had painted the steps outside the front doors of Barton Hall a scarlet red.
Now he was a very grand gentleman with a different, imposing name. And he was a very well-mannered gentleman too. He scarcely stopped smiling and making polite, noncommittal replies to all the pomposity that was being said to him despite the fact that Aunt Martha and Sir Clarence were almost openly and really quite embarrassingly courting him, and Henrietta was simpering. It was actually rather hard to simper effectively before a blind man, but she was doing quite well at it.
When the conversation finally threatened to flag, Henrietta was sent to the pianoforte to dazzle the viscount with her talent on the keyboard. And then she was directed to sing as she played and went through a repertoire of five songs before remembering that the music for the sixth, her particular favorite, was in her mother’s private sitting room, where she had been practicing earlier in the day.
“Go up and fetch it,” her mother said, turning her head in Sophia’s direction.
“Yes, aunt,” Sophia murmured as she got to her feet.
And she was aware of Viscount Darleigh, a look of slight surprise on his face as he raised his eyebrows and turned his eyes her way. She would have sworn he was looking directly at her, though she knew it could not be so. But for that moment, before she left the room, she felt a little less anonymous than usual. And she found, before she reached the staircase, that she was scurrying rather than walking like a dignified lady.
They had not, of course, been introduced.
“When you stepped into the drawing room with me,” Vincent asked as the carriage swayed its way over the short distance between Barton Hall and Covington House, “was there someone else there in addition to Sir Clarence and Lady March and Miss March?”
“Hmm.” There was a pause, during which Martin was presumably thinking. “Apart from the butler, you mean?”
“A woman,” Vincent said.
“I can’t say I noticed,” Martin told him.
“Someone was sent for more music,” Vincent said, “and she said yes, aunt before going. It was the first and last I heard of her all evening. She must walk very softly, for I did not hear her return, though the music certainly arrived. She was obviously not a servant. She called Lady March aunt. But we were not introduced. Is that not strange?”
“A poor relation?” Martin suggested.
“I daresay,” Vincent agreed. “But it would have been good manners to introduce her to a guest anyway, would it not?”
“Not necessarily if you were a March,” Martin said.
“Go up and fetch it, her aunt told her when Miss March wanted the music,” Vincent said. “There was no please. And, worse, there was no name.”
“Hmm,” Martin said. “You are not betrothed yet by any chance, are you?”
“Eh?”
“They have serious designs on you,” Martin told him. “Be warned. The servants are not very close-lipped in that house, a sure sign the Marches don’t inspire a great deal of loyalty.”
“Serious designs,” Vincent said. “Yes, I believe the servants may be right about that. I shall tread with great care during the coming days. In particular, if I should happen to hear the fateful words I understand and I do not mind come from Miss March’s lips, I shall flee to the tip of Land’s End.”
“You had better have a boat with you,” Martin said. “That might not be far enough.”
They were home already. What a very strange day it had been. He had arrived here before dawn with the happy idea of relaxing quietly for a few days and doing some serious thinking before going back home to Middlebury Park to take command of the rest of his life. And then—
He laughed as Handry set down the steps of the carriage and he climbed down outside his front door without assistance.
“Miss Waddell and her welcoming committees,” he said.
“I was upset you did not invite me to come and listen to the vicar’s welcome,” Martin said.
They both snorted with laughter.
“Actually, you know,” Vincent said as he made his way up the steps to the front door, “it was touching. They were all so much a part of the fabric of our childhood, Martin. And kindlier, more well-meaning people one could not hope to encounter. It is unkind of us to laugh at them, except that our laughter is well meant too. We were fortunate to grow up here.”
“That we were,” Martin agreed cheerfully. “There are some of Mam’s cakes left, sir. Would you like one or two with a drink?”
“Hot milk, if there is some, please, Martin,” Vincent said, making his way to the sitting room. “And one cake, please. Your mother has certainly not lost her touch, has she? One of her cakes is worth four of anyone else’s.”
Goodness, he must be feeling nostalgic. What had he just asked for? Hot milk?
He was actually glad he had been discovered here. He had been a bit ashamed or embarrassed or … or something to be seen blind like this when these people had known him as he used to be. But that had been foolish of him. His morning visitors had been kind and, solicitous though they had been over his blindness, they had still treated him as a thinking, functioning adult. They had been happy to reminisce about the past, when his father was schoolmaster here and his mother was active in the church and the community and Vincent and his sisters had been growing up with all the other village children and getting into all sorts of mischief with them. Vincent too had been happy to remember and had joined in the conversation with some enthusiasm.
He sighed as he sat back in his chair by the fireplace. Dash it, but he was tired. Tired without having even exercised today. That, no doubt, was part of the problem.
And tomorrow evening there was to be an assembly at the Foaming Tankard. Vincent grinned as he remembered the petition Miss Waddell had coaxed eleven people to sign protesting the name of the inn when it changed hands—Vincent must have been about six at the time. The inn had once been the respectably named Rose and Crown.
An assembly.
In his honor.
He tipped back his head and laughed aloud. Who but the citizens of Barton Coombs would put on a dance for a blind man?
He must not relax too much into this unexpectedly pleasant interlude, though, he thought as Martin brought in his milk and cake. For Sir Clarence March had made it perfectly clear that his daughter would welcome a marriage proposal from him, and Lady March had extolled her daughter’s virtues and accomplishments. Miss March herself had simpered. They all meant to have him, and what the Marches wanted, they often got, though they had obviously failed miserably with a few dozen dukes and marquesses and earls—were there that many in existence, even if one included the married ones?
He was going to have to watch himself.
Henrietta March had been exquisitely pretty as a girl and had shown promise of extraordinary beauty when Vincent last saw her. She must have been about fifteen at the time. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and shapely, and she had always been fashionably, expensively clad in clothes made by a dressmaker—or modiste in Sir Clarence’s vocabulary—who came down from London twice a year. Miss March had always had a French nurse and a French governess, and had never mingled with the children of the village. The closest she had ever come to conversing with them was at her birthday parties, when she stood in a receiving line with her mama and papa and nodded and murmured graciously in acknowledgment of the birthday greetings of all those who filed respectfully by.
Vincent might have felt sorry for her if she had not embraced haughtiness and an air of superiority quite independently of her parents. And his guess was that she had not changed. Certainly she had shown no sign of it this evening. That music her mother had sent for had arrived, but she had not uttered a word of thanks to the mystery woman who had brought it. Her cousin?
Who was she? She had not even been introduced to him or been included in any of the conversation. Her only spoken words all evening had been yes, aunt. But she must have been there all the time.
He felt rather indignant on her behalf, whoever she was. She was apparently a member of the family, yet she had been ignored except when there was an errand to be run. She had sat all evening as quiet as a mouse.
It ought not to bother him.
He reached for his glass of milk, having finished the cake, and drained it.
Good Lord, it had been a ghastly evening. The conversation had been pompous and insipid, the music less than distinguished. While he might happily have endured both if the Marches had been amiable people whom he had once liked, he felt no guilt about looking back on the evening with a shudder of distaste. If he had returned to the village today as plain Vincent Hunt, they would not have deigned to recognize his existence. Did a title make all the difference?
It was a rhetorical question.
It was time for bed.
He wondered how long it would be before his mother was informed of his whereabouts. He would wager that at least a dozen letters had been written and sent on their way today. Everyone would want the distinction of being the first to tell her.
