Authors: Madcap Marchioness
Adriana saw them from the long gallery and hurried downstairs, grateful that she had decided to dress in one of her most becoming gowns in order to offset the gloom of the day. Her rounded bodice and puffed sleeves were in the latest fashion, as were the high waist and slim skirt of the green gauze gown. If the dress did little to protect her from the chilly drafts in the castle, she ignored that detail, particularly now with Sally just stepping down from her carriage. Not for worlds would Adriana trade fashion for comfort. Feeling with one hand to be certain that her tawny hair, dressed by Nancy in a riot of curls atop her head, was still neatly confined there by her pale-green bandeau, she hurried down to greet her first houseguests. Only when she reached the entry hall did it occur to her that a marchioness ought properly to receive visitors in her drawing room.
Lady Henrietta, however, was already in the entry hall. “Who is it? Do you know? Oh, isn’t this exciting? I cannot think when it was that we last had real houseguests—other than Lydia and the children, of course, or Ned and Molly, or one of Chalford’s schoolfriends, you know. Oh, who is this, my dear?”
Adriana had a sudden sense of being carried back in time. Many times in the days before her mother’s death had she perched in the curve of the grand stairway at Wryde to peer through the banister at newly arriving guests, wondering who they were and how long they would stay. Lady Hetta made her feel like one of a pair of conspiring children. She smiled at her. “’Tis Viscount and Lady Villiers,” she said in a low voice. “He is Lord Jersey’s son and she—”
“Oh, yes, of course, I know all about Sally Fane,” said Lady Hetta, her cheeks reddening slightly. “Or all about her poor mother, that is. I think it was dreadfully unkind of Sarah Child’s father to leave all his money away from her and her husband to her daughter, don’t you know. A wicked thing.”
“Well, it made Sally Fane the greatest heiress of our time,” said Adriana with a small sigh. “She took London by storm. Left the rest of us standing entirely in the shade.”
“Oh, I do hope Adelaide will be civil to her.”
“Why on earth would she not be?”
“Well, my dear,” Lady Hetta confided, “banking is all very well in its way. Indeed, I do not know how we should go on without them—bankers, I mean. But it is still trade, don’t you know? At least, so Adelaide regards it, and though dear Sally Fane’s papa is the Earl of Westmorland—not that I’ve heard much good of that man, I can tell you—her money derives from Robert Child, who was only a banker when all is said and done.”
Adriana choked on laughter. “But, my dear ma’am—” She could say no more, for the front doors were open wide, their guests on the point of entering the hall. Adriana hurried forward, her hands held out in welcome. “Sally … my lord, how very kind of you to visit us so soon.”
“Well, my goodness me, what else could we do?” demanded the slender, brown-haired young lady who swept forward to fling her arms about Adriana. “You were so rude and ungracious as to refuse our invitation to spend your wedding n—”
“Now, Sally,” interrupted Chalford calmly, having come from the great hall, behind Adriana, “you know better than that. May I present my aunt, Lady Henrietta Blackburn. Aunt Hetta, this is Lady Villiers.” He stepped past them then and clapped the viscount on the shoulder, adding, “And her husband. Villiers, well met. Welcome to Thunderhill.”
“Passable little cottage you’ve got here, Chalford,” said the viscount gravely. “A touch of paint and a new shingle here and about, and it ought to be snug enough for the pair of you. Humbug country, though, man. Can’t expect guests during the hunting season, any more than we expect them at Prospect Lodge. You’ll have to come to us at Osterley Park, or better yet, spend a month with me at Middleton Stony. I’ll show you sport.”
“And show me a clean pair of heels,” retorted Chalford, laughing. He looked at the others. “No finer seat in the hunting field than Villiers’. He shows them all the way.”
“Oh, goodness me, yes,” chirped Sally. “George looks simply like a god or something when he’s on a horse. You never saw his equal for sport. Why, everyone says so, don’t they, George?”
The viscount beamed at her, then looked at the others as though he were inviting them to beam at her, too. “It would scarcely become me to agree with you, my dear, particularly when Chalford is like to know, if his lady does not, that I overturned us in my curricle, most ignominiously, not two weeks ago.”
“Gracious,” exclaimed Lady Hetta, “I hope you weren’t hurt.”
“Bruised but not broken,” Villiers assured her.
“’Tis nearer three weeks ago,” Sally said, “and you did not overturn us.” She glanced from one to another of her audience. “It was the most awful thing, for we were thrown out. The pole broke, and if George had not been quick to turn us against a post when the horses bolted, we might have been killed.”
“As it was,” Villiers said dryly, “the force of our meeting with the post caused us to fly out of the curricle like a pair of damned birds. Do you mean to entertain us right here, Chalford, or does this hovel of yours have another room?”
Adriana’s amused gaze collided with that of the young third footman, who looked scandalized. Chuckling, she glanced at Sally, whose dark-brown eyes were alight with laughter, and said, “I think we had better repair to the great hall, don’t you?”
“Goodness me, does this place actually boast a great hall?”
“Now, Sally,” Chalford said, “you know it must. It’s got a keep, too, like any decent castle ought to have.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lady Hetta, suddenly looking from Lord to Lady Villiers in dismay. “Joshua, what if—?” She broke off, staring at her nephew helplessly.
He looked back, bewildered, and Adriana, not knowing what to make of the pair of them, leapt into the breach. “There are owls living in the keep,” she said. “Some of them have the most amusing names.”
Chalford choked, looked again at his aunt, and then burst into laughter. “You must come and meet them after supper,” he said. “One of them”—he grinned at Villiers—“is named after your illustrious mama.”
L
ORD AND LADY VILLIERS
planned to stay only three nights at Thunderhill, because, as Sally confided to Adriana, his lordship’s parents expected to descend upon them at Prospect Lodge the week following the Prince of Wales’s birthday. “For George’s birthday is that Monday, you see,” she explained early that evening as they descended the stairs in the keep after a brief, chilly, and disappointingly dimly lit expedition to visit the owls in their noisesome abode. “It gives us barely the month in Brighton. You are so fortunate that Chalford’s mama is deceased, Adriana.”
“Sally, what a dreadful thing to say!”
“Yes, isn’t it,” Sally agreed complacently as she lifted the skirt of her pale-blue crepe gown a bit higher, “but my goodness me, only think if you had my mama-in-law looking down her nose at you all the time. I daresay no one ever thought to name a fat, haughty owl after the tenth Marchioness of Chalford.”
Adriana’s amber gauze dinner gown covered less of her than the green dress she had worn earlier, and she paused on a step to rub her bare arms in an attempt to warm them. Though she had never known the tenth marchioness, she had had the experience of meeting Lady Jersey on more than one memorable occasion and might well have expressed agreement with Sally’s feelings had it been within the realm of propriety to do so. She said instead, “Though I do not have a mama-in-law, I do have Lady Adelaide, and I certainly have no wish for her demise.”
Sally waved Lady Adelaide away with an airy gesture. “’Tis not by any means the same thing, I promise you. Why, my goodness me, Adriana, can you imagine Lady Adelaide carrying on a practically public love affair with the Prince of Wales or putting evil-smelling stuff in his wife’s hair on their wedding night just to put the prince off bedding her?”
Choking with suppressed laughter, Adriana looked quickly over her shoulder to see if the men were near enough to overhear them, hissing as she did so, “Sally, you mustn’t.”
“They cannot hear us,” Sally said, “and, goodness me, even if they could, do you not think George knows how I feel about his mama? He is not overfond of her himself.”
“Still, you must sometimes make life difficult for him,” Adriana said quietly, glancing back again. The men were well behind them on the torchlit staircase that wound down the inner wall of the keep, and although she could hear only murmuring sounds from above, she feared that her voice and Sally’s might carry better up the stairway than the men’s voices carried down. “Why, only the week before Chalford and I were married I heard you telling everyone at Lady Prentice’s rout how charming the Princess of Wales is and lamenting the way she is treated.”
“I spoke no more than the truth,” Sally said firmly.
“But, my dear, only think how Lady Jersey must react when such tales are carried to her, as surely they must be. I cannot think she does not express her displeasure to her son.”
Even in the gloom between torches she could see Sally’s careless shrug. “He knows I cannot like her, Adriana. Nor will I attend to her strictures. I mean to be my own person, one day to lead fashion and to be a great political hostess, too, for George will make a stir when he takes his seat in the House of Lords. I’ll see to it. I have neither the intention nor the desire, now or ever, to bow and scrape to a royal har—”
“Sally!”
“My goodness me, Adriana, ’tis only a word—and the correct word at that—but if it offends you, I shall refrain from its use. I shall say merely that I do not cater to my mama-in-law’s sensibilities. I choose my own road.”
It had begun to rain before they emerged from the keep and they were forced now to run for shelter. By the time they reached the porch, the heavens had unleashed their full fury. Jagged shafts of lightning with cracks of thunder crashing at their heels cut through roiling black clouds directly overhead. Adriana was shaking when she entered the hall.
Chalford looked at her as Sally and George hastened toward the warmth of the fires in the great hall, and when Adriana moved to follow them, he stopped her with a gentle hand upon her upper arm, saying in a worried tone, “You are cold, sweetheart.”
Another flash of lightning above the open quadrangle lit the colonnade outside, and the great crash of thunder that came but a second later made Adriana wince. “I am all right, sir, or I will be when we reach the warmth of the fire.”
“That gown is ridiculously ill-chosen, and damp besides,” he said more firmly, letting his hand move up and down her bare arm in a way that sent shivers of a different sort through her. “You go up and put on something warmer. I ought never to have let you go out to the keep without a thick cloak to wrap about you.”
“I do not even own such a cloak,” she told him, speaking quickly. “Really, Chalford, I am perfectly—”
The crash this time was so loud the walls vibrated with it, and with a startled, frightened cry, Adriana flung herself at her husband and buried her face in his shoulder. When his arms wrapped securely around her, she shuddered with relief but clung even tighter.
Several moments of silence passed before she began to relax. Indeed, not until a muted roll of thunder could be heard in the distance did she draw a long, sobbing breath and move to free herself from his embrace.
“This storm is moving fast,” he said quietly.
“Good. Then it will soon be over.”
“With another, more than likely, on its heels.”
She bit her lower lip.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Adriana?”
“Tell you what?”
He looked at her but did not speak.
Finally, she shrugged and turned away, striving to make the movement look casual. “It is childish to fear thunderstorms.”
“The fear is no less real,” he said, gently taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him again. “I nearly sent you upstairs alone to change your dress. You must tell me when you are afraid, sweetheart, so that I can help, so that I don’t make matters worse.” The third footman approached just then from the south end of the hall. “See to our guests’ needs, Jacob, and tell them that we will be with them again directly.”
“Really, Joshua,” Adriana protested when the footman had gone and she found herself being urged, gently but no less adamantly, toward the stair hall, “there is no need to change my dress. ’Tis scarcely damp at all, and I will be quite warm enough in the hearth corner of the great hall. Why, Sally is wearing no more than I am.”
“Sally is not my wife,” he pointed out. “If Villiers chooses to allow her to freeze herself to death, that’s his lookout, not mine.”
“I don’t know that what George chooses counts for a great deal with Sally,” Adriana said before thinking.
“He is her husband.” Chalford said no more. Indeed, he seemed to think he had said enough, and while his arm remained firmly around her shoulders, pressing her forward, Adriana could see no point in arguing with him. Still, she remembered Sally’s casual reference to George’s future political career. At dinner, the viscount had spoken only of sport. Although Sally had twice mentioned politics and had encouraged Lady Hetta to discourse upon her efforts to protect England from the French, these sorties had proved unsuccessful, Villiers always managing to bring the conversation back to his favorite topic. Adriana could not imagine his wishing to become a great political leader. She put her thought into words as they reached the top of the stairs.
Chalford blinked. “Villiers? A political leader? Utter nonsense, if you ask me.”
“But Sally said—”
“Sally is little more than a schoolgirl,” he said, “and a foolish, chattering schoolgirl, at that. What does she know of anything, let alone politics? It is not as though she grew up in Melbourne House, as Cowper’s little Emily did.”
“Sally is a year younger than I am, to be sure,” Adriana said stiffly, “but we are both of us older than Emily, Chalford, and well beyond the schoolroom. Moreover, from what I have seen of Sally, she means to have her way about things. Why, even Lady Jersey cannot frighten her, and I can tell you that woman utterly paralyzes me. When Sally chooses, she can appear to be even higher in the instep than the queen. I have seen her.”