Bluestocking Bride (2 page)

The marquis, perceiving that his mother was about to embark on her favorite reminiscence of how she had escaped from the clutches of her wicked guardian to come to his father in little more than her shift, exerted himself to head her off.

"When you come down to
Fotherville
House, Mama, I promise to find you a more spirited mount."

"A more spirited mount?
We were talking of a suitable bride for you, I think. Now how did you contrive to turn the subject into horseflesh, you naughty boy? No matter. Let us return to the terms of your promise."

"Yes, Mama," replied
Rutherston
, suppressing a sigh.

"You will own, I think, Richard, that since you made that promise, your family has put little restraint on your mode of life. But now," she continued seriously, "that must change. It is time for you to marry and set up your nursery."

"Oh, I have no disinclination to set up my nursery,"
Rutherston
joked, "if only I need not marry a wife!" He gave her a quizzical look, expecting to see her smile, but the dowager was not amused.

"It will not do, Richard, it will not do. Your mode of life is a constant worry to me and an irritation to your sister. Richard, if I have grandchildren, I would wish to be proud of them, not have them hidden from my knowledge because they are base born."

She heard her son's sharp intake of breath, then a soft laugh as he bent over to kiss her gently on the cheek. "Am I such a worry to you then, ma'am?" he asked affectionately. "I need not be. It has not come to that, I assure you. You may rest easy, for I intend to stand by my word. But you will not mind if I take more than a
se'ennight
to find a suitable wife?" He brought her hand to his lips. "Mama," he said, all signs of levity gone from manner and expression, "I know what I owe my Name and my Station, and I promise that before long you will be the happiest of women."

The dowager marchioness had searched her son's face intently, and what she saw there seemed to satisfy her.

Rutherston
mused on that penetrating look. His mother understood him very well. Perhaps she had seen more than he had been willing to concede. Had she grasped that his gay, bachelor existence was, in fact, a crashing bore? There was only one mode of life that he could imagine more boring, and that was the state of wedlock. "It is a case of damned if I do and damned if I don't," he thought, a deeper melancholy settling upon him.

He had considered at one time abandoning his idle existence to join Wellesley in Portugal. But the reprobation of his family had stifled that ambition. Heirs to titles did not have the same freedom of choice as younger sons, but had responsibilities and duties to assume about which their younger brothers knew little. He glanced musingly at Norton, envying him his carefree life. And now he had this drat promise hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles.

Lord
Rutherston
must marry, but he had no inclination to find a wife. Women were a bore, especially the empty-headed widgeons that graced the balls, halls, and drawing-rooms of fashionable London when the Season was at its height.

If one found a woman of intelligence, she invariably had the face of a horse; if she were endowed with beauty and grace she was bound to be bird- witted; and if she had that certain something that he called "quality," she was almost certainly as coldblooded as a fish.

He let his mind linger fleetingly on the
warmblooded
women he had known—the fashionable
im
-
pures
, those Cyprians whom he had on occasion allowed to share his bed. He thought of Marguerite, whose protector he now was. She was beautiful, intelligent, and passionate. She was also grasping and ambitious and fast becoming a bore. His mind strayed to Lady Pamela, his latest conquest, and his gloom deepened.

His reverie was broken by a question his cousin had flung at him. "My dear fellow," said Charles amiably, "do strive for a little countenance. You look like a general who has just lost a battle—not at all like the man of title, fortune, and favor that you are. Now do pay attention. I asked you how far it is to your
uncle
Bernard's estate. Surely it can't be far now?"

Rutherston
replied that they would be there directly, and once again, for the umpteenth time, explained to his cousin why his uncle's estate,
unentailed
as it was, had been bequeathed to him.

"Well, it
don't
seem quite the thing," said Norton with some vehemence.
"When you think of all the younger sons of no fortune and with little prospects, that he should leave it to you just because you read classics at Oxford!"

"Not because I
read
classics, Charles
. '
Twas
because I
excelled
at classics,"
Rutherston
corrected mildly.
"There is a difference, you know."

"Fudge!" retorted Norton, not mincing words. "My argument still stands. He left his property to you on the merest whim when there are probably a dozen more worthy candidates to whom such an estate would be regarded as a plum. You don't need it, nor even want it, I'll be bound."

Rutherston
turned away to hide his smile. Norton, as a younger son, was talking with the vehemence of personal experience.
Rutherston
fully intended, with the utmost discretion of course, to ease that young man's way in the world when he judged that the time was right. Meantime, his young cousin was content to idle away his days, hoping no doubt, that the right girl with the right face and fortune would just happen to come his way.

With some semblance of equanimity in his voice,
Rutherston
wondered aloud at the eccentricity of a doddering old uncle who had bequeathed a choice estate to a relation—a connection really—whom he had hardly seen, and upon so trifling a circumstance.

The news of his inheritance had come to him on the day following his birthday, and he had grasped at the excuse of paying a visit to the neighborhood to look it over. It would be a short respite from the task his mother had set him. Two weeks later had seen
Rutherston
embark on his journey in company of his young cousin, Mr. Charles Norton, who was enthused at the prospect of the riding, shooting, and hunting that
Rutherston
had promised. The two men enjoyed each other's company, despite the difference in their ages, and the marquis felt himself to be much more in the role of elder brother than distant cousin. The prospect of male camaraderie in thoroughly masculine pursuits for the next month or so was a most pleasant diversion from the petticoat government of Green Street and the muslin company of the demimonde, and did much to relieve his lordship's black mood.

Norton eased back in the curricle, observing appreciatively his cousin's handling of the high-stepping grays. It would be going too far to say that he hero- worshipped the older man, although he held him in the greatest affection and highest esteem. But Norton was well aware of his cousin's flaws, although he owned that a man who had such a title and fortune could be excused for being a trifle high in the instep. Norton wriggled uncomfortably in his place at the thought of his mild disloyalty. Not that Richard had ever displayed that side of his character to him. Their relationship had always been marked by cordiality and informality. And then, for some reason or another, unfathomable to Norton, Richard had taken to him. In his manner to others, however, he sometimes displayed an aristocratic hauteur that kept them at a distance. It was not exactly pride, but something very close to it; not a sense of his own consequence but more a sense of his own worth, not as a marquis, but as a man. It was hard to define, and Norton soon gave up the effort.

"Well, Charles?"
Rutherston
broke the easy silence that had fallen between them. "Do you mind giving up a few weeks of the Season to bury yourself down here with me?"

"Not I," said Norton with a shake of his head, "but I am surprised that you should."

"I?"
Rutherston
asked in some surprise. "What can you mean?"

"Oh, only that I would have thought that the hunting in London was more in your line."

"Hunting?" repeated the marquis in some confusion.
"In London?"

"Well, I only surmise that the kind of game you are looking for will be much bigger in town—but of course, the Season
ain't
underway yet." Norton suppressed a chortle.

The confusion on the marquis's face gave way to enlightenment.

Rutherston
was about to return some freezing rejoinder, but seeing the shaking of his friend's shoulders, he stayed the retort on his lips.

After a moment or two, his face broke into a grin, and then his laughter joined his friend's.

Thus it was, on a fine afternoon in February, near the beginning of the London Season, the good folk of the village of Breckenridge, in the county of Surrey, beheld two fine London gentlemen almost doubled up with laughter as their curricle bowled along the High Street at a spanking pace, with a liveried groom perched up behind.

Catherine Harland paused atop her perch on the rough-hewn country stile and looked irately at the muddy patch of water that barred her path to
Branley
Park. A thick mass of bramble bushes on either side of her formed an impenetrable obstacle. The puddle had to be crossed. After only a moment's hesitation, she gathered up her skirts and threw herself bodily across the mire. She fell headlong on the soft ground, but her pelisse brushed the surface of the puddle and a dark stain spread along its hem.

"Damn!" Catherine muttered under her breath, borrowing one of her older brother's hackneyed expletives. She looked round guiltily to ascertain whether or not she had been overheard. Satisfied that no one was in the vicinity, nor like to be, she picked herself up and repeated her expletive more forcibly. "Damn!
And damn again!"
Her amber eyes danced merrily to hear her own audacity—a shocking want of conduct, she knew, in one of her gentle birth.

Catherine was not overly anxious about the state of her appearance, for she had donned her plainest attire that afternoon to walk the three miles from her home,
Ardo
House. With a cursory shake to the hem of her pelisse, she made her way through the leafless copse of willows and birch following the well-trod path that led to
Branley
Park.

It was a large house, much grander than any in the neighborhood, and bordered her father's estate. She loved this house—not because of its style or furnishings, which were rather shabby and old-fashioned, but because here she had been—her mind searched for the word she wanted—not happy, but comfortable. That was it. She had been comfortable and at her ease in a way that was not possible at home. In the late Bernard
Fortescue
, country gentleman and scholar of some note, Catherine had found a congenial companion. It had been Mr.
Fortescue
who had encouraged one of the few accomplishments Catherine possessed, a love and knowledge of all things Greek. It was he who had taught her the rudiments of the language almost ten years before when a sudden downpour of rain had put an end to the annual picnic that was always held at
Branley
Park for the people of Breckenridge and its environs.

Catherine, a child of eleven, had wandered into his library to while away the time. He had found her, curled up in a chair, book in hand, poring over the Greek alphabet. Merely thinking to humor a disappointed child, Mr.
Fortescue
had answered all her questions and piqued her interest. She had proved to be an apt pupil and had been invited to return. This had been only the beginning.

At first her mother had indulged Catherine's whim to learn, but when she saw that she excelled and that this was no harmless pastime but a dangerous snare that might have her unfortunate daughter labeled "clever," she had put her foot down. Gentlemen did not like women who were clever, and women who were clever concealed this fact from men.

But Catherine had found a supporter in Uncle John, her father's brother, who was himself a teacher of classics at Oxford, and his influence with her father had given Catherine a reprieve. Greek she could learn, but only if she applied herself to all the other accomplishments that were the mark of the true lady of quality.

It had been her habit, in the last number of years, to spend one afternoon a week with Mr.
Fortescue
in his library. She had long since mastered the intricacies of the language, and their time together had been mostly spent in discussing Greek life and thought in general. He had widened her scope to include other fields, and Catherine had taken to the intellectual life.

As a matter of habit, Catherine found herself making her way to
Branley
Park as if she still had her weekly appointment with Mr.
Fortescue
. But she would have no one now to share her insights, no more delightful conversations or heated arguments on the characters
who
peopled the masterpieces of the Greek playwrights.

The copse ended abruptly on an expanse of winter- brown lawn, and Catherine followed a cobbled path to the back of the house. She unlatched the outside door and entered a large, airy kitchen, shaking her pelisse free of grass and dust, smiling a greeting as she did so.