The Fleeing Heiress: A funny flight into love. (16 page)

“I will be glad of it, ma’am,” said Thea gratefully. “I
hope Papa does as he is asked. As you have obviously noted,
my present wardrobe is somewhat lacking. Two of the
gowns I have were purchased from a village modiste who had had them left on her hands.”

“I really did not think that was your usual quality of
dress, my dear. It is quite obvious that the walking dress you
are wearing was not made for you. It is the tiniest bit too
short, besides being of an ill cut for your figure,” said Mrs. Owen dryly. “Nor did I believe for a moment that young
woman you brought with you was a true lady’s maid.”

“No, ma’am. She was a chambermaid at the inn whom
Lord Cardiff bribed to accompany us in order to lend me
countenance,” said Thea, making a clean disclosure of her odd circumstances.

“Lord Cardiff is a very practical gentleman,” observed
Mrs. Owen. She seated herself in one of the wing chairs sit
uated in front of the hearth and gestured for her niece to be
seated opposite her.

When Thea sat down, Mrs. Owen regarded her with a
keen appraisal. “You are not quite a beauty, but you are well
enough. Tell me, Thea, what does Lord Cardiff think of
you?”

Thea felt heat rise into her face which had nothing to do
with the reflected warmth of the fire. She chose her words
with care. “I do not know, Aunt. However, I expect that he will be glad to be rid of responsibility for me. I have been the
cause of much trouble to his lordship.”

“Quite. Yet one might say that Lord Cardiff has gone out
of his way to be of service to you,” said Mrs. Owen.

“His lordship has a high standard of honor, ma’am,” said
Thea quietly.

Mrs. Owen smiled. “Of course he does. He is a gentle
man of the finest order.” She regarded her niece with a kind
expression. “Pray be frank with me, Thea. Have you any re
gard for Lord Cardiff?”

Thea managed a small laugh. “How could it be other
wise, ma’am? He appeared first to my dazed sight in the
guise of a hero. He has been consistently kind and chival
rous and forebearing. I do not know of anyone else who
would have endured all that he did at the hands of my father
and my brothers and ended by seeing me into your safe
keeping.”

“Indeed! Lord Cardiff is obviously a paragon,” said Mrs.
Owen, nodding. She fixed a compelling but compassionate
gaze on her niece. “My dear Thea, did his lordship make an
offer for you?”

Thea bowed her head and looked down at her clasped
hands with inordinate interest. She was reluctant to reveal
the truth, but felt she could not deny it. “Yes, Aunt, he did. I
refused him, of course.”

“And why was that, dear?”

Thea looked up quickly, her eyes very wide. “Why, I
could not possibly accept his suit! Surely you must understand why. Such a sacrifice on his lordship’s part became
unnecessary when I thought of my great-aunt, Mrs. Par
tridge, and he offered to escort me to her. I thought when she
refused to have me stay with her that Lord Cardiff might in
sist on wedding me after all. But then she sent me to you and
my uncle, and all is working out for the best for everyone.”

“Quite.” Mrs. Owen’s tone was dry. “Your scruples do
you honor, Thea. However, I cannot help but think that you would have done even better for yourself by accepting Lord
Cardiff’s offer. He is a very eligible parti, you know. We
number his lordship’s sire, his Grace the Duke of Armouth,
among our several acquaintances. It is a noble family.”

Thea swallowed. Her aunt’s words were much the same
that a little voice had been whispering to her for hours since
she had first insisted on applying first to her great-aunt and
then to her uncle for succor. “Perhaps you are correct,
ma’am. But I
could
not serve his lordship such a back
handed turn.”

“Such a pity.” Mrs. Owen reflected with obvious regret
on what might have been. She gave a small sigh. “It would have been a brilliant match. And I suspect that you are not
quite as indifferent to Lord Cardiff as you would like every
one to believe.”

Unable to deny it, Thea shook her head. “No, ma’am, I
am not,” she admitted quietly. The flicker of a smile crossed her face as she made the tiniest gesture to indicate her helplessness, “I admire and respect Lord Cardiff more than any
one of my acquaintance.”

Mrs. Owen nodded her understanding. She thought she
understood far more than even her niece. “I shall not tease you anymore, my dear.” She rose and stepped close enough
so that she could kindly pat her niece on the shoulder. “I
shall let you rest a few minutes before I send your maid back
to you in time to dress for dinner. We shall have more opportunity to visit in days to come.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Thea.

Mrs. Owen tactfully withdrew, leaving her niece alone
with her reflections. As Mrs. Owen exited the bedroom she wore the hint of a frown on her face, but her niece was not
privileged to see it.

Over dinner that evening a good rapport was established
between Thea and the Owens. She attributed it as much
to Lord Cardiff’s presence as she did to any of her own anx
ious desire to make a good impression on her aunt and
uncle.

The conversation was at first a trifle stilted, all parties
concerned being overly polite. Mr. Owen in particular
forged forward with painstaking effort. He had obviously been coached by his wife to show forbearance for the sake
of his niece’s sensibilities and went out of his way not to
make reference to his absent brother-in-law. On her side,
Thea was painfully aware of her uncle’s reticence, and while she appreciated it, she felt constrained in what she could say
because she did not wish to utter anything which might
prove too much of a temptation for her uncle to pass by.

However, Lord Cardiff’s polished ease swiftly served to thaw the atmosphere. His ability to make himself agreeable
and to introduce such topics as must interest any company
in which he found himself was profoundly salubrious. Mr.
Owen liked his lordship’s sensible assessments of England’s
progress in the war; Mrs. Owen enjoyed Lord Cardiff’s
pretty compliments on her domicile and his lordship’s com
pany manners; and Thea was diverted by his lordship’s
telling of some amusing anecdotes, which generally showed
himself and his friends in a derisive light. Altogether Lord Cardiff proved himself an amusing and interesting dinner companion to the entire party.

Whenever Thea looked back on that evening, it was al
ways with a lingering smile because it had been made so
pleasant for her by Lord Cardiff. At the time, she simply ap
preciated the fact that his presence eased what could have
been a horridly uncomfortable gathering.

After the excellent four-course dinner was finished, Mrs.
Owen led Thea out of the dining room to leave the gentlemen with their port. When she and Thea entered the parlor, Mrs. Owen invited her niece to sit down beside her to converse. She learned much about her niece in those first sev
eral minutes that made her think well of Thea. In her gentle
questioning, Mrs. Owen also discovered that Thea had a
love for music. “You must have inherited your interest from
your mother, for I recall that she was a very pretty performer
at the pianoforte,” she remarked.

“It was Mama who gave me my first lessons,” said Thea
with a softening look in her eyes.

“Why do you not play an air for me? I would very much
enjoy it, I am sure,” said Mrs. Owen civilly. She knew her
duty as a hostess, and even if her niece turned out to be tone-
deaf, she would politely applaud and request an encore.

Thea demurred at first, but at Mrs. Owen’s continued
urging, she finally capitulated and seated herself at the
pianoforte. She began to play a few airs and was thrilled
with the quality of the instrument. Her graceful fingers
found the keys with confidence and caressed them with the
touch of a maestro.

Thea quickly lost herself in the music and became totally
unconscious that she had a listener. Now and again she
hummed or lifted her voice in accompaniment to her own playing. The music was a comfort to her bruised spirit, and she gave herself up to it wholly.

As the melodies began to flow one into another, Mrs.
Owen listened with growing astonishment. Thea had a vast repertoire at her command which she performed with obvi
ous adoration and passion. Mrs. Owen realized that her
niece had a definite gift. She was delighted by the discovery.
It spoke well for Thea’s background in at least the maidenly
accomplishments.

The gentlemen did not linger overlong over their wine
but came into the parlor to join the ladies for coffee. When
they entered, Mrs. Owen held a finger to her lips, enjoining their silence, and gestured an invitation to her husband and Lord Cardiff to be seated. They obeyed Mrs. Owen’s in
junction, their separate gazes resting on the young lady
seated at the pianoforte while they listened.

Thea had become so entirely wrapped up in her music
that she did not notice the gentlemen’s quiet entrance. When she came to the end of the air she was playing, she was star
tled by a burst of applause behind her. She swung around on
the stool and flushed when she saw that she had acquired a
larger audience. “Oh! Pray forgive me. I did not realize I had
been playing for so long.”

“It is quite all right, Thea,” said Mrs. Owen with an ap
proving smile. “I did not wish to stop you.”

“Brava, my dear! Pray continue,” said Mr. Owen. He was very pleased by his niece’s performance. “You play exceed
ingly well.”

“Yes, Miss Stafford. It is quite a treat to listen to someone who plays as well as you do,” said Cardiff quietly. He
did not believe that he had ever heard better on any stage.
He was still in thrall of the beauty of her performance. The
soaring silver of the melodies seemed to fill the corridors of
his mind.

Thea’s blush deepened with Lord Cardiff’s praise. She
smiled and inclined her head, her eyes glowing like deep-
colored jewels. “You are all exceedingly kind. But I fear that
I have exhausted my repertoire.”

“There is sheet music on top of the pianoforte,” said Mrs.
Owen. “Pray indulge us with a few more selections, Thea.”

Cardiff at once seized the opportunity. “Perhaps you will
permit me to turn your music?” he asked, getting up from his wing chair even as he spoke.

“Certainly, my lord,” said Thea with a shy smile. “I
would like that very much.”

Cardiff moved to the pianoforte and stood slightly to the
side so that he could watch her face as she played. The
candlelight shed soft light on her face, and her obvious hap
piness with the music was a new side of Miss Stafford that
he found peculiarly intriguing. Something stirred in him,
and he recognized that he was responding to the passion he
glimpsed in her. For the moment it was enough to simply be
standing where he was, pleasantly drawn under Miss
Stafford’s unexpected spell.

She looked up at that instant and their gazes meshed for a suspended second. Thea dropped her eyes, her color
heightened. She had not ever seen that banked glow in a gentleman’s eyes before, but instinctively she knew what it
was, and her own body heated as though with a fever. It
made a slight tremor run through her, and her fingers fal
tered just for an instant on the keys. She regained command
almost at once so that the mistake was nearly imperceptible.

Mrs. Owen drew her spouse’s attention to the pair at the
pianoforte. “See how our niece looks up at Lord Cardiff,
Thatcher. She is half in love with him, unless I miss my guess.”

“His lordship is somewhat taken with her, too,” said Mr.
Owen, observing the warmth of Lord Cardiff’s expression
as his gaze rested on Thea. He recalled the history of the
pair’s meeting and regretfully shook his head. “It’s a pity
that things have gone the way they have. He’ll hardly wish
to align himself with such a family after the way the
Staffords have treated him.”

“Indeed, it is a pity.”

The elderly couple listened and watched for a few more
minutes. Mrs. Owen nodded to herself as though coming to some decision.

“Thatcher, I have it in mind to bring that poor girl out,”
said Mrs. Owen. “Blessed though we undoubtedly were
with two sons, both of whom married well and are content,
I yet find myself wondering what it would be like to launch
a daughter into the world. And now here is poor Thea come
to us. It is almost providential.”

“I shall not argue a fine point of theology, dear wife. However, I can find no fault in your generous notion. Our
niece is well-bred and a credit to her mother, at least. I
should like to do something for her, if for no other reason than for the sake of the affection that I held for my sister,” said Mr. Owen somberly. His lips thinned to a forbidding
line, and there came a bite into his voice. “Of course, I
should like to put that idiot Stafford’s nose out of joint besides.”

Mrs. Owen brushed over her husband’s last comment,
deeming it insignificant. “Then if you approve, I shall
broach the subject to Thea later and ask her if she would like
it,” she said.

“Do just as you wish, my dear. The girl would be a ninny
to turn down such an opportunity,” said Mr. Owen.

“Just so; and I do not believe Thea is
quite
a fool,” said
Mrs. Owen placidly.

The impromptu musicale ended when the coffee um was brought in by the butler. Coffee was served, along with a se
lection of nuts and biscuits and delicately decorated chocolate truffles. Mr. Owen claimed Lord Cardiff’s attention and
Thea sat down beside her aunt.

Mrs. Owen lost no time in putting forward her invitation. Thea was astonished and touched by her aunt’s proposal. She
paled slightly, then pinkened with an absurd pleasure. “My
dear ma’am! It would naturally be a wonderful treat for me.
I never expected—” She shook her head quickly. “But I can
not accept such generosity from you and my uncle! It would
not be right of me. I would be presuming too much on our
connection, for I have no claim upon your affections.”

“True enough, my dear. However, I am already developing a fondness for you, which shall undoubtedly take firmer
root as we come to know one another better. As for your
uncle, his affection for your mother strongly inclines him to
ward you, and it is his expressed wish to do something for you in her memory,” said Mrs. Owen. She took her niece’s
hand and slightly squeezed the younger woman’s slender
fingers. With a wistful smile, she added, “So you see, Thea,
it would be positively uncivil of you not to allow us this opportunity.”

Thea decided she could scarcely decline the invitation in
the face of such gentle persuasion. “Very well, ma’am. I
shall accept your invitation and with much gratitude. But what of Papa? He might very well deny his permission, for
I know that he and my uncle are estranged. And there is
Tabitha, too. She is the eldest and—”

Mrs. Owen laughed and threw up her hand. “My dear!
You make too much of a molehill, believe me. When I write
your father, I shall suggest that your reputation can be repaired very nicely if it is put about that you were supposed to come to us for this very purpose. He may explain to any of the curious that since you resemble your mother, your
uncle has taken particular interest in your future, which has
all the benefit of being the truth. As for your sister, we must
trust your father to know best how to spare her feelings.”

Thea placed little confidence in her father’s abilities on
the last point, but the rest of her aunt’s argument operated powerfully on her. She very much liked the idea of remain
ing for several months under her uncle’s roof, for she still
had a lively dread of returning to her home with a cloud of
scandal hanging over her head. If her aunt was right, much
would either be forgotten or discounted when it was learned by her friends and acquaintances that she was being given a London season by her uncle and aunt. After all, someone in
utter disgrace would not have received such an advanta
geous offer. Rather, it would have made more sense that a
young lady of ruined reputation would have been exiled to the furthest reaches of the earth. She was persuaded that in
her aunt’s astonishing invitation she beheld the salvaging of
her ravaged reputation.

“I am content to leave the matter in your capable hands.
Aunt,” said Thea in humble gratitude.

“Thank you, my dear. You have made me very happy. I had no daughters and I had such plans for the eventuality, which now I may trot forward to my full bent. How fortu
nate that we have kept up connections!” said Mrs. Owen.

She smiled as she saw Lord Cardiff coming towards them.
“Ah, here is Lord Cardiff returning to us. Or perhaps I
should say, to you?” She laughed at Thea’s quick blush and rose, saying to Lord Cardiff, “I wish to relay something of import to Mr. Owen, so I know that you will hold me ex
cused, my lord.”