The Viscount and the Virgin

‘Yes, but that is just it,’ she countered. ‘Very few people ever did meet her after she married Hugh. She never showed her face in Society again. It left Baron Framlingham free to say whatever he liked.’

Rick frowned, either because he was at a loss to know what to say or because he was concentrating on getting through the park gates.

Once they were safely bowling along the broad carriageway and there was no further risk to the gleaming paintwork, Imogen continued in a subdued voice, ‘There is no escaping the truth, though, that she did take a lover.’

‘Only the one!’ he retorted, as though that made it acceptable. And then, hot in defence of the woman who had mothered him throughout his formative years, ‘And only because your father drove her to it by making her so miserable! My father never blamed her for any of it. Said she would have done better to have married the Earl of Leybourne in the first place. Courted her at one time, so he told me. Why didn’t she marry him? After all, she must have carried a torch for him for years, if she…’

He petered out, with the look of a man who had just realized he was engaging in a rather improper conversation with an innocent young female.

‘My father swept her off her feet,’ replied Imogen dryly. ‘Not only did it satisfy his sense of mischief to win her from a man of higher rank, he had his eye on her fortune. Then again, he hoped marrying into such a respectable family might hoodwink certain people into believing he would reform. But of course, he did no such thing. Mama said—’ And then she realized it was not at all the thing to repeat any of the stories her mother had told her. They had been delivered as a warning, when Amanda knew she was not going to live long enough to steer her daughter through the shoals of the Marriage Mart herself.

‘He was a shocking rake,’ was all Imogen could bring herself to say. ‘Very indiscreet.’

At that moment, they passed a barouche carrying a group of particularly haughty matrons, whose eyes widened to see her riding in a sporting curricle—with a dashing military man as her only escort.

‘People watch me with their beady little eyes—’ she indicated the retreating vehicle with a wave of her hand ‘—-just hoping to see some signs of flightiness in me. With my mother branded as some kind of temptress who lured two noblemen to their doom, and my father notorious for his legions of mistresses, it is hardly surprising people expect the worst of me. Aunt Herriard has to be extremely strict with me, Rick. To make sure nobody has even the slightest reason to say I am tarred with the same brush.’

‘I am amazed she let you come out with me this afternoon, then,’ he said wryly.

‘I was not sure, until the moment we saw you draw up in this rig, that she might not think better of it, either!’ Imogen laughed. ‘But it hit exactly the right note. Wherever did you get it?’

‘Oh, I borrowed it off Monty. You remember Monty?’

‘Remember Monty! Of course I do!’

Rick had not been on active service for long before Monty’s name began to crop up in his correspondence to Midge. It turned out that whenever a packet of mail arrived for the officers, they tended to share news from home with each other. Right from the first, she had scattered little sketches throughout her text, to illustrate the events she was describing. The pictures of the butcher chasing a recalcitrant pig through several paragraphs before meeting its inevitable fate beneath her signature had proved a particular hit. After that, everyone in Rick’s unit began to look forward to his receiving letters from his dear little Midge. Especially Monty, who never seemed to receive any mail of his own at all.

Appalled to learn that a young man who was serving his country had no support from his family, Midge had begun to include short messages specifically for him. And he had returned his own personal greetings.

‘He is in town?’ she said, half turning to him.

From the very first, her heart had gone out to the lonely young lieutenant, serving alongside her brother. Fancy being in a strange country, fighting battles, and nobody from home writing to him!

Later, as she had got to know him better through Rick’s accounts of his exploits, she began to think there was no finer or braver officer than Lieutenant Monty, saving her own dear Rick, of course. She was genuinely pleased for him when he got made up to captain and asked Rick to tell him so. In his turn, he had sent her, via Rick, his condolences when first her mother and then her stepfather had died.

But then, not long after making major, he had sold out. And for the past few months, she had heard no news of him at all.

‘Yes, he is in town, and a good job too. Entirely thanks to him we are enjoying this outing. Told me exactly how to turn your aunt up sweet—you know, sending round a note, applying in writing for permission to take you out—oh, how to do everything in form! Capital fellow, Monty!’

‘I do wish I could meet him—’ she sighed ‘—though I don’t suppose Uncle Herriard will think him a suitable person for me to associate with. Not if he is one of your friends.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rick darted her a sideways look. ‘He comes from a very respectable family. And he has money. Dash it, you must be able to tell that at least from the pair harnessed to this rig!’

She observed the paces of the high-stepping matched bays for several minutes before venturing, ‘I don’t suppose he will be anything like I have imagined him anyway. I am bound to be disappointed.’

He had probably run to fat now that he was not on active service. Not that she would hold that against him. No, she would prefer him not to be as handsome as she had always imagined him. Handsome men, her mother had warned her over and over again, were not to be trusted. Particularly if they had charming ways about them. A girl could easily be deceived by such a man. Her own father was a case in point. By the time Amanda had become a widow, she told Imogen, she had learned it was better for a woman to look for the worth of a man in his character, not in his appearance. Hugh Bredon may have been much older than her, and somewhat dull, but he would never have dreamed of breaking a woman’s heart just for sport.

‘You won’t be disappointed by Monty,’ Rick assured her, his grin spreading. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I see if I can get up a party with him and some of the other officers kicking their heels in town this week. Do you think your uncle would permit you to come to the theatre with us? Monty’s family has a private box.’

‘Oh, I do hope so. That sounds wonderful!’ An evening spent with Rick’s friends! For a few hours, she might be able to be herself, rather than her aunt’s prim and proper creation.

‘I will see what I can do then. Hope I am not speaking out of turn,’ he said, his shoulders stiffening, ‘but it does not seem to me as though you are very happy, living with your aunt and uncle.’

Imogen sighed again. ‘Their one ambition is to see me married well. But because of the scandal attached to my name, I am not getting many invitations to the kind of places where I might meet the sort of man they would think eligible. And when I do go, I nearly always manage to disgrace myself.’

‘You? I cannot believe that!’

‘Oh, Rick, it is kind of you to say that. But it is the truth. Why, only last week, I knocked a full glass of champagne all over a viscount.’

‘Well, that’s hardly disgraceful behaviour,’ Rick objected. ‘Anyone can have an accident.’

Imogen wanted to hug him for dismissing the incident so lightly. But she needed to make him understand why it had preyed on her mind so much.

‘Yes, but the viscount was furious with me for ruining his splendid waistcoat. He…he swore at me, and stormed out of the ballroom, which in turn made the hostess angry too. He was a much sought after guest, while I am just…’

‘Popinjay!’ Rick interrupted. ‘He cannot be much of a man if he gets in a miff over a little bit of drink spilled on his clothing. And what kind of blackguard swears at a female, I should like to know!’

‘Quite,’ Midge mused. She had always accepted she had been at fault in spilling the drink, but his behaviour had certainly not been that of a true gentleman.

She began to feel a little better about herself and sat up straighter She might be a sad romp, but Viscount Mildenhall had the most abominable manners. But just because he was wealthy and titled, nobody would call him to book for his boorish behaviour.

She knew that for a fact. In the days since what she thought of as the champagne incident, she had glimpsed him at one or two functions. He was always surrounded by a court of fawning females and obsequious males. If ever he caught her looking at him, his face would twist into an expression of contempt that made something inside her shrivel.

Well, she was not going to waste another minute trying to work out how she could counteract the viscount’s mistaken impression of her. Viscount Mildenhall was exactly the kind of man her mother had warned her about. Too handsome by half. Full of his own consequence. And to be avoided like the plague.

Men like Rick or Monty would never bother about getting a little bit of champagne on their clothes. Why, they must have been covered in mud, and blood, and worse, time without number. And men like that, real men who had fought and bled and starved to serve their country would not go strutting about a ballroom rigged out in satins and silks, either, looking down their noses at lesser mortals with expressions of disdainful boredom.

‘Well, I will only have to endure a few more months in town, anyway,’ she confided. ‘I will only be having one Season. It is pointless for my aunt and uncle to persist in trying to marry me off. Even apart from the scandal attached to my name, I am a bit long in the tooth to attract a husband.’

At five and twenty, she was long past the age most girls had their first Season. No wonder certain people assumed she was so desperate she would deliberately knock a drink over an eligible man just to attract his attention.

‘Nonsense!’ scoffed Rick. ‘You are just a slip of a girl.’

‘To you, perhaps, but not to men on the hunt for a bride. Anyway, enough talk about marriage. I will probably never get married. It was not my first plan, you know. I told Nick I would rather look for work. And that is what I shall do.’

‘You would rather work than marry?’ said Rick, aghast. ‘And what as, might I ask?’

‘Oh, as a governess, I expect. I…I like children.’

‘Yes, but you should have your own, not get paid to mind somebody else’s! Midge, have you got some aversion to marrying? Have your mother’s experiences frightened you that much?’

Imogen wondered if that could be true. It struck her that whenever the question of her having a Season had cropped up, she had always declared she would rather stay at the Brambles and look after her family. But after a moment’s reflection, she shook her head. ‘It is not marriage itself I am afraid of. Mama was content with Hugh. As content as she could have been with anyone, after what she went through.’

Imogen sighed. Amanda had been grateful, all her life, for Hugh’s willingness to offer her the protection of his name, in return for a generous settlement from Grandpapa Herriard. She always felt that he had rescued her from an intolerable situation. Her world had been lying in ruins. The shock of having her lover arrested for murdering her husband had caused her to lose the baby she was carrying. She had lost her independence, too, when Imogen’s grandfather had hauled her back to the house in Mount Street when, to cap it all, somebody had broken into the Framlingham residence and ransacked part of the ground floor. She could not show her face in public, for the gossips were tearing her reputation to shreds. Almost out of her mind with grief and guilt, Amanda had submitted to the family doctor who had administered copious quantities of laudanum.

Imogen thought that it was probably during those days that she had been left for such lengthy periods in the nursery. It was certainly about that time when her baby brother, Thomas, contracted the illness that killed him.

The doctor’s response was to sedate her mother even more heavily.

That was when Grandpapa Herriard had taken the drastic measure of writing to his widowed friend Hugh to beg him to get his only daughter out of town.

‘He had three young sons,’ Amanda had often told her, her eyes welling with tears, ‘for whom he had little time and even less patience. They missed their mother, and I missed my boys. We all comforted each other.’

‘She was a wonderful mother to us,’ said Rick, as though completely attuned to her thoughts, ‘and I know you would be too. The way you took us all on after she went…’

‘I did not take you on, as you put it. I just love you all. You are my brothers,’ she declared, lifting her chin mutinously.

‘How would you like it if your brother took you to Gunter’s for some hot chocolate?’ He smiled down at her. ‘Would your aunt think that was improper?’

‘I expect so.’ Imogen grinned sheepishly. ‘But I should love it above all things. What will you do with the curricle, though?’

‘Oh, Monty’s groom can take it back. You won’t mind walking home, will you?’

‘Not with you,’ she smiled. ‘I know you will set a spanking pace. I have not had a good brisk walk for months!’

‘Ah, Midge,’ said Rick. ‘What was Nick thinking, to send you to live with a parcel of relatives who seem to want nothing more than to crush you?’

‘He did not have a lot of choice. They were the only ones who would have me. Oh, don’t let’s talk about such gloomy things. Tell me what you have been up to.’

So he spent the rest of their time together regaling her with anecdotes of his time with the forces occupying Paris.

‘You would like Paris, Midge,’ he said reflectively. ‘Pity we cannot find you a serving officer to marry while I am over here, and then you could come back with me.’

‘I should love that! But—’ her face fell abruptly ‘—I do not think my uncle would grant me permission to marry a soldier.’

Rick let the subject drop, but a thoughtful frown creased his brow as he made his way to Monty’s house in Hanover Square, after escorting Imogen home.

A footman took him straight upstairs to a dressing room, where he found his friend lounging on a sofa, a valet on a low stool before it, buffing his nails.

‘Ah, Rick!’ Monty smiled, nodding towards a side table that held a selection of crystal decanters. ‘You won’t mind helping yourself, while my man finishes?’

Rick made for the table, but then paused, fiddling with one of the stoppers, his frown deepening.

‘Not had a pleasant afternoon with Midge?’

‘Not entirely,’ Rick scowled, pouring himself a small measure and then walking with it to the window. ‘I need your advice.’

Monty dismissed his valet. ‘How may I be of service?’

Rick flung himself into a chair and gazed moodily into his glass.

‘My family has left Midge in a pickle. Up to me to get her out of it. Thought I could trust Nick to handle things, but what must the stupid cawker go and do but tell her the truth. You know our house had to be sold to cover my father’s debts? Well, anyone with an ounce of sense would have split the proceeds four ways and let Imogen think she was entitled to it. It isn’t as if the money makes all that much difference to us. We all have our careers. We can make our own way in the world. But no. Nick had to tell her that father left her with next to nothing! Then packed her off to a set of starchy relatives who seem intent on crushing all the spirit out of her. And now she says she’s too long in the tooth to attract a decent sort of husband with such a paltry dowry, and she’s thinking about becoming a governess!’

‘A fate worse than death,’ Monty agreed, only half joking. ‘My brothers have seen off three of the poor creatures since I sold out, and the Lord alone knows how many they dispatched before that!’

‘Midge would be wonderful with boys like your brothers, I should think. Probably thoroughly enjoy taking ‘em birds—nesting. That’s half the problem. Grew up following us around like a little shadow…well, you know that’s how she got her nickname. Nick said she was like a cloud of midges you just couldn’t shift no matter how many times you swatted them away!’ He chuckled. ‘Plucky little thing, she was. Gerry said she must have rubber bones. Why, when I think of the trees she fell out of, and the horses she fell off and the streams she fell into…and never cried! That was why, when she burst into tears all over me yesterday…well, it shook me up, I can tell you.’

Monty poured himself a brandy, and took the chair opposite Rick’s.

‘Well, I am not going to let her become a governess. Going to find her a husband myself! That is why I came to you.’

‘Indeed?’ said Monty coldly.

‘Well, her aunt’s not going to succeed, not by throwing her in the way of society types who want a wife to be a decoration to hang off their arm.’

‘I take it you are warning me that Midge is not very decorative.’

Rick looked affronted. ‘She is pretty enough. In her own way. It is just that she doesn’t go in for all that fluttery feminine nonsense. You know, batting her eyelashes and sighing up at you and so forth. She would never do anything that smacks of insincerity. Straight as a die, she is.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Monty. ‘She has no dowry to speak of, she is past the first flush of her youth, and is happier climbing trees than dancing quadrilles. Is that it?’

Rick grinned. ‘That just about sums her up!’ Then his expression grew serious. ‘Monty, you have been in town for a while now. You know who is about. And you said you were bored. Well, this will give you something worthwhile to do. Dammit, Monty, you know what a warm, sweet, loving girl she is. We need to find her someone who will appreciate her for what she is.’

Monty gave him a peculiar look.

‘Are you suggesting that I should fill the role?’

‘You!’ Rick’s jaw dropped. ‘Absolutely not! Not now you’ve sold out. A bit above our touch now you’ve stepped into your brother’s shoes. Your family will want you to marry somebody with money and connections, won’t they? And I’m sure you will be holding out for a diamond of the first water. All Midge has to offer any man is a warm heart. No, no, the kind of fellow that would suit Midge would be a serving officer. You would never hear her complaining about the hardships of following the drum. She would just fling herself into the role of taking care of her household on the march, and relish every challenge.’

Something about the set of Monty’s shoulders altered. ‘Forgive me. For a moment I thought you were trying to set me up with your sister.’

Rick burst out laughing.

Monty grinned sheepishly. ‘I know. It is just that recently, I have begun to feel…’ he shivered ‘…hunted. You have no idea the lengths some females will go to in order to hook a viscount on their line. The most mousy, unkempt of creatures fling themselves in my path…’

Rick looked very pointedly at Monty’s silk knee breeches, then at the rings that sparkled from almost every finger. ‘If you will dress so extravagantly, what can you expect?’

‘Oh—’ his expression soured ‘—for people to show their true colours, of course.’

Monty had still been seething from the interview he had endured with his father, when he had first arrived in town. He had spent months trying to prove that he was well able to take up his position as his father’s heir. But nothing he did or said had made any difference. Nor would his father listen to a word of criticism against the steward, who was bleeding the tenants dry to line his own pockets. So far as he could see, it would take only one more bad harvest to have the lot of them rising up in protest at their lot.

‘You have spent too long abroad.’ The earl had sneered when he had voiced his concerns. ‘This is England, not revolutionary France. Your brother knew these people, and he never noticed anything amiss.’

His older brother had been cut from the same cloth as his father, though, that was the trouble. Piers had been indulged and pampered from the day of his birth. He felt the whole world existed only to provide his pleasures, so saw nothing wrong with letting his tenants endure hardship, so long as the rents that funded his luxurious lifestyle came in on time.

‘You would do better to go up to town to get yourself a wife. It is heirs I need from you, not interference in the management of my estates!’

He had never felt so worthless in his life.

And it might have been perverse of him, but his reception in town had made him feel ten times worse. People knew he had a title and wealth, and that was all they cared about. Dandies aped every ridiculous kick of fashion he instigated. The more jewellery he wore, the more the women’s eyes lit up. The more obnoxiously he behaved, the more they fawned round him, until it was hard to know who he despised more: them or himself. It was only with an effort that he managed to shake off the feelings of disgust with himself—and the world in general—and say to Rick, ‘Will you dine with me before coming on to Lady Carteret’s rout? A tedious affair, but for several reasons, I am obliged to go. Once I have shown my face, we can go on to Limmer’s.’

‘Why not?’ Rick replied, draining his glass and setting it down on the table. ‘I have no other engagements tonight. And I have heard you keep an excellent cook.’

‘It is one of the few benefits of civilian life,’ agreed Monty, ‘that I can now have as much to eat as I want, as often as I want.’

‘Then let us get started, Monty,’ said Rick. ‘Or am I being presumptuous? Do I need to My Lord you these days?’

Monty shuddered eloquently. ‘You cannot believe how glad I am to have somebody in town who knows me as Monty. Whenever anybody calls me by my title, I get the urge to turn round to see if my brother has walked into the room. And I find myself going to greater and greater lengths to demonstrate that I am nothing like the former Viscount Mildenhall.’

‘So that explains why you are playing the dandy these days.’ Rick grinned, eyeing his friend’s brocaded waistcoat. ‘Can’t tell you how relieved I am. Was beginning to think I didn’t know you any more!’

‘Sometimes, lately,’ he admitted, thinking of how very tempted he had been by that chit who had thrown her drink over him, ‘I hardly know myself.’

If it had been on just that one occasion, he could have put it down to a momentary aberration. But since that night, he always knew when she was at any function he attended. The nape of his neck would prickle, and he would turn and find those knowing eyes fixed on him, and instead of feeling the contempt for her that her behaviour deserved, he would want to stalk across the room, free all that luxuriant hair from the pins that were scarcely restraining it, yank her into his arms and yield to the temptation of those seductively parted lips. He was beginning to think she, or some woman like her, could offer him a temporary respite from his torment. If he could just bury himself in that tempting little morsel for an hour or two…But then what?

By making such a girl his mistress, he would only prove his father right. Only a worthless rogue would ruin a girl from his own class.

Even if she was asking for it.

Chapter Three

‘Now, Imogen, I need hardly tell you that it is quite a feather in your cap to receive an invitation to Lady Carteret’s. Nor how important it is that you do absolutely nothing to raise eyebrows tonight.’

‘No, Aunt,’ replied Imogen meekly.

She was quite sure she would have no problem at all tonight affecting the slightly bored expression that was de rigueur for young ladies. She would be bored! Nobody talked about anything but dresses, and who was the latest arrival in town and how much money they had.

How on earth her aunt expected her to find out enough about a man to decide she wanted to marry him, when nobody spoke about anything that mattered, she had no idea!