A Gentleman Of Substance

“Cousin Neville, the son of my father’s brother.” Drake didn’t try to deny Lucy’s opinion of his cousin.

“I recognized your grandmother, but who was the younger lady? I’ve never seen her at Silverthorne before.”

“Lady Phyllipa Strickland, widow of my cousin Clarence.” If asked, Drake could not have said why he answered her peremptory interrogation so readily.

“Oh.” His account of Phyllipa’s identity appeared to confound her for a moment. Her inexplicable indignation rapidly gathered strength again. “Those people may be Captain Strickland’s relatives. But I doubt if they knew him or cared for him as well as many of his old friends.…”

Her words trailed off as fresh tears sprang into her wide-set brown eyes. Drake reached out to take her hand, but she pushed him away. In the split second they were in contact, he could feel her trembling.

“You must be freezing. I’d offer you my coat, but I fear it would do little good, sodden as it is.”

“F-f-father…” She was shivering in earnest now, her teeth chattering rhythmically. “F-f-father keeps a s-s-spare surplice in the v-v-vestry.”

Rising from the pew, Drake strode down the side aisle to fetch the vicar’s spare surplice. He wrapped it around her as best he could.

“Believe me, Miss Rushton, it was never my intent to slight you. I only wanted to spare my tenants any obligation to attend the funeral. If you’d spoken to me beforehand, I would have welcomed you to join the family. Jeremy was very fond of you.”

In the perverse, puzzling manner of women, Lucy greeted his attempt at kindness with a fresh effusion of tears.

“Dash it all, what’s the matter now? You always struck me as a sensible person. I must say, I find your reaction to Jeremy’s death exaggerated quite out of proportion. Just because you didn’t get a front row seat for his funeral is no cause to go courting consumption by keeping a graveside vigil in the pouring rain.”

Bluster had no better effect than solicitude. Lucy Rushton bent her head practically into her lap, weeping in loud sobs that racked her delicate frame.

“There, there.” Drake patted her shoulder in an awkward gesture of sympathy. He was beginning to wish he’d stayed back at Silverthorne. “Don’t take on so. I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you.” He tried to recall what he’d said that might have caused this outburst. “You must stop. Otherwise you’ll make yourself ill.”

Then, as though she considered his warning an invitation, Lucy Rushton vomited all over the flagstone floor, the kneeling bench, and Drake’s Hessians. Fortunately for the boots, she had little on her stomach but broth.

Afterward, Drake wondered what had prompted his uncharacteristic flash of insight. Grasping Lucy Rushton by the shoulders, he looked her straight in the eye. “You’re carrying my brother’s child,” he said with complete conviction.

Her chin trembled, but she did not flinch from his look. With only the barest nod, she confirmed Drake’s preposterous charge. His hands slipped from her shoulders, limp with shock.

Lucy unwadded his handkerchief and daubed at the mess on the chapel floor. “Go ahead. Say what you’re thinking.

I’m a harlot—a wanton. I deserve everything that’s coming to me.”

Suddenly the stock around Drake’s throat felt very tight. He had a powerful urge to dig up Jeremy’s corpse so he could have the satisfaction of strangling his brother. Damn him! With his golden good looks and ingratiating manner, Jeremy’d always had more women than he knew what to do with. Drake hadn’t cared how much of his allowance the young fool spent on trinkets for actresses and barmaids. But to take advantage of an innocent like Lucy Rushton was utterly insupportable!

“Wanton?” His lips twitched involuntarily at using such a word to describe her. “Nonsense. My dear child, you could not behave in a wanton manner if you tried.”

He scarcely knew what to make of it when she flared up, “I am not a child! I am every day of twenty. I have been to Bath.”

Signifying what, exactly? Drake wondered. He opened his mouth to explain he’d meant no offense, quite the contrary.

She cut him off. “How do you know what I’m capable of? You know nothing about me. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“Perhaps I would rather stay and commiserate. It appears Jeremy’s death has put us both in a spot of bother.”

“Bother?” Sharp and shrill, the word echoed off the chapel’s stone walls. “Is that what you call it? When my condition becomes known, I will be a social outcast. My child will be farmed out to strangers or to the harsh mercy of a foundlings’ hospital. What bother of yours can compare with that?”

“Only that I shall have to marry, against my inclination, to provide myself with heirs. Otherwise that foppish cousin of mine stands to inherit Silverthorne.”

“Forced to marry? Poor man. You make it sound as appealing as a hanging. Jeremy did not shy from it as you do. He planned to marry me on his next leave.”

Drake wished he could believe that as sincerely as she appeared to.

“A pity be did not marry you before he went away. It would have spared us both considerable distress.”

Her anger collapsed on itself, like a punctured bubble. “Forgive me, your lordship. I have abused your patience inexcusably this evening. I must get back to the vicarage before father misses me. I trust you’ll keep my secret for as long as need be.” She rose to leave.

“How far along are you?” Drake called after her.

His abrupt question stopped Lucy. “I beg your pardon?”

“How long…since you conceived the child?”

She answered without hesitation. “Six weeks.” Musing softly, she added, “We only made love once. The day before he left.”

Drake drew a deep breath. He was about to dive headlong into murky, uncharted waters. Unfortunately, his bothersome conscience would let him do no less. He must speak now, before she hurried away again, or before he lost his nerve.

“In that case…I propose…a mutually beneficial solution to our problems.”

Chapter Two

“Married? Drake you can’t mean it.” A morsel of egg slid from his grandmother’s spoon and fell quivering onto her saucer.

Neville and Phyllipa exchanged a glance, two pairs of eyebrows raised in surprise and consternation. Drake felt a rush of satisfaction at having ambushed his family so neatly. This was their payback for last night’s dinner.

“I assure you, Grandmother, I am quite in earnest” Drake cheerfully tucked into his breakfast.

“To the vicar’s daughter?” Phyllipa blinked her bulging eyes. “But you are a gentleman of substance, Drake.”

“All the more reason I can dispense with the bothersome task of pursuing an heiress,” he replied with exaggerated good humor.

“Decided to dive into the cesspit after all, have you Cuz?” Neville weighed in with his contribution. “I marvel at how rapidly your scruples deserted you.”

“If you’ll recall…” Drake could not keep the muscles of his jaw from tensing. “I was speaking of that matrimonial cattle market they call The Season, not of marriage in general. Were you too drunk to mark the difference?”

Breathing on his quizzing glass, Neville made a show of rubbing it clean with his napkin. “My dear fellow, you underestimate my capacity for good port.”

“And you underestimate my reluctance to have you inherit Silverthorne. Taking Grandmother’s warning to heart, I followed her advice and secured a wife with the utmost dispatch.”

“But it’s so unromantic!” Phyllipa wailed.

“Which suits me admirably, for I am the least romantic of men. I find nothing disagreeable about this arrangement. It is honest, practical and expeditious.”

They all looked so dumbfounded, he could not help warming to his subject. “Just think if I’d gone about it the usual way. I’d have had to abandon my business concerns for weeks on end to attend a lot of tiresome routs and balls in London. There, I would have stayed up later than is good for me; eaten food that disagreed with me and drank an intemperate quantity of spirits.” He cast a pointed glance at Neville.

“I would have strained to hold my gorge while a pack of silly girls preened for my inspection. I would have pranced through a succession of tedious terpsichorean exercises, whose sole purpose is to provide an immoderate living for mincing dancing masters.”

After pausing for a sip of coffee, Drake continued. “Having fixed on my choice—the least objectionable female desperate enough to consider me for a husband—I would pay the lady my addresses. Which is to say, a compound of meaningless pleasantries and insincere flattery. My proposal accepted, I would commence negotiations with her father, resulting in a marriage contract. The driest batch of legal quibble ever penned by a lawyer’s clerk, a monument to cold-blooded self-interest. The whole operation is so exceedingly romantic, it fair takes my breath away!”

Such a long speech, all in one go, did leave him rather winded. Still, Drake felt a tremendous sense of relief to have had his say on a subject that had long vexed him.

“When is the wedding?” Phyllipa finally squeaked.

Drake beamed as though she had wished him warm congratulations. “Day after tomorrow. I have to speak with the vicar and obtain a special license. I trust you’ll all stay on for the nuptial festivities. We will need witnesses.”

The Dowager Marchioness rose from her place. She had a majestic presence for so small and ancient a person. Grasping her walking stick, she stalked toward the door. “No doubt the funeral meats will coldly furnish forth the wedding table.” She quoted from Hamlet.

Drake almost grinned. Touché, Grandmother.

“I, for one, will not condone this farce with my presence.” With that malediction, she marched from the room and quit Silverthorne within the hour.

In a pool of pale autumn sunshine, on the stoop of a modest thatched cottage, Lucy Rushton sat reading aloud from Milton’s Comus. On the bench beside her sat Widow Sowerby, tenant of the cottage, a pair of knitting needles clattering busily in her tiny nimble hands. Never once did she look down at her work, but gazed unseeing on the pastoral beauty of Mayeswater.

For years it had been Lucy’s habit to, drop by Mrs. Sowerby’s cottage and read or talk while she knitted. Preoccupied with her grief for Jeremy and her fears for the future, she had recently neglected her self-imposed duty. Today, in spite of her new misgivings, or perhaps because of them, she had sought comfort in doing for others.

“Come now, lass, out with it. What’s troubling you?” The tempo of Mrs. Sowerby’s knitting slowed.

Lucy glanced up from her book. “Troubling me? No…I mean, nothing. Nothing is troubling me. I am quite well. Whatever makes you think that?” Fortunately, Mrs. Sowerby’s cataracts prevented her from noticing the blush that smarted in Lucy’s cheeks.

The old woman chuckled. “Just because my eyes don’t work no more, doesn’t mean I can’t see what’s plain. I’ve counted seven times you’ve sighed since you last turned the page, and four times you’ve lost your place. Don’t try to fool Old Fanny that you haven’t got some’ut weighing on your mind.”

Lucy sighed for the eighth time. “I might as well tell you, Mrs. Sowerby. Everyone in Nicholthwait will know by tomorrow night. I’m getting married.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Sowerby nodded over this information, and perhaps the marked lack of enthusiasm in Lucy’s announcement. “Anyone I know?”

Lucy nodded, then remembered her friend couldn’t see her. “Everyone knows him. I am to marry Viscount Silverthorne.”

Mrs. Sowerby’s knitting needles froze in midstitch. “His lordship? This is unexpected news. Most lasses would be singing it to the rooftops—a match like that.”

“It is a great honor.” Not to mention a great burden, sharing her life with the man she held responsible for Jeremy’s death. If she could have seen any other way to provide decently for her child, she would have taken pleasure in refusing Lord Silverthorne’s proposal.

“Oh, aye. A big estate. A title. A large fortune. Most lasses could ask naught more from a marriage.” The two women, sat silent for a moment. “Then again, you aren’t most lasses, Miss Lucy. I think you want more from a husband than his brass or his family name. You’d fancy a man with a ready smile and a way of saying your name that makes your heart beat faster.”

Lucy thought of Jeremy Strickland, his eyes as blue as the summer sky reflected in the glassy surface of Mayeswater, his golden hair ruffled by the upland wind. As her eyes began to water, she felt a pang of exasperation. She had always been of a sunny, optimistic nature. A sensible person, as the viscount so plainly put it. Lately it took nothing to make her weep. She hated having her emotions so out of control.

“Your description does not sound very much like Viscount Silverthorne, does it?” Lucy hoped Mrs. Sowerby would mistake the break in her voice for a chuckle.

“I suppose not. Nothing glib about his lordship, poor lad.”

“Nothing poor about his lordship either,” Lucy reminded her friend tartly. “They say he has the Midas touch.”

Mrs. Sowerby felt at her knitting to find where she’d left off. “As I recall, the golden touch didn’t make that Midas fellow any too happy.”

“You’re hinting at something, so you might as well tell me plainly. Why do you call Lord Silverthorne a ‘poor lad’?”

Now it was Fanny Sowerby’s turn to sigh. “Perhaps you should ask him, my dear. Let’s just say he had a childhood I’d not envy any lad.”

Something in Mrs. Sowerby’s tone gave Lucy a pang as she thought of her own idyllic girlhood, full of books and dreams and the small beauties of nature. The only passing shadows on those years had been the deaths of an infant brother and sister. Deprived of other children, her parents had lavished all their love on her.

Just then, Lucy noticed the long shadow cast by Mrs. Sowerby’s crab apple tree. Though she was curious to hear more about Lord Silverthorne’s unenviable childhood, she’d promised to meet him at the vicarage within the hour.

“I’m afraid I must be getting back home, Mrs. Sowerby. I’m sorry I was so distracted, and spoiled the reading for you.”

“Never you mind about that. I’m grateful for the company. Not many lasses would bother with a blind old woman.”

“That would be their loss.” Lucy stooped to bestow a gentle kiss on the woman’s weathered cheek.

Mrs. Sowerby dropped her knitting and caught Lucy’s hand. “I wish you and his lordship every happiness. He’s a fine man, for all he don’t say much. Once a month, like clockwork, I’ll hear him ride up to my gate. Never says a word, just checks to see how I’m getting on. Once he came by when it was raining, and my roof was leaking like a sieve. The next day a crew shows up from the big house with orders to rethatch it.”

Lucy could not think what to reply. Mrs. Sowerby’s story contradicted her lifelong perception of the stern autocrat.

“He needs a bit of happiness in his life,” Mrs Sowerby added. “Deserves it, too, with all he’s done for folks round here. If there’s a woman can make him happy, I fancy it’s you.”

“I’ll try, Mrs. Sowerby.”

The old woman waved Lucy on her way. Then, perhaps thinking her out of earshot, Mrs. Sowerby mused aloud, “And you might just be surprised at how happy he can make you, my dear.”

Lucy turned away, sighing for the ninth time that afternoon. She doubted it was in the power of any woman to make his lordship happy. And she was certain any chance of her own happiness had died on a Spanish battlefield with Jeremy Strickland.

At a wary distance from the vicarage, Drake sat on his horse trying to screw up his nerve for an interview with Vicar Rushton. He had made his initial marriage offer to Lucy in a momentary surge of moral obligation. Jeremy had used her abominably, and Drake felt it his duty to rectify the situation. He relished breaking the news to his family. Their opposition had only strengthened his resolve. During his ride to the vicarage, a host of doubts had risen to assail him.

Could he manage to put up with a wife underfoot all the time? He’d lived a solitary existence, apart from his years in school—years he’d hated. Ragged and bullied by highborn louts with no interests beyond their own pleasure, he’d fought hard for the simple right to be left alone. It went against his grain to surrender his hard-won privacy.

He wasn’t thinking only of himself, either. What kind of life would it be for Lucy and the child—mewed up at Silverthorne with a man temperamentally unsuited to marriage and fatherhood? Desperately as he wanted an heir to supplant Neville, he could not consign Jeremy’s son to a bleak, joyless childhood like he had suffered.

“It’s no good,” Drake muttered through clenched teeth.

“Do you not think so?” Lucy suddenly emerged from a wooded path nearby. “Most people would call this a fine day, after that dreadful storm. Or were you referring to the view?”

Drake looked down the lane to Saint Mawes vicarage, a cosy stone house, green with ivy and hemmed in by an inviting miscellany of trees and shrubs. Not merely a house, the vicarage looked like a home. The sight of it stirred a long-buried wistfulness in Drake Strickland’s practical, impervious heart.

“No, indeed.” He strove to sound impassive. “The view is very well.”

Planting herself squarely in front of his horse, Lucy looked up at him, a challenge glittering incongruously in the depths of her wide, soft eyes. “Then I must assume you are having second thoughts about marrying me?”

He fixed his gaze on a point just above the crest of her bonnet. “By no means, Miss Rushton.” Drake surprised himself with the ease by which he delivered this bold-faced lie. “I see clearly where my duty rests.” At least that part was true.

“How priggish you sound. As your wife, will I be subjected to daily sermons at the breakfast table?” Drake felt the sting of her rebuke. This was not the Lucy Rushton who had won his distant regard—the generous, unpretentious girl who read to Widow Sowerby and wandered the countryside with a book under her arm. That winter in Bath of which she boasted, had spoiled her completely. Turned her into one of those tart-tongued brittle creatures he despised.

“I can assure you, madam, I will subject you to as little of my objectionable discourse as appearances permit.”

“If that’s how you feel, perhaps we should call off this ridiculous charade.” With those bold words, her face went white and she swayed as though buffeted by a strong wind. Drake vaulted from his saddle, sending his startled horse skittering sideways. He caught Lucy just before she hit the ground.

It took a moment for her to recover, a moment during which Drake found himself torn by conflicting emotions. Part of him protested that it was most indecorous for the scion of Silverthorne to be kneeling in a country lane with a half-conscious woman in his arms. Even if she was his intended bride. Another part felt a passing qualm of guilt that he had subjected Lucy to an unpleasant exchange, in her delicate condition. An overwhelming sense of protectiveness conquered all other feelings.

So small and childlike in his arms, she needed him as much as any of his tenants or employees. But she was not a child—she was a woman. Through the light fabric of her dress, he could feel her delicious feminine curves. This whole arrangement would work better if he did not find her so dangerously attractive. All the same, Lucy and her baby were his responsibility. Though it might prove the most difficult undertaking of his life, he must do right by them.

“Where am I?” Her eyelids fluttered. “What happened?” She struggled to sit up.

“Easy now.” Drake gently restrained her. “Do let me know the next time you feel faint. You gave me quite a turn.”

She quit trying to get away from him, but her whole body stiffened, reluctant to yield. “I seem to make a habit of discommoding you, my lord. It’s a habit I am eager to break, I assure you.”

What a prickly temper! Drake frowned. Making any overture toward Lucy Rushton was like trying to engage a hedgehog. Were all expectant mothers like this? he wondered.

As he slackened his hold, Lucy pulled free of his arms. Jumping to her feet, she slapped the dust from her pale-blue dress. “Forget what I told you last night. I absolve you from any moral obligation to me.”

Drake unfolded his tall frame from the crouched posture in which he’d held Lucy. “That is the trouble with moral obligations—one can never quite absolve one’s self.” He tried to smile, to show he was partly in jest and hopefully to ease some of the tension between them. The muscles of his face didn’t seem to understand what he was asking of them. They could only manage a lopsided grimace.

“If you wish to reconsider your decision to marry me, that is your right. In fact, I urge you to weigh your options carefully before choosing the course that will best serve you.and your child,” he added almost under his breath, in case anyone should be within earshot of their conversation.

“Options?” She gave a bitter little laugh. “I have no options, Lord Silverthorne, as you are well aware.”

“Of course, you do. You must. If you choose not to marry me, I’ll still provide for you.both. I’ll give you money to go away until the child is born. If you choose not to keep him, I’ll secure him a good home.”

“That is very generous of you.”

“It is my duty.”

“Ah yes, that irksome word again.”

Drake was tempted to launch into a lecture on the importance of ideals like duty and honor, but he restrained himself. “Bear in mind, if you choose to go your own way, I will never be able to acknowledge Jeremy’s son as my heir.”

“I understand.”

“However, it would leave you free to forget the past and, one day, make a marriage more to your liking.”

“I will never forget Jeremy.” She declared it as a fundamental truth. “And I will never love any other man. It would be wrong of me to marry a man I could not love.”

“What if the man knew you could not love him?” Drake asked quietly. “What if he did not want your love?”

“I suppose…” Lucy looked over at the spire of Saint Mawes, rising from behind the vicarage. “Won’t it be a sin to speak marriage vows we have no intention of keeping?”

“I doubt we will be the first couple to do so.” Drake scuffed the grass with the toe of his Hessians. “Or the last.”

Lucy made no reply. Assuming she must be weighing her options, Drake held himself still and silent. He’d had his say, whether or not she’d listened to him. In the end it all came down to her life and her child’s. She must be free to choose, without pressure from him. Yet, as the minutes passed with no sound but the occasional swish of the horse’s tail, Drake found himself earnestly hoping Lucy would not change her mind. Perhaps her doubts had tempered his resolve. Or perhaps he wanted a son of Jeremy’s to call his own.

Finally she spoke. “Very well, sir. I will marry you.”

Drake suddenly realized he had been holding his breath. “I must speak to your father.” He gasped out the words. “Then I must hunt up Squire Lewes and have him issue us a special license. Is tomorrow too soon?”

“For the wedding?” A faint blush mantled Lucy’s cheeks. “Considering our reason for marrying—the sooner, the better. First.” She laid a hand on his coat sleeve. “Can we make a private vow, truthfully, with only God as our witness?”

“What a clever idea.” Drake found himself smiling. “Like in business—a prior contract. What did you have in mind?”

Her hand slid slowly down his sleeve, and after a moment’s hesitation, clasped his hand. “I, Lucy Rushton, promise to raise my child, with you as his father. I vow to treat you with the respect due to a husband. I will never burden you with unwanted affection or be jealous of your interest in other women.”

That summed up the whole situation quite well. Drake cleared his throat. He liked the feel of her hand in his-too much so, perhaps. “I, Drake Strickland, promise to raise your child as my own and treat you with the respect due to a wife. I’ll never…”