Authors: Father Christmas
Graceanne suspected he might be right and cursed the duke again for being out of the country. “Then it will have to be Gretna Green.”
“Aye, they’re no so fussy over the Scottish border. But that spaleen vicar—pardon, your da—said he’d have me arrested for kidnapping should I take Miss Prudence away. I’d pay the old blighter no never mind, but happens there’s another problem. I’ve promised Squire here I’d take three of his best mares back to Ireland and me father’s stud this month to be bred. He’s already made all the arrangements and bookings. And me da needs the income.”
“And Ireland is in the opposite direction from Scotland,” she finished for him.
He nodded. “And there’s some’t else. I never thought to take a man’s daughter without his blessing. That’s laying bad cess on a marriage. I’m thinking we’d better go to Ireland with the horses and get me own da’s blessing.”
How nice, Graceanne thought, then the three mares and Pru could all be breeding at the same time.
Graceanne made all the arrangements.
First she had to meet with Liam again, since Prudence wouldn’t come out of her room. He didn’t come to choir practice or church, not with the vicar around, so she met him outside the lending library in the village and set tongues to wagging again. That was as good a camouflage as any, Graceanne thought, for keeping Prudence’s secret.
Liam was so relieved to have any kind of solution offered to him and was so appreciative of her help that he kissed her hand. Then he kissed both her cheeks.
“Mr. Hallorahan!” she exclaimed, blushing furiously under the Misses Macgruders’ gasped shock.
“’Tis a brother’s affection I’m showing, lass,” he whispered in her ear, “merely a brother’s.” But he was flashing those dimples. The town was getting a diversionary smoke screen indeed, and Prudence was getting more than she deserved.
But not in Pru’s estimation. “But I always wanted a pretty wedding like yours. And if I can’t tell Lucy, what good is it? Some skimble-skamble wedding over the anvil is not at all what I had in mind, Grace. Besides, by the time. I get to Gretna Green, I’ll be so fat even their filthy blacksmiths will laugh.”
As patiently as she explained to the children that while birds could fly, little boys must not jump off the barn roof, she told Pru there was no choice. Somewhat less patiently did she listen to her sister’s new complaints.
“I don’t see why I cannot just drive off with Liam when he takes the mares next week. At least that would be romantic.”
“What, and advertise your disgrace in front of the whole village? Perhaps I should have the Sunday-school children strew orange blossoms in your path.”
Pru screwed her face into a pout. “It’s not as if we aren’t going to be married as soon as we find someone who’ll do the thing. Besides, I don’t care if I never see this place again. Good riddance, I say. So why should I care what these cabbageheads think, anyway?”
“So Mama can hold her head up in Warefield, that’s why.” And so the Duke of Ware doesn’t learn that his wards’ aunt is no better than she ought to be, Graceanne hoped, but she didn’t say to Pru. She just plotted her intrigues a little deeper.
She made sure that they both went to bid Liam a polite farewell at Squire’s, and she made sure Pru went to church—with her cloak kept on against both the chill and prying eyes. Let everyone see the chit wasn’t grieving; let no one see she was swelling like a dead cow on a hot day. Then Graceanne drove Prudence to visit Lucy briefly, to announce her carefully rehearsed good fortune: a friend of Grace’s, another army officer’s widow, was going traveling, possibly to Austria for the peace talks, and she wanted a companion. What luck!
One week after Liam left, Graceanne drove Pru out of town in a hired carriage to meet her friend in Worcester, she told Mr. Blanchard at the local hostelry as he helped load all the bags and boxes. Pru had insisted that it would look odd if she didn’t have new, fashionable clothes for her journeying. Her old clothes didn’t fit, anyway. Graceanne’s purse did.
Liam was supposed to be waiting in Worcester, resting the mares. The hired driver and post boy mustn’t know this, of course, so Graceanne dismissed them to return to Warefield without her, saying she was going to visit with her friend a day or two before returning home. Graceanne and Pru took a room at a respectable inn, at Graceanne’s expense, to await the friend’s arrival. Pru wanted only to see the shops; Graceanne wanted only to see her gone before someone recognized them.
Liam finally appeared, with a cumbersome traveling coach he’d managed to hire. It wasn’t as fancy as the one Graceanne had chosen for the ride, nor as well sprung. According to Pru, it was also odorous, drafty, and the squabs were bound to hurt her back. Furthermore, Liam was going to drive it himself to save expenses and to keep an eye on the mares tied behind.
“We’re going to take forever just getting to Cardigan, I know it. And I’ll have no one to talk to the whole time, Grace.”
“Of course you will. You can ride outside with Liam.”
“What, in the cold and the wind? Besides, you were the one who worried what people would think.”
“Yes, but they are now supposed to think that you are already man and wife, so there is nothing odd in your traveling together.”
“But I don’t have a ring,” Pru slyly noted. “Innkeepers’ wives are sure to notice such things.”
So they had to go buy her a ring, at Graceanne’s expense. Liam needed his money for their traveling costs.
Pru was still not resigned to that old coach. “I don’t understand why you can’t accompany me, Grace, at least till the Welsh border.”
“This is my first night ever away from the boys, Pru, and I am as anxious as a broody hen. I couldn’t bear to be away a moment longer than I have to.”
“For pity’s sake, Grace, the brats don’t need you. You left four nursemaids to watch them.”
Graceanne smiled. “Wait until you are a mother, Pru, then tell me how you feel about leaving your baby behind.”
“I won’t feel like that, I know. If you think I am dragging a puling brat around with me when we go to London, you are even more harebrained than I thought.” She tugged her new fur-lined mantle closer about her. “Truly, Grace, the slow pace is sure to make me queasy with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Couldn’t you at least hire me a maid?”
“You can sleep or read those books you insisted I purchase for you or start sewing baby clothes. You’ve never had a maid a day in your life, Prudence Beckwith, and you’re not going to start now on my sons’ income. If I thought my budget could spare it, I’d hire a girl for myself so I don’t have to spend tonight alone at an inn. At least you’ll have Liam.”
“Smelling of horses,” Pru muttered angrily, but she gave up and got into the coach without so much as thanking Graceanne for her efforts. It was Liam who hugged Graceanne good-bye and swore to take care of her precious sister. Graceanne walked back to the inn, shaking her head. That poor man.
Despite her widow’s blacks, the veil, and air of distraction, Graceanne still got looks from the men in the taproom that left her uncomfortably wishing she had a maid after all. She ordered her meals brought up to her room and resigned herself to staying there until the next morning.
There was no noise. That’s what she noticed first. No listening for cries or calls of “Mama,” no smashes, crashes, or thuds. There might be a murmur from the common room, an occasional clink barely heard through the walls and doors, but no one was going to come looking for her. How was she expected to rest?
Graceanne decided to spend her solitary evening writing to Ware in case someone informed him of her doings. She supposed the steward at Ware Hold was in contact with his man of business in London, and she suspected that all of her bank transactions were reported back to His Grace as a matter of course. He’d wonder about her withdrawing all of her reserve and most of her March allowance. She’d left herself just enough for household expenses, unless she put some of Prudence’s dressmakers’ bills off till next month. Graceanne took the pins out of her hair and shook it loose, feeling some relief from the headache she was developing at thoughts of her budget. And here she’d felt rich for all of a month.
She wrote to Ware that there had been some unforeseen expenses in the family, nothing he should worry about. The boys were fine, learning their alphabets. They already knew
L
and
W,
and recognized
R, I,
and
P
. She wished him well and closed with another reassurance that she was not living above her means.
The next morning she rode home on a carter’s wagon to save the cost of hiring a carriage. She was half frozen, but there were her twins shouting a welcome, the dog barking, and only one of the nursemaids crying. She was home.
* * *
The innkeeper at the Crown and Feather where Graceanne stayed got busy the next morning. Three carriages of sporting gentlemen pulled up, demanding accommodations for the mill to be held the next day outside of town. So he didn’t put the widow’s letter in the post that day. He put it in his pocket instead, where it stayed until his breeches were due to be cleaned. Which was after enough ale had been spilled on them that the local sot could get castaway on the fumes as mine host walked past. That’s when Graceanne’s letter got mailed.
The note went from Worcester to Ware’s London house, where his secretary debated about the fate of such a scruffy letter. Should he consign it to the dustbin? Open it? Forward it, since the handwriting, as far as he could make out on the blurred address, was feminine? His Grace had no business dealings in Worcester, to his secretary’s knowledge. For three days the letter sat on the man’s desk with dubious charitable requests and questionable investment offerings. Then arrived a letter from His Grace’s aunt, some correspondence from a university professor, and a ballot for a policy vote from one of the duke’s clubs. The secretary gathered these and the waif from Worcester into a pouch to be sent to the Foreign Office for delivery via diplomatic couriers and embassy mailbags.
All in all, it was mid-April when Leland received Graceanne’s note. By then he’d already had a message from his man of business that Mrs. Warrington had gone through her entire account for January, February, and March. He’d written back to increase the funds. She wasn’t a henwit who would turn into a wastrel in two months. And he could afford the additional expense. Why, he’d won and lost more than her monthly income on one roll of the dice the previous night. He’d bought his current mistress, a highborn lady of the Austrian court, a diamond bracelet whose price would have fed and clothed the twins for a year. What he was spending on bribes to collect and dispense political information—his government’s request, his pocketbook—didn’t bear thinking about. And he was hating every minute of the whole thing.
The talks were going nowhere but from bedroom to ballroom. Any important decisions would be made quietly, privately, away from this circus. Vienna was London times two, wealthier and wickeder. In a word, decadent.
In the back of Leland’s mind was the niggling worry that his life, this glittering world of power and money, was nothing but dross. And soon enough he’d have to select a wife from the haut monde, to perpetuate the race of hollow, empty people like himself.
He could have his pick of any of the women attending the Congress, but none appealed to him except for an evening or two of pleasure. He wanted an English wife, not one of the exotic foreign beauties who were weaned on intrigue. He didn’t want anyone else’s English wife, either, although bored British brides were waiting outside his apartments every night. There were more than a few beautiful widows on the prowl for a proposal or a protector. When Leland asked about their children, the Diamonds laughed and waved manicured fingers. Nannies, tutors, schools—la, who cared? A handful of debutantes fished the matrimonial waters of the peace talks. Sharks they were, smelling out titles and fortunes like blood on the water. The Duke of Ware was no one’s supper.
Jupiter, he was getting too old for this life! Moreover, it was getting on toward spring, and he’d promised Willy and Les ponies and riding lessons. Let the diplomatic society swap lies with every handshake or kiss, Leland vowed to keep his word to two little boys. You couldn’t trust a groom to do the thing properly, he was convinced, forgetting that it was John Groom who’d set him on his first pony and dusted off his breeches till he got the hang of the thing. No, servants didn’t care enough. Then again, should he find one pony, because it would be easier to watch one child at a time, or two ponies so they could all ride together? He wondered if Graceanne rode. And did the ponies have to match?
The hell with the peace talks. With rumors of Napoleon’s return flying around, any decisions would be moot anyway. Let the puffguts waste their efforts on these endless debates. They could dashed well do it without the Duke of Ware. Leland was determined to get home before someone else, some sap-skulled suitor of Tony’s widow, made cow-handed riders out of the boys.
There were obligations, however, that not even the Duke of Ware could shunt aside, not without creating an international incident. While his departure was delayed, Leland notified his secretary, his steward, and his man of affairs to open his houses, send his yacht, and watch the horse sales for a pair of well-trained, even-tempered ponies.
He also wrote to tell Graceanne that he was coming home, that he was keeping his promise about the ponies. His letter was carried that same day to the British embassy, taken by special courier to London, and hand-delivered to the parsonage in Warefield. Where the vicar tore it up. Leland was too late; Graceanne was already gone.
* * *
Not quite by chance Graceanne picked up the post in the village one day. She’d been eagerly awaiting some word from her sister, word that her father would have read or ripped up, she knew, no matter who was the addressee.
Pru’s letter did not relieve her trepidations. Prudence hated the trip. The carriage made her as ill as she knew it would, and the packet sail was positively hellish. She might never recover. Liam was hateful. He cared more for his precious horses than for her, which was no wonder, she was so ugly and bloated. And they hadn’t found anyone to marry them, so they were staying at his father’s horse farm, which was dirty and isolated. Liam was going to London on horse business, the letter went on, lines crossed and recrossed, and refused to take her. He lied to her about getting married, about his family’s prosperity, and about the fun they’d have. Now he was leaving her alone with people who barely spoke English.
Prudence begged Graceanne to come rescue her. Or to send money so she could hire a maid. There went most of April’s money.