Mary Balogh - The Proposal

Now she had seen Jason again after seven years. And he was threatening to call at Kilbourne House. Neville, he had had the effrontery to say, was too indulgent with her. He must give her advice as head of her late husband’s family. As though he were head of her family. She liked him no better now than she had all those years ago.

She fumed inwardly but said nothing at home.

She called at Lord Trentham’s the morning after he had called upon her and was introduced to his languid stepmother, who resembled her daughter to a remarkable degree. Gwen bore Miss Emes off to her own dressmaker.

The shopping trip cheered her up a great deal, long and exhausting though it was. She always enjoyed shopping, and having a pretty young girl to dress from head to toe for any number of upcoming occasions was as much fun as she had expected it to be. Especially as the girl’s brother had given them carte blanche to spend as much as they wished.

She had missed a visit from Jason while she was out. So had her mother and Lily, who had gone to spend the day with Claudia, Joseph’s wife, who was suffering from the nausea that came with early pregnancy—her second. But Neville had been at home.

“He said something about feeling responsible for you as head of the family,” Neville said to Gwen as they sat at a late luncheon. “I was obliged to poker up and stare him down and ask him to which family exactly he was referring. No offense intended, Gwen, but the Graysons have not been scrambling to take care of you since Vernon’s passing, have they?”

“I suppose,” Gwen said, “he thought it ought to be beneath the dignity of a Grayson, even just the widow of a Grayson, to be seen in Hyde Park with a former military officer whose heroism was so extraordinary that the king himself rewarded him with a title.”

“He did hint,” Neville said, “that Captain Emes—that is how he referred to Trentham—was perhaps not as heroic on that occasion as the king among others was led to believe. I did not invite him to elaborate. I am sorry, Gwen. Ought I to have? You have never said much about Vernon’s cousin and successor. Are you fond of him and inclined to take advice from him?”

“Neither,” Gwen said, “and I never did like him, though admittedly he never gave me particular cause. I hope you informed him, Nev, that I reached the age of majority years ago and no longer have a husband to whom I owe obedience. I hope you informed him that I am quite capable of choosing my own friends and escorts.”

“It is almost exactly what I told him,” Neville said. “I even flirted with the idea of raising a quizzing glass to my eye, but I decided that would be too much of an affectation. Are you regretting that you refused Trentham’s offer at Newbury?”

“No.” She paused in her eating and looked at him. She was glad her mother was not here. “But I have agreed to introduce his sister to the ton, Neville, and therefore I will be seeing him. I like him. Do you disapprove?”

He set his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers against his mouth.

“Because he is not a gentleman?” he said. “No, I do not disapprove, Gwen. I am not Wilma, you will be glad to know. I trust your judgment. I married Lily in the Peninsula, you will remember, when I thought she was my sergeant’s daughter. I loved her then, and I loved her when I discovered later that she is actually a duke’s daughter. The apparent change in her status made no difference whatsoever to my feelings for her. Trentham just seems … morose.”

“He is,” she said. “Or, rather, moroseness is the mask behind which he feels most comfortable.”

Gwen smiled, and no more was said on the subject.

Jason did not call again at Kilbourne House.

Fiona had succumbed to a mysterious illness, which kept her confined to her bed in a darkened room. No one but Constance was able to bring her any comfort. Her physician, whom Hugo summoned to the house at her request, could not shed any light upon what ailed her beyond saying that his patient was of a delicate constitution and ought to be protected from any major changes in her life. According to him, she still had not recovered her health after the untimely demise of her husband just a little over a year ago.

Constance proclaimed herself willing to devote her time to her mother’s care—or to sacrifice herself, Hugo thought.

He went to see his stepmother in her room.

“Fiona,” he said, seating himself on the chair beside her bed, which his sister had occupied all too frequently in the past few days, “I am sorry you are unwell. Your family is sorry too. Quite deeply concerned, in fact.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow to look at him.

“I went to their shop to call on them yesterday,” he said. “They are prospering and happy. They made me very welcome. The only real blot on their happiness is never seeing you, never knowing how you are. Your mother and your sister and sister-inlaw would be very happy to call on you here, to spend time with you, to help nurse you back to health and cheerful spirits.”

He did not know if cheerful spirits were even possible for Fiona. He suspected, painful though it was for him since it was his father of whom he thought, that she had sacrificed all real hope for happiness when she had been offered a chance to marry a man who was so wealthy that it was impossible to refuse him.

She stared at him with dull, red-rimmed eyes.

“Shopkeepers!” she said.

“Prosperous and happy shopkeepers,” he said. “The business does well enough to support them all, and that includes your two nephews, your brother’s sons. Your sister is betrothed to a solicitor, younger son of a gentleman of modest means. They have done well, Fiona. And they love you. They long to meet Constance.”

She plucked at the sheet that covered her.

“They would have been nothing,” she said, “if I had not married your father and if he had not squandered a small fortune on them.”

“They are well aware of that,” he said, “and they feel nothing but gratitude to both you and my father. But money is squandered only when it is wasted. The financial assistance he gave them because they were your relatives and he adored you was used wisely and well. They never applied to him for more. They never needed to. Let your mother come to see you. She asked me if you were still as dazzlingly pretty as you used to be, and I told her quite truthfully that you are—or that you will be when you are well again.”

She turned her head away from him once more.

“You are the head of the house now, Hugo,” she said bitterly. “If you choose to bring my mother here, I cannot stop you.”

He opened his mouth to say more but then shut it again. She did not feel she could say yes, he supposed, without somehow losing face. So she had put the responsibility of the decision upon his shoulders. Well, they were broad enough.

“It is time for your medicine,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll send Constance to you.”

All people, he thought with a sigh as he left the room, had their own demons to be fought—or not fought. Perhaps that was what life was all about. Perhaps life was a test to see how well we deal with our own particular demons, and how much sympathy we show others as they tread their own particular path through life. As someone had once said—was it in the Bible?—it is easy enough to see the speck of dust in someone else’s eye while remaining unaware of the plank in one’s own.

“Your mama is ready for her medicine,” he told Constance, who was looking pale and wan and rather dull-eyed. He set an arm about her shoulders. “I am going to bring her mother, your grandmother, to see her, Connie. Perhaps tomorrow. It is time. However it is, you will be going to Lady Ravensberg’s ball and to any other entertainments to which Lady Muir is willing to take you and which you wish to attend. You will have a chance for your own happily-ever-after. I promised you would, and I do not break my promises lightly.”

Her eyes had brightened.

“My grandmama?” she asked.

“Did you even know she existed?” He hugged her a little more tightly to his side.

But part of his mind was always elsewhere.

How had Grayson killed Lady Muir’s husband?

How had she?

The questions had buzzed about inside his head like bees trapped inside ever since that ride in the park three days ago.

Had she meant the words literally? Well, of course she had not. He knew her better than to believe her capable of coldblooded murder. But she had not been joking either. One did not joke about such a thing.

So in what sense had she killed her husband? Or why did she feel responsible for his death?

And why had she coupled her own name with that of Grayson? He would be quite happy to consider Grayson capable of murder.

If he wanted answers, he thought, he was going to have to go about getting them in his usual way. He was going to have to ask.

The evening of the Ravensberg ball inevitably came despite Hugo’s attempts to think about it as something comfortably far in the future. Feeling it creep up on him was not unlike knowing a great and bloody battle was in the offing, except that with the battle he could at least look forward to action and the knowledge that once it began he would forget all else, even fear.

He had the horrible feeling that fear would paralyze him when he walked in upon a ton ball.

He could get out of going altogether, he supposed, since Lady Muir had agreed to sponsor Constance, and his presence was not strictly necessary. It would not be fair, though, to Lady Muir, who was being kind to Constance only because of him. And it would not be fair to Connie, whom he had promised to take to a ball.

It would help if he could dance. Oh, he could prance about in approximate time to music as well as most other people, he supposed. He had attended a few country assemblies in the last few years and had never quite disgraced himself—except perhaps with the waltz. But dancing at a ton ball in London during the Season? It was a three-pronged combination to fill him with terror. He would rather volunteer for another Forlorn Hope.

He was to escort his sister to Redfield House on Hanover Square, the site of the ball. Lady Muir would meet them there. Hugo dressed with care—Connie was not the only one who had new clothes for the occasion—and waited in the downstairs sitting room with Fiona and her mother and sister. The latter two had called for the first time the day before. Hugo had not witnessed their meeting with Fiona in her bedchamber. But as they were leaving, they had informed him that they would return this evening to give her their company while Constance and he were at the ball.

Fiona had come downstairs for the first time in a week and sat, limp and uncommunicative, close to the fire. Her mother, plump, rosy-cheeked, and placid, sat beside her, holding one of her limp hands and patting it. Fiona’s sister, twelve years younger than she, sat across from them, working quietly at some crochet she had brought with her. She resembled her mother more than she did her sister though she still had the slimness of youth.

It was a promising situation, Hugo thought.

“I shall go to the kitchen myself, Fee, as soon as Constance and Hugo have gone, and make some soup,” Fiona’s mother was saying when Hugo came into the room. “There is nothing better to coax an invalid back to health than good, hot soup. Oh, my!”

She had spied Hugo.

He made conversation, but only for a few minutes. Constance was not about to risk being late for her first ball. She burst in upon them, looking as if she were literally about to burst, and then stood inside the sitting room door, blushing and selfconscious and biting her lower lip.

“Oh, my!” her grandmother said again.

Like a bride, she had not allowed anyone to see the gown she would wear tonight or even to know anything about it. She was all white from head to toe. But there was nothing bland about her appearance, Hugo decided, despite the fact that even her hair was blond. She shimmered in the lamplight. He was no expert on clothing, especially women’s, but he could see that there were two layers to her gown, the inside one silky, the outer one lacy. It was high at the waist, low at the bosom, and youthful and pretty and perfect. She had white slippers, white gloves, a silver fan, and white ribbons threaded through her curls.

“You look as pretty as a picture, Connie,” he said with no originality at all.

She turned her head to beam at him—and her grandmother wailed and spread a large cotton handkerchief over her eyes.