Nev climbed the Bedlow House stairs, pushing past the duns who clustered before the door. He felt years older, though it had only been two weeks since his father’s death. He had spent most of that time closeted with his father’s man of business, trying to understand the extent of his difficulties and selling everything he could think of. He had worked far into the night adding columns of figures and trying to organize the stacks of bills in his father’s desk into some semblance of order-then worrying at the cost of the candle, and all too aware that he was like a schoolboy practicing the piano, plunking out the same five notes over and over and entirely failing to turn them into a tune.
And every day, as the news spread around London that Lord Bedlow was dead, more bills arrived-duns from the tailor, the stables, the milliner, the bootmaker, the stationer, the wine seller, the butcher, the jeweler, the glover, and a thousand other tradesmen whose existence had previously been merely theoretical to Nev. There was even a polite request for repayment of a generous loan from a Mr. Mendoza of the City.
And still there were this week’s expenses to be paid-food for his mother and sister, his father’s funeral, oats for the horses, wages for the servants, mourning clothes. Every day, every hour that Nev found no solution put them deeper in debt; and Nev knew very well he could not find a solution. The quarter’s rents had been spent long since-probably years ago. He had come to tell his mother that the town house must be sold.
Lady Bedlow went very pale. She darted a few glances around the room, allowing her eyes to rest for a long moment on the portrait of herself and Lord Bedlow that hung over the mantel. Then she turned her face to the window, presenting Nev with a sorrowing profile. “Will that put us out of debt?”
Nev was unsure how to deal with this display of regal suffering. “Er, I’m afraid not. But it will make up what Papa spent of your jointure. I haven’t quite worked out how to get us out of debt yet. I was thinking of selling the oaks on the drive to Loweston-Papa cut down nearly everything else already.”
Lady Bedlow’s head snapped around at this. “Sell the oaks at Loweston? Those oaks have given your forefathers shade for centuries!”
“But, Mama-” Nev subsided at her glare. “Well, but I don’t know what else is to be done! I’ve already sold the hunting box in Essex and most of the horses and-” He realized that listing everything he had sold to his mother would be an unsurpassed act of folly, and stopped.
Lady Bedlow turned back to the window. “Your father and I honeymooned in Essex.”
“You didn’t sell Blackbeard, did you?” Louisa asked.
Nev smiled for what felt like the first time in months. “No, I didn’t sell Blackbeard.”
She straightened her spine. “I see how it is.”
“Er-how is it, Louisa?”
“You must marry me to some horrid old merchant. That will bring us to rights, won’t it?”
Lady Bedlow was speechless.
Nev tried not to laugh. “Must it be an old merchant, Louisa?”
“I’m not pretty enough to get a young one, I know that. It’s all right. I’m prepared to make sacrifices for the family.”
Nev was abruptly appalled. “Louisa, you goose, you’re pretty enough to have a hundred young merchants eating out of your hand, but if you think I’m going to consent to any such scheme you’re all about in the head.” In fact, their neighbor Sir Jasper Montagu had already offered to buy Loweston for a generous sum and settle the land on Louisa’s children if Louisa would marry him. Nev had refused without consulting her. In his late thirties, Sir Jasper was old enough to be her father; and Louisa, Nev recalled vaguely, had been frightened of the baronet as a child.
Lady Bedlow nodded. “As if I could feel a moment’s happiness living in the lap of luxury, knowing that my child had been sold to some wretched Cit!”
Suddenly, Nev remembered a small warm hand and a sweep of brown hair. His eyes widened. “You know, I think I may have a chance to get us out of debt after all.”
And he bounded out the door and down the steps before his mother could say another word.
Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence-and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury-had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper.
Penelope looked up from her well-thumbed copy of Sense and Sensibility when she heard the great front door swing open. But as no one came to announce a visitor, she decided that it must be one of her father’s business acquaintances. Or perhaps it might be the post; she was hoping for another letter from Edward. She had reread the last one this morning, but somehow it had not told her anything new.
Poor Edward! He sounded lonely in Paris, and always busy working and learning the French that would help him sell his employer’s woolen goods on the Continent. She wished he had been sent to France the following year, so that she might have gone with him-for surely by then Mama would have given over hoping for a lord for her. Mama could be romantical and talk of noble lords and Grand Passions and ancestral art collections all she liked, but Penelope didn’t care for any of that. Mutual esteem and warm affection were good enough for her.
She had to admit it was partly Edward’s own fault. Her parents might have been willing to consider the match if Edward hadn’t left the brewery to work for a northern industrialist. She herself had wished that Edward would stay in her father’s company; she had little desire to live so far from town.
But she was willing to make the sacrifice for Edward’s sake. In the meantime, she would wait patiently, and if Mama wanted her to accept the invitations to ton affairs that Penelope still sometimes received from old schoolfellows, well, there was no real harm in it.
She wished her mother could be made aware of how very out of place they were at the ton’s social occasions-or rather, made to care how out of place they were, for her mother was aware of it. Dear Mama; she thought it a great joke how everyone looked at her, and with true maternal loyalty refused to see that everyone looked at her darling Penny in exactly the same way.
Mrs. Brown had nearly burst with pride when Penelope attracted the attention of a viscount a few weeks ago-waving away Penelope’s most forceful representations that Lord Nevinstoke had merely walked with her for a few moments before sprinting out of the house as if the hounds of Hell were after him. Penelope had not had the heart to tell her mother of the improper way he had looked at her-at least, she was sure from the way it had made her feel that it must have been improper.
Nor had she had the heart to mention that she had seen him a week later at Vauxhall, well on his way to being drunk as a wheelbarrow, and with a woman Penelope would have wagered a hundred guineas was his mistress. A very pretty woman. Penelope had seen her in a production of Twelfth Night the previous month, and she had been a charming and talented actress.
There was no use her mother feeling the pain of disillusion that must follow.
His image rose again before her eyes. There was, to be sure, nothing out of the common way about him. A perfectly ordinary-looking young man, Penelope insisted to herself. He was of middling height, his shoulders neither slim nor broad. His hands were not aristocratically slender-there was nothing to set them apart from the hands of any other gentleman of her acquaintance.
His hair was a little too long, and she thought its tousled appearance more the result of inattention than any attempt at fashion; it was neither dark nor fair, but merely brown-utterly nondescript save for a hint of cinnamon. His face too would have been unmemorable if it were not for a slight crookedness in his nose, suggesting it had been broken. His eyes were an ordinary blue, of an ordinary shape and size.
So why could she picture him so clearly, and why did the memory of his smile still make her feel-hot, and strange inside?
But it was his voice that stayed with her the strongest; the timbre of it was imprinted on her ear, and there was nothing ordinary about it. It was rich and mellow, and there was something graceful in the careless rhythm of his speech.
So strongly had she conjured up Lord Nevinstoke’s image that when the door opened, Evans spoke, and that same gentleman entered the room, it was a moment before she was quite convinced he was real.
He was in every particular as she remembered him, save that he was dressed from head to toe in black, and his blue eyes were anxious and grave. She realized that Evans had not announced him as Lord Nevinstoke, but as Lord Bedlow.
She stood without thinking, and her book fell to the floor. In an instant he had stepped forward, bent down, and returned it to her. She was conscious that her fingers closed too tightly on the book; he was very close, an odd expression in his eyes. His nearness affected her, alas, just as she remembered.
“Has something happened to your father, my lord?”
He looked away and stepped back. “You are very perceptive. My father was killed Wednesday before last.”
“You mean-the day after I saw you at Vauxhall?”
He smiled. “You remembered me.”
She had been so shocked by his news that at first she had forgotten to listen to his voice. Now she experienced the full effect of the pure vowels and husky overtones; her pulse sped up. “I am so sorry to hear about your father.”
“Thank you,” he said, then stood silent. “Dash it, this is awkward.”
“I own I am a little surprised to see you.”
“I suppose I had better out with it. My father had run into debt before he died. A great deal of debt.”
Penelope’s heart plummeted into her boots. She struggled for composure. “I see.”
“The long and short of it is, I’ve come to ask you to marry me.”