A Gentleman Of Substance

“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 (#ulink_f339a37f-8786-5713-b18a-6d1a19497466)

“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.