Mary Balogh: A Summer to Remember

“You won’t have to put up with my wicked influence for much longer,” he said. “I’ve been summoned to Alvesley.”

Lord Farrington sipped his drink. “By your father? Redfield himself?” he asked. “A summons, Ravensberg?”

“A summons.” Kit nodded slowly. “There is to be a grand house party this summer in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the dowager, my grandmother.”

“An old dragon, is she, Ravensberg?” Mr. Rush asked sympathetically. “ Do you suppose the mantel would collapse if I stopped holding it up?”

“You are three sheets to the wind, old chap,” Lord Arthur informed him. “It’s your legs, not the mantel.”

“I have always had a soft spot for the old girl, you see,” Kit said, “and my father knows it. Oh, for God’s sake, Rush, just look down into your glass, will you? It is still half full.”

Mr. Rush looked with pleased astonishment at the glass in his hand and drained off its contents. “What I really need,” he said, “is my bed. If my legs would just carry me there.”

“Egad,” Kit said, his gloomy stare back on the unlit fire. “What I really need is a bride.”

“Go to bed,” Lord Arthur advised him hastily, “and sleep it off. The feeling will go away by morning—guaranteed.”

“My father’s birthday gift to my grandmother is to be the betrothal of his heir,” Kit said.

“Oh, I say! You are the heir.”

“Jolly rotten luck, old chap.”

Lord Arthur and Mr. Rush spoke simultaneously.

“A pox on all fathers!” Lord Farrington exclaimed indignantly. “Does he have someone picked out for you, Ravensberg?”

Kit laughed and draped his hands over the arms of his chair. “Oh, yes, indeed,” he said. “Along with everything else, I am to inherit my late elder brother’s betrothed.”

“Who the devil is she?” Mr. Rush forgot his inebriated state sufficiently to straighten up and stand unassisted.

“Bewcastle’s sister,” Kit said.

“Bewcastle? The Duke of?” Lord Arthur asked.

“I have obliged my father by withdrawing from the Peninsula and selling my commission,” Kit said. “I’ll oblige him further by going back to Alvesley after almost three years even though I was banished for life the last time I was there. I’ll even oblige him on the matter of the birthday gift. But I’ll do it all on my terms, by Jove. I’ll take with me a bride of my own choosing, and I’ll be married to her before I go so that there will be nothing Redfield can do about it. I have been sorely tempted to pick some vulgar creature, but that would not do. It is just the sort of thing Redfield would expect of me. I’ll choose someone above reproach instead. That will gall him more than anything else because he won’t be able to complain about her. She is going to be dull, respectable, prim, and perfect.” He spoke with grim satisfaction.

For a moment his friends regarded him in fascinated silence. Then Lord Farrington threw back his head and laughed. “ You are going to marry a dull, respectable woman, Ravensberg?” he asked. “Just to spite your father?”

“Not wise, old chap,” Mr. Rush said, treading a determinedly straight path toward the sideboard. “You would be the one married to the woman for life, not your father. You would find such a wife insupportable, take my word on it. The vulgar wench might afford you more amusement.”

“But the thing is that one has to marry sometime,” Kit explained, cupping one hand over his aching eye for a moment. “Especially when the death of one’s elder brother has made one the reluctant heir to an earldom and vast estates and a fortune to boot. One has to do one’s duty and set up one’s nursery and all that. Who better to do it with than a quiet, dull, worthy woman who will run one’s home competently and without fuss and will dutifully present one with an heir and a few spares?”

“But there is a very real obstacle to such a scheme, Ravensberg.” Lord Farrington was frowning when he spoke the words, but he grinned and then chuckled outright before continuing. “What respectable woman would have you? You are a handsome enough devil, it is true, or so I understand from the way females look at you. And of course you have your present title and your future prospects. But you have established an impressively notorious reputation as a rakehell since you sold out.”

“And that would be stating it mildly,” Lord Arthur muttered into his glass.

“As bad as that, is it? What a devilish stuffy world we live in,” Kit commented. “But egad, I am serious about this. And I am Redfield’s heir. That fact alone will outweigh all else when it is perceived that I am shopping in earnest for a wife.”

“True enough,” Mr. Rush admitted, seating himself on an upright chair after refilling his glass. “But not necessarily the sort of wife you are looking for, old chap. Parents with lofty principles and daughters to match steer clear of gentlemen who mill with foul-smelling laborers within sight of Rotten Row and then kiss milkmaids without their shirts on for all the world to witness. And men who on a wager drive along St. James’s in their curricles past all the gentlemen’s clubs, a painted doxy squeezed onto the seat on either side of them. And men whose names appear in all the betting books in connection with every disreputable and outrageous dare anyone cares to wager on.”

“Who are the possibilities?” Kit asked, ignoring this dire prediction and returning his attention to the coals in the fireplace. “There must be hordes of new arrivals in town now that the Season has begun in earnest. Hordes of hopeful misses come shopping for husbands. Who is the dullest, most prudish, most straitlaced, most respectable of them all? You fellows will know better than I. You all attend ton nish events.”

His companions gave the matter serious thought. Each threw out a few names, all of which were rejected out of hand by the others for a variety of reasons.

“There is Miss Edgeworth,” Lord Arthur said at last, when they appeared to have run out of suggestions. “But she is too long in the tooth.”

“Miss Edgeworth?” Lord Farrington repeated. “Of Newbury Abbey? The Earl of Kilbourne’s abandoned bride? Lord, my sister was at that wedding. It was the sensation of last year. The bridegroom waiting at the front of the church, the bride in the porch ready to make her grand entrance. And then the arrival of a ragged woman claiming to be Kilbourne’s long-lost wife—and telling nothing short of the truth, by gad. The Edgeworth chit fled from the church as if the hounds of hell were at her heels, according to Maggie, who is not normally prone to exaggeration. Is she in town this year, Kellard?”

“Staying with Portfrey,” Lord Arthur said. “The duchess is Kilbourne’s aunt, y’know. And Miss Edgeworth is connected to her too in some way.”

“I had heard she was in town,” Mr. Rush admitted. “But she doesn’t go about much, does she? Hedged around by the Portfreys and dozens of other relatives, I daresay, all trying to get her married off quietly—and respectably .” He snickered. “She is doubtless dull enough to set one to yawning at the mere thought of her. You don’t want her, Ravensberg.”

“Besides,” Lord Arthur added with what proved to be the fatal challenge, “you would not get her even if you did want her, Ravensberg. Portfrey, Anburey, Attingsborough— none of her relatives would allow someone of your reputation within hailing distance of her. And even if you did slip past their guard, she would give you the cut direct. Turn you into an icicle on the spot, I daresay. You are just the sort none of them would want for her, least of all the lady herself. We will have to think of someone else for you. Though why you would want—”