Priceless (4 page)

Olivia divined Bronwyn’s chaotic emotions and offered compassion without succor. “It won’t be so bad. Many men are affectionate with their wives. Look at Da. He dotes on Maman.”

“Yes, and look at our King George,” Bronwyn snapped. “They say he divorced his wife, locked her up in a German castle, ignored her pleas for clemency. She hasn’t seen her children in twenty years.”

“He divorced her for infidelity.”

“His crime was the greater. He lifts every skirt he can, they say, and he had his wife’s lover assassinated.” Grimly Bronwyn contemplated her fate. “I tell you, sister, I wish Da hadn’t insisted we be married from oldest to youngest. Lord Rawson would much rather have you, I’m sure.”

“Don’t say that!” Olivia cried. “I don’t want him.”

Startled, Bronwyn faced her sister. “Have you heard something I haven’t?”

“No!” Olivia placed her hand on her breast and took a calming breath. “No. I just…I don’t want to marry yet.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Bronwyn assured her. “The marriage settlement Lord Rawson offered should keep Da and Maman in silks for another few years. Who knows, perhaps Da will invest in something useful this time and make his fortune.”

“Perhaps.” Olivia’s hopeless tone clearly told her opinion of that. “Here they come. Which one is he, do you suppose?”

With one glance, Bronwyn knew. He was the gorgeous one. He was the one whose sculptured face was the epitome of male beauty. He was the one with the fashionable sneer. One glance, and she looked at him no more. As her father, with his good-fellow-well-met voice, greeted Adam, she kept her eyes trained below his collar.

The talk washed over her, but she could no longer ignore him when he took her hand. “Lady Bronwyn. You’re a breath of fresh air in my unexceptional life.”

Her stomach twisted. It wasn’t a compliment, for all he made it sound as smooth and charming as a sonnet. She looked at him then, and his remote disapproval stole her breath. His glacial eyes rested on her regally. His lips pinched into a tight line, and his nostrils quivered with disdain.

Chiming like a bell, her mother said, “Thank His
Lordship, Bronwyn. Greet His Lordship! After all, you’ll have years of marital bliss ahead. You must begin correctly.”

“Lord Rawson, I’m well aware of the honor you confer on me with your”—the words stuck in her throat—“your offer. I’m sure I’ll never forget it.”

The last sentence sounded a little sarcastic. She smoothed her expression into that of a placid sheep—no small achievement, for he still held her hand. She wanted to adjust her wig, to press her velvet beauty patch more firmly on her cheek. She settled for licking her lips. He watched her, close and attentive as a prospective bridegroom. Which he was, she reminded herself.

He gave her a chilly smile. “All is in anticipation of your coming. The manor gleams from top to bottom. The housekeeping staff is assembled by the door, waiting to meet you.”

She stared at him, jolted with the reminder that the worst of her ordeal remained. With a twist of her wrist, she tried to retrieve her hand, but he refused to allow her even so small a retreat.

He said, “My mother can barely restrain her impatience.”

Her palm began to sweat.

“She’s a most opinionated lady, used to having her own way. I’ll be anxious to hear her verdict on the bride I bring her.” He lifted her hand, kissed the back, turned it over, examined it. The gleam of his eyes reveled in his victory, and he released her. “Come and see the house.”

Set among towering trees that seasoned it, Boudasea Manor sparkled with marble and soared with columns. The butler pointed out its contemporary improvements, as did the housekeeper and various retainers. With running water in the kitchen and a private sewer to the river, the manor was a
miracle of the modern age. The room Bronwyn shared with Olivia held everything a young woman would want. The room adjoining Adam’s, into which she would move only too soon, combined taste with comfort. Quality was stamped on every item; quality, Adam said, was his overriding concern.

He meant, she knew, that she hadn’t come up to his definition of quality.

Going now to dinner, she wished she could sink through the floor and drown in one of those conduits of running water. She’d imagined horrors, but this evening had put her nightmares to shame—and the worst was yet to come. Adam had a guest. In for a cozy dinner, he’d said, but she knew why this “guest” visited now. He was a friend, come to inspect the recently purchased goods.

Like a buzzing in her ear, she could hear her mother giving advice as they strolled the mirrored hallways to her doom.

“Don’t gawk about you. Keep your head lowered and a modest demeanor. Don’t interrupt the men’s conversation, especially if you’re sure they’re wrong.”

Bronwyn shot a look at her mother, but Lady Nora never noticed. “Remember what I’ve taught you. Men prefer women who are useless and decorative.” She arranged the silk of her skirt with a series of little jerks. Her blossoming panniers held the glowing scarlet of her underdress out to the sides. The costume enhanced her coiffure, an artful arrangement of her own black curls, and the cream of her skin. Retrieving her patch box from her voluminous pocket, she placed a heart-shaped bit of black velvet above her upper lip and perfected her seductive smile.

It would hardly do to compare herself with her mother, Bronwyn thought, but with so many mirrors around them…Overwhelmed by a profusion of laces and ribbons, the formal white dress did nothing to enhance her tanned skin. The fashionable décolletage should reveal the curve of her bosom, yet she had little to reveal, and that was bolstered
by a stuffing of linen beneath. Her brown wig towered above the top of her head, and a ringlet trailed over her shoulder. On a woman as petite as she was, it had a crushing effect, and the high heels she wore didn’t help.

How women ever learned to walk in them, she didn’t know. She stopped and shook her foot, but nothing could ease the cramp. She sighed, and Lady Nora jerked her attention from her own fascinating reflection and back to her daughter.

Putting her patch box away, she said, “Lord Rawson seemed most impressed with you.”

Bronwyn plucked at the silk of her white fan. “Maman, he was stiff as a stick.”

“La, child.” Lady Nora touched Bronwyn’s cheek with her finger and smiled. “He’s capable of much worse. I didn’t want to tell you, for fear it would worry you, but the man has a nasty temper, and has been known to give vent to it rather loudly in public. You can imagine my relief when he was gracious.”

Could Lady Nora be so obtuse? A hard look at that enchanting face convinced Bronwyn. Lady Nora could. A glorious butterfly who’d never had to look beyond the obvious, she took Adam’s artistically phrased insults as plaudits. Bronwyn ignored the stab of envy such oblivion caused her. “Why didn’t Da tell Lord Rawson that I don’t look like the rest of you?”

Lady Nora shrugged, her white shoulders rising and falling in a move she had practiced many times. “What difference will it make in the end? We needed the money, and his was the best offer we’d obtained for you.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he cried off,” Bronwyn said.

Laying the back of her hand across her forehead, Lady Nora cried, “Don’t be silly, child. You are
betrothed
to him. He can’t cry off. It would be an insult to you, and more serious, it would be an insult to our family. Your da would be justified in calling him out, should Lord Rawson do
such a mad thing.” She shook her head. “No, he won’t cry off.”

He’s sorely disappointed.”

Something in Bronwyn’s face must have spoken to Lady Nora, for she said petulantly, “Oh, really, he’s going to be your husband. He’ll look for his pleasure elsewhere. Your function is to bear him two healthy heirs.”

“One for the heir, one for a spare,” Bronwyn intoned.

“Exactly. Then you’ll find your own lover. In the meantime, this future husband of yours positively glows with health. There is that distressing limp, of course, but his shoulders strain against his coat. And you know”—Lady Nora tittered behind her fan—“the dandies of London must envy him his thighs and calves.
His
stockings aren’t stuffed with cotton.”

“Maman, it sounds as if you’re selling me a horse. Have you checked his teeth?”

Lady Nora snapped her fan closed. “I want you to realize the advantages of this match.”

Prodded by the cold analysis of her bridegroom, Bronwyn asked the question she’d always wanted to. “Why don’t I look like the rest of you, Maman? Am I a product of a lover?”

“A lover?” Lady Nora stopped and stared at her daughter. “How can you ask that, when all of London buzzes with my devotion to your father?”

“Perhaps I’m the product of Da’s misalliance?”

Two bright red spots bled through Lady Nora’s rouge. “Not at all,” she said, but she didn’t deny Lord Gaynor’s wanderings. “You are the image of your da’s great-aunt. The wild hair, the height, the dreadfully tanned skin.”

“I don’t remember her,” Bronwyn said doubtfully.

“Of course not. She died before you were born. A wizened old maid who spoke her mind without respect to station or relationship.”

Bronwyn liked Da’s great-aunt already. “You met her?”

Touching a scented handkerchief to her nose, Lady
Nora sniffed delicately. “Heavens, yes. Your da had a fondness for her. I remember those great eyes staring, and that frazzled white hair flying. She rattled on about the circle stones of Ireland, and how some magician had set them up.” She strolled down the hall, waving the handkerchief in front of her face.

Tagging along after her mother, Bronwyn said, “I wonder if she read the Gaelic manuscripts of the monasteries.”

“Probably.” Lady Nora sighed with indifference.

“She does sound like me.”

“Never say so.” The trembling of Lady Nora’s feathers betrayed agitation. “You’re not like that ridiculous spinster.”

“She doesn’t sound ridiculous to me. Just learned and eccentric.”

“Learned and eccentric! How much more ridiculous can a woman be?” Lady Nora’s expression was reflected in the endless mirrors as she passed. She seemed puzzled by the child fate had bestowed on her. “You’ve always been a trial to me. Asking odd questions. Reading books. Begging that dreadfully erudite governess to teach you Latin instead of French. French is a civilized language, and you refused to learn it. I never understood you. You aren’t like the other children, but I’ve done my best.”

In the face of her mother’s distress, Bronwyn conformed once again. “Yes, Maman. No one could ask for more.”

Lady Nora turned to Bronwyn and fussed with her gown. “I’ve dressed you in the best of clothing. It’s not my fault that your appearance doesn’t lend itself to the fashions of the day.”

“No, Maman.”

“Stop ripping at your fan. You shred all your fans with that distressing habit of yours.”

Stilling the nervous movement of her fingers, Bronwyn agreed, “Yes, Maman.”

Lady Nora’s glorious violet eyes met Bronwyn’s for the first time. “I always loved you. Never doubt that.”

How could Bronwyn question her mother’s fervency? “I know you love me, Maman.”

Lady Nora placed her cheek against Bronwyn’s in a brief gesture of affection. “There! That’s taken care of.” She drew back and adjusted Bronwyn’s wig with an expert hand. “I don’t want you to get hurt. This is marriage. Lord Rawson gets his entrée into respectable society again, you get the husband you so badly need, and your father and I get money.” Lady Nora took Bronwyn’s arm with more force than was necessary and shook her sharply. “Don’t ask for more.”

“No, Maman.”

With a smile and a trill, Lady Nora swept into the drawing room. “Here we are. Have we kept you waiting?”

Lord Gaynor, Adam, and Adam’s friend abruptly ended their discussion; Olivia stood up from her chair beside the window.

Adam bowed, his gaze on Bronwyn. “To feast my eyes on such beauty, I’d easily wait twice as long.”

Her mother’s sharp elbow in her ribs prompted Bronwyn to simper and hide her face behind her fan. A few loose threads waved before her nose. “You flatter me, Lord Rawson.”

He didn’t deny it. She stuck out her tongue before she lowered the concealing silk. Batting her lashes at Adam, she asked, “Who is this gentleman?”

He blinked as if her flutter bothered him but introduced her to Robert Walpole. “A member of the House of Commons,” Adam concluded as the gentleman, stout and on the better side of forty, looked her over frankly.

Bronwyn had been made to feel like a commodity too many times that day. Gritting her teeth, she asked, “Is that a great thing?”

Walpole’s gaze snapped from her bosom to her face. Too offended to cover her resentment, she stared back at him until he roared with laughter.

“Not at all, my dear. It’s nothing when placed beside the conversation of a scintillating lady.” Offering his arm, he said, “I’ll take you in to dinner.”

Adam intervented when she would have accepted. “She’s my fiancée, Robert. I take her in to dinner.” Realizing, perhaps, he’d sounded less than gracious, he added lightly, “It is, after all, my privilege.”

So, Bronwyn diagnosed, he didn’t want his friend Robert to discover he was disappointed with his betrothed. Her mouth curved. How interesting. Her brief euphoria faded when he continued, “Lady Bronwyn hasn’t met my mother, yet.”

Her gaze brushed Robert Walpole’s, and his expression revealed a comical horror. He dropped his offered arm, backed away as if she’d been contaminated. “Well, yes, of course. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of the, er, dear lady since I arrived. Go on, go on.” He made shooing gestures. “Meeting Adam’s mother is an experience you should, er, experience.”

What fear made the statesman blench and retreat? Was Adam’s mother as dreadful as that? Bronwyn wanted to plead for clemency, but there was none. With his walking stick held at a jaunty angle, Adam waited for her to proceed him. Clenching her fan, she did. In an awesome silence, they traversed the mirrored hall to a small door set in the wall.

The parlor beyond was decorated in crimson and furnished with delicate-looking furniture. Heavy drapes covered the windows, and candles lit the room. Their dancing light found the face of the woman seated on a settee—an immense woman, dressed in a loose, flowing robe. Her chins stair-stepped from her chest to her face with nary a glimpse of her neck. Her tiny, red rosebud mouth stretched in a smile. Her cheeks flowed on for acres. Her nose was an indeterminate blob, but her eyes—