A Spinster by the Sea Read online

  “To him,” Anne said, rising. “Nobody dares say a word to the duke. Old Devonshire has been gone for more than five years, and people still talk about his household in scandalized tones. I’ll not…”

  Helen remained seated. “You are protecting Tindale from the gossips?”

  “They are waiting to pounce, Helen. Augustus came across plenty of aristocratic dirty linen in the course of his legal practice. His peers will take any opportunity to remind him that solicitors are not gentlemen, even when they luck into a ducal title.” Lily Northrup had passed along a few general details regarding the cases Augustus had handled.

  Gambling debts so enormous they necessitated confining the irresponsible noble scion to a sanitorium until he could be declared legally incompetent and thus not liable for his wagers.

  A fine lady’s bastard child quietly entrusted to a rural vicar.

  Genuine madness. Marital violence. Shocking meanness toward impecunious siblings and offspring. Augustus had seen much and heard more. Society would ensure that he kept his mouth shut about the whole of it.

  Though Society was utterly blockheaded. Augustus would never divulge a confidence entrusted to him in either a personal or a professional capacity.

  “You’ll let them win, then? The Daleys and their ilk? You’ll give Lady Deschamps the pleasure of telling all of Debrett’s that you rudely rejected her efforts to rehabilitate your reputation?”

  “My reputation needs no rehabilitation.” Yet. “Lady Deschamps can take a flying leap into the Thames.”

  Helen took another sip of tea. “That is something you would have said as a schoolgirl. You are a hoyden at heart, Anne, but you have managed to overcome your wild impulses. You are so close to victory that I cannot imagine why you’d quit the field now.”

  Defeat had arrived in the person of one dear, tenderhearted, ferocious duke. “I haven’t overcome my wild impulses, Helen. Not entirely. I never did. I am certain in my bones, though, that Tindale, Billingsley, and whoever else Lady Deschamps means to toss at me are not such as I would marry. I have no wish to move in Society, and I cannot see that changing. I should have retired to the countryside years ago.”

  “Now you talk like a widow, exhausted by the social affray, but you aren’t a widow.”

  Anne was not a hoyden and not a widow, but she was no stranger to grief either. “Tindale knows not to expect me.”

  “I haven’t sent your regrets to Lady Deschamps, Anne. You cannot think to simply—”

  A maid came through the garden gate, a folded piece of paper in her hands. “Beggin’ yer pardon, ladies. I have a note for Miss Baxter. Came from that fancy house party, and there’s a crest pressed into the wax.”

  Anne took the message and examined the seal. She knew the coat of arms, because it adorned Tindale’s coach.

  “You may be excused,” Helen said, “and might you please take the breakfast dishes with you?”

  Anne waited until the maid had gathered up a tray full of cups and dishes, then slit the seal.

  * * *

  Miss Baxter,

  Lord Corbett Hobbs has joined Lady Deschamps’s gathering. The perishing imbecile is impersonating a tragic hero from some Greek drama, lurking in corners and staring pensively at nothing. I have not yet acknowledged him, nor do I intend to. I thought you deserved notice of this most farcical development.

  I remain, yours respectfully,

  Tindale

  * * *

  Oh, Augustus. If he cut Corbett Hobbs, Hobbs could provoke a scene, or even issue a challenge. The talk would be nothing compared to the repercussions if either man were injured—or worse.

  Anne passed the note over to Helen.

  “I see the pretty hands of the Daley sisters in this development,” Helen said, wrinkling her nose. “And Lady Deschamps will be delighted to host the drama of the Season.”

  The vile, reeking Thames was too good for Lady Deschamps. “Can a duke’s son challenge a duke?” Anne asked.

  “Technically, no, but in terms of family standing, both fellows would be equal. As my late husband used to say, when drunken men get to feeling slighted, nonsense can ensue.”

  “Deadly nonsense. I will attend that card party after all, Helen, and I must send a note to His Grace.”

  Helen folded up the missive. “What will you tell him?”

  “I will beg him to please be civil at all times. To recall his standing and his dignity, and to see no insult where only stupidity is on display.”

  “Some men call that stupidity honor.”

  Anne took one last look at the placid majesty of the sea. “Corbett Hobbs hasn’t the first notion of honor. Perhaps the sight of me will help him recall his passing acquaintance with discretion.”

  Tindale watched the drive from Lily’s sitting room. “The coach approaches.”

  “Then perhaps you will cease pacing a hole in my carpets, Augustus.”

  “I half expected Anne to leave me…”

  Lily looked up from her knitting. “At the altar? Has she accepted your proposal, then?”

  For a woman who spent much of her day in her apartment, Lily knew nearly everything that transpired under her roof.

  “Anne doesn’t want me to propose,” Augustus said. “The original plan was for her to throw me over, to show polite society that she can have—or reject—any man she pleases. She has since forbidden me to do the bended-knee bit.”

  The sound of a coach clattering up to the front door nearly had Augustus bolting from the parlor.

  “Because you would be proposing in earnest.”

  Lily’s needles clicked away, the soft blue wool cascading over her knees.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t be in earnest this time,” Augustus said, “but yes, I would like to marry Anne. She has all but sent me away with a flea in my ear.” After crying in his arms. What was he to make of that? “I suspect she’s trying to protect me.”

  “I more than suspect it. Your duchess must be as far above reproach as the Dover cliffs rise above the sea.”

  Voices drifted up from the foyer. “Because I am a jumped-up solicitor?”

  “Your grandchildren will have that thrown in their faces, Augustus. Anne is absolutely right to be concerned for your acceptance in society. Times have changed, and propriety has a hold on society it will not easily give up. The middling classes might not have the vote, but they run the newspapers, the print shops, the schools, and the churches. They have had enough of a wastrel monarch and his greedy, licentious peerage.”

  “How odd,” Augustus said. “Here I thought a solicitor was from the middling classes, and all I seek is to offer a lifetime of marital devotion to the woman I esteem greatly.”

  Lily gestured with her chin toward the door. “Go sprinkle duke dust on Camelia’s card party. Do not call out Lord Corbett, or I shall be quite severe with you.”

  “I can’t call him out.” More’s the pity.

  “Because he lacks a title?”

  “Because Anne forbade me to and because I do not make sport of dumb animals. Besides, an affair of honor would implicate Anne’s good name, and that is a risk I would never take.” Duke dust, as if this gathering were some sort of fairy tale.

  “Lord Corbett can still issue a challenge, Tindale. He’s that much of a dunderpate. Go carefully.”

  Augustus bowed on that excellent advice, assembled the dignity Anne had admonished him to keep on hand, and made a slow descent of the main staircase to greet the new arrivals.

  “Mrs. Saunders.” He bowed over Helen’s hand. “Miss Baxter, a pleasure as always. Shall I find you ladies some punch?”

  A dozen guests, including both Daleys, apparently found it necessary to tarry in the foyer, all eyes on Anne.

  Who appeared as serene as the sea on a sunny summer day. “Punch would be appreciated, Your Grace.” Anne replied.

  Augustus offered an arm to each lady, though Helen was soon waylaid—happily, it seemed—by Lord Bertram.

  “Lord Corbett has kept his distance,” Augustus said. “Shall we greet him now? The punch bowl is on the terrace, and he’s keeping company with a potted palm along the balustrade.”

  “You will be civil?”

  “I would rather shove his head into the nearest horse trough.” The Daleys apparently felt a pressing need for some fresh air, for they trailed Augustus and Anne by three not-very-discreet yards.

  “I would rather have stayed in my nice, cozy cottage,” Anne said, “watching the light change over the sea as the sun set while I revisited some lovely memories.”

  Augustus stopped a few steps onto the terrace. By the light of the waning sun, Anne’s composure took on a brittle appearance.

  “You’ve been crying.” Again.

  “The salt air and the bright sun must have irritated my eyes. I spent the afternoon building another sandcastle.”

  “I spent the afternoon on correspondence, lest I accidently pitch Hobbs over some obliging balcony.”

  Anne leaned infinitesimally closer. “Please, Augustus. No drama.”

  “Oh, very well. Let’s get this over with.” He did not exactly tow Anne across the terrace to the balcony, but neither did Anne march along smartly at his side. A crowd formed in the main doorway to the terrace, with a smaller cluster of spectators on the steps to the conservatory entrance.

  Corbett tried to look past Augustus’s shoulder, then tried to gaze at the sea, but Augustus had made his living sorting through necessary confrontations, and this moment could go a long way toward restoring Anne’s peace of mind.

  “Hobbs,” Augustus said. “Shrewd of you to choose this venue. Polite society is on hand, but not in overwhelming numbers.”

  The compliment apparently confused his lordship. “Tindale, Miss Baxter.” Hobbs bowed over Anne’s hand, probably out of habit more than manners. “Miss Baxter, you are looking… well.” He had the sense to offer that compliment cautiously.

  “I am well, thank you, my lord. And you?”

  “In the very pink,” Hobbs said, and at that moment, his complexion was pink enough to suggest he’d fortified himself with a quantity of Lady Deschamps’s excellent rum punch. “I say, Miss Baxter, you seem to have weathered—”

  Augustus cleared his throat.

  Anne cocked her head. “I came to the seaside to recover my spirits, my lord, after most upsetting developments in Town which were in no way the result of my own actions. Lady Deschamps has been good enough to include me in some of her events. What brings you here?”

  Bravo, Anne.

  “I wanted… That is to say, I don’t suppose…” Hobbs looked from Anne to Augustus, and Augustus had the sinking impression that Hobbs meant to renew his proposal of marriage.

  “Did your parents threaten to cut you off unless you talked Anne around?” Augustus asked.

  Hobbs resumed studying the sea. “Her Grace might have implied that it’s not too late… and there’s nothing to say that Miss Baxter and I won’t suit, except nobody knew where Miss Baxter had got off to, and why am I discussing this with you, Tindale?”

  “Because,” Anne said, “Tindale was left to clean up your mess, my lord. If you have an apology to make, I’m happy to hear it, but please don’t think I’ll entertain another proposal from you.”

  Hobbs risked a glance in Anne’s direction. “Is that how the wind blows? You’re throwing me over for a duke?”

  Anne’s grip on Augustus’s arm tightened. “You threw me over for your mistress, Corbett, and a man who will toss aside his intended should anticipate being tossed aside himself. If your problem is excessive indebtedness incurred as a result of your expectations in my direction, you should have thought of that before you decamped for Scotland. Roberta Daley has a sizable dowry, and she’s ready to settle down.”

  “They wrote to me,” Hobbs said. “The Daley sisters. I’ve known Bobbie forever, but… all those flounces give a man pause.” Hobbs’s pale blue eyes had acquired a speculative gleam.

  “Before you trot off to begin your wooing,” Augustus said, “you owe Miss Baxter an apology, and make it convincing, Hobbs, lest Miss Baxter think ill of you.”

  Hobbs blinked, he frowned, he looked as if he were preparing for his first Speech Day effort, then he put his hands behind his back.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “Badly done of me. I was an idiot. Mama says so too. She says so frequently. Don’t know what came over me.” He tried for a smile that Anne did not return. “I do apologize.”

  Anne held Hobbs’s gaze long enough that even Augustus felt an inclination to fidget.

  “That will suffice, my lord,” Anne said at length. “Apology accepted. I wish you a pleasant evening.”

  Hobbs looked from Anne to Augustus, then seemed to realize he’d done all that was required of him. He remembered to bow before haring off straight for Miss Roberta Daley.

  “They deserve each other,” Augustus said. “That was brilliantly done. We never did get that glass of punch.”

  Anne remained by the balustrade, her fingers curled around his arm. “I was an idiot to think I could have made him an adequate wife, but one does grow tired. After a few years, the line between pretending and reality blurs to a dangerous extent.”

  “Pretending?”

  “I wanted to slap him, Augustus. I forbade you to call him out, but I wanted to kick him hard, to do violence to his person… but he’s the same overindulged lordling I was engaged to. I cannot expect him to ever be otherwise, despite a towering need to backhand him before a large audience.”

  “Right now,” Augustus said as the crowd began to file back inside, “I want to take you in my arms and hold you until you are free of all the violence, and tears, and pretending. I want to tell that tittering lot of scandalmongers calling themselves polite society to choke on their damned gossip.”

  Anne blinked, and a tear splashed on the coat of Augustus’s sleeve. “You are so very dear, Tindale. Perhaps you’d fetch me a glass of punch?”

  Bedamned to the punch. “So you can compose yourself enough to face an evening of cards with people you loathe.”

  Lord Bertram and Helen remained on the terrace, reminding Augustus that Helen was technically Anne’s chaperone.

  Anne rubbed her forehead as footmen began lighting torches in the formal garden. “I don’t loathe them.” Said with weary bitterness.

  Augustus shifted so he could lean his hips against the railing and see Anne’s face. “I was curious to know if you’d take pity on Hobbs. I did not think you’d have him, not if you won’t have Billingsley, and you won’t have me.”

  “Augustus, please, not now.”

  She wiped another tear from her cheek, and Augustus realized that the woman he loved had hit the limit of her vast stores of composure. She had hit the limit of her patience, her courage, her self-restraint… Her dignity teetered on the brink of collapse, and yet, she intended to soldier on, smiling politely and losing with good grace to an impecunious naval lieutenant.

  Why? Why suffer like that, why reject a duke, why protect a duke? Why reject the lover who would give his life for her? He thought back over years of quietly solving such problems as found their way to a lawyer’s office, to family secrets and private humiliations.

  “Anne,” he asked, taking her hand, “was there a love child?”

  Chapter Eight

  I never wanted you to know. She would rather have been left at the altar a thousand times over, while all of Mayfair laughed at her, than have Augustus quietly guess at a secret she’d gone to such lengths to keep hidden.

  She took a final swipe at her cheeks. “Don’t be ridiculous, Tindale. Any woman would find it taxing to confront the man who jilted her. If we tarry out here much longer, our absence from the card tables will be remarked.”

  Tindale considered her, though Anne could barely meet his gaze. “The consumptive lad, the one who went off to Greece. Did he know he left you with child?”

  Oh, God. The vast ocean was not deep enough to hold the pain Tindale’s questions caused.

  “This does not bear discussion, Your Grace.”

  “Your tears are more important to me than any card game, scandal, farce, or drama happening anywhere on this entire sceptered isle, Anne Baxter.”

  Tindale led her by the hand to where Helen and Lord Bertram hovered by the punch bowl.

  “Tindale, you must not… I only need a moment… What are you doing?”

  “Miss Baxter is feeling unwell,” Augustus said. “I am seeing her home. Tell Lady Deschamps and her harpies and imps to go to hell.”

  “A megrim,” Helen said. “Understandable in the circumstances.”

  “Can come on quite suddenly,” Lord Bertram added. “And don’t worry. We’ll partner Hobbs and the Daley creature and ensure their conversation is all that it should be. Thurlow has designs on the other sister, and it would not do for scandal to interfere with the boy’s plans just as his ship is coming in, so to speak.”

  “Lord Hume and Mrs. Northrup will take over for us when the tables switch,” Helen said. “Hobbs will comport himself like a gentleman if we have to nanny him all the way back to London. Anne, take His Grace’s kind offer of an escort. Camelia’s pot-stirring is over and done with.”

  “Helen, no… If I leave…”

  Helen hugged Anne tight, not a cousinly hug, more of a motherly hug. “Go with His Grace, for God’s sake, Anne. What you just did… You were magnificent. Leave this pack of jackals to gape in awe at your self-possession.”

  “I will never feel self-possessed again.”

  Tindale slipped an arm around her waist. “We’ll walk back to the cottage. The sea air might restore your spirits.” He bowed to Helen, nodded to Bertram, and Anne found herself crossing the park and holding hands with His Grace of Tindale.

  He could have gone to fetch her a glass of punch, could have allowed her to slip back to the cottage with a quiet word to her hostess. But here he was, holding her hand, walking her home, and telling polite society to go to blazes.