Wayward Widow. Nicola Cornick
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fact that it was just past two. Martin recognised this as a bad sign.
Liddington, the butler, opened the door with an expression so blank that Martin’s heart sank even further.
‘That bad, Liddington?’ he murmured, as he divested himself of his coat.
‘Yes, sir.’ The butler was matter of fact. ‘Mrs Lane is awaiting you in the library. I did try to suggest that she should leave the matter until the morning, but she was most insistent—’
‘Mr Davencourt!’ The library door opened and Mrs Lane swept out in a swirl of draperies. She was a large woman with greying hair and a perpetually agonised expression. When Martin had first met her he had wondered if she was plagued by some medical complaint that kept her constantly in pain. These days he realised that it was apparently the effort of chaperoning his sisters that caused her misery.
‘Mr Davencourt, I simply must speak with you! That girl is quite hopeless, and does nothing that I tell her! You must speak to her. She is fit for Bedlam.’
‘I assume you refer to Miss Clara, Mrs Lane?’ Martin asked, catching the matron’s arm and steering her back into the library and away from the servants’ stifled amusement. ‘I know that she can be a trifle indolent—’
‘Indolent! The girl is a minx.’ Mrs Lane pulled her arm away huffily. ‘She pretends to fall asleep so that she may ignore her suitors! It is no wonder that she has yet to attract an offer from a gentleman. You must speak with her, Mr Davencourt.’
‘I shall do so, of course,’ Martin said. The last time he had tried to talk to Clara about her behaviour he had felt as though he was wrestling with a very slippery fish. She had looked innocent and puzzled and told him that she tried very hard to show an interest but she found the Season dreadfully fatiguing. There had been a stubborn look in her eyes and Martin had been uncomfortably aware that his half-sister was trying to hoodwink him, but he had not even scratched the surface of the reasons for her behaviour.
‘As for Miss Kitty…’ Mrs Lane swelled wrathfully. ‘That girl is getting into bad company, sir. How is she to catch a husband when she spends all her time at play? Gambling away her allowance, I have no doubt, though the chit will tell me nothing.’
‘I shall speak with Kitty as well,’ Martin said. He felt in desperate need of a drink. ‘May I offer you a glass of ratafia, Mrs Lane?’
‘No, thank you, Mr Davencourt,’ Mrs Lane said, as though Martin had suggested something unspeakably vulgar. ‘I never take spirits after eleven. It upsets my constitution.’ She billowed to her feet. ‘I merely wish to add that if Miss Davencourt and Miss Clara do not reform—and quickly!—I shall be taking my services elsewhere. There are plenty of young ladies who would be glad to have my chaperonage and would not cause me one moment’s anxiety. I am much in demand, you know!’
Martin felt panic and irritation stirring in equal measure. The thought of losing Mrs Lane, humourless as she was, was terrifying. He would never find another reputable lady willing to chaperon Kitty and Clara about town, not in the middle of the Season when the girls had a reputation for being so difficult. His sister Araminta had had to work very hard to persuade Mrs Lane in the first place. The chaperon had implied that a house with seven children and lacking the steadying hand of a mistress must surely be a hotbed of wickedness, and now his half-sisters were proving precisely that. Martin ran his hand through his hair.
‘Please do not leave us, Mrs Lane. You have done such a splendid job so far.’ He could hear the insincerity in his own voice.
‘I will think about it,’ the chaperon said graciously. ‘Of course, if you think that I have done such a splendid job, Mr Davencourt, you might consider reflecting that fact in my fee…’
Martin could feel the screws of blackmail turning. Only the previous week he had been obliged to increase the wages he paid to his younger brother’s tutor to prevent him from handing in his notice. Then the governess had threatened to leave after his younger sisters filled her bed with stewed apple. It only required the nursemaid to resign and he would have a full house.
He held the door open for Mrs Lane. ‘I shall see what I can do, madam. In the meantime, be assured that I will speak to both Kitty and Clara—’
‘Martin!’ A plaintive voice floated down from the staircase. Daisy was sitting halfway up the stair, swinging her feet through the delicate iron tracery of the banisters. She was clutching her teddy bear and looked tiny and dishevelled. Daisy was five years old and a late child, the result of Mr and Mrs Davencourt’s last, ill-fated attempt at reconciliation. Martin hurried up the stairs to scoop her up into his arms, and felt the fierce heat of her tears against his shirt.
‘I had a bad dream, Martin,’ his youngest sister hiccupped. ‘I dreamed that you went away and left us for ever and ever—’
Martin smoothed his hand over her hair. ‘Hush, sweetheart. I am here now and I promise never to go away—’
The nursemaid came hurrying along the landing, a candle clutched in her hand, a wrap thrown hastily over the nightdress. Her eyes were full of sleep and anxiety. She held her arms out.
‘Now then, Miss Elizabeth, what’s going on here? Come back to bed.’
Daisy clung to Martin with the tenacity of a limpet, winding her fat little arms about his neck. ‘I want Martin to put me to bed and tell me a story!’
Martin thought longingly of the huge glass of brandy as yet unpoured in the library and the pristine newspaper he had not even unfolded. But the nursemaid’s look was pleading.
‘If you would be so good, sir…Miss Elizabeth has been having so many nightmares lately and I am sure she will sleep better if you tuck her up.’
Down in the hall Mrs Lane was still watching him with a look of cupidity in her sharp grey eyes. Her expression reminded Martin of a hunting cat closing in on the kill. He felt anger and helplessness in equal measure. He turned away deliberately, pressing a kiss on Daisy’s tumbled fair curls.
‘Come along then, sweetheart. I will tell you the story about the Princess and the Pea.’
Daisy snuggled up to him. Her warmth comforted him. When the terrible news of their parents’ death had reached him the previous year, he had been stunned and appalled. The late Mr and Mrs Davencourt lived for most of the time in a state of armed neutrality towards each other, barely spending any time together. It had been ironic in the extreme that they had died together in a fire at their London house. Philip Davencourt had been a staunch Tory who had deplored his son’s Whiggish tendencies, but for all their political disagreements, father and son had had a healthy respect for each other and Martin knew that his father had been proud of him when he had been appointed to Castlereagh’s delegation at the Congress of Vienna. The only thing that his father had disapproved of was Martin’s failure to marry.
Perhaps his father had had a point, Martin thought ruefully, as he carried Daisy back to the nursery. A man who had seven younger half-brothers and half-sisters to care for needed help and a far more permanent relationship than the transient affairs that he had been accustomed to in the past. Not only that, but in future he would need a wife to act as political hostess as well.
He held Daisy close. His sister Araminta, the only other child of his father’s first marriage, had argued that the younger girls should go to live with her when their parents had died. Martin had been tempted, but in the end he had decided against it. He might only be thirty-one years old, he might have no wife to support him, but that was as nothing compared to the powerful sympathy he felt towards his younger siblings. They had endured enough misery over the death of their parents and he would not be responsible for separating them now. They stayed with him and he did the best he could for them. But he needed a wife.
Juliana lay in her huge canopied bed and watched the play of shadows across the wall. The house was completely silent. Even in the daytime there were no children to spoil the peace and nothing to disrupt the almost sepulchral silence. Juliana lived entirely alone, with no companion