Then Comes Seduction

9

JASPER’S visit to Lady Forester and Clarence the following morning proceeded much as he had expected. He was very careful to time his arrival so that he was knocking on their door at precisely four minutes after nine, and they kept him waiting in the visitors’ parlor for fifteen minutes.

Touche.

He was not invited to sit down when they did arrive.

There followed a tirade-delivered by the lady-in which Jasper was accused of every excess and vice known to man and a few unknown ones too and a demand that he relinquish control of Charlotte to her aunt before she was corrupted beyond hope of reform.

“If she is not already,” Clarence was unwise enough to add.

Jasper had deliberately armed himself with a quizzing glass for the occasion, an affectation with which he did not usually encumber himself since his eyesight was excellent. He raised it to his eye at that moment and directed it at Clarence, particularly his ostentatiously tied neckcloth. Good God, even a dandy would shudder.

“Perhaps it might be wise, Clarrie,” he said, “to allow your mama to do the talking for you. You would not particularly enjoy having me rearrange that knot at your neck, old chap, although it is in dire need of rearrangement, I must say.”

He lowered the glass before looking politely back at Lady Forester.

And she proceeded to tear apart the good name of Merton and his sisters, who might appear blameless in the eyes of the ton but who did not deceive her, the vulgar upstarts. They certainly did not know how to behave if they had all seen fit to be seen in public with him and-far worse!-in company with a young schoolgirl who had no business being seen in public at all until after she had made her curtsy to the queen.

“And for either one of the sisters to allow Charlotte to walk on the arm of the Earl of Merton was the outside of enough and merely confirms me in my conviction that they are brazen hussies,” she added. “I took quite a nasty turn at the realization that that very young girl in the park was my niece, my dear dead brother’s daughter. Did I not, Clarence? My maid was forced to burn feathers to revive me after we arrived home.”

“It is to be hoped that none of them were your best evening plumes, ma’am,” Jasper said, all concern.

“They are vulgar and quite long in the tooth,” Lady Forester said. “I suppose no real gentleman will have them. And the earl is doing himself no favor behaving as he does. And he is your friend, I understand.”

Jasper bowed and smiled.

“I really must be on my way,” he said. “This has been a delightful half hour, but I have other matters to attend to and so will not, alas, be able to sit down and take refreshments with you. No, no-you must not bother to offer them. Charlotte, by the way, will be remaining at my home and under my protection and her companion’s guidance. Good day to you both.”

He reached for his hat from the table where he had set it down since the servant who had opened the door and ushered him into the parlor had not offered to take it.

“She will not be there for long, Jasper,” Clarence said with spiteful relish. “I called upon Great-Uncle Seth yesterday afternoon after escorting Mama home.”

Jasper paused, his hand on his hat.

“Ah,” he said. “That must have been a pleasant experience for you both, Clarrie. Did he offer to kill the fatted calf in your honor?”

“I was able to apprise him of the truth concerning Charlotte,” Clarence said. “He agreed with me that something really must be done.”

“Clarence,” his mother said sharply, “there was no need to say a word about that visit to Jasper. It is none of his business. He has never shown any interest in Charlotte’s family, including Uncle Seth.”

“He ought to know, Mama,” Clarence said, “that his carelessness regarding my cousin will not be tolerated any longer, that soon she will be living here with us, where she will be properly prepared for her debut into society and for a respectable marriage.”

“You would be well advised, Clarrie,” Jasper said as he fixed his hat on his head and crossed the room to let himself out, “to listen to your mama and allow her to speak for you. Always. For she always knows best.”

A minute later he was striding down the street.

Another visit, it seemed, was in order, and he had Clarence of all people to thank for alerting him to the necessity of making it without further delay.

Poor Seth Wrayburn! Having two visitors descend upon him in as many days was going to be a severe trial to him.

But some things could not be helped.

When Miss Wrayburn and Miss Daniels called at Merton House later the same morning in the hope of finding the Misses Huxtable at home, they were admitted immediately and shown up to the drawing room, where they discovered not only those ladies but also the Duchess of Moreland, their sister, and her two young children. The duke was downstairs in the library with the Earl of Merton, whom he still considered his ward and his responsibility though he had loosened the leading strings considerably during the past year.

Margaret and Katherine had been telling Vanessa about Miss Wrayburn and how they liked her-and how upset they had been at the encounter with Lady Forester, her aunt.

“It had just not occurred to either of us, or Stephen, that perhaps there was something improper about inviting her to walk in the park with us, had it, Kate?” Margaret had said.

“That is because there was nothing improper about it, you silly goose,” Vanessa had assured her. “Good heavens, who is this Lady Forester? I have never heard of her, but she sounds remarkably silly. I must ask Elliott. He knows everyone.”

They had talked too-inevitably-about Baron Montford. Meg had given it as her opinion that he had a partiality for Kate, and Katherine had protested that he was a notorious libertine and had a partiality for any lady who was willing to spend a few minutes tete-a-tete with him.

“Now, Lord Montford I do know,” Vanessa had said, her eyes twinkling. “We sat together at supper during someone’s ball earlier this year and talked for all of ten minutes exclusively with each other. He did not show the smallest sign of partiality for me and so I must contradict you on that, Kate. I found him charming and amusing-and quite gloriously handsome.”

“And I walked all the way to the Serpentine with him yesterday,” Margaret had added, “while Kate was with Stephen and his sister. He was amiable and interesting and showed not the tiniest sign of partiality for me.”

Katherine was quite glad of the interruption.

Miss Daniels made her curtsy to them when Miss Wrayburn presented her and found a chair near the door when invited to be seated. Margaret introduced Vanessa, and Katherine watched Miss Wrayburn’s awed expression disappear within moments when Vanessa behaved in a very unduchesslike way and smiled and talked to her and explained that she must stand and rock like a boat in a stiff breeze in the hope that young Sam would soon lose his battle with sleep.

“He is very stubborn,” she said. “His papa insists that it is a trait he has inherited from me. I know that the opposite is true, of course.”

Miss Wrayburn tiptoed forward to peep into the baby’s face, and then she smiled at two-year-old Isabelle and sat beside her.

Margaret poured the tea, and they all conversed comfortably for several minutes until the gentlemen joined them and more introductions had to be made.

Sam was still fussing.

“I suppose it did not occur to you, Vanessa,” Elliott said, scooping the baby up out of her arms, “to summon his nurse from the housekeeper’s sitting room and instruct her to take him away somewhere else.”

“No, it did not,” she admitted, her eyes laughing into his as he crossed the room to stand close to the window, the baby’s head held to his shoulder with one hand.

Isabelle had jumped to her feet at the arrival of the men and was standing in front of Stephen, holding up her arms. He laughed and lifted her high onto his shoulder. She sat there chuckling and clinging to a fistful of his curls.

“I am delighted to meet you, Miss Daniels,” he said. “And I am delighted that you have come again, Miss Wrayburn.”

“I came for a very particular reason,” Miss Wrayburn said, flushing and moving forward to the edge of her seat. “I am going to be eighteen in August. Jasper has said I may have a house party for the occasion at Cedarhurst Park-it is in Dorsetshire. He has told me I may invite as many guests as I wish-for two whole weeks. Miss Daniels and I have made all sorts of plans for everyone’s entertainment-picnics and excursions and wilderness walks and croquet and dances and boat rides and riding and… and charades and cards and… Oh, and all sorts of things. It is going to be the most wonderful time I have ever had in my life.”

She smiled eagerly from one to the other of them.

“And the most wonderful time everyone else will have had too, of course,” she added.

Miss Daniels looked pointedly at her.

“And, Charlotte?” she said softly, making a beckoning gesture with one hand. “Of what concern is this to Miss Huxtable and her sister and brother?”

“Oh.” Miss Wrayburn looked mortified and then laughed too-a light, youthful sound. “I want you to come, Miss Huxtable, and you too, Miss Katherine, and you if you will and if you do not have other more exciting plans, Lord Merton, though I daresay you do. I want you all to be among my houseguests. Will you? I would like it of all things, I do assure you. Please say yes.”

Jasper has said I may have a house party…

Was he deliberately luring her to a place where he would have plenty of opportunity to be tete-a-tete with her?

How very clever of him.

Or was she reading too much into this invitation?

“It sounds very delightful,” Margaret was saying. “But are you quite sure you wish to have us among your guests, Miss Wrayburn? Your aunt did not appear to consider us suitable companions when she saw us with you yesterday.”

The girl flushed.

“She did not even know who you were,” she said. “She wants to have me live with her now that I am almost grown up and no longer a nuisance of a child. She wants to control my fortune and have me marry Clarence. I would rather die.”

“Charlotte, my dear,” Miss Daniels said reproachfully.

“Well, it is true,” the girl said. “And you yourself said, Danny, that it was quite unexceptionable for me to walk in the park with the Earl of Merton and his sisters and Jasper himself. Besides, this party is to be held in the country. At Jasper’s home and mine. Nothing could be more respectable. Aunt Prunella has nothing to say in the matter. Please come.”

She looked as if she were almost in tears.

Elliott had turned from the window-Sam was fast asleep against his shoulder, his mouth open.

“Stephen is no suitable escort for Miss Wrayburn?” he said. “In a public park with her brother and his sisters in attendance? How very peculiar.”

“It is because I am not yet out,” Miss Wrayburn explained. “My aunt believes that I ought to remain hidden in the schoolroom until my presentation to the queen.”

“Well,” Stephen said, swinging Isabelle to the floor at her insistence-she came to sit on Katherine’s knee. “I do have exciting plans for those weeks in August, Miss Wrayburn. I plan to spend them at Cedarhurst Park in Dorsetshire-as the guest, I believe, of Baron Montford, my friend. And by happy chance it seems that you are to have a birthday while I am there.”

“Oh.” The girl clasped her hands to her bosom and beamed at him. “Oh, how splendid. Jasper will be so pleased. And I am too.”

“I believe,” Margaret said, “it is quite proper for Kate and me to accept your invitation, Miss Wrayburn. We would be delighted to come, would we not, Kate?”

The decision had been taken from her, then, had it? Katherine did not know if she was glad or sorry.

“Absolutely,” she said, smiling at Miss Wrayburn. “I shall look forward to it.”

And she knew she would even though she really ought not.

Miss Wrayburn beamed at them all.

“I am so glad,” she said. “Oh, thank you.”

A few minutes later Miss Daniels rose, and Miss Wrayburn followed suit and took her leave of them all.

“She is indeed a delightful girl,” Vanessa said when they had gone. “It is very kind of her brother to arrange a party in the seclusion of the country for her. It is a ridiculous notion that girls ought to be left in the schoolroom until the very moment of their come-out. Then, of course, they know no one and are gauche and blushing and uncomfortable. Miss Daniels told me which other guests have been invited to Cedarhurst. Most of them-both ladies and gentlemen-are very young indeed. Stephen is going to seem like an elder statesman. But of course it is right too that a few older guests be invited-for Lord Montford’s sake.”

She looked pointedly at Katherine and laughed.

Katherine busied herself with amusing Isabelle and pretended not to notice.

Mr. Seth Wrayburn lived in London all year long, even during the heat of the summer when the beau monde deserted it en masse for the greater comforts of the countryside or the relative coolness of the seaside.

He lived on Curzon Street, which was in a fashionable enough neighborhood for a gentleman of his rank. He had nothing to do with fashions, however, and nothing to do with the beau monde either. Or with anyone else for that matter except his valet and his butler and his chef and his bookseller.

The best company a man could ever desire, he had always said-when forced to say anything at all, that was-was his own. At least a man could expect a little intelligence and sense from himself.

He was not pleased to be presented with a visiting card the very day after being bothered with another. He had been forced to admit Clarence Forester the day before because that fool had sent up the verbal message with his card that it was a matter of life and death concerning Charlotte Wrayburn, who happened to be not only Seth’s great-niece, but also his ward. He had never been pleased with that latter connection, but he had not contested the terms of his nephew’s will when he might have done so with some success immediately after his death-a man surely could not be forced to take on the guardianship of a girl in whom he had no interest whatsoever, after all. But it was probably too late now.

He had admitted Clarence, albeit reluctantly, expecting to have his ears assailed with an affecting story about how his great-niece was at her last gasp on her deathbed or a lurid tale about how she had eloped with the groom after climbing out of the schoolroom window down knotted sheets while her governess slept-or some other such dire event over which he supposed he would be expected to exert himself.

Though what he could be expected to do to stop the girl from dying or to set her back in the schoolroom when she had been wed and bedded by the groom he could not imagine. Nor did he want to imagine.

As it turned out, Clarence had bored him exceedingly and at great length and had confirmed him in his long-standing conviction that he himself had been born into the wrong family-and a parcel of nincompoops at that-more than seventy years ago and had been made to suffer for it ever since.

But since Clarence had demanded action in that pompous way of his and had raised some issues that probably could not be ignored much longer, Mr. Wrayburn sighed deeply when he lifted Jasper’s card from the butler’s tray and read the name written there.

“There is no message to accompany the card?” he asked. “No life-and-death situation? No warning that the sky is falling or the great trump of doom blowing from the heavens to summon us all to judgment?”

“None, sir,” his butler assured him.

“Show him up, then,” Mr. Wrayburn said with another sigh. “At least he is no blood relation. That is some consolation. Small enough, it is true, but some nonetheless.”

His nephew’s stepson strode into the room a minute or two later, looking fashionable and virile and altogether too full of energy for his own good. He held up a hand as he came.

“Do not get up, sir,” he said. “No need to stand upon ceremony. Do remain seated.”

Since Mr. Wrayburn had made no move to rise to his feet, and never did when in company, he snorted, especially as he detected a gleam of amusement in the younger man’s eyes.

“Impudent puppy,” he muttered. “Still raking your way through life, I hear?”

“You hear?” Jasper raised one eyebrow as he helped himself to a seat. “From the lips of Clarrie, I suppose?”

“You would call him a liar, then?” Mr. Wrayburn asked him.

“Probably not,” Jasper said, grinning, “though he always had an impressive gift even as a boy for embellishing every story he told-to his own aggrandizement and my debasement. He was and is a weasel-apologies to you, sir, since he is your great-nephew.”

“Through an unhappy accident of birth,” the old man said. “You must help yourself to a drink if you want one, Montford. You will dry up like a desert if you wait for me to get up to pour it for you.”

“Sounds painful,” Jasper said. “But I am not thirsty. I daresay Clarrie informed you that I am a shockingly unsuitable guardian for Charlotte?”

The old man grunted.

“Did you or did you not know that she was cavorting about the park with young Merton the day before yesterday when she ought to have been in the schoolroom reciting the multiplication tables?” he asked, not without irony.

“Charlotte can recite even the thirteenth times table without pausing for breath or making one mistake,” Jasper said. “I know. I worked it all out on paper one day-and she was right, by Jove. She is not still in the schoolroom. She is seventeen years and ten and a half months old, and her governess has acquired the new name and expanded duties of companion. And yes, I knew she was in the park with Merton. I was with them, and so were his sisters, both older than he.”

Mr. Wrayburn snorted again.

“I suppose,” Jasper said, “Clarrie conveniently omitted those pertinent details?”

“And did you or did you not,” the old gentleman continued, “observe Prunella fainting dead away at the sight of such impropriety involving her beloved niece? And gashing her head open as she fell so that traffic was held up for half a mile behind them?”

Jasper chuckled aloud.

“I almost wish I had seen it,” he said. “Dash it all, it must have happened when I turned my head or blinked.”

“And is it or is it not true,” Mr. Wrayburn continued, “that Merton’s sisters are no better than they ought to be?”

Jasper sobered instantly.

“Now that is a baseless lie,” he said with uncharacteristic grimness. “And if Clarrie is spreading such vicious untruths about them, then-”

“Spare me.” The old man held up a hand. “If you are fool enough to slap a glove in the face of that idiot, Montford, and to ruin your own life by putting a period to his, then have the goodness to do it without feeling the necessity of giving me a full preview, if you please. The thing is that according to that infernal will of my nephew’s, you were not to take Charlotte anywhere beyond the bounds of Cedarhurst without the express consent of either Forester or myself. You have done it anyway. And people like Prunella are bound to cut up vaporish about such things as the girl wandering in the park on the arm of an earl for all the world to see when she has not yet been fired off into society-even if her brother and his sisters were with them. It was all the provocation she needed to orchestrate an assault on my peaceful haven here. It is all a parcel of nonsense, of course, and tries my patience to the utmost limit, but if I ignore the complaint and Charlotte ends up flying off to Gretna Green with this earl or someone else less eligible, then I am going to have to endure another visit from Clarence-and probably from Prunella as well. And I am going to be made to feel that I have neglected my duty to make sure that both Charlotte and her fortune are delivered safely to some suitably sober and worthy and dull husband when the time comes.”

“Clarrie,” Jasper said.

“Eh?”

“I am convinced of it,” Jasper said. “Lady Forester has not cared a tupenny toss for Charlotte all these years. But now her eighteenth birthday and her fortune are looming on the horizon, and Forester senior died with a veritable mountain of unpaid gaming debts, and Clarrie is fortunately still single and in a position to recoup the family fortunes by marriage to the right woman.”

“His own first cousin,” Mr. Wrayburn said in open disgust. “It makes perfect sense, though. One could not expect any other woman to have him, after all, could one? I will exert myself to deny my permission for such a match, Montford, as I am sure you will. Devil take my nephew for naming me as guardian to the girl. As foolish as every other member of the family, is she?”

“Not at all,” Jasper said. “I am inordinately fond of her.”

Mr. Wrayburn grunted. “At least she can recite the thirteenth times table,” he said. “I doubt Clarence can say the second without using his fingers and toes and wondering why he has run out when he arrives at eleven times two.”

Jasper chuckled.

“Here is the thing,” the old gentleman said. “I’ll state it once, Montford, and then you may do with it as you will. It is time for my luncheon and my nap and I never postpone either. You may keep the girl with you over the summer and winter-you have my vote on that. But you are not in any position to bring the girl out next spring, if Clarence is to be believed-your other sister, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, is married and breeding often enough to decline the honor of organizing and supervising young Charlotte’s come-out. So Prunella is going to have to be the one for the task.”

“But, sir-”

Mr. Wrayburn held up a hand again.

“There is a solution,” he said. “It is as clear as the nose on your face, Montford, but I am not going to advise it. I never took that road myself and would not wish it upon my worst enemy. It would be a solution for Charlotte, though, if you are determined to offer her one.”

“You are suggesting,” Jasper said, “that I marry?”

“You do not listen well,” the old gentleman said. “I am suggesting no such thing.”

For once Jasper was speechless.

“You have the summer and the winter with Charlotte-with my blessing,” the old man said. “Provided, that is, you do not force my hand. Your excesses and debaucheries, all enumerated in lurid detail by my esteemed great-nephew yesterday, are of no interest to me, and I am fully aware that more than half of what I was told was exaggeration or baseless innuendo or outright fabrication even if I am not sure which half. But be careful nevertheless. I am Charlotte’s guardian, and if something about you surfaces that suggests it would be downright irresponsible to leave the girl in your charge, I may be forced to act. Don’t force me, Montford. I would not be amused. Close the door quietly behind you as you leave, will you? I abominate loud noises and sudden drafts.”

Jasper got to his feet.

“You would deliver Charlotte into their clutches-” he began.

“What I would do,” Mr. Wrayburn said testily, “is have my home back to myself, Montford. I like you. You stood up to my fool of a nephew all through your boyhood though some of your exploits almost made even my hair stand on end. And you are no namby-pamby, sniveling idiot. It always seemed markedly unjust to me that you were not my relative instead of all the others. But like it or not-and I do not like it, I assure you-I am one of Charlotte’s guardians. And when I am called upon to assert my third of the guardianship, I shall do so according to what I consider to be her best interests, even if those are only a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. Go away now. I have a sore throat from doing so much talking.”

Jasper went.

With much food for thought to digest.