Captain Langthorne's Proposal

‘Are you going to enlighten me about your discoveries, Sir Adam?’ she asked, hoping he was too occupied with his pair to notice that betraying flush.

‘Oh, that feminine curiosity you all share—however strikingly you differ in other ways,’ he said, with a secretive smile that probably meant he missed nothing. ‘I found some things I expected and others I certainly did not.’

‘Well, now I know. Pray don’t be more infuriating than you can help, Sir Adam—even if you are a man and therefore can’t avoid it.’

‘Well, that’s put me in my place,’ he lied blithely. ‘But if you must know the vault had been opened lately, as I’m sure you suspected after hearing Wharton’s fanciful tale. The grass around it was torn, as if something heavy was dragged over it. Why anyone should disturb the dead when there must be so many less macabre hiding places in the neighbourhood is currently beyond me, but I did find this,’ he told her, taking the reins in one hand while he dug in his pocket. He handed a small object to her with yet another frisson of shock when their fingers touched.

Serena wondered if he felt it too, but if he did nothing showed on his face as he concentrated on his pair once more and she forced herself to look coolly composed as she examined the object he had passed her. It was a button of distinctive design, still attached to a piece of dark grey cloth. An elusive memory stirred at the back of Serena’s mind, but however hard she tried she couldn’t make it tangible.

‘It looks vaguely familiar,’ she finally admitted, ‘but anyone we know could have lost it in the village churchyard.’

‘It has been torn off in some sort of accident—or an argument, perhaps. No man would have a button wrenched off like that and not notice unless he were preoccupied with something very urgent indeed.’

‘Yet until we discover something illegal has taken place we’re as guilty of flying at phantoms as any gothic heroine.’

‘Speak for yourself, my lady. Nobody ever accused me of being a heroine before.’

And nobody ever would, she decided, with considerable exasperation at his wilful misunderstanding. ‘It amazes me that Rachel never pushed you into the lake when you were children, Sir Adam.’

‘Not for want of trying. But, being five years younger than I am, she was always too small to manage it on her own.’

‘What a shame I didn’t know you both better then; somehow we could have soaked you between us.’

‘In your presence I would have been on my best behaviour even in my unregenerate days,’ he said, with such a mix of teasing and admiration that she felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘You regarded me as a scrawny and irritating chit, not worth knowing because I couldn’t play cricket. Believe me, I’m liberally supplied with male cousins who left me in no doubt as to the general inferiority of the female half of the population when they were home for the holidays, so there’s no need to pretend you were any different,’ she managed, coolly enough.

‘Scrubby brats!’ he said, with apparent amusement and far too much understanding of her contrary emotions in that teasing smile. ‘Point them out to me when we’re in town and I’ll dunk them in the Serpentine.’

Serena couldn’t suppress a delighted chuckle over her mental picture of the scapegrace Marquis of Helvelin, immaculate Mr Julius Brafford and the very dashing Lieutenant the Honourable Nicholas Prestbury picking mud and pondweed off their normally resplendent persons. ‘Well, you could try,’ she said with a smile, as she reckoned up the combined strength of her three tall and muscular relatives.

‘You should laugh more often, your ladyship. It makes you young and carefree instead of overburdened and old before your time.’

So he thought she looked haggish, did he? Her smile wiped effectively off her face, Serena frowned, then gazed haughtily at the distant Welsh Hills to prove he meant nothing to her whatsoever.

‘I am a widow,’ she informed him majestically. ‘And I live a very comfortable life, thank you very much.’

‘That you do not,’ he replied, as if he would like to shake her for taking such an optimistic view of her situation. ‘You’re exploited by your mother-in-law, and when not relieving her of her duties or fussing over her you’re at the mercy of a sister-in-law who delights in setting your consequence at nought and her own A1 at Lloyd’s. What I quite fail to fathom in the face of such wilful self-abasement is why on earth you endure it and what Helvelin is about to let you, considering he’s head of your family. If you’re truly content with such a lot you’re far more poor-spirited than I ever thought you.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ she snapped furiously, trying hard not to let him see how that brutal assessment of her character had hurt. ‘And I’ll thank you to leave my cousin out of this and mind your own business.’

‘No. You’re Rachel’s best friend, and it concerns her deeply that you let yourself be trampled on by a family who don’t really appreciate you. Even if you won’t allow me to be concerned on my own account, you can’t forbid me to worry about my sister’s friend.’

His voice was gruff with emotions she dared not examine too closely. Her breathing threatened to stall in the face of any chances she might be about to throw away—the main one being the possibility Adam Langthorne might care about her. That could not, must not be. There was no future in such thoughts on either side. Even if she loved him—and so far she’d managed to avoid that trap—she couldn’t marry him. Come to think about it, she couldn’t consider it especially if she loved him.

‘I suppose I could always join my aunt in Bath for a while,’ she said without enthusiasm.

‘Where you’ll run her household and look after Helvelin’s tribe of sisters instead of being at the beck and call of your family by marriage, I suppose? You have a way of humbling a man with your choices to avoid him that is without parallel, Lady Summerton,’ he replied austerely.

Inflicting pain on Sir Adam Langthorne was difficult, but less unthinkable than seeing him grow restless and bored with her. ‘I feel very real affection for my cousins, as I believe they do for me. But they have a doting mama and little need of me, and I do like to be busy.’

‘Yet you just made it sound as if your boxes are packed and your farewells all but complete. Could it be that you are less convinced than you sound, my lady?’

‘I have no wish to be a burden.’

‘Anyone less likely to be a charge on any household she became part of I find it hard to imagine. You overflow with misplaced loyalty to those who don’t deserve it, and begrudge yourself to those who’d value it way above rubies.’

‘That I don’t. I value true affection and consideration far above duty,’ she said stiffly.

‘Then prove it and come to London with Rachel, who surely deserves your friendship and loyalty even if I don’t. Prove you mean it, Lady Summerton, instead of revelling in the heady delights of sacrificing yourself on the altar of family duty in Bath instead of Herefordshire.’

‘I can’t,’ she replied in a hard little voice, trying not to slavishly watch for his reaction to her denial.

She knew without looking that his eyes would be flinty now, and his sensuous mouth set in a disapproving line. It was an effect she had been striving for these many weeks, after all, but she couldn’t resist a sideways glance at him, despite destroying any admiration he had for her once and for all. To her amazement he was smiling at her as warmly as if she had agreed to his ridiculous scheme as eagerly as a schoolgirl.

‘You mean you won’t let yourself, however strong the temptation?’ he asked with considerable satisfaction, and seemed to require no answer. ‘You have no idea how flattering it is to be regarded as so dangerously irresistible that a lady of character dares not risk my company lest she succumb to my fatal charm.’

‘Pray don’t congratulate yourself on reaching that ridiculous conclusion, Sir Adam,’ she replied stoically, although of course it was true. Trust him to deduce exactly why she was refusing such a tempting offer. ‘You must have every single one of your attics to let to truly believe no lady dares spend time in your company lest she falls at your feet in a frenzy of gratitude and infatuation.’

‘Well that’s properly put me in my place. If I might suggest you take a few lessons in rebuffing a gentleman’s hopes and dreams with finesse before you brave London society once more, Lady Summerton? Or perhaps it should be the other way about and your potential suitors are the ones who need their courage honed by an expert? At least giving lessons to them will help me pass any tedious moments during our stay, and I feel uniquely placed to offer such forlorn hopes my wise counsel.’

‘You can’t possibly live with us!’ she heard herself say, as if everything was settled and nothing left to do but decide where they would reside.

‘I really don’t see why not. Even the most exacting chaperon would trust your reputation to Cousin Estelle and my sister.’

‘Your cousin wouldn’t notice if you held an orgy under her very nose!’

‘An interesting notion, but I think I can restrain myself. And my sister would be justly furious if we abandoned her to Cousin Estelle’s tender mercies. She would never see the outside of the nearest library or Hatchards.’

‘You would be there,’ Serena protested, but her resolution was faltering.

She recalled the circus that was the London season for debutantes such as she and Rachel had once been with a shudder. To leave Rachel to face all that in the care of bookish, otherworldly Miss Langthorne would be distinctly unfriendly, and she knew she couldn’t do it.

‘My presence will make matters worse,’ she defended herself weakly, feeling she was leading a forlorn hope against a superior tactician.

‘Rubbish. Nothing could be worse than poor Rachel spending months being carted from one blue-stocking salon to another on my cousin’s coattails, and you know it—unless you’ve become as blue as my esteemed relative.’

‘You know perfectly well I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘and nobody could call Miss Langthorne formidable,’ she added lamely, quite ruining her effect.

‘I prefer to call her a force of nature,’ her undutiful cousin said with a surprisingly affectionate smile for a relative who benignly ignored him and everyone else most of the time.

‘That’s one alternative, I suppose.’

‘It is the only description I ever found that fitted her.’

‘As she has a reputation for speaking her mind, I can’t think why you consider her a suitable chaperon for myself or your sister, given that she will doubtless refuse to attend any event that’s unlikely to amuse or interest her.’

‘Which is precisely why I need your presence. Cousin Estelle, eccentric though she might be, would never permit immorality to flourish under any roof where she was residing,’ he replied, with every appearance of shocked virtue himself. ‘Any more than I would dream of suggesting it.’

‘I should stop right there, Sir Adam. You were doing so well until you got carried away,’ she said, with a frown that was only partly in jest.

‘Then ignore my pleas and come for Rachel’s sake. It could be a bigger disaster than her first season if you don’t support her.’

‘I really don’t see what I can do that any other widowed lady might not do better,’ she protested.

‘You have the sophistication of taste to see my sister is dressed to suit her own looks, rather than those of whichever blonde beauty the dressmakers are promoting this season—or you have when you choose to employ it,’ he said, with a disapproving glance at her very plain gown and shabby cloak.

‘You have a way of flattering a lady that is almost unparallelled, Sir Adam,’ she forced herself to parry lightly, but he had given her pause for thought and she suspected he knew it.

‘What do you think the Bond Street Beaux would say about my sister if she turned up in the salons of the ton in her current guise?’ he challenged her.

‘Poor Rachel,’ she said unwarily, as she considered her friend as she had last seen her clad in a tobacco-brown stuff gown that had never been fashionable, even in the dim and distant past when the village dressmaker had made it up for her.

‘Then you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll talk to Rachel, and if she truly wishes to go I’ll support her in any way I can.’

‘Hmm, an admirably evasive reply. You’ll support her, but is that to be from a distance or at her side, where she needs you?’

‘Where she needs me, of course. It’s time I returned the favour.’

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