The Scandals Of An Innocent

CHAPTER SIX

“OH, DARLING, I cannot believe that such an appalling thing could have happened!” Dorothea, the Dowager Lady Vickery, rushed into the drawing room of Drum Castle, enfolded her elder son in a scented embrace, then released him to stand back and dab artistically at her eyes with her inadequate and lacy handkerchief. “I am so sorry for you, Miles, darling! To have inherited the Marquisate of Drum is…Well, it is quite…” Words seemed to fail her and she took refuge once more in wiping the tears from her eyes.

“It’s a damned disaster,” Miles finished for her, “begging your pardon, Mama.” He had been working on the estate finances in preparation for Churchward’s visit, and the grim columns of figures had not improved his mood. Drum had been badly run for years and had brought in very little income. His cousins had suffered from a congenital failure to understand that they had no money to spend. The combination of the two was disastrous and meant that he was more deeply in debt than he had realized. Alice’s eighty thousand pounds would clear most of the debt, and selling off those parts of the estate that were not entailed would ease the situation a little, but once he and Alice were married and her money spent the two of them would have nothing other than his Home Office salary-which was barely enough for one to live on, not two-and this ruined monstrosity of a castle. They would be surviving on credit for the rest of their lives unless he could think of a way to make a fortune.

Under the circumstances the arrival of his mother was about as welcome as one of the plagues of Egypt. He looked at her with ill-concealed impatience. “Might I ask what you are doing here, ma’am?” he said. “I really did not expect this.”

The dowager opened her hazel eyes plaintively wide. “We came to support you in your hour of need, darling,” she said. She gestured airily toward the door. “Celia is here, and Philip, too. When I realized that dear Mr. Churchward was coming to consult with you on matters of business-” she waved a hand at the lawyer, who was struggling into the room weighed down with what looked like a monstrous amount of the dowager’s luggage “-I prevailed upon him to allow us to accompany him. We knew that you would need us by your side at this difficult time.”

“How perceptive of you, Mama,” Miles said grimly. He nodded to the lawyer. “Churchward, you have my sympathies. I wish you had not bothered to come, Mama,” he added brutally, turning back to his mother. “This place is utterly uninhabitable, there are no servants and I will be selling off all the contents next week. There is nowhere for you to stay and you know you hate the north of England.”

The dowager’s expression set into lines that were surprisingly mulish. “Well, we shall all manage somehow,” she said briskly. “And you need not fear that we will have to stay in this ghastly ruin-” she cast the baronial room a look of profound dislike “-for we have arranged to visit your cousin Laura Anstruther at the Old Palace in Fortune’s Folly. I only had the luggage brought in because the carriage is so ancient that it leaks and the weather in the North is so appalling.”

“You are staying with Laura?” Miles asked. That was bad news, he thought, for it meant that Lady Vickery would be established in Fortune’s Folly for at least a month, possibly longer. He groaned inwardly. That would give her ample time to interfere in his courtship of Alice and cause all sorts of problems.

“I am so looking forward to getting to know Laura’s new husband better,” his mother was saying. “The Home Secretary speaks most highly of him. I hear he is one of the Hertfordshire Anstruthers. He is vastly handsome, is he not?”

“Dexter isn’t my type,” Miles said grimly, making a mental note to ask his friend what the hell he was playing at to allow Laura to invite his entire family to stay.

Celia Vickery came up to him and offered a cool cheek for him to kiss. “How are you, Miles?” she said, appraising him with her sharp hazel gaze. “Still alive, I see. The Curse of Drum has not yet carried you off.”

“Give it time,” Miles said. “Could you not have dissuaded Mama from coming, Celia?” he added, scarcely bothering to lower his voice. “You know I don’t want any of you here.”

His sister, the eldest of the family and unmarried at thirty-three, gave him an old-fashioned look. In appearance Celia was like their mother, with the same oval face, dark brown hair and winged eyebrows that had once proclaimed Lady Vickery a beauty. Yet it was odd, Miles thought, that the looks that had made Dorothea Vickery a diamond of the first water were somehow muted in her daughter. Celia could probably be described as well to a pass but she was no incomparable. Nor was she remotely like their mother in temperament but more like Miles himself, cool, cynical and direct.

“Of course I could not put her off,” Celia said. “You know mother is as persuadable as a Nile crocodile! Do you think I wanted to traipse all the way up here to see you, Miles?” she added. “It is the most damnable nuisance.” Her expression softened slightly as she looked at Philip, who was admiring a huge, dusty suit of armor that stood in a dark corner. “Actually I think Philip wanted to come. He enjoyed the travel and the new scenes, and he wanted to see you, Miles-”

Miles turned away from the appeal in her eyes. Philip, a late child and the apple of his mother’s eye, had been five years old when Miles had quarreled so dreadfully with their father and had left home to join the army. The boy was a stranger to him and that was the way Miles intended to leave it. It was far, far too late for him to establish a relationship with his family and he did not even want to try.

“There are no servants to make any refreshments, I fear,” he said pointedly as his mother sat down on an ancient chaise longue and raised a cloud of dust that almost choked them. “Why do you not repair to Fortune’s Folly now whilst Mr. Churchward and I conduct our business, Mama? I could join you all later for dinner.”

The dowager turned her expressive hazel eyes on him. “But, Miles, darling, we have only just arrived,” she protested. She settled back more comfortably, gestured Philip to sit beside her, and it was clear that she was going absolutely nowhere.

Miles sighed. He drove his hands into the pockets of his well-cut jacket of green superfine-fourteen pounds from Mr. Welbeck, the premier men’s outfitter in York, who was never likely to see the cash for it-and strolled over to the window. Outside, the early February day was already closing in; a gray mist hung over the Yorkshire fells, and the sleet spattered the window. The wind whistled in the chimneys and sent the cobwebs scurrying across the floor. The last thing that Miles wanted was his family with him in Yorkshire at such a time. They had already been obliged to sit by when he had sold Vickery House out from under them two years before, and before that Vickery Place, the sprawling country house in Berkshire where Miles and his brother and sisters had grown up. Now he would be selling Drum, as well, or at least the bits of the estate that were not entailed, plus all furnishings, fixtures and fittings. The Ton would soon be calling him the Merchant Marquis, or some such cutting sobriquet, for he was the man who had put his entire birthright on the market. He did not care, but he knew his mother would. The financial ruin of the Vickery barony and her consequent loss of status had hit her hard.

“I appreciate your concern for me, Mama,” Miles said carefully, without turning back to look at his mother, “and I realize that it is distressing for you to know that I am even more deeply in debt now than I was before I inherited Drum-”

“Oh, I am not worried about the debt!” Lady Vickery declared. She had always had a rather tenuous grasp of finance. “You can always find an heiress to wed, Miles! No, I am here because of the Curse of Drum! It is the most lamentable piece of bad luck to befall our family in years! You are doomed, Miles, positively doomed!”

Miles remembered Nat Waterhouse commenting on his mother’s superstitious nature and tried to smother his annoyance. “The only doom that is waiting for me, Mama,” he said, “is a sojourn in the Fleet if I cannot find myself an heiress in short order. You know I don’t believe in all that superstitious twaddle about the Curse of Drum.”

“You should do,” the dowager said crossly. “Look at your cousin Freddie! Dead in a bawdy house fire and he had only been Marquis of Drummond for a twelvemonth!”

“Miles is more likely to die worn out by one of his mistresses, like Cousin William,” Celia put in waspishly.

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as Lady Vickery covered Philip’s ears. “I am duly warned and can only hope that I have more stamina or perhaps more discrimination in my amorous adventures than Cousin Billy had.” He sighed irritably. The family curse was something that he treated with absolute contempt. He had not been a soldier for eleven years in order to develop a superstitious fear of death. As far as he was concerned the Curse of Drum only related to the fact that his cousins had been profligate to a man and had left thousands of pounds owing to the moneylenders.

“Miles, you are a disgrace,” his mother said reproachfully. “I am sure that your poor papa would be turning in his grave to hear you speak thus.”

“Papa did not have to be dead to disapprove of me,” Miles said evenly. “He would probably feel that the inheritance of Drum was my just deserts for a misspent life. No doubt he would say it was a judgment on me.”

Lady Celia stifled a laugh. “Papa was very keen on hellfire and damnation,” she said.

“As was appropriate for so eminent a man of the cloth,” Lady Vickery pointed out, smoothing the widow’s weeds she had worn for the past five years, since her husband had died. In the pale winter light she looked delicate and artfully pale, the epitome of the grieving widow. Miles’s father had been a younger son who had gone into the church, had unexpectedly inherited his brother’s barony and had risen to become Bishop of Rochester. The presence of the beautiful, high-born, gracious Dorothea at his side had done much to ensure his preferment and it was frequently said that His Grace would have reached the dizzy heights of the See of York or even Canterbury if only he had not died relatively young.

“Oh, we all know that Papa was all that was appropriate for a bishop,” Lady Celia said, with an edge to her voice that made Miles look at her closely. She did not meet his eyes but fidgeted with the stitching on her cuff. “He was an example to us all.”

“Celia, a little respect, if you please,” Lady Vickery said in a fading voice. “I know that you and your father had your differences, but Aloysius is dead.”

Celia made a small sound of disgust. Looking at her, Miles could see pity as well as impatience in her eyes as they dwelled on their mother’s tragic, piquant face.

“Mama,” Celia said, “it is Papa’s fault that Miles is in such desperate financial straits. Had he not been so extravagant, Miles would not have two cursed inheritances to contend with rather than one-”

Lady Vickery gave a little cry of distress and her daughter fell silent as the lacy handkerchief was applied again.

“Your papa was a good man.” Lady Vickery sniffed. “I will not hear another word against him, Celia! Do you hear me? He did his best for us all.”

There was an awkward little silence in the room. It was generally known within the Ton as well as within the Vickery family that the late bishop had been a deplorable spendthrift, just as Celia had said. He had entertained on a lavish scale and had not understood the meaning of the word retrench even when the bailiffs were at his door. Lady Vickery, Miles knew, tried to forget this regrettable aspect of her late husband’s character and had unofficially canonized him. As for the rest of the late Lord Vickery’s sins, they had been hidden so deep that no one would ever uncover them. Miles was aware that he was the only person who knew of his father’s transgressions.

He knew because he was the one who had taken the blame.

The anger stirred in him again, dark, painful and poisonous. He had worked so hard to lay those memories to rest along with his father. He would not allow them to be exposed now. It was ancient history, dead and buried. There was nothing that could be done to right old wrongs.

Mr. Churchward cleared his throat very loudly. The tips of his ears glowed bright red, a sign of his extreme discomfort on hearing family squabbles rehearsed before him.

“Returning to the Curse of Drum, my lord,” he said. “I do believe that you should treat the tales with a little more circumspection.”

Miles raised his brows. “I would not have expected you to indulge a belief in superstition, Churchward,” he drawled. “You are a man of the law, a believer in evidence and reason.”

Churchward blushed rather endearingly. He removed his spectacles and polished them agitatedly. “The empirical proof is too strong to ignore, my lord,” he said. “Sixteen marquises dead in less than one hundred years-”

“All dying in violent and horrible ways.” Lady Vickery shuddered, whilst Philip looked rather excited, as though he wanted the details.

“The result of no more than excessive carelessness,” Miles said. “You know our cousins were the most reckless, foolish and generally decadent of men.”

“But once the curse has taken you…” Churchward said unhappily.

“Philip will be next in line for the marquisate,” Celia Vickery finished, her words dropping into the room like pebbles down a well.

This aspect of the situation had already occurred to Miles although he wished that his sister had not made it quite so explicit. The Dowager Lady Vickery was looking stricken now, and Miles felt impatient to see his mama’s distress. She cared too much, that was the problem. She cared about their father’s reputation, she cared desperately about Philip’s future, she cared about the loss of Drum, and she even cared about him with a fondness Miles found inexplicable and utterly unwelcome. Looking at Philip’s youthful, clear-cut profile, Miles felt some emotion stir within him and dismissed it abruptly. It was too late for him to have any feelings of love or affection or even obligation toward his family. Old memories and emotions rose in him and he slammed the door on them, trapping them in the dark recesses of his mind. He wanted no love from his family now. He had lost them all when he had been eighteen, and it was too late to heal the breach. He would pack his mother and siblings off back to the South as soon as he could. They had, at least, been offered the sanctuary of a grace-and-favor cottage on a cousin’s estate in Kent so he need not worry that they would starve. They lived in vastly reduced circumstances, they were poor relations, but at least they were not begging on the streets.

“Mr. Appleby,” Philip said importantly, “is of the opinion that a belief in superstition is no more than a demonstration of an ill-educated mind.”

“Your tutor is a man of great wisdom,” Miles said. “I am glad to think that you are not in the care of a superstitious fool.”

“But we must make sure,” Lady Vickery protested. “We cannot afford to take any risks!” She sat forward in her seat and grabbed hold of Philip’s hand in what she clearly thought was a reassuring grip. “The only solution is for you to marry at once, Miles. I know that you have always been most resistant to the idea of matrimony, but it is your duty to provide an heir immediately in order to save your brother!”

“A charming thought, Mama,” Lady Celia murmured. “Miles can ensure the succession of another hapless sacrifice to the Curse of Drum.”

Miles smiled at her. “On past experience I do not think that one son will be enough, Mama,” he said. “Drummond needs an heir and several spares before Philip is safe. Look how many of our cousins have been cut down in the past.”

“Pray do not joke about it, Miles,” his mother said, her lip quivering piteously. “You always had a most lamentably odd sense of humor.”

“Your mama does have a point, my lord,” Mr. Churchward said. “It would be extremely advantageous for you to marry, and preferably to an heiress. Leaving aside the so-called curse, that would at least buy you time and stave off the most pressing of the moneylenders-”

He broke off as there was a loud ping from one of the springs in his wing chair. “I do beg your pardon,” he added. “This chair is particularly uncomfortable.”

“The furnishings here are all ghastly,” Lady Celia agreed, looking around the high-ceilinged room with deep disapproval. “The first thing that Miles should do is to have a bonfire.”

“Can’t do that,” Miles said. “When I say we have to sell everything, Celia, I mean everything, down to the last stick of firewood and the last chamber pot.”

Once again there was a silence. Lady Vickery fidgeted with her gloves. She looked pained, as though she had swallowed a fish bone. Celia’s firm expression softened slightly.

“I am sorry, Miles,” she said. “First Vickery Place, then Vickery House and now this! You must feel dreadful-”

“It can’t be helped,” Miles said briskly. Celia’s sympathy was the last thing he wanted. He did not need her pity. He looked at his mother’s pinched, white face. She was aware that he would forever be remembered as the man who had sold Vickery and sold Drum, too, the reckless, extravagant marquis who had brought the family fortunes so low that they were in the dust. It was unfair that he would take the blame for the extravagance of others but Miles was blisteringly aware that life was never fair. He had learned that lesson at eighteen when he was banished by his father for bringing the family honor low. Since then he had taught himself to care for nothing.

A knock resounded through the castle, the sound echoing off the stone of the walls and bouncing back to assault the eardrums. Lady Vickery winced.

“I believe that will be Frank Gaines, of Gaines and Partridge, the Skipton law firm,” Miles said. He looked at Mr. Churchward. “I asked him to join us to discuss the very matter you touched upon, Churchward-the business of my marriage.”

Lady Vickery gave a squeak of excitement. “Oh, Miles, you good, good boy! I knew you would not stand by and see your brother taken by the family curse!”

“This has nothing to do with the curse, Mama,” Miles said harshly, “and everything to do with my need to marry money very quickly indeed.”

“I will answer the door,” Lady Celia said practically, rising to her feet, as the knocker thudded again.

“Celia, no.” Lady Vickery was appalled. “That is what the servants are for.”

“Miles has no servants, Mama,” Celia said. “Have you not been attending? He is ruined, in Queer Street.” The knocker sounded a third time and she frowned. “Good gracious but Mr. Gaines is an impatient man.”

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as she headed for the door.

His sister dropped him a curtsy laced with irony and left the room. Whilst she was gone, Miles leaned an arm along the top of the stone mantelpiece-which needed a good clean and left a line of dust on the sleeve of his jacket-and reflected how uncomfortable the other occupants of the room looked. Philip was fidgeting and looked thoroughly bored to be so confined. Miles wished his mother had left Philip in London with his tutor. The boy should really be at school, but Miles could no longer afford to pay for his brother’s education and had only been able to afford the services of Mr. Appleby because he was a distant connection of the dowager and had grudgingly offered to reduce his fees out of family feeling. It was something, Miles thought, when even the tutor was patronizing his poor relations.

Lady Vickery, meanwhile, looked as though she was sitting on a bed of nettles. Clearly the news of Miles’s imminent betrothal had excited her considerably and she could not wait to hear the details. She huddled on the sofa in her winter pelisse, holding her hands out toward the fireplace in a vain attempt to get warm. In this drafty medieval castle it seemed almost impossible to build up any heat at all. The stone fireplaces were all broad enough to house an army, and the fire that Miles had coaxed into life in the red drawing room today could not be felt beyond a radius of three feet.

Mr. Churchward shuffled his papers again for no particular reason and cleared his throat simply to break the silence. He looked as though he would be happier taking refuge behind a desk and preferably one a long way away from this shabby castle with its uneasy atmosphere. He, too, was a man who preferred the bustle of city life, and Miles knew that the isolation and harsh beauty of these Yorkshire hills was not to everyone’s taste, particularly in winter. And then there was Drum Castle itself, which seemed so different from Miles’s childhood memories. He had spent a great deal of time here in his holidays from Eton, for his cousin Anthony had been an almost exact contemporary of his and the castle had rung with sounds of their martial games. Miles was not remotely superstitious, but even he was forced to admit that there was something strangely oppressive about these dark rooms now, crisscrossed as they were with spiders’ webs and trails of dust. Drum Castle seemed positively Gothic now, weighed down by its heavy furnishings and by the dark curtains that closed off the dusty windows. Today, with the wind lifting the hangings from the old stone of the walls and making the building creak and groan, it felt like a castle in a nightmare. Really, Miles thought, one would hardly need a family curse to send one demented in a very short space of time.

Miles thought of the so-called Curse of Drum and of the deaths of his two predecessors. His cousin Freddie’s death had been unpleasant, but it could have happened to anyone, Miles thought ruefully, or at least to anyone who had the sensual appetite of his cousin and the lack of discretion to match.

Anthony, the fifteenth marquis, had been a different matter. He had been cut down at Vimiero, a member of the 20th Light Dragoons who had suffered shocking losses during a cavalry charge. Miles, who had seen the action himself, shuddered inwardly. He had liked Anthony very much and still felt his loss keenly. Their childhood friendship had matured into an easy adult comradeship. His cousin was one of the few people he had been able to talk to of their shared experiences in the Peninsular Wars. Coming back to civilian society had been a strange and isolating experience after the carnage of the battlefield. No one who had not been there could understand what it had been like, and the well-meaning attempts of some of Miles’s relatives and friends to assure him that they understood his dark moods simply made him feel more alone.

The door opened and Celia reentered the room, followed by a man in well-cut clothes who looked to Miles’s eyes more like a sportsman than a lawyer. Frank Gaines was a big man, tall, broad shouldered and with the durable air of someone who would wear well in adversity. He had brown hair peppered with gray and a humorous but observant glint in his gray eyes. His face was lined and burned dark from the sun, and his nose looked like a bent bow. Miles liked him on sight, although he was fairly certain that any cordiality between them was unlikely to last through the discussions of his proposal of marriage to Alice Lister. As one of Alice’s trustees, Gaines would be a difficult man to win over.

Miles was also amused to see that Celia, whose chilly composure in the presence of the opposite sex was legendary, was looking ever so slightly flustered. He wondered what on earth had occurred between Frank Gaines and his sister in the hall.

Gaines set a chair for Celia, who thanked him in arctic tones. He gave her a look that made her blush, faintly but distinctly, and set her lips in a very straight line. Mentally raising his brows, Miles held out a hand to Gaines and was not surprised to discover that the other man had a very firm handshake.

“Glad you were able to join us, Gaines,” he said.

“How do you do, my lord,” Gaines responded. “It is a pleasure to see you in such good health.”

Miles’s lips twitched. “Thank you, Gaines. Give me time. I have only been Marquis of Drummond for a very short while. My relatives are doing their best to convince me that the family curse will carry me off in the fullness of time.”

“Indeed, my lord,” Gaines said, smiling.

“May I introduce my mother, the Dowager Lady Vickery, and my brother, Philip,” Miles said. “My sister you have just met, of course, and Mr. Churchward must be well-known to you, I imagine.”

Gaines bowed to Lady Vickery and to Philip with aplomb, gave Lady Celia a look that made her raise her chin with hauteur and nodded to Churchward. He took the chair Miles indicated and sat down, uncoiling his long length with a sigh.

“Would you care for refreshment, Mr. Gaines?” the dowager asked hospitably.

“Because if so,” Celia put in, “you will have to make it yourself. My brother has no servants, having no money with which to pay them.”

“At the least we are spared that shocking stew that passes for tea in these parts,” the dowager said with a shudder. “You can stand a spoon up in it!”

“That is how we drink tea in Yorkshire,” Miles said. “Churchward, Gaines and I are going to get down to business now, Mama,” he added. “Might I try to persuade you once again to repair to Fortune’s Folly where, one hopes, Laura’s servants will be able to serve you tea to your satisfaction?”

“I would not dream of it!” the dowager declared. “If you are to discuss your marriage plans, Miles, then I wish to be here!”

“And so do I,” Celia added, unexpectedly, “to hear which deluded woman is actually prepared to accept your suit, Miles.”

“As to that,” Miles said, “I yesterday made a proposal of marriage to Miss Alice Lister of Fortune’s Folly.” He turned courteously to Churchward. “I apologize that I have not had the opportunity to apprise you of my plans in advance, Mr. Churchward. I understand that you are one of Miss Lister’s trustees, with Mr. Gaines here as the other, which was why I asked to speak with both of you today.”

“Indeed I am Miss Lister’s trustee, my lord,” Churchward said, surprise registering in his voice. He exchanged a look with Frank Gaines, who raised his brows expressively.

“Has…has Miss Lister accepted your suit, my lord?” Churchward continued, in tones that did not fall far short of incredulity.

Miles nodded. “She has.”

He saw Frank Gaines stiffen at the news and his brows snap down in intimidating fashion. “Indeed, my lord,” he said. “You do surprise me. I was under the impression that Miss Lister held you in strong dislike.”

“I managed to find a way to persuade her,” Miles said smoothly. He knew the lawyer was suspicious but told himself that Gaines could not prove anything-not if Alice kept quiet about the blackmail, which she surely would having so much to lose.

“Oh, Miles could persuade any woman to marry him if he tried hard enough,” Lady Vickery put in helpfully, “and what young lady would not wish to be Marchioness of Drummond?” She leaned forward. “How big is Miss Lister’s fortune?”

Mr. Gaines and Mr. Churchward exchanged another look. “Miss Lister inherited a sum in the region of eighty thousand pounds, madam,” Gaines said carefully, “and in addition she has properties in London and Skipton. There are, however, conditions attached to the inheritance when Miss Lister comes to wed.”

“So I understand,” Miles said.

“How tiresome,” the dowager proclaimed. “Why must people always make these matters so complicated?”

“In order to protect the heiress from unscrupulous fortune hunters, madam,” Gaines said, looking straight at Miles. Miles smothered a grin. The lawyer had his measure, no doubt of it, but there was little that he could do.

“Since you are insisting on being party to this discussion, Mama,” Miles said, “I suppose I should inform you of the background. Miss Lister is a former maidservant who last year inherited the fortune of her late employer-”

Lady Vickery’s face registered an appalled expression. “Miles, darling,” she said, “surely you cannot be considering an alliance with the servant classes?”

“Better Miles wed a servant girl with money than be clapped up in the Fleet prison for debt, Mama,” Celia said bracingly.

Lady Vickery sighed melodramatically. “Do you think so? I suppose it might be. At least we can use her money to pay off the debts and we can all move into her house in London. It does not matter if she is not presentable. Well, it matters a little, for people will talk scandal about you marrying beneath you, Miles, but we shall just have to manage. We can make up some excuse as to why your wife cannot go into society. She could be delicate, perhaps. Everyone will know that we are lying, but at least she need not be seen in public-”

“Mama,” Miles interjected, holding up a hand to stop the flow of words, “Miss Lister has perfect manners and is entirely presentable.”

“Then I suppose she must be as ugly as sin,” Lady Vickery mourned, “for there is bound to be something wrong with her. A servant! Hands the size of hams to do so much manual labor, I suppose-”

“Miss Lister is accounted uncommonly pretty, my lady,” Frank Gaines interposed, steel underlying his tone. “She would grace the name of Vickery.” More than your family deserves, his tone implied.

“A pretty servant girl,” Celia snapped. She sounded put out at Gaines’s words. “Why, that is right up your street, Miles. What are we waiting for? Call the banns!”

Miles looked at the lawyers, who both looked back at him with very straight faces. “There is, as Mr. Gaines mentioned, a small difficulty,” he murmured.

“The conditions attached to the match?” Celia asked.

“Quite so,” Miles said. “Miss Lister’s trustees-” he inclined his head toward the lawyers “-have to agree that I am a worthy suitor. In fact, I believe I have to prove it to them over a period of three months.” He raised his brows interrogatively. “Gaines? Churchward? Do you think I stand the remotest chance?”

“You put me in a very difficult position, my lord,” Mr. Churchward said unhappily. “Very tricky indeed.” He shook his head. “Oh dear, oh dear. I hope you will not take offense when I say I wish that your choice had not alighted on Miss Lister, of all people.”

“I told you there was something wrong with the gel!” Lady Vickery said triumphantly.

“On the contrary, madam,” Churchward said, looking chagrined, “I am of the same mind as Mr. Gaines that Miss Lister is an utterly charming young woman.” He turned to Miles. “As your family lawyer I have to advise you to marry an heiress, my lord, but as Miss Lister’s trustee I have to say that you are an entirely inappropriate and unworthy suitor, and I would be very remiss in my duty to give my permission to the match.”

“Not an overwhelming endorsement, then,” Miles said. “Gaines.” He turned to the other man. “Are you of the same mind?”

“No, my lord,” the lawyer said. He met Miles’s gaze very squarely. “I would put the matter more starkly than Mr. Churchward has. I am of the mind that it would be well nigh impossible for you to convince me of your worth. You are a rake, a gamester and a blatant fortune hunter-”

“Oh, that is nonsense!” Lady Vickery interposed. “Miles does not gamble!”

“Lord Vickery has never made any secret of his affaires, madam,” Gaines said sharply. “He set up a notorious courtesan as his mistress-”

“Not in front of the boy!” Lady Vickery said, covering Philip’s ears again.

“The relationship between myself and Miss Caton is over,” Miles said. “I am quite reformed.”

Celia smothered a snort of disbelief and Gaines gave Miles a wintry smile. “That remains to be seen,” he murmured. “Then there was the matter of Miss Bell, the nabob’s daughter.”

“That was most unfortunate,” the dowager put in. “Unfortunate in that she jilted Miles, I mean. She was the biggest heiress in London. Ghastly parents, of course, but one must simply concentrate on the money.”

“I am aware of the circumstances, madam,” Mr. Gaines said, with cold courtesy. “Lord Vickery abandoned his earlier pursuit of Miss Lister in order to win the larger financial prize-”

“And then lost his gamble because at the time he was only a baron and Miss Bell preferred an earl,” Celia said, smiling. “She will be kicking herself now that Miles has inherited a marquisate.”

“Such accidents of fate overset even the most careful planning,” Lady Vickery said. “All the same, it serves the chit right.”

“I accept,” Miles said, “that the episode does not reflect well on me.” Under Frank Gaines’s chilly scrutiny he was starting to feel like a schoolboy hauled up in front of the headmaster at Eton.

“You are a cad,” Celia pointed out.

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said. “Your help in this matter is much appreciated.”

“I believe your sister has summed up the situation very succinctly,” Gaines said.

“So,” Celia said, eyebrows raised, “no lawyerly approval, then?”

Churchward shuffled his papers again and avoided Miles’s gaze. Gaines met it head-on in a moment of tension.

“Mr. Gaines and Mr. Churchward cannot actually refuse me at this point,” Miles said softly. “If I fulfill Lady Membury’s conditions, which are that I prove myself an honest and worthy gentleman over a period of three months, then they must accede to Miss Lister’s wishes and agree to the match.”

“Three months!” the dowager said. “That might be a little ambitious for you, darling.”

“Well nigh impossible, as Mr. Gaines has said,” Celia opined.

“Not at all,” Miles said. “I have reformed in order to win Miss Lister’s hand.”

He saw Frank Gaines’s lips set in a line of grim disapproval. “Why Miss Lister would even consider you as a suitable husband is beyond me, my lord,” he said.

Miles smiled blandly. “Perhaps Miss Lister pities me, being doubly burdened with both a family debt and a family curse. Or perhaps she feels that I need to change my ways and she thinks she is the woman to reform me,” he said.

Churchward looked at Gaines, who shook his head in a gesture of exasperation.

“It is true that Miss Lister devotes herself to a variety of lost causes,” Mr. Churchward said with resignation, “but in this case…”

“You feel that she has overreached herself?” Miles murmured.

“I think, my lord,” Churchward said with asperity, “that Miss Lister is most misguided. Reform you indeed! A desperately unlikely state of affairs!”

“I can barely wait to meet her, Miles,” Celia said. “A devotee of lost causes, eh? She might be just the woman for you.”

“So I think,” Miles said smoothly. He turned back to the lawyers. “If I do somehow manage to meet the requirements of Lady Membury’s will and behave as an upright and worthy gentleman for three months,” he said, “you cannot refuse consent, can you, gentlemen?”

Once again Gaines and Churchward exchanged a look. “No, my lord,” Gaines admitted reluctantly, “we cannot. Not if you fulfill Lady Membury’s stipulations.” He gave Miles a particularly piercing look. “I take it that Miss Lister has at least had the sense to refuse an official announcement until you have fulfilled the conditions?”

“Sadly,” Miles said, “she has. And I have agreed.”

He saw Gaines relax infinitesimally. “Then perhaps she has not completely lost all sense,” he said grimly.

“I assure you that Miss Lister made her decision in full possession of her faculties,” Miles said. “She is an admirably strong and resolute woman.” He nodded politely to the lawyers. “I look forward to fulfilling the terms of Lady Membury’s will and making the official announcement in due course.” He smiled. “You will see, gentlemen, just how worthy I can be when there is a fortune at stake.”