Page 3 of To Marry and to Meddle
“In fact,” he continued, “I’ve taken the liberty of asking Lady Willingham herself to accompany us, so that your virtue will be in no danger.”
Emily opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, the unmistakable voice of the dowager marchioness rang down the corridor.
“Ah! There you are!”
Emily and Lord Julian turned. The dowager marchioness was in her seventies—Emily guessed; she was too fond of her own life and limbs to risk making any inquiries regarding specifics—and barely five feet tall, but she moved with surprising swiftness when she wished to.
“I understand we are to go for a walk in this charming weather?” the dowager marchioness asked as she joined them. She was wearing a gown of yellow muslin and had already donned a jaunty hat that involved an improbable amount of lace and feathers, and she looked eager to partake in a morning of sunshine and exercise. Emily had no objection to Lady Willingham’s company; her friend Diana had arranged for Lord Willingham’s grandmother to serve as her chaperone, and Emily had so far found the experience to be a marked improvement over her usual lot, which involved trying to convince her mother to leave her in the company of her friends for more than ten seconds, so that she might discuss anything of interest. Lady Willingham, by contrast, seemed to adopt the philosophy that so long as Emily was in possession of all her limbs and not in imminent danger of being deflowered in a linen cupboard, she could be left well enough alone.
“I… need to fetch my bonnet and wrap,” Emily said, faltering a bit, taken aback by the speed with which this plan was progressing.
“I sent your abigail to do so,” Lady Willingham said smugly. “She should be reappearing any—oh! Here she is!”
Emily turned in time to have her wrap and bonnet pressed into her hands by Hollyhock, her lady’s maid and—she suspected—a spy on behalf of her mother, who would no doubt be waiting in London for a full accounting of Emily’s behavior while away. Turning away from Hollyhock with a murmur of thanks, Emily looked from Lord Julian to the dowager marchioness and back again.
“This has all been very… smoothly arranged,” she said blandly, trying to keep her voice absent of any trace of suspicion; despite her best efforts, she still thought she sounded a bit like someone noting that an execution had been efficiently planned.
“Hasn’t it?” Lord Julian asked, pushing himself off the wall and giving her that lethal smile of his. He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
They had scarcely made it through the front doors before the dowager marchioness began her performance.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and Emily and Lord Julian turned to see the lady clutching at her chest in dramatic fashion.
“Are you quite all right, my lady?” Lord Julian asked.
“Nothing but a flutter, I assure you,” Lady Willingham replied, waving a hand. “I shall be right as rain in a moment.”
Lord Julian released Emily’s arm to offer it to Lady Willingham instead.
“Oh, that ismostkind of you, my lord,” the dowager marchioness said fawningly; Emily, who had spent a fair amount of time with the lady over the past week and had never before heard her employ such a tone, suppressed an uncharacteristic desire to roll her eyes. Perhaps she unwittingly showed some sign that she found this display less than convincing, however, because Lord Julian shot her an amused look.
Ignoring him, she instead cast an appreciative glance around at their surroundings. Elderwild, in rural Wiltshire, was set amid rolling hills and woodland; the party had already explored the woods some days earlier, and today Lord Julian had instead set their course for the lake that stretched out at the base of the sloping lawns at the front of the house. There was a gravel path that led from the front door down a gentle incline to the lake’s edge, and they continued down it now, conversing idly about the beautiful late summer weather and the agreeable nature of the house party thus far.
Lord Willingham’s shooting party was an annual affair, but this was the first year that Emily herself had been in attendance; she was always invited as a matter of courtesy, given the fact that her two closest friends were Violet, Lady James Audley, the wife of one of Lord Willingham’s best friends, and Diana, Lady Templeton, a widowed viscountess who was the sister of Lord Willingham’s other closest friend, but her parents had never allowed her to attend. Emily’s mother liked to keep a watchful eye on her only daughter, and generally adhered to the philosophy that one’s offspring (particularly when female) should be kept in sight as much of the time as possible—particularly when one was rather dependent on said offspring’s beauty and pristine reputation to prevent the family’s precarious finances from slipping entirely into ruin.
This year, however, thanks to Diana’s intervention, Emily was mercifully free—for an entire fortnight!—from both her mother’s hovering and the suitor she’d been entertaining for years now.
Which, in turn, left her free to entertain other suitors.
Not that she would have characterized Lord Julian precisely as a suitor—he had a dreadful reputation and had never given much of an impression that he was interested in matrimony. Their meeting that summer had come about when Lord Julian—a university acquaintance of Diana’s brother, Penvale—had been convinced to put his acting skills to unconventional use, playing the role of a physician as part of a rather half-baked scheme in which Violet had feigned a deadly case of consumption to get her estranged husband’s attention. Somehow, the plan had worked—though Emily remained privately unconvinced that the drama involved had been strictly necessary to bring about the reconciliation between Violet and Lord James—and, in exchange for his assistance, Lord Julian hadextracted a promise from Violet to attend a show at his somewhat disreputable theater.
Violet, never one to shirk a promise—and, truthfully, never one to miss a chance to get to visit a place that she really wasn’t supposed to go—had attended a show with Diana and Emily in tow. Emily and Julian had struck up an odd sort of friendship in the month that followed—he waltzed with her at society balls and had escorted her to the odd musicale or Venetian breakfast; their arrangement was unspoken, but there had always been an understanding between them that they were of use to each other.
Emily had no complaints about this state of affairs; she knew that Lord Julian liked being seen with her on his arm to improve the reputation of his theater, and thought that the theater’s owner giving the appearance of courting a respectable lady would help in this aim. Given that any time spent with him meant less time spent in the company of a certain Mr. Cartham, the odious man her parents had insisted she allow to court her for three Seasons now, Emily wasn’t terribly bothered by Lord Julian’s motives.
Until the past week. Because ever since they’d arrived at Elderwild, he’d given less an impression of a man feigning a courtship than an impression of a man conducting one in earnest. There had been long, lingering glances—ones that, were Emily in her first Season rather than her sixth, she might have mistaken for the glances of a lovestruck, enamored swain—and constant offers of his escort—around the grounds, to meals, even between the drawing room and the library to fetch a missing glove. There had even been rather bold allusions on Lord Julian’s part to her family’s financial woes and their entanglement with Mr. Cartham, and an implication that he could somehow make these troubles go away, were she his wife.
He had, in short, done everything shy of proposing outright.
Emily still wasn’t entirely certain why. But she suspected she was about to find out.
Matters could not proceed in that direction, however, while they were in the presence of Lady Willingham—but then, right on schedule, that estimable lady once again brought their progress to an abrupt halt.
“I think…” She trailed off dramatically, reaching her hand up in the general vicinity of her heart. “I think I feltanother flutter!”
“Lady Willingham, you must allow me to escort you back to the house,” Lord Julian said—Emily would have found his offer gallant, were it not for the fact that he, despite being a rather skilled actor, seemed barely able to muster the appropriate note of concern. “You are clearly unwell,” he added, in the tone of someone observing that it looked like rain.
“No, no, my dear boy,” the dowager marchioness said tremulously. “I simply moved too quickly. I shall find my own way back, at my own pace. Please allow me this moment with my own thoughts….” She turned and began to make her way back toward the house; for about five steps, she moved at a convincingly feeble pace, before breaking into what Emily could only characterize as a trot.
