Page 14 of About a Rogue
Bianca closed the door. “From doing what?”
Her sister’s wild eyes darted to the door, then to the window. “I’m eloping with Richard.” She took a crumpled paper from her skirt pocket and thrust it out, almost defiantly. “I’m going.”
Bianca read the first sentence of Mr. Mayne’s scrawl—My darling, I am in agony; if you love me half as much as I love you, let us fly to Manchester this very night before we are divided from each other forever—and smiled.
“Of course I won’t stop you,” she said quietly. “I’ve come to help you.”
Chapter Four
Max’s plan was proceeding brilliantly, by any objective measure.
The business was as solid as he’d thought, with far more potential to grow. Tate had shown him some spectacular samples of a brilliant cerulean glaze, unlike anything he’d ever seen. Max pictured services painted not with bucolic country scenes but with replicas of the great works of art—not merely Fragonard and Rubens but Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling. He was sure the painters Tate employed had the talent to do it, given what he’d seen so far. It would cause a sensation in London.
His marriage proposal had been accepted. Samuel Tate had given his blessing, and Miss Tate had blushed and stammered in gratitude when he spoke to her about it. Max stayed only one night in Marslip before dashing back to London to wind up his affairs there, keen to see the thing through.
Within a fortnight it was all but done. Tate had eagerly received the marriage contract. It was more fashionable to marry by license, so Max went to the effort of visiting Doctors’ Commons to secure one. He gave notice on his rooms, packed his things, and hired a manservant away from a friend who had recently suffered a disastrous loss at the gaming tables.
This time the journey to Staffordshire seemed easy and familiar, as if he were going home. In fact, Max reflected with satisfaction, he was—not only a new home and a new bride, but the first settled, fixed home and family he’d known in many years. Tate had offered him the former family house on the far side of the hill from the potteries. It wasn’t as fine as the house atop the hill, but it was solid and comfortable, and would allow Miss Tate easy access to her family while Max was traveling, spreading Tate wares around the country.
Max spent considerable time contemplating how best to make Perusia the preeminent source of fine pottery wares. He must establish contacts in Edinburgh, Antwerp, Calais, eventually Paris... Now that the war in America was over, trading was resuming with Boston and Charleston as well. The colonials must be starved for anything elegant after so many years of blockade. Yes, the Americans had enormous potential, particularly if Max made an early, bold strike to seize the market.
He said as much to Tate that night as they shared a cold supper in Max’s new home. Tate had met him at the door to hand over possession. His daughters, Tate explained, had begged off, to prepare. In the morning Max would marry Catherine, and she’d seen the house comfortably furnished and supplied. Just stepping over the threshold filled him with such a feeling of contentment that he knew, deep in his bones, this was his destiny.
“I thank God we crossed paths,” said Tate at the end of the evening. “You’re a rare one, St. James.”
Max could not agree more. “Mr. Tate,” he replied, “I might say the very same to you.”
At that moment, it seemed as though everything he had ever wanted was in the palm of his hand. And it was.
Until the next morning, in the church.
Bianca’s plan went off almost perfectly, if she did say so herself.
Cathy never had been one for scheming. The night she tearfully declared she was running off with Mr. Mayne had proved that. Her plan—if it could be called such—had been to pack her valise, lug it down the hill to the church after everyone had gone to bed, and tell Mr. Mayne that she was ready to elope. In the middle of the night. With no preparation whatsoever.
“Don’t be a goose,” had been Bianca’s reply to that. There was no need to flee in the dead of night; St. James was returning to London in the morning. They had days, even weeks to prepare, and the better they prepared, the better off Cathy would be with her curate.
First, they’d gone to the vicarage together. Any doubts Bianca had about Mayne’s stoutheartedness were swept aside by the way he seized Cathy and bent her backward in a passionate kiss. It went on so long, in fact, she had to turn her head and clear her throat twice to regain her sister’s attention.
This time Mayne rose to the occasion. Far from the dithering fool Aunt Frances called him, he arranged for a travel chaise. He plotted their journey to his elder sister’s home, where they could be married in peace and propriety. He took the money Bianca offered him without blinking an eye or saying a word of protest. He gazed at Cathy with rapt devotion, and swore to protect her with his life. Cathy twirled home with stars in her eyes and roses in her cheeks.
A week later Papa announced he had received the marriage contract from Mr. St. James. Cathy grew quiet and nervous, but bravely ventured a protest that it was perhaps too soon to wed someone she’d barely met. She spoke fondly of Mr. Mayne, and how much more at ease she felt around him. Deceiving Papa had not sat well with Cathy, and she seized that last chance to change his mind.
Up until then both sisters had hoped he would yet see reason. Papa was bewitched by St. James, but he could still come to his senses and recognize Cathy’s unhappiness and Mayne’s worth. Cathy especially hoped he would reconsider, no matter what it cost his business. By nature she was kind and caring, and she hated to hurt anyone’s feelings, let alone her beloved father’s.
Papa overrode her, saying firmly that Mayne was nothing but a country curate while St. James was a gentleman—and cousin to a duke, if she hadn’t forgotten—and that she would have years to become acquainted with him. It was a very advantageous marriage, and he was certain she would thank him someday.
After that Cathy stopped fretting about how upset Papa would be when she was gone.
As for Bianca, she had such an argument with her father over his callous dictating of Cathy’s marriage that he hadn’t spoken to her for a week. This time it suited her perfectly. It gave her freedom to help Cathy smuggle her trunk to the vicarage and plan how to slip out of the house the night before the wedding. It gave Cathy leisure to write a long letter to her father explaining everything—Cathy refused to leave without doing it, but Bianca was relieved to see that her sister’s eyes were dry at the end. There was a certain poetic justice in the thought of Papa dining with the interloper St. James on one side of the hill while Cathy sneaked down the far side of that same hill to meet her true love.
And now it was the morning of the wedding. Papa had invited half the town to celebrate his daughter’s marriage to a gentleman. Bianca had argued against that, too, but been overruled again. Mayne, of course, was nowhere to be seen, although Papa hadn’t been coldhearted enough to ask him to perform the ceremony. Mr. Filpot from St. Anne’s in Waddleston Grange had come, and was cooling his heels in the morning room, trimming his fingernails with a penknife.
Aunt Frances, as if scenting something on the wind, had walked over that morning and was installed in the breakfast room with Trevor, calling for a rasher of bacon and more preserves for her bread.
Maximilian St. James, Bianca presumed, was somewhere gazing fondly at himself in the mirror, preening at how he’d gulled an ambitious country potter and his simple daughters, and tallying up the many ways he could spend Cathy’s inheritance.
Bianca had also risen early, to monitor the maids and keep them from telling Papa about Cathy’s absence for as long as possible. She sent Jennie and Ellen running for water, the iron, the curling tongs, more water, then a cup of chocolate, until both maids eyed her resentfully and Ellen finally declared she must go to Miss Cathy, who was the bride after all—condemning Bianca’s unusually demanding behavior with a severe look.
