A Christmas Promise Page 2

  “Then,” the earl said, “I shall have to reconcile my mind to debtors’ prison, I suppose. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot reach into a pocket and bring out the sum I owe you. I wish I could. Believe me.”

  “I do, my lord,” the merchant said, resuming his old occupation of rubbing his hands together. “But your debts can be canceled in a moment, my lord.”

  The earl smiled arctically.

  “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, so to speak,” Mr. Transome said. “You do something for me, my lord, and I’ll cancel your debt. Every last penny of it. And make sure that you have the wherewithal to make Grenfell Park one of the showpieces of England and its farms the most prosperous. And to spend some time and money at your tailor’s again.”

  The earl raised his eyebrows.

  “You are waiting to hear what it is you must do for me,” Mr. Transome said. “It is a small something, my lord, in exchange for what you will get in return. But it will mean a great deal to me.”

  The earl did not change his expression.

  “I will cancel your debts and settle half of my fortune on you, my lord—and it is a considerable fortune,” the man said, “if you will marry my daughter. And most of the remaining half of my fortune will be hers after my death and so in effect will be yours too.”

  The Earl of Falloden stared in disbelief at his visitor. “You want me to marry your daughter,” he said faintly, wondering for a moment if he had walked into some strange dream. A cit’s daughter. A coal merchant’s daughter. A total stranger.

  “She is nineteen years old and a beauty, even if I do say so myself,” Mr. Transome said. “And if it is refinement you want, my lord, you cannot do better than my Ellie. I had her educated at Miss Tweedsmuir’s academy. Two lords’ daughters were there at the same time and a colonel’s daughter too. She was particular friends with Lord Hutchins’s girl.”

  “How do you know I am not married already?” the earl asked coldly. “No, disregard that question. I do not have a doubt that you know everything about my life, sir. Doubtless you know of my attachment, though not betrothal, to Miss Dorothea Lovestone. Doubtless you know of the mistress I have had in keeping for a year past.”

  “Miss Alice Freeman,” Mr. Transome said. “And a beauty she is too, if you don’t mind my saying so, my lord. She is a credit to your good taste. But then so will Ellie be. You will have her beauty and her refinement and education and half my fortune, my lord. And she will be your countess. She will bear you the heir to Grenfell Park and your earldom. It is all I ask, my lord.” He chuckled. “To be grandfather to an earl.”

  “Mr. Transome,” the earl said quietly, “get out of my house.”

  The merchant scratched his balding head. “I understand that you are a man of pride, my lord,” he said. “What member of the peerage is not? And I know that it goes against the grain, so to speak, to consider marrying into the merchant classes. But sometimes necessity must swallow up pride. I really cannot see that you have any alternative to what I have suggested.”

  “Debtors’ prison,” the earl said curtly. “That is an alternative, sir.”

  “You have not even seen my Ellie,” Mr. Transome said. “How can you be sure you would prefer prison, my lord? And I cannot believe you are serious. It is bravado. But even without prison, what is there ahead of you in life? You have not been able to offer for Miss Lovestone, have you, my lord, even though you have the title to dangle in front of her papa’s eyes? You are too proud to offer her marriage while you are debt-ridden. But if you will pardon me for saying so, you will be an old man or perhaps even a man in his grave before you are free to offer. It is doubtful that her papa would accept you anyway, since he is not himself a wealthy man.”

  “My relationship with Miss Lovestone is entirely my own concern,” the earl said.

  “Quite so,” his visitor agreed. “But you were the first to mention her name, my lord. Let me be brief, since I see that you are eager to bring this interview to an end. You must marry my daughter within the month, my lord, or I shall call in my debts within the same month. I would hate to do it, but business is business.”

  The earl set his hand on the knob of a door. “Allow me to show you out,” he said.

  “I shall call tomorrow, my lord,” Mr. Transome said. “I cannot wait any longer. I trust you will think carefully of your decision.”

  “There is nothing to think of,” the earl said, opening the doors and motioning his guest to precede him into the hallway. “You will be wasting your time returning here, sir. I will bid you a good morning.”

  “Until tomorrow, then, my lord,” Mr. Transome said, taking his coat and hat from a footman. “I believe that in the course of one whole day and one whole night you will see that in all wisdom you have only one possible course. And it will be a good one, I can promise you. I have chosen you with care, since I will be entrusting to you my dearest fortune of all.”

  “Good day to you, sir,” the earl said, and he nodded to the footman to open the door and turned away himself to climb the stairs.

  He felt rather, he thought, as a condemned man must feel when climbing the steps to the scaffold.

  ELEANOR TRANSOME WAS NO longer reading the letter that lay open on her lap. She was seated sideways on the window seat in her bedchamber, her legs drawn up before her, staring out at the dreary November day. But she saw nothing.

  That was that, then. Wilfred did not want her. He did not love her. Oh, he said in his letter that he both wanted and loved her. He said it more than once. He said that he would always love her and always want her. But he would not marry her.

  His reason was a noble one. He would not take her from the life of luxury to which she was accustomed, he wrote, in order to make her the wife of a struggling shipping clerk who might never make his fortune. And he would not accept help from her father even if it were offered.

  “A man has his pride, Ellie,” he had written—she had read the letter enough times already to have it memorized. “And in some ways pride is stronger than love, for I would be consumed with shame if I begged your father for you with a sizable dowry and owed everything to him instead of to my own efforts.”

  Eleanor closed her eyes. Men and their pride! She had written to him, improper as it was for her to make the move, explaining the situation to him, begging him to believe that she loved him, that for her love was all, that fortune and position meant nothing. After all, he had already expressed his intention of marrying her at some time in the future.

  “I must set you free,” he had written. “I would have worked and waited forever to deserve you, Ellie. But everything is changed now. I am sorry about your father. I had not realized that things were quite so bad. But he has tried to make provision for you. You had better bow to his wishes. At least you will be set for life—as you have been accustomed to be and as you deserve to be. Forget me, Ellie. Pretend in your mind and in your heart that I never existed.”

  But he had concluded the letter with a passionate affirmation of his love for her and an assurance that she would be in his heart every moment for the rest of his life.

  She knew it was hopeless. Dear proud, foolish Wilfred. She knew that she would never succeed in changing his mind. And so he was lost to her, because she was rich and he was poor. Although they were second cousins. Perhaps because they were second cousins. Papa disapproved of Wilfred and his father because they had not been as successful as he. And Papa had always opposed her growing attachment to Wilfred, fanned by frequent meetings at family gatherings, calling it puppy love, chucking her under the chin and assuring her that he had far more satisfactory plans for her than marriage to Wilfred.

  There was an earl. Eleanor still had her eyes closed. She let her head drop sideways so that her temple rested against a cold pane of the window. She did not know his name or anything at all about him except that Papa had set about netting him for her and was confident of success. That meant that he would succeed. Papa always did when he set his mind to
something.

  Papa wanted her to marry an earl. A member of the peerage. A member of the ton. She shuddered and remembered all the humiliation of the summer two years before spent in the country with her school friend Pamela, Lord Hutchins’s daughter. She had been seventeen, fresh from school, eager for life and for fun and for love, and quite unconcerned about the fact that she was different in one essential way from every other guest. She had never even heard the word “cit” before that summer. But she had come to know it well, and to know that it was her nickname among the guests and that it was a derogatory term. It meant that she was a member of a lower class, an upstart class, a vulgar class. She had seen nothing but disdain in the eyes of the other ladies and contempt in the eyes of the gentlemen—except that the gentlemen had also assumed that a cit would be freer with her favors than a lady. Eleanor shuddered again, in part at the way she had reacted to it all—fighting back with instinct more than reason.

  Papa wanted her to marry an earl. And the trouble was that she would not have the heart to say no. Not now. If Wilfred had replied differently, perhaps she would have made a stand. Undoubtedly, she would have made a stand. But without Wilfred there seemed no point in anything. Certainly not in defiance. And how could she defy a dying father who had been everything to her through her life?

  Eleanor bit her lip, but unbidden tears squeezed between her eyelids anyway. Papa wanted so badly to see her well settled before he died. It had always been the pinnacle of ambition for him, he had told her just a few weeks before—the conversation that had prompted her letter to Wilfred—to marry her into the nobility, into the landed classes. He would die a happy man, he had assured her, if he could see her become a lady, which was what he had trained her all her life to become.

  Perhaps Papa did not realize, she thought, that only one thing could create a lady—birth. She might marry a dozen earls, but she would still be a cit. For all of the rest of her life she would be despised. She did not want to be despised. She wanted to be loved. It was all she had ever wanted. Just simply to be loved. Was it a great deal to ask?

  Obviously it was. She spread her hand over the letter on her lap without looking down at it.

  Wilfred!

  But the sound she had been half listening for reached her at that moment and put an abrupt end to her painful thoughts and her self-pity. She jumped to her feet and raced from her room and down the stairs to find that the person who had entered the house was indeed her father. Looking stooped and gaunt and exhausted.

  “Papa,” she said, waving away the servant and setting her arms up about her father’s neck to kiss him gently. She knew better than to hug him tightly and cause him pain. “You should not have gone out. Oh, you know you should not. You are so tired. Come into the parlor and I shall fetch you a stool for your feet and a blanket for your legs. And I shall have some tea brought up to be taken with your medicine.”

  While she spoke, she undid the buttons of his great-coat and lifted the garment gently from his shoulders, careful not to bump against him. She smiled cheerfully at him.

  “I’ll be sitting down and lying down long enough, Ellie,” he said. “And it is a good morning’s work I have done. One more tomorrow and all will be settled.”

  “As if other people could not conduct your business for you,” she scolded, linking her arm lightly through his and leading him into the warm parlor and to the large blanket-draped chair beside the fire. “Papa, you should rest more. And you are in pain. I can tell by the fixed smile on your face. It is well over an hour past the time for your medicine.”

  “Medicines dull the mind as well as the pain,” he said, lowering himself carefully into the chair and setting his head back with closed eyes. “All will be settled by tomorrow, Ellie. And then I can die with an easy mind.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said, smoothing the thin hair back from his brow and kissing it before fetching the stool for his feet and lifting them carefully onto it. “All you need is rest, Papa.”

  “Ah, the time for make-believe is past, Ellie,” he said, opening his eyes to smile wanly at her. “Ring for tea, then. That carriage ride seemed interminable. Tomorrow the earl will agree to my terms and I shall see the two of you married before I die.”

  She made no protests. She had made enough during the past month, ever since Papa’s physicians had finally admitted to him, on his insistence, that the cancer he had was killing him and was not progressing slowly. The time for protests was over, especially now that she had heard from Wilfred.

  “What are your terms?” she asked quietly, ringing the bell for the tray to be brought in.

  “All his debts paid and half my fortune,” he said. “He has a huge estate and one of the finest mansions and parks in England, Ellie. With my money he can restore it to magnificence. And you will be his countess. Tomorrow it will be all arranged and then I shall die a happy man.”

  She said nothing but stood quietly before the fire, looking down at him. It was hard to believe that just a few months before he had been a vigorous, robust man, who had appeared to be the picture of health. Now all his flesh had fallen away. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were hollow. His breath was coming in rasping gasps. She knew he was in great pain and silently willed the servants to come quickly with the medicine that would dull it for a few hours.

  So she was to be married for her money. But of course there was no other reason why a peer of the realm would marry someone from her class. She had known that all along. But she was to be married to an impecunious man who had lived carelessly enough to incur great debts—she had no doubt that they must be great if he was being induced to marry the daughter of a cit, sight unseen. A man who would despise her as the unpleasant but necessary means by which he had extricated himself from trouble. And a man who would waste the fortune Papa had worked hard a lifetime to amass.

  Sometimes, she thought, it felt as if she had been dealt a death sentence just as surely as Papa had.

  2

  YOU ARE FOXED, RANDOLPH.” SIR ALBERT HAGLEY stood over his friend, grinning. “Better let me get you home, old chap.”

  The Earl of Falloden swirled the dregs of brandy in his glass but did not down them. Yes, he was foxed—for the first time since he could not remember when. He could not afford to drink anything in great quantities these days, except perhaps water. But unfortunately he was not foxed enough. Only his bodily movements were impaired. He set the glass down carefully on the table in front of him and congratulated himself on accomplishing the task safely. His mind was as lucid as it had been when he had arrived at White’s a number of hours before.

  “Come on.” Someone was hauling firmly at his elbow, and he obeyed the pressure and swayed to his feet.

  “So what would you do, Bertie?” he asked an indeterminate number of minutes later. He could not quite remember how he had left the club and got himself into his friend’s carriage. But there he was, and he was contemplating his boots resting on the seat opposite. It was unmannerly to put one’s boots on the cushions of someone else’s carriage. The earl hiccuped and crossed his feet at the ankles.

  “Oh.” Sir Albert blew out air from puffed cheeks. “What would I do? Marry the chit, I suppose. I don’t see that you have much choice.”

  “That is what he said too.” He must have spilled a drop of his drink, the earl thought. There was a dull spot on the high sheen of his left boot. Had he told Bertie the whole story? He must have, he supposed. Had he told anyone else? He hoped he had not been entertaining a whole roomful of White’s members with the tale of his woes.

  “I’ve never even set eyes on her,” he said. “And I’m supposed to marry her within the month. Did I tell you he’s a cit, Bertie? A coal merchant? Do you suppose I should just take a gun to my temple and end it all?”

  “For the dozenth time, no,” his friend said hastily. “I really think I had better stay with you tonight, Randolph. I’ve never seen you so far into your cups. There’s no knowing what you will do. Why not
just sell Grenfell Park? You would make something over and above the mortgage and be able to pay off that bastard’s other debts, though I fail to see why you should. And then you would be as free as you were when you were plain Randolph Pierce. That’s what you ought to do.”

  The earl stared at his boots for a long while. “It’s been in the family for over two hundred years, though,” he said. “It was once my grandfather’s. I grew up there. I’m fond of the place.”

  “Well, then,” Sir Albert said, “you will just have to marry the girl, cit or not. Though it’s a damnable shame, I must admit. Are you going to have to be listening to a cockney accent at your breakfast table for the rest of your life, Randolph? But you won’t have to live with her, will you? Your life can proceed more or less as usual except that you will have the blunt with which to live well. And you will still have Alice.”

  “And a damned cit for a father-in-law,” the earl said, grimacing. “And a damned cit for a wife. Her father says she is a beauty.”

  “He would,” Sir Albert said.

  “She was at school with Hutchins’s daughter,” the earl said, frowning. “Which one would that be?”

  “How old is the girl?” Sir Albert asked.

  “Damned if I know.” The earl frowned in thought. “Not quite twenty. He said that, I am almost sure. At least she is not long in the tooth, Bertie.”

  “That will be Pamela, then,” Sir Albert said. “The third daughter. Hutchins had his eye on me for her a couple of years ago, but she is too horsey for my tastes. Had me out to a damned dull party in the country for almost a whole month. Wait a minute.” He looked sharply at the earl. “What is this chit’s name?”

  “Good Lord.” The motion of the carriage was making the earl’s stomach feel decidedly queasy. “Don’t ask me. Something Transome. Aggy, Addy, Ellie, Emmy—something like that.”