The Proposal: Number 1 in series (Survivors’ Club)

Constance, it seemed to Hugo, was having the time of her life. She went shopping with Lady Muir and her cousin and sister-in-law one morning and ended up at a tea shop with an admirer and his mother. She went on a round of visits on another afternoon with the same three ladies and was escorted home by the son of the final household upon which they called, a maid trailing along behind at his grandmother’s insistence. She went driving in the park on two afternoons with different escorts. And each morning brought a steady stream of invitations, though so far she had attended only the one ball.

She was well launched upon society, it seemed, and she was happy. Not just for herself, though.

“All the gentlemen who have singled me out for attention want to talk about you, Hugo,” she told him at breakfast one morning. “It is very gratifying.”

“About me?” He frowned. “And yet they are courting you?”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose it is good for their prestige to be seen with the sister of the hero of Badajoz.”

Hugo was mortally tired of hearing that ridiculous phrase.

“But they are courting you,” he said.

“Oh, you must not worry, Hugo,” she said. “I am not going to marry any of them.”

“You are not?” he asked, his brows drawing together.

“No, of course not,” she said. “They are all very sweet and very amusing and very … well, very silly. But no, that is cruel. I like them all, and they are very kind. And they are all terribly in awe of you. I doubt any would be able to get his courage up to ask you for my hand even if he wished to do so. You do frown quite ferociously, you know.”

Constance was perhaps more sensible than he had realized. She was not pinning her matrimonial hopes upon any of the gentlemen she had met thus far. It was hardly surprising, of course. Her first ball had been less than a week ago. Perhaps he had mistaken her motive in wanting to attend that ball. Perhaps it was not even important to her to move up the social scale by marrying up.

It was an idea that seemed to be corroborated by other things happening in her life.

She went to the grocery shop one afternoon with her grandmother and met her other relatives there. She instantly adored them all and was adored in return. After that first visit she made time every day to go over there to see them—those of them who were not at the house fussing over Fiona, that was. And she spoke of them and of the shop and the neighborhood with as much enthusiasm as she showed when describing her dealings with the ton.

There was an ironmonger’s next to the grocery shop. The longtime owner had died recently, but his son had promised all his customers that he would keep it open and that he would not change a thing. It was, according to Constance, a veritable Aladdin’s den, with narrow aisles that twisted and turned until one was in danger of getting lost. They were so narrow that it was sometimes hard to turn around. And he had absolutely everything in the shop. There was not a nail or a screw or a rivet or nut or bolt that he did not have. Not only that, though. Just like his father before him, he knew exactly where to lay his hand upon even the smallest, most obscure item anyone happened to need. And there were brooms and ladders hanging from the walls, and shovels and pitchforks hanging from the ceiling and …

The story went on and on.

And Constance went in there every day, always with one or other of her relatives, all of whom were particular friends of Mr. Tucker’s. Indeed, her grandmother had almost adopted him as an extra son now that his father was gone. He was the same age as Hilda, according to Constance, or maybe a year or two younger. Perhaps three. He was funny. He teased Constance about her refined accent though she did not speak so very differently from everyone else and his accent was not too broadly cockney. She could understand him perfectly well. He teased her about her pretty bonnets. And he let Colin and Thomas, the two little boys, run about his shop to their hearts’ content, though he did insist one day when they tipped over two boxes of different nails and got them all mixed up on the floor that they pick them all up and then sit at the counter to sort them out again. It took them almost an hour, and he brought them milk and biscuits to make their fingers more nimble. And then, when they were finished, he ruffled their hair, told them they were good lads, and gave them a penny each on the condition that they leave the shop immediately and not return for at least an hour.

He told Constance funny stories about his customers, though they were never unkind stories. And he insisted on the afternoon it rained upon walking her all the way home while holding over her head a very large black umbrella he had dug out from somewhere at the back of his shop. He would not sleep that night, he had told her, if he had let her walk home without it and thus caused the demise of her bonnet.

Hugo listened to the lengthy, enthusiastic accounts with interest. There was a certain glow about his sister whenever she spoke of the ironmonger that was not there when she talked about any of the gentlemen who danced attendance on her.

All of which suggested to Hugo that he might have avoided all this business with the ton. There need not have been the Redfield ball, and there need not be the upcoming garden party. And there need not have been any renewal of his acquaintance with Lady Muir.

His life would have been altogether more peaceful if he had not seen her again after Penderris.

They were starting to fall in love with each other. No, actually they were more than just starting. And it was mutual. He had even begun to think that it was all possible between them. So had she. But romance did not last forever. Not that he had any personal experience with romance, but all his observations of life had taught him that. It was what remained to a relationship after the first euphoria of the romance had faded that was important. What would be left to him and Gwendoline, Lady Muir? Two lives that were as different as night and day? A few children, maybe—if she could have them? And decisions to make about where they would be educated. She doubtless would want to pack them off to posh schools as soon as they had passed the toddling stage. He would want to keep them at home to enjoy. Would there be anything of love left to them when the romance had dimmed? Or would it all be used up with the energy they would expend upon trying to meld two lives that could not be melded?

“What happens to love when the romance is gone, George?” he asked the Duke of Stanbrook on the afternoon he and Lady Muir had gone to tea, as invited. The Duke and Duchess of Portfrey had been there too, but it was the afternoon it rained unexpectedly—the same afternoon Tucker walked Constance home from the shop. The duke and duchess had taken Lady Muir home in their carriage since Hugo had not brought his.

“It is a good question,” his friend said with a wry smile. “As a young man I was taught by all who had authority and influence over me that the two should never be mixed—not by someone of my social stature, anyway. Romance was for mistresses. Love, though it was never defined, was for wives. I loved Miriam, whatever that means. I enjoyed a few romances in the early years of our marriage, though I regret them now. I owed her better. If I were young now, Hugo, I believe I would look for love and romance and marriage all in the same place, and bedamned to any dire warning that the romance would grow thin and the love even thinner. I regret much in my life, but there is no point, is there? At this moment we are both in exactly the spot to which we have brought ourselves through our birth and our life experiences, through the myriad choices we have made along the way. The only thing over which we have any control whatsoever is the very next decision we make. But pardon me. You asked a question. I do not know the answer, I regret to say, and I suspect there is none. Each relationship is unique. You are in love with Lady Muir, are you?”

“I suppose so,” Hugo said.

“And she is in love with you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“It is hopeless,” Hugo said. “There is nothing but romance to recommend it.”

“That is not so,” the duke said. “There is more, Hugo. I know you rather well, and so I know much of what lies beneath the granite, almost morose shell with which you have cloaked yourself to the public view. I do not know Lady Muir well at all, but I sense something … Hmm. I find myself stuck for the appropriate word. I sense depths to her character that can match your own. Substance is perhaps the word for which my mind is reaching.”

“It is still hopeless,” Hugo said.

“Perhaps,” the duke agreed. “But those who are most obviously in love and well suited to each other often do not withstand the first test life throws their way. And life always does that sooner or later. Think of poor Flavian and his erstwhile betrothed as a case in point. When two people are not well suited and know it but are in love anyway, then perhaps they are better prepared to meet any obstacles in their path and to fight them with all the weapons at their disposal. They do not expect life to be easy, and of course it never is. They have a chance of making it through anyway. And all this is pure conjecture, Hugo. I really do not know.”

There was no one else to ask. Hugo knew what Flavian would say, and Ralph had no experience. He was not going to ask any of his cousins. They would want to know why he asked, and then all of them would know, and they would all be in raptures because Hugo was in love at last. And they would want to know who she was, and they would want to meet her, and it did not bear thinking of.

Besides, as George had said, no one could tell you about love or romance or what would happen if you married and the romance dwindled away. You could only find out for yourself. Or not find out.

You could face the challenge or you could turn away from it.

You could be a hero or a coward.

You could be a wise man or a fool.

A cautious man or a reckless one.

Were there any answers to anything in life?

Life was a bit like walking a thin, swaying, fraying tightrope over a deep chasm with jagged rocks and a few wild animals waiting at the bottom. It was that dangerous—and that exciting.

Arrgghh!

The day was perfect for a garden party. That was the first thing Hugo realized when he got out of bed in the morning and drew back the curtains at the window of his bedchamber. But for once the sunshine brought him no joy. Perhaps clouds would move in later. Perhaps by afternoon it would rain.

It would be too late by then, though, to cancel the garden party. It would probably be too late anyway, even if it had been raining buckets out there already. No doubt the hosts would have an alternate plan. They probably had a ballroom or two hidden away in their mansion just waiting to accommodate the crème de la crème of English society—as well as Constance and him. And they would all be sumptuously decorated to look like indoor gardens.

No, there was no avoiding it. Besides, Constance was so excited that she had declared last evening she doubted she would get a wink of sleep. And he had not seen Lady Muir for three whole days. Not since she went off home from George’s with the Portfreys and he had had to content himself with a mere brushing of his lips over the back of her gloved hand.

So much for a kiss a day. But then he was not really courting her, was he?

The afternoon was as perfect as the morning, and Constance must have slept last night after all since she was looking pretty and bright-eyed and was bouncing with energy today. The whole thing was not to be avoided. Hugo’s carriage was at the door five minutes early, and Hilda and Paul Crane, her betrothed, who arrived at almost the same moment, waved them on their way. They had come to take Fiona for a walk, her first outing in a long while.

Constance slipped a hand into Hugo’s as they drew near their destination.

“I am not nearly as frightened as I was when we were going to the Ravensberg ball,” she said. “I know people now, and they are really quite kind, are they not? And of course, no one will have eyes for me when I am with you, so I will not be self-conscious at all. Are you in love with Lady Muir?”

He raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat.

“That would be daft, wouldn’t it?” he said.

“No dafter than me falling in love with Mr. Hind or Mr. Rigby or Mr. Everly or any of the others,” she said.

“Are you in love with them?” he asked her. “Or any one of them?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “None of them do anything, Hugo. They live on money that is given them. Which is what I do, I suppose, but it is different for a woman, is it not? One expects a man to work for a living.”

“That is a very middle-class idea,” he said, smiling at her.

“It seems more manly to work,” she said.

He smiled to himself.

“Oh,” she said, “I cannot wait to see the gardens, and to see how everyone is dressed. Do you like my new bonnet? I know Grandpapa would say it is absurd, but there would be a twinkle in his eye when he said it. And Mr. Tucker would agree with him and shake his head in that way he has when he does not really mean what he says.”

“It is a sight to behold,” he said. “Quite splendid, in fact.”

And then they arrived.

The gardens surrounding the Brittling mansion in Richmond were about one tenth the size of the park at Crosslands. They were about a hundred times less barren. There were mown lawns and lush flower beds and trees that looked as if they had been picked up bodily and placed just so for maximum pictorial effect. There was a rose arbor and an orangery, a bandstand and a summerhouse, a grassy alley lined with trees as straight as soldiers, statuary, a fountain, a three-tiered terrace descending from the house with flowers in stone urns.

It ought to have looked hopelessly cluttered. There ought to have been no room left for people.

But it looked magnificent and made Hugo think with dissatisfaction about his own park. And with longing to be back there. Had the lambs all survived? Were all the crops in the ground? Were there weeds growing in his flower bed? Singular—flower bed.

Lady Muir had come with her family and was there before them. She came hurrying toward them as soon as they arrived, her hands outstretched to Constance.

“There you are,” she said, “and you did wear the rose bonnet rather than the straw one. I do think you made the right choice. This one has considerably more dash. I am going to introduce you to people you have not met before—at their request in most cases. You have a famous brother, you see, though they will want to pursue an acquaintance with you for your own sake after they have met you.”

Her glance moved to Hugo as she mentioned him, and the color deepened in her cheeks.

She matched the sky with her blue dress and yellow bonnet trimmed with cornflowers.

“Do come with us, Lord Trentham,” she said as she took Constance by the arm. “Otherwise you will stand here looking like a fish out of water and scowling at everyone who wishes to shake you by the hand.”

“Oh,” Constance said, looking in surprise from one to the other of them. “Are you not afraid to talk to Hugo like that?”

“I have it on the best authority,” Lady Muir said, “that he used to carry spiders gently outdoors when he was a boy instead of squashing them underfoot.”

“Oh.” Constance laughed. “He still does that. He did it yesterday when Mama screamed as a huge daddy longlegs scurried across the carpet. She wanted someone to step on it.”

Hugo walked about with them, his hands clasped at his back. What a ridiculous thing fame was, he thought as people actually bowed and scraped to him and gazed at him in an awe that often seemed to render them speechless. At him, Hugo Emes. There was nobody more ordinary. There was nobody who was more of a nobody.

And then he saw Frank Carstairs sitting in the rose arbor, a blanket about his knees, a cup and saucer in his hands, his discontented-looking wife at his side. And Carstairs saw him and curled his lip and looked pointedly away.

Carstairs had caused him a few disturbed nights in the past week. He had been a brave, earnest, hardworking lieutenant, respected by both his men and his fellow officers. He had been as poor as a church mouse, however, since his grandfather was reputed to have gambled away the family fortune and he was merely a younger son. Hence his need to win his promotion rather than purchase it.

Constance was soon borne away by a group of young persons of both genders. They were going to walk down to the river, which could be reached along a private path lined invitingly with flowers and trees.

“The river is at least a quarter of a mile away,” Lady Muir said to Hugo. “I think I will remain here. My ankle was a little swollen yesterday, and I had to keep my foot up. I sometimes forget that I am not quite normal.”

“Now I know,” Hugo said, “what it is about you that has been bothering me. You are abnormal. All is explained.”

She laughed.

“I am going to sit in the summerhouse,” she said. “But you must not feel obliged to keep me company.”

He offered her his arm.

They sat and talked for almost an hour, though they were not alone all that time. A number of her cousins came and went. Ralph put in a brief appearance. The Duke and Duchess of Bewcastle and the Marquess and Marchioness of Hallmere stopped by for an introduction. The marchioness was Bewcastle’s sister, and Bewcastle was Ravensberg’s neighbor in the country. It was all very dizzying trying to sort out who was who in the ton.

“How do you remember who is who?” Hugo asked when he and Lady Muir were alone again.

She laughed.

“The same way you remember who is who in your world, I suppose,” she said. “I have had a lifetime of practice. I am hungry—and thirsty. Shall we go up to the terrace?”

Hugo really did not want to go there even though the idea of having some tea was tempting. Carstairs had moved from the rose arbor and was sitting on the second terrace, not far from the food tables. However, staying here was not an option either, he suddenly realized. Grayson, Viscount Muir, had appeared as if from nowhere and was on his way toward them, though he had been stopped for the moment by a large matron beneath what appeared to be an even larger hat.

Hugo got to his feet and offered his arm.

“I shall try to remember,” he said, “to extend my little finger when I hold my teacup.”

“Ah,” she said, “you are an apt pupil. I am proud of you.”

And she laughed up at him as they crossed the lawn in the direction of the terraces.

“Gwen,” a voice called imperiously as they reached the foot of the lowest terrace.

She turned with eyebrows raised.

“Gwen,” Grayson said again. He was standing a short distance away—but far enough that he had to raise his voice slightly and make his words far from private. “I will do myself the honor of walking with you or escorting you to your brother’s side. I am surprised he will allow you to let that fellow hang on your sleeve. I will certainly not do so.”

They were surrounded suddenly by a little pool of silence—a pool that included a number of listening guests.

She had paled, Hugo saw.

“Thank you, Jason,” she said, her voice steady but slightly breathless, “but I choose my own companions.”

“Not when you are a member of my family,” he said, “even if only by marriage. I have the honor of my late cousin, your husband, to uphold, as well as the name of Grayson, which you still bear. This fellow is a coward and a fraud in addition to being riffraff. He is a disgrace to the British military.”

Hugo released her arm and clasped his hands behind him. He set his feet apart and held himself erect and silent as he gazed directly at his adversary, very aware that the pool of silence surrounding them had become more the size of a lake.

“Oh, I say,” someone said and was immediately shushed.

“What nonsense you speak,” Lady Muir said. “How dare you, Jason? How dare you?”

“Ask him how he survived the Forlorn Hope without a scratch,” Grayson said, “when almost three hundred men died and the few who did not were grievously wounded. Ask him. Not that he would answer truthfully. This is the truth. Captain Emes led from behind, well behind. He sent his men on the way to their deaths and followed only after they had made the breach that allowed the rest of the forces through. And then he ran up and claimed the victory. There were not many men left to contradict him.”

There were gasps to break the silence.

“Shame!” someone said before being shushed. But it was not clear whether he addressed Grayson or Hugo.

Hugo could feel all eyes upon him even though he looked nowhere but back at Grayson.

“It is your word against mine, Grayson,” he said. “I do not intend to brawl with you.”

From the corner of his eye he could see Constance. Damn it all, she was back from the river already and had moved into the circle of listeners.

He turned to Lady Muir and inclined his head stiffly.

“I will take my leave, ma’am,” he said, “and take my sister home.”

And then a weak, rather reedy, but perfectly audible voice spoke up from behind him.

“There is one survivor right here to contradict you, Muir,” Frank Carstairs said. “I have no reason to love Emes. He took the command that ought to have been mine on that day. And then his bravery showed up my cowardice and has preyed upon my conscience every moment of every day since. I wanted to abort the charge when the men started to die in droves, but he forced us onward. At least, he charged onward himself and did not look back to see if we followed. And he was right. We were a Forlorn Hope, dash it all. We volunteered for death. We were the cannon fodder that would allow the real attack to break through behind us. Captain Emes led from the front, and he earned all the accolades he has received since.”

Hugo did not turn. Nor did he move. He felt stranded in the midst of surely the worst moment of his life, worse even than the day he had gone out of his head. Though no, perhaps not worse than that. Nothing could ever be worse than that.

“Dear me,” a languid voice said, “I am for my tea. Lady Muir, Trentham, do join Christine and me at our table. It has the advantage of being in the shade.”

It was a man he had just met, Hugo saw when he looked away from Grayson at last—the one with the autocratic air and the silver eyes and the jeweled quizzing glass, which was currently trained upon the suddenly retreating figure of Grayson. The Duke of Bewcastle.

“Thank you.” Lady Muir took Hugo’s arm. “We will be delighted, Your Grace. And the shade will indeed be welcome. The sun becomes uncomfortably warm when one has been out in it for a while, does it not?”

And suddenly everyone was moving again and talking and laughing again, and the party had resumed as if nothing untoward had happened. Carstairs was not looking his way, Hugo saw when he looked directly at him, but was talking quite pointedly to his wife. It was the ton’s way, Hugo realized.

But doubtless polite drawing rooms and club rooms throughout London would buzz with the interchange for days to come.