The Bargain Bride Page 2

  But there was still a few early vegetables in the garden to go with the rabbits.

  “You are very brave, Aleda,” the Earl said, “and I only hope that I shall live up to your expectations.”

  “Just remember you are a Blake,” Aleda commented, “and, when these people come – they will then see for themselves – the position we are in.”

  The Earl did not speak, but she knew he was thinking that the shopkeepers would not go back to London empty-handed.

  They would take him with them.

  So he would rot away in the Fleet Prison unless by a miracle somebody bought the house and the estate at a price which was enough to let him go free.

  “The best thing I could do,” he said aloud, “is to put a bullet through my head.”

  Aleda turned on him angrily,

  “That would be a cowardly thing to do.”

  There was a little sob in her voice as she went on,

  “You are all the family that I have left. Our relatives never approved of Papa – and they now don’t – approve of you. We have to support each other – David and I – cannot be alone.”

  The Earl drew in his breath.

  “There must be someone besides that swine Shuttle,” Aleda laughed.

  “Do you really think there is any chance of me meeting men here? I could hardly invite them to the house when we cannot afford any sort of hospitality.”

  “Now you are making me feel ashamed,” the Earl protested. “I know I have been ungrateful and selfish and I should have thought of you instead of enjoying myself in London.”

  “I understood,” Aleda said, “and when you came back after the War – I was – only seventeen.”

  “Now you are nearly nineteen,” the Earl remarked, “and you are lovely, Aleda. If I could have taken you to London, I know that you would have had a dozen proposals of marriage.”

  “That is the last thing I want,” Aleda said. “I have told you that – I hate men. If only we had just a little money, I would be completely happy here with the – horses and dogs.”

  “You are just talking to me like that because of Shuttle’s dirty suggestions,” her brother said angrily. “How did he ever get to meet you in the first place?”

  Aleda gave a little laugh.

  “He was out hunting and his horse cast a shoe and, seeing how impressive Blake Hall looked from a distance, he came to see if we employed a blacksmith.”

  The Earl laughed as if he could not help it.

  “It must have given him a big surprise when he saw that the stables were falling to the ground.”

  “He saw me,” Aleda corrected him, “And that was enough. Ever since he has not left me alone and I have to hide every time I see him – coming up – the drive.”

  “Curse him! I should have thrown him out a long time ago.”

  “At first you welcomed the wine he brought you.”

  “I had no idea that he was asking you to be his mistress!”

  “There is nothing else that he can offer me, but if he was a widower, I would still not accept his money – or him. I hate – him! He makes me creep – and the last present he – gave me I threw into the back of his – carriage as he – drove away.”

  “What was it?” the Earl asked.

  “A diamond bracelet, I think, from what he said, but I did not open the case.”

  She knew without her saying anything more that her brother was thinking that the diamonds would have at the least paid off some of his debts.

  “Remember you are a Blake,” she said sharply again, “and if we do go down – we go down with all flags flying and our – heads – unbowed!”

  *

  Later in the evening, after they had eaten a very frugal meal of rabbit with a few vegetables, Aleda made the Earl open up the Banqueting Hall.

  They arranged the few chairs that were left at the end of it under the Minstrels’ Gallery.

  “We will receive our guests here,” she said, “and you will tell them exactly the position that we are now in.”

  She saw that her brother was about to refuse and she said,

  “You are not to be humble, merely frank and honest.”

  “Why should I be that?” the Earl asked her sullenly.

  “Because there is no point in being rude or secretive,” Aleda said. “Be frank and you should also say that you are sorry that you are so much in their debt. If you are pleasant, they might not be so vindictive as to send you to prison.”

  She saw that the Earl was not convinced and so she went on,

  “We have nothing at all to lose by being polite and you will certainly not be able to find work if you are behind bars.”

  “Work!” the Earl exclaimed. “What do you mean – work?”

  “There must be something that you can do,” Aleda queried. “Have you ever thought of counting your talents?”

  “I have none.”

  “That is nonsense! We all have talents of some sort. I have been trying to think how saleable mine are.”

  “Saleable?” the Earl questioned suspiciously.

  “Not to some man who only wants me for my pretty face,” Aleda snapped. “I was thinking that I might become a teacher of some sort. I have been fairly well educated, I can play the piano, I can paint in water colours and, of course, I can ride.”

  She gave a little cry.

  “That is what you can do, David.”

  “Ride? Of course I can ride. What do you mean?”

  “I remember how you told me that the Duke of Wellington was very impressed when you won the Steeplechase that he had arranged for the Officers in the Army of Occupation.”

  “That is true,” the Earl replied, “but I cannot see how I can make money like that.”

  “Supposing we persuaded one of your friends to help you?” Aleda said. “If you could break in horses that you bought cheap, and then you could sell them for perhaps a good sum.”

  For a moment her brother’s expression seemed to lighten a little and then he answered,

  “I can hardly think that what we will get for selling just one horse or even half-a-dozen will do more than pay for our food. It would be a mere drop in the ocean compared to what I owe!”

  Aleda bit back the words that came at once to her lips and after a moment she said gently,

  “We have to show the people who are prosecuting you that you are – prepared to – try to pay your – debts.”

  “Very well, have it your own way. I can only hope that by some extraordinary stroke of luck we may be successful.”

  He did not sound very hopeful.

  Later, when she was in bed in the darkness, Aleda admitted to herself that it was very unlikely that all the tradesmen would listen or that anyone would provide David with a horse to break in.

  She was well aware that he had already borrowed from his friends while he had been in London.

  He had stayed with them and he had ridden their horses and driven their phaetons.

  He had also, she was very sure, taken money from them and had then spent every penny of it on what she could only describe to herself as ‘riotous living’.

  She had no idea exactly what this meant, but she was quite sure that David drank much more than was good for him.

  She thought too that he must have spent a great deal of his time with just the sort of women who her mother would not have approved of under any circumstances

  And yet it was her mother, and her father for that matter, who had spoilt David ever since he was born.

  For some unknown and strange reason that the doctors had no explanation for, the ninth Earl of Blakeney and his wife had been married for fifteen years before, to their astonishment and joy, they had produced a son.

  Because David was so good-looking a boy and they were so thrilled to have him, he had ruled the household from his cot.

  It was totally inevitable therefore that he should think that the whole world was there for him to walk on.

  The Earl and Countess had on
ce again been delighted when, four years later, they had a daughter.

  Aleda, as soon as she was old enough, realised that David was the light of their lives.

  Although they loved her, she was a very poor second to her brother.

  She as well loved David, it was impossible not to.

  He was impulsive, selfish and yet at the same time he was courageous, kind-hearted and in many ways very intelligent.

  He had gone from Eton, where he had been well educated, straight into the Army.

  He had been commended twice by the Duke of Wellington for gallantry and at the end of the War had received a medal for gallantry in the face of the enemy.

  He was one of the Officers whom the Great Duke insisted should be with him in the Army of Occupation.

  It was only when he had resigned his Commission and came back to England that he had begun to realise that, for the Earl of Blakeney, London was an alluring place.

  He had an elevated position in the Social world and he was the envy of many of his brother Officers.

  It was certainly inevitable that it should go to his head and he completely forgot the way that his estate had gone to rack and ruin despite his father’s efforts to keep it going.

  His sister had become little more than a slave in a house that was falling down.

  Now he was faced with reality and Aleda knew that she had to comfort and sustain him as her mother would have done if she was still alive.

  “It is not going to be easy, Mama,” she said in the darkness, “but I am praying desperately hard that David will not be sent to prison. Please help me – help us both. I cannot believe that you and Papa are not – worried about us.”

  She felt as if her prayer moved from her heart to her lips, and next up into the sky.

  Somehow, although she had no reason for it, she fell asleep believing that her mother had heard her.

  *

  When morning came, Aleda went downstairs early.

  She found, after searching amongst the weeds and grasses in what had once been the chicken run, that one of the old hens that were still there had laid an egg.

  She carried it very carefully back to the house and gave it to David when he came down for his breakfast.

  She thought that, despite their many worries, he was looking brighter and certainly better than he had yesterday.

  She knew, if the truth was told, it was because he had had nothing to drink at their frugal dinner.

  The amount of claret and brandy he drank when he was in London was obviously bad for him.

  She gave him the egg and some toast from the bread she had received from the baker in exchange for a rabbit that Glover had snared for her.

  There was no butter, but one of the cottagers who knew, as did the rest of the village, the state that she was in had given her a comb of honey from his beehive.

  She had been using it sparingly so that there was enough both for David and herself.

  Yet she was wondering despairingly what they would have tomorrow when David said,

  “I must say, I still feel hungry!”

  “Perhaps some of your friends who are coming down from London to take part in the sale will bring something substantial with them,” Aleda suggested.

  She laughed before she added,

  “A leg of lamb or a boar’s head would, I assure you, be far more welcome than a case of wine.”

  “I want both,” David replied.

  “Then, as Mama used to say,” Aleda replied, “‘Want must be your master’!”

  “If you ask me, he is a very hard taskmaster.”

  They laughed because it sounded so ridiculous then, as if he suddenly noticed her for the first time, David exclaimed,

  “You are looking very smart.”

  “It is the last of Mama’s gowns,” Aleda explained. “I have been very careful with them, but unless I was to go naked, I had to wear something. And I kept this one for special occasions.”

  “I suppose you think this is special,” David said bitterly.

  “It is to me,” Aleda replied. “Now you go and put on your smartest coat and tie your cravat in a ‘Mathematical’, which I am told is the very latest style in St. James’s.”

  “Who on earth told you that?” David asked.

  “Glover, whose son came here to see him last week. He is working as the valet to the Duke of Northumberland who, I am assured, is very much ‘up to scratch’.”

  “You really should not talk to the servants,” the Earl said.

  “Then who else?” Aleda enquired. “It is more eloquent than the croaking of frogs and the caws of the rooks.”

  Again David had the grace to look shamefaced.

  “I swear,” he said, “that if we have a penny left over after the devouring wolves have left, I am spending it on you.”

  He spoke anxiously and Aleda rose from her seat to drop him a deep curtsey.

  “Thank you kindly, sir,” she said, “but I am not counting my pennies until I hear them tinkle.”

  It was impossible now for the Earl not to laugh.

  Then, because time was passing and they were not certain at what hour the tradesmen would appear, they both went upstairs.

  Aleda had polished David’s Hessian boots to an extra fine sheen the previous night before she went to bed.

  She had also pressed several white cravats in case he should spoil one.

  In her room there was a colourful if old bonnet that went with her mother’s gown.

  It was fortunate that the fashion had not altered much since the Countess’s death five years before.

  The gown, which was of blue gauze, the colour of her eyes and Aleda’s, had small puffed sleeves, a high waist and was also decorated with frills and ruching around the hem.

  Mother and daughter had more or less the same figure.

  The blue of the gown made Aleda’s skin seem very white and her hair the soft gold of the dawn.

  There was no doubt, if there had been anyone to notice her that she was lovely in the tradition of the Madonna painted by Botticelli.

  There was something humanly captivating and at the same time spiritually beautiful in her face which was not found among the beauties who were acclaimed as Incomparables in the Beau Ton.

  When she lifted up the high-crowned bonnet to put it on her head, she thought that it was not grand enough.

  Leaving her bedroom, she went to the one opposite, which had been her mother’s, and found two others in the wardrobe.

  One of them was decorated with flowers and the other with ostrich feathers.

  She then added these to the ribbons which had been skilfully arranged on the bonnet that matched her gown.

  It made her look, she felt, certainly striking and much more flamboyant.

  As she came from her bedroom, her brother appeared from his.

  For a moment he just stared at her.

  Then he laughed.

  “You will certainly surprise them!”

  “That is what I want to do,” Aleda replied, “and, David, you look a complete ‘Tulip of Fashion’.”

  “If you will call me that, Aleda, I shall then consider myself insulted!” David said, “And I shall take off my coat and greet them in my shirtsleeves! Preferably one that has holes in it!”

  He was only teasing her, but Aleda insisted,

  “Please think of your speech and remember how important it is for both of us.”

  “I have not forgotten,” David replied.

  They walked together to the top of the stairs.

  Aleda had left the door open.

  She had brushed away some of the accumulation of dust and arranged a bowl of roses on a table near the fireplace.

  She was, however, as they next began to descend the stairs, acutely conscious that the huge grandfather clock she had loved had gone.

  So had the barometer that she had loved as a child, which was one hundred years old.

  The large armchairs with their carved backs were missing, and the
Persian rug that had lain in front of the fireplace was no longer there.

  ‘There is nothing to sell,’ she thought with a sense of panic, ‘except the staircase and the panelling.’

  Then, as she walked down the stairs to the hall keeping pace with David, she saw through the open door the horses of a large carriage coming up the drive.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The occupants of the first vehicle came walking up the front steps.

  As they did so, Aleda was aware that they were sniggering and laughing amongst themselves at the dilapidated condition of the house.

  At the same time, as they entered the hall, she thought that they were slightly awed and she was certain that they had never entered an ancestral home before.

  It was obvious that they had not expected to be received by the Earl and herself.

  Standing by the marble mantelpiece they looked, she very much hoped, impressive.

  “How do you do, Carter?” the Earl said to his coachbuilder, the first man to approach him.

  He then held out his hand and there was a distinct hesitation before the man took it. He was obviously somewhat flustered at shaking hands with Aleda.

  “If you walk straight down the passage,” she said, “you will find everything arranged for you in the Banqueting Hall.”

  It was a sentence she was to repeat a large number of times before there was a pause and she thought perhaps nobody else was arriving.

  Then, looking through the open door, she was aware that a very smart phaeton had drawn up outside.

  She saw from the expression on her brother’s face that they were his friends from London.

  She knew it upset him that they should see him humiliated by the tradesmen and she said quickly,

  “It is kind of them to come and I am sure that they will buy something from here and you must not forget that we need the money.”

  He gave her a wry smile to show that he understood just what she was saying.

  Then Lord Fulbourne and two other members of White’s Club came through the door.

  “How are you, Blakeney?” they asked him genially. “We all thought that we would come to support you. We are well aware that it might be our turn tomorrow!”

  “It is jolly decent of you,” the Earl answered, “and let me introduce you to my sister.”