Page 8 of Miss Dignified
“Caroline, good day.” The Honorable Reginald Glover offered his sister-in-law a nod. Caroline, Countess of Tremont, was one of few women he knew who looked good in half mourning. Pearl gray, lilac, ivory, and violet emphasized magnificent blue eyes and a luminous complexion, though Caroline was well past forty.
A pity she was so venerable, but then, English law did not permit a man to marry his brother’s widow. Caroline’s faultlessly ladylike demeanor precluded anything so coarse as frolicking for comfort, and she would not remarry until her termagant daughter had found a spouse.
Which, if Reginald had anything to say to it, dear Lydia would shortly do.
“Please have a seat,” Reginald said, rising from behind his desk and coming around to gesture Caroline to the wing chair by the fire. “How have you occupied yourself since breakfast?”
Caroline graced him with a smile when she’d settled on the cushion, and all over again, Reginald grasped why his dashing older brother had been smitten. John’s widow was, and probably always would be, purely lovely. She moved, spoke, gestured, and even laughed with a sense of poise at once refined and natural. Heads still turned when she walked into a room, and men of all ages grew wistful watching her dance.
She had been an Incomparable, but more than her beauty, her self-possession meant something of that former glory still clung to her.
“I met with Mrs. Bloom regarding the spring fete,” Caroline replied. “The weather is always a chancy element, but we will hope for the best and assume the worst. I’ve also directed Mr. Mortimer to begin moving the hardier plants out of the conservatory. The front terrace looks too dreary without its appointments, and spring is advancing.”
She had met with the vicar’s wife, and she had conferred with the head gardener. Reginald knew that much to be true, because he knew everything Caroline got up to. She’d also spent two hours tending to correspondence, but not a one of those letters had been sent to her own daughter.
Lydia had left to visit her aunt Chloe prior to the Yuletide holidays, and Reginald was increasingly uneasy about her absence. The girl was not to be trusted, and Chloe’s loyalty was to her younger sister and her niece.
“What do we hear from our Lydia?” Reginald asked.
“Precious little. She must be quite enjoying her stay with Chloe, and Chloe is apparently reveling in the role of doting auntie.” Caroline smiled at her lovely hands. She still wore John’s ring and often wore a mourning brooch that held a lock of John’s hair.
An earl’s heir would not normally make a love match, but Caroline was an earl’s niece, and her settlements had gone a long way toward restoring the Glover family finances. She’d fulfilled any number of requirements with the ease and grace so typical of her, though she had not managed to produce a spare.
Such a pity, that.
“Don’t you think it time Lydia returned home?” Reginald asked, taking the second wing chair. “She is your companion in all but name, and without her on hand, you are left to serve as hostess, lady of the house, and general domestic factotum. I worry about overburdening you, my dear.”
“Lydia deserves some time away. I miss her terribly, but to know she’s happy assuages that ache. Tremont is my home, and I delight in caring for it.”
Gracious, selfless, generous… Caroline truly was the lady of the manor, which made Reginald want to shake her—or kiss her. Something to destroy the poise she wore like a bishop’s stole. Her daughter had run off to an auntie’s house, her son the great war hero was missing at best, and yet, she glided through her days as if village fetes and potted salvia were the summit of her ambitions.
She was enough to drive a conscientious brother-in-law to drink. “I will write to Lydia,” Reginald said. “I will remind her of her duty and of all the responsibilities warmer weather will bring. We’ll have her back where she belongs, by your side.”
Back where Reginald could keep an eye on the girl. Every fine quality Caroline possessed—her quiet, her poise, her warmheartedness—had run amok in the daughter. Lydia was secretive rather than merely quiet. Poise in her had become an indefinable distance from her family, and while she could hardly be called warmhearted, she was exceedingly familiar with the staff and tenants.
Whereas Caroline was classic beauty gracefully matured, Lydia was a dark-haired, gimlet-eyed bluestocking who moved through life with about as much grace as a bullock who’d seen oats dumped into the trough across the barnyard.
And yet, Lydia was fiercely loyal to her mother, which was why this protracted absence to visit an auntie in Oxford made little sense.
Reginald liked good wine, naughty women, and for things—especially the women in his family—to make sense.
“Write to her,” Caroline said, turning that smile on Reginald. “She might be shocked enough that you get a reply.”
“Wesley misses her.” Reginald infused that observation with a bit of grudging admission. “My son would never say anything to me, of course, but he takes Lydia’s mare out for the occasional hack, and he sorts through the mail not a quarter hour after it arrives.”
“Lydia probably asked him to look after Demeter. The mare is too much horse for me, and Wesley and Lydia are friends, a not-unheard-of situation between cousins.”
“And that is precisely why I asked you to spare me a few moments of your time, Caroline. We must face facts. Marcus has not come home, Horse Guards has no idea what has become of him, and I will soon be applying to have him declared dead. I thought you should hear this news from me.”
Caroline rose and went to the window, not a gasp or glance gave away what a blow that news must be to her.
“You are in a difficult position, I know, Reginald. Even the most faithful steward cannot take certain steps on his own initiative. Marcus’s absence limits your ability to manage Tremont as you see fit. Nonetheless, Marcus has not yet been missing for seven years. Tremont isn’t going anywhere, and we’re getting by well enough for now.”
No, they were not. Tremont was a complicated balancing act, with tremendous value on one hand and tremendous expenses on the other. What was lacking wasrevenue, income generated from all the acres, leaseholds, tenancies, and other property.
Wesley had seen the problem the first time Reginald had shown him the books. The boy would make a fine earl, should that day ever come.
John, Caroline’s late husband and Reginald’s older brother, had known how to make all the parts of the earldom work together. Times had changed, alas. Rents had fallen, the war had ended, and Reginald was not a magician. If he was to sell off a few parcels of land here and there, he needed for John’s son to be declared well and truly dead.
