Page 4 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
“Leave them alone, Pauline. It is wicked to involve them in your plots, and it won’t make any difference.”
His stepsister flushed. “I didn’t… I wouldn’t…”
He glared at her, and her eyes dropped as her color heightened still further. “I’ll just be going then,” she said, and sidled round him and out the door.
“You were not very nice to Pauline,” Vivienne growled. Rose said nothing, but she wouldn’t look at him. They didn’t understand. He forced a smile and asked if they would like him to read their bedtime story.
The letter from his solicitor was as welcome as a reprieve from execution. It requested a meeting at Richard’s offices in London.
“I have a proposition to put to you, my lord, which may resolve your current difficulties.”
Peter couldn’t imagine anything that would fix the viscountcy’s finances except years of economies and hard work, but he packed a satchel with a change of linen, had a horse saddled, and set out for London.
Chapter Two
Within four weeks,Mr. Richards sent Arial a list of the candidates he had considered, and a detailed biography for each of those who met the criteria he and Arial had agreed.
No one responsible for his own indebtedness made the list. Mr. Richards also rejected men subject to the flaws of whomever had preceded them—gambling, drinking, wenching, or even just poor management.
The four men who made the final short-list were intelligent, capable, and responsible—at least in Mr. Richard’s estimation. Two had inherited from profligate uncles, one from a remarkably stupid brother, and one from a father whose bad habits included gambling and drinking far beyond his capacity. On the information in his report, any of them might be suitable.
Arial hesitated over the last name—Peter Ransome, now Viscount Ransome. She knew him. Or, at least, she had known him once, when they were both children. Their fathers had been the best of friends, though her family’s principal estate was in the Midlands and the Ransomes lived near the coast in Sussex.
They visited back and forth when in London for Parliament and often stayed at one another’s estates during the remainder of the year. Indeed, the Ransomes had been staying with Arial’s family on the night of the fire—Peter had lost his own mother to the flames, as Arial had lost her brother and her mother.
Perhaps that bereavement was why they never returned. By the time Arial was recovered enough to ask about them, the father and son were far away, back in their own home, five counties away.
It wasn’t ancient history that bothered her. The estrangement could easily have been on her father’s side—he and Mama had been highly sociable before the fire, spending months every year in London and more time at house parties around the country. When they were home, they usually had guests.
The fire changed that. After losing his wife and son, and nearly losing his daughter, her father retired to the Midlands, traveling to London only occasionally and for a night or two, when a particular vote in the House of Lords attracted his interest.
Even if Ransome senior had been the one to abandon the friendship, Peter bore no responsibility for that. He would have been thirteen or fourteen when she last saw him.
And beautiful. That was the problem. Peter Ransome, as a youth, had been the most perfectly formed individual she had ever seen.Beau Ransome, the boys at school called him, and he hated it. But it was true.
When she was ten, Arial had had a painful crush on Peter—painful because such a glorious male would never look at a pudgy, overgrown female like her.
He was fifteen years older now, so perhaps he had changed. She very much feared he would have changed for the better. How could a man who was the epitome of male beauty marry a female like her? She had never been pretty—she was too large for that, with a big nose and a square chin.
Sturdy, her nurse called her, being partial. Fat, said the Turner sisters, who lived next door to the Ransome estate. Her mother and Peter’s thought it was nice for her to have companyof girls her own age, so Laura and Pauline Turner were invited over whenever the earl visited his friend the viscount.
It had been Laura Turner who dubbed herLady Caliban, even before the fire left her scarred and twisted into a monster. Beau Ransome would never marry such a one as her.
She sighed. From Mr. Richards’s report, poor Peter had been left in a dreadful situation. The new Lord Ransome, said Mr. Richards, was determined to put his estates back into good heart, but he faced an uphill struggle.
His father had become a wastrel: a drunkard and a gambler who ignored his estates. And his second wife was as extravagant and careless as the viscount. That was another strike against Peter. His father had married Mrs. Turner, mother of Arial’s persecutors.
Arial firmed her chin. She could not hold the Turner sisters against her old friend. Let Peter make his own decision. This was to be a marriage of equals. She could not offer a husband beauty, but she had other attributes. Her wealth, of course. But also, she kept an efficient house, was an excellent estate manager, and a skilled investor. She understood livestock, including horses, and ran a superb breeding program that was producing champions.
Added to that, as far as she could tell when it had not been tested, her reproductive system was in full working order. She was willing to do her part to produce heirs for her husband. More than willing. Her heart yearned for children.
She hoped her ugliness would not prevent the conception of such offspring.Presumably, the necessary deed can be done in the dark, however.The grim humor did little to calm the pounding of her heart at the mere thought of allowing another human being so close to her.
Better marriage than an asylum. Her response to Mr. Richards authorized him to go ahead and talk to his candidates. Arial then put the matter out of her mind as much as she could.Her next challenge would be the journey to London. She bent her mind to the logistics. It would be a procession of several carriages, with Arial, Clara, and their maids in one, the servants she was taking in another two, and the luggage in a fourth. Grooms, including the tough burly ex-soldiers that Sir Thomas had found to guard her, would act as outriders along the way.
They would need one overnight stay. She asked Sir Thomas about inns near the halfway point, and he gave her the names of three that might be able to accommodate her entire entourage, and that would offer her the privacy she needed.
“Do you know anything of these three?” she asked Clara, who went away once a year to visit her married sister.
