Page 1 of Weave me a Rope
Chapter One
A London garden, March 1802
The lamps strungthrough the garden cast pools of light that made the shadows even darker. Perfect cover for a beleaguered gentleman escaping the zealous marriage hunters who turned every entertainment into a labyrinth of mantraps.
The young man currently hiding in one particularly remote corner was a prime quarry for this Season. His father, the Marquess of Deerhaven, had made it known he wanted his heir married and breeding. Those hungry for a title were in a frenzy.
Paul Ambrose George Bedevere Forsythe, Earl of Spenhurst, had not yet reached his twenty-first birthday and had hoped to delay choosing a bride for another decade. Spen’s observations of his father’s three marriages had not endeared the institution to him. But the marquess had spoken and it was for his son to obey.
He wouldn’t mind if he could find a wife he liked. Spen had seen marriages where the couple were friends and were faithful to one another. Spen wanted one of those, and a town chit just would not do.
His father dismissed his concerns as irrelevant. A man, he said, put babies in his wife’s belly and took his pleasure elsewhere. Spen had seen how unhappy such a marriage hadmade his mother and his stepmothers. He could not bear the idea of being responsible for such misery.
Half the crop of females his aunt paraded in front of him left him cold, and the other half struck horror in his heart. Was that to be his fate? Married to an insipid female with nothing to recommend her beyond her bloodlines, or to one with a bit of gumption and a vicious character? Either choice was unacceptable.
The first group would lie down and let him walk all over them. Any one of them would bore him to tears inside of a week. The second would expect to walk all over him. They would go looking for a lover as soon as they were bored with him, which he didn’t expect to take much longer than a week, for he had nothing much beyond his title to offer them. Or so his father had always given him to understand, and the diamonds of the ton certainly seemed to agree.
He was not much of a conversationalist, at least when it came to the flattery and trivial chatter that passed as conversation in the circles these ladies adored. Spen would far rather discuss wool yields, the Corn Laws, the ambitions of General Napoleon and what they might mean to England or even some of the subjects he had read at Oxford. Ancient Greek culture, perhaps. Or natural philosophy. Both had intrigued him and still did.
Spen liked some things about town living—the theatre, the museums, the lectures. But most of it left him cold.
He knew little about fashion. He couldn’t care less what the knot in his cravat was called and knew nothing about what colors were fashionable, or what many of them were named. He left his own clothing decisions to his valet, who enjoyed turning Spen out to be, as the valet put it, a credit to his skills.
He hated gossip and scandal, which always struck him as cruel torment, and he could not see the point of thesocial maneuvering that named some diamonds and others wallflowers, some nonpareils, and others gudgeons.
All this meant most town entertainments bored him. Or worse. Large numbers of strangers or mere acquaintances, all squashed into a small drawing room or ballroom, anxious to speak to him because he was the son of a marquess, made it hard for him to breathe. His head swam and his heart thumped in his chest.
He feared a repeat of the condition he had suffered when he was first sent away to school, shortly after his mother died. In his first six months at Eton, he had fainted eleven times when his chest stiffened, and his lungs refused to work.
Panaphobia Hysterica, the doctor had called his condition in the hearing of one of the servants. Panic terror caused by vapors. The servant had passed the diagnosis on to certain of the pupils. His years at school had been blighted by jeers and jokes about his delicate nature, though the persecution never turned physical again after an attack landed him in the infirmary with a broken leg and his father turned up at the school breathing fire at the risk to his heir and the assault to the marquess’s own dignity.
As he pushed the memories away and concentrated on slowing his breathing, the clamoring in his mind slowly silenced enough for the noises of the night to register. Close at hand, water tinkled—that would be the fountain. Foliage stirred—the wind, perhaps, or the movement of man or beast. The whispering and giggles that reached his ears suggested the latter.
From beyond the garden, the sounds of the city penetrated, muted in this area of town and at this time of night, but still, people shouted, dogs barked, horses clopped, and wheels rumbled.
Even this far away from the house, the sound of the ball dominated. Not just the orchestra, but the buzz of hundreds of voices plus the occasional crash or bang, betokening clumsiness on someone’s part.
He would have to go back in. But not yet. He sat on a stone seat in the shadow of a tree. When the orchestra took a break, he would take that as his signal to return.
They were still playing when a girl stepped into the paved area around a fountain that lay beyond the edges of his shadow. By her white dress, he knew she was a debutante, slender and of medium height. He couldn’t tell her hair color in the indifferent light, but it must be fair, for it looked almost white.
Astoundingly, she was alone. She sat on the edge of the fountain bowl and stretched out her fingers, so the water fell on them. She giggled, then lifted her face to the sky.
She didn’t behave like a particularly audacious hunter, but why else would she be out here alone? Pretty girls of his class were never allowed to go into dark places without their dragon protectors. A mother or chaperone was probably waiting in the wings ready to pounce on anyone foolish enough to accost the damsel.
He did not see how he could be her prey, for no one knew he was here. Still, to be on the safe side, he should withdraw through the bushes, as silently as possible, trusting the sound of the water to disguise his passage.
Before he could move, though, three more ladies hurried through the trees to join the first. “Here she is,” one called over her shoulder to the other two. She advanced on the first damsel, coming into a circle of light cast by one of the lamps. Spen tensed when he saw her cruel smile. He had been the target of such a smile many times until he learned how to fight back with fists and words.
He also knew the three ladies, by sight at least. Mainly because his aunt, whose ball this was, had pointed them out and warned him to avoid them. The leader was Miss Wharton, and with her, of course, were her two friends and supporters, Miss Fairchild, and Miss Plumfield. They were seldom apart and had a reputation for cruel tongues and sly tricks. His aunt thought them willing to use any means to trap a husband.
“I have to invite them, Spenhurst,” she told him. “For I promised Miss Fairchild’s aunt. However, you would be a far better husband than any of them could hope to win on their own merits,” she had told him. “Be very careful.”
Spen hoped the first girl was able to stick up for herself, for if he had to intervene, those three would be sure to make a scandal out of the pair of them being discovered together. Or perhaps just threaten it to pressure him into showing one or more of them some sign of favor.
Miss Wharton cooed, “Whatever are you doing, Lady Daffy?”
The lady she had addressed, who surely could not really be namedDaffy, smiled in answer, though her gaze did not leave the fountain. “The water is so pretty. Look how it sparkles.”
