Cinderella's Stepmother: A Tapestry of Love Romance Read online

  CINDERELLA’S

  STEPMOTHER

  A TAPESTRY OF

  LOVE Romance

  Rebecca Ward

  Copyright 1991 by Maureen Wartski

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  "WHAT A SUMPTUOUS tea," marveled Lady Angelica Linden. "Are we expecting guests?"

  Her elder stepdaughter, engaged in clearing the tea table of a riding crop, several copies of the Horseman's Gazette, and a pen-and-ink study of a black stallion, shook her head.

  Lady Angelica clasped white hands in the lap of her twice-turned blue muslin gown and gazed wonderingly at currant buns, toast that was actually buttered, and a rum cake. "Is it someone's birthday, Nella?" she hazarded.

  "The tea will fortify us." Miss Citronella Linden's tone was deceptively brisk as she added, "Thank you, Stubbs, and please tell Mrs. Brunce that the cake smells heavenly. Rosa will—but where is Rosa?"

  "I believe she has gone sketching, ma'am." The ancient butler's wheeze conveyed disapproval. "Miss Rosemary set out shortly after luncheon and was last seen entering the woods."

  "She will be hungry by now." Nella's faded gray riding dress swished about her ankles as she walked to the window, threw it open, and leaned out to give a piercing whistle. Angelica started, and Stubbs so far forgot himself as to wince, but Nella said calmly, "I collect that Rosemary will appear immediately. Please do pour, Angel."

  Lady Angelica waited until Stubbs had tottered out of the Blue Room. She then asked, "Why must we fortify ourselves, Nella?"

  Nella regarded her stepmother with affection. She had been thunderstruck when her late father, Sir Thomas, had announced his intention to marry a lady three years younger than his elder daughter, but her doubts had disappeared when she met Angelica. The daughter of an impoverished country squire, Angelica was an exquisite, gentle creature with golden hair, amethyst eyes, and a smile that was both sweet and eager to please.

  "Our tea is something like a council of war, Angel," Nella said.

  "Sir Tom's debts," his widow murmured. "Are we in trouble, then?"

  In spite of herself, Nella sighed.

  "I had thought we could manage if we economized, but apparently we cannot. More and more of Sir Tom's notes are coming due, and if we do not take stern measures, we will be forced to sell everything we own."

  "Everything?" Angelica paled at her stepdaughter's nod. "Linden House, do you mean—and Excalibur, too?"

  An anguished look filled Nella's sea-green eyes, but once again she nodded. "Excalibur, too," she repeated.

  Just then the door to the Blue Room was flung open and Rosemary Linden came marching in. She had a sketchbook tucked under her arm, pencils and brushes protruded from the pocket of her walking dress, and her boots were muddy. When she saw the tea she exclaimed, "Oh, famous! Did anyone die?"

  "Of course not," Angelica exclaimed, shocked. "Why would you say such a thing?"

  Tossing aside her sketchbook, Rosemary advanced on the tea table. "The last time there was a funeral in the village, the vicar's wife sent us leftover cake and shortbread. 'The funeral baked meats,' and all that." She cut a large slice of rum cake as she added, "What was that you were saying about your horse, Nella?"

  There was, Nella thought, no use wrapping plain facts in clean linen. "Excalibur will have to be sold along with everything else we own," she said bluntly, "to pay Sir Tom's debts."

  Stricken, Rosemary looked up from her half-eaten cake. "Is there nothing we can do?"

  Nella caught hold of her sister's high chair to stop the treacherous shake in her hands. "One of us must marry."

  "Aha," Rosemary exclaimed wisely. "You have an offer."

  She continued to eat cake, and Nella wondered how anyone could be so naive. At eighteen, Rosemary Linden cared nothing for convention or polite society and was happiest when she was tramping through the woods with her sketchbook. She had no doubt been sitting on some mossy spot today, for there were grass stains on her dress and a wisp of lichen clung to one frayed cuff. The face she turned up to her sister was a study in browns: brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles, and ingenuous brown eyes that were as guileless as a baby's.

  "Did you have an offer to be married?" Rosemary repeated. "I did not know you had a suitor."

  As she spoke, the ormolu clock on the mantel began to chime. The cheerful, tinny sound seemed to echo in the near-empty room. Most of the furniture had long since been sold, as had the Venetian crystal, silver candlesticks, and a Sevres figurine of a lovely lady with dark hair and laughing eyes that had shared the mantelpiece with the ormolu clock. Sir Tom had bought this figurine for his first wife some years before her death.

  Nella had cherished that figurine. She hoped fervently that whoever had bought it had given it a loving home.

  She drew herself up to her full five feet and spoke dryly, as though discussing the merits of a horse she was about to buy. "No, Rosa, I have not had an offer, and I am not likely to get one. I am twenty-four and so am considered old-cattish on the Marriage Mart. I am also very short—Sir Tim used to say I was too puny to be any good except on horseback. My hair is dark brown, which is unfashionable just now, as are my green eyes. In short, I would not take."

  Angelica protested, "You are too hard on yourself, Nella. You are beautiful and brave and loyal, and any gentleman who married you would be fortunate."

  Nella flashed her stepmother a warm smile but said frankly, "I feel that I am handicapped in knowing too much about gentlemen. Collect that I went often with Sir Tom to Newmarket—he was plump of pocket in those days and Ableman was our jockey—and have had a chance to observe sportsmen. They were almost constantly foxed and usually foolish. Indeed, I can tell you that I did not admire them—nor did they admire me."

  "That is because you can ride better than they can," Rosemary pointed out. Suddenly, a stricken look filled her eyes. "But . . . but Nella, you cannot mean that I must be married. I would dislike it above all things!"

  As though soothing a restive horse, Nella patted her sister's shoulder. "Don't be alarmed. You are too young."

  Relieved, Rosemary fortified herself with more cake. Angelica faltered, "Surely, you cannot mean me?"

  "You are the only one with a chance, Angel."

  Angelica's teacup rattled in its saucer. "Not again," she cried.

  She looked pleadingly at her stepdaughter, and Nella recalled the torments that Angelica had suffered at the hands of her ruthless family. Having no assets except their daughter, they had tried to sell her to the highest bidder on the Marriage Mart.

  "If it had not been for good, kind Sir Tom," Angelica quavered, "I would have had to marry Lord Waxe—who was eighty-three and had the gout—or that horrid Mr. Rickdon with his creeping ways and his leer. Ugh!"

  Nella ran to her stepmother and put an arm about her trembling shoulders. "You would never have to marry someone like that," she cried. "We would not let you."

  Rosemary reached for her sketchbook, tore out a sheet of paper, and with a few bold strokes sketched a young man on horseback. "A handsome duke will take one look at you, adore you, and heap his riches at your feet," she predicted. "And look—here you are in the lap of luxury, Angel. Would it not be famous to lie in bed all day and have servants bring you sugarplums and coffee and strawberries w
ith pounds of cream?"

  Nella couldn't help admiring Rosemary's deft little sketch of Angelica surrounded by fawning servants. "What nonsense you talk," she smiled.

  Angelica shook her head sadly and said, "It is I who am talking nonsense. Of course I must marry, and quickly, too. There is no other way."

  Nella felt a dull ache in her heart that she suppressed instantly as Angelica continued, "But how can we afford to attract a wealthy suitor? Even with your giving riding lessons, Nella, and after all our economies, we have no money. We cannot even pay the servants who have not left us. Mrs. Brunce and Stubbs and Torfy have not complained, but I wince whenever I think of how much we owe them. We cannot possibly afford a Season in London."

  "We will not need to go to London," Nella said.

  "But how else can I meet—"

  "We will not need to go to London because we have been invited to Lady Portwick's ball."

  Nella drew a stiff square of paper out of the pocket of her dress and handed it to Angelica, who cried, "I cannot credit it. Lady Portwick has made it plain that she thinks us below her notice. Her family has descended from a real saint, or so she says, and she considered Sir Tom a godless man. Since his death, she has ignored us."

  Lady Portwick was not alone, Nella thought wryly. Since Sir Thomas Linden's death in a hunting accident a year ago, the Linden ladies had been largely ignored, except by his creditors.

  She said, "I suspect that her ladyship's secretary included us by mistake. It does not matter. What does matter is that Lady Portwick's younger brother, the Earl of Deering, will be at the ball. Where Deering goes, his rich London friends will follow." Nella drew a deep breath and added, "Lady Portwick's ball will be full of men. Wealthy, titled men!"

  "You make it sound like a declaration of war," Angelica sighed.

  Nella thought of her coal-black stallion in the paddock. She looked toward the nearly bare mantle and remembered the fate of her precious Sevres figurine. She clenched her small hands.

  "It is war."

  "War," declared the young Earl of Deering, "was simpler. 'Pon my word, it was. You was shot at. You shot back. Can't shoot these curst bills, Court."

  He swept the back of a beringed hand across the top of his Louis XV desk. Bills, letters requesting payment, and scraps of paper affixed with the earl's signature fluttered down to the fine Aubusson carpet.

  Major Charles Harcourt leaned back in his cane-backed chair and stretched out long, booted legs. He clasped his hands behind his unfashionably cropped dark head and surveyed his aristocratic friend with ironic, gray eyes. "Why not just pay them?"

  "With what? Bloodsuckers have bled me as dry as a turnip. B'dad, Court, I'm played out."

  "You mean you've played the fool."

  There was no sympathy in Harcourt's voice, and the earl swore bitterly. He began to pace up and down the morning room of his London town house as the major continued, "In the past month you've smashed up four curricles, lost a fortune at White's and another at Brooke's, and then had to pay for those damages that you incurred at Vauxhall. You can dance if it pleases you, my dear fellow, but don't whine about paying the fiddler."

  "To the devil with you," the earl cried. "You know why I've been kicking up my heels. My heart's broke."

  The angry flush had faded from Deering's fair, handsome face, and he looked far younger than his twenty-five years. Young enough, thought Harcourt grimly, to mistake infatuation for love.

  He disguised the concern in his voice with banter, "Don't talk slum. You heart's been broken fifty times this past year. It seems to have great powers of recovery."

  "Hadn't met Lady Barbara then." The earl stopped his pacing and leaned against a window that overlooked fashionable St. James Square. "Court," he went on. "If you hadn't saved m'life, I'd never have met her. B'dad, I've wondered since why you bothered."

  Rising to his full six feet, Harcourt strode across the room and grasped his friend's shoulder.

  "Lady Barbara Hinchin's husband is the best shot in London," he said sternly. "Have you ever thought that she may enjoy pitting him against young fools? Ronald Kierby was her lover, too . . . and he lay at death's door for months with Lord Hinchin's bullet under his ribs." He gave the shoulder he held a rough shake. "There's blood on Lady Barbara's dainty hands."

  "How dare you?" Deering shouted.

  He glared at the major, who said, "She's not worth going to the devil for, Edward."

  Steadfast gray eyes met the earl's furious gaze, and after a moment, Deering gave a gusty sigh. "Feel as though I am going to the devil," he whispered. "When I think of Barbara, there's a fever in my blood. I love her, Court. Love her till the day I die."

  An odd look, part pain, part distaste, passed across Harcourt's strong-featured face. His fine mouth tightened, and the set of his square chin became harder. "Let me hear that tune in a month," he retorted, "and I'll believe it."

  "You don't know how it feels to burn as I do. Doubt if you have a heart to break, give you my word," the earl exclaimed. "I suppose you'll tell me next that you'll never marry."

  "I've no desire to be legshackled in the near future," Harcourt replied cooly. "When that day comes, I intend to marry with my head, not my heart. Which means, my friend, that I'll marry for money and not for love."

  "Love!" The earl sank into a chair and put his face in his hands. Harcourt watched him, thinking that Lady Barbara Hinchin with her flaming red hair and her laughing black eyes had driven her poison deep. If he stayed in London, Deering would be drawn back to her flame, and there would certainly be a duel.

  The thought made Harcourt frown, but he only said, "These Cheltenham tragedies become boring, Deering. What you need to lighten that Friday face of yours is a change of scene. Why not go down to Hampshire for a sennight, as your sister wishes?"

  The earl looked up at this. "Must be weak in your upper works," he exclaimed. "M'sister's the last one I want to see now. Should have been a bishop, Maria should. Gives sermons. Proses on about a fellow's sins. Takes it too seriously that we've descended from that plaguey saint—"

  "Saint Hugh the Brave," Harcourt interjected, "who rode in the Second Crusade, converted the Saracens, and became a monk."

  "The very one. Must have been a rum touch, Court, to leave his lady and his brats and go wandering off to sing psalms in some monastery. Always seemed to me that he showed a lack of proper feeling to abandon his family, give you my word."

  Harcourt interposed, "I used to live in Hampshire as a lad, did I tell you?"

  "You ain't told me a lot about yourself, Court. All I know is that your parents are dead and that you ain't on good terms with your relatives. I can understand that, give you my word. Think of m'sister. Besides, if I go down to Hampshire, I'll be far from Barbara." The fleeting interest that had lit his eyes faded away into dullness. "I couldn't bear being away from her, Court. Have to stay in London."

  The major strode to the window and flung it open so that a damp fog—redolent with the odor of mud, refuse, and smoke—drifted into the room.

  "Hampshire air is clean," he said. "There's good riding down there and pretty country girls. And hunting. Think of riding to hounds, Deering."

  Underneath the town house window, a jarvey had begun to curse his horse. The animal's frantic whinnies mingled with a nearby dog's barks and the jarvey's drink-roughened oaths.

  "Oh, shut the window," Deering shouted. "I take your point. But to go to m'sister's—b'dad, Court, you don't know her. In ten minutes, she'll have me on the rack."

  "Not if I'm with you," Harcourt said. "We'd ride and hunt and fish. I recall some fine trout fishing I did there as a lad."

  The earl stared hard at his friend. "You'd come to Hampshire with me? That's handsome of you, Court. But you won't like Maria, I promise you, and Portwick drinks like a fish. Disguised most of the time, give you my word. And m'nephew's one of those mush-mouthed, chitty-faced halflings that puts you off your feed. Why would you want to go to Hampshire, anyway?"

/>   To save your foolish young life, Harcourt thought.

  He shut the window and stood looking out into the London darkness for a long moment. Then, turning, he smiled at his friend.

  "Why would I want to go to Hampshire?" he repeated. "To relive fond memories, of course."

  But his smile did not quite reach his eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "TEA, DEERING?"

  The young earl eyed with distaste the delicate porcelain cup which his sister held out. "Good God, Maria, no."

  "I must request, Deering, that you do not use profanity in this house. It does not serve as an example to the servants. Besides, your nephew is a youth of untried years and should not be subject to evil influences."

  Deering glanced at the heir to Portwick Hall, who was staring dreamily at a bowl of flowers. "That swill will rust m'inner works," he protested.

  "Tea is excellent for your digestion, which, naturally, has suffered from your ramshackle and dissipated ways." Catching the look that her brother shot at the tall man who stood by the fireplace, Lady Portwick added repressively, "I collect that you do not agree, Major Harcourt."

  "Ma'am, I bow to your knowledge on the subject."

  Smiling, Harcourt set down his own Sevres teacup. Lady Portwick might send him sharp looks, but he had her slightly off-balance, for she did not know what to make of his two-edged comments.

  Harcourt continued to smile at her while wondering at the difference between Deering and his sister. Though they both shared the fair hair and blue eyes that had come down to them from their mother, they did not look like siblings. Deering was of medium height, slender, and well-favored with fine, almost delicate features. Lady Portwick was tall, amply fleshed, and had inherited her father's heavy features and small, mean mouth.

  Their characters differed, too. Deering, though bubble headed when it came to women, was kindhearted to a fault. Once, he had outraged his fashionable friends by stopping his curricle en route to Vauxhall so that he could rescue a dog that had been injured by a passing carriage. He had wrapped the hurt cur in his new coat, received that very day from Scott, and had taken the animal home so that he could tend it with his own hands.